Sure everything dies, but this wasn't just a natural death.  He was killed by death on the cross.  And it wasn't the natural time to die either.  By being killed in the flesh he was sacrificed.

Like I said, I don't know why.  God played by his own rules.  My mere mortal mind isn't capable of understanding it.

I'm agreeing with the post because the post misses the entire point.  Jesus didn't sacrifice something, he was the sacrifice!  He wasn't meant to sacrifice something.  He was meant to be the sacrifice, a perfect human being.

It made a universe where physical things die but metaphysical things don't.  Don't ask me why, that's just the way he did it.  Perhaps God got bored and wanted to create people to glorify him, but he wanted them to choose to glorify him, not mindlessly follow him.

Lots of people die unnaturally. Lots of people have died by crucifixion. Lots of people die at unnatural times (not to mention: life expectancy was much shorter in the 1st century; 33 wasn't so unnatural a time to go). Lots of people are "killed in the flesh". How are their deaths any less sacrficial than jesus'?

Thank you. Conceding that this god is a sadistic megalomaniac.

Case closed.

i thought the whole point of the essay was that jesus shouldn't necessarily be praised for doing something that any person would have done. i mean i'm not a "perfect human being" i'm not even a very nice one and i would have done what he did.

at this point it just seems like you're ranting a little bit. you're going on about gods wanting human sacrifices and creating perfect humans just to kill them and how awful humanity is. you don't actually believe this stuff do you?

God, in the Trinity, expresses many perfect attributes (love, knowledge, power, etc.). But that does not express justice (wrath against sins) or mercy. These things are not possible inside of God. They require others to be the object of wrath or mercy.

Hell is payment for the price of sin. The price of offending the infinite God is infinite.

I doubt that was his only sin. Did he ever use God's name lightly (blasphemy)? Disrespect his parents? Tell a lie? Lust after women? Desire things more than God? But, sure it just takes one. How many lies do you have to tell to be a liar? How many murders make you a murderer?

That is not fair at all. That would make God unjust. To allow criminals to escape punishment is unjust.

I'm not sure how much active torture is going on. Sometimes I think Hell would be an improvement over life on earth for many people. Some say the "wailing and gnashing of teeth" are people continuing to curse God. Not due to any particular torture. People just don't like God and continue to complain about Him.

I can't prove it from the Bible, but it appears we become unchanging (like God) after death. That is why reform is impossible.

Technically, belief in God is insufficient. Demons believe in God. You must turn (repent) from sin and trust in Christ for salvation.

We aren't certain what the judgment is for any given person. The only certain way to salvation is through Christ. For others, there is uncertainty. If you care about others, then spread the message of Christ. That's what I do.

It is a hard doctrine, I have to admit that. But our sins are crime against an infinite being. If you lied before Congress, the punishment is worse than if you lie to a child or to your wife or boss. How much more so when you commit crimes against one who deserves only good.

A finite Hell and annihilation would disrespect God. It would imply He is not of infinite worth.

As I mentioned above, there must be sinners to express justice and mercy. God is without sin, so He made us. The sacrifice of Jesus demonstrates that salvation is from God alone. There is nothing we can do. It also shows God's displeasure with sin. It removes any doubt that there is judgment for sin. It also expresses Jesus' love, that He would die for evil people (people are hesistant to die for good people they know, much less evil strangers).

God enjoys punishing sin only to the extent that He cannot tolerate sin in any way. There are many Bible passages that show God weeping for what the world has become.

 How can a god be incapable of tolerating sin? Or why can't god tolerate sin?  Sounds pretty limited to me.

That doesn't make any sense at all.

It would be easy for me to have perfect love, perfect knowledge, perfect power, etc if I was the only thing in existence! I would only have to love myself, have power over myself, and have knowledge of myself. There! I know everything! Who would have thought greatness could be so easy?

But then I invent earth and mankind (though how I had perfect knowledge complete with these things before they ever existed is a terrible mystery that I suppose we'll just have to take "on faith&quot.

Even though I had infinite knowledge, power, and love while creating these things, I somehow managed to create them in a way that made them vulnerable to behaving in ways that I hated. We could perhaps draw an analogy with a carpenter building a house, which is a decent house that mostly pleases him, but sometimes a door falls of its hinge or something, which kinda pisses him off. Is he really that great a carpenter? Did he really have perfect carpentry skills? Jumping back to god, how would that be possible with his infinite knowledge?

We could perhaps assume that since these things didn't exist yet---and therefore god had no knowledge of them---that god was forced to just kind wing it and throw a bunch of stuff together. Now that he does have knowledge of this blob of whatever that he just magically created from nothingness, he has to love the parts that he just happened to make something nice out of and "fix" the parts that he screwed up because he wasn't really sure what he was doing.

Of course, having infinite knowledge, he probably would have seen that coming. Weird that he would just go ahead and do it anyway. God must run on autopilot or something. 

I mean, really, how does it make sense?

And to suggest that god was perfect in this way, but not perfect in this way is ridiculous, because that means that something else was external to god. God didn't have it all. He was therefore not perfect because it was not in his power to accomplish those tasks which required the capabilities or characteristics he lacked!

My my... this is one sticky wicket, eh? 

Yes, we know that sin "offends god", but that's not exactly fair when god is making up all the rules---namely rules that are obvious difficult for the creatures he created that are obviously vulnerable to them. Not entirely our fault there. So much for that infinite knowledge wisdom god is supposed to have.

The question is not who the crime offends, the question is simply does the punishment fit the crime. By your logic, our courts of law should appoint judges that convict criminals---no matter what their crime (stealing, rape, jaywalking, whatever)---not to terms that fit the crime, but always to terms that mirror the judges age. That's a pretty good rule of thumb for a judge, eh? That's totally fair! Makes absolutely sense.

No, not really.

Does the punishment fit the crime? That is the question. 

It doesn't matter how many other sins he comitted because infinity is mathematically indivisible. If you cut infinity in half, you have two infinities. If you caught infinity into thirds, you have three infinities. So no matter how many crimes you observe, no matter what their size or degree, it will always be fair to apply an unjust infinity to any one crime.

And it will always be the case that an infinitely long length of time will be applied to a crime made in but a fraction of a 75 year life span. Again, what's up with that? 

In other words, the sentence will never fit the crime, and it will always be unjust. 

They didn't escape punishment. They died. I wouldn't even have a problem if god said that all sinners will necessarily die painful deaths and then cease to exist while all the righteous will die peacefully in their sleep and then go to heaven and live in palaces (weird how the heavenly promises always seem to involve things people value on earth, even though we apparently "won't care". Hm. Riiiiight. Allow me to be the first to raise the flag of suspicion).

Feel free to come up with any other punishment ideas you can think of; my point is that traditional Hell is a horrifically unjust and vindictive. The punishment does not fit the crime.

And arguably, any punishment will be questionable since god is applying punishments to rules he basically made up himself. "You wil live and you will burn because you did things I like and you did things I didn't like" is basically what it boils down to.

If righteousness is being like god, then surely all high school bullies go to heaven. 

Dante surely would have agreed with you about the becoming "fixed" and hating God forever and being incapable of repenting and whatnot.

But this is all unorthodox guesswork. Is that what God really said, or is that what you think god said? That's just the version you like the best? You're papering over a huge crack with "interpretation".

But assuming that we do become incapable of repentence, I must ask why? God created us, god created the rules, god created hell, god has infinite power, what is the point of this? He could allow all of these sinners to learn from their mistakes and become righteous, but he simply allows this to happen? What happened to that infinite love?

Hm. 

There's that interpretation again! Can't prove it from the Bible, eh? So you're just making what you think is a pretty good guess? How dare you claim to understand god or his plan using your own, feeble, human reason! Blasphemy! 

Ooh, yes. Devils and demons believe in god but are sinners because they break god rules. Not the point. Good try though.

Suppose a person did follow all of God's rules, but simply didn't believe in him. Such people do exist (despite fundies who would insist that no unbeliever can really be moral).

It is possible to be damned for just not believing.

We aren't certain, but we should agree that the traditional, torturous hell is completely unjust.

The only way to salvation is through Christ? There's that all powerful god not being powerful enough to accomplish things without help again.

I care about others, so I try and talk them out of centuries old folk tales. 

Irrelevant, as mentioned before. 

Only because Congress says so.

It doesn't matter who you commit a "crime" against, the question is whether the sentence is equal to the "crime".

Your comparison to congress unintentionally works in my favor. It is only worse to god because god says so (just like things are apparently only crimes because god says so).

A finite hell or annihilation would prove that god is merciful, which is something he is apparently supposed to be. 

As I mentioned above, this doesn't make any sense.

Oh, so he deliberately made us so that there would be sin? Thanks for admitting how much of a dick god can be.

Don't scoff. He could have created us without the capacity for sin, couldn't he? Or does he lack the power?

Thorny questions, and perhaps mockingly worded, but valid nonetheless.

No, it doesn't. It demonstrates that god was incapable of forgiving us without it. Yikes!

Which he created. You even said it yourself. Can't blame us, but he does anyway, because he's god and he does whatever he wants.

Yep. He's still a jerk. 

As mentioned before, he didn't really die. He's still alive, isn't he? How does that powerful hymn go again....

He's alive!

He's alive!

He's alive and unforgiven,

and the gates are open wide!

He's alive!

Oh, man... I used to LOVE that one. Still a great song that I will gladly lend my appreciation, even though I have no belief in its contents.

Jesus didn't really do anything that great, and he didn't really do it "for me". I've already discussed this before. Last post, I believe. 

Then how did he create it? By accident? Oops... what an incompetent creator. =\

How does god weep? Does he have eyes? Tear ducts? A sniffly nose, perhaps? Does sin make god wrathful or does sin make god sad?

Christians love god to be "just so" for whatever their current situation\mood calls for. It's amazing that he can be so many incompatible things at once. 

A perfect God cannot tolerate imperfection.

Show me a perfect person, one who has never done or thought anything wrong in their life.

I'm going to go out on a limb here.  Evil is the absense of God.  I don't think that God is everywhere (yes, i know, Heresy! Heresey!  Hang him! Stone him!), especially in the pantheistic view of "god".  When man took his focus off God and put it onto himself, God was absent from his thoughts.  Man became selfish and corrupted, having eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  God, being perfect, cannot accept imperfection, thus Adam and Eve were banished out of the garden.

Again, God can create imperfection and set up the rules so that said imperfect creation can fall on its face (can't disobey if you don't know what good/evil/obedience/disobedience means) but he can't tolerate imperfection so it must be punished?

But he loves us...

I think this is going very well.  Thanks to all involved!

The Bible says God created evil, only in the same way He created darkness.  He created light, and wherever there is no light, we have darkness.  Similarly, wherever there is no good, there is evil.

And that makes sense.  Evil is not a object thing.  Evil is the twisting of, or opposition to good.  For example work is good, working to the point of ignoring your family is bad.

What do you mean?

1. So when the Bible makes reference to God sending lying and tormenting spirits to people to make sure he gets what he wants, he's not actually doing evil he's just removing good? Way to let God off the hook.

2. According to your bible, Adam and Eve didn't know what the concepts of good and evil were until after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So God was setting them up to fail so he had a reason to punish them (and so he could sacrifice himself to himself to change that rule he made)

I can see what you're saying about evil being the absence of good, but where in the Bible does it say that God created evil?

Isaiah 45:7 (KJV). The NIV has it as "cause disaster", The NKJV and others have it as "create calmity" 

I've seen this verse used in that way, but I think that it means more of disaster, i.e. natural disasters like storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes, etc.  I'm not sure it's saying here "God created evil, so there."

On goes the vicious cycle... =)

Then why does "imperfection" still exist?

No matter what answer you concoct in your attempts to make sense out of it, it will necessitate that god somehow---to some extent---tolerates imperfection.

As said before, this misses the point. I'm not saying that there is any one person who is perfect (and, I might add, such a person would pass or fail the "perfect" test depending on whose definition you were using).

The point is that a person can be punished for nothing more than not believing. Do they commit other "sins" as well? Maybe. Who cares? That's not the point.

Fail.

If evil is the absence of god in the same sense that darkness is the absence of light, and if god doesn't exist everywhere, then evil must have always existed.

Since your contention is that god cannot tolerate evil, how can you also say that evil is as eternal as god? If he was going to rid the world of evil, he had an entire infinity before we arrived in which to do it.

Evil is as eternal as god? Evil is as powerful as god (or at least powerful enough to compete)? Evil is at least equally present, or *gasp!* more present than god? In the beginning, there wasn't just god, but there was evil, too? So you've acknowledged that god is not all present. Thanks! But you've now indirectly stated that he is not all powerful either. Thanks!

Since god is apparently not evil in any way whatsoever, then he is also not all knowing. Hm. (Perhaps capable of knowing, but how does that make him different from us?)

The major problem with your explanation, though, is that it defines good and evil in terms of degree or as a gradient. Much like temperature, there isn't just a hot and a cold, there is an entire continuum of temperatures. Like light and darkness (your analogy), there isn't just light and dark, there is an entire continuum of luminescence. Like color, there isn't just black and white, but there is also an entire continuum we call the gray scale.

The problem with positing such a continuum is that, no matter where along the continuum our observation lies, we can always point to something higher or lower in the continuum. No matter how hot something is, we can say "Well X is even hotter than that." No matter how light something is, we can always say, "Well X is even lighter than that." No matter how GOOD something is, we can always say, "Well X is even more good than that." Which means that no matter how good god is, we can always say, Well X is even better than god. No matter how evil satan is, we can say: well, X is even worse than satan. And since we can always imagine something with greater or lesser value along the continuum, there is no perfect value on the continuum, which means that no matter how good god might be, he is also evil compared to whatever is higher (even if what is higher is only potential and not actual).

On the other hand, if good and evil are mutually exclusive (in a heads or tails fashion), then god is either evil or he's not. He's either good or he's not.

They were banished for becoming more like god, not because they became more imperfect. Logically, they were more imperfect beforehand and god banished them only after they became less imperfect.

Hm. Interesting.

First of all, what? God created himself then? How does that work? 

I've already answered this above, but I will restate that this means that evil always existed along with god and that god, to this day, has been unable to conquer evil, which means that evil is at least as powerful, if not more powerful, than god.

Or god just doesn't care, which makes him not perfectly good.

Hm. But having premarital sex is bad, but not having premarital sex is supposedly good. Hm....

So clearly evil is not always a lack of action. It is also sometimes an action. Good is not always an action; it is sometimes a lack of action.

This sort of quantitative explanation doesn't seem to match up.

He means that there were no rules about what is right and what is wrong before God made them. So before he made them, there was no right and wrong. Under those conditions, we had no idea what right and wrong were. But when God created the rules concerning the rightness and wrongness of things, he somehow managed to make rules that he must have known would be nearly impossible for us to follow (namely the ones that demand us to resist the biological urges and drives he himself gave to us).

Essentially (but not exactly), it would be almost like me drawing a sentient circle and then telling it that I would set it on fire unless it became as little like a circle as possible.

If I wanted a square, I could have just drawn a square. Or maybe I could have decided that "rightness" was to be a circle instead of a square. Yet somehow I stacked the deck against my circle friend. And yet I love him?

I believe that was his point.

Exactly. He created A&E vulnerable to the temptation of the tree, but he also created the tree, and he also PUT THE TREE THERE WITH THEM, and then he told them not to touch it. Why not place a box next to a six year old, tell him not to open it, and then go away and leave him unattended for a while (or pretend to, since god is apparently omniscient). Oh! Surprise! He opened it! Guess it was all his fault and we'd better take action right away! We had absolutely nothing to do with it! Nope! What a poor, sinful child!

Natural disasters create torment for mankind. Even if you want to argue that there is an unknown goodness to it as well, there is still an evilness to it, so god is still making evil when he does these things.

So when God said he created "evil" he didn't really mean "EVIL"?

What other parts of the words of your God did he not really mean to say? 

But Genesis 1:31, everything was very good.  It wasn't until Adam and Eve disobeyed God that there was evil.

Satan cannot act without God's permission (that is, Satan is not an equal with God - as in dualism). God withholds His protection, and Satan goes to work.

They had no "da'ath" - knowledge or awareness of good and evil. That is, no experience. Good was being with God and obeying Him, evil was to disobey God. After eating the fruit they started to become aware of all sort of evil. And it continues today.

Didn't god know they would disobey him before he created them?  Sounds to me like god wanted sin and disobeidence.

We are removed/separated from God.  God does not tolerate imperfection - in His presence.  And God is longsuffering/patient.  He desires for all people to be saved.  Eventually, His patience runs out.

The positive is "honoring marriage as the shadow of Christ and the Church".  Sex outside of marriage abuses this image.

God didn't "make rules" so much as things proceed from His nature.  Obeying and honoring God is good.  Disobeying is evil.  Adam and Eve could of obeyed for all eternity.  But chances are, they'd disobey eventually.  And here we are.

Sure, but A&E (I thought of the TV channel at first were not children.  They were fully developed adults.  They knew exactly what they were doing. 

this doesn't make sense. "They had no "da'ath" - knowledge or awareness of good and evil. That is, no experience." << you start out ok with this. but then this happens>> "Good... << this word right here, they dont know what this word means, you said so yourself in the preceding sentence remember?

"...was being with God and obeying Him, evil...<< you see right here? they don't know what this means either. "...was to disobey God.

to know what those things even mean they need this right here>> "knowledge or awareness of good and evil" <<remember that, that thing you were talking about in your first sentence?

moral decisions require this>>"knowledge or awareness of good and evil"

this right here is a moral decision>> "Good was being with God and obeying Him, evil was to disobey God."

do you get it?

Nedbrek's statement here, "Sure, but A&E (I thought of the TV channel at first were not children.  They were fully developed adults.  They knew exactly what they were doing. " shows he doesn't. 

But wait...didn't Satan rebel against God (also taking a third of the angels) before he was able to tempt Eve?   Isn't that considered "sin" or evil?

Archeopteryx, you're saying that evil had to always exist in order for it to be the absence of God.  I say wrong.  If evil is simply the absence of good, then evil doesn't really exist.  And evil and good can have absolutes.  For example, let's take hot and cold.  There is an absolute "cold", which is 0 K, at which all motion ceases.  There is also probably an absolute "hot", at which you can get no hotter.  Like I said, evil doesn't really exist, it's the absence of God, though we define it as "evil".  This is one of if not the major contention on the validity of the Bible, so explaining it isn't an easy task.

Right, they had no knowledge of what comes from good and evil.  They knew about obedience (work the garden, don't eat the fruit) or disobedience (eat the fruit).  Just like a child doesn't need to understand all the reasons we correct them.  They just need to obey.

The timing of Satan's fall is difficult. The entire book of Job seems to be saying Satan has (some) access to Heaven.

The "third of the angels" passage is Revelation 12:4. The immediate context is the dragon preparing to devour the child who would rule all nations (Jesus).

Jesus mentions the fall of Satan in Luke 10:18. It appears to be related to His mission.

It seems Satan was not fully removed from Heaven until around the time of Jesus. Although the book of Enoch does talk about it some. The history of the book of Enoch is clouded, however (and it is non-canonical).

According to whom? Are you saying that people pick and choose what books to consider the word of god, using their own judgement?

-Triften

Enoch falls under the Hebrew Old Testament (HOT).  The HOT was taken as a whole from the Jewish authorities at the time of the foundation of the Church.  Those authorities rejected it.

The only full copies still remaining are relatively new and in Ethiopic.  Given the protection we've seen of other Scripture, it is safe to assume that is not inspired.

That does not mean it cannot have anything interesting or possibly instructive.  An interesting project would be to correlate the oldest fragments (which predate Jesus) to the more modern text (which often reads somewhat like Christian "fan-fiction" of the time).

I'm not surprised this has so many comments. This is the best of all yours I have read Todangst. And absolutely right, I absolutely agree with your conclusion. 

How many proclaimed christians would get it, I don't know, but honestly, it's not like it isn't in their book. 

"I tell you the truth, if you believe in me you will do the same things that I am doing. In fact, you will do even greater things..."

 Looks like all those begging for the chance to hang are the true believers. Irony huh?

What idiot is telling you this shit or are you making this shit up?

Why would a 'god' have emotions? Emotions are endemical to biological entities.

Good point. Thanks!

We are removed from most of God's goodness. His mercy, grace, and wrath are still present (Psalm 139:8 ). Mercy protects us from the punishment we deserve. Grace gives us good that we do not deserve. This is true even for unbelievers.

God allows for imperfection so these attributes (wrath, mercy, grace, and justice) can be expressed. God in Himself (the Trinity) cannot express these things.

Hell is the result of breaking the law. It would not be just for a criminal to break the law and not pay the consequences.

No one is telling me these things specifically. I am applying Biblical theology as it is understand by most orthodox Christians (small 'o' ). Listen the teaching of John MacArthur, John Piper, Charles Spurgeon, etc. They say the same things.

Why wouldn't He? The Bible says He is angry, jealous, sad, pleased, etc. That is in terms we can understand. I wouldn't assume it is exactly like it is for us. God has no body, so physical effects would certainly be absent (increased heart rate, sweating, etc.)

Sure, we are in the presence of God's wrath, mercy, and justice.  In Hell, there is only the presence of His wrath.  In Heaven, there is only His goodness. 

He "created" imperfection, only with regard to creating beings who could oppose Him.  

Sure.  But God is also just.  And sin (crime, breaking the law) must be punished.

Oh, sure, I am adhering to Biblical theology.  (I thought that was clear) 

Apparently, spiritual entities can have them too.

You are just asserting that there is no spiritual realm.  If there is a spiritual realm, then God exists.

Something other than the natural.  Whatever it is where spirits are. 

In saying this, you're not saying what god is or where he is, you are only saying where they are not.

It's basically like saying, "God does not live in my closet". Everywhere that is not in my closet, we will call "the spiritual realm". Therefore, god lives in the spiritual realm

But where is that? You don't know! Still agnostic and not realizing it. Welcome, once again, to atheism. 

Supernatural claims are meaningless, just like all other god claims.

Why did they reject it? They used their own judgement? How do we know they were correct?

Well, you said the authorities rejected it, so of course it would not have been protected by the church. Just because it wasn't as popular, it wasn't inspired? How do you know Satan wasn't trying to trick people into rejecting this inspired work?

But you wouldn't consider it as word-of-god-y as the rest of the bible?

-Triften

aiia, you are the one who doesn't get it.  Darkness doesn't really exist.  It is the absence of light.  Cold doesn't really exist.  It is the absence of heat.  Evil doesn't really exist.  It is the absence of God.  And there are absolutes for all of these.  There is absolute cold, i.e. 0 Kelvins, at which no motion is present.  There is absolute darkness, i.e. no light is present.  There is absolute evil too, i.e. when God isn't present.  I'll give some examples.  When Satan took this thoughts off of God and put them on himself, he was sinning.  When Adam and Eve took their thoughts off of God and put them on themselves, they sinned by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  What more of an explanation do you want?

But there can't be absolute evil, because god is omnipresent, right?

-Triften 

I consider it false that the God of the Bible is omnipresent, especially in the sense of omnipresence that pantheism represents.  If you have any points or verses in the Bible that contradict this feel free to challenge me.

This argument didn't work the last time I rebutted it! So I suppose I'll just copy and paste. Maybe I'll add a few more road signs to boot.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. Evil is the absense of God. I don't think that God is everywhere (yes, i know, Heresy! Heresey! Hang him! Stone him!), especially in the pantheistic view of "god". When man took his focus off God and put it onto himself, God was absent from his thoughts. Man became selfish and corrupted, having eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Fail.

If evil is the absence of god in the same sense that darkness is the absence of light, and if god doesn't exist everywhere (those are your words, by the way), then evil must have always existed [since God cannot be everywhere at once and there must have therefore always been evil wherever God was not.]

Since your contention is that god cannot tolerate evil, how can you also say (indirectly, by way of what was shown above) that evil is as eternal as god? If he was going to rid the world of evil, he had an entire infinity in which to do it. And that's before we even got here!

Evil is as eternal as god?

Evil is as powerful as god (or at least powerful enough to compete)?

Evil is at least equally present, or more present than god?

In the beginning, there wasn't just god, but there was evil, too?

So you've acknowledged that god is not all present. Thanks! But you've now indirectly stated that he is not supreme or all powerful either. Thanks!

Since god is apparently not evil in any way whatsoever, then he is also not all knowing. If he knew everything, he would not only know about evil, but he would know how to be evil, or how to avoid it. (After all, according to his rules, if you thought it, you said it/did it). Hm. Perhaps he is only capable of knowing of evil, but how does that make him different from us?

The major problem with your explanation, though, is that it defines good and evil in terms of degree or as a gradient. Much like temperature, there isn't just a hot and a cold, there is an entire continuum of temperatures. Like light and darkness (your analogy), there isn't just light and dark, there is an entire continuum of luminescence. Like color, there isn't just black and white, but there is also an entire continuum we call the gray scale.

The problem with positing such a continuum is that, no matter where along the continuum our observation lies, we can always point to something higher or lower in the continuum. No matter how hot something is, we can say "Well X is even hotter than that." No matter how light something is, we can always say, "Well X is even lighter than that." No matter how GOOD something is, we can always say, "Well X is even more good than that." Which means that no matter how good god is, we can always say, Well X is even better than god. No matter how evil satan is, we can say: well, X is even worse than satan. And since we can always imagine something with greater or lesser value along the continuum, there is no perfect value on the continuum, which means that no matter how good god might be, he is also evil compared to whatever is higher (even if what is higher is only potential\possible and not actual).

Furthermore, your comparing good/evil to hot/cold or light/dark is misleading because it attempts to put good/evil on the same empirical footing, and it clearly does not belong there.

(For example, you mentioned above the absolute cold is 0 kelvins. Well, then what is absolute hot? Answer: there is no such thing. In fact, to persist in tying yourself so tightly to this analogy would force you into the position there is such a thing as absolute evil, but there is no such thing as absolute good, which would be very troublesome to your position, I would think. This analogy is kaput).

On the other hand, if good and evil are mutually exclusive (in a heads or tails fashion), then god is either evil or he's not. He's either good or he's not.

God, being perfect, cannot accept imperfection, thus Adam and Eve were banished out of the garden.

They were banished for becoming more like god (his words), not because they became more imperfect. If God is perfect, and if they became more like God by eating the fruit, then it is only logical to conclude that they became MORE perfect. Therefore, they were more imperfect beforehand and god banished them only after they became less imperfect.

Hm. Interesting.

The Bible says God created evil, only in the same way He created darkness. He created light, and wherever there is no light, we have darkness. Similarly, wherever there is no good, there is evil.

First of all, what? God created himself then? How does that work? [The point here was twofold: first, that the absence of light is the absence of light. Period. You don't need to create light to HAVE THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT. Before you create light, is it not absent? What do you then have? Darkness! You only need to create light to understand that something else is possible. Great. Moving on. So before light, only darkness was possible. By this analogy, the speaker is saying that, before god, only evil existed and only evil was possible. But his analogy suggests that there was a time when God did not exist. If evil didn't exist until good arrived, then there was a time of only evil. And, apparently, in order for God to come into existence, he had to create himself? But if God always existed, then good didn't have to be created first in order for there to be evil. Obviously, this line of reasoning doesn't work.]

I've already answered this above, but I will restate that this (the fact that good and evil both exist without depending on the other) would mean that evil always existed along with god ( "perfect goodness" ) and that god, to this day, has been unable to conquer evil, which means that evil is at least as powerful, if not more powerful, than god.

Hm.

And that makes sense. Evil is not a object thing. Evil is the twisting of, or opposition to good. For example work is good, working to the point of ignoring your family is bad.

Hm. But having premarital sex is bad, but not having premarital sex is supposedly good. Hm....

So clearly evil is not always a lack of action. It is also sometimes an action. Good is not always an action; it is sometimes a lack of action.

This sort of quantitative explanation doesn't seem to match up.

So there's a recap for you.

See above.

It's kind of strange how Satan was able to do that, since he was not only one of God's creations, but he was an angel of all things!

If God didn't want us to be able to do X, he shouldn't have created us with the innate capacity for X, and then told us to ignore it. That's not us sinning, that's God being a shitty engineer.

And he didn't just do it once, he apparently did it twice: man AND angels. Does his incompetence know no bounds!?

Secondly, every time I'm not thinking about God, then, I'm sinning? If I'm thinking of cotton candy, that makes me a sinner or more likely to sin?

If I were to be thinking of something like... oh... naked women. Then my thoughts wouldn't be on God, but I'd already be thinking of sin, so that would just be circular reasoning.

Also, Satan's mind wasn't off of God. He was thinking about overthrowing him. He wasn't NOT thinking about God. He was just thinking about him in a way that God didn't like. But, again, that was God's shortcoming as an engineer, I'd say.

But if they were perfectly innocent, how were they capable of such sin? Even if they did the sin by accident, how could you call them a sinner? (for example, when a toddler says "shit" not knowing what it means---he just heard someone on a movie say it---can you really spank him and make him eat soap right then?)

Also, if God didn't want them to touch the tree, why the hell did he put it there? (Here, two-year-old boy. I have some cookies here. I'm going to leave for an hour and put these carton of cookies here, resting wiiiiide open. Don't touch them though! Bye!)

As Douglas Adams once wrote (paraphrasing): Anyone who attempts to get you by putting a brick under a hat probably isn't going to give up on the first try.

Lastly, the story of Adam and Eve isn't real. It's stolen from the stories in the literature of previous religions. For example, Eden and A&E both appear (along with Noah's Ark!) in the Epic of Gilgamesh, although all the characters have different names.

One that doesn't have science, history, and logic incredibly stacked against it.

The only way you can apologetically "prove" God is by just making things up, which is very appropriate since that's God came about in the first place.

Ciao!