Here's a question the wonder more about.
Why did God create man with the intention of having man exist in a sinful world?
He, being God and all had to have intended it, but WHY?
Warning: This is long. But SUPER IMPORTANT!
Okay, not really. But it was fun to write. And it should be a quick read.
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First, I'm actually impressed you picked up on this and have the stones to ask yourself the question. A lot of Christians just hand-wave it away and/or simply don't want to think about it. So points for you!
There's really only a few answers if you actually believe the story. "Not understanding his ways" or "It's all part of a mysterious PLAN!" is a cop out, and I think anybody who's honest and put some thought in about it knows that deep down. 'Cos that would be one needlessly complicated and convoluted "plan" for an all-wise GOD to carry out.
Kinda counter productive when you set to RE-INVENTING all of existence in order to carry out a punishment on two completely innocent and mentally handicapped prototypes.
I will expand on this. One of the few potential answers that allows the story to make actual sense: Chiggidy-check it.
A.)The god is malicious and sadistic, or in the best case, apathetic and bored. He did it to watch it happen. Grand Theft Auto is a really boring game if you just drive around, obeying the traffic signals and never using a weapon or playing a mission because you want to play nice nice with cartoon characters.
Whereas going batshit crazy and powersliding around corners at 100 mph and taking out a gaggle of civillians and prostitutes and mailboxes and then ramming a oil truck and blowing yourself out into the ocean is far more action-packed.
Of course the person playing the game isn't really a mass murderer, or inclined to drive a Lamborghini through a pack of people... But people find it entertaining because it ultimately doesn't matter to you. It's a clump of pixels that only exists because you turned the game on, and you can always just hit "Load game" if you want and carry on like it never happened.
Yahweh, umm, didn't do that though. Hit "Load Game" I mean. Could have snapped his big sausagey fingers and undid a snake's meddling with his "greatest most beloved creation" (personally I think Binary Star systems are just as impressive but that's just me)...
Simply undoing it, or NOT PUTTING A WORLD DAMNING TREE IN THE GARDEN AT ALL (and why a WHOLE TREE full of multiple fruits when there were only two people to eat it??? What if a knowledge fruit fell on the ground and a squirrel ate it?), well, not putting a landmine in the garden that would make sense to ME.
Like "hey, I put a lot of work into these two gloriously stupid Aryan prototypes, and a talking snake just really pissed me off, because these two didn't even know it was NOT OKAY TO DISOBEY ME (seeing as they had no knowledge of "right" and "wrong)... That s**t ain't gonna fly. Snake, yer OUT OF HERE. Now, let's try this again. <RESET>"
But no, Yahweh just goes nanners and dramatically displays the single greatest over reaction in the history of popular fiction. Kinda like punching a retarded kitten in the face forever because it chewed on your shoes when you told it not too, in full knowledge that your roomate is the one who soaked your Nikes in Catnip.
<<If I can go on a brief tangent here, what did snakes do before they had to "crawl on their bellies"? I like to think they coiled up into springs and hopped around like in Q-bert! Though that snake is STILL disobeying Yahweh's divine punishment... 'Cause, you know, they don't eat dirt. Like, ever. Rebellious ass critters ain't they?
This is even more messed up because it was actually the Debil in Disguise in the FORM of a snake, so it was pretty much completely mis-directed anger and one clumsy ass smiting. Did Yahweh not know it was really his arch-nemisis??? Or not care that it was REALLY not a snake?
What if Belzebub took the form of a Ferret? We'd have little fur worms wriggling around, which I think we could all agree would be infinitely cuter, though still just as ludicrous of an example of "eternal wisdom".>>>
But I digest. So anyway, there's this giant collasal sabotage of Yahweh's most specialist creation because a talking snake who was REALLY a big red goat man from the 5th dimension totally took a s**t in Yahweh's cereal. And he just lets it slide.
Really? He does nothing about it but play the hand he's been dealt? And he's going to play all dumb and say "Hey, where ARE you guyyys?" when he comes back to the garden from Jersey or wherever he was hanging out? WTF?
Really. He just smites the s**t out of the ENTIRE PLANET that he was allegedly SO meticulous in creating, and suddenly "poofs' agony during childbirth into every living thing, creates death, creates buttholes that magically appear in almost every living thing, creates this insanely complex digestive system (and makes the waste come out of the same places needed for REPRODUCTION OH FUCKING YUCK CITY), makes MILLIONS upon MILLIONS of delightful horrors like 1,000 types of cancer, bones that break, hunger, want, Fear, anger, jealousy, ingrown toe-nails, baldness, cavities, etc. etc. etc. X A BILLION...
HOW MANY WAYS DO WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO SUFFER before the silly space monster says "Okay, that's enough... THAT'LL learn those disobedient retards!"
I mean, dude put a metric ASS TON of thought and work into completely changing and RE-CREATING all of "Creation" in order to make sure it suffers gloriously in SO MANY WAYS...
No, but that wasn't yahweh. That was the DEBIL.
Really? I mean, he crippled an entire species of animal (snakes) because it was the SHAPE of Dr. Doom's disguise... But he lets his rebellious ex-angel continue to f**k with humanity for forever? That's a little like finding out your kids were molested by the neighbor, and then just saying "f**k it, they're tainted now. Have your way with them all you want lulz."
Bottom line: The character of Yahweh ALLOWS it all to go down. According to the to believers, he's STILL letting his kids get sodomized by the neighbor 6,000 years later.
Now THAT is a grudge! lol.
So again, no "load game" for Yahweh. Nope. He just keeps playing the game allowing babies to be born with no eyelids or crushing a hiker's legs with a rock so he has to amputate it with a penknife or sending bears to maul 42 kids because they called a preacher "bald".
Only possible explanation is that the character's motivation boils down to thinking it's all much more exciting, and nobody is in a position to tell him he's a sadistic fucktard.
But then again, maybe he simply resented his creation's wide-eyed, slack-jawed, half-retarded ignorance... I know I probably would. They basically just wandered around a garden grinning at each other like idiots and saying things like "Oh this pineapple is delicious. Hey look it's a purple flower! Ooh there's a pink one!"
How long could you watch the same two people wander around in circles gaping at everything before you became insanely bored?
That's one idear that makes sense of things. The character simply doesn't care about being rational or just or loving; it just wants to see some action.
A few more possiblities:
B.)Yahweh is actually a drooling idiot. This makes sense as well, considering the entire old testament consists of him fucking up whatever he's doing over and over and then going and sloppily trying to correct it's mistakes. Usually, this is done by inflicting unspeakable suffering on his kids. Little fuckers had it coming though. Especially those kids with the bears.
C.)Yahweh is actually the "devil", the incarnation of Evil and the Prince of Lies, and his magical and ancient murderbook is all a giant and masterfully effective deception. What better way to spread some Evuhl around than by making the rubes on Earth think they're actually ENLIGHTENED and doing GOOD by stoning faggots to death?
I mean, if you follow that particular bunny trail, it's kinda startling how perfectly the pieces all fit together lol. Makes more sense than virtually ANY other explanation, except the last one.
Really, it's an INGENIOUS plan if you really think about it. The devil murders Yahweh (or Yahweh has a "non-interference" policy or something), and starts wearing Yahweh's face around like Hannibal Lector, drafts a giant manuscript of contradictory themes and instructions and horror stories painted as "Holy", makes it confusing as hell so that it needs to be EXPLAINED and ANALYZED and STUDIED to make any kind of sense of it (allowing every other believer to interpret it a completely different way), sewing allllll these religious atrocities and REALLY BAD IDEAS into humanity's beliefs and behavior and laughing his big red ass off the whole time, while nobody on Earth knows any better and keeps professing they LOVE him under threat of eternal suffering!
<Giggles> "Oh yeah. Rape the s**t out of those slaves. You're totally justified. Blessings unto you!"
... Realizes that if society keeps evolving, NOBODY is going to buy this s**t anymore, so sends some demon dressed like a hippie down to spread messages of super huggy warm feelings and then BRUTALLY MURDERS it in front of it's fans to assure 2,000 years of morbid ass clinging and a fascination with torture..
Seriously. Give it some thought. It just gets creepier and more ominous the more you look at the murderbook through a filter of deception.
And I bet the incarnation of evil and Prince of lies would think it's HILLARIOUS when the believers start killing each other in his name.
D.)Another option is, of course, that it's 2,000 pages of superstitious bullshit created by socially powerful priests and a wacky Roman Emperor in order to keep the illiterate peasantry in-line and leech the s**t out of the nobilities coffers while instilling a Fear of the state that extends EVEN BEYOND DEATH.
The storytellers were 2,000 years away from Steven Spielburg, completely ignorant in virtually all things science, and thought you could cure leporasy by rubbing yourself down with bird's blood. Hence why their goofy ass opus contradicts itself every other page and includes ALLLLLL this nasty and nonsensical bullshit.
Straight-up, they were not Homer, they were not Keroauc. Never taken a creative writing class or studied up on plot consistency. Plus the overwhelming majority of their target audience were completely uneducated and illiterate goatherders and laborers... DESPERATE for someone to tell them something entertaining, to validate their lives, and to tell them "Hey, life sucks for you fucking mongrels... I know eating doormouse and pigeons and shitting in the bushes and dying by the age of 35 from Typhoid or Malaria or an infected skin knee sucks some massive talking donkey dick, but if you listen to us, give us your money and do what we say, and make sure to tell us about all the naughty things you do, it totally won't suck after you FUCKING DIE!!!"
"Oh, and by the way guys, it's totally okay to own other humans and beat the s**t out of them and stone your wife if she cheats on you or your kids if they give you a hard time and oh yeah gay dudes is gross so you can throw big fuckin' rocks at 'em all day long and hey if you invade another country feel free to f**k all their kids if you win."
I dunno. That's the one *I* lean towards. Makes sense to me. If I was some filthy, body-aching, sexually repressed small-dicked goatherder 1,600 years ago, I'd probably eat that s**t up with a spoon.
