Frelga wrote:Good stuff!
Ax, I think you are conflating intent and motive. Your motives may be a complex blend of residual cat worship and Loonie Toons, but your
intent is either to hurt the cat or to save the bird.
Vison, the binding of Isaac is a difficult and important part of the Torah. It's at least a thread of its own. To even begin to understand it, even for th purpose of intellectual inquiry, one must consider a much wider context, both of what led up to the incident and what the consequences were, to Abraham, Isaac, Isaac's sons, and, yes, the God.
Also, to your latest post, there is a large school of thought saying that the so-called Fall was no surprise to God at all. And another school of thought that said that God matured threw the relationship with humans, as humans themselves did.
Pearly Di, yup, this chosen people business is a job with long hours and the benefits are not always readily apparent.
I'll be back if work permits.
A lot of good stuff here...
The bit to Ax...
And time, yes, and study, oi! Not that I'm complaining. There is plenty about the Bible that is offensive at first (or even second, third, and fourth) glance. But that was part of my motivation to try to understand it, especially as you are presented with a doctrine that preaches love with many so-called adherents who often appear to live-out anything but. When I came across scriptural warnings to the effect that there would be many false teachers and prophets along the way, it was about that time I was sold.
Further to Vision, regarding the overall line of reasoning here, one thing I find fascinating is how deep some of this stuff goes. Your objections appear to be owing to the apparent contradiction between free-will and pre-determination. Admittedly, I do not understand it all that well...
Basically humans choose what to do and God, like some super-computer we cannot even imagine, continuously adjusts His plans to arrive at the desired outcome. (The Book of Jeremiah deals with this somewhat iirc.)
Think of playing a game of chess... a condition of the game is that you are assured victory but you still have to play (Time?)... but the other player uses their free will to move however they want to... this forces you to continuously adjust your line in order to achieve the victory you were assured from the beginning. The main idea: though there is free will, victory is assured. Again it has something to do with our experience of time vs God's experience of time, which I've often felt The Bible isn't very clear on at some points.
There is this attempt to explain it by focusing on how perspectives would differ between beings living in a 2D world vs a 3D world:
http://www.askgramps.org/what-is-the-di ... stination/
I realize the answer that "God's ways are not our ways," or that we are not able to grasp the the mind of God are not very satisfying to many... John 3:12 covers it but not in any great detail: “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” I like this verse not because it seems to put us in our place but because it shows that even the disciples that walked with Jesus had difficulty getting it at times. It's comforting to know we are in good company.
A person with a runny nose might say, "why put a nose above a mouth, it's gross. God had no idea what he was doing when he designed us!" and leave it at that. A scientist might then say, "Being able to smell our food before we eat it is a first line of defence against sickness."
Now my brain is mush... I'll check back much later. Interesting thread!
Oh, before closing, I wanted to wave to Wampus Cat in thanks for posting the Borg piece this morning. It seems to address what Nerdanel and I were talking about.
(oh and thanks Prim and Pearly Di.)
Of course you would expect me to say that. 
) and he quite literally did not understand the concept of *not* doing what he wanted to do because it was "bad." A dog may break your rule, but will feel guilty about it. A bird seems to have no such process in it's brain. You can teach them not to do something if it results in danger to them, but you can't gently teach them to obey your rules because it's the right thing to do. If he got it in his head that he wanted to shred a particular item, he'd be back in that corner the minute your back was turned tearing away until you came back and shooed him away again.