This world, and everything in it only begins to make sense when you have the courage to accept that god does not exist.
Did God know adam and eve would sin?
by gavindlt 58 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Bribie
If there is no God then the complexity and tremendous diversity of life on our unique planet does not make sense. There is something far far superior to human thinking and our limited troubled life spans.
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Ding
If God didn't know that, by the same reasoning he wouldn't know ahead of time any of the evil that would happen.
That would eliminate a lot of the prophecies in the Bible and would leave a God who knew very little about human beings.
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GoverningBobby
From the Sept 1881 WT reprints. p250 Why Evil Was Permitted. (Note: this is presented as a fictional dialogue between 3 people. Not sure if this is Russell's take or not, but I found it interesting. I'll have to reread the article and try to find out. Its freaking long 😅)
"Therefore, I claim that God not only foresaw man's fall into sin but designed it: it was a part of his plan. God permitted, nay, designed man's fall' and why? Because having the remedy provided for his release from it's consequences, he saw that the result would be to lead man to a knowledge, through experience, which would enable him to see the bitterness and blackness of sin."
As far as my opinion, I don't know what I believe anymore. Just became POMO last year after 50 years in. I'm in the early stages of reconstructing things.
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slimboyfat
God chose not to know.
Have you ever been shocked in a dream? As in running away from someone, running around a corner and BAM! they’re right there. What a shock! Did you know they’d be round the corner? Obviously not, or you wouldn’t have woken up in such a fight. But where did the dream come from? Your own mind surely. So did you know what was round the corner? On some level the mind knew it and didn’t know it at the same time. It’s the only way to explain how your mind both produced the dream and was shocked by the dream at the same time. On some level your mind chose not to know what it knew for the purpose of the dream playing out.
This may be an analogy for the sense in which God chose not to know what humans would do in order to give them room for free action and to be fairly held accountable for their actions. If us mere humans can compartmentalise our knowledge in a dream, can’t almighty God choose not to know some aspects of the future if he so desires? Surely he can. The witness of scripture is that God offered humans a genuine choice and not a foreknown one. This is what necessitates that God chose not to know whether humans would obey or rebel.
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moomanchu
I'm thinking yes. He set them up to sin. Hey human dummies wander around aimlessly forever in paradise, but whatever you do, do not eat from this tree of knowledge. Hey kids here is all the food you want to eat, but whatever you do, do not push this candy button.
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TonusOH
The future could be undetermined and god could still predict the future. He is able to control the minds of people and control events with complete precision. If god says that 'one day, X will happen' he can direct events so as to make X happen. Yes, that interferes with free will, but an unstoppable cosmic power probably doesn't give a rat's ass that you're upset that he made a woman name her child "Jesus" instead of "Bruno."
Presto: you have a universe where things can happen that god does not predict, but where god makes predictions that come true. If god could read a timeline and tell us what will happen, doesn't that mean he is subservient to that same timeline? In which case, there is something more powerful than god out there. Here's a thought experiment: could god create a reality where the timeline is fixed so that even he cannot act freely?
Bribie: If there is no God then the complexity and tremendous diversity of life on our unique planet does not make sense.
The thing is, no engineer considers complexity to be the hallmark of good design. A good design is simple and efficient, and life on Earth is nothing like that. If there is a god, he's not a very intelligent designer.
But also, if we use complexity to justify god's existence, then we have to account for a being who is far more complex than anything we've discovered or even imagined. Doesn't that make even less sense?
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peacefulpete
Adam and Eve did not sin they 'became like' their creators, i.e. no longer naive. Letting the author explain his very short story leads to a very different conclusion than the countless spins theologians have overlain upon it. Unfortunately, we primarily know of this particular legend only through the voice of one such theologian (P).
Appreciating the literary stages the Genesis composition passed through prevents anyone from being dogmatic about the original purpose the small more ancient elements individually had, prior to being woven together. However in this case the original intent seems to be retained by the "become like one of us, knowing good and bad". IOW, the end of childlike naivety.
The P compiler/redactor, that borrowed this snippet, seems to have in mind the Eden ideal of 'holy place' with it's implied connections to the temple rights that he and his fellows were engaged in. The place seems to be of greater import than the message. Some of this is lost on modern readers as a result of the merging with other traditions in the later centuries BCE.
So what we have is a snippet of metaphor drawn from local cult of the goddess brilliantly commandeered to emphasize the naivety of man in contrast to the creators, preserved in a larger narrative (P) that utilizes it to contrast sacred from profane then later merged with other traditions into a collection, more concerned with preservation of legends, loosely woven into a 'history of man' (R/sages).
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Leathercrop
God chose not to know.
Slimboyfat
Great name btw lol
I agree mostly with this. God knows all things. The Bible describes that we are made in his image, we are God's "thoughts".
Imagine a God existing only in himself with absolute nothingness aside from himself. Why create something like himself with no free will? He could, but if we also believe God is love, then no free will would equal no love. Love has to be expressed. And it can only be expressed thru free will.
So God knew of the probability of sin, but chose to let love express itself out. Or not.
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