Atheism As A REJECTION OF--Not Disbelief In--An Evil God (Buddhist, America, church)

[Matthew 4:4]

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

A father can lay a loaded gun on the living room coffee table and say to his 5-year-old son, "Don't play with that gun because something bad will happen if you do". This naturally piques the son's curiosity because he's thinking, "How can a toy hurt me?" But he will obey the father for a time, until the next door neighbor's 5-year-old kid visits and they start playing and the neighbor's kid says, "Hey, let's play with your dad's gun". So they play with it and the son accidentally shoots and kills his neighbor. Who do you think is going to be arrested and tried for homicide? If you guessed the father you'd be absolutely right. So now who is responsible for man's downfall, Father God or his son, Adam?

But married Adam ( 5-year olds are Not married ) was Not married the day he was created as an adult.
Mr. Adam first was introduced to the animals and then given the job to name those animals.
In Scripture we find adults are considered to be about 30 years of age.
So, it is quite possible Mr. Adam was about age 30 when he married wife Eve.

The forbidden fruit was Not loaded as a gun would be.
The fruit was not considered as being a pointed murder weapon.
The fruit was Not a toy either. Out of all the trees on Earth only one tree was God's tree.
If Adam and Eve were minor children it would be as if they were in a HUGE warehouse chock full of candy.
That was Not the case according to Genesis 2:17.

[thrillobyte]

Originally Posted by Matthew 4:4

But married Adam ( 5-year olds are Not married ) was Not married the day he was created as an adult.
Mr. Adam first was introduced to the animals and then given the job to name those animals.
In Scripture we find adults are considered to be about 30 years of age.
So, it is quite possible Mr. Adam was about age 30 when he married wife Eve.

The forbidden fruit was Not loaded as a gun would be.
The fruit was not considered as being a pointed murder weapon.
The fruit was Not a toy either. Out of all the trees on Earth only one tree was God's tree.
If Adam and Eve were minor children it would be as if they were in a HUGE warehouse chock full of candy.
That was Not the case according to Genesis 2:17.

Adam was created as an adult but do you think he had the wisdom, experience and the maturity of a 30-year-old adult capable of making an adult's decisions? He couldn't have had any more maturity than a child if he had just been created. Now you can argue he and Eve lived in the garden for a hundred years or some such thing before picking the fruit but that's just a hypothesis. All things being equal, God placing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil right in front of Adam and Eve to tempt them was as irresponsible as a father laying a loaded gun on the coffee table. Can you find a good reason why God placed such a tree right in front of them? Why not outside the garden where they had no access to it? It's certainly as possible for God to do that as, say... Adam being about 30 when he married Eve? But does the Bible say Adam married Eve, or does it simply say he created Eve as a mate for Adam?

[Shirina]

Originally Posted by GldnRule

This is the REAL problem...that otherwise intelligent people lament the inactions, or "wait on/around for God". A entity they know as a metaphorical and allegorical character in a work of representative literary art.

At the time, however, that isn't how we perceived God. I won't speak for Mordant, but I really thought there was an entity out there that played around with people's lives. I know it seems utterly ludicrous now, sure, but I was barely out of grammar school - "tweenager" I think they're called. I still had a mushy brain.

Originally Posted by GldnRule

Why would you do that? Because there are a lot of people that mistakenly interpret those writings literally...is that why?

Again, I won't speak for Mordant - I suspect people do that for a lot of different reasons. For me, pure and simple, it was desperation. I wasn't getting any help from humanity so I directed my attention to the only place left.

Originally Posted by GldnRule

You already know...and even state that you know...those stories are not actual accounts of occurrences and the characters are either completely representative and/or embellished for artistic emphasis.

That's what I believe now - yes. But when I was 12? Like I said, I was just *barely* coming out of those magical years of childhood when anything was possible - Santa, giant anthropomorphic rabbits on Easter Sunday, unicorns, even imaginary friends seemed plenty real. At that age, I was only just taking my first steps into the far less magical world of "middle school" - so an all powerful god was far easier to swallow given that seemingly everyone believed in it.

Originally Posted by GldnRule

So...why complain about or wait on what you know does not even exist to wait on or complain about?

Uh ... Gldn ... seriously. You're essentially saying that, because I believed in God when I was 12, I have no right to speak out against a belief in God as an adult. At the very least, yet again, I should just sit down and shut up.

It's like saying people who got in trouble with the law should never go to schools and warn kids to stay out of trouble.

Originally Posted by GldnRule

It's almost like some are so upset that so many people actually take it literally, that they become irrational over it.

Now see ... here is where we atheists are screwed over by the forum rules. Because if I were allowed to talk about how religion influences politics - and how religion influences science - and worse, how religion influences our education system, I could tell you exactly why I speak out against religion. I could quite literally write several volumes of books detailing how religion corrupts the democratic process - and the ever-growing influence religion has on right-wing extremism. But I can't.

So you get to ask questions I'm not allowed to answer - which irritates the living hell out of me, to be quite frank about it.

Originally Posted by GldnRule

Or...maybe it's because of a lack of acceptance that this world/life will most likely bring an inevitable large dose of physical and emotional pain, and there really is no getting "saved" from that by or anything.

I'm not entirely sure what you're driving at here. All I can really say, assuming I'm interpreting this correctly, is that I have never - not even once - been inflicted with any kind of emotional pain for refusing to believe in ancient Palestinian myths.

However, I'm probably one of the lucky ones since I know people talk all the time about the pure evil nastiness many atheists have had to endure at the hands of Christians - simply for exercising their Constitutional right to not worship anything.

Originally Posted by GldnRule

It actually makes more sense to me that people would really believe it literally, (I have no problem with that) than those that are obviously hip to the real deal going off about, or waiting on, what they know are representative characters in Ancient Writings.

Nearly everyone who believes in a god - regardless of what they call it - are so enmeshed within that belief system that they can't imagine a world without a god. This is the reason why a good portion of believers cannot handle any kind of criticism of their beliefs no matter how professionally or gently that criticism is made. They've internalized their belief to such a degree that there is literally NO difference between the belief and the person doing the believing. If I were to say that Yahweh is a pooh-pooh head, what THEY see is: "GldnRule is a poohpooh head" - at which point they start ranting about personal attacks, slamming the "report" button, and complaining about atheists posting on this forum.

IF a person could step outside of their religious beliefs - primarily those who have a rigid belief system such as fundamentalists, evangelicals, certain baptists - those who swear by the existence of a specific named being referred to only in an uncorroborated holy book - those types. If they could step outside of their religious beliefs and see them how I do, I'm willing to bet that at least half of them would start seriously questioning their faith. Because it's, quite frankly, barmy.

Think of it this way:

Imagine you live in a world where you haven't been browbeaten with Christianity since Day One. You're at home and the doorbell rings. Standing there are two people with fake smiles who wish to bring you the Good News.

What on earth is that? You may wonder, yes? So here is what they tell you:

You should henceforth and forthwith devote your lives to a god-man who sacrificed himself to himself to circumvent a curse and punishment he, himself, created when a woman made from a rib was deceived by a talking snake to eat a forbidden fruit from a magical tree!

Now, I think if people were honest with themselves, they would probably slam the door in their faces and mutter about crazy wackjobs and their stupid cults.

BUT ... because the once cult-turned-religion called Christianity has become a literal institution, it indoctrinates millions of children before these kids EVER have the freedom of thought to make up their own minds about what to believe - if anything at all.

Which is why, inconceivably, even people like yourself - who do not even claim to be a Christian - will still continue to treat this religion as if it were just a nanometer away from being true. The entire premise of Christianity is not only insane on its face, it also advocates that the most evil act one being can inflict upon another - eternal torture - is somehow good, just, and moral wholesome goodness!!

And yet, bafflingly and mind-bogglingly enough, you will claim that it makes MORE sense to take the Bible literally than to not believe in it at all.

I mean ... seriously ... if you can't see the absolute lunacy of what churches actually teach people as being real, then ... I really don't know anymore. I guess as I've gotten older over the last 10 years, I've just lost some of the desire to show people the absolute certifiable nature of religious dogma.

Originally Posted by GldnRule

And this is not a "indirect way to make Atheists sit down and shut up".

Well ... any time I read anyone's post and my eyeballs start once again bleeding as they start complaining that we atheists are willing to keep fighting the good fight, sorry, but I see it as nothing more than "sit down and shut up."

The last time I was here, some random Christian poster I had never seen before started whining and boo-hooing about homosexuals, gay marriage, the unraveling of society and all the rest of that crap - and not one single person outside of the atheist community criticized said poster. In other words, here's this poster STILL complaining about gays some 12 years after same-sex marriage has been made legal - and no one is telling THAT person, "Hey, ya know? Maybe you don't need to keep bashing gays ..."

Yeah, religious people are allowed to prosalytize their bigotry, their prejudices, their hatred, and their superstitious phobias until the proverbial cows come home and NO ONE tells them enough's enough.

But by golly if an atheist says something negative about religion - yeah - here it comes. "Why do you keep complaining about God if you don't believe in him?" And, "Why are atheists even posting on this forum?" and more nonsense to that effect - essentially saying atheists should be relegated to posting ONLY in the A&A forum so believers can turn this forum into a back-patting echo chamber extravaganza.

Originally Posted by GldnRule

I really wanna know what's up.

The Supreme Court is about ready to rescind the Constitutional right to have an abortion. Already, even before this has happened, Christians and the court (now stacked with right-wing conservative judges) are eyeing Obergefell v. Hodges - the law that legalized same-sex marriage across the country. They're like vultures on a powerline just waiting ... waiting ... trying to figure out a way to repeal that, as well. These freaks of nature won't be happy until even interracial marriages are banned.

One thing about right-wing religion - it's never happy unless it's making other people unhappy. All they're interested in doing is persecuting and discriminating people, using religion like a club to beat down ANYONE who refuses to conform.

Is it really any surprise that the fundamentalist, evangelical communities have rallied behind right-wing extremism including such racist groups like the Proud Boys? Don't believe me? Look up Greg Locke. They worship Trump more than they do Jesus - especially since Jesus would never approve of their shinanigans.

And that's about all the politics I'm probably allowed - which is why I said earlier how I'm prevented from discussing the clear and present danger religion is to our free and democratic way of life. It puts atheists like me - who argue more from a geo-political point of view rather than debating semantics in the Bible - at a severe if not debilitating disadvantage.

My apologies for writing yet another long post - I know how much people seem to hate that. Reading is such an arduous chore for some people. But the answer I have to your question is not a simple cut-and-dried answer that can be summed up in a couple of sentences.

Originally Posted by GldnRule

And I have the solution to it as well...but I want some people to tell me what the dynamic is with the waiting and complaining/criticizing.

We'll see if it's really a solution. So help me, though, it better not be a case of atheists just shutting up and taking up quilting or something ...

[Shirina]

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

You must admit, Shirina I have a way with the written asterisk.

Haha ... such an eloquent asterisk it was!

[Shirina]

Originally Posted by EscAlaMike

I addressed this here.

The tree was there for Adam to partake of, but only on God's terms, not on Adam's. That's the root of Adam's entire problem; that he wanted the knowledge of good and evil on his terms and in his own timing. Had Adam resisted the temptation of the serpent, he would have then been able to partake of the tree and be confirmed in righteousness forever.

Originally Posted by EscAlaMike

We would also disagree with your characterizing Adam as a child or childlike. He was created as a man and endowed with everything he needed to obey God. His disobedience was completely his conscious choice while aware of the consequences.

Sorry, but you're making stuff up. Or, more accurately, whoever told you this information is making stuff up.

The Bible doesnt allude to any of this. The explanation you're giving is the way believers try to rationalize an indefensible position.

Nowhere does it say that the tree was there for Adam to partake from - nothing was said that it had to be on God's terms. In fact, Eve was the one who ate from the tree first. But women do not, and never did, matter much in the Bible unless they are being portrayed as prostitutes and evil deceivers trying to lure good men astray.

Therefore Eve eating the fruit was a non-event. Yeah, what could one expect from those weak-willed females so easily taken in by a snake which lacked the facial muscles and vocal chords (let alone the intelligence) to have ever spoken even a single syllable of human speech (but since when does reality or science matter?)

Adam was not tempted by the serpent. Eve was. And it wasn't much of a temptation for, as I said, Eve hadn't even been created yet when God issued his warning. God told Adam in Genesis 17 not to eat the forbidden fruit. Eve wasn't created until Genesis 22. Whoops.

Of course Eve was created as an afterthought - which is what women are in the Bible - Adam being tasked with naming hundreds of millions of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibions, and fish (the fish would've been real fun to name ... either flopping around on the ground with no air ... or Adam taking a swim 3 miles below the surface to name all those bizarro creatures that live around underwater volcanic vents... wait, oops, that's science and reality again. My bad!)

By the time Adam got around to Eve, I'm sure not eating from a single tree had long passed out of Adam's over-taxed brain.

Note, too, that Eve wasn't created to be an equal partner with Adam - that was what Lilith was supposed to be - but given the Bible was written by men who wanted a strict patriarchal society, well ... that's why there's no trace of Lilith in Bible 2.0. Unfortunately an extra creation story as well as two different sets of commandments from Bible 1.0 slipped through the editor's radar. Whoopsie again.

No, Eve was created to be Adam's little helper. I think we all know what "helper" really means. It's the same kind of euphemism seen when modern Bibles changed the word "slave" to "servant"

Originally Posted by EscAlaMike

We would also disagree with your characterizing Adam as a child or childlike. He was created as a man and endowed with everything he needed to obey God. His disobedience was completely his conscious choice while aware of the consequences.

Once again, the Bible doesn't say that - it doesn't imply that - it doesn't allude to that.

Again, once again, these are the kinds of "facts" (loosely defined) Biblical scholars invent from whole cloth to solve the very problems people like me bring up. Especially when you realize that Adam could not have been created with all the knowledge that would allow him to obey God. Because if he DID have those faculties, then he would essentially know most if not all of the information the fruit would've bestowed in the first place. It's akin to closing the barn door after the horse has galloped away.

For instance, Adam would have had to have to known what life and death, good and evil was for the consequences of disobedience to mean anything to him. If Adam knew nothing about death, then God threatening Adam with death would've been ... pointless. Just like if I threatened you with flarkinjotisblat if you don't respond to this post, what would that mean to you? Right?

But if Adam DID know about death, then the fruit wouldn't have given Adam any information he didn't already know, making the entire warning superfluous to begin with.

Thus Adam HAD to have been child-like, and God would've been trying to protect Adam's innocence.

Besides, what fully grown man with all of his brain functions intact want to spend eternity in a garden doing pretty much ... well ... nothing? I start getting bored and restless after being in a waiting room for five minutes. I would go stark raving mad after awhile, living in a garden where I didn't even have to hunt for food or worry about the elements.

"So, Eve, what do you want to do today?"

"Well, I'm almost done counting ants on this tree over here. I was thinking about maybe looking for a four leaf clover today .."

"Cool! Want any hel ... oh crap, I found one. Now what do you want to do ...?"

[mordant]

Originally Posted by Shirina

Sorry, but you're making stuff up. Or, more accurately, whoever told you this information is making stuff up.

Indeed. Sometimes we are so many layers deep in dogma and tradition that we forget what is actually in the urtext. Countless generations of theologians have tied themselves in knots building up commentaries to defend the incoherent.

I know that Mike likes to think of theology as first among "sciences" but in reality other than the part of it that does rigorous comparative religion and history of religion and other forms of navel-gazing it's not a discipline at all. When it comes to actually getting down to brass tacks and describing god and his claims on humanity it is exposed for the fraud that it is because outside of a given denomination there's not the slightest evidence that it's converging on some universal underlying truth. And even within a theological school there are logical holes you can drive a truck through.

[Derek41]

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

Adam was created as an adult but do you think he had the wisdom, experience and the maturity of a 30-year-old adult capable of making an adult's decisions? He couldn't have had any more maturity than a child if he had just been created. Now you can argue he and Eve lived in the garden for a hundred years or some such thing before picking the fruit but that's just a hypothesis. All things being equal, God placing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil right in front of Adam and Eve to tempt them was as irresponsible as a father laying a loaded gun on the coffee table. Can you find a good reason why God placed such a tree right in front of them? Why not outside the garden where they had no access to it? It's certainly as possible for God to do that as, say... Adam being about 30 when he married Eve? But does the Bible say Adam married Eve, or does it simply say he created Eve as a mate for Adam?

That’s an interesting take on Adam and Eve.
I’d always regarded the Original Sin as pretty trivial in nature anyway.
No different to a child being scalded for being caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
But Christians will always argue that sin is sin, no matter what it is.
And of course that we cannot compare God’s nature, to that of ourselves.
I’ve argued with other Christians about the 2nd Commandment, that God being “a jealous God” is breaking his own rules book? (the Catholic and Protestant 10 commandments are not the same)
But God not having our nature, and being all powerful, doesn’t have to “lead by example” in this instance.

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by Derek41

That’s an interesting take on Adam and Eve.
I’d always regarded the Original Sin as pretty trivial in nature anyway.
No different to a child being scalded for being caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
But Christians will always argue that sin is sin, no matter what it is.
And of course that we cannot compare God’s nature, to that of ourselves.
I’ve argued with other Christians about the 2nd Commandment, that God being “a jealous God” is breaking his own rules book? (the Catholic and Protestant 10 commandments are not the same)
But God not having our nature, and being all powerful, doesn’t have to “lead by example” in this instance.

Original sin is more like a child getting punished for somebody else having their hands in the cookie jar.

[EscAlaMike]

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

Tell me something, Mike: when we talk about "free will" what is the difference between these two scenarios:


1. you can choose to follow my commands or not. If you choose not to there are no repercussions.


2. you can choose to follow my commands or not. If you choose not to there are repercussions, namely an eternity suffering hell.



Do both reflect EQUALLY the exercise of free will?

Originally Posted by EscAlaMike

The first scenario is farcical as a command without repercussions for disobeying is no command at all. The second scenario is not what was presented to Adam.

Originally Posted by thrillobyte

Farcical? Just because you can't answer the question without looking silly you deem it farcical? This is a typical response from a Christian when they are cornered--just call it farcical. They think that makes them look intelligent.

Yes, farcical. You asked a trick question. There's no answer to your question, and your premise is nonsensical. I can't even really tell what you're getting at.

Which scenario do you think even equates with the Edenic one?

Adam was not presented with either of the scenarios you laid out, and he did have free will.

[EscAlaMike]

Originally Posted by Shirina

Again, once again, these are the kinds of "facts" (loosely defined) Biblical scholars invent from whole cloth to solve the very problems people like me bring up. Especially when you realize that Adam could not have been created with all the knowledge that would allow him to obey God. Because if he DID have those faculties, then he would essentially know most if not all of the information the fruit would've bestowed in the first place. It's akin to closing the barn door after the horse has galloped away.

For instance, Adam would have had to have to known what life and death, good and evil was for the consequences of disobedience to mean anything to him. If Adam knew nothing about death, then God threatening Adam with death would've been ... pointless. Just like if I threatened you with flarkinjotisblat if you don't respond to this post, what would that mean to you? Right?

But if Adam DID know about death, then the fruit wouldn't have given Adam any information he didn't already know, making the entire warning superfluous to begin with.

Thus Adam HAD to have been child-like, and God would've been trying to protect Adam's innocence.

The only thing Adam needed to know is that God is Good and can therefore be trusted.

That was the foundation of the serpent's temptation. His effort was first and foremost to get them to doubt God's Goodness.