(Next panel)
"HAW HAW HAW!!"
This is my take on why the fall had to happen:
We were made so that Lord Jesus has to Love us to the absolute max
There is no greater Love then one who lays down his life for his friends, so this had to happen. God used Satan’s pride to accomplish this. Note, the scriptures say that ‘he lay down his life’, the laying down of life is mandatory, not just a willingness to do so, to achieve this level of Love.
I think this is a good opportunity to discuss participles, taking a look at the elephant in the room — namely, your “damn thing”. Don’t you really think, in your heart of hearts, that it should be “damned thing”? I do believe there is a tiny bit of wriggle room to argue against the point, so let me just shoot straight for that.
There are four tests I like to apply in determining whether a participle is an adjective. Is it attributive? Can it be compared? Can it be used in the predicate? And can “very” modify it? It’s that last test where “damned” is arguably disqualified. But I ask why. Why can’t something be “very damned”.
Consider, for example, Reverend Lovejoy scolding his dog when Flanders emerges to catch it pooping on his lawn. “Bad dog!” the reverend exclaims. “Damn you to hell!” We can easily imagine the reverend going further, “You are damned! Very, very damned!”
Therefore, I believe that a participle of the perfect tense is the appropriate form of adjective in this case.
Are you saying that Jesus wouldn’t love us to the max unless we fell for god’s set up? Did he not love us to the max up until that point? Since Jesus is god, that means that god set us up so that he would love us to the max? Was god incapable of making humans that were able to loved by Jesus (ie, himself) to the max?
There isn’t? Cuz I think that maybe a parent’s love for their child might be right up there. You know, without the death and all. It seems odd that god would have to involve death and suffering in this, and was incapable of making being that were good enough to be loved without death.
Yes, and he applied his own idiosyncratic definition of “slash.”
There are a lot of reasons why the first part of your comment might not be true. The word day in Hebrew is just as flexible as the word day in english, so one interpretation is that day meant period, but more likely is the fact that she began to die on the day she ate of the fruit, which is perfectly acceptable on a plain reading of the text. Which means Satan lied, because they did begin to die. Satan actually says “You will not surely die”, Eve is not still alive thus he died.
“know” has the connotation of experiencing good and evil. They already knew that it was wrong for them to eat of the fruit, they freely chose to do exactly the opposite of what God had told them, and thus experience or “knew” good and evil.
I would say they did not know it was wrong, it just not something they considered a option. I like to compare this to my niece, who I wanted to go downstairs, I said something like lets go downstairs, she said ‘no, mommy said not to’ - I found that this was a rule ‘mommy’ had for her since she started walking. Going downstairs was just not a option in her mind. She had no reason to distrust anything mommy said, and mommy (and daddy) provided all her needs, she never had a reason to look beyond anything she said, and totally trusted her. Perhaps if I would have told her I would get her a toy I could have tempted her to.
I think this is just like the fruit, it just was not in their minds till the serpent talked Eve into it, and she saw the perceived benefits “when she saw…”.Before this I think there was no reason to even consider it, and she knew not of the perceived benefits.
You may not give a hoot in a fig tree, but this right here is why I love to read your posts.
Why not just stick to the old and trusted “Koran”? So much easier to spell. “Denmark” is called “Danmark” in Danish – I don’t see you making any attempt to make it the correct English spelling.
A hoot, hell. I’m delighted! 
Touring with U2?
That’s why the fatwa was rescinded. The ayatollahs figured having to endure months of travel with Bono was punishment enough…
That was quite nice, Liberal. I bet you scoured it for Gauderian errors before posting.
Indeed. I’m as big an Arabic snob as anyone this side of Asad AbuKhalil, and it causes me actual physical pain when someone spells “Al Qaeda” with a u after the q, but I have no problem whatsoever with “Koran” as a spelling.
Koran it is, then. Drinks around the house! […tink…]
Has anyone here actually tried to read the Qur’an? Admittedly I’ve read a translation and not the Arabic original, but still: it’s incredibly formulaic, repetitive and in some places vaguely stream of consciousness. Add to that the fact that Muslims claim the incomparable beauty of the Qur’an can only be understood by someone who is reading it in the original and who didn’t learn Arabic as an adult.
So basically unless it was rammed down your throat throughout your entire life (i.e. you weren’t indoctrinated) you won’t find it beautiful. But it’s still incomparable in its beauty, m’kay?
Why is anyone in this thread even trying to take the “Qur’anic challenge” seriously, let alone do it?
How clearly and sharply-defined are those sixteen different poetic forms? Could inclusion or exclusion be accurately measured by a completely disinterested arbiter?
Muhammad recited the Qur’an over a period of twenty years. His followers wrote it down as he recited it. They wrote it on whatever surface they had available with whatever implement they had available. After his death they compiled it and decided how to organize it.
While he was alive, his followers asked him lots of questions about the revelation.
Some biblical elements that appear in the Koran are: Noah and the great flood, Jacob, Abraham, Moses, David, and the virgin Mary’s giving birth to Jesus.
There are innumerable volumes by Islamic scholars discussing the meaning of the Qur’an.
You guessed wrong.
Stipulate nobody can do it. Imagine a world without a God. In such a world, there will be one person who is worse at writing poetry than any other person in history (they probably won’t be in a vegetative state–they’ll be like Vogon bad). There will also be one person who is better at writing poetry than any other person in history. The existence of that person would not indicate that God exists.
Even if the Koran is the best poetry ever written, it does not indicate that God exists.
Daniel
Good way to lose a hand, my friend…