The article did not say that Tyre was literally Satan. Rather, it said that the references to the King of Tyre describe Satan, rather than the earthly king. Obviously, Tyre and the King of Tyre are two very different entities.
The article also pointed out that the literal, earthly King of Tyre was nowhere to be found in the Garden of Eden – which, after all, had long been gone. It therefore suggests that the aforementioned King of Tyre refers not to the earthly personage, but to Satan himself.
How in the world did you draw that conclusion? Obviously, man and woman already had the capacity of free will; otherwise, they could not have chosen to obey Satan instead of God. I think your conclusion is simply invalid. (More importantly, it’s irrelevant to the question of whether Ezekiel was referring to Satan, or to the earthly king.)
Now, one might speculate about what the “fruit of the knowledge of good and evil” means, but the context shows that it is clearly distinct from free will.
Once again, I think you’re reading too much into the text. Where does it say that Satan “serves” God? God did tell him, “Go ahead, test my servant Job” and Satan complied, but that was clearly an adversarial response, not an act of obedience.
Once again, you’re extrapolating far beyond the textual content. Nowhere does it say that the entire city was possessed – not even remotely. Even if it did, that would be a separate question altogether, and hardly a compelling argument against this interpretation.
Perhaps one could suggest this interpretation, but frankly, I see nothing in the text to support it. In fact, the text goes to great lengths to describe Satan’s history – his cherubic origins, and his presence in the Garden of Eden. That sounds like far more than merely name-calling, as the Arabs do in calling the USA “the great Satan.”
JThunder, I’ve read a lot of your posts, and you strike me as a person who has a pretty good head on his shoulders. So I say this meaning no disrespect, but…
I guffawed when I realized that a Christian made this statement. Hee hee hee
Yes, one might speculate on what knowledge of good and evil means, but in all the possibilities I can think of, it would be a prerequisite for any meaningful kind of free will. If it was right for Eve to naively follow God’s orders, with no understanding of right and wrong, then how can she be blamed for naively following the serpent’s advice?
(And after all, it was the serpent, according to the story, who turned out to be telling the truth. Adam and Eve didn’t die that day, and their eyes were opened. The only problems that resulted were in the form of God’s punishment. He got his feelings hurt because people gained knowledge that he wanted to keep to himself, and he sought revenge on his creations. In terms of the OP, it’s more evidence that God isn’t so good. In terms of literary criticism, it’s evidence that it just isn’t a very good story–but I know, that isn’t playing by the rules. )
There isn’t any passage prior to the “serpent” tale that states that God gave man free will.
<snip Now, one might speculate about what the “fruit of the knowledge of good and evil” means, but the context shows that it is clearly distinct from free will.**
[/QUOTE]
How so?
If Satan complied with an order of God’s, how is that not an act of obedience?
Then perhaps you could explain to me what the king of Tyre has to do with Satan? Where is the association? The history of Tyre I think lends more credence to my interpretation.
There isn’t any passage prior to the “serpent” tale that states that God gave man free will.
How so?
If Satan complied with an order of God’s, how is that not an act of obedience?
Then perhaps you could explain to me what the king of Tyre has to do with Satan? Where is the association? The history of Tyre I think lends more credence to my interpretation.
There isn’t any passage prior to the “serpent” tale that states that God gave man free will.
How so?
If Satan complied with an order of God’s, how is that not an act of obedience?
Then perhaps you could explain to me what the king of Tyre has to do with Satan? Where is the association? The history of Tyre I think lends more credence to my interpretation.
Not explicitly, no. HOWEVER, it can be inferred from the fact that God commanded them not to partake of the forbidden fruit. There is no point in commanded someone who has no free will.
Not everything has to be spelled out in explicity detail, you know.
BECAUSE THEY ALREADY HAD FREE WILL!!!
Do you really need this spelled out for you?
BECAUSE SATAN WAS ATTEMPTING TO PROVE GOD WRONG! His goal was NOT to serve God, but to put God to shame!
Really, now. Do you really need this all spelled out for you?
God’s statement “Go and test my servant Job” was a challenge hurled at an adversary. It was not a command given to a faithful servant. Frankly, I am astonished that you seem to believe it WAS an act of obedience.
The article I cited already explained this. Now, perhaps there are additional details that we are not privy to (contemporary references to Satan as the king of Tyre, for example). Whatever the case, the context clearly shows that Ezekiel could not have been referring to the earthly, mortal King of Tyre. The context clearly and unambiguously prohibits taht.
Not by a long shot. Not even remotely. The earthly King of Tyre was not in the Garden of Eden. Ezekiel was referring to someone who DID occupy Eden. ERGO, common sense dictates that Ezekiel was not referring to the earthly King of Tyre.
I don’t care what you say about the history of the city Tyre. We are not talking about the city. We are talking about a person – the king of that city. The history of that city is irrelevant to the topic at hand.
First of all, there’s a difference between free will and the ability to distinguish good from evil. Free will means that I have the ability to make deliberate, free choices. Distinguishing good from evil is a more specific matter.
Second, you’re assuming that “the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil” is a strictly literal title. You’re assuming that without this fruit, Adam and Eve had no way of discerning the different between good and evil. We have good reason to believe otherwise.
As I’ve explained, Adam and Even clearly had the ability to make moral choices – to obey or to disobey. This is implied by the Genesis account itself. Moreover, Satan and Eve (and probably Adam too) clearly understood that “knowledge of good and evil” referred to more than just its literal meaning (Genesis 3:5). My interpretation is that this refers to knowledge in the sense of experience. That is, Adam and Eve already knew good, but they had not yet experienced evil. That happened AFTER they partook of the forbidden fruit.
I’ve read of other interpretations, including one which considers this term to be metaphorical for ascent to godhood. That would certainly jibe with verse 3:5, although I’m not yet convinced of its validity. Whatever the case, the context clearly shows that it means more than just the superficial, literal meaning.
Yes, I know that. That’s why I said that the ability to distinguish good from evil is prerequisite to meaningful free will, not identical to it.
**
Well, I’m assuming, for the purposes of this discussion, that the book means what it says, though not necessarily literally. If Adam and Eve could distinguish good from evil without this fruit (though they couldn’t tell whether they were naked or not), what was the meaning of eating the fruit? If we have, as you say, good reasons to believe that they could distinguish good from evil before eating the fruit, what are these reasons?
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But without knowing whether obedience and disobedience were good or evil?
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Ah, you mean becoming as god? Able to decide for themselves what is right and wrong? I’d agree with that. In verse 22, God even admits it.
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So why wasn’t it called the Tree of the Knowledge of Evil?
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I could see it as a metaphor for humanity’s intellectual and moral development, the development of laws and such. So yes, certainly more than the superficial, literal meaning. Or less, depending on how one looks at it.
One can certainly give commands to an automaton.
**
[/QUOTE]
BECAUSE THEY ALREADY HAD FREE WILL!!!
Do you really need this spelled out for you?**
[/QUOTE]
Your simply saying so doesn’t make it so.
His job, as indicated by his title, Satan, is to be the accuser, the “respected counsel for the prosecution.”
No, it most certainly does not.
Yes, a person, not an angel or other supernatural being, and at the time of the writing of Ezekiel, the King of Tyre was indisputably a real person. That Ezekial was using overblown metaphor to castigate that person for his wickedness and the wickedness of his city is certainly more logical than your interpretation–after, there were certainly people who had been around at the time of the king’s royal, but mundane birth.
Uh huh. An 11-year-old girl raped and having her face smashed to bits with a hammer–boy, I bet she was wicked! An Ethiopian boy shitting his own intestines out back during the famine–wonder what he’d done? Must have been something awful.
If Jesus washed all our sins away, then aren’t we all born innocent?
I’m sure Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Idi Amin, etc. all thought that too: trust me, I know what’s best even if it means genocide and torture.
no God is not evil. but God knows evil, and God can do evil.
If God is all knowing, then he would have known that an angel would have a choice, and the angel would choose to revolt against him. God had all the power in the universe to stop Satan for good, ala smack him to oblivion, but it had been in God’s vision to have evil, so instead of stopping Satan once and for all, he just bannished him and followers to Hell. The real thinker of a question is Why didn’t God just destroy Satan?
Generally, to be effective at debate or the art of persuasion, one needs to have a reasonable understanding of both or multiple sides of an issue. Unfortunately, many of the postings here demonstrate a shallow understanding of basic theological and biblical concepts. For example, Christians and non-Christians who respect the Bible as at the very least a historical document, know that its verses can be easily warped to support ANY argument when they are completely divorced from their context. It does little good to list a series of verses and allow them to speak for themselves. Additionally, many (not all) Christians find their god to be beyond human definition (those “mysterious ways”, for example) so it seems pointless to argue about his nature if we are indeed examining him from the Judeo-Christian perspective. Instead of arguing whether he is evil or not, a more appropriate question is, if the Christian god exists, why does he allow so much evil in the world—past and present?
I know of at least one attempt to answer this question. It was in a book that contained a personal and intellectual debate between an agnostic and a Christian scholar who specializes in apologetics. It is called “Letters From a Skeptic” by Gregory Boyd. Boyd is not a fundamentalist so his message is palatable for those who are often turned off by what seems like narrow-mindedness in some fundamentalist Christians. This also means he acknowledges that the Bible contains many contradictions because it was written and translated by humans. The agnostic poses very pointed questions like “Why has Christianity done so much harm?” “Why is the world so full of suffering?” “Why does God create earthquakes and famines?” “Why does God make believing in him so difficult?” “How can you believe a man rose from the dead?” and “Do all non-Christians go to hell?” The Christian scholar tackles these questions head on. Very few Christians are willing or able to do this so it is an engaging dialogue to read if you are interested in either side of the debate over God.
Finally, an observation: It’s interesting that many of the postings here which try to prove that the Christian god is evil have distinctly bitter, fearful, pessimistic, or frustrated undertones while those which argue the contrary tend to be more hopeful, optimistic, and generally positive. I can’t help but wonder if these tones are somewhat indicative of the nature of the authors’ view of the world and life in general. If so, it is unfortunate that there are many spiritually frustrated people out there. However, it is better to examine spirituality (Christian or otherwise) and wrestle with it than to dismiss it entirely.
No, I’m not “spiritually frustrated.” Your perspective is interesting, but it is your perspective. To me, the tone of the posters defending God is different from the others only in… a lack of rationality? No offense to the esteemed opposition.
I’m not seeing anything fearful from those who think that God is evil. I do recall some saying that God doesn’t exist, but if he did exist in the way the Bible describes, he would be a right bastard. It’s hard to be afraid of something one doesn’t believe in. Most of us who are critical of God seem to be discussing him as a literary figure. The ones who say that God couldn’t possibly be evil, on the other hand, sound to me as if they are fearful of examining the evidence, as I was when I was a Christian. I thought it was sinful even to consider that God might not be good or might not exist. I was afraid to think about it.
Bitterness and pessimism? I also don’t see that. If optimism is blindly insisting that God is good and refusing to consider that he might not be, then I suppose the “God is good” crowd is more optimistic, though I don’t know what that has to do with the discussion. Frustration? I see a little of that in the “God is evil” crowd. It’s frustrating to debate those who do not examine or respond to valid points. But the frustration is not spiritual.
Better to examine spirituality and wrestle with it, rather than dismiss it? Well, I am apparently unable to stop examining it, and I have wrestled with it plenty. Thinking is a kind of hobby of mine, and religion is a huge part of the culture, and it was a huge part of my process of growing up. I’ll admit that I sometimes envy those who just shrug it off, though. I don’t envy childlike faith, but I sometimes envy the ability not to be so serious all the time.
I am bitter and fearful, but definitely not pessimistic or frustrated. I know that people have an intrinsically moral nature, I have seen many religions use circular logic to short circuit this morality. A majority of christians gloss over the dark side of their religion in order to fit it in with their morality, but many choose to ignore what is really right and focus on what the bible says, or more often their pastor says the bible says.
And you think you’ve the right and are capable to know what god thinks? For if you’re not capable, obviously, you can’t claim to know what his intents are, nor whether he’s good or evil…
)
Your perspective is interesting, but it is your perspective. To me, the tone of the posters defending God is different from the others only in… a lack of rationality? No offense to the esteemed opposition.