Here be my problem with "God"

My apologies, I was unaware you were coming from a Catholic theology base. I was explaining it from a protestant point of view. The immaculate conception is not part of protestant theology. The virgin birth was the only thing required to have Christ sinless. Unfortunately, I don't have time to go into it right now, so I'll have to finish the explanation later.

Why? Because only men have sin nature? Or because sex is sinful or something? I don't get it. I was a Protestant, and they never really covered this.

It actually has nothing to do with sex. And sex isn't sinful in itself. There is a time and place for everything. Even without biblical guidelines sex outside of marriage doesn't seem like such a hot idea because of STD's, unwanted pregnancy and the like. But that's a topic for another thread.Okay, Adam was created first and then Eve was created for him as a helper. Adam was responsible for Eve. She was under his protection and his authority. Then we have the whole fruit incident, they're cursed and kicked out. Adam was held responsible for a couple of reasons 1. she was his responsibility and 2. he was the one who had the direct command from God not to eat it and he did anyway.Then we jump over to Romans. Basically all of chapter 5 covers it. 5:12 says "Just as death entered the world through one man and death through sin, so death came to all men becaue all sinned." Also "But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!"Adam was held responsible so the sin nature was passed down through the males. Since everyone has a father, everyone received the sin nature before they were even born. Jesus did not have an earthly father, only an earthly mother so he was born without the sin nature. Also the Bible consistantly speaks of the life (both spiritual and physical) being contained in the blood. From what I understand about biology, the blood of the baby and the mother never mixes. Nutrients are passed by osmosis (?) through the placenta. Mary's DNA wouldn't be tainted because only the Father passes down the sin nature. And Mary's tainted blood would have never mixed with Jesus'. I don't know if all that biology stuff at the end made coherent sense, I don't have a firm grasp on it. But that's basically how the doctrine goes.

If we cloned a female human, why would or wouldn't she (the clone) have a sin nature? Are you saying that females do not have a sin nature? If this is not your assertion, please explain how a female can have a sin nature that you believe to be coded for only in the Y chromosome.

quote:

---

If we cloned a female human, why would or wouldn't she (the clone) have a sin nature?

---

Actually, identical twins ARE clones so we could ask the same thing of them. The only difference between the creation of clones in the womb and in the test tube is the point at which the cells split to create separate humans. On second thought, in current cloning techniques it is the nucleus alone that is transferred to a denucleated ovum instead of simpler cellular fission that creates identical/maternal twins. So perhaps I should say is that if cloning occured without transfer of a nucleus to a different cell there shouldn't be a difference between clones and naturally occuring identical twins.

I guess you could say that females are carriers, but don't pass it on. If that makes any sense. We have the sin nature, but it's not transfered through us. They would have the sin nature because it would already be in the DNA, I guess you could say it was already tainted. It's not passed from Mother to child, but a clone would have it already.I could have explained it better on the other post, but I'm not sure I can grasp all the biological implications without someone else mentioning it. I'm not a biologist.

Where? How? In the genes? I didn't get anything from my father except for genes. How is this "sin nature" supposed to work? Magic?I find theology rather frustrating and boring, because to my observation there's no difference between "theology" and "making stuff up."It's fine for you to believe, though. Although if you expect sin nature to have real-world consequences then you're going to have to propose a real-world mechanism for how sin is passed on. What's the unit of sin inheritance?

So then Jesus would have had it? Because he would have had Mary's DNA?[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 01-21-2004]

You asked how it worked in protestant theology. I can answer that. I cannot answer how it works biologically because I do not have the scientific knowledge to formulate an answer.I was hypothesizing because the Bible indicates that the spiritual realities have physical connections, but how it all works I don't know.Perhaps some Christian with a wider scientific base can step up to the challenge?

Can I change your wording? You don't like the answer to that particular question anytime, because if it were up to you, you wouldn't send good people to hell. Who's that person--that parent, friend, cousin, aunt, neighbor, teacher, dentist--that's such a wonderful, nice person, but they haven't accepted Jesus into their heart? Get them clearly in mind.Are you picturing their face? Now, it's up to you, not God. Do you send them to be into burning flames, moaning in pain and gnashing their teeth in loneliness, forever, so that after ten million years of this torture, their time is still just beginning, and after seventy years--a lifetime--of this agony, they're still a very small portion of the way to that first ten million years.Maybe you should hold your hand on the stove and let it smoke and make the room stink while you're thinking about it. That shouldn't be a problem, as you'll only have to do it for five or ten minutes while you're thinking, and they'll have to do it for seventy years times 77 times 7 times forever.Do you still like God? I'm a believer. I believe God made me. I believe, like you just said, that God knows what's truly in people's hearts. In fact, I believe he made our hearts, and he knows how they think.Let me tell you a couple Bible stories. In one, a young Jewish man finds out that his fiance is pregnant. The Bible says, "But being an UPRIGHT man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly."He was UPRIGHT or GOOD for not wanting to make her a public example. Is this what the law taught him to do? In the law, if he found out the night of their wedding that she wasn't a virgin, then he's to show the sheets, with no blood on them, publicly. That's the law, and this was worse, because she was actually pregnant. But because Joseph was UPRIGHT and GOOD, he did not do what the law requested.Why was it a big deal for the Pharisees to throw down the adulterous woman before Jesus? Don't Christians tell the story in such a way that we all think that they were trying to make Jesus look like a meanie by saying she should be stoned? Yet the law says she should be stoned!Christians are worse than the Pharisees in that story! They take the woman and throw her at Jesus' feet, and they tell the world that Jesus will not just have her stoned, but that he will have her tortured with fire for all eternity. (Do you still have your hand on the stove? Can you still smell your burning flesh? Because otherwise, you're really not listening to me correctly.) In fact, they tell us that Jesus, supporter of adulterous women, would throw her in hell for merely being human (and thus born in sin, not perfect, etc.)!!!I vote for an UPRIGHT and GOOD God. One who is as UPRIGHT and GOOD as you, Angeldust, not worse. You wouldn't sear your friend's flesh off forever in hell, and I'm telling you God wouldn't, either. God is as UPRIGHT and GOOD as you are and as Joseph, husband of Mary, was, and as UPRIGHT and GOOD as Jesus was with adulterous woman. That story was told for a purpose!"The anointing remains within you, and you know all things, and you don't need that any man should teach you." Thus says 1 Jn 2:27. So what exactly, when you block out what people have told you the Bible says, is that thing withing you telling you, Angeldust? That you ought to roast that friend, teacher, aunt, etc. forever and that God would, too?I believe in judgment, and I believe in justice. I believe in the death penalty, and I would support public flogging. Roasting someone alive, however, seems pretty extreme for any crime, and it seems extreme even knowing that people can survive it for only a few minutes. How much worse when it goes on forever, without the person dying.Maybe, just maybe, the Bible doesn't mean what you've been told it means (there's LOTS of people throughout history who have thought so), and God isn't any more of a beast than you are.

Well, I was a Christian, but I've evolved into a new species (unnamed as of yet), and my scientific base isn't very wide, but I do have a proposition :-).Our "sin nature" is our body. It is called the flesh, after all. Evolution encourages selfishness, after all. (Now, hang on, I'm not saying belief in evolution encourages selfishness. I'm saying evolution itself encourages selfishness.) What's necessary for long-term survival of my genes? Food, shelter, and sex. Really, not much else. In the opinion of my genes, society is okay as long as it helps provide food, shelter, and sex.God has called us to rise above selfishness. To take no thought for what we'll eat and what we'll put on and to flee fornication and consider marriage as a secondary consideration (a bit of a paraphrase on 1 Cor 7, that one), but to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness--to prosper spiritually rather than physically.Our own body opposes that message, because it is trained by evolution to SURVIVE. Try taking no thought for what you'll eat or what you'll put on. Try setting aside selfish ambition. Try fleeing fornication. Your body will not be a willing accomplice. From a Christian standpoint, your body is quite pro-self, while we are trying to crucify self.Anyway, I think the sin nature is in every gene--the SELFISH gene, as Richard Dawkins called it.Jesus had it, too, though, which is why he had to say, "Not my will, but thine be done." A virgin birth didn't help him in that respect. Nope. He got a body that the Scriptures says was like ours in every respect. Thus, he is a high priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses.

I agree with you on some points, and not on others. Our definitions of justice seem to differ, but that's alright. I don't think that any of us will truly understand all the implications of justice until we get to the other side. Maybe your right and I'm wrong. I hope you are. I don't beleive you are, but my beliefs don't dictate what is true and what is not. We all live with imperfect knowledge.I don't believe that God is a beast, but I'll admit to many things I don't understand. I think that even when the answers inside of me don't line up with what I believe about God (given what the bible says) it is me who has to change and not him. But I do believe that scripture is the primary source for our knowlege of him.If all you've ever seen in Christianity is judgement, I'm sorry. I'll apologize on behalf of all of us who have done a cracked up job of Christianity at one point or another. Believe it or not, the primary message of Christianity is love and mercy even though I know that sometimes we do a bad job of representing that.I believe in heaven, but I also believe in Hell. I've heard it said that for those who didn't choose God in this life, heaven would be hell for them anyway. God does not force anyone to love him in this life and he wouldn't in the next.Your post has made me stop and think thoughJenn

Now here's my pov. Are any of us God?(According to the Christian faith) no. Therefore we may think someone is perfect according to our standards however God's are much higher. He knows everything so he sees what we dont. Remember this is a God of purity holiness but also of judgement. Each one of our sins has to be judged, for what it is comparitivly to God, impure. Therefore comes the need for Christ's sacrifice etc. How can a pure God even comprehend impurity, it is just like bile in his mouth.(My own illustration to show how disgusting it is this is not in the bible)Here' s a question for you truthlover? Do you believe that HItler should go to Hell? Do you believe Stalin should go to Hell? Do you believe Genghis Kahn can go to Hell? Of course you do, even if you don't believe in God you think that they should be punished for what they have done.
However God sees sin as sin, no matter how little the sin is, since God is perfect, any sin at all(no matter how small) is enough to keep us from him in eternity.
Again this is where the perfect god-man comes in, Jesus Christ. He never sinned, and yet he died and his blood flowed freely from his body.
God Bless

Thanks for your answer, Angeldust. For some reason I never saw that there was a reply, so I'm just seeing your post today. I appreciate your openness. It's refreshing. I like to think that I'm willing to change, too, when I believe God has a stance that's different from mine. I hope that's true.I hope, too, that you caught that I appealed to Scripture in my post, not just to what I think, because I know that you make Scripture your "primary source."

Totally different question than the one I was addressing. Just because I believe Stalin or Hitler should be punished does not mean that I think they should bubble and boil in a lake of fire for all eternity. Punishment and hell are not synonomous. 1. Keeping us from him for all eternity is not the same as being tortured for all eternity.2. I don't agree that this is what the apostles taught. Do you have any Scripture for "any sin at all is enough to keep us from him in eternity"? You may be able to find a couple that you think suggest that. I wouldn't mind discussing them.