EGGO

Someone finally became a freethinker?

Someone realized how pain felt like and didn't want others to feel it? And no, it doesn't mean all creation is evil.

Us videogamers can remember MegaMan...
-Protoman was created to be good, turned evil...

Us tv anime watchers can also remember Dragon Ball Z?
-16, some android or whatever, was programed to do evil deeds, but was very much on the protagonist's side, seeing the beauty in things, and protecting them all. He even went the extra step in commiting suicide to make sure they were all safe, and apologized for what his kind has done to the world.

winstonjen

Unfortunately, they use doublespeak when confronted with the argument that god set up A&E to fail from the start.

Calzaer

That's actually not a bad question. Good came into the world with Eve's "sin" of eating the apple. Knowing what Good is, she can now do Good. Beforehand, she could not do Good because she had no concept of Good.

Jeremiah

So you are saying that an evil God created a being that could do evil or good, and somewhere someone started doing good? I find this view interesting because it is the direct opposite of a Biblical view that says a good God created a being that could do good or evil, and with Adam/Eve started doing evil. In the Biblical view, man messed up the world, and in your view, God messed up the world.

Knowledge of good and evil I would say is different from doing good or evil. For example, when a dolphin comes to the aid of swimmers either drowning or threaten by sharks, I would call that good. The dolphin performs an instinctive action, which by human standards could be classified as good. Now, saying that a dolphin knows good or evil and chooses to act in a good manner is an unlikely explanation for their behavior.

So does man choose to do good or evil based upon knowledge of it, or does he do good or evil based upon an instinctive nature?

Arken

Do they believe that about the appendix too? Or do they think that our supposedly omnipotent, omniscient creator thought it was a good idea to leave us with an extra organ which has absolutely no function except to occasionally rupture and kill us?

What about male nipples which serve no function at all?

Calzaer

I noticed that. The key here, I believe, is God's apparent desire to hide his intentions from his creation by denying them the ability to determine the difference between good and evil. If they don't know what evil is, they can't tell that God is doing evil things. A similar problem exists if God is good; Adam and Eve can't know that what God does is Good. What purpose would a good diety performing good actions have to hide the nature of himself and his actions from his creation?

I would say that one has to know the difference between good and evil in order for any act to be subjectively (in reference to the actor) good or evil. A objectively evil act committed by a person who doesn't know the nature of the act he/she's committing doesn't make that person an evil person. Just like your dolphin example. The dolphin commits an act that would be seen as objectively "good", but doesn't know the nature of the act it's just performed. Thus, it can't be a "good" creature.

I'd like to point out that I take issue with your assumption that a dolphin can't, in fact, know good from evil. Dolphins are highly intelligent and communicative; if any "animal" has a framework of good an evil, it'd be a dolphin. However, I'm willing to work with that premise for the sake of this argument. Just don't assume I agree with you. It's really a good topic for another thread.

Once man has knowledge of good and evil, the acts he choses to engage in classify him as good or evil. Before that knowledge is avaliable, man's ignorance makes him just like the dolphin above. He may do good acts, but they are a matter of coincidence and chance rather than premeditation.

If all of creation is good, humans would have to commit "evil" (eating the fruit) in order to know that the act they just committed was evil, and that creation (and God) is good. Why would a good diety object to humans knowing its fundamental nature?

If all creation is evil, humans have to commit an objectively neutral act (eating the apple) that the evil creator sees as bad for his self-interest in order to know the moral nature of the act they committed and the moral nature of God/creation. It makes sense as to why an evil diety would be angry that its creation had discovered the ability to determine the diety's fundamental nature.

How does one chose from the two equally likely scenarios above? Notice that the former leaves at least one important question unanswered, that is the mystery of God's reaction to the discovery of the fundamental nature of creation. The latter answers that question, and thereby appears to be the theory that better fits the scriptural evidence than the former.

In either case, now that humans have the knowledge of good and evil, they have the capability to premeditate good and evil, and thereby perform good and evil acts that are both objectively good/evil from a metamoral perspective and subjectively good/evil from their perspective, thus making them good/evil actors, as opposed to animals accidentally performing good/evil acts.

By this veiw, both good AND evil entered the world as a result of man's original "sin", which would be a case for God's perfect neutrality if he didn't have all those nasty rotten fruits around him later.

***
Another viewpoint (one which effectively combats my original premise in the first post) would be that the bad fruits are a form of confirmation bias, in that the bad is emphasized and the good is ignored, downplayed, or honestly missed. If that's the case, good's omnibenevolent nature is still falsified, but an omnimalevolent nature is similarly falsified. A perfect neutraility would ensue. Not necessarily a neutraility like "God is Swiss", but a neutraility along the lines of God performs just as many good acts as evil acts. Or perhaps a neutrality along the lines of natural forces, such as summertime (which has both nice things like warm temperatures and singing birds, and nasty things like thunderstorms and tornados).

Jeremiah

In your interpretation of the God’s forbidding them to eat of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, you accept the argument that the Serpent makes against God that He has something to hide and to keep from them.

Here is another view. The Bible does not say that God did not want them to have that knowledge. His command is to not eat of the tree, and could be interpreted as a test of obedience. Would they obey God, share fellowship with Him and get their knowledge from Him? Or would they seek to be all knowing in themselves, rejecting God? They rebelled against God in their eating of the tree and their first response was to hide from Him. They chose to break fellowship with Him.

Calzaer

But without the knowledge gained by eating the fruit, they could not possibly have known that disobedience was bad. Further, the punishment enacted upon beings acting without moral knowledge was a punishment that assumed said beings DID have moral knowledge.

Before eating from the tree, humans were much like dogs. You can't just tell a dog not to jump on the couch. Even assuming it could fully understand you, it wouldn't have any way to know that disobeying you is a bad act. You have to thwap it with a newspaper a couple times for it to get the picture. With humans lacking subjective moral knowledge, God should have whacked them with a newspaper, omnipotently removed the effects of the apple from them, and said "No! Bad humans! Bad!" Instead, he assumed a subjective moral knowledge they did not posses until AFTER the crime had been committed.

And this is, of course, omitting the fact that an omniscient diety would already know the outcome of this "test" before he started it.

The crime is questionable even from an objective standpoint. From the subjective standpoint of the actors, they may have thought eating the apple was a GOOD thing, since, remember, they can't tell the difference between a good act and an evil act. The punishment meted out for the commission of this crime was also inexplicably harsh for a being who is alleged to be both just and merciful (not to mention a being who could simply rewind time or invent a spiritual stomach pump). [It was not "just" because the consequences that ensued were NOT the consequences God had set forth originally. He said nothing about kicking them out of the garden if they ate from this fruit. One could also argue its injustice on the grounds that even our flawed human system doesn't hold mentally deficient people fully accountable for crimes when they don't know the difference between right and wrong.]

Calzaer

I wish more people would read my threads.

Deacon Doubtmonger

So who said anything about knowledge??? I thought the point of the story is that we're supposed to trust and obey God and His Nature, not know them. So now one wonders why God hasn't smote the snot out of Nike for expropriating "Just Do It" ...
This ain't much better than eviction from Eden, if you ask me. The whole reason we miserable sinners do this with dogs is that they aren't capable of understanding or appreciating the whys and wherefores of virtue. So whether God metes out this punishment or the harsher one, he's still operating from the premise that His creations (though having minds, and thus presumably capable of such understanding and appreciation) are still no better than dumb animals. And we are meant to worship a being who takes such a dim view of His "children" ... and never lets them forget it???


Given this, I have to wonder (though Xians would never admit this) if the A&E story is no more than some big theological "NYAH-nyah-nyah-NYAH-nyah!" meant to get people used to the idea that they should passively accept pain and injustice if it comes from God. "You may have lots of reasons not to obey Me, but I have all the power and I'm gonna inflict pain on you anytime I want if you don't kiss My Holy Ass! I don't care if it hurts you and I don't have to! Get used to it!"

Decidedly a being NOT worthy of worship, and certainly not willing to set an example of right conduct for His kids.

Deacon Doubtmonger