Chili

No ship sinking here. I chose my words very carefully and I am afraid to use words that are less familiar to me to avoid confusion. Well you better jump ship now before it is too late.

From a religious perspective we are a 'total being' and therefore are free to chose between good and evil so we can be held accountable for our actions. This is a necessary condition if the Law must convict us of sin. Gal.2:17, I think, tells us that "in seeking to be justified we must stand convicted of sin" as if we must be caught with our hands in the cookie-jar.

The only reason we are not free is because we are divided in our own mind but since both minds are ours we are free . . . or at least we must pretend that we are free until we encounter the Hypostatic Union wherein our two minds become one. Hence there is Free Will in heaven but not on earth even though we are determined (I am a Determinist) by our own subconscious mind wherein "'every hair on our head is counted." So then, the Church holds that we are free, because, as a going concern we are one entity that makes choices.No, man is man and Adam is hu-man. Hu- is from humi- and means earthly to indicate that humans have two natures. The first [heavenly] nature is man to which a certain degree of earhtliness has been added to make it hu-man. I even think that A-dam suggest some kind of earthliness in ancient languages.
Get it out of your head that man is doomed or set up for failure. Predestined, yes, but that is good and very much needed so you (impersonal), finally, can find peace in your own self.

Edited to add "impersonal" because I sure do not wish to imply that you need it (lol).

Chili

I will argue that the best thing that can ever happen in N. America is that we gather all our bibles from North to South and burn them in a windrow from West to East.

And you know, that "just backwards" is not such a bad idea because if a 180 degree metanoia is required to send us in the right direction we are best off to have it right backwards.

But really sir, it does say that man was placed in Eden and it was not until after man ate from the apple that a breezy time of day caused to confusion in the mind of man. The question "who told you" suggests a second identity from where Adam could now look upon himself and for the first time realized that he was naked.

Plognark

I disagree, but i've got no personal quarrel with you, so we'll probably just have to agree to disagree on this

Hehe, something I should do more of myself

I still don't see how this addresses my questions. You've not demonstrated any sort of logical loophole that would allow free will under the most common basic attributes ascribed to the Christian flavor of god. Basically it seems that you keep saying it is so, and explain it as a somewhat complex duality of rational mind and spiritual soul, but fail to provide either evidence for or a logical space that can be filled by it.

However, you've stated that you're a determinist (at least here on earth), so i'm pretty sure you could have just said "you're right, there's no free will on earth"...but you seem to be a determinist with conditions?

You're conceptualization of a free will in heaven is something i've not put a great deal of thought into, admittedly, but that's primarily because I find the concept of an afterlife, well, fanciful and wishful thinking at best :huh:

It's interesting though, thanks for the thought exercises, even if I still largely disagree with you :thumbs: '

Be that as it may, i'm still quite sure that the passages from genesis I posted are clearly examples of a proper noun switch from a pronoun. :huh:

Of course, we'd have to go back to the original texts in their original language, but that's quite a bit beyond both of us, I imagine.

Eh, I think you misunderstand. I don't believe man is doomed for failure. I'm oddly optimistic for our species' potential in the future.

However, under the most common interpretations of Christianity i'm familiar with, God did set us up with full awareness (God's awareness, not ours) of every failure and subsequent predetermined punishment that we would commit and be burdened with. Again, I see no logical path that would absolve God of guilt for every scrap of evil in this world, nor any room for free will in any form. :huh:

fr0sty

Hmmm, free will in heaven... If that's the case, what's to stop the fall from grace happening again, and again and again... What special case will prevent someone else playing the role of lucifer and starting the whole thing again?!?! Certainly that should have been done the first time.

PDH5204

Muidiri:

The problem you have is that most persons who have ever expounded on the story have it all wrong, at least in my oh so humble opinion [or hubris, depending on just how one sees it].

In any event, the first item concerns the command itself. Most commentators simply misconstrue the command. That other Paul reports that the "command was to life." Why would he say such a thing when the common understanding is that the command lead to their deaths? Of course, that other Paul more fully reports that the command that was to life was found to be death to him. Now as to why that is so:

Ever tell your kids, don't touch the stove lest ye be burnt? I know, we don't say it that way, but that is what this command is, i.e., a warning designed to avoid a harmful result [so the command was to life]. More specifically, the man was a sinner. And so long as he does not have the knowledge of tov and ra', God "accepts" his sin [or more correctly, his ignorance] because he cannot be held morally responsible for his conduct in the absence of that knowledge which will inform him as to whether his deeds are good or bad. So knowing that the man is a sinner, God says, don't eat from the tree of knowing tov and ra'. And since God knew that the man was going to be an unrepetant sob [as it were], he added in that part about surely dying if he ate from the fruit of that tree.

Now note that once the man eats, he gains the knowledge of tov and ra' [their eyes were opened]. And then God himself makes an appearance and points out to the man the error of his ways. Now go read Leviticus 4. Do you see that one has no duty to repent unless one knows the wrongful nature of his conduct or has the same pointed out to him? Can you also now see that Genesis provides both, i.e., by eating from the tree the man gains the knowledge of the wrongfulness of his conduct that he lacked prior and God also points out the error of his way to make that reality plain? So the man ought to be saying, sorry Lord, I screwed up. But he doesn't. What does he do instead? He blames God. And that is another misreading that has rather tragically survived the ages. If the man was merely or only blaming the woman, he need only have said....the woman gave to me and I ate. But instead, he starts with.....THE WOMAN YOU GAVE TO ME, she gave to me of the fruit of the tree and I ate.....so it's your fault God since you gave her to me. May I please say that anyone who either has kids or has been around kids long enough has heard the exact same excuse offered by one or more children.

So, no, there was no "set up." And the test, if there was one, was not in judging whether the man would disobey and eat, but rather, what would the man do after he ate. And, as stated, rather than acknowledge his error and plead for God's forgiveness, he blames God. And, lastly, since no one, let alone God, likes an unrepetent sinner who will live forever [the adversary is one such creature], God, in his mercy, banishes the man from the garden and thus prevents access to the tree of life [lest that man live forever as an unrepentant sinner].

Chili

What do you mean "flavor of God?" We are God after the convergence of our twain mind and that is when heaven begins while we are alive here upon this earth which is called the New Heaven and New Earth with the only difference that the celestial sea is no longer because it has been absorbed in this world to create the new image of heaven and earth. I am not talking about some future event after JC comes back to get us but in the right here and now but only in the life of those who are called and chosen. This description without the celestial sea is found in Rev. 21:1. The only condition I have is that the only reason we are not free is because we are divided in our own mind. We call the other side our subconscious mind which occupies about 80 % of our brains and we use involuntary because we have no direct access to it. In Heaven we would wherefore the celestial sea is gone which is the time when our subconscious knowledge, also called intuition, has become rational knowledge. Hence the sea was no longer.I am not, at least not in the Western world where fertility clinics outnumber abortion clinics these days. Most of Christianity is pretty warped in its idea about God.

God is two causes removed from evil and has nothing to do with it. Evil did not exist nor was it conceived to exist until Gen.3 and that was the third cause.

Child of No Gods

There's a difference between God and Lord God? What might it be? How can Lord God be working against God. And what scriptural traditions does your interpretation of the Adam and Eve story come from? It's certainly not Abrahamic.

If I buy your unsupported assertion that Adam did not exist as a ego until after the fall, I have to ignore Geneis 2:19

which takes place before the appearance of the serpent.

Child of No Gods

The first time a child asked a parent "Why do you have to work all the time?" To paraphrase Aaron, out came this just-so story about how the first woman was tricked by a clever reptile and took the first man down with her.

Of course, it could have a much more interesting history. In Sumerian myth, Enki is cursed by the goddess Ninhursag for eating forbidden herbs. Ninhursag later relents and restores Enki to life, creating the goddess Nin-ti from his rib. Nin-ti being the Lady of Life in that mythology, which had been around for over a thousand years before the biblical myth was written. Interestingly, Eve is a transliteration of the Hebrew Havvah, meaning mother of all living. But then, Adam gave her the name Eve before he "knew" her and she conceived, so at the time, she was mother of nothing.

Did the serpent have legs before he was cursed to go on his belly, bruising heels? I've heard some YEC's claim that dinosaurs fossils are really the earthly remains of the evil angels who fell with Lucifer. Seems their spirit bodies couldn't exist in the outer lands, so they took material bodies after the form of Lucifer, their master.

I ramble. It's late.

Sven

Ignoring other problems: This story has no biblical support at all. Here's what Genesis 3 says (NIV):

It's perfectly cleat that your god condems Adam and Eve because of the act of eating, not because of they blame him for it. It remains a set up.

Plognark

As Sven has pointed out, your intepretation is spurious, does not match the translation, and appears to be little more than wishful thinking.

Every theist on this planet has their own interpretation of what god is (or what godds are for polytheists). Yours is simply one among billions. :huh:

Well, that we both agree on

I see pretty much no basis for your assertion :huh:

Again, feel free to provide some, you've piqued my interest :wave: