• Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.

Casstranquility

Potato, pineapple, pickle.
Aug 25, 2005
1,567
77
43
Vermont, U.S.A.
✟24,610.00
Faith
Pantheist
Marital Status
In Relationship
Lilly of the Valley said:
It doesn't matter. Bottom line, they rebelled knowing good and well it was sin.
How is that possible? Isn't sin supposed to be evil? Adam and Eve, according to the story, did not yet have any knowledge of good or evil. They did not know it was a sin, until after they ate the fruit.
LionofGod said:
Why be mad at Satan for what he does? Should we not be mad at the god that 'let the beast out of the cage'?
Why be mad at anyone? Satan is only a concept-a name for the seeming presence of evil. And this "evil" being only that which we do not understand.
 
Upvote 0
Jan 12, 2004
49,784
860
✟54,471.00
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
Casstranquility said:
How is that possible? Isn't sin supposed to be evil? Adam and Eve, according to the story, did not yet have any knowledge of good or evil.

God CLEARLY said they shouldn't eat it and the consequence if they did...they weren't blind. You either believe God or not and they rebelled. They knew God closely...so it's not like He was a stranger.
 
Upvote 0

Job_s_First_Son

Regular Member
Feb 17, 2006
307
17
✟23,138.00
Faith
Atheist
Lilly of the Valley said:
I say no. He was already created good. God doesn't create evil beings...they become evil of their own choice.
OK, that's interesting. I have a couple of questions on that. You said Lucifer was created good. Now do you mean he had no evil thoughts or did he have evil/rebellious thoughts and just was able to repress them until he couldn't any longer?

Continuing the Yes/No questions: If you had a child, would you allow Satan to interact with him/her without your interference?
 
Upvote 0
Jan 12, 2004
49,784
860
✟54,471.00
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
Job_s_First_Son said:
OK, that's interesting. I have a couple of questions on that. You said Lucifer was created good. Now do you mean he had no evil thoughts or did he have evil/rebellious thoughts and just was able to repress them until he couldn't any longer?

Continuing the Yes/No questions: If you had a child, would you allow Satan to interact with him/her without your interference?

When God creates something good, that means they initially have no evil zip in them. What happened was somehow...I don't know how...Lucifer became prideful out of nowhere...don't know how long it lasted or when it began...but He wasn't always like that, that's a fact.

If they had a mind and I told and warned them of what to do and not do, then yes...I'd trust them enough to give them responsibilty like that since they would be capable of it. Satan couldn't make them do anything. On this note...Adam and Eve weren't children or mindless or infants...thus God was able to give them responsibility.
 
Upvote 0

Job_s_First_Son

Regular Member
Feb 17, 2006
307
17
✟23,138.00
Faith
Atheist
Lilly of the Valley said:
When God creates something good, that means they initially have no evil zip in them. What happened was somehow...I don't know how...Lucifer became prideful out of nowhere...don't know how long it lasted or when it began...but He wasn't always like that, that's a fact.

If they had a mind and I told and warned them of what to do and not do, then yes...I'd trust them enough to give them responsibilty like that since they would be capable of it. Satan couldn't make them do anything. On this note...Adam and Eve weren't children or mindless or infants...thus God was able to give them responsibility.
Good answer to the Yes/no question (which looking back on it was really unfair anyway as it was out of line of the previous questions). But just to give you insight as to how I look at it, the problem was God knew they would fail. Its like if you put a knife in the room with your kid, knowing the kid would kill him/herself with it eventhough I told him/her not too. I wouldn't do it, would you?

Back to the original yes/no questions. Ok so the last one you answered that god could not create satan any different way (he couldn't have made him better, less prone to pride, or not able to enter the snake). Is God all powerful? (the thrust of this question is to see how you handle the contradiction).
 
Upvote 0
Jan 12, 2004
49,784
860
✟54,471.00
Faith
Christian
Marital Status
Single
Job_s_First_Son said:
Good answer to the Yes/no question (which looking back on it was really unfair anyway as it was out of line of the previous questions). But just to give you insight as to how I look at it, the problem was God knew they would fail. Its like if you put a knife in the room with your kid, knowing the kid would kill him/herself with it eventhough I told him/her not too. I wouldn't do it, would you?

Back to the original yes/no questions. Ok so the last one you answered that god could not create satan any different way (he couldn't have made him better, less prone to pride, or not able to enter the snake). Is God all powerful? (the thrust of this question is to see how you handle the contradiction).


Again...they still had a choice not to choose it. They had responsibility and didn't use it. That's not God's fault. The error is how you are viewing it. You are seeing it as: God knew and thus set them up, they had no choice and it was preset for them to fall. In reality it's: God simply knew what they'd freely choose in the freewill He gave them. They had a choice and God even warned them.


The thing is, God didn't need to make him 'better'. That's what I'm saying. He was already really good! There was freewill...so it was a freewill issue. Like w/ man (Adam and Eve were perfect [perfect in this doesn't mean can't sin in this instance], no sin, no nothing, but in their freewill, they chose sin and thus became corrupted) Satan allowed Himself to get prideful and stay that way and rebel against God. It's that simple. Yes, God is...so there is no contradiction. God permits the choices of His creation. He doesn't force us to do anything.
 
Upvote 0

kangitanka

Regular Member
Jul 2, 2006
281
16
✟23,009.00
Faith
Seeker
Marital Status
Married
Lilly of the Valley said:
Again...they still had a choice not to choose it. They had responsibility and didn't use it. That's not God's fault.
Of course not
Mankind was given the rules of God (represented by one tree) and personal experience (represented by the other tree)
They were to take the trees in order
They, however, didnt.
They chose their personal experience before the laws of God (or, more correctly, previous to the laws of God)
According to many Jews (who have a culturally deeper understanding of Bereshit...Genesis...than you do) such was the nature of what Christians call "The Fall"
Lilly of the Valley said:
The error is how you are viewing it. You are seeing it as: God knew and thus set them up, they had no choice and it was preset for them to fall.
AW Pink agrees with this "God did it on purpose" interpretation. And he does so, just as you, based upon revelation of the Holy Spirit.
Many Calvanists agree with AW Pink
Im sure you won't, but that is up to your (get this) "personal interpretation based on the Holy Spirit of the Trinity".
Again, Jews (who have much more cultural experience than you probably do) disagree with your personal interpretation.

Lilly of the Valley said:
In reality it's: God simply knew what they'd freely choose in the freewill He gave them. They had a choice and God even warned them.
You are missing a vital point-
God apparently (in your christian eisegesis of Bereshit) knew what they would choose, warned them of the consequences, but didnt warn them of the actual temptation of the serpent.
Lies of omission are still lies.
Or perhaps deception.


Lilly of the Valley said:
The thing is, God didn't need to make him 'better'. That's what I'm saying. He was already really good! There was freewill...so it was a freewill issue. Like w/ man (Adam and Eve were perfect [perfect in this doesn't mean can't sin in this instance], no sin, no nothing, but in their freewill, they chose sin and thus became corrupted) Satan allowed Himself to get prideful and stay that way and rebel against God. It's that simple. Yes, God is...so there is no contradiction. God permits the choices of His creation. He doesn't force us to do anything.
It's been said time and time again (and by people that understand the Old Testament better than you)- Satan, as a personified "devil", as a rebel against God Himself, is a New Testament fabrication and has NO basis in the Old Testament (or Tanakh).
The Isaiah and Ezekiel passages (regarding "the devil") are viewed far too often through "christian colored glasses" (ie-eisegesis)
 
Upvote 0
V

very_irreverand_Bill

Guest
Lilly of the Valley said:
Why blame God for man willfully taking satan's bait to begin w/ and choosing him and his perverse way despite knowing truth? Yes, God allows satan some freedom, but again, man doesn't have to do anything satan tries to make him/her...that's our own choice...and God even is willing to help us at that and man still rejects it.

If Christianity were the one true faith, and iut's god the one true god, then it would be 100% gods fault.

If it were to be true, than acording to it, all that existed was this same God,before time and space, before energy or matter, before anything period. God existed in a void of nothing all by gods self.
Then God created.

Thus, logically we could deduce, if this is the case, that not only did this very God create us and the angels that fell, but the "choices" themselves, the very energy that concieves thoughts of so-called wrongdooing exist as something that said God concieved of and created, and it all came froth from w/in this very Gods inner beeing-or else it could not exist. Hence, the very things,idea/conceptions,actions, or beeings deemed as 'sinful"/"evil"/etc exist only because they pre-existed in this deity and therefore this deity always was both good and evil and everything inbetween and purposefully made the energy/material universe and all the ingredients that cause any intelligent beeing to concieve of good or evil thoughts or deeeds out of this deities own nature and inner beeing.

Hence, this veyr god would be condemning and condemning to hell eternal it's own creations{the so-called fallen angels included} for baring the stigma of beeing of the exact same nature and essense as it itself is,was and ever shall be, something they cannot help but be anymore than it itself can.
Hence, it's either that this god is to blame 100%, or that it and it's own created extensions are hapless victims of the way thing simply are.
Or, as the case may be, the theistic god does not exist.

That said, it should be made knwon that the popular fallen angel conception of Satan is relatively new. The Jewisnh Scriptures and faith never contained a fallen angel-Satan. In the Jewish scriptures, Satan was simply a word that meant in their language "adversary/opposition/etc", not a proper name, but a title. It was a title given in the Tankah scriptures to ANY non-fallen angel that YhWh{G-d/tetragramaton} sent out to oppose somehting the humans were dooing that YhWh did'nt like. There was a specific Satan in the book of Job, whom in the Jewish tradition was NOT fallen, but was acting in YhWhs heavanly courts as a sort of court prosecuter{not an evil nemesis of the judge-YhWh}.

Sometime shortly before the alledged time of Jesus{w/in several hundred years} "SOME" jews came into contact with concepts from peoples and religions that had fallen or evil gods/demi-god type beeings in their mythologies, and they borrowed the concept over time{for example, it is thought probable that Pre-Islamic/Persian Zoroastrianism probably played a role- the enemy of their God Ahura Mazda, also Mazdas shadow side in some traditions I believe, was "Ahriman"-the god of destruction/death/etc; Egypts "Set" may also have ;layed a role, so and so forth}.

Eventually, the early Christians misintrpreted a couple verses in the Jewish scriptures, especially some verses in Isaiah referring to the fall of a babylonian king whose poetic title was "son of morning/etc" and the poetic prose used, and thoyght it referred to THEIR Satan, furtermore centuries after the alledged time of Jesus, the christians/church added this misintrpretation to a misintrpretation of a couple N.T. verses and connecte dthem erroneously= "I saw satan fall from heavan like LIGHTning" and "Satan appears as an angel of LIGHT"{amongst a couple others of similar phraseology} and connected this to the fall of the babylonian king they thought was then Satan, they mixed this Satan w/the Roman word "Lux' "Ferre" or "Lucifer"-meaning "light, to bear; lighbearer", this vision of Satan/Lucifer was used a bit some centuries after Jesus time, but became particularly popular and use din the western world after John Milton wrote his epic poem "Paradise Lost", And the rest is history. Semantics errnoeously mixed and confused.

Furthermore, one take of some people of Promethean mindset is to see Satan or Lucifer{erroneously mixed and concieved as this mythological entity may be} as a sort of peoples champion hero and bringe rof liberty and enlightenment in symbolic/metaphorical terms{like the Greeks Prometheus}; the Christians own O.T. and N.T. Bible gives precedence for this hero intrpretation. To read the O.T. partciularly w/humane heart and unbiased reason-one sees YhWh as quite a cruel,childihs,hypocritical entity, and he is still so{though a little less so} in the N.T., and the fallen Satan/Lucifer of Christian myth hardly ever gets a wor din edgewise-except for in most of the few instances where he is written to speak- as someone bringing enlightenment; so he can be seen as a peoples champion against tyranny,hypocrisy,ignorance,etc.

The above is metaphorical of course. But the facts spoken about the origins of the Christian devils/satan/lucifer are verifibaly true and factual, and irrefutablly how the so-called "evil rebel angel, opposer of a good god' came to be, furthemore my analysis of the Alpha/Omega god of christianity/monotheism beeing fully responsible for so-called "evil" in nature or beeings, is a logically irrefutable argument.

In Reason:
The very Irreverand: Bill
 
Upvote 0