Is Genesis 1:18-20 an example of God making a mistake? He sets out to create a helper for Adam, and initially at least...

Well that's a bit of a vague question, it would be much easier just to answer specific questions.

But in general I guess I could say that I don't think God is omnipotent, or omniscient. While I do believe he is extremely powerful, and still worthy of reverence I don't believe he is all-powerful.

Furthermore while I believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God, not the literal word of God. This means I view statements made by God and statements made by man about God in the Bible in different lights.

Again, it would be easier to answer specific questions.

which part is the mistake?

>But in general I guess I could say that I don't think God is omnipotent, or omniscient.

if god was omniscient he wouldnt have created lucifer. he would have known that lucifer would become satan and cause man to sin dragging billions of souls to hell for eternity.

God created everything, God created the concepts of mistakes. If god just did everything for us what kind of world would that be?

>lucifer would become satan and cause man to sin dragging billions of souls to hell for eternity
honest question, where in the bible does it say this?

say what? that god created lucifer?

yeah, that god created lucifer, then drags souls to hell for eternity and is called satan. Also you hear about lucifer bringing knowledge to men, also the primordial war between angels and demons, etc. Is this non-cannonical? Im not too knowledgeable with religion

>God created everything
Yes
>God created the concepts of mistakes
No, just like he didn't create the idea of paradoxes. Oh, and when I speak about him not being omnipotent I already exclude inherently impossible acts, like creating a square circle. So even excluding those already in your definition I still reject his omnipotence.

God sets out to create a helper for Adam, and even says this is what he is going to do, but after he is done he hasn't managed to create a helper, out of the earth and air like he originally intended.

This is just one example of many though, the flooding of the earth was another mistake. It's an action that did not have the outcome that God wished, meaning he cannot be omniscient, for example.

Aren't the beasts, as well as Eve, the helpers?
Also, wouldn't a 'mistake' imply we actually knew what god originally intended?

im not actually a christian. perhaps your googling skills would be as good as mine on the subject.

but if gods intentions were to create this simulated matrix of imperfect reality, couldn't it be argued that he did everything perfectly, even the acts of deceiving man in various ways?

How can you still believe in God after reading Genesis?

I'll walk you through this step-by-step.

Verse 18:
>"And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him."
Here God tells us straight up what he intends to do. He intends to make a helper for Adam.

Verse 19:
>"nd out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof."
God goes on to create all living creatures, in order to create this helper.

Verse 20:
>"And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him."
And finally here we see that despite God's intentions Adam couldn't find a helper in what God created.

God sets out to create a helper, that's why he creates the animals, but the animals aren't helpers.

This is probably the strongest argument against my hypothesis, but I still think it fails. The idea is that God intends to make some mistakes, or that they're not really mistakes, but a lot of the time that still doesn't shed light on some of his actions. I just apply Occam's Razor and say that God is simply not omniscient nor omnipotent.

thats kinda my point though. googling suggests none of these are clearly stated in the bible, just rabbi tidbits here and there. which would mean

>he would have known that lucifer would become satan and cause man to sin dragging billions of souls to hell for eternity.

is just a non-christian view of christianity?

the bible says god created the angels. lucifer was an angel. he rebelled and became the devil. he cause eve to sin. man became aware of good and evil. man can now go to hell for his sin for all eternity.

openbible.info/topics/lucifer

good find, cheers!

it goes a bit off topic near the end.

>not even almighty God can stop women ruining everything

if you believe the bible woman caused man to sin in the first place making him "know death".

When god asks people like Adam or Cain "where are you?" or "what have you done?" he's not asking him because he doesn't know, he's giving these people the opportunity to confess or repent. This is a theme throughout all of the stories in Genesis.

Free will
God is love, God is just, to make his angels without free will would be worse than not doing them at all

Since this thread is about the bible and this isn't worth starting a new thread over, what did it mean to be a judge in Israel? I've just been assuming they were like a high priest or maybe even a king.

>God is just

if god was just (and omnipotent and omniscient) he would not have created the devil.

Why is he giving them the opportunity to repent? He knows whether they will or not, as he is omniscient. I've heard this argument before and I don't think it's a very strong one.

A fun little extra is that if you think that God asks them for them to have an opportunity to repent, then prayer is useless. It follows logically.

You could think of it as god setting an example. I think you have a faulty understanding of the purpose of prayer. It's not an effort to change god's will, but to reconcile yourself with it. This idea that you're going to ask god to do something that he wasn't already going to do is what a child thinks prayer is.

That's not what I think prayer is, it's just that the idea of having any sort of communication with God is useless, since he knows what you're thinking.

In the end though, I don't believe he is omniscient though. Omniscient beings don't make mistakes, and God, according to the Bible, makes mistakes.

Why would he need to set an example by the way? I feel like you are jumping through hoops to be honest. It's almost like you started out with the assumption that he was all-mighty and all-seeing, instead of reading the Bible with a blank mind to actually see what God says.

I remember being told whilst growing up that God was this and God was that, but I also remember being told that camels store water in their humps.

>but I also remember being told that camels store water in their humps.

is that not true? damn!

>Omniscient beings don't make mistakes, and God, according to the Bible, makes mistakes.
You did not and most likely cannot qualify this statement.

You've read the bible very dumbly if you think god is making mistakes. You're not taking into consideration the genre and literary traditions of the human authors that were writing for a specific audience. The anthropomorphisation of god is very common all throughout the bible and this is where this language of "mistakes" come from. We know god is omniscient and omnipresent from the bible and from extrabiblical theological sources like Aquinas.

The quotation in the OP is an example of it, and the flood is an example of another.

What if Aquinas was wrong? At least partially. And I do think I take those traditions into consideration.

>What if Aquinas was wrong? At least partially. And I do think I take those traditions into consideration.

What if 2+2 didn't equal 4? This is a stupid question.

What is the mistake in the OP? God gave Adam dominion over animals.

Calling the flood a mistake is just embarrassing.

I've explained it several times throughout the thread.

The flood was a mistake for similar reasons, God did not accomplish what he set out to with it.

Do you want him to breath for you too?

No you didn't. God accomplished exactly what he set out to do- he punished evil.

Something tells me you have not read the Bible.

You have it backwards, god created the devil because he is presumably just.

God created the helpers, Adam failed to find them. Also the flood was to wipe out the wicked during the time. I don't see any mistakes here.

OP there is a problem with the logic of asking this in the first place.
You first have to believe in a judeo christian god to even consider him making a mistake or not.
If you do believe in the existence, then you have to perfectly understand his original intentions to deem whether his actions were mistakes or not.

You are arguing that a religious text that may or may not be true has records of a god that may or may not exist making 'mistakes' when said religion itself is centered around understanding why this perfect god did the things the way he did.
With this, you can easily make simple counter arguments like saying god intended these things to happen, we just don't have the insights to understand why. Or that they're not mistakes, it was intentional.
The assumptions your question rests upon doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

He set out to destroy evil, but the post-flood world was just as wicked as the pre-flood world. Something tells me you read the Bible with a lot of things already predecided in your mind.

But God intended to create a helper for Adam, so that presupposes that Adam would find a helper in what God created.

>He set out to destroy evil
Wow, you are embarrassing. Just stop posting my dude.

>presupposes
See this is what I mean. This is our own assumption. Under our own assumptions, genesis isn't the only mistake you will find.

>tfw too smart to believe in god
heh silence you fools, god isn't real and never was, i truly feel euphoric as a TRUE athiest.
nothin personal creationists
heh

>Something tells me you read the Bible with a lot of things already predecided in your mind.

Like knowledge of literature, languages, and historical context? You could say that.

I wouldn't say it was a mistake. He was just throwing stuff at Adam and seeing what stuck.
>alright, what about this thing?
>well, the spikes on its head are cool, I guess
>you wanna name this one?
>he kind of looks like a... "bull", maybe?
>man, you come up with the weirdest shit
>me? remind me, who came up with slugs?

I read the old testament, and to me, it makes "god" look like nothing but a fuck up. Your example is but one of the MANY fuck ups written in the OT.

1. God makes man, a social creature, but fucks up and doesn't make him any company.
2. God fucks up by thinking animals will be good enough for his creation...WRONG!
3. God fucks up yet again by allowing his creations to eat from the tree of knowledge. This one is just ridiculous, as if he didn't want those fuckers to eat that shit, he could have made the tree invisible to them, put guards on it, moved the fucking tree to a spot they couldn't reach, hell, ANYTHING to keep them away from the tree, because he's fucking "god"....but noooooo!

The old testament makes "god" look like a complete fuck up, which he is, considering all the stupid shit he's reportedly done.

Reading the bible, and how ridiculous and contradictory it is, was what made me realize the Abrahamic religions are all fake ass bullshit, as is every other religion.

This better be b8

Why would that be bait?

There is no sane person that could read the old testament and not come to the conclusion that "god" is anything other than a huge fuck up.

>creates man in his own image
>gives them free will
>they fuck up and piss "god" off so he murders almost all of them
>later seems to realize killing them all was a mistake and promises not to do it again

It's not like I'm making this shit up...

>God created man
>man chooses to disobey God
>sin is punished
>God tired of punishment and takes form on earth to die for man and save him from his sinful nature

You focus on Genesis a lot, but the for me the spot where I really started to feel God was kind of a dipshit was Kings. The idea that an all-powerful, all-knowing God would back such a clusterfuck of traitorous, sinful dipshits is utterly impossible to swallow. Particularly where he picks Saul to be king. An all-knowing God would have known full well that he wouldn't have been up to the task, and just skipped that bullshit entirely.

>implying a perfect being would ever be "tired" of something

>Particularly where he picks Saul to be king. An all-knowing God would have known full well that he wouldn't have been up to the task, and just skipped that bullshit entirely.

Perhaps you should have read 1 Samuel 8 where god tells Israel exactly what would happen if they chose to do away with god as their king in favor of a man. It's one thing to read the bible it's an entirely different thing to understand it. You may have read the words but you're very ignorant of it.

A supposedly perfect and powerful being like "god" would be able to make a creature that doesn't fuck up the way man does, and if "god" decides to give it free will, then that perfect being would KNOW that the creatures would fuck up, because that's the way he made it.

None of that shit makes sense, user.

As far as the "save them from their sin" bullshit? How about just fucking forgive them without all the bullshit? How hard is that? It's not.

"God" supposedly made man and gave him the ability to make choices, so he should respect the choices men make, whether good or bad. After all, it's "gods" fault for allowing them to be fucked up. "God" getting pissed at man is like man getting pissed off at a toddler for drinking a shot of whiskey you left in its crib.

All of those inconsistencies clearly demonstrate that the OT, and Abrahamic religions, are simply man made stories, because they make NO damn sense.

My personal favorite is exodus, where "god" tortures the Egyptians with plagues and kills a bunch of their kids just to be a dick. He could have just allowed Pharaoh to release the Jews unto Moses the first time he asks, but nooooo.

And then of course there's the fucked up, almighty, "godly" communication method he seems to choose every time he wants to talk to his creation. Instead of talking to EVERYONE AT ONCE, this asshole picks ONE motherfucker to talk to at a time, and then gets pissed when people don't listen to the dude? What an asshole. Hell, even a child is capable of realizing that talking to an audience all at once is a more effective method of communication than talking to ONE asshole at a time and having them try to pass on your message.

The bible is just dumb, repetitive, and obviously fabricated by dumb ass people. A "god" just wouldn't be so fucked up and stupid.

>I warned you about kings bro!!!!
>I told you, dog!
>IT KEEPS HAPPENING

its because its character-driven literature first. its about the vices and virtues of moses as much as the israeli people

this is bullshit revisionism to make an illogical story make sense, this is common Christian confirmation bias, they're the eternal enemies of logic and reason.

probably a nicer one.

why didnt god just make angels that he knew wouldnt sin?

this is not an argument. not logical.

topkek this gave me a hearty laugh.

That's yet another point where the Abrahamic logic completely breaks down.

They like to talk about free choice, but a god could make a creature where the free choices they made didn't offend him, or lead to "sin", simply because god is supposed to be an all powerful being, and could simply manipulate the environment and control the options available.

Think about a child. A child can have free will in its room, but a good parent ensures that it examines the environment, and removes any potential hazards the child could face, therefore eliminating any option the child could select that may be harmful. A god would have the same ability to do this with his creation, and the environment he puts his creation in, so that man could have free will, while at the same time not being able to sin, because god simply removed that option from the environment.

when does he promise not to do it again btw

He promised not to drown the shit out of everyone again, did he not?

If not, then my bad.

Yep, this is where rainbows come from..

Is Veeky Forums normally this bad at philosophy?

>being "good" at philosophy...

i dunno lol, it sounds like it would be a funny part of the bible though

if you're better then dismantle it

Except that isn't happened, something else, something worse happened, and he pretty expressly stated that Saul was the right guy for the job, only to find out he wasn't the right guy for the job; an all knowing God wouldn't have done that. An all powerful God wouldn't have felt the need to give them kings at all.

>He doesn't know about the Dead Sea Scrolls
>He doesn't know about Lilith

Absolute kek you primitive.

God made Eve from Adam and as a help for him not because he forgot to make an companion at the beginning, but because the one he did make from the same dirt as Adam and as an equal to Adam refused to submit to Adam and instead went off with the fallen angel Samael.

>muh fanfiction

yeah, and all the villains in the bible were actually the same guy and actually there's this whole mythological heavenly battle kind of like the Greek mythology but that's not a coincidence it's not like the greeks had any influence over the evolution of Christianity OH WAIT they literally translated the Bible we all read today, funny that.

this literally supports OP's arguments throughout the whole thread.

If you remove the option of taking bad choices it's not actual free will

Also Judaism totally didn't evolve out of Semitic polytheism into monolatrism, which was then influenced into monotheism by the monotheism (arguable dualism) of the Persians. Also they never wrote any prophecies to predict shit that had already happened.

>this circular logic

Free will is about choice, not consequence.

If you eliminated 1000 choices with negative consequences and replaced them with 1000 choices that had positive consequences, you have done nothing to change the ability of an individual to use free will to select one of a 1000 choices.

but what if someone could make bad choices, they just don't.

nope

No, not at all. Not only does it put the creation of woman in a unique position, and defines her original intended role in life as a helper, it also shows that God wishes to, and does, collaborate with man in the creation.

how can something that doesnt exist make a mistake?

You're playing checkers, and God is playing n-dimensional LIFE.

First, God did not create satan. He created a beautiful angel, placed him in charge of all of the other angels, and allowed him to lead both the assembly of angels and the worship of the Almighty, in the presence of God.

That angel turned himself into the devil when he sought to overthrow God and be worshiped as God. So no, God did not create evil; an angel with free will turned against God, which is rebellion, and a wicked sin indeed.

And yes, God knew he would do it.

See, the exercise of your free will to love God or reject him requires the presence of seemingly viable alternatives for you to choose from. Adam and Eve had a million trees from which they could freely eat, and were forbidden from only one.

They joined satan's rebellion by eating from that one tree.

I would advise you to consider that God does not work in a linear fashion, and that he is limited by nothing but himself and what he chooses to do and to be. While he is the Almighty, and spoke the universe into existence, he cannot sin, he cannot break covenant, he cannot worship another being.

What he can do is adopt any who want to be adopted into his family, and judge and execute the rest.

You're asking God to create a universe where every choice we make is good, and nothing evil happens.

Such a universe, if it could exist, does not include the possibility of love being the highest ideal.

An automaton cannot love.

whats the point if god knows what youre going to choose? why would he create satan?

The point is to make the choice.

Your free will is just you selecting from your known available options. Surprising God is not one of your known available options.

God created satan so that people who wanted to reject him, reject his prophets, reject his son, and have nothing to do with him, have a leader and a cell mate.

>he cannot sin

but he can literally just unnecessarily take out 3/4 population of the middle east in the bible.

You say it's unnecessary.

I say it's a well deserved judgment. Those wicked and evil people had 400 years to repent, and God gave them that time while his own children were under the lash in Egypt.

And another like judgment is going to happen in the same place, in your lifetime.

Heritics are to be burned at the stake child of Satan

whats the point when he knew they would and could just not create them. Its not like theres some surprise or solace in someones faith. he knew they were going to be faithful. theres literally nothing to test.

god in the OT is worse than most people on earth. hes a little shit and he needs to take some notes from his sons book.

To answer your question from a logical perspective, no. God saying that he will make "an help" does not necessitate that his next action be to make "an help". All this passage tells us is that among the animals which God initially made there was not an help. Animals are inferior companions to women, in layman's terms.

>You're asking God to create a universe where every choice we make is good

And?

Seems to work for raising children.

Again, free will is about choice, not consequence. There is absolutely zero need for god to create, or allow, his creation to choose anything that he would disprove of, just as there is zero need for a parent to put anything harmful into a playpen with a small child.

>An automaton cannot love.

And an all powerful "god" wouldn't need "love".

Just another example of how the Abrahamic faith is clearly just ridiculous, irrational, human fabrication, based on human behaviors, and human emotions, not any supreme "god".