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Noah's Ark

Autodidact

Intentionally Blank
Wrong, you seem to be hung up on your own definition of reality and what is good and evil. Good is what moves all creation forward and evil is contrary to that. You speak of murder and, yes, that is evil so far as it is done as an attempt to usurp the authority of God and that is what makes it wrong.

Just want to highlight this. For you, the only thing that makes murder immoral is that it contravenes what you see as the will of God. If God commands it, it is then moral. That is killing innocent people, in itself, is morally nuetral, it is only violating God's authority that you see as wrong.

Among other consequences of this, you worship a genocidal maniac and see nothing wrong with total genocide.

Further, murder occupies the same moral status as trimming your beard.

Christianity makes me sick.
 

Autodidact

Intentionally Blank
Wrong, you seem to be hung up on your own definition of reality and what is good and evil. Good is what moves all creation forward and evil is contrary to that. You speak of murder and, yes, that is evil so far as it is done as an attempt to usurp the authority of God and that is what makes it wrong. Only God knows how to keep things rolling forward and no man has the ability to deny another his or her life or the right to try, only the ability to cut temporal life short and, unless your actions are in keeping with the guidelines the Lord has set, your actions are evil and you shall be judged for it.

Let me ask you this question. "What makes God...well...God?" I believe that it is because all creation willingly bows to His will (extremely simplistic way to put it but you get the idea) Now, why do you suppose that is? I think it is because He acts with absolute equity and justice and has proven himself worthy of that level of respect. Now, what can disrupt that flow of growth - namely free thinking individuals who think they have it all figured out, as did Lucifer, and act in a manner contrary to the forward organization of all creation, so, acting in support of the forward motion of organized creation is, simply put, keeping the commandments of God, anything less is less and if you are not moving forward you are moving backward...If you are not being good you are being something else.

Mankind is hung up on the concept of reality, not having a full knowledge of what reality really is. Actions are called good or evil but the concept of good or evil is subjective to the standards that all creation has set to keep things moving forward placing God at the helm because He has proven worthy to be there. In order for God to be evil He would have to stop the forward progression of all creation and that would effectively end all creation.

When a man murders he is not changing anything other than to unjustly dispatch another into the next life and thusly subjecting himself to the demands of justice. He is choosing to attempt to interfere with the rights of others to move forward in the realms wherein God has placed them. God can and will make reservations for those who are so unjustly treated by their brethren while those wicked brethren (murderers) have simply put themselves beyond the ability to ever be at the helm of creation.

It is a perfect plan wherein all creation can move forward while perfecting those who are the children of God to one day inherit all that He has. Not all will make it because not all will prove that they can be trusted with such power.

As I said before, evil is the absence of good just as darkness is the absence of light. In fine, a person who chooses to do evil is simply attempting to prevent the forward motion of all creation which is dependent upon the principles of justice. Just as darkness is nothing, literally, and nothing is the absence of something, in this case “light”, evil is only a condition that lacks anything good.

Saying something doesn't make it so, and inventing your own definitions for words only confuses your readers. The rest of us define evil as "morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked."

You can live in your own private world and use your own definition, but since it isn't generally accepted, it makes conversation very difficult.

Under your definition, doing nothing is evil, but slaughtering innocent Amalekite babies is good.

Did I mention that Christianity is disgusting?
 

Autodidact

Intentionally Blank
Happily, the lesson here is allegorical and theological, not literal and historical.

Being "under water," "behind the 8 ball," "swamped" -- however you want to put it -- those in rehab talk about "hitting bottom" -- is the very best place to begin making more of yourself than you now are.

An allegory to the effect that if you don't do what God says, he'll slaughter you, man, woman and child is a horrible, reprehensible, disgusting allegory. In the "allegory," tiny babies die of drowning. Not a nice story, even as allegory.
 

Autodidact

Intentionally Blank
Symbolism! There's much deeper symbolism in water for that culture than there was in the snapping of fingers.

Water, first of all, represented chaos. Humanity drowned in its own chaos. Additionally, water represented life. Humanity became drowned out of the old, wicked life, and took on new, righteous life.

Weird, idiosyncratic interpretation of a story in which YHWH kills every living thing on land.
 

Wotan

Active Member
Yep, and there's also people out there who claim to talk to invisible sky beings too. Crazy world we live in.

Not only talk. Some claim to have seen these invisible sky beings.

Seems contradictory - seeing the invisible. But maybe I'm showing a foolish consistency.;)
 

averageJOE

zombie
Oh, dear God! Of course it's allegory!!!:facepalm:
Some people believe the story to be a literal, historical event that actually happened. Some believe the story to be an exagerated truth (IOW a local flood). And others believe it to be allegory.

My question to you however is, if the story is allegory is it a story based on people that actually lived, or a fiction with fictitious characters?
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Some people believe the story to be a literal, historical event that actually happened. Some believe the story to be an exagerated truth (IOW a local flood). And others believe it to be allegory.

My question to you however is, if the story is allegory is it a story based on people that actually lived, or a fiction with fictitious characters?
The flood narrative has obviously been lifted (almost directly) from the much earlier Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, with details altered. Not fiction -- more like "urban legend."
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
An allegory to the effect that if you don't do what God says, he'll slaughter you, man, woman and child is a horrible, reprehensible, disgusting allegory. In the "allegory," tiny babies die of drowning. Not a nice story, even as allegory.
I would argue strongly that that's not the point of the story. At all. Additionally, being based on an earlier mythic story from a different culture, that fact further insulates the details as purely mythic, and not intended at all to depict God in any way other than theologically.;)
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Yep, and there's also people out there who claim to talk to invisible sky beings too. Crazy world we live in.
What has that to do with your claim that many people take the mythic stories literally?

One is bad scholarship. The other is delusional.
 

Tristesse

Well-Known Member
What has that to do with your claim that many people take the mythic stories literally?

One is bad scholarship. The other is delusional.

Nothing, I was simply replying to your post about people who get orders to kill from a dog. Which I suspect has nothing at all to do with taking mythic stories literal either.
 

sojourner

Annoyingly Progressive Since 2006
Nothing, I was simply replying to your post about people who get orders to kill from a dog. Which I suspect has nothing at all to do with taking mythic stories literal either.
why bring it up? So what if many people take the mythic stories literally? My point was that that has no bearing on reality -- just as someone receiving orders to kill from a dog has any bearing on reality.
 

Tristesse

Well-Known Member
why bring it up? So what if many people take the mythic stories literally? My point was that that has no bearing on reality -- just as someone receiving orders to kill from a dog has any bearing on reality.

And I agree. Just like people who claim to talk to invisible sky beings has no baring on reality.
 

Noaidi

slow walker
Symbolism!

Sorry, I assumed that you thought that the flood story was to be read literally. There is another thread on this forum in which christians are defending the flood story as literal, and I thought that this thread followed the same line. If you believe that the flood story is symbolic, then fair enough, but what else do you take as allegorical / symbolic? Jesus? The predictions of Revelations? (getting off-topic, here).

Plenty of christians believe literally in the flood story, and I think this thread is aimed at them. My bible, for example, doesn't have a disclaimer stating that "this is a work of fiction" or "this is book should be read allegorically". These people believe that the bible is the literal interpretation of the word of your god.

My questions regarding the method of killing your god adopted in the flood scenario are aimed at the literalists. If you regard the bible as a work of allegorical fiction, then I'll retract my questions to you. I am concerned here with biblical literalists.
 

Tristesse

Well-Known Member
No one has inferred that anyone here has done that...:areyoucra

And I never said that anyone here has. It was analogous to your comment about getting orders to kill from a dog. That was my only point, your statement had as much relevancy as mine did, which is none. ;)
 
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