In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
Why give us free will if we aren't allowed to use it? It only creates suffering.
As for the despot thing, Original Sin is a good example. Punishing every human being for the actions of two people who have been mislead and didn't even act from malice.
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: - Genesis 3 22
Unless God was sarcastic, of course. It's hard to tell since there are no emoticons in the Bible.
edited 24th Dec '14 2:17:14 PM by Antiteilchen
My personal belief is that the creation myth is, well, a myth. I believe that we were indeed created by God, but that the creation was through setting evolutionary processes into motion.
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
Oh come on, guys. It's Christmas, can't we talk about something cheerful instead?
Anyhow, Merry Christmas to all of you! 
Of course, December 25th is probably not when Jesus was born, but who cares about that, it's about taking a day to celebrate his birthday, for all I care it could be in the middle of July, and it would have same importance. 
Personally, I believe that God gave us free will because he wanted us to choose to follow him. Yes, he could have just made us all to be blind followers of him, but that's not genuine faith. Faith by choice and free will is much stronger than faith by force. He placed that tree there because he wanted to give us the choice of following him or not.
As for the whole Tree of Life thing, well death came into the world through sin, so I have a feeling that was more of a metaphor. He didn't banish them so they could become immortal; he banished them because they turned away from God, and even tried to deflect blame onto something else. Heck, they probably were able to eat from the Tree of Life before they were banished. With sin comes death, the ultimate consequence. Above all, the Tree is mainly a metaphor; they are unable to eat from it again because with sin came death. It wasn't a source of immortality as it was mainly a symbol of the life given by God.
Plus, if they did indeed live forever, they would never have been able to reconcile with God, as they be forced to live a life of sin forever. A Fate Worse than Death. It would also mean that Jesus would never have been able to redeem us, as he had to die for that to happen. We would forever be caught in sin, forced to walk the Earth in our sinful states.
Heck, considering how huge the Garden of Eden was, having only one rule, "don't eat from this tree", is a pretty easy one to follow. And yes, because Adam and Eve were indeed the progenitors of all humanity, we do indeed have to suffer from their inability to resist temptation. However, it is through Jesus that we can be redeemed.
Speaking of which, let's give a very Happy Birthday to the birth of the one who allowed for our redemption in the first place!
edited 25th Dec '14 1:39:51 AM by LDragon2
Merry Christmas everyone.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to all and God bless 
Staring At My Own Grave
I have a question regarding our current society or at least our news-feeds:
Why is opinion on religion considered “science” just because someone who spews it happens to be a scientist?
I was browsing Huffington Post – something to do when bored – and looked in on their Science section and looked at the blog and article blurbs. One of them (that I didn’t click on because I recognized the a-hole who was author) seemed to be very unscientific.
(The a-hole thing: Back when I used to comment at the site, I remember getting a full-frontal antitheist-assault from this guy for trying to politely point out to him on a past article that some churches do genuine charity when he was basically ranting that “good theists don’t exist” because we only do things for Heaven and/or to get people or some shit. At least THAT article hadn’t been in the Science section. I was called immoral and a liar and it was implied that I was an inherently inferior being. He apparently didn’t think that theists deserved proper grammar or spelling, either. Or to exist. )
Anyway, I thought the guy had been kicked off Huffpo for years, but I’ve seen him back recently – only none of his articles show up in the Religion section anymore. They all show up in Science. DESPITE BEING RELIGIOUS OPINIONS. I’ve clicked on a few of them, and, yeah, that’s what they were. It was like Huff bought his “I get to call this science because I’m a scientist.” Today, I just read the blurb and didn’t take the clickbait, but he’s basically peeing on Pope Francis for making proclamations about souls when “science has proven duality to be ridiculous.”
Um… first of all, I don’t think the Pope is defining “soul” the same way you are, guy. It’s a notoriously tricky concept to pin down, to the point that even some non-theists believe in it and some religious groups are, in fact, monist. But this is getting away from the topic at hand. You title your article something about Francis “barking up the wrong tree” when you’re barking up the wrong tree by even pretending that your “opinion as a scientist” has bearing on religious opinion.
It goes the other way, too. I see New Age types there all the time giving some opinion about this or that new finding in science and how it relates to their ideas on spirituality – in the Science section. Deepak Chopra is a frequent article writer there. I actually enjoy reading his articles as I find them interesting, but still… sometimes having them in the Science section is a little weird when they’re mostly spiritual speculation.
Why is this? Why do we do this? I know, in our day and age, we think science trumps religion on default, but, when I think about it, there are a hell of a lot of scientists (both hostile and friendly toward religion/spirituality) who seem to think that their opinion on something equals science AND the last word.
In which I attempt to be a writer.
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
I think that one is neither the fault of religion nor the fault of science but the fault of the media. They began conflating opinions and facts because the only reported in "he said-she said" style and not fact checking anymore. All in the name of fairness and balance.
Staring At My Own Grave
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yeah, I shouldn't even worry about it. This is Huffpo I was talking about - a site notorious for scavenging from other sources, for having more opinion than fact and straight up getting facts wrong on a lot of their articles that are supposed to be fact. Even their "GPS for the Soul" section - which started out as and sometimes tries to get stress-reduction/psychatric advice is mostly cute animal videos from You Tube these days.
I get mail on Yahoo and their front page can be annoying sometimes. Such as today, the headline trumped Neil De Grasse Tyson as saying something really offensive on Twitter and when I read what he wrote, I was "People are upset about this?" Sure, it was a bit trollish, but he would want to celebrate Newton. I'm not offended.
In which I attempt to be a writer.
Happy new year Crimson .
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
I have a question about Christian military orders of the Middle Ages: How likely is it for such an order to survive to the 20th century if, for one reason or the other, it converted half-way through the Protestant Reformation to a syncretism of Christianity and Judaism, and at the same time rejecting the Pope's authority?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
happy new years!!
and also...i have no idea. um. probably would depend how many converts it had? a lot of Protestants during the Reformation had problems b/c of persecution from the Catholic Church. you're talking about a military order, so my assumption would be that they have strongholds and places they can defend and engage in their religion. the problem would be mostly figuring out the local politics. so like, if you had the support of local officials, you could probably get away with not recognizing the Pope's authority, but only within their domains. being a member of this order would probably get you excommunicated, though, from what I know of the Catholic Church during this time.
...i feel like you're talking about Assassins' Creed a little but tbh I'm completely lost on the notion of syncretism between Christianity and Judaism.
ophelia, you're breaking my heart
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Well, there is a religion IRL that syncretizes Christianity (specifically an evangelicalist strain) and Judaism. It's called Messianic Judaism
, and apparently both Christians and Jews are split over whether it's a sect/denominaiton of one or the other, or a whole new religion of its own.
edited 3rd Jan '15 10:16:29 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.