Questions for Christians

[X-Christian]

I have a couple of questions for Christians.
1 - if god is all knowing then he knew before time began who would accept him or could even possibly have ever heard of him. There's too many religions on this planet as of right now that doesn't even know the name jesus even exist. This is not including the billions people that has died believing in the god of their time based off of the geographical location they were born in. Just liked Christians. Since jesus said that he is the only way to god and since god is all knowing then he knew before time began who he was sending to hell to be burned. Sounds like an evil dictator. Personally, id rather had not been born then to be born by God but predestined for hell. And any response that disagrees and says he still gives me the choice totally takes away the claim that he's all knowing.
2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick? We obviously see Satan walking around in the book of job. He was standing with Jesus when he offered him the kingdom after jesus's baptism and he's all over revelation walking around. What happened to God's curse? Apparently god isn't as powerful as Christians say?

[agnosticatheist]

[Replying to X-Christian]

I am NOT a christian, but for starters, the satan character mentioned in job is not necessarily the nachash in the garden of eden.

[ttruscott]

I have a couple of questions for Christians.

First off, #1 has no direct question though I can see right off that you have been seduced by the pagan Greek definition of omniscience and do not use the Biblical definition of Acts 15:18.

2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick?

First you must prove that the serpent is Satan himself and second you must prove that this verse should only be interpreted literally and not figuratively, that is, referring to his abasement as a prisoner on earth, his degradation, to assert the curse didn't stick.

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to X-Christian]

I am NOT a christian, but for starters, the satan character mentioned in job is not necessarily the nachash in the garden of eden.

According to Revelation it was indeed Satan:

Revelation 12:9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Revelation 20:2 And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years,

So yes, in Christianity since they have included Revelations into their official Holy Canon, they have no real choice but to acknowledge that "that old serpent" in the Garden of Eden "that deceiveth the whole world" was indeed Satan himself.

[Divine Insight]

First you must prove that the serpent is Satan himself and second you must prove that this verse should only be interpreted literally and not figuratively, that is, referring to his abasement as a prisoner on earth, his degradation, to assert the curse didn't stick.

Revelation clearly states that the old serpent was indeed Satan. So that's covered.

And from genesis we have:

Genesis 3:14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

The curse was that he shall crawl on his belly and eat dust "all the days of his life".

So he can hardly be standing or walking around later in the Biblical saga unless the curse didn't stick.

[Divine Insight]

I have a couple of questions for Christians.
1 - if god is all knowing then he knew before time began who would accept him or could even possibly have ever heard of him.

This is an extremely good point, and it goes much deeper than this.

Let me give you two examples:

1. This God is said to know what he's doing and even have a "Master Plan". However, in the story of the Great Flood the Bible proclaims that God had repented that he had ever created mankind.

This can only suggest that God was not expecting this. How could this have been part of his original plan if he was repenting that he had ever created mankind? If God has a Master Plan then when it came time to drown out the humans with a Great Flood he should have been elated. He should have screamed "Eureka! My plan is going along precisely as I had planned". But no the Bible doesn't have him doing this. Instead it has God repenting that he had ever created mankind in the first place.

The Bible is nothing more than very poorly thought-out superstitious fables. In fact, they clearly weren't thought-out at all.

2. A second point on this one is that if this God had even the remotes clue about how humans might think then he should have known that I would reject the crucifixion of his demigod Son to pay for my sins before he ever came up with that immoral plan. He also should have been able to recognize precisely why I would necessarily need to reject this as being immoral.

And since this God was totally clueless on both of these counts he could hardly be omniscient. In fact, he couldn't even be very wise or moral. I would necessarily be the intellectual and moral superior of God, and that's impossible, so this God myth necessarily has to be false.

2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick? We obviously see Satan walking around in the book of job. He was standing with Jesus when he offered him the kingdom after jesus's baptism and he's all over revelation walking around. What happened to God's curse? Apparently god isn't as powerful as Christians say?

Well, if you want to talk about omnipotence then why not ask why this God didn't just heal this mentally ill Satan fellow?

Cursing him to crawl on his belly and eat dirt isn't going to solve anything. As you point out, that didn't even slow him down.

This is a God who has no ability to cure or correct a bad situation in any positive way at all. Instead of curing Satan he curses him using a totally ineffective lame curse that is extremely barbaric and non-productive at all.

Christians like to claim "With God all things are possible", well if that's true then why couldn't God heal Satan of his mental illness?

Clearly this God is as inept as can possibly be.

And this makes perfect sense since we aren't even talking about any real God here. What we are talking about is a very lame mythology of a God character who has been given the very same ignorance and lack of wisdom and abilities as the barbaric culture that created it.

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to X-Christian]

Why is this in "Science and Religion?"

You're looking for logic in all the wrong places.

[X-Christian]

[Replying to post 3 by ttruscott]

If Adam sinned, us as well, because of free will then did God take away our Free Will in Heaven? If we have free will in heaven then we will be able to sin. And to argue that we won't want to sin in heaven means that God took away the desire of anything I have and stripped me of my free will. So the other argument is that if we don't have free will then Adam could only do what he did because he was predestined to do it. Sin is a byproduct of free will. Although I know that the Garden of Eden story is not true and has been told and evolved differently through several religions over thousands of years. We know for a fact that logic, reason, and indisputable facts are how the world is supposed to run properly. Not listening to voices in your head and saying that everything you don't understand is based off of a mystical being preforming magic. The whole Christian religion is based off of the Bible but the Bible has been completely, indisputably, undeniably proven to be inaccurate. So if we already know it's not true then why continue believing in it as if it is true when all you have to do is Google "Bible contradictions" and read a few of those web sites and read a million of the scripture verses that completely contradict themselves. It's that easy to see how ridiculous the Bible stories are. Why Christians don't do this and would rather just live their lives believing in something that has already been disproven cannot be understood by a non-religious person. So Christians making arguments like "something from nothing" makes no sense to atheists. We have no idea if something came from nothing. As far back as we can look into our universe there has always been something there. So maybe the question should be how did nothing come from something? Or maybe we don't fully understand antimatter verses matter or positive and negative particles that neutralize themselves in a resting state. Or anything about quantum mechanics or how space-time works. How do we know that at the Big Bang is what started time itself and that's as far back as our brains can handle because since there was no light there was no time. This is scientific stuff that Einstein talked about a hundred years ago and was completely agnostic if you read any of his writings. Christians have to stop trying to answer questions that no one in the world knows. Their only argument is their own belief in the Bible which again is completely false and can be shown to be completely false with millions of pieces of evidence, tons inside the Bible itself, that disproves christians own belief. And PLEASE quit quoting scriptures to atheists. We laugh when we see someone respond to us with a scripture. You might as well pull out a Harry Potter book and read us a line out of that because it has the same amount of relevancy to what religious people use to debate with the bible.
Show evidence of the claims that you are making about a man that breaks laws of physics and laws of biology. Christians are making the claim so it is the Christians job to prove it, not atheists job to disprove it. We never made the claim. We never made a claim that Santa Claus is real so it's stupid for me to tell you that it is now your job to disprove it if I make the claim that he is real. But when it comes to Christians it seems like it's the other way around. The fact is is that it's not. Christians are making the claim therefore it is their responsibility to prove it with viable evidence. Not a scripture that was written 2000 years ago from the Middle East from a people that was completely illiterate. If God was intelligent he would have sent Jesus over to China that were intelligent and could read and write at the time. Evidence is what atheist want, not scripture or voices in your head, or your own personal belief. If something is true with undeniable pure evidence then you don't need any kind of faith or any kind of belief in it. It just is what it is which is facts. The reality is that Christians don't have facts about anything so they have to use faith instead and faith is the exact opposite of fact. So when a Christian tells me to just have faith in something all they are telling me to do is to believe in something that doesn't have any evidence to it and they want me to believe it just because they said so and want me to think the way they think. It's ridiculous and the fact that nobody will study it totally blows my mind. Don't you all want to know the truth as well? Then go look for it.

[X-Christian]

[Replying to post 6 by Divine Insight]

You are exactly right. Lots of good points made. The problem I'm finding with debating Christians is how hard it is to get them to engage in a serious debate without them continually using scriptures to try to show evidence of what they believe. Then when you ask them why they believe in the Bible they just say the Bible says to. It makes no sense. If Zeus were to come down in the flesh and show the whole world that he was actually God than Christians would still close their eyes and ears off and be too stubborn to accept it and just keep believing in Jesus. I am not saying Zeus is real, I am an atheist, that was just an example that I used. I don't want Christians to start bombing me with emails and calling me stupid for believing that Zeus is real.

[tam]

Peace to you, X-C!

May I ask you a couple questions concerning your second question?

2nd question is why didn't gods curse for Satan to slither on his belly and only eat dust in the garden didn't stick? We obviously see Satan walking around in the book of job.

Where do we see this please?

(also please note that the curse was not for Satan to only eat dust in the garden... in the garden is an addition that you have made to the text)

Please also note that there is no word 'slither' in the text. Most versions state that the serpent will crawl - which denotes legs - on his belly; or 'go' on his belly; where the word translated as 'go' actually means walk.

For a variety of translations:

http://biblehub.com/genesis/3-14.htm

For a link to the word that has been translated as crawl or go:

https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/le ... 1980&t=NIV

The Adversary is simply no longer permitted to walk upright.

He was standing with Jesus when he offered him the kingdom after jesus's baptism

Can you show me where it is written that the Adversary is standing (and I assume by standing, you mean standing upright) please?

and he's all over revelation walking around.

Well, walking is not against the meaning of the word, so that should not be an issue. But can you also show me where it is written in Revelation that he is standing upright and walking around?

Thank you!


Peace again,
your servant and a slave of Christ,
tammy