In religion class:
“Why doesn’t God just kill the devil?”
“Did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons?”
“If God and the devil had a fistfight, who would win?”
“Could God create a boulder so big that even he couldn’t lift it?”
“Are we supposed to hate the devil? I thought hate was a sin and we were supposed to love everyone. . . if we’re supposed to love everyone, does that mean we should love Satan too?”
I got kicked out out of a college theology class once for asking. “So, God tells Adam and Eve that if they eat the fruit, they will die. The serpent tells Eve that that’s nonsense, if they eat the fruit they’ll know what God knows (good and evil) but they won’t die. So they eat the fruit, they don’t die, and they know stuff. So God lied? And the devil-serpent told the truth?”
The thing was, I really wasn’t trying to be a punk. I really didn’t (and don’t) understand how to code that bit.
“What did they feed the carnivores on the Ark?”
Huh? IIRC, He didn’t say they’d drop dead on the spot, just that they’d die. Which they did, eventually.
Not that there aren’t some things to question there. “So let me get this straight. He makes these crappy beings that can’t follow a simple order. So when they inevitably don’t, instead of scrapping them and starting over, he decides to go ahead and let them make billions of eqally crappy duplicates of themselves?”
See, this is getting somewhere, unlike the idiot who taught the class and assumed I was being a jerk. My question then becomes, do we have reason to believe that Adam and Eve were immortal before they ate the fruit? For what it’s worth, if Dad tells me “don’t eat that, you’ll die” I’d expect a little more quick-acting poison. “Eventually” feels like a cop-out.
I was pretty peeved that I got literally kicked out of class, rather than talked to or even told to see him after class so we could discuss it then.
It’s not my intention to hijack this into a Debate, I should have posted this part with my first part to explain my reasons for asking the question.
And I never thought about the carnivores on the Ark! :eek: (Come to that, what did Noah and his family eat?) Maybe they just all fasted for 40 days and 40 nights?
To a rotund woman: “When is your baby due?”
Dave did this last week. I told him he should never, ever ask that of a stranger unless there’s a baby coming out of her at the time.
The best question I’ve heard about that Adam & Eve story is: “Why was it so wrong to eat from the tree of knowledge? Is ignorance so holy?” 
How 'bout questions sure to get the *askee * in trouble:
Do these pants make me look fat?
Do I remind you of your mother?
What’s wrong with me today?
Do you remember what today is?
(The only acceptable answer to any of the above is a kiss and a box of chocolate.)
My SO’s answer to the above is “No I don’t feel like fighting right now.”
On the SDMB:
What’s felching?
What three words end in -gry?
What’s Hi Opal!?
Why do we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?
Ooh, I got in trouble for this one in Lit class in High School.
“Wait, so if the Bible is true…because the Bible says so…how the hell does that work? I mean, if it is true, we can’t just simply accept that it validates itself, right? If I were to write something and claim it’s absolutely truthfulness in the foreward, would I start a religion, too?”
Keep in mind, I live in Georgia, where if you’re not Christian, you’re not Georgian.
Harborwolf and I were just discussing this. He said that eventually it’s useless to argue with some Christians about the bible. The answer to everything will eventually be “because the bible says so,” or simply “God.”
At work:
“Do you mind if we switch to decaf?”
“Do you have a case of the Mondays?”
WhyNot, they didn’t die because they ate the apple. Genesis goes on to say that God kicked them out of the Garden because there was another tree there that could give them eternal life, and God was afraid that if they ate that, then they’d be equals (or at least the equals of the angels), now that they knew about good and evil.
So it was a lie. They were going to die anyway. The snake told the truth, but he was doing so against God’s plan. So he was bad. If you have a chance to choose between the Truth and God, you know how you’re supposed to choose. (Per the story)
There was a lot a lying in the Old Testament, which God didn’t appear to mind. He was supposed to be impossible to lie TO, but he didn’t hold it agains the folks who tried, if he liked them otherwise. (Bearing False Witness isn’t the same as lying. BFW is lying in order to hurt someone.)
I’ve heard that lying in bad per the New Testament, but I can’t remember a specific verse against it. I remember verses in which people were called liars, but that’s rhetoric. What I can’t remember is a proscription.
Actual questions my kids asked in Sunday School:
Who took care of Adam and Eve when they were babies?
If it was God’s will that Jesus should be crucified, and Judas made it happen by betraying him, wasn’t Judas doing God’s will?
. . . our Pastor told us he planned to retire before either of our kids got to confirmation class - and he did!
Yllaria, thanks for a great post! A pastor once told me that the reason lying is bad is that it’s an attempt to create a new or better reality than God’s, and that’s blasphemy. Or something. Maybe not in the Book, but an interesting philisophical debate.
I’ve always wondered about poor Judas, as well, Genghis Bob.
sigh I really was the pesky kid who wanted to understand and love God for real and truly, but people just wouldn’t take the time to really discuss it! If I had been born 500 years ago, I woulda been burned as a heretic for sure. [/hijack]
Tommy, do you like to watch gladiator movies?
I’ve often wondered that about Judas and the Romans. Weren’t they just doing what they were supposed to be doing? Why did Jesus ask God to forgive them when they were doing his will in the first place. In that case, were any of those things actually sins?
Also, I’ve often wondered if Abraham would have been in trouble if he had dismissed the angel as a hallucination and killed Isaac anyway on the grounds that God told him to do it.
A question I have learned not to answer: How old do you think I am?
My Sunday School question was always something along the lines of: God created the world, then right away created people…so where do the dinosaurs fit in?
Dung Beetle did “The Flintstones” not teach you anything? 
Did Noah just shovel manure off the ark into the water?
Why was God so displeased with Cain’s offerings to him when Cain obvioulsy had done his best. Is God just not a vegetable lover?
Wasn’t Lot sinning when he offered his virgin daughters to the inhabitants of Sodom instead of letting them have the angels?
Wasn’t Lot sinning when he had sex with his virgin daughters?
Since Jesus died on the cross, are we supposed to ignore all of the original Jewish laws, or just some of them? How do we know which ones to disregard?
Honestly, I don’t see why this is a question. Heck outside of continental shelves we still dump raw sewage from ships directly to the ocean. Given the state of hygiene in the stone age, I can’t see any other answer.
Good question. I really don’t know. I’ve heard it said that Lot knew he wouldn’t have his offer accepted. I don’t quite see where that interpretation comes from, myself. Though my reading of this scene left me thinking it wasn’t impossible, but it still feels like a bit of a retcon. 
IIRC, what happened was that his daughters believed that they were the only people left in the world, and they had to start breeding up new people. And that Lot was asleep/out of it, when they had their way with him.
My question: If we’re supposed to have absolute separation of Church and State, why do people swear on Bibles in court?