"Free will was given to man by god."

[gaffo]

"Free will was given to man by god." This I often hear from theists. I searched the bible and found no support for this from the word of the supposed god.

So this is inference? Or did I miss something.

Will Guffo or somebody else please tell me where the idea of "free will" emerged in christian thinking, and what Christians use as explanation to it in the bible?

God gave Man free will but we are not Man: we are fallen Man and that is the problem.

nonsense, prior to the "Fall" man was without sin (as animals are today), and just one of the "Beast of the field" - without sin and without freewill.

an Ox.

Being dual natured or part animal we are governed by reactive desire as opposed to having conscious free will

due to "Fall" (which of course was a Rise instead).

1 Corinthians 10:13

13 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

Free will is a potential for fallen Man after the Old Man has become the New Man

Saul was a pozer/phoney and evil opportunist.

[gaffo]

LOL!??!?! ..god didn't want us to have free will, so he forbade us to eat the fruit of wisdom!

Whaddya know? HexHammer has hit the nail on the head. How can any theist maintain that humans freely choose between good and evil if they don't know what either is?

exactly

[gaffo]

Uwot, physics has a high rate of predictability because the variables of the very small and the very huge are so few as compared with events at our level?

Well again, it depends. At the quantum level, individual events have little more than zero predictability. At the very large scale, no one predicted that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. We simply don't know what the variables are.

ibid, concur, well said and true!

[gaffo]

LOL!??!?! ..god didn't want us to have free will, so he forbade us to eat the fruit of wisdom!

In the mythical Garden of Eden there would be no discussion about clinical abortion as God's necessity would prevail as in everything.There would be no sin as nothing could happen there that was not ordained by God.

Odd, your Bible must read differently from mine. In mine, sin originated in Eden, first by Satan, in the form of the serpent lying to Eve,

1. "Snake" was a co-god to YHWH, a member of the Cananite Heavenly Court (with Mot, Baal (YHWH's Brother), and 5-7 others, and El (Yhwh's daddy - and dad of all the other including "snake").
2. Ahriman (Satan/Belial) did not exist when Genesis was written in 800 BC (400 yrs after the oral tales (1200 bc) were put on leather scrolls by Jews)
3. Ahriman (Satan/Belial) first shows up AFTER the return from the second exile in Babylon (when the Persians defeated the Babylonians 70 yrs after the latter raised the first jewish temple in 587 BC and took 20-percent of the upper class jews into captivity).
4. Ahriman (satan/Belial) first shows up in Zachariah's work - 480 or so BC - where he serves YHWH as an accusing angel toward man in work of YHWH
5. 200 yrs later he shows up in work of Job, where though less than honourable, overall still serves YHWH as the accusser of man WRT to faith in YHWH

...............

it only 700 yrs AFTER Genesis was written was the "snake" equated by jews with Satan, who by that time morphed theologically from being the teaster of man's faith in god to being the enemy of god.

so no, "snake" never was Satan, any more than "The dragon is satan" (the apocalypse - 97 AD). the "Dragon" is Levathon, not Satan, and can be found in the Torah and the Akkadian/Summerian tablets as Taimat. "dragon of the deep"

[gaffo]

Why IYO is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil always considered superficially from a moralistic perspective?

Because "knowledge of good and evil" implicates ethics/morality. It's what the text says.

There was no society at that time so obviously knowledge of good and evil refers to something other than societal morality.

Biblically speaking, morality is not a product of society, but rather an objective property to which different societies respond differently -- some by obeying the moral law, and others by breaking it. But its origin point and rational grounding is in God, not man.

That's why the Bible uses the phrase, "The Law of God."

Nick_A wrote: ↑Thu Jun 13, 2019 8:19 pm
Why IYO is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil always considered superficially from a moralistic perspective?

Because "knowledge of good and evil" implicates ethics/morality. It's what the text says.

It is resistance to questions like this which made me leave Sunday school at an early age.

Genesis 2

8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

There seems to be an objective relationship between these two trees suggesting that the universal concept of good and evil transcends social morality.

Genesis 3:

22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim

Jesus arrival on earth seems to contradict God's will here.

yes it does,

but keep in mind that Christianity has not at all the same theology/religion as Judaism.

and maybe more aptly archaic Judaism (which had its own theology and was polythiestic - and died when Ezra/Zachariah/Zarrababbel returned from Babylon and imposed their "reformed version of Judiasm via babylonian influence (Satan shows up now - he did not exist prior in Judiasm). Ezra and company imposed thier version of Judaism in 480 BC and the older Polytheistic religion was killed of even though the majority of Jews never were sent to exile (they were poor though and so without infulence, though a majority 80-percent).

Ezra also nullified all interfaith marriages upon his return from a foreign land (nice guy he must have been - lol).

The two trees are connected and it is clear that objective good and evil for Man refers to more than social morality.

2 tree were in center of eden, so ya important - i find it funny most Christians don't even know about the ToL.

the Akkadians and Summarians did - its ingraved on thier stone tablets!

However the atheists consider all this a basic contradiction natural for primitive people and believers say one must have faith. So the seeker of truth annoys everyone during their efforts to experience the depth of an extraordinarily profound meaningful teaching. Well, as long as we avoid the hemlock we'll be OK.

???? I'm an Atheist. does that matter?

[gaffo]

I C

There are many atheists who become believers because they were able to move beyond the superficiality and negativity of what they were being taught.

I'm an atheist (started to became one at 8 when i read Genesis for the first time and saw the "We" "us" "our" references and thought wait a minute, i thought there was only one God............and by 12 was an self affirmed atheist.

am i superficial?

i never had any negative experiences with religion as a kid going to church either.

[gaffo]

Jacob Needleman for example was an atheist. He was turned off by what he knew about Judaism and Christianity. When he was hired to teach a course on religion he had to explore Christianity from the writings of the Church Fathers. He quickly learned that Christianity was far deeper than he had known. It changed his mind as to the ancient truths which had become distorted by society.

good for him.

I've read most of the OT and some of the NT.

i love Amos the best (a work most ignore), then Jonah (again most ignore, and when the do not they do not understand it - the whale and chist is crap - its about Universal Humanism and was written to counter Erza tribal work - all about the Pagan Greek Fisherman being more godly than Jonah sleeping during the storm, and jonah (a jew) learning nothing even at the end and cursing God for sending him to Ninivah (to save non jews) and finally cursing the plant that god allows to grow over him (jonah learns nothing) - all the while even the cows (not only not jews, but not even men! of ninvah are more godly than the jew jonah).

job is my 3rd favorite. "submit" - "be humble" "be fatalistic" "do not question god" "you nature is not able to understand"

.....all those 3 works i find supperior to any NT works.

then 4th is Mark - i like how in it Jesus is a man like me, fully human, with doubts, i can relate to him (unlike john where he is a robot/god with all the answers).


I like James and Jude too.
...................

then there is stuff that Saul wrote - sophistry by a phony in my book. i do not like Sauls works and do not like him as a man (he boasts too much - ego shows - so suspect his character and ignore his offerings).

-------------------------

then there if pure filth like Lividicus which reads like the worst of the Koran (2/3 of IMO - 1/3 does offer some good reading (yes the koran is a collection of works by different authors (and no Moses did not right the whole Torah) - both i know is blasphemy, but simple reading critic shows them to be authored my many different men.

[gaffo]

So when the resurrection is removed from Christianity, what is left is the morality of secular humanism

per Christian view. 2/3's of the word is not christian - of that most of other faiths.

those faiths do not require a resurrection for salvation, 4 billion Believers are not Secularists (if you mean i.e. not believers in a God/Gods).

do not let your christian upbringing cloud actual reality per the population of our earth and the numbers that are Beleivers and those that are not.

Beleivers does not equal christian in lands outside of Western Hemisphere and Europe.

[gaffo]

Not at all. He's describing resurrection...quite a different thing, I think you'll find. Check the context, and you'll see for sure.

But the resurrection is the evolution of one quality of being into a higher quality of being.

No, it's the opposite. Evolution is, by definition, gradualism produced by natural causes. Resurrection is instantaneous, and caused by God.

Some versions of modern Christendom deny the importance of the resurrection

Maybe. But they're not Christian, then, by the Apostle Paul's definition.

He regarded the resurrection as a sine qua non of Christianity, as you say in the subsequent passage you quote from 1 Corinthians.

this is true, but of course Pauline dogma won out in the christianity theology wars.

esp, due to Jersalem being raised by the Romans and James (head of the Christian Church and Jesus brother, killed 5 yr prior by Jewish elders - thrown off temple wall and clubbed to death).

James and Jude valued works, the former refers to Saul's works as "faith without works is dead" - so author of James (Jude as Jesus other brother (he had 4 i think - and at least 2 sisters)

Author of Mark is burning in hell now - via Paul's requirements. Mark is clear, works matter, Jesus was born via sexual intercourse, and was adopted as god's Son around the age of 30 via john the Baptist on the river jordan.

that is not Saul's view of Jesus.

Saul condemns author of Mark to Hell forever - and since Christians are now Paulists, christians comdenm author of Mark to Hell forever.

author of john/luke and matt might get a pass to heaven per Paulists though.

James and Jude are of course burning in Hell with Mark.

[-1-]

But the resurrection is the evolution of one quality of being into a higher quality of being.

No, it's the opposite. Evolution is, by definition, gradualism produced by natural causes. Resurrection is instantaneous, and caused by God.

Some versions of modern Christendom deny the importance of the resurrection

Maybe. But they're not Christian, then, by the Apostle Paul's definition.

He regarded the resurrection as a sine qua non of Christianity, as you say in the subsequent passage you quote from 1 Corinthians.

this is true, but of course Pauline dogma won out in the christianity theology wars.

esp, due to Jersalem being raised by the Romans and James (head of the Christian Church and Jesus brother, killed 5 yr prior by Jewish elders - thrown off temple wall and clubbed to death).

James and Jude valued works, the former refers to Saul's works as "faith without works is dead" - so author of James (Jude as Jesus other brother (he had 4 i think - and at least 2 sisters)

Author of Mark is burning in hell now - via Paul's requirements. Mark is clear, works matter, Jesus was born via sexual intercourse, and was adopted as god's Son around the age of 30 via john the Baptist on the river jordan.

that is not Saul's view of Jesus.

Saul condemns author of Mark to Hell forever - and since Christians are now Paulists, christians comdenm author of Mark to Hell forever.

author of john/luke and matt might get a pass to heaven per Paulists though.

James and Jude are of course burning in Hell with Mark.

Dear Gaffo, I bow to your incredibly deep and detailed understanding of the holy scripts.

I wish to obtain your permission to collect your posts on these forums that deal with mythology of christianity and judaism. After I collect them, I wish to compile them into a structured form.

But all that could be avoided if you, the author himself, wrote a book about comparative religions for the layman, pointing out myths and misconceptions that people mostly have, and pointing out the way the passages developed into common man's faith, which are often based not on the very script, but on the faith superimposed, falsly or rightly, on the original text.

Then you could hire an editor to fix your dyslexia-born language. Or you could hire me as a co-author, I'd fix your dyslexia-born language, and you and I could try to find a publisher. I'd expect no payment from you for editing, but would share the publishing income 75 percent to you, 25 percent to me.

Unless of course your wealth of knowledge has been described and published by some other authors, independently of you.

This is a project I would really much like to undertake. What you say?

[RCSaunders]

1. "Snake" was a co-god to YHWH, ...

Gaffo, this is not a criticism, but you have spent a lot of time discussing what is irrelevant to what I said. I never said what is described in Genesis is true or correct, only that it is what is described there. Your entire discussion is about something I never said or implied.

[Immanuel Can]

nope about the Tok NOT being the same thing as ToW. from simply reading of Genesis one can equate the ToK as giving man "Self awarness".............and so wisdom.

Simply read, and you'll see...

Gen. 2: 9 -- "The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." Only two of the many trees are identified in specific. There is no "tree of wisdom." And no "tree of self-knowledge." Nor is there any "tree of scientific, artistic, philosophical, or experiential knowledge." Just moral knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil...and the tree of life.

Not so with two-sided moral knowledge. Man was to choose not to come to know how to disobey God. But, being a free-will being, he was also free to do so, because freedom entails choice. It was specifically negative moral knowledge that was forbidden. Man should have chosen obedience. He did not.

???? don't follow welcome clarification.

I'm not sure what is unclear, but will happily clarify if you specify what you need clarified.

[Belinda]

Immanuel Can wrote regarding how to understand the Garden of Eden myth:

I'm not sure what is unclear, but will happily clarify if you specify what you need clarified.

How are you going to teach somebody to read poetry?

[Immanuel Can]

How are you going to teach somebody to read poetry?

Easy. Start by teaching them poetics. But what's the relevance?

[Belinda]

How are you going to teach somebody to read poetry?

Easy. Start by teaching them poetics. But what's the relevance?

What are poetics?