A Dialog With Ritchie
Posted in Bible, Blogosphere, Daylight Atheism, Religion, Responses on | 6 minutes | 68 Comments →
Recently, I was over at DA criticizing Ebonmuse for jumping to conclusions in his essay, Original Virtue, when a commenter named Ritchie pitched me a few questions relating to my criticism. I explained to Ritchie that Ebonmuse moderates my persistent dissent, which means I am only allowed to comment on Daylight Atheism once per 27 hours, which means I have to choose my battles carefully. Since each of Ritchie's questions could easily support a post of their own, I suggested we move the conversation here, where comments are not moderated and speech is truly free. So, enough of my blathering, here's Ritchie in his own words:
To give readers some background, cl and I were both posting on daylightatheism.org, on a post about original sin and free will. Naturally, Adam and Eve were talked about. Ebonmuse, the site's author, asked why should the sin of Adam and Eve pass on to their children, and by extension, to us? Why can't each person be born with a blank slate? God, apparently did not arrange things this way. Instead, He Himself introduced the taint of sin and then blames us for possessing that flaw.
At this point cl responded by saying he believes there is nothing in scripture to support the idea that God introduced sin into the human race, and I responded with this:
Who made the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden (knowing in advance that Adam and Eve would eat from it)? Who gave instructions to Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit despite the fact that they had no concept of good or evil and were therefore unable to make moral decisions on their own? Who created the serpent (or Satan, whichever you prefer), knowing in advance the role he would play in man's downfall? Scripture says God, God, God. Whichever way you turn it, the entire episode in Eden is an almightly cock-up and it's all God's fault, frankly (despite the fact that we humans CARRY the blame for it…).
At this point, cl is in conversation with many posters, responding to many questions per post, so he asked he to ask my questions here where he could give them the time needed to do them justice, and so I am, in the hope that he will.
Well, I suppose first I should be clear on where we agree: for the sake of this discussion I'm assuming a literal interpretation of Genesis' account of the fall of man, meaning that for example, we're assuming things like Adam, Eve, the serpent and the tree of knowledge of good and evil were objective things that actually existed, as opposed to metaphor or analogy intended to convey myth or moral message.
In this context, I agree with Ritchie that according to the Bible, God put the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden; knew in advance that Adam and Eve would eat from it; gave them instructions not to eat from it despite the fact they had no knowledge of good and evil; and did in fact create the serpent knowing in advance the role he would play in humanity's downfall. I also agree that God apparently did not arrange things such that each person can be born with a blank slate.
So where do Ritchie and I disagree?
1) In the original essay, Ebonmuse made the claim that God "deliberately introduce[d] a taint of sin into the entire human race, [then] blame[d] us for that flaw which he himself gave to us…" My contention that scripture does not support this claim is apparently what lead to Ritchie's questions. I do not believe that any of the pre-stated points of agreement between Ritchie and myself justify Ebonmuse's claim that God introduced sin into the human race, or Ritchie's claim that "it's all God's fault." I would further note that Ebonmuse's claim is a positive claim – sans justification. On what evidence does Ebonmuse rest? To anyone who would make the positive claim, what verse in the Bible supports the position that God introduced sin into the human race? I'm especially interested in a verse that is not Isaiah 45:7, and I'm also more than willing to explain why I don't accept Isaiah 45:7 as justification for the claim, should anyone be interested. Of equal importance, what Bible verses challenge said position?
2) Implicit in Ritchie's counter-argument is the assumption that Adam and Eve's ignorance of good or evil rendered them incapable of making "competent moral decisions on their own." I have no problem with the idea that Adam and Eve lacked knowledge of good and evil before they ate from the tree; where I disagree is that their pre-fall state rendered them incapable of making a competent moral decision. The argument itself is not uncommon, and Teleprompter, another commenter who visits DA, also asked this question, albeit in somewhat modified form:
..if Adam and Eve did not know what good and evil meant, then why would it be a sin for them to disobey? Is it wrong for a toddler who has no knowledge of rules to disobey her parents?
-Teleprompter
This raises a fundamental question that's plagued philosophers for millennia, known as the Euthyphro dilemma: is an act evil because it is evil? Or because the Gods say it's evil? While answering that question is certainly beyond the scope of today's post, nonetheless, Ritchie and Teleprompter's question merits an answer.
Fundamentally, it seems to me that we're discussing when ignorance of the law is an excuse, but the problem is that God did indeed command both Adam and Eve to specifically avoid eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so neither Adam nor Eve were ignorant of the law. They didn't need knowledge of good and evil in order to obey God – and if disobedience to God is sin – it follows that they didn't need knowledge of good and evil to sin. As opposed to a toddler who can't yet understand the law, it's presumed that Adam and Eve were grown adults, hence it follows that they clearly understood God's command. For this reason, I replied that Teleprompter compares apples and oranges.
Ritchie asked a few other questions that also deserve address, and it's apparent this post is going to need a t least one follow-up, as I'm all out of time today.
(to be continued…)
scott
says...Hi cl
I replied on the DA thread but since you can only reply once every 24 hours over there I thought I’d follow you back here.
You seem to be under the impression that Adam and Eve would be able to have an understanding of right and wrong, despite the fact that they had no understanding of good and evil. Whilst I do not make the claim that every wrong act is evil, I would argue that even if disobeying god is a sin, wouldn’t Adam and Eve need to have knowledge of what sin is in order to do it?
Until they ate the apple, sin did not even exist in the world. Arguing that disobeying god is then a sin when sin didn’t even exist until the act of disobedience occurred seems a little too circular to me.
cl
says...Hey scott, thanks for coming over. We can agree that until they ate the apple, sin did not even exist (I would say ‘had not occurred’) in the world. With that in mind,
Well, then I guess I’m not being clear enough. What I mean to say is that no, they would not have an understanding or knowledge of what right and wrong / good and evil / sin and righteousness are, but presuming they understand what eating means and what a tree is, they would most certainly understand a basic command like “don’t eat off that tree.”
I’d say no, on the logic that I don’t need to know what slander is – or that it’s illegal – in order to it.
The idea is that disobeying God is always sin. Sin is a behavior, which occurs, not an object, which exists. No sin had occurred until they broke the command and ate the apple. They did not need to know that disobeying God was sin in order to disobey God, just as I don’t need know slander is illegal in order to slander.
I hope some or any or all of that helps. If not, let’s pick up again tomorrow. I’ve been coding css for four hours straight, not to mention blogging for half the day. My brain and eyes are fried :
scott
says...Ok, so imagine there is a behaviour in the universe that we as of yet don’t know of. It’s a behavious that we can’t even comprehend, we have no notion of what it is or if it’s good or if it’s bad or anything at all like that. Now imagine being told, don’t disobey me or you’ll be committing that behaviour. Now as that behaviour is so utterly foreign to you(“until they ate the apple, sin did not even exist (I would say ‘had not occurred’)”), how can you make a judgement of whether to commit that act?
I mean how does god explain to them that they need to obey him because something bad will happen if they don’t understand what bad is? The concept of bad or wrong hasn’t even come to occur in the universe yet as far as they were concerned.
So yes they can commit sin, but can god really hold them accountable and if he can’t, then they can’t really be called sinners.
Ritchie
says...Oooh, a thread on me! I’ve never felt so wanted!
Let me kick off by saying thanks for delivering this thread as promised.
Now let’s get stuck in. For the sake of this discussion, yes, let’s take it as read a literal account of the Genesis story. I of course do not believe such a story really happened, but my point in arguing it is to demonstrate that even taken on its own terms, the story makes little sense and is hugely flawed. Even if we take it as a metaphor, that still does not really rescue it from some rather appaling moral directives (unless you want to do some spectacular literary gymnastics in the translation).
On your first point, God was creator and and overseer of Eden. Not only did He create it and everything in it, but He did so being both all-powerful and all-knowing. As He was creating each thing He knew what it would do and He could have created it differently. I would say God introduced sin from the very moment he created the serpent in full knowledge that it would soon tempt Adam and Eve to sin. I cannot speak for Ebonmuse, of course, but I can explain why his conclusions make perfect sense to me.
As for your second point, I think scott is on the right lines. How could Adam and Eve be expected to obey God if they had no sense of right or wrong? And when I say that, I mean they could not reason that it is good to obey God and bad to disobey him.
You state…
But this misses the point. We are not talking about ignorance of the law here. I might commit a crime because I did not know it was illegal. But I still have a sense of right and wrong. I understand the concept of doing bad things. Adam and Eve were indeed instructed not to eat the fruit, but without a concept of good or evil, how could they have known that obedience to God is good, and disobedience is bad? If you truly had no concept of good or evil and God gives you an instruction, how are you supposed to know that you should obey him? You can’t make the simple connection of obedience = good, disobedience = bad.
You made (or referenced) the comparison to the toddler. But even here, I would say that a toddler has a rudimentary understanding of good and bad. Children seem to dislike being told of by their parents, so they quickly associate certain actions with praise (which is good), and others with being told off (which is bad). Even here they are applying a rudimentary understanding of good and evil. If a child truly had no concept of good and bad, it would just wander around doing whatever it wanted. If it started playing with the plug socket and Mum told it off, they might find the angry-sounding words interesting, but would not stop playing with the socket. A person needs an understanding of good or evil for words like ‘should/shouldn’t’, ‘must/mustn’t’, ‘ought to/ought not to’ to make any sense whatsoever.
I realise this is a complicated point to get across. I hope I’m explaining it sufficiently.
neosnowqueen
says...I would actually disagree with you, Ritchie, and say that toddlers do not know what is right and what is wrong. They have to learn through experiences based on what they like and dislike. They wanted to play with the plug, but when Mommy took away dessert or gave a little slap to the rump, the toddler doesn’t like. So they learn what’s right and wrong through association. But they have to learn through experience.
CL, you say that Adam and Eve were basically adults rather than toddlers, but I think that’s overly simplistic. They were made as adults and never went through a child’s experiences that made them into adults as we know them, with twenty years of experience in a difficult world, rather than a few years in a perfect one. So perhaps comparing them to toddlers is appropriate.
Ritchie
says...neosnowqueen,
With respect I didn’t say they did. Of course children do not have a developed sense of morals and need to be taught right from wrong. But they need a sense of good and bad to start off with.
Yes, that is precisely right! They want to play with the plug socket, but whenever they do, Mum tells them off or gives them a smack (which is bad). When they finish their dinner, they get ice-cream afterwards (which is good). This is how children learn. But they need a concept of good and bad for this to work. If they don’t, then being told off or being smacked is NOT bad. Getting ice-cream for dessert is NOT good. And then learning by association does not work.
neosnowqueen
says...I think we’re confusing “good/bad” and “like/dislike.” The first seems to suggest morality, while likes and dislikes, especially in the early years, are amoral (later in life, they can be informed by morality, but not always). As an example, it was a running joke in my family that to properly punish me, they’d send me to a friend’s house for a party, since I preferred to cave myself in my room with a book rather than go out and be with people. For other people, it’s the other way around. The likes and dislikes in this case are independent of any moral concept.
Ritchie
says...neosnowqueen,
Actually, I think you’re correct there. In which case the comparison between Adam and Eve to children is simply a bad metaphor.
Adam and Eve may well have had likes and dislikes. Yet they did not (before the fall) have any concept of what was morally good or evil. This leaves us with the original dilemna – without being able to connect ‘obedience to God’ with ‘good’ and ‘disobedience to God’ as ‘bad’, how could they have been expected to obey Him, or deserve to be judged when they did not?
cl
says...Hey everybody, good comments, lots of valid points in different directions.. I’m in the middle of something right this second, but definitely planning on jumping in here soon. Thanks again.
neosnowqueen
says...Actually, I think that means that the comparison between Adam and Eve with children is appropriate – they didn’t have the experience to determine “good/bad” because they hadn’t had the time to associate “likes/dislikes” with “good/bad,” or rather, they were in the process of it. Challenging the parents’ boundaries (the terrible twos and threes), unconsciously and consciously, are absolutely necessary for the development of children’s moral compass. That’s why it’s so important to push the concept of empathy on children at this time.
Similarly, Adam and Eve pushed the boundaries without a clear guide of “good/bad,” and rather than a slap on the wrist like a toddler, they received a death sentence.
Of course, I’m not even getting into the myriad questions I still have about the creation story, regarding both literal and metaphorical interpretations. It seems like the deeper I go into that story, the less it makes sense. Right now, it seems like we’re focusing on just one point of the story: whether Adam and Eve knew any better before eating from the tree.
scott
says...I’m in agreeance with neosnowqueen.
A toddler learns right/wrong from experience with the world. Often recieving pain/punsihment for ‘wrong’ acts such as disobedience. Pain didn’t even exist before the fall so it is hard to imagine these two individuals with a correct moral compass.
cl
says...Boy, this one’s really a brainbuster. I’ve literally gotten hungry from all of this thinking. Thank you all for being mental workout partners. This is one of the best discussions I’ve had in a while. As a general note to all of us, I think this is getting more difficult when each of us uses different terms at different times in different parts of the arguments (good, evil, bad, sin, right, wrong, like, dislike, etc.).
scott,
Re: comment #3 – You hypothesized,
Trust. According to Genesis, the command God gave did not have the qualification you added: “..or you’ll be committing that behavior.” God simply said, “Don’t eat of that tree, or you will surely die.” Now, could Adam and Even have comprehended death? I would say not. Does that fact absolve them? I would say not. Imagine a new form of capital punishment that had never been introduced into the world. By no means could I ask to be pardoned of capital murder on account of the fact that I didn’t understand the punishment that would ensue if I chose to violate the clear command, right?
I say the same way a parent tries to explain to a toddler that they need to obey them and not stick their hands in the socket because they’ll get electrocuted if they do.
I don’t know about bad or wrong, but I agree that no sin occurred until they ate of the fruit. What I’m saying is that they don’t need to intellectually understand sin in order to sin, just as I don’t need to intellectually understand slander in order to slander, just as a toddler doesn’t have to intellectually understand the consequences of electrocution in order to get shocked.
I believe God is justified in holding them accountable, for a very simple reason that seems like straightforward logic to me: God set up specific parameters for them to follow, and told them what the consequences would be if those parameters were not followed. Neither curiosity nor ignorance absolve their infraction.
Re: comment #11 – You said,
I think Genesis supports the claim that sin and its ramifications didn’t exist before the fall, but I don’t see how Genesis supports the idea that there was no pain before the fall. Note that I’m talking simply about physical pain, here – not the complex emotional pain and suffering that often accompanies many of the things we call sin – which obviously couldn’t have existed before the fall.
Ritchie,
Re: comment #4 – You said,
I agree, but I don’t see how any of this makes Adam and Eve blameless, and I think we’re having trouble with the “God introduced sin” argument because you still seem to be thinking of sin as a “thing” that can be introduced, whereas I’m thinking of it as a behavior that one either does or does not. The Bible states that God cannot sin, so if the Bible is true, the idea that God could “introduce sin” into the human race doesn’t work. If each human being is a separate morally responsible consciousness unto itself, then even if God knew human beings would sin and made them anyway, God Himself has not sinned or “introduced sin.”
I agree that scott raised valid points. Can I suggest reading my replies to scott and see whether that answers the question, or prompts any new ones? (To avoid unnecessary re-typing..)
I agree, and if that happened, would your attempted defense be that you didn’t know it was illegal, or that you didn’t understand the severity of the consequences? I’m guessing not. That’s where my “ignorance of the law” comparison came from.
My question is, why do they need to know obedience is good in order to follow a clear command? Why couldn’t they just have trusted that this magnificent being knew what He was talking about and had their best intentions in mind? Aside from lacking the intellect to process the language, a toddler does not have a moral sense of right and wrong. If you told a toddler not to eat fruit of a particular tree, the toddler has not sufficiently understood the command. Full-grown adults know what “fruit” and “eating” and “trees” are, and they understand simple Boolean requests. That’s why the toddler analogy fails badly, in my opinion. The only point of similarity between the toddler and Adam / Eve is that none of them knew the difference between good and evil, or the consequences of breaking the commands, but I stick to my position that neither curiosity nor ignorance absolve their infraction.
I’m not sure if I agree with that or not. I think all a person needs to understand is what somebody means when they say, “Don’t do X.”
To neosnowqueen, you typed,
What I would point out here is that as neosnowqueen said, you might be conflating good / bad with like / dislike. Children don’t need concepts of right / wrong to learn in the manner you just described; they only need to know that when they do one thing, something favorable results, and when they do another, something less than favorable results. Since humans tend towards pleasure, the chain of association begins as the toddler begins his or her attempts to maximize pleasure. I agree with neosnowqueen that “The likes and dislikes in this case are independent of any moral concept.”
Also to neosnowqueen, you asked,
Let’s say a guy from some unknown country shows up in America not knowing a single iota about any of our laws or punishments. Is that person guilty and deserving of punishment if they murder a restaurant full of people despite their ignorance? I say yes. Also, note that if we (as authorities) absolve the man on account of his ignorance, we preclude the chain of association from even beginning in the first place – withholding justly deserved punishment would quite literally pervert that man’s moral compass – which means that absolving on account of ignorance becomes immoral.
neosnowqueen,
Hello, and thanks for coming by.
I agree, as would Adam and Eve. Does the fact that toddlers must learn through experience mean they haven’t done something wrong the first time they reached for the plug? I’d say no.
I’m also curious to hear what you think of my replies to scott and Ritchie, and whether they answer your questions, prompt new ones, or both.
Dominic Saltarelli
says...I see why there are still Calvinists in the world. It *should* be clear to everyone by now that Adam and Eve were never expected to be obedient in the first place. Taking the Genesis account literally (which I’m limiting myself to here, to keep w/ the discussion) has only one logical conclusion, that Adam and Eve’s actions were a
necessary part of God’s plan for the salvation of the elect.
Prior to having knowledge of good and evil, its safe to assume they made their decisions solely as a matter of taste (like the toddler example). It’s only possible to believe that trust could have kept Adam and Eve sinless by ignoring the totality of the situation. It’s God who was responsible for their creation, and thus their sense of taste, and for how closely he associated with them (which would control how much they liked him, you trust people that you like). God set up the whole thing, like a line of dominoes. All he did then was knock over the first one, and after that there was no other possible outcome.
Possible objection to this position:
God wasn’t responsible for Adam and Eve’s sense of taste, he merely created their bodies and gave them life and free will.
In response, I’d have to say that this would require objectifying “taste” in such a way that it is in some way independent of pre-existing, conditions. I’m operating on what I believe to be a very safe assumption that one’s sense of taste is entirely determined by factors beyond one’s control. Even if you train yourself to like something (such as acquiring a taste for black coffee, for instance), you’re choosing to acquire that taste for a reason, you *want* to like it, and that isn’t something you chose, something drove you to it. I challenge anyone to find an exception to this. Knowing the full spectrum of a person’s sense of taste would allow you to predict with perfect accuracy how they will exercise their free will in any given situation.
(disclaimer: I really don’t want to start a discussion over whether or not free will exists. Let’s just all assume it does and leave it at that. Free will just means you make your own choices, I don’t care if they’re predictable, just… let it be, please.)
Ritchie
says...Wow! I can see this is going to turn into an almighty thread!
I think I’ll try to condence my responses a little to try keep everyone’s interest. I find long posts rather daunting…
Neosnowqueen –
I don’t see how they could. To do so would first require a sense of good and evil, which they did not have until the ate the fruit. In fact, having this sense was exactly what was explicitly denied them by God. They may have had likes and dislikes, but on every question of ‘should I do x, y or z?’, they would have had no moral judgement of their own. So the question ‘should I obey God?’ is one they could not have answered themselves. This is where a paradox occurs.
cl –
The Bible also states that God is good. Yet He also orders entire nations to be slaughtered, demands sacrifice and blood, and brings unnecessary suffering and death to thousands. Putting these together, the Bible is at best contradictory, at worst, such statements about God’s goodness/’not introducing sin’ are demonstrably false.
The key phrase here is ‘morally responsible’. That is exactly what Adam and Eve were not. If they had no sense of good and evil, they simply could not have made moral decisions for themselves. God must have known all along they would eat the fruit, despite His warnings, and they simply could not have been expected to resist doing it.
Let me recap the relevant points of the Eden story as I see them: God creates Eden and all the life therein, including Adam and Eve. But He makes them with no knowledge of good or evil. He then makes a tree whose fruit will bestow upon the eater such knowledge, knowing in advance that Adam and Eve will eat it. He then gives Adam and Eve a clear command not to eat the fruit, despite the fact that they could not have been expected to understand that obeying it was ‘right’. He also created a serpent, knowing full well it would tempt the humans (well, Eve anyway) to disobey Him.
How could the ensuing drama NOT be God’s fault?
I think this is the core of our disagreement. You are simply putting the cart before the horse. They could not have been expected to follow the command or just trust God because they did not understand that it was ‘good’ or ‘right’ to do so. From their point of view, trusting God or obeying Him was as morally neutral as mistrusting or disobeying Him.
(to scott)
He did give them parameters, but not the knowledge that they should stay within those parameters. Also note the consequences “for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Gen 2:17) Firstly, since there was no death in Eden, how were Adam and Eve to know what death was, let alone that it was bad? Secondly, what are we to make of ‘in the day that thou eatest’? They DIDN’T die on the day that they ate. They lived for centuries afterwards, apparently. So God’s warning was in fact false, unless we want to read the warning as poetic, which would be rather convenient to say the least…
Dominic Saltarelli –
Now this explanation does make sense! However, it also leads to some rather unpleasant conclusions. Firstly, if all the characters in the Eden story were merely God’s puppets (as it rather seems they were, since He created them knowing in advance what they’d do), then again, any moral blame for the story’s outcome lies at God’s door. Original sin is God’s fault, and it is unfair of Him to punish Adam and Eve, let alone all their descendants.
Secondly, to suggest that God only wants to save ‘the elect’ implies he wants other people to NOT be saved. Had he let Adam and Eve stay in paradise, all their descendants could have lived there happily forever. Why should God introduce sin so that SOME humans could then be saved from it? If He hadn’t introduced sin, ALL humans wouldn’t have needed saving anyway. It’s like a fireman who starts a fire in a bulding full of people just so that he can save some (and chillingly, ONLY some) of them.
You also mention free will. I am willing to concede (for the purposes of not getting too bogged down in philosophy) that it exists, but I do not accept Adam and Eve had it before they ate the fruit. Knowledge of good and evil seems to me to be a necessary prerequisite for free will.
Phew, so much for keeping it short!
Dominic Saltarelli
says...If you assume that the Genesis account is literally true, then yes, the conclusions are indeed unpleasant. Calvinists are always on the defensive in this regard. It’s actually rather amusing to watch.
neosnowqueen
says...[CL, could you delete that last comment. I didn’t mean to sign in under that name]
CL,
Does the fact that toddlers must learn through experience mean they haven’t done something wrong the first time they reached for the plug? I’d say no.
Not necessarily. I always thought, though, that the punishment was not appropriate to the crime.
I’m not going to address everything, especially since I’m not going to have access to the internet for a while, and other people seem to be joining in. However, I will take issue with one thing you said, and it is within my 21st century, American justice system context that I take issue with it:
I believe God is justified in holding them accountable, for a very simple reason that seems like straightforward logic to me: God set up specific parameters for them to follow, and told them what the consequences would be if those parameters were not followed. Neither curiosity nor ignorance absolve their infraction.
The only point of similarity between the toddler and Adam / Eve is that none of them knew the difference between good and evil, or the consequences of breaking the commands, but I stick to my position that neither curiosity nor ignorance absolve their infraction.
Here in the US, we have a system set up wherein people who do not know the difference between right and wrong are absolved of their actions. They are not put in prison. Instead, they are put in mental institutions in the hopes that they can be rehabilitated in a situation that fits their needs better. Intention and ignorance are considered. I’ve addressed this before in some blog posts, the question whether mentally ill people who can’t know right from wrong can be held accountable for their actions.
I’m
not saying that Adam and Eve were mentally ill – I’m saying that according to a 21st century sense of justice, those without a moral compass cannot be held accountable the way we hold people who do have one accountable. They must be trained. And in the case of Adam and Eve, it’s the justice equivalent of the electric chair for the pathologically naive. Just as you wouldn’t give a toddler a death sentence for stealing a cookie the first time they do it, I do not think that God’s punishment fits the crime.
Dominic,
The Conservative Christian part of my mind (which I don’t necessarily associate with my own identity as an atheist, just my old identity) is emphatically Calvinist. I can’t see any other way that the Genesis story could play out with a Omni God without it being on purpose. In an article written from my CC perspective, humans were made to fall so that God could save us. He couldn’t save us unless we fell to begin with. Which, unfortunately, does raise some disquieting questions about the capricious nature of God. But that’s a bit off topic, and once you get me going, I can rail on all night about the inconsistencies and troubling nature of the creation story.
So seriously, don’t get me started. Keep me focused. :)
scott
says...Hi cl,
good to see you replying so quickly and so thoroughly, especially with all of us bringing up differnt points.
“Imagine a new form of capital punishment that had never been introduced into the world. By no means could I ask to be pardoned of capital murder on account of the fact that I didn’t understand the punishment that would ensue if I chose to violate the clear command, right?”(sorry but i don’t really know the blockquote function.)
I think ‘a new form of capital punishment’ is very different from what we have happening here. We have a type of punishment that the people being punished don’t even understand. It’s like me saying to you, don’t do that or you will surely blageriton. You have no concept of what blageritoning is, you don’t even know if blageritoning is a good thing or a bad thing since the concept of good and bad don’t even exist yet in your world.
I would argue that a black mark of eternal sin fordisobeying a command when you don’t fully understand the consequences of the command is a little harsh to say the least.
This is without even going into the fact that god who knows all, knowingly placed the tree there knowing full well that his pet humans would eat the fruit. Doesn’t the blame therefore lie at his feet?
cl
says...I’ll try the condensed route, too, and the following is basically what I still believe: they may not have known what good and evil meant, or why one thing was good and the next evil, but God didn’t tell them to be good, or to not be evil; God simply asked them to honor a very straightforward request. If they could understand what God was asking in that request – then regardless of their ignorance or insufficieny of moral compass – they still did what God asked them not to do. They still made the choice to not listen to what God said. Thus, they must bear the consequences, else God becomes a moral monster for not providing the negative stimulus needed to start the chain of association that neosnowqueen introduced into the conversation. Exemption from punishment precludes moral development. Can anyone here argue with that?
As far as the “domino effect” and its usefulness in justifiably blaming God for introducing sin into the universe, I don’t follow that logic, either. For exampe, I don’t know to what extent as God might, but it’s almost certain that at some point, my son or daughter is going to do something wrong. I knew that before making the choice to bring them into the world. Still, in no way am I responsible if my son gets caught stealing gum from the corner store, especially if I told him not to.
Now, a few particulars:
Ritchie
The part about whether “God is good” would be another interesting discussion we could have. D over at DA made some similar arguments.
But they would know that they were told not to do something, right? Under a position of authority, all they need is a parameter of what’s permissible and what is not. Where we seem to disagree is that you seem to think not knowing the difference between good and evil absolves Adam and Eve from guilt in going oustide those parameters. I don’t, just as I don’t think a man who shows up here from another country knowing nothing of the law should be exempt from murder. Similarly, imagine you find yourself on the first day of work at a new job. The boss comes up to you and says, “Hey, nice to meet’cha.. now whatever you do, don’t open door #213, or something will happen.” That’s it. The boss gives no further explanation than that, and doesn’t even explain that the “something” that will happen is necessarily negative, or that obeying him would be good. All that’s known is that you were told not to open the door. Now, let’s say some other employee with charisma persuades you to open the door anyways, and the entire parking garage destructs. There is absolutely no way around the fact that you must held responsible. Agree or disagree, and to what extent would you say that analogy holds?
To Dominic, you said,
I knew that my son or daugher will eventually commit some sort of wrong behavior before bringing them into the world. I chose to bring them into the world anyways. When they understood what stealing was, I told them not to do it. If they steal, according to my logic, I’m in no way responsible. According to your logic, it seems I am. I’m having trouble there, but maybe I’m not quite hearing what you intend..
I’ll be back later to get to some of the other points from yourself and other commenters..
scott
says...“I knew that my son or daugher will eventually commit some sort of wrong behavior before bringing them into the world. I chose to bring them into the world anyways. When they understood what stealing was, I told them not to do it. If they steal, according to my logic, I’m in no way responsible.”
This isn’t quite the same. It would be more apt to say that you brought your son or daughter into the world and then placed a plate of poison shaped like food infront of them and said don’t eat any or you will die(even if they have no concept of what death is). The difference between this and what you are saying is that god created the tree of knowledge. For what purpose other than introducing sin into the human species could such a tree have been created? particularly when we take into account that god must have had foreknowledge of what would happen.
Ritchie
says...cl –
Having no knowledge of good or evil must have had what we would think of as rather odd consequences. Imagine for a moment a person who genuinely has no concept of good or evil. To that person, everything is morally neutral. Everything. Murder is morally neutral. It is simply an act. Saving a life is morally neutral. Trust is morally neutral. Disobedience is morally neutral.
Now let us consider Adam and Eve specifically. Let’s say they understood what it was that God did not want them to do. Okay, but so what? Obeying those instructions would seem (to them) morally neutral. As would disobeying them.
You seem to be assuming not only that Adam and Eve understood the instruction, but that they knew they SHOULD obey God. It is the second assumption I want to challenge. A soldier blindly obeys orders. He does not need to fully understand them, or decide for himself whether each order is right or wrong. He just obeys. But then, a soldier has ALREADY come to the conclusion that following orders is good. Adam and Eve could not have come to such a conclusion.
An odd assertion bearing in mind Christianity is built on the assumption that one (semi-divine) man can bare the consequences for the sins of the whole of mankind. Doesn’t Jesus’s sacrifice mean we are exempt from punishment we deserve (provided we accept him, of course…)?
You can’t really equate your relationship with your son/daughter to God’s with Adam and Eve. For one thing, God is all-knowing. You may come to the (reasonable) conclusion that if you have a child, it will occasionally be bad. But you don’t know precisely what they will do or when. God did.
Secondly, a parent may influence their child’s development, but God sculpted the personalities of Adam and Eve. Every personality trait was His handiwork and His responsibility in a way which does not translate to parent and child. It is closer to a man building a robot with a personality – the man is responsible for every personality trait of the robot’s.
Thirdly, God may have told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit, but on the other hand he was actively tempting them to do it by creating both the tree and the serpent knowing full well what would happen. It would be like you telling your daughter not to steal gum, and then getting a friend of hers to talk her into doing it.
In this case I would agree that I was responsible. My boss could have done more to warn me – explain the consequences, but even so I knew better than to open the door. Then again, I differ from Adam and Eve because I understand about obeying orders. Disobedience to an authority figure without a good reason is usually wrong (not often an actual sin, but generally your superiors don’t hand down bad advice or order you to do bad things). I can make the connection of ‘obedience = good, disobedience = bad’. Adam and Eve could not.
Again, you did not create your son/daughter’s personality. You influenced it, certainly, but that is not the same. Now image I built a robot and sent it to rob a bank for me. Could I be said to be responsible, even though I did not actually commit the robbery?
Now I’m sure you might want to argue that the robot is obeying orders whilst Adam and Eve were defying them. And whilst this is true, God not only tempted them to eat the fruit by making the serpent, He is also directly responsible for whatever personality flaws led Adam and Eve to do what they did, is He not? After all, He made them the way they were.
cl
says...Sorry for the lag in response. This is one of the headier discussions I’ve had in a while; I can tell you that much. We might just have to agree to disagree on this one, I don’t know. I would absolutely agree with all of you that “it’s all God’s fault” if God had both made the tree and not told Adam and Eve a single thing about it, but if we’re still talking Genesis, that’s simply not the case.
Somebody made a point back up there about criminal insanity; the analogy I sought to make was, if somebody of able mind – just like the rest of us – is unaware that an act is wrong, that unawareness is not a suitable defense in a court of law. Who agrees? Similarly, I say the “ignorance of the law” cannot absolve Adam and Eve.
Further, I think we’ve all overlooked a significant nuance here: the entire time leading up to the fall, Adam and Eve were obeying every word God said (for example commands to name the animals), and it was all “good,” right? Well, this means that they’d already begun to learn to associate obedience with good by the time the choice to eat of the tree presented itself. This means the chain of association had already begun. They certainly had to have noticed that obedience to God allowed things to continue along smoothly, right? I agree this doesn’t entail that they knew disobedience was bad, but we don’t need to know disobedience is bad to disobey. If we absolve Adam and Eve because they didn’t know disobedience was bad, then aren’t we saying that ignorance of the law is an excuse?
Also, one of my questions that I haven’t yet seen an answer to was, “Isn’t God a moral monster if He witholds punishment?” I say yes.
scott,
Regarding my analogy you objected to, the point I was trying to make is this: foreknowledge that beings will sin doesn’t entail culpability for said sin on the creator’s behalf. Parents generally aren’t held accountable for their children’s crimes. Do you agree or disagree? If you agree, what’s different about the context we’re in?
Ritchie,
If you build a robot and send it to rob a bank, yes, I say you are responsible – because a robot doesn’t have an intellectual understanding of “good” and “bad”, nor does a robot have the ability to think. Adam and Eve lacked half of the former, but possessed all of the latter. Where we seem to disagree is that you think Adam and Eve needed an intellectual understanding of “good” and “bad” in order to properly assess God’s command to stay away from the tree of knowledge of good and evil – and in order to be held accountable. Your position seems to be that knowledge that “its good to obey God” was lacking, and therefore Adam and Eve can’t be held accountable. You then extrapolate this to an, “It’s all God’s fault” type of position. I disagree.
My position is that they had enough history with God to associate obedience and goodness. Further, both obedience and disobedience bring consequences, and God gave Adam and Eve specific parameters, and they chose to go outside them – so they are responsible for the choice they made. They did not need an intellectual understanding of “good” and “bad” to understand what it was God was telling them not to do, nor can we absolve their disobedience because they lacked such understanding. We don’t need to know why God told us not to do something, we just need to know that we’ve been told not to do something, and I believe Adam and Eve had that much to go off. If we wonder, “Yeah, but how would they have known they should have obeyed God?” The answer is because every time they obeyed God prior, good resulted, so they already had at least one experience that would have suggested, “Hey, doing what God says results in goodness..”
Everyone on this thread seems reasonable; I don’t think we can just attribute our disagreement to stubbornness on anybody’s behalf. Do you have any idea what the root matter is here? Perhaps one or more of us are reasoning from given or debatable premises?
scott
says...Hi cl,
I’d say we can find the the problem we are running into described perfecly in your second to last paragraph:
“every time they obeyed God prior, good resulted, so they already had at least one experience that would have suggested, “Hey, doing what God says results in goodness..”
Here you assume that Adam and Eve can understand what good is without having first eaten the fruit. We(or at least I) assume that before eating the fruit the pair had no understanding of what good is. I hesitate to say that without an understanding of evil, an understanding of good might be hard to fathom.
cl
says...I think this is where all the different words used in this argument are coming back to bite us in the ass:
Well, unfortunately that’s not the assumption I meant to convey. When I say “good resulted” in that paragraph, I refer to the lack of privation, not moral good. What I meant was that up until the time they ate the fruit, a pattern was developing: they followed God’s commands, and saw that this lack of privation remained (IOW, they learned that obedience to God is related to that which they liked, to use neosnowqueen’s ‘likes / dislikes’ approach). That, in and of itself, means the chain of association had already begun. It means that by the time they asked themselves whether or not to eat the fruit, they already knew that obedience “was good” – not because they knew the difference between moral good and evil – but because they already had experiences with God in which their obedience allowed perfection to continue.
I agree, but God wasn’t telling them to be good. Now, if God had said, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and don’t forget to be good,” then I think you would all have a much stronger argument. For how could they be expected to be morally good without knowing what it means to be morally good? OTOH, they knew what it meant to do or not do.
Of curiosity: if a sane person shows up in America from somewhere else and does something we define as crime, should we exonerate that individual on behalf of his or her ignorance?
scott
says...A very difficult question to answer. In general I think the onus is on the peson travelling to a new country to learn and obey the laws. on my travels through Asia I was made very aware that transporting even one extacy pill would land me in front of a firing squad in numerous countries and was also made well aware that it was my duty to check in with the police in each town i visited in China to let them know I was there and where they could find me if they wanted to.
On the other hand, if somebody from some tribe from the middle of nowhere travelled to the US and decided to walk around nude because he didn’t understand the concept of feeling shame of his nakedness, I would argue that he should not be punished. The same if said person came from a tribe where there was no concept of money or property. Should that person take something from a shop without paying for it I would be inclined to see said person go free and some attempt to explain things to them made, rather than see them punished to the full extent of the law.
In this way I think that Adam and Eve are like the the person described above, they didn’t truly understand the consequences of their actions and thusly the punishment handed out by god is far far far too harsh.
cl
says...Hmmm… so, if you understood the parameters about ecstasy pills and willingly chose to go outside them, should you be punished?
What’s different about Adam and Eve?
Ritchie
says...cl –
Actually, I don’t think I do agree. Legally, ignorance may in fact be a mitigating circumstance. The law treats ignorance as no defence generally because otherwise, everyone could claim ignorance of any crime they commited, and since people are innocent until proven guilty, it would be extremely difficult to prove otherwise. In practise, people often ARE let off for minor misdeeds if it is reasonable that they were ignorant of their crime.
I think someone mentioned murder as an example. It is extremely unlikely that anyone would ever be let off for murder because I’m pretty sure there is no society which does not condemn it. The idea that a person could live in any society on Earth without the knowledge that murder is wrong is absurd.
But imagine you are driving down a road at the speed limit of 60 miles an hour. Suddenly, the limit changes to 40. There is a sign, but you simply didn’t see it. Should you be prosecuted for speeding? I would say yes, because it is your duty to drive with due care and attention. Like Scott travelling to Asia – it was his duty to make himself aware of the local laws. In this case, ignorance does not excuse you. But now imagine you did not see the sign because a tree fell down in front of it, or some kids stole the sign as a prank. You would still be driving at 60 in a 40 zone, but here ignorance seems a rather good defence, and I’m pretty sure that under those circumstances, a court of law would indeed let you off.
So let’s apply this to Adam and Eve. Well, they were made with no knowledge of good or evil, so I think it is wrong to hold them accountable for sins committed whilst they were in that state of ignorance. It could not have been their duty to educate themselves of the ‘laws of Eden’ if they have no concept of good or evil. Note that it is no defence here to say ‘But they were not ignorant that eating the fruit was wrong – God told them!’ They still should be considered ignorant because without a concept of good or evil they have no concept of wrongdoing, and that applies to disobedience too.
I was going to argue that Adam and Eve had no concept of good before they ate, but I see Scott got there first. But in any case, even if Adam and Eve had lived a million years in Eden obeying every word God said, that still gives them no reason not to disobey Him for once. You might have a beer after dinner every night for years and enjoy it, but that does not mean you shouldn’t try a glass of wine instead one evening.
That’s a very big question. It depends on lots of things. Do we have free will, or is the future predestined? Because if we have no free will and everything is predestined, I’m not sure we do deserve to be punished. Also, surely ‘a man who withholds punishment’ is the very definition of a merciful man? Couldn’t God be described merely as being ‘merciful’ if he withheld punishment from someone who deserved it? Wouldn’t delivering ‘justice’ in that case make Him MORE of a monster?
Just for the record, I’m not sure I know the answers here. But let me point out that, if Christian tradition is to be believed, the whole of humankind was been cursed and billions of people have been sent to the eternal flames of Hell as a direct consequence of God not withholding this particular punishment. What consequences could withholding it have had which would have been worse?
Actually, a computer does nothing else other than think. A petty point I know, but I couldn’t resist…
To restate my position, before Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they had no knowledge of good or evil. Therefore it is unreasonable to hold them accountable for any wrongdoing they performed even if they were instructed not to – they could make no moral judgement on whether or not to obey the command. To suggest otherwise is simply begging the question.
Now let’s compare this to God’s accountability in the whole fiasco. For one thing, being all-knowing, he must have known what would happen right from the start, and being all-powerful he could have made things differently, but he did not. He made the tree and the serpent to tempt them. He gave them a command knowing they could not have understood to obey it. He could have stepped in right at the last minute, just as Eve was putting the apple to her lips, like when He sent an angel down to stop Abraham at the last second just as he was about to sacrifice his son (a lesson if ever one were needed on God’s approval of slavish obedience in the face of sickening morality). But He did not. On what possible grounds can God be absolved of guilt in the whole affair?
cl
says...I wrote a big long response to this one, but first a simple question: it seems to me that you’re saying doing something wrong is only justifiably punishable if the person doing it knows its wrong. Is that in fact your position?
Ritchie
says...I would say so, yes.
Legally it doesn’t hold much water because it is a person’s responsibility to make themselves aware of the laws of the country/state in which they live.
But morally, I don’t really think a person should be punished for sins they commit in ignorance.
cl
says...What does the italicized “it” refer to in that sentence?
You use the word “ignorant” here – let’s distinguish between two types of ignorance that both seem applicable in this discussion:
moral ignorance would refer to not knowing the difference between good and evil (moral neutrality);
legal ignorance would refer to not knowing the parameters of a given law.
I would say that toddles are both legally and morally ignorant, and I want to go back to an earlier comment from neosnowqueen:
I agree with this. Do you, and if you do, are there any caveats implied?
Ritchie
says...‘It’ would refer to the assertion that ‘doing something wrong is only justifiably punishable if the person doing it knows its wrong’.
Thus: Legally, [the assertion that ‘doing something wrong is only justifiably punishable if the person doing it knows its wrong’] doesn’t hold much water because it is a person’s responsibility to make themselves aware of the laws of the country/state in which they live.
I do agree with the passage you quoted from neosnowqueen. And I think I see where you are going with this (though I may be jumping the gun slightly here. Correct me if I am). But parents WANT their children to learn the difference between right and wrong. They want their children to know good from evil. God clearly did not want this for humans. Also, God’s draconian curse of humankind is not comparable to a minor punishment which would teach the recipients right from wrong so that they don’t do it again. It was a totally devastating and debilitating curse which has caused untold suffering and resulted in billions of souls being lost to Hell’s eternal agonies. This is the equivalent of breaking every bone in a child’s body and pulling out its eyes and teeth for playing with a plug socket.
Or was that not where you were going with this?
Karla
says...I have not read through all of these comments, so this may have already been asserted, but Adam and Eve had the knowledge that to eat from this tree was forbidden and thus wrong, they however, did not have carnal knowledge of this truth. They had not experienced evil before, they had not chosen to do something not good. When they made that choice, the knowledge wasn’t just intellectual, it was experiential it became a part of their DNA so to speak and they were altered by it as sin damages and alters a person. Now this passed on their children for they are fallen and they beget fallen children and so on and so on.
Good topic, intriguing.
cl
says...Karla,
Thanks for coming by and adding input. I rarely ever get input from other non-atheists, and every bit helps. Usually, “Christians” only comment to me when they want to let me know they don’t think I’m “Christian” enough.
I agree with your comment and especially appreciate the distinction between intellectual knowledge and carnal knowledge (experience). I’m curious to hear how scott or Ritchie would reply to your position, which I tried to articulate back up in the thread. I imagine they would disagree with your claim that “..Adam and Eve had the knowledge that to eat from this tree was forbidden and thus wrong,” on account of their position that the carnal knowledge (experience) was necessary before they could know that they weren’t supposed to eat from that tree.
Ritchie,
I agree it’s each person’s responsibility to make themselves aware of local laws. Do you agree that every person who’s aware of local laws is obligated to obey them?
I agree that parents want their children to learn the difference between right and wrong, and I agree that parents also want their children to know good from evil. I disagree that God did not want this for humans. In fact, I believe the exact opposite: that God did want humans to know good from evil. To digress a moment, that’s why I’ve always felt the so-called “problem of evil” falls flat on its face, because if an all-loving God did in fact want people to know the difference between good and evil, then allowing them the ability to choose and experience the consequences of both becomes absolutely imperative. Right?
Well that’s an opinion, you see, and while I really do understand your opinion here – which is that God’s reaction wasn’t analogous to the “slap on the wrist” we give toddlers – it’s hard for me to say anything to that, because I don’t have knowledge of what a “slap on the wrist” is to God, so how can I make an accurate judgment? Personally, I think kicking humans out of paradise, increasing women’s labor pains, making us work for food we used to get without effort – and still offering us a chance to get “back to Eden” despite the fact that we all sin – sounds much more like a “slap on the wrist” than the instant hellfire God could give us the very first time we sin. Don’t you?
Actually, I was never clear on where you thought I was going with this. Where did you think I was going with this? Is that where I went?
Ritchie
says...Karla –
Welcome to the debate!
Here lies the crux of the debate thus far. Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good or evil before they ate the fruit, so they could not have understood that disobeying a command from God was wrong. They simply had no concept of good or bad. To suggest Adam and Eve knew it was wrong to eat the fruit implies that they understood good and evil, which they didn’t. And I’m afraid it doesn’t matter if we consider intellectual knowledge or carnal knowledge – Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good or evil on either level.
This I find hard to follow. Sin does not change a person’s DNA. We cannot find any ‘guilt’ or ‘sin’ or any trace of wrongdoing by examining the DNA of criminals. I’m sorry, I appreciate you may not have meant this literally, but I don’t really see what you DID mean by it…
cl –
Yes I do.
Errrrrrrm… yes. I suppose people DO need to be able to choose and experience the consequences of both good and evil in order to understand it. So why didn’t God arrange things that way?
Adam and Eve could have been created in paradise WITH a knowledge of good and evil. God could have given the a ‘slap on the wrist’ when they misbehaved as we do to young children. But he did not. They were initially created with no understanding of good and evil, and therefore no way of learning about it. They would have had to defer to God’s word on absolutely every moral decision. They had no moral sense and were not developing a moral sense. In fact they were strictly forbidden from having a moral sense. God’s ideal plan for humankind seems to have been for them to live forever in Eden never understanding about good or evil, and thus forever unable to make moral decisions for themselves.
I really don’t see what makes you think God wanted Adam and Eve to have a sense or right and wrong. He did not create them with one, forbade them from getting one for themselves, and then cursed them horribly when they did. It seems ridiculous to conclude God wanted them to do it all along.
If God wanted Adam and Eve to have a sense of right and wrong, why didn’t He create them with one?
Well… they are not the only repercussions of God’s curse. Apparently we can only be redeemed through Jesus, so many billions of people must have been condemned to Hell just by not having heard about Jesus (by either living before he was born or living in far away places where news of Jesus never reached), or by following the ‘wrong’ religion (many Jews, Muslims, Hindus etc., in the modern world have heard about Jesus, but prefer to follow their own religion instead). The chance that any particular person will recognise that Christianity is the correct ‘choice’ for a religion out of the thousands that are available (baring in mind there is absolutely no good evidence to help us decide between these religions) is thoroughly unreasonable.
We do not live in a world where the ‘truth’ of our Biblical past is readily obvious. There is no reason why people should reasonably recognise the story of Adam and Eve as objectively true. So the chance God offers us to redeem ourselves from the curse of Adam and Eve is slight in the extreme, and the consequences for failure are horrific.
In fact, I think the most awful aspect is that the descendants of Adam and Eve were included in the curse at all. We do not punish the children of criminals for the crimes of their parents. So why is it acceptable for God to do it? How is it fair to punish us for sins committed by our ancestors?
Karla
says...Ritchie
I find this debate interesting, I don’t believe I have heard these contentions before that you are making. To address your response:
Ritchie said “Here lies the crux of the debate thus far. Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good or evil before they ate the fruit, so they could not have understood that disobeying a command from God was wrong. They simply had no concept of good or bad. To suggest Adam and Eve knew it was wrong to eat the fruit implies that they understood good and evil, which they didn’t. And I’m afraid it doesn’t matter if we consider intellectual knowledge or carnal knowledge – Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good or evil on either level.”
The Bible often uses the word knowing to mean more than knowing facts, but knowing by experience. Words like “believing” or “knowing” are often an experiential matter in Scripture. Knowing the truth, the Truth being a person, Jesus is knowing relationally not knowing facts about Him.
When the Bible tells us that Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good and evil, they had not experienced this kind of knowledge. Evil had not been actualized experientially in humanity, it only had potential of being experienced for if they did not have the ability to do the wrong thing they could not have true freedom to love God. The abused their freedom and did the wrong thing and the world changed to a world that became based on good versus evil rather than a world where righteousness was alive without the actualized presence of evil. Thus their knowledge of good and evil was a fallen perspective, before they didn’t have to live based on such knowledge and work to do the good, the simply lived fully connected to God, but they opted to try to have what they thought they were lacking and knew was forbidden.
Also look at their actions after they did this, they had guilt–the covered themselves and hid from God and then they blamed each other– they were fully aware they weren’t to do this intellectually.
Yes, when I said DNA, I didn’t mean literally, though it could be possible that it is different today than in Adam, but my point was that their nature changed and this was passed on to the following generations.
cl I should come over here more often I just get so tide up on my blog I don’t peak out often enough to enjoy the writing and thoughts of others.
cl
says...Ritchie,
I’ll post my response to your latest response a bit later today. I want to reread it a few more times to be sure I’m hearing what you’re wanting me to hear, and to be sure I’m saying what I want to say. Thanks for the perseverance, though – I consider thoughtful debate the same as any other physical workout: we grow by practicing with others. We’re all making each other smarter right now. That’s pretty cool if you ask me.
Karla,
Good comments. I also believe that the ultimate form of knowledge is experience, and I especially found insight in the way you worded “Evil had not been actualized experientially in humanity, it only had potential of being experienced.”
However, maybe you can clarify this one a bit:
I didn’t really see what the “they were fully aware they weren’t to do this intellectually” was meant to convey.
I will clarify that when I said DNA, I did mean literally. I’ll get to this in Pt. II.
Hey, you’re welcomed any time. I understand whatcha mean, I often find myself getting stuck in some of the same places, too.
cl
says...Ritchie,
Sorry to not keep to my word, but I’m not gonna be able to pick up again until the weekend or possibly Monday. And, I’m planning to get to Pt. II of the conversation by then as well – meaning another post on the genetic angle. Have a good weekend, talk soon..
MS Quixote
says...“I see why there are still Calvinists in the world.”
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dominic…
Just an aside, it’s great to see everyone disagree in such an agreeable fashion. My view is that given the prior creation of Adam and Eve in the image of God, they were endowed with the knowledge of good and evil before eating of the tree. The tree is best understood, then, as their rebellion in attempting to know and act with repsect to good and evil independently of God, in as much creating a merely human view of good and evil–one we have suffered under ever since.
Karla
says...Cl asked “I didn’t really see what the “they were fully aware they weren’t to do this intellectually” was meant to convey.”
I only meant that they showed signs that they knew it was wrong, but then later I did realize they would show those sames signs because of the guilt of experiencing evil.
However, Eve was clear to the serpent in Genesis 3:3 that she knew full well she wasn’t to eat from that tree and that the consequences were death. Then in verse 7 it says their eyes were opened and they realized their nakedness. The evil actualized opened their eyes in a way that was not ideal for them, now they felt shame at their nakedness and made for themselves coverings. They began to operate in a different system immediately.
The thing is we often think only their knowledge of evil was problematic, but there was more to it because of the fallen idea of needing to become good versus evil by our own methods whereas God’s way was His righteousness making us righteous. I talk about that on my last post on my blog.
Anyway, regarding DNA, it’s not that it can’t be literal, I was just using the word to indicate the core of our being was changed and passed on generation to generation. We weren’t to die before this, we would have been born into eternal life, so I would imagine DNA changed.
Ritchie
says...Just to continue the back-patting, yes, it’s good to be able to discuss with people who are open and respectful, and know that disagreement does not mean disrespect.
I response to the posts,
cl –
No worries, I’m in no hurry.
Karla –
Okay, let me see if I’ve got this – when the Bible says Adam and Eve had no ‘knowledge’ of good or evil, that meant they had no ‘experience’ of it. Fair enough, I’m with you so far. But then how would eating a fruit give them ‘experience’ of good and evil?
Also, the realization that they were naked and it was shameful seems rather odd under this interpretation too. Why would experience of good and evil make them suddenly ashamed of their nakedness? If being naked was bad and they knew about good and evil before they ate the fruit, shouldn’t they have come to these realizations sooner?
Mrs Quixote
Does scripture support that?
MS Quixote
says...That seems to be the best rendering of Gen 1:26: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” To the Hebrew, this would have read “Let us make man to be like us and represent us.” The best rendering of the text, then, is that they were endowed with intellectual ability and the ability to make moral choices, along with many other of the communicable attributes of God.
Thus, when it comes to the fall and eating of the tree of good and evil, it’s understood as Adam and Eve desiring to know good and evil apart from God, to construct a purely human ethic that does not require a divine source, a rejection of God as the source and determinant of the knowledge of good and evil. This coheres with the text in chpater three where God says “they have become like us, knowing good and evil.” The sin of Adam and Eve was the attempt to substitute the Word of God for their own word, and in that sense, they became like God knowing good and evil, establishing an independent, merely human, and ultimately disastrous, ethic.
cl
says...Ritchie,
I apologize if any of these are repeated sentences in this wall of text. I wrote quite a bit on this, enough that it’s actually hard to keep track of it all. Your words are in blockquotes, of course..
I. Clarifications:
To restate mine, ignorance of good and evil is not required to follow a command and does not justify willful disobedience. Before the fall, Adam and Eve were with God, God established Himself as trustworthy, thus they had sufficient reason to continue doing what God said. They had clear knowledge of the law and chose to go outside it, which makes them accountable.
II. Agreements:
It might be helpful to summarize and restate where we seem to agree, which is that:
1) Adam and Eve lacked both intellectual knowledge and experience of at least evil (you also seem to think they lacked knowledge of good, but I disagree, at least provisionally);
2) Adam and Eve clearly understood the parameters they were given (unlike a toddler);
3) consequence to the offender cannot be just without knowledge of the parameters (law);
4) anyone who understands the parameters yet willfully offends them merits consequence, which is just (per 3).
To me that’s an airtight chain of reasoning justifying God’s reaction. It seems most or all of our problem is that you make an exception to 4 that I don’t: that willfully offending the parameters does not merit consequence if the offender lacks knowledge of “why they should obey the parameters in the first in place.” I disagree to that exception, and by all means speak up if I’m off the mark in any or all of this.
III. Disagreements:
It might also be helpful to summarize and restate at least some of where we seem to disagree, which is that:
1) God didn’t give Adam and Eve a “slap on the wrist;”
2) Adam and Eve lacked all concept of moral good and evil before eating the fruit.
Regarding III.1, you said,
Possibly, but isn’t there an inherent disadvantage in drawing firm conclusions on what constitutes a ‘slap on the wrist’ to a purportedly all-powerful God? Admittedly I’m at this disadvantage myself, but from my perspective, Adam and Eve did get a slap on the wrist. Whereas God could’ve sent them straight to Hades, life on Earth just got considerably more difficult (suffering is an unavoidable effect of sin). To me, a “single sin takes you straight to Hades” policy would have been truly draconian.
Okay, now I’m beginning to understand why you see the punishment as so severe. I’m also realizing that we share quite different views of the criteria for salvation. From what I can glean from your comment above – no offense intended here – but you’re arguing something I would say is more like mainline Christian dogma than what a reasonable parsing of the Bible actually permits. That makes sense and would seem to explain our discrepancies at least in part. From your perspective, God really is a monster, because you believe God set up the aforementioned draconian policies as repercussions of the Fall. Indeed, your conclusion is absolutely cogent and flows perfectly from your premise, but I don’t reason from the same premise (see IV below). If I did, I would wholeheartedly agree with you that God is a monster, but I don’t believe such is the system God established. Do you think that might explain why we see things so differently here?
Regarding III.2, to Karla, you said,
From my perspective, I think I’ve presented an acceptable case that Adam and Eve had only knowledge of good, and lacked knowledge of evil. If eating the apple signifies the first sin in the universe, then everything up to the point of eating the apple was not sin, i.e. good. Eating the apple – the first sin – represents the introduction of evil into the universe. The way I see it, the accurate assessment is that the only concept they had was good. They presumably complied with all of God’s requests up to the first bite, and life was good, so the “chain of association” concept neosnowqueen introduced last week was well under way. They could understand that obedience allow “good” to persist.
When we were addressing the question of whether Adam and Eve could have been created with knowledge of good and evil, you said:
But earlier, we agreed that subjectively experiencing evil (and its consequences) seems the only possible way to understand it. You said, “..yes. I suppose people DO need to be able to choose and experience the consequences of both good and evil in order to understand it.” How else can we know why we should avoid evil unless we’re allowed to taste it? As an analog, how can I know what it’s like to be drunk if I’ve never drank? Somebody could tell me what it’s like and why they think I shouldn’t do it – just as God could’ve told Adam and Eve what evil is like and why He thinks they shouldn’t do it – but we can never really know unless we taste of it. Only then do we really understand why evil is evil: because of the negative effects it has on creation. And, a teenager’s curiosity about alcohol – which seems sufficiently analogous to Adam and Eve’s ignorance about evil – does not excuse them from consequence if caught drinking before legal age.
IV. Miscellaneous points:
You had two claims above: that those who’ve never heard of Jesus and/or lived before Jesus go to Hell, and that those who’ve heard of Jesus but follow another religion go to hell. Let’s refer to the first claim as the “damnation from ignorance” argument, and the second as the “damnation from wrong religion” argument. I don’t accept the damnation from ignorance argument because I don’t believe the Bible supports the claim that those who haven’t heard of and/or lived before Jesus go to hell. The most concrete thing I can find in on this matter is that the Bible says those who reject Jesus are doomed. Further, the damnation from ignorance argument would seemingly place Isaac, Abraham, Moses, Sarah and literally every other Old Testament character under damnation. There’s more on this topic here. In a sense, I accept the “damnation from wrong religion” argument, although I think I interpret it quite differently. To me, no religion is higher than truth, those who we’d call Christians are certainly going to comprise a large percentage of Hell’s population, and not everyone in Heaven is going to be somebody that we would could reasonably classify as a conventional Christian.
So in light of those distinctions, let’s address this:
Again, the same thing: I don’t believe anyone goes to Hell simply because they chose the wrong religion. If you accept my responses to the damnation from ignorance and damnation from wrong religion argument, how does that change your position that God’s reaction was draconian?
Also,
Noted, but that’s just your perspective, right? Of course not everyone who reads the Bible comes to the same conclusion, but to me, the Bible’s truths (both past and present) are readily obvious.
For those people, sufficient reason exists to at least provisionally assume the objective truth of the story. However, if I believed the story was as difficult or “flawed” as most atheists, I’d probably think nobody had sufficient reason to assume its objective truth.
I realize that was to Karla, but I’d say the biblical reasoning would be that God is good, and that sin brings consequences. It seems reasonable that if God is good, then rebellion against God entails a disruption of that good *in actuality*. Assuming they literally ate the fruit (in other words assuming the story is not metaphorical), it’s not necessarily the act of eating the fruit that was the sin; the sin was rejecting God from His rightful position as moral authority. This is now the default position of human beings when born. God’s presence is no longer unequivocally among us, so we either make up our own “moral authority” as we go along, or we seek out some other “moral authority” from another source (of course, both approaches overlap a bit in reality). – I’ve always perceived a direct corollary between intelligence and morality, meaning that the more an sentient being knows, the more moral that sentient being can be.
I realize this is a fairly draining and heady topic; I’m not at all saying that you’re wrong and I’m right, it’s just that I really would like to be able to see what you see here, or get you to at least see what I see, to the point where we can easily and clearly articulate our differences. I can see that we’re both trying for that “a-ha” moment in this one. That’s good, and justifies the time and effort if you ask me. I’d still like to get on to the part about genetics and the original virue thing. I knew when you asked your questions on DA that they would be very involved. That was the whole reason for moving over here. It’s really too bad for Ebon’s readers, as they’ve missed out on a decent discussion.
Karla
says...Richie “Okay, let me see if I’ve got this – when the Bible says Adam and Eve had no ‘knowledge’ of good or evil, that meant they had no ‘experience’ of it.”
right
Richie “Fair enough, I’m with you so far. But then how would eating a fruit give them ‘experience’ of good and evil?”
It was doing the wrong thing that gave them the experience. It wasn’t tasting a fruit, it was doing what was forbidden. It was experiencing a new reality–a fallen reality — where they were knew better than God how to determine right and wrong. We are still living in this reality. We still think it’s all about “being good” “doing right”. Quixote explains this above in his post.
Richie “Also, the realization that they were naked and it was shameful seems rather odd under this interpretation too. Why would experience of good and evil make them suddenly ashamed of their nakedness? If being naked was bad and they knew about good and evil before they ate the fruit, shouldn’t they have come to these realizations sooner?”
It wasn’t bad, the thing is when they experienced this new fallen reality they began to reason in a fallen way, things that weren’t bad became bad and they became ashamed of things that ought not shame them. They instantly began to adapt to a fallen futile thinking.
Ritchie
says...Hello all. Back again.
Phew, this post’s going to be an epic. Strap yourselves in, people… :)
MS Quixote
“That seems to be the best rendering of Gen 1:26: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” To the Hebrew, this would have read “Let us make man to be like us and represent us.” The best rendering of the text, then, is that they were endowed with intellectual ability and the ability to make moral choices, along with many other of the communicable attributes of God.”
I see. Though this interpretation (and I do not mean that in a derogatory sense) raises several more questions. If ‘made in the likeness of God’ imples man (and woman) was made with God’s attributes, then why not all of them? God is traditionally depicted as being omnipotent and omniscient, for example. Yet these are not traits Adam and Eve were made in the likeness of. Why were humans made in the ‘likeness’ of God in some ways and not others?
Karla
“Richie “Fair enough, I’m with you so far. But then how would eating a fruit give them ‘experience’ of good and evil?”
It was doing the wrong thing that gave them the experience. It wasn’t tasting a fruit, it was doing what was forbidden.”
So eating the fruit gave them the experience of evil they did not have any beforehand. So when they made the choice to eat, they did not have any experience of evil? Am I right so far?
“It [nakedness] wasn’t bad, the thing is when they experienced this new fallen reality they began to reason in a fallen way, things that weren’t bad became bad and they became ashamed of things that ought not shame them.”
This seems slightly odd to me too. It seems to me as though, by gaining knowledge/experience of good and evil, by eating the apple, they gained information one way or the other. But if they suddenly started percieving things as bad when they really weren’t, that suggests eating the apple gave them a moral confusion or distortion, not an increase in accurate knowledge.
I mention this because there is another memorable incident in the old testament regarding nakedness – after the flood, Noah celebrated his deliverance by making wine, getting drunk and passing out in his tent naked. His son, Ham, looked in the tent and saw his father naked. For this heinous crime, Noah cursed Ham and all his descendants to a lifetime of slavery.
Now let us consider the evidence. I do appreciate that many ingenious interpretations of the Bible have been found, but a rather literal reading of this and the Eden story (and several other passages besides) draws me, at least, to the conclusion that the old testament was written by people who believed in:
– corporate guilt. Entire societies and descendants may be held accountable and punished for the sins of individual members.
– nakedness is a sin. Or at least, it is deeply shameful, and that exposing or even seeing others naked is a sin. I couldn’t tell you why, but that’s what seems to be obvious.
Neither of these are concepts we accept in this day and age. Whatever good morality we find in the Bible (and I’m happy to admit there is some good stuff in there too), we also have to be aware that some strange, barbaric and even thoroughly disagreeable morality is woven into the Bible too. This should make us extremely nervous about using it as a text for moral reference.
cl
You are to be congratualted, not only for your patience, but also your ability to hold an ever-growing debate together with an impressive degree of structure. I’ll try to reply in kind.
CLARIFICATIONS – I believe with have both stated our cases as simply as we could several times each, and we still seem to be at odds. Lets try approaching this from different angles and see what, if anything, gives.
AGREEMENTS – “1) Adam and Eve lacked both intellectual knowledge and experience of at least evil (you also seem to think they lacked knowledge of good, but I disagree, at least provisionally);”
Agreed.
“2) Adam and Eve clearly understood the parameters they were given (unlike a toddler);”
Agreed.
“3) consequence to the offender cannot be just without knowledge of the parameters (law);”
Agreed, but with a proviso. It is not enough that offenders understand the perameters, but also understand that they must not break them.
“4) anyone who understands the parameters yet willfully offends them merits consequence, which is just (per 3).”
Which is where our agreement parts. I say, ‘anyone who understands the parameters AND that they must not cross them, and yet still crosses them, merits consequences’.
The distinction here, I think, explains our different attitudes to whether Adam and Eve deserved their fate.
DISAGREEMENTS – It seems this is another area our opinions differ widly. If Jesus had met Adam and Eve outside the gates of paradise and sacrificed himself there and then, then yes, God’s punishment would be far more reasonable. As it is I reason that every person who lived between the time of Adam and Eve and the time of Jesus (who lived thousands of years later by anyone’s reckoning), went straight to Hell as a direct result of the Fall. So yes, a moral monster seems to describe God quite well.
[Just to be clear, I don’t think this is ACTUALLY the case. I don’t believe in Adam and Eve, God, Hell or Jesus. I merely want to show that even when taken as true, Christian theology is still inconsistent, morally abhorant, and hugely unlikely to be objectively true in any case.]
“Okay, now I’m beginning to understand why you see the punishment as so severe. I’m also realizing that we share quite different views of the criteria for salvation… but I don’t believe such is the system God established. Do you think that might explain why we see things so differently here?”
Quitely likely, yes. And for that reason I’ll skip straight to the next directly related point you made.
“You had two claims above: that those who’ve never heard of Jesus and/or lived before Jesus go to Hell, and that those who’ve heard of Jesus but follow another religion go to hell. Let’s refer to the first claim as the “damnation from ignorance” argument, and the second as the “damnation from
wrong religion” argument.”
Sounds good to me.
“I don’t accept the damnation from ignorance argument because I don’t believe the Bible supports the claim that those who haven’t heard of and/or lived before Jesus go to hell. The most concrete thing I can find in on this matter is that the Bible says those who reject Jesus are doomed.”
To counter that, I present this: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” ( John 14:6-7)
In fairness though, the Old and the New Testaments seem to have differing views on what conditions are necessary for salvation. The Old Testament presents the children of Isreal as chosen people. They will be saved through virtue of heritage (just as sin passes down through heritage, apparently) and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It also says nothing about Heaven and Hell. Merely that everyone dies. However, ‘soon’ the Messiah will come, whereupon all dead members of the chosen people will arise from their ‘slumber’ and establish a kingdom of God on Earth. This is still a central belief of Judaism, to my knowledge.
The New Testament then suddenly and abruptly changes the deal completely, promising Heaven to anyone who follows Jesus and Hell for those who do not. It may seem grossly unfair on those who never got to hear about Jesus but maybe it really is.
It’s the whole rationale behind missionaries – spread the word! Jews generally do not evangelise, because there is no need. The Jews are the chosen people, and they will be ressurected and everyone else will not. Tough luck. The Christians consider it their moral duty to spread the word, so as many people stand a chance of being saved as possible. So evangelising has become woven almost inextricably into the Christian faith.
Why do you reject the idea of damnation by ignorance? Do you reject that it is true, or do you reject that it is part of Christianity?
“In a sense, I accept the “damnation from wrong religion” argument, although I think I interpret it quite differently. To me, no religion is higher than truth, those who we’d call Christians are certainly going to comprise a large percentage of Hell’s population, and not everyone in Heaven is going to be somebody that we would could reasonably classify as a conventional Christian.”
On a personal level I recognise I am backing a fundamentalist interpretation of Christianty (in order to better highlight the lunacies in the theology), while your view seems more liberal. I will also not deny that you are not alone in your view – I know many reasonable Christians who believe any religion is good as a way of ‘knowing God’, and that there will be people of all faiths in Heaven (and Hell). I really do salute your view as more tolerant, reasonable, and respectful of others than the fundamentalist one.
The problem is that it’s all less Christian! Nowhere to my knowledge (and I have looked) in the Bible does it even imply that other faiths are as valid as Christianity. It is one of the Ten Commandments that ‘Thou shalt have no other gods but me.’ In some passages, people are demonized – even killed – for worshipping false gods. There would also be no reason to preach – why bother telling others about Jesus if they stand just as good a chance of getting into Heaven if they just concentrate on being good, no matter what religion they follow?
I know this has been a massive detour, but worth it, I hope. As far as I can see, Christian doctrine does indeed promise damnation for both ignorance and ‘wrong religion’. If this jars with you because you are convinced that ‘God is good and would not instigate such a horrible system’, then may I invite you to consider that it is this premise that is false?
“Noted, but that’s just your perspective, right? Of course not everyone who reads the Bible comes to the same conclusion, but to me, the Bible’s truths (both past and present) are readily obvious.”
When I meantioned the ‘truths of the Bible is not readily obvious’, I meant it in the most literal of terms. Imagine there actually was a pair of gates in the Eastern Mediterranean which was locked to us, possibly through which a utopian garden could be glimpsed beyond. Imagine if, while glancing up at the sky, we sometimes saw winged angels flying around as we sometimes do flocks of birds. Imagine if up a mountain there was the rotting remains of an enormous boat that you could walk around inside and examine – a boat which once housed two of every kind of living animal.
This is not the world we live in.
I know I’ve skipped over one or two points, but it’s late and I can’t face making this response much longer. :) If there’s anything I missed which you particularly wanted me to reply to, please point it out. Hope this gives you much food for thought.
MS Quixote
says...“Why were humans made in the ‘likeness’ of God in some ways and not others?”
Hey Ritchie,
By communicable attributes, I mean those attributes of God that actually can be transferred to us. The attributes you mention, omnipotence and omniscience, are incommunicable attributes of God. In short, they’re termed incommunicable because it’s impossible for any created being to possess those attributes. Consider the aseity, or self-existence, of God, for instance. It’s incommunicable because a created being cannot be, by definition, self-existent. Likewise, a creature cannot possibly be omniscient or omnipotent. These are qualities of a maximally great being, and, of course, supposing for a moment we could be omnipotent, then God wouldn’t be, right?
“(and I do not mean that in a derogatory sense)”
No worries…not an insult where I come from :)
cl
says...MS,
I liked that answer, especially the part about “communicable attributes” and how some are logically impossible to infer.
Where can I read your blog? I hear about it often but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it.
Ritchie,
Okay… Then,
To me, Genesis 3:2 clearly indicates that Eve knew she must not break the parameters.
Well, as far as the Damnation From Ignorance argument is concerned, it’s not entirely fair to label it “Christian theology” as not all Christians or theologians advance it (in fact, I know of few if any that do). It’s a common strawman that atheists and skeptics criticize, but not what the Bible actually teaches. If the Bible teaches the Damnation From Ignorance argument, it follows that all the patriarchs would be in Hell, yet in scripture such is not the case. As far as John 14:6-7 goes, to say “No one comes to the Father except through me” is not to say “No one born before me goes to Hell.” Right?
I answered part of that already, but I’ll add that the damnation from ignorance argument is a conclusion drawn from scripture, not scripture itself.
Well, let me elucidate a bit here. My approach to scripture is essentially Fundamentalist, it’s just that I reject most (if not all) mainline Fundamentalist dogma. IOW, a Fundamentalist and myself might share quite a bit in terms of baseline beliefs – for example that the Bible is God’s word, or that God created the universe, or that we need spiritual rebirth – but where Fundamentalists and myself often differ radically is in the conclusions drawn from those baseline beliefs. That the Bible is God’s word and that God does not condone homosexuality in the Bible doesn’t mean we should be supporting prop 8 in church. That sort of thing.
From my experience, the Bible teaches that people of other faiths who’ve not even heard the Law can intuitively understand God’s righteousness (Romans 2:14,15). This means that salvation is something Boolean, something a person either has or does not have, regardless of the particular cultural trappings. In evaluating the damnation from ignorance argument, I believe the Bible supports two ideas that aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive: truth is truth regardless of where it’s found, those who reject spiritual rebirth remain under the curse. So, while I believe most religions do contain truth, I don’t say that any religion is good as a means of salvation. I think God often prepares teachable people’s hearts for His word through their own religion. Now, are these people, the people who intuitively understand God’s righteousness – are they still in need of spiritual rebirth? I’d say yes, which is why the Bible includes the Great Commission. Does the person who intuitively understand God’s righteousness yet fails to be evangelized go to Hell? I don’t think that’s what the Bible claims. I know the Bible claims that we live once, and after that face judgment, but I don’t think that permits the statement that “those who die without hearing of Jesus go straight to Hell.”
Correct, and don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying God’s lessened His stance on idolatry, either. Today, most people don’t approach religion as actual God-worship like they used to. Many religions represent an amalgamation of philosophies and ideas. Love is not an exclusively Christian concept, right? The Bible says that God is love and forgiveness is good; I’m just noting that people of other religions can learn these things regardless of their particular cultural labels (Buddhist, Jewish, Catholic, etc.)
I don’t think people stand just as good a chance of getting into Heaven if they just concentrate on being good; I think what’s true in different religions can prepare people for much of God’s truth as revealed in the Bible.
Well, check out the post I linked to regarding the damnation from ignorance argument. Read that if you haven’t, and let’s continue the discussion over there. If I can be presented with convincing arguments from scripture supporting the idea, indeed, then maybe it’s my argument that’s false.
Ah, thanks for clarifying. Still, to this I’d say that gates and the garden would have been wiped away with everything else in the Flood. I’d also respond that people do report seeing winged angels, but since they can’t prove it skeptics don’t believe them. And as far as the Ark thing, well, isn’t that exactly the argument that’s going on?
Hey no worries. Sometimes what you called a “major detour” can also spontaneously yield “major progress” in related ideas and arguments. That’s why I think it’s generally silly to criticize people for thread derailment, as freethought doesn’t have boundaries. I’ll go over everything again, and see if there’s any last points I’d like to address or would like addressed before getting on to Pt. II.
MS Quixote
says...Thanks, cl. Link attached. You’re always welcome…
Ritchie
says...Grrr, damn connection problems…
Mrs Quixote,
I’ll ignore the obvious rebuttal that ‘nothing is impossible for an omnipotent God’ and accept what I think is the spirit of your point. Instead, I’ll just move on to ask whether you think it is fair that the curse of Adam and Eve passed onto their descendants too, even though they were not guilty of any crime? Is it acceptab;e, in short, to punish children for the crimes of the parents?
cl,
A reasonable point. I would respond by saying it indicated only Eve knew what the parameters were. Consider this interpretation – Adam and Eve always obeyed God because it simply never occurred to them to do otherwise. The serpent merely made the suggestion, but from there, Eve, who could not make any moral decision on her own, could not see the problem with disobedience. What would you say to this interpretation?
I accept it may be a strawman in the sense that it may not represent the views of many (even most) Christians. However, I am pretty confident it represents the views of the Bible! Isn’t that curious in itself? For more on this topic, I have responded on the thread you directed me to.
In other words, you think that other religions open people up to the idea of there being a God, but they’re just in the wrong one?
Agreed. But they are still missing that final vital step before they reach salvation – conversion? Is that your agrument? A good person from another faith still needs to convert to gain salvation? So good people from other religions are still damned (which by the way, would include such people as Ghandi and Buddha)?
You believe the flood is a historical fact?
You have to admit they are not obvious the way flocks of birds are obvious. The reality much better fits the scenario that those who claim to have seen them are mistaken/deluded/have fooled themselves. If there are angels flying in the sky, they are exceptionally discrete, photoshy and selective about who they ‘appear’ to.
You’ve lost me completely here. What argument?
Karla
says...Ritchie “So eating the fruit gave them the experience of evil they did not have any beforehand. So when they made the choice to eat, they did not have any experience of evil? Am I right so far?”
Correct, no experience, but intellectual knowledge that it was not to be eaten.
Ritchie “This seems slightly odd to me too. It seems to me as though, by gaining knowledge/experience of good and evil, by eating the apple, they gained information one way or the other. But if they suddenly started perceiving things as bad when they really weren’t, that suggests eating the apple gave them a moral confusion or distortion, not an increase in accurate knowledge. ”
Actually yes, they were now making moral choices apart from righteousness found only in God. So their choices would be confused and distorted. The very reason God told them not to eat of it was to do so wouldn’t be good for them, hence it being evil.
Ritchie “I mention this because there is another memorable incident in the old testament regarding nakedness – after the flood, Noah celebrated his deliverance by making wine, getting drunk and passing out in his tent naked. His son, Ham, looked in the tent and saw his father naked. For this heinous crime, Noah cursed Ham and all his descendants to a lifetime of slavery.”
No it wasn’t because he saw him naked. It was because he tried to make him a spectacle to the other brothers. He was disrespected his father. The other brothers covered him and respected him. However, nakedness is seen in a fallen manner after Adam and Eve took of the fruit, people lust and sin in this manner. Sin changed our perception of the purity of things. People now figuratively wore dirty glasses and saw the world through that dirty confused, distorted lens.
Ritchie ” to the conclusion that the old testament was written by people who believed in:
– corporate guilt. Entire societies and descendants may be held accountable and punished for the sins of individual members.”
Yes, sins of a community affect a community adversely. We can see this in the natural. Hypothetically look at a community full of alcoholics, and how that one thing can cause a ripple affect of problems in the community. Or a community where children do not have both parents raising them in a nuclear family. Or a community where murder is rampant.
“- nakedness is a sin. Or at least, it is deeply shameful, and that exposing or even seeing others naked is a sin. I couldn’t tell you why, but that’s what seems to be obvious.”
See what I said above about this.
Ritchie “Neither of these are concepts we accept in this day and age. Whatever good morality we find in the Bible (and I’m happy to admit there is some good stuff in there too), we also have to be aware that some strange, barbaric and even thoroughly disagreeable morality is woven into the Bible too. This should make us extremely nervous about using it as a text for moral reference.”
Some of it is cultural. Some of it was protective such as disposing of waste outside the city walls and not touching dead people. Some of it simply doesn’t apply today, but we can see it was very helpful to that culture who did not yet know that waste can cause disease. These “moral laws” were there to help stabilize a people who were separated from living from God’s righteousness due to their fallen sinful nature. The external rules were to not to bind them to laws, but to lead them to freedom in Christ. They served a purpose, but Christ fulfilled that purpose.
MS Quixote
says...“I’ll ignore the obvious rebuttal that ‘nothing is impossible for an omnipotent God’ and accept what I think is the spirit of your point.”
You’re right to avoid this…there are things that are impossible for an omnipotent God, as evidenced in my last post, for instance. Go cannot do the impossible, for starters, but he also cannot act against his will, or act contrary to his other attributes. For instance, his omniscience precludes him from believing a false proposition. Omnipotence is thus defined as God’s ability to accomplish his holy will, or some such, rather than the ability to do anything.
“Instead, I’ll just move on to ask whether you think it is fair that the curse of Adam and Eve passed onto their descendants too, even though they were not guilty of any crime?”
I agree with you that it would be unjust to impute original sin to humanity if they were not guilty of any crime. However, the federal view of the fall, a Christian teaching, declares that all of us are in fact guilty of the crime of Adam. God chose him as the representative for the entire human race, and his choice was, and is, binding for us as if we were there eating the fruit ourselves. Since God is infallible,–another thing God cannot do is make a mistake or the second best choice–he chose the very best representative possible, and to say that you or I would have done any different is therefore illogical, given God’s omniscience, of course. Since we would have done the same, or even worse perhaps, God is just in imputing original sin to us.
“Is it acceptab;e, in short, to punish children for the crimes of the parents?”
I agree with you here, Ritchie, that it is not. Unfortunately, as we all see too well too and often, children at times bear the consequences of their parent’s bad actions.
Here’s one for you: do you think the doctrine of original sin gives a fair account for human evil in the world? Isn’t this at least one place where the claims of Christianity are at least supported by observation?
Karla
says...Good points Quixote. I hadn’t looked at it in that way before. I have always seen it as being kind of infected with the fallen nature generation to generation — which is also true, but I never thought about it quite so philosophically as you just laid out.
Ritchie
says...Karla –
I see. So it is better to be told what is right and wrong by an authority figure, than to have free will with the possibility of making mistakes that comes as a necessary consequence?
I can understand your perspective here, though it is not explicitly stated in the Bible. It does make a point of saying that Noah’s other sons, while they fetched a robe for their father turned their faces away so they didn’t see him naked. So I think my reading here is equally feasible.
But whichever is the case, Whether Ham was punished for being disrespectful to their father, or merely happening to see him naked, does this merit absolutely slavery for Ham and all his descendants?
Such are the claims of Christianity. The Eden story not only serves as a creation (small ‘c’) story, but also an excuse as to why everyone needs to accept Jesus – everyone is tainted by sin because everyone has inherited it from Adam and Eve. That’s not to say we don’t commit enough sins ourselves anyway, but we can be absolutely positive that everyone is a sinner, because everyone inherits Original Sin. It is a tactic of conmen and advertisers the world over – convince people they are lacking something vital/they have a problem, and then sell them the answer.
The examples you pick don’t hold. the ‘community of alcoholics’ is a group of people who are EACH alcoholics. Every individual has the same problem. This is not corporate guilt. Corporate guilt is when an entire community (family, tribe, etc…)carry the blame for the actions of just one individual, ie, one man commits murder and his wife and children are punished along with him despite being completely innocent of the crime.
“Some of it is cultural. Some of it was protective such as disposing of waste outside the city walls and not touching dead people. Some of it simply doesn’t apply today, but we can see it was very helpful to that culture who did not yet know that waste can cause disease.”
Which would you say was the case on the issue of slavery? Which would you say was the case on the issue of corporate guilt? Which would you say was the case on the issue of genocide?
I know those questions sound narky, but they really are all sanctioned in the Bible.
Ritchie
says...MS Quixote
Oooh, new avatar!
That’s a contradiction in terms. Effectively you are saying ‘God is not really omnipotent’. Possibly that omnipotence itself is impossible in reality?
The train of reasoning here is frightening! No-one other than Adam and Eve ate the fruit, so punishing the whole human race for what Adam and Eve did would be, by your own admission, unjust. If you’ll forgive my saying so, this seems to be a rather tenuous defence of what is clearly grossly unfair. For one thing, Adam was not a ‘representative’, he was the ONLY man. I didn’t vote for him as my representative. For another, God’s omniscience can be proved impossible as simply as his omnipotence can – does God know what it feels like to be confused, or to forget something? And to say that everyone would have done the same thing as Adam and Eve is frankly a ridiculous, unsupported assertion.
They may bare the consequences, but that is entirely different from bearing the guilt. Such children would surely not bear that? So it is unjust it they were to be punished.
I’m not sure I really understand the question. Are you asking me whether original sin is a good metaphor for human evils? I would say no. Are you asking me whether original sin gives a good explaination for human evils? Again I would say no. Or are you asking me something completely different?
cl
says...I have some other things typed out elsewhere, and haven’t quite caught up in the thread yet, making it only down to Ritchie’s comment to Karla Sept. 25th at 7:37, but here’s a few things I did see:
Well sure – and I can even agree with you that many people fall into religion and cults and political factions and all sorts of things on behalf of conmen and advertisers – but who’s conning or selling me anything if I take what’s given and make my own reasoned decisions like any freethinker should? My belief isn’t the result of advertisers or conmen; though we could all use improvement, for the most part, I know nonsense when I see it.
I think that about hits the nail on the head, and goes right along with an idea I’ll get to again – that the fall of man inevitably brought irreparable changes to the natural world, and to human genes.
I’d say God can’t do the logically impossible, but I suppose the two phrases are effectively synonymous. Anyway, this supports what I was saying to Ritchie before, that I don’t believe God can do the logically impossible, i.e. believe a false proposition.
Although I think “corporate consequence” is more accurate, actually, I think Karla’s example was pretty sound. Humans are EACH sinners, as we’ve all agreed, right? Every individual has the same problem of sin, right?
More later..
Ritchie
says...cl –
Your belief is the result of people telling you about Christianity and Jesus (supported by your own research – reading the Bible and books/essays from religious people, which is an indirect way of people ‘telling’ you things). Now I do not mean that all these people were deliberately out to deceive you. But when we approach such insubstancial things as religion or (typically ‘New Age’) techniques such as hypnosis, astrology, astral projection, reincarnation or aura reading, I have no doubt many practitioners sincerely believe what they preach. Most, if not all of these things are power chiefly by belief, and people who believe in it are just feeding off the belief of overs.
My point in comparing Original Sin to a con trick is that if you come face to face with a person who has no knowledge of Christianity at all, you would first have to tell them that they were cursed – that they bore Original Sin – to THEN tell them Jesus is the solution. They would never recognise having Original Sin if you hadn’t told them about it. It is not a property of themselves they would ever identify.
I’m sure you don’t need me to point out such an assertion carries no weight at all. I’m sure everyone would say that. And how many would be mistaken?
It may be a sad fact that children often bear consequences of their parents bad actions but it is not just for them to bear the guilt of their parents crimes.
“I’d say God can’t do the logically impossible, but I suppose the two phrases are effectively synonymous. Anyway, this supports what I was saying to Ritchie before, that I don’t believe God can do the logically impossible, i.e. believe a false proposition.”
So God is not truly omnipotent? Fair enough. But then how can we be sure God can work miracles? The popular response to God performing any number of miracles (by definition, ‘doing the impossible’) is that God can do anything. He is omnipotent. If you agree He is not really omnipotent, then how would we know whether creating a universe or appearing as a pillar of flame or destroying cites with fire and brimstone lie within his limited abilities?
“Although I think “corporate consequence” is more accurate, actually, I think Karla’s example was pretty sound. Humans are EACH sinners, as we’ve all agreed, right? Every individual has the same problem of sin, right?”
Not really. A ‘community of alcoholics’ is made up of individuals who each need help because of their own actions. We are all sinners because of the actions of two remote ancestors. That is like treating a child of a murderer as a murderer themselves.
MS Quixote
says...“That’s a contradiction in terms. Effectively you are saying ‘God is not really omnipotent’. Possibly that omnipotence itself is impossible in reality?”
I disagree, respectfully, Ritchie. The contradiction is between your definition of omnipotence and what God can or cannot do. For a Christian such as myself to claim that God can do anything–and thus define omnipotence in that manner–would be rather foolish, since I freely admit I can do things that God cannot, like lie or kill myself. If you’ll take a look at any Christian sytematic theology, you’ll not find omnipotence defined as the ability to do anything.
“For one thing, Adam was not a ‘representative’, he was the ONLY man. I didn’t vote for him as my representative.”
That’s exactly my point, Ritchie. You, as a fallible non-omniscient creature could not vote for the perfect representative, as, if you’re old enough, is empirically observable by your voting record. But, given God as omniscient, He not only could, but must choose the perfect representative. Thus, you were perfectly represented, and the choice was made as if you were there eating the fruit yourself. In fact, if you or I were there, we would have done much worse. Since you were perfectly represented, it’s as if you ate the fruit yourself, and are culpable for the crime.
“For another, God’s omniscience can be proved impossible as simply as his omnipotence can”
If this were true, Ritchie, we wouldn’t be talking about fruit, now would we :)
“And to say that everyone would have done the same thing as Adam and Eve is frankly a ridiculous, unsupported assertion.”
Far from it. It’s a logical necessity, given the omniscience and benevolence of God. What’s ridiculous, again offered with the highest respect for you, is your assertion that you know better than the omniscient God who chose your representative, and could or would do a better job.
“They may bare the consequences, but that is entirely different from bearing the guilt.”
Agreed.
“So it is unjust it they were to be punished.”
Not if they are complicit in Adam’s sin, and Christianity claims they are. Please also note that you, me, Karla, cl, and everyone else who has ever lived to an age where they were able has ratified Adam’s choice with their own sin.
“Or are you asking me something completely different?”
I’m asking you to look around you, on your TV, in all your experiences, and in your own heart and tell me if the claims of original sin are observable.
Ritchie
says...MS Quixote –
Forgive me, but it sounds as though you are defining omnipotence in terms of God’s abilities. That is backwards. ‘Omnipotence’ is not defined as ‘the amount of power God has’. It is defined (broadly) as ‘having unlimited power’. Many Christians claim God possess this quality.
My personal opinion is that such a quality cannot actually exist. The reason is that this involves logical contradictions, as we have indicated. So, with this in mind we might, perhaps, want to change our definition of God’s abilities to something like: ‘as powerful as it is logically possible to be’.
A new problem arises here though – how powerful IS it logically possible to be? Is it logically possible to create a universe? Is it logically possible to know the minds of every individual on the planet? Etc…
…For the time being, but I’m working on it… :)
I see the reasoning, but I do not accept it. It seems to me as though you are trying to marry the conflicting assertions that ‘God is good’ and ‘God has punished us for the sins of our ancestors.’ Since this seems such a contradiction on the face of it, something has to give. So this odd justification emerges which claims it is morally acceptable for God to enforce corporate guilt.
A simpler explaination, to my mind, it that this is a morality story written by people who DID believe in corporate guilt, and it simply did not occur to them that people would one day find this concept morally reprehensible.
True. That is partly why I reject the ‘omniscience and benevolence of God’ as brute facts.
No offense taken, of course. But if I were to assert that I knew better than God, that would pre-suppose He exists. I don’t claim to know better than him, but I do claim to be able to spot flaws in an ancient morality tale. Arrogant? Perhaps, but less so, I hope.
Christianity claims that? Can you find me anything in the Bible which supports the assertion that Adam and Eve were ‘representatives’ for humanity, or that we are complicit in Adam’s sin? Or are you just asserting this because you do not want to callenge the convention that ‘God is good’?
Well yes, that’s a fair point. I’m not claiming anyone is totally without sin. But it COULD happen, in theory, if we are judged simply on the merits of our own actions, which I have less of an issue with.
As an aside, I once asked a fiercely religious man why Jesus didn’t inherit the sin of Adam and Eve through Mary. He may not have had a father, but he still had a mother. His reply was that (and I kid you not) babies inherit their genes solely from their father! A woman is simply a vessel in which to incubate the father’s child. Jesus had no mortal father, and was therefore perfect. I’m not suggesting you support this nonsense, but why DIDN’T Jesus inherit the sin through his mother Mary?
Embarrassingly I’m still a little lost. What ARE the claims of Original Sin?
That we are cursed by God? I hope not.
That the troubles of the world are the result of our rebellion against God? I don’t see any evidence for this.
That we like to eat fruit? Yes, this one I’ll grant you.
MS Quixote
says...“Forgive me, but it sounds as though you are defining omnipotence in terms of God’s abilities.”
I’m giving you the orthodox Christian definition. Like I said, pick up or google any standard systematic theology for confirmation.
“My personal opinion is that such a quality cannot actually exist.”
I agree, and any Christian who claims this just hasn’t thought through it.
“Since this seems such a contradiction on the face of it, something has to give. So this odd justification emerges which claims it is morally acceptable for God to enforce corporate guilt.”
You’re throwing around the word *contradiction* pretty loosely, Ritchie. You may not accept the explanation. That’s fine. But it’s not contradictory or internally incoherent because in actuality I’m not claiming corporate guilt.
“But if I were to assert that I knew better than God, that would pre-suppose He exists.”
Not necessarily…you might say “if God exists, I know better than him.” It presupposes nothing, except perhaps the validity of logic and meaning.
“but I do claim to be able to spot flaws in an ancient morality tale. Arrogant? Perhaps, but less so, I hope.”
I understand, and if you turn out to be right, then you’ll be both right and not arrogant in the least, not that you are now. But drop the term *ancient*. It weakens your statement, IMO. The ancient part has nothing to do with it; you’ve spotted a flaw or you haven’t.
“Christianity claims that? Can you find me anything in the Bible which supports the assertion that Adam and Eve were ‘representatives’ for humanity, or that we are complicit in Adam’s sin?”
Christianity and the Bible are not synonymous, but Romans 5 does.
“Or are you just asserting this because you do not want to callenge the convention that ‘God is good’?”
Come on, Ritchie…are you just asserting your part because you don’t want to challenge the assertion that God is not good?
“but why DIDN’T Jesus inherit the sin through his mother Mary?”
As you probably know, the Catholics make Mary to be sinless to get around this issue. I don’t believe that, but I also am not convinced that original sin is passed through bloodlines or DNA.
Regardless, the birth of Christ is a miracle, having been conceived of the Holy Spirit with no earthly father. It’s reasonable to assume that this type of miraculous birth, if true, is substantially and inherently different from ours.
“What ARE the claims of Original Sin?”
How about just the minimalist claim that folks have a bent toward doing bad things?
“That we like to eat fruit? Yes, this one I’ll grant you.”
Good one, Ritchie…in past times, I would have had shared a good comeback with you :)
Ritchie
says...Ms Quixote –
I’m confused – you seem to be saying both that God is omnipotent and yet you agree omnipotence is impossible in reality. Omnipotence is defined as the quality of having ‘unlimited power’, which can either exist or it cannot. If it does, then how do we solve the contradictions we have identified? If it does not, then God cannot be omnipotent.
Okay, but you are claiming to know what everyone who has ever lived would do given the choice of Adam and Eve. Well, actually you are claiming this knowledge through logical deduction, but it is logical deduction based on something you claim to know to be true – that God exists and is perfect.
Suppose I came to you and said there was a perfect being who made a perfect representative of you, but this representative sinned against me so now you have to be my slave. In fact, I should treat you as though it was you who committed the sin, because you yourself could not have done better, and would probably have done worse. Would you accept this? Would this seem logical to you? Would it seem ridiculous to take it on face value?
Very well. Good point.
Really? Don’t you find that curious?
I assume these are the verses you mean?
Not only do these passages not say that Adam was our representative, or that we are complicit in his crime, but it also points out that there were some men after Adam who had not sinned by still inherited his curse…
Touche. I suppose we could play the motive game all day, but it would probably achieve little.
As much as it can ever be ‘reasonable’ to assume a miracle, I suppose.
Well I don’t want to get into a rendition of What A Wonderful World, but no, I do not think folk are inherantly bad. True, there are a lot of bad things happening in the world, but the way I see it it is usually the minority victimizing the many. The majority of people are by and large reasonable people, and in such a population, a few bad people can find much to exploit.
Plus I work in the media, so I like to think I’m pretty clued up on how sensationalist many of the stories which hit the news really are.
cl
says...First, a general note:
I concur! My preferred strategy is to give the benefit of the doubt.
Quixote,
It seems your position is that we would all have made the same choice as Adam and Eve, so punishing us for their failure is just. Is that what you’re saying?
Ritchie,
To continue a point we let simmer a few comments back, regarding my assertion that Genesis 3:2 established that Eve knew both what the parameters were, and that she was not to cross them, you said,
Yet, the verse reads: “..but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ Note that ‘and’ indicates this to be a two-tier statement: Eve first responds to the serpent by reiterating exactly what the parameters were – not to eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden – and Eve then responds by stating that she knows she is not to eat from that tree.
You ask,
I’d say from there, Eve could have made the moral decision: she could have trusted God. After all, they’d trusted God up until that day, and they had what they needed, right? She could clearly recognize the problem with disobedience because the Almighty Creator told her there would be a problem if she disobeyed.
Moving along to newer points introduced in the thread, to Karla, you said,
I would say that depends on the authority figure. Certain authority figures justifiably merit submission. If an all-knowing God that has humanity’s best interests in mind exists, wouldn’t you say such an authority figure is worthy of following?
My point was that I didn’t see the relevance of conmen to this discussion. How does the existence of conmen – or the adaptibility of the doctrine of Original Sin to their aims – weaken or strengthen either of our arguments?
Probably many. My point was to say that knowledge and reason are our defenses against conmen.
I disagree. This position ignores the fact of sin as expressed in each individual’s life. We are all sinners because we have all sinned. As Quixote said, “..you, me, Karla, cl, and everyone else who has ever lived to an age where they were able has ratified Adam’s choice with their own sin.” It’s not like we’d be blameless if Adam and Eve hadn’t eaten the fruit.
To Quixote, you said,
If God exists, then claiming this is best explained as flaws in an ancient morality tale is a claim to know better than God!
For the record, I see the core of your disagreement with Quixote here:
Frankly, I’m not sure who’s side I’m on in this regard. It seems I have a different position than both of you.
I’d say the Bible argues that we are judged on the merits of our own actions. Yes, Adam and Eve’s original sin is causally linked to ours, but we don’t need salvation because they sinned; we need it because we all sin. We all “ratify their choice” as Quixote put it.
I saw Quixote’s response, and I’d like to get to this in Pt. II.
cl
says...[REGARDING OMNIPOTENCE]
Ritchie,
I initially wondered if you include the ability to do the logically impossible with your definition of omnipotence, because when Quixote said there were things that were impossible for an omnipotent God to do, you replied, “Effectively you are saying ‘God is not really omnipotent’.” You also asked, “does God know what it feels like to be confused, or to forget something?” Both of these initially suggested that you accept the premise that omnipotence entails the ability to perform the logically impossible.
I agree that such is the popular conception, but it’s poorly worded in that it leads to the conundrum that God can even do the logically impossible, but the Bible is not consistent with this position, and neither is philosophical rigor. Even the Bible states that it is impossible for God to lie, so clearly, “God can do anything” comes with caveat, and not recognizing the caveat can influence people to talk past each other. I believe God is truly omnipotent in that God can perform every possible possible action. For example, if God is eternal by nature, the fact that God can’t commit suicide is not a strike against omnipotence in my book – it’s consistency of logic.
Well, I don’t agree that “He is not really omnipotent.” I don’t say God’s abilities are limited; I say ability itself is limited, but God has all abilities that exist. As I read further, I see you said,
My reply would be that unlimited power cannot exist, and that omnipotence is better defined as “access to the full range of possibility.” [which seems equivalent to your ”as powerful as it is logically possible to be’.’] I’m not really sure when and where these differences in definition become problematic, but we should probably be aware of them at the very least.
It seems we agree, then. From my reading, you, myself and Quixote are all on the same page regarding omnipotence. Either of you please correct me if I’m wrong.
It must be; we’re in one. Not to be coy, but the reasoning would be that whatever exists in actuality must be logically possible, else it couldn’t exist.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t be, as no contradictions seem to arise.
MS Quixote
says...“I’m confused – you seem to be saying both that God is omnipotent and yet you agree omnipotence is impossible in reality.”
Actually, I’m saying that God possesses the Christian defintion of omnipotence as an attribute, and agreeing with you that your definition of it is impossible.
“Would you accept this? Would this seem logical to you? Would it seem ridiculous to take it on face value?”
Your pejorative *slave” notwithstanding, yes and yes. For face value, yes, it would seem a fantastic claim for certain, and perhaps ridiculous. But were I convinced of the existence of this perfect, benevolent being on other grounds, face value would no longer be face value. In other words, I completely understand your stance from your epistemic distance and don’t begrudge you for holding it.
“Really? Don’t you find that curious?”
No more curious than the existence of you, Dawkins, and Nietzsche together under the pale of atheism :)
“Not only do these passages not say that Adam was our representative, or that we are complicit in his crime,”
A bit pedantic on my part, but you asked for *supporting* text, not explicit. Nevertheless, you deserve this point. Good point.
“Plus I work in the media, so I like to think I’m pretty clued up on how sensationalist many of the stories which hit the news really are.”
How interesting. Hope you’re as rational there as you are here. We could sure use some good folk in the media these days. You’re a good sort, Ritchie…very happy to have made your acquaintance.
Karla
says...I’m behind in this and don’t have the time at the moment to catch up but I didn’t want to address this to Ritchie.
Ritchie “I see. So it is better to be told what is right and wrong by an authority figure, than to have free will with the possibility of making mistakes that comes as a necessary consequence?”
No, it wasn’t like that before the fall – man walked with God in one accord—not as a servant obeying a master. It is better to be righteous on the inside so that your actions are right and good on the outside. God makes us righteous in our being because His life is merged with our life and from that place of righteousness we do what is good. When sin separated us from righteousness we began to be on a different system of morality where we had to be governed externally for our good to lead us back to the place of righteousness.
Karla
says...I’m behind in this and don’t have the time at the moment to catch up but I didn’t want to address this to Ritchie.
Ritchie “I see. So it is better to be told what is right and wrong by an authority figure, than to have free will with the possibility of making mistakes that comes as a necessary consequence?”
No, it wasn’t like that before the fall – man walked with God in one accord—not as a servant obeying a master. It is better to be righteous on the inside so that your actions are right and good on the outside. God makes us righteous in our being because His life is merged with our life and from that place of righteousness we do what is good. When sin separated us from righteousness we began to be on a different system of morality where we had to be governed externally for our good to lead us back to the place of righteousness.
Karla
says...correction * I did want to address not * I didn’t
Ritchie
says...Hello again.
Sorry for having been away so long. I hope you’re still around? I know it must be annoying when people unceremoniously vanish…
cl –
This seems to be question begging, for me. Eve could not have made a moral decision. That is rather the point. She had no knowledge of good or evil, which is a necessary prerequisite for making moral choices.
Fair enough. And how do you know God is worthy of submission? How do you know God is good? He certainly commits or sanctions some appalling atrocties in the Bible. And any evil deity can CLAIM to be good, so any Biblical references describing God as ‘good’ are worthless. How do you know God is worth obeying? Surely you need to exercise your own moral judgement in order to decide that?
Would we sin if Adam and Eve had not? Would we have been able to sin if Adam and Eve had not eaten the fruit?
Ritchie
says...[ON OMNIPOTENCE]
Precisely. Which is why I do not think omnipotence can actually exist.
Fair enough. As long as we recognise the differences in each other’s definitions then I suppose we are equipped to carry on the debate.
This is just rewording the problem, not solving it. How do you know that creating the universe, or life, or knowing the future are abilities that can exist?
I’m afraid this is circular logic. All we can draw from the existence of the universe is that it is possible for a universe to exist. But is it possible to CREATE one? We certainly don’t have that ability. Does God? Maybe the act of creating a universe involves logical impossibilities, putting it outside the ability of God to create, under your definition of omnipotence.
Ritchie
says...MS Quixote –
Very well. Then I put to you the same question I put to cl – how do we know creating the universe or life is possible? If it is indeed impossible, then it lies outside God’s abilities.
Okay. So you think it is acceptable because there is evidence to support the existence of God? I realise I reaching for a massive brand new can of worms here, but can you point to some solid, objective evidence that the Christian God exists?
Well atheism is a curious position because it is defined only by non-belief in one very specific thing. That is the only quality which ties all atheists together. So by definition, atheists are a very diverse bunch, and not necessarily united in any other way.
However, the Bible is the holy book of Christianity. It is the text which contains the teachings Christianity is supposed to be built upon. I realise that different branches of Christianity take more of a literal interpretation of the Bible than others, but if your beliefs contradict those stated in the Bible, to what extent are your beliefs Christian?
Right back atcha. I find there is more to be gleaned that is true in the world from open debate between people speaking honestly than in every newspaper ever written.
Ritchie
says...Karla –
The fact that God lay down even one rule rather belies this. Adam and Eve could do what they liked – as long as they stayed within the perameters set down by God.
If that were true, then we might expect to find Christians (or ‘holy men’) more righteous, less likely to sin and commit horrible crimes, surely? Yet this is not the case. The general trend in the USA alone shows crime rates to be higher in states which are the most ‘pious’. Countries which boast high numbers of atheists tend to have low crime rates and have high quality of life.
Of course, I am not suggesting that religion makes people bad, or that atheism makes people good. I mean no offense in this, but how can it be said that ‘God makes us righteous in our being’ if we generally see Christians or religious people in general behaving no better than the rest of us?