atheists

[*zeo]

Good point. But your logic still baffles me, because as Ryuki pointed out, everyone was long lived back then. Suggesting that Adam and Eve lived in the garden of Eden because they were long lived doesn't seem logical considering that.

Then you would have to ignore the tree of life! Those who eat from the tree of life don't age or die! And it wasn't until they ate from the tree of knowledge that they lost access to the tree of life and thus started to age and die.

It's like the part about god creating the universe in 7 days, yet only on the seventh day was day and night created. So how then was time measured before Day or Night considering Adam was created on the sixth day? What is a day to an immortal being like god?

The fact Adam is an allegory for mankind only adds to how much time we are really talking about, as then the concept expands to generations as time then becomes measured by the age of the species and not of just an individual.

And if you are pointing out that good portions of this are symbollic (which I agree with, it did have god confessing to speak in riddles), then why are you making statements such as the length of time that Adam and Eve lived in Eden?

To show the different aspects of what the story represents. On one side you got the tree of life, which represents not only life but eternity. On the other you got the tree of knowledge, which not only represent knowledge but also change and not until they ate from the tree of knowledge was time really introduced into the story. Yet obviously time did pass, it just wasn't measured. But since Adam and Eve were allegories of the human race, then you just have to ask how long did it take for the human race to develop?

The story itself is an allegory, it's not meant to be literal. But for a full analysis I debated both aspects of the story from both what is said and what is meant. As representatives of the human race Adam and Eve are not just individuals but a representative of all humans and how we came to be. But it is all wrapped in a story with a moral lesson as its goal and that is why it leaves so many logic holes since the story is suppose to be moral and not a literal proof of our beginnings.

Yes, I know. I was the one that pointed out that names have meanings. That for the true meaning behind the bible we must take into account every word in order to figure out the riddle. Remember? I was arguing against you simply taking the meaning that the modern church dishes out.

Except you never went anywhere with that argument, you pointed out the story had elements that showed it was an allegory but did not show how that applied to your argument. After all an allegory is not a proof but rather a tale with a intended message.

No Zeo, I'm working the riddle and the meaning, and incorporating every fragment. I'm not dropping the parts that don't fit into my world view. I'm trying to incorporate them in order to see what this particular religion was actually trying to say.

Perhaps but you're leaving a lot out if this was your intent. Your arguments to date have seemed to only add to the notion you put forth at the beginning and do not seem to be non-partisan, so to speak.

For example you have not, as far as I've perceived, separated from what is said from any possible intent. Your argument has been primarily that the literal interpretation supports your contention. But I've pointed out that mention of god in these stories are applied very liberally and aspects of personality are accredited to god but do not literally mean god took control.

The very point of good and evil is choice, despite all your arguments you have not address this one overriding point. Without choice there can't be good or evil, as you can't be either if you don't have the choice.

You suggest free will is limited, I'm not arguing that it's not. Free will like any right is only as free as you can excersize it. What I have argued is that it is always present and can never be fully taken away. You may have to balance it against the free will of others, the good of the many versus the good of the one or the few for example. But you always have a choice and that is why responsibility and good and evil apply to us. Without free will good and evil, responsibility, would all be meaningless.

Oh, and about the bible being a law book-the first five books of the bible are the Torah. That literally translates into 'law'. Remember how many rules it lays down? And punishments? And descriptions for becoming clean? Though honestly I think the clean part relates into the presence of the Ark. The Ark was just really weird.

Old testament only, because these are derived from early Judaism. But these aren't laws as we consider laws now, unless you know any laws based on allegories and moral tales? Really, any time allegories are used then intent overrides the exact wording. Even the stories that based on actual historical events are often coloured by interpretation of the writer of the story.

Unlike modern laws which the exact wording can be more important than intent. The people who wrote the bible weren't lawyers!

True, no argument. But the prophecy came from god, and god gave it in order to save David from Saul. God interfered with Saul's free will. That is what we were debating. You were taking various examples of free will from other stories, I took an example of free will being over ridden from this one. That is the only reason I brought it up

Sorry but I think this illustrates why I'm having problems with your interpretation, the story of Samuel says nothing about god saving David from Saul. Aside from delaying him as he took time for prophecy and there is nothing to say this wasn't Saul's choice. After all many people at that time relied on such events to make decisions.

Like Remember the tale of the Spartans against the Persians, the Greeks had to seek the approval from the seers before they could declare war. Similarly kings have been noted to seek the advice of prophets and seers throughout history. Saul was no exception, except he was his own seer/prophet. But ultimately he only heard what he wanted to hear. Since as you pointed out he never stopped wanting to kill David. In any case there is nothing in the story that suggest Saul ever changed his mind and thus his free will was never interferred with.

The only one who really saved David was Saul's son Jonathon, who remained loyal to David throughout the story and confirmed to David his father's intent to kill him. David wasn't around for Saul to kill at that point, after the first failed attempt he had fled after talking with Jonathon who went to confirm his father's intent. The only one in danger then was Jonathon if his father had ever found out what he had done.

That's why the church originally started arguing for free will. Without free will, people didn't see the need to work for going to heaven. They felt they were either going or they weren't. Fate was dangerous as a concept to the church. Prophecy was dangerous as it was-(If I am prophecized to commit a sin, is it destiny? If it is, is it really my fault? Because god made it all and set me up to fail?) This is under the same lines as why the church created Purgatory. (What good is going to church if you have already sinned-better to have a place to work the lesser sins off).

The church created and twisted many concepts. Free will became absolute, when that is not what the bible was suggesting.

Again, your interpretation. I won't argue that the church hasn't twisted many concepts because it has. But the Church doesn't argue that free will is without restrictions, it argues that free will is what makes us responsible for our actions. It's taking the extreme to say free will is absolute, when in fact free will has to be balanced against the free will of all people.

This is another reason why I think you have taken a modern interpretation, since many modern people have ideas like thinking rights should be absolute and any restrictions would invalidate them but rights have always had limits, even the freedom of speach is limited whenever it starts to interfere with the rights of others. It doesn't change the value of the rights that they have limits but those rights are always there.

Free will is like the ability to think, you can't limit how a person thinks. You can only limit how they express what they think, the ability is alwasy there though. Similarly no matter how limited your options may be you'll always have a choice of some kind.

The Church for example never blocked the concept of an act of god, like a natural disasters or other events out of our control. If they had really preached free will as absolute then they would have to say all events were our fault, whether we had control over them or not.

The very point of purgatory is an acceptance that not all things are in our control, otherwise we would hold full responsibility and have to have the full punishment. And in the old testament Jews had many different and often conflicting concepts on what happened to their souls. Many for example don't believe in resurrection yet the Bible states Christ was resurrected. But there are old testament references to Purgatory, barring a long conversation of meaninglessness of time and space to god, in the old testament god was often associated with fire or burning illumination. Like the burning bush through which he spoke to Moses for example. Purgatory then was in the old testament a purging of sins by the all purifying light of god. Many believe that since god transcends our concept of time that Christ's sacrifice effects all before and after his death and resurrection. It's not all just one strict interpretation.

[*Jess♥]

It's like the part about god creating the universe in 7 days, yet only on the seventh day was day and night created. So how then was time measured before Day or Night considering Adam was created on the sixth day? What is a day to an immortal being like god?

what???

when was the last time you read the book of genesis?

day and night were created on the FIRST day.

how could you even say somethng like that....

[*zeo]

Sorry your're right, got mixed up, meant how time as we think of it basically wasn't started until the 7th day of rest that signifies the completion of creation and the world. I usually get into scholarly debates and different religions have different orders of how things came to be. But most scholars would agree the let there be light is often associated with the concept of the beginning of the universe, aka Big Bang as we would now call it.

So day one was the creation of the universe, but this still goes into the concept of a day for a god. The world was not created on the first day so day and night did not yet exist in the cyclic sense, god created order from chaos and the void. You need a rotating planet to get cyclic days as we now measure them first. Like how do you tell time in space? You have day and night all over but not the cycles that we call days.

Day-Age Creationism

Remember on day 2 he created the heavens and divined the separation between the sea and heaven. Then day three he created the dry land and sea, only now does Earth get mentioned that combined with Day 4 in which god creates light in the heavens gives us the first mention of day time on the planet but we have been working on terms days since the beginning which still puts the concept of days under what is a day for god and not us mortals on Earth.

Like day 5 is credited with the creation of life in the sea, do we assume this happened in one of our 24 hour days or one of god's equivalent days?

Then day 6 and the creation of land animals and finally Adam. Remember this story is mainly an allegory, just like Adam represent mankind each of the days are an allegory for the phases of creation.

Also since day 6 god told all his creations to be fruitfull and multiply. So we can conclude Adam and Eve have been at it since the Sixth day of creation. We then move forward to the seventh day and the day god rested.

Put this in the light of how long we know it took the planet Earth to form, for the universe to cool down since the big bang, the part in which day light in the sky wasn't mentioned until day 4 all add up to my point that the days mentioned in genesis aren't representative of the days we go through here on Earth.

Like in the later part in which they give more detail on day 6, god brought every living creature to man for him to name. Considering how many animal species there are this would have taken a very long time, never mind where Adam would have gotten the knowledge to name them all without eating from the tree of knowledge first, and yet it is still mentioned within a day. Man was also created to work the garden of Eden and Eve was created to be his mate and helper, but god put Adam to deep sleep for this to take one of his ribs. Another event that should have taken time from the day. The inconsistant part is the marriage of Adam and Eve because it is mentioned that, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."

The problem with that line though is the mention of father and mother if Adam was the first man then he would not have these, even Eve was basically cloned from Adam, but this in turn supports that Adam is just an allegory. Even the sequence of events is in question, with the first part showing Adam and Eve being one of the last creations but the later part that goes into more detail on Adam shows instead plants being created after man.

In most respects genesis is an upbeat version of the original belief. Since before Judaism it was believed mankind was created to be the servants of the gods, genesis takes many of the same elements and even names of that original Ancient Near East belief and reformated it into the opposite in which we started out good and went downhill from there. So even the old testament ultimately saw god as being good, at least compared to the selfish nature of the previous pagan gods.

Other historical anomalies, in the traditional hebrew interpretation of certain words are different from the Christian. For example when the spirit of god is mentioned in Christian version it is meant Wind in the original Hebrew. The difference being the Christian version wanted to associate it more directly with god because of the concept of the holy trinity, etc. They get away with this because the original hebrew words in the old testament often had multiple meanings depending on usage, which is why I like to look at how the jews interpret the old testament versus the Christians to get a better sense of original intent.

For example the number 7 is a very important number in hebrew traditions and religion. The author of genesis for example cleverly put the act of Creation into 7 parts, showing yet another reason to see this as an allegory instead of being literal. Even the number of times god and earth were mentioned can be divided into multiples of 7. The very first line of genesis is composed of 7 hebrew words and the next line is 14. Symbolism is thus imbedded throughout it and is ulimately my point, the events stated in Genesis are primarily topical and not chronological.

P.S.> I just want to emphasis that this is mainly just my view on things and in no way is anything I've said intended to infringe on other people's beliefs.