Why does God need a book?

[OnceConvinced]

The bible tells us about the Book of Life, which contains the names of those who have been saved and are going to Heaven. If your name does not appear you go to Hell. (Chick Tracts even have God asking the chief Angel "Does his name appear in the book of life?")

There are two issues I have with this (and topics for discussion):

1) If God is all knowing and he knows each of us personally, then why does he need a book to record our names? Santa doesn't need a book to know who's naughty and nice. He just knows. But God needs a book. Why does he need a book when he is all knowing?

2) Why a book? Wouldn't they have really amazing technology in Heaven? You'd think they'd have computers, perhaps even something superior to computers. If the bible had described some kind of metal box that contained all the names... or perhaps a flat round disk, that would go a long way to showing that the bible was divine and not just ancient man's ignorance. Imagine how huge the book would have to be! It would be mammoth. So why use a book rather than some other form of data storage?

Feel free to speculate, even if you have nothing solid.

[OnceConvinced]

Actually also the works are written in those books.

True!

That's right, the God of love (where love means keeping no record of wrongs - 1 Cor 13:5) is keeping records of our wrongs in the same book.

Imagine the size of that book! Billions and Billions of people all with their life stories in them. Every single little sin is going to be recorded in great detail. Wow, just imagine how many times I've lusted and even fornicated in my mind. That will probably take up about 1000 pages right there!

[David the apologist]

The bible tells us about the Book of Life, which contains the names of those who have been saved and are going to Heaven. If your name does not appear you go to Hell. (Chick Tracts even have God asking the chief Angel "Does his name appear in the book of life?")

There are two issues I have with this (and topics for discussion):

1) If God is all knowing and he knows each of us personally, then why does he need a book to record our names? Santa doesn't need a book to know who's naughty and nice. He just knows. But God needs a book. Why does he need a book when he is all knowing?

2) Why a book? Wouldn't they have really amazing technology in Heaven? You'd think they'd have computers, perhaps even something superior to computers. If the bible had described some kind of metal box that contained all the names... or perhaps a flat round disk, that would go a long way to showing that the bible was divine and not just ancient man's ignorance. Imagine how huge the book would have to be! It would be mammoth. So why use a book rather than some other form of data storage?

Feel free to speculate, even if you have nothing solid.

Easy: the "Book of Life" is a metaphor. Sort of like everything else in the book of Revelations. Unless, of course, you think that the early church literally believed that the earth would eventually be ruled by a literal multi-headed dragon, that whenever Jesus speaks a literal sword comes out of His mouth, that four dudes on four literal horses would literally be sent out to deliver plagues on the earth, etc. the only reasonable thing to think is that most - if not all - of the book of Revelation was intended to be interpreted in a symbolic way.

If all the things that caused you to abandon your faith were of this sort, then frankly, I'm afraid that I have to question your rationality.

[JoeyKnothead]

From Post 22:

...
...I'm afraid that I have to question your rationality.

As you do, be reminded some of us'll question the rationality of those who belong to the "Christian supporters of Evolution" and the "Opposes Scientism" usergroups.

Tell us all, Christian, do you really think dead folks come back to life?

If you think they do, what does that say of your rationality?

[Zzyzx]

.

Easy: the "Book of Life" is a metaphor. Sort of like everything else in the book of Revelations.

Or "everything else in" the bible?

Unless, of course, you think that the early church literally believed that the earth would eventually be ruled by a literal multi-headed dragon, that whenever Jesus speaks a literal sword comes out of His mouth, that four dudes on four literal horses would literally be sent out to deliver plagues on the earth, etc. the only reasonable thing to think is that most - if not all - of the book of Revelation was intended to be interpreted in a symbolic way.

What parts of the bible, exactly, can be taken as literal truth – not symbolic or allegorical? Unless there is a means by which any interested person can distinguish fact from fiction (or other non-literal literary forms), the literal truth of the entire text is questionable at best.

If all the things that caused you to abandon your faith were of this sort, then frankly, I'm afraid that I have to question your rationality.

I, personally, question the rationality of those who retain a "faith" based upon tales by unidentified ancient writers who did not distinguish between fact and fantasy, who appeared to believe that dead bodies come back to life after days in the grave, who ignore the absence of any credible corroborating evidence for bible tales of earthquakes and eclipses not recorded by extra-biblical sources, of the Earth ceasing rotation, of a star stopping over a specific location, etc.

[David the apologist]

From Post 22:

...
...I'm afraid that I have to question your rationality.

As you do, be reminded some of us'll question the rationality of those who belong to the "Christian supporters of Evolution" and the "Opposes Scientism" usergroups.

"Scientism" is a muddleheaded doctrine at best. I can't prove scientifically that you're a real person with conscious states broadly analogous to my own. I cannot falsify the position that you are a philosophical zombie, or an upgraded version of Cleverbot, or any of a million other things. But nonetheless, I know with certainty that you are a real person, that you are not a philosophical zombie, and that your mental life is not radically different from mine. Therefore, there are pieces of knowledge that are not gained via the scientific method. Therefore scientism is false. QED.

That being said, the scientific method is the ideal method for dealing with the observable and controllable. Most of the biological world fits in those categories. So while the scientific method is a dud when applied in domains where it doesn't belong (metaphysics, daily experience, etc.), it is a powerhouse in the domain where it does belong.

Tell us all, Christian, do you really think dead folks come back to life?

It depends on the circumstances.

I believe that dead people stay dead unless interfered with by a supernatural force.

Whenever a skeptic raises the subject of miracles, they always talk about "people rising from the dead" or "women having babies without having sex." But that's not what Christians think is going on, or at least it's a misleading way to phrase what Christians do think. "People rising from the dead" is an absurdity, as it (at least implicitly) indicates that the dead person is coming out of their grave, and there's nothing else in the equation worth mentioning. "People being raised from the dead," on the other hand, is another story entirely. It causes the reader to instantly wonder, "what or who is doing the raising?" And that makes all the difference in the world. When there's more to the story than just dead people not being dead anymore, things make a bit more sense.

So the entire question of miracles ends up having nothing at all to do with the laws of nature or any other discovery of science. It hinges entirely on whether or not there is a something or someone outside of the natural order capable of impinging upon the natural order. And I think that the arguments for such a something or someone (the henological argument, the first cause argument, the Leibnizian cosmological argument, the Kalam cosmological argument, the argument from abstract objects, the teleological argument, the argument from consciousness, the argument from reason, the argument from morality, and the argument from desire, to name the main ones) are individually defensible, and collectively nearly unassailable.

[David the apologist]

.

Easy: the "Book of Life" is a metaphor. Sort of like everything else in the book of Revelations.

Or "everything else in" the bible?

Please don't put words in my mouth.

Or talk in a way that reminds me of Young Earthers. It ticks me off when professed skeptics ape the fundamentalist slippery-slope arguments about symbolic interpretations of scripture. It makes it sound like that skepticism is on the same intellectual level as fundamentalism, and I know enough honest skeptics to be able to say that that is not the case.

Unless, of course, you think that the early church literally believed that the earth would eventually be ruled by a literal multi-headed dragon, that whenever Jesus speaks a literal sword comes out of His mouth, that four dudes on four literal horses would literally be sent out to deliver plagues on the earth, etc. the only reasonable thing to think is that most - if not all - of the book of Revelation was intended to be interpreted in a symbolic way.

What parts of the bible, exactly, can be taken as literal truth – not symbolic or allegorical? Unless there is a means by which any interested person can distinguish fact from fiction (or other non-literal literary forms), the literal truth of the entire text is questionable at best.

The entire text... OF THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS.

Weren't you the one who pointed out that none of the NT authors were interested in having all of their documents bound together as a single "Bible"? If that's the case, then how can the symbolic nature of one book in the collection cast doubt on the literal accuracy of other books in the collection?

If all the things that caused you to abandon your faith were of this sort, then frankly, I'm afraid that I have to question your rationality.

I, personally, question the rationality of those who retain a "faith" based upon tales by unidentified ancient writers

Ever heard of Papias, Irenaus, or Tertullian? They tell us who these "ancient writers" were: Matthew was written by the Apostle of the same name (though it was originally in either Hebrew or Aramaic), Mark was written by an attendant of the Apostle Peter on the basis of Peter's preaching, Luke was written by the associate of the Apostle Paul along with the book of Acts, and John was written by the Apostle John. In all the debates over canonicity of books - and every book was subject to scrutiny, so much so that 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Hebrews, Jude, James, and Revelation were nearly excluded because of uncertainty as to authorship - the authors of the Gospels were never in question.

who did not distinguish between fact and fantasy,

I assume that this is a reference to the supernatural? Unfortunately, the arguments for such supernatural beings are decidedly factual in nature. If you would like to discuss them, make a thread, and I will give you something you ain't never seen before.

who appeared to believe that dead bodies come back to life after days in the grave,

No, they believed that God (of the type 2 or type 3 variety, see the "is God an Alien?" thread) brought dead bodies back to life after days in the grave. There's a difference between an object in motion arbitrarily changing motion in violation of the law of inertia, and an object in motion having its motion changed by an outside force. Every law of physics has a "if no external forces are operative" clause.

who ignore the absence of any credible corroborating evidence for bible tales of earthquakes and eclipses not recorded by extra-biblical sources,

1) Earthquakes happen all the time, who's going to connect it with the execution of some rabble-rouser from the sticks?
2) Where does the Bible say that there was an eclipse? Some sort of atmospheric phenomenon involving cloud cover seems much more reasonable as having caused darkness for three hours.

of the Earth ceasing rotation,

The same supernatural effect could have been caused in a number of different ways. God could indeed have stopped the earth's rotation, but He also could have temporarily altered the geometry of spacetime on the battlefield, causing what would have been a few seconds to the rest of the planet to last for several hours within the area of the disturbance.

But the method is beside the point. The point is that even if the earth stopped rotating, it didn't stop rotating on its own. Nobody says that the earth could stop rotating on its own. I believe that it was caused to stop rotating by something outside of the natural order. Moreover, I have at least ten arguments for the existence of a something outside of the natural order, if you care to listen.

of a star stopping over a specific location, etc.

Again, no one is saying that the star just stopped of its own accord. If it did stop (and there's always the possibility that some convoluted astrological woo woo that ancient Jews neither understood nor cared to learn was involved in the magi's navigational decisions), it stopped because it was caused to stop by an entity outside the natural order, an entity whose existence is to be accepted on the basis of rational argument.

[Divine Insight]

Whenever a skeptic raises the subject of miracles, they always talk about "people rising from the dead" or "women having babies without having sex." But that's not what Christians think is going on, or at least it's a misleading way to phrase what Christians do think. "People rising from the dead" is an absurdity, as it (at least implicitly) indicates that the dead person is coming out of their grave, and there's nothing else in the equation worth mentioning. "People being raised from the dead," on the other hand, is another story entirely. It causes the reader to instantly wonder, "what or who is doing the raising?" And that makes all the difference in the world. When there's more to the story than just dead people not being dead anymore, things make a bit more sense.

So the entire question of miracles ends up having nothing at all to do with the laws of nature or any other discovery of science. It hinges entirely on whether or not there is a something or someone outside of the natural order capable of impinging upon the natural order. And I think that the arguments for such a something or someone (the henological argument, the first cause argument, the Leibnizian cosmological argument, the Kalam cosmological argument, the argument from abstract objects, the teleological argument, the argument from consciousness, the argument from reason, the argument from morality, and the argument from desire, to name the main ones) are individually defensible, and collectively nearly unassailable.

Dear David the Apologist, I completely agree with you reasoning here. The only problem I have with this argument is that it doesn't help Christianity one iota.

I'm more than willing to grant a supernatural God can do supernatural things like raising people from the dead, etc. Or even having an illiterate prophet like Muhammad re-write a flawed Bible into a perfectly infallible Qur'an before flying off to heaven on a flying horse.

The problem with this sort of apology is that it can be used to justify any and all mythologies. There is no a single solitary mythology that is too outrageous to be defended in this way. Therefore this argument alone is not impressive. In fact, this argument can even be applied to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. "With God all things are possible"

So merely attempting to defend or support these fables via this apologetic approach alone is futile and meaningless.

As you suggest there needs to be more to the story that we can look to for trying to make sense of these ancient myths. This is where I find the greatest objections of all.

I find the biblical stories of the God portrayed in the Old Testament to be utterly absurd, genuinely idiotic, and profoundly immoral to boot. So my objections to the Old Testament God are not ones of disbelieve that an omnipotent God could not have done these things, but rather my position is that no sane, intelligent and moral entity would have ever behaved in such an utterly stupid and immoral way.

Every "solution" this God comes up with is violent, messy, and truly stupid. They are the kinds of ignorant solutions I would expect an ancient barbaric society to make up, and certainly not the kinds of intelligent solutions I would expect from an actual intelligent God.

In the Garden of Eden, this God curses the evil serpent to crawl on his belly and eat dirt for the rest of his days. Doesn't that sound to you like a solution to a problem that came from an all-intelligent being? Moreover, did this actually solve anything? No it didn't.

Again, in the Garden of Eden this God curses Eve with greatly multiplied pain and sorrow in children (the act of procreation of LIFE!). Does this sound like something a loving Fatherly God would do to his child? Using the procreation of life itself as weapon of punishment? Besides, who's idea is to that humans should procreate anyway? God's or Eve's?

If I was Eve I would have told God to shove his curse in one of his black holes and I would just refuse to have any more babies. Period. That would have been a shocker for God huh?

Moreover did this rude and crude "punishment" solve anything? No clearly it did not as things only continued to go downhill from there.

So this supposedly all-loving all-wise God is not doing loving or wise things, and apparently he can't even solve the simplest of problems.

This God does a lot more stupid stuff, but let's just jump ahead to he Great Flood. Despite this God's many attempts at trying to solve the problem of sin many times using many truly stupid and crude barbaric "punishments" all of humanity has become totally evil. So this God is a complete failure. None of his utterly stupid attempts to solve the problem of sin have ever worked.

So he drowns out humanity as his further attempt to thwart sin. Once again a truly violent gory and stupid "solution" to a problem that doesn't even work. It solves NOTHING.

Then in Christianity this God seem to be at the end of this rope, in an act of extreme desperation he sends his only begotten son to try to save people from sin. Once again, a totally gory and barbaric method. He has his very own corrupt priests call for the brutal beating and crucifixion of his son. And then he's going to demand that all humans must condone this act on their behalf and accept his son as their scapegoat for sin. A totally immoral thing to ask anyone to do. Yet this God demands that we embrace this immoral act lest he'll unleash even more of his brutal barbaric wrath on his.

Does this solve the problem of sin? Well, apparently now. People are supposedly just as sinful today as they always were. So this didn't solve anything. And according to Jesus the "Good News" is that most people will be condemned to everlasting punishment and only a few will find eternal life.

That's supposed to be the "Good News" of Christianity?

And also what happens when God resurrects Jesus from the grave? Is Jesus miraculously raised from the dead in a perfectly restored body? No, he's body is simply resurrected as a zombie right out of a Hollywood Horror flick complete with all the wounds that killed him.

In fact, I think the part in the Gospels about the Doubting Thomas is the stupidest thing I've ever read. The Doubting Thomas wouldn't believe it was Jesus unless he could see the wounds of Jesus' Crucifixion.

What?

A God raises Jesus from the dead and this Doubting Thomas won't believe it unless Jesus has retained the wounds that killed him? That's absurd. I would expect Jesus to say back to Thomas, "You are a silly man Thomas. When God resurrected me from the dead he healed my body to perfection and I no longer have a single solitary scratch that I had ever acquired during my life."

That's what I would expect a truly supernatural God to be able to do. The idea that God raises Jesus from the grave like a Hollywood Zombie is utterly ridiculous. All for what? To satisfy the doubting Thomas? Why should an all-powerful God need to jump through hoops to impress a stupid doubting Thomas?

These stories are utterly absurd and make no sense at all.

Also, if Heaven is a spiritual place then why would Jesus have needed to take his beaten and battered zombie body back to heaven with him?

I would have been far more impressed if Jesus was simple risen as a ghost and his physical body remained in the grave where it belongs.

Of course changing that little bit now wouldn't help much considering the overwhelming absurdities from Genesis to Revelation.

I don't reject the Bible because supernatural events are impossible. I reject the Bible simply because it is an utterly stupid story. Period amen.

The God of the Bible would need to be an absolute moron. Not to mention being an immoral moron to boot.

[David the apologist]

Whenever a skeptic raises the subject of miracles, they always talk about "people rising from the dead" or "women having babies without having sex." But that's not what Christians think is going on, or at least it's a misleading way to phrase what Christians do think. "People rising from the dead" is an absurdity, as it (at least implicitly) indicates that the dead person is coming out of their grave, and there's nothing else in the equation worth mentioning. "People being raised from the dead," on the other hand, is another story entirely. It causes the reader to instantly wonder, "what or who is doing the raising?" And that makes all the difference in the world. When there's more to the story than just dead people not being dead anymore, things make a bit more sense.

So the entire question of miracles ends up having nothing at all to do with the laws of nature or any other discovery of science. It hinges entirely on whether or not there is a something or someone outside of the natural order capable of impinging upon the natural order. And I think that the arguments for such a something or someone (the henological argument, the first cause argument, the Leibnizian cosmological argument, the Kalam cosmological argument, the argument from abstract objects, the teleological argument, the argument from consciousness, the argument from reason, the argument from morality, and the argument from desire, to name the main ones) are individually defensible, and collectively nearly unassailable.

Dear David the Apologist, I completely agree with you reasoning here. The only problem I have with this argument is that it doesn't help Christianity one iota.

I'm more than willing to grant a supernatural God can do supernatural things like raising people from the dead, etc. Or even having an illiterate prophet like Muhammad re-write a flawed Bible into a perfectly infallible Qur'an before flying off to heaven on a flying horse.

The problem with this sort of apology is that it can be used to justify any and all mythologies. There is no a single solitary mythology that is too outrageous to be defended in this way. Therefore this argument alone is not impressive. In fact, this argument can even be applied to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. "With God all things are possible"

So merely attempting to defend or support these fables via this apologetic approach alone is futile and meaningless.

Thank you for your polite and well reasoned response, Divine Insight. I'll try to address your concerns as best as I can, but odds are that you won't feel satisfied. As much as I may gripe about "the Bible wasn't written for robots" and "stupid frikkin' men without chests," I'm guilty of that sort of intellectualism myself. Insofar as your distaste for Christianity derives from a deep-seated revulsion at the Bible's depiction of the universe, I won't be able to help you. But I'll answer you as best as I can, and I can tell you ahead of time that there are some surprises in store.

Now, as to the substance of your first few paragraphs, I think that it's relevant that my goal in saying what I said was not to demonstrate the truth of the resurrection, or at least not directly. As you say, the same argument could be used for one of Mohammad's miracles, or for intervention by the Greek gods. But the point of my argument wasn't to establish the resurrection directly. Rather, my goal was to sweep aside any a priori bias against miracles based on some vague sense of having "gotten past that stage of our cultural evolution" or any other such nonsense.

Once that sweeping is done, the apologetic for Christianity begins in earnest. Given that there is a supernatural Something, and given that there's nothing intrinsically improbable about It intervening, a brief sketch of the sort of case I would make would proceed as follows: We have various statements of faith in the Christian tradition, and many of these have been attributed to followers of Jesus Christ Himself. The Apostle's Creed is a good example of this. Now, either the Apostles taught what was attributed to them or else they did not. If they did not, then Christianity is a legend. If they taught what was attributed to them but did not believe it, than Christianity is a lie. If they believed it but were wrong, then (given the fact that they claimed to have seen and interacted with Christ) Christianity is a lunacy. But if what they taught and believed was true, then Christianity is the only legitimate religion.

Having established my quadrilemma, I would argue that the legend, lie, and lunacy hypotheses face more difficulties than the hypothesis of legitimacy. Needless to say, this would take a great deal of work to establish, and it's far from clear to me that my current stores of knowledge are sufficient to do the job. I am only twenty, after all, and I still have a great deal to learn.

As you suggest there needs to be more to the story that we can look to for trying to make sense of these ancient myths. This is where I find the greatest objections of all.

I find the biblical stories of the God portrayed in the Old Testament to be utterly absurd, genuinely idiotic, and profoundly immoral to boot. So my objections to the Old Testament God are not ones of disbelieve that an omnipotent God could not have done these things, but rather my position is that no sane, intelligent and moral entity would have ever behaved in such an utterly stupid and immoral way.

Every "solution" this God comes up with is violent, messy, and truly stupid. They are the kinds of ignorant solutions I would expect an ancient barbaric society to make up, and certainly not the kinds of intelligent solutions I would expect from an actual intelligent God.

This, I believe, is where my ratiocentric approach will break down. I can make all the arguments I want, but if you're revolted by God's behavior in these narratives, you'll always have that feeling that something remains unresolved. At best, you'll feel that I haven't resolved the issues. At worst, you'll feel like I was trying to justify a monster. I'll try my best to address your points, but be patient with me. I guarantee that, in a few instances, it will be worth your while.

In the Garden of Eden, this God curses the evil serpent to crawl on his belly and eat dirt for the rest of his days. Doesn't that sound to you like a solution to a problem that came from an all-intelligent being? Moreover, did this actually solve anything? No it didn't.

Again, in the Garden of Eden this God curses Eve with greatly multiplied pain and sorrow in children (the act of procreation of LIFE!). Does this sound like something a loving Fatherly God would do to his child? Using the procreation of life itself as weapon of punishment? Besides, who's idea is to that humans should procreate anyway? God's or Eve's?

If I was Eve I would have told God to shove his curse in one of his black holes and I would just refuse to have any more babies. Period. That would have been a shocker for God huh?

Moreover did this rude and crude "punishment" solve anything? No clearly it did not as things only continued to go downhill from there.

Wisdom Calls put things as well as I ever could, so I'll try to be brief. Several points here.
1) These chapters in Genesis stand out from much (not all) of the rest of the book in how easily they admit of a symbolic interpretation. "The Tree of Life" and "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" practically beg to be interpreted as the options on the table for the first humans instead of being interpreted as branching things coming up out of the ground.
2) Applying this to the snake, I think that it's safe to say - based on the consensus of centuries of commentators - that it symbolizes Satan. So when the snake looses its legs, we're probably really talking about some kind of loss of "mobility" in Satan - or at least a loss of status.
3) Interestingly enough, a lot of the problem of giving birth to a baby human is due to the huge brains we need to have. Perhaps the original reason childbearing got tough was because we started being able to work with abstract concepts like good and evil? It's a bit of a stretch, but it's certainly an intriguing possibility.
4) To pre-empt a further question along the lines of "Even if He had to kill his only son, why didn't He do it right away?" I think that St. Thomas Aquinas had some interesting responses to that sort of question. First and foremost, whatever the particular nature of the sin that resulted in the Fall of Man, it was a sin of pride. An "instant gratification" solution wouldn't break the pride - and thus ensure that the actual problem got solved - the way a "delayed" solution would. Additionally, the species Homo sapiens has been around for ~300,000 years, and behaviorally modern humans have been around for at least one fifth of that time. It has been only 2000 years since Christ came, and already we see large areas of what was once Christendom slipping into a state that can only be described as post-Christian. As such, it seems that it would make little sense for God to send Christ too early, as the initial fervor would cool over time, so that by the time we reached the population explosion around the invention of agriculture, almost nobody would be a genuine Christian any more. It's interesting to note that Christ came at a time when the entire Mediterranean region - and a great deal of territory beyond it - was at peace thanks to Rome, that most of the Roman empire spoke a single language, and that Christ was sent to a region with ready access to three continents.

So this supposedly all-loving all-wise God is not doing loving or wise things, and apparently he can't even solve the simplest of problems.

This God does a lot more stupid stuff, but let's just jump ahead to he Great Flood. Despite this God's many attempts at trying to solve the problem of sin many times using many truly stupid and crude barbaric "punishments" all of humanity has become totally evil. So this God is a complete failure. None of his utterly stupid attempts to solve the problem of sin have ever worked.

So he drowns out humanity as his further attempt to thwart sin. Once again a truly violent gory and stupid "solution" to a problem that doesn't even work. It solves NOTHING.

I think that mankind is hardly the "simplest of problems." We're always finding new perversions, new tortures, new weapons. Never content with the evils of our ancestors, each new generation makes its own new evils. The knot was always difficult to untie, and it only gets more tangled as time proceeds. Part of this is due to the fact that, since the first humans, human nature has been corrupted by sin. This is key to understanding any sort of "satisfaction model" of atonement.

At any rate, the flood story was likely inspired by the filling of the Persian Gulf c. 60,000 BC, or by the filling of the flooding of the Black Sea basin c. 6,000 BC. I, for one, can't see how else these flood myths could have become so widespread.

Then in Christianity this God seem to be at the end of this rope, in an act of extreme desperation he sends his only begotten son to try to save people from sin. Once again, a totally gory and barbaric method. He has his very own corrupt priests call for the brutal beating and crucifixion of his son. And then he's going to demand that all humans must condone this act on their behalf and accept his son as their scapegoat for sin. A totally immoral thing to ask anyone to do. Yet this God demands that we embrace this immoral act lest he'll unleash even more of his brutal barbaric wrath on his.

Does this solve the problem of sin? Well, apparently now. People are supposedly just as sinful today as they always were. So this didn't solve anything. And according to Jesus the "Good News" is that most people will be condemned to everlasting punishment and only a few will find eternal life.

That's supposed to be the "Good News" of Christianity?

And also what happens when God resurrects Jesus from the grave? Is Jesus miraculously raised from the dead in a perfectly restored body? No, he's body is simply resurrected as a zombie right out of a Hollywood Horror flick complete with all the wounds that killed him.

In fact, I think the part in the Gospels about the Doubting Thomas is the stupidest thing I've ever read. The Doubting Thomas wouldn't believe it was Jesus unless he could see the wounds of Jesus' Crucifixion.

What?

A God raises Jesus from the dead and this Doubting Thomas won't believe it unless Jesus has retained the wounds that killed him? That's absurd. I would expect Jesus to say back to Thomas, "You are a silly man Thomas. When God resurrected me from the dead he healed my body to perfection and I no longer have a single solitary scratch that I had ever acquired during my life."

That's what I would expect a truly supernatural God to be able to do. The idea that God raises Jesus from the grave like a Hollywood Zombie is utterly ridiculous. All for what? To satisfy the doubting Thomas? Why should an all-powerful God need to jump through hoops to impress a stupid doubting Thomas?

These stories are utterly absurd and make no sense at all.

Also, if Heaven is a spiritual place then why would Jesus have needed to take his beaten and battered zombie body back to heaven with him?

I would have been far more impressed if Jesus was simple risen as a ghost and his physical body remained in the grave where it belongs.

Of course changing that little bit now wouldn't help much considering the overwhelming absurdities from Genesis to Revelation.

I don't reject the Bible because supernatural events are impossible. I reject the Bible simply because it is an utterly stupid story. Period amen.

The God of the Bible would need to be an absolute moron. Not to mention being an immoral moron to boot.[/quote]

[WisdomCalls]

[Replying to Divine Insight]

Dear Divine Insight,

I would have to agree with your initial comments that David’s argument as quoted could just as easily support Islam or other God-stories as it does Christianity. It wouldn’t support pantheistic mythologies, however, as pantheism requires spirits and gods to be a part of the natural order and his arguments are about something outside of nature acting on something within. It also wouldn’t support the Flying Spaghetti monster as a monster made of spaghetti is material and therefore part of the natural universe.

I would like to address some of your specific objections to the God of the Bible. Few people hold that the serpent was merely an animal, but a representation of Satan. It is often debated how much of the Genesis account is historical and how much is figurative or metaphorical. Even in the creation process, the first three days are about God creating the “realms� or different places for things, the second three days are about God filling those realms with creatures that would “rule over� those places. It does not follow what we would call a scientific or historical storyline. Was there an actual tree of the knowledge of good and evil? What about the tree of Life? Is it an actual tree? It’s up for debate.

Some things are clear from the narrative of Genesis. They are as follows:

• 1. God was there in the beginning before time. He created the natural universe with order, laws, and beauty. It was all very good.
  2. Adam and Eve were created in the image of God and set as stewards of God’s creation. Unlike animals, humans could reason, enjoy beauty, love like God, and create things and solutions for other reasons than practical use (an ape can create primitive tools).
  3. God had a personal relationship with Adam and Eve and would speak with them directly and even walk with them through his creation.
  4. There was no death for Adam and Eve before they sinned. This presents a problem for theistic evolution because evolutionary change requires generations to die off and change slowly, but the Biblical account is clear that Adam and Eve were made perfect and immortal.
  5. Adam and Eve made a willful decision to know evil. All through the Bible, whenever the word “know� is used, it means to have an intimate understanding of something, not just to know about it. Essentially, Adam and Eve chose to have evil become a part of them. Since creation was put under them, creation also fell with them.
  6. Evil is not the opposite of good or even the equal to good. Evil is the twisting of or the rebellion against the good. God is entirely good. In choosing to disobey God, Adam and Eve rebelled against the source of all goodness and life.
  7. All humanity is descended from Adam and Eve and the evil nature was also passed down to each descendant. The rest of Scripture refers to Adam as a historic figure. If there were other people at the same time, one could well imagine that there may have been some who did not sin, and thus a race of people who were still perfect. Not so, if Adam and Eve are historical and the first humans to walk the earth.

As for the curses on Adam and Eve, God targeted the areas that would most be a source of pride for humanity, the areas that would only encourage their rebellion. For Eve, there was pride around being able to produce life. As it is, people have a tendency to revere motherhood (even referring to the earth as Mother Earth). For Adam, the source of pride was what he could accomplish and create with his hands, so God introduced futility in work. He would constantly have to fight against entropy and other forces that would undo his labour. The other part of the curse, of course, was death. Death is the final consequence of rebellion against the source of life.

You also suggest that God raised Jesus as an undead zombie. Does a zombie eat and drink? Can a zombie teleport? (essentially that is what Jesus does on several occasions when he appears to his disciples, including within locked rooms, and then disappears suddenly). He wasn’t a ghost either, since his disciples were able to touch him, and yes, feel his scars. I don’t see any evidence that those wounds were still running with blood either or anything like that.

Have you ever watched Stepford Wives? The men in it have ideal wives who are totally submissive and do whatever they wish. I’m going to suggest that you’ve created a Stepford God. The God of the Bible, on the other hand, does not act as we think he should, he continually defies expectations, challenges our worldview, and even worse, tells us we are not nearly as good as we think we are, that in fact we all deserve death. A spiritualist, such as you seem to be, instead puts together a mixture of religious and mythical stuff till they find something that they like - in other words, a God of their own making. An atheist, at least, has some basic philosophical premises that they rationally follow through with. A spiritualist just goes with whatever they feel like at the time. As Friedrich Nietzsche so astutely said, it all comes down to the will to power in the end. Your spiritualism (and if my assumptions are correct, your Wiccan practices) are all a futile attempt to control your life and run things your way. That is the real reason why you reject the God you see in the Bible.

[ttruscott]

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What parts of the bible, exactly, can be taken as literal truth – not symbolic or allegorical? Unless there is a means by which any interested person can distinguish fact from fiction (or other non-literal literary forms), the literal truth of the entire text is questionable at best.

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Perhaps I've said this before but I don't think the bible has 'the truth' open to all but to get the truth that it does contain we need the input from the Holy Spirit for the correct interpretation of what is written which will be to my mind, the absolute truth. In other words it is not written to give away any secrets but to force those trying to figure it out to turn to GOD and seek HIM. This is the Christian contention anyway,

peace, Ted