RE: Better reasons to quit Christianity
August 22, 2012 at 7:55 pm
(This post was last modified: August 22, 2012 at 8:00 pm by Cyberman.)
Re: Undeceived - Utter crap. Sorry, but I have to call 'em as I see 'em. It wasn't until that single, almost throwaway line in Rev. 12:9 about "that old serpent" that the Eden snake was ever considered to be the Devil anyway. The story makes extremely little prima facie sense as it is, but what sense there can be extracted from it goes right out of the window if you try to overanalyse it the way you're trying to do. Remember that the Eden serpent was 'punished' by being condemned to crawl on its belly and eat dirt etc, which is a reasonable Bronze-age rationalisation for why snakes have no legs (though they still have the remnants of hips where legs were once attached). On the other hand, it's a pretty stupid depiction of the Devil, who is generally and traditionally shown with horns and cloven hooves.
Did Satan manage to overcome his belly-crawling punishment? If so, then YHWH's curses are obviously not as permanent as we might be led to believe and maybe our own 'curses' can be, or have been, lifted.
Besides which, the story is blatantly clear on the whole point regarding the fruit and the trees - one set gave "knowledge of good and evil", which is necessary in order to know what is and isn't morally correct and which YHWH clearly warned would result in A&E's death - not "you will eventually come to the end of your life" but "On the day ye eat the fruit thereof ye shall die". Clearly a lie since they lived long enough to be banished from Eden before they could eat of the tree of life; a possibility which clearly scared the shit out of the astonishingly un-prescient YHWH. In other words, the serpent - Satan if your beliefs are so weak you really need to insist the point - told the truth and YHWH lied. QED, I'm afraid. You can't eat your cake and still have it on your plate; it's not a Schrödinger's Cake.
Did Satan manage to overcome his belly-crawling punishment? If so, then YHWH's curses are obviously not as permanent as we might be led to believe and maybe our own 'curses' can be, or have been, lifted.
Besides which, the story is blatantly clear on the whole point regarding the fruit and the trees - one set gave "knowledge of good and evil", which is necessary in order to know what is and isn't morally correct and which YHWH clearly warned would result in A&E's death - not "you will eventually come to the end of your life" but "On the day ye eat the fruit thereof ye shall die". Clearly a lie since they lived long enough to be banished from Eden before they could eat of the tree of life; a possibility which clearly scared the shit out of the astonishingly un-prescient YHWH. In other words, the serpent - Satan if your beliefs are so weak you really need to insist the point - told the truth and YHWH lied. QED, I'm afraid. You can't eat your cake and still have it on your plate; it's not a Schrödinger's Cake.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
