(November 26, 2014 at 9:52 am)Tonus Wrote: As I recall, the JWs explained it thusly: god created man and woman as perfect creatures. Perfection meant that they had full control of their thoughts and actions; if they wanted to follow god's orders, they could do so without succumbing to temptation out of some fleshly weakness. So when they ate from the fruit they were performing a willful act. At that point they became imperfect, and passed that imperfection to their offspring. Since god had declared his creation "good" it meant that he couldn't just wipe everything out and start over. He had to prove that mankind could be redeemed.
And this is, of course, more kicking the can. If you switch form the problem of evil to the problem of suffering, this is how the apologist shoehorns free will into things that cannot possibly be governed by human decision. Why was the kid born with Tay Sachs? Original sin.
The whole issue can be stated about God can't or God won't fix the problem. Then they bring in free will to "explain it". Still, their notion is that original sin somehow fucked up our DNA and allowed us to get genetic diseases. That being said, that state of thing could have been fixed by God. It can still be stated as whether God can't or won't fix it. They've decidedly ordered up "won't" and added a side of "and we deserve it".
Again, this notion runs afoul with the idea of a future-seeing god needing to perform tests on humans in the first place. Also, for some stupid reason, the test has required six thousand years and counting, but he decided to drastically change the rules two thousand years ago.
Ad hoc justification is ad hoc.
(November 26, 2014 at 9:52 am)Tonus Wrote: But first there had to be a lengthy period during which imperfect humans filled the Earth and made a mess of it (as imperfect humans were doomed to do). With that experience clearly in mind, once god cleaned up the mess and returned humanity to perfection, no one would want to perform evil acts. And with the question of sovereignty settled, even if someone did decide to turn against god, there was justification for removing that person immediately and not starting the whole mess all over again. Presumably the few people who would falter would be easily made up by new births of perfect humans, and things would be just peachy from then on.
Heh. As time marches on, it looks like humanity is moving further away from Christianity. It looks like the JW version of God isn't very good at seeing the future. It reminds me of the Simpsons where Bart is placed in remedial school, and he notes the absurdity of being behind and catching up by moving slower.
(November 26, 2014 at 9:53 am)Irrational Wrote: What they fail to explain is how one can be perfect and yet with fleshly weaknesses.
Yuuuup.
