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The accountability aspect itself is equally inconsistent. The accountability is typically regarded as if it were a "punishment". However, the point of punishment is to teach. Touch the stove and mommy smacks your hand - It's meant to be a small pain to prevent a bigger pain.

What then is the point of the sort of eternal punishment that's usually implied by this worldview? What can possibly be learned from that sort of punishment? What larger pain does it prevent?

It becomes obvious that what we're considering isn't punishment, or even accountability, at all. It's torture.

Well, now we enter the magical explanation. There is a place that is perfect, and it requires perfect understanding. If one cannot even understand how thieving harms the world, then they can’t be good in a nice place like that. Plus it’s eternal, so imagine not understanding an eternal place and why even one flaw would last for eternity in a place like that.

It’s not something anyone will consider until the last few days of their lives. The very last few moments and seconds.

You can’t walk in dirty to a pristine palace, not because you are dirty and bad, but because such a place is to be clean, for eternity. That requires an other worldly level of solidarity, which would take a lifetime for humans, who cannot even feed and house all their brothers and sisters in this world right here, to understand.

Of course, God can just make it all so, but then our creation can just be done away with. We were defined in a very specific way, the same way Angels are defined to be perfect. We were not to be that. The same way a Lion was to never consider what we are talking about here.

——

Which brings me to my final point. I am God of my codebase. A function that I give life to cannot, ever, sit around and lament “why oh why, I lowly Fibonacci function, must compute Fibonacci numbers forever?”. Because I fucking said so.

Arrogance at the possibility of God in the exact way I’m describing is just something a human will have to deal with. Many are confident in that arrogance. That’s about all we can say.

I can delete any function from my codebase, but I have mercy. Catch my drift?

> There is a place that is perfect, and it requires perfect understanding.

I counter that a perfect place would not require anything of it's inhabitants, except perhaps that they be capable of joy. Requiring more would make the place imperfect.

The concept that one must meet certain qualifications, take certain actions, and be certain things to EARN a right to exist is nothing but the strange artifact of an elderly belief system born of scarcity models of the universe. Again, people define things based on the other things they know. When this model of the universe was created everything was scarce, and daily life was mostly misery. Sky-daddy had to decide who got to eat, and who didn't - So, obviously, it was the good boys and girls that agreed with sky-daddy.

> You can’t walk in dirty to a pristine palace, not because you are dirty and bad, but because such a place is to be clean, for eternity.

God does not require you to be perfect, or God would have made you that way from the start. Or to use your code analogy- If God wrote my code in such a way that it won't run within the operating system provided then he is a bad programmer. He is not, therefore we know my code will run there.

Note: I should caveat that I don't believe any of this - I'm just arguing from a sort of devils advocate position because it's entertaing to me. Please don't let it offend you if you are a true believer.

Please don't let it offend you if you are a true believer.

Of course not. I believe in fucking magic, so happy to even be taken seriously (in the context of willing discourse). This shit takes an open mind for sure.

> Let’s take God’s punishment unto man from the events of Eden for a moment. > If you don’t hold a creature given morality accountable, then that creature is fundamentally is the same as a creature that was not given morality.

In the story, Adam and Eve did not learn about good and evil until after they ate the fruit.

>In the story, Adam and Eve did not learn about good and evil until after they ate the fruit.

Did they though?

They knew that eating the fruit was wrong, so they clearly already understood the concept of good and evil, and they could be talked into disobeying God (arguably by appealing to their envy of God,) so they already had the ability to choose.

The sin wasn't the ability to choose to eat the fruit, or to comprehend the choice, because humans were already made in God's image as moral beings, but in making the choice itself. They "knew good and evil" because they already knew good, and then chose evil, in the same way you "know comfort and pain" by stabbing yourself in the arm with a knife. The knife doesn't grant you the ability to feel pain, that's just the consequence of your actions.

That's just my interpretation, and I'm not a believer. As a mythological narrative, it makes more sense to me that the forbidden fruit is a moral test. But I have no idea what the original authors intended.

It will be difficult to understand the human condition without properly understanding universal law.

For example, what authority did Satan have to torture Job in Job 2:1-7 for no reason?

Well, Luke 4:6 clearly shows Satan is the king of the earth, and he gives power to whomever he pleases (1 John 5:19).

Okay, but how did it happen? Humans rejected God’s support in Eden and sided with a rebellious sect (Satan, meaning “resistor”) and as long as humanity sides with that sect they will be dealt as co-conspirators along with that rebellion under universal law.

We now harbour the demons on earth (Rev 12:7-9) and there is apparently a Demon pulling strings behind every nation (Dan 10:13, Dan 10:20,21). This bodes badly for us, although Michael, also called Jesus, is very fond and cares greatly about humans and wishes to spare many.

Luke 4:6 is a direct quote from the devil, as he's tempting Jesus in the garden. The devil can lie.

Yeah that’s interesting… well do you think Satan would have tried to lie to Jesus, the King, who knew everything. That’s obviously not going to work, and Satan is smarter than that. Jesus didn’t dispute Satan on his claim either. Satan’s main angle was to tempt Jesus’ ambition, which would have been useless if Satan didn’t have the authority to actually offer the throne of Earth.

In Rev 13:2 (2-4 for context) Satan “the dragon” (identified in Rev 20:2) gives the symbolic beast authority over the Earth. Meaning of beast explained Dan 7:23 (15-24 for context)

Thinking about it … if Satan doesn’t have authority over Earth, 1) then Jesus would be king of earth, hence why would Satan bother to tempt Jesus giving him authority he already had? , and 2) why would Jesus permit Demons to rule nations on Earth, previously cited. Jesus would have cleared out his own house prior to coming.

> Michael, also called Jesus

Is this a Jehovah's Witness thing? I'd never heard it before today.

Michael is the archangel (Jude 9) and 1 Thess 4:16 say Jesus is also (14-16 for context), so if there is one archangel then they are the same person.

Not uncommon to receive a new name after a significant event, for example Saul renamed to Paul, Jacob to Israel. Or maybe Michael is just the name used by angels and Jesus is what was picked by his human parents.

That's an interesting take, but it all sort of hinges on the exact translation you use because it leans heavily on interpreting one particular sentence, and even one word in a very particular way. In this case it seems to be the word "the" in the phrase "the archangel." That's dangerous, and I'd love to talk about why it's dangerous. Lets start here:

https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Thessalonians%204%...

If we check out some of the other translations, we can see that Thessalonians 4:16 has been interpreted many ways over the years, so we'll just have to pick the one that seems closest to the original. Of course, you're free to pick another, but to me the one that makes the most sense is the legacy standard bible version, as they try very hard to stay close to the original greek, and also they italicize the words that a translator had to add themselves which weren't in the original. Remember that ancient Greek sentence structures weren't the same as English sentence structures, this happens a lot. Many other versions of the Bible just gloss over it.

So, in the LSB version, it reads "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a [b]shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first."

To me that sounds more like the lord is bringing a list of things with him, and one of the things on that list is an archangel to use as a voice, but more importantly the phrase "the archangel" is here which does imply that there is only one, even though it is often interpreted in other versions as "an archangel". Which one is the best translation?

Well there's a clue here. The word "the" is this version is one of the italicized words, meaning it was added by the translator, because it wasn't there at all in the original Greek. The other translators have just been picking whichever one "felt right" to them at the time.

If you're doubting this particular translation, you're free to manually translate that bit of Greek yourself or check one of the other more literal interpretations. I think the NASB version is also very good.

I will read what you said later and get back to you.

Okay, I see what you are saying and I’m happy to put 1 Thess 4:16 completely aside a moment since I do not know Greek to be certain either way.

I do think there are holistically other reasons to conclude prince Michael and Jesus are the same, for example comparing the use of “stand up” in Dan 11:2,3,4 referring to kings, and then Dan 12:1.

Also there are parallel accounts of the prophecy regarding a great time of distress and resurrection in the last part of the days: 1 Thess 4:16b, Matt 21:23 and Dan 12:2, each describing the same foremost person, but they use Jesus and prince Michael interchangeably.

If this is not convincing then I just have to let it alone, it doesn’t really change the Bible’s message if Jesus is Michael or not. But it is good to hear from someone who cares as much as you do.

> But it is good to hear from someone who cares as much as you do.

I'm not a religious person, but I've read the bible a few times in different translations, and I do find it all very interesting. Thank you for taking the time to explain your perspective.