left behind series says evolution the root of all evil

[1123581321]

I am at a fundie relative's house and was skimming through the last book in the left behind series, and stumbled upon Satan's trial. In it, it's claimed that Satan formulated the theory of evolution (at some point befoe Earth was created), and this led him to believe he was equal to God, he then convinced most humans evolution was real, blah, blah, blah. So basically, it comes down to Satan went evil because he thought up evolution, and then the world went really down hill, when he spread that idea.

This is in SLAM, so I guess I need a science question...oh yeah, in the same book, there's a big earthquake that flatten every single mountain, valley, hill, plain, etc. until they are all the same elevation (except Jerusalem, which gets moved up 300 ft and the Mount of Olives). I just found that premise rather interesting, since we just had this big huge tsunami, which involved moving a section of the ocean floor a few meters. But flattening every mountain, BDZ level energy or not? I really don't feel like calculating it.

One final thing, heaven is a place where you have no evil thoughts (sex with no marriage, gay), thou don't put anything in your body that's not nutritious (alcohol, tobacco, drugs), and you get to worship God 24/7, for a thousand years. hmm, I wonder what Hell is like?

[darthdavid]

If heaven = Opposite of Hell and Heaven = Lame then Hell = Awesome so if Hell = Awesome and Heaven = Lame and Worship = Heaven and Sin = Hell then that book just gave me another reason to live a life of sin.

[Darth Raptor]

Satan's quite the prescient biologist.

[Darth Wong]

In order to estimate the energy requirement, it would help to know the RMS (root-mean-squared) altitude deviation of the Earth's surface. I'd suspect this is BDZ-level energy already, even if you totally disregard material deformation requirements.

[Lord of the Abyss]

In it, it's claimed that Satan formulated the theory of evolution (at some point befoe Earth was created), and this led him to believe he was equal to God, he then convinced most humans evolution was real, blah, blah, blah. So basically, it comes down to Satan went evil because he thought up evolution, and then the world went really down hill, when he spread that idea.

This is even sillier than most religious claims. Why would the concept of evolution lead the Devil "believe he was equal to God" ? It's not like he would need to take religion on faith :

Devil : "Hmm, is the world run by natural forces, or it created and controlled by an omnipotent being ?"
God : "Yo ! Over here !"
Devil : "Well, so much for that idea..."

[Darth Wong]

In it, it's claimed that Satan formulated the theory of evolution (at some point befoe Earth was created), and this led him to believe he was equal to God, he then convinced most humans evolution was real, blah, blah, blah. So basically, it comes down to Satan went evil because he thought up evolution, and then the world went really down hill, when he spread that idea.

This is even sillier than most religious claims. Why would the concept of evolution lead the Devil "believe he was equal to God" ? It's not like he would need to take religion on faith :

Devil : "Hmm, is the world run by natural forces, or it created and controlled by an omnipotent being ?"
God : "Yo ! Over here !"
Devil : "Well, so much for that idea..."

It makes no sense, but it does reveal something about their mindset. They simply can't wrap their heads around the idea of people who make decisions with no concern whatsoever for their religious beliefs. As far as they're concerned, the whole idea of evolution was invented because mankind wanted to exalt himself to become the equal of God. It never even occurs to them that evolution supporters honestly don't believe in God at all; they simply can't comprehend it.

[Illuminatus Primus]

In it, it's claimed that Satan formulated the theory of evolution (at some point befoe Earth was created), and this led him to believe he was equal to God, he then convinced most humans evolution was real, blah, blah, blah. So basically, it comes down to Satan went evil because he thought up evolution, and then the world went really down hill, when he spread that idea.

This is even sillier than most religious claims. Why would the concept of evolution lead the Devil "believe he was equal to God" ? It's not like he would need to take religion on faith :

Devil : "Hmm, is the world run by natural forces, or it created and controlled by an omnipotent being ?"
God : "Yo ! Over here !"
Devil : "Well, so much for that idea..."

Lucifer in the book claims he evolved to parity with God, and as an evolved creature, and not a strictly created one, he owed no submission nor any loyalty to God.

[Lord of the Abyss]

It makes no sense, but it does reveal something about their mindset. They simply can't wrap their heads around the idea of people who make decisions with no concern whatsoever for their religious beliefs. As far as they're concerned, the whole idea of evolution was invented because mankind wanted to exalt himself to become the equal of God. It never even occurs to them that evolution supporters honestly don't believe in God at all; they simply can't comprehend it.

Sort of like the Soviet Communists. They held that their position was so self-evident that anyone who disagreed had to be lying or deluded, and honest disagreement was impossible. IIRC that was a major excuse for putting many dissidents in "mental hospitals"; since they disagreed with Communism, they had to be insane.

In fact, Christian anti-gay "treatment" follows the same principle, doesn't it ? It's funny how similar the Good Christians and the Evil Commies really are.

Lucifer in the book claims he evolved to parity with God, and as an evolved creature, and not a strictly created one, he owed no submission nor any loyalty to God.

Well, he'd be right. In fact, a question I've never heard a good answer for : Why would anybody or anything owe God "submission and loyalty", or worship for that matter ? Especially the fundie version of God, who is basically Saddam Hussein in the Sky.

If we are believe the Bible, we should try to find a way to imprison or kill God, not follow him. I think Ian Watson ( or someone with a similar name) wrote a story about that, where God is fleeing an ultra-advanced humanity, who intend to put him on trial for criminal incompetance.

[Jew]

Keep in mind that the Left Behind series is strictly fiction. It should be interpreted as escapist fiction marketed to Christians; it's no better or worse than escapist fiction marketed to other niche groups. Attacking Christianity for stupid plot holes in Left Behind is a bit like attacking evolution for plot holes in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or attacking Objectivism because Atlas Shrugged is an interminably boring book.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I am at a fundie relative's house and was skimming through the last book in the left behind series, and stumbled upon Satan's trial. In it, it's claimed that Satan formulated the theory of evolution (at some point befoe Earth was created), and this led him to believe he was equal to God, he then convinced most humans evolution was real, blah, blah, blah. So basically, it comes down to Satan went evil because he thought up evolution, and then the world went really down hill, when he spread that idea.

Rather idiotic premise, since if Satan came up with the theory of evolution before the formulation of the Earth, he'd have no observational evidence for it, given that none of the species would've existed yet. Though maybe in the realm of angels and demons, they're the highly-evolved tool-users of their world. Still, the premise is idiocy for the first reason alone.

This is in SLAM, so I guess I need a science question...oh yeah, in the same book, there's a big earthquake that flatten every single mountain, valley, hill, plain, etc. until they are all the same elevation (except Jerusalem, which gets moved up 300 ft and the Mount of Olives). I just found that premise rather interesting, since we just had this big huge tsunami, which involved moving a section of the ocean floor a few meters. But flattening every mountain, BDZ level energy or not? I really don't feel like calculating it.

According to this the average elevation of all the continental land on the planet is about 840 meters above sea level.

The elevation of Jerusalem is 825 meters above sea level. If we assume everything is leveled to the same elevation of Jerusalem, so that the sky-wizard can elevate it by 92 meters, the mean elevation of all continental land in the world would have to change by 15 meters.

We'll take the most naive, straightforward approach possible, which is to compute the energy needed to drop 1,917,002 cubic kilometers of granite fifteen meters. The figure comes by taking the difference of the volume of the Earth, and the volume of the Earth if it's radius was 15 meters smaller, and multiplying the result by the 25% of the Earth's surface area made up of continents. This 1,917,002 cubic kilometers of granite will mass 4,984,207,410,780,000,000 kilograms (since the density of granite is 2600 kg/m^3)

The potential energy of this mass is described by the formula PE = mgh. Plugging in the numbers yields a PE of 732,678,489,384,660,000,000 joules. That is 7.32E+20 joules or the explosive force of 175,114,361,707 tons of TNT (175 GT,) or the equivalent of detonating a 1 gigaton bomb over every square kilometer of land-area on Earth. This is only an estimate of the energy which would be released dropping that mass from the height of fifteen meters. That doesn't include the energy required to break up the mountains into pieces small enough to evenly drop to the same level, and rather naively ignores the fact that this is only mean elevation across all the land areas of the planet, and that the land mass of the planet isn't uniformly comprised of granite, among many other factors that would be removed in an exhaustive analysis requiring the use of complex statistics and calculus.

However, if we assume the sky-wizard was really angry and decided to make the average elevation of all the land on Earth zero meters above sea level (dropping the mean elevation of all the land area on Earth by 840 meters) we get a PE of 2,297,382,552,970,770,720,000,000 joules. That is 2.297E+24 joules, or the explosive force of 549,087,608,262,612 tons of TNT (549 TT,) or the equivalent of detonating a 3,700 gigaton bomb over every square kilometer of Earth's land area, simultaneously.

In either scenario, even if I was a couple of orders of magnitude off, the energy released (depending on the timescale) would be sufficient to kill every person and modest-sized animal on the surface of the planet with 100% lethality.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

<Addendum>

Damnit, that should be a 1 KT bomb in the first case, and a 3.6 MT bomb in the second case.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

<Addendum>

Damnit, that should be a 1 KT bomb in the first case, and a 3.6 MT bomb in the second case.

<Addendum #2>

This is what I get for writing my analysis based on goofy numbers. The KT event released the equivalent of 100,000,000 megatons of TNT. That's 100 teratons. That would mean that the first case would only be mildly inconvenient. The second case postulates an energy release five times greater than the explosive force of an extinction-level event that raised global temperatures to a couple hundred degrees centigrade for a few hours. The second case would entirely wipe out most life on Earth period. The first case would only cause massive death and destruction.

[1123581321]

I read the last chapter. There is no sex in heavan, the only thing that matters is worshiping Jesus. Yay, that sounds like so much fun. [/sarcasm]

When Jesus, came down, the first thing he did after beating Satan is to kill every single non-Christian on the planet. Is this a religious book, or a horror novel?

[1123581321]

I am at a fundie relative's house and was skimming through the last book in the left behind series, and stumbled upon Satan's trial. In it, it's claimed that Satan formulated the theory of evolution (at some point befoe Earth was created), and this led him to believe he was equal to God, he then convinced most humans evolution was real, blah, blah, blah. So basically, it comes down to Satan went evil because he thought up evolution, and then the world went really down hill, when he spread that idea.

Rather idiotic premise, since if Satan came up with the theory of evolution before the formulation of the Earth, he'd have no observational evidence for it, given that none of the species would've existed yet. Though maybe in the realm of angels and demons, they're the highly-evolved tool-users of their world. Still, the premise is idiocy for the first reason alone.

Satan buys into the fifteen billion year old universe, he evolved before Earth did. God says Satan was created before Earth, but still created Satan. Satan thinks universe 15 billion years old, God around 6 thousand. hey, Satan is pretty smart (comparitively).

[Chmee]

If heaven = Opposite of Hell and Heaven = Lame then Hell = Awesome so if Hell = Awesome and Heaven = Lame and Worship = Heaven and Sin = Hell then that book just gave me another reason to live a life of sin.

Wasn't this Blackadder's reasoning when he was made Archbishop of Canterbury and was trying to talk a dieing lord into willing his lands to the King? Basically that heaven was for people who liked singing and praying and talking to god, and hell was for people who liked rape, pillage and debauchery?

[Lord of the Abyss]

When Jesus, came down, the first thing he did after beating Satan is to kill every single non-Christian on the planet. Is this a religious book, or a horror novel?

Is there a difference ?

Seriously, just read the Bible. Genocide, mass rape, killing the first born, plagues... sounds horrific to me.

[That NOS Guy]

When Jesus, came down, the first thing he did after beating Satan is to kill every single non-Christian on the planet. Is this a religious book, or a horror novel?

Given that it's a graphic portrayl of Revelations? Horrifically religous. The book (Revelations) is quite gory and to certain extent sickening to image for those of you who haven't glanced at it.

[Mr Bean]

If heaven = Opposite of Hell and Heaven = Lame then Hell = Awesome so if Hell = Awesome and Heaven = Lame and Worship = Heaven and Sin = Hell then that book just gave me another reason to live a life of sin.

Wasn't this Blackadder's reasoning when he was made Archbishop of Canterbury and was trying to talk a dieing lord into willing his lands to the King? Basically that heaven was for people who liked singing and praying and talking to god, and hell was for people who liked rape, pillage and debauchery?

Yes indeed that was the reasoning behind it, when the pat, ooh you can't have done to many bad things line did not work.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Wow, I read left behind, and during Satan's trial I totally don't remember that part. Is there any chance someone with the book could post a chapter and/or page #? I'm going to my parents' house this weekend, and my dad has the books.

But yeah, that's messed up to say Darwin was led by Satan.

[Steven Snyder]

I am at a fundie relative's house and was skimming through the last book in the left behind series, and stumbled upon Satan's trial. In it, it's claimed that Satan formulated the theory of evolution (at some point befoe Earth was created), and this led him to believe he was equal to God, he then convinced most humans evolution was real, blah, blah, blah. So basically, it comes down to Satan went evil because he thought up evolution, and then the world went really down hill, when he spread that idea.

thousand years. hmm, I wonder what Hell is like?[/quote]

Well since god created Stan, and knew that he was going to do this all along, then god pretty much endorsed Stan's plan for "evilution" all along. Then he created Adam and Eve with a built-in susceptibility for the Stan's deceptions, just so some of them would be fooled so he could torment them for eternity.

...what an asshole...

[The Dark]

I read the last chapter. There is no sex in heavan, the only thing that matters is worshiping Jesus. Yay, that sounds like so much fun. [/sarcasm]

When Jesus, came down, the first thing he did after beating Satan is to kill every single non-Christian on the planet. Is this a religious book, or a horror novel?

It's based off a fundamentalist interpretation of the Book of Revelation. As such, everything within the Book must be understood literally, rather than anything being figurative or allegorical. It's also premillenialist, IIRC, in that all the "faithful" are taken prior to the tribulation, which is a point that's very disputed religiously (although it gets into rather technical points that give me a headache). Basically, it's a fire-and-brimstone interpretation of a religious writing.

[1123581321]

Wow, I read left behind, and during Satan's trial I totally don't remember that part. Is there any chance someone with the book could post a chapter and/or page #? I'm going to my parents' house this weekend, and my dad has the books.

But yeah, that's messed up to say Darwin was led by Satan.

It wasn't a trial as we know the word. Jesus stated charges and pronounced sentence, he didn't even bother to say guilty. It's in chapter 17 of Glorious Appearing.

[1123581321]

Wow, I read left behind, and during Satan's trial I totally don't remember that part. Is there any chance someone with the book could post a chapter and/or page #? I'm going to my parents' house this weekend, and my dad has the books.

But yeah, that's messed up to say Darwin was led by Satan.

Most of the Satan believing evolution stuff is brought out in Chapter 5, pg 79 and on in the last book, Glorious Appearing, again.

Sorry about the double post, but I didn't read your question very well and thought you said you don't remember a trial.

[General Zod]

Wow, I read left behind, and during Satan's trial I totally don't remember that part. Is there any chance someone with the book could post a chapter and/or page #? I'm going to my parents' house this weekend, and my dad has the books.

But yeah, that's messed up to say Darwin was led by Satan.

It wasn't a trial as we know the word. Jesus stated charges and pronounced sentence, he didn't even bother to say guilty. It's in chapter 17 of Glorious Appearing.

Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were particularly fond of those types of trials as well. Says quite a bit about the big G, don'tcha think?

[Junghalli]

It never even occurs to them that evolution supporters honestly don't believe in God at all; they simply can't comprehend it.

Emphasis mine.
Pardon me but what the fuck? There are definitely people who aren't creationists but still think there's some kind of higher power. You're talking to one of them.