Eternal punishment is pointless.

[Thumpalumpacus]

So when children do bad things we're to praise them, no wonder this country's going to hell in a hand basket.

GC

When my son made a mistake he didn't get praised.

He also didn't get thrown into the oven for eternity.

The idea that there is no middle ground is simplistic beyond belief and if you hold that, then that marks you as a mental midget of the first order.

---

If you notice your child is about to touch the fire, do you just let him do so because you "respect his freedom"?

Well, the only other option is to shoot him through the head. Right, GC?

Actually, you're supposed to pick him up and bodily hurl him into the fires so he burns for all eternity. That'll learn 'im!

---

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”

Man had gained understanding. Had his eyes opened. And it angered god. The only reasonable conclusion is that god didn't want creations that dared disobey, dared gain knowledge that he and he alone (through circular reasoning) deemed unworthy for them to obtain. He wanted them to be sheltered children in perpetuity.

And to point out a contradiction of sorts not often mentioned in this passage: death is one of the punishments received for the applebite (according to Genesis 2:17), which implies that before the sin, humans were immortal.

And yet when then see this curiously ignorant deity ("might"? Wasn't he supposed to know everything?) worried that humans might live forever.

If they weren't immortal before the first sin, then death was no punishment. And if they were immortal before the first sin, why should there be created a tree of life and death, and why should the deity worry that humans might become immortal?

---

Sorry about that. And, by the way, I do agree that the floods in these stories could have been local. They could have been referring to "their" world and using hyperbole.

No more possible than the global flood, and no more in evidence. Unless you're talking "noah clung to the roof of his chicken coop while the local stream overran it's banks". Some flood....some god. It's a habit of mine to offer to run some numbers for people who really want to hold onto flood myths. Pick a point on the map. Give me depth and duration. I'll tell you why it didn't (and couldn't) happen.

I have an alternative hypothesis - it's just a story. Not embellishment, not mythicized tragedy, just a story. As an example, what do you think the size of the actual Death Star was, upon which the story was based? How big was the exhaust port that Luke Skywalker fired his torpedo into (I think we all know that no one could hit a 2m target in an xwing - especially at full throttle with Vader on his tail..no matter how many wookies gave the assist)?

This is clearly a strawman ... it was a droid giving the assist.

You Aforcists will stoop to anything in order to push your false religion.