(June 27, 2015 at 9:33 pm)Randy Carson Wrote:(June 27, 2015 at 9:23 pm)Mr.wizard Wrote: 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?
Quote: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.
Quote: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.
Not when it comes to morality, you really are being told what to do regarding morality from the cradle to the grave? No of course not, we make moral decisions all the time with regards to the reality in which we inhabit, without someone telling us what to do.
So the plan was to give us free will, so we could not use it and submit to gods will and if we didn't we would be punished. Yep that sounds pretty much like what I just said was part of an immoral system in my last post.
Why do you keep putting that god told them they would die in bold? Why would they be worried about death when they don't even know what death is, remember they where the first two people nobody had ever experienced death. Since they had no knowledge of death, good, or evil then laying out this as a consequence would not be a deterrent. Its like telling a dog to "not jump on the couch or I'll shoot you", then we he jumps on the couch and you shoot him, you say, "well I told him I would shoot him but he chose to do it anyway"
