A really hard question on Satan and deception.

[Mister Agenda]

Here's a thought to ponder, when a smoker goes to a doctor and the doctor says that if you continue to smoke it will kill you, is that a threat from the doctor or is it concern for the well being of his patient?

It is interesting to ponder. To make the analogy a little more spot-on, let's say the doctor invented smoking and cancer, and can prevent cancer or eliminate tobacco or cure tobacco addiction with the merest thought.

Ponder that.

[Godscreated]

@ IATIA, I'm going to tell you even though I know you will just disagree, the Tree of Life was placed in the garden because God wanted to let us know that such a thing existed.

The Tree of Life existed so we would know it exists? Words fail me.

If it had never been placed in the garden, then it would have never been mentioned in scripture and we would not have known it existed. Please read carefully with what I say, you have distorted the above statement.

He knew Adam and Eve would fail, with the tree known about it should have been a sign to the Israelites that there would be such a thing as eternal life.

Here's the thing: if you set the initial conditions, and know the outcome of your actions, you are responsible for whatever happens subsequently. Adam and Eve were exactly as God made them, and if he knew he didn't make them strong enough to resist the temptation to which he was deliberately going to expose them, he set them up to fail. You can't have an omnipotent entity that sees the future and creates everything involved in a scenario and blame the puppets acting out their parts.

The initial conditions were this, a perfect creation, one in which all of God's created creatures had freewill, this freewill was given to all so that they could have a choice in their relationship to God. Lucifer decided that he did not like his relationship with God. Lucifer thought that it would be better if God his creator were to worship him,ie. Lucifer was jealous of God, so Lucifer in his stupidity thought he could over throw God and assume His authority, he tried and failed. God banished Lucifer to earth and gave him dominion over the planet not the people. As for Adam and Eve being puppets that's not so, they had the right to choose for themselves what they wanted to do, they fell to temptation and chose to be like God, Lucifer's delusion, and found themselves out of a spiritual relationship with their creator. Why do you think they were hiding from God when He called out to them, they now knew good and evil and understood the shame of their disobedience to God. The question is not whether God made them strong enough, it was if they decided to be strong enough to allow God to help them do as He asked.

Actually we do not know whether they ate from the tree or not, scripture does not state so one way or the other, if they did it would have made no difference, when they eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil they disobeyed God and that sin brought death into the world.

If it would have made no difference, why was God concerned that they might eat from it after they knew of good and evil?

The Tree of Life would have given them eternal life after they sinned, it would allow them to over come death, originally there was no death to over come. Sin had not been brought into man's life thus death was not a part of man's life. Them knowing good and evil was not God's main concern for them should they eat of the Tree of Life, He did not want them to have to live in a state of sin for ever, this would have gone against His plan for redemption, hell is a state of eternal life in sin, God wanted Adam and Eve to have a chance at redemption.

God told them that if they ate of that tree they would surely die and many years later they surely died. "Surely die" never meant immediate death then nor does it have that absolute definition today.

True. But 'on that day' means 'on that day'. It still has that absolute definition today. They didn't die the day they ate the fruit. You have to make something up that isn't written to make that contradiction go away.

Yes it does, however God was speaking of their spiritual death, which did happen that very day. Read Genesis 3:14-19 and you will see the punishment for their sin, first the consequences of their spiritual death and second the lose of their eternal lives.

God knowing what would take place gave all hope of eternal life before Christ came to be our savior. Scripture makes it quite clear that death came into the world because of sin, and specifically that Adam was responsible.

Their creator knowing what would take place means that Adam and Eve did not have free will and aren't responsible for their actions. Fortunately, the authors of Genesis were telling a story, not a treatise on logic.

They did have freewill they made a choice, though be it the wrong one. God having fore knowledge of an event does not take away their freewill, I'm not sure why you would see it that way it's not a logical way of looking at this. It seems to me nonbelievers look at Adam and Eve not being responsible for their choice because they do not want to have to face their responsibility of wrong choices.

---

Here's a thought to ponder, when a smoker goes to a doctor and the doctor says that if you continue to smoke it will kill you, is that a threat from the doctor or is it concern for the well being of his patient?

It is interesting to ponder. To make the analogy a little more spot-on, let's say the doctor invented smoking and cancer, and can prevent cancer or eliminate tobacco or cure tobacco addiction with the merest thought.

Ponder that.

Smoke and cancer=sin. Prevent cancer, eliminate tobacco= no freewill. Cure addiction= redemption through Christ. Pondered.

[Mister Agenda]

1. By 'it' I will deduce you mean immortality and not the tree itself, in which case a verse stating something along the lines of 'Adam and Eve would have lived forever had they not eaten from the tree of knowledge' would suffice to indicate that immortality was an option. If by 'it' you mean the tree itself, I remain speechless.
2. Something created by a maker who knows exactly what it will do in any circumstance cannot have free will. It can only do what its maker designed it to do. You can't have it both ways: either God did not know in advance what Adam and Eve would do before creating them, which would afford them free will; or he did and they did not have free will.
3. At least this makes more sense than it existed so the Hebrews would know it existed. And props to you for conceding that it would have made a difference if they had eaten from the tree of life.
4. That's an example of what I was saying about ad hoc explanations to explain away contradictions. Even if you are correct about the 'true meaning', it doesn't say 'spiritual death', that is something you added to explain why the verse doesn't really mean what it literally says. You're free to believe yours is the correct interpretation, but it doesn't change what the verse actually says.
5. Choice necessarily requires that you would have been able to make a different choice. Absolute foreknowledge necessarily implies that the future is fixed and no one can do other than what they have been foreseen to do. Absolute foreknowledge is not compatible with a world in which people's choices are free. Asserting that this is not a logical way of looking at things is an extremely weak objection compared to reasoning showing why it would not be the case.
6. So what is the doctor's justification for requiring you to jump through hoops to get him to cure your addiction? What's wrong with smoking is that it causes addiction and cancer, which exist only because the doctor allows them to. Note that at this point I'm not even tightening the analogy to 'someone tells you there's a doctor that can cure your addiction but you don't get to meet the doctor until after you die, and it's that person telling you that you have to do what they say for the doctor to help you, and there's a bunch of other people telling you that guy's doctor isn't real and you should listen to them about what the doctor wants.'

[The Grand Nudger]

That last bit makes me dizzy. So god creates a couple of nasty things, which he refuses to get rid of because they would invaliudate free will (an essential and yet completely meaningless concept from what I can tell), but then he goes ahead and gets rid of them later in the narrative anyway. One side or other of this claim has to give. Either god will invalidate the consequences of our free will, or he wont. Either he can, can't or wont; or he could, does or has.

On another note, has anyone noticed that free will is the hot topic for our fundies and other believers? They need more variety out of their faith based publishing houses and entertainment centers. Even believers who don't technically believe in what the rest of us are referring to by "free will" will argue that it exists, so that we can be culpable for some fuck up better laid on their god.

[Mister Agenda]

And if God is taking advice: it's a mistake to allow free-willed beings into heaven. They will mess it up. You couldn't even keep more than 2/3 of the angels in line and you're going to allow humans in? Save yourself the headache, but be nice: send 'em to a better place, but out of your hair.

[Godscreated]

And if God is taking advice: it's a mistake to allow free-willed beings into heaven. They will mess it up. You couldn't even keep more than 2/3 of the angels in line and you're going to allow humans in? Save yourself the headache, but be nice: send 'em to a better place, but out of your hair.

God did not try to keep 1/3 of the angels in check, He allowed them to exercise their freewill. I think you have a misconception of freewill, it is only one of two choices God or no God, the rest of ones life goes on from there in a relationship with God or no relationship with Him. The decision is ours we were created to choose, so were the angels.

[Minimalist]

He allowed them to exercise their freewill.

So you admit that your god is inept.

Some god.

[Faith No More]

Created to choose? Do you think before you post GC?

[Captain Scarlet]

[snip]He allowed them to exercise their freewill. I think you have a misconception of freewill, it is only one of two choices God or no God, [snip]

Despite the pure fantasy of angels etc. This is something I have never understood about xtian theology. If god exists, in the terms put forward by xtianity, how can freewill exist at all?:

1) you are only allowed to make free choices, ie they are not intrinsic to your existence and reality ie they are an illusion provided by a god
2) you can only make free choices from within the context imposed of a cartoon universe drawn by a god, ie reality as perceived through nature is not an absolute
3) you can invoke a god through prayer to get you out of trouble of your free choices. He may/may not answer.
4) He knows your free choices in advance and doesn't need to run the freewill experiment on earth
5) Worse still if you only choose to do what can be considered 'good' becuase of a fear of god, he'll know that too (know your motives aren't sincere). Thus your free choice was irrelevant.

Xtianity definitionally abolishes freewill as an illiusion.

[Greatest I am]

Godschild.

A quick question. In making a free choice between God and Satan, heaven and hell, is full disclosure of what the decision entails part of the decision making process. IOW, should all the consequences, good or evil be known?

Regards
DL