A Petulant Child

Daily Reading

A letter to MVP

MVP,

So go ahead and have your tantrum. Stomp your feet, cover your ears and yell. You are very much like a petulant child, wanting to have his own way, despite the truth of reality.

What you rail against is the truth itself, not contradictions.

Truth is absolute and unchanging. What you believe changes, but what you believe doesn't change the reality of the truth.

You do know that truth is not contradictory. Truth cannot be both true and untrue. That is why you point to contradictions as evidence that something is not true.

But the plain fact is that you don't actually believe that there is a "contradiction." You know better than that. You know that there is a simple explanation for the apparent contradiction.

Your claim of "contradiction" is just a childish ruse. You remind me of a child, covering your eyes and claiming that no one can see you.

The contradiction you point at is your foolishly clever (albeit childish) subterfuge.

God sees right through it, right through it into the deepest part of your heart.

You refuse to acknowledge the truth that the author (i.e. God) is emphasizing different ideas in each of the accounts. Genesis 2 is not a simple parroting of what was already covered in the preceding account. It is a literary flashback to the sixth day. It relays additional details. The story of creation does not reveal every detail about how creation unfolded.)

The real problem you have is back in the first verse of the Bible. You refuse to acknowledge the truth it reveals.

"In the beginning, God created everything."

That reveals to us several important truths:

1) there was a beginning
2) there is one true God
3) God precedes existence
4) everything began to exist
5) God is the cause of everything

That first verse packs a whole lot of truth into a few short words.

And if you don't get that right, there is really no hope of you understanding anything else in the Bible.

The original ancient language of these verses does present some difficulty in translation to modern English. But no so much difficulty that we are unable to grasp the truths that God reveals to us.

What are you trying to accomplish by means of your peevish objections? Are you seeking affirmation that what you say is true? (It's not.)

What is it that you are trying to preserve by your obstinate rejection of the truth?

I am truly concerned for you. It saddens me to see you continuing down a path towards an eternity in the torment of hell.

May 16, 2010 3:15 PM








MVP had said in response to my previous post...

Spencer Spencer Spencer...where to begin with you?

At the beginning I suppose you poor deranged lunatic.


I admit that I was mistaken. I was under the impression you were open to investigating the truth.

What a ridiculously vague and meaningless statement! Anyone could say that to anyone who disagrees with anything they say...we are talking aren't we? At least I thought we were. You started on with telling me what God thinks, what God knows and what you believe I have considered or not.

If you mean that you thought that I was going to instantly agree with everything you asserted then you really do have a high opinion of yourself.


But you are like a dog,....

blah blah blah. The opinion of someone who WORSHIPS a being (made up or otherwise) that would torture someone for eternity for telling a lie is of less value to me than the opinion of a dog.

Both of the creation accounts (in Genesis 1 and 2) are true. And there is no real contradiction. An apparent contradiction serves to point out that our understanding is incomplete.

Says you Spencer. Says you.
I am telling you what it says...you are the one twisting it to suit YOUR needs. Both stories make literary sense on their own. But they contradict each other side by side. If our understanding is incomplete then your 'perfect' God cannot even string a decent and simple story together.

But like a petulant child, you already understand all that you want to understand. You stomp your feet and wail about a contradiction.

More analogies. Dogs...children. Do you find many people debating you for long Spencer or do you find that some people just punch you in your self important face and walk away?

I mentioned the contradiction ONCE. You and Beth brought it back up and questioned me about it. I barely mentioned it but you are the ones wailing and leaping to the defense of the writer/s!

Thats called projection Spencer. In my opinion it matters not because there is enough in the text of Genesis 1 and 2 alone to point directly to ancient people talking about things they don't understand.

A firmament with water above but has stars in it.
The moon being regarded as a light.
The night and days being related as if from a specific place on the ground.

Literally nothing that points to it being written by a being that knows more than the most basic of things. A story written by humans about humans.

I actually did look up some apologetic arguments for that contradiction as I did for the other points I had raised.

One argued the same as you did but to do so had to completley ignore the 'God didn't want Adam to be lonely' remark in order to alter it to his liking.
Another decided that all ancient text was written in that basic-then-detail fashion but failed to realise that he had just described the writers as ancient..nothing more.
Yet another said that Adam was made after the animals but it was just written weirdly. But this would leave the problem of Adam naming every animal in the world in a single day in order to have Eve born on the same day.

It comes down to opinion and interpretation Spencer...we have nobody to ask about this text.

You are correct about some things. You are right to say that I cannot completely know the mind of God. I am limited, by a finite existence in space and time.

And by the fact that you cannot converse with or 'know' that which does not exist or acts as if it does not exist.
You know what men wrote in a bible. Thats all.

To be more honest: You know what it says in a version of a bible that is an interpreted translation of chosen pieces of text that have been orally and manually passed down through the ages from some unknown and unavailable original pieces of text.

Wow...that God of yours sure knows how to make sure we know what he wants and thinks! (SARCASM)

My finite brain cannot fully comprehend everything that God knows. But unlike you, I recognize that reality transcends my understanding of it. I have sufficient capacity to apprehend the truth.

So....reality transcends your understanding of it but you can sufficiently understand it. Good for you Spencer. Glad you think so.

The apparent contradiction you squawk about should tell us something.

"Squawk"! Haha! Thanks a lot. We were discussing but because I say something you disagree with I am now "squawking". What a lovely human you are.

It should focus our attention, that perhaps our understanding of truth is incomplete. Perhaps there is deeper truth that God wants to reveal to us.

Hasn't done very well then has he?


When we study the word God has given to us, we discover some important truths.

You mean 'the words men have written' I think. You still have an assumption that this is the word of 'God'. You have given no evidence of it.

Genesis 1 reveals that God created everything.

"Reveals"! You crazy christians and your loaded double talk.

The phrase "the heavens and the earth" is not a list of two things. It's a figure of speech called a merism that means "all things" or "everything."

I have no argument that WE use it that way. However in Genesis 1 it is written as if those are just 2 things. Earth is described and then heaven (the mysterious firmament) is described....badly!

No mention of moons, planets, space, spheres, orbits, asteroids...nothing. The stars are described as being 'in the firmament'. If you imagine an ancient person believing a solid layer above the earth with lights set into it then it makes perfect sense. They were wrong but it makes sense that they would think that.
If you take it to mean space itself then it makes no sense - you are adding to it and twisting it to suit your own bias and knowledge.

Indeed the descriptions of Heaven as a specific thing are everywhere in the Old Testament.

God reveals to us that he had an ordered plan for creation, it unfolded over a period of time. And he reveals that his creation is complete. It was finished when he had breathed his life into man. (No other creature was so endowed with the breath of God.)

And because a book says it it is true...I am seeing a pattern here.

Genesis 2 reemphasizes the importance of man. Man is listed first, because man is the penultimate of God's creation.

Once again you are making an interpretation and claiming to know the mind and meaning of the writer.

The text says:

18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him."
19 So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

He was alone, then the animals were made, then he named them, then Eve was made. Thats WHAT IT SAYS!
I can see you don't like it but your presumption that your interpretation is correct does not make it so. Again - I am reading it as it is written. You are twisting it to be what you want it to be and then saying that I am not understanding!

The irony!

Mankind is God's reason for the entirety of creation. I know you do not comprehend any of this. The Bible says that men like you are blind to the things of God.

The bible also says that the moon is a light and that the stars are set in the 'firmament' above which is water. Are you starting to see why I don't believe the bible to be very 'inspired' yet? No? Didn't think so.

To you, the Bible is an incoherent collection of contradictory scribblings.

Not only.

But to a man reborn of God, the truth of the Bible comes alive, revealing the beauty and majesty of God in full color.

I understand. Believers are able to twist the bible to their liking and ignore bits they don't like.
Believers can ignore the fact that their 'perfect' God has not been able to make even half of the world believe he exists and those that do believe in him believe countless differently interpreted, contradictory and sometimes ridiculous things because he chose to relate his wants and commands in writings that no longer exist.
They are able to call God just while also saying that he tortures for eternity for lusting. They are able to call him moral while ignoring the fact that he allows people to hit their slaves, therefore also endorsing slavery.
They are able to use the word 'beauty' to describe a character who would kill someone for working on a Sunday or turning their head when told not to.

Believers are amoral slaves to their own minds who preach love at the same time as they issue threats while ignorant to their own contradictory views. They abandon their own morality and humanity by passing on their decisions to a character from a book who would commit global genocide and kill capriciously.

The Bible also reveals that you are in perilous danger. You do not see it because of your love for darkness.

And so you reach the pinnacle of your self rightous blathering. You know profess to know what I love as well as what your God loves. I will leave you with your self important claim of omniscience.

Go play with Sooty.

I am concerned for you.

No...you are not.
I am a squawking dog child to you.
You told me so yourself.

So go away. Go an reinterpret your bible to fit the God you have created in your head. Go and worship this character and abandon your own morality while you are at it. You make me sad but I am not concerned for you as there is no evidence for heaven, hell, a soul, your God.

I am concerned for your children if you have any. But not for you.

Respond if you wish...I shall not be reading it. If it makes you happy you can tell yourself that your words have made me realise my error and I am running away.

That isn't true but it seems nothing is true unless it is what you believe...so go for it.

May 16, 2010 10:48 AM