Damnation of the whole human race due to one act.
Yes very loving
Unable to stop Eve from eating an apple
Inept
Claiming that weeds and birthing pains are a curse from God
Human.
Banishment from paradise
Human
Anything I missed?
If you think anything about the Garden of Eden shows Love you have a very strange idea of what love is.
That is not a judgment that you are qualified to make, fortunately for me (and God)
Richard
Not true.
The “test” had already been failed.
Besides which, the alternative would have been making puppets, not potential friends.
And in your wisdom superior to the Holy Spirit, you think they are not?
Loving. Leaving them there would have been very much the moral equivalent to abandoning your children in a luxury suite that cost $2500 a night and if they couldn’t pay they would be sold into slavery, or for a more accurate analogy, leaving them in a place where the ambient radiation was 10,000 rad/hour but they were naked.
Your basic argument is that you know better than God, so you can twist and distort the scriptures as you please.
Your arguments assume God wrote it.
They also assume that the Garden story is real history. You do not believe Genesis 1-2 is real history. Why should Genesis 2- 4 be? (or Genesis 1-11 for that matter)
I have absolutely no idea what you think this (I would not even call it an analogy) means.
Do you think that God thinks we owe Him for creating us? Wow.
(I thought we were the product of flukey evolution!)
God does not casually wnder around looking for His pets.
I challenge you to find Eden geographically. (one of the rivers doe not exist and never has) And the flaming sword? Or did Eden disintegrate and decay due to lack of use! (It got over run by weeds)
Do you know what a weed is? It is a plant growing where a human does not want it ti be.(That has nothing to do with God)
Do you know why a woman has birthing pains? (You claim scientific knowledge) They are a necessary part of the process. Without them she does not have the urge to push.
Are animals aggressive because God made them that way ? (Or is ist to do with survival?)
If you do not go near a snake, it will not come after you.
So much for God;s punishments
And as for Adam and Eve themselves. At what point in evolutionary theory does God take two primates, place them in an enclosed garden and allow them to get cognisance? Is that evolution?
And death? Evolution had spent several millions of years using death as part of its mechanism. How can Adam affect that, unless he came first?
If you are going to claim that Genesis 1 cannot be real, try putting the same logic onto the Garden of Eden.
Now get off your high horse
Richard
The raising of Lazarus (John 11:1–44) is a clear demonstration that God can make humans capable of prevailing over death. Death is not a necessary part of human life.
Before the arrival of the first sin humans did not have to die.
God is not stupid but is somewhat “crazy”:
He loves humankind so much that decided: 1) to create us free at the risk we sin, and 2) in case we sin, to give us opportunity to repent by moving us with his death on the Cross.
Damnation of the whole human race would have entailed that we are now with the devil in hell.
By contrast, we are now on earth!
A clear sign that God want us to be redeemed and not damned.
Consequently, if we are on earth submitted to illness, death, and concupiscence this means that this state of things is convenient for our redemption, even if we do not always can understand this.
In summary, you are right when you claim:
That is callous.
No just heading for it.
And you think that the number of Christians justifies this?
Lazasurs still died. Just a bit later.
Death is the only certainty of life on earth, whether it is human or not. And Death is needed before new life. Without it the world would be overpopulated in minutes, not just by humans but all creatures. And some creatures need carrion to survive.
The theological standpoint of death as a direct consequence of sin is actually untenable outside theology. (And only specific theology at that)
Richard
P.S.
I couldn’t resist this:
Genesis 2 also claims that Adam should not be alone. And had to create Eve from a rib.
Does that mean that males and females do not exist in Nature? (Or evolution for that matter)
My point is that the raising of Lazarus clearly demonstrates that God can empower human beings to overcome death.
If after raising Lazarus God did let him on earth submitted to death instead of taking him alive to heaven, this confirms that the state of being on earth submitted to death is generally the convenient way for reaching eternal life after the first sin.
From a Christian point of view, “the only certainty of life on earth” is Resurrection, not death (see 1 Corinthians 15: 50-58).
God could very well prevent both death and overpopulation by making people to enter heaven alive like Elijah, or damning sinners to hell alive like the Devil!
Once again,
We are not in a state of damnation: God led us on earth after sinning because he is merciful and deeply wants we repent and he can get us to heaven.
If you accept this obvious fact, then you can’t’ help acknowledging that God wants us to share illness, death and concupiscence in order we feel our weakness and are moved to love him.
This holds in the state of disrupted nature in which God creates the world for the case humans sin.
In the “new earth” this will not be the case (Isaiah 65:25).
As it states, this is a dogmatic claim, not an argument!
I am proposing a theological-biological explanation based in evolutionary science and scripture.
No, you are trying to justify an unfair world with theology.(Biblical or otherwise)
The world is as God made it, not corrupted by (more powerful) man (Global warming and other ecological damage excepted)
Richard
If “the world is as God made it”, and it is “an unfair world”, then:
either you are claiming that God is unfair or you ought to explain why God makes such “an unfair world”.
Whichever way you look at it, such an explanation cannot be other than theological, as for instance the magnificent one in Romans 8: 18:
“our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
However, as far as “the world’s unfairness” is encoded in the Sapiens DNA, as you also seem to acknowledge referring to evolution, then the explanation of how the “world’s unfairness” becomes transmitted is necessarily a biological one.
By human standards, Yes. But God is not ruled by human standards. God is at best Amoral by human standards which is why the mantra “my ways are not your ways” occurs in scripture.
Ironically the best way to understand God is to watch Q in Start Trek. Picard is always trying to moralise and cannot understand why Q does not do what he would do.
Because fairness does not work. Being a prey is not fair. Being a predator is not fair. Survival of the fittetst is not fair. Competing for food is not fair. Having to deal with weeds is not fair. Having to deal with pain and suffering is not fair. Bacteria? Can be helpfu or deadly, but the dividing line is very blurred.
Freedom cannot be fair. Because it invites selfishness. You cannot rule against selfishness, or killing, or risk taking and still be “fair” Like I said elsewhere. To be free to live you must be free to die. That is actually very fair.
What on earth gave you that idea? Evolutionists? Certainly not me. DNA has nothing to do with fairness and skewed DNA or disabilites from DNA is anything but fair!
Biology is our understanding of the way the world works. We neither dictate it or construct its rules and workings. We just observe and use those observations to predict and understand what is happening. (Or maybe not)
Science does not dictate. Science does not make rules that cannot be broken. Sceince is perpetually updating what it knows and encorporating it into what it thinks it knows
It is like a man watching trains on a stretch of line. Over time he can predict what will come and what it will probably contain. But he does not control the railway. There may be a “special” train for some reason. Is that a miracle? (That is what miracles are, unpredicted occurrences that break the rues we have formed)
The “new world” of the Bible is not fair either. It may be desirable in theory but it basically means removing all your freedom and giving you a lobotomy.
Richard
No, my arguments assume nothing; they do, however, recognize that inspired scripture is authoritative, so that the theological/spiritual points it makes are to be affirmed.
Maybe if you didn’t just cut a piece out and ignore the rest of it you’d have an idea.
There are several candidates where the two rivers not presently in evidence not only both exist but can be charted.
Exactly – prior to being mercifully escorted out of the Garden, plants didn’t grow where the humans didn’t want them to.
Your final sentence tells why there would not have to have been birth pains before the Fall.
You still can’t get it straight, can you?
You want science to include God, then you say science shouldn’t include God, now you’re back to wanting science to include God.
He didn’t.
They are entirely different types of literature.
Only the ignorant treat two different types of literature as the same.
There you go again telling God you know better than He does.
What has the number of Christians got to do with it?
So God made an unfair world?
Do you include that in your sermons?
I’ve read that four times and I can’t see how it isn’t borderline blasphemy.
Today the biblical “humankind in the image of God” matches the biological Homo sapiens: Each sapiens creature is a human being in the image of God, who is ordered and called to share eternal divine life.
By contrast, when you go back in evolutionary history Homo sapiens becomes a fuzzy biological category, so that it is impossible to sharply define the beginning of Homo sapiens by biological means alone.
Accordingly, your question should be re-formulated this way:
“At what point in history does God take evolved sapiens creatures and make them to beings in the image of God?”.
On the basis of Genesis 9: 3, 5-6, we can assume:
When God makes humankind in the image of God, God writes in the human heart the prohibition of homicide and the permission of using animals for food. And this requires that the distinction between humans and animals at that moment is as distinct as it is today.
According to evolutionary theory, such a distinction becomes established by the end of the Pleistocene (beginning of the Neolithic), at about 12’000 BP.
Additionally, writing appears at about 5’300 BP in the form of cuneiform tablets documenting contracts and registers. So it is safe to say that at this moment the sense of responsibility and accountability relationship was widespread.
Consequently, on the basis of evolutionary theory and scripture one can conclude that:
God create the first human beings in the image of God (say “Adam and Eve”) at some point between 12’000 BP and 5’300 BP.
That is a bold statement to make. You know what He does then?
That woud be the number of people who actually are redeemed. The proportion would seem to deny your assertion.
You seem intent on questioning my calling.
My calling is from God Hiimself. Testested, verified and ratified by the church to which Christ is the high priest.
It would appear that it is you who thinks he knows better than God (or at least His church)
And, yes I do include it in any sermon that would require it. Why wouldn’t I? Do you want me to lie? Or do you think tht this world is fair? If it isn’t fair, does the blame lie with God? According to you He had virtually no control over creation!
You clealry have no idea what Scrioture showed paradise to be.
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.
Clearly, according to scripture, it was God’s intent to keep their eyes closed. So when He recreates paradise… He will close your eyes again, Otherwise you will not be able to live in innocence and bliss. (and you will rebel against all the restrictions that must be in place for paradise to work.)
What morality are you judging my comments against? Human or God? (they are not the same: “My ways are not your ways says God”)
There was no need to quoote it all, That does not mean I did not read it all.
It is not my beliefs that are in question here.
You claim evolution created man by deviations direct from other primates.
Genesis 2 claims that God specifically created two humans and put them in a garden.
(actually it states that god put Adam in and then had to create a female companion. Males and females do not exist in Evolution? )
The two versions of the creation of man collide. It is your cognitive dissonance that does not see it, not me trying to squeeze God into Evolution.
Genesis 1 does not fit with evolution, but neither does the second creation narrative in Genesis 2-4. Sorry and all that!
Think again.
Richard
God is not in evolution.
There is no prohibition for eating animals.
And you know this how?
And put one in a garden? And then had to create a female companion for him? And killed all the others so that Adam and Eve could sire the whole human race? What planet are you living on!
You cannot reconcile random evolution with Genesis 1-5. That is both creation narratives
If you are going to accept evolutionary theory it does not include God, period.
If man is a direct line from any other primate, or going further back any other creature, then God did not create him specifically. He could not. Evolution does not allow for such a specific result.
Either we are descended from primates (et al) or we were specifically created by God (as scripture claims). The two are incompatible.
Richard
This is what I said.
I get the impression you are not accurately reading what I write.
I know what the scripture plainly says and that you are imposing a humanistic interpretation on it that is contrary to the clear meaning.
I didn’t make any assertion, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.
If you mean Antoine’s assertion, then here you go again telling God he’s wrong since the apostle plainly says that God wants everyone to be saved.
Your statements that are contrary to the scriptures are what question your calling.
No one who disagrees with the very basic and plain teachings of scripture is being faithful to a calling from God.
LOL
What have you been reading?
According to me, He has control over every molecule at every moment – and you’ve been blithely insisting He doesn’t!
Your reasoning fails in logic: there is nothing that says what His ultimate intent was, only His at-the-moment intent which was to give them a chance to show they were loyal – a chance that was absolutely necessary if humans were to be more than puppets.
That He provided a choice says He had plans that were not yet stated.
I haven’t claimed any such thing.
No – only limited imagination and reasoning ability would say that. That’s not surprising when you don’'t understand evolution and you don’t think God is in control – or that He knows what He’s doing.
You’ve convinced yourself of that, but it only works if you do what you do and say that God doesn’t know what He’s doing, which you do every time you call Him evil via such things as saying He intended to keep humans blind.
You call good evil, which is half the equation of apostasy.
Show me animals in here:
“See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the [earth], and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food”.
Excrementum tauri.
That’s your mantra and you chant i very well but there are tens of thousands of Christian scientists, many with deep theological educations as well, you say otherwise. And since you’ve shown that not only is your education woefully out of date but you are unwilling to learn, I will take the word of those Christian scientists/theologians – some of whom were among my science professors , at least a dozen of whom had graduate degrees in both biology and theology.
How much computer programming have you done? Evolution is very much like a computer program, and it’s perfectly possible to filter random processes to eventually arrive at a desired set of results. To the common user, such a program would appear heavily randomized while to the programmer the desired result would be plainly inevitable.
Evolution allows for every bit as much as the method we are told God used to get lifeforms on this planet: He commanded earth and sea to “Bring forth!” – no mention of design of individual species or genera or families or other clades, just a command to the inanimate to produce the animate.
Is your mantra. Mine should be Cognitive dissonance. Yo are trying to marry incompatible principles. Each argument individually seems logical but wha you combine them together they fail
I don’t care what other Christians claim. (or even me) Evolutionary theory, as it is taught, does not contain God. it is random and withoit purpose.
Your whole position is based on theistic evolution. However, your understanding of how God is in evolution is based on the false beleif that there is no such thing as chance. I have shown you that is a false beleif.but…
And that is just plain’ wrong. You are being blind.
Which rather ruins all the rest of your arguments.
Sound theology. Bad science.
You have always claimed a scientific standpoint but you have twisted science to fit your beliefs. Your science has no more basis that YEC.
That assumes that you have the correct view. Unfortunately that is just your overconfident self-righteousness.
Christianity is not as dogmatic as you are.
So you think that there was a tree of Knowledge (and a tree of life)? How very scientific!
Surely, even you cannot thinkt aht the Garden existed in the form of Genesis 2-5?
I ask again, at what point does God interrupt evolution to take one man into a sealed-off garden, and then have to create a companion (Because there was no female human) and all the other non-sceintific elements as well?
Your theory has jusrt collapsed.
Richard
Yes I did misread what you said, sorry.
That sounds like either a specific creation, or tinkering, neither of which sits well with evolutionary theory.
There would seem to be no reason for God to do it, within evolution. If He was going to do that He might as well just create man from dust as the bible suggests.
Evolution claims that man is a direct descendant of primates. That is the whole point of his theory and the reason the church objected. Any intrusion or addition within that transformation is not evolution.
So, once you leave evolution any attempt at a “biological” explanation goes with it.
Richard
This is your prejudice.
But as far as you accept to participate in this Biologos Forum, you should at least show respect and open-mindedness toward the declared principles of BioLogos:
We believe that the diversity and interrelation of all life on earth are best explained by the God-ordained process of evolution with common descent. Thus, evolution is not in opposition to God, but a means by which God providentially achieves his purposes. Therefore, we reject ideologies that claim that evolution is a purposeless process or that evolution replaces God.
We believe that God created humans in biological continuity with all life on earth, but also as spiritual beings. God established a unique relationship with humanity by endowing us with his image and calling us to an elevated position within the created order.
Respect does not mean full agreement.,
As I have said elsewhere, I have been arguing Theistic Evolution for a long time before BioLogos existed. That they get close to what I have argued may show some sort of agreement but it does not mean that their position is unarguable.
They have never established how this might come about within the working of evolution.
Neither have they ever tried to marry God into evolution. IOW the belief is not explained. only stated.
Random evolution precludes a specific image of man.
Every one here is so desperate to defend science and scientists but science has no such agenda. God is at best an untestable theory. Everyone sins but not if they are engaged in science? It is impossible for a scientist to have alterial motives or tunnel vision?
(No but it would be wrong to even suggest it!)
Everyone defends the evolutionary theory as taught without even thinking whether it might be in conflict with their ideas about God. They seem to compartmentalise science and faith. They do not need to marry them.
Sorry, but I do.
Richard
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