First of all, God created the Earth in 6 days to give us a pattern to live by. It's that simple! :) And from what we understand, God created angels to minister to Him. He created a finite number of them and endowed them with responsibilities. Angels were bestowed the same free will and creativity that humans encompass. Lucifer's was to be in charge of the light around the throne of God. He held what we would consider a highly desirable position of authority by being in close proximity to God.

This is conjecture, but it is possible that Lucifer became too proud. He had seen first hand how God creates and orders everything around Him. Perhaps Lucifer began to assume that he could replicate what he had seen God do. Maybe when other angels conferred with Lucifer, he began to give them advice and offer his opinion. Being creative himself, Lucifer might have imagined alternatives or "improvements" on God's designs. In the company of other angels, who themselves sought to be close to the seat of power, Lucifer probably began to think that he could do a better job than God. He began to converse about his plans and ideas with other angels and brag about them. Of course, God was watching all this unfold.

Apparently, a full third of the angels were suitably impressed by Lucifer, therefore when God confronted him, they sided with Lucifer. God had Michael kick Lucifer out of Heaven along with a third of the angels who were deceived by Lucifer.

God could have destroyed Lucifer and the other angels, but if He had, the remaining angels and the universe might have always wondered if there really was a different or a better way than God's way. Thus, Lucifer changed his name to Satan and was given the opportunity to prove he was equal to God.

Satan discovered that he couldn't create anything. God created the Earth and everything on it. He created a new being - man, less powerful than an angel, but possessing God's own DNA. It was perfect. God proved to the universe that He is God. Satan, on the other hand, decides to see what he can do to improve on God's creation. He's already demonstrated that he can't create anything, but perhaps he can upgrade what God's already done. He does this by deceiving Eve, who in turn deceives Adam. The result is that Satan breaks, not improves on God's creation. Every part of Creation that Satan touches, fails. He loathed God so much that it became his goal to destroy God's perfect creation. Satan realizes that God is holy and that nothing unholy can exist in His presence in Heaven.

Nonetheless, God could have destroyed Satan and mankind, although God wished to show that Satan couldn't mess up God's creation beyond God's power to fix it. This is why Jesus came to restore the relationship that Satan had broken between God and man. Jesus made it possible for us who are fallen to stand holy before God. :)

Satan is a continual reminder to the angels in Heaven and all of existence that God's way is the best way. Satan has no power except to deceive - just as he did the angels in Heaven, and Adam and Eve, and everyone of us since then. We, on the otherhand, have the power of the Holy Spirit, the same power that lived inside Jesus. Because of the perfect man, Jesus, we have authority over Satan and his demons.

There is no evidence in the Scriptures that demons can reproduce. There is only a finite number of them. In the early days, there were plenty of them able to gang up on people, like the boy with the Legion of demons. However, today there are over 6 billion people in the world. Satan is short-handed! He is not omniscient and omnipresent. :)

All things are for the glory of God.

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Or perhaps this story is more correct:
I think I like the Atum story better. Their creator is not such a male chauvinist.

But the point, of course Andy, is that when you have different creation myths, how do you show which one is correct? And why do you so often choose the same one as your parents? Could it have anything to do with the culture you were raised in? But in cool light of reason, all creation stories are based on faith, not evidence.

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the comments on my post. Looks like I'll be posting here a lot.

Fleshpray

I echo that sentiment.
I apologize in advance to Fleshy for responding to this post, as it was addressed to him and not me, but I invite him to make whatever corrections (or to tell me I am full of it) if he desires.

What Fleshy has done is to show some of the contradictions in the Biblical version of God. As you know, there are many widely divergent descriptions of God, but the Christian version is very popular. Thus, he didn't assign these attributes to God. The Bible did that. He is merely commenting on those attributes.
This statement exemplifies the problem with all creations myths: They must say (at some point) "God waved his magic wand and the laws of nature were overriden". If you're going to invoke breaking the rules, then you can say pretty much any darn thing you like, because God can do anything, right? So all of the creation myths have equal validity, which is to say, none. There is no evidence that the laws of nature have ever been overriden.
Ah, so now you want it both ways? If logic and the rules of order can be set aside at any time, then there is no point in having them, wouldn't you say? You clearly want to make a special exception to those rules. I want the same rules, all the time. That is what the evidence suggests.
LOL. First of all your assertion as to how rules suggest purpose is a complete non sequitur. Then you go about asserting that you know God's purpose. Here's your word of the day: "hubris"
Then you are retracting your earlier insistance that God bypasses logic? And if God really wanted us to understand, He wouldn't make the evidence so difficult, what with all these confusing fossils and vestigial organs and such. It sounds more like if there is a God, He is deliberately trying to confuse us.
We have to understand no such thing. You confuse reason and purpose. Here's a short dialogue to illustrate the difference.

Teacher: What is the reason you were late?
Student: My car had a flat tire.
Teacher: For what purpose were you late?
Student: There was no purpose! It just happened!

Now you could go round and round looking for the "root reason", like saying it was because he hadn't checked his tires or that the tire company made a defective tire or any other number of "reasons", but you can never do more than hypothesize about the "purpose".

You can makes assertions about God's "purpose" (as you have above) as much as you like, but you can never provide any evidence for any of them.
That statement is in direct contradiction to your earlier statement that God can set aside logic and rules of order. That, my friend, is a very great paradox.
But many do believe the Bible in the literal sense. Andy, for example has a much more literal interpretation then do you. Which one of you is more correct? Could you both be completely wrong?
I agree that we all need to question our unsupported beliefs.

Don't you try telling a Biblical literalist that they are "unaccustomed to thinking for themselves." They have indeed thought about it, but they found the literal interpretation (whoever they learned it from) more satisfying. I will not defend the basis on which they made this decision, but it was not because they hadn't thought about it.

I know you have thought about your own interpretations at great length, but I do not think that makes them correct, because in some cases they are contradicted by evidence against them, and in other cases, simply have no evidence for them. It is not "deep thoughts" that show the correctness of a hypothesis, but evidence.

Again, my apologies to Andy for stepping on his toes.

Thanks for responding to my post. I have some comments.
Minister what?!?
What did God need them to do that he/she couldn't do with a thought?
Please remember that nothing would be a surprise to a God. The christian God is omniscient and sees the present, past, and future all at once. There would be no time line. The christian God is Omnipresent and exists everywhere all at once. God would know what Lucifer would do even before he/she created it. The biblical story you present is a human creation.

So you are saying that God's first creation, the Angels, weren't a perfect creation? How can God's creation be flawed? Was Lucifer flawed when God created it? How about Michael? hmmm...
The fall of human kind need not have happened. As per my original posting, before God ever created Adam, he knew he would eat the fruit. If God wanted a perfect creation, he would have created it. God's perfect creation, would have been an untemptable being. Isn't God perfect? So, this would have been possible. Everything God creates would be perfect. The Angels were more powerful then humans and yet they were flawed also, hence the fall of Lucifer. The story just doesn't hold water.
But which one? A flawed God that creates imperfect creatures?!? :eeka:

Thanks again for these wonderful comments.

I'll be reading this board a lot in my spare time.

Fleshpray

Faith? That's too bad, you make it sound like the whole thing is made up and contrived. If that's the case, who wants to believe in that? Hey, I would seriously ask for my money back. The thing that you neglect to say, however, is that the origin of life for everyone is the same. So, regardless of what culture you're brought up in, even in the variation of its myths, it still reflects that same origin. So just because we develop a different way of looking at something, does not mean that thing has changed, except perhaps more in terms of our relationship with it has changed.

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

Really? Just because they involve magical creatures that defy the laws of nature? Just because there's no evidence for any of them? Just because they reflect the beliefs and cultures of the societies that wrote them? How could you possibly think that they might be made up?
You wouldn't ask for your money back if having some answers, even made up and contrived answers, made you feel better than admitting you didn't know.
Yep. So some of those stories have to be wrong, wouldn't you agree? They can't all be right, or the origin of life would not be the same for everyone.
Very true. I think our relationship to the origins of the universe and of life have changed tremendously since the days when we had no way of gathering information on distant galaxies or DNA or fossil lineages. So it appears our "relationship" is drifting towards one of collecting and understanding evidence. I am highly in favor of that, even if it means that our relationship eventually becomes that most people believe our common origin is completely natural and requires no God or divine intervention at all.

Would that relationship bother you?

Well, I understand that he would like to try to refute these things anyway.

The thing is, if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, we have to ask if the same rules apply to Him that apply to us? And it's a perfectly legitimate question.

And yet that's apparently not the case with our world. No, I'm making an exception with the rule maker, not the rules themselves. Indeed, if these rules didn't exist, and there wasn't a sense of consistency about them, how would we know anything? Not to say that there wasn't some other means of doing so, but that's not the way it's set up. Regardless, it's still rather difficult to define.

You know, I specifically requested grape pickers when I started up this forum, not nit-pickers!

And maybe it's not so important to discern who God is, but to learn the lessons of life. Since there's a whole diversity of things to learn from and, all meaning proceeds from God.

No, things don't just happen arbitrarily.

Depends on whether the Universe was expressly put here on purpose.

Perhaps it is a paradox? I doubt very much that God is fully explainable. Actually I, haven't given it that much thought, since I primarily try to focus on the logic of existence.

There is such a thing as accepting something "blindly," however.

Appearances can be deceiving.

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

Well, you can only refute things that have been said. I pointed out that you, Iacchy, did not say these things. Others have though, and that is what Fleshy was refuting. Refuting what has not been said is the logical fallacy known as "straw man".
It would be a legitimate question providing that one first accepts the premise that God is all-powerful and all-knowing. I do not accept that premise, as I have seen no evidence for it.
This is indeed at the root of the problem. Our limited information about the universe means that each of us reaches a point where even with all we have learned about the consistancy of the laws of nature we cannot understand how things happened. Some choose to explain them by invoking a magical creature who exists beyond the laws of nature. Some merely say "I don't know".
LOL. Well I didn't know you were going to "wine" about it.

Really though, claiming to know God's plan is hardly a "nit".
And maybe it's not so important to discern who God is, but to learn the lessons of life. Since there's a whole diversity of things to learn.

I agree with the first part of your sentence. The last part of your sentence is merely opinion.So you believe. All evidence goes against this.
Something we are unlikely to ever have evidence for.:eeka:
Yes. That would be "accepting without evidence". Sort of like "accepting" that there is a purpose to everything.
Yup. Some people even are decieved into believing that dreams are a kind of reality, simply because they appear to be similar to reality.

Aside from the fact that everybody experiences reality differently? What do you mean?

If I felt I was being deceived, yes.

To the extent that some of them may have outlived their usefulness, perhaps. But as a general rule, no. Not if you look at it in terms of the diversity of life which exists on this planet in relation to the sun and the earth.

We are children of the Universe. Why should we have to go to the furthest outreaches of space to discover that? Indeed, why the need to look any further than within?

Except that's pretty much what we have right now, and no, it wouldn't bother me that much. The main problem I see that lies ahead though, is with the planet, and if we don't find a way to discourage people from being so materialistic, and stop consuming so much, we're not going to have a planet left. In fact I think if people understood that there was a greater reality than this, maybe they wouldn't expect so much from this life, and stop taking so much for granted. Otherwise what will it take to get people to change? Also, if there truely was a lineage between us and God, don't you think people have a right to know about it?

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

Simply that not every story that is told is reality. Not everything that everyone believes is true, whether it is something they heard, or something they made up for themselves. Beliving fables is not simply a different way of experiencing "reality".
People don't even have to be deceived. They are perfectly capable of deceiving themselves, if it fits in with their philosophy and makes them feel better
LOL. Well I have news for you, Iacchy. Sun worship has outlived its "usefulness".

What does "looking within" tell you about quasars, Iacchy? What does it tell you about neutron stars? You're not going to stand there and tell me "I know everything I will ever need or want to know about how the universe works," are you?
I agree about your environmentalism. But I don't think religion or spirituality is the way to achieve greater world awareness. I think it is through education.
Knowledge. They need to be made aware of exactly how their activities harm the planet. Those answers come from research, not from "within". It seems to me that belief in a "greater reality" would lead to just the opposite, leading people to think that this reality (our planet) was not very important.
Of course, and as soon as you have some evidence of that lineage (or of God) I'd love to see it. And please, some external evidence this time. That "comes from within" stuff is way past its freshness date.

By the way, people also have the right to listen to other people hold forth about a God and a lineage that someone has only imagined, or to make up their own.

Life is a mystery is it not? If God is there, we will find Him in what guides us, interiorly.

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

Some parts of life are mysteries. Other parts are utterly predictable.
So you're not expecting there will ever be any evidence of God "exteriorly"? Will we have to gut you to find God?

What is reality without unreality? And, since our relationship with reality is merely relative, how do we know that that which appears unreal, is not in fact part of an even greater reality?

Why bother to look within then, if not to try and unlock the mystery of self-deceit? Are you suggesting the answer lies without?

Really? When's the last time you went to the beach?

Why bother to look within the structure of DNA? ... as if to say there would be nothing to find there?

I'm just kind of wondering if some of us aren't just a bit too comfortable in our views?

Look at the Native Americans, who believed in both the Great Spirit and, had nothing but reverence towards Mother Earth.

You are the witness to the truth.

So? ... Is it possible that something may actually entail a deeper meaning as opposed to how it appears superficially?

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?

Teh, heh!

Teh, heh, heh!

Iacchus, I really must say that your humor never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Reality.
Are you telling me that you are incapable of telling real things from unreal things? If you bang your head against a wall, can't you tell if it is a real wall or an imaginary wall?
The only way to see if you are deceiving yourself is to compare your beliefs to external reality. If all you ever use to examine your beliefs are those beliefs themselves, then it should be no surprise that you wind up thinking your beliefs are correct.

Two weeks ago. There were no altars. No churches, no apparent worshipping activity at all. And before you even go there, enjoying the sun is not the same as worshipping the sun.

If I subscribed to your philosophy, I would never bother to examine the structure of DNA because it isn't an internal truth. No, I don't mean where DNA is located, I mean its structure is not discernable by simply examining your own thoughts. But I have the feeling you're about to OMRI again, with emphasis on the R.

LOL. Yeah. That's why they nearly wiped out the buffalo herds. They would drive whole herds off a cliff and leave most of the meat to rot.

The idea that primative civilizations took care of the earth is yet another myth.



Some, yes, but none of it is coming from you. But of course, this little OMRI (emphasis on the M) is constructed to avoid the fact that you have none of the evidence I requested. As far as I can tell, you are simply making it up. I don't call that "truth".
It is possible. Or it could just be gibberish, or in your case, just the usual OMRI, emphasis on the M again this time.

Hello again. Have we scared you away yet? I hope not.

Well, I think I've already addressed this part in suggesting that He who makes the rules is not one and the same and/or subject to the rules in which He makes. I would agree, however, that the rules which govern this Universe are wholly consistent and logical.

No, this does not appear to be consistent with the Universe as we know it. However, it has no bearing, as suggested above, to God's omnipotence.

I think the issue here is to ask whether or not Adam and Eve were truly innocent? How could they be, if they were not grounded (for having lived a life on earth) in their experience? In other words maybe the whole thing was mandatory, in order to establish a pragmatic relationship with God. Indeed, isn't this what being down to earth implies? So, how else could you be expected to follow the rules? If anything, Adam and Eve were probably terribly naive. Also, according to Swedenborg, heaven and hell which, is none other than the angelic realm, is from the human race, and cannot be propagated except by those who have lived and died on this planet. It's too bad that the link is down that I would normally refer to here ...

Actually, as I understand it (according to Swedenborg's explanation), when man looks at God and God appears to be angry, it's really just an appearance derived from man's own evil (man's dissatisfaction with himself) looking back at itself. So in that respect you can say man's relationship with God has been anthropomorphized. In which case it's really inappropriate to blame God for anything. Also understand, that the Devil (the spirit of) is none other than man gone to hell.

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So when the body dies, and consciousness departs, where do "we" go? ... Off to define another "reality" perhaps?