RE: The Fall as Allegorical Fiction.
July 21, 2014 at 12:27 am
(This post was last modified: July 21, 2014 at 12:37 am by The Grand Nudger.)
I don't mind at all Thump. Spot on.
@Thom
I don't believe in the god of the OT, or any god. The problems with god are legion, lol. You're never going to hear me tell you that this story (or any story in the bible) is an argument in favor of djinn. Let me ask you a few questions though, bounce back your opinions - if you'd like.
-Is the god of the garden narrative good? It lied to two people who must have held it in very high esteem. When it's lie was discovered -it put a curse on them. While later accounts might try to make the claim that god is all good, the writer of this story was definitely not painting us a picture of Buddy Jesus. To be truthful god is as much a prop as the tree in this story. Why does god need to be all good, or even a little bit good?
-Sure, a super-duper god could beat the shit out of a rinky dink demon - but the writer of this story would have surely noticed that evil exists in the world. So he didn't write some horseshit about how god came in with a thundering sword and smote evil into the ground forever and ever and everyone lived happily, ever, after...... He made a dragon eat dust - that's as far as he was willing to go to pursue the end of evil at this point in the narrative. Again, he cursed Adam and Eve, he's clearly dishing out some evil magic. Do you get the sense that the narrator was actually trying to overcome the problem of god and evil...in this story?
-The god isn't real, and no god was revealing himself in this story. It was spoken by a human voice, penned by a human hand, full of human problems. Thump summed it up better than I. Why is this a problem for the story?
@Thom
I don't believe in the god of the OT, or any god. The problems with god are legion, lol. You're never going to hear me tell you that this story (or any story in the bible) is an argument in favor of djinn. Let me ask you a few questions though, bounce back your opinions - if you'd like.
-Is the god of the garden narrative good? It lied to two people who must have held it in very high esteem. When it's lie was discovered -it put a curse on them. While later accounts might try to make the claim that god is all good, the writer of this story was definitely not painting us a picture of Buddy Jesus. To be truthful god is as much a prop as the tree in this story. Why does god need to be all good, or even a little bit good?
-Sure, a super-duper god could beat the shit out of a rinky dink demon - but the writer of this story would have surely noticed that evil exists in the world. So he didn't write some horseshit about how god came in with a thundering sword and smote evil into the ground forever and ever and everyone lived happily, ever, after...... He made a dragon eat dust - that's as far as he was willing to go to pursue the end of evil at this point in the narrative. Again, he cursed Adam and Eve, he's clearly dishing out some evil magic. Do you get the sense that the narrator was actually trying to overcome the problem of god and evil...in this story?
-The god isn't real, and no god was revealing himself in this story. It was spoken by a human voice, penned by a human hand, full of human problems. Thump summed it up better than I. Why is this a problem for the story?
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