God is cruel

Yes, many people have seen it like that. Those are good examples of the mental gymnastics that are necessary in order to try to obscure the contradictions in the various Genesis myths.If the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil doesn't actually but just a test, there is no explanation for the change in their behavior before being confronted by GOD. In addition, that would make the Tree of Life just another test and remove the fear that GOD exhibited that they might eat from it.Sorry, but frankly those commentaries seem to be nothing more than mental gymnastics.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Sorry but frankly your views are the mental gymnastics, simply to justify your own idiosyncratic misreading of the scripture.

thanks for the best wishes...but I'm surprised and a little dissapointed that no christian on here can counter that argument

It's been countered. That's the point.

show me where... please..

That only holds true if they accept that there was a Fall and Original Sin.Many Christians don't think either is the case.So, would a Christian that agrees those two things would indicate a cruel God and that does not accept that there was a Fall or that the sins of some long dead parent are vested on the child show a GOD that is not cruel.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

True, but if god doesn't exist and didn't create it all, then everything we see is not evidence of him. This kind of argument leaves us pretty much back where we started (it begs the question) and therefore is an empty point

No problem Faith. Folk will read your defense of your position, they will read my defense of my position, and they will decide which makes more sense.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

only if you, view wanting to be like god = ego, i'm not so sure it was really about ego, or more like a child wanting to be like thier parents, we want to be like someone we love

And I think that you good folk have said your points already...but we have 6 more posts to assert whether God...IF He exists...is cruel or not.Please make your final points and either AdminJar or I will then put this cruel thread to bed!

God is cruel among many other things. Job and the crucifixion evidence this as well as killing infants in Jericho and turning people to salt! Well, not that that happened.Yes, cruel from the ego's stand point. Though I don't believe hell is permanent yet it is horrible the hells that people experience for hours, days, years on end. Long enough.Ramana said: It's all part of the dream and it's only dream.lfen

I am sorry if you do not understand. You asked about the fall, and our suffering.What you percieve as suffering may actually be God just showing you things. It's all about our free will and what we choose. It's all about knowing God. It is what separates us from being like a tree.We may not be in the garden of eden any more, but we aren't in hell. The perverbial tree still exists. When you sin, it is like eating from the tree, and it separates you from God. No, it's my imagination, I am the only real person alive!!!!
Don't ruin it for me I used to think this way too. Back to what I said earlier. How can one know and appreciate the light, until they have seen the dark?
The light is God, and the dark is anything that you think is not from Him. But it is all from Him ultimately.Could you be a doctor unless you went to college and worked hard at it?It is the school of life.God's ways, are not our ways, so we don't understand it, until we make an attempt at getting closer to Him, and then He starts to speak to us. What you think is bad, is really just school. The bible says rejoice in our tribulations. The bible explains that we will suffer, so there is no surprises. Believeing in God is not fairy tale land.I do not see a problem with going through the school of life, so long as when I graduate, I can go to heaven. God has done way to many awesome things for me in my life for me not to believe.

And maybe we are finally given the opportunity....through communication....to fullfill our purpose and destiny!RiverRat is a good friend as well! My take on the whole matter is How could God be so cruel if so many ordinary people are not?

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Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. --Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Where did you get the name, fallacycop? Are you from Brazil?? How are things there? I have heard that they have a lot of voodoo and supernatural beliefs down there! You gotta tell me about them some time! (Brazil, that is!)If I can see that you are not cruel, I can have hope that IF God exists, God also is not cruel!This message has been edited by Phat, 04-15-2006 04:58 AM

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Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil. --Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Of course there's ambiguity. We're talking about language, here. When the serpent says in Gen 3:5 "...you will be like God, knowing good and evil," does he mean completely like God, but only mentioning a couple qualities explicitly? Or like God only respecting those qualities and no others? Or like God regarding only some qualities, of which a couple are mentioned explicitly?And later in Gen 3:6 we read, "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom..." Is "gaining wisdom" the same as knowing good and evil? Does it mean gaining some of the qualities of God? All of the qualities of God? Has Eve accepted the serpent's words at face value (whose meaning is unclear, anyway), or has she interpreted them in some other way?The only thing I'm certain of is that there's not enough information to be certain.--Percy