Originally Posted By Red
Ok, I will try my best to point out some common misunderstandings. When God put the tree called “The tree of Knowledge” He didn’t put it there to temp man but to allow man to make a choice. Man had the ability to sin before he even took a bite of the fruit but, he didn’t sin until he took a bite. Why did God want man to have a choice? Well, because if God said to man, “You can choose between me or evil,” and then gave man no way of being able to choose evil then we would have the Ferrari paradox. That is; you can have a Ferrari in any color as long as it is red. God wanted man to choose Him on his own accord not because man had to. That is not love.

I don’t really see what difference any of this makes to what I wrote in my article. God did make the “tree of knowledge” tempting – in accordance with what you say above, this was necessary so that man had a viable alternative to following God. The thing is though, man didn’t really consciously choose “evil” – he was duped by the temptation God put in front of him (the tasty Apple, the talking snake etc.). This sort of thing would be thrown out of a court of law as entrapment, yet this is the sort of shenanigans the supposed creator of the universe indulged in so that he could have someone to love him! This therefore means that he not only is a sadist, but utterly sad and pathetic as well.

Also, let’s not forget that God created everything involved here, and he is supposed to know all that ever was, and ever will be. So he should have known what the results of his temptation would be.

The original sin is not man eating the fruit but, Satan rebelling against God and trying to place himself as God. Satan was God’s greatest angel and was also God’s best looking creation but, when Satan got too big of an ego, he decided to lead an army of his followers against God and God’s followers. Satan lost but God spared him and let him live on earth and in hell.

This is one of my favourite absurdities of the Bible – God supposedly created hell for Satan, as he is supposedly the greatest sinner of all. Yet God spared him and sent him down to earth, where he supposedly tempts we human beings into evil, so that many of us end up burning in hell instead!

There is another absurdity here as well. Heaven is supposed to be a place of perfect peace, yet (as the Bible says) there is at least one great war there. So how is heaven any better than earth then?

God does have the capacity to do evil but, God does not have the desire to because it would go against who He is. If you read the Old Testament you can read a lot of stories of God killing people. In Sodom He rained down fire and brimstone on the city. That is pretty harsh but, it said that the people were leading the world away from God and they were breaking God’s commandment to go and populate the world. They were even sacrificing babies on alters to false gods. God knew in His heart that no matter what he did they would never follow Him but they would lead the world away from Him and into its early demise. God never gets any pleasure from destroying His creation.

I will be writing about this in my next post. God in fact has a greater capacity to do evil than anyone else we know of – Hitler and Stalin pale in comparison to the atrocities committed by God in the Old Testament. There certainly isn’t anything to indicate that he doesn’t enjoy genocide and torture.

When God created woman, I personally think, God had made his greatest creation. Women are great. I love women and I know that I have a strong sexual desire for women too. Having a sexual desire is not a sin but, I think that married people should be faithful to their spouses. In a Christian marriage not only does the man promise the woman to be faithful but, he also promises God that he will be faithful to the woman and the reciprocal is true too. The breaking of a promise to God and the spouse is what the sin is. I agree with you that from a scientist’s point of view that sexual desire is what perpetuates life. It really is what drives people to want to make babies and continue the cycle of life. I actually have never had sex but, I think that sex is the second best thing that God created (women being the first). While I think that sex is great, I also think that sex is even better with the one person that we were meant to be with. Those are my personal beliefs and what I understand the bible tells me too. Oh, and I have no problem with looking at porn. I read somewhere that porn actually stops people from raping others.

I personally agree with your views on sex and porn, but you are obviously at odds with the teachings of your church here. Your views are perfectly harmonious with a purely scientific standpoint though.

Fact: By 410 CE, when the Goths invaded, Christianity was the ONLY legally recognized religion in Rome and it led to an internal rot because of the below mentioned fact.

Fact: Theodosius I, by c. 390 CE, had already enacted severe persecutions against pagans, including scholars and philosophers…the learned ones with all the books. Many of those same scholars and philosophers were the first to begin debunking Christianity, even way back then.

Fact: Barbarian was and remains a racist, exclusionary term and as such does not actually prove anything about those who it supposedly describes beyond “those people are not like us”. The Greeks invented it and used it to describe civilizations as advanced (or even moreso) as theirs: Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians among others. What’s the connecting thread? They weren’t Greek. And the use of the word in other civilizations? Again, simply to say, “those people are not like us”. Since the contemporary history we have of those times were written by the very people the Goths fought against, obviously there just a bit of bias there. That leads to the next fact.

Fact: The Goths/Visigoths who invaded in 410 CE? Arian Christians. So, it was Christian v. Christian. Considering your idealistic and extremely ignorant responses regarding the religion and the scripture to which I’m assuming you profess your faith, you probably also don’t know too much about the various Christian incarnations. Here’s a history lesson for those who don’t know: Arians denied the Trinitarian aspect of modern Christianity.

The Arians were the cause of much controversy and the Council of Nicea was a major contributor to the end of Arianism in early Christendom. This is why all good little Christians in western Christendom learn the Nicene Creed:

“And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God, Begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made;”

In short, everything the Arian Christians denied was the “revealed truth” of Christianity. The strongest opponents of Arianism, btw, came from the strongholds of the Holy Roman Empire: Alexandria, Constantinople and Cordoba.

Getting the picture now, of why the Goths, who were Arian Christians, were referred to as “barbarians”?

Fact: Those same Goths/Visigoths under Alaric I worked with the Theodosius I as a troop commander. When Theo died, his sons screwed over Alaric and the Germanic tribes working with their father, sparking resentment and rebellion that culminated in the Sack.

I never cease being amazed by the creative ways Christians come up with to cover their collective asses about the breadth and depth of destruction, mayhem, chaos, ignorance and hatred in the past two millennia inspired by their religion and its Holy Scripture.

Finally, Red, I was baptised and raised in the Christian faith attending Anglican, Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches. My late aunt Dorothy was the pastor at my Presbyterian church. My uncle Charles is a preacher at a Baptist church in North Carolina. I am currently enrolled at a Catholic university where I am majoring in art history, recently finishing a course discussing the very time period in which you have shown a great deal of ignorance: the Fall of Rome. Believe me, I learned more truth at this Catholic university about the culpability of the Church in the mess that was the end days of Rome and if anyone should be doing a major CYA about that time period, it’s the Catholic Church. I am not talking out of my ass.

I began questioning the Church and its teachings at age nine and finally left for good at age twenty-one. I left not out of some silly, emotional fit of teenage anxiety but out of careful study and consideration. I have read the Bible, all the parts and not just the parts that support the “ideal” manifestation of The Word. All. Of. It. I have had discussions about the Bible with people who have read it in the original Latin and Greek, with people who were raised as Evangelicals who know Scripture better than most priests. The Scripture is found wanting morally, intellectually and emotionally and I have a very negative reaction to those who attempt to defend it and who have not read every part of the book despite claims to the contrary.

And before you even start with the usual Apology of, “Well, it’s not supposed to be taken literally”, again, I suggest you actually READ the entire book without skipping parts that make you feel uncomfortable. Furthermore, taking that Apology as is remains unsatisfactory for sceptics because then it becomes obvious that Christianity is loosely interpreted and those with moderate and liberal Christian leanings at that point have to admit that the fundamentalist crazies who “hijack” the religion have as much right to pick and choose chapter and verse that makes them feel good inside as the moderate, liberal Christian Apologist does.

We can’t get rid of fundamentalists until we get rid of their fuel: The Bible itself.

And I’m done arguing this and won’t be responding to any of your responses. Having been in far too many online and IRL spats with True Believers, the most dogged oddly enough being those of moderate and liberal leanings, I know how you’re going to respond. The argument goes round and round without end and the only reason I am posting this is because you addressed me personally. Just do us a favor? Learn some history before spouting off to atheists about what they don’t “know” concerning Christianity and other Savior-based faiths. More often than not, they know more than you about your own religion. More often than not, they’re right.

The original sin is not man eating the fruit but, Satan rebelling against God and trying to place himself as God. Satan was God’s greatest angel and was also God’s best looking creation but, when Satan got too big of an ego, he decided to lead an army of his followers against God and God’s followers. Satan lost but God spared him and let him live on earth and in hell.

God does have the capacity to do evil but, God does not have the desire to because it would go against who He is. If you read the Old Testament you can read a lot of stories of God killing people. In Sodom He rained down fire and brimstone on the city. That is pretty harsh but, it said that the people were leading the world away from God and they were breaking God’s commandment to go and populate the world. They were even sacrificing babies on alters to false gods. God knew in His heart that no matter what he did they would never follow Him but they would lead the world away from Him and into its early demise. God never gets any pleasure from destroying His creation.

When God created woman, I personally think, God had made his greatest creation. Women are great. I love women and I know that I have a strong sexual desire for women too. Having a sexual desire is not a sin but, I think that married people should be faithful to their spouses. In a Christian marriage not only does the man promise the woman to be faithful but, he also promises God that he will be faithful to the woman and the reciprocal is true too. The breaking of a promise to God and the spouse is what the sin is. I agree with you that from a scientist’s point of view that sexual desire is what perpetuates life. It really is what drives people to want to make babies and continue the cycle of life. I actually have never had sex but, I think that sex is the second best thing that God created (women being the first). While I think that sex is great, I also think that sex is even better with the one person that we were meant to be with. Those are my personal beliefs and what I understand the bible tells me too. Oh, and I have no problem with looking at porn. I read somewhere that porn actually stops people from raping others.

The tree in the Garden of Eden was actually called “”he Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” not just “The Tree of Knowledge”. Also Adam and Eve did not have blind faith. God would come down and talk with them and He would even explain stuff to them too. God did not want them to be ignorant nor does he want us to be ignorant. The medieval Popes did because if people could read the bible for them selves then well, they might post some sort of ninety five point thesis on the door of a German church.

@M McQuown: The Albigensians were Christians who saw the evil in the Roman Catholic Church and broke off from them.

@Doug Ross: I lived in Kansas and I would like to say that the people in that area are nothing more than ignorant selfish people who would love nothing more to put other people down and commit evil. They use religion to achieve that goal rather than religion uses them. Religion to them is nothing more than a tool. I would say that a good majority of the people in the bible belt region don’t have a clue of what the bible means.

@Mark Crawford: The apostle Paul was one of the Sanhedrin. He then left them to become a follower of Christ. The Sanhedrin was staunchly opposed to homosexuality. I think that Paul saw that other churches had homosexuals in them and his old habits came back to haunt him. I actually think that he was too depressed to have any sexual desire. He had been tortured for many years before he had wrote any of his letters.

@Aspasia: The fall of Rome was caused by unlearned Goths who feared anything that they could not understand. Books were like giant spiders to them; they scared the crap out of them. Saying that I would like to point out that they understood that anyone who could read could also lead an army against them unless of course there was some sort of punishment if you did. Hell makes a great punishment. They really had no control of who went to hell and who didn’t of course but it kept them safe while they ruled Rome.

@Curt Russell: God doesn’t interfere with our decisions. He knows what we will do but that doesn’t take away from free will. It just means that He knows what we are about to do.

One last thing before I go get something to eat; using free will as an excuse for their problems is a total cop-out and is not an explanation. Ok, I got to eat. I hope that I have explained myself well. I will try to get to some of the other stuff later.

If my understanding of the Bible is flawed, then why don’t you enlighten us all in the comments here?

I would like to say that your understanding of the bible is a little off. I am willing to explain any misunderstandings or answer any questions that you have. I hope that I can change your mind about Christians being a bunch of assholes. I am not going to lie; I think that I am pretty nice.

Red

P.S
I think that you are very beautiful.