Anyone Interested in a Serious Religious Debate?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
556

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:
Since I can’t get our resident Catholic apologist to explain his meaning of the origin of sin and death (unless Pat can help me out here) let’s switch tracks…can anyone explain the Islamic origins of sin and death?[/quote]

Man allowed sin into the world by his own freewill, and death followed as a result. Because of this decision, we have become the battle ground between good and evil. [/quote]

But according to the bible, man (technically woman first) allowed sin into the world because God put a forbidden tree within reach, then allowed a demon (in the form of a snake) to convince them to eat the forbidden fruit. Keep in mind that God, being all knowing, knew exactly what was going to happen. Following this original sin, God not only punished Adam and Eve, but the rest of humanity forever.

Does this sound like the act of a loving God? [/quote]

This concept of a loving God comes up frequently in a discussion like this. Some folks have the erroneous idea that a loving God cannot/should not be a just God as well. They can’t fathom that a judge who adjudicates cases that come before him should do ANYTHING other than find every single person Not Guilty regardless of the evidence, regardless of the crime.

It just doesn’t work that way. There are as many or more biblical references to God being a righteous Judge as there are Him being a loving God. The two are not mutually exclusive. He is both.[quote]

In criminal law, entrapment is when a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit an offense which the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit.[1] In many jurisdictions, entrapment is a possible defense against criminal liability.

[/quote]

The scene in the garden is not one of entrapment at all.

What happens under the following scenario? Your town places the only traffic light in town in the intersection of Main and Elm and then passes an ordinance saying you must stop your vehicle when the light is red. You know this. In fact, it was on your driver’s license exam.

However, one day you come screaming up to the light in your 2010 Corvette and decide "Today I simply don’t give a shit the light is red and you floor the accelerator. Barney Fife is hanging out eating doughnuts and drinking coffee and observes your heinous act. He pulls you over and issues a citation.

You decide to take it to court because you know there is a loving judge presiding. You get up in front of the court and make your case that this traffic light is a tool of “entrapment.” The city council that passed the law KNEW some folks would run the red light and the judge KNEW it as well.

What’s the appropriate verdict? Are you guilty or non guilty?
[/quote]

What exactly does “Done debating with you” mean to you, Push?

557

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:

Inevitable consequence.

So God made us with a quality that He knew would be our undoing, and punishes us for it? So that we can eternally struggle to be worthy of something we’ll never be worthy of?

My point stands: Literal impossibility aside (no snakes have ever talked, ever), the bible doesn’t depict a loving God. [/quote]

Then you’d create man as automaton. I’d rather the present arrangment. At least my seperation from, or nearness to, God, would be the result of a self-aware, choice making, individual. Me. [/quote]

Or you could create man with free will, and not create a forbidden fruit, or not create a demon to convince them to eat of that fruit. Or put the tree real real super far away so they have to really work to disobey.

Or you could understand that its your own damn fault for setting the whole situation up (not to mention the fact that you knew what was going to happen), and forgive their childrens childrens children for something they had no part of.[/quote]

Methinks you’re not uderstanding that very nature of free will as the origin of the inevitable. [/quote]

Methinks you’re not understanding how a truly loving, all powerful God would act.[/quote]

What, making us into automatons?[/quote]

No. Giving us free will and not putting wildly unnecessary temptations in front of us. Punishing the sinner, not the child of the sinner. Forgiving the sinner after the punishment is done. Stuff like that.

560

I think your view of a loving all powerful God sounds like a daddy who can’t let go. I’m talking about a mentally unstable daddy. As in, the kid is obviously born with a will of his own, but is never let go at some age of majority, to fall or rise on his own. A daddy who won’t accept that his son should be punished when he has done wrong, thus terrified to allow any opportunity for his child to do wrong.

Your loving all powerful God, having given the gift of free will, must be a daddy sitting on the couch with a loaded shotgun, finger on the trigger, refusing to allow even the now grown child to leave the house. Lest he get himself into a trouble he must punished for. Perhaps even harshly, depending upon his crimes.

We’ve been allowed a will of our own. We’re even allowed to leave the house. But in the final reckoning, we will either pay the price, or be forgiven, for our transgressions.

562

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:
We offer no exacting answer to when death (chronologically) entered the world. We also do not give an exacting answer to when the first man and woman were seen as the first man and woman. That is, as oppossed to a developmental stage leading to man in the line of evolution. We make room for biological processes (planned out WAY back down the chain) to have been the selected tool for the development of what would be the first Human, with a capital H. The soul, now that would be the immediate gift of God to first man and woman he deemed ‘finished.’ Ready, whatever. Basically, an end had been reached, and the next step was set in motion.

While God had wanted man, from first to last, to live eternally in his grace, he understood where the gifting of free will would lead. Even in the literalist reading of the apple test, your understand it’s a test. A demonstration of why things will become what they will throughout human history. If not a test (or perhaps demonstration is the better term), why the tree in the first place? Why is the situation even presented? Furthermore, obviously Adam and Eve were already capable of rebellion, or we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, as they would’ve been literally incapable of their disobedience.

Somewhere along the line a Human being, singularly graced with the first revelation of God, was capable of sin, acted out on it, and demonstrated why we aren’t ready for eternal life in God’s grace. Yet.[/quote]

You and Pat obviously disagree then. He agrees with me that man’s sin brought death into the world (Romans 5:12 Genesis 3). [/quote]

Death for MEN.[/quote]

This doesn’t work, Sloth. You have to completely trash the Bible to try and make it work.

You’re actually trying to make the case that millions and billions of men who weren’t quite men yet WERE dying then finally one man and one woman came along and were given souls and THEN POOF they did sin and that’s where we’re at now. That argument is so strained, so weak, so brittle that I need do little to argue against it.

You also have to chuck all of Genesis 1 where God says “It is good” and introduce death and suffering for all creation as part of “It is good.”

Slothy, baby, your jumbo jet is not going to get off the ground. You left off the engines.[/quote]

If they weren’t quite men, they not yet MEN. Men were the final end, when God was satisfied, and first gifted the soul.

563

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:
Being that Adam and Eve already had mastery of fish, fowl, and livestock before disobeying, death, I’m sure was already in the world.[/quote]

Mastery of the animals is NOT a code word for killing them.[/quote]

I’m pretty sure eating them for food, was killing them. Yes, this was done before the fall.

Genesis 1: 28-29.

565

Oops, add 27. Livestock isn’t food?

566

[quote]pushharder wrote:
…but you cannot dismiss Satan’s power to possess an animal and make it do something extraordinary. [/quote]

Yes! Yes I can! Watch!!

Satan never possessed an animal. In fac, Satan does not exist at all. Satan is just a conversion of the pagan god Pan, and in reality satan is the hebrew word for adversary (meaning the authors of the bible were basically saying “anybody who disagrees with me is evil”)

Watch, I’ll do it again:

Satan never possessed an animal. Ever. Ever ever ever.

Now go away.

568

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

If they weren’t quite men, they not yet MEN. Men were the final end, when God was satisfied, and first gifted the soul.[/quote]

Cite the biblical references that support this doctrine.[/quote]

Site the biblical references for a non-basin world, not existing upon a great water, nor under a great body of water divided by a firmament which contain the celestial lights. You can’t. Neither one of us is a biblical literalist. However, I don’t claim sola scriptura. I do not claim the bible as scientific/historical text.

571

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:
Being that Adam and Eve already had mastery of fish, fowl, and livestock before disobeying, death, I’m sure was already in the world.[/quote]

Mastery of the animals is NOT a code word for killing them.[/quote]

I’m pretty sure eating them for food, was killing them. Yes, this was done before the fall.

Genesis 1: 28-29. [/quote]

Those verses say the EXACT opposite.

[i] 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground - everything that has the breath of life in it - I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. [/i]

What were you trying to pull there, buddy?[/quote]

My bad. I didn’t relate all the verses. 24And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kindsâ??livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

26Then God said,(O) “Let us make man[h] in our image,(P) after our likeness. And(Q) let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

573

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:
Being that Adam and Eve already had mastery of fish, fowl, and livestock before disobeying, death, I’m sure was already in the world.[/quote]

Mastery of the animals is NOT a code word for killing them.[/quote]

I’m pretty sure eating them for food, was killing them. Yes, this was done before the fall.

Genesis 1: 28-29. [/quote]

Those verses say the EXACT opposite.

[i] 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground - everything that has the breath of life in it - I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. [/i]

What were you trying to pull there, buddy?[/quote]

My bad. I didn’t relate all the verses. 24And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kindsÃ?¢??livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

26Then God said,(O) “Let us make man[h] in our image,(P) after our likeness. And(Q) let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

[/quote]
“Dominion” clearly does NOT mean killing them for food. God directly said He gave plants for food. That’s it.[/quote]

LIVESTOCK.