(September 12, 2024 at 7:05 am)h311inac311 Wrote: The serpent is a bit more mysterious, we believe that he is a fallen angel but that isn't something that I can support with a chapter and verse reference. What we do know is that the serpent had one simple objective, ruin God's perfect plan by leading men into sin. What we know for sure about the serpent is this, it knew what God's commandment was and it wanted to see if it could find a way to make God's people choose to dis-obey him.

The bible is like bad fiction that way. Characters show up at the right time to move the plot along in a certain direction, and then are dispensed with, never to be heard from again. This happens all throughout the bible.

I can support, with chapter and verse, that it was a goddamned dragon. Says right there in the black and white there was a serpent with legs that talked. One of many dragons in magic book. I'll never understand why dragons are a bridge too far for christians who believe in things like fallen angels.

I suspect, in mere reality, that the character in the OT is a version of babylonian All Evil. A fascinating character in ane magic. Started out as a post script to magic spells..but..writing on cuneiform tablets all these different clauses to ward them off was unweildy...so they employed "and all other evil". Over time, we see "and all other evil" replaced by All Evil - the post scripts and clauses had become contextualized as the personification of a force. The authors of old magic book were deeply influenced by transportation.

-aaaanywho, I see we've returned to a deontological explanation for the moral permissibility of eating animals. The idea that things are more or less okay, because some guy said so. Authoritarian subjectivism. I do think that eating animals is permissible, but I don't think anything is made right or wrong on the say so of any given moral agent or one moral agent in particular. Neither god nor man. If moral content is real, and if moral statements are cognitive statements - then any given moral agents moral utterances may be true or false, and so the mere fact of their saying so-and-so does not entail the fact of so-and-so. That must be premised elsewhere, on things specifically and explicitly separate from facts of a given moral utterer. At best, our moral utterance (and a gods moral utterances) might coincide with or conform to with some objectively true fact, but our utterances do not and cannot, themselves, generate them.

(September 12, 2024 at 7:36 am)Angrboda Wrote:

(September 12, 2024 at 7:05 am)h311inac311 Wrote: The serpent is a bit more mysterious, we believe that he is a fallen angel but that isn't something that I can support with a chapter and verse reference. What we do know is that the serpent had one simple objective, ruin God's perfect plan by leading men into sin. What we know for sure about the serpent is this, it knew what God's commandment was and it wanted to see if it could find a way to make God's people choose to dis-obey him.

The bible is like bad fiction that way.  Characters show up at the right time to move the plot along in a certain direction, and then are dispensed with, never to be heard from again.  This happens all throughout the bible.

So, The Serpent is like a biblical Tom Bombadil.

Boru

Bad Tom Bombadil.

(September 12, 2024 at 7:05 am)h311inac311 Wrote:

(August 29, 2024 at 11:53 am)h4ym4n Wrote: Do you believe Adam and Eve had any free choice to be forced into life only to encounter the serpent to fuck them up?

Did the serpent have the knowledge of good and evil @h311inac311?

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.”

Adam did not choose to be born, that decision was made for him by his Father who wanted to have a close and intimate relationship with him. 
Also, Adam did have a choice of weather or not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Why would Adam need to know Evil (also meaning destruction) if God wasn't going to allow anything Evil to ever happen to him?

The serpent is a bit more mysterious, we believe that he is a fallen angel but that isn't something that I can support with a chapter and verse reference. What we do know is that the serpent had one simple objective, ruin God's perfect plan by leading men into sin. What we know for sure about the serpent is this, it knew what God's commandment was and it wanted to see if it could find a way to make God's people choose to dis-obey him.

Who would you guys choose to follow? 
     Would you have eaten the forbidden fruit?

@h311inac311 

Could the serpent do anything yahweh didn’t want it to do?

If so, was yahweh shocked that the serpent evilly trick Eve and totally fucked up yahwehs plan?

How and why would a serpent know and understand HOW to fuck up the creator of everything’s plan?


And finally @h311inac311 , why didn’t jesus show up to save Adam and Eve? Did Yahweh have to rape a human first before jesus can appear as man?

(September 12, 2024 at 12:48 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Bad Tom Bombadil.

I’m not convinced that the Serpent is the villain of the piece. It was instrumental in Adam and Eve being kicked out of the Garden, which let - more or less directly - to music, literature, science, painting, poetry, engineering, and all other uniquely human endeavours.

If it weren’t for the Serpent, the population of the world (exactly two) would still be stuck in Eden, accomplishing nothing.

Boru

If we look at this through the ane framing that it belongs in (and it's later european influence), the serpent isn't so much a villain, or even evil..as it is an agent of disorder, chaos, etc. In the coming of age myth the serpent represents mistrust of authority figures. Mistrust of our parents, in a specifically man-and-woman kind of way, wink wink nudge nudge. Dis-rule, disorder. A similar thing pops up when magic book talks about the sea dragons. How they can wreck any human plan, nothing we can do to it. How only god could create such a creature or bring it to heel.

(September 12, 2024 at 1:57 pm)h4ym4n Wrote:

(September 12, 2024 at 7:05 am)h311inac311 Wrote: Adam did not choose to be born, that decision was made for him by his Father who wanted to have a close and intimate relationship with him. 
Also, Adam did have a choice of weather or not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Why would Adam need to know Evil (also meaning destruction) if God wasn't going to allow anything Evil to ever happen to him?

The serpent is a bit more mysterious, we believe that he is a fallen angel but that isn't something that I can support with a chapter and verse reference. What we do know is that the serpent had one simple objective, ruin God's perfect plan by leading men into sin. What we know for sure about the serpent is this, it knew what God's commandment was and it wanted to see if it could find a way to make God's people choose to dis-obey him.

Who would you guys choose to follow? 
     Would you have eaten the forbidden fruit?

@h311inac311 

Could the serpent do anything yahweh didn’t want it to do?

If so, was yahweh shocked that the serpent evilly trick Eve and totally fucked up yahwehs plan?

How and why would a serpent know and understand HOW to fuck up the creator of everything’s plan?


And finally @h311inac311 , why didn’t jesus show up to save Adam and Eve? Did Yahweh have to rape a human first before jesus can appear as man?

If you can read the story of how Mary got pregnant in the Bible and arrive at the conclusion that God raped her, then that tells me everything I need to know about your Lexile Level.

Not that there's any point in correcting a mocker, since all they will do is mock you for it.

I think the serpent (or Dragon, as Nudger pointed out) had free will and a voice. It wasn't satisfied with peace on Earth so it wanted to see what would happen if it could convince God's people to commit sin.

YHWH did seem surprised, perhaps it is because he chose to turn his back on Adam and Eve to allow them the freedom to choose weather or not to eat of the fruit.
A good leader gives his instructions, makes sure that his subordinates know what they are and then walks away to tend to other matters. It is a show of trust.

To say that they, 'totally fucked up God's plan' is a pretty massive over statement, but if you're this aggressive about getting things wrong then I can't do all of the reading for you.

The Dragon was an Angel who was with God in heaven before descending into the garden, it knew who YHWH was and it knew what his will for man kind was as well. All of this simply boils down to God choosing to allow for every part of his creation to have a choice between obedience and dis-obedience. From the Angels to men and even to some extent animals as well, God gave us a mind to choose. He didn't create us to be robots who are forced to worship him. He didn't put a spell on us so that we would always be under his control.

Therefore, he will hold us accountable for our actions under the sun.

(September 14, 2024 at 1:08 pm)h311inac311 Wrote:

(September 12, 2024 at 1:57 pm)h4ym4n Wrote: @h311inac311 

Could the serpent do anything yahweh didn’t want it to do?

If so, was yahweh shocked that the serpent evilly trick Eve and totally fucked up yahwehs plan?

How and why would a serpent know and understand HOW to fuck up the creator of everything’s plan?


And finally @h311inac311 , why didn’t jesus show up to save Adam and Eve? Did Yahweh have to rape a human first before jesus can appear as man?

If you can read the story of how Mary got pregnant in the Bible and arrive at the conclusion that God raped her, then that tells me everything I need to know about your Lexile Level.

Not that there's any point in correcting a mocker, since all they will do is mock you for it.

I think the serpent (or Dragon, as Nudger pointed out) had free will and a voice. It wasn't satisfied with peace on Earth so it wanted to see what would happen if it could convince God's people to commit sin.

YHWH did seem surprised, perhaps it is because he chose to turn his back on Adam and Eve to allow them the freedom to choose weather or not to eat of the fruit.
A good leader gives his instructions, makes sure that his subordinates know what they are and then walks away to tend to other matters. It is a show of trust.

To say that they, 'totally fucked up God's plan' is a pretty massive over statement, but if you're this aggressive about getting things wrong then I can't do all of the reading for you.

The Dragon was an Angel who was with God in heaven before descending into the garden, it knew who YHWH was and it knew what his will for man kind was as well. All of this simply boils down to God choosing to allow for every part of his creation to have a choice between obedience and dis-obedience. From the Angels to men and even to some extent animals as well, God gave us a mind to choose. He didn't create us to be robots who are forced to worship him. He didn't put a spell on us so that we would always be under his control.

Therefore, he will hold us accountable for our actions under the sun.

But God didn’t give his creations the ability to understand his instructions. Suppose a Field Marshall was to tell a raw recruit, ‘Make sure you stanifraz the nolneks at least twice every vilk’ and then had the recruit court martialed for not following orders he couldn’t possibly have understood.

Adam and Eve had no knowledge of Good and Evil before eating the fruit - God explicitly denied them that - so the couldn’t possibly have known it was wrong to disobey God.

And, not for nothing, how does an all-powerful, all-knowing God need to ‘walk away to tend to other matters’? You’d think Yahweh would be a dab hand at multi-tasking.

Boru

(September 14, 2024 at 1:08 pm)h311inac311 Wrote: YHWH did seem surprised, perhaps it is because he chose to turn his back on Adam and Eve to allow them the freedom to choose weather or not to eat of the fruit.
A good leader gives his instructions, makes sure that his subordinates know what they are and then walks away to tend to other matters. It is a show of trust.

This is inconsistent with God's omnipotence. He not only didn't choose ignorance of their actions, he was unable to be ignorant. You're just making things up ad hoc in order to reconcile the unreconcilable.