If at first you don't succeed...(Adam and Eve)

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At the moment God was creating Adam and Eve, He would have known they would fall and His creation would be a debacle. I wonder why He didn’t scrap that design and create two other first people who while still exercising their free will would have chosen not to disobey? Keep trying until you randomly create two that would not disobey.
 
Given the nature of the story I doubt Adam and Eve were two literal people. I think they represent humanity as a whole and are an explanation for why humans choose evil over good.
 
KevinK said:
wonder why He didn’t scrap that design and create two other first people who while still exercising their free will would have chosen not to disobey?
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Probably because God is God and he’s not @KevinK
 
They were literal people and their son Abel is in the Mass in the Eucharistic prayer.

Any human would have fallen, even if they didn’t Cain would have.
 
He did create beings that would not disobey. They are called animals. God created a being In His Image and Likeness, free will, and that can’t be constrained. To simply scrap the model until coming up with an automatically obedient model would be just another animal.
 
KevinK said:
At the moment God was creating Adam and Eve, He would have known they would fall and His creation would be a debacle. I wonder why He didn’t scrap that design and create two other first people who while still exercising their free will would have chosen not to disobey? Keep trying until you randomly create two that would not disobey.
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Catechism
412 But why did God not prevent the first man from sinning? St. Leo the Great responds, “Christ’s inexpressible grace gave us blessings better than those the demon’s envy had taken away.” 307 And St. Thomas Aquinas wrote, “There is nothing to prevent human nature’s being raised up to something greater, even after sin; God permits evil in order to draw forth some greater good. Thus St. Paul says, ‘Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more’; and the Exsultet sings, ‘O happy fault,. . . which gained for us so great a Redeemer!’” 308

307 St. Leo the Great, Sermo 73,4: PL 54,396.
308 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh III,1,3, ad 3; cf. Rom 5:20.
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Every human descending from one man and one woman would result in a genetically deformed offspring right off the bat. There’s no way it’s literal.
 
JanSobieskiIII said:
Given the nature of the story I doubt Adam and Eve were two literal people. I think they represent humanity as a whole and are an explanation for why humans choose evil over good.
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@JanSobieskiIII this view is not a permitted view for a Catholic to hold.

Adam and Eve were two literal humans who are our first parents. In Eastern Catholic Churches they are venerated as Saints.

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Are you saying any human that God created with free will, who did not disobey would be an animal? Why? Free will could just as easily have led to obedience.
 
Catechism.

402 All men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as St. Paul affirms: “By one man’s disobedience many (that is, all men) were made sinners”: “sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.” The Apostle contrasts the universality of sin and death with the universality of salvation in Christ. “Then as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men.”
 
KevinK said:
Are you saying any human that God created with free will, who did not disobey would be an animal? Why? Free will could just as easily have led to obedience.
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You are missing my point. Animals are created with instinct. An automatic form of self knowledge that compels the animal to act in a certain way given the situation. For example, a lion that kills an antelope for food is not choosing an evil, it is only acting on it hunger instinct. Totally different than the free will given as a gift to mankind. Man sees two options and chooses one, not on instinct, but on a reasoned (or sometimes unreasoned ) volitional choice.
 
@JanSobieskiIII read Humani Generis. What you described would be a sort of “polygenism.”

http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x...nts/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html

HG #37
“When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.”
 
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Just read that. So how’s that reconcile genetics and inbreeding if Adams sons and daughters were just reproducing with each other?
 
Spyridon said:
@JanSobieskiIII this view is not a permitted view for a Catholic to hold.
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Half true. Catholics are permitted to view the Genesis story as an allegory. We must however hold that there were two humans God imbued with His Image and Likeness, most likely reason, free will, and the higher emotions. Whether they were the two told in the story of Genesis is debatable. One is free to hold that position.
 
I’ve no idea my friend - you’d likely have to have a double doctorate in both theology and biology or genetics to come up with a good theory on that.

You can find articles written by Catholic scientists which touch on evolution, genetics, Adam and Eve and such which is put out by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross here: http://inters.org/interdisciplinary-encyclopedia
 
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