Proving The Resurrection By the Minimal Facts Approach

[Randy Carson]

What points, Stimbo?

That God deliberately set up Adam and Eve by creating what? No literal tree for sure. Then what?

Well, whatever. He created something whatever it was, and He made it SOOOOOOOO appealing that despite the fact that He told them not to what? Eat it? Touch it? Do it?

Well, whatever. He told them not to, but they did it any way, but it wasn't really their fault because they had no real reason to think that they shouldn't despite the fact that they had been told not to?

No, I'm sorry, if you HAVE any points, you're going to have to be a bit more explicit about what exactly you are alleging.

The story of the fall is an allegory which explains that our first parents preferred their own will over submitting their wills to God. As a consequence of that decision, they separated themselves from God, and we are stuck with that consequence without hope of rectifying the situation.

God, however, has provided the way by which we may be reconciled with God: through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.

I thought he gave us free will, why would he want us to submit our will to him.

Bingo!

We choose freely to submit our will to God. If we did not have free will, then it would not be called "submission", would it?

Why give us free will and then set up a system that punishes us for using it?

BZZZZ! Oh, I'm sorry...wrong answer. God didn't punish us for "using it". He holds us accountable for using it to choose wrongly. There is no punishment for choosing to be obedient.

Also saying it's an allegory does not solve the moral dilemma that the story creates. It is a system that portrays morality as doing what your told whether or not you even understand why and that in my opinion is not a moral system.

I'm not sure about whether a moral dilemma exists or not, but doing what we have been told works in just about every area of our lives from the time we are small children until we taking our medications in a retirement home like the doctor ordered.

Even in the account of Adam and Eve, God did tell Adam why:

And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

"Don't eat the fruit, Adam. It will kill you." Sounds like "why" Adam should have obeyed to me.

But on a more serious note, I think it is fair to say that if you were to engage in a serious study of Christianity, you would find more "why" answers to your questions than this brief exchange suggests.