Well, that post certainly got a bit of feedback. I'll leave just a few general comments I suppose.
1. I was kind of expecting it, but still somewhat disappointed that there were two people who felt it necessary to call into question if I was ever a Christian based solely off that one post. Talk about making a quick judgment with virtually no supporting evidence for or against it. However, I do understand that many Christians believe there are no such thing as true ex-Christians, and I guess I can understand that viewpoint as I used to believe that myself for many years. But for the record, yes, I was a genuine follower of Jesus Christ for a large chunk of my life.
You are entitled to think that you were a Christian. We are equally entitled to think that you were probably not. 'A large chunk of your life' is not very impressive when you are only 26 LOL You sound to me like a typical church-goer with a head belief that never became a reality. You went along with the tide. IF you ever were a Christian God clearly feels that you need a time in the wilderness to get yourself sorted out.
2. My initial post was moreso an argument against the hypocrisy of disbelief of the supernatural amongst several Christians in my life. It's so easy to discount the Hindu creation story as complete nonsense, but in that same breathe turn around and say all the bizarre things in the Bible are supernaturally inspired so that makes it somehow rational. It's just a double standard that's always bothered me. Like, who are we to judge that crazy supernatural stuff in other religions, when we have some crazy supernatural stuff of our own.
I see no strange ideas in Genesis 1. Nothing in it is against common sense, or indeed science, once you take into account the Almighty power of God. It is very different with other creation myths which simply contain absurdities. But your view does make clear that you are not very straight in your thinking, otherwise you would have recognised the difference.
3. That leads me to this post I made: "Yet Christians have no problem believing all of this is literal, even though there has never been anything like that since nor any evidence that such things ever existed."
Do you expect there to be a number of creations?. By the nature of it there can only be one. There is certainly evidence that light, land, sea, vegetation and animals exist. so I am not sure what you are talking about. you seem a bit muddled up.
Now, two people actually attempted to tackle this comment, and I think both misunderstood what I was saying here. As one of them mentioned, snakes do not have vocal chords, so they physically cannot speak. Thus, it's not surprising that there has never been any physical evidence of a snake talking, nor is there is any evidence to indicate a snake ever could talk.
But if Satan spoke through it, it would not need to be able to talk.
Same with the fruit. The fruit from the Tree of Life and the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil had supernatural/metaphysical soul-changing properties that defy any sort of logic,
no one ever suggested any such thing. you are simply muddled up. I know of fruits which provide man with vitamins and other resources for life. why should there not be a fruit that renews a man's youth? as for the tree of knowing good and evil its very presence with its limitation brought home the question of good and evil. It could have been any tree. It was the fact that it was forbidden as a sign of God's authority that made it potent. Once someone disobeyed God and ate of it they would immediately be conscious of evil whatever kind of fruit it had. there was nothing supernatural or metaphysical about it at all.
and since then no fruit has ever been endowed with such properties in Scripture or elsewhere.
Actually many fruits have life-giving properties. so what is your problem?. If God chose to create a tree whose fruit provided all that man needed for full sustenance, are you denying that that is possible? medical science is hard at work with the hope of producing such a 'fruit'..
And saying that a garden that is apparently invisible/guarded by a group of angels is in no way mystical is a bit of a stretch.
It is visible and still there today. Once God caused it to be overgrown and spoiled there was no need for it to be guarded. Thus the guards could be removed.
I mean, just imagine for a second, if you could, that the bible was never written. Then lets say someone were to say to you that the way the earth began was this: A man and a woman were created in this garden full of all these animals and vegetation. There was a tree called Life that if they ate its fruit they would live forever and a tree called knowledge that if they ate its fruit they would attain a knowledge of both good and evil desires and they were told not to eat of this tree but a talking snake possessed by an evil spirit convinced them to eat the fruit and they were cast out of the garden and it was barred by angels never to be entered again....
If taken away from the context of Scripture and our belief in God's supernatural presence and power, this would sound like another oddly engineered creation story, full of elements that we have no reason to believe to be true because they have presumably only happened once in all of history and have not been repeated again.
Anything taken away from its context can sound strange. But once you know that God is at work it ceases to be strange.
4. Oh yeah, Valiant said, "which demonstrates how little you know of the creation myths."
My response: Have you taken college courses in comparative religion or had some other equivalent study on the matter, or are you literally just speaking out of your rear end here? (pardon the rudeness).
Actually I have an advanced degree in theology and ancient history.
