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PetraG
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Actually, the account says, “The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” (Gen. 3:6) She claims later that the snake tricked her, just as her husband tried to blame his choice to eat the fruit on her. They refused to take responsibility for their choice, they didn’t repent, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t make a deliberate choice with full knowledge of what they were doing.
Given a choice between what God told them and what seemed pleasing to them, they did what pleased them. There wasn’t what you’d call a hard sell coming from the snake–he only gave one reply to the premise that death would follow if they ate the forbidden fruit. They were given the possibility that they would be better off with their own decision-making than God’s, and they decided against God’s decision-making in favor of their own.
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STT
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This is simple. Suppose that you don’t have free will. Don’t you always do right? Therefore free will allows to choose wrong. The question is what is point of being free.
Our ability to do good is damage by the effect of the sin. How Adam and Eve could sin in first place if they were not depraved by any sin?
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STT
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There is no such a verse.
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Gorgias
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No. If you don’t have free will, then you don’t have the ability to make moral choices. Therefore, you are not a moral actor. This implies that you never do ‘right’ and you never do ‘wrong’; rather, you don’t make any moral choice.
No, free will allows you to make moral choices, either virtuous or vicious.
The point of having free will is that it gives you the opportunity to choose to do what’s right.
Because they had free will.
There’s a critical distinction to be made here:
- Our ability to sin isn’t the result of Adam and Eve’s sin.
- Rather, the tendency to sin comes about from the loss of preternatural gifts, as a consequence of the first sin!
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Wesrock
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Lacking free will doesn’t mean one always does good. One could lack free will and do evil. But there’d be no moral component to this. Morality only makes sense when we’re responsible for our choices. Having free will means they could choose to participate in the good.Gorgias:
This is simple. Suppose that you don’t have free will. Don’t you always do right? Therefore free will allows to choose wrong. The question is what is point of being free.
The second sentence doesn’t in any way follow from the first.Gorgias:
Our ability to do good is damage by the effect of the sin. How Adam and Eve could sin in first place if they were not depraved by any sin?
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STT
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The fruit just not look pleasing to them. They were told that you become God. They were lied and believed otherwise. No mature and rational person do otherwise if he knows that he would die.
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STT
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What is the point of making moral choice? You can always do good if there was no free will.
Yes. I said that it allows us to choose wrong.
Again, what is the point of being free? Would you make a machine which could damage itself and other? No. That just doesn’t make sense.
So we are back to square one. What is the point of having free will?
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STT
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Not when you are a rational being.
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Wesrock
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It wouldn’t really be you doing the good.
We’re not machines. And, regardless of whether or not it’s possible to do so, there are plenty of people of Earth who would be happy to create machines with artificial intelligence that allows them to be free. So yes, there are people who would choose to create that capability.Gorgias:
Again, what is the point of being free? Would you make a machine which could damage itself and other? No. That just doesn’t make sense.
Why?
- Free will is a good in itself.
- Free will allows for a broader diversity of goods that could not be present otherwise, such as courage, compassion, self-sacrifice, charity, love (as proceeding from the Intellect, not just a feeling), participation in goodness, etc…
- A reality with free will and a wider diversity of goods is a better image of God than one without
- Human nature requires free will, to create similitudes of us but lacking free will would have been to create something other than human beings.
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STT
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Of course you are not guilty when you are convinced that what you have done wrong was right.So… there’s no moral dimension to disbelieving God and believing lies instead?
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STT
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So rational for human means to be able to do wrong?
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Wesrock
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No, not that either. Not as its primary, meaning, anyway, though it follows from the primary meaning that they are capable of doing wrong.
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Gorgias
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Again: the point of making moral choices is to do what God wishes – He wishes us to choose virtue over vice.
Again: no, if you have free will, then you are unable to make a moral choice.
Here’s your counter-examples:
- A lion kills an endangered animal – let’s say, an Asian elephant. Has he committed an evil act?
- A human kills an Asian elephant. Has he committed an evil act?
If the answers to the two questions are different, what is the basis for the difference?
- A dog lifts a child from a raging stream, saving it. Has he committed a virtuous act?
- A human lifts a child from a raging stream, saving it. Has he committed a virtuous act?
Are the answers here different? If so, why?
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Gorgias
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Hitler was convinced that he was doing right by eliminating Jews from the face of the earth. Is he, by virtue of his opinion, not guilty of heinous crimes against humanity? (Feel free to substitute Stalin / Pol Pot / your favorite mass murderer, if it helps you reach clarity on this question.)
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STT
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We always make moral choice if there is no free will. Isn’t morality justifiable?
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