No good god would make an unlasting punishment. if you have forever, then even Hitler, Dahmer would have enough time for a finite punishment. Even the worst people in the world don't deserve a unlasting punishment.

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[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 28 points 1 day ago (6 children)

Did god not have the power to give us free will without also giving us evil?

Had the power but opted not to: god is himself some part evil
Didn't have the power, did the best he could with the tools he had: god is not omnipotent.

Pick one.

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 13 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Going by the Bible, it's both. He acted with malice and proved himself to not be omnipotent many times.

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[–] FrostBlazer@lemm.ee 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

I think it’s a misread to say it gave us evil. The garden is portrayed as being a paradise with a tree of knowledge. The man and the women, as they self-identified themselves to be, were both allowed agency to be themselves and be blessed without the burden of knowledge, so long as they did not eat the forbidden fruit. Both the man and the woman independently made the conscious decision to break the rule given to them to not eat the fruit of knowledge. The actual sin was both the man and woman breaking their covenant with God, through the eating of the fruit. My take on this is that story is meant to show that God can help you and will help you, but if you choose to go against his will you have the face the consequences of that decision on your own. However, you can still seek forgiveness for your decisions and even be forgiven, but this doesn’t magically put everything back to the way things were before.

The story is more or less a cultural device to explain good and evil from the perspective of the early Israelite society. The story itself is rippled throughout the Bible in this way: God gives instructions, the people follow the instructions at first but then grow complacent, bad things happen because people stop following God’s instructions, and then one of the leaders of the tribe of Israel steps in to help get people back on the right path of following God’s instructions.

I’ll add that functionally Genesis is three serparate creation stories that were pulled into one book. Culturally, the early Israelites borrowed some of the elements of other creation stories of their time seen in other cultures such as the Babylonians. The first creation story is the seven days, the second is what we know as the story Adam and Eve, and the third was the story of the great flood.

[–] Classy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 16 hours ago

A major problem I've always had with that story is the fact that it is predicated on the fact that Adam and Eve acted disobediently by eating of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. But what is disobedience? Is disobedience a form of evil? To disobey God would be evil if it was done with knowledge, correct? How could Adam and Eve have possibly known that what they were doing was evil if they had no knowledge of such? Why would God set the situation up to necessitate that Adam and Eve would eventually disobey his wishes if they had no knowledge of good and evil, and therefore no knowledge of how their actions would have an impact or how their actions would be considered wrong. If a 2 year old disobeys their parents it's easy to brush off their behavior as just being ignorant, and Adam and Eve are effectively like the cosmic 2-year-old, totally incapable of understanding consequences, or righteousness, or disobedience. Fundamentally, the God that created the Garden of Eden must be evil because what he did is akin to me putting an infant in a room with a loaded bear trap and telling them not to touch it. They don't understand the consequences, nor do they really understand what commands mean. Is it really the baby's fault for getting caught in a bear trap if I am the one with superior agency and knowledge and I was the one that set the whole thing up in the first place? Who is really the evil one here?

God is often referred to as the Father, and if he is truly a father I would say that he fails miserably in that duty by the very fact that he put his children directly In harm's way. Yes, it is the responsibility of the parent to put obstacles in the way of their children so that they can grow, but at the same time it is also the responsibility to protect them from grievous harm, and clearly he didn't do this according to Genesis.

[–] GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

the third was the story of the great flood

And don't forget the really fun part, where you can actually still see the three flood stories smashed into one if you look at the sentences.

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[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 54 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Yup.

The teachings of Christianity don't make any fucking sense. (Unless you're willing to gaslight yourself for a lifetime.)

[–] callouscomic@lemm.ee 30 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Now now, don't discount free reign to also gaslight others for a lifetime as well. And judge and shame others too. It's great for complete assholes.

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[–] Jhogenbaum@leminal.space 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Did Calvin write this post?

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 points 16 hours ago

It was Hobbes who said...

"But his Lordship [tells]us that God is wholly here, and wholly there, and wholly every where; because he has no parts. I cannot comprehend nor conceive this. For methinks it implies also that the whole world is also in the whole God, and in every part of God. Nor can I find anything of this in the Scripture. If I could find it there, I could believe it; and if I could find it in the public doctrine of the Church, I could easily abstain from contradicting it."

[–] GoodLuckToFriends@lemmy.today 2 points 16 hours ago

Only the right half. Arminius was responsible for the left.

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well, since this is a religious discussion, I'm a Christian. It's always God.

Job 1:6-12 very clearly shows God granting permission for Satan to test Job.

1 Kings 22:19-22 shows the "court in heaven" and God soliciting ideas from spirits for enticing Ahab to attack Ramoth Gilead, where he will die. When a good suggestion is made, God grants permission.

Exodus 10:1-2 states clearly that God hardened Pharaoh's heart to not let the slaves go, so that God could display his "signs" (plagues).

Satan is a liar, and the father of lies.

Romans 9:19-21 NIV

One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 15 points 1 day ago (13 children)

Wow, sounds like a cruel deity that's definitely not worthy of worship.

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