Re: If we were created perfect, why do we sin?
Frank Apisa wrote:neologist wrote:The perfect conscience is innate. . .God, having created Adam and Eve, programmed them with an aversion to sin.
How do you know that, Neo?
By deduction, I suppose.
They were supposed to be perfect. (whether you guess that is so or not)
God gave them only one rule involving any sort of consequence.
He didn't give any other rules until much later.
I think it's a good guess they had a conscience which gave them an aversion to sin.
I could be wrong, of course.
Frank Apisa wrote:
neologist wrote: Adam did not have to wonder if it was OK to steal or commit adultery; He was incapable of it.
How do you know that, Neo?
Same guess.
Frank Apisa wrote:neologist wrote:If this was all there was to it, Adam and Eve would have been perfect robots and we would all be alive today living happy lives in the smiley farm and life would be beautiful all day long.
No free will - Everything perfect - So what?
So God gave them the choice of whether or not they would continue with His arrangement. He warned them the consequence would be death; but they disobeyed anyway.
But the god purposefully withheld from Adam and Eve...the essential element in making this "choice"...the knowledge of good and evil...right and wrong.
How about cause and effect?
Frank Apisa wrote:neologist wrote:
If Adam and Eve had not sinned, we would have no need for the bible. The entire history of man is a consequence of that rebellion and the bible, woven into that history, clearly tells what God has done and intends to do so that his purpose for the earth will become.
Your god tells you that they did not know they were doing anything wrong!
If your god considered this a "sin"...which of course, means that it was something that offended the god...
...then there was something wrong with the god...not with the humans.
The 'god' to whom you are referring created the humans and knew what was best for them. (if you believe the bible, that is) By choosing their own course, they condemned themselves and their descendants to the consequences of their actions.
Frank Apisa wrote:The best possible guess that can be made about the Bible is that it is a history, of sorts, of the early Hebrew people...and that it contains a mythology...a fairytale, if you will, about REALITY.
The fairytale is defective in many ways...but the defect in this early part of the fairytale is especially defective.
This is the part of the 'fairytale', as you call it, which explains what follows. The question Satan raised was whether God had the right to set standards for mankind. By their choice, Adam and Eve rejected God's sovereignty and chose to set their own course.
Frank Apisa wrote:If there is a lesson that can be obtained from the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden...it is that one should not trust the god in the story.
If you mean by the use of lower case, the god of this world, I would agree.
Not me. This was my first post on this thread. Oh, I checked for you. I can see how you got Neologist and me mixed us since his avatar is blue and mine is red and his name is Neologist and mine is Intrepid.
