You missed the full name of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Some people seem to think God made people to be naive because they don’t want people to be able to choose evil, but to always do good.
The question is not knowledge, it is choice. People did choose choice or freedom, but the problem is that they did not take RESPONSIBILIY for this choice. People want freedom, but fail to take responsibility for the misuse of that freedom.
Most of sin is not the act itself, but the coverup. Putin should have stopped when he saw or should have seen that the invasion of Ukraine was not a walk in the park.
Adam and Eve knew what was wrong. They knew that eating the fruit was wrong, but until they ate the fruit, they never experienced evil or sin.
As @Mervin_Bitikofer pointed above,if anyone isn’t willing to sacrifice even a little bit of that"God given freedom(freewill) to make the world better,then he hasn’t truly suffered in his life. And this shows here by many of you believers. You haven’t really suffered it seems to question your free will and that you have too much freedom. It doesn’t even cross your minds to give up a little of that freedom. You remind me of some rednecks who will defend the gun policy with whatever stupid argument they’ll find
You are talking about moral robots. I conclude you are amoral robots
Precisely wrong. They knew that God had said it was wrong. They did not know it was wrong. That is the whole point. The difference between obedience and choice.
Besides, it is academic if the story is not based on reality.
Why? Why should there be a god? The only reason for this assertion would be that creation could not exist without a creator? But that leads to the paradox of where the creator came from in the first place?
The answer appears to be that God is outside linear time and therefore has no beginning or end. Convenient or what?
(just saying)
The only logical reason for belief in God is the Razor quoted elsewhere. Belief is irrational. That is half, if not all of the point of it. And the reason why the empirical view of God does not work.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at ,Terry. I’ve never described myself as any kind of antitheist, quite the opposite. You don’t strike me as someone to be provocative for no reason nor do I think you are a poor or inattentive reader. So perhaps you can explain what you’re saying or asking or accusing me of. I have no idea why you quoted those others; I’ve only followed the parts of the thread that interested me.
Hegel’s dialectics make my head spin, and I doubt I can challenge you any further other than by saying that unity and diversity are both ultimately real in the being of a triune God.
Sin is defined biblically as the state we find ourselves when we break God’s law. So strictly speaking, you would need to say, God is to blame for creating law, and as this is all pervasive, you would need to argue for an alternative (that is all of creation). This is where most arguments for and against, get tricky. Christianity acknowledges that we have sinned and ask God to redeem us, and to redeem the entire creation - and this is the work of Christ.
I cannot understand your point of view - if you are against what God has created, perhaps you should suggest an alternative creation.
On the matter of choice - biblically, humanity was offered eternal life without sin, or tempted to seek the fruits of the knowledge of good and evil which brought the wages of sin. Since we have chosen the latter, we are subject to the outcomes of sin, and need to repent and turn to Christ for our salvation.
Are you against this?
My comment on anti-theists is simply to show their contradiction - ie, they say there is no God, yet they blame God for the evil humanity does. This is odd.
Why do I need to suggest an alternative? How can I a human being can suggest an alternative thing to a supperrior being that I cannot even comprehend in the first place? This is dumb sorry. It’s like asking to me to find an alternative to the crisis of my country even though I’m not an economist.If I need to suggest an alternative to God then there is a problem here. And if God couldn’t find an alternative way there is also a problem here. Maybe the title all-powerful is not suited for him anymore.
Your argument that you imply I need to make is straw man sorry.
A lot of them are debating out of speculation. As I said before I’m arguing always on the basis of "what if ". So even if someone doesn’t believe in God they can still argue about him or blame him in a what if scenario
I have pointed out the basics of the Christian faith and include law and sin, and salvation - if you are against all of these, do you have an alternate outlook?
Haven’t answered to my comment above. I won’t answer on repeated questions. I answered you above. If you didn’t understand something just ask me to rephrase it better. You are basically asking the same thing
Unfortunately, I should have said nothing or, at most, I hope that I am not alone knowing who is most foolish (i.e. an anti-theist who (a) claims a right to say that, if there is a God, He is an evil Creator because He made Humans who can and do sin, i.e. do evil acts, and (b) claims a right to be absurd.) Instead, I wrote:
Sorry to put you to so much extra work. My bad. I thought it had been Heymike and was feeling like there was nothing I could say to get a break. So I reacted accordingly. Mea culpa. I will endeavor to do better.
But I’d never heard the phrase “agnostic anti theist” before. Hard to see how anyone who recognizes the weakness of our epistemic position in this area would have a hard time justifying acting a jerk toward those who practice a religion. I think it is harder for Christians to tap into that agnosticism because of the apparent contradiction between being strong in faith while also admitting the shaky ground that faith must stand upon - not because of the weakness of the case in favor of but because of our common human frailty which thwarts most certainty. But the rare believers who get the balance right are real jewels. I would have had you pegged as one of those but given my recent ‘success’ in keeping users info straight … I’m not so certain.
The thought occurred to me when I was being introduced to Hegel’s dialectical metaphysics where there is the conflict between oneness and diversity. Being leads to non-being and then the synthesis (or something like that) leads to becoming. Unity and diversity are not coequally ultimate for Hegel or even Marx I think, but in trinitarian theology they are. It’s also the only kind of theism I ever seen spoken of where God would not have to suffer being alone.
It’s almost the height of irony that the kind of certainty that is certain, like the principle of non-contradiction, is said to tell something about the world, but it’s an admission of what it can tell and what it cannot. It’s just not the part everyone thought it was going to be.
