Raphael
Nice reply. Thanks.
"Well I am speaking of morality only in response to your main thesis/title of this thread. You asked, "is it moral for God to punish us?" And my response is: as humans, we have no reference point from which to accuse God of being immoral,"
??
We have a reference point where God himself says that we have the same moral sense that he has.
They have become as Gods in the knowing of good and evil. ---- How else could we do as Jesus asked and write the laws of God in our hearts.
-----------
" what you wrote above illustrates this, you said you "only know of one tenet that might be objective."
I wrote that yes but I find it strange that you did not put any down at all. Seems my 1 trumps your 0. If you wish to add to your 0 and make your point, that would be nice. Otherwise my view of morals being subjective stands.
----------------
"(God sending a famine, for instance, is an assumption not found in scripture)."
??
Who else could have sent it?
----------
"2) didn't need to make many changes, since humans would eventually attempt to murder God without prompting"
Not if Jesus had not prompted the whole thing by throwing his fit at the temple or bribing Judas as I will show below.
That was Jesus and the butterfly effect. He knew people would be pissed off at his fit.
---------
My ---
That is why he chose Jesus before even creating the earth or the potential for sin.
Your ---
So here I ask the question, where do you get this information from? Your question sort of opens a huge box haha that may be off topic, but going there is necessary to answer.
I get that from your bible of course.
1Peter 1:20 0 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.
-----------------
"That said, scripture claims that God is love. This means that God must at all times operate under the principle of love (non-manipulative sacrifice for the benefit of others)"
Scriptures also claim that serpents and donkeys can speak human speech. Do you believe that as well?
But let's look at God is love.
Scriptures say that in the beginning, there was only God and that everything that is and can be emanated from him. Scriptures also confirm that God created evil. That would mean that, using your logic,
God must also be hate and "This means that God must at all times operate under the principle of hate.
If your description is true of love then it follows that mine is true of hate.
If not, why not?
--------
"God is Jesus."
Give chapter and verse that says God can die.
Please listen to this first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-91mSkxaXs
---------
"Well, the authorship of the Pentateuch (first five books of the Old Testament/Torah) is commonly attributed to the biblical figure Moses, who does not give any sort of account of how "he viewed the fall," so I don't know where this information is from. According to Wikipedia, Jewish interpretations of the Fall in Eden vary, with scholars on both ends of the spectrum, so this claim cannot really be substantialized. "
Not really as Jews know that a dead man cannot write of his own death.
Further.
Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS
Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."
Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.
"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."
Also ---
The Original Meaning Of Original Sin – The Dish
And lastly ---
http://www.raceandhistory.com/...calviews/doubtingexodus.htm
The key to understanding the moral of the story of Eden, as to whether it was a fall or our elevation, you will have to decide based on your own intelligence and thinking. If you can Ignore your tradition and dogma that is and think for yourself.
If you think it was a fall, then tell us what is wrong with, as God himself said, we, through A & E, becoming as Gods in the knowing of good and evil.
What is wrong with getting closer to God's thinking?
Were A & E not following this scripture.
Matthew 5:48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
--------------
"first Christians essentially were Jews! They saw Christ as the fulfillment of their heritage and religion."
Eh, no. The first Christians were not Jews. They, IMO, were gentiles. Although there were likely some few Jews in that mix.
I think the original Chrestians is what came from the belief in the Nazarene Jesus who might have been the model for all the other archetypal Jesus' and Christs in scriptures. There is more than 1.
We Gnostic Christians favor the more Eastern esoteric one and not the Roman ass kisser that Rome invented.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r...
-----------------
"God did not create us this way. Choosing sin and selfishness was a human choice."
Yes and a good choice it was but if God did not create us as is, who did?
Before you try to reply, please view what follows.
Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by whipping out their favorite "free will!", or it’s all man’s fault.
That is "God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy."
But this simply avoids God's culpability as the author of Human Nature. Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.
If all sin by nature then, the sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not sin. That being the case, for God to punish us for following the instincts and natures he put in us would be quite wrong.
Psalm 51:5 "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me."
----------------
I like that you say you are willing to learn.
You wrote this of the fall.
"I see what you are saying, and to be fair, it would make sense that they would not."
Learn that you should go with what makes sense to you and not the idiotic dogma that Christianity invented by reversing what the authors of the original myth thought.
If it does not make sense to you, it is probably because it is senseless and illogical.
I apologise for all the links I put but writing everything down would have taken a week.
I said above I would show you something on the sop and Judas. here it is. Please go with your sense and not what you have been taught by your church.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znOw0XKldxc
John 13:26 Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon.
John 13:27 And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.
John 13:30 He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night.
Regards
DL
™ Version 4.2