It’s true: I read it in a book.

And Genesis 2:17 says that Adam will die the day he eats of that bothersome fruit, but since you’re clearly willing to reinterpret any word to have any meaning you prefer, there’s little point in arguing about it.

I cannot fathom why I must be punished for another person’s transgression, in which I had no part. The idea that Adam and Eve somehow “messed it up for everyone,” including people born thousands of years later, is morally repugnant. It is akin to condemning your son and all his descendants to hard labor because he stole from the cookie jar one Saturday morning. Pile atop that the issue that by the Genesis account itself, they did not know right from wrong when they ate the fruit, and the LORD God comes across as unworthy of human respect.

If there is any hope for me at all, it lies in the chance that I will never be tempted by the arrogant, inhumane mythology bequeathed to us by Paul of Tarsus.

The Bible was referring to Adam and Eve’s spiritual death. Which did occur instantaneously. And he didn’t say “as soon as” – we have to be careful when dealing with scripture not to misquote – as the devil did in the garden of eden. But I will concede the point because he said “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Spiritual death. Adam and Eve messed it up for everyone, and we got their curse “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food” referring of course to our having to “work” for our supper.

Regarding “For that matter, are you willing to bet your soul that God wasn’t serious about that whole not shaving thing (Leviticus 19:27) or the business about not picking up sticks on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32)?” (By the way, you’re missing the point – I already have.)

You’re referring to the Sabbath. Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

I know you can’t accept what I’m telling you. I know its foolishness to you. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” I Corinthians 2:14.

I know Jesus Christ. He’s very wonderful. I’d like you guys to get to know him too. When you have a personal relationship with him, its supernatural. Trust in the Lord, for he is the ONLY way to Heaven.

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.

I hope you make the right decision in this life, because (as they said in Braveheart – always liked that movie ;-), what we do now will echo throughout eternity.

Peace

(Blake – I think there is hope you for you – just a feeling, dunno.)

So, Dumbledore is gay.
Man, I remember when the Lord Protectors of Decency (TM) were all upset with Lois Lowry’s The Giver, this despite the fact that the hero risks his life trying to return real “family” to the world. Bashing The G…

And why doesn’t Matthew agree with Luke or Chronicles? Are they just carrying on the honorable Biblical tradition of contradicting one another, a tradition established by the two different creation stories of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2? And a little later, there was that business about God saying that Adam and Eve would die “as soon as” they ate of that nasty fruit — and Adam lived, what, another nine hundred thirty years? That fruit of the tree of knowledge must have had a lot of antioxidants.

Who are these “scientists and clergy”? Give me names. Your mere assertion that they exist is no good. If scientists are to be trusted in everything they say, then the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and life on Earth arose by a process of evolution. Scientists say so. Oh, and lots of clergy agree too.

Are you willing to bet your soul on a book which can’t even be consistent with itself? For that matter, are you willing to bet your soul that God wasn’t serious about that whole not shaving thing (Leviticus 19:27) or the business about not picking up sticks on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32)?

Are you willing to bet your soul that you’re right?

Oh, and Luke gives forty-three generations from David to Jesus, and of the two lists, only three names are the same.

The explanation is, in fact, that an awful lot of numbers are divisible by 7, and that if you look through any text, picking and choosing the length of this and the number of times those begin with vowels, you can find just about any number you want.

Also, many of those magic 7s are in fact faked.

Children are dying whilst your God is playing number games.

Let’s suppose you were asked to come up with your own Genealogy. Let’s
limit it to the first 21 families. Assuming you had all the books and
records in front of you of course (no easy feat, in an of itself), but
for the sake of argument, let’s say you have them all, right there.

Ok, I’d like you write down your genealogy – all of the names. Since
you have all the records, let’s make it a little bit of a challenge.
I’d like you to do this, but ask you to make sure the the number of
words you use, are evenly divisible by 7.

Could you do that?

Ok, let’s say you could do that. It might take some time, but you could
do it.

Since you were so adroit at doing that, let’s also say that the number
of letters must also be divisible by 7 evenly – no remainders.

Oh, well, this is going to take longer than we thought, but let’s say
you could do that too. Might take a few months of hard work (in my
case, much much longer), but you’re a bright guy, so let’s say you do
that in two months. Wow! you’re smart!!

OK, you did so well with that, let’s make it harder.

Let’s also say that when you write these names down, the number of
vowels, and the number of consonants must also be divisible by 7.

And just for fun, let’s also say that

The number of words that begin with a vowel must be divisible by 7.
The number of words that begin with a consonant must be divisible by 7.
The number of words that occur more than once must be divisible by 7.
The number of words that occur in more than one form must be divisible
by 7.
The number of words that occur in only one form shall be divisible by
7.
The number of nouns shall be divisible by 7.
Only 7 words shall not be nouns.
The number of names in the genealogy shall be divisible by 7.
Only 7 other kinds of nouns are permitted.
The number of male names shall be divisible by 7.
and The number of generations shall be 21, also divisible by 7.

Just one huge cosmic coincidence?

How about:

If we look at the first 17 verses of the New Testament (The Gospel of
Matthew) which deals with a single principal subject: the genealogy of
Jesus Christ, It contains 72 Greek vocabulary words in these initial 17
versus(*note;The verse divisions are man’s allocation for convenience,
added in the thirteenth-century A.D.). We find the following Heptadic
(7) structure throughout these original Greek versus.
#1. The number of words which are nouns is exactly 56, or 7 x 8.
#2. The Greek word “the” occurs most frequently in the passage: exactly
56 times, or 7 x 8.
#3. Also, the number of different forms in which the article “the”
occurs is exactly 7.
#4. There are two main sections in the passage: verse 1-11 and 12-17. In
the first main section, the number of Greek vocabulary words used is 49,
or 7 x 7.
#5. Of these 49 words, The number of those beginning with a vowel is 28,
or 7 x 4.
#6. The number of words beginning with a consonant is 21, or 7 x 3.
#7. The total number of letters in these 49 words is exactly 266, or 7 x
38-exactly.
#8. The numbers of vowels among these 266 letters is 140, or 7 x 20.
#9. The number of consonants is 126, or 7 x 18-exactly.
#10. Of these 49 words, the number of words which occur more than once
is 35, or 7 x 5.
#11. The number of words occurring only once is 14, or 7 x2.
#12. The number of words which occur in only one form is exactly 42, or
7 x 6.
#13. The number of words appearing in more than one form is also 7.
#14. The number of 49 Greek vocabulary words which are nouns is 42, or 7
x 6.
#15. The number of words which are not nouns is 7.
#16. Of the nouns, 35 are proper names, or 7 x 5.
#17. These 35 nouns are used 63 times, or 7 x 9.
#18. The number of male names is 28, or 7 x 4.
#19. These male names occur 56 times or 7 x 8.
#20. The number which are not male names is 7.
#21. Three women are mentioned-Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth. The number of
Greek letters in these three names is 14, or 7 x 2.
#22. The number of compound nouns is 7.
#23. The number of Greek letters in these 7 nouns is 49, or 7 x 7.
#24. Only one city is named in this passage, Babylon, which in Greek
contains exactly 7 letters.
And on and on it goes.

I think God was trying to tell us something, as clearly no human could
produce this work. Also, I wonder if God has a sense of humor. How
many times have we all “blown by” the genealogy of Christ in Mathew
thinking “this is kind of boring”. I suspect of the universe itself has
the same mathematical precision as illustrated by the Lord in Mathew’s
genealogy of Jesus Christ.

What a God!!!!!!!

I’m really not talking to anyone. I think its the Lord that’s doing the talking.

I like that part in the bible where the Lord says my sheep know my voice. It reminds me of what he said to Lazarus when told him to wake up. Lazarus was dead, but he woke up. So, Lazarus ‘heard’ his voice.

I found something really cool the other day. I’ll put it in a separate post because I’ll probably run out of room.

Given your theological bent, or lack thereof, I would be genuinely curious how you would respond to it. I have NO explanation besides an all power God.

Have a great day guys. We have a bunch of bible toting members from our Church coming over tonight so we can all look pious to one another. Yep – I see where we need work too. A lot of time we’re all show and no go.

Peace.

It’s not in my heart, but then again, as you say, you’re not really talking to me, are you?

Sivi Volk:

It’s actually a Bible Code-type acrostic. The first letter of every capitalized word spells out, er, HIGCMHHSJ. . .

OK, maybe I was wrong.

Now go ahead, mock away, call me an idiot. It’s fine. I was once just like you. The bible says spiritual things are “foolishness” to those of the world. So, really I’m not talking to the 9 out of 10 of you. But the 1. Just the 1 who will read this, and consider it – dare I say it? Pray about it. Jesus said “my sheep know my voice”. Are you one of his sheep?

I am.

Oh, I was definitely in the long-haired programmer category.

Joshua:

I’ll have to remember that when I become a famous “New Atheist” and get on TV.