From: sieferme@stein.u.washington.edu (Eric Sieferman)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: THE MIND OF THE BIBLE BELIEVER
Date: 29 Dec 1992 20:17:59 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Distribution: world,public
NNTP-Posting-Host: stein.u.washington.edu

In article <1992Dec29.163307.21853@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> brian@lpl.arizona.edu (Brian Ceccarelli 602/621-9615) writes:
>
(previous notes about the suffering and death of children, deleted)

>It grieves me to hear this kind of discussion.  God gets accused of
>things that are really not his to begin with.  Both Christians and
>non-Christians alike attribute the pain and suffering in the world
>to God.   This is not true.
>
>   I'll state my point first then back it up.  The point is this.  
>Ultimately, we as humans have chosen death over life.

No one ever gave me this choice.  I doubt if the 4-year old
who died of cancer made this choice, either.

>We had preferred
>cancer and old age a long time ago.   The four year old girl gets what
>she has inherited from the beginnings of humanity.  Death.  Suffering. 
>It is sad.  Truly a pity.  But guess what?  God didn't create it that way. 

According to my Bible, and all of my christian religious training,
God created everything.

>He originally created us to live forever.  God doesn't dole out cancer
>to 4-year olds.
>Such is a sad and major consequence of what we as
>humans chose for ourselves a long long time ago.  

We humans never made any such choice.  According to certain 
traditions, an error was made by the original two humans.
These humans were created by God in full knowledge that the
humans would make the choice they did.  God decided that
their single choice justified the pain, suffering, and death
of billions of their descendants.

I shudder to think what would happen if this God REALLY 
got angry.

>   Do you remember that in the Bible, we humans chose to gain access
>to the knowledge of good and evil at the price of our lives.   Despite God's
>ample and clear warning. we chose to eat from that infamous fruit.  It
>reaped death for Adam and Eve then.  It reaps death for us now.  We,
>through some sort of spiritual genetics, inherited death from the
>originators.  Due to Adam and Eve, humanity had changed ever after. 
>We now die.  80 year olds die. 4 year olds die.  There are old age, cancer,
>sickness, war, starvation.  All this stuff happens now.  But remember,
>this is not the way God created it to begin with.   God's will then is 
>still his will now.  For all to come to Him and have everlasting life.  

It would have been trivial for an omnipotent deity to devise
a universe in which none of this happened.  The only conclusion
is that, since God is creditted with creating the universe,
he prefers the current situation to any alternative.

(biblical quotations, deleted)

Genesis says that A&E suffered for their "crime".  The fact
that their descendants suffer is entirely due to the
nature of divine "justice" which God infused into the
universe.

>You may also note that the "serpent" had a major role in enticing
>Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  You may
>attribute some of the responsibility of man's fall to the serpent,  
>but God still held Adam and Eve accountable for the choice they made.
>The consequence of eating that fruit reaped death for humanity thereafter,
>and yet Adam and Eve knew that consequence behorehand.

Since death had not been invented, how did A&E know what God
meant when he said that death would be their punishment?
And nowhere did God tell them that their "crime"
would be responsible for the death and suffering
of billions;  God kept those cards close to the vest.

>2.  Another example from Job.  This example shows that Satan
>    can and does instigate and cause suffering and death.  Without
>    God's intervention, there is no cork on Satan's evil.

The Satan in Job was God's messenger.  God and Satan made a
little bet about the faithfulness of Job.  God allowed
Satan to do his little business on the Job family.
And nowhere is Satan claimed to be source of all suffering.

BTW, the message of Job is that God is really all-powerful,
and that suffering is not the result of personal transgressions.
Job's crummy friends tried to make him admit that his sufferings
were the payment for his sins, but Job maintained his
righteousness.  God showed up at the end of the story
to let everyone know that Job was correct.

Job is the clearest statement in the Bible that
God is omnipotent, and that nothing happens without
the tacit permission of God.

(quotations from Job, deleted)

>     Who would you say caused all this?  God?  NOT!  God merely 
>allowed Job to be given "into Satan's hands."

What do you mean by "merely"?  The omnipotent God could have
avoided the entire situation, but chose not to.

>Being in Satan's
>hands is not a great place to be.  Job suffered in them.  Satan
>caused the deaths of the servants, the death of his family, and 
>Job's sores.  These were the results of Satan's will, not
>God's will. 
>
>     For some semantic hair splitters out there, some will
>note that during all this havoc, one may think along the lines 
>of how Job and Job's friends think, that is, that God is the one
>who is afflicting Job.  But from verse 1:12, the reader knows it is 
>Satan.  It is again confirmed in verse 2:7.  Job and Job's buddies
>are basically in the dark.  They do not know what is going on behind 
>the curtains like the reader does. The reader is given the
>perspective from the heavenly throne room.  Job and his friends
>have but a limited view.

The last few chapters of Job clearly show that God is
behind the entire drama.

>3.  Consider Jesus' death.  Here was the only sinless man ever
>    to exist.  A perfect man.  God incarnate.  Who killed him?
>    Pontious Pilate?  Judas Iscariot?  Sure, they had their hands
>    in the pie.  Do you know of anyone else?  How about the
>    same dastardly being who enticed Eve to eat the fruit
>    and killed off Job's family?  What "possessed" Judas
>    Iscariot to betray Jesus?

This Satan sounds pretty powerful, that he can possess
Judas to make him do things that he would otherwise
never have done; in fact, if Judas had not done what
he did, the crucifixion would have never occured.
Seems that Satan is pretty stupid, since the 
crucifixion is claimed to be an essential event
in the final triumph of Jesus over death and sin.

BTW, what ever happened to free will?

>From the Bible you will see Satan ruining people's lives and
>enjoying it.  On the other hand, from the Bible you will see God
>fortifying people's lives, promoting the good, removing the
>evil,  loving, and encouraging love.  God wills that no one should
>perish but have everlasting life.  

A long list of biblical quotations showing numerous
cases of God trashing people, tribes, and cities
has been posted here recently.  Did you miss it?

>Here is a question you may want to ask yourself.  "Do I have the
>same affinity to the tree of knowledge of good and evil as did Eve?"

No, I just have Usenet access.  :)

>Eve, remember, was a perfect human being before the fall.  And she
>fell into the trap.  We are in a fallen state already.  Are we
>better than Eve?  Can we handle the knowledge of good and evil?

I can.

>What does human history say?

History says that people who are convinced that they have
knowledge of the will of God have caused more misery
that anything else.

>What was Eve's option in the first
>place?  She could have eaten from the Tree of Life.
>
>That same stubbornness and self-will that led Eve into 
>thinking that she could handle the knowledge of good and evil, is 
>the same stubborness and self-will and over the same thing that 
>prevents people from eating from the Bread of Life today.  
>People are still choosing death over life.  

Actually, I try to choose understanding over superstition.
If this condemns me to eternal misery, so be it.

-- 
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       A Lie is still a Lie, even if you believe it.
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