Quote from oddiduro:
God puts two humans made in his image into a garden. He puts a tree there and warns them not to eat from it. He is all knowing.
So, he knew that they would eat from it. If he loves them so, why put the tree there in the first place, unless he were setting them up to fail, or there is an error in the storyline?
In our primitive legal system this could be considered entrapment.
On all-Paul judeo-christian radio the other day, mI* heard this explanation:
Two parents go out for the evening and tell their kids to absolutely not look in the box they put on their dresser in their bedroom. The "pastor" readily admitted that the first thing the kids are going to do is look in the box. He described how this is an almost irresistable temptation, like sitting in front of the TV with a bag of Doritos that you can think about but shouldn't eat. He even took a huge, hungry bite of an apple on stage and relished the taste. And yet, he still insists the kids are guilty because it was the one box the parents told the kids to look in...oops, I mean, nOt to look in.
This "pastor" seems not to make a correlation between the motives of gOd [of time] and the snake. If this explaination is in any way "the truth", then gOd and the snake were working toward the same purpose: to entrap and frame the suspected perpetrators on trumped up charges.
And this is my point. The gOd of biblical genesis is entangled with the snake toward the same objectives. So they are really one and the same, and hiding their connection by splitting one's attention between the apparent "good" and the apparent "evil". In magic, this would be called misdirection. The "pastor" is in on it because the magic offers him something he wants. And by his own desires for a glorified body, he is fooled.
A glorified body ranked among a heirarchy is the epitome of what it means to be "special". And it is *specialness* that ultimately motivates a powerful [but equal, not special] mind to make magic in the genesis of the illusion that is "the world". Without guilt, the goal of being special cannot be "realized". Guilt is as essential to the illlusion as gravity is essential to the inhabitants of the earth.
So, those who secretly desire to be special accept and promote any and all trumped up charges against the truth...and must misinterpret any teaching aids given to point them in the direction of truth.
And this is also my point. The genesis of the world is essentially magic by misdirection which produces the manifestation of an illusion of specialness. This is registered in the collective sub/un/conscious, and kept hidden in confusion by those who sense a benefit from the confusion. Any one [person,nation] who secretly wishes to be "chosen" above any other [person, nation] is going to side with the gOd of guilt which does select, grade, evaluate, rank, reward and punish. Indeed, they already have.
I submit that the genesis of this world is built on trumped up charges that could never stand up in the court of the True GoD. The verdict: Not Guilty. This verdict essentially pulls the rug out from under the illusion, and endangers its very existence. I submit that this is the very reason the true gospel of Jesus is so ignorantly resisted and shrouded with the smoke of false witnesses like Paul.
* = messenger "I".
Christ!