I said that I know differently, not believe differently. You are the one imprisoned by belief and conclusion.
Cain was punished. He even said in scripture that his punishment was too great. He was banished from his home and family, made to wander, and marked so that no man would kill him for what he'd done. Thus he was also punished to live with the knowledge of his own guilt, by God himself. Noah's Father didn't murder anyone. You are confusing him with another Lamech who had the same name but was a different person who accidentally killed two people while out hunting. Noah didn't have sex with his sister. Their Fathers had the same name but were two different people. Noah's lineage was from Seth, his wife Naamah lineage goes back to Cain. And Abraham didn't have sex with his sister. He fell in love with and married his half sister from another household. Abraham didn't commit adultery. His wife couldn't conceive. So to give him descendants she devised an arrangement that her servant would give him children. Abraham and Hagar agreed. As for Lot, he didn't consciously have sex with is daughters. His daughters hatched a plan to bear him descendants after his wifes death. They got him drunk and unaware and had intercourse. They both conceived. Whether or not this is sin, I don't know. It wasn't done for lust. Of all these, the one clearly a sin was Cains murder of his Brother out of jealousy and envy. Which is why God punished him.
IOW Cainan was not punished, given he was even protected from retribution when he lived happily ever after in Nod and died at aged 910 (Genesis 4, Genesis 5:14). Wrong. Lamech described in Genesis 4 was Noah's father, and his daughter Naamah was Noah's wife. And the genealogy in Genesis 5 includes the genealogy in Genesis 4 with minor changes in spelling and order. Thus Cain=Cainan, Enoch=Enoch, Irad=Jared, Mehujael=Mahalaleel, Methusael=Methuselah, Lamech=Lamech. Therefore the adam (first man) in the Gen 5 genealogy was the grandfather of the adam in the Gen 4 genealogy. And Noah's brothers, Jubal and Jubal (Genesis 4:19-21), were therefore not drowned with most of Noah's family, including his grandparents (Gen 5:27) and his widowed mother (Gen 5:31), and his aunts and uncles and cousins (Gen 5:26), and his other brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces (Gen 5:30), and his other children and grandchildren born before his 600th birthday (Genesis 5:32) when they were drowned with most of their animals. IOW Abraham had sex with his biological sister Sarah when she became pregnant with Isaac, and Abraham committed adultery with Hagar when she became pregnant with So how did his daughters maintain their old man's erection if he was unconscious? Or did they use an electro-ejaculator and turkey basters to inseminate themselves? Or did Lot tell lies about sexually assaulting them after he tried to pimp them and then mocked their future husbands in Sodom (Gen 19). Wrong. Cainan was never punished for killing his brother Abel, even though he regretted it (Genesis 4:15-16).
So what!!! I didn't write it, even if it's just pure fantasy, including the story about a donkey rider going fishing with his mates after being crucified as a scape-goat to avoid the crucifixion of thousands of Jewish people as described in John 11:48-50.
Well I can't know for you, only for myself, any more than I can eat to your nourishment. That's why I say I know. I know there's sun in the sky, but a blind person can't see it. I know the sounds of dawn and dusk, but a deaf person can't know it. They can believe me, but they can't know. And they can disbelieve me. But it doesn't change the facts. That's why I said that I know differently than what you believe or conclude about God. So stick with what you think if that suits you. As for me, what I think is irrelevant. The truth is what matters. So I say it.
OK. But if you use a bit of logical and lateral thinking, then you will see that the bible still says that Abraham had sex with his sister Sarah, and committed adultery with Hagar, and Lot had sex with his daughters, and that the ten commandments etc didn't apply to them. And the bible says that Noah's brothers (Jubal and Jabal) were not drowned with the rest of their family (Genesis 5:26-32) since they are the fathers of all nomadic herders and musical instrument makers, whereas Noah wasn't.
They didn't like that people know God it gives us purpose and an infinite reference point for meaning. And at the same time suggests we are capable of living a life of righteousness just that some choose not to and that is their choice. That's the whole point of this thread to blame God for sin when it's you and me that choose it. The only difference between people like us and then is we take responsibility. You can either serve your God or your earthly desires. You can't serve both. They have convinced themselves that they are smarter than you that's why you aren't allowed to know something they aren't privy too . Seeds scattered and sown.
Exactly. What you believe. Knowledge can be shared with evidence. Belief can never be share, unless others have same belief. You don't know. You only believe. You even say so. Sad you reference deaf and blind to make your point. Maybe it's not them that are those things. For facts can be shown to deaf and blind people. But you can't prove or show anything to those who are not. You, and you alone, is the only one to know. Which is only a belief. Because only YOU, are privy to your make believe.
how do you know that? That's not the case for example I know what breed of dog I have you don't that knowledge isn't shared it's knowledge but it's something you don't know. You can say you don't believe me but that is your belief.
knowledge doesn't have to be shared I don't know where you got that idea. no not all knowledge can be shared with evidence I can know what my grandmother's face look like but if I have no pictures of her I can't show that to anybody but I still know. it's kind of a narcissistic and self-centered for you to tell people what they can and can't know. He's not the only one.
You don't get it. If I believed something, I'd say I believe thus and so. Or I might say that I have concluded, reasoned, or surmised this and that. But if I say I know something, then it isn't in the realm of belief or intellectual gymnastics or study. I don't expect you to just believe what I say I know. I say it with the hope that you might take it into consideration, even as a common courtesy. So when I say that I know that the entire population of the earth actually knows God but has forgotten him, being seized by a form of amnesia. And when I say that God is real, that he lives and is divine. I am only speaking the truth and what I know, not what I believe or have heard or been taught or read or reasoned. I know it by the visitation of Gods spirit who awakened me to a remembrance of him, and I realized that true life is in him rather than in myself or in my life alone. It is as natural as winter giving way to spring. Repentance and baptism are in keeping with the divinity of Gods spirit. So it follows suit that upon an invitation to an event, you shower, put on clean clothes and make ready. I don't expect you to believe what I say or know what I know without the intercession of Gods spirit. But it isn't out of place to speak of God on a topic about God and sin. And in this world with so many voices stating belief and disbelief, it seems appropriate that a bit of certainty might be a welcome respite in the back and forth. I don't care what people believe. I know that Gods spirit supped with me and filled my cup with milk and honey, filling the molecules of my person, swept the table of my soul of all obstacles, and filled my mind with light and vision. And I know he was God because I recognized and remembered his spirit which I had somehow forgotten throughout my mortal life, or perhaps due to my mortal life having eclipsed any vestige of him. So just because I can't see for the blind or hear for the deaf, it doesn't mean there is nothing to be seen or heard, or that it is all an illusion. Science would bear me out on this, as would reason.
No the above is factually incorrect and assumes the only hell was one defined in the New Testament. Therein lies the absurdity of your thread. You keep making assumptions of what people can believe and project it on your imagined audience. Please do not tell me or anyone when "hell" as a concept was deroived in cultures outside the writings of the New Testament. Its ignorant. Thank you.
Christianity as you repeat it was derived from King Constantine ordering writers up on a hill and asking them to merge gnostic Christian beliefs (which would not have been called "Christian" beliefs with Pagan ones to prevent a civil war in then Rome. It took a recycled story of man sent to earth to save men and fused it with certain other pagan and gnostic beliefs to create the religion you assume is the starting point of Christianity, God, sin. If anything Jesus if he did exist because we have no direct proof, did not leave behind any direct writings. The supposed stories we have are many times removed from what "Jesus" may have actually taught altered and amended to appease Pagans. The original teachings from what was found did not define Jesus as THE son of God but a son of God like all the rest of us. The original teachings of Jesus were an explanation of the rules of the Talmud which were the discussion points from which to be able to explain and put into practice otherwise abstract concepts of the Old Testament. The basic concept was that if you give without expecting anything in return, you continue the positive energy flow flowing through your body from some larger original energy source and in so doing heal the world. If you block that positive energy flow, you deny and dettach from that greater positive energy injuring the world. These two concepts, positive and negative are the crux of all life and the inherent battle to balance them is the divine struggle within all life forms. One could not exist unless it clashed with the opposite because for their to be generated new meaning and understanding, the two (thesis, antithesis) must clash and then the life form must synthesize them or remain unable to complete itself and its creation of experience (new life), The original lesson above is as one person said "mathematical". It is basic physics to explain how energy moves and mutates in shape constantly-it can not be measured in crude linear one dimensional paradigms. It has infinite dimensions of shape and so meaning and possibility depending on what clash occurs between negative and positive. So in that sense Adam and Eve are allegorical for negative and positive energy in all cells. Religions all were created to supposedly help homo sapiens cope with their own self destructive violence and fear of darkness. Religion is in tha primal behaviourt sense a neurotic obsessive compulsive reaction triggered or compelled by a need to explain and give order and answers to things we would otherwise feel threatened by due to our ability to "control" (understand) the unknown. So sin? So sin as some said is a human construct written by humans to define primal negative behaviour we believe prevents humans from learning, prevailing, understanding, balancing the extremes, evolving on a constant basis of movement towards more and more realizations. It was meant by humans to mean primal violent behaviour like incest, rape, murder, theft, war we created religions (rules) to try repress if we were to survive and cooperate and find harmony with the environment we live in. We can all sin deliberately or unintentionally when we do not develop insight as to our behaviour to prevent negative ripple impact on nature and other life forms. Certain religions have turned that word into a rationalization or excuse to justify punishing and judging others and creating terms like evil, bad, so that we think by giving it that name. we can then understand it and seek revenge. reverse negative behaviour against it (moral judgement, punishment) to what we think will balance it and reconcile it (remedy, rehabilitate, seek justice) for it. Sin is a human word necessarily with a beginning and ending and a causal connection to being able to condemn it. Because of that its often used by some to make themselves feel superior to others morally by accusing the other of sin but not themselves/ This is why then in all religions and in the supposed lessons of Jesus we were warned we all are sinful. Sin to me is a simplistic word. As a psychologist and lawyer, I can appreciate the role religion, philosophy, medical sciences and social sciences have played in defining it, but the bottom line is, it is an inherent and often fatal flaw of homo sapiens. What makes us sinful also makes us righteous and that is what some called on this thread free choice. That all said, from a purely practical perspective, if a society does not come up with a consistent set of rules to clearly define prohibited behaviour its doomed to implode. The problem is as quick as we come up with a definition, someone says, yah but and seeks to be exempt from the rule of sin as it constantly changes to suit the ever changing moral values of the day. So for me and some on this thread we argue its just a human word full of imprecision, always changing, always being contradicted by our own actions, and its NOT "God" who creates or expresses sin, its we humans. "God" is an abstract energy source that did not create the sin but passes on the energy you and I through free will chose to turn into positive or negative energy and so that sense we create evil. This so called God did not create good or evil-it created us if you must use that word, to decide which one to create and often they are inextricably linked in causal effect flowing from the choices we make. Negative energy or sin defines you being able to define its actual shape: Because of the above we then have a habit of trying to make it understandable by creating a human image of it (by explaining it through human behaviour): But is that really what it looks like? Or is all sin is, is: first time I saw sin was when I looked in the mirror at first it was the most frightening thing I ever could imagine then after awhile I realized nah, anything that ridiculous looking is hilarious I have been laughing ever since you think you see Satan? nope just you start laughing then it shrivels and melts into steam leaving just your face behind pimples and all
That's your choice if you just cherry pick which biblical stories are just fantasies and which are fiction, even though you have no evidence that Jesus existed or not, and whether he was crucified or not, and whether he went fishing with his mates after he was resuscitated or not.
It isn't what you know. It's what you have concluded because of your other conclusion that there is no God. So you conclude in keeping and in harmony with your former conclusions. That way, it's all simpatico. Then you round it out by concluding that you originated from slime. It's almost like you have created a super magical protective hex. Then you say the Bible is fiction.