Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
1 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,817 Year: 3,074/9,624 Month: 919/1,588 Week: 102/223 Day: 0/13 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Death in Relation to the Creation and Fall
GDR
Member
Posts: 6202
From: Sidney, BC, Canada
Joined: 05-22-2005
Member Rating: 1.9


Message 16 of 208 (721575)
03-09-2014 7:11 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by DevilsAdvocate
03-09-2014 5:51 PM


DevilsAdocate writes:
Not exactly the way I would have worded it. The Fall brought on a separation of our souls from God and eventually death to our physical bodies and that through salvation our immortal souls are saved, and after physical death our immortal souls in our new glorified bodies will live eternally in heaven.
I'd suggest that the Biblical message is that ultimately our glorified or resurrected bodies will live eternally in God's re-created world when all things on heaven and earth come together. For example Ephesians 1:10, Revelation 21:1-2, Isaiah 66 22-23 or as Jesus taught us to pray - Thy kingdom come on Earth as in Heaven.
The Bible teaches in essence that all creation will be resurrected and renewed, and so it isn't a ultimately a matter of heading off somewhere to Heaven but that ultimately Heaven comes to us renewing this world.

He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by DevilsAdvocate, posted 03-09-2014 5:51 PM DevilsAdvocate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 18 by DevilsAdvocate, posted 03-09-2014 8:40 PM GDR has not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 17 of 208 (721576)
03-09-2014 8:23 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Faith
03-09-2014 2:47 PM


said they are treated differently than animals and human beings. And yes they were on the ark as FOOD. Another nitpicking timewasting irivial piece of information. Plants do not breathe air as animals
Those trivial points were directly responsive to your attempts to say exactly rhe opposite thing in support of your position. So they are exactly as trivial as your own arguments are silly. I'm going to point out that while plants do not have lungs, they do utilize air and oxygen for reasons quite similar to humans. Fish don't breathe like humans either.
Scripture says "the life is in the blood." It doesn't matter what YOU think, that's what scripture says.
So again you are trying to suggest that plants are not really alive.
It has already been pointed out to you that your quotation is not on point, so I won't bother re-arguing that issue. I will question why you duck and do not respond when I cite scripture suggesting that plants are alive.
James 1:10
But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Faith, posted 03-09-2014 2:47 PM Faith has not replied

  
DevilsAdvocate
Member (Idle past 3101 days)
Posts: 1548
Joined: 06-05-2008


Message 18 of 208 (721578)
03-09-2014 8:40 PM
Reply to: Message 16 by GDR
03-09-2014 7:11 PM


I'd suggest that the Biblical message is that ultimately our glorified or resurrected bodies will live eternally in God's re-created world when all things on heaven and earth come together. For example Ephesians 1:10, Revelation 21:1-2, Isaiah 66 22-23 or as Jesus taught us to pray - Thy kingdom come on Earth as in Heaven.
The Bible teaches in essence that all creation will be resurrected and renewed, and so it isn't a ultimately a matter of heading off somewhere to Heaven but that ultimately Heaven comes to us renewing this world.
Correct. I was imprecise. It is a new heaven & new earth as stated in Revelations.

"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World
"In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are. - C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism

This message is a reply to:
 Message 16 by GDR, posted 03-09-2014 7:11 PM GDR has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 19 of 208 (721587)
03-10-2014 12:22 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by ringo
03-09-2014 2:54 PM


Well of course nobody died before Adam because there was nobody before Adam. That says nothing about "why" death entered.
Of course what is meant by that passage is that death entered BY ADAM's SIN. Death entered BY SIN, which was committed by Adam.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by ringo, posted 03-09-2014 2:54 PM ringo has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 30 by ringo, posted 03-10-2014 11:42 AM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 20 of 208 (721588)
03-10-2014 12:24 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by arachnophilia
03-09-2014 3:15 PM


I gave you what the commentators say, I don't know otherwise. If you have a theory why don't you give it?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by arachnophilia, posted 03-09-2014 3:15 PM arachnophilia has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 22 by Coyote, posted 03-10-2014 12:33 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 35 by arachnophilia, posted 03-10-2014 10:07 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 21 of 208 (721589)
03-10-2014 12:33 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by DevilsAdvocate
03-09-2014 4:33 PM


I've given you reasoning based on scripture, you are answering with reasoning based on your own notion of science.
If you mean plants don't have lungs to breath air. No, neither do fish, some amphibians, insects, earthworms, etc. They do breath air in the fact that they absorb oxygen from the air.
The scriptural phrase is "whose breath is in their nostrilsx. Again, what I said is simple truth according to scripture: plants do not breathe air as plants and animals do, and let's for the moment define those according to the commandment to preserve them on the ark. Fish, amphibians, insets and earthworms were not among that company. Stop trying to make the Bible bow to science. That is the great error of "liberal Christianity." You can't do it without perverting the meaning of the scripture anyway.
So how about fish, some amphibians, insects, earthworms, etc? Do they live according to the Bible or not? Not all animals have blood circulatory systems i.e. sponges, jellyfish, worms, etc. What does the Bible say about them?
It says that life is in the blood, so I would conclude that for whatever reason God does not put them on the same level as the animals preserved on the ark.
IT COUDL ALSO BE THAT THEY DID NOT DIE UNTIL THE FALL EITHER. Who knows.
The problem here is you are trying to read the Bible as a science textbook.
No, the problem here is that YOU are imposing some anemic idea of science of your own on the scripture. Scripture defines its meanings as I have tried to lay them out. It has nothing to do with science, but it also DOES NOT CONTRADICT science.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by DevilsAdvocate, posted 03-09-2014 4:33 PM DevilsAdvocate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 27 by Drosophilla, posted 03-10-2014 8:57 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 38 by DevilsAdvocate, posted 03-10-2014 11:52 PM Faith has not replied

  
Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


(2)
Message 22 of 208 (721590)
03-10-2014 12:33 AM
Reply to: Message 20 by Faith
03-10-2014 12:24 AM


On the "fall" and original sin
Your myth of a "fall" and the consequent "original sin" is one of the most evil ideas ever to ooze from the minds of your fevered shamans.
I do not choose to believe that I am inherently evil, and neither should you.
If you apply some logic and forget unreasoned belief for just a second, you might actually learn something. (Unfortunately, belief gets in the way of learning.)
Here we have this thought expressed in far better words than I could come up with.
—Ayn Rand Lexicon
Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.
It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some inexplicable claim upon himit does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man.
The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.
A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.
Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a tendency to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.
What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledgehe acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evilhe became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his laborhe became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desirehe acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joyall the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he wasthat robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without lovehe was not man.
Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he’s man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives.

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
Belief gets in the way of learning--Robert A. Heinlein
How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?--Robert A. Heinlein
It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so--Will Rogers
If I am entitled to something, someone else is obliged to pay--Jerry Pournelle
If a religion's teachings are true, then it should have nothing to fear from science...--dwise1
"Multiculturalism" does not include the American culture. That is what it is against.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 20 by Faith, posted 03-10-2014 12:24 AM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 23 of 208 (721591)
03-10-2014 12:42 AM
Reply to: Message 14 by DevilsAdvocate
03-09-2014 4:51 PM


Both sin and death "entered into the world" by Adam. Sounds like death coming to earth for the first time to me. And that's how it is always treated by orthodox theologians.
Death to man came by the sin of Adam & Eve, not to all of creation.
So VERY sorry but that is not how that passage reads, nor iis it how the greatest and truest theological minds have read it.
I suppose it's what your liberal theologians say, who are all, like you, simply trying to justify the false science of evolution by the Bible, which means of course by twisting its meanings.
Death occurred in plants, microbes, insects, and other animals before Adam sinned did they not?
I don't know. But if it did it would be because scripture doesn't treat them as living in the sense of Adam or the other animals, as it doesn't treat plants as living in the same sense.
Adam ate plants, thus killing them.
Oh stuff and nonsense. All word games.
On these plants, the ground, other animals, lived microbes, insects, and small animals that themselves would die by natural means and through contact with Adam. Adam carried gut bacteria and other organisms in and on his body that went through a life and death cycle, did they not. See where this is going?
See above.
Where do you draw the line what organisms lived forever and which ones died before Adam sinned
I try not to draw that line. Scripture, however, seems to confine the meaning of life and death to humanity and the higher animals, whose "life is in their blood" and whose "breath is in their nostrils" and which God commanded Noah to preserve on the ark. As I've already said. This seems to be how SCRIPTURE defines life as it is relevant to its purposes.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 14 by DevilsAdvocate, posted 03-09-2014 4:51 PM DevilsAdvocate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 40 by DevilsAdvocate, posted 03-11-2014 12:44 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 42 by herebedragons, posted 03-11-2014 8:56 AM Faith has replied

  
xongsmith
Member
Posts: 2578
From: massachusetts US
Joined: 01-01-2009
Member Rating: 6.8


Message 24 of 208 (721595)
03-10-2014 1:24 AM


Faith writes:
I've given you reasoning based on scripture, you are answering with reasoning based on your own notion of science.
I think when we realize where Faith is coming from, we can rule out anything she has to say - right here. "Your own notion of science" is a cowardly term to avoid admitting that the overwhelming preponderance of evidence from zillions of others, not just DevilsAdvocate here, discredits her fragile and very frightened worldview. She is such a terrified person. I can only hope that she will see the error of her way in a manner that will allow her to be cool.
Edited by xongsmith, : forgot DA

- xongsmith, 5.7d

Replies to this message:
 Message 25 by Coyote, posted 03-10-2014 1:44 AM xongsmith has not replied
 Message 26 by Faith, posted 03-10-2014 3:27 AM xongsmith has not replied

  
Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 25 of 208 (721598)
03-10-2014 1:44 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by xongsmith
03-10-2014 1:24 AM


Not terrified, but blind...
She is such a terrified person. I can only hope that she will see the error of her way in a manner that will allow her to be cool.
Not terrified--just so firmly embedded in her myth cycle that she does not, and cannot, see the world around her, and wouldn't believe it if she could.
A classic example of the "None is so blind..." line.

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
Belief gets in the way of learning--Robert A. Heinlein
How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?--Robert A. Heinlein
It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so--Will Rogers
If I am entitled to something, someone else is obliged to pay--Jerry Pournelle
If a religion's teachings are true, then it should have nothing to fear from science...--dwise1
"Multiculturalism" does not include the American culture. That is what it is against.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 24 by xongsmith, posted 03-10-2014 1:24 AM xongsmith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 26 of 208 (721605)
03-10-2014 3:27 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by xongsmith
03-10-2014 1:24 AM


Good grief. DA answered the scripture-based definition of life as breath in the nostrils and blood in the veins with creatures that have no breath in the nostrils and blood in the veins, managing to be wrong by the standard of either science or scripture and you think my using scripture as the standard makes me "terrified" of all the weird and twisted ideas I'm answering? This is a thread about scripture, of course what scripture says is the point and his "scientific" definition of life does not apply to the subject. However, he's wrong from both a scientific and a scriptural point of view.
AND YOU ARE OUT OF LINE TO COMMENT PERSONALLY ON ME. STICK TO THE TOPIC.
AGAIN, THIS IS A DISCUSSION ABOUT THE MEANING OF SCRIPTURE.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 24 by xongsmith, posted 03-10-2014 1:24 AM xongsmith has not replied

  
Drosophilla
Member (Idle past 3641 days)
Posts: 172
From: Doncaster, yorkshire, UK
Joined: 08-25-2009


(2)
Message 27 of 208 (721608)
03-10-2014 8:57 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by Faith
03-10-2014 12:33 AM


The scriptural phrase is "whose breath is in their nostrilsx. Again, what I said is simple truth according to scripture: plants do not breathe air as plants and animals do
Yet another example of how ignorant this bronze-age text is. Plants use the respiration process (glycolysis and the Krebs cycle) exactly as animals do — in fact they 'invented' it first.
Plants use photosynthesis - using carbon dioxide and water (simplified explanation) and the energy from sunlight to build up complex carbohydrates that form the plant structure. At night when there is no sun they use the reverse process (respiration) to break some of their organic compounds back to carbon dioxide, water and energy (which is used to run the myriad of chemical reactions to support life) - in just the same way your body (and that of all animals) does also and for the same reason.
The only difference with plants is that they can do the process in a bi-directional way - animals can only do respiration.
And your ignorant text has to invoke 'nostrils' as a pre-requisite of defining what is alive? What a joke! And blood? How does the Bronze Age text interpret that? A red fluid by any chance?
Are you aware of the myriad of animals that neither breathes air through nostrils nor have 'red blood'? What about the liquids contained in the phylum vessels of plants? Such liquids perform the same function as your 'red blood'.
What a joke! You can see the ignorance of nature coming through in the first page of Genesis - God brought forth light and dark BEFORE he brought the sun into being - clearly showing the desert tribe who wrote the bible had no idea that our sun IS the source of our light.
Forgivable I suppose when you are a bronze-age nomadic shepherd - embarrassingly cringe-worthy if you are a 'supposedly' educated Westernised 21st century inhabitant however.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by Faith, posted 03-10-2014 12:33 AM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 28 by NoNukes, posted 03-10-2014 10:50 AM Drosophilla has not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 28 of 208 (721618)
03-10-2014 10:50 AM
Reply to: Message 27 by Drosophilla
03-10-2014 8:57 AM


It's not the bronze age folks fault...
Drosophilla writes:
And your ignorant text has to invoke 'nostrils' as a pre-requisite of defining what is alive? What a joke! And blood? How does the Bronze Age text interpret that? A red fluid by any chance?
No the text does not define being alive in such a way. Faith does that.
During this discussion we've seen Faith latch onto different parts of the text to make poor arguments that we should ignore the fact that plants are alive and were dying before the fall. The text does not actually say what Faith says it does. Perhaps she could pick some better arguments if she knew the Bible and science better. Alas, she does not.
For example, she has advanced the idea that because Noah was not commanded to save plants, they were not alive. That argument is silly on its face, because lots of animals including at least those without nostrils were not on the ark. Using her logic, then locusts were not alive either because they don't have nostrils like 'real animals'. Fish can have nostrils, but they don't use them to breathe through, so are they must not be alive either. On the other hand, whales have nostrils but they were not on the Ark. I don't know what we can do about that and still leave Faith's argument intact.
What the scripture actually says at most, is that death came to Man because of sin. How literally the speaker quoted in Romans meant his remarks to be taken is unclear. But absolutely nothing is said about animals or plants.
For Faith's interpretation to be correct, the Bible writers would simply have to be wrong about death. Death would have to be something other than what happens to fish, plants, and insects, but just like what does happen to humans and puppies. And of course that is simply wrong. I doubt that those bronze age guys believed anything of the sort.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him. Galileo Galilei
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by Drosophilla, posted 03-10-2014 8:57 AM Drosophilla has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 29 of 208 (721625)
03-10-2014 11:38 AM


Romans 8:19-22 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,
Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
Not only we but the whole creation, all creatures, wait for the redemption of the BODY. For they too were subjected to death and corruption because of the Fall of humanity by sin.
There is probably to be some kind of redemption or transformation of ALL the creatures including the plants and worms. What the Fall did to them is not clear, nor what redemption might mean to them, but they did not die before the Fall in any sense that people here are trying to claim, because there was no death before the Fall. Plants very probably did not wither in the ground and die then. I've conjectured, based on various phrases in scripture, that what is being called death of plants and insects etc is not considered in scripture to be death because they are not considered to be alive in the same sense that humanity and the higher animals are, whose "life is in the blood." It is simply a conceit of modern man to call it life and death and impose it on the scripture.
But those who have life according to the scripture also died by the Fall according to the scripture.
Matthew Henry Commentary:
When man sinned, the ground was cursed for man's sake, and with it all the creatures (especially of this lower world, where our acquaintance lies) became subject to that curse, became mutable and mortal. Under the bondage of corruption, v. 21. There is an impurity, deformity, and infirmity, which the creature has contracted by the fall of man: the creation is sullied and stained, much of the beauty of the world gone. There is an enmity of one creature to another; they are all subject to continual alteration and decay of the individuals, liable to the strokes of God's judgments upon man.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

  
ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 30 of 208 (721627)
03-10-2014 11:42 AM
Reply to: Message 19 by Faith
03-10-2014 12:22 AM


Faith writes:
Of course what is meant by that passage is that death entered BY ADAM's SIN. Death entered BY SIN, which was committed by Adam.
Of course. It couldn't have entered by anybody else because there was nobody else. That says nothing about why death originated.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by Faith, posted 03-10-2014 12:22 AM Faith has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024