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[Sergius]

You miss the point that humans, not having free will, don't have a choice on whether they eat or don't eat the "forbidden" fruit. Given a set of circumstances, they will eat it. And being that God made them, and designed whatever non-free thought processes they had, knew exactly what it would take for them to eat it, or not eat it. So punishing them for taking it "too early" or not being "ready for it" makes no sense whatsoever.

[Servant Corps]

* Servant Corps sighs.

Just because God knows what you will do doesn't mean you don't have free will. God knows what you will do, but you do not what you will do. You still have free will, in that you have the ability to choose what you want to do, but God already knows what you will choose.

[Sergius]

* Sergius sighs louder, rolls eyes, and makes a face, shaking his head while mumbling "tsk tsk tsk", crosses his arms, looks at the sky, hands open into the air, "why me, why me".

We are talking about a magic fruit that gives Man "free will", the ability to tell good from evil, etc etc etc. Taking the story at face value (that means, not assuming that everything said about the fruit is a damn dirty lie by a chuckling God, and that it's just a worthless fruit designed to test something just for the heck of it as it seems to be someone's very own personal and completely unsubstantiated assertion), it stands to reason that Man before fruit = no free will. Man after fruit = free will. Therefore, Man has no choice whether he eats it or not (no free will). Once he gets free will and the ability to decide for himself, he already ate it.

[Servant Corps]

And, you are dealing with a person who is not a Chrisitan and is very ignorant of Chrisitan religion. In fact, according to my religion, God created mankind with the distniction of having free will, causing the angels to remark why God has given free will to mankind, when mankind will only make mischief. In response, God told the angels that he gave mankind "free will" for a reason, and then taught mankind knowledge as well.

The fruit is meaningless, it was just a test. It had no special properties. It did not impart knowledge or free will. It's just an fruit. I don't understand how this is hard to compherend, it's just a fruit.

[chaoticag]

The test was a success, man shows his free will by defying God.

[Sergius]

And, you are dealing with a person who is not a Chrisitan and is very ignorant of Chrisitan religion. In fact, according to my religion, God created mankind with the distniction of having free will, causing the angels to remark why God has given free will to mankind, when mankind will only make mischief. In response, God told the angels that he gave mankind "free will" for a reason, and then taught mankind knowledge as well.

The fruit is meaningless, it was just a test. It had no special properties. It did not impart knowledge or free will. It's just an fruit. I don't understand how this is hard to compherend, it's just a fruit.

I don't know what religion you're arguing about. This thread is clearly about the one that is represented in the Old Testament Bible, and it is explicitly stated in said bible that the fruit is not just a fruit, and that it has special properties, and these properties have an immediate effect the very second that it is eaten. Now, if you have a different bible and religion where this is not the case as is in the book of Genesis, you could make a separate thread about it and not demand that everyone here change the subject to the religion/book you're talking about.

[Servant Corps]

I'm not interested in making a seperate thread, especially since I'm distrustful of religious topics.

The point is, the story in the Old Teastment is not the only story of Adam and Eve out there. That is what I was trying to get at. I was presenting how I saw the story of Adam and Eve, how it was presented to me, in the religion which I believe in. So, the idea that this story somehow is a stunning proof that God does not exist seems silly, because there is more than one version of events out there. PTTG?? wants to know how different people handle the story of Adam and Eve, and that likely includes people who are outside of Christanity and Judaism, so this is why my post matters.

The religion I'm arguing about Islam, by the way.

[Sergius]

I might have missed that part, I'm behind a very restrictive firewall and the... method I use to circumvent it is very slow. That makes it hard for me to go back and reread the whole thread. Either way, the post I made at the start of this page was directed at Duke, you just happened to post yours 10 seconds before I hit submit.

[Yanlin]

Disclaimer: For about 1000 years, the Bible (Known as the old testiment.) was told mouth to ear. Grandpa to children.

Factor in memory corruption (How your memory of something chages with time, like remembering a situation different from how it really happened.) and everybody throwing their own version in, I refuse to acknowledge that the Bible is true. Who knows what that book might have been back then. Somebody took shit way too seriously and made a cult.

Since then, the Bible has probably been rewritten as new facts arose. Such as historical events that actually happened and were documented. But this doesn't prove anything else. Not even in the slightest bit.

Did I mention it also contains typos? Example: Red sea.

It's supposed to be reed sea. Sea of reeds. Reed.

How do I know this? I speak Hebrew. The Bible was written in ancient Hebrew. The word stayed the same. Reed is a type of plant that grows on marshland. Science tells us that the area where the red sea is today, was once shallower and full of reeds.

Why this happened? A translation error.

This may be an invalid example, since this is a translation after all. But I do remember a case where there was a numbering error somewhere.

Also, improbable ages. In the Bible it says man was destined to live 120 years. Look at how we live now. With modern medicine and shit, we still live to about 80 or 90. Some of the healthier live to 100 and it takes some serious dedication and luck to reach anything more.

Also, Noah lived for what? 500 years? Yeah. Sure.

Remember, I'm approaching this from a scientific mindset. Science has already proved that the odds for the Bible to be utter fairy tale are rather high.

I refuse to believe something which shows no proof of its own but has tons of proof against it.

But hell, god is a whole different matter. I wouldn't call myself an atheist. But I wouldn't affiliate to any religion. PROVE to me that god exists. God doesn't have to be like you "know" him. God could just be a divine figure that spawns some matter every once and a while, allowing a universe such as ours to be created. After all, that matter came from SOMEWHERE. But once again, questions bring more questions. What created god? What created the thing that created god? Etc.

[Rooster]

But there is one question I would like to ask:
How divine powers that god uses work?
Everybody knows you can't defy the laws of physics. If you make something impossible, then its a proof that we don't know enough. Who knows maybe mankind will be powerfull enough to be immortal or something like that in the far future.

[Idiom]

How divine powers that god uses work?

Imagine you are two dimensional. Imagine I am three dimensional. I can manipulate you in ways that you can't even comprehend and seemingly break the laws of your two dimensions by moving in higher dimensions.

If God is, he's outside of time at the least, and possibly even space-time. Anything out of space-time I suppose would be a god to us.

That good can't exist without evil is just arguing semantics.

So why not allow less evil than there is anyway? Then again, why not more?
God only knows why (dur hur hur). Either way, some degree of things we don't enjoy have to exist else, as I've read somewhere around here already, the world would be flat.

The fruit is meaningless, it was just a test. It had no special properties. It did not impart knowledge or free will. It's just an fruit. I don't understand how this is hard to compherend, it's just a fruit.

If I were a god, I would totally test my creation's ability to act independently like that. Except it would involve strippers instead of fruit.

[Rooster]

[not serious]
I don't believe you!
I also don't like apples and thus say it was an orange! Yeah, sue me!
[/not serious]
Okay enough of stupidity 

I think somewhere on this forum someone said that you can understand perfect things with imperfect mind, and I still don't believe that god can defy laws unless he made them

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And now you'll say that he did...

[Idiom]

I didn't say an imperfect mind. I said imperfect perception. That we are physically incapable of movements in other dimensions that to us appear to be magic.

You can understand things with an imperfect mind, yes, but not all things. I am inclined to say that there is a limit to what you can understand with an imperfect mind, but that wasn't my point. Ignore this tangent paragraph and pay attention to the one above.

[Shoruke]

Okay, so god can't make us comprehend stuff because we're too stupid. And there's no way we'll ever figure out why he's such a hypocrite, because he's pan-dimensional or some such, so the best we've got is "he moves in mysterious ways" (which is an understatement in the extreme).

So how about this: god is omniscient.

OMNI means all
SCIENT means knowing

Let's say there is an omniscient, omnipotent god, he made humans, and set up a situation so that their robotic minds would invariably go eat that little apple (oh yeah he knew Satan would be there too... again, omniscient). And then, X-thousand years later, we're here discussing "wtf happened" and the best we have is "I don't know" because god buggered off after dumpin us out of that garden.

God seriously couldn't just come back for say, ten minutes, and hold the world's most clearest and concise lecture ever, and clear the whole thing up? Of course he could. He's omniscient, he knows EVERYTHING, and I guarantee that the english language has enough words in it that we could get the general idea.

Or better yet, since he's omniscient (and therefore knows precisely how the history of the world would unfold ever since he created it), why didn't he make the +2 Apple of Free Thought just a tiny bit different, so that when we ate it, and got free will, and made up some languages and logic and stuff, that we would be able to understand more?

"Because god moves in mysterious ways". Meaning we suffer, and don't know why, because god, if there is a god (specifically THIS god from THIS religious text), said so.

[Gorjo MacGrymm]

I cant believe i am going to add to this conversation but....................

Humans (Adam, then Eve) had free will from the start.  The tree is not the Tree of Knowlegde.  That is a shortened misnomer.  It is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (it should be philisophicaly significant to everyone that good and evil are not moral absolutes, but rather an un-official add-on to what man was first made to be).  If man did not have free will, he would have been incapable of eating from the tree he would have been incapable of eating The Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil given to him by Eve, who was deceived by Satan.  I will get back to Satan shortly.

IMHO-  "Created in the image of God" means:  We have the ability to create and destroy.  Which is another way of saying we have free will, but also much more.  I believe that He created us to see what we would do, and thereby glorify Himself in the process.  If I was to point to a supporting example (but not the only one) i would point towards the part of Genesis where God brought all the animals of the earth before Adam to see what Adam would name them.  He allowed us to define them, name them, give them meaning and purpose.  I believe He delights in this and is a more honest form of worship.  This, by no means, is to say He is happy with everything we invent.

Back to Satan.  In the Old Testament, the ancient Hebrews (thats for Yanlin  ) saw Satan not as a Fallen Angel, but as Gods chosen instrument of testing man.  Satan was always the one sent to prove or disprove the veracity of someones faith before God.  This slowly but surely changed as the ancient Hebrews wrote down their lore until he became an adversary.  First an adversary against humans before God, then and adversary of God.  And then Peter's church came along and created the Devil we still use to this day in our popular culture.

While I do call myself a Christian, I have always had a hard time accepting much of the New Testament.  I feel that much of what has been done in His name is atrocius, but that is to be expected in anything controlled by man, sorta like communism (snicker, sorry, but most obvious choice as an example to me).  I stand by what John 3:16 says.  Everything else is, in the end, add-ons, as far as the New Testament goes.  I have a really hard time accepting a bunch of books as the literal Word of God (the new testament) when multiple different sects of faith have different books within it.  But i am willing to accept the possibility that maybe thats the way its supposed to be, because all people are different and God will use different means to reach them.

Lastly, the favorite battlecry of those who wish to argue the non-existence of God is, in a nuthell, "Why do bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people, if God is all loving?"  Well, if God was a tyrant who controlled every decision we humans made, then yeah, i would see a problem.  He would become an "asshole" as Aquizzar so eloquently pointed out.  Fact of the matter is, we got free will folks.  We can fuck each other over all we want.  Also, if a arguementative non-believer wanted to get really dirty, he/she might ask, "What about babies born defective or brain dead or retarted or.....", you get the drift.  Answer?  Honestly, I dont know.  But i have faith (ohhh, that sticky word that so iritates angry non-believers) that God will take care of them.  This is a frustrating response so someone who does not believe in a Heaven of sorts, because it threatens his/her only concept of existence, which is the here and now on earth.  It would mean they might have been born "defective" (its just a word, please dont flame me for being unfeeling towards those born different) and not been able to enjoy life, or might be crippled tomorrow and have no hope.  That would be terrifying to someone without faith.  For those who bring up "what if you child was born different?" or something along those lines, the answer is still the same.  Both "I dont know" and "I have faith".

Well, I know I said "lastly" earlier, but Im on a roll now so.......:
I think all people, all souls, existed before God created the universe in Genesis ch. 1.  I believe He gave us this universe as a place to create and destroy with pure free will.  He gave us Dominion over the earth and all things under heaven.  He gave us this playground to learn about ourselves, and therefore learn about God Himself, as He placed us into this world in His image, or, more accurately, with His abilities, but in a finite sense.  Time is a function of the reality He created for us.  It did not exist before creation, now will it after.  This life/world/universe of ours is just a nano-metrical blip in our whole existence, but we get blinded by that fact with the vagaries of our daily lives.  People have said, "You really think Hitler could have gone to Heaven if he repented right before he died?!"  I say , YES.  John 3:16.  A reminder that this world isnt all there is.  That this life is transient, just a brief moment in the totality of our existence, and that all we do here in the end will be moot when its all over and we return to God.  We draw breath for only a short while in this world, and during this period we are tested, challenged, pulled apart and besieged with a million bits of craziness everyday.  This isnt so we can be Judged worthy or not.  This isnt so that we can be divided in the goods and bads.  Thats what we humans do, so we can grasp our reality without losing our minds after eating from the tree.  God tests us so we can learn about ourselves and therefor by proxy learn about Him.  We are our fathers/mothers.

sigh, burnt out now.  I am sure non of that made any damn sense.  oh well, there it is anyway.  have at it.