Did God prohibt or encourage Adam and Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge?

many goods, agreed, don’t need evil to bring them about… but nonetheless there are certain “good” things that simply logically could not exist in a world entire devoid of evil. forgiveness for one, simply could not logically exist in a world that had absolutely no evil. there would never be anything to forgive.

[edited to ensure proper context of original quote.]

Well, yes - of course. but we don’t pine for forgiveness as some independently enjoyable thing any more than we pine for bandages or doctors. Those things take us in good directions, but only from deficit places. In our world of physical injuries, we need and love access to all that, but nobody in a world devoid of injury will miss them. While our world of suffering does make us long for a heaven away from suffering, one must yet believe there is more to hope for from paradise than an absence of suffering (granted - that is an observation that I suppose could only come from somebody not suffering overmuch in this present world.)

That is completely WRONG. There is plenty of reason for forgiveness when you make mistakes, and mistakes are part of how we learn. This probably derives from our completely different definitions of sin and evil. You may define sin as any kind of disobedience to absolute laws or evil as a failure to be perfect, BUT I DO NOT! I define sin as self-destructive habits and evil as the pursuit of desires at the expense to the well being of others. The way I define these things there is nothing good to them at all. They destroy and bring death to the spirit.

(quite correct. unintended on my part… was not trying to misquote or mislead but was just trying to capture the most relevant part… but you are correct, what i selected made it look like you were saying the opposite of what you said.)

if someone made some kind of “mistake”, but it brought me absolutely no pain, discomfort, displeasure, annoyance, frustration, offense, harm, or injury in any way whatsoever … i have trouble understanding what there would be to forgive?

and a world devoid of evil would, i would understand, be a world devoid of pain, discomfort, displeasure, annoyance, frustration, offense, harm, or injury of any kind, by very definition.

what am i missing?

Sin in the Biblical sense can be understood in several different ways. The greek word used for sin in the New Testament essentially means “to miss the mark.” As Jesus taught us, sin is not particular actions, but motivations for actions, although there are some actions that no one could undertake without sinful motivations (such as adultery). At bottom, though, sin is simply rebellion against God. As God is the source of life, rebellion against God ultimately leads to death, but I don’t think you can draw such a clear distinction as you have. Any action can be sinful, even praying, as Jesus also taught using the Pharisees as an example. There is no need to forgive a mistake unless it is the result of rebellion. For example, if in the process of learning to do something correctly one makes a mistake, what’s there to forgive?

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So? I don’t define evil and sin as anything causing pain, discomfort, displeasure, annoyance, frustration, offense, harm, or injury in any way whatsoever.

Exactly. My definition of evil was “the pursuit of desires at the expense to the well being of others.” Not the pursuit of desires which happen to do harm to the well being of others. And pursuit begins in the mind with thinking and obsessing about it long before you actually put a plan into action. It is indeed the intent and not the results which matter.

No mafia godfather could have said it better. But I do not believe in that kind of god.

Yes that is indeed a enormous difference between us. I accept the facts discovered by science that pain, suffering, and death are a necessity for life itself, and completely reject this fantasy of life created by magic in fairy tales. Pain is literally the spice of life. Take those things out of life and we will quickly become the eloi of HG Well’s “Time Machine,” or worse.

Apologies, then… How do you define evil?

That definition has a lot of merits. But I don’t think that is the Bible’s definition of evil. As he did so often, Jesus pointed to the fundamental issue when he prayed to have “this cup” taken from him, adding, “yet not my will, but yours be done.”

Desiring that which is not God’s will is evil, for only God is good.

The personification of God in the Bible can create problems when people take that too literally. We have to realize that the person of God is not like the person of a human being, because God is, as Paul put it, “above all, in all and through all.” He acts from the perspective only he can have.

Thus, rebelling against God is rebelling against reality as it actually is. God “punishing” us isn’t retribution in the sense of “how dare you act against me, take that!” Rather, it’s protection of the purpose of his creation. If he did not, we would (as we are currently doing to this planet), destroy his creation.

God is good, his creation is good and is created for good. Consequently rebelling against him is rebelling against good, and that which is not good is evil.

No. God created life and free will because God chose love and freedom over power and control. This means it is not just about His will. His will is for there to be other wills than His own. It is God’s will that we desire things other than God’s will – which is to say this notion of defining good as God’s will is inconsistent. Things are not good because God wills them, God wills things because they are good.

Incorrect. Nearly the first words out of God’s mouth were “It is good” and “It is very good,” and He wasn’t talking about Himself.

The God I believe in is more not less. He most certainly IS a personal God. He is not limited to a singularity of personhood as we are, and in that sense He is different. But theology with a list of things that God cannot do is a theology which seeks to enslave God to the theologian’s will – very foolish.

Ah yes! There is a great deal of truth to this. Though I come at it from a very different direction when I speak of the proper fear of God. We are accustomed to manipulating others to get what we want and that just will not work with God. People seek what they want and God knows what they need. Our demands tend to be inconsistent, and God is likely to ignore such nonsense.

But the problem is that such definitions of sin as rebellion is not helpful and only serves those using religion as a tool of power more than anything else. You might as well be serving the “god of this world” or a mafia godfather. And I just don’t thinks God works the same way. I certainly don’t think God is simply reality but there is truth in what you say because God is far more in touch with reality than we are.

True but not helpful because obedience is not a definition of goodness. As we have learned all too well in recent history, obedience can be very very evil. It is time to move beyond the moral stage of the toddler where the only reasoning we can handle is “because daddy says so.” In world which is constantly changing we need a rational for what is good and what is evil and what is sin.

I don’t think the contradictions you assert in your reply are actually contradictions. Thanks for discussing with me!

so, might a list of things God cannot do include…

-be limited to a singularity of personhood,
-cease to be a personal God,
-prefer power and control over love and freedom,
-will that we not desire things other than God’s will,
-be like a mafia godfather…?

No, I deny every one of the claims in your list.
God can be limited however He chooses to be limited.
God can become whatever He chooses to become… in whatever time continuum(s) He chooses.
Preference is a choice by definition thus God most certainly can prefer otherwise.
God can be like whatever He chooses.
God can do evil if He chooses.
But because God can do something doesn’t mean He will. And just because He can doesn’t mean He will have my regard if does… doesn’t mean that I will call Him God. There are quite a number of things He could do that would mean I will call Him a monster.

So for example…

Omnipotence means God can accomplish whatever He chooses to accomplish not that He must do everything. Statements about logical contradictions are incoherent and without meaning so any statement about whether God can or cannot do such a thing is a meaningless statement.

Omniscience means God can know whatever He chooses to know, not that He must know everything. So yes God is capable of not knowing something. It means God can take risks, give someone privacy, or forget someones sins as it says in the Bible.

Ah, yes, then he could choose to limit himself by removing from himself his ability to do evil…? He could choose to become a being who did not have the ability to choose to do evil…?

Thank you for your comments–really. I need to do more study. Your comments are serious and require detailed attention. Allow me to come back, hopefully tomorrow but certainly by Sunday.

will be happy to share whatever small wisdom or thoughts i may have, if you find it helpful.

Sure.

I could complain that you make it sound far simpler than it really is. God doesn’t have a genie to make wishes to. But God is certainly up to any task no matter how difficult. So more to the point, there is a HUGE difference between God choosing something and some human declaring that God cannot do something. And that which is a result of a choice is by definition different than that which the case by nature. Furthermore, human declarations have a strong tendency to be logically incoherent and therefore meaningless.

And do you have a point to make or are you just playing around? Fishing for an opportunity to cast stones is not very Christ-like… sounds like the Pharisees to be frank.

I am genuinely trying to understand your position, and figure out how to make sense of what sound like irreconcilably contradictory claims - because it honestly does not make sense to me - logically or otherwise. You seem to be saying that God’s freedom to choose overrides all else… But I don’t see any possible way how one can claim that God can choose to limit himself in any conceivable way whatsoever… or choose to be whatever he wants to be…but then claim simultaneously that God must (presumably by nature, and at any time) have the ability to do evil. In any conceivable way I think through it, these are mutually exclusive.

If I had absolute freedom and power to instantly become whatever I decided to be… and I chose to be someone whose nature, character, desires, morality, or everything else was such that I simply could not choose to do evil… then I will have exercised my “freedom” that you note to “choose to be limited,” or to “choose to become whatever I choose to become.” But once I have chosen to become that, once I have chosen to so limit myself, then I no longer, by very definition, have the freedom to choose to do evil. Or, alternately, if I want to “hold out” and make sure I maintain the freedom to choose to do evil at some point in the future if I ever so desire, then I simply cannot make myself into a being that cannot choose evil, I simply cannot limit myself in that particular way.

One can have one or the other, but not both. I am suggesting that the theology and doctrines about God that you are proposing sounds like an incontrovertible, irreconcilable contradiction… but I am quite happy to hear your case if you can explain further, if you think I’m missing something.

I quite agree that there may be any number of ways of limiting yourself that is simply inconsistent – and it seems quite possible that this inability to do evil is one of them. But that was YOUR idea, not mine. However suggesting that God cannot limit Himself in ways that make Him incapable of simple things that any human being can do, like takes risks or give privacy, sound utterly absurd to me as well as rather inconsistent with the text of the Bible. Furthermore it makes any idea of love on the part of God so alien and strange that I want nothing to do with such a creature.

Many statements taken to absurd extremes as absolutes generate contradictions… but it seems to me that is what you do when you are hunting for excuses. It is far more reasonable to take this a reason why such absolute extremes is not what was intended. You see the same differences in the way an atheist reads the Bible… just looking for excuses.

This may be true for many “out there”, but this is very uncharitable toward Daniel here (or I suspect most people) who come here in good faith to learn, discuss, or defend. Please give them enough benefit to at least assume that what they have received (even if it turns out to be in need of correction in one way or another), their conviction is one of good faith and not one of “looking for excuses”.

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