New Blog Post: why did God seemingly allow Cain to get away with murder? (page 5)

Comatose

No I cannot. That is NOT logical. It makes NO sense. It is a cop out.

Man cant do something they were not created with the ability to do. If god does not have any evil in him then his creations don't.

latinthunder

What evil? God is love right? Where did the evil come from? It couldn't exist if god made everything and has no evil.

Isaiah 47 says that God "bring['s] prosperity and create[s] disaster." That's exactly how the Garden of Eden was designed in the story. He created prosperity AND disaster which came through the forbidden fruit. The Great Flood was God's doing, which is why he felt regret. However, Adam DID use his free will to eat, so he brought the disaster upon himself.

Adamah is right that the Jews believed all were designed with the ability to do good or evil. It's called free will. Without the ability to do bad, doing good means nothing.

latinthunder

Can you consider that man could have created evil, himself... giving it a doorway into 'existence'... himself?

God created ALL THINGS, evil is a thing. Evil is difficulty which is needed for growth. You know a better way?

Comatose

Is it bad or evil when a cat toys with a mouse for an hour before eating its head off or is that just life on earth?

trying to introduce an all powerful god of love with no evil in him is what creates this contradiction and problem. Life on earth has evolved the way it has evolved. There is no intelligent and logical explanation of evil having to do with god.

adamah

prologos said-

It is one of the very unfortunate choices that "GOD" let the blood line and gene riches of a jealous murderer (manslayer) continue, with all the other choices around over a technicality. (the court decised it is not murder) despite the evidence to the contrary.

Yeah, that's one of the issues that the author(s) of the Cain account didn't consider, since he was trying to depict God's sense of mercy and grace by allowing what most people would see as cold-blooded murder to be given a mysterious protective mark, instead. The problem is exacerbated by depicting Lamech's confusion of thinking God had protected his great-great-great grandfather Cain for commiting murder, not manslaughter; hence Lamech's bragging about being protected 77-fold for murdering two people!

Instead, in the resulting confusion God is made out as a uber-liberal who lets murderers and bigamists go free....

Fact is though, as is shown by God's handling of Cain's manslaughter, Mosaic Law was EXTREMELY LIBERAL even by today's standards, where the Jewish judicial system used much-higher standards to determine murder vs manslaughter. The threshold of what actions constituted murder were so high, that many people proably got away with cold-blooded murder by today's standards.

For one, under Mosaic Law, the trial of someone who killed another not only REQUIRED at least two witnesses to testify against him, but the eyewitnesses had a DUTY to REMIND the would-be murderer of the punishment for the act he was about to commit; if they didn't warn him, the person could only be found guilty of manslaughter. And if no witnesses to the crime were located (eg it happened in a field), it's as if it didn't even happen: murder conviction REQUIRED at least two eyewitnesses (physical evidence was not considered), EVEN IF the person confessed to it. So a murderer could lay in wait, kill their victim outside a city, and flee; such a policy incentized killing any eyewitnesses who might testify against them, as well (in for a penny, in for a pound).

BTW, here's an interesting book written by David De Sola Pool which is in the public domain (first published in the early 1900's), called "Capital Punishment Among The Jews"

https://archive.org/details/capitalpunishmen00pooliala

(It's available as a download, and is a short read which discusses this stuff.)

Adam

latinthunder

Is it bad or evil when a cat toys with a mouse for an hour before eating its head off or is that just life on earth?

The mouse doesn't experience pain in the way that humans do. The mouse isn't sentient and neither is the cat. You might as well be describing moss "attacking" trees and call that evil.

trying to introduce an all powerful god of love with no evil in him is what creates this contradiction and problem. Life on earth has evolved the way it has evolved. There is no intelligent and logical explanation of evil having to do with god.

Isaiah 47 perfectly explains why God created evil. Spend a great deal of time studying it and you will recieve revelation.

tec

God created ALL THINGS, evil is a thing. Evil is difficulty which is needed for growth. You know a better way?

God did not create evil, and he does not tempt men with evil. Evil... death... the propensity to commit evil... just IS. Darkness/death existed, but did not have a foothold to enter the life that God had separated from the darkness - light being life/christ. Not until Adam granted it entrance by sinning and eating of it. (bringing sin and death into him, and into the world)

But yes, I do know a better way.

Christ.

Listening to God and learning from Him (from Christ now), is the better way... God would not have withheld anything from Adam and Eve; just as Christ does not withhold from... except that which we cannot yet bear. That doesn't mean it isn't coming; it just means it is coming when He knows the time is right.

Same with Adam and Eve.

They could have listened to God, and grown as God taught them (as we can grow as Christ teaches us now )... but they chose another way. The hard way. Same as some children will listen to the moms (or dads) when they are told not to touch something that will hurt them. Depends upon the faith and love the child has for the parent. Most will learn the hard way though.

Peace,

tammy

Comatose

The point is that shit happens. It's happening now with all living things on earth. It's been happening for billions of Years.

There is no need to try to read and reread some verse and wait for a revelation. Animals dont feel pain like a human... I can't keep arguing over this stuff. It's Friday and time to relax a bit.

willmarite

My belief is that evil is simply ignorance in disguise. I would suspect that if you go into the minds of some of the most "evil" people such as hitler, stalin, mao zedung, Idi Amin and others you would see that they didn't consider themselves to be evil. They had probably rationalized in their minds that killing millions of people was justifiable in order to meet some idealized goal they had. They subscribed to the belief that the ends justify the means.

If a person could see all effects of their actions, long term and short term, and internalize this knowledge evil would be a rare thing.

So I believe evil has to do with ignorance.

Comatose

Tammy you should have devoted your life to finding a cure for cancer. Your tenacity and inability to even fathom failure would make a big difference. we don't agree on this issue, but that was a honest compliment.

New Blog Post: why did God seemingly allow Cain to get away with murder?

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