Is God absent minded or plain evil?

[sandy whitelinger]

And you have a hotline to god, perhaps?.

Actually, yes!

You seem to know an awful lot about god's psyche.

Thank you.

See above about the example of Cain and Abel. That seems ex post facto to me.

How so?

 

[FlyingTeaPot]

How so?

You stated that god doesn't pass ex post facto laws. Yet we have the story of Cain and Abel mentioned in Genesis 4. Only by Genesis 9 does god say murder is bad. How do you explain this ex post facto law in your narrow-minded biblical way?

 

[sandy whitelinger]

You stated that god doesn't pass ex post facto laws. Yet we have the story of Cain and Abel mentioned in Genesis 4. Only by Genesis 9 does god say murder is bad. How do you explain this ex post facto law in your narrow-minded biblical way?

Since Cain was punished at the time of his action and not after the passage of a law then it doesn't qualify as ex post facto. It's more a matter of definition than a narrow-minded Biblical principle.

 

[Evandr]

Hi all,

I just had a thought. According to the Bible, we are all descendants of Adam and Eve. If this is true, then Adam and Eve must have had sexual intercourse in order to give birth to offspring. The male offspring must have had to have sexual intercourse with either eve or the female offspring in order to continue the lineage. It seems to me that we must have gotten to this point through incest of massive scale. Yet the Bible forbids incest in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

This leads to only one logical conclusion: Either this god who forbids incest is so absent minded that he could not foresee that mankind had to engage in incest in order to continue or he knew we would have to engage in incest and forbade it on purpose because he is evil.

In either case god is not an entity to be worshiped. He is supposed to be omni-max. The Judeo-Christian god clearly isn't.

Thoughts? Please feel free to point out why my post is stupid if you think it is.

I think that the problem lies in the fact that the practice of social sexuality is not a part of the unchanging everlasting Gospel. There are many instances throughout history where the laws of the people were acknowledged by God because they had no knowledge and/or ability to adhere to any other and they would not have been able to be taught if the social rules were too steringint. The methods of teaching and/or protecting society, either from others, themselves, or whatever, were often tailored to the people as long as the principles of the Gospel remained pure. Remember, God would never give a commandment without first preparing a way that we may keep that commandment; Being fruitful and replenishing the earth was a commandment given to Adam and Eve and therefore interfamily sexual relationships may have been necessary. I do not know one way or another about what we would call incest and how it would relate to the family of Adam and Eve as they went on to populate the world. I can only accept that the rules that applied then have changed for us and that God has the right to do that. Spending too much time focusing on questions that have no bearing on our own eternal progression can stop us from reaching the goals we set for ourselves in the presence of God before we came to this mortal probation.

We live in a society that is constantly changing the rules by which we live and that does not make the way things were as being "Bad" just different as society deemed them to be necessary at that time but not necessary or acceptable now.

This same question could be applied to the story of Noah. God has often altered His directives to His children as seems him good and necessary to do so, but He has never changed the principles and ordinances of the Gospel, it is important to make that destinction.

Rules regarding human sexuality are as they are and for good reason; pointing to a bygone time and judging God is not only unwise but it attempts to question the wisdom and authority God and that is just plain foolish.