Jesus the man or Jesus the Son of God

[rusmeister]

It's not possible to have free will without knowing good and evil. The very first part of the story depicts the very first thing that happened.

Agreed.

And that was the deck being stacked against us. You may as well put canvas and paints in a locked room, not even tell me they're there, and tell me I failed when I don't produce a painting.

How so? They were told, not only what not to do, but honestly told the consequences. That's not "a deck being stacked against them" any more than you telling your children of dangers and warning them is for them.

And you say the burning pit of Hell is the result of our western paradigm/bad translations/etc. But Gehenna exists. Your objection should be that the words are often used incorrectly, because people incorrectly translated more than one word, which represented more than one distinct state of being, as "Hell." But one of those states of being is an eternal fate named after a burning trashbin outside of Jerusalem.

I didn't say 'the burning pit of Hell is the result of our western paradigm/bad translations/etc.' I said that our conceptions of hell are based on bad translation and confusion of concepts. Above all, the confusing of the state of death and the state of eternal damnation (destruction).

A third objection turns on the frightful intensity of the pains of
Hell as suggested by mediaeval art and, indeed, by certain passages
in Scripture. Von Hügel here warns us not to confuse the doctrine
itself with the imagery by which it may be conveyed. Our Lord
speaks of Hell under three symbols: first, that of punishment
("everlasting punishment" Matt. xxv, 46); second, that of destruction
("fear Him who is able to destroy both body and soul in Hell," Matt.
x,28 ); and thirdly, that of privation, exclusion, or banishment into
"the darkness outside", as in the parables of the man without a
wedding garment or of the wise and foolish virgins. The prevalent
image of fire is significant because it combines the ideas of torment
and destruction. Now it is quite certain that all these expressions
are intended to suggest something unspeakably horrible, and any
interpretation, which does not face that fact is, I am afraid, out of
court from the beginning. But it is not necessary to concentrate on
the images of torture to the exclusion of those suggesting
destruction and privation. What can that be whereof all three
images are equally proper symbols? Destruction, we should
naturally assume, means the unmaking, or cessation, of the
destroyed. And people often talk as if the "annihilation" of a soul
were intrinsically possible. In all our experience, however, the
destruction of one thing means the emergence of something else.
Burn a log, and you have gases, heat and ash. To have been a log
means now being those three things. If soul can be destroyed, must
there not be a state of having been a human soul? And is not that,
perhaps, the state which is equally well described as torment,
destruction; and privation? You will remember that in the parable,
the saved go to a place prepared for them, while the damned go to a
place never made for men at all. To enter heaven is to become more
human than you ever succeeded in being in earth; to enter hell, is
to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell
is not a man: it is "remains". To be a complete man means to have
the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God: to have
been a man - to be an ex-man or "damned ghost" - would
presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centred in its self and
passions utterly uncontrolled by the will. It is, of course, impossible
to imagine what the consciousness of such a creature - already a
loose congeries of mutually antagonistic sins rather than a sinner -
would be like. There may be a truth in the saying that "hell is hell,
not from its own point of view, but from the heavenly point of view".
I do not think this belies the severity of Our Lord's words. It is only
to the damned that their fate could ever seem less than
unendurable. And it must be admitted that as, in these last
chapters, we think of eternity, the categories of pain and pleasure,
which have engaged us so long, begin to recede, as vaster good and
evil looms in sight. Neither pain nor pleasure as such has the last
word. Even if it were possible that the experience (if it can be called
experience) of the lost contained no pain and much pleasure, still,
that black pleasure would be such as to send any soul, not already
damned, flying to its prayers in nightmare terror: even if there were
pains in heaven, all who understand would desire them.

"The Problem of Pain"

[Fist and Faith]

You're really sugar-coating it. God didn't "warn" them of a "danger." He "commanded" them not to eat the apple. And he was angry that they disobeyed him, not that they did something that harmed them. And when they did disobey him, he punished them. But not just pain in childbirth for Eve, and making things more difficult for Adam. He also denied them eternal life. It wasn't any sort of "natural consequence" of eating the apple. It was a natural consequence of not eating from the tree of life. They had now "become like" God, and he didn't want them to have eternal life. So he kicked them out of Eden, so they couldn't eat from the tree of life. He could have let them stay in Eden, where they could have eaten from the tree of life, and lived there forever, knowing good and evil. God didn't want that. It was God's decision; not some natural consequence.

This isn't any flawed understanding of vague texts. This is straight-forward stuff. It's spelled out very plainly.

[rusmeister]

You're really sugar-coating it. God didn't "warn" them of a "danger." He "commanded" them not to eat the apple. And he was angry that they disobeyed him, not that they did something that harmed them. And when they did disobey him, he punished them. But not just pain in childbirth for Eve, and making things more difficult for Adam. He also denied them eternal life. It wasn't any sort of "natural consequence" of eating the apple. It was a natural consequence of not eating from the tree of life. They had now "become like" God, and he didn't want them to have eternal life. So he kicked them out of Eden, so they couldn't eat from the tree of life. He could have let them stay in Eden, where they could have eaten from the tree of life, and lived there forever, knowing good and evil. God didn't want that. It was God's decision; not some natural consequence.

This isn't any flawed understanding of vague texts. This is straight-forward stuff. It's spelled out very plainly.

Fist, you can accuse me of wanting to believe things; I think the same can surely be said of you. The ideas you speak of - which you admittedly don't believe in - are drawn straight from your own reading of a text based on your own understandings. Even if I take a good modern translation of Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita", you're still going to have problems with cultural things you don't understand - and won't, until you learn a good deal more about Soviet Russia than you now know. And that text is only removed in time by one lifetime - 70-odd years. What then of even a good translation of the Bible? How do you know that, for example, the concept of marriage, such as Mary being "married" to Joseph, mean precisely the same things as they do in our context today - especially when it really does mean almost exactly the same thing, but some things DON'T coincide, and it is where they do not that happens to be the case? How then, do you think you can correctly and completely understand the story on your own, simply by picking it up and reading it? Of COURSE you'll understand some things. And other things you'll get wrong - unless you have guides from much closer to that space and time that can tell you what it means. In a sense, we need our translations and commentaries regularly updated, if only to keep up with changes in languages and understandings. And yet people here pick up a translation from 400 years ago, translated from Masoretic texts that basically tossed the Greek and Latin overboard, and then turning around and telling ME what this stuff means. I don't even know so much and have to frequently turn to the Church - to a priest, to commentaries of the Church fathers, to get better clarity. I'm not a know-it-all. That's really the start of real learning. To learn what you don't know. If you think you already know then you can't possibly learn.

In short, you're actually coming from Protestant Sola Scriptura assumptions that are n/a in the Eastern Tradition, and making your own conclusions, which aren't even Protestant (although the logic of Sola Scriptura allows for it), as most Protestants will tell you that you are leaving out a ton of clarifying Scripture (on which I would agree with them).

Yes, God DID warn (after the commandment), even in the "plain text", and there is nothing to say it was an apple that was eaten. The trouble begins when you interpret "become like God" to mean actually become a deity. If a more correct modern interpretation is "to become his own god", then the meaning rapidly shifts, and your understanding, based on your plain reading, turns out to be in error.

[Fist and Faith]

Let's not worry about how I might misunderstand things that come later. Let's talk about this relatively short, clearly spoken section. I don't interpret "become like God" to mean actually become a deity. I don't interpret it at all. God said what it means: knowing good and evil. But that knowing did not cause them to lose eternal life. It's not like they were warned not to make cups from the clay in a certain area, because there was a lot of lead there, and they ignored the warning, and got lead poisoning from drinking from those cups. They didn't eat mushrooms they were warned against, and, naturally, died. We're not talking about a natural consequence. God no longer wanted them to have eternal life, so he didn't allow it.

That's all perfectly clear, actually spoken stuff. I don't see any translation that's ambiguous. If you think it means something else, it's because you are interpreting things in ways that are not there. Is something said later in the Bible that says it means something other than it says?

[rusmeister]

Let's not worry about how I might misunderstand things that come later. Let's talk about this relatively short, clearly spoken section. I don't interpret "become like God" to mean actually become a deity. I don't interpret it at all. God said what it means: knowing good and evil. But that knowing did not cause them to lose eternal life. It's not like they were warned not to make cups from the clay in a certain area, because there was a lot of lead there, and they ignored the warning, and got lead poisoning from drinking from those cups. They didn't eat mushrooms they were warned against, and, naturally, died. We're not talking about a natural consequence. God no longer wanted them to have eternal life, so he didn't allow it.

That's all perfectly clear, actually spoken stuff. I don't see any translation that's ambiguous. If you think it means something else, it's because you are interpreting things in ways that are not there. Is something said later in the Bible that says it means something other than it says?

We ALWAYS interpret everything - you are interpreting what I have written right now. It is a fact that we frequently misunderstand each other due to misinterpretation. I agree that things CAN be "plain" at times - but as I said, it is NOT always plain - if a Russian says "I have a country house" - you have one image. He has quite a different one. How you picture his house, his neighbors, naturally tends to be along the lines of country houses that you are familiar with. I know for a fact that the Russian "dacha" is quite a different thing from American or English country houses, and involves a lot of realities that you don't have a clue of. And this is in your own time. You are separated by distance, language and culture alone (if I dare say such a monstrous word) and not by time.

If you want an Orthodox explanation of the text, you have to turn to the Church and ask. You can get a short and simple answer to satisfy a dilettante or a lengthy complex answer to satisfy a theologian. As a layman, I've given you the short answer for dummies. You insist that your interpretation of the text, based on your own authority and limitations of knowledge, is more correct.

You say you don't believe the text at all, I say I don't accept Sola Scriptura. Isn't there some ironic humor in your attempting to convince me of an interpretation via a Sola Scriptura approach? If Sola Scriptura is invalid because of the tremendous problems of what is NOT explained in the text as times, languages and cultures change, then it's no use quoting text at me. You need the right interpretation.

FR John Matusiak is just an e-mail away (info@oca.org)

Contact Fr. John Matusiak. YOU WILL RECEIVE A PERSONAL RESPONSE!

, and he's far more competent to speak on these things than I am. Sure I can run and do the work for you, but why should I when I don't even believe you are interested in the answer?

[Fist and Faith]

You're evading the issue. No, you have not given me the short answer for dummies. You tried putting words in my mouth. I did not interpret it as "actually become a deity" or "become his own god." I'm merely repeating what it says. If you have reason to believe it means something other that what it says, then please tell me what that reason is. You want "strong, intelligent belief"? Let's see something other than avoidance. I'm reporting exactly what's written in this part of the Bible that is very clearly written, and asking how it can be that it doesn't mean what it says.

[rusmeister]

You're evading the issue. No, you have not given me the short answer for dummies. You tried putting words in my mouth. I did not interpret it as "actually become a deity" or "become his own god." I'm merely repeating what it says. If you have reason to believe it means something other that what it says, then please tell me what that reason is. You want "strong, intelligent belief"? Let's see something other than avoidance. I'm reporting exactly what's written in this part of the Bible that is very clearly written, and asking how it can be that it doesn't mean what it says.

You are not merely "repeating what it says", you are taking a translation of an ancient text and then opining on your understanding of this English translation.
One personal reason off the cuff why I believe the Orthodox understanding to be correct and your "Sola Scriptura" interpretation wrong is because the Orthodox explanation makes sense in a complete system of theology. Taken as you interpret it, it becomes "Huh?" It makes no sense in the context of the rest of the Scriptures, let alone the Tradition which Scripture is a part of. And that's just off the cuff from a lowly layman. Even if it IS wrong (as you believe), try to say that it is also unintelligent - which is the one thing I believe I can decidedly prove to be false - the idea that my faith is incompatible with reason.

If you've never studied a foreign language on an advanced level - sufficient to study the problems of translation, you will probably have some trouble grasping it (and this is only ONE of the problems of interpretation). Your reliance on taking a text at face value without footnotes is an indicator that this is the case. Interpretation is THE problem of the western world in understanding the Christian faith, where the individual is the authority doing the interpreting.

Here is a highly relevant comment on this:
www.oca.org/OCchapter.asp?SID=2&ID=111

[Fist and Faith]

You still won't answer. I ask for clarification, and you just say I don't understand other languages. True enough, I don't know any Hebrew at all. How about some help? You either know how this should be translated, and/or what it means in the context of the culture in which it was written, or somebody who does know told you. So help a guy out.



All of these translations tell us that God prevented them from gaining eternal life, because they now knew good and evil. If that's wrong, tell me why/how. You want credit for intelligent, reasonable faith. You say you're not just blindly following what you're told simply because it makes you feel better. I'm asking for the tiniest bit of intelligence or reason. How are the translations inaccurate, or how did what they say mean something different to the ancient Hebrews?

[rusmeister]

Thanks, Fist,
(Now that I know which text you are referring to)
The answer is "I don't know."
I'm sure you could come with a hundred questions to which I don't know the answer offhand. What I DO know is that I can ask, and I always get a decent answer. You can ask, too, and even cut me out as a harried and useless middleman. But I have fired off the question to Fr John, because I think it good and reasonable. That's the great thing about the Church. It's perfectly fine to ask questions like that. Many of them are handled in the catechumenate, which I never went through...

[High Lord Tolkien]

Can I request a split for all this off topic stuff?
Mainly Rus and Fist's posts.

[Fist and Faith]

Cool, rus. I'm interested in what he says.

And you get to be the middleman because you're the one coming here telling me I'm wrong about everything, and demanding that I see your faith as reasoned and intelligent. We disagree in different ways about a couple of different reasons to believe anything in the first place.
-We agree that the universe is a cause & effect system, yet something must be uncaused. I don't see reason to think that the uncaused, first thing is not the universe that we all agree exists. You think that can't be, so you think the uncaused, first thing moves back a step to a creator. Well, we just don't agree. But there's no detail we can point at and say, "See? Right there!"
-We disagree on how to to interpret human behavior in regards to Lewis' moral compass. This time, we each point to specific things, and say, "See? Right there!" But we each think the other doesn't see it, or ignores it, or whatever.

So now I'm looking for reason and intelligence within the faith itself. Starting at the beginning seems like it might be a good place. And the Fall is certainly an important part of your faith. But, trying my darndest to read God's words without reading anything into them, I see contradiction with your faith. You don't have to be the middleman. You can ignore me. But you can't show me reason or intelligence if you do.

[rusmeister]

Cool, rus. I'm interested in what he says.

And you get to be the middleman because you're the one coming here telling me I'm wrong about everything, and demanding that I see your faith as reasoned and intelligent. We disagree in different ways about a couple of different reasons to believe anything in the first place.
-We agree that the universe is a cause & effect system, yet something must be uncaused. I don't see reason to think that the uncaused, first thing is not the universe that we all agree exists. You think that can't be, so you think the uncaused, first thing moves back a step to a creator. Well, we just don't agree. But there's no detail we can point at and say, "See? Right there!"
-We disagree on how to to interpret human behavior in regards to Lewis' moral compass. This time, we each point to specific things, and say, "See? Right there!" But we each think the other doesn't see it, or ignores it, or whatever.

So now I'm looking for reason and intelligence within the faith itself. Starting at the beginning seems like it might be a good place. And the Fall is certainly an important part of your faith. But, trying my darndest to read God's words without reading anything into them, I see contradiction with your faith. You don't have to be the middleman. You can ignore me. But you can't show me reason or intelligence if you do.

Hey Fist,
Have I ever really ignored you? Our conversation is now running in the years; threatening into the decades . Like I said, I have this funny feeling that you are a kind of person who is particularly like me (Indiana Jones to Belloc - "Now you're getting insulting" )
I think I've showed plenty of reason and intelligence along the way - as much as anybody who doesn't agree with you can.

Here you say "God's words". That's one of our ten thousand bones of contention - about your understanding of my faith. I don't in fact believe them to be "God's words" - with the particular implications that necessarily follow, but words inspired by God but written by men - fallible men, in fact.

If I really HAVE discovered the most complete and correct version of the truth, then I surely can't know a whole lot about it personally - only enough to overwhelm me and convince me without a doubt. But for me to know even a quarter of it? - No way. So I personally am not the complete answer man. But I have found something that blows me away, where practically every piece fits into a complete whole and forms a complete picture, from which EVERYTHING acquires meaning - and justifies all the things that would otherwise be meaningless as I have been saying. It makes sense out of them - meaning. As GKC put it, the strange shape of the key fits the strange shape of the lock.

So you're NOT going to find the sense of Orthodoxy by just reading Biblical texts on your own. Did you read the link I posted? www.oca.org/OCchapter.asp?SID=2&ID=111
By all means, read the Bible, and ask what it means. But don't forget to learn how we see the Bible.
I have neither the education nor the energy to answer all of your questions competently. I'll answer some, here and there - but if you're not serious about inquiring I don't even want to do that. If the purpose is just debunking, then you'll debunk in spite of the most brilliant responses. If you can just get to a point of being able to say "I see", and "I understand" on what I have been slovenly defending, that will be all that I really hope for.

[Tenara]

Here you say "God's words". That's one of our ten thousand bones of contention - about your understanding of my faith. I don't in fact believe them to be "God's words" - with the particular implications that necessarily follow, but words inspired by God but written by men - fallible men, in fact.

Quick question, Rus. Are you saying that you (and by implication some other Christians as well) don't take every word in the Bible literally? That would interest me because every Christian I've spoken to about it in real life has said you have to take every word in the Bible exactly as it was written. The paragraph I've quoted above suggests you see the Bible as man's interpretation of God's intentions, which could be accurate but could also be wide of the mark.

[Fist and Faith]

So you're NOT going to find the sense of Orthodoxy by just reading Biblical texts on your own. Did you read the link I posted? www.oca.org/OCchapter.asp?SID=2&ID=111
By all means, read the Bible, and ask what it means. But don't forget to learn how we see the Bible.

Yes, I did. I understand what it means. That's why I'm asking. How do you see the Bible? This seems like a good point to ask about. Frankly, I'm shocked that you didn't immediately have an answer for me. I'd think that, either because the Fall is a vastly important topic, or because it's the very first thing in the Bible, this would have been something you'd have learned about. The fact that you simply ignore the apparent contradiction - between your belief that the Fall was a natural consequence of eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and what is said in Genesis - amazes me. How can you not have asked the same question I'm asking about something as important as the Fall?? Or, if you did, how can you have forgotten the answer to such a thing? This isn't a picky little detail, like "Why does it say here that Ed begat Charlie, when it says over there that Charlie's parents were Bob and Carol?"

I have neither the education nor the energy to answer all of your questions competently. I'll answer some, here and there - but if you're not serious about inquiring I don't even want to do that.

I've said often enough that I won't bother looking deeper into this, or anything, without reason. If you can't give me reason to believe anything beyond the materialistic viewpoint, and you ignore the apparent contradiction within your faith that I'm asking about, then what on earth do offer that would motivate me to pursue a serious study of it?

[Hashi Lebwohl]

All of these translations tell us that God prevented them from gaining eternal life, because they now knew good and evil. If that's wrong, tell me why/how.

We are fallible beings, capable of error. If we were to live forever in this physical form...do you realize how awful things could become? We aren't wise enough for immortality in this form.

We already have the technology to clone human beings. Other than successful clone tests that did not progress beyond a few days before destroying the zygotes, it is only a matter of time before someone allows a human cloning experiment to go full term. After that, it will be only a matter of time before we artificially synthesize a full complement of human genes, implant them into an egg, and thus "create" life.

Do you really trust your fellow enough humans for them to be gods?

note: I support cloning experiments because we now have the ability to clone organs from tissue, avoiding the need for transplants and organ donors which also minimizes the risk of rejection. But that is a topic for a different thread.

[rusmeister]

Here you say "God's words". That's one of our ten thousand bones of contention - about your understanding of my faith. I don't in fact believe them to be "God's words" - with the particular implications that necessarily follow, but words inspired by God but written by men - fallible men, in fact.

Quick question, Rus. Are you saying that you (and by implication some other Christians as well) don't take every word in the Bible literally? That would interest me because every Christian I've spoken to about it in real life has said you have to take every word in the Bible exactly as it was written. The paragraph I've quoted above suggests you see the Bible as man's interpretation of God's intentions, which could be accurate but could also be wide of the mark.

Thanks, Tenara,
Well, meet a Christian who is not a fundamentalist Sola Scriptura Protestant (note: this does NOT include ALL Protestants) who thinks that the Bible fell from God in the sky and every word in it is the literal blinking truth.

But neither do I think it man's interpretation of God's intentions. I think men were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write truths - but that they described them in the terms of their own day, with the science of the time and the limitations of what they knew and so, could express. So if it looked like the sun went around the earth, then they put it in those terms. We would say that the Bible is not man's story about God, but God's story about man, (re)told by men. In Scripture, we see man's faithlessness all over the place, and God's faithfulness to man in spite of that.

[Fist and Faith]

All of these translations tell us that God prevented them from gaining eternal life, because they now knew good and evil. If that's wrong, tell me why/how.

We are fallible beings, capable of error. If we were to live forever in this physical form...do you realize how awful things could become? We aren't wise enough for immortality in this form.

We already have the technology to clone human beings. Other than successful clone tests that did not progress beyond a few days before destroying the zygotes, it is only a matter of time before someone allows a human cloning experiment to go full term. After that, it will be only a matter of time before we artificially synthesize a full complement of human genes, implant them into an egg, and thus "create" life.

Do you really trust your fellow enough humans for them to be gods?

note: I support cloning experiments because we now have the ability to clone organs from tissue, avoiding the need for transplants and organ donors which also minimizes the risk of rejection. But that is a topic for a different thread.

OK, let's go with that scenario. Maybe it's a bad idea for humans to live forever with the knowledge of good and evil. It's still the same as far as "natural consequences." That is, it wasn't natural consequences. Eternal life wasn't lost as a natural consequence of gaining that knowledge. It was lost because God doesn't want us to live forever with that knowledge.

So I return to a question I asked before: Why was the tree there? We would have lived there forever without that knowledge if the tree wasn't there.

[rusmeister]

All of these translations tell us that God prevented them from gaining eternal life, because they now knew good and evil. If that's wrong, tell me why/how.

We are fallible beings, capable of error. If we were to live forever in this physical form...do you realize how awful things could become? We aren't wise enough for immortality in this form.

We already have the technology to clone human beings. Other than successful clone tests that did not progress beyond a few days before destroying the zygotes, it is only a matter of time before someone allows a human cloning experiment to go full term. After that, it will be only a matter of time before we artificially synthesize a full complement of human genes, implant them into an egg, and thus "create" life.

Do you really trust your fellow enough humans for them to be gods?

note: I support cloning experiments because we now have the ability to clone organs from tissue, avoiding the need for transplants and organ donors which also minimizes the risk of rejection. But that is a topic for a different thread.

OK, let's go with that scenario. Maybe it's a bad idea for humans to live forever with the knowledge of good and evil. It's still the same as far as "natural consequences." That is, it wasn't natural consequences. Eternal life wasn't lost as a natural consequence of gaining that knowledge. It was lost because God doesn't want us to live forever with that knowledge.

So I return to a question I asked before: Why was the tree there? We would have lived there forever without that knowledge if the tree wasn't there.

I'll say that Hashi has departed from Orthodoxy here - that line of thought doesn't work until AFTER the Fall has already been considered. It IS a good question as to why living forever as such is 'bad' for un-Fallen man, seeing as he was not created to die. For Fallen man, it is indeed fearsome to live forever - unless he be raised out of his Fallen state. We were just reading the Greek myths and came across the one of Eos, who asked for eternal life for her husband, and he wound up shrinking, unable to die and ultimately became a grasshopper because she forgot to ask for eternal youth as well.

I think the interpretation of the text hinges on the fact that are two accounts of Creation, and that the things said by God or describing Godly speech are not all to be taken literally. I think of the book of Job, which describes Satan as 'walking around'. A literal interpretation forces me into some pretty narrow thinking - a metaphorical one explains it in terms that we, not being pure spirit, can at least understand, even if it is not the most exact truth, which we CAN'T understand. That's from Dr Stupid, a mere layman. When I'm NOT sure, it's much easier to say, "Gee, I dunno..."

[rusmeister]

So you're NOT going to find the sense of Orthodoxy by just reading Biblical texts on your own. Did you read the link I posted? www.oca.org/OCchapter.asp?SID=2&ID=111
By all means, read the Bible, and ask what it means. But don't forget to learn how we see the Bible.

Yes, I did. I understand what it means. That's why I'm asking. How do you see the Bible? This seems like a good point to ask about. Frankly, I'm shocked that you didn't immediately have an answer for me. I'd think that, either because the Fall is a vastly important topic, or because it's the very first thing in the Bible, this would have been something you'd have learned about. The fact that you simply ignore the apparent contradiction - between your belief that the Fall was a natural consequence of eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and what is said in Genesis - amazes me. How can you not have asked the same question I'm asking about something as important as the Fall?? Or, if you did, how can you have forgotten the answer to such a thing? This isn't a picky little detail, like "Why does it say here that Ed begat Charlie, when it says over there that Charlie's parents were Bob and Carol?"

I can offer an explanation on that. If Ed was Charlie's biological parent, but he was adopted by Bob and Carol, then everything turns out to be true. There are a great many things like that that we are up against in reading Scripture - thus, you have to find out if extenuating circumstances are claimed and on what basis. The person going on "plain reading" is screwed, because 'plain reading' means reading without any contextual knowledge.

[Worm of Despite]

Man. Being an atheist is so much easier. I can't figure why people write eight-bazillion block paragraphs about a 2,000 year old text, which had it never existed we'd still have the main apparatus of moral prerogative that common sense and our natural inclination to develop a social universe creates. Now. Back to girl-on-girl pr0n.