Name: Fire Escape #65 Date: Sat Apr 15 13:13:55 1989 The Israelites were told to offer animal sacrifices by God, I know evolutionists see animals as EQUAL to humans, but by God's standards they are not equal, Animals do not possess human souls, so it's NOT the same as murdering a creation possessing a soul, you can't make that comparison by Biblical standards which is how we have to view these proceedings. God's foundation is Justice and his supports are mercy, this dilemma could only have been resolved by Jesus Christ, How else could a God who desires to be reconcilled and forgive sin do so and still remain completely just? Send an alternative sacrifice. It was this Ultimate sacrifice of His Son that the animal sacrifices prepared Israel for, they taught the ultimate truth, that Sin can only be paid for by death, that truth was ultimately realized in Jesus' death ONCE and FOR ALL. Now instead of dying for our own sins, we have a savior that died in our place, this is the mercy and justice of God. Caanan, was deceived and their hearts became hard because of their wickedness, they refused to repent, and God was left no option, he could not continue to allow them to go on like they were or else they would have spred their evil to all the surrounding tribes. Then we would be a planet of Baby murderers, well, I guess we still are as Baal sacrifice seems to be legal in most countries today, Blech! Fire Escape Name: Utwo #109 Date: Wed Apr 12 15:13:36 1989 Ghost stories anyone? You know in a sense when God was all alone and hadn't created anything he really couldn't be termed good. For in order for him to be good there has to be something bad, something to make a comparason. That's an interesting thing that I always think about® I'm not arguing therå just saying what's on my mind. Name: Jk #18 Date: Wed Apr 12 16:17:18 1989 I'm arguing...that masochistic attitude never fails to leave me aghast. Look, God gives creations the choice to be Good or Evil (yep, I'm using the caps on purpose, ok?). Right. How can you have a CHOICE between two things if only one exists? God creates Good, or so you say...if EVERYTHING he makes is Good, how do you choose Evil? It HASN'T BEEN CREATED YET! Something inherently Good CANNOT, by the defintion of "inherently Good" choose Evil. Name: Gryphon #21 Date: Thu Apr 13 06:35:17 1989 And if something is good, how can it create something with the potential for evil? Hmmm? Nice trick. That'd be sorta like someone taking a bowl of water and dumping it on the ground and lighting it on fire. Nope..doesn't work. There has to be some sort of evil in the goodness to make it work...put some oil on that water and it'll light up mighty fine. If somethign has the potential to do something, it IS...potential to do evil means it CAN BE EVIL.. Name: Snappy #98 Date: Thu Apr 13 14:44:56 1989 Perhaps the model of the Ying and the Yang comes into play here. Name: Doomer #20 Date: Fri Apr 14 17:45:42 1989 It's more like you create evil when you create any sort of rules and/or regulations. By an idirect sort of way...I don't feel like explaining my thoughts right now, tho...maybe later. Name: Gryphon #21 Date: Fri Apr 14 21:30:08 1989 Don't worry, doom, I can see where you're coming from, and expound on wht I think you might mean. By putting down any rules, you're restricting freedom. lightly oppressing the people. Isn't that bad? Name: Utwo #109 Date: Fri Apr 14 23:22:09 1989 Yeah some power eh? Like being able to create good and then evil appears is proof that God is all- powerful. hehe Name: Doomer #20 Date: Sat Apr 15 10:29:37 1989 Not quite. What I was saying was, that by creating a restriction you are making what is restricted 'evil'. Get it? So maybe God didn't 'CREATE' evil, but he sure as hell 'MADE' evil. Name: Fire Escape #65 Date: Sat Apr 15 13:33:49 1989 Who created EVIL? Things and people did not become as they are of their own volition and in their own strength, as they could not be what they are without God's directive or permissive will. OBSERVE that I said "Directive or permissive will". As you look around you or within, you will see that in our present world both good and evil exist together. Did God - or even more accurately did Jesus -actually create the evil things as they exist today? NO, we do not believe that he did, for God is good and He could only have created that which is good. Evil results only from man's original disobediance to God. This applies not only to evils that personally beset man but also nature, for the whole of nature has been corrupted by man's disobediance. God is holy, and, since He is holy, when man disobeyed Him, he could not but allow him (man) to suffer the consequences of his choice. Man desired his separation from God through disobedience to His law, and in that separation lay all the beginnings of all evil. God actually created all things in their original form, good and holy. In the same way man had free will to separate from God's will, Lucifer could as well (this is true of all "created beings"), hence we have evil resulting in the angelic realm as well. God did not create it but he allowed it to RESULT from free choice of the created things. This is why REBELLION against God is the basis for sin, because from rebellion, evil is "created" or results. BUt who is doing the causing? Not God, but the free willed creation. Fire Escape Name: Jk #18 Date: Sat Apr 15 14:10:59 1989 This is really, REALLY getting deep... First FE, tell me how you know animals "have no souls". What, exactly, is the requirement for being a "soulful" being? The ability to speak English? The ability to drive a car? How about the simple ability to walk on two legs? I prefer to think of it as the ability to feel emotion...animals love, animals get angry, animals are sad. My cat gets extremely pissed when I pick her up when she doesn't want to be. She is also incredibly affectionate, for no goof (good) reason...I don't ring a bell that makes her start purring; she does it on her own because she is feeling contented at that moment. When my grandmother died, her dog stopped eating, and within 2 weeks, he died. There was abolutely nothing physically wrong with him...he was just EMOTIONALLY devastated. No...from what I've seen, animals have more of a soul than your God ever will... Now, let's handle the scapegoat thing: "So FE, your God advocates 'passing the buck', punishing the innocent for the crimes of the guilty. The only way God could be appeased was to have his son executed...THEN he decided he could forgive humanity. Waitaminute...he FORGAVE their crimes, such as murder, AFTER the killed somebody else? Hell, not just AFTER, but BECAUSE they killed somebody else. Heinlein said it best... "How can justice possibly be served by loading your sins on another? Whether it be a lamb having its throat ritually cut, or a Messiah nailed to a cross and 'dying for your sins'. Somebody should tell the followers of Yahweh, Jews and Christians, that there is no such thing as a free lunch." Name: Doomer #20 Date: Sat Apr 15 17:29:04 1989 Personally, that statement ALWAYS pisses me off. First of all I don't recall anything about animals NOT having souls in the bible all -I- recall is that God 'Gave us dominance' over them. THE EGYPTIANS HAD CONTROL/DOMINANCE OVER THE HEBREWS FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS!! Does this mean Jews have no souls? Get real...I'm going to stop, tho, 'cause that really DOES piss me off and its hard for me not to just start yelling, here. Name: Stex #22 Date: Sun Apr 16 19:42:25 1989 I have a few things to say here. First about Canaan and the Hebrews. Like has probably been mentioned the Canaans thought they were in the right in what they did, after all they were brought up that way, then there is the Hebrews, in the name of God lets kill 'em 'cause they sin against our God, then take the land so we can live good. Ever think that the bible was written from a biased view? I mean you never do hear the Canaanites view, straight from them do you? Only the Hebrews, and of course if they think they are in the right, and there is something they want real bad they are gonna be biased, and even think up something likel, ohhh....that they have sinned against God....then kill 'em with justification, atleast in there eyes. Works for me. And what about this eye for an eye dealy? Did the Canaanites ever do anything real bad to the Hebrews, besides purposely pissin' off their God? If not the Hebrews didn't live by their law. As I see it the Cannaites weren't the agressors, shouldn't a whole bunch of Hebrews get slaughtered in turn? Name: Ironman #120 Date: Mon Apr 17 08:53:47 1989 I find it most interesting to hear the PRO-Canaanite folks saying " Oh, the Canaanites thought this, and the Canaanites thougth that ..." " Oh, those poor ol' Canaanites...." First, God knew the Canaanites. They were, folks, not some poor peaceful souls inhabiting Canaan. They were monsters who were given EVERY chance to change. As to the subject of " Well, gee whiz, the Canaanite parents were baby sacrificing monsters, but, gosh, the kids grew up in this CULTURE so, golly, it just isn't fair ". Hmmm....so the sins of the fathers were passed onto the next generation, huh ? Now, where have I heard that before. As to animals having souls, I'll post on that in the future. I'm about ready to fall asleep at the keyboard... Name: Snappy #98 Date: Mon Apr 17 11:54:14 1989 The bible is biased. That is one of the many reasons it is classified as fiction. It may be based on fact, but it is fiction. Name: Gryphon #21 Date: Mon Apr 17 14:52:14 1989 Ironman: Who says that "God knew the Canaanites and they were monsters"? Why, the people who killed them. Gee, does that sound like a bit of bias to anybody else? That's sorta like Russia's history books that say that 3 days after they entered the war vs Japan in WWII, the war ended. It leaves out us using the bomb... Books are written by the victors. Hebrews won, so why not make the Canaanites look as horrible as possible? After all, Christians did just as bad in the Spanish Inquisition and Crusades. Of course animals don't possess human souls. That's why they're called human souls. However, Jk said what I want to say: Define soul. What determines it? Hmmmm? Name: Doomer #20 Date: Mon Apr 17 17:35:25 1989 FE: Tell me how exactly Jesus getting nailed to a bunch of boards saved us all. No one can tell me that (Went around asking today) I made people think about it and no one could answer me. I'm really interested in knowing how He saved us by dying an early death rather than hang in and keep teaching. Name: Fire Escape #65 Date: Tue Apr 18 12:31:13 1989 Good question Doomer. You must first realize that Jesus's death on the cross doesn't "SAVE" right off the bat, that's God's part, but in order for it to EVER SAVE anyone, an individual must personally TRUST in that death as being FOR HIM, or it is meaningless to him. Salvation comes by trusting personally in Jesus' death for you. One can't just say, "Yeah Jesus died for the world, guess I'm saved now, bug deal." and expect anything. Something spiritual happens in your heart when you make Jesus' sacrifice PERSONAL. How or why it occurs is beyond us because we don't fully understand spiritual things. Logically I can try explaining WHY you need a savior, and why ONLY God's Son could have sufficed. Mainly because sin's penalty is death and only someone without sin of their own could die in the stead of another. This is why it required the LIFE of a person, and since the only perfect being is God, it had to be the life of God's son, Jesus. This is WHY Jesus was Savior. Jesus Died = History Jesus Died FOR ME = Salvation Fire Escape Name: Jk #18 Date: Sat Apr 15 14:18:05 1989 FE, you just don't understand what's trying to be said here...the concept of "rebellion", which you blame as the Origin of Evil, would not occur to a Totally Good being. If God created servants (angels) totally Good, and they served a Totally Good Being (your God), WHY would they rebel? There is NO reason for them to...they realize that by serving this being, the most Good can be accomplished, and being Totally Good, THAT is what they would want. Totally Good people don't try to overthrow other Totally Good people. Evil was introduced into them somewhere...either with the Creator, or a being besides the Creator. Either way, a popular belief gets dispelled. Name: Doomer #20 Date: Sat Apr 15 17:35:25 1989 If God is Omnipotent then he DID create evil, directly or indirectly however you see it. If he KNEW that what he created would BECOME evil, then first off the seeds of evil HAD to be created in with the good of that being (Hence evil is created) and secondly if he knew what the world would be like TODAY then he CREATED this by CREATING those that would make it this way. There was ABSOLUTELY no alternative. If he made it the way he did THIS IS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN. If he knew that, then he DID do all of this to us.