neo_mp5

i don't understand the question.

Faith

Oh, a hypothetical...

I'm not sure hypotheticals apply to Sovereign Beings.


All choices have consequences. God outlined the consequences of eating from the ToKoG&E beforehand: a death sentence. A&E chose knowledge and independence over faith anyway. As a consequence, they traded newfound experiential knowledge for a life of hard work.


You see anger, I see love. No real surprise there.

Genesis 2 says God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into him the breath of life. Clearly the act of a loving, "fatherly" Creator.

Krosis

Let's.. for the sake of arguement.. assume that they do.. and just answer the question please.

-K

Quality

That act in itself isn't loving at all. The loving part is how you take care of the kid, not just having it.

Mageth

As I said, I "used that analogy to demonstrate that for something to be perfect, it cannot create imperfection. If God is perfect, he cannot create imperfection; if he does, then he is not perfect."

There's the rub, though. A&E apparently had no knowledge of good and evil before eating the fruit. So what meaning could "consequences" or "death" have to them?

Yes, that's one way to interpret the myth. Except I don't get the "faith" part. God was right there in front of them, was he not?

And why could it not be both? In any case, God is not described as having any emotion; one has to read into it what might be there. I detect anger in the initial reaction, and possibly something akin to remorse or tenderness in the subsequent clothing of A&E by God.

No, it's not clearly an act of fatherhood or of love. That's being read into the act, as so many other things are into the myths.

A creator is not a "father". One can argue that a "father" is a creator, I suppose. However, a father is much more than simply a creator.

What kind of father, for example, would leave a "loaded gun" (the infamous tree) in the middle of the Garden that his children are playing in? That is surely not the act I'd expect of a loving father, whether or not he tells them not to eat from it. And if he wanted them to eat from it, why tell them not to?

Demigawd

:notworthy :notworthy :notworthy

Faith

Then, hypothetically, both God and His Creation are perfect, or neither of them is.

Or a perfect God created perfection and allowed man to choose independence from Him.



In what verse of what chapter do you read that A&E had no previous knowledge of good or evil?



Not just faith in His existence, but faith in His Word and His ability to care for them for all eternity. Whether God revealed Himself physically, however, is debatable.



I'm sure I'm projecting onto God what my reaction, or the reaction of any loving parent, would be.


You're looking at it the wrong way. God could've commanded that A&E love and obey and remain faithful to Him. Instead He demonstrated His love by creating and giving them the ability to choose freely. Being forced to behave a certain way without a choice it isn't love at all.

Mageth

If you accept any one of those, then I really have no quibble. The whole "perfection" thing came about due to Magus' assertions.

But if you do accept one of those, then arguing that God is justified in giving "consequences" for A&E's actions become problematic, if you're so wont to do.

I did say "apparently", did I not? It's apparent from the following verses:

Gen 2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Gen 3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Gen 3:7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they [were] naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

Gen 3:11 And he said, Who told thee that thou [wast] naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

Note in particular the association of nakedness/sexuality with "good and evil." A theme that continues througout the Bible. God seems a bit obsessed about sex and sexuality. A rather strange obsession for a purely "spiritual" being, wouldn't you say?

Wow, you really are reading a lot into a little. There's no indication at all of any such "faith" on the part of A&E.

Not really:

Gen 3:8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.

Yes. And loving parents can be angry. In any case, God is not portrayed as a "father" or "parent" in Genesis. The "father" analogy doesn't appear until much later in the OT.

And I'm not arguing it is. However...

"Consequences" for a choice supposedly freely given by God is "loving" is free? You mentioned yourself that God warned them about making the wrong (against God's will) choice, consequences dictated by God. So just how "free" was this choice God gave them? The "free choice" appears to have had some rather significant strings attached.

If their choice was truly "free", then why the consequences? For the choice to be truly free, God should have said "Here's a tree of knowledge of good and evil; eat from it if you so choose."

cjack

At the same time, having hopelessly unreasonable consequences tacked onto one of those choices sort of DOES force one to behave a certain way, doesn't it?

Yet, without the knowledge of good and evil provided for them in advance, it would be hard for A&E to attach any significance to an "evil" outcome.


Since the "God as Father" bit has been brought up, here's an analogy out of real life:


Here in Arizona, we have a small but significant number of toddlers drowning in backyard pools every year. Some of them die, and some are disabled for life.

Now, let's take an average parent and average 2 year old. The parent tells the child in no uncertain terms that they are to stay away from the pool. To be safe, the parent keeps a close eye on the child at all times...except once.

The parent leaves the room to answer the phone. They're gone for all of one minute. In that time, the child (who has seen the parents enjoying themselves in the pool and does not fully understand the danger) somehow manages to get the back door open and falls in the pool, sinking to the bottom.


If we applied the Garden of Eden variety of "love," then the child (not the parent) would bear the responsibility. Assuming the kid survives, he or she would be punished for the rest of his or her life, and pass down the guilt for their "sin" onto every subsequent generation for the rest of time.


Does that make sense? Does the punishment fit the crime?

Does the parent bear any responsibility for leaving the child alone and the door to temptation unlocked?

If we want to pile on a bit, how about a sibling (taking place of the serpent) who tells the child its okay to jump in the pool?

Does all the responsibility still lie entirely with the child?


'Cause that's what the whole A & E story boils down to, IMO. As I said earlier, God creates a couple of human beings without either the capacity to understand the consequences of their actions, or (as Magus claims) the inability to resist temptation, then places a rather large temptation in front of them, and punishes them overly harshly when they make the "wrong" choice.

Faith

I'm not equipped to argue this point except to say I think A&E instinctually knew that God, their Creator, loved and cared for them. They wanted for nothing. So they did have some knowledge of what constituted "good" prior to eating from the tree.


Or the authors may have been. And the biblical association between nakedness/sexuality and evil carries over into society. No wonder people have so many hangups about the subject.


It's more likely that they felt His presence.



Freedom of choice requires difficult decisions and has significant consequences. Still, the consequences of the Fall were nothing truly horrible in my mind (although I've never lived in a Paradise that promised all I'd ever need or been immortal). We are blessed with the ability to think and reason and know, all of which were actualized after leaving the GoE. We are free to find God or choose to be independent of Him. Those seem more like gifts than punishments to me.