Christianity and the End Times

That diminishes God to a spirit inhabiting rocks and trees, with no power over anything. There's the part where God said there was no fall, for example. I don't understand why you're holding up heathen religions as an example of something we should follow.

You said that God has no power to change the nature of the universe.

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Genesis 3:22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil....

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Becoming like God can not be a fall. The heathen religions got it wrong on a whole lot of counts (according to you, not according to me). Why on earth would you use them as an example at all? Why would you think they got that one thing right?

Deciding that scripture doesn't mean what it says is a dangerous road to go down. What it says is that Adam and Eve became more like God. Only a really perverse mind could make a bad thing out of that. Of course, we would expect you to say that knowledge is a bad thing.By the way, I looked into the bit about God promising Adam and Eve a Saviour. Surprise surprise, Google took me to Answers in Genesis - and surprise surprise, as per usual, they got it wrong.What Genesis 3 says is that Eve's seed will bruise tbe serpent's head and the serpent will bruise the heel of Eve's seed. AiG - and presumably you by proxy - stretches that to Eve's seed being Jesus. It seems odd that Jesus would be called Eve's seed instead of Adam's or, even better, God's. But in any case it doesn't make any sense because it's depicted as a mutual bruise-to-bruise animosity - i.e. there is no winner - i.e. no saviour.

Why not? Isn't He supposed to be the source of morality? Poof! Moral. Poof! Immoral. What's the problem?

He creates evil. (Please don't waste everybody's time by trying to deny that.) That's cute sound bite but it doesn't fit the text. He changed His mind about the creation and decided to destroy it with a flood. He changed His mind several times about destroying Sodom and Gommorah. There doesn't seem to be a very solid reason for Him to be incapable of changing His mind again, say about the "need" for blood sacrifice.Edited by ringo, : I swear the submit button jumped up and hit my finger before I was ready.

Of course God can not sin. Sin is an offense against God. He can easily choose not to be offended by His own actions.But the distinction between evil and calamity is entirely bogus. God CAN choose not to send calamities against us, can't He? He COULD choose to waive the blood sacrifice, couldn't He? So He CAN change His mind, as I said. His policy on when to change His mind is completely irrelevant to the fact that He can and does change His mind, as I said.

So He's a slave to our foibles. So what? If He doesn't mind and we don't mind, no harm, no foul.

As I already mentioned in Message 875, that's a pretty weak "prophecy". There is not the slightest indication that Eve's seed will win the battle with the snakes. It's just an ongoing enmity. If it was a prophecy of a "saviour", it would be a failed saviour. More likely it's just another lame attempt to read Jesus into the Old Testament.

Then where does the "saviour" come in? As I have pointed out twice now to Faith, there is no winner in that battle.The snake in Genesis 3 is a literary device to expose Eve's thoughts (i.e. the primeval thoughts of all humans). The enmity between snakes and humans is a biological turf war. Reading more into it than that just convolutes your theology to the point where it becomes a joke.

No it isn't. I, for one, had never heard it.It is, after all, ridiculous. For the third time, nobody wins that battle. It's just an ongoing enmity with no "saviour" to save anybody.Reading Jesus into it is an outright fabrication - and one that makes no sense.

Do you read my posts at all before replying? I told you, I did Google it. And AIG was the first hit on my results too. That's a nail in the coffin. I wouldn't trust those guys as far as I could throw the Garden of Eden.And I have explained why the "prophecy" makes no sense. There is no saviour in Genesis 3. The enmity goes on and on and on forever. It just doesn't fit the idea of Jesus at all.Deal with that instead of just repeating, "I do, I do, I do believe...."

Bruise = bruise. It doesn't suggest an unequal fight at all. The fact that it is only a bruise is a pretty clear indication that it is not a permanent defeat.

Again, it is NOT all the theologians in Christian history. It's only the subset that agree with you. And I bet you disagree with many of them on a wide range of issues too.

So, are you using the Argument from Popularity fallacy or the Argument from Authority fallacy? Or a mashup of both?Can you address the actual argument at all?

Of course not. I'm pointing out that relying on "traditional Christian theology" for your argument is a fallacy. It isn't about literal bruises. Snakes don't cause bruises.But you're not addressing the point at all: In Genesis 3, the snakes don't lose the battle.