scigirl

I don't think I"m explaining myself very well, so I'll try to think of an analogy.

What God seemed to do to Adam and Eve - punishing them for disobeying him in the manner that he did - would be like punishing a deaf person for playing the wrong note on the piano the first time he ever played one. The way in which musicians learn to play music is by trial and error - they hear a wrong note, and they correct themselves.

Humans clearly learn this way in many different aspects of their life. Avoidance of pain and suffering is one of the cornerstones of behavior, and hence of some morality.

But there is no evidence to suggest that Adam and Eve had any of those "learning opportunities." They lived a nice sheltered life, with no real consequences, no real bad things happening (apparently they were even vegetarian so they had no concept of inflicting suffering or pain on others). So - how on earth were they mentally able to appreciate the consequences of disobeying a direct order from God? In most states in the Union, they'd probably be found by courts of law as "mentally incapable of appreciating the consequences of their actions." Yet God held them and all their decendents accountable!

I don't understand how anyone can read that story and be ok with their deity. Even if it was just a story - it's still an awful story.

scigirl

Evangelion

• The verse which states that they were "very good" (not "perfect", which the Bible never says they were.)
  
• The verse which says that death came upon them as a result of sin.

Your argument necessarily results in the conclusion that their ability to overeat is predicated on a point of physiology. This renders the question of free will quite irrelevant.

Physical ability (or inability) is not equivalent to free will. Free will is the rational ability to make decisions. Whether or not we are physically capable of carrying out those decisions, is nother matter entirely.

For example: I find that my car has a flat tyre. I say to myself "OK, I'll just lift up the car with my bare hands, and place it on a couple of wheelstands." That is my free will decision. Having attempted to lift the car, however, I discover (to my lasting astonishment) that I am physically incapable of moving it.

According to you, this means that I do not have free will. But the reality, of course, is quite different.

I subscribe to the latter position. (Highlighted.)

Non sequiter. The physiology of Adam and Eve is totally unrelated to the issue of free will.

At least you can shower. The gas isn't working at my place (for some strange reason) so there's no hot water for showers. :boohoo:



__________________
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Søren Kierkegaard

Evangelion

I suggest to you that the presence of animals and plants provides ample opportunity for Adam and Eve to witness death in a variety of forms. So yes, they would have been familiar with the concept.

Now God said "Don't eat the fruit. If you do eat the fruit, you'll die." You don't need to be a genius in order to realise that this constitutes a prohibition. Adam and Eve clearly understood it, as we see from their guilty actions after the fact.

No, He only held them accountable for their own actions. Having become mortal, Adam and Eve subsequently had mortal children. That is a very simple matter of cause and effect. There's nothing unfair about it (unless you're a pro-lifer, perhaps...?)

If Adam and Eve already had children who were subsequently rendered mortal after the sin of their parents, then yes, that would have been unfair. But this was not, in fact, the case.

The most awful thing about it is that it's an accurate description of human nature; to whit, that humans are inherently selfish, and will turn on each other in order to escape the consequences of their own actions.

Whatever else you may think about the people who wrote the Bible, there can be no disputing the fact that they understood human nature very well indeed.



__________________
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Søren Kierkegaard

Vinnie

Just a quick note on free will. Those of us who advocate it usually do so in this form:

H + E + FW = A

or in word form:

Heridity + Enviroment + Free Will = Action or Act

Heredity and Enviroment naturally limit our acts. No matter how much I will myself to fly off a cliif I cannot do so without any external help. This does not mean I do not have free will. It was my free wil lchoice to try to fly off the mountain but H + E had an effect on the end result. Heredity and enviroment condition our acts, but they do not determine them.

An argument for the existence of FW:

Quote is compliments of Ronald Tacelli and Peter Kreeft, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, p. 137.

Vinnie

Evangelion

Well played sir.

Straight to the boundary for six. :notworthy



__________________
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Søren Kierkegaard

yguy

Or the teacher corrects them. The Teacher did correct Adam, but he rejected the correction. It was like saying he played a wrong note because the teacher's piano was out of tune.

wordsmyth

Nothing in Genesis gave me any indication that Adam and Eve could have comprehended the repercussions of disobeying God.

Imagine you have a child. You bake a big chocolate cake and set it on the kitchen table. You tell the child not to eat the cake or they will get a spanking. If the child has never been spanked before nor seen another child spanked, then how can the child comprehend the ramifications of what it means to be spanked.

The same with Adam and Eve. They had never disobeyed God before, nor had they ever witnessed the repercussions of anyone else disobeying God before. They also had little to no experience with death so Gods proclamation "on the day thou eat the fruit, thou shalt surely die" would be completely meaningless without the knowledge of what it means to die.

As I see it, Adam and Eve weren't punished so much for disobeying God as they were for being ignorant, which is a flaw in Gods design. If you design a plane that doesn't fly straight, you don't fault the plane.

mark9950

Christian free will came with a price death.

yguy

Had that been the case, Adam could have pleaded ignorance. Instead, he tried to blame his mistake on someone else, which he would have had no reason to do had his mistake been honest.

scigirl

Evangelon,

You stated that Adam and Eve would have seen animals suffer. However, isn't it true that God killled the first animal for them, AFTER they had eaten the fruit?

Also - do you think their lives were free from disease? If so, than their choices and thus their consequences would be a lot different than our choices and consequences today, don't you agree?

No I don't think the Biblical authors understood that much about human nature. Sure, they understood some - just like any mythological author (shakespeare, gilgamesh, the ancient greeks - they all had some clue as to human greed, etc). However, they had no concept about mental illness being in part biological, to just illustrate one example.

Furthermore, even if the authors were aware of human nature, it doesn't mean they were aware of its causes.

scigirl