Animals Doing What Animals Do...

[Tassman]

As for why I think God cares about us- consciousness is one reason. Through us (and any other intelligent life that might be out there), the universe looks back on itself and to me that's an absolutely sacred and even mystical thing. If there is a supreme being, I can't see it not valuing that- especially since it would be intelligent itself.

Well we would care if we were God, wouldn't we? But we are not. What you've done is conjure up a deity who cares about the things we care about - the very definition of a God made in Man's image. Which of course all gods are!

[The Pixie]

Sorry for jumping in but a couple of points:

A Jewish view is that they knew the difference between right and wrong -- obeying God was good, disobeying was wrong -- but they didn't actually know what it felt like to disobey until they disobeyed. That was the knowledge they got, God being omniscient knew what it felt like even though He didn't actually disobey Himself.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/sin_gene.htm

Do you have any better?

Another Jewish view is that the creatures made as helpers for Adam in Genesis 2 aren't regular animals like in Genesis 1, but cherubim, of which Satan was one. Thus the Serpent wasn't a walking talking snake cursed to be dumb with no legs, but an angelic being. Adam would return to dust, the Serpent would eat dust, and his belly would symbolize Hell, like Jonah as dust in the belly of Hell of the fish, a similar metaphor. Meaning, the Serpent was cursed to be the thing that swallowed men up into Hell.

I have never heard of that before. Do you have any references?

Did they believe Satan was cursed to crawl on his belly?

I offer this:

http://biologos.org/blog/genesis-cre...crafty-serpent

[The Pixie]

Just to be clear, I have snipped a few bits here.

The reason that it's a place of both bliss and free will, is that we've been sanctified and learned to love God and hate sin. That could not have meaningfully happened a day after the Fall or whatever you were asking for because the first humans had no practical knowledge of the suffering sin causes yet, Christ had not come to redeem our lives, etc. Like I said, God's purpose in this is not minimizing suffering, it's creating people who really understand love and holiness. That takes time.

Why does it take time? Is it beyond god to create us with these things already? You say "That could not have meaningfully happened...". Why not? Meaningful to who, exactly?

The Wisdom of Solomon does. The Apocalypse of Moses (both from the 100s BC) has Satan recruiting a talking snake to be his agent. Philo said the snake was a metaphor for sex. We don't have many rabbinical writings from Jesus' time, but I don't think there's ever been a Jewish source that says it was just some random talking snake with its own agenda.

I will quote this again, which indicates they did indeed think animals could speak back then:


http://biologos.org/blog/genesis-cre...crafty-serpent

As far as I know, Wisdom of Solomon only has this:

Wisdom of Solomon 2:23 God created us to live forever,
just as he himself does.
24But death entered the world
because the devil was jealous,
and so all his followers die.

Are you aware of any verses more conclusive?

The Apocalypse of Moses seems to originate in the first century AD, and certainly by then some Jews at least (possibly all) believed the snake was Satan, as we see in Revelation.

It takes little subtlety to go ask God why this snake is telling you to go something against God.

He gave them free will, and got angry when they used it.

I should have mentioned that I'm not an inerrantist. My bad. I believe that the Bible contains truths from God, but I don't believe the entire Bible is inspired, my bad.

No problem, I had already realised that.

Ego is a human failing. It's a false impression that the world revolves around you or that you have no limitations. God knows for a fact that the world revolves around Him. In fact, were He to try and be "humble" about how great He is, He would essentially be lying.
He demands our worship not just for Himself but for our own good. It is the only way to truly live.

Why? What difference does it make to us? What difference does it make to him?

How do you know God does not have an ego? What makes you think he is perfect? If the only evidence you have is what he has told you, would he not also say that if he was imperfect but had a huge ego?

I would say few would find it before they die, but anyway. I don't think even an eternal punishment view rules out a second chance after death for those who sincerely missed out on Jesus in life. As for the rest, they probably don't want to be with God anyway, so they're getting what they wanted.

You think they wanted eternal punishment? I find that unlikely.

That makes no sense given what I said. I'm talking about raising the kids that are have survived infancy. Surely you can appreciate that letting them face the consequences of their actions sometimes builds character?

Let us put this in perspective. Adam and Eve ate a fruit. The consequences of that was the world cursed. If my kids make honest mistakes, then I will help them to get through the consequences, but I do not hide them from those consequences. If they have done wrong, I punish them, but I keep the punishment proportional to the offense. If they disobey me, I do not kick them out the house and bar them (and their descendants) from it thereafter.

I see the two as connected. God is the ultimate upholder of the universe. Nothing that exists even exists unless He is actively grounding its being. So, when we distance ourselves from God, we are not only undergo spiritual death but we court physical death as well. It is only God's forbearance because He wants us to repent that prevents us from ceasing to exist.

Connected, maybe. But actually quite different, given you can have one without the other. Adam and Eve were not immortal, Genesis makes that clear. Even before spiritually dying, they were still destined to physically die.

Are chimps grounded in their being? How about fish? Do they exist or not?

Spiritual death is alienation from God.

Then it is not so bad. Compared to physical death, spiritual death is a breeze. And a lot less distressing for those around you too.

Hebrews 9:22- Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. If God is the source of our very existence, then how can not sticking as close to Him as possible bring anything but death? I don't know how to be more clear than that. As St. Athanasius put it, "What is not assumed by the Word [Christ] is not healed."

Okay, so it is there in the Bible. God can only forgive if blood is shed.

The question now is: Why? Why did sacrificing an animal lead to God forgiving someone? What is it about the death of a living thing?

No. What makes you say that? God can do anything that is logically meaningful.

Except forgive people without something dying, apparently.

I used to play role-playing games (like Dungeons and Dragons), and characters who sacrificed animals were all evil. I find it bizarre that you worship a god who would be considered evil in Dungeons and Dragons!

A universe where we both never sinned and had mature knowledge of and love for God is a contradiction. It's like the, "Can He make a rock so big he can't lift it," saw.

Do please explain why those two are equivalent. I do note that you have used the word "mature". If you want to claim that mature knowledge implies a lifetime of experience, then the real challenge here is to show why this knowledge has to be mature.

When a baby dies, does he or she have this mature knowledge of and love for God? When happens then to the baby's soul?

Further, what you are saying here is that sin is necessary. How can you say we are wrong to sin, when sinning is, apparently, a vital part of the process?

He commanded it because people need a day of rest. Working seven days a week is a good way to an early grave. Honoring God is not supposed to be burdensome of complex, so we set aside the day for Him. Iy has had in immediate purpose in marking the Israelites as a redeemed and consecrated nation. There are legitimate reasons to break the Sabbath, of course. And before you bring up the guy who was killed for gathering sticks, this was deliberately flouting the Law of God, not an innocent mistake. http://christianthinktank.com/sticksnstones.html

Let us talk about the guy gathering sticks. I accept he knew the law. Great. Whether he was "flouting" it is certainly not established in the text. And either way, why is it a capital offense to pick up sticks on a Saturday? Who was the Sabbath for, again? It was certainly not for this guy.

So, to keep tally: In order to accept that God is just, you want a grey, boring world full of people who are either automatons or mental and spiritual dwarves. So much for that scientific love of nature

So in order to have free will, you want a world of suffering. So much for divine love.

I say "want", rather than "need", as we have now established you can have free will in a world with no suffer, as heaven shows.

If he's sincere, yes. Though "regret" is far from strong enough for it.

Why would he not be sincere? He has just encountered God!

They weren't thinking for themselves. In the Eden story, they were letting Satan think for them. In a more realistic scenario, they were likely acting out of hubris. That's not thinking for yourself, it's being a tool.

What makes you believe they were not thinking for themselves? In the realistic scenario, why is acting out of hubris not thinking for yourself?

I must admit, perhaps I have overstated my case. I should not have said we ruin everything we touch so as to imply we can do no good. We aren't perfect though and we all are guilty of flouting God's at one point or another.

Fair enough.

[Kelp(p)]

Um, those are huge differences, and not just ink but blood has been spilled over them. You might as well say the 41st and 43rd presidents of the United States are the same person because they share the same name.



But we could agree on quite a few facts that would be indisputable. In addition to what you have already mentioned, we would both agree that he was human, and not a god. We would agree that he is now dead, and that he did not rise afterward. We could even agree as to who his parents were, and who he married and what were the names of his children. Neither of us would say he was born to a virgin. We would agree as to what speeches he gave and what he wrote, and that what he wrote is not scripture. Neither of us would worship him, nor would we imagine he holds the world together with his power. I could list many more things like that we would agree on. I see no where near that kind of common ground among religious traditions when it comes to discussing the nature of God.

I'm not sure how to respond to that. Perhaps my analogy was problematic. It doesn't matter as much to me. As long as one believes in a God of love and loves their neighbor (whether one identifies as Christian in this life or not), the differences will all come out in the wash.

I don't follow you here. I agree about good and evil existing, but see no reason why God can't be evil.

An evil god would not be the supreme being. It would be some kind of lesser spirit. That would indicate either a technically atheistic universe that happens to contain some kind of spirit world or a world with one supreme being and one or more lesser gods (Henotheism). If we're defining "God" as the supreme being, the originator of the universe, then it makes no sense by definition for God to be evil.

I can easily see God not caring. I find evidence of this every time I read the news.

Go back and read my discussion with the Pixie on that topic. There's no point in me making every point twice.

[Kelp(p)]

Well we would care if we were God, wouldn't we? But we are not. What you've done is conjure up a deity who cares about the things we care about - the very definition of a God made in Man's image. Which of course all gods are!

First of all, there's that exclamation tic of yours.

Second of all, so what? Science is oriented toward explaining things in terms humans can understand and finding things that are meaningful to our problems and interests. We can't help but see through our own eyes. It has nothing to do with whether God actually exists or not any more than it does whether our senses are accurate or not. You're just arguing from incredulity.

[Kelp(p)]

Just to be clear, I have snipped a few bits here.

Ok.

Why does it take time? Is it beyond god to create us with these things already? You say "That could not have meaningfully happened...". Why not? Meaningful to who, exactly?

Meaningful to everybody involved. You can't create experiential knowledge by fiat. It has to be learned, by definition. God wants us to learn the difference between suffering and obedience and what it means to really love Him. There's no way to achieve in lieu of actually sin and suffering.

I will quote this again, which indicates they did indeed think animals could speak back then:

Genesis 3:1 presents the serpent simply as an animal. But how to explain his ability to talk? Some interpreters suggested that at first all animals were able to talk. The second century BC book of Jubilees says that when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, “the mouth of all the beasts and cattle and birds and whatever walked or moved was stopped from speaking because all of them used to speak with one another with one speech and one language” (3:28). Philo said that, “in olden times…snake could speak with a man’s voice” (On Creation 156). The historian Josephus said, “at that time all living things spoke the same language” (Jewish Antiquities 1:41).
http://biologos.org/blog/genesis-cre...crafty-serpent

What do you want me to say, that Jesus believed that snakes could talk? Maybe He did, I was not aware of these citations because I've not read very far into Philo and Josephus. I was getting my information on Philo from the wiki because I couldn't find it in a quick search of his writings.

I don't care, I told you I don't take the story that literally. You're missing the forest for the trees here. The point of the story is that sin came from distrusting God.

As far as I know, Wisdom of Solomon only has this:

Wisdom of Solomon 2:23 God created us to live forever,
just as he himself does.
24But death entered the world
because the devil was jealous,
and so all his followers die.

Are you aware of any verses more conclusive?

Genesis depicts the Serpent as enticing Adam and Eve to sin, WoS depicts Satan causing death. Connect the dots.

The Apocalypse of Moses seems to originate in the first century AD, and certainly by then some Jews at least (possibly all) believed the snake was Satan, as we see in Revelation.

Ok.
[QUOTE=The Pixie;126880]
He gave them free will, and then let them experience the natural consequences of misusing it.[?QUOTE]fify

Why? What difference does it make to us? What difference does it make to him?

Do you know what the phrase "ground of being" means? We. Need. Him. So. We. Can. Be. More. Than. Mere. Husks. I don't know how to make this any clearer to you.

How do you know God does not have an ego? What makes you think he is perfect?

If He's not perfect He isn't God. The statement, "God has an ego" is just silly. How could He not have a high opinion of Himself?

If the only evidence you have is what he has told you, would he not also say that if he was imperfect but had a huge ego?

If you want to go Gnostic and claim that the Christian God is a demiurge, go ahead. But we won't be talking about the same concept anymore.

You think they wanted eternal punishment? I find that unlikely.

They don't want punishment. Like all selfish fools, they want to have their cake and eat it to. They want the power to essentially force God to give them comfort and every blessing and then get out of their way. But since that's simply not possible, they do the only thing available- they sit and stew in their spite.

Let us put this in perspective. Adam and Eve ate a fruit. The consequences of that was the world cursed. If my kids make honest mistakes, then I will help them to get through the consequences, but I do not hide them from those consequences. If they have done wrong, I punish them, but I keep the punishment proportional to the offense. If they disobey me, I do not kick them out the house and bar them (and their descendants) from it thereafter.

Good for you. You aren't the supreme being who is by definition good and with whom no evil can coexist. And God didn't hide the consequences, He sent prophet after prophet only to see them get killed or ignored and then finally He sent His own Son.

Connected, maybe. But actually quite different, given you can have one without the other. Adam and Eve were not immortal, Genesis makes that clear. Even before spiritually dying, they were still destined to physically die.

No, the "Tree of Life" (not a literal magical life fruit, a symbol of eternal life) was only denied them after they fell. Before the fall, the only command was not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Are chimps grounded in their being? How about fish? Do they exist or not?

Yes, yes, yes. But not being moral agents, they can't move away from the source of their being.

Then it is not so bad. Compared to physical death, spiritual death is a breeze. And a lot less distressing for those around you too.

Your arrogance is duly noted.

Okay, so it is there in the Bible. God can only forgive if blood is shed.

The question now is: Why? Why did sacrificing an animal lead to God forgiving someone? What is it about the death of a living thing?

The death of animals in the Old Testament only purifies ritually and symbolically (Hebrews 10:4- For the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin), forgiveness was and is always based on Christ- Here's the entire context, Hebrews 9:11-28, emphasis mine:

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12 he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify[f] for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our[g] conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.[h] 16 For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. 17 For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. 18 Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. 19 For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20 saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” 21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

And 10:1-4 and 11-18, emphasis also mine:

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. 2 Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? 3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. 4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ[b] had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying,

16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my laws on their hearts,
and write them on their minds,”

17 then he adds,

“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”

18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

Except forgive people without something dying, apparently.

Which is not logically meaningful.

I used to play role-playing games (like Dungeons and Dragons), and characters who sacrificed animals were all evil. I find it bizarre that you worship a god who would be considered evil in Dungeons and Dragons!

Yes, we should all get our theological knowledge from a work of fiction by 1960s Americans with no relevant degrees...

Do please explain why those two are equivalent. I do note that you have used the word "mature". If you want to claim that mature knowledge implies a lifetime of experience, then the real challenge here is to show why this knowledge has to be mature.

I doubt it requires a "lifetime" for everybody. It depends on the purpose. Because when we have mature knowledge of the ways of God, then we can love and participate in Him most fully. It's more delightful for both parties. What's wrong with God wanting that?

When a baby dies, does he or she have this mature knowledge of and love for God? When happens then to the baby's soul?

The baby goes to Heaven. Mature love is optimal, but not required.

Further, what you are saying here is that sin is necessary. How can you say we are wrong to sin, when sinning is, apparently, a vital part of the process?

I never said sin was necessary. I said the possibility of sin was necessary. We need not have ever sinned and things would have been fine. Yes, our fellowship with God would not be as deep as it could be, but we could still love Him and He would still incarnate to unite ourselves to Him.

Let us talk about the guy gathering sticks. I accept he knew the law. Great. Whether he was "flouting" it is certainly not established in the text. And either way, why is it a capital offense to pick up sticks on a Saturday? Who was the Sabbath for, again? It was certainly not for this guy.

Read the article I linked to see why it was flouting. Begin a new thread about it if you like. I'm not going to quote more giant blocks of text at you in this post.

So in order to have free will, you want a world of suffering. So much for divine love.

None of which suffering would happen at all if we didn't decide we knew better than God.

I say "want", rather than "need", as we have now established you can have free will in a world with no suffer, as heaven shows.

You're conflating two different scenarios. Heaven is only free of suffering because we've come through the other side redeemed. If we had never sinned, Heaven as such would never have existed. A pre-sin paradise was unlikely to last very long, just looking at it in terms of odds.

Why would he not be sincere? He has just encountered God!

No idea. Maybe he thinks he can fool God. I agree that he would likely be sincere.

What makes you believe they were not thinking for themselves? In the realistic scenario, why is acting out of hubris not thinking for yourself?

Hubris is freethought, huh? Nice to see the true nature of atheism on display, I guess.

[Enjolras]

An evil god would not be the supreme being. It would be some kind of lesser spirit. That would indicate either a technically atheistic universe that happens to contain some kind of spirit world or a world with one supreme being and one or more lesser gods (Henotheism). If we're defining "God" as the supreme being, the originator of the universe, then it makes no sense by definition for God to be evil.

As far as I can tell you are just asserting this to be the case. That's fine, but I see no reason to share your opinion. If you want to define God as "good," then your conclusion naturally follows, but that is begging the question.

[Enjolras]

The death of animals in the Old Testament only purifies ritually and symbolically (Hebrews 10:4- For the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin), forgiveness was and is always based on Christ- Here's the entire context, Hebrews 9:11-28, emphasis mine: And 10:1-4 and 11-18, emphasis also mine:

Was God required to kill Jesus in order to forgive sins, or was that a rule he just set up for some unknown reason? If it was necessary, who is making him keep to it? Are there rules that God must obey? Why can't he just decide to forgive everyone apart from Jesus? I can forgive people who have wronged me without killing an animal, why can't God?

[Kelp(p)]

Was God required to kill Jesus in order to forgive sins, or was that a rule he just set up for some unknown reason? If it was necessary, who is making him keep to it? Are there rules that God must obey? Why can't he just decide to forgive everyone apart from Jesus? I can forgive people who have wronged me without killing an animal, why can't God?

You'd have to ask someone who believes in Penal Substitution. In my view, the death of Christ is only necessary because He redeemed our lives and subsumed all that we are into Himself via His life, death, and Resurrection. "What is not assumed by the Word is not healed," to quote St. Athanasius.

[Kelp(p)]

As far as I can tell you are just asserting this to be the case. That's fine, but I see no reason to share your opinion. If you want to define God as "good," then your conclusion naturally follows, but that is begging the question.

I'm just using the Classical Theistic definition of God- all powerful, uncaused, self-existent, all good, pure actuality, ontologically simple, etc. If such a God exists, then yes, it is logically necessary and also necessarily good.

If you want to talk about finite, pagan-style deities, fine. But I have no interest in debating whether they exist.

[lilpixieofterror]

Was God required to kill Jesus in order to forgive sins, or was that a rule he just set up for some unknown reason? If it was necessary, who is making him keep to it? Are there rules that God must obey? Why can't he just decide to forgive everyone apart from Jesus? I can forgive people who have wronged me without killing an animal, why can't God?

Begged question. What do you think the answer is?

[Truthseeker]

possible to find a unified enough God throughout the different authors, despite some of their discrepancies.

What discrepancies? I suspect you misunderstood or misinterpreted . . .

[Kelp(p)]

What discrepancies? I suspect you misunderstood or misinterpreted . . .

That's entirely possible, yes. I'm just having a hard time with the idea that the Old and New Testaments are completely harmonious in their depictions of God (yes, I know the God of the NT is not all sunshine and flowers and the God of the OT is not all wrath and destruction).

[Tassman]

First of all, there's that exclamation tic of yours.

No it’s a direct response to your unsupported conjecture about: “why I think God cares about us…” which is followed by my comment: "Well we would care if we were God, wouldn't we? But we are not…”

Second of all, so what? Science is oriented toward explaining things in terms humans can understand and finding things that are meaningful to our problems and interests.

Science is orientated toward explaining things via "observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and the theoretical explanation of phenomena" (Oxford Dictionary). It is is indifferent to our personal “problems and interests."

We can't help but see through our own eyes. It has nothing to do with whether God actually exists or not any more than it does whether our senses are accurate or not. You're just arguing from incredulity.

When human beings give their deity the same attributes they themselves have, only bigger and better, they are merely making their deity in their own image. There is no substantive reason to believe that such a deity actually exists in reality.

[Kelp(p)]

Science is orientated toward explaining things via "observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and the theoretical explanation of phenomena" (Oxford Dictionary). It is is indifferent to our personal “problems and interests."

I didn't say my problems and interests. I said humanity's problems and interests. Scientific inquiry goes hand in hand with areas of human curiosity and need. We had sickness, so we began doing medical research. We were intrigued by the night sky, so we began charting the stars. These disciplines did not just spring fully formed from some kind of inhuman font of scientific objectivity.

I see no reason why philosophy of religion should be any different. We're not computers solely designed to investigate the universe.

When human beings give their deity the same attributes they themselves have, only bigger and better, they are merely making their deity in their own image. There is no substantive reason to believe that such a deity actually exists in reality.

Elephant hurling and hand-waving of arguments for the existence of God noted and given all the attention it deserves.