In Eden, God Lied and the Snake Spoke Truth

https://www.humanreligions.info/god_lied_in_eden.html - In Eden, God Lied and the Snake Spoke Truth.

God itself says that if Adam eats from the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, "thou shalt surely die" on the very same day, using the Hebrew mût tamût that specifically means physical death and yôm which does just mean an ordinary day (Gen 2:16-17, Gen 3:2-3). The serpent says it's untrue: actually they will attain knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:4-5). Adam and Eve, who were already mortal (Gen 3:22-23), ate from the tree and didn't die. They lived on to parent all of humanity. God in Gen. 3:22 admits that Adam and Eve did indeed "become as one of us, to know good and evil". God lied, and Satan told the truth.

God Has No Free Will (Four Arguments)

There are four philosophically strong arguments that God cannot have free will.

1. If God is perfect, then, it always follows the best course of action and therefore never has a choice.
2. A benevolent God always chooses the path that causes most good, so, never has a choice.
3. An all-knowing god knows with certainty all of its future actions. As its knowledge cannot be wrong, then, it must follow this instantaneously predetermined path, and has never had a moment of existence in which this wasn't the case.
4. A perfect being that created time never changes (any new state implies that the previous state was less good); a being that never changes isn't making choices. This makes sense for a being that is outside of space-time.

Without free will, God cannot be moral, and must be neutral (amoral).

One final irony is that if God created free will, then, it had no choice in doing so. If free will wasn't created by God, then, God is not the Creator. If it was, then, #Creator:at the moment when it created free will, the concept did not exist, and therefore, God itself did not have free will in doing so.

See: www.humanreligions.info/god_has_no_free_will.html.

Pantheism

Pantheism is a form of theism (god-belief) in which God and the universe are equivalent: be this in either a conscious or automatic sense. The whole system of physical laws, cause and effect, and time itself, are the internal workings of a divine being. www.humanreligions.info/pantheism.html

Agnosticism

Almost all debates on agnosticism are messy, because there are a few common ways to define what the term means. Here's a summary of the two main kinds of agnosticism and two possible assumed positions (agnostic theists and agnostic atheists). www.humanreligions.info/agnosticism.html

Five updates on pages on Christianity

1. Iyyobh, in the Jewish Book of Truth - Known to Christians as the Book of Job: I've added a paragraph to the introduction on this page on the theological problems in the story of Job, and 2 sections to this page: (1) God Testing People in The Bible, and (2) God as the Author of Evil: Are Satan and God Interchangeable?

2. Jesus Did Not Exist: I have added a long introductory paragraph, and added multiple quotes from Bart Ehrman and a bit from Karen Armstrong. This page needs a lot of work - there are several important books and authors on this topic that I ought to be mentioning (for example the dry Richard Carrier and the impassioned Acharya S). The parts on the birth of Jesus and on his death will be revamped too at some point.

3. The Book of Revelation: Some notes on authorship and symbolism.

4. The Birth of Jesus and the Christmas Story: Pagan and Unhistorical: I have revamped this page... given it an introduction before the menu, added notes from Prof. Bart Ehrman on historical proofs, and added a few other bits throughout the page.

5. Incest in the Bible: Adam and Eve and Their Children, and Noah and His Family: I've added a note on Warren Steed Jeffs, the President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a spin-off from the Mormons).He got himself on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" on account of the scale of his sex crimes within his congregation, including sex with minors and incest. And I've added some paragraphs on the Parsis (Zoroastrians) in Hong Kong, where religious inhibitions against marrying outside causes severe problems with the 100-strong community. Zoroastrianism and its dogmas influenced Judaism, Chritsianity and Islam.

A load of updates on religion and Satanism

I've done quite a few updates, here are some of them:

• Prayer to God in Christianity and Islam: It is Useless and Satanic!: I've added a quote from Voltaire (1764) to the section "2. Praying is Against God's Will" and massively expanded section "3. Praying is Magic" with commentary of Justin Barret's investigations into people's choices of prayer in emergency situations. And to section "5. How to Pray in Islam, According to the Qur'an" I've added notes on several more Qur'anic verses, such as Qur'an 3:191, 5:6 and 17:107,110.

• Is God All-Powerful? Can God or Anything Truly Be Omnipotent?: I've added a 6th (important!) item to the list of things that an all-powerful god cannot do: omnipotency is incompatible with benevolence. Responsible for making every aspect of evil and suffering possible and for creating the long chain of cause and effect that results in disasters and influences people to choose wrongly, god is so absolutely responsible for all evil and pain that it renders it an amoral being at best, and at worst, an immoral one. And on that note, I've added Section 2 on The Problem of Evil. On a sociological bent, I've added section "5. The Ineffectiveness of God to Answer Prayers", which is about the way choices of prayers give away the fact that people are saying them more as magic words rather than saying them with the confidence that God itself can change the laws of physics (i.e., a link to the text mentioned in the first update mentioned in this entry!).

And three updates to my Satanism website:

• Misanthropy, Nihilism and Self-Worth: People are Shit, Boring and Stupid: Added two new paragraphs, including: "People attain varying shades of greatness. Some become great and lead humankind forward, successfully encouraging others to shake off their shackles and dogmas, and face the wondrous world with imagination and open-mindedness. Some become great through beauty, acting, entertainment, or other temporal endeavours, and find their egos drag them onwards. Both the humanistic greats and the egotistical greats are prone to thinking themselves better than others, and both can often be found bemoaning the state of the masses. Are you with me, or are you part of the deluded herd? Because of the two types of greatness I mention above, one is formed of breakable china, and the other is formed from rock, upon which we build humankind's greatest scientific, technological and moral victories. When looks and talent fade, who has left the enduring legacy on which others can build? They are the greats, and they are ones who have permission to announce their disgrace at the state of humankind! Follow them, copy them, be inspired by them and read their books!"

• Moojan Momen's 8 Pathways to Religious Experience: Categorizing Satanism: I've added this paragraph to section "1.7. Gnosticism". Momen's use of the word "gnosticism" is a little problematic, as, nearly all gnostic documents discvovered archeologically have been largely Christian affairs, having as a saviour a Christ figure who comes and reveals the necessary secret knowledge, and, being heavily centered on the ways in which the Old Testament god is defeated by the Good News. Momen's category mostly describes what are called mystery religions, rather than gnosticism. For this reason, although in 2007 when I first published this text I stated that there was a 4 out of 5 match between this category and Satanism, I am not revising that to 3 out of 5, due to the poor choice of category title by Moojan Momen. I follow this with a good description of actual Gnosticism.

• Righteous Satan Theologies: When Satan is Good: I've added section "2.3. Classical Gnosticism". Just added a few paragraphs on the Gnostics who were caught occasionally identifying with bad-guys such as Cain, Kresh and Judas. Because it turns out that if the God of this world is actually evil, then, those who oppose that god are in fact the good guys.

Scroll around these updated pages and look for the little "New" graphics as always, which Ziggy will leave in place for ~ 6 months for any new paragraph, quote, or section.

A few little updates to religion pages

• Monotheism and Free Will: God, Determinism and Fate - added a note on the contradiction between Omnipotence and Free Will (section #2), added a few more verses from Qur'an to the list of determinist verses, and re-ordered the page a little bit.

• Added section Atheism and Secularism #2. Lower-case or Upper-case Atheism? and commentary on the confused opinions of sociologist William Sims Bainbridge.

• The God of the Christian Bible is Evil: Evidence from Scripture and Nature - Added section "4. Sowing Seeds of Confusion - Not the Antics of a Good God" about Biblical statements on dreams, prophecies and the like and how they should be trusted, against the real-life situation that many conflicting religions and beliefs result from such visions. Also, the story of the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11 has God create all the conflicting languages of mankind, because otherwise "nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them".

And finally,

• Biblical Christianity Denies Free Will: I've added Matthew 5:45 to the section on predeterminism; although it isn't about salvation, it is at least about justice. The verses say that the sun and the rain afflict both the good and the evil amongst us. Also added a quote to section "4.5. The Church of England" from John William Draper (1881).

And in other news, I'm loving the summer heat even though it makes it harder to do my marathon training - mostly means I'm having to go running a bit later in the day than normal.

Christianity: Times in the Bible When God Doesn't Know All, and Tests People to Find Things Out

I've added a new section to http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/omniscience.html#Christianity:

The Bible says God is perfect in knowledge, knows all thoughts, all secrets, sees all and no-one can hide from God. See: 1 Samuel 2:3, Job 28:24; 37:16; 42:2, Psalm 44:21; 139:4,7-8; 147:5, Proverbs 15:3, Jeremiah 16:17, 23:24, Acts 1:24, Hebrews 4:13, Matthew 10:30 and 1 John 3:19-20. Yet there are plenty of times when God doesn't know things, such as where people are. Check these verses:

• Genesis 3:8-13 - Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord, amongst the trees of the garden, and God had to go find them, and then asks them questions. Either Adam and Eve are so dumb that they can't grasp that God is all-knowing, or, God is genuinely asking because it doesn't know the answers.
• Genesis 18:20-21 - "²⁰Then the LORD said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous ²¹that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”"
• Genesis 32:22-30 - In this obscure story, Jacob wrestles with God in bodily form and sees God face-to-face. God asks Jacob what Jacob's name is; yet an all-knowing god would surely know!
• Numbers 22:9 - Balaam and some Moabite officials spend a night waiting for God, who duly pops down for a visit, "And God came unto Balaam, and said, What men are these with thee?" An all-knowing God would have known.
• Job 1:7, 2:2 - "And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it."
• Hosea 8:4 - Some princes of Israel were set up without God's knowledge.

Sometimes, it is said in the Bible that God tests people. In Deuteronomy 8:1-2 God reveals that the 40-years in the wilderness was a test done by God to find out what was in people's hearts - whether they would still obey orders. In Deuteronomy 13:1-5 God sends some false prophets and wonder-workers as tests to see if people will follow other gods, and in 2 Chronicles 32:31 God is doing similar fact-finding tests. Yet an all-knowing God, creator of all time, knows exactly who will pass any tests, and knows exactly what is in everyone's heart. So either God is lying about his reasons, or, god is not actually all-knowing. See: "God Never Needs to Test Us" by Vexen Crabtree (2005).

The Problem of Evil and Suffering: Can a Good God Exist?

I've redone "The Problem of Evil: Why Would a Good God Create Suffering?" by Vexen Crabtree (2011). It still opens with a list of all the main areas of the problem of evil (natural disasters, angels heaven, babies going to heaven). And a list of all the main theodocies used to try to explain why evil exists (free will, the absence of god, god testing us, etc). All these explanations do not answer the fundamental problem of evil, however.

The page contents:

1. Introduction: A Fundamental Contradiction Between a Good God and Reality
2. A Venn Diagram: Absolute Good vs. Apparent Evil
3. The Creator of the Worst of All Possible Worlds: Is God Evil?
4. Christianity
5. Conclusion

The Problem of Evil and Free Will

If God is all-powerful and all-good, it would have created a universe in the same way it created heaven: with free will for all, no suffering and no evil. But evil and suffering exist. Therefore God does not exist, is not all-powerful or is not benevolent (good). [...] A theodicy is an attempt to explain why a good god would have created evil and suffering.

The most common theodicy is the free will theodicy. This is that God created evil so that we could then choose between good and evil, and make moral choices. If all choices result in good, there would be no moral choices. If love is acceptable, it must be chosen over hate and therefore evil and suffering result when we make morally poor choices. However this classical theodicy does not hold up, for many reasons. Prominent historical Christian theologians who have rejected the free will theodicy include St Augustine, Martin Luther and John Calvin1. The arguments on this page are thousands of years old, but, many continue to believe in the simplicity of the free will theodicy, so, it does no harm to state the arguments against it again.

These are the menu headings on my page about the free will theodicy:

The contents of "Is Free Will the Reason God Allows Evil and Suffering?" by Vexen Crabtree (2003) is now:

1. Free Will Does Not Require the Existence of Evil
   1. There is Free Will in Heaven, But No Suffering
   2. Natural Evil is Not the Result of Free Will
   3. Why So Much Suffering?
   4. Why Do Bad Choices Of One Person Cause Suffering in Another?
   5. Choosing Different Good Courses of Action
   6. Evil Does Not Have to Cause Suffering
2. Conclusion: There are Multiple Reasons Why the Free Will Theodicy Fails