neologist wrote:On the contrary. If one uses only the bible as the authority, then the only reasonable point of view is that a loving and all powerful God would not have set these things in motion without having the power to deal with any and all eventualities.
This is nonsense--it does not follow from the
assumption that your boy god is loving and all powerful that he would set "these things" in motion without have the power to deal with any and all eventualities. That your boy god might be loving and all powerful says nothing about whether or not the boy is prepared and willing to deal with eventualities. Most of all, stipulating that your boy god is loving and all powerful does not imply anything about what he whether or not he would set something in motion, regardless of intent or control. Finally, my contention is that, based soley upon the text of Genesis, no sin were committed, because the text states that Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil. This response on your part does not address that at all.
Quote:And to say that God knew in advance of the human misery that would result from his allowance of free will is to insinuate that all these evils at one time existed only within the mind of God, to be unleashed on intelligent creation in an almighty sweep of cosmic sadism.
Genesis does not discuss free will, nor does it assert that human misery resulted from an exercise of free will. It is a choice on your part to project this claim upon a text which is mute on the topic of free will. I'm not insinuating, i'm stating that the god portrayed in the Edenic passage of Genesis is a cosmic sadist. You have the problem of attempting to claim several things here, which constitute a marvelous exercise in begging questions. The first is to assert that your boy god exists, and that Genesis is neither metaphorical, nor a parable for the less that swift among the community of believers--but to contend that Genesis is a true account of events which transpired exactly as described, and were that so, your boy god suckered Adam and Eve, and punished them for doing what he set hem up to do. Next, you claim that this was some sort of experiment in the exercise of free will--but that is projection on your part which is not supported by the text, and it begs the question of what the purpose of the entire Edenic episode were. You might argue that it were this or that, but you're not doing that, you're stating that it were an experiment in the exercise of free will, perpetrated upon a pair of people whom the text stipulates were without the knowledge of good and evil--it was sadistic in those terms. Finally, you are stating by implication that human misery was the just result of the failure of Adam and Eve in this failure of the exercise of free will, which makes your attitude just as vicious as that of your boy god, because the text clearly states that they hadn't the knowledge of good and evil, so they were set up to fail.
Quote:Doesn't fit with the bible as a whole.
Nonsense, the god of the bible is a viciously and capriciously cruel character. That, were there nothing else, is good reason to believe that it is a fairy story cobbled together by a not very bright collection of religious manipulators, working independently and bereft of the ability to logically correlate their description of the god with the putative, laudable character traits ascribed to the god, despite the absence of any evidence in the text that the god exhibits those laudable character traits.
Quote:My main argument with non believers comes from their attempts to impeach the left hand of the bible while ignoring the right hand.
Screw that, keep your snotty and haughty judgments to yourself. You have woven a fancy story from whole cloth in a desperate attempt to salvage a claim that the bible is inerrant and literally true, while continuing to peddle a horseshit story about a loving god. The god of the bible is one vicious son of a bitch, and were there such a character in human form walking down the street, i'd shoot the filthy bastard on sight.
