iama wrote:

> Abner1, I know the answer to my question, but amcolph doesn't!

You are bearing false witness against Amcolph, who does have indeed an answer to that question.  I've seen him answer it in previous exchanges with you.  You didn't read his answer and apparently don't remember it, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have an answer.  Indeed, the mainstream Christianity answer to that question is so well-known that even I, a non-Christian, know it ... yet you do not know his answer, after all this time.  This means that you know less about Christianity than I do, much less than Amcolph does.

>   I am challenging amcolph to deal with something which he is denying is essential.

No, you're missing the point entirely.  He has several times expressed the very common opinion among Christians that Genesis does not have to be literally and inerrantly true in order for mankind to be fallen, which means that we can be sinners and Jesus could die for our sins even if the story of Adam and Eve biting into an apple was entirely allegorical.  In fundamentalist Christianity, if Adam and Eve didn't bite an apple then we are not sinners, don't need redemption, and Jesus died for nothing; in mainstream Christianity, we are all sinners and in need of redemption regardless if the story of Genesis was literal or allegorical.

> Do you know what that essential ingredient is?

I don't agree with mainstream Christianity, but I understand it a lot better than you do.  You don't understand your fellow followers of Christ one bit, and reject them as non-Christians for not being members of your sect ... itself a non-Christian action you should be ashamed of.  Slandering them for saying they don't have answers to questions where anyone with a basic understanding of Christianity knows that they have answers to those questions is just icing on the cake.

> What did the events of 2,000 years ago mean to those who were alive in the land of

> Israel?

Varies with the various groups that were alive in Israel at the time.  To the Christians, it meant several things. To the Jews of the time, there's really no sign that it ever happened ...  the few references in Jewish writings all were written down much later and not by any eye-witnesses, and few Jews joined the new religion.  Similar statements can be made about the Romans of the time - Christianity didn't spread much into them until generations later.

> Why did our Creator-God NEED to incarnate and die?  That is the issue that

> amcolph continues to dismiss.

No, I've seen Amcolph explain it to you several times: that mankind is sinful and in need of redemption.  Exactly *how* mankind came to be sinful and in need of redemption is irrelevant to that part of Christian doctrine.

I can understand why Amcolph is tired of explaining it to you; if you didn't learn it any of the previous times, you're not going to learn it this time either.  Which is a pity, since it's one of the core parts of Christian doctrine - it's a shame you can't learn it.

Iamachild:

Please read Abner's post with with your best attention.  He has the right of it.

Apr 14, 2012 -- 1:09AM, Abner1 wrote:

  He has several times expressed the very common opinion among Christians that Genesis does not have to be literally and inerrantly true in order for mankind to be fallen, which means that we can be sinners and Jesus could die for our sins even if the story of Adam and Eve biting into an apple was entirely allegorical.

My understanding is that Genesis 2 is an etiological folk myth; in other words, a how-so story written by men who didn't know any more than we do about how we came to our present "fallen" condition, but wrote the story to explore the theological implications of that condition.

That understanding is arrived at by examining the literary character of the story itself and has nothing to do with "evolutionism."  If the theory of evolution was overturned tomorrow, it would not change my understanding of Genesis 2 nor make it more likely that I would regard it as historical fact.

It not just my personal opinion nor is it original with me.  As Abner has clearly pointed out, that opinion is widely shared by Christians.

iama: Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, .... Noah, Shem, etc. See Genesis 5, and 9. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, etc.  Moses would have received these while he was in Egypt. 

But of course, there is absolutely no evidence that any of these people actually existed.  And given the obviously impossible nature of the stories in which they appear (talking snakes, humans living to be 900, wooden boat surviving world-wide flood, etc.) these characters have more in common with Paul Bunyon than any real human.

So if you don't have any exo-Biblical evidence for the existence of Adam or Noah, Iam -- and we all know you don't --- then there is absolutely no reason to assume that they are any more than what they appear to be: characters in a tribal story invented by humans to explain where they came from.

Call this a major plank of the YEC "model", then: producing some great bunch of made-up crap and expecting people to treat it as factual when there isn't the slightest evidential reason to do so.

No wonder YECism fails.