But on thinking again, I can't see anything wrong with believing that God would have taken their spirits to be in union with him.

Which is exactly what did not happen. Their spirits were "remote from God's light". Those people are gone forever (literally, according to Job, like smoke) and won't come back. Not now, nor later. What once goes to sheol doesn't come back, end of story.
Admittedly, this is portrayed somewhat differently in some parts of the Psalms later, but those were "invented" about a thousand years later. For someone living (and believing, and dying) at the time of the Egyptian plagues, the Psalms have no bearing. For all a writer of that time knew, death was definitively not a good thing.

A big foot coming out of the sky and crushing the pharaoh would leave little doubt, though God might get in trouble for violating intellectual property rights owned by the Monty Python group. Seriously, though... for a god, it should be no real issue to make it clear who or what killed the pharaoh. If he can't do that, he should look for a different job.

The whole story is a lot more machiavellistic, though. If you read through Exodus 7 and Exodus 11 where God talks with Moses, it becomes clear that the whole punishing-Egypt-plot is set up from the beginning to the end, somehow similar to the FBI Oregon Bomb Plot.
Exodus 7 literally reads like "Hah, go and ask him, I will make sure that he cannot comply ("harden his heart"), so I have a good excuse for punishing everybody in this country, muhahahaha!". Exodus 10 and 11 openly admit at several occasions that it was God who actively prevented the pharaoh from giving in (which begs for the question of "free will"), just so he could send the plagues. The reason for it is given in 9:16 too, he was merely interested in advertizing his name, which of course is a perfectly valid reason to kill a few people, in someone else's name.

The image that the old testament depicts here is not only the image of an injust sadist or a terrorist if you will, but also the image of a treacherous coward. He cannot just kill the Egyptians and say "behold my might, or I will crrrrrrush you". No, that won't do, the blame must fall on the pharaoh, who is, by divine intervention, not even given a chance to decide otherwise.

The probably most scary thing about it is that the authors of the old testament texts did not even deem this a bad thing alltogether, because they wrote it down just like this.

Imagine that I came to your house, bound and gagged you, and then I started hitting you with a cricket bat. Not as subtle as releasing frogs and mosquitos in your living room first, but it'll do the job. Every now and then, I'll ask "Do you want me to stop?". Since I don't get an answer, I'll keep batting you to death, and that's OK.
I mean, what do you want... I have been asking you again and again, you only needed to tell me! It's all your fault, you're the bad guy. Pray to me.

'Zeraan' said:

If the Hebrews were teleported magically to their promised land, what would be the people's reaction? They'd lose their grips on reality

Ok, but honestly, I'd lose my grip on reality as well if an 82 year old nutter who keeps talking to people I can't see made me follow a fire column through the desert and then parted the seas with a stick.


As a funny sidenote, I'm not quite sure what to think of the "I made you a god, and your brother your prophet" thing, seeing how not long after that, God says that he is a jealous god, so you should not pray to any other god (which is commonly translated as "your god, the only god" today). That, and the fact that Moses (other than the people) didn't make it to the promised land after so many years of trials, makes you wonder if someone might have been holding back a little grudge there. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Heh, one should make a Populous-like "Get Israelites out of Egypt" god game with rules such as "don't break any physical laws". Maybe that would answer some questions?

A big foot coming out of the sky and crushing the pharaoh would leave little doubt, though God might get in trouble for violating intellectual property rights owned by the Monty Python group. Seriously, though… for a god, it should be no real issue to make it clear who or what killed the pharaoh. If he can&#39;t do that, he should look for a different job.<br /> <br /> <br /> Or maybe he didn&#39;t really wanted to destroy all Egypt or plunge Egyptians into eternal despair(imagine a giant foot coming off the sky- all of them, Egyptians and Israelites, would be afraid to sneeze in the wrong direction for the rest of their lives). All things considered, the thing ended with as less casualties as possible, without raping physics of course(the whole teleporting thing). From where I stand, God had a plan for the Egyptians too(Joseph very directly contributed to the wellfare of the Egyptians) and didn&#39;t wanted them to vanish. It&#39;s just that the story, through the Bible, is told from the slave&#39;s side. You guys on one hand characterize the God of OT as &quot;terrorist&quot;, and on the other wonder why he didn&#39;t use even more outrageous methods to show off. Egypt survived the Exodus just fine, as far as I can tell. The Pharaoh was &quot;terrorised&quot; as much as a guy who considered himself &quot;god on earth&quot;(and,subsequently, would only consider to talk with what he considered another &quot;god on earth&quot; on equal grounds) needed in order not to persecute a strong nation who would be a risk of opposition once out of slavery.<br /> <br /> <br /> There is somewhere in the Bible an incident where Joshua, just out of the &quot;promised land&quot;, met with a man and asked &quot;are you one of them, or one of us&quot;, and he replied &quot;Neither&quot;. This puts some things a bit in perpsective. I don&#39;t believe any nation is really favoured by God the way some believe(the promise to the Israelites was, I believe &quot;priests of all nations&quot;, not &quot;rulers&quot;), but only that things are arranged in such a way in order to prevent greater bloodshed and allow for more people to be &quot;educated&quot;, since humanity has already chosen to resolve their quarrels with killings and wars. There is free will. Maybe all God wants is to have children(&quot;out of his own image&quot;) to love and educate, and not puppets to control. Just like all parents. If those children decide that the best way to resolve arguments it to kill each other off, that&#39;s their choice. Free will. Just something to think about.

There are definitely numbers that don't match up, but also things like the creation of the earth. Were man and women created at the same time, or was women created days after man? Were men or beasts created first?

Ah, but this can be aswered without much doubt. Man and woman were created in the sense of "the idea was conceived" at the same time. Funnily they were both created after God, which seems contradictory as they are obviously different things. However, ontogenetically man and woman are the same for the most part, so from a modern scientific point of view, this is not even so much of a contradiction or surprising at all. Which leaves the question whether God had a bi-existence or was a hermaphrodite, or an embryo, or there were two gods, or whatever. But I guess some things are best unasked and unanswered :-)

Later, man was formed from dust, and yet later, woman was formed. And it took God three attempts to get woman right. Though "right" is debatable if you ask me, because the only thing "wrong" with the first one was that she didn't want to be totally submissive to Adam, which did not please the world's first macho.

Note the difference between "created" and "formed". This is usually lost in today's translations, but if you refer to word-by-word translations of the "most original" originals that we know of (who can tell how original they really are, but we only have what we have), then God did not really create an awful lot. Rather, he formed things out of what was already there. Much like Marduk in the Enuma elish, of which the book Genesis probably "borrowed" and "mono-theized" many things.

'tstrimple' said:

There are definitely numbers that don't match up, but also things like the creation of the earth. Were man and women created at the same time, or was women created days after man? Were men or beasts created first?

Ah, but this can be aswered without much doubt. Man and woman were created in the sense of "the idea was conceived" at the same time. Funnily they were both created after God, which seems contradictory as they are obviously different things. However, ontogenetically man and woman are the same for the most part, so from a modern scientific point of view, this is not even so much of a contradiction or surprising at all. Which leaves the question whether God had a bi-existence or was a hermaphrodite, or an embryo, or there were two gods, or whatever. But I guess some things are best unasked and unanswered :-)

Oh ffs, the Genesis is not supposed to be "Biology 101". The chapters are some images of how world was perceived to be created by seemingly different forces(fire,wind,earth,water,etc..). In the first action, it's said that God created light and seperated it from darkness. Or, "let there be light". Maybe "let" means allow chaos to be formed into order by establishing physical laws? Just a thought. That should pretty much be it...light and darkness, energy and vacuum, life and death, existence and void...isn't that pretty much it? And the woman was told "you will be a subsidian to your husband" after the story of Edem. After the "original sin". Not before. And I insist: The original sin is to believe you are wise when you're an idiot, and decide to take more power on you than you deserve. Like drilling for oil in an area full of precious life and think "hey, what's the worst thing it could happen, I'm smart, I have it under control". That's when all shit starts to happen. God, I believe, is beyond time and space, but he is described in temporal terms in the Bible, because these are stories told by parents and grandparents to their children. That's how we can understand them, given we are nothing but temporal beings ourselves.

'way2lazy2care' said:

But on thinking again, I can't see anything wrong with believing that God would have taken their spirits to be in union with him.

Which is exactly what did not happen. Their spirits were "remote from God's light". Those people are gone forever (literally, according to Job, like smoke) and won't come back. Not now, nor later. What once goes to sheol doesn't come back, end of story.
Admittedly, this is portrayed somewhat differently in some parts of the Psalms later, but those were "invented" about a thousand years later. For someone living (and believing, and dying) at the time of the Egyptian plagues, the Psalms have no bearing. For all a writer of that time knew, death was definitively not a good thing.

I forgot that you were both there and could see into the afterlife. My bad.

And I insist: The original sin is to believe you are wise when you're an idiot, and decide to take more power on you than you deserve.

Yes, but the text doesn't say that. It says that man was punished for disobeying god's orders ("do not eat from that tree"), with little in the way of explanation ("because you will die").

Not to mention that the way the text is written, it hints that the apple represents the knowledge of sexual desire ("and they saw they were naked and were ashamed"). The writers of this nonsense were Machiavellian indeed.

Not to mention that the way the text is written, it hints that the apple represents the knowledge of sexual desire ("and they saw they were naked and were ashamed"). The writers of this nonsense were Machiavellian indeed.

Nope, it doesn't say that. It says that, when they 'ate' from the tree of 'Knowledge' (or 'knowledge of good and evil'), they felt ashamed that they were naked. One is the result of the other. It is directly implied that being ashamed of your nakedness(which is how God created them) *is* wrong("Adam, who told you that you're naked"). As in, right before this incident, man was in balance with nature and with himself and had no reason to feel ashamed about anything. If you choose to see it any other way, it's your choise. I can't really do anything about that.

Eat from the "Tree of knowledge of good and evil", you start arbitrarily dividing actions and situations into "good and evil", you start believing you are wise, you start using that knowledge to rape nature, you become a cancer for nature and other people, you die alongside with nature. You reap what you saw. That is all. That's what I get from the text. You are free not to.

'Fiddler' said:

Not to mention that the way the text is written, it hints that the apple represents the knowledge of sexual desire ("and they saw they were naked and were ashamed"). The writers of this nonsense were Machiavellian indeed.

Nope, it doesn't say that. It says that, when they 'ate' from the tree of 'Knowledge' (or 'knowledge of good and evil'), they felt ashamed that they were naked. One is the result of the other.

So you are saying that they felt ashamed of their *nakedness* because they ate some fruit. Sorry, but that doesn't make any sense no matter how you slice it.


What makes sense is that this fruit "of knowledge" made them aware of their sexual nature - hence the shame.

You still haven't explained how the text support your previous interpretation ("The original sin is to believe you are wise when you're an idiot"). Because I just read it and it doesn't say *anything* of the like.

Edit (you edited while I writing):

Eat from the "Tree of knowledge of good and evil", you start arbitrarily dividing actions and situations into "good and evil", you start believing you are wise, you start using that knowledge to rape nature, you become a cancer for nature and other people, you die alongside with nature. You reap what you saw. That is all. That's what I get from the text.

Care to quote the passages that lead you to this interpretation?

So you are saying that they felt ashamed of their *nakedness* because they ate some fruit. Sorry, but that doesn't make any sense no matter how you slice it.

It's the fruit of Knowledge. Knowledge. Of "good and evil". We see it every day in our daily lives, people believing they have the right to define what is "good" and "evil" and inflict guilt on others and themselves. I have no idea if it's an actual fruit, a symbolic image, or a fruit that multiplies the fucking neurons in your head. It doesn't matter to me. It's a story. An image. A lesson.

Why are we even talking about it, since it's clear what I mean by 'fruit of knowledge', and you just don't want to accept it? Let's just drop this, it goes nowhere.

Care to quote the passage...


[font=&quot;Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif&quot;]And to the man<a href='&quot;http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Genesis+3&quot;'>*</a> he said,<br /> [font=&quot;Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif&quot;]Because you have listened to the voice of your wife,<br /> and have eaten of the treeabout which I commanded you,<br /> “You shall not eat of it”,<br /> [font=&quot;Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif&quot;]<span style="font-weight:bold;">cursed is the ground because of you;</span><br /> in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; <br /> and you shall eat the plants of the field.<br /> [font=&quot;Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif&quot;]By the sweat of your face<br /> you shall eat bread<br /> [font=&quot;Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif&quot;]until you return to the ground,<br /> for out of it you were taken;<br /> [font=&quot;Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif&quot;]you are dust,<br /> and to dust you shall return.’<br /> [font=&quot;Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif&quot;] <br /> [font=&quot;Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif&quot;]You choose to see it as a punishment, I choose to see it as cause and effect, which man has been warned against(and we still are being warned against, and we still rape nature and ourselves). Maybe the fruit of knowledge contained instructions on how to burn fossil fuel and build iron swords. So there.

Because you have listened to the voice of your wife,
and have eaten of the treeabout which I commanded you,
“You shall not eat of it”,

Hence, punishment. This is not a mere intepretation, it is actually spelt out on the text - which you, I should remind, hold infallible.

If the text had said "don't eat from the tree of knowledge because you don't have the wisdom to distinguish good from evil", your interpretation would have been valid. However, it says "don't eat from the tree of knowledge because you will die" which makes your interpretation specious at best.

Let's just drop this, it goes nowhere.

Indeed, since christians (and other religious folk) twist their "infallible holy texts" to fit whatever worldviews they wish to support. And if something is too egregious to twist, they just cop out "we cannot know god's will".