h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

ES
You're absolutely correct. The effect might be zero, but that doesn't mean that He's not there ....... just that sometimes the answer is 'No'.

toxx

Toxx: We are made in the image of God, but uncovered sin produces shame. I do not fully understand the implications of sinfulness on nudity, but this passage seems to indicate that for sinful man, clothing is needed.

As for the snake... that would require me to do a lot of thinking on a somewhat extraneous question. Sorry.

Just felt I had to make you aware I were still kicking around in the corner...

CS. Me too! The snake is not sinless, but it doesn't have to keep its kit on, if improbably it ever had any. Poor ole humans only have to eat a fruit, and it's knitting needles out at the first opportunity. Daft, I call it!

toxx

CS. "UNCOVERED SIN"!!! What are you wittering on about? This is something made in the image of God. How can the mere appearance of it be sinful, covered or otherwise? Many human societies don't use much in the way of clothing. If anything, it is a recent development. This doesn't seem to sit well with an ancient prohibition!

toxx

CS. I do a lot of thinking and I expect anyone conversing with me to do some, at least. Memorising stuff doesn't count, and I'll excuse those who are too dim; not you of course. The snake is not extraneous, but part of the same question. It's just that it's possible the nobody has thought to ask this question before. You read it here first, on Hootoo! Get your act together.

You there az? I guess I bullied you into starting to think, at least to do so in text on this board. Sorry about the bullying, but ya gotta admit it was more of a favour than an insult.

toxx

Della. You might, at least, purr!

toxx

Morning az. I like the subject line. Looks a bit familiar. Erm ... where did it come from?

toxx

hi toxx,

I stole it!

hi CS,

I've never understood the point of having the tree of knowledge in the garden in the first place. Was it just meant as a test? And why didn't God want us to have knowledge of good and evil? Was it because ignorant non-thinking people make the best followers and obeyers? Surely He was so insecure to need that, and anyhow, what would be interesting about having a bunch of completely obedient sheep-like humans worshipping Him?

If God had not wanted Adam and Eve to eat this fruit he could have easily placed the tree out of reach. He knew A and E were simple, ignorant people. He had to know, as anyone does with a small child, that the best way to get them to do something is to tell them that this is the *one exact thing* they shouldn't do. This is called being curious, btw, not being sinful.

So God planted these trees as temptation and then created the snake and sent him along to tempt. Unfair! God Almighty against two people without knowledge of anything. It seems that God did this on purpose in order to have more interesting creations to boss around. Perhaps He was bored?

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Does this mean that previously snakes used to have legs and walk about?
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If this was a punishment for woman then why do animals also experience pain while giving birth? What did they ever do to God? I watched my cat Lua giving birth and she was obviously in a LOT of pain. This hardly seems fair.

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This is inconsistant with God being the big triple-O. Why couldn't He see them?

Oops, gotta go to work!

az

(class was cancelled . . . )

Oops, typo! That should have read 'surely He *wasn't* so insecure to need that'.

So, we left off with the All-Seeing One going 'where are you?' in the garden.

You see, CS, even as allegory, the bible is loaded with contradictions and it is really hard for me to understand why anyone would choose to follow the God depicted in it. I also don't agree when christians go on about God's love and God's mercy while hastily brushing over God's psychotic anger and jealosy by calling it His justice.

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Well, yeah! Who else would He play with then? The snake?

How is God being just when, just to give one example, He wipes out an entire city, including innocent adults and children?


<<ii. Mercy is the withholding of cursing for disobedience.
iv. Mercy is blessing regardless of obedience.
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Yes, but God *did* curse them, so he wasn't being merciful according to point ii. above. Just because He didn't use more curses doesn't mean He didn't curse them. So in fact He gave them neither mercy nor justice.

az

The bible does not and never has been an honest depiction of the begining of the world, or infact anything.

Anyone who believes it does so because they want to.

It has been passed on as fact gy people who either truly believed in what it says but just as much by those who knew they were on to a good thing by keeping the poor under the spell of the "Almighty".

It has no more truth in it than any book of the time, who remembers when our old friend Malalypse posted this:



Ooh! Just found a few quotes from Thomas Jefferson on the subject of the Bible (he was one of the main founders of the US government, a liberal genius, and a christian):
To his nephew he writes as follows regarding the Bible:

"Read the Bible as you would Livy or Tacitus. For example, in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still for several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of their statues, beasts, etc. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine, therefore, candidly, what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand, you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature" (Works, Vol. ii., p. 217)."

We all know there was no Adam and Eve - there is evidence of humans for thousands of years before this event was supposed to have taken place.

Taking this story as allegorical (rather than fictional entertainment) we encounter the concept of 'original sin'. If we accept however that Adam and Eve never existed: when did the original sin take place?

Without this 'original sin' much of the basis of Christianity has no meaning; there would, for example, have been no need for God to send his son as a saviour. Is this the reason so many fundamentalists hang on to creation and oppose evolution? Simply because it so severely undermines this basic tenet of their faith?

F

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Many myths have very similar creation stories, flood stories, etc. I wonder why the christion god myth became so popular? And if people always took it literally or if this is something that evolved over a period of time?

az

Hi big sis, thank you again. It may be a false dawn again but I really think may have broken out this time. Sorry if anything I said got you dragged in.

Christianity became the religion of the roman empire. This was at a time when there were many competing religions and beliefs. The central themes in christianity are very appealing and to be honest there are so many that the people in charge of the counry/empire/religious body (often the same thing all in all) can change the emphasis to what they want and still keep all the old costumes, props and scenery pretty much.

Even the christian manual has had many tinkerings and additional books to tell you how to understand it.

Theres a show on tonight about how the vatican changed the rules about priests being able to be married to having to be celibate in I think it was the 13th century. Ironic thing is they had done it because of the growing number of sex scandals plagueing the church.

After the roman Empire the next big expansion in christianity was the British, Portugues, Spanish and French empires, but even before them missionaries had gone out to the heathens of northern Europe to spread the word of the bigG. ( I think it would have been appealing to me being a forgetful type I'd keep getting all my minor deities mixed up and one bigG that covered everthing would be less hassel. Still saints days kept minor festivals inplace an alowed people to focus on different areas. eg Saint Popeye, protector of sailors and fishermen.) Part of the idea of spreading the bigGs word was that it put the willies right up people in the new world and played well at home with the devout and those who pretnded to be devout like the Popes.

During the !^th century one of the truest things about the church came out. "No Bishops, no King" The English church and crown had a very cosy relationship. The crown used the army to persecute heathens and papists while the church raised funds for the crown to have an army with which to persecute heathens and papists.

Very cosy and vert efficient.

Dear gods... wait... maybe I shouldn't say that.

Anyway, I never expected to come back and find this thread still going strong. I see we've managed to move on from the Infinite Possibilities idea.

Which is good.

So, what've I missed?

Probably not much.

F

When were you last here JTB?



Well, in a sense, they did. Snakes are reptiles, and as such are probably evolved from creatures that once had legs. (We have in Britain a creature called a slow worm that looks like a snake, but is actually a legless lizard.) Probably not what the writer of Genesis had in mind, though.

Genesis as a whole is a mishmash of myth, legend, and genealogy, but which still seems to contain tantalising nuggets of historical truth distorted by time and loss of context. Eden, and the garden therein, for example, refers to a definite place, regardless of the mythical nature of Adam and Eve; there is Woolley's flood deposit at Ur; and the name of the first city in Mesopatamia, Eridu, bears an uncanny resemblance to the name of Enoch's son Arad, after whom, according to Genesis, the first city in Shinar is named.

Noggin