missyzilly, if you are just making a short reply to a very long post, don’t quote the whole post. Quote a little of it or just address it to one poster (“Askthepizzaguy, please.”)
There, see? It’s a praiseworthy bit of cleverness from me – if and only if I haven’t actually heard of it before. 
Wow, there is just so much wrong in there it’s hard to know where to start.
First, you think God had some special place in his hearts for the children of Israel and you consider yourself left wing? Really? I can’t imagine a left-wing person worshiping a God who thinks that one group of people is more special than another.
And you think that people can just choose whether or not they want to be gay, and that if we let people choose gay sex then we might have a problem making enough babies? Those are pretty much right wing talking points. They are also ridiculous.
I suspect dark energy was coined to be analogous to dark matter, which has a lot of evidence for it. And don’t downplay the importance of making the math work. Lots of things have been predicted, correctly, in order to make the math work.
Like planets
I was thinking neutrino, but that’s an even better example.
Well, in the first story of creation, he doesn’t. He just creates man and woman, equal in stature, equal in authority. Some argue that this first story was actually Adam and Lilith who rejected subservience and went off on her own to do her own thing so god created a second woman out of Adam’s ribs to underscore her place in the order of things.
Note that this is not the mainstream view. It’s not one I’m familiar with; most of what I know about “Lilith” is what I read in the Staff Report.
There’s no textual evidence for really any of the Lilith mythology in the bible itself. Interestingly enough, for a while in the 19th century, christians were really into the idea of a pre-adamite civilization and the two creation stories told of a human race that existed and failed and was eliminated entirely, no noah’s ark for these guys, and the second story is the one with Adam and ‘our’ ancestral father. Mostly I’m just amused at the various ways people explain away two creations.
Sorry.
sorry in my post #17 wasn’t too clear, only the last line is mine. In his post Rucksinator said Adam and Eve had freewill and that God didn’t know they would fail. My point was that God absolutely knew they would fail even before he created them or gave them free will. He had to know or he wouldn’t be omniscient.
The OP in this thread, I think, illustrates a lot of the issue I see that happens between atheists and theists. There is this idea that all Christians believe these things, and while a lot of what the OP says is more or less what’s in the Bible, I don’t know a single person who believes all or even most of that. You’re literally lumping in billions of people under an umbrella of beliefs and not understanding why there’s inconsistencies. Even for the people who believe nearly all of that word for word, it’s not even remotely a monopoly of religion. For instance, you have 9/11 truthers, moon landing conspiracy theorists, Roswell… all kinds of stuff that people believe despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Hell, on this board you even have atheists who espouse that all theists are, at best, idiots.
These things go both ways, and no one makes headway because there’s no real understanding of the other perspective. For instance, I am not an atheist, but I understand and appreciate the perspective, yet I know theists who don’t really understand that there are atheists who honestly, without emotion, don’t believe God exists. There’s insistence that all atheists are angry at God and deep down know he exists but get back at him by denying his existence. Or, more bizarre, really don’t believe in him, but belief in God is necessary, so they essentially make themselves their own God. I have heard this argument from a few people and God’s existence is just such a basic part of their world view they’re unable to even consider any views that don’t have that assumption as a given.
But at the same part, there are some atheists who never believed, never felt anything, never had any experiences of God, and so it’s hard for those sorts of people to understand why someone might be compelled to believe in something that has no evidence. There’s just plain no way to express how impactful and real those experiences are. So without that sort of experience, it’s difficult to understand why, with no real evidence why someone would believe something that, on it’s face, seems unnecessary and illogical.
Perhaps not the best analogy because of the conotations, but it’s like someone who is in love trying to explain those feelings to someone who never has been. It has people believe and do completely illogical things and all because of an experience that is completely impossible to accurately articulate and, frankly, sounds pretty silly when it is described. The point is, humans are NOT purely logical creatures, and a big part of what makes us who we are is our irrationality. Some people think this is a bad thing, I disagree, but that’s not really here or there.
But here’s the thing, making blanket assumptions about theists or atheists and then belittling it or strawmanning it isn’t going to make a difference. I love to talk about that sort of stuff, but it’s only really worth talking about on an individual level. I’ll never convince a generic atheist that my perspective makes sense, but I’ll never convince a generic Christian that my perspective makes sense either. Yet, when I can sit down and we can discuss our experiences, our logic, our beliefs, I’ve found that most reasonably intelligent people can, even if they don’t agree, at least come to an understanding of why they don’t. But, you’ll also find that, though I am a Christian, I believe virtually none of the generic Christian beliefs mentioned by the OP.
Adam and Eve were not children! They were ADULTS! And told YOU WILL DIE IF YOU EAT THAT! Why do people act like they were 3 . They were at fault THEY ATE IT KNOWING AS ADULTS NOT TODDLERS ! Do not eat this OR YOU DIE .
George Carlin rises from the dead, goes over to Askthepizzaguy’s house, hacks his SDMB account, types up a monologue, and then goes back to his grave…
Yup, I’m a believer.
Again, I disagree with the notion that God knew what was going to happen, based on reading Genesis. Otherwise the flood would have never been necessary. The flood was to correct a mistake that God made.
Christians (I’m not sure how Jews feel about this) have decided that God must be omni-everything (omniomni?), but that doesn’t fit with Genesis.
Blaster Master, didn’t want to quote your whole post, but I have a question for any of you “all Christians don’t believe this way” types. How do you justify the revisionist view? I don’t want to use the terms cherry picking or apologist because they are a bit hateful, but I can’t think of a better shortcut to my question. If the individual rewrites the religion in order to suit his own level of education and support his own arguments, what, exactly, is left? Do you believe only certain chapters which are somewhat plausible? Do you choose to accept only those bits and pieces with some historical support? Do you pick only those sections which match political and social trends?
See the post right below yours.
Did they know right from wrong before they ate the fruit?
They may have had adult physical stature, but they had no education. An uneducated adult is very difficult to discern from a child. The decisions made are ignorant and emotional.
Adam and Eve were emotionally immature. (“Family Values” conservatives would note that they had no parental role-models…)
First, as your comment brings up they were lied to by God; they didn’t die. And second, supposedly they weren’t fully functioning adults before eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. That’s rather the point.