Laser Eyes,
…When the Bible says that Adam had "become like one of Us, to know good and evil" (Genesis 3:22) it means that Adam rejected God's authority and had decided to determine for himself what was right and wrong.
Clearly that isn’t what the bible says. Adam ate from the tree that gave the knowledge of good and evil, it is overwhelmingly obvious that that is where his knowledge came from, and hence acquired the same knowledge as God.
There can be no question that Adam knew he was obliged to obey God's command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There was a period of time before Eve was created when Adam and God lived together. We don't know how long it lasted, it may have been days, months or years. But during this time Adam and God communicated with each other and God taught Adam as a father teaches a son. It is reasonable to suppose that Adam would have learned who he was, how he was created, his proper relationship with God and so forth.
An interesting story but without the knowledge of good and evil he would not have understood very much and certainly would have no ability to make value judgments requiring decisions to choose good instead of bad. If you want to insist that God taught Adam the difference between good and evil then you need to explain the purpose of the tree that gave such knowledge, if that wasn’t its intended purpose (I see you attempt to do that later in your post, but you didn’t succeed). You also need to explain
Genesis 3:7 “Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked….” This is the exact moment when Adam received the knowledge of good and evil. Why would Adam suddenly feel this way if God had already taught given him this knowledge as you claim? Your assertions are simply inconsistent with the bible.
Adam must have fully understood the concept of death or the warning from God would have been meaningless and the punishment would have been unjust.
Bingo, now you understand the Adam and Eve paradox. And why Christianity is a fraud since the need for a savior is based on Adam knowing the difference between good and bad before he had obtained that knowledge.
Just because the Bible does not explain how Adam learned the meaning of death does not mean it didn't happen.
Read Genesis 3:7 again – clearly there was a moment when he didn’t know what was bad and the next when he did. He could not have known that death was a bad thing until AFTER he had eaten from the tree.
The Bible does not purport to be a complete record of every thing that has happened in the history of mankind.
Agreed, but when it is logically paradoxical by its own statements as in the Adam and Eve farce then it loses all credibility. The writers seriously screwed up because they were creating a myth rather than recording real events.
On the other hand the Bible does tell us that God is a loving and just God who respects the intelligence and free will that he gave us.
Except that we can see that the Adam and Eve story is a paradox in which case God if he were to exist is a sadistic murderer who condemned all of humanity to pain, suffering and death.
If Adam didn't understand the meaning of death then it wouldn't have been a fair test.
Yes indeed you do understand.
But since we know that God is fair and reasonable it follows that God must have ensured that Adam fully understood the consequences of disobedience.
Why? The Adam and Eve story is the first story in the bible where he interacts with people and we can see from that that he is a sadistic monster, why would we trust anything else he says in the rest of the bible?
We can conclude that Adam knew and understood what death meant from the fact that God would not have let Adam be unfairly tested.
Not if God is the real evil, as it looks like he is, judging by the Adam and Eve paradox.
You seem to have difficulty with the idea that God can choose not to know something if he wishes.
You mean just like a 6 foot tall man can decide not to be 6 foot if he wishes. Omniscience is the claimed property of God. What you really mean is that God could choose not to act on the knowledge that he possesses. But if he is omniscient then he knows everything.
Why should he not have this ability?
Because the definition of omniscience says otherwise. God cannot be omniscient part of the time since that would defy the definition of omniscience.
Why should omniscience be an uncontrollable quality?
I don’t see your point. It is still up to God to choose what he does with the knowledge.
It is more omniscient to know any thing you want, any time you want than to know everything all the time whether you want to or not.
Sure but then he wouldn’t be omniscient.
God could indeed know every choice you will ever make if he wanted to know that.
But again God does know because that is what it means to be omniscient.
But as I explained above God deliberately chooses not to see what choices we will make as individuals so that you will feel your life is not predetermined.
It is highly questionable that I could feel any different if God chose not to know something or not. Your statement appears pointless.
Omniscience does not mean everything is predetermined.
But yes it must. If the outcome of an event is known in advance then the event must have been predetermined. It is very simple inescapable logic. The real issue is what mechanism was at play to cause the event to be predetermined so that knowledge of this event would be available before it occurred. This is part of a longer argument that shows that omniscience is impossible.
You still have free will and no-one but you is in control of that.
But that will be an illusion if all your actions have been predetermined. You wouldn’t know the difference.
Suppose there is a flower growing in your garden. Tomorrow that flower will still be there but you can stop it. You can go out to your garden tonight and pull the flower out and destroy it. You can change the future by an exercise of free will.
No, that is an attempt to predict an event, omniscience is perfect knowledge that an event will occur and you will be powerless to change it. Free will is only an illusion and hence cannot exist if omniscience exists. I.e. Free will and omniscience cannot coexist.
Adam had no impure moral inclinations.
Effective morality requires knowledge of good and bad, and without that knowledge it is unclear what inclinations Adam might have had. And I have already established from Genesis 3:7 that Adam did not have that knowledge before he ate from the tree.
In our imperfect condition we are inclined to do the wrong thing.
There are two types of “doing wrong”, the first is because of simple ignorance with no deliberate intention to do wrong (an accidental wrongful act), and the second is a deliberate choice to do wrong. The first can certainly occur if one does not have a clear moral sense or simply cannot tell the difference between good and bad which was the case for Adam and Eve. The second, deliberate choice is reprehensible and most likely worthy of corrective action.
In the Adam and Eve story Adam innocently ate the apple because he did not understand it was wrong, he could not have had any comprehension that disobedience was a bad thing since at that time he had not acquired the knowledge of good and evil, as we see from Genesis 3:7. But God in his apparent stupidity chose to believe that Adam had disobeyed him deliberately and proceeded to severely punish him. That is grossly unjust.
But for Adam it was a relatively simple thing to obey God's high moral standards.
How, when he couldn’t have understood them?
Being perfect does not mean that Adam would always make the perfect decision.
Why not? If he was inherently sinful as has been suggested then he is clearly imperfect. If he is perfect then that implies perfect decisions. Jesus has also been described as perfect, so using your reasoning Jesus being perfect does not mean he will make perfect decisions.
Adam had free will and that means he had the ability to do the wrong thing.
And the critical issue is whether he chose bad deliberately knowing it was bad, or was it an entirely innocent action out of ignorance?
I know it can be difficult to understand - how can a perfect man do a bad thing?
No, it is simply a direct contradiction.
In today's world you can raise a son the best way imaginable - just the right amount of love, discipline, family, friends, environment and so on. Is that a guarantee that the son will turn out right and do the right thing for the rest of his life? No, of course not. You can give a son the best possible upbringing but that is no guarantee he will live a righteous life.
When he grows up he makes his own choices and he alone is responsible for them.
Agreed, but normal people do not produce children who are classified as perfect, unlike Adam, in which case your analogy does not apply to Adam.
And so Adam and Adam alone was responsible for the choice he made.
But it was a choice out of ignorance as to whether the choice was good or bad. Punishment for a non-deliberate act is unjust.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a symbol. It was just an ordinary tree but God used it to test Adam's obedience.
Clearly it wasn’t just a symbol, see Genesis 3:7 again which shows it gave Adam the knowledge of good and evil. It also seems true that God used it to test Adam, but the test was very unfair since Adam could never understand that he should not disobey until he actually disobeyed and ate the fruit – it’s a catch-22 and Adam was in a no-win situation.
Adam would have known it was morally wrong to disobey God from God's express command that Adam would die if he disobeyed God.
No – he did not understand morality or that it was wrong to disobey at that time.
Adam lacked appreciation for God's gift of life.
Naturally since he had no knowledge of good and evil and was equally incapable of appreciating good as he was of appreciating bad.
Indeed the point of having free will is so that moral choices can be made.
Yes indeed, but to be effective one must understand the differences between good and bad.
But we are not at liberty to set the standard.
Yes we are but that is a different issue and outside of the Adam and Eve myth.
God tells us his moral standards in the Bible, the same moral standards that Adam was obliged to obey.
Except that he would not be able to understand them without appropriate knowledge of good and evil.
But like Adam we know the consequences if we reject God's moral laws.
We know because we have the knowledge of good and evil unlike Adam.
The reason why God has allowed evil to exist all these generations is to prove the consequences of not following God's moral laws.
Or that God is really the true evil force in the universe.
Or that God simply does not exist and that evil is the temporary inevitable result of a new and rapidly evolving self-aware species.
Kat