(June 25, 2015 at 8:56 pm)Godschild Wrote:I am unaware of anyone today who had it made clear to him by god and satan that they both exist and that they have something to offer. Eve, for example, knew god personally and spoke with the serpent directly. If she understood the stakes, she chose a path which she knew would lead to her death. The Israelites who were freed from bondage by god saw his hand in action directly. They knew what god offered and what he was capable of. Jesus' disciples knew him personally and saw him in action. They knew who god was and what he could and would do.(June 25, 2015 at 11:25 am)Tonus Wrote: There really is no emotion that would favor the devil's offer. Even stuff that isn't practical would favor taking god's offer. Any story where so few people make such a clear and obvious choice has to be suspect. It goes against everything we know about ourselves as a species and as individuals.You must not pay much attention to what's going on in the world, it's money, wealth, things, all the things Satan would have use to pay attention to, why, so we will be distracted from God. He pulled this on Eve, he told he of the great wealth of knowledge she would gain, again and again greed.
Even Christians today do not claim to experience god or Jesus in this manner. If people are driven by certain desires --that often can be identified as evolutionary traits-- in the absence of any gods, that makes perfect sense. What doesn't make sense is when people who knew god --on the basis that the Biblical characters did-- nonetheless make decisions that can only possibly end badly, when the only other option was the best possible outcome ever. Unless they were clinically insane or abysmally stupid, there is no way they make such a bad choice.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould