Repost:

This is an interesting one to focus on because (while the premise of this book is its own tangent) the table presents a case as if Talmudic religion is literally contrary to what real Torah faith should be (which both Judaism and Christianity aspire to). Talmud is supposedly to explicate Torah and set boundaries around it without contradicting it; like other explications, it can be casuistic at times, but this is not due to illogic. If there is a casuistry it's because it has broad support as a positive moral boundary in the original rabbinical community and afterward. So we need to find both what's misrepresented as contradictory and what's the degree to which Talmud takes improper liberties with Torah. (For instance, Jesus pointed out that "hate your enemy" was not in Torah but had gotten confused with it in the Talmudic Mishna period.)

1. Sanhedrin 54b-55a does not say "If one committed sodomy with a child of less than nine years, no guilt is incurred." It begins by quoting Lev. 18:22, the passage which it supposedly rejects, and continues: "With regard to what do disagree? Rav holds any that applies to one who engages in intercourse applies to one who engages in intercourse, and any that does not apply to one who engages in intercourse does not apply to one who engages in intercourse. And Shmuel holds: It is written: As with a woman. It is taught in accordance with of Rav: A male aged nine years and one day, ... liable." Also: "Rav says: Does not deem the intercourse of one who is less than nine years old like one who is nine years old." Unlike rape, homosexuality is being defined only as an adult state, and so the difference is that someone nine or under is regarded only as a victim of forbidden intercourse, which is treated separately under rape law as per Deut. 22:22-27, but someone over nine is also regarded as (at minimum) a passive sodomite. (Shmuel, the minority, wanted to count the child a sodomite if over three.) So the quote mistakenly infers that, because it is not tried as capital sodomy, there is no other punishment for the rapist, which is false. There is no statement about guilt not being incurred, there is only the silence about liability for adult sodomy.

2. Sanhedrin 64a does not say unqualified that "He who gives of his seed to Molech incurs no punishment." Actual text: "One who gives of his offspring to Molekh is not liable unless he hands over to the Molekh and passes through the fire. He handed over to the Molekh but did not pass through the fire, he passed through the fire but did not hand over to the Molekh, he is not liable, unless he hands over to the Molekh and passes through the fire." This is a straightforward definition of the crime (cited from Lev. 20:3-4 in 64b) having two parts, consent and injury. If one part is missing (the child was not committed to the fire despite parental intent to, or the child was committed to the fire despite parental intent against), the parent has not committed the crime. In the first case the parent has not crossed the threshold of injury, in the second case someone else crossed the threshold and can be tried as a kidnapper. To treat this simple legal definition as if a permission by cutting the text short is inappropriate. The Talmud doesn't condone generic "giving to Molekh" by defining a point at which the court takes action; if someone had ill intent but stopped short of the criminal boundary that person would still be both considered liable to heaven and triable for capital idolatry in other ways.

3. Sanhedrin 66a is accurately quoted: "One who curses his father or his mother is not liable unless he curses them with the name .... When he blasphemes the name he shall be put to death. Why the verse state The name? Taught concerning one who curses his father or his mother, that he is not liable unless he curses them with the name." The explanation of this dictum cites Lev. 24:16, which states twice the blasphemer of the name shall be executed. Menahem ruled that the repetition should be meaningful, and that therefore Moses is explicitly teaching that besides cursing God directly, it is also a capital crime to blaspheme the name indirectly; and so he ruled that the indirect form must be stated for the purpose of qualifying, or narrowing, or defining, the meaning of Ex. 21:17, cursing parents. This is clearly intended for the purpose of mercy, to make a capital crime harder to commit, especially one that has specific temptation for young adults. Should we object that the merciful application of a capital code, using a valid technicality, nullifies the code? I don't think so, since otherwise we'd be arguing that a teenager is at risk of execution for any single untoward statement that can be ruled a curse in a very broad way rather than the narrowly fenced way described here.

4. Sanhedrin 101a is accurately quoted: "One may whisper incantations of snakes and scorpions on Shabbat .... One may not consult the words of demons on Shabbat. Rabbi Yosei says: Even during the week, prohibited .... Demons of oil and demons of eggs, it is permitted to consult them; but due to that they deceive." The word for consulting is the same as in Deut. 18:10-11; the Talmudic word for demon here is first H7700 (meaning "shade" as in Deut. 32:17), and second H8269 twice meaning "prince", while in Deut. 18 it is H178 meaning a "murmurer". The type of incantation considered is the recitation of either a Bible verse or another formula to invoke healing power. Therefore the idea is that, though enforcement against demonism was very strict, certain practices were considered too minor (and probably widespread) to make significant issues, and these included speaking a formula over a snakebite on Sabbath (due to the emergency) and asking questions of the "princes" of eggs and oil (folk augury). The rabbis argued that the matters were merely "bad ideas" rather than enforceable. One of the known weaknesses of the Talmud is its frequent dependence on folk spiritism, so here the question is whether the exemption of minor lapses from capital crimes of idolatry was worth pursuing for the peace of those who practiced them. This question should not be answered from within our culture, but should be considered in light of the prevalence of the practice in its origin culture as indicated by the Talmud and other sources.

5. Yevamot 59b does not say "Women having intercourse with a beast can marry a priest, the act is but a mere wound." Actual text: "Rabbi Shimi bar Hiyya said: Had intercourse with an animal, fit for the priesthood. This is also taught: Had intercourse with one who is not a man, although stoning, fit for the priesthood. When Rav Dimi came he said: An incident, a certain girl in Hitlu who was sweeping the house, and a village dog sodomized her from behind. And Rabbi permitted her to the priesthood." This personal ruling is that it's anecdotally possible that intercourse with a male animal may not be intentional (later argument may apply this to demons as well). Stoning is still stated to apply if the act is intentional and forewarned against. This does not condone bestiality but cites a legal case where it was ruled unintentional; the quote makes it sound as if intentional bestiality was permitted, which is contradicted by the reference to stoning.

6. Avodah Zarah 62b does not say: "A harlot's hire is permitted, for what the woman has received is legally a gift." Actual text: "And in the corresponding payment, permitted. As it is taught: Gave but did not engage in intercourse with her ... permitted her payment. Since he did not engage in intercourse with her, it is merely a gift that he has given her." The text alludes to prostitute wages not being permitted as an offering (Deut. 23:19), and gives the general rule that if a person has not consummated an act of prostitution then an animal in payment would constitute a gift. The discussion into 63a raises various dilemmas such as whether the man intends to consummate the act much later than giving a gift, which might be offered in the meantime, and concludes that different rabbinical case laws are contradictory but "shall stand" as an unresolved dilemma. Does the discussion condone prostitution? No, that is judged elsewhere under Deut. 22:21, as the separable question is limited to when an offered animal is judged to be wages of prostitution.

7. Sanhedrin 65a does not say unqualified that "One can revile the Divine Name if mentally applying it to some other object." Actual text: "A blasphemer, what action is there? The twisting of his lips is an action .... Is liable only for a matter that involves an action .... And Rabbi Yohanan, what is different? ... A blasphemer is different, since is in the heart." Here Yohanan is the minority view, who believes that blasphemy should not be charged because it is essentially a heart matter (continuing into 65b). The majority view is that a blasphemer is liable for the action of speaking. The quote mistakenly enlarges on Yohanan's minority opinion as if final.

8. Nedarim 23b does not say unqualified that "One may declare: Every vow which I may make in the future shall be null." Actual text: "One who desires his vows not be upheld the entire year should stand up on Rosh HaShana and say: Any vow that I take in the future should be void .... If he remembers at the time of the vow and says: I am vowing in accordance with the initial intention, his vow has no substance. He did not say: I am vowing in accordance with the initial intention, he has uprooted his stipulation and upheld his vow. Rav Huna bar Hinnana intended to teach at lecture. Rava said to him: tanna conceals it in order that not treat vows lightly, and you teach it at lecture?" That is, including 23a, this practice was regulated such that a person who wishes a vow to apply to his "invalidation" context must explicitly state the context at the time of the vow, proving its invalidity and performativeness to the listener. The haggadah that follows shows that vows are to be treated seriously, and so the idea of intending the new year to be a clean slate should not be taught casuistically as an excuse to deceive later. The person who makes a separate annulment and then later vows without informing the audience of that annulment is condemned by the development of the discussion. Thus the context mitigates the then-current practice.

9. Sanhedrin 78a does not say unqualified that "If ten men smote a man with ten staves and he died, they are exempt from punishment." Actual text: "The Sages taught: Ten people struck with ten sticks and he died, whether simultaneously, whether one after the other, they are exempt .... Rather, in there is sufficient to kill, and another comes and kills him; that is liable." The ruling is disputed, and then the majority judgment is made that when the blows are sufficient to kill but the first did not finish the job, there is still liability under Lev. 24:17. Thus the sentence quoted is out of its context. It remains that if a man was struck simultaneously and it cannot be determined who killed him, it is not regarded as capital, but the men are still liable to his estate under tort law for having injured him.

So the chart presents a consistency that is unusual for those who miscite the Talmud: in each case there is an objection that the Talmudic judgment is too lenient compared to the apparent strictness of the Mosaic law in its brevity. Rows 3-4 are actually valid summaries of the Talmudic context, while others quote accurately but fail to consult the context. Here are the lenient judgments: 1. Sodomy of a boy nine or under is tried only as capital rape and not also as sodomy. 2. Giving a child to Molekh is defined only as including intent and application of fire, though other actions can be tried as generic idolatry. 3. Cursing parents is regarded by a technicality as limited to cursing by the explicit name of God and not capital otherwise. 4. Speaking a formula over a venomous bite on Sabbath, and performing augury on oil and eggs, are regarded as too minor to rise to capital idolatry. 5. Because it's possible for a male animal to rape a girl, as once happened, it is assumed (absent further evidence) that such an event is unintentional and not punished as either capital or prejudicial. 6. A man's gift to a woman is not ruled as prostitution if he doesn't have intercourse with her; if he does, there are unresolved and conflicting judgments about what circumstances might exempt the payment from being capital evidence, such as the gift long preceding the sex act. 7. The idea that verbal blasphemy might not be intentional in the heart is an overruled minority opinion from Yohanan. 8. The practice of asking forgiveness in advance if one should unintentionally break a future vow must be regulated by stating it again at the time a vow is made, i.e., by making clear to the audience that it is not to be taken as a vow. 9. The act of a group is not applied to the law about a single murderer if it is simultaneous (tort law would apply instead), but if there is a sequence of blows then it is capital.

In all cases the Talmud is the merciful text and the Torah if taken alone becomes the judgmental text by contrast! In all nine cases the rabbis are considering defenses that permit them not to apply capital charges (though in at least rows 1-2 they are cases where other capital charges would apply). And this is exactly the position Jesus took with the woman caught in adultery: he knew the crime was capital but he showed the way to extend her mercy by shaming her accusers (who had broken the law about bringing the male forward as well). The point of the Mosaic law was to demonstrate the gravity of sin by its capital charges so that we would learn to hate sin; it was never to create a gotcha environment. Just as in American law, the many defenses available against capital crimes allow us to sift until we are only executing those who have demonstrated for years they have no interest in learning to do right. We too try never to err in our use of capital punishment. Thus the conclusion that the Talmud is sinful in itself or contrary to legitimately merciful exposition of Mosaic law is not sustained by the chart given. We could criticize the Talmud for its irreverent jokes, its insular protectiveness against outsiders, or its extensive demonology and folk spiritism, but its legal judgments have not been evidenced anywhere as constituting permissions to obvious sins.

These contain a number of easily debunked theses. For instance, in the table of alleged "contrasting religions" between Torah law and Talmud law in "Esau-Edom", actual review shows the Talmud was more lenient and merciful than the plain text of the Torah (unless its corresponding passages about mercy are applied to balance the plain commands); but the text treats the Talmud as the abusive and unjust version when the two actually harmonize on the points listed. Talmud misquotes generically are hoax #2 on my list. Since it appears my explanation of this table has been deleted from ConPro, I'll repeat it below.

Speaking to the thumbnail only and not to the 5.5 hours, these are not admissions that the Jews "are not" Israelites. The first quote is correct but is just the first shocker sentence of a long article in which it's pointed out that Jew, Israelite, and Hebrew, "strictly speaking", have different definitions and contexts; it's not an admission, just an attention-getting distinction. The second quote isn't really accurate, as the primary name being Jews (from Judeans/Judahites) didn't affect the fact that secondary names fluctuated in popularity. The third quote is patently false, as I've documented; it's a telephone-game version of quotes that actually appear in the encyclopedia with far different meaning. Details, hoax #6.

Funturistic, none of these indicate foreknowledge or narrative control. They are just random citations of two common terms, "six million" and "Jews", in close proximity. The people who compiled these took any such reference, including even one to $6,000,000; their cites "proved too much". When the stats were run with different numbers, it turned out three million had a higher correlation than six million. So this is statistically meaningless. There was nobody prophesying six million Jews would be killed in eastern Europe. Details, hoax #3.

FYI archon (ruler) is from Greek archein (reign); arcane (secret) is from Latin arca (ark, chest), no relation.

the holy serpent Yahweh

But don't you reject this interpretation, Dot? Why speak of it favorably?

Thank you for not pinging me with your accusation. I don't know what you think I'm doing to "manipulate votes" that anyone else is prohibited from doing, or what past you're referring to. Accusations without ping and without evidence and without specifics that can be pinned down by the accused amount to chilling speech, especially from a banning mod.

"you decided to tell...". I haven't "decided" anything

Yeah, people who tell have decided to tell, that's just logic.

I don't have an agenda. I believe you do and to you if it's not in the canonical gospels is not proof.

I have one agenda, namely Jesus. Something not in the gospels might well be proof. But if you contradict every fact of history on a subject, in or out of the gospels, that requires extraordinary evidence. Jesus 100% upheld Hebrew Scripture, no historical evidence teaches that he told his disciples secretly that Scripture was wrong, there would be no movement without dedication to Scripture. That's why your narrative on that point is just a narrative. Nothing in Nag Hammadi has your narrative.

my story mentioned by early Christian theologians and evangelists like Marcion of Sinope

Nope. No text mentions such an imaginative retcon as you propose. If you had said you're just Marcionite, it would've made more sense, because he did teach that, but he didn't say that Jesus and the Apostles taught it (as you did): he implied that the Apostles worked for the Demiurge (WP); his Scriptural canon still included details contrary to the Demiurge theory, against his edit attempts otherwise; and his work on antitheses is now lost, and does not even appear in the newly uncovered documents. So what you're doing is imagining something that could've happened if only Marcion was totally right in his view and had a perfect tradition from Jesus's time and every other indication of history is wrong. No historian would view this as a workable theory of what actually happened.

So yeah, when you double down on apparently rejecting facts of history instead of interacting with them, my tone does tend to change.

For 2,000 years, we have been told that God is love, that he is the father of light. Yet, open the Old Testament, and you meet a different entity entirely.

The evidence is that Jesus's teachings made headway among the Jews because they agreed with the God depicted in Hebrew Scripture. All the apostles and evangelists emphatically used Scripture as a final authority, and several times they recognized that each others' works were Scripture too. The fact that Marcion invented a duality narrative, or based it on other gnostics, doesn't mean that narrative existed in primitive Christianity.

Could it be that our so-called official New Testament might have actually been deliberately reassembled later to counteract Marcion's version? IMO, that's exactly what happened.

Marcion admitted that confirmed evangel and confirmed apostolic writings were Scripture. The difference between the NT and Marcion's canon is entirely one of degree. Because Scripture is holistic, you can prove any core tenet of traditional Christianity with reference to Marcionite Scripture alone. If you admit the Marcionite canon, you would have no reason to reject other gospels or epistles that say the same thing (just as I do not reject all the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, but only hold them to a lower standard of authority).

They took his challenge so seriously that they constructed a new cannon, four gospels, Acts, and everything else in such a way to police his ideas.

The books of the canon were already circulating, nothing was constructed anew, even as your own (liberal) dating would prove. His ideas may have been "policed" (though there was no political power to force anything for another 200 years) but only because all other churches but the Marcionite "church" recognized the internal contradictions of the system early. You say the Marcionite church was regarded as very widespread, so without arguing that either way I'll note it, but if it were "coherent" Christianity it would have survived instead of essentially disappearing in the 3rd century. The orthodox arguments and texts stand, and Marcion's works didn't survive, which is not an indication that Marcion was so much better but an indication that he had nothing to say that wasn't expressed by his canon and the quotations of him that survived. Althist is fun, but must be admitted as such.

Scholars like Adolf von Harnack

Didn't I say 19th-century German unbelievers? Harnack was counted as a Christian but he rejected the Apostles' Creed on Jesus and rejected the Bible.

So the inclusion of say Acts and the Old Testament cannon came in as a sort of counterpoint.

No, the Hebrew canon had been getting closed in the 1st century BC and 1st century AD. All the Hebrew books were recognized as Scripture, and taught to be so by Jesus and the Apostles, with the exception of a couple late disputes persisting for a time over books like Esther. The only reason Marcion could reject the OT utterly was that he was in a Greek milieu where reliance on the Hebrew had begun to wane (but was still extant throughout 2nd century patristics). It wasn't about the OT "coming in", instead the NT shows that it was the NT books that were slowly coming in to join the OT.

These became deliberately essential to the new narrative

No, they were not regarded as essential until late 4th century. They were regarded as inspired, useful, beneficial, and sufficient, but there was no argument of essentiality. Look, if the church has Luke-Acts for 100 years, and then suddenly Marcion says only most of Luke is good and none of Acts, it's clear to everyone that he is innovating on received tradition, and it's clear from history that they continued to preserve the whole Luke-Acts because Marcion's version didn't have a slate of dedicated copyists throughout the known world like the established tradition did. There is no althist available where Marcion's Luke existed as Scripture, and Acts, which was written by the same man around the same time to the same audience, was accorded universally as useless until somebody got it to be thought of as inspired as if it counteracted Marcion. It's Luke, it's the same author! Did you know that Papias, quoted by Eusebius, mentioned and named the four gospels around the 120s, long before Marcion or Irenaeus step up?

many modern scholars argue that the NT was published as a collection specifically constructed against Marion's challenge

Nope, nobody published the "NT" until Constantine, much later. Nor was his canon "constructed" but it consisted of all Greek Scriptures that rose to the level of inspiration and acceptance that other works (including some verses added by Marcion) didn't.

the comforting narrative that the canonical Bible just dropped fully formed from the heavens

I agree with you in rejecting that narrative. All mature Biblical Christians recognize and admit the same.

So, if history is written by the winners, then perhaps our understanding of early Christianity is missing, has deliberately omitted a whole perspective.

I'm very empathetic to Romanism omitting perspectives and have consistently appealed here for primitive Christianity. Gnosticism isn't primitive Christianity and never had approval from Jesus's apostles or their appointed successors at large. When gnosticism is tested as a theological system (as it was), it fails logic, history, and inspiration.

Now, in all our conversations I've been attempting to find out how you know what is true. I don't see that answer. I see you sticking to a storyline, even imagining what Jesus might have said that totally contradicts what history shows he did say. If you had quoted Gospel of Thomas, I wouldn't object because Jesus may have said everything in there in context, and there may be an echo of apostolic tradition in it. But you're coming in with Marcion whose only tradition, if any, comes from either part of the holistic Bible (which was accepted along with the rest), or Valentinus or Simon or Menander before him, who were never accepted. It was apostate (standing aside from Christianity), never something that acted as if part of the same Christianity as everyone else kept. So you don't seem to be committed to seek the truth wherever it leads and to accept the facts of history. You're free to show me otherwise.

Hey Apex, you have an excellent doctrine of purism, I had to wrestle some time in the past to come to a similar understanding. If you are convinced in your heart and mind that any woman in any leadership is sinning, you do have a duty to separate from those (like me) who profess Christianity but also advocate for what you think sin, under Romans 14.

What I discovered was that each being fully convinced in his own mind means that those who are separated from must also continue in their convictions. Over time either one party will be revealed as false by true apostasy (to the point of the group shriveling up and the Lord removing its candlestick), or both parties will find a reconciliation (revealing both concerns as legitimate and harmonizing them).

So I'd appreciate your keeping discussion lines open as part of the duty of seeking to understand other views well enough to make the most refined and complete case to judge them.

Practically, in this case, since it sounds like you've held for some time that all women moderating any forum here are sinning (except maybe a women's and/or children's forum), it's surprising that hasn't come out, and only arose in this forum (that you don't frequent) because of your recent awareness. You didn't notice on Meta a couple months ago when this was discussed, nor have I seen you comment on any forum about how important it is for you to give this warning about female mods. So I'm not convinced it's your actual view rather than something performative that you use to feel good among others you work with.

The actual debate is rather simple, and could be engaged anywhere, but it requires us both being open to being transformed by the Lord through Scripture. On this topic and the one I raised to you a moment ago, I'm not certain you wish to practice that openness: so I merely note that one path to it is submitting both your position and the concerns of others to the Lord for adjudication. This willingness and submission is reflected in dialogue. The fact that you lay out your case in detail is a great first step, but is not always a signal that one wants to undertake the journey.

Look, I was right, now you're just getting dogmatic and sectarian. You decided to tell everyone a "narrative" without any backing about Jesus and his disciples, and you're now backing it by the "narrative" of Plato's cave, without any respect to whether things happened or not.

Since you're not getting my own allegory but supplying your own, Frakes hosted a show where elaborate urban legends were acted out to let the audience determine which actually happened and which were entirely fabricated. Your idea that Jesus rejected Scripture, when there is 100% testimony (even at Nag Hammadi) that Jesus affirmed Scripture more than anyone, is unhelpful to your moving forward. You're stuck in a story someone told you that you believe in telling others as the only way to validate it.

I told you that I refuse all those titles upon the satan and you continue to pretend I accord them to him. The satan is not self-existent (Yahweh) or architect (demiurge) or environment molder or divinity or wise (Sophia-spawned). You're not listening to that.

If our past was erased (as to emanations, although it wasn't), then you don't get to write a new past about Jesus rejecting Scripture. We must inquire together. I haven't objected to the parts of your gnosticism that speak of awakening and theosis, but they cannot proceed in the escape you desire without a firm recognition that what happens happens and cannot be lied about. Jesus on earth had a particular character shown in all sources and if we reject that character we reject our best Guide.

Funny how the self-ID'd troll handshakes are the primary ones to fail to understand that censorship is about content and enforcement is about objective behavior.

They're not any one person's rules, they're the objective rules all users accepted by commenting here (as incorporated by reference in site policy).

You even have freedom of speech to propose alternative interpretations of the rules (I tried to get the community to do that for months). But you don't propose a better interpretation here, do you?

Whoever you are, if you were here earlier you could've stood for modship and gotten popular approval. But I doubt you did.

When there are no trollers there is no need for con-trollers. Think about it!

Covid Planning

Upvoted!

Alien Encounter Strategy

Absolutely.

Let me tell you a story

No thanks. Jonathan Frakes said, "Never happened."

story

Hmmm, don't you govern yourself and accord yourself the right to control yourself? And didn't you grow up needing that right accorded to your parents and caregivers? It seems that somewhere between Self and Other there must lie a claim of greatest right to govern.

I actually like that idea. So Enmendurana reigns and then at some point they decide his reign "was" 72,000 years long because that's easier to remember than the actual number of years. I could see that being approved by the caste as a "necessary" alignment recalculation.

so tell us what it stands for already

Yeah, welcome back. I don't recall if you ever answered why you named your account after the people you claimed to hate (Jacob/Israel). It's almost like you're revealing who you are in your alleged anti-Semitism. But don't mind me, I won't make a big deal about it.

When the Biblical god is eradicated then pushback to freewill begins, and that's a good thing why? Fatalism or something?

I don't bot, Apex, thanks. I do know people who have a habit of reading the entire comments feed as I do.

So you're censoring your own thoughts about censorship, I understand; and you're not interested in explaining your own actions. Anyway, I appreciate you taking time out from your censored fora and visiting us in these uncensored waters, and I always look for good things.

I have autodiagnostic autism. I diagnosed myself so that nobody will trust the diagnosis. That sounds like what you're describing.

Conspiracy: The "spectrum" increasing is just another aspect of Big Pharma defining everyone to be sick because to be sick is to be controllable, just like being under 18 or being "elderly" or being "disabled" or being minority or LGBTQ+ makes you controllable. By autodiagnosis, I control myself. Wait till I get started on autodidacticism.

a conspiracy forum that's moderated by people who censor stuff on behalf of the people in power

Hi Apex, I'm really not upset at you for nuking all my ConPro content over a misunderstanding, but your having said that suggests there may be an open question. You seem to think "censorship" is happening here but not at forums like ConPro. Now, I understand modern censorship to mean viewpoint suppression, while behavior suppression is the ordinary good purpose of forum rules across the board and is viewpoint-neutral. I've been auditing TINAE, and she is disciplining based essentially on viewpoint-neutral rules like disrespect and trolling (disruption). On the other hand, I got nuked because I helpfully answered a sincere question about what Jews existed who defended the oddities of the Talmud (I wasn't even defending it myself in that response). That seemed viewpoint-related and/or related to viewpoints I had previously taken in an attempt to sincerely interact with the forum's (unstated, evolving) purposes.

What would you say censorship is?

Competition appears

What I said, you go by surface appearance, but there is more data to resolve than that.

actions we consider to be evil. It takes higher order thinking to avoid those

The fact that higher thinking exists out of a world currently obsessed with competition and entropy is of the unresolved data.

We can grant that entropy is a law, but have we seen any type of greater manifestation of it in living organisms?

The idea of evolution that things just get better, by nature and without direction, contradicts the laws of thermodynamics. That's another data point. Since order is observed, evolutionists attribute that order to Blind Chance. Theists, to First Cause. Either way, the assumption is that the world isn't only destructive and competitive. Everyone believes there is good out there somewhere despite appearances; everyone believes that evil is something that will (naturally) be judged. People see it as a natural law, the law of sowing and reaping, what goes around coming around. (A couple deny it, but the honest among them follow atheist Will Provine in admitting that the only alternative is nihilism.)

So wherever you stand, as soon as you use moral language such as evil existing, you logically entail responsibility (which entails freewill). If there were no responsibility nothing would be "evil"; if things are evil then responsibility is defined as actions that avoid evil.

I don't mind that we are out of step, I've said my peace as to the OP. The issue is whether you'd like to find out the truth and the resolution of the disagreement between us, or not. If you don't care and are comfortable remaining in your presuppositions (even though the forum exists to challenge people), sobeit. But if you have committed to pursue truth at all costs, it's not enough to bat away opposition with weak arguments (veganism) or to dismiss arguments as illogical without working through the definitions of the words you use.

Your initial salvo was that evil exists "due to the nature of things", which implies you presume that the corrupted state we observe is the only state this world could ever have had. However, science shows that the formation of the universe was dramatically different from its ongoing phases, and in particular that via the second law the universe was more orderly in the past than it is now (less entropic). How can we weigh the evidence of science and history together to find out the true "nature of things" together? Are you prepared to investigate your presumptions and weigh whether they are capable of nuance? From recent observations we don't have hard proof that the universe began with perfection or that it began with imperfection, either way; so we need to draw inferences from analysis of science and history, not just recent observation. Without getting to that root we wouldn't likely arrive at the same conclusion.

No, the year-month storyline would have Adam begetting a son at 10 years, Abraham at 8, etc. It was just another invention of 19th-century German atheists who hated the Bible and wanted to imagine that people didn't live that long in the past. But the punctuated breakdown of ages across the Bible is just what you'd expect from a degrading universe.

No, eating plants isn't always killing them, you might just be eating their fruit. Yes, vegetarians have worked out safe plant-based diets for cats, although the real issue is adaptation. Since evolutionists believe plant-processing synthesis was adapted in other species, and since creationists believe cats once had it, they should agree that death is not the issue.

they cry out for help when being cut down. And what of decaying organic matter?

Sounds like special pleading.

God cannot create a contradiction, being is not nonbeing. All realities we can imagine (except nihilism) have this logical requirement. If freewill without evil, or evil without freewill, were a logical possibility, then we could talk about it. If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.