Is Genesis to be taken literally Part II

that's my beef with vegans too.

no. thorns are not dead leaves. take a bio class.

there is an idea thata few people and i have been throwing around for a while. that there are to things that make up god: knowledge and life. hence the two trees. when he created man, god gave them a choice of which godlike quality to attain first on their way to becoming gods. as god was lonely, he wanted to create a companion for himself. (maybe so he could stop talking to himself.) anyways. so perhaps mankind as a whole will become this companion, or maybe there is a select human that will become it. eitherway, we would have to move closer to being godlike for this to work out. so when we first chose knowledge (the selfish choice) he knew we had to grow up a bit more so he prevented us from choosing life after the fact and becoming immature and impulsive gods. had we chosen life, we could have learned knowledge easily without having to have great records and technology. but we chose knowledge and (as almost all our technology revolves around killing each other) will have to overcome our knowledge to achieve life.

well obviously the snake ate from the tree of knowledge. *aside* can snakes talk?*/aside*i think that nothing ate from the tree of life. without knowledge, one cannot be selfish. wanting to live forever is a very selfish thing. you continue to use resources when you should have stopped etc.of course i used selfishness to define the choice for knowledge. so i will be more precise. which would you rather, to know the answers to your greatest questions, or to live forever in ignorance? for most here, we want knowledge, no?This message has been edited by brennakimi, 04-07-2005 01:06 PM

no, perhaps not. but we can call ourselves followers of christ.

not to mention that the bible instructs us to resist the temptation to fall into chanting and recitation "as the pagans do" (no offense meant to any pagans. apparently most of them don't chant anymore lol) and yet i've not been to a single church where chanting and recitation isn't the main point.go into a closet and lock the door, and there go to your father in secret.

yes it means that. but i don't know a whole lot of christians who follow christ. i know a whole lot of christians who follow paul, however.

funny. my ideas are biblically based and yours are not. show me the fall of a freewill satan in the bible.

find any other mention of it. an allusion is no good as far as i'm concerned.

immaterial. if you expect me to back up my claims, i expect you to back up your claims. show me where in the bible it tells the story of how satan fell from heaven. surprise. it doesn't. that's in milton. not the bible. anyways. you're dragging us off topic. stop it. no preaching. badphat.

yes. jesus and the holy spirit are not in genesis. (at least not without some revisionist theological fiddling.)

so he gave me a mind and i am to waste it by simply following some preacher like a sheep? sorry. don't sheep go astray? i cannot believe that my god would create my intellect in order that it should be a temptation to draw me away from him. something inherent and inescapable... it cannot be. it cannot be that i am right in following someone else's perception of divinity but not my own, when the other does not line up with scripture OR reason.

i didn't say they weren't at the creation of the world, i said they aren't mentioned in genesis. yes, god uses the royal we (an easy enough assumption) but the entities (persons whatever) are not mentioned.why is it that god could speak to and directly lead people in the bible and yet we have to follow other people? why can't god lead me?

i read genesis very literally. i just think a lot of it is mistaken on history and accurate only in tradition (kinda like johnny appleseed).

that is a matter of opinion.
i really doubt that a whole people group came from abraham's cousin sleeping with his daughters. they made up a story to excuse themselves from the responsibility of having warred with and completely annihalating those people.