(November 6, 2012 at 2:48 pm)thesummerqueen Wrote: God creates man. God tempts man by having a tree in the garden he's not supposed to eat. God punishes man for eating instead of just removing tree. Man gets banished.

Man multiplies. Man supposedly turns away from God. God decides he's powerless to do anything other than drown out the wicked.

No pleasure, eh? I suppose he didn't think to have a conference first? Coaching sessions?

Gen 4
So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

Seems like coaching to me.

Only after he deliberately decided one man's burnt offering was better than the other - which is inherently stupid since God doesn't need to eat and it was essentially a waste of produce, though that is neither here nor there. Again, it seems more like he was inciting someone to anger rather than trying to help.

(November 6, 2012 at 3:16 pm)thesummerqueen Wrote: Only after he deliberately decided one man's burnt offering was better than the other - which is inherently stupid since God doesn't need to eat and it was essentially a waste of produce, though that is neither here nor there. Again, it seems more like he was inciting someone to anger rather than trying to help.

Did you ever consider that the issue may have been their thoughts regarding the offerings, rather than the actual offerings themselves?

Did you ever consider that this is not a factual retelling of any actual event?
(and just how often does your excusing god for this or that entail reading the minds of those who supposedly lived in the distant past?)

That's why I'm saying this is entirely based on a special pleading argument.

You go back and make reason after reason after speculation after speculation without even acknowledging that this shit is fake.

Lord of the Rings makes more sense than the Bible.

I prefer to think of it as cultural commentary myself, rather than "fake". But that's just me. Not like the faithful are going to let me be generous on that count though.

Quote:Only after he deliberately decided one man's burnt offering was better than the other

The point of this otherwise stupid story lies in the basis of what later evolved into Israelite-Judahite cultures. With the exodus story of outside conquest having been dismissed as pious fiction by archaeologists the Theory of Indigenous Origins has been accepted by every non-bible-thumper and the bible-thumpers can safely be relegated to the realm of idiots. These cultures arose at the end of the Late Bronze Age

What remains in dispute, perhaps best personified by William Dever and Israel Finkelstein is where did the population which later became Israelite and Judahite ( as well as Edomite and Moabite!) come from? Both men cite the Sea People devastations of the coastal region as a primary cause. In Finkelstein's case, he sees the pastoral nomads of the Eastern highlands being forced to settle down and begin to grow their own grain because their trading partners had been overrun. Dever makes the claim that the population arose from refugees fleeing the Sea People and that these people had the technological know-how to farm successfully. In truth, both men make such good points that what probably happened was some sort of synthesis wherein the nomads supplied the meat and other animal products needed to survive while the farmers brought the knowledge of how to farm going forward. This must have produced some tension within the communities. People tend to look for artificial differences between themselves anyway. But what the absurd bible story tells us is that by "god" accepting the gift of the pastoralist and rejecting the gift of the farmer that it was the pastoralists who had the upper hand in those settings. Otherwise, if the farmers had been running the show, "Cain's sacrifice" would have been accepted and Abel told to go fuck himself.

By the way, how come "god" didn't know what would happen when he pulled that little stunt? God comes off as a second rate detective in a sleepy town instead of of omnipotent ruler of the universe.

The god of the old testament is nasty and blood thirsty because he was invented in nasty blood thirsty times.

Fiction often mirrors what is going on at the time.

(November 6, 2012 at 3:27 pm)John V Wrote: Did you ever consider that the issue may have been their thoughts regarding the offerings, rather than the actual offerings themselves?

Classic Christian response, when the Heavenly Father emotionally abuses his weak, inexperienced child and it leads to bad things, blame the victim.

(November 6, 2012 at 11:51 am)John V Wrote: Your own verse says that the killer shall be put to death. Is that killing inherently sinful?

It states the penalty for sin. You have to remember, that Jews were still not allowed to take justice into their "own hands", read the full passage and this is clear.