I have a couple of theological questions. Wonder if these concepts are every pondered in seminary

[Lint Head]

or colleges of theology. I know the basic answer from an atheistic perspective.

In Genesis when God said "Let there be light." why did he not also instill the knowledge of the light blub in Adam? He is, after all, God.
Why did it take mankind until just 110 years ago to come up with the concept? Evolution of the mind maybe?

When a person is healed it always seems to be of a sickness or raised from the dead. Why do you never hear of an amputee having their limbs grow back? Wouldn't that be on YouTube with a million or so hits if a televangelist performed this act?

I realize these questions seem rhetorical but my question is, are these types of logical ideas ever discussed when ministers and priests are educated.

[shraby]

1. Without the technology to make glass or the technology to

make the necessary filaments to make it light up, the knowledge would be a pretty useless thing.

Humans don't possess the capability to make a limb grow back. Very few species in the world can do that.

Neither question is a question of theology, they are both questions of science.

[Lint Head]

6. But the idea is that God is all knowing and can do anything.

If the idea that God created everything then he or she created the light bulb because he or she created the brain that invented the light bulb. This may sound sophomoric to some but no more sophomoric than the tales society is supposed to except that could only happen thousands of years ago and cannot happen now. These are most definitely theological concepts and questions that were discussed when I took theology in college. It was a highly educated professor that discussed these ideas because when you are talking about existence, life and death, you are postulating the concept of everything. If you have not done so then ones mind is relegated to dogma not education.

[existentialist]

2. I'm not exactly a theologian, but

(1) At some seminaries, the first part of Genesis (perhaps all of Genesis) is not taken literally. Therefore you are asking at least some theologians to defend or explain what they have never stated as a tenet of belief in the first place. Even St. Augustine stated that he only converted to Christianity after the religious scholars with whom he discussed scripture explained to him that many parts of scripture were never intended to be taken literally.

I agree, however that many fundamentalists do take the Bible literally;
I make no attempt to explain such silliness.


(2) With regard to the issue of why don't limbs ever grow back as among the miracles, well, by comparison, where is the drama in that? Assuming God is out to make an impression he would presumably want his miracles to be as dramatic as possible, and if someone is merely writing a story they want some poor fools to believe, the same logic applies. True or false, the writers of religious texts can only be expected to want their works to have drama.

[ChandlerJr]

3. I'm sure they are pondered in EVERY freshman dorm room

in the world after a night of smoking and drinking Ripple though.

[Gman]

4. Interesting quetions...

1) I hate to answer a question with a question, but your inquiry does not go deep into thought. So why would God want to instill the knowledge in Adam? God put man on earth, the story goes, to glorify God. Anything else was up to man.

2) There is the passage on the night of the Last Supper that in the fight that ensued when they took Jesus into custody that Peter cut off a Roman soldier's ear and Jesus put it back.

If in fact your's are serious questions, you need to think more deeply about the mystique beyond these issues.

[CrispyQ]

5. "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.

It's a quick read. You might like it.

As for your second question, I never thought of that. Unlike the poster above, I think re-growing a limb would be way more dramatic than raising someone from the dead. I'm a septic. I'd question if the person was dead to begin with. But to watch a limb grow back? That would be some bitchin' technology! ;)

I don't know what they teach or discuss. My experience with the 3-4 different ministers I dealt with in my youth was that they encouraged conformity & in-the-box thinking.

[LuvNewcastle]

7. You seem to be asking, in a roundabout way,

why God chose to create humans. God could have given humans all sorts of knowledge; he could have even made them gods. Why God would choose to make finite, fallible creatures is a mystery.

Some people believe that all of life is in a process of becoming God and that mankind is just a step toward that eventual goal. They believe that constant birth and rebirth into a higher form is simply the way in which gods are created. By this way of thinking, it would have been as unthinkable to teach Adam about electricity as it would be to teach a fetus how to play the piano.

[Lint Head]

8. Then you have to propose that God 'teaches' and cannot just create the knowledge

in the human brain. If the Omnipresent God created all of existence then everything past, present and future 'could' exist instantaneously and would not have to wait for a teaching. The 'could' word itself proposes only an idea and guess that God makes choices. Being created in his image supposes we have the image of God's mind. If this would be true then all people would think like God. The problem with humanity attempting to understand the 'mind of God' per say is that we are confined to the box of what we know and see around us when actually time and existence are nothing more than mathematical concepts and human modalities used to explain something spiritual and only can be understood if you become a spiritual existence which some people claim to be able to do. In other words you must become God to know what God really thinks or either you using the filter of mankind's interpretation of what God thinks.

Maybe the idea is to be able to walk in God's shoes one day. I know the Bible well and that is one of the things that the personification of Satan strives to do.

To me Jesus is an 'example' that I like to follow. It fits with my Democratic and progressive beliefs. Republicans are Old Testament
Not that there are not other examples. I struggle with the logic that seems to stretch the realities of day to day living in the media and with people I come into contact with when it comes to ethics and morality.

I also love to talk about philosophy and esoteric concepts. And yes I sometimes have to forgive those that attack me just because I question things.

[LuvNewcastle]

9. I apologize if I came across as attacking you.

The point of my post was to give an answer (not THE answer) to your questions, and in order to do so I tried to put them in a form easier for me to understand. I'm not at all saying that your questions are foolish. We all ask questions and give answers here; that's what a discussion board is for. I should have just said that God primarily gives capability, not knowledge. We have to work for knowledge. Hope that clears things up a little.

[Lint Head]

11. No apology needed. I apologize for wording my response to make you think that

I was attacked. Text comes without emotional so I should have worded it a little better. :pals:

[Deep13]

10. The light bulb is the result of an industrialized society.

No couple of humans in a garden can build one or generate electricity to use it. Anyway, the suggestion that lighting the dark is an advance is a value judgment based in the capitalist desire for constant productivity. If it's too dark to see, it is time to stop working and go to sleep. Anyway, why stop at the light bulb? Why did god wire our eyes backwards? Why did god make reproduction so dangerous for women? Why did god give us inadequate lumbar support (is there ANYONE who does not have back pain?)? Why did god give us teeth that can become abscessed and kill us in great pain? Etc. Etc. Etc. In dictating his holy books, he might have mentioned the most ancient and numerous types of critters on this planet, bacteria, and tell us that they cause a lot of diseases and also cheese.

Well, the amputee thing is self evident: miracles don't happen. Faith healers can only claim to heal non-visible injuries and diseases because they can lie about them.

I can't say what seminary students discuss.

[Moe Shinola]

12. I've wondered about this myself...

sorry if I'm repeating someone else's post, but did'nt Carl Sagan ask a question kinda like the 1st one? I think it went along the lines of, "well, if he's God, then why not just tell the Israelites 'here's the basic rules of mathematics, here's why they're important. No go thou, and invent technology. Improve thy lives'?". This is a very important question. Or, if morality is always the same, and it was just as wrong to own slaves back in the day as it is now, then why not tell the people, "Thou mayest not own thy neighbor", or "Thou shalt not impose thy work upon thy neighbor" or something like that? I mean, if he's God, then the people would do what he said no matter how out of step it was with their cultural beliefs. He's a pillar of fire, for god's sakes, who's gonna argue with him?