Well… would a loving God allow this?
The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea
Fear and dread. God is basically saying that he created these beasts with the capacity to feel and now is encouraging Noah and his flock to kill them and consume them. Seems like a bit of a not nice thing to do.
Punishment for our sins.
We’ve sinned a lot, apparently.
The thing is, words attributed to a specific god, and which almost certainly were oral tradition written down by somebody who figured out how to read and write, do not prove or disprove the existence of that god, or of any god. The most that girl could have said about Gen 9:3 is that the god of Abraham doesn’t exist because animal cruelty, but even then, that’s a huge leap.
In quite a few Christian sects, the god they worship is a singular god. Is it possible to prove this, or can evidence of one god be used as evidence of other gods?
Also note that 9:3 represents a change from what Adam and Eve were told, that they were to be entirely vegetarian. The standard explanation is that God realized humans couldn’t live up to that high an ethical standard and adjusted expectations.
(Yes, I am aware there are logical problems with the idea of an omniscient God learning new information!)
Of course, the Bible states “do not test God” at least twice, so trying to prove the existence of God is sinful.
An oldie but a goodie:
Pure logic can disprove the existence of certain versions of God, like that one. If a god being logically contradictory doesn’t disprove it, then the concept of “disprove” has no meaning anyway.
It’s using logic to prove any sort of god that never works, despite many amusing attempts. “God is the most perfect being that can exist, nonexistence would be imperfection, therefore God must exist”.
Don’t y’all remember the text of the U.S. Constitution’s 1st Amendment?
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, unless the religion is the brand of baptist Christianity practiced by the 2nd Church of Norfolk, Virginia over on 14th Street next to the donut shop.”
As a woman once told me many years ago: “God puts these mountains in our path for a reason.” My response was: “So he’s an asshole then?”
Synod of 1654 or synod of 1641?
If a person is a real Christian, they probably see Trump as a Cyrus - a non-believer who is advancing Christianity and is therefore worth supporting.
The counterargument to that is there’s another biblical reference that could apply to Trump - he’s the serpent, somebody who is tempting faithful believers into sin by offering them secular rewards.
And of course, some Christians are actually “Christians”. Their religious faith is like a costume they wear over their true self. And for them, their true self is a right wing bigot.
The absolute ignorance needed to make that comparison is astounding.
Having lived with a variety of creatures I find two major differences: Knowledge the future exists – they very much live in the now – and language, making it easy to pass on accumulated knowledge. Whether this is a vast difference I leave as a debate.
That’s why I call myself a very strong agnostic, not an atheist. I don’t know Russell’s teapot doesn’t exist but I find no credible evidence that it does.
There’s a lot of people with a “people tell me that the bible tells me” mentality.
The thing I find closest to proof of God is that single-celled animals carry the ability to mutate and evolve into things we can’t even imagine. This is exactly how a super scientist would introduce something called life .
Analog copying in DNA molecules, while it’s remarkably reliable, is not foolproof. And, with competition for scarce resources, how could you avoid mutation and evolution?
I imagine a super scientist, if they were aiming for something in her own image, would be able to start with something closer to the final product rather than hoping and praying (to who?) that evolution follows a certain path, mass extinction events included.
Which god is this evidence for?
I think this and @Velocity’s claim are evidence for the God of Elephants. I mean, no other animals even come close to how useful, strong, sensitive, and precise a trunk is. It’s obvious that God used primordial slime to put life on a path to make those perfect beings with their perfect noses.
It’s rationalization. Find bits of the Bible that support whatever awful thing you want to do or support, and ignore the bits which tell you that you’re being sinful.