If there was really a God, bad things wouldn't happen.

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Atleast they will have an excuse on Judgmentday. You however wont.

Which thing do you mean?

Are you saying (A)that at the moment Jesus was born everyone on the planet instantly magically knew he existed?

Or are you saying (B) that "yes...for a long time there were (and may still be) millions of folks who dont know about Jesus, but despite that (in your opinion) those folks do not go to Hell?


B would make sense, but A would not make sense.

I don't believe they were punished, and I believe this verse confirms that:

The Law brings about wrath, but where there is no Law, there also is no violation. (Romans 4:15)

Last edited by Campin_Cat on 19 Jan 2017, 9:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

Close, but I am not trying to say specifically who either does or does not "go to hell". I am only saying what I have said: I highly doubt that someone who never knew anything about the "Jesus" of sectarian religion is automatically doomed to ultimately land in eternal damnation. Or to say that a bit differently: "Salvation" was available before "Jesus" had ever come onto the scene...but all of that is actually off-topic here in this thread.

I, TOO, believe humans were perfect, at the time of creation----and, I believe that when they chose to NOT follow God's Law, that THAT is what made them what God called, "flawed".

Who left them alone with the Serpent in the garden? How could they know that they should not do something if they had no knowledge of good or evil?

They were naked and not ashamed, because they did not know to be ashamed... Then they must not have been capable of understanding that it would be "wrong" and "not good" to disobey God.

I don't think there is any way around making God responsible for the existence of evil in creation. The stories in Genesis are more like a prestidigitator's misdirection than an actual denial of God's authorship of evil. Even if you take the more complicated idea that Lucifer was always at work, God created angels. Why did some of them rebel? Did God make them incompetently or could God not foresee that they would turn that way?

And then there is that idea in Genesis 6 after the notorious Nephilim passage:
NRSV (Oremus Bibile Browser)


Or if you are a KJVophile


Sounds like the Lord is recognizing that He made a mistake, doesn't it? "I did a bad thing making these little horrors, and now I have to fix it by killing almost everybody."

It "repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth."

Maybe it should have repented him that he allowed the sons of God to go into the comely daughters of men... but the story originates with ancient desert nomads and they had some very different moral ideas.

There are certainly many ideas to mull over there, but the "man went wrong when Eve listened to the Snake against the will of God" version doesn't quite stand up to close scrutiny, I think.

The deeper meaning must be that God intended that man should struggle with ethical reasoning, or He would have provided simpler and less conflicted explanations.

Side note: This hasn't been a special interest for several years, but it flares up every now and again. It's odd how those things can go dormant but never really die, at least, not in my experience.

Depends on how you read the text, really.

Also: there was once in Christendom a widely held belief in the "harrowing of hell," an idea that many modern mainline protestant Christians (e.g., Methodists) visit when they use the Apostles Creed: He descended into Hell. On the third day, He rose again.

The once-widespread doctrine was that all the righteous among those who had never had a chance to hear the Gospel were saved by the direct intervention of Christ during his sojourn in hell/sheol.

This is a bit complicated by ongoing confusion over what is meant by sheol, hell and hades, but that seldom stops people from getting passionately certain about these things.

Ofcourse but thats just a doctrine. We should be carefull about the things we say concerning these kind of events. The Bible never mentions it so it's merely speculation.

That knowledge was the fruit of the tree, and they had been told to not eat of the tree lest they die. One might speculate they had been set up to fail -- Who can know the mind of God? -- but even that would not change the fact they had willfully disobeyed in spite of having been forewarned of the consequence.


Who has said it is wrong or even just a bad idea to disobey God? As best I can tell, each man or woman is free to decide that matter for himself or herself.


Agreed.


No, just grieved over what was going on and His apparent need to "repent" (turn away).


I would find it difficult to doubt He knew man would, but I would not want to speculate as to His intent.

Whenever I'm trying to understand God's intentions----and, because God is referred to as "God the Father----I equate Him to an "earthly father".....

They didn't have to have knowledge of good and evil, they needed only to obey the Father----IMO, it would be no different than an earthly father telling his kid not to go play wherever, and the kid disobeyed and got hurt. Should, then, the father be said to be a bad father?

I don't think they were left-alone with the serpent. When God created Man, he felt that it wasn't right for Man to be alone, and made every kind of animal, from the soil, and brought them to Adam, to name. There doesn't seem to be a passage-of-time indicator, between when God created the animals, and then Eve, and then the serpent spoke to them.

Also, alot of people think the serpent is an incarnation of the devil----I'm thinking that it's possible that that's not so, at least, at the time (one of my Bibles describes the serpent as "crafty", not "evil"), because serpents were only "made" bad AFTER that incident. God told the serpent that, for his punishment for making Eve do what God had told her NOT to do, the serpent would be singled-out from the rest of the "animals" and cursed, and henceforth crawl on his belly (snake), and Eve's offspring and the snake's offspring would, forever, be enemies.

As for them not being capable of understanding that it was wrong to disobey God, and being ashamed to be naked----again, I equate it to an earthly father..... A child KNOWS, instinctively, IMO, not to disobey their father----but, a child learns that they should be ashamed to be naked.

As for God taking responsibility for the creation of evil, we weren't talking about that----we were simply talking-about people being "flawed" (I, for instance, certainly am "flawed"----but, I ain't never shot-up a movie-house, which, to me, seems evil)----so, I'm not going to address that last paragraph (or, the rest of your post), right now, to keep my focus on what we were discussing: "flawed".

Well, let's think about that for a moment.

Suppose an ordinary dad left his kids in the playroom with a plate of cookies and said "I'll be back in a while, don't eat any of those while I'm gone" would he be a bad father?

No, not really. A foolish one, perhaps.

But what if an ordinary dad left his kids alone in the yard with an uncovered deep well in the corner and said "I'll be back in a while, don't play over there while I'm gone." Would he be a bad father?

A negligent one, definitely. A bad one? I think many would say yes.

But suppose an ordinary dad left his kids in the playroom with a loaded pistol, no safety. Would he be a bad father?

I think most people would say yes. I'm sure child protective services would say yes. The same would be true if the forbidden object was an armed claymore mine.

Is losing eternal life and ruining the moral order of creation, ensuring that many would end history in hell for eternity and there would be immense suffering all around more like the plate of cookies or the gun? It seems a lot worse than the gun, to me.

The consequence is immense.

Why not just put a fence around the tree that Adam and Eve couldn't cross?

Then again, we know that animals don't carry on conversations with humans and people evolved in Africa rather than being created in a garden somewhere, so I think it's good to remember these stories are allegorical and symbolic rather than historical.

I suspect a great many fathers will be amused by that notion!


It's not so much a question of God taking responsibility for the creation of evil as people needing to tell themselves that he is somehow the ultimate author of everything, except the things they don't like.

It seem to me that the flawed nature of people was built in from the start. They were always going to eat that fruit, because evolutionary pressures drove them to the large mind and language skills that enable knowledge of good and evil.

The knowledge of good and evil inevitably comes with consciousness, self awareness and community.

The argument applies to a loving god, especially one specifically regarding itself as good by human standards. By all meas, there could be an apathetic god which would be a lot more likely I think anyway, though simply saying "there could be an omnipotent being that cares so little that he doesn't interfere" holds about as much likelihood to be true as the claim of "there are invisible aliens in my garage and they're really quick and quiet so I never bump into them or hear them"; entirely and absolutely possible, but there's no reason to believe it's actually the truth.

I'm thinking that God didn't create evil----I'm thinking that because of "free will", Man chose to do evil things.

As I understand it, Lucifer wasn't content with not BEING God, so he rebelled----he (Lucifer) decided that he was gonna make it his life's mission to undo anything that God did, so that God would have to acknowledge that Lucifer was THEE MOST powerful.

As for why other angels rebelled: It is my understanding that God gave angels "free will", as well----and, some of them decided, I guess, that it would be more beneficial to follow Lucifer, than God, and became "the fallen angels".

As for God foreseeing that they would "turn that way", I can only guess that he COULD, as I believe that God can foresee what HUMANS will do, as well.


But, that's just it, IMO, God didn't make "these little horrors"----that's what they BECAME!! IMO, what God made were perfect human beings, and therefore, NOT a mistake. God saying He was sorry that He made Man, is not the same, IMO, as Him saying He made a mistake.


Well, maybe----but, as I said before, He gave everybody "free will"; and, again, I liken it to an earthly father, to whom a child often repeats: "Why can't you let me make my OWN decisions----it's MY life!!".


The "man went wrong" thing stands-up, well-enough, for me, because I choose to believe it.

I don't feel God intended that man should struggle----in-fact, God promised Man that Man WOULDN'T struggle, if Man would just believe-in / follow God.

Your version sounds good.
Maybe I spent to much time with my head in a computer, but I think of it this way.

From God's celestial IDE

B seems like a better choice to this ignorant being. If God knew they would screw up, could have prevented it and let it happen anyway then He made the choice to have it happen.

At the very least, he would seem to be partially responsible, like a bar owner or parent who lets a drunk drive off.

I don't ever remember hearing / reciting the "Apostle's Creed", like that----and, I was raised Southern Baptist, Baptist, and Methodist. The way I remember it, is:

"I believe in God the Father Almighty,
maker of Heaven and earth;

And in His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord:
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
and was crucified, dead, and buried.
On the third day He arose from the dead,;
and ascended into heaven,
where He sit-eth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come, to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting; Amen."

I've never known "He arose from the dead", to mean that he had been in Hell----I've always believed it meant, simply, that He came-back, to life.

Some Protestant Taliban (or maybe it was Wesley) cleaned it up for the version you are accustomed to. I learned multiple versions of it, some with the original "harrowing" references because of a branch of the United Methodist Church that liked to pay respect to the rich and varied traditions from which the modern Church grew.

The original in Latin with the "descended to hell" part italicized:

The Greek has the same wording:

The Anglican Book of Common Prayer (1662) version is:


Wesley had issues with this and omitted the "descended into hell" language (and lowercased "catholic" because it would never do to be confused with Papists!) but see the asterisked footnotes!


The Lutheran service book keeps it Old School:


So you remember it right, but it wasn't always that way and the old way is still used in other denominations or particular observances within a given denomination like the United Methodist Church.