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Christian fundamentalists are not qualified to be judges

Discussion in 'Free Speech Alley' started by Rex, Oct 5, 2005.

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martin Banned Forever

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so we know things are right or wrong because it is already within us. ok. then america's laws arent so much founded on judeo christianity as much as us just listening to our hearts.

they should put heart icons on building instead of the ten commandments. who needs the ten commandments? cain didnt!

martin, Oct 6, 2005

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red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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LSUsupaFan said:

We know killing and stealing is wrong because of Divine Law. We do not need the Bible for that, because God has made his Divine Law part of our creation. That is how Cain new murder was wrong.
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According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Divine Law is a combination of Mosaic Laws of the old testament and the New Law of Jesus of the new testament. Both of these laws were enacted several millenia after the time of Cain. So how did Cain know murder was wrong?

red55, Oct 6, 2005

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martin Banned Forever

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stupid, i just told you you can feel that stuff in your heart. have you no soul?

martin, Oct 6, 2005

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red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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martin said:

stupid, i just told you you can feel that stuff in your heart. have you no soul?
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I've got Marvin Gaye.

red55, Oct 6, 2005

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saltyone So Mote It Be

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red55 said:

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Divine Law is a combination of Mosaic Laws of the old testament and the New Law of Jesus of the new testament. Both of these laws were enacted several millenia after the time of Cain. So how did Cain know murder was wrong?
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Cain and Abel Genesis 4

In Old Testament times, God commanded people to worship Him with burnt offerings. These offerings were burned on altars. They were called sacrifices. Do you remember how God let the people know what He wanted them to do? The Bible had not been written then, so they could not read to find out like we do. He talked with the fathers in each family. They were called patriarchs. Their time was called the Patriarchal Age. If you knew how God wanted you to worship Him, would you try to please Him? There was a problem when Cain and Abel offered their sacrifice. We will talk about that problem this week.

Adam and Eve lost their wonderful home because they did not obey God. They ate the fruit from which God told them not to eat. God put them out of the garden because of this sin. We sometimes get punished immediately when we disobey God. Sometimes we are punished later. But we cannot do wrong without suffering for it.

Adam and Eve should have said, ?Thank you, Father, for our lovely home.? They should have known He knew what was best for them since He made them. But they did not want to obey Him. They wanted to have their own way instead. God had to punish them, just as your parents have to punish you when you disobey them.

Adam and Eve?s problems did not end when they lost their home in the Garden of Eden. After their children were born there was more trouble. Their first son Cain was a farmer who worked in the fields. Their second son Abel was a shepherd and took care of flocks and herds.

Both of the sons made a sacrifice to God, but God liked Abel?s sacrifice better. Abel had brought an animal for an offering, but Cain had brought plants.

Cain was jealous because God liked Abel?s sacrifice better than his. The Bible tells us, ??Cain was very angry and his countenance fell.? That means Cain even looked angry. God said to Cain, ?Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? But if you do not well, Sin lies at the door.? God was warning Cain to calm down. But Cain would not.

Later when they were alone out in the field, Cain killed his brother Abel. Then he buried his body in the ground. Wasn't that a terrible thing for him to do? Of course God saw what happened. He asked Cain about Abel, saying ?Where is Abel your brother??

But Cain did not want to tell God what had happened.

He said, ?I do not know? am I my brother?s keeper??

Do you understand what Cain did? First he killed his brother, then he lied about it. He sinned when he took his brother?s life and sinned again when he pretended not to know what happened to him.

Because of Cain's sin God had to punish him. God said, ?The voice of your brother?s blood cries to me from the ground.? This was God?s way of saying, ?Cain, you are not getting by with your evil. I know that you have murdered your brother.

God told Cain that the ground would not grow plants for him as it had before he killed his brother. He would have no certain place to live - - he would be roaming from place to place.

Cain said, ?My punishment is greater than I can bear?whoever finds me will kill me.? God felt sorry for Cain and told him He would put a mark on him to keep people from killing him. God also said He would punish anyone who tried to kill Cain.

We can see that disobeying God always brings trouble and unhappiness. But remember God?s laws always have a good side - - if we keep them we can be happy while we live on this earth. Then we can be with Him in heaven after this life.
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God still talks to us. Since this is writen on the level of a young child, everyone should be able to understand it. Even martin and red55.

saltyone, Oct 6, 2005

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marcmc99 Founding Member

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red55 said:

So how did Cain know murder was wrong?
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Genesis 3.

marcmc99, Oct 6, 2005

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martin Banned Forever

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that story is so stupid i can barely believe a living human likes it. god liked the animal sacrifice better and made cain jealous of abel? god cares about the precious tree? unbelievable.

stupid cain, you cant please god with sacrificing plants! plants are boring!

martin, Oct 6, 2005

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saltyone So Mote It Be

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red55 said:

Still he found a wife and multiplied. Where did his wife come from, anyway?
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Long read, but it answers your question.

The Wife

If we now work totally from Scripture, without any personal prejudices or other extra-biblical ideas, then back at the beginning, when there was only the first generation, brothers would have had to have married sisters or there would be no more generations!

We are not told when Cain married or any of the details of other marriages and children, but we can say for certain that some brothers had to marry their sisters at the beginning of human history.

But what about God's Laws? Many people immediately reject the conclusion that Adam and Eve's sons and daughters married each other by appealing to the law against brother-sister intermarriage. Some say that you cannot marry your relation. Actually, if you don't marry your relation, you don't marry a human! A wife is related to her husband even before they marry because all people are descendants of Adam and Eve -- all are of "one blood." The law forbidding marriage between close relatives was not given until the time of Moses (Leviticus 18-20). Provided marriage was one man to one woman for life (based on Genesis 1 and 2), there was no disobedience to God's law originally when close relatives (even brothers and sisters) married each other.

Remember that Abraham married his half-sister (Genesis 20:12). God blessed this union to produce the Hebrew people through Isaac and Jacob. It was not until some 400 years later that God gave Moses laws that forbade such marriages.

Biological Deformities

Today, brothers and sisters (and half-brothers and half-sisters, etc.) are not permitted by law to marry because their children have an unacceptably high risk of being deformed. The more closely the parents are related, the more likely it is that any offspring will be deformed.

There is a very sound genetic reason for such laws that is easy to understand. Every person has two sets of genes, there being some 130,000 pairs that specify how a person is put together and functions. Each person inherits one gene of each pair from each parent. Unfortunately, genes today contain many mistakes (because of sin and the Curse), and these mistakes show up in a variety of ways. For instance, some people let their hair grow over their ears to hide the fact that one ear is lower than the other -- or perhaps someone's nose is not quite in the middle of his or her face, or someone's jaw is a little out of shape -- and so on. Let's face it, the main reason we call each other normal is because of our common agreement to do so!

The more distantly related parents are, the more likely it is that they will have different mistakes in their genes. Children, inheriting one set of genes from each parent, are likely to end up with pairs of genes containing a maximum of one bad gene in each pair. The good gene tends to override the bad so that a deformity (a serious one, anyway) does not occur. Instead of having totally deformed ears, for instance, a person may only have crooked ones! (Overall, though, the human race is slowly degenerating as mistakes accumulate, generation after generation.)

However, the more closely related two people are, the more likely it is that they will have similar mistakes in their genes, since these have been inherited from the same parents. Therefore, a brother and a sister are more likely to have similar mistakes in their genes. A child of a union between such siblings could inherit the same bad gene on the same gene pair from both, resulting in two bad copies of the gene and serious defects.

Adam and Eve did not have accumulated genetic mistakes. When the first two people were created, they were physically perfect. Everything God made was "very good" (Genesis 1:31), so their genes were perfect -- no mistakes! But, when sin entered the world (because of Adam -- Genesis 3:6, Romans 5:12), God cursed the world so that the perfect creation then began to degenerate, that is, suffer death and decay (Romans 8:22). Over thousands of years, this degeneration has produced all sorts of genetic mistakes in living things.

Cain was in the first generation of children ever born. He (as well as his brothers and sisters) would have have received virtually no imperfect genes from Adam or Eve, since the effects of sin and the Curse would have been minimal to start with (it takes time for these copying errors to accumulate). In that situation, brother and sister could have married with God's approval, without any potential to produce deformed offspring.

By the time of Moses (a few thousand years later), degenerative mistakes would have built up in the human race to such an extent that it was necessary for God to forbid brother-sister (and close relative) marriage (Leviticus 18-20).[12] (Also, there were plenty of people on the earth by then, and there was no reason for close relations to marry.)

Cain and the Land of Nod

Some claim that the passage in Genesis 4:16-17 means that Cain went to the land of Nod and found a wife. Thus, they can conclude there must have been another race of people on the earth, who were not descendants of Adam, who produced Cain's wife.

And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bore Enoch: and he built a city, and he called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.

From what has been stated previously, it is clear that all humans, Cain's wife included, are descendants of Adam. However, this passage does not say that Cain went to the land of Nod and found a wife. John Calvin, commenting on these verses, states:

From the context we may gather that Cain, before he slew his brother, had married a wife; otherwise Moses would now have related something respecting his marriage.[13]

Cain was married before he went to the land of Nod. He didn't find a wife there, but "knew" (had sexual relations with) his wife.[14]

Others have argued that because Cain built a "city" in the land of Nod, there must have been a lot of people there. However, the Hebrew word translated as "city" need not mean what we might imagine from the connotations of "city" today. The word meant a "walled town" or a protected encampment.[15] Even a hundred people would be plenty for such a "city." Nevertheless, there could have been many descendants of Adam on the earth by the time of Abel's death (see below).

Who Was Cain Fearful Of? (Genesis 4:14)

Some claim that there had to be lots of people on earth other than Adam and Eve's descendants, otherwise Cain would not have been fearful of people wanting to slay him for killing Abel.

First of all, in the days before civil government was instituted to punish murderers (Genesis 9:6), someone would want to harm Cain for killing Abel only if they were closely related to Abel! Strangers could hardly have cared. So the people Cain was afraid of could not have been another race of people.

Second, Cain and Abel were born quite some time before Abel's death. Genesis 4:3 states:

And in the course of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to the Lord.

Note the phrase "in the course of time." We know that Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old (Genesis 5:3), and Eve saw him as a "replacement" for Abel (Genesis 4:25). Therefore, the period from Cain's birth to Abel's death may have been 100 years or more -- allowing plenty of time for other children of Adam and Eve to marry and have children and grandchildren. By the time Abel was killed, there could well have been a considerable number of descendants of Adam and Eve, involving several generations.

Where Did the Technology Come From?

Some claim that for Cain to go to the land of Nod and build a city he would have required a lot of technology that must have already been in that land, presumably developed by other "races."

However, Adam and Eve's descendants were very intelligent people. Jubal made musical instruments such as the harp and organ (Genesis 4:21), and Tubal-Cain worked with brass and iron (Genesis 4:22).

Because of intense evolutionary indoctrination, many people today think that our generation is the most intelligent that has ever lived on this planet. But just because we have jet airplanes and computers, it does not mean that we are the most intelligent. Modern technology results from the accumulation of knowledge. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.

Our brains have suffered from 6,000 years of the Curse (since Adam). We are greatly degenerated compared with people many generations ago. We may now be nowhere near as intelligent or inventive as Adam and Eve's children. Scripture gives us a glimpse of what appears to be great inventiveness from the beginning.[16]

Conclusion

Many Christians cannot answer the question about Cain's wife because they focus on today's world (and the problems associated with close relations marrying), and do not understand the clear historical record God has given to us.

They try to interpret Genesis from our present situation, rather than understand the true biblical history of the world and the changes that have occurred because of sin. Because they are not building their world view on Scripture, but taking a secular way of thinking to the Bible, they are blinded to the simple answers. Genesis is the record of the God who was there as history happened. It is the word of One who knows everything, and who is a reliable witness from the past. Thus, when we use Genesis as a basis for understanding history, we can make sense of questions that would otherwise be a mystery.
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saltyone, Oct 6, 2005

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red55 curmudgeon Staff Member

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saltyone said:

Long read, but it answers your question.
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Not exactly. It suggests that Cain married a sister. But Genesis mentions no such sister.

It certainly is a long read and a very interesting spin on the sparse prose of Genesis. I'm especially amazed at the the (uncited) author's use of genetics to defend his thesis that all humans descended from Eve. Yes, because of the early genetic purity of Eve's children it was unneccessary for God to forbid incest for many generations. Then the genetic bad mutations ("degenerative mistakes") increased to the point that intersibling relations were eventually made taboo.

Nevermind that real genetics is completely Darwinian, is completely embrasive of Evolution, and has all but disproved the many religious origin myths.

Amazing.

Still, it is a fun read and surely an articulate and innovative (if dubious) effort to explain the implauseable.

red55, Oct 6, 2005

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saltyone So Mote It Be

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red55 said:

Not exactly. It suggests that Cain married a sister. But Genesis mentions no such sister.

It certainly is a long read and a very interesting spin on the sparse prose of Genesis. I'm especially amazed at the the (uncited) author's use of genetics to defend his thesis that all humans descended from Eve. Yes, because of the early genetic purity of Eve's children it was unneccessary for God to forbid incest for many generations. Then the genetic bad mutations ("degenerative mistakes") increased to the point that intersibling relations were eventually made taboo.

Nevermind that real genetics is completely Darwinian, is completely embrasive of Evolution, and has all but disproved the many religious origin myths.

Amazing.

Still, it is a fun read and surely an articulate and innovative (if dubious) effort to explain the implauseable.
Click to expand...

Evolution is not a proven theory, hence, the use of the word, theory. You shouldn't claim that it is. You are an educated man, you know better. It is as much unproven theory as you say religion is.

Why is it, that so many people are happy to believe that their ancestors are monkeys?

I really think we should start a new thread to discuss this.

saltyone, Oct 6, 2005

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