Lionel Refson
Member
Genesis Chapter 9 [9:1] God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth."
The flood has subsided, Noah and his sons have been saved.. All that remains are the descendants of us all Noah and his sons, the Fathers of the whole human race. God or if you are Muslim, Allah then blesses all of us, through our ancestors equally. This is the first blessing that God was to give to all of us and it is quite remarkable. Note the lack of religious instruction. Note the lack of any conditions attached. Remember how you should be reading this with God’s perfection in your mind’s eye! Ask yourself how come God made no rules on how we were to behave or worship him? At this key stage? Why is this? God’s first and only blessing to the WHOLE of humanity carries great weight.
Could it be that God could not see our future and therefore got His blessing wrong, or perhaps God forget to tell us about religious duties and made a mess of the whole opportunity. We can’t accept a God that gets it wrong, isn’t so all-powerful and makes a mess of things. that would not be God. It is more than reasonable to argue that God should be perfect, perfection. God should know all about our future and our past and tailor the blessing accordingly which clearly is what happened. We are all equally blessed, especially when God must have known that the descendants of Shem would become Semites i.e. Jews and Muslims, no more blessed, despite their religions, than the descendants of Ham or Japheth. . But humans are not equal are we?. We are not born into materially the same set of circumstances BUT we are all equally God-blessed, through our ancestors, the ancestors of the whole world. God didn’t get it wrong God is always right
The key point is that we all have the same value in the eyes of God even if our material circumstances differ wildly . Ergo an atheist is as equally blessed as a Rabbi or Imam, in the eyes of God, without any dispute. Remember this is Gods first and only blessing to the whole of humanity. God could have said, "Be fruitful and multiply. Those who bow down to me and wear hats will get to the heaven, the rest Hell".
We could therefore conclude that God does not endorse religion. Of course, it would be argued that many later verses contain all the prescriptive elements of religion as given to God by Moses BUT there is none of it in the First Blessing. Perhaps the later parts were added or amended? That is not such a wild theory.
Following on from Genesis 9:1 we read
9:2-9:4[9:2] The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. [9:3] Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. [9:4] Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its soul and blood.The meaning is clear Don’t eat flesh with its soul and blood i.e. don’t eat live animals is sound advice and may contain a reference related to health and medicine but for now it is not one that we are concerned with..
[9:5] For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.This is a reference to the after-life and the day of Judgement No one on this Earth can prove whether or not there is an after-life but according to God who is infallible there is something more for us It would not be wild to assume that if we hold God's blessing to our hearts and be fruitful to ourselves and others we would not walk down the wrong path but it is the next verse that should make us reflect a while.
[9:6] Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind.
God doesn’t kill nor punish us. Read the verse again…Whoever sheds the blood of man through man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man. What God is saying here is so very clear. “If you do the very worst of crimes i.e. murder then even then I am not going to intervene and cause holy fire to sweep down from the heavens."
In other words God is not going to punish the murderer in this life even though he or she is acting in a manner contradictory to the Blessing where God blessed us all equally to be fruitful and multiply.. God is saying "Because humans were made in my image then it’s up to humans to try the murderer be fair as I was with Adam and Eve and Cain the murderer who killed his brother and yet I spared him. Give your murderer a fair hearing and sentence him. If you kill him then it is your right”The implications of this are far-reaching. Anyone who kills in the name of God is not killing in the name of God at all. We were all equally blessed. As God is not orchestrating any of these killings we can see right through the phoney theology of religions that urge us to shed blood in the name of unless again one blasphemes by assuming incorrectly that God got his blessing wrong. This verse is one of the verses used by religion to teach the philosophy of an eye for an eye i.e. they’ve killed your ancestors so you should kill them. But the verse does not mean that in any way. .
The often-overlooked part of the verse are the words for in the image of God He made man. The point is that God had already forgiven Adam and Eve for disobeying him and Cain for killing his brother. God had already shown us what mercy is and Noah and his Sons would have understood. If the worst of crimes is punishable by us, not God, what about all the rest of our crimes against each other. I believe it is right to say that the punishment for these crimes would also be down to us. In fact God doesn’t seem to be involved or want to be involved in our daily life, despite what later religions preach to us and it’s the later religious nonsense that would be thrown at you if you were to dare stand up and say that we are all equally blessed and God does not punish us but then in my opinion, the later religious writings are just man-made echoes of the earlier stories and poor ones at that. What would you value more do you want the original or a poor, twisted, added to and unoriginal copy?
Of course, counter arguments to this conclusion could be ..But in the Torah later The Israelites with God’s help killed all sorts of tribes.”These writings came later in the Torah. God/Allah who is without error nor mistake gave us these words first and would not have changed His mind, nor contradicted himself, nor got his original words wrong. It is likely that there were embellishments but not here, not at this early and original stage, where scribes struggled so hard to write down the words correctly and without error..
Perhaps the later stories were the works of fiction. It is a well-known that the Genesis chapter predates the other chapters.
Another argument might be But in Jeremiah/Isaiah/Ezekiel/Amos etc. it states...
These are not the words of God/Allah. These writings all come much later on.
Another objection might be “But it states in the new testament or the Koran”
The New testament and the Koran came much later than the Old testament, How could an-all seeing Allah/God change His mind and why would the subject place more emphasis on a later work than an earlier one. The original blessing did not state “Smite only the unbeliever or those that do not follow the ways of God". It does not ask for the help of man to clear up the sinners. It cannot be explained in any other way. By omission, God had said nothing to us about rape, or robbery, or fraud, or sexual relations with the same sex or anything else. That is because God made it so clear to us here by simple omission that all other acts are subject to the law of Man. He gave us that freedom.. According to what God said we have the right to kill, those who murder unequivocally. This is big news and directly counters the commandment “Thou shall not kill”, but it is there in Genesis in black and white.
cont
The flood has subsided, Noah and his sons have been saved.. All that remains are the descendants of us all Noah and his sons, the Fathers of the whole human race. God or if you are Muslim, Allah then blesses all of us, through our ancestors equally. This is the first blessing that God was to give to all of us and it is quite remarkable. Note the lack of religious instruction. Note the lack of any conditions attached. Remember how you should be reading this with God’s perfection in your mind’s eye! Ask yourself how come God made no rules on how we were to behave or worship him? At this key stage? Why is this? God’s first and only blessing to the WHOLE of humanity carries great weight.
Could it be that God could not see our future and therefore got His blessing wrong, or perhaps God forget to tell us about religious duties and made a mess of the whole opportunity. We can’t accept a God that gets it wrong, isn’t so all-powerful and makes a mess of things. that would not be God. It is more than reasonable to argue that God should be perfect, perfection. God should know all about our future and our past and tailor the blessing accordingly which clearly is what happened. We are all equally blessed, especially when God must have known that the descendants of Shem would become Semites i.e. Jews and Muslims, no more blessed, despite their religions, than the descendants of Ham or Japheth. . But humans are not equal are we?. We are not born into materially the same set of circumstances BUT we are all equally God-blessed, through our ancestors, the ancestors of the whole world. God didn’t get it wrong God is always right
The key point is that we all have the same value in the eyes of God even if our material circumstances differ wildly . Ergo an atheist is as equally blessed as a Rabbi or Imam, in the eyes of God, without any dispute. Remember this is Gods first and only blessing to the whole of humanity. God could have said, "Be fruitful and multiply. Those who bow down to me and wear hats will get to the heaven, the rest Hell".
We could therefore conclude that God does not endorse religion. Of course, it would be argued that many later verses contain all the prescriptive elements of religion as given to God by Moses BUT there is none of it in the First Blessing. Perhaps the later parts were added or amended? That is not such a wild theory.
Following on from Genesis 9:1 we read
9:2-9:4[9:2] The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. [9:3] Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. [9:4] Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its soul and blood.The meaning is clear Don’t eat flesh with its soul and blood i.e. don’t eat live animals is sound advice and may contain a reference related to health and medicine but for now it is not one that we are concerned with..
[9:5] For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.This is a reference to the after-life and the day of Judgement No one on this Earth can prove whether or not there is an after-life but according to God who is infallible there is something more for us It would not be wild to assume that if we hold God's blessing to our hearts and be fruitful to ourselves and others we would not walk down the wrong path but it is the next verse that should make us reflect a while.
[9:6] Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind.
God doesn’t kill nor punish us. Read the verse again…Whoever sheds the blood of man through man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man. What God is saying here is so very clear. “If you do the very worst of crimes i.e. murder then even then I am not going to intervene and cause holy fire to sweep down from the heavens."
In other words God is not going to punish the murderer in this life even though he or she is acting in a manner contradictory to the Blessing where God blessed us all equally to be fruitful and multiply.. God is saying "Because humans were made in my image then it’s up to humans to try the murderer be fair as I was with Adam and Eve and Cain the murderer who killed his brother and yet I spared him. Give your murderer a fair hearing and sentence him. If you kill him then it is your right”The implications of this are far-reaching. Anyone who kills in the name of God is not killing in the name of God at all. We were all equally blessed. As God is not orchestrating any of these killings we can see right through the phoney theology of religions that urge us to shed blood in the name of unless again one blasphemes by assuming incorrectly that God got his blessing wrong. This verse is one of the verses used by religion to teach the philosophy of an eye for an eye i.e. they’ve killed your ancestors so you should kill them. But the verse does not mean that in any way. .
The often-overlooked part of the verse are the words for in the image of God He made man. The point is that God had already forgiven Adam and Eve for disobeying him and Cain for killing his brother. God had already shown us what mercy is and Noah and his Sons would have understood. If the worst of crimes is punishable by us, not God, what about all the rest of our crimes against each other. I believe it is right to say that the punishment for these crimes would also be down to us. In fact God doesn’t seem to be involved or want to be involved in our daily life, despite what later religions preach to us and it’s the later religious nonsense that would be thrown at you if you were to dare stand up and say that we are all equally blessed and God does not punish us but then in my opinion, the later religious writings are just man-made echoes of the earlier stories and poor ones at that. What would you value more do you want the original or a poor, twisted, added to and unoriginal copy?
Of course, counter arguments to this conclusion could be ..But in the Torah later The Israelites with God’s help killed all sorts of tribes.”These writings came later in the Torah. God/Allah who is without error nor mistake gave us these words first and would not have changed His mind, nor contradicted himself, nor got his original words wrong. It is likely that there were embellishments but not here, not at this early and original stage, where scribes struggled so hard to write down the words correctly and without error..
Perhaps the later stories were the works of fiction. It is a well-known that the Genesis chapter predates the other chapters.
Another argument might be But in Jeremiah/Isaiah/Ezekiel/Amos etc. it states...
These are not the words of God/Allah. These writings all come much later on.
Another objection might be “But it states in the new testament or the Koran”
The New testament and the Koran came much later than the Old testament, How could an-all seeing Allah/God change His mind and why would the subject place more emphasis on a later work than an earlier one. The original blessing did not state “Smite only the unbeliever or those that do not follow the ways of God". It does not ask for the help of man to clear up the sinners. It cannot be explained in any other way. By omission, God had said nothing to us about rape, or robbery, or fraud, or sexual relations with the same sex or anything else. That is because God made it so clear to us here by simple omission that all other acts are subject to the law of Man. He gave us that freedom.. According to what God said we have the right to kill, those who murder unequivocally. This is big news and directly counters the commandment “Thou shall not kill”, but it is there in Genesis in black and white.
cont