[Patrick Bateman]

Father, who may or may not be in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name - although of course never pronounced as this is against Old Testament Scripture.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heavan - someday of course, not today however as can be seen by your righteous destruction of large parts of the East and West.
Give us this day our daily bread - not all of us of course, only those who deserve it, which leaves out Eithiopians, Sudanese, pretty much all of Africa it seems, dirty heathens - and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us - except for abortionists, smokers, drinkers, gamblers, proponents of free love and contraception, scientists, the inventor of the steam engine ...
For thine is the kingdom - apparently - the power and the glory, forever and ever,
Peace Out.

P.S How's about a fucken break here big fella, we get the message. People do bad shit, some get punished while most seem rewarded at best cough Karl Rove cough. We all get it. How about some actual divine intervention/retribution, the last act was 2000 years ago, surely you've recharged the battery's since then.

[Zatoichi]

Awsome interpretation.

Some divine intervention would be great, and could definately help clear things up for a lot of people. Unfortunately asking for it would be like temping the Lord. Damn rules of religion. With that hole all creation in 7 days thing awhile back, you would think that God wouldn't mind a little rule bending here and there.

[Patrick Bateman]

Damn right. It appears Jehovah only makes an appearance to those with a direct line, people like the Pope - who has served mankind so well over the years, direct involvement in the spread of aids, poverty and starvation across the third world excepted of course ...
What fucken pisses me off most however is the righteous 'hide behind religion' angle used by proponents of God above all. Bush for example, who did not find it necessary to even VISIT New Orleans during the crisis, yet offers as a solution ... A NATIONWIDE DAY OF PRAYER. For fucks sake tell me he was joking.
As Jon Stewart pointed out, a day of prayer in aid of recovery for an ACT OF GOD.
Pointless in the extreme.
Hey Christians, from what I remember from Sunday School, the guy your life is based around actually got his hands dirty from time to time. I very rarely read sections of the bible where the disciples ruch to Christ and ...

[I]Lord, come quick, locusts attacking the city down yonder.
Locusts you say, your right let us act quickly. Kneel in prayer. And after an hour or so of that ... how about a holiday, I hear Texas is lovely this time of year.
Hey Paul, what's that I hear about you leaking to the Romans the name of one of our undercover agents? Well, I forgive you ... shit, power has to be accrued somehow ... now who's for a chicken dinner.

[Zatoichi]

Don't get me started on the Roman Catholic Church. For all the good they've supposedly done throughout the years, they have probably done more damage to mankind than any other group of people EVER have. This is not to say that protestants are much better. And what I want to know is, what the Hell did Christ do for those thirty or so years we never hear about except for one story?

While I'm at it, here are my views on the other two largest religions. After converting family members and such, Muhammed spread the religion through war and by having oppenents and rivals murdered. So much for being such a great and holy fellow. The Jews are the worst though. They kepped getting shown miracles and getting punished and such and such directly by God, and they knew for damn sure that it was God doing it. They turn away from God as an entire people (well, almost all of them) more times than the Bible cares to say. As an entire group of people they suck to the extreme. And I didn't even have to mention the way that Isreal treats the Palestinians. Instead of trying to make things better, they keep perpetuating the cycle.

I would say that the only reason it is hard to be critical of most other faiths (or non-faiths) is that they are very loosy organised, or they no longer exist.

[Patrick Bateman]

I hope you're referring to the Jewish faith as opposed to the Jewish race ...
That cleared up, it's frustrating to see quite nice concepts as 'be nice to each other' - something quite selfish with regard to the 'social contract' - and turning it into a front for harm to others.
"If you're not with us you're against us" - Super

[Zatoichi]

I suppose its kind of intertwined. Probably the Jewish race though. And, yes, for those who don't know they are actually consided to be a race by the scientific community.

Here is something that I just thought of: if going around naked in the while in the garden of Eden was wrong, why did God let them? Also, why wouldn't that be the original sin?

You know, I bet that we were just an experiment of God's, and the angels totally fucked it up. Lucifer hates us, probably because he is jealous or doesn't think we are worthy or some stupid shit. One of the angels was probably told that the seven days thing was an extremely clever metaphor, and they totally botched the explanation to Adam. Quite probably, it was always the angels acting (and screwing up) in the name of God. Placing a language barrier (probably another metaphor anyways) has had to be one of the most detrimental actions taken against mankind.

I could go on and on, but here is a question or two that might help to prove this theory. In the garden of Eden, how were Adam and Eve able to look upon God? Because later on in the OT the Jews would be killed by merely looking at him (was God bluffing?). Secondly, how did Adam and Eve actually manage to survive after being banished from the Garden of Eden? This is assuming that they didn't have to do anything besides forage for food in the garden, and that the surrounding land was barren (otherwise what a hollow punishment that would be).

Seriously, I bet the Bible was intended to be all clever and metaphorical and shit, and someone totally botched it.

[Zatoichi]

Sorry for the double post, but I also don't believe that fate is determined by God, and that everthing (or just about) is His will. That would mean that He purposefully lined up people to go to Hell for not believing in Him and other such stupid things. Wouldn't that be absolutely retarded and detrimental towards His goals. What were the Jews going for anyways back then? If the gates of heaven were closed befor Jesus came along ....

[Slade]

Here is something that I just thought of: if going around naked in the while in the garden of Eden was wrong, why did God let them? Also, why wouldn't that be the original sin?

The Bible says that Adam and Eve realized they were naked and covered themselves up out of embarrassment, not because it was "wrong" or sinful, and this occured after Eve was tempted by the serpent and ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. To me, it sounds like that act is a metaphor for humans achieving self-awareness, and realizing that the couple were naked is how that is depicted. It's crazy fundamentalist Christians who say that nudity is wrong, and society tends to purvey that image as well. I think it's designed to partially suppress the sex drive and keep people from temptation, but even eskimos reproduce, so it can't work that well, maybe just keep reproduction to a dull roar.

The original sin was that Eve disobeyed God's request not to eat from that one tree in the Garden. From the Bible, it seems silly that God wanted humans little more than the animals that existed in the Garden as well, so I'm rather unsure as to why he wanted us blissfully ignorant. Could be mistranslations, mistellings, and general morphing of the story before it was written down.

At any rate, Eve was told to not eat of the Tree, or she would die. This is rather odd given that it's difficult to form a concept of death when one has been alive only, and especially in a place of bountious immortality. Given the knowledge implications of the Tree, one could presume that Eve was going to die regardless, she just wouldn't be able to understand it. Or that she did because God explained it to her. And given her utter innocence, how would she know that the serpent would be trying to tempt her down a foolish path? And then, after the eating is done, God asks "Who told thee that thou wast naked?" It's rather counterintuitive to the human condition and general ideas for God to deliberately keep everyone in the dark. But given the rest of the OT, he was rather into the fire and brimstone approach. The more I read it, the more I feel it's all just parables and mythology of a culture of the distant past. Also, the serpent could easily just be personified human curiosity about the world.

I don't think it's at all fair to say that the Bible is "intended to be all clever and metaphorical and shit, and someone totally botched it," and base that claim on taking everything literally.

It's also unfair to constantly wrap the big guy up in the Judeo-Christian contexts. If you're going to discredit the Bible, you have to take it into account that they got God wrong, so you can't really gripe about how God thought killing all of the uncircumsized philistines in Kings was something his followers should have been doing because you're using a source that you discredited to support your claims.

And it could be said that by giving humanity free will, God sacrificed his ability to intervene, and since we go about doing what we want, we're responsible for what happens that is a result of our actions. And it's absurd to call a natural disaster an act of God. Do any of you really think he just randomly waves his omnipresent fingers around and makes earthquakes and hurricanes appear when he gets angry or bored?

You could bitch about Christianity all you like, but it completely neglects the crux of the matter, and you're unfair unless you add that you're complaining about how that certain take on God is absurd. you need to remember that the Bible is a group of stories told from generation to generation, pulled in by a group that sought power, and modified how they saw fit. General human error, the fact that society was patriarchial and women were considered property for thousands of years, and the maliciously intelligent power mongers seeking an opiate for the masses with their hands on the material all need to be taken into account as well.

Descartes tried to argue deterministic free will, but he failed miserably from modern thought viewpoints. I don't remember how he had it working, though, and I'm not about to dig through the meditations in Discourse on Philosophy to find it.

I am done for now. Yay, rambliness! And for the most part, when I say "you", I'm generalizing, not meaning just Zatoichi.

Also Hebrew is a pretty language.

Editorium: The story can also be taken as just an explination of why humanity is born into a world set against them, like Pandora's Box.

This post has been edited by Slade: 16 October 2005 - 01:44 PM

[Spoon Poetic]

Actually, the original sin was Adam's, not Eve's. That's why in the whole rest of the Bible, it's referred to as Adam's sin, not Eve's. Eve didn't really know any better, but Adam neglected his job in teaching her how important it was to not "eat of the tree," and also his job to protect the Garden--the serpent shouldn't have been there to tempt Eve in the first place. However, that's all if you take the story literally--which I'd swear 99.9999% of people, even non-Christians, do. Jews explained things with stories, that's just the way it was. That's why most of Jesus's teachings were in parables--the easiest way to get a point across was to put it in a story where some things stand for other things. I believe both the Creation story and the majority, if not all, of Revelations is metaphorical.

Why God wanted to keep humans "ignorant," or however you'd say it, I personally look at it this way: One cannot do something unless they have some inkling of an idea that it can be done. Humans are not creative - we can "piggy-back" on ideas, we can carry ideas further, but everything that someone creates that people consider to be "new," if you look deeper, you can always find that it really isn't a brand-new creation. If you don't believe me, try this: in your head, or on a piece of paper, try creating a brand-new animal. Something no one has ever seen the likeness of before. Now, after finishing, study it. Is anything really new? Or did you draw from creatures that really do/did exist? Is it a biped, like humans? Perhaps a blobby thing, like an amoeba? Wings like a bird, or a bat? Maybe it's a combination of things, or things are changed a little bit, but I can guarantee you it's not brand-new. And it's physically impossible to even think in your imagination of a color that is outside of the spectrum that is visible to the human eye.

Slade, your statement about God sacrificing his ability to intervene: Yes!! Finally, someone with an open mind. Also, the human error thing, great observation. The fact is, the Bible is merely a collection of stories passed down, mostly orally, for generations until the beginnings of the Church decided to write them down and make one certain set of them the "official" ones, so there wouldn't be these lots of slightly different versions drifting around everywhere. Also, people will shape their god to fit what they're doing at the time; such as when the Crusades were said to be God-sanctioned. Like hell they were! Keep that in mind when reading some of the stuff about the "wrath of God." Other tragedies, you have to admit, they brought upon themselves: with or without any gods, if you put your hand in a fire, you're going to get burned.

Edit: Zatoichi, I love what you said in your last post.

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 17 October 2005 - 12:31 AM

[Slade]

Hmm... I like the analogy that we were intelligent, but could not conjure up entirely new bizarre things on our own. I'm unsure if this is because of the tie between consciousness and language though. We could be creating new things, but since we don't often invent new words, we use old words to describe it so people sort of know what we are talking about.

Ex: The Gurln is a snarky creature with pulsating brackish tubes protruding from it's Andrewjackson bilre. Doesn't make much sense, does it? But if I drew a picture and explained what those words meant, it might make some.

Either way, I like that thought much more than God deliberately keeping humanity as little more than just the animals around the Garden, like Zeus did until Prometheus.

If you're feeling philosophical, I'd reccomend reading some stuff by Kierkegaard. He helped pioneer the French existentialist movement, a hundred years earlier, and he attempted to break away from the Judeo-Christian concept of "God" to a... well, an existential one, which denounces group think and letting other people tell you truths and accepting them without question.

[Slade]

Questions, my good spoon: Why did the Garden need protection at all?

And exactly what is the original sin, if it was not Eve disobeying God's request to not eat from the tree? It seems a little silly that it was bad for Adam to not tell Eve it was wrong, but less for Eve to disobey the request...

[Spoon Poetic]

Genesis 1:26b
"They will be masters over all life--the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the livestock, wild animals, small animals, and all the earth."

Genesis 2:15
"The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and care for it."

I assume the Garden of Eden needed protection for the same reasons any other garden or dwelling would. Yes, yes, I know, the Garden of Eden was supposedly perfect. But where in the Bible does it expicitly state that "Life was perfect in Eden before the apple incident. Nothing bad ever happened and man didn't have to do any work." But it does state that Man had dominion over all the earth, including all the other creatures. Also that he had to tend to and care for the Garden. Adam should have kept that devil of a snake (haha) out of the garden, and espeially away from his wife.

Also, God told Adam directly that he should not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then he made Eve. (Genesis 2:16-18) This leads me to believe that it was also Adam's job to teach Eve how important it was so stay away from that tree. But she obviously didn't know how important it was, or else it wouldn't state Eve had "been deceived;" it would say she outright "disobeyed." But even without this little detail, Eve was "deceived" whereas Adam just ate it, knowing where it came from (Genesis 3:6 states that he was with her at the time), and then tried to get out of trouble by placing blame on Eve. Adam outright disobeyed the command of God.

Another thing to consider: the Hebrew word "Adam" means "man." Any time you see the word "man" in the Bible, you can replace it with the word "Adam." Any time you see the name "Adam" in the Bible, you can replace it with the word "man." It kind of puts new meaning on some things.

[Zatoichi]

Somehow gave up ability to majorly intervene ... hmmm ... I like that idea. I would explain why He hasn't been proven to do much since Jesus came around.

I have done a little rereading in Genesis and have done a little asking around for various opinions. I have come up with some various ideas. I'm going to excuse the facts that because of oral tradition, mistranslation, things being recorded long after their occurance, the destruction of many of the religious texts during one of the times Jerusalem fell, and the fact that a council of basically what was the Roman Catholic Church (at that time) put it together means that the Bible is actually quite limited and quite possibly wrong on many accounts. I will also try to keep this as coherent as possible.

The creation in 7 days thing:
It is a metaphor. Why would God waste all that time in creating math and science and not bother using them? The fact that math and science exist could even be used to prove that God exists, and was the creator of everything. In my opinion each "day" was probably a different stage in the development of the universe, and did not occur in a somewhat haphazard order. If you take it that way science has been used to validate faith in God. The seventh day as a day of rest would explain why God hadn't done many majorly huge things after the other six days. (Plus, it would validate the day out of the week as being a day of worship)

God created the angels and all of the other gods and goddesses:
God caused the angels to come into existance with the express purpose of being His servants. They were to act as His agents, and probably have the freedom to do things of their own violition (a bit of rule bending), or in Lucifer's case (and all who joined him) turn against God. Their power carries the authority of God. An interesting point is that several times in Genesis various angels refer to themselves as God. It may be concluded that sometimes some of the angels stepped out of line, and why at times in the OT God seems cruel and heartless (and generally wrong). Also, angels can take the form of men. One example of this is when Lot was staying in Sodom before the city was destroyed.

It can be considered that God created all of the other gods and goddesses because many times He and others speak of us (as in there was other beings around at the time). God also refers to the other gods, though not directly. Therefore He admits that they exist. In dealings with others in the OT by those who were followers of God, it is actually shown that various rulers (such as one or two of the pharohs in Egypt, and a smattering of other kings. Even Laban, Jocab's [later known as Isreal] father-in-law) feared God above their own gods and goddesses. It is quite possible that at some point in time these gods and goddesses turned their backs on God, and that is why God wished to put a stop to their ways. In fact, the first part of the Ten Commandments, when reading the lengthened versions, gives validately to this idea. It may have even been an angel who read these off, because to me God comes off as sounding like a bit of an ass. It is my opinion that God created the angels first to be his servants. The other gods were created to take on all aspects of what God had created and were given a bit more freedom. This may explain why many gods and goddesses take on human appearances and aspects. We were created in His image after all.

The spread of mankind:
Adam and Eve were probably an experiment used to test if mankind was worthy in God's sight. It was probably brought about by pressure from Lucifer and several other immortal beings. That is why people already exist when Adam and Eve are thrown out of Eden. That can very simply be concluded because Cain and others had to have married someone, and it is apparent that other civilizations already exist. In fact several of the decendants of Adam and Eve start up cities soon after, and cities tend to have a lot of people.

The original sin:
It was the fact that Adam and Eve disobeyed God's instructions. He didn't actually care that they had the knowledge of good and evil. That is why God did not destroy them.

The bit about nakedness:
It actually wasn't considered to be "wrong". It was actually an admission of guilt. Same thing about the hiding bit.

Getting thrown out of Eden:
There were two trees at the center of the Garden of Eden. They were the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life. The first tree is self explanatory, and the second presumably immortality. They were thrown out because God (or some grouping of immortals) did not want Adam and Eve living forever. It can be guessed that Adam and Eve somehow did not know of the Tree of Life. Neither Adam or Eve refer to there being two trees at the center of the garden, only one. Once this was figured out, the Garden of Eden was opened again, but being no longer useful because the experiment was over was no longer as bountious as it had been. Especially with Adam no longer tending to it.At this point in the reading God throws in a "The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; ....", for me this reinforces that the angels sometimes posed as God and/or God created the gods and goddesses.

I have just lost my train of thought, and will edit this to add more in a little bit.

This post has been edited by Zatoichi: 17 October 2005 - 11:12 PM

[Zatoichi]

or run out of time

The flood:
First off, there are references to other immortals once again. Secondly I believe that the flood occured in a contained area, only wipping out those who had turned their backs on God. I believe this because they once again find people after the end of the destruction and go about building cities and kingdoms (go figure).

The Tower of Babel:
Served to break up a group of those who knew of God to prevent them from sinning. There is also another us reference in there.

Actual Acts of God:
Would never do harm to those who were innocent. I am refering to when Abraham talks with the Lord to find a way to spare Sodom.

Sodom and Gomorrah:
It was actually angels who presided over the destruction of the cities, presumably (and very likely) under orders from God.

This post has been edited by Zatoichi: 17 October 2005 - 11:59 PM

[Spoon Poetic]

"Us" = God & His Son

A reference to another "deity" does not equal an acknowledgement that they are truly actual gods, and not just human creations.

You have some interesting, thought-provoking ideas, though.