Several defects with the U.S.:
We don't know that Adam and Eve had free will. They might have had faux free will imagining they had the ability to NOT sin, but lacked the capacity in at least this instance. We assume they did, they too if the record is true.
The same could be said of any sentient being including Satan.
Do we have it? Did they have it? We don't know, but we assume.
Another thing is the idea that there was a point to all this continuing, namely to see how well we'd proceed without God interjecting himself in free will, however multiple times he did so.
First, by allowing angels to mess around on the planet, second by the flood, third by the confusion of languages. We have no parallel universe to compare with to see what might have been without intervention.
Of course Paul would basically blow off the question later as 'impertinent' :
Ro. 9:20-22 But who are you, O man, to be answering back to God?+ Does the thing molded say to its molder: “Why did you make me this way?”+
21 What? Does not the potter have authority over the clay+ to make from the same lump one vessel for an honorable use, another for a dishonorable use?
22 What,
then, if God had the will to demonstrate his wrath and to make his
power known, and he tolerated with much patience vessels of wrath made
fit for destruction?
Here Paul says the issue is Power, but what does Paul really know? He basically guessed about so many things and speculated as to the reasons. Here Paul is at a loss to explain God in moral terms, but instead is reduced to a crude "Who's the most powerful one in this room?" as an answer.
All the years I spent knocking and it became apparent that perhaps the angels are idiots and their mental retardation is the reason this charade has been running for so very long, so humans have to suffer their idiocy because we're a spectacle to them so they can get the point. Humans are the whipping boys for the rich 1%'er angels who look on through it all just not able to comprehend just how evil evil is because they are galactically slow in their understanding. Whipping up human bodies like meat-suits is easy, but understanding how evil is evil takes them millenniums to get the point.
So the issue of U.S. is simply an insufficient answer to the whole issue of evil.
Unless evil is the point.
If evil is the point, then and one has to choose between inevitable evil and free will, then are we saying that we all wish we didn't have free will? Once again, maybe we don't.
I remember once asking someone if Jehovah could have made Adam and Eve and the rest of humanity with faux free will such that we imagined we had the capacity for an evil act and these thoughts could flit momentarily through our minds until these were overridden by our imagined 'free will' so the end result would have been no sin, no death, no need for a redeemer?
I said in response:
We'd feel happy and be happy and be living forever in a paradise even now and rejoicing over our good sense to shun evil (even though we never realized we absolutely lacked the capacity).
Why would Jehovah do that, I asked?
He said, Jehovah would know.
My response was "So it's all about him, then."
The problem of evil remains the biggest problem and I can't even begin to make up an answer that works.
Other Things I'd read:
1. It's our fault.
2. There is no evil, that's just the way you look at it
3. To teach us a lesson.
None of this works for me and unless you have Stockholm syndrome, I'm not sure how you can make it work.
I used to imagine it was all Universal Salvation like some of the Unitarians in the early 19th century concluded (even though this wasn't WT doctrine. I never worshiped the GB like it seemed so many did) but none of this makes sense to me any more.
Do I believe there is a creator still? Yes, but I'm not sure about his reasons or his character. I can't be anything but what I am, a human so I can't view things or even imagine them from such an alien perspective. I can't worship any creature whose morals seem twisted from my viewpoint. The issue of U.S. is supposed to be an explanation and the ransom is likewise, but the more you dig, the shakier even the Bible becomes. It reads like Jorge Luis Borges stories with his use of magical realism. We read about a city in the scriptures, archaeology confirms it existed, we read inscriptions, and these are confirmed and in the midst of the text a miracle occurs of which we cannot verify took place. All we have is the hope people didn't intentionally lie, and they may not have, however these accounts still could have been wrong in their interpretation of the source of the miraculous.
I'll stop here...just stream of consciousness anyway
