(October 3, 2012 at 2:02 am)Godschild Wrote:
Ds Wrote:Okay, the survival is different, but I still don't know how you say they knew right from wrong when they had no knowledge of good and evil.
You said earlier
What you hid says it all, we established this with the small child analogy. So, yes they knew right from wrong, there was consequences, consequences that they did not understand, but they knew something unpleasant would happen.
Ds Wrote:When the accurate moral comparison is small children, don't you think god overreacted?
You have in this statement shown that you agree with the small child analogy, and no I've already stated they got off light in their personal punishment. I'll explain when I get to your reply about this.
Ds Wrote:Does obeying to avoid punishment really constitute a conscience? The consequence was death, so it didn't matter if they knew what was 'wrong', they just didn't want to die.
Does a small child have a conscience, yes they do, do they obey mom and dad to avoid punishment, yes they do. So what point were you trying to make, you surely did not in your above statement.
Ds Wrote:I believe that I made it clear that Lucifer said they would not surely die, not that they surely wouldn't. God said they would die on the day that they had eaten it, which did not happen. I don't know how you can say they died a 'spiritual' death by acquiring a conscience. They still had souls, didn't they? They 'knew' it was wrong because god arbitrarily told them. The only justification he gave was that they would die that very day. With the deterrent removed, and without any knowledge of good and evil, of course they would eat it.
Please explain the bold sentence above, it makes no sense to me.
They died the moment they ate of the fruit, they were separated from God by sin, no more walks with Him, no more anything, banished from the Garden. They are the cause no living man could look upon God until after the judgement, they separated all of mankind from God, and you do not think they died, they are responsible for Christ's death (as we all are), this is the spiritual death, separation from our heavenly Father.
God arbitrarily told them, just something He threw from the cuff I suppose, God is deliberate in all that He says and does.
They died actually twice, so how do you see the deterrent removed. If your dad told you not to jump from a high place because you will die, then a teacher comes along and says you will not surely die are you going to jump.
Godschild Wrote:God kicked them out of the Garden (sanctuary) and also punished (cursed) them for ruining the perfect creation, personally I believe they got off light, considering what God could have done.
Ds Wrote:What more could he have done? He cursed them, kicked them out of paradise, and opened the gates of hell to everyone. Everyone born before Jesus burned at least until Jesus's death, all for a single disobedience from people who had no knowledge of good and evil. I think he seriously overreacted... The best reason I can see for kicking them out (but not any of the other things) was the preservation of innocence. If they knew not of evil, they could not comprehend the difference between it and good. Lucifer gave them knowledge at the cost of innocence; isn't that what we all do nowadays anyway? (Although we live in an imperfect world, so it is required, whereas Eden wasn't the same.)
Now to answer your overreaction question, God could have put them, and each of us to follow at the mercy of the Roman whip and cross, that is what they deserve (it's what we all deserve). This is what Christ saved us from, He took it instead of us.
Yes, He did open the gates of hell to all who will not believe in His Christ, you are wrong about people being there, the judgement has not yet come, it will though.
Yes Eden is the same, God removed it from the earth, the Garden will be returned, if you think I'm making this up you can find it in scripture.
When Adam and Eve disobeyed God all innocence was lost upon the earth, that's why we now have a sin nature, it is the loss of innocence.
Ds Wrote:God let the devil himself decieve Adam and Eve because he loved them? They had no knowledge of good and evil, it couldn't have occured to them that he was supposed to be the bad guy. You use the word 'decieved'. If they were truly decieved, then they dis not know what they were doing. Look at their reactins to the snake's words, they are obviously profoundly naive and do not understand the difference between right and wrong in any more then a completely arbitrary way.
You look at this situation from a child's view, I do not mean this as an insult, so please do not take it that way. What I mean is that you see this as a good guy, bad guy point of view, when this in reality is a part of a great spiritual war, we are not the prize to be won either. The war is to let evil run it's coarse and then God put an end to it by allowing, through love, His Son to be killed on a cross and then resurrecting Him from the grave. So yes, because of love God allowed Lucifer to tempt Adam and Eve. I would not expect you as a nonbeliever to understand this, but this is what we have because of two people deliberately disobeying God. As I just said, deliberately they disobeyed God, they understood there were consequences to their action.
Godschild Wrote:Ok, let's make this simpler, God will not associate with the sinful, does this clear up things. God's omnipresent, which means He can be in all places all the time if He chooses to.
Ds Wrote:I thought that everyone was sinful. Didn't Jesus associate with the sinful on occasion? (Not to join them is sinning, mind you)
Like I have said, Jesus is God as a man, when He left heaven, He left behind His royalty ie. glory, power and ect. This is why He was able to be in the presence of sinners, every day He was here.
Ds Wrote:So all of the terrible things that happen were meant to? God is responsible for the holocaust? Saying 'well his plan is so complex that is makes no sense...to a mortal' is kind of a cop out. If god's plan requires so much suffering, then he isn't very efficient, now is he?
The bold above is a big debate even among Christians, and I'm not going to debate it one way or the other. What I will say is God foreknew all things, that's why I said God is never surprised. God is not responsible for the holocaust, sinful man is, when I speak of God 's plan I do not mean He planned the entire future in every detail. I'm saying He looked down through history and saw what would be and made His redemptive plan accordingly. God allowed all of history to run as it would be and He was able to work out redemption within it.
You say He is not effective, yet He was able to work out His plan without altering history, the worlds past and future is determined by man's actions, and it all began with one wrong decision in a beautiful garden several thousand years ago. Sad but then we can't change it, all we are able to change is our eternal destination.
Godschild Wrote:You find the story hard to believe because an omniscient being foresaw the only plan for salvation that would satisfy His will. That does not make sense to me.
Ds Wrote:So now it isn't that god is inefficient; he deliberately takes a hard path with humanity because he feels like it.
You are the one who said God is inefficient, not me. God takes the path that will lead to the redemption of man, if the path gets hard it is man's fault, not God's. He through Christ has given us a way out of this mess, and you know I personally have experienced this. You talk about God doing things because He feels like it, now that would make Him irresponsible, which is outside the possibility of an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent being, so you see God does things with purpose. This makes your above statement contradictory.
Ds Wrote:Poor guy, he had to give up being omnipotent for a cosmological second. His early death was a blessing then, if it is suffering to simply be human. Wow, then we must really be martyrs; we're human our whole lives!
Quit being childish, you are better than that, at least I hope so. Christ was the one who created all, man is the one who ruined His perfect work. We deserve all that happens in this world, Christ did not, and He most certainly did not have to redeem mankind. Like I said before, God could have allowed us all to go under the Roman punishment Christ suffered and suffer the guilt of our sin, no one can even imagine the horror of that guilt.
(bolding added)
Ds Wrote:You do realize you just admitted that they didn't know it was wrong until after the fact. We sure 'screwed that up royally' when two people who didn't know the difference between right and wrong were tricked into disobeying an arbitrary command.
I did not come close to saying that, I said they understood the horror they brought upon themselves, stop trying to put a wrong slant on what was clearly stated. We, does that mean you were there, they screwed up and we continue the same even today, man will never learn unless God is in his life.
Ds Wrote:So...he killed the animals to foreshadow the bloodletting that had to be? Remember what you said about it earlier?
I believe that you have seriously contradicted yourself. In one passage you say that the killing is merely foreshadowing what was already destined to come, in the other you say it was the only reason for what was to come.
I have not contradicted myself, again you are trying to put a false slant on what I said. I would never say a mere foreshadowing, that would be to degrade what had happened, please read closely what I state. I said the reason there was shedding of blood through innocence was because the innocent died to cloth the sinful and this was the foreshadowing of Christ's redemptive death.
Ds Wrote:How am I not interested in being my own person? If I'm repeating things others have already said, then it is only because you are doing the same, and that a similar conversation have been had before.
I doubt others have brought to you what I've brought forward in our conversation, yes I'm sure that a similar conversation has taken place, just not with you, and I know we have not discussed this before. I state things from what I have learn through others and personal Bible study, if I believe someone has a wrong teaching I will search it out, even if it's my pastor or anyone of Biblical authority. When it comes down to it the Holy Spirit is the One who will reveal the truth of scripture.
God loves those who believe and those who do not and the same goes for me, you have no choice in this matter. That puts the matter of total free will to rest.
