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The Flood
- Thread starter Soul Searcher
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- Jun 18, 2006
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Well, for starters, aren't you the one that made this statement?
Unless God snapped his fingers, of course
And why does that cause you to slap your forehead? What? God doesn't have any fingers? Or is it He's not allowed to snap them, or what? Why do you guys act like God had to ask nature (your goddess) for permission before He did anything?
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Yep... better still why kill them at all?
Were the animals evil except for those few choosen apparently at random to go on board the ark?
For that matter why kill the humans? Why not just give them an attitude adjustment?
The freewill arguement usually comes up but then somehow I do not think that drowning was of thier own freewill but rather forced upon them. One would think that given the choice to let God magically zap them into good boys and girls and drowning a large number of them would choose the zap so the freewill arguement falls short.
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God gives you free will so your love means something to him, but if you don't love him, he'll kill you/torture you/banish you.
Yeah, nice system you've got there - I feel so much better knowing I've got free will!
Yeah, nice system you've got there - I feel so much better knowing I've got free will!
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thaumaturgy
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Could it be because, as Naraoia points, out God went to a lot of trouble to ask a person to put all the animals in breeding pairs on an ark rather than snapping his fingers.
See this is what you get when you mix an ultra-powerful supernatural being presumably capable of everything with the human penchant to try to explain things they didn't witness and don't understand in terms that they can understand.
Maybe this is why people keep trying to get you to think of the Bible in comparison with countless other religions' holy books which you might reasonably look at and determine are little more than myth.
Just thinking out loud here. I know Comparative Religions is probably the last class one takes before being damned straight to hell.
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thaumaturgy
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As I've said before I'd gladly, with a giant smile on my face, give up free will if it meant removing any chance, however miniscule, of eternal torment for actions taken during a finite existence.
Especially if I live my finite existence with less than perfect perception of all the facts (like God's existence, or the real rules of the real, one true god, etc.)
I can't think of one living being who would say:
"Ya know, I realize and am fully aware that God exists and he wants me to do thus and so, but I just wanna sin for my alloted life-time knowing full well that I will end up being tormented beyond rational thought for eternity!"
The fact that some Christians assume this type of human must exist somewhere says a lot more about the necessary existence of strawmen.
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thaumaturgy
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Well, you've never met my puppy. If an animal could be considered inherently evil it would be "Mr. F." But he sure can look cute when he needs to.
Well, you see, God did the Flood as "Reset v1.0" when mankind got too sinful. That only worked for a while before the human RAM got loaded up with more malware.
So God opted to go with "Reset v2.0" and that's when he opted to go with the Jesus Reset. In the Jesus Reset God didn't just push the on/off button in a "hard crash" as he did with the Flood, he installed a "Disk cleaning" algorithm (Grace.app) that would keep the human RAM cleaned even when it loaded up with malware.
(Jeez, I'm going to quit my job tomorrow and go into the ministry...I think I've got a knack for this! I'll have to find a church who is tolerant of atheist ministers tho'...)
It's all pretty simple. I think it's in the World Operating Systems manual. I forget which page. I'm sure its in there along with the Bible Prophecies covering the internet.
Well, to be fair, I'm sure some of them chose not to drown for a couple minutes at least.
Yeah, but how would you then explain all the geology we see?
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Well, duh - I mean, he knew it was going to get infected, and exactly how it was going to infected - in fact, for it to be infectable, he must have put the security flaw in there! I mean, if you insist on giving /usr/bin/man setuid root then I guess your into trouble when /usr/bin/serpent has write access to woman, who has the same to /usr/bin/man.
Also setting a+r on /usr/share/trees/knowledge wasn't a good idea either.
Of course, don't get me wrong! It was still a perfect system. It was just flawed and doomed to failure right from the start. Perfect - but flawed.
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Vene
In memory of ChordatesLegacy
I honestly don't know where literalists get "perfect" from considering that in Genesis God only calls his creation "very good." Not that "very good" is something to be ashamed of, but it sure isn't perfect.Well, duh - I mean, he knew it was going to get infected, and exactly how it was going to infected - in fact, for it to be infectable, he must have put the security flaw in there! I mean, if you insist on giving /usr/bin/man setuid root then I guess your into trouble when /usr/bin/serpent has write access to woman, who has the same to /usr/bin/man.
Also setting a+r on /usr/share/trees/knowledge wasn't a good idea either.
Of course, don't get me wrong! It was still a perfect system. It was just flawed and doomed to failure right from the start. Perfect - but flawed.
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What? And end up making the same mistakes you guys make? No, thanks --- you're not gonna pin "Nadab" or "Abihu" on me. It'll be a cold day in Hellespont when I start blaming the Crusades on obedience to the Scriptures, or thinking the Bible taught that the earth was flat, or the Flood was local, or dinosaurs and man didn't co-exist, or Jehovah and Allah are the same, or Jehovah and Yahweh are the same, et. [ad nasuem] al. I'm not trading my cross for a Periodic Table for anyone.
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Yes you can --- Matthew, John, Paul, --- just to name a very few. All traded comfortable living so they could --- according to some --- train a fake messiah to "self-fulfill" prophecies that weren't really prophecies in the first place - (just vague sayings) - so they could be "tormented beyond rational thought" for the rest of their miserable lives.
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Wiccan_Child
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Hey, it's your explanation, not mine.
Because it's a cop out of an explanation.
He may do. He may not. It's simply a metaphor.
If he exists, I don't see why not.
We don't. We just despair at the irrationality you people will go to in order to defend your religious beliefs.
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thaumaturgy
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Not an analogous example. (Note how you shifted it from "eternity" to "rest of their miserable lives".)
BUT, that being said:
no doubt we see, even today, people who believe in things that choose to do things we ourselves would not do.
Imagine how you would view the choices of any number of religious followers to other religions or ideas, such as Heaven's Gate or David Koresh's followers. They laid their lives down for what were ultimately false ideas. They believed them. But you can't use someone's laying down their life for a religion as support for any given religion unless you allow that all examples are equally compelling in support for that religion for which the person gave up comfort and/or life.
I'm not saying it means Christianity is, by definition, false, but rather this is a flawed argument in support for Christianity unless you explain why it doesn't apply to other examples we know to be false.
What it all boils down to is people choose every day to forego things in support of strong beliefs. That doesn't mean the belief is obviously correct, just that they believe it really strongly.
And beliefs can be held without firm support. We all do it. We all hold beliefs we cannot justify rationally. The goal for me is not to turn that into a virtue.
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Sure did --- I do believe atheists don't believe in an "eternity"?
Let's try this from a different angle. Matthew, John, and Paul would not die a martyr's death --- knowing that what they did was fabricated.
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You're reading things in the passage that aren't there.
You have to keep in mind the bible's intended audience when it was first written. Ancient people did not know the full extent of the Earth; just the country or continent they were on, say. Saying 'for in his days was the earth divided' would not communicate an intent of actually splitting the landmasses of the Earth up, because as far as any of them could tell it was whole.
Now, if God wanted to say 'and then Pangaea split up' he could have been more careful with his wording.
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