Johnny Skeptic

From a fundamentalist viewpoint, and possibly from a liberal Christian viewpoint as well, if no one had ever sinned, which the book of Genesis says was God's desire, today, what would people talk about? Certainly not good weather, because the weather would always be good. Certainly not about wars, because there wouldn't be any. Certainly not about sicknesses, because there wouldn't be any. Without the presence of adversities, how could anyone fully appreciate the good things in life? That is exactly the same argument that Christians sometimes use when skeptics complain that God allows bad things to happen.

In no one had ever sinned, I guess that killer whales, great white sharks, whales, and polar bears would be eating vegetarian diets, right?

Replies from Christians should prove to be quite interesting indeed.

NZSkep

imagine trying to eat veggies when you have all those sharp teeth for tearing meat but none of the molars for grinding tough veggies. must be difficult to survive.

maxxmann

From my take on the whole story is that man "was to be fruitful and multiply." If they had never sinned, I take this to mean that everyone would enjoy the work they do and gain much from it and enjoy sex without all the baggage. And kids wouldn't be all that hard to raise, since they would be perfect.

I have always said that, according to the story in Genesis, Adam and Eve(and I guess the rest of us) really lost out on this one.

Eldarion Lathria

Like it is now. Adam and Eve are fictional. Sin does not exist.

Eldarion Lathria

Dean Anderson

Well, (according to the Fundy view) death was only introduced to the world because of Adam's sin...

So everyone and everything that has ever been born would still be alive.

You know that frogspawn - thousands of eggs laid because only one or two survive... Nope. Thousands of frogs.

So the world would basically be covered in a 10 mile deep carpet of live rabbits, mice and cockroaches...

Of course, if that's not enough, every person who has ever lived would still be alive - crawling around naked (because Adam and Eve wouldn't have invented clothes) on top of the writhing mass...

sharon45

The god of Genesis wouldn't have settled with humans not committing the first sin, so he would have just tried another tactic until it worked.

cydonia

He's got so much riding on it. This is one of those topics that gives me a brain-twister, he didn't want us to sin, but made it possible anyway, and knew in advance it was going to happen, even though he didn't want it to happen and could have stopped the apple crunching, on and on in circles. Drove me nuts when I took it seriously. Wait it still drives me nuts.

maxxmann

I am not sure, according to the story, if Adam's sin indtroduced death. My simple reasoning is this: death was the penalty for eating of the tree and they must have had some understanding that this was bad(implied by the serpent's questioning) so up to this point in the story, the idea of death and their understanding of it prevented them from eating of the tree.

If this is true it seems that death could still occur in a sinless world, but maybe not in the way we understand it today.

Howard

That’s always perplexed me. The fruitful males I know don’t seem to be all that interested in multiplying.

Johnny Skeptic

Ok, but as I asked in my opening post, what would people talk about?