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I hope you soon realize that the various stories in the bible are not actually true.
Those of us who disregard the supremacy of God do not suffer any more than those that do, except when man becomes involved in metting out god's will.
Do not forget that in your theory god made me skeptical of his existence thus sentencing me to hell beyond my control.
I have always been amused by the kind of excuses christians give me when i ask them why god would give a child cancer, or why god would allow for a child to starve to death. Their "best" excuse is that those children are paying for the sins of their ancesters. Sometimes from many genrations back, and others from their parents or grandparents. This is their best explanation and it still sounds horribly ridiculous to me.
Rob, it is ridiculous and often when you ask a Christian something they don't give you an accurate answer. Children get cancer and starve to death because the system they live in is a product of the sin of Adam. Adam was created to live forever in paradise. To fill and subdue the earth. Without sickness or death. When Eve was deceived by a rebellious angel Adam became frightened that he would lose her, and so chose to decide what was good and what was bad for himself. God had to allow this to settle the issue Satan had raised. Can man decide for himself what is good and what is bad?
Its like a man who builds a house for his son with the stipulation that his son be a responsible homeowner, but the son decides for himself the way he should take care of the house. The Father can't help him do that, so he rebukes the son and promises the house to his other son who will take care of it.
If god is a loving god, why the diseases and illnesses? I often ask myself, "if there is a god, why did he make my child disabled?" Did he do this in order to help others who are disabled? I mean, there's a reason for it, right? And if it's to help others with disabilities, then why have them in the first place? So it gives other people understanding? Why should my child have to suffer for doctors to learn more? And how do these doctors learn more? They do it because of science, the very thing that helps disprove god and his biblical timeline. And how did it help me or other people that I was molested for 12 years of my life? It didn't. All it did was help cement my beliefs that there isn't a loving god. If anything, there's a sadistic god who takes pleasure in watching his creation suffer. And no, even if he does happen to exist, I would never worship someone who allowed me to be sexually, physically, and emotionally abused. Not anymore...Christianity has done nothing for me. It helped destroy my relationships and make me feel inferior. That's not love.
if there was a god then why would he create us so he/she can make us suffer with killing, rape, and suicide
Heather, very powerful words. I had always wondered why God if he was real would allow war and fighting among his children. But then I began thinking through logic and the fact that no true all loving god would allow his children just stray away from the path of salvation straight to crime, drugs, and abuse. God is a sham. Just an excuse made by man not to deal with their own problems.
Thank you. And I agree with you. If there were a god, I can see being punished because humanity looks to him as a "father." My parents punished me when I did something bad. That's understandable. What did my daughter do before she was born? And what did I do when I was 4-16 years old to require such abuse? God is an imaginary being to give hope to people who cannot think for themselves.
When I was a Catholic, I'm very active, religious and served my church with all my heart and time. I grew up attending almost everything that the religious community would require me. Every time I undergo pains and tribulation I always listen to religious teaching of elders and read biblical encouragement quotations. By doing so, I was able to withstand my faith. But there had a time when life given me too much pain that my heart can almost no longer bear. I continued praying, praying and praying but pain continue to evolve more thus making me feel pathetic for myself. I started to question myself but not God because I'm trying to find the question out of my own intuition. Why I'm experiencing all of these? Why I feel that I wasted my time serving the church? Why there are people who don't believe in the god that the bible speaks about? Why religious people around me always says that I should stay on my faith without even listening carefully to what I feel and what are happening to me? If religion matters to god then why don't he reward me with the life that I deserve? Now, I'm no longer a religious person, nor an atheist. I can consider myself as a Christian humanist. Jesus is as good as I know him. He's a friend for me, but not god. I don't know god, but I believe in the supreme being, he's not under any religion nor requires us to serve as religions does. I search myself and discovered the answers within me. Everything happened so I can evolve, so I can be strong, so I can know more, when I know more none can manipulate me, so I can discover my abilities, talents, and I can become a better person whether I have a religion or not.
No, because my understanding of the Bible explains all of that to me. Its all about inherited sin. Adam rejected Jehovah God's sovereignty and in doing so his protection and guidance. The result is a world of pain and suffering.
In the story, did the Adam character know his actions were wrong?
Yes, Adam had been warned.
The story distinctly says that the ability to differentiate good from evil was given by eating the fruit. The decision to eat the fruit was made *before* the Adam character had the ability to understand that the decision was wrong. Nor could he have known that disobedience is wrong without the knowledge of good from evil. The warning you mention would be incomprehensible without knowing good from evil.
Of course this objection hinges on a literal interpretation of the story, which I inferred (possibly in error) from your comment.
Spewer,
The story doesn't say anything of the sort. The tree of the knowledge of what was good and what was bad represented Jehovah's sovereignty, that is, the creator's right to decide for his creation what was good and what was bad. Since God told Adam what was good and what was bad he was perfectly capable of determining this, and in fact demonstrated this effectively later when he tried to blame it on Eve. If you suggest that he couldn't have known what was good and what was bad without an intimate knowledge, that is, personal experience then God couldn't possess that knowledge himself.
The Jerusalem Bible of 1966 puts it this way: “This knowledge is a privilege which God reserves to himself and which man, by sinning, is to lay hands on, 3:5, 22. Hence it does not mean omniscience, which fallen man does not possess; nor is it moral discrimination, for unfallen man already had it and God could not refuse it to a rational being. It is the power of deciding for himself what is good and what is evil and of acting accordingly, a claim to complete moral independence by which man refuses to recognise his status as a created being. The first sin was an attack on God’s sovereignty, a sin of pride.”
And mine is a literal interpretation.
Interesting. What does your Jerusalem Bible of 1966 have for Genesis 2:9 and Genesis 2:17?
From the soil, Yahweh God caused to grow every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat; for, the day you eat of that, you are doomed to die.
Thanks. I'm not convinced a literal interpretation of "knowledge of good and evil" would necessarily lead to all the theological extrapolation from JB66, but it is interestsing to hear another view on the Eden myth.
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