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Replying to post 63 by ttruscott]
ttruscott wrote:
Not yours! The word evil in this verse is judged by most commentators to mean disasters and calamities which the KJV does not show even though it does contain the idea.
Resting a doctrine on only one word of one verse especially a doctrine that attacks the revealed nature of GOD is considered by Christians to be an improper exegesis. The whole tenor of the rest of the BIble is that HE is light with no darkness in HIM. A match struck in the light that fills the room with darkness is more likely than GOD would do or create something evil.
You wordplay fails again and will fail every time you stoop to try to rest the idea of GOD being evil on this word. Anyone who cares to can look up the full meaning of this word and decide if it forces all theology to admit GOD is evil or not:
Hebrew Interlinear Bible (OT)
Isa 45:7
"I Yahweh and·there-is-no further one-forming light and·one-creating darkness one-makingdo well-being and·one-creating evil I Yahweh one-makingdo all-of these"
http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInte ... /isa45.pdf
This is a direct interlinear translation from Hebrew.
Christians prefer to translate the Hebrew word for evil, found in Isa 45:7, variously as adversity, disaster, calamity, distress, and misery, and other rather watered down words. The Hebrew word of evil is רָ ע
iutzr aur u bura chshk oshe shlum u bara ro (רָ ע ) ani ieue oshe ki -ale
Now check with the Hebrew to English translator.
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is ... e&ie=UTF-8
רָ ע
is variously defined as bad, evil, wicked, inferior, unkind, noxious or repugnant. Not as disaster (�סון ), or calamity, (again, �ָסוֹן ). When faced with translations that Christians do not agree with, Christians find it expedient to simply insert another word. Changing the entire meaning to suit their sensibilities. Or as Lewis Black pointed out:
"every Sunday I turn on the television set. And there's a priest or a pastor reading..... from my book. And interpreting it. And their interpretations, I have to tell you, are usually wrong.
And it's not their fault..... because it's not their book."
Not that all Christian Bible translations have mistranslated Isaiah 45:7. The KJV uses the word evil. As does the 21st Century King James Version, the American Standard Version, the BRG Bible, the Darby Translation, the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (DRA), the 1599 Geneva Bible (GNV), and, well, I really didn't have time to check them all.
On the other hand, notice how the Contemporary English Version (CEV) chooses to translate Isa 45:7.
Isa 45:
7 I create light and darkness, happiness and sorrow. I, the Lord, do all of this.
Which is pretty far from what the original verse had in mind.
ttruscott wrote:
EXACTLY - so HE did! HE created everyone in HIS image with a free will with an equal ability and opportunity to chose to be perfectly righteous or to be eternally evil. Then HE asked us to choose. Or do you know something that makes HIS omnipotence incapable of choosing to create us this way?
The Bible
does say that man was created in God's image. The Bible
does not say that man was given free will. You have simply assumed that part.
ttruscott wrote:
The tracks you follow around the bush are of your own making... In the garden there was "never the slightest possibility that Adam and Eve would not" disobey since they were sinners already. Their disobedience when they thought they were still faithful (they were not ashamed of their nakedness, their sin) shocked them so much their eyes were opened to their sin and they repented, the whole reason the serpent was allowed in the garden with them. HE did intend them to fail in the garden but HE did not create them to become or to be evil however many thousands of years earlier before Satan decided to go rogue and took them with him.
All of this is a part of your particular version of "make it up and declare it to be true." Even most Christians aren't buying this version.
ttruscott wrote:
Now this I can agree with! As sinners Satan and all other humans were sent to live predetermined lives (no free will) on earth so the sinful elect could be brought back to their Bishop and Saviour the best way possible. Since our lives (BUT NOT OUR FATES!) are predetermined, of course HE had full knowledge of what would happen. I deny that their sinfulness and predetermination was due to the created nature HE gave them but that they fell (chose to be evil) by their own free will, pre-garden.
So you agree that Satan's role in all of this was predetermined? Satan was
created for a very specific purpose. Did he have a choice? NO! He was a part of God's plan and his fate was sealed from before his creation. Is there any way out for him? Can Satan see the error of his ways and beg for forgiveness? NO! Satan's path was rendered unchangeable from the moment of his creation, and there has never been any way out. No wonder he seems to be in such a perpetually bad mood. That would certainly make me irritated.
ttruscott wrote:
How silly - was not everyone on earth drowned export those 8 who were brought thru by HIS grace? How is that a failure? Instead it is a sign to all Christians facing great persecution that GOD can bring them thru great tribulation though the whole world be against them.
God REPENTED. God was unhappy with the way things turned out. God CHANGED HIS MIND! A God who repents of his original efforts because he is unhappy with the way things turns, and changes his mind, is not an omnipotent omniscient Being. That is me discovering I got the rebuild on my 67 Alfa-Romeo Spyder engine wrong and having to start over. And being pretty disgruntled about it.
ttruscott wrote:
How silly - was not everyone on earth drowned export those 8 who were brought thru by HIS grace? How is that a failure? Instead it is a sign to all Christians facing great persecution that GOD can bring them thru great tribulation though the whole world be against them.
And omnipotent omniscient God that repents and changes his mind... now THAT is silly.
Because the Bible specifically says that God "repented" of his decision to create humankind. Christians are constantly attempting to adjust and re-translate what various of the words actually say and to convert them into what they would prefer that the words mean. But the words used in Genesis are "repented" and "repenteth." You can't change them, so you chose to conclude that they must actually means something else. Like redefining "evil" to mean "sorrow."
ttruscott wrote:
This answer is a non-sequitur and doesn't address my contention at all but ducked it. Your own definition of omnipotence supports the contention GOD could have created us the way I contend, no matter what you (erroneously) think Adam and Eve were doing...
A "non-sequitur" is something which is out of sequence; something that does not logically follow. God ordered that Adam and Eve should not eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and when they did their eyes were opened. God then proceed to expel them from heaven. This is the exact sequence of event that is found in Genesis. The God of the Bible could have created us any way He chose. He chose to follow the path of events depicted in the Bible, not the one you have dreamed up for Him to follow.
ttruscott wrote:
What has a promise to do with anything? We had a free will at our creation, it was not necessary to promise us anything about it. And it is a Christian doctrine that everything is indeed going to plan once we finished choosing to be with HIM or against HIM and all of life conforms to those positions we chose for ourselves.
If nothing has gone as God expected since our creation then we had free will. And God is not omniscient. For God to be omnipotent He necessarily must also be omniscient. In which case everything is going entirely according to plan, and humankind was never granted perfect free will, which, coincidentally,
was never offered!
ttruscott wrote:
The word promise still seems to me to be misused. Did HE have to promise us self or other awareness for us to have it now?
According to the Bible humankind was created by an omnipotent Being. If this is accurate, then everything that happens was foreknown and predetermined. Any deviation would represent failure. And yet the God of the Bible clearly DID fail to achieve His intended objective when He first created Humans. And no promise of free will was extended. If you perceive free will in your life, that is
exactly the condition one would expect to find if no God existed in the first place.
ttruscott wrote:
I think Calvinism is a great blasphemy on earth along with any other ideology that claims our sinfulness is from Adam or that GOD knew who would end in hell before HE created them but created them anyway or that GOD HIMself created evil people.
Calvinism does not agree with your personal theology, this is true. But your personal theology... doesn't agree with your personal theology. At least in the sense that it doesn't correspond to what is written in the Bible. Calvinism at least makes an attempt to combine reason and logic with what the Bible actually says. But the Bible was written by iron age peasants for whom logic was never their strongest suit anyway.
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this." -- Albert Einstein -- Written in 1954 to Jewish philosopher Erik Gutkind.
