How to attack Christianity

[Meh Gerbil]

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[Juvenal]

If you need to look up those references, Carrot, your Bible is under that stack of pro-Eugenics biology textbooks you keep in the bathroom.

That's just wrong. Do you have any idea what that kind of humidity can do to a textbook?

[Meh Gerbil]

That's just wrong. Do you have any idea what that kind of humidity can do to a textbook?

Since I never actually have owned a textbook I have to admit I wouldn't know.
I've not noticed much of an impact on stone tablets.

[Meh Gerbil]

Finally a good parody nickname! The insult apologetics types on here only came up with 'caricature'.

I just caught this and I'm distressed.
I hope you don't classify me as an insult apologetic type, you nincompoop.

[Trout]

I just caught this and I'm distressed.
I hope you don't classify me as an insult apologetic type, you nincompoop.

Thank spaghetti monster, I no longer have to look at his name 16 times to spell it correctly.

[shunyadragon]

I figure he'll just say "air ball!", and then try to change the discussion to something else.

Air ball YES!!!!! Change the discussion. NO!!!!!

[shunyadragon]

If all of Creation were in a broken state yet somehow yielded none of the symptoms of brokenness than we'd be living in a lie.
Injustice is a part of brokenness - the universe must therefore be unjust as an expression of reality.

The 'wages of sin is death' isn't punishment to my way of thinking.
It is a simple statement of the nature of reality.

If I put water in my car's engine instead of oil the car isn't punishing me when it breaks down.
If the car didn't break down either well established physical laws are being suspended or the physical laws are a lie.
The car breaking down isn't punishment, it's just a confirmation of the nature of reality.

The tornado isn't punishment from God.
The tornado is the natural result of a broken Creation.

If God did too much to hide the results of brokenness from us we'd be living in a lie.

The 'Problem of Evil' is a much easier problem to solve than the 'Problem of Good'.

I do not consider Creation broken. It is as God intended Creation to be. The nature of reality is not broken. God does not Create existence that breaks. Our universe and Creation is ultimate just and natural as it is.

[Carrikature]

You'll have to elaborate on that one.
I see the passage as changing the relationship between man and his charge.

Maybe there is a relationship between the ground producing thorns for it's lord (Adam) and us producing thorns for our lord (Christ)?

Events:
1) Snake acts
2) Snake-woman interaction
3) Woman acts
4) Woman-man interaction
5) Man acts

Punishment:
1) Snake cursed
2) Snake-woman interaction cursed
3) Woman cursed
4) Woman-man interaction cursed
5) Man cursed

As storytelling goes, the parallels are spot on.



You could certainly view this as changing relationships, but we've no need to turn to metaphor. The snake claims to know better than God and in return is cursed to the lowliest of places. The relationship between the woman and the snake changes from trusted adviser to eternal enemy. Similarly, the relationship between the woman and the man changes from her as helper and adviser to more of a servant. For both the man and the woman, they lose the easy life of the garden. Now both must struggle to bring forth their respective fruits.

The remaining piece is the eviction. Because they now have knowledge of good and evil, they are not allowed to partake of eternal life. Thus is Romans 5 accounted for. Death 'enters the world' because access to immortality has been lost. We, as their descendants, gain both the knowledge and the mortality.

At no point is there any mention of natural disasters, predation, disease, or any of the other ills* this world has to offer. Nothing tells us that creation underwent massive change. For that matter, we have no reason to believe that childbirth would have been painless prior to this event. All of these things are commonly placed at the feet of Adam and Eve, yet none of it is actually supported by the story. That's what I mean when I say its implications are vastly overstated.



*'Ills' here is the common perception of these events. They're the main basis for the problem of evil. I don't hold them to be bad things, myself.

[seer]

I do not consider Creation broken. It is as God intended Creation to be. The nature of reality is not broken. God does not Create existence that breaks. Our universe and Creation is ultimate just and natural as it is.

So people being killed by natural disasters is what God intended? People being killed in war is what God intended?

[Meh Gerbil]

You had a nice summary there.
I didn't ignore it, but I am skipping onto our point of disagreement.

At no point is there any mention of natural disasters, predation, disease, or any of the other ills* this world has to offer. Nothing tells us that creation underwent massive change.

From Genesis wherein God lays out how sin is changing the world:

Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

The ground is cursed - that is, it went from a non-cursed state to a cursed state.
Painful toil is also a new state of being, the idea being that what was once easy is now going to be difficult.
For the acquisition of food to become difficult something within the environment had to change.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

This is also a new development - there were not thorns and thistles before but now the cursed ground will produce these things.

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food...

Again, something in the environment has changed.
Food wasn't a sweat producing problem before and now it is a major problem.
Creation was Adam and Eve's environment sans other people so these changes in the game had to be changes to Creation at large.

I don't think reading the passage as an important and substantive change in Creation is stretching much of anything at all.
I believe the NT talks about the redemption of all of Creation, something that wouldn't be necessary if it wasn't in a state of curse/decay.

[Carrikature]

From Genesis wherein God lays out how sin is changing the world:

Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

The ground is cursed - that is, it went from a non-cursed state to a cursed state.
Painful toil is also a new state of being, the idea being that what was once easy is now going to be difficult.
For the acquisition of food to become difficult something within the environment had to change.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

This is also a new development - there were not thorns and thistles before but now the cursed ground will produce these things.

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food...

Again, something in the environment has changed.
Food wasn't a sweat producing problem before and now it is a major problem.
Creation was Adam and Eve's environment sans other people so these changes in the game had to be changes to Creation at large.

"For the acquisition of food to become difficult something within the environment had to change." That's false. Adam and Eve are moved from one environment (the Garden) to another environment. Where food in the Garden is readily accessible (literally growing on trees), now Adam must bring it forth through his own effort. Where toil and sweat was previously not required, now they are the rule.

"there were not thorns and thistles before" is an assertion. We have no information on the state of creation (especially the outside world) prior to this curse. All we know is that God is telling Adam that his efforts will produce plants he doesn't want as well as those he does. What you're suggesting is special creation just to make Adam's life harder, which is both unnecessary and unsupported by the scriptures.

"Creation was Adam and Eve's environment sans other people." Replace 'creation' here with 'Eden', and you'd be correct. Adam and Eve's environment was a special location. We're told of two people that have kids. One of them gets murdered, and the murderer worries about being killed by other people. He gets married, too. These may all be kin, as is often claimed, but the scriptures don't provide any support for that. We don't know what the outside world looks like.

The only change to creation itself falls under "cursed is the ground because of you". How it is cursed is not detailed. We could stop at "harder to produce food than it was before" and still have everything covered, the same way that childbirth is now more painful but wasn't necessarily painless before.

I don't think reading the passage as an important and substantive change in Creation is stretching much of anything at all.
I believe the NT talks about the redemption of all of Creation, something that wouldn't be necessary if it wasn't in a state of curse/decay.

"Important and substantive change" is fine, but "in Creation" is the stretch. "Important and substantive" is a bit subjective, though. Let's say you're right about all of the above. What we don't see in this curse is 1) decay becoming a thing, 2) predation becoming a thing, 3) disease entering the world, or 4) natural disasters becoming a thing. You might subsume #1 and #4 under "cursed is the ground because of you", but that's just assertion. The point is that all these things are claimed to be a result of sin. When I speak of 'massive change', these are the things I'm referring to. Adam and Eve's lot in life went downhill fast as a result of eating from the Tree, and the rest of us do get to suffer the consequences. I just don't think those consequences involve everything that people don't like about the world.

As for the redemption of all Creation, I don't think curse/decay is necessarily involved here. Should we pretend that humans are good caretakers? We regularly abuse our environment for the pettiest of wants. We have a lot more impact than I think we typically want to believe. Thousands of years of human involvement is more than enough to push whole ecosystems into places they were never intended. Whole hosts of species continue to fall as the result of our actions. We could call redemption a rebalance of the ecosystem and restoration of habitat. "Redemption of Creation" is one of those terms that sounds nice, but which people don't really have any idea what it's supposed to look like. I don't think the NT writers did, either.

[shunyadragon]

So people being killed by natural disasters is what God intended? People being killed in war is what God intended?

The spiritual destiny of the soul in its journey is not dependent of on the natural and human determined disasters or physical acts by humans of the real world. These events are the natural course of physical events, and fallible human acts in the natural world.

This is a greater problem form your perspective where the omnipotent, omnipresent, All-powerful, all-knowing God is ultimately directly responsible for all the events that cause disasters and suffering in he real world.

How a religion explains the real events, science. and consequences of the real world is a measure of how it relates to the real world without Monday morning quarter backing in an effort to explain what it cannot explain.

[Carrikature]

So people being killed by natural disasters is what God intended? People being killed in war is what God intended?

Given that the fruit borne by the Tree of Life was something that had to be eaten, it's a safe bet that death was a normal part of the system. That's not to say any particular method of death was intended.

[seer]

The spiritual destiny of the soul in its journey is not dependent of on the natural and human determined disaster of the wrld. These events are the natural course of physical events in the natural world.

Shuny, you said Creation was not broken, that it was as God intended - and since your god is also omnipotent, omnipresent, and all knowing then he is responsible for all natural disasters and wars and the deaths that follow. How could it logically be otherwise?

[Meh Gerbil]

"For the acquisition of food to become difficult something within the environment had to change." That's false. Adam and Eve are moved from one environment (the Garden) to another environment. Where food in the Garden is readily accessible (literally growing on trees), now Adam must bring it forth through his own effort. Where toil and sweat was previously not required, now they are the rule.

For this to be true you'd have to assume that Eden was biologically different than the rest of the planet.
What? They had no fruit trees anywhere else?
I don't see how you could maintain that assertion - it is a fine theory but isn't supported by the passage.

"there were not thorns and thistles before" is an assertion. We have no information on the state of creation (especially the outside world) prior to this curse. All we know is that God is telling Adam that his efforts will produce plants he doesn't want as well as those he does. What you're suggesting is special creation just to make Adam's life harder, which is both unnecessary and unsupported by the scriptures.

If the ground would produce those anyways then there would be no point in cursing the ground.
And no, I'm not suggesting special creation - I think the passage introduces the concept of decay.

The only change to creation itself falls under "cursed is the ground because of you". How it is cursed is not detailed. We could stop at "harder to produce food than it was before" and still have everything covered, the same way that childbirth is now more painful but wasn't necessarily painless before.

I think the nature of the curse is defined in the passage when Adam is told that he'll die and return to dust (decay).

You might subsume #1 and #4 under "cursed is the ground because of you", but that's just assertion.

Once you allow for decay you allow for everything else.
For example, I don't think disease hit immediately but it doesn't take much imagination to believe that decay could include genetic decay resulting in microbes shifting from helpful to deadly.
The same could be said for everything from weather patterns to earthquakes - if you introduce decay into a perfectly balanced system it begins to fall apart.

I just don't think those consequences involve everything that people don't like about the world.

I agree.