God is not more merciful than most humans.

[DanieltheDragon]

In order for humans to forgive we go through an emotional state and move past the slight.

In order for God to forgive he has to have a ritualistic blood sacrifice involving torture of a pure being to forgive even the slightest of offenses.


How can God be all powerful if he is restricted in his ability to forgive?

How can God be all merciful if there is a sacrifice restriction on his mercy?

Why does God have a lower capacity of forgiveness than humans?

[Mike Boone]

[Replying to post 48 by JehovahsWitness]

I'm sorry JehovahsWitness but it is truly sad to encounter adults, here in the 21st century, who are still functioning at such a childlike level of thinking that they give a fairy tale like the Adam & Eve myth the same amount of credibility that they give to an actual event like the June 6th 1944 D-Day invasion of France.

The theology of literal bible believers maintains that each person living today who is enduring an illness or disease, does not suffer that malady due to his or her own sins, but rather, is suffering because the so called "Original Sin" committed by Adam & Eve forfeited man's one chance for people to live disease free, sickness free, lives.

And JW, a sad, and actually cruel aspect of your Adam & Eve belief is that it certainly does reveal a God who couldn't possibly be a just one if that myth was true. We had a 4 year old little boy in our community who died after enduring a painful form of cancer. So in accepting the Adam & Eve tale, you then believe that child suffered due to a couple in a garden who yielded to temptation created by a well spoken reptile, about 6,100 years ago. And with that poor 4 year old having been as sick as he was, it's very possible that he died without ever even learning what the concept of sin is.

So are you still going to insist that the God you believe in is a just God, since you know that His plan includes small children in 2017 suffering due to actions taken by people ages ago, which the kids obviously had no part in?

You are probably a very decent and good person, JW, but the belief that a truly loving God would find it acceptable for the innocent to suffer because of offenses that they had absolutely no responsibility for, is sure not a belief that is worthy of a good and decent person. I really tend to think that Christians who hold such beliefs must have gotten their definition of justice from some warped dictionary that is unknown to any library.

But don't worry, no one suffering from sickness or disease in 2017, is going through their ordeal because of any couple in a garden being fooled by a talking snake.

Almost any highly qualified physician, who managed to avoid a total brainwashing with bible passages being pounded into his head as a child, knows how totally absurd it is to credit sin as the reason that diseases like cancer came into this world. Because if that loopy claim was true, we would not see cats, dogs, and other animals, who also suffer from cancer, as animals simply behave according to instinct, so they aren't sinners, and have no connection with that mythical "Original Sin".

And JehovahsWitness, if you honestly believe that all of the people on earth descended from 2 people who had a fateful talk with a very articulate serpent, then you must also think that people have always communicated with each other via the spoken word. But anthropologists, the scientists who study how humans developed, know that early man existed for tens of thousands of years before learning to use language, with the earliest people using nothing more than grunts, groans, and a few other crude sounds, for attempting to express thoughts or feelings. The first people simply didn't talk, and certainly didn't use language to converse with a talking snake.

The people writing the bible were working with an extreme handicap because in their time no anthropologists or archaeologists were around who could have let the bible's authors know that they were actually descended from early humans who walked the earth more than a million years ago.

And it's also pretty easy to understand why the Adam & Eve myth is silly, for another reason.

Every Christian minister whose theology I've heard or read, maintains that God, being all-knowing, is aware of every single event, long before it happens. So before he even created our world, God would have known that he was going to create Adam and Eve, have them living in the Garden of Eden where they would disobey an order from him, and thereby, commit mankind's 1st sin. And God would also know, before creating them, that Adam & Eve's actions would make him so angry that he'd throw them out of that garden. How phony it is in the story for God to get angry at Adam & Eve, when he knew as he created them, that he was not equipping his new creations with enough strength of character for them to be able to resist the temptation provided by a very clever serpent.

JW, let's say that I was a designer of engines for GM cars, and was aware that the engine I designed for a brand new 2017 GM model would blow-up and be totally ruined when reaching about 35,000 miles. When complaints from angry customers started flowing in, it would be the manufacturer of the car and engine (and me) who would eventually be found to be at fault for making a defective product.

And if the Adam & Eve story were true, it would be the exact same type of case as that example of a General Motors car, but instead of it being an auto company designing and making a defective product, the A & E tale concerns a God designing and manufacturing a couple of defective products, in the form of 2 people.

Adam and Eve just ended up acting in the exact way that God knew that they would have to eventually behave when he included a defect in his design for them.

Blaming Adam & Eve for their sin just seems like a case of letting God off the hook for his responsibility in causing the Garden of Eden fiasco by placing 2 people there who he knew were virtually guaranteed to screw up eventually due to his own design

But don't worry, if you surveyed the last 100 people who won the Nobel Prize for anthropology, physics, and astronomy, it's a safe bet that every last one of them would tell you that he or she considers the Garden of Eden tale to be nothing more than an ancient myth constructed by some very ignorant and superstitious people.

Albert Einstein, who is generally regarded to have had the greatest mind of the 20th century, may have given the best description of the bible when he said that much of the bible is "childish superstition". And by the way, Christians often make the false claim that Einstein was pretty religious and had said that he believed in God. That angered Einstein who wrote a letter, to correct that faulty claim, in which he stated that he had used the term God in a much different way than religious people do, and that he did not believe in any God that judges man, or requires worship.

Anyway, the whole problem with this Garden of Eden story is that God knew before creating his first people that he would give them the built in character flaw of weakness in resisting temptation that would cause them to sin. And with God knowing before the creation that the first 2 people would commit sin as a result of that flaw in his own human design, then if God really hates sin as much as Christians claim he does, then he should have known that he needed to create beings who are better than humans. That Old Testament God really is a screw-up, isn't he? But then we humans are supposed to take all of the blame for his mistake in doing a lousy job with his design. Didn't the old boy ever hear about quality control?

But the final moral that I draw from the Adam and Eve story is that if a God, as the creator, knew that he wasn't going to like it when his creations don't behave perfectly, then he should have been bright enough to make perfect creations. But then, of course, he'd miss out on all the great fun of judging people, having many of them go to Hell, and then, seeing them suffer.

[Mike Boone]

In order for humans to forgive we go through an emotional state and move past the slight.

In order for God to forgive he has to have a ritualistic blood sacrifice involving torture of a pure being to forgive even the slightest of offenses.


How can God be all powerful if he is restricted in his ability to forgive?

How can God be all merciful if there is a sacrifice restriction on his mercy?

Why does God have a lower capacity of forgiveness than humans?

Actually, Daniel, the very fact that The Greatest Story Ever Sold includes a God who is connected with a blood sacrifice, is a dead give away that the Christian religion is nonsense.

It simply isn't sensible to believe that a God who supposedly possesses the greatest intellect in the universe would have any involvement, whatsoever, with a blood sacrifice, an act that is characteristic of only the most primitive, crude, and cruel types of societies.

And in crucifying the thousands of condemned prisoners that they did in the ancient world, the Romans were simply performing a far more painful form of capital punishment than American states employ today. But the really crude part is Christians believing that one of those quite torturous executions provided the blood that a supposedly loving God needed to forgive humans, when obviously, a God would have the power to accord forgiveness to those who seek it, while having no need at all to require the bloodletting and slow painful death of an innocent being before he could grant forgiveness.

Back in 2004, I thought that few things were as sad, or depressing, as hearing Christians getting emotional when describing how Mel Gibson's "The Passion Of The Christ" had made them cry while causing them to think about how much pain that Jesus endured which they believed to have saved them from an eternal Hell.

Gibson's film was certainly a very slick, polished production, but those unfamiliar with the New Testament, or Christianity, would never derive any knowledge about Christ's philosophy or way of treating people from seeing that movie. Basically, "The Passion Of The Christ" consisted of about 2 hours of Christ being beaten, tortured, making his way to the cross while being knocked down constantly, and getting up again, and finally, being tortured to death. That movie really deserved a more appropriately descriptive title such as "The Sickest Religious Movie Ever Sold", or "The Bloodiest Snuffing Of Jesus That Will Soon Get Old", or maybe even "J.C. Makes A Huge Blood Donation".

Really gory movies never bother me, but the constant abuse of Christ in Gibson's movie got really boring, as far as I was concerned. I remember looking at my watch in the theater when the movie still had about 30 to 40 minutes left, and thinking, I can't wait until this crap is over. And that was certainly one time I agreed with most of America's movie critics, because slightly more than half of American movie reviewers gave "The Passion Of The Christ" a negative review. And then of course, not very long after that film had it's run, we all heard how sick the movie's creator actually was as the taped audio of a Mel Gibson drunken anti-Jewish tirade, and his threats of doing bodily harm to a girlfriend, made the evening news.

I'm very encouraged, however, that with all of the discussion of movies, from every era of film making, that I participate in on Home Theater Forum, I can't even recall anyone bringing up "The Passion Of The Christ", even though a lot of other movies from the early to mid 2000s are discussed on that forum all of the time. Somehow, I'm really sure that Gibson's movie will never make it onto any AFI list of great American movies, even though 1959's Ben-Hur made it onto an AFI list.

[marco]

[Replying to post 55 by marco]

I admit I do tend to analyse scriptures and come to what some (maybe not yourself) may see a absurd, obscure and pathetic conclusions. I won't address the issue as you have implied that whatever I write, should it not correspond to your own conclusion, will be contorted and unreasonable.

You are being harshly self-critical, for I don't disagree with all your interpretations. I am simply making the point that my interpretation and anyone else's is subject to human error.

What I like about you is you don't interpret scripture in any way, this means that you don't impose any interpretation at all on the words you read in the bible, perhaps I should follow your lead and I humbly beg your indulgence when I fail to do so.

I am humbled both by your flattering words and by your disregard for the worth of your own interpretations. I don't think we are divided by a vast Red Sea. Words can be as beautiful as butterflies, but just as fragile. What lies beneath them is all important.

My warm wishes.

[Justin108]

It would be more accurate to say we are suffering the "consequences" of their action rather than we are being punished.

Either God has control over whether we are affected by these consequences or he doesn't. If God has no control, then he is not omnipotent. If he does have control, then he willingly designed a system where the children are unjustly suffering for the sins of Adam and Eve. God could easily have given us all the same chance as Adam and Eve. He didn't. Either God is unjust, or he is incompetent

To illustrate: If a father is irresponisible and crashes the car, the whole family, including any children that weren't even alive when it happened, suffer. The family may go for years without a car, the children may have to walk to school, worse, one of the children may have been injured and suffer permanent pain. If the father is convicted of reckless driving and jailed the children no longer have a father at home incurring long term financial, emotional and psychological consequences.

These consequences are outside of anyone's control. It therefore cannot be used in comparison to God as nothing is outside of God's control. If the father could magically fix the car and healed the children but chose not to, then the father is responsible. God could easily fix the injustice of us needing to suffer for Adam's sin but chose not to. God is unjust

The plan was that we all descended from one couple, so we would ultimately be 'family'. A great plan until the parents of that family deliberately did something that meant that all their children would be born "defective".

God could easily have made sin something uninheritable. For some reason, God made sin inheritable. This decision on God's part was an unjust decision

God can of course do anything, but "anything" is not always the right thing to do.

Explain why making sin inheritable is the "right" thing to do

cons:
- innocent children suffer for something that was not their fault

pros:
- ???

Our creator limits himself to only acting in a way that is just, good and beneficial

How is inheritable sin just, good or beneficial?

[Monta]

[Replying to post 64 by Justin108]

"Either God has control over whether we are affected by these consequences or he doesn't. If God has no control, then he is not omnipotent. If he does have control, then he willingly designed a system where the children are unjustly suffering for the sins of Adam and Eve. God could easily have given us all the same chance as Adam and Eve. He didn't. Either God is unjust, or he is incompetent "

To my children I am omnipotent.

Not true, you have all the chance as Adam and Eve had;

do 10 commandmants.

[Justin108]

[Replying to post 64 by Justin108]

"Either God has control over whether we are affected by these consequences or he doesn't. If God has no control, then he is not omnipotent. If he does have control, then he willingly designed a system where the children are unjustly suffering for the sins of Adam and Eve. God could easily have given us all the same chance as Adam and Eve. He didn't. Either God is unjust, or he is incompetent "

To my children I am omnipotent.

Not true, you have all the chance as Adam and Eve had;

do 10 commandmants.

So I'm not supposed to work on the Sabbath?

[Mike Boone]

[Replying to post 55 by marco]

Thank you so much, I will not trouble you any further with my "own benign interpretation on ... verses." I admit I do tend to analyse scriptures and come to what some (maybe not yourself) may see a absurd, obscure and pathetic conclusions. I won't address the issue as you have implied that whatever I write, should it not correspond to your own conclusion, will be contorted and unreasonable.

What I like about you is that you consistently and don't interpret scripture in any way, this means that you don't impose any interpretation at all on the words you read in the bible, perhaps I should follow your lead and I humbly beg your indulgence when I fail to do so.


Be well yourself,

JW

JW, you seem to agree that there are passages in the bible, the exact meaning of which are extremely difficult to arrive at with any great degree of confidence. In fact, I'd wager that there are scores of passages in the bible that are so inscrutable that a half dozen ministers who were educated together at the same seminary, if questioned separately, would provide 6 different answers, in many cases, for what a given passage means.

This brings me to one of the points made in a book I used to have by an ex-fundamentalist minister. This man posed the question that if a God wrote a book to let people know exactly what he expects of them don't you think he would make sure that his book used brief declarative sentences that would not be open to much interpretation so as to leave as little doubt as possible in the reader's mind about exactly what information or points that God wanted him to understand, with the writing always striving to avoid confusion. Yet, the bible we have is certainly written in just the opposite manner.

One of the reasons I don't devote time to reading the bible is because so much of it is open to interpretation with many people disagreeing on what is actually the correct meaning.

And people may come away from reading a bible passage thinking it had a basic, easy to understand message, when they actually got it all wrong. Many years ago, even before having his CNN talk show, Larry King had a radio show that came on at midnight, here in the Akron, Ohio area. One night Mr King had a prominent Jewish biblical scholar as the guest on the show. I'll never forget the comment that the biblical scholar made about a biblical passage. The passage in question was the famous "Spare the rod, and you spoil the child."

Now this Jewish biblical expert said that the word rod in that passage had nothing to do with it being a stick, or other object, that would be used to strike a child. Instead, this man insisted that rod was a term that meant Jewish law. So the biblical passage actually means "Spare the law, and you spoil the child."

I will always wonder how many millions of people took to using rods on their children due to that passage that the biblical scholar said they had simply misunderstood.

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 58 by JehovahsWitness]




[center]
Beware of the demon Irony.[/center]

conclusions. I won't address the issue as you have implied that whatever I write, should it not correspond to your own conclusion, will be contorted and unreasonable.

Three points:

• 1. If Marco didn't actually write those implications.. we have to make those up ourselves.
  
  2. If Marco steps over the line YOU CAN BET I'll be one of the very first to report the violation.
  
  3. What you are accusing Marco of, is an automatic negative bias towards you as a person. I suggest that's a negative bias towards Marco as a person... do you see any irony here?
  
  Because I do.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 67 by Mike Boone]

I have written an earlier post addressing this issue, you may like to consult it - here
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 547#756547

[JehovahsWitness]

Explain why making sin inheritable is the "right" thing to do

It's not a matter of making "sin inheritable", God in his infinite wisdom chose to create a physical universe of cause and effect. Or as Newton put it "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." Our phyiscal universe is governed by laws these render life both possible and pleasurable.

The gift of procreation?

Humans were designed to procreate. In this Mendels laws of genetics comes into play, this is the law that demonstrates that there are inherent species limitations imposed by the genetic makeup of all living things. It is essentially that which ensures that humans give birth to other humans. Is this "good"? How emotionally destabalizing distressing and ultimately horrirfic would it be if there was a 50% chance a woman give to a giraffe? Or a crocodile? The principle of inheritance is simply a feature of the living world and anyone that has looked at their new born baby with awe and wonder, or seen their wives blue blue eyes staring at them from its little face will answer the question whether its a good design feature or not.

# Okay but why didn't he just overide one of his own laws when it would pass on something negative?

Because there were other issues involved. When Adam sinned they made a decision (as the family head) for himself and his children. It was a bad decision but He had the right to do so. Before Jehovah could legitimately "override" that decision there were issues that had to be settled. If God had spared the human race the consequences of Adam's actions there would have been relief but it would only have been temporary because the issue was ultimately of rebellion against his (God's) rule and the bid for independence from God. The human family had the right to make that bid, any overriding of that decision would be dependent on the children (humans) choosing a new "father". It would have to be a choice of the children and for that the children had to be born. And if they are born they would be born inheriting all the physical characteristics imposed on them by their father (Adam)

But we suffer in the meantime, we suffer.

Yes we do. The comfort is that God can and will repair the damage or all those that chose the replacement "father" (Jesus). God could not mitigate his punishment of Adam (that would have incurred more suffering that its worth thinking about), He could not impose his rule on Adam's children (without denying their right to choose) but he could given them the chance to be born, and choose life under his (God's) rulership. And then legitimately upon request, override the physical, emotional and spiritual consequences of inheritance.

That's the plan, let each one make his choice.

JW