stflook - a lot of questions here. Part of my family is Lutheran, part Anglican, part Catholic etc. I’ve gone to many different denominations services and wondered myself at the whole things.

No one should criticise for asking honest questions. Good post.



I'm not going to defend Christianity here. If something has value it will defend itself.

A few points here -

it was the tree of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. not knowledge itself.

The Deistic point of view was not to want beings to have something they could not handle and therefore be corrupted with. Consider children being given access to things that could destroy them. Matches? What about firearms, gasoline, pornagraphy, fireworks?

The fruit was not an apple, that is merely church tradition. No one knows what it was.

Read that story over and you will see they both did, in fact eat of the fruit.

Satan does not promise knowledge. Studying satanism shows he promises alternate paths other than Gods.

The whole issue of God sending his son is illogical. It cannot be understood under normal circumstances. So calld theologians have discussed and argued this forever it seems. Like all matters pertaining to faith it must be accepted. Or not.

The whole Catholic issues is far too large to cover here but the newly formed Protestants were seen as a threat and the Pope and his advisors felt they had to deal with it. I strongly disagree with them on the matter. The same thing has happened in Islam where Sunnis fought Shias for years. Conflicting interpretations.

All in all a very discussion oriented thread. Well done.