I still am not sure what you're trying to say? Simpler terms, man, I didn't get much sleep this weekend.

For the first one, I never said the world was a lie, I said it was deceptive, and for the second, I'm honestly not sure why God created Satan in the first place, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess- Nah I'm not even going to guess that. But hey, if I knew everything, I'd be God. This may not be the answer you're specifically looking for, but sometimes people will ask why didn't God just force Eve to refuse the Devil since God can do everything? But see, if God had done that, he wouldn't have been giving us a choice, and the ultimate act of love is giving a choice.
Plus, we learn from our sins. We're like a square block of wood with pointy edges- The sins/bad things in our life are like sandpaper, and they smooth out the edges, making us well-rounded people.

Taking one of the language's metaphorical idioms and then embedding that idiom in an analogy is misleading and, frankly, terrible writing.

I don't like how in the end the only answers you get when difficult questions are asked is that we'll never understand. I sometimes feel like people are just trying to get away from an actual discussion :/

But did you understand what I meant?

We won't ever understand, I'm just stating the facts. There's always something else to be learned.

You were trying to draw a connection between the bad things that happen to us and how widely taught/experienced we are.

You just failed to fill in the details in the middle on how that works. In my experience, the bad shit that happens to you in your life is pretty bad, as it happens.

Yeah, it is bad. It sucks. But you learn from it and become stronger, don't you?

Or you end up broken and scarred. The analogy you used was flawed, trite bullshit.
What about the corners that the bad things remove? The bad tings make us incomplete AND well rounded?

The corners were sharp and pointed, they just hurt people.

Oh. Oh wow, you're really pushing this shitty analogy.
Please, stop for all our sakes. If you have points to make, make them, but please please please don't resort to that type of sentimental bullshit analogies. They make me cringe and make no fucking sense.

Haha, you asked. And I was just about to get off anyway, so this is a nice place to stop.

If the analogy is imperfect you don't pretend reality fits it! :o That's silly!

Haha... You're silly. ;D But if you think about it, there are exceptions to almost all analogies. Anyway, I'm off. It was nice hearing other people's opinions, it really was. (: Goodnight.

Good night.

I have to agree with ThenAgain that I can't personally see how suffering can be justified by attainment of "well-roundedness".

And FanofJesus, I don't really know how to simplify my previous statement much further. Genesis is not a science textbook. It's a spiritual story about God and mankind.

"I did a very small amount of research and found this site:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7110

It looks fairly impartial to me, and it does a good job of refuting or at least addressing some of the claims you've made, Entity."

"It's different names for the same being."
Counter:
The bible was written by many different people over many years. The author known to scholars as Second Isiah, who lived around 600 BCE, wrote the second half of the book of Isiah and edited many parts of the torah and talmud to change the many gods into a single god. The reason he did this was because at the time Judea was being invaded by Babylon and the Babylonians scattered the Israelites to different parts of their empire to prevent rebellion.

At the time and place which god you worshiped was tied deeply to your location. In Psalm 137:3-4 is an example of this way of thinking. Babylon was the land of Marduk, whom I've mentioned before, so in effect both Babylon and Israel shared a religion at the time. The speaker is an Israelite prisoner and exile from Judea right after the invasion of Babylon.

"For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" How could we sing Yahweh's song in a foreign land?"

In our current, common understanding of god it is thought that god is present everywhere and is all powerful. Why would this Israelite have difficulty singing songs of praise?

This is why the cult of Yahweh had to evolve into a monotheistic religion, otherwise it would die out. So that's why Second Isiah changed the torah and the talmud. It was to save his religion.

So I have the motivation and the opportunity, but there's more evidence. We can determine approximately when various parts of the bible were written based off of the kind of language used (just like you can place a date on Chaucer vs Shakespeare,) references to contemporary events, political and social goals that can be inferred from the text based on historical knowledge of the time period, and the smooth narrative flow when parts written by other authors are removed.

So we have motivation, opportunity and circumstantial evidence to support my claim in this case.

Moreover, the author of the response admitted that I am at least partially correct, "allow me to note that I do believe that some Israelites believed in many gods, of which Yahweh was one. However, there is also evidence inside and outside the Bible that there were other Israelites who believed in a single deity."

The author also claims that there is no deity named "El Elyon." But there is see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Canaanite_religion&oldid=412390411
http://www.biblicalheritage.org/Bible%20Studies/canaan-gods.htm

Of course, Wikipedia isn't a good first source, but it's what I have on hand at the moment.

In fact, the parable of Abraham going up the mountain to kill his first son is a Jewish rejection of the standard practice of sacrificing your first born son to El Elyon, (who is also El Shaddai or "God of the Mountains", which explains why he went up the mountain to do so. El Elyon, not Yahweh was the god of Abraham as I believe I mentioned my previous post.)

And he considered the Enûma Eliš and other extra biblical texts of the sort not to be "compelling evidence" of a connection, despite similarities in mythology, names of gods, and geographical and temporal nearness. It is baffling to me why he would disregard this connection.

So at the end of it all, it's simply a matter of disagreement between biblical scholars (not that I am a biblical scholar, but I draw my material from those who are,) and I readily admit that the gentleman in question is more learned than I am on the subject. However, the difference his position from the position I take isn't as large as he is making out (aside from his being incorrect on certain points.)

You seem to have ignored many of his points rather than rebutting them as you claim, and I remain unconvinced. (Nor do I particularly care one way or the other.) But anyway, this is off-topic, and if you'd like to continue discussing it, you may make another thread.

Can you point out which ones in specific I missed?

Not in this thread.

I see no reason that you can't believe in the Big Bang AND creationism/intelligent design. If the bible is taken literally, of course, then it can't be, but I see no reason Genisis can't be taken in a more allegoric way, much like Revelations is taken. I've met a few Christians who'll say they believe in evolution to an extent--that while certain creatures could evolve to an extreme, that people only evolve to an extent, which would explain the median height change over centuries and things such as that. I've met other Christians/people who believed in intelligent design who say that they believe that we did evolve from the hominids--with god's hand over it.

The time difference could be easily explained, also. When we talk about years, we have to remember that ways of measuring time has changed, even for humans. What was once considered a year is no longer considered a year as shown in the difference between the Gregorian calendar and the Lunar calendars. Who says what this particular deity would say a day was? On earth, a day is how long it takes the world to make a complete revolution around its axis. However, if I remember correctly, Christians don't think of god as living on earth. Why would it, therefore, use that as a unit of measurement?


I don't understand. Then there wouldn't necessarily need to be any energy/matter created or destroyed, would there? It would be merely expanding/changing form. I mean, as long as there's some for of a catalyst, what's the problem?

When it comes to my own personal beliefs, I wouldn't say I have a religion, though I'm currently very interested in the Hindu religion--it sounds right to me. I agree with everything I've so far read about it and am now reading the sacred texts. It chimes in me in a way no other religion ever has.
Much like Christianity, Hinduism is monotheistic--though a common misconception is that it is polytheistic, simply because the different 'gods' are aspects of the same god. Different facets of the same jewel, if you will. The three main facets are Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Brahma is the creater, Vishnu the protector, and Shiva the destroyer. God is also the Unmanifest Reality.
One of the reasons I was first interested in Hinduism is that it's very accepting. Hinduism does not teach that one particular religion is the way to salvation, but that all religions are sides of God's love and light. It is the most tolerant religion I've ever heard of.
Hinduism does not explain--that I've so far found, at least--the creation of the universe. God could of been said to of created himself, though--Brahma grew out of a lotus in the navel of Vishnu while she was sleeping.
To create the world and people, Brahma created a goddess out of himself. (Think of Blake's explanation about the Index Cards. If you cut it into two by splitting it, it is still one index card. Still one god.)

The question is where the initial energy came from.

It wasn't just matter and energy. It was matter, energy, and the laws of the universe themselves. We have no idea if energy was necessary at that point.

We'll never know. The math stops, and that's all there is to it. At this point there isn't much that can really be concluded, so we just keep on pushing forward. I'm sure that in a few years/decades or so there's going to be some other theory which explains things so much better than the Big Bang Theory and makes us all look ridiculous and ignorant, like the earth-is-flatters.

@Macman: I don't think there was matter. Matter didn't appear until fractions of a second after the big bang.

@BFD: I think that the big bang theory is unlikely to be overturned in the same way that the idea of a flat earth was since the hard scientific evidence behind the big bang is so strong.

I ought to point out that as far as theories go, the Big Bang and a flat world dont particularly fit on the same playing field. Yes, both ideas are/were falsifiable, but while there is significant evidence for the Big Bang, the assumption of a flat world is an explanation of the world for people that lived in about the same area for much of their lives that did not have other means to understand the earth upon which they stood.


Curiously, points Omni stated about the Genesis creation stories can be strongly correlated with interpretations of creationism/intelligent design, as their historical significances were used as a preface to a sermon at a church I occasionally attend. Just like the assumption of a flat world by early man are explanations for the way things are, such are these stories as well, and the story of seven days even makes use elements similar to the flat world because of the lack of knowledge about the universe at the time. This means that just like many other aspects of of the Bible including religious codes and social morals (ie. slavery as a norm, women are not particularly important) cannot be taken literally in the world we live in now because of the social and scientific advances that we have made over thousands of years.