Interesting read this thread >.>

So Lucifers a good guy.

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 02:41:32 AM

Quote from: Korra Valentine on January 08, 2015, 02:05:20 AM

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 02:03:10 AM

Quote from: Korra Valentine on January 08, 2015, 01:31:11 AM

Quote from: Nick McIntyre on January 08, 2015, 01:29:28 AM

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 12:22:35 AM

They could eat of any tree, but the one bearing the knowlege of good and evil.

That's it. One tree.

That's one thing that always bugged me:  Why was God such a fucking asshole as to put a tree like that in the middle of a field and tell Adam and Eve, "You better not touch that, that's the cookie jar.  Keep your hands off of it."

And then when they did, he fucking cast them out and cursed their descendants and the whole of Earth.  Like an asshole.

And literally make the one being that wanted to give you some cookies the most evil being in existence.

Here's where perspective matters. God is good, and righteous. Sin, is the opposite of that: unrighteousness, darkness, evil. It defiles, it corrupts.

So what does eating of the tree of knowledge do? Well that's the question.

Genesis 3:7

Quote

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Sin comes into the picture, the very moment Adam and Eve eat of the tree. Eating of the tree didn't enlighten them, it corrupted them. They were perfect in every way, they would never work for food or die of old age.

They eat of the apple, then suddenly......everything goes wrong. They are aware of their nakedness and feel shame, they hide from God whom they loved so much. And what does God do when He discovers this? The first thing He does is curse the serpent.

Why curse it? Because God saw the serpent had destroyed the innocence of those He loved. And created a rift of sin, that divided them. Christ was the only way to bridge that divide.



Here is what happens immediately after the cursing of the serpent:

Genesis 3: 17-20

Quote

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat from it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

All these results you see, they aren't God cursing them. "Cursed is the ground because of you".
He is saying their actions caused this suffering they will now experience.

Romans 6:23

Quote

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So you rather remain ignorant and stupid instead of having knowledge and awareness of your own actions? Knowledge that make you like gods, knowledge that make you live independent from this god and to live your own life?

But we weren't ignorant or stupid. The only difference was, we weren't in sin.
We had the freedom of choice, but we chose wrong. Adam and Eve knew what they did was wrong, since they were told not to do it, but the gravity of what they had done didn't sink in until after the fact. They felt shame and hid from God because of it.

You see it as "enlightenment" or realization, but this event isn't called "The fall of man" for nothing. It wasn't a step up, it was a leap off a cliff from perfection to imperfection.

Yes, how dare they have free will.  Because they had Free Will, God decided to:

Make them mortal
Experience sickness and suffering
Cursed their children (and every child after them) to sin
Damned them to Hell
Forced women to experience the pain of childbirth
and threw them out of paradise.

Meanwhile the Devil is happy to take all the rejects, such as gay people, furries, and people with mental instabilities.  I'm thinking I'd rather have a beer with the Devil than a jealous, angry, vengeful God who would wreck your shit.

What is Heaven?

Because of Satan, the individual you ironically prefer. Genesis 1:31 says: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Everything was great; there was peace, harmony, and the such until Satan corrupted the minds of Adam and Eve and destroyed all of that. Satan's actions caused suffering.

Exodus:20:5-6 "You shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me ; And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me , and keep my commandments.. Notice the underline parts, loved and accept God and his commandments will free you of your so called curse. It's called free will and it's not God's job to ensure you follow in his path

(Matthew 25:41), that He is "…not wishing for any [person] to perish but for all to come to repentance." (II Peter 3:9), and that He has done everything possible to save us from that terrible, terrible place. Yet in the end God will not violate or overrule the deliberate choice of those who consciously and willfully turn away from Him. If you turn away from God, then you will be sent to Hell; He will do his best to make sure you live in Heaven

Um, it's called biology and science. Something big coming out of a small hole will cause pain, but that pain is worth it because it will bring life and joy just as how Jesus suffered through pain to bring salvation to man

Except God accepts and loves everybody
Romans 5:8 "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
Proverbs 8:17 I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.

Quote from: Korra Valentine on January 08, 2015, 04:20:00 PM

Quote from: Nick McIntyre on January 08, 2015, 07:52:49 AM

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 02:41:32 AM

Quote from: Korra Valentine on January 08, 2015, 02:05:20 AM

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 02:03:10 AM

Quote from: Korra Valentine on January 08, 2015, 01:31:11 AM

Quote from: Nick McIntyre on January 08, 2015, 01:29:28 AM

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 12:22:35 AM

They could eat of any tree, but the one bearing the knowlege of good and evil.

That's it. One tree.

That's one thing that always bugged me:  Why was God such a fucking asshole as to put a tree like that in the middle of a field and tell Adam and Eve, "You better not touch that, that's the cookie jar.  Keep your hands off of it."

And then when they did, he fucking cast them out and cursed their descendants and the whole of Earth.  Like an asshole.

And literally make the one being that wanted to give you some cookies the most evil being in existence.

Here's where perspective matters. God is good, and righteous. Sin, is the opposite of that: unrighteousness, darkness, evil. It defiles, it corrupts.

So what does eating of the tree of knowledge do? Well that's the question.

Genesis 3:7

Quote

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Sin comes into the picture, the very moment Adam and Eve eat of the tree. Eating of the tree didn't enlighten them, it corrupted them. They were perfect in every way, they would never work for food or die of old age.

They eat of the apple, then suddenly......everything goes wrong. They are aware of their nakedness and feel shame, they hide from God whom they loved so much. And what does God do when He discovers this? The first thing He does is curse the serpent.

Why curse it? Because God saw the serpent had destroyed the innocence of those He loved. And created a rift of sin, that divided them. Christ was the only way to bridge that divide.



Here is what happens immediately after the cursing of the serpent:

Genesis 3: 17-20

Quote

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat from it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

All these results you see, they aren't God cursing them. "Cursed is the ground because of you".
He is saying their actions caused this suffering they will now experience.

Romans 6:23

Quote

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So you rather remain ignorant and stupid instead of having knowledge and awareness of your own actions? Knowledge that make you like gods, knowledge that make you live independent from this god and to live your own life?

But we weren't ignorant or stupid. The only difference was, we weren't in sin.
We had the freedom of choice, but we chose wrong. Adam and Eve knew what they did was wrong, since they were told not to do it, but the gravity of what they had done didn't sink in until after the fact. They felt shame and hid from God because of it.

You see it as "enlightenment" or realization, but this event isn't called "The fall of man" for nothing. It wasn't a step up, it was a leap off a cliff from perfection to imperfection.

Yes, how dare they have free will.  Because they had Free Will, God decided to:

Make them mortal
Experience sickness and suffering
Cursed their children (and every child after them) to sin
Damned them to Hell
Forced women to experience the pain of childbirth
and threw them out of paradise.

Meanwhile the Devil is happy to take all the rejects, such as gay people, furries, and people with mental instabilities.  I'm thinking I'd rather have a beer with the Devil than a jealous, angry, vengeful God who would wreck your shit.

This.

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 12:22:35 AM

There was nothing essentially evil about the tree or the fruit of the tree. It is unlikely that eating the fruit truly gave Adam and Eve any further knowledge. It was the act of disobedience that opened Adam and Eve’s eyes to evil. Their sin of disobeying God brought sin and evil into the world and into their lives. Eating the fruit, as an act of disobedience against God, was what gave Adam and Eve knowledge of evil.

Basically, sin is what caused all these bad things. God didn't curse everyone, they cursed themselves by bringing sin upon themselves.


Genesis 3: 17-20

Quote

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

All these results you see, they aren't God cursing them. "Cursed is the ground because of you".
He is saying their actions caused this suffering they will now experience.

But Yahweh is supposed to be omnipresent, he already knows that they would take from the tree. Yahweh is a dick with extra foreskin flapping in the wind.

Not a god that would deserve worship in my book, if he were real.

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 09:40:19 PM

Quote from: Korra Valentine on January 08, 2015, 04:20:00 PM

Quote from: Nick McIntyre on January 08, 2015, 07:52:49 AM

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 02:41:32 AM

Quote from: Korra Valentine on January 08, 2015, 02:05:20 AM

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 02:03:10 AM

Quote from: Korra Valentine on January 08, 2015, 01:31:11 AM

Quote from: Nick McIntyre on January 08, 2015, 01:29:28 AM

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 12:22:35 AM

They could eat of any tree, but the one bearing the knowlege of good and evil.

That's it. One tree.

That's one thing that always bugged me:  Why was God such a fucking asshole as to put a tree like that in the middle of a field and tell Adam and Eve, "You better not touch that, that's the cookie jar.  Keep your hands off of it."

And then when they did, he fucking cast them out and cursed their descendants and the whole of Earth.  Like an asshole.

And literally make the one being that wanted to give you some cookies the most evil being in existence.

Here's where perspective matters. God is good, and righteous. Sin, is the opposite of that: unrighteousness, darkness, evil. It defiles, it corrupts.

So what does eating of the tree of knowledge do? Well that's the question.

Genesis 3:7

Quote

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Sin comes into the picture, the very moment Adam and Eve eat of the tree. Eating of the tree didn't enlighten them, it corrupted them. They were perfect in every way, they would never work for food or die of old age.

They eat of the apple, then suddenly......everything goes wrong. They are aware of their nakedness and feel shame, they hide from God whom they loved so much. And what does God do when He discovers this? The first thing He does is curse the serpent.

Why curse it? Because God saw the serpent had destroyed the innocence of those He loved. And created a rift of sin, that divided them. Christ was the only way to bridge that divide.



Here is what happens immediately after the cursing of the serpent:

Genesis 3: 17-20

Quote

To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat from it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."

All these results you see, they aren't God cursing them. "Cursed is the ground because of you".
He is saying their actions caused this suffering they will now experience.

Romans 6:23

Quote

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So you rather remain ignorant and stupid instead of having knowledge and awareness of your own actions? Knowledge that make you like gods, knowledge that make you live independent from this god and to live your own life?

But we weren't ignorant or stupid. The only difference was, we weren't in sin.
We had the freedom of choice, but we chose wrong. Adam and Eve knew what they did was wrong, since they were told not to do it, but the gravity of what they had done didn't sink in until after the fact. They felt shame and hid from God because of it.

You see it as "enlightenment" or realization, but this event isn't called "The fall of man" for nothing. It wasn't a step up, it was a leap off a cliff from perfection to imperfection.

Yes, how dare they have free will.  Because they had Free Will, God decided to:

Make them mortal
Experience sickness and suffering
Cursed their children (and every child after them) to sin
Damned them to Hell
Forced women to experience the pain of childbirth
and threw them out of paradise.

Meanwhile the Devil is happy to take all the rejects, such as gay people, furries, and people with mental instabilities.  I'm thinking I'd rather have a beer with the Devil than a jealous, angry, vengeful God who would wreck your shit.

This.

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 12:22:35 AM

There was nothing essentially evil about the tree or the fruit of the tree. It is unlikely that eating the fruit truly gave Adam and Eve any further knowledge. It was the act of disobedience that opened Adam and Eve’s eyes to evil. Their sin of disobeying God brought sin and evil into the world and into their lives. Eating the fruit, as an act of disobedience against God, was what gave Adam and Eve knowledge of evil.

Basically, sin is what caused all these bad things. God didn't curse everyone, they cursed themselves by bringing sin upon themselves.


Genesis 3: 17-20

Quote

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

All these results you see, they aren't God cursing them. "Cursed is the ground because of you".
He is saying their actions caused this suffering they will now experience.

But Yahweh is supposed to be omnipresent, he already knows that they would take from the tree. Yahweh is a dick with extra foreskin flapping in the wind.

Not a god that would deserve worship in my book, if he were real.

Why should God have to be responsible for the actions of Adam and Eve? They were given the freedom of choice, because they weren't supposed to be robots. That's like blaming me for the mistakes of my adult children when I'm not the one committing those acts.

And God didn't invent evil and allow it into this world. Look at Satan for a moment.
He was an Angel, something good. But then he grew jealous and rebelled against God. He committed an evil act, which brought evil into the world.

So now Satan comes to Adam and Eve, and tempts them. They give in to the temptation, and commit a sin. That sin, brought evil upon Adam and Eve.

It wouldn't be very meaningful if we loved or obeyed God because we were unable to choose otherwise.
What is more loving? Loving someone because you can't choose anything else, or loving someone in spite of being able to choose otherwise?

I ain't no bad guy, baby cakes.

Quote from: Rocketman287 on January 08, 2015, 11:49:53 PM

Quote from: Prime Meridia on January 08, 2015, 11:05:28 PM

Can God make a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it?

God can do whatever is possible to be done. God can't do that which is actually impossible though. This is because true impossibility is not based on the amount of power one has, it is based on what is really possible. The truly impossible is not made possible by adding more power.

Boo, you missed the loophole! God makes a rock he cannot lift, then dwarfs its mass by  becoming stronger in comparison! He retains omnipotence by being more powerful at a given time, not by a set number that can't be attained. 

It's more philosophy than religion, but I wanted to see how the rhetoric would compare.

Oh, ok.

Well philosophically I guess its an explorable idea. In regards to any religion, I don't think it really "matters".

Gotta say, Rocket is throwing out much better rebuttals than Korra in this debate.

Kinda on topic here, can I have a list of times Lucifer/Satan is mentioned in the Bible? My questions are as follows:
-How could Lucifer rebel against God, did angels have free will, wasn't that special for Humans?
-Is there anything that makes it impossible for Lucifer to actually still be an angel of God, with the purpose of tempting Humans away from God with the purpose of allowing them to become stronger from the trials, similar to the story of Job?
-Are angels explicitly explained anywhere, or are they like the Nephilim and we don't have any real good explanation?

Note: Revelations is silly to me, so if you could come up with something else that would be much better.

Yes, they do have free will and can sin. At least, some of them can. Others are what's known as 'elect' and cannot sin.

There is very little canon scripture dealing with it, and quite a bit of apocryphal information on them.

So, why are some angels not able to sin and some are? Was there any real understandable point to that?

That's really what makes this problem for me. I've read most of the Bible(I don't think I've ever gotten through all of Psalms or the one similar to it) and I cannot remember anything written truly explaining the Angels and Satan/Lucifer. They're characters that are there and fundamental to they story, but aren't explained how they came to be, why they were made, and why they do what they do. That's part of what has always really baffled me with the Christian faith, preaching about how Satan wants your soul and to pull you away from God to make you his pawn, but there's nothing really saying that in the Bible. It's one of the things that really makes the belief seem shaky to me when I think about it.

Job's an interesting case, because by some exegesis (analyzing text), the 'satan' screwing with Job wasn't Lucifer, it was just an angel (though I honestly think the conversation they had was largely allegorical). But yeah, Lucifer was still an angel, probably capable of going back to heaven until judgement day.

Really? I've never heard of that, can you link the analysis or explain that?

Now, in part because of my inability to find anything saying Lucifer is outright bad and against God, I've thought "what if Lucifer was made by God as an angel to put Mankind through trials". What would you think about that specifically, is there any text saying that cannot be?

Revelation is awesome. One of my favorite books of the Bible. Imagine taking some uneducated guy from 40 AD and showing him the future, with all the technology and scenery that he couldn't even comprehend, followed by something even more difficult to imagine: the literal apocalypse. All the weird shit you read about is John struggling to make sense of it all.

It's a good story that's very entertaining to read, I'll give it that. However, I can't help but shake the feeling that it doesn't really fit in all that well with the message of God loving all his children and wanting nothing more than to reunite with them. Because, well, almost the entire Human race is left behind and abandoned by God, who returns to pretty much destroy all of them along with Satan and his fallen angels. In the moral/spiritual sense there is where I disagree with it, and combined with how John was exiled on an island by himself it doesn't seem unfathomable that he was just losing it mentally or got on some kind of trip.