bfniii

no one at all? what about the people who claim they do know?

what you omit is that there are plenty of people who claim to have personal experiences regarding God. human proxies are not the only way a person can know God.

Johnny Skeptic

How do those people find out what they know?

And so say the followers of some other religions. If personal experiences are sufficient, why do you need the Bible to tell you about God's existence and specific will?

bfniii

matthew henry's commentary in reference to the expulsion states "Here we have, 1. The reason God gave why he shut man out of paradise; not only because he had put forth his hand, and taken of the tree of knowledge, which was his sin, but lest he should again put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life (now forbidden him by the divine sentence, as before the tree of knowledge was forbidden by the law), and should dare to eat of that tree, and so profane a divine sacrament and defy a divine sentence, and yet flatter himself with a conceit that thereby he should live forever."

given that his commentary has been one of the most widely read, i would say a fair amount of christians believe the original sin was at least partly responsible for the expulsion. in fact, it could be argued that adam and eve forfeited their right to take from the tree of life thus the original sin is what actually precipitated the expulsion.

i see bias all around. however, absolute truth is bigger than any bias.

but not all people, right? in fact, there are some atheists who deconvert. the actions of fallible people are not indicative of any alleged truths about christianity (or atheism for that matter).

what's honest is to acknowledge that everyone operates from a bias.

but people can determine God's will. my point is that trying to judge an overall plan for mankind from a thimblefull of verses is ludicrous.

bfniii

one standard is the law of identity. what is good?

on the contrary, i think we can competently comment.

it depends on the choice of the individual to either embrace, reject or ignore.

i have agreed that there is uncertainty, pain and even death in this life but none of that obviates any alleged absolute good.

spin

You did not answer my question with this evasion.

By what standard can you judge the standard?

As you have no point of perspective from which to comment on, you are certainly incompetent.

How does this comment relate exactly to what you were ostensible commenting on?

I'm pleased that you agree.

Now can you give a useful meaning for your term "good", one that one might find in a dictionary so that a person might know how you personally use the term. Statements such as "god is good" or '"good' is a quality of god" will not help as they do not supply any further semantic content. (An example of a meaning for the adjective "cold": "the quality of temperature which is lower than human body temperature".) I'm not asking for some ideal definition, but one that makes clear exactly what you intend by the word.


spin

Sven

Umm, I suggest to go back and look what we were actually discussing. Hint: it wasn't the reason for expulsion.

Nice. You have yet to show that "absolute truth" even exists.

I have no idea how this answers what I said.

Yes, indeed. Former Christians who deconverted despite their Christian bias. Understood now?

Obviously they can not. There are as many interpretations of god's will / plan as are denominations, or even as are Christians.

And my point is that including more does not help, because Christians don't can agree what the plan is, not even including the rest of the bible, but rather by including it. The more you take from the bible, the more unclear god's plan becomes.

You seem to be operating with the typical Christian tactic: Everyone interpreting the bible is dumb, except the people who agree with you.

bfniii

no, i'm telling you what i have learned from other people who have studied the phenomena.

they don't have to walk around with snakes in order to reproduce the trick. they just need to have knowledge of how to perform the trick.

of course they knew about it. the bible claims they performed it first.

i guess because He knew He would eventually perform one that they couldn't reproduce. which is what the bible claims happened.

exactly. he didn't clarify only the set of walls surrounding the island. he was referring to the walls in general just like he referred to other general aspects of tyre.

incorrect. "I will" in verses 13 and 14 refer to the ultimate destruction of tyre, not the human armies.

this is another case of you reading something into the text that isn't there. you seem to think ezekiel contains the word "only" when referring to the walls. or that genesis refers to "only" for the reason of the explusion.

actually, since the city-state of tyre would at some point not exist (as is the case today), tyre's wealth is a thing of the past.

not entirely. tyre included the mainland as well. that's where the monarchy was.

that still doesn't show that tyre didn't include the mainland.

but the city-state was not. it doesn't exist and hasn't existed for a long, long time.

ezekiel may have known of uninhabited cities, but that doesn't mean he was referring to tyre as one of them. otherwise, he wouldn't have used the word "like".

the only thing that's clear is that people are divided on the issue.

because the author is capable of posting a webpage doesn't mean they are correct, whether christian or non-christian.

yes, you're great at repeating yourself without actually answering the question. what is socially acceptable to one culture or one species is not for another. evolution does not produce these kinds of ideas. clearly this notion of society can be broken down into good and evil as i stated earlier. so what is good, evil, justice or injustice?

as i said, an omnipotent being intellectually raping someone is not learning.

what do you think freewill comes from? it comes from information. a person, in their mind, makes a choice and then acts on that choice. stamping someone's brain with ineluctable information obviates choice.

if you're referring to pain caused by people, because God respects our choice to hurt other people. if you're referring to gratuitous evil, because uncertainty is an important element of the human condition and because God can use this type of suffering for ultimate good.

actually, it's not. you're assuming that God could make life painless and still respect freewill.

not really. the "no" was referring to the instinct to preserve the species. the second sentence is referring to the instinct to preserve self. so evolution has provided these conflicting instincts which cause us to do all kinds of things. this notion that evolution has provided the idea of society is ridiculous. evolution has produced confusing ideas, if anything. every society is different and endorses different forms of justice. the question remains how do we categorize what is good and what is not?

i most certainly have not. i am saying that God can appear to be unjust at times, but our perception is often clouded by false expectations.

what is your definition of amoral?

this is a perfect example of a jackism. i responded with an explanation as to how it does refer to a person volunteering. do you respond to that explanation? no, you just repeat your original statement which i suppose makes you feel better.

this comes from a person who thinks genesis portrays us as stealing freewill from God. there are several other examples of you inserting your own made up words into the text. we can discuss those examples if you like.

oh lots of people think they can accurately date the flood anywhere from 2000bc to 10000bc. and some people say there was no flood. with such a wide range of opinions, history seems to be silent on the issue right now.

but the reason that is stated was precipitated by the reasons given in the prior verses. to ignore them is to take verse 23 out of context. if you ignore the disobedience as the precipitating event, you are assuming that God would have had a problem with adam eating from the tree of life regardless of the tree of knowledge. if you make that assumption, you must provide quotes from the text that supports that position. the text seems to imply that God did not have a problem with adam eating from the tree of life until after he disobeyed.

is that going to help you stop inserting words into the texts or taking verses out of context?

ok. logic 101. that is called an appeal to numbers and it's a logical fallacy. it didn't work when copernicus posited the heliocentric model and it doesn't work now. their argument is not correct just because there are more of them.

what is your defintion of "usually"? that's a subjective term that you are unable to quantify.

here you commit another fallacy. your so-called minority is of the same religous background as the majority. in fact, they were from the same era and the same locale at the same time. so again, which set of jews is correct?

by your own reasoning (of which there is tangible support), you should side with your so-called minority because the truth of a supernatural, backwoods, healing, non-political, non-militant messiah is counter-intuitive to the common, contemporaneous jewish belief. under your own (unsupportable) rules, this would qualify as an exception to the majority being correct.

but there are scholars who are christians. so now the question is how many scholars do you require of christianity in order for it to be legitimate?

which, of course, is irrelevant. what is relevant is that jews convert to christianity even today. they forego orthodox judaism in the belief that Jesus was the messiah referred to in the OT. why are they incorrect?

i have done no such thing. i have merely asked you, many times now, why you think the ones who didn't convert are the correct ones

i realize you don't like my answer, but i'm not avoiding anything. i have tried to respond to every single word you post. i have been here from the beginning of this long thread and i'm not going anywhere so feel free to drop this ridiculous accusation anytime. save yourself some keystrokes and stick to the point.

i have provided at least one answer; that being they tend to ignore or misinterpret isaiah 53

it's not my statement. it's a fact that there are jews who believe the torah is an accurate representation of their history, i.e. monotheistic from the beginning. instead of this non-response, how about explaining to these jews why they are wrong about their own history.

1. so they are historically authoritative enough to know that Jesus does or doesn't fulfill messianic prophecies but not enough to know whether their religion was always monotheistic?
2. by what authority do you know which jews are accurate about their theistic history and messianic prophecy fulfillment and which ones aren't? even if you are one of the most prominent jewish scholars of all time, that doesn't mean you speak for every jew from all time nor does it mean you are correct.

this is probably the most inaccurate statement you have made in this entire thread. well, stealing freewill from God was pretty bad. anyway, did christians reject the extra-biblical evidence for pilate when it was found? did christians reject the harmony between the existing manuscripts and the dead sea scrolls when they were found? even when the helicentric theory was verified, christians didn't reject it. we could go on and on with examples. in fact, many scientific discoveries were made by christians in the hope of better understanding God's creation.

i can't say that i'm following these two statements.

bfniii

my point in asking is that people have all kinds of expectations of God in order for Him to prove He exists. what makes your expectations more realistic than anyone else's?

not really. God never promised He would do that and i don't find it a necessity in order for us to go on living. God did provide some miracles and no matter which ones He performed, someone is going to complain that He didn't perform M+1.

they can ask all they want but is that a realistic expectation?

bfniii

ok. so you have a source that claims polytheism and there are jews who claim monotheism. which is correct?

bfniii

multiple ways

because it's another piece of the puzzle.