God's injustice towards Adam and Eve

[Mister Agenda]

It's relevant to whether they were competent to be held accountable. There's a good reason we don't execute a six-year-old who kills someone.

Are you trying to hold God to a manmade conception of justice?

There are no non-man-made definitions of justice of which I'm aware. if there's a God-made one, we're incapable of comprehending it, apparently. Not being a superhuman, I'm limited to human conceptions. If there's no way to reasonably judge anything God does as wrong, there's no way to reasonbly judge anything God does as right, either; and no way to meaningfully say 'God is good'.

God owned Adam and Eve so any attempted analogies drawn from how humans treat other humans is going to fall short of being analogous because we do not own one another.

It took us thousands of years to figure out we shouldn't own each other. No person should think of another person as their personal property. Again, if we can't judge God to be bad, we can't judge him to be good, either. If none of our powers of judgment can be applied to God, maybe we should stop making any claims about him at all.

Hypothetically speaking, sure. It doesn't mean the person doing it understands the wrongness of what they're doing. The plain wording of the story has A&E not knowing right from wrong until after they ate the fruit. I appreciate that you have a different interpretation, but it seems to be based entirely on the premise that it can't possibly REALLY make God look unjust.

[quote='Statler Waldorf' pid='718795' dateline='1406585460']
Well it’s impossible for God to be unjust because justice itself is rooted in His immutable character.

So you consider yourself to be qualified to judge God's character?

Does the plain reading of the story indicate that Adam and Eve were not alive since they were not allowed to eat from the “Tree of Life”?

The plain reading is that if they ate of the Tree of Life, they would live forever. Have you not read this story?

If not, then why does the plain reading indicate that they did not know any good from evil until after they ate from the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”? I think you are reading too much into the names of the two trees.

Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. Genesis 2:25

[quote='Mister Agenda' pid='718731' dateline='1406579694']
Sigh, that's what I mean by their awareness of their nakedness, sorry I didn't express it in a way that made that clear enough for you. Anyway yes, they did not feel shame prior to eating the fruit. You can't feel shame unless you know you did something wrong.

It’s not like it was morally wrong for Adam and Eve to be naked prior to the fall and they just did not know it, it was actually not morally wrong. The fall had a drastic effect on all of creation.

That's your ad hoc explanation, yes.

Shame is consciousness that your behavior was wrong. It's in the defintion and everything.

Yes, but they may have felt shame because being naked became wrong after the fall. My Bible actually does not say they were ashamed, it simply says that their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked.

They may have. But you can 'maybe' anything. You're trying to explain how the text may mean something different from what it seems to mean, something that fits your own beliefs on the matter. I don't have any particular reason to think your interpretation is correct.

A minute ago you were arguing that she knew what dying was, now you're arguing she had to know right from wrong in order to not want to do something she'd been told would kill her? It doesn't take a moral sense to resist doing things that might kill you, just a sense of self-preservation.

The reason she initially gave him for not eating the fruit was that God had commanded them not to. Rather than challenging whether or not she should listen to God, the serpent challenges what God actually told her.

In the story she says God ordered them not to eat it and that it would kill them in the same breath. If she first said "God said not to do it', then the serpent said 'it's okay', then she said 'but God said we'll die if we eat it' that would be the scenario that fits what you've just said, but she said (paraphrasing slightly) that God said not to eat it and we'll die if we do.

You could make a much better case for that had not God specified there would be dire consequences for disobedience. The threat of death nullifies any argument that she had to know it was morally wrong to disobey to resist the serpent's wiles for even a moment. Instead it emphasizes her child-like mentality that she will apparently believes whatever she was last told, no matter who or what it came from.

Wait, so if I tell my hypothetical children the horrible consequences of adultery I am somehow undermining the fact that it is morally wrong?

You'd be undermining any argument you might make that the only reason they hesitate to commit adultery is because they know it's morally wrong. Which is the argument you're making about Eve, that the ONLY reason she's have to hesitate before eating the fruit is that she knew it was morally wrong.

According to your version, they had perfect moral judgement up to the point where they ate the fruit, which is pretty odd since when they had perfect moreal clarity, they ate the fruit!

No, that’s not what I am saying at all. I am saying that they knew that they morally ought to obey God and He was in communion with them and turn giving them perfect revelation as to what was right and wrong. They were resting upon his perfect and ultimate moral authority.

So they were resting on God's perfect and ultimate authority when they decided to eat the fruit. Your argument is that their moral judgement decayed AFTER they ate it. Before they ate it, according to you, they had great moral judgement.

Once they ate the fruit they lost that, they were left with their own fallible and clouded judgments. That’s the entire concept of sin, it’s a separation between man and God.

But they had it when they decided to eat the fruit. Look, I'm not the one saying they had great moral judgement before they noshed on the wrong food item. To me, the story indicates they didn't know right from wrong, they were moral infants until they ate the fruit. To me, it's just a plot hole in the story. You're the one who seems to be compelled by your a priori committment to it being true, making sense, and making God look good to fill that hole with something that accomplishes what you're cmmitted to believe. But your plot hole filler has it's own plot hole.

Look, I get that this particular part of Genesis is poorly written, but you're taking a story where a single fruit can affect your sense of morality or make you immortal literally. I don't think the people who first wrote it down took it nearly as literally as you do.

Then why is it written in the style of a historical narrative?

Everybody tells their just so stories like they really happened

Why did Jesus believe it was accurate history?

Best guess: Because he was a Jew.

Paul? Peter? And John?

Best guess: Because they were Jews or because Jesus did.

It would be absurd of me to believe I am more spiritually enlightened than Christ himself.

I've not noted any particular connection between enlightenment and accurate judgment of historicity.

I do not believe it is poorly written at all, it’s a profoundly deep narrative that makes perfect sense when examined within the context of the Bible and redemptive history as a whole.

Funny, that's almost exactly what Muslims say about the Qu'ran.