Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
I like your version, Super Universe, though I can't believe it any more than I can the traditional Adam and Eve story.
Yep, I just made it up (sarcasm).
Sorry it takes away another reason for you to hate God but then, you can just go back to believing that serpents talk, and God puts trees with the knowledge of good and evil in tempting places, and that God has all these pitiful and strangely very human personality traits.
It's not "my" version but the choice is always yours. Believe what you will.
What I posted was greatly condensed but it comes from the Urantia Book which you can read free online.
God did not miss anything, maybe you did by using a single reference in scripture. Ezekial made reference to Satan's fall (Ezekial 28:13-19) and used it as an example in prophecying the fall of King Tyre's reign in Babylon.Nope, not according to the Bible;
Genisis 1:31 And God saw everything that He had made,and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
God had just got done creating the Universe, and He gave the whole shabang His seal of approval.
Did He miss something?
But you make the choice, He does not make it for you! Free will is not a farce, it's reality. When doe you stop blaming God and take accountability for your own choices?He gave me a path, but he knows what I'm gonna do anyway, so free will is a myth, and I am a puppet in his game. And since he designed every fiber of my being and knew that by presenting me with my exact life I would lead this exact life and end up at whatever result I end up at either implies that everyone ends up choosing right in the end or we are predestined to wherever we are going. So whatever I do is already foreseen and thus is unchangeable, the wheel of fate continues to turn. I hope you picked me out for the happy place and not the sad one
Because a great many people believe the main character of this story is real. And this book clouds the rationality of so many people that it makes my head spin. There are people in this world who think that a man having sex with another man should be punished. And that you were born evil, and only a being in the sky who condemned his own son to death, made you that way, but since you murdered his son, who isn't really his son but is in fact one of 3 parts of him, you can be forgiven for being born evil, but you have to follow certain special rules. Do I think it's absurd, yeah. But it is true that there are people who believe it, that's why I discussed it. If we all dropped the pretense of factuality, then what would we base Christian faith on? That would imply that billions of people have been living their lives based on a story book. Now I believe that to be true, but does everyone here? I don't think they do.Now, Shakespeare's plays are written and are commonly presented to us as though they are about actual people and events, occurring, yet no one in the audiences, or who has read the plays on paper, actually believes, or even imagines that they are supposed to believe that the characters and events depicted are "real". We all understand that the characters are characters, and the events are fictional.
So I can't for the life of me understand why people keep insisting that we read stories in the bible as if the characters and events within them actually occurred. Can anyone give me any reason why we should make such an absurd assumption?
Adam knew what was good and what was not. The highest degree a believer can reach (according to Islam) is to be a slave of God. If your not God's slave, then your a slave to Shaytan, to your desires, your lust, money, food..etc. It's not even comparable between being a slave of Allah and being a slave of anything or anyone lesser than and inferior to Him (The Most High And the Supreme in His Greatness).Here's the part I don't understand. If god created man without knowledge of good and evil, how did we know disobeying him was evil? That's a pretty weak question I know, but if the answer is we did have knowledge and we chose evil, disobedience to god's will was evil, doesn't that just seem like slavery to you?
Well...Adam had mind to think with and to know what's wrong and what's not, but actually Shaytan (Satan) managed to deceive Adam with the delusion that he would be an angel or immortal, and Adam obeyed him!! (The same thing happens with every human). If you have the whole Paradise, what else will you want? what this tree will add? Just temptations of Shaytan.I don't know, it just kinda seems to me like putting a little kid in a room with 1000000 toys, everything he could want to play with, but don't play with the tonka truck in the middle of the room. Of course the kid is gonna play with the tonka truck, he doesn't know any better and you drew his attention too it.
Even if Adam didn't eat form the tree, he would settle the Earth, in all cases. God's will was to create Adam (the human being) to be his vicegerent on Earth (not in Paradise!).God says, you disobeyed me, now you get this terrible punishment.
Of course God knows every thing and we have free will too but God's knowledge precede our acts! (God's knowledge and the free will are not contadictory) Yet, God predetermined that Adam would settle Earth!I just don't understand. God knows everything, so he knew we would pick evil. But he gave us free will, but it's not really free because he knew what we were going to do, so it was predetermined.
God did not miss anything, maybe you did by using a single reference in scripture. Ezekial made reference to Satan's fall (Ezekial 28:13-19) and used it as an example in prophecying the fall of King Tyre's reign in Babylon.
I've asked the same question or something similar to this in previous topics.Aasimar said:If god created man without knowledge of good and evil, how did we know disobeying him was evil?
These are all excellent question. But I think it's important to understand the way these scriptural stories were used, originally. The people who used these stories, originally, did not read them looking for one logical answer. They used them to represent a collection of questions, that they would then discuss and debate among themselves, and within themselves. And it was through this discussion and debating and internal wrangling with all the same questions that you have asked, that they work out their relationship and understanding (what they can have of it) with their God. This was the purpose of their stories: to generate an interactive and on-going idea of "God".Sorry about jumping into topic so late. Like I always do, I will reply the first post (ie OP) first, before I look at other posts.
I've asked the same question or something similar to this in previous topics.
My question was like, if Adam and Eve haven't eaten the fruit, then how can they distinguish good and evil from what God or the serpent had told them? If they can't distinguish good from evil, then why did God curse them and then banish them from Eden?
Eve couldn't know the serpent was lying because she hadn't eaten the fruit yet, since she is ignorant of "what is good?" and "what is evil?"
Some of those who believe in Adam's mythos will tell you that God gave them a free will to choose between good and evil. But that's still doesn't make sense, considering you have to eat before fruit first before you can actually decide on one or the other.
Also, if God didn't want them to eat the fruit, then why bother to put the Tree there in the first place. Again, some would answer you that it has to do with free will.
Others would say it is a test.
If God is "all-knowing", then surely he would have known they would fail the test. Why test them if you already know they were going to fail?
The problem with the whole Adam and the Tree scenario, because it can be interpret in so many ways. Some would say it is allegory or symbol. Others would take in literally. And here lies the problem, and both have their pitfall.
Free will/omniscience coexistance is possible if the omniscience is a product of omnipresence.That is impossible. You cannot know everything but not know what I'm going to do. And if he knows I'm gonna disobey him in advance and he still punishes me because he made me this way then he's in no way worthy of my worship, he's a sadist.
I agree; that was the beginning (creation) of sinFree will/omniscience coexistance is possible if the omniscience is a product of omnipresence.
but anyway, on topic:
I don't believe they knew it was evil, just that it went against God's command.
I have no idea about angelic free will...