Random God Rant

Me. Genius intellect (had it tested), believer in evolution.But, like Giordi LaForge says, you don't have to take my word for it...

The fact that there are parallels with the myths of other cultures is not evidence that the Bible's stories are also myths.Christians know that "El" and "Elohim" are generic terms for God in that part of the world, and by using them the Bible makes clear that it is about THE God, the ONE God who goes by that generic name, recognized by the other peoples in the region at the time, but only the Hebrews were directly given the one true God's proper Name YHWH.We regard the similar stories in other cultures to be evidence for rather than against the Biblical accounts. We would expect many similar cultural ideas, but the Bible's to be the corrective one, the definitive one. Fallen man gets things wrong, but not TOTALLY wrong. We would expect obvious mythical exaggerations in stories recalled by fallen man, but that they also would preserve enough true memory to exhibit what you call the "striking parallels" with the authentic account in the Bible, the Bible's being authentic because it was given by God Himself to His own chosen prophets.The Bible is not about science so scientific ignorance in those days is not relevant to the Bible's validity. Nevertheless, the way the ancients visualized the world may contain some truth while being mostly symbolic representations. It is interesting that the Babylonian vision of the cosmos is a literal rendition of some ideas in Genesis. We don't know what is meant by those descriptions -- the waters above and below etc. -- because things changed after that, since the Fall and since the Flood, and we may never know. The depiction of Sheol may contain some truth. How would you know whether it does or doesn't? Many cultures have had a notion of an underground place of torment. Real Hell or Hades is probably a spiritual rather than a physical location but symbolically the location may be quite apt.You don't have to believe any of it of course, but your evidence is easily explained from the Christian point of view and considered good confirmation for it rather than falsification of it.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-22-2005 11:52 AM

Faith took the words right out of my mouth. Thank God

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"Jesus wept" John 11:35. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. What caused him to weep? Anothers death....

It wouldn't be an assumption, it's clear enough in the Bible. From your perspective it wouldn't. But your fallen, like all the rest of us. Your seperate from God and like all of us, you were born that way. You (or me) don't know what it is like to have perfect communion with the Father like the Son did. Thus you can't comment on the torture of being seperated from him. It wasn't the physical torture that was the worst for Jesus, it was the spiritual separation from his Father.On the cross, Jesus cries out "My God, My God why have you forsaken me" Up to that his father was always referred to as father. Ask any Christian what is the worst thing they could imagine and it would be separation from God - even though it can't happen to them. No, were not all his children. You become an child of his at conversion. An adopted child rather than a begotten one. But loved with all the love in the world for all that. Sacrificing his son was as much torture for the Father for the reasons given above. Perfect union wrenched apart.Imagine the pain a parent feels when a much loved child is killed and you get just the merest inkling of what is going on. What parent would sacrifice a loved child for someone who was considered a sinner. None I'd warrant. That's how big Gods love is: "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" Can you be the one to say why your standard of innocence and guilt should be the one to hold sway. Anyway sickness and death came in with sin. Man sinned of his own free will. You might not think fair but that was the warning and that was the consequence. Do you have the complete overview of why this was. Do you know God or the mind of God. Should God be a gentle old man with a beard who tut-tut's at our transgressions saying "Goodness me, whatever will the little critters think of next!!"?
In criticizing God and the way things are, your pitting your own (created) wisdom against that of the creator. It makes no sense to do so. The only person who will tell God he is great is a person who realises he is. Humans hate bowing the knee to anyone. A person who 'sees' God for what he is (even if it's only a glimpse) bows the knee gladly (well some of the time - we're still sinners so rebel). Worship isn't for Gods benefit I've come to realise - it's for ours... That, I'm afraid to say is not something you get to chose. 'To do with him' you have whether you like it or not. The nature of your 'to doing with him' is your choice. Your very life is sustained by him, he will call quietly to you and will give opporunity to you to turn to him. The day of your death is chosen by him too.Although life isn't the main show it is still hugely significant. A time to chose.... They could obey. They had choice. They chose wrong. That God knew what choice they would make doesn't alter the fact they had choice.Think about it a bit (and here I go into my own take, scripture doesn't, as far as I am aware, tell us exactly why God made it as he made it.God made us so that he could love us and we him. God is relational. He didn't have to but chose to. Fair enough so far - who's going to tell God what he can and cannot do.Now the only love worth having, you will agree, is love freely given. I can decide I want to give my girl a cuddle. If she isn't in the mood, I can, because I am stronger, cuddle her against her wishes. No love there though. The cuddle is only worth anything if both of us want to. So if God made a creature who could only obey him and not chose to love him, what use would it be.A Christian is a person who has chosen for God. Obey is part of it: because he should be obeyed, but also because it is good for us - he's the designer, he knows how life is best to be lived. Love is in there as well. I love God - of my own free will. And freely given love is returned in kind. It's the only love worth having. Their not doomed unless they want to be How can someone have free will, a choice, if there is nothing to chose between? He will in his good time - he says so in Genesis. Satan's goose is cooked and the irony is that Satan was the one who cooked his own Goose - he got people to crucify Jesus Satan was created and chose just like Adam and Eve. God created but like I say, he wasn't making automatons. He was giving choice

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"Jesus wept" John 11:35. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. What caused him to weep? Anothers death....

So you're saying that Creavolution is fallen and therefore cannot comment on Jesus' torture. You're also saying that you cannot comment on it, for the same reason.Yet, you do: Isn't that a bit of a presumptuous claim then? All to more so, I might add, because, unlike Creavolution, you present your assertion without the slightest hint of doubt?This message has been edited by Parasomnium, 22-Sep-2005 01:55 PM

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Hi Faith how do you explain that those other cultures and their myths predate the Jews ? If I were to write a historical account about someone's life (say Ted) that read remarkably like the life of Rhett Butler out of 'Gone with the wind' (i.e. Ted was a southern gentleman, he met a woman called Scarlett, etc.), wouldn't it be fair to say that the existence of 'Gone with the wind' evidenced the claim that my work was not a historical account but pure fantasy ? this is like saying that 'Gone with the wind' is evidence that my account of Ted's life is real! this is reasoning that you wouldn't use in any other aspect of your life (e.g my historical account example), yet you happily apply it to biblical matters.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the pigeon and some days you'll be the statue."

Crevo is fallen as am I, Creo was born separate from God as was I, so he doesn't know what it is like to commune with God. But I, in being born again, now have communion with God. It's not perfect communion - I'm fallen thus sin resides in my mortal flesh - but not in my spirit - which is alive (as opposed to Crevo's being dead) so I am in a position to comment. (Source: The Gospel)I scuba dive but am no expert. I can look at an expert an have some apprecation of his communing with the undersea world in a way that I can't. Someone who has never scuba dived has no appreciation of communing with the undersea world in scuba diving terms

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"Jesus wept" John 11:35. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. What caused him to weep? Anothers death....

I think a major difference is that the Bible's story easily accounts for all the previous stories. The Biblical genealogies show that all the surrounding peoples came from the same source after all, all had Noah for an ancestor, all would have passed down stories of the Flood in some form or another and the Creation stories as well. God took Abraham from among a people who had such beliefs, the Chaldeans or early Babylonians. Abraham would have known the same stories. God then taught him about Himself in a more personal and particular way than Abraham could have known from his culture, and yet his culture retained some memory of the doings of God with humanity. There's nothing improbable about it. Not at all. You are using an example of known fiction for one thing which makes a bad analogy. It makes perfect sense that a more accurate historical account could have been written later rather than earlier, if the later writer happened to be privy to more accurate facts and the earlier was going by vague memories. In the case of the Bible its author is God Himself speaking through His prophets.

Alright then, I will reply to Faith here. I think you are a very rational, and inteligent, individual iano. I am very interested in your response. Why not? If it looks like a myth, smells like a myth, sounds like a myth? Why do we give the bible stories any special treatment?Let's remember what world view you are defending: The writters of genesis were utterly wrong about how cosmology works. And don't tell me they didn't think this is how it was, because it says so clearly in the bible!Further, babylon is much MUCH older than the hebrews. And they had a similar cosmology. If the hebrews didn't exist at the time of bablylon, wouldn't it be safe to assume that they are plagerizing already existing works? Nonononnonono.... El is SPECIFICALY, the baylonian wind god. Some of his abilities are giving life.... thrugh... breath! That's right, in those days, people belived the spirit was your breath!It was a perfectly logical assumption. Someone died, their breath "went out". The belief is still held over when people say "bless you" after you sneeze.Infact, the very word Spirit is derived from the latin Suspiri, which means "To breath"!Further, El moving over the waters at the begining of the world etc. That's all lifterd directly from Baylonian/summerian myths. Wonder why he is moving over the waters at the beginning of creation? Because first there was only water! Till he brought land out of it, and hammered out the firmament like a dome to separete the waters above from the waters below. Oh... it may sound like I'm talking about Genesis, but I'm not, I'm talking about much OLDER babylonian beliefs.One of the babylonian accounts has El fighting the serpent Temuz. I believe there is a reference to that in the bible as well. I'll dig it up if I get a chance. B.S. your willfully ignoring the evidence presented. The fact is that Babylon was older. Further, it is quite clear that Genesis is wrong. WRONG! WRONG!!!!!The sky isn't solid, it dosn't have windows, it's not shaped like a dome, etc. etc. etc. Why do you want to cling to some ancient goat hearders pipe dream? Ah! Good. So the bible comes YEARS after the fact, and it's the RIGHT one. Never mind that dozenz of similar stories were circulating centuries before the hebrews even existed.So. If I write a book today about a guy named Ted, and it sounds like Rhett Buttler. People say "Your plagerizing 'Gone With The Wind'", I can just answer "No, it's perfectly logical that similar stories predated me, I'm here to set the record straight and give you the REAL story, the tale of Ted." It's not the parallels, it's the fact that the parallels predate the bible! The hebrews are after the fact, they didn't exist at the time of Babylon/Summeria.Further, it's the fact that the genesis view of cosmology is WRONG!!! WRONG!!! Absurdly, entirely, 100%, WRONG!!!! Ah... so it contains truth. Where is it? Where are the windows in heven? And why the hell does wrong/ancient science get to sudenly be symbolic?It is patently obvious that this is what these people belived. THEY BELIVED THIS CRAP LITTERALY. You are not gonna weazle out of that, I'm sorry. You don't get to call it a symbol simply because it is so obviously incorrect.Can I now say that the Aztec human sacrifice rituals were mearly symbolic? They didn't realy belive in Qutzcoatle, it was just a symbol? The other way around Faith. The Genisis account is a depiction of the babylonian cosmos which the hebrews lifted. And it is WRONG! They belived the world was structured this way and there is no getting around it. Yes we do. They saw the sky: "Hey it's blue. Rain comes out of it. There must be water out there!"They looked at the hrizon an it seemed there was ocean all around. "Wow, that sky must be like a dome!"Etc. Put the pieces together. It was a logical deduction based on how things looked. Well, we have dug lots of holes, and we ain't found hell yet. How far down you figure it is? No, it's NOT symbolic. You don't get to call it symbolic just cuz you know it's wrong. They BELIVED it was there. The bible depicts it as BEING THERE. Unfortunetly you haven't explained one iota of it. Hell, you even mentioned the flood, another disproven fairytale. You can't even give a rational account of how China, the American Indian culture, Greeks, Egyptians, and so on kept flurishing uninterupted at the time the flood supposedly happend.Face it pal, your all washed up.This message has been edited by Yaro, 09-22-2005 10:49 AM

But you said God Sacrificed his own son for us as an expression of his love... so are you changing tack?
was the sacrifice his death on the cross? or was the sacrifice sending him to earth in the first place?
Surely god had the powers to remain close to his son while he lived as a mortal? especially given that Jesus was free of sin. But surely (one of) the message(s) in the bible is that we should do what we can to alleviate suffering and pain?
the standard is the same standard presented in the bible? If god is as loving as he supposedly is, I fail to see why he would put us in a position where he knows we will fail and then punish us for that failure. What Choice is there here? Like I said, the Rulemaker makes the rules in the full knowledge we cannot abide by them nonsense... Go knew what was going to happen... so there was no other possible course of action... they were going to fail/fall and god knew it.He set the conditions that would create this fall, he created the flawed beings that would fall. What exactly did he expect? I wonder how many times that has been said as the Bible was copied/re-written/re-told over the years... So you would say we are as God created us? If it Pains God so much that we have fallen (given he knew this would happen), why did he set this chain of events in motion? It seems he knew we would fall, he knew our punishment would be hell, so he created us fully expecting to send us to hell. Would you create a child knowing that its destiny would be hell? Why would aloving God do this? "Choice" has no meaning here, as we are, by your own words (and presumably those of the Bible) on an unerring path to damnation. but... you also say... Sorry to repeat myself but there is NO CHOICE here.
I could quote ad infinatum here but the point I hope I'm making here is that you keep espousing the notion of freewill and choicewhile at the same time pointing out that really we had no choice because we did not have the ability to adhere to God's word

I don't understand that. How can it account for all the previous stories when the previous stories predate it ? Surely it's the original source of something that accounts for the subsequent versions, isn't it ?! The Greek myth genealogies show that all peoples came from Deukalion and Pyrrah (the Flood survivors). These stories were doing the rounds long before the Jewish stories came to be. Furthermore, there's good archaelogical evidence to suggest that the Jews had knowledge of these stories. Which is the most plausible explanation ?1) God taught the Jews the 'real' version of events, which just happened to be very similar to what the Greeks / Babylonians / et al already believed2) God taught the Greeks the 'real' version of events, and the Jews just copied and adapted them.3) The Jews just based their myths on those of neighbouring people and justified them as God-given.My view is -in order of plausibility: 3 -2 -1. Why?
Like the Greeks / Babylonian myths, 'Gone with the wind' is known to be pure fantasy.
Like the Biblical accounts, my story of Ted's life is clamed to be the 'real' thing, though it has many similarities with 'Gone with the wind'.
Like the Biblical accounts, my story of Ted's life is written along time after the story it sounds remarkably like.
why the bad analogy? If you could show how the biblical authors were privy to more accurate facts (other than just claiming that God told them) you might have a case.
Otherwise, I can as easily claim that the Greeks were privy to more accurate facts (Zeus told them - and they were the first ones too!).But, anyhow, that's a moot point as the Greek / Babylonian / Jewish myths are known pure fantasy, just like 'Gone with the wind'. Talking about how the Jews explained the 'firmament' or the 'Flood' in a more accurate way than the Greeks or Babylonians makes no more sense than talking about whether 'Lord of the Rings' or 'the Hobbit' gives a more accurate description of a cave troll.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the pigeon and some days you'll be the statue."

The conjecture that more accurate facts could be known to a later writer applied to your analogy particularly. The later writer could have had access to better historical information, known some of the people personally, been part of the family perhaps, or anything like that, while the first writer was depending on local legend and a strong imagination. So, Ted could have been a more factual presentation of the real historical person while Rhett Butler was a romanticization. It's logical, it's possible. Something along these lines might also apply to the Bible too {Edit: Shem lived a long time for instance, and might have been closer to Abraham's family}, but this is not known. In any case the claim just IS that God directly taught the prophets who told the Biblical versions. It's God's own revelation. Not really "as easily" if you have an ear for the authentic. The realistic detailed writing of the Bible is far more persuasive in itself than most myths, even if they do preserve some historical facts.This message has been edited by Faith, 09-22-2005 12:14 PM

So basically, as long as there is a remote possibility, that you may just maybe kinda, sorta, be right, you are right by default. That's nice.Good to know that you are imune to evidence and logic. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!What is more persuasive about a story that talks about magic apples and talking snakes?

Yaro, Faith is a lady. A bit of chivalry man, chivalry.

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"Jesus wept" John 11:35. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. What caused him to weep? Anothers death....