rhutchin

The problem is that LFW requires, in theory, that a person be equally able to choose between that which he desires and that which he does not desire. For example, if a person hates liver, LFW says that the person, when offered liver to eat, would be equally likely to accept the liver as to refuse it. However, people seem to always prefer (have a prior prejudice, inclination, or disposition toward) that which they desire over that which they do not desire and where that situation exists, LFW cannot exist.

John A. Broussard

"people seem to always prefer (have a prior prejudice, inclination, or disposition toward) that which they desire over that which they do not desire"

How can you repeatedly engage in such meaningless vebiage.

Obviously people prefer what they desire. That's what "prefer" means.

Sheesh!

rhutchin

It could be that Moses edited out the part where Adam wrote, “I don’t believe I could have been so naïve.�? Maybe nothing was uncommon in a world that had just been created. There are a lot of things that Adam does not expand upon in the narrative.

Well, we could say that Adam did not explain the command very well. The narrative simply gives the facts without expanding on those facts. Obviously, it leaves much room for speculation.

Good scams are often based on the truth or one’s perception of the truth. Seems like history says that both Adam/Eve died contrary to what the serpent said (Ye shall not surely die). Apparently, God did not lie.

The command to Adam was—

Gen 2
16 …God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

In eating the fruit, A/E disobeyed God; they sinned. The penalty, death, was the consequence and this resulted in their being banished from the garden and unable to eat from the tree of life.

We are told that the wages of sin is death. The presumption has been that without sin there can be no death. I don’t think immortality is a bad assumption in the absence of sin.

I would disagree on some points. While God wanted A/E to be obedient and to serve Him, it was for their benefit, not His (thus God did not want them under his thumb taken in a negative context). Having the knowledge of good and evil did not make A/E gods only like God in that one limited characteristic. God was not jealous. He issued a command and specified a punishment for disobedience. Once the command was broken, God carried out the punishment.

Jack the Bodiless

In Exodus, God promises in advance that HE will harden Pharaoh's heart, and later initiates the heart-hardening in Exodus 7:13. Pharaoh doesn't get the chance to harden his OWN heart until God has already done it for him several times.

A post from a previous thread on this:

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...60#post1524460

In every Biblical translation of Exodus 7:13 (the first actual heart-hardening incident), God either hardens Pharaoh's heart directly, or Pharaoh's heart hardens "as God had said" earlier, in Exodus 7:3 (where God himself declares that HE will harden Pharaoh's heart).

So God started it.

rhutchin

It could be that Moses edited out the part where Adam wrote, “I don’t believe I could have been so naïve.�? Maybe nothing was uncommon in a world that had just been created. There are a lot of things that Adam does not expand upon in the narrative.

Well, we could say that Adam did not explain the command very well. The narrative simply gives the facts without expanding on those facts. Obviously, it leaves much room for speculation.

Good scams are often based on the truth or one’s perception of the truth. Seems like history says that both Adam/Eve died contrary to what the serpent said (Ye shall not surely die). Apparently, God did not lie.

The command to Adam was—

Gen 2
16 …God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

In eating the fruit, A/E disobeyed God; they sinned. The penalty, death, was the consequence and this resulted in their being banished from the garden and unable to eat from the tree of life.

We are told that the wages of sin is death. The presumption has been that without sin there can be no death. I don’t think immortality is a bad assumption in the absence of sin.

I would disagree on some points. While God wanted A/E to be obedient and to serve Him, it was for their benefit, not His (thus God did not want them under his thumb taken in a negative context). Having the knowledge of good and evil did not make A/E gods only like God in that one limited characteristic. God was not jealous. He issued a command and specified a punishment for disobedience. Once the command was broken, God carried out the punishment.

Jack the Bodiless

God DID lie: the Serpent did not.

From the context, it is clear that the Serpent wasn't promising immortality. He was contradicting God's lie of immediate death: the lie that the fruit was toxic.
Your logic got a little scrambled there. Eventual death was the consequence of not easting from the Tree of Life, which was in turn a consequence of their banishment.
Mortality was not a part of any "punishment". Genesis is quite clear on this. Exile from Eden was for one specific purpose, to prevent them becoming too powerful (by becoming immortal). The punishment was the other stuff: pain in childbirth, weeds in crops etc.

The promised consequence, immediate death, wasn't specified as a "punishment" either (toxins don't "punish" those who eat them). But, of course, the fruit was harmless.
...And herein lies the problem: the retrojection of later doctrines back into the story.

Jimmy Higgins

Well, sorry to be blunt, but one could use that explanation to explain away any sort of claim. Perhaps the beastility of Adam before Eve came was redacted from Adam's Scripture by Moses because Moses knew that such actions were wrong now. See how absurd one could get using such reasoning as supposing redaction?

But you said that the serpent talking was a sign it was Satan, but if Adam sees nothing unusual in a talking serpent, then why suppose any superpower being involved. Furtherly, how much more do you want Adam to explain? You are blaming Adam for not including critical details that would support your vision of the story. Perhaps Adam doesn't include it in the story because it never happened the way you see it. Just like with the serpent. The story speaks that the serpent is the most cunning of animals. The serpent asks a question, Eve answers. The serpent corrects her and sees through a fake proclamation of God. This is how the story reads. However, you want to include details such as the serpent hates man, that the serpent somehow lies to the woman. That isn't spoken of in the story.

We could say that. The story doesn't though.
You may speculate any number of things in the story. I'm actually reading the story and following what it actually says, not what it could of said.

God speaks of near instanteous death, not spiritual death or a gradual death. In fact, when God is punishing the three players in The Fall, he doesn't even mention anything about stripping immortality.

But where does it read that this is prohibition? God speaks that they can't eat of the tree. Why? Because if they did, they would die, not because God didn't want them to, atleast that's not what God says. God tells the man that if he eats of that tree, he would die, not be punished with death.

But no where is it written that it was a prohibition. How could you break a rule that was never a rule. God wanted man to remain a man, not become a god.
God punished man, woman and serpent (who was never part of the alleged prohibition in the first place) with specific punishments like failing at farming and women having painful child birth. God throws them from the garden as an afterthought when God realizes his greatest displeasure that man had become like he was.

Where exactly is this in the narrative of The Fall?

Excuse me? God made man to tend to the Garden. Man never had to exist in the first place, so why would one say being born and then made a servent was in man's best interest? Could the same be said of blacks being born into slavery being in their best interest?

Except for the fact that God himself says that man and woman had become like he was.

God didn't issue a command. He warned of eating from a specific tree. The serpent knew the warning was a lie. Once man had become like God and not a servent anymore, God threw man from Eden. This is jealousy!

rhutchin

I agree, but there is more involved than that. You are also telling the person that they do not get to choose to do what they want to do if it conflicts with that which you want them to do. It’s another form of might makes right; you get to impose your desires on others if you don’t like what they are doing. The free will of the individual is put in conflict with the sovereignty of the state. Same thing happens with God.

rhutchin

The Catholic Bible includes some extra books known as the Apocrypha. From what people tell me, these books don’t really add anything of substance to that which is contained in the other books. This also is not a translation issue.

Wayne Delia

The Apocrypha are a collection of books not included in the Bible at all - containing some controversial additional Gospels with embarrassing details of Jesus's childhood (Infancy Gospel of Thomas) in which Jesus evidently killed one or two of His playmates in a childish tantrum.

WMD