why do christians overlook the biggest deception in the bible?

I wouldn't say money is the root of all evil, more so the lack of it. Poverty is the root of most evil. Most criminals come from poor backgrounds. As well its debatable as to whether the Bible should always be interpreted literally in all cases. I'm not a Christian myself but many people attacking them seem to take verses out of context considering the time period in which they would written. Much or the Bible doesn't really apply to the modern day. My advice to people studying the Bible is not to take everything as it seems on the surface, but instead question the underlying reasons behind what it written. E.g the motives of God.

a reply to: TCB9NCL

Poverty is definitely not the root of all evil I didn't know poor people started all these wars enslaved humans and create this perverse society thru media manipulation

Theology gives me a headache. Why don't you take up drinking instead?
a reply to: christophoros

a reply to: christophoros

I didn't say poverty was the root of all evil, merely 'most' evil. Evil is commited by all sorts of people irrespective of their differing socio-economic staus. There was evil in the world long before money.

Framing this in a Christian context was puzzling, at first, but the idea is likely smart as there are many (mostly so called) Christians involved in the main models of economics, today.

Money is barbaric in that we should be a brotherhood (and sisterhood) and support each other because it is the right thing to do... letting people die because they haven't the killer instinct to (or have made a reasoned decision based on morality to not) amass money is wrong, no matter how one frames it. Paying folks less who devote their lives to keeping the rest of us alive (farmers, public infrastructure engineers, researchers, etc) is also wrong.

People are limited (in everything) by what they know... thus their ideas about economics and how systems have been expressed on Earth (Communism is bad, Socialism is wrong, Corporate Fascism is eviler, Capitalism is unsustainable and evilest of all, etc. etc) and I, too, foresee a time in the near future where all we could ever want or need is available in seconds through nanotech ... personal freedom is expanded and money won't be needed as it is, today.

That does leave the last point of contention... real estate... or how we decide who gets to live in the nicest places and for how long, but all that can be worked out in an equitable manner, I'd hope... especially as we create and find more living areas.

Sharing is caring... heh... and in a high tech world of mutual abundance, caste systems will erode, crime will fade to a rare incident and our society will heal the wounds want has created.

I sometimes imagine what we'd do if all our energy wasn't put into day-to-day survival, and instead, we could all spend our time pursuing our interests, and not those of someone more 'elite'... the progress would be astounding.

a reply to: TCB9NCL

We wouldn't know that though money or bartering has been apart of our lives forever there were mutual communities that were equal back then I believe but we don't research enough

Great thread and interesting theory! I just wanted to jump in with an issue i always bring up when the Adam and Eve story is mentioned. In this tale, God tells Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge for he "will surely die." The serpent tells Eve that this is not true and rather they will gain the knowledge of Good and Evil as God has. When they eat the fruit of the tree they gain the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore God lied and the serpent (devil) told the truth. Wouldn't this make God the original sinner, as well as demonstrate he is a manipulative tyrant, not worthy of worship? Why trust anything God says after this grand deception? God meant to keep humanity not just ignorant, but morally ignorant. How can any Christian be comfortable with this? a reply to: christophoros

a reply to: Hohuwah

That is sorta the point a lot of people don't necessarily think the snake is Satan or evil

a reply to: Hohuwah

The snake gave us free will yes once this free will was given the innocence was stripped. we were yahweh's favorite thing he created because we are in of his likeness(which means we were conscious). but now that they knew what good and evil were they had the moral responsibility of choosing to feed your animal in you or the divine in you. with knowledge comes great responsibility. Essentially we weren't meant to suffer just live innocently because we were Yahweh's youngest creation. our evolution into divine beings would have become much quicker if it stayed how it was.

We are children. There is so much more we don't know, but we see ourselves as a superior creature. I for one would love to live in a society of logic and science, but while we received "knowledge", we are actually emotional creatures. We are addicts. Even without money, we would fight for power...for control. We would collect the most rocks just to have more than other people. And even in the after-life (if you believe in that...which I don't) we wouldn't be happy. Eventually we would want more because that is what we always want. More, bigger, better, faster, taller, etc.

Science and logic is wonderful, but we are non-scientific, illogical creatures. Maybe that was the sin. The confusion. Maybe we would have been better off left alone by religion, evolution or aliens...whatever helped us get to where we are. Naked running around in the woods. We would be healthy instead of fat. We would have usefulness instead of unemployment. We would be in short reach of killing our leaders if they became corrupt. And we would have community, family in our small groups. Doesn't sound so bad.

But look at us now. We are on a path to the end of ourselves. I doubt we would get there without the science. Like a monkey with a gun. It is shiny and interesting so we play with it...we think we can handle it. Then it goes off and kills us because we are too stupid to realize what we don't know.

originally posted by: christophoros
When Cain kills his brother it is allusion of him the spear going thru Abel the hole/holy.

As a polyglot who is certified thru various government agencies and universities in several countries, it makes me want to eat a broken glass and wash it down with lemonade just to refocus myself on severe pain instead of severe annoyance. Im not one of those people who give a darn if I or a fellow internet user has made errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. These forums are where it would be silly to expect more than casual/lax approaches to writing. However, when language is being used to make a point in debating a delicate subject like religion, it's only fair to stick to facts. With that said, I mean absolutely no offense to the OP, I know its not purposely done to deceive, it's a minute and trivial point in the passage to say the least, and you can correct me if by some improbable coincidence there actually IS a correlation here. But I just want to point out something that I have seen for YEARS here on ATS with nobody pointing out the fallacy in thinking that I thought since the first time I saw it was an error any Joe Blo would recognize. But since I guess it's not as "duuuuhhhh" an error as I thought, I will point it out:

Please stop using all the heteronyms, homonyms, homophones, yada yada yada that create some hidden meaning in the Bible ie Jesus' birth is celebrated at Yule, a pagan holiday dealing with the birth of the sun/son or in this case Abel was a hole/holy. Engkish is a matter of hundreds of years old and I hate to say it but the parallels you think youve sleuthed out of the shadows dont exist in the languages the Bible was written in. Im not a creativevperson buf heres a made-up example or two-
A tree in the Bible represents man's free will or choice as in wood/would- Greek is the languSage of my family and fatherland. So lets see, so if my argument is correct...wood-"ksEEEElo" like C-Low the music guy but "ks" and would is...hmmm oh thats right, there is no such word in Greek for the word would (it's formed by changing the ending of a verb proceeded by "tha") and actually "would" doesnt have a word in most languages even French or Spanish you use an infinitive and attatch imperfect endings. Or Samson was a rabbit Delilah killed, its just a hidden secret of the Bible to be revealed in the apokalipsi, she cut his "hair"-hare...cuz we'll take French this time "chuh-VUH" hair doesnt look like "laaaa-PAN."

I wish these parallels DID mean something and werent just people using a totally unrelated language like English to infer hidden meaning in the Bible so it'd give less ammo to those atheists (most of the atheists active on ATS) who for some reason get so irritable, worked up, and whiney when discussing religion instead of leaving anger, insult, and emotion out of a discussion that doesnt warrant getting heated up and offensive for no apparent reason (no disrespect to those of you atheists who are mature enough to livevand let live). And finally, after rereading my post Im about to submit yes, I come off as just as big a jerk as I assumed I would which is why I ask the OP to read it in the light hearted and not-unfriendly tone in which it was written. Nothing meant to be addressed to you personally, it's addressed toward anyone who is on here or who hives a darn ::crickets chirping:: I just happened to grab that line to quote which, as a result, tagged you. Also, if the words hole and holy are somewhat homophonic in ancient Aramaic, touche' and I appologize.

a reply to: AlexandrosTheGreat

I'm sorry but everything in the bible has symbolism

originally posted by: MyHappyDogShiner
Money is stored labor.
Labor is part of human life.
To devalue money is to debase life.

Without labor of the working man,
money would have no value.

Money = labor, so when money is devalued
(by inflation, i.e., the "printing" of more money)
that means our labor is being stolen.

a reply to: wasaka

Precisely money can be manipulated pretty much manipulating our energy and labor that is not fair