2008:Noah's Ark FOUND? Who Was informed?

[Orin]

...Old Covenant vs Christ's New Covenant. There is great conflict between the old and new.

Then you have not read both. There is no truth in your statement.

 

[angelofdeathzz]

If we knew who or what created "Man" we would need to be a much more advanced form of life than we are now, and would have obtained knowledge by then that would be very close to infinite. Hunger, greed and war would be a long forgotten bad dream. But for now were just like pre-schoolers wanting knowledge that only someone with a doctoral/MD degree has, its a work in progress, and till then we can believe or not believe in anything we see fit.

Well that my view on things anyway, as I believe in GOD but I'm not sure what that really means I'm believing in? And that's OK by me.

 

[Precarious]

Then you have not read both. There is no truth in your statement.

I know apologists do mental gymnastics to try to make sense of it. Seems pretty straight forward to me. No point in debating beliefs.

Old Testament

"Jehovah is a Man of War, Jehovah is his name."

Exodus 15:3

"For you must not prostrate yourself to another god, because Jehovah, whose name is Jealous, he is a jealous God."

Exodus 34:14

"Every one that is found shall be thrust through; and every one that is joined unto them shall fall by the sword. Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives raped."

Isaiah 13:15-16 (discussing "the LORD and the weapons of his wrath")

"So therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

Numbers 31:17-18 (Moses commanding the Jews after they conquered the Midianites.)

New Testament

"Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."

Matthew 5:9

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."

Corinthians 13:4-7

"There is no fear in Love; but Perfect Love casteth out all fear because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love."

John 4:18

 

[Orin]

I know apologists do mental gymnastics to try to make sense of it. Seems pretty straight forward to me.

You simply posted some unrelated posts out of context. Some speak of war and some of love and you haven't even tried to come up with related subjects.

 

[Colorcham427]

where am I???? Is this real????

 

[Precarious]

You simply posted some unrelated posts out of context. Some speak of war and some of love and you haven't even tried to come up with related subjects.

Under what context are the acts described in the Old Testament quotes acceptable to you? They were done at the command of Jehovah.

You are welcome to produce quotes that counter those I've posted. Let's hear what Jesus had to say about war. Was he into smashing the heads of children and rape? No.

"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues."

Matthew 10:16-17

Synagogues, where they worship Jehovah. The wolves are the ones who like to smash the heads of children and rape. You may remember them from the Old Testament.

He did speak of a sword, but a sword is not war. It symbolizes cutting ties, as in turning people away from the old way - Jehovah.

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, a man's enemies will be the members of his own household."

Matthew 10:34-36

So you either follow Jehovah or Christ, the old paradigm or the new one, and that will come between families.

Earlier he mentions this:

"A student is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the student to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If the head of the house has been called Beelzebub, how much more the members of his household!"

Matthew 10:24-25

Who do you think he is referring to here as "Beelzebub" as he goes on to discuss dividing families because members still follow Jehovah, and "the head of the house has been called Beelzebub". If you think he meant Satan then why didn't he say Satan? Because they are two different characters in this story.

"Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you."

Matthew 12:25-28

What did he mean by "And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out?" Sounds a lot like he is saying they follow Beelzebul, especially when taking into consideration the preceding statement. REMEMBER: he was stating this to the Pharisees. He is also then stating that demons serve Beelzebul (i.e. Jehovah). Read it again and remember who he is talking to.

Earlier...

"Going on from that place, he went into their synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, they asked him, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?""

Matthew 12:9

A man in a synagogue, where they worship Jehovah, looking for a reason to accuse him. Do you seriously not see how the followers of Jehovah are cast as evil throughout the New Testament?

Bare in mind, I'm not a Biblical scholar. Nor am I even Christian. I do not see it as the world of God. It was written by men and made official by other men - Constantine and his cohorts. And men always have motives for their actions. In Constantine's case it was unification of Rome's conquered lands - convert or die, I might add. I can look at all of this in the spirit of Logic (the real meaning of the purposefully mistranslated Logos) because I am not tied to a specific interpretation dictated to me by tradition.

I have no intention of changing your opinion. I'm only stating my own. You can be assured that I have done much research that led me to these opinions. Considering I've seen what there is to see in that book and found obvious meaning for myself it would be very difficult to shake my conclusions. I will always, however, remain open-minded but they would have to be very logical and convincing ideas.

That being said, I hope you are not offended by my opinions. That is not my intention at all.

 

[Precarious]

You simply posted some unrelated posts out of context. Some speak of war and some of love and you haven't even tried to come up with related subjects.

Here are a few quotes from the Old Testament concerning Jehovah, the dweller in darkness, to think about. Remember that when you see "lord" in all caps it said "Jehovah" in the original texts. I used the King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.) for the quotes since later versions were cleaned up quite a bit to help hide the connection between Jehovah and darkness.

This first one sounds an awful lot like the classic Devil's deal...

"And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel."

Isaiah 45:3

"Then spake Solomon, The LORD said that he would dwell in the thick darkness."

1 Kings 8:12

"Then said Solomon, The LORD hath said that he would dwell in the thick darkness."

2 Chronicles 6:1

"Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light."

Amos 5:18

"The great day of the LORD is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the LORD: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of ruin and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness..."

Zephaniah 1:14-15

"He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies."

Psalm 18:11

"And the people stood far off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was."

Exodus 20:21

"Now therefore, behold, the LORD hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the LORD hath spoken evil concerning thee."

1 Kings 22:23

Does this sound like the good guy to you? Sounds more like Darkness from the movie Legend.

 

[minard734]

I don't agree that the Old and New testament contradict. I DO see where you are coming. You are a very educated man and I see that you have studied this subject a lot. I just don't agree.

God is the Lion and The Lamb. Also, there were prophesies of a messiah in the Old Testament and Jesus fulfills them. One more thing... The happening of Christs death drastically changed things. We are no longer slaves.

Just my 2 cents.

You are all entitled to your own opinion if you have looked deep into the subject and continue to dig deeper. One should never EVER say that there opinion will not be budged at all. Often details change due to digging deeper.

Interesting thread. I don't think it's Noah's ark though. It is probably a ship that was used to send livestock from shore to shore. I could be wrong though. It just seems to me that it would be deeper under the ground. Ey?

You see I don't think what most Creationists think. This world can not be 6,000 years old. Some Yew trees are actually said to be older than that (though their ages have not been confirmed like the 4,500+ year old Bristle-cone pines). Carbon dating isn't the best method so I don't believe this world is billions of years old. I mean... just my opinion. Seems far too old. Carbon dating past a certain age is really not accurate. But yes. This world must be over 10,000 years old. There are things we can trace back to then and it seems like civilization was already well established. So yeah... it's even OLDER than that!

Just my opinion. Feel free to point out mistakes above in my text or inaccuracies. Would love to know.

 

[Precarious]

Just my opinion. Feel free to point out mistakes above in my text or inaccuracies. Would love to know.

The followers of Jehovah did not accept Jesus as the fulfillment of their prophesies. That's why we now have Jews and Christians.

I look around me and see a world enslaved. I also see the people beginning to rise against the oppressors, and I would agree that is the spirit of Christ awakening within them. But I see Christ as Truth and Logic, rather than the person mythicized within the Gospels. The Gnostics understood this.

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

The Gospel According to Thomas

I'm just glad we can all agree to get along!

See how mantids bring us all together?

Word origin:

mantis

1658, "type of insect that holds its forelegs in a praying position" (esp. the praying mantis, Mantis religiosa), from Gk. mantis, lit. "one who divines, a seer, prophet," from mainesthai "be inspired," related to menos "passion, spirit" (see mania). The insect so called for its way of holding the forelimbs as if in prayer. Also used in Gk. for some sort of grasshopper (Theocritus).

Fun stuff! More fun things to think about...

I would have to agree with you on Carbon dating. Especially considering the recent discovery that emanations from the sun are effecting the rate of radioactive decay!!!

Is the Sun Emitting a Mystery Particle?

When probing the deepest reaches of the Cosmos or magnifying our understanding of the quantum world, a whole host of mysteries present themselves. This is to be expected when pushing our knowledge of the Universe to the limit.

But what if a well-known -- and apparently constant -- characteristic of matter starts behaving mysteriously?

This is exactly what has been noticed in recent years; the decay rates of radioactive elements are changing. This is especially mysterious as we are talking about elements with "constant" decay rates -- these values aren't supposed to change. School textbooks teach us this from an early age.

This is the conclusion that researchers from Stanford and Purdue University have arrived at, but the only explanation they have is even weirder than the phenomenon itself: The sun might be emitting a previously unknown particle that is meddling with the decay rates of matter. Or, at the very least, we are seeing some new physics.

...

As the Earth is closer to the sun during the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere (our planet's orbit is slightly eccentric, or elongated), could the sun be influencing decay rates?

In another moment of weirdness, Purdue nuclear engineer Jere Jenkins noticed an inexplicable drop in the decay rate of manganese-54 when he was testing it one night in 2006. It so happened that this drop occurred just over a day before a large flare erupted on the sun.

Did the sun somehow communicate with the manganese-54 sample? If it did, something from the sun would have had to travel through the Earth (as the sample was on the far side of our planet from the sun at the time) unhindered.

The sun link was made even stronger when Peter Sturrock, Stanford professor emeritus of applied physics, suggested that the Purdue scientists look for other recurring patterns in decay rates. As an expert of the inner workings of the sun, Sturrock had a hunch that solar neutrinos might hold the key to this mystery.

Sure enough, the researchers noticed the decay rates vary repeatedly every 33 days -- a period of time that matches the rotational period of the core of the sun. The solar core is the source of solar neutrinos.

...

http://news.discover...y-particle.html

 

[PhilinYuma]

I never thought that i would have the pleasure of seeing two of the more prominent correspondents on this forum debating the merits of covenantalism and dispentationalism. The following dialogue just about summarizes my own views on the debate and the attitude of Christians towards each other., and if it may seem humorous, its point is very sad.

The scene : Two East end [of London] blokes in their late teens have been discussing beatbox dubstep and looking back to the "old" days (mid nineties?) when dubstep was making a splash in England. They recall English performers, and their relative merits.

Tom:Yeah, well, Forward was important, but I think that Martin's "God" was the real groundbreaker, earth shaker..

Jerry: Then you haven't listened to them both. That kinda talk is just B.S.

T [changing subject] Oh I went to fix the speaker console at that R.C. place, Our Lady of Perpetual Gloom. They were having some kind of ceremony. A guy in a long dress was standing up front and asking the rest of the people questions and they answered all together and kept bobbing up and down and kneeling to him. And the place sure smelled of incest.

J; Onanism? Or the kind that they set on fire and then try to put out by swinging it over their heads?

T Didn't look that close, i wanted to avoid an "occasion of sin". Tell ya what, though. We all know about the "perfidious Jew" and the antichrist muslims who are trying to sell white girls into slavery in Manchester, but these so-called "Christian" sects like the RC's and the Unitarians and Presbyterians and all that lot, are all darkness [a term used by my dear mother to describe Christian sects other than the Strict Plymouth Brethren] so far as i can see.

J Yeah. I sometimes wish that i had lived in the Reformatioon when Protestants all spoke with one strong, clear voice, instead opf like now, when even so many denominations have fallen away from the True Faith. Like when you were talking about that performance at the RC place. A lot of denominations who are covenantalists believe in church services like they had in the O.T. If tjhe R.C.s are anathema, i have to wonder about them, too.

T: Did you know that they are still a majority of Protestant Christians? But considering that God only revealed the truth of dispensationism less than 200 year's ago, the True Word is catching on fast.

J: You're right there, but even so, although we might agree on something lke soteriology, there are still a few old-school Scofield followers out there, and therir prophetic readings of Revelations are pretty far out.

T: Oh, I con't know, I think that some of them are pretty interesting, just my two pence, you know. Like that one about Revelations describing helicopters as signs of the last days,,,

J:: Come off it mate. There aren't going to be many of us True Believers in heaven (many are called but few are chosen), anyway; I don't want to be the only one!

T. Well all this talk has made me hungry let's get a vindaloo. AsianDawn makes the best chicken vindaloo around here.

J. Then you obviously haven't eaten Habibi's, or you don't recognize a good kebab when you taste one!

"And the peace of God that passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord."

 

[HoldThePickle]

These were all written in a time when people KNEW the world was flat. They also DIDN'T KNOW where the sun went at night time. They were written by primitive men who believed there was an invisible man who lived in the sky who watched and controlled everything that happened. No different then lighting bolts coming from Zues, or tidal waves coming form Neptune. Modern science was nearly 2000 years away, at a minimum. It's crazy what you can get people to believe if you threaten their afterlife, no matter how whacky the stories. It's also a good business to get into..... a burning bush told me so.

 

[Precarious]

I never thought that i would have the pleasure of seeing two of the more prominent correspondents on this forum debating the merits of covenantalism and dispentationalism. The following dialogue just about summarizes my own views on the debate and the attitude of Christians towards each other., and if it may seem humorous, its point is very sad.

The scene : Two East end [of London] blokes in their late teens have been discussing beatbox dubstep and looking back to the "old" days (mid nineties?) when dubstep was making a splash in England. They recall English performers, and their relative merits.

What a load of cr@p! Dubstep didn't even exist in the 90's. It was Jungle, Break Beat, then TECHstep. Dubstep is a much more recent phenomena, but essentially the sounds of Techstep with a half-time beat and different structuring. The references to Dubstep artists in the 90's is completely unfounded since they lack the characteristic wobble bass, which is the defining aspect of Dubstep in addition to the "drop" portion in which mayhem ensues.

There was no equivalent to this in the 90's...

So, though the roots of Dubstep are inexorably linked to the trinity of Jungle/Rave/Glitch it did not manifest until the passing of the new millennium. It represents the new covenant between technology and music, and a fulfillment of the style prophesied by the Old School Techno sects.

Or did I miss your point? :tt2:

 

[PhilinYuma]

I enjoyed your rant so much, Henry, that i'm happy to overlook the fact that i never said when it started, for good reason. Love that wobble, but I see the genre defined by that drum note followed by a pause --usually -- and then a base note that was sometimes an octave or more lower, or, as we musicologists would say, "someone dropped a clanger". The question, and it is harder to pin down than many religious arguments, is when its precursor, Brit garage morphed into dubstep. I remember in a visit to my home town, London, around 1998 doing a pub crawl through the usual riverside establishments and hearing what sounded a lot like the dubstep that emerged into the US consciousness in the early C21 when I was in SD.

Of course, you must also remember that the US often tends to be a few yars behind Britain. The Beatles were a hit in England before they were "discovered" on their first US tour. And remember WWII? Declared in December of 1941 for you chaps, I think, when Hitler declared war on you 4 days after Pearl, with no engagements until Spring of '42. The Brits declared war on Germany in 1939.

That was such fun that i really must have a chat with you later about your lack of trust in radioactive carbon dating.

 

[Precarious]

The scene : Two East end [of London] blokes in their late teens have been discussing beatbox dubstep and looking back to the "old" days (mid nineties?) when dubstep was making a splash in England. They recall English performers, and their relative merits.

I enjoyed your rant so much, Henry, that i'm happy to overlook the fact that i never said when it started, for good reason.

...

That was such fun that i really must have a chat with you later about your lack of trust in radioactive carbon dating.

I was just having some fun using a rant to make fun of my previous rants. I don't know when Dubstep started but considering it's hitting big in 2011 and previous trends generally hit within about 5 years of inception, I would doubt it goes back very far. Not that it matters in the least. Just saw it as a good reason to jump on you and make fun of myself. :stuart:

Do fill us in on whether or not the latest changes found in radioactive decay rates have any effect on carbon dating. I'm not up on the technical end of the process.

 

[Precarious]

These were all written in a time when people KNEW the world was flat. They also DIDN'T KNOW where the sun went at night time. They were written by primitive men who believed there was an invisible man who lived in the sky who watched and controlled everything that happened. No different then lighting bolts coming from Zues, or tidal waves coming form Neptune. Modern science was nearly 2000 years away, at a minimum. It's crazy what you can get people to believe if you threaten their afterlife, no matter how whacky the stories. It's also a good business to get into..... a burning bush told me so.

I'm with you. Religion is a racket. Still some interesting wisdom in select texts, but if you take allegory as literal history it loses all value.

I would have to strongly disagree about the ancients not knowing the world was round or where the sun went at night. Don't mistake allegory using heavenly bodied as characters with the extent of their astronomical knowledge. Mankind had likely been tracking the course of the stars and planets for hundreds of thousands of years. Their survival depended upon accurate prediction of the seasons, and hunters used the advantage of full moons to track prey at night.

There is no question ancient cultures understood the earth was round and revolved around the sun. They couldn't have built megalithic structures able to predict eclipses and other astronomical events otherwise. It was only after formation of the Catholic church and their declared war on knowledge that mankind entered the Dark Ages. The Holy Roman Empire did all that it could to wipe out any records of previous human knowledge. They collected documents to hoard for themselves that still rot in the bowels of the Vatican vaults.

 

[jrh3]

i see one answer, can you prove the bible to be wrong? no questions or replies, i dont think you can.

 

[Precarious]

i see one answer, can you prove the bible to be wrong? no questions or replies, i dont think you can.

That's not even a legitimate question. Wrong about what???

Can you prove Star Wars is wrong?

Can you prove the color green is wrong?

Can you prove Bugs Bunny is wrong?

Can you prove committing evil is wrong?

"No questions or replies, i dont think you can."

...

Technically, you can't prove a negative.

Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or "appeal to ignorance" (where "ignorance" stands for: "lack of evidence to the contrary"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, it is "generally accepted" (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient investigation and therefore insufficient information to prove the proposition satisfactorily to be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four, (1) true, (2) false, (3) unknown between true or false, and (4) being unknowable (among the first three). In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof.

Argument from ignorance may be used as a rationalization by a person who realizes that he has no reason for holding the belief that he does.

More:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

...

The real question is, can you prove the Bible is right? That's a big NO.

 

[patrickfraser]

Right or wrong is just an individual's interpretation of the situation based on their past experiences and teachings as to it's "rightness" or "wrongness".

Precarious is RIGHT!

 

[Orin]

Under what context are the acts described in the Old Testament quotes acceptable to you? They were done at the command of Jehovah.

I have no intention of changing your opinion. I'm only stating my own. You can be assured that I have done much research that led me to these opinions. Considering I've seen what there is to see in that book and found obvious meaning for myself it would be very difficult to shake my conclusions. I will always, however, remain open-minded but they would have to be very logical and convincing ideas.

That being said, I hope you are not offended by my opinions. That is not my intention at all.

Usually people who come up with wild theories about the bible haven't read a word of it but you seem to at least pull quotes and yet they don't seem relevant to your argument. How do I argue the irrelevance of something that's already that way? That's an interesting tactic. Jesus uses dozens of words and phrases to describe the devil including the prince of lies and your thought that each and every description is a different deity is a child of lies. I find it interesting that you mention that in the beginning was logos and the logos was God and yet you look and you can’t see. Isn’t the logic of men foolishness?

 

[Precarious]

Usually people who come up with wild theories about the bible haven't read a word of it but you seem to at least pull quotes and yet they don't seem relevant to your argument. How do I argue the irrelevance of something that's already that way? That's an interesting tactic. Jesus uses dozens of words and phrases to describe the devil including the prince of lies and your thought that each and every description is a different deity is a child of lies. I find it interesting that you mention that in the beginning was logos and the logos was God and yet you look and you can’t see. Isn’t the logic of men foolishness?

Yes, the logic of men is foolishness. So then why believe what other men wrote in a book and claim God wrote through them, instead of using your own god-given faculties? Your faith boils down to that. Whether or not you believe that a collection of texts gathered from diverse location and across thousands of years, in some cases offering alternate and conflicting versions of the same "events", are the inspired word of God, and that other texts from the same period or before, upon which the New Testament Gospels are based, are false because a Roman emperor decided not to include them as he gathered his mechanism of social control intended to consolidate the conquered world. Sounds reasonable to me.

You dropping a line here and there just stating that I am wrong without supplying any evidence to back your claim, other than pointing out things were "already that way", does not do much good to defend your position. I guess it doesn't matter since this is really a discussion of belief and belief is a matter of choice;

• Do you choose to believe what tradition tells you to believe? Or the evidence of your own eyes and mind?
  

• Do you believe in Logos as "the word", written law, open to interpretation and manipulation? Or Logos as "logic", the power of reason, and key to TRUTH?
  

To my eyes it appears Christians have been tricked into worshiping the very "god" Christ came to turn them from.

Jehovah/Yahweh is a jealous god, full of contempt for any who won't fall to their knees and worship him. He is prone to fits of rage that sometimes end with the destruction of the population of nearly the whole planet. He appears as a column of smoke and fire, and dwells "in thick darkness" (1 Kings 8:12, 2 Chronicles 6:1, 2 Samuel 22:12, Zephaniah 1:14-15, Exodus 20:21, to mention a few). He makes promises of "the treasures of darkness" in return for worship (Isaiah 45:3), and plants spirits within his enemies that cause them to lie (1 Kings 22:23, 2 Chronicles 18:18-22, Judges 9:23, Ezekiel 14:9). He tricks his own worshipers, in some cases to almost murder their own children. He is fed the blood of animals during secret ceremonies. He commands destruction, the murder of children and the rape of women (Isaiah 13:15-16, Numbers 31:17-18, to mention a few).

Even as far back as Genesis he lies to Adam and Eve, telling them on the day they eat from the tree of knowledge they "will surely die", yet they do not. It was his attempt to prevent their acquisition of higher knowledge that they will "become like us". Do you believe mankind capable of becoming a threat to the real God?

I am fine that this began with you thinking I'm just a random crackpot with nothing to back my statements, because this world is full of crackpots that spout nonsense of which they know nothing. I am not one of them. My conclusions are based on reason and the evidence within your own Holy Bible. Pick it up and double check my quotes. Or better yet, go HERE so you can see all the various version side-by-side. It would appear you have nothing to back up your opposition to my ideas, which, though they are new to you, are very old indeed.

And to be clear, there is no mention of your "prince of lies" in the Bible. Satan is once referred to as the "father of lies" (John 8:44). But to suggest I am wrong to tell you Satan and Beelzebul are two distinct characters is an expression of your ignorance of the Bible. Satan, according to the old Testament, is merely a position within Jehovah's hierarchy of "angels" representing the tempter or adversary. Beelzebul is "Lord of the Flies" and later a prince of heck. It is true that tradition has warped these two into a single character but that is a recent dumbing down of the facts. I even supplied you with a quote of Jesus speaking of them as two distinct characters (Matthew 12:25-28). But, as in most cases involving modern Christians, you chose to believe "tradition" over the very words of Jesus.

And that, my friend, is the story of Free Will, why we have it, and how we judge ourselves by choosing our own path; either that of the sheep who follows blindly without thought, or one who struggles internally towards TRUTH.