This god is also supposedly omnipotent - he has the power to do anything. This means, he could have explained the entire creation and evolution of the universe to humans, without giving humans clear proof of his existence, and while still allowing humans to have free will.

He's god, remember?

Why did Yahweh say we came from two people when we didn't? Either the person who said God said this is lying or God lied for some reason or there was some miscommunication and God doesn't have the ability or doesn't want to make himself clear to humans.

pretty much.

Pretty much. Or people misunderstood what the bible meant, or it will all become clear eventually and it will be obvious why God did it this way. Lots of options here, I'm sure the Christian churches would be able to provide plenty more as well. What's your estimate of the probability that none of them are right?

seriously bro? We all just took the Adam and Eve story the wrong way, it was actually a perfect explanation of how evolution works?

Wat? Again, if we find that god's explanation for how humans exist is vastly different than scientific facts, just replying with "well you don't know everything so maybe it will make sense later" is like, sorry, the worst response ever and is not going to make me move to even 99.9998%. There's no justification for lying or misleading people in your holy book, especially when you supposedly know everything and are to be honest and loving towards them.

I'll repeat to you again that this god is omnipotent, and he could have made all of this make sense from the beginning - there need not be some sort of grace period where millions of innocent people are mislead. An honest and caring god does not set up the universe knowing that he is misleading millions of innocent people in his own book. That is absolutely incompetent, and this god is supposed to know everything and have the power to do anything, so incompetence and impotence are not an options; they're cop outs.

Well no, I meant it wasn't an account of how humans arose. You do realise that none of these are my position right? I don't even think the bible is inerrant. My point is that christian churches have more to say than "God is honest and benevolent" and you can't form any meaningful deductions about his behaviour unless you include the whole list of their 'definition' since the bits you leave out may well explain what you find puzzling.
Nah - there's far worse, I'm sure. "He's testing our faith" is worse, imo. But that's no doubt another one some christian would provide.
So you say - I have no idea what moral obligations exist for someone outside of the universe who made everything and I'm not really sure how you've become aware of them. So far it just 'seems obvious' to you. Or (as anticipated) it's based on you being unable to think of any other explanation.
So you say. Is that the view of the christian churches whose views on God you are accepting for the sake of the argument? I didn't think they would agree with you that God is misleading millions of innocents in his own book.

Im pretty sure all are false.

No chance someone's stumbled on the right answer then? We obviously agree that (even if they have) they won't know it.

So pretty sure means...? 51%? 90%, 99%, 99.99%?

EDIT: actually this makes no sense. You provided an exhaustive "it's one of these options" list. Now you think all of them are false?

Im as sure of Yahwehs non existence as i am of Zeuss. So 99.9% would work.

I gave possible explanations to a God i dont think is realistic. So they are all going to be false.

I think we're talking at cross purposes again. I thought you meant something else with your list? Obviously if the Christian god doesn't exist, the chance of any Christian church hitting on the right answer is practically zero.

The point is it doesn't matter. Any of these excuses you are creating on god's behalf or the "moral obligations" don't matter. Every situation you have postulated as an excuse on god's behalf leads to the same door with the same answer inside.

This god knows everything, and this god is able to do anything, remember?

Any of the excuses you have postulated do not matter because god can do anything.

"What if it will make sense later?"

It doesn't matter. If god loves everyone, is defined as being good, wants to be honest with people, can overcome any obstacle in his way, then there is, literally, no reason for why he couldn't have made it make sense from the beginning.

"I don't know about the moral obligations of a deity outside of time. What if he had some other obligations to something else that could explain why he seems so incompetent?"

It doesn't matter. God has the ability to do anything, right? He could then satisfy all obligations, and still be competent with regard to scientific fact in the bible.

"What if god just wanted us to believe without proof for some unknown reason that would seem to make absolutely no sense?"

It doesn't matter. God can do anything. He could have provided the exact details of how the universe and humans were created with 100% accuracy. This would not completely prove that he exists.

Every situation you have postulated to try to remove the blame from god goes back to the same exact thing I have said for the whole thread. The supposed definition and characteristics of God provided by Christians themselves have refuted his own existence throughout this thread. I don't need to be able to know everything about god, or what it's like outside of time. The fact that he can supposedly do anything means that, whatever those are, they are not obstacles for him since he can do anything, he could have removed them before they came up, he knew they were coming up before they actually came up. If there are any obstacles preventing god from correctly identifying evolution instead of the story of adam and eve in the bible, this god wanted it that way, and this also means, he did not care to fix a lie that has mislead his own followers. The fact that he consciously lied to his own followers in this way means he is not an all-good/all-knowing god. The fact that this god has been shown not to be all-good/all-knowing means the typical definition of the christian god is wrong. This means, Christianity is wrong.

Yeah thats all i meant.

As far as which one makes the most sense supposing Yahweh is real. Miscommunication seems unlikely given his power. Yahweh lying seems unlikely because he not supposed to lie. So id go with one. The person representing Yahweh was either lying about talking to him or about what he said. That or your we misunderstand what the bible says would be most likely.

The OP seems kind of thin. We've gone over this before. The standard response is that the creation story isn't meant to be literal. It's allegorical. And the Bible is not meant to be a complete scientific history of the Earth.

And we've also gone over this before. The standard response is that whenever you figure out that something in the bible is wrong, everyone acts like it was allegorical from the get go even while knowing that thousands of people in previous generations took it seriously - somehow even while simultaneously holding the the bible is inerrant.

I'm honestly able to get all this (though why bother with something as obscure as evolution's omission? He can't forget his phone number - fail!). I don't actually think it's an accurate portrayal of christian beliefs, but I'm not particularly interested in defending a view I don't hold. My defence here is of agnosticism, not christianity.

My quibbles are along the following lines:

"The fact that he consciously lied to his own followers in this way means he is not an all-good/all-knowing god."

you cant know this. You have no idea whether it is good or bad for an all-knowing god to consciously lie to his followers.

Under what circumstances could it have been good?

Figure out a scenario that you like, and then refer back to the yellow sentence above.

(He could have told the truth and had all other things remain the same - he's omnipotent.)

Is telling the truth not better than lying?

It could have been intended to be allegorical from the get go, and misinterpreted by the uneducated to this day.

"Christianity" could be wrong, but everyone who has posted on twoplustwo has been wrong several times.

So why not just say that then and get into the actual reality of our circumstances? Does god enjoy dangling self indulgent jokes in front of humans instead of simply giving them an accurate portrayal of reality? Nice god this is.

Also, who gets to decide what is allegory in the bible and what is not? You? Who's to say that the golden rule wasn't allegorical? Who's to say the entire bible wasn't allegorical? You? In your infinite wisdom?

If the bible is filled with these ****ing riddles, where you never know when something is actually happening or just a fantasy, whether a rule is a rule or whether it was just for the lolz, is this really a candidate book to be written by the all knowing creator of the universe? Couldn't he have figured out a better system for showing people what he wanted to show them then just putting a bunch of **** against the wall and letting all kinds of people interpret his words in all kinds of ways, most of which being incorrect, since there are many more ways to interpret a passage than the 1 correct way.



You have now made your god into a complete caricature. Congratulations.

Well the bible is supposed to be inspired by God through human writers. The human brains' of bronze age peasants don't make good translators for God's message. The writers did their best to interpret the messages God was sending them to their brains as best they could.

Well the writers deliberately wrote in a fashion to try to suggest which things were allegorical and which were not. Typically speaking if It's coming out of the mouth of Jesus Christ himself It's not allegorical, as that's an actual person. And there are other indicators.

It was written through humans channeling God, not God himself. God got across the most important things through his writers.

He needed to preserve free will for humanity. If he used more explicit measures then humanity would be robbed of free will, and any meaningful existence on Earth.

Couldn't god have planned for that and simply not required the use of bronze age peasants to get his divine message across? Judging by the fact that he is supposed to do anything he could. Was he just not smart enough to think of this? Again, for every answer you give to 1 question, it seems to raise 3 more questions.


And you know this how? What is your evidence of this? What are the "other indicators"? This seems like nothing more than "looks like only Christians get to decide" with lipstick and makeup on.


Really? Telling everyone how to pierce your slave's ear with an awl was more important than telling everyone about the nature of stars, galaxies, or the universe? Telling everyone that slaves were to be treated as property and not as humans was more important then telling everyone how electricity worked or that infectious diseases were the result of germs (not "demons")? Telling everyone that they came from 2 specially created humans named Adam and Eve when in fact they did not and science has proven that they actually have a long lineage dating back through chimpanzees to the first cellular life? Wouldn't simply telling humans the cure to cancer, right this second, be more valuable to the human race and save more lives than roughly 99% of what is contained in the bible? What could be more important than saving people's lives? Yet instead, god knew ahead of time the predicament we would be in at this very second, with the amount of deaths cancer has caused and will cause, and yet still decided to talk about slaves and stoning people for working on the sabbath instead. Cool story, bro.


I thought he was omnipotent? That he could do anything? If this is true couldn't he indeed have used "explicit measures" while still keeping free will in tact, or would like to continue neutering your god's power and disprove his existence that way?

ah. Argument from ignorance again.
I thought you were taking the Christian conception, you know, for the sake of the argument? Almost no theologian thinks god can do everything. (he can't forget, do evil things, draw square circles... Maybe he needed to create a misleading bible. You're the one who's ruled out any such option.
For god? I have no idea, that's my point.

Genesis is wrong even as an allegory.

The story of Adam and Eve is perfectly compatible with evolution while being a literal story