So, who is responsible?

[Spock]

Oh good, I like jokes, they seem to lighten the mood sometimes. Maybe it is the power God used to create light. Maybe we were created out of the laughter of the Trinity.

Or maybe it was “gallows humor”. (I love sick humor)

Anyway, I knew right away after sending that post about God not leaving any loaded guns around, you would have something to say, but I didn’t realize it would be so profound as THE TREE. Good one, I like your style. The tree does seem like a loaded gun, and God probably did know we were going to eat it, or shoot it, or whatever, but I have to contend that God did not design us to do such, and we know it.

So you got me on the loaded gun, but we are not like children who do not know better.

Thanks.

We only became “unlike” children after the fall. Read my little analysis right above. And share more jokes, please!

 

[Spock]

So you mean to tell me you dont believe its possible right now for me to make a choice to believe in the Loch Ness Monster?

Yes. That is what I mean. Of course you can always “say” that you now believe it, but you cannot “make” yourself to believe it.

 

[Spock]

What if He wanted to be surprised, and see what happens?

I often make paintings that in the end I don’t like. I don’t regret making them, though, because I learn something new every time I make a painting.

God can’t know speculative things. He only knows that you “will” do this or that, because He is already watching you do it, from His vantage point in Eternity. But if He had never created you, then you would/will never have done it, and He could not watch you doing it, to know that you “will” do it at some point in the future. It is only by creating you that He can know what you will or will not do.

I would agree, but this is not the “usual” Catholic position.

 

[seagal]

Well, I have never seen an authoritative, dogmatic proposition, just how should one read and understand the story. So, all I can do is read it according to my best ability.

1. We talk about the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”.
2. Before eating the fruit A&E did not know right from wrong (or good from evil). They could not have known it, otherwise what was the point of the tree?
3. Therefore they were not moral agents, just like a child is not a moral agent. As such they were not culpable.
4. The usual objection is that God commanded them not to touch the tree. He told them about the consequences. God told them that on the day they eat from the tree they will “surely” die.
5. But the Catholic teaching is that “death” was absent from the world until the “fall”, death was the result of the fall, so the word “death” was meaningless before the fall.
6. The next objection is that whether they understood the meaning of “death”, it was still a command, and they disobeyed it.
7. But, is plain “disobedience” - in and by itself - wrong? If it is not wrong, then why the punishment? If it is wrong, then they could not have known it, since they gained knowledge only after eating that fruit.

So my conclusion is simple. A&E were like children, who did not know right from wrong, and who did not understand what the word “death” meant. They could not have known that disobedience is wrong. No loving father would throw a child out from his home after ONE act of disobedience. “One strike and you are out” is overreacting, to say the least.

The problem here is you’re reading Genesis as if it was a factual account of what happened. According to the Catholic Catechism, the story of Adam and Eve “uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.” But in any case, even if they didn’t fully understand the consequences, they knew that they should obey if only because their creator told them to. What parent has never said to a child “because I say so!” We teach our children that we as parents know more than they do and they should do what they’re told for their own safety even if they don’t understand the danger.

 

[seagal]

No loving father would throw a child out from his home after ONE act of disobedience. “One strike and you are out” is overreacting, to say the least.

But if the father said “if you don’t want to abide by my rules then you will have to leave my house” and the child went ahead anyway, the father would be duty bound to throw the child out. Otherwise his word is meaningless.

 

[seagal]

Spock, I suggest you read this article in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, which discusses free will and God’s and man’s responsibility. It’s a bit of a slog but it might answer your questions. That is, if you really want answers and not just an argument

 

[Spock]

The problem here is you’re reading Genesis as if it was a factual account of what happened. According to the Catholic Catechism, the story of Adam and Eve “uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man.”

It does not matter if it is literal or allegorical. The teaching is the same.

But in any case, even if they didn’t fully understand the consequences, they knew that they should obey if only because their creator told them to.

The point is that they could not have known that disobedience is wrong - before the event. That is why they cannot be held responsible for it.

What parent has never said to a child “because I say so!”

Every lousy parent says it. The good ones modify the circumstances, so that fatal errors cannot occur. It is fine to allow the child to commit minor mistakes, so he can learn from them. It is not fine to leave a loaded gun in plain sight and command the child to leave it alone. Or to leave the “poisoned tree” readily available. Only irresponsible, bad parents, who don’t care about their children would do anything like that. And they must be held responsible for the fatality when it happens.

But if the father said “if you don’t want to abide by my rules then you will have to leave my house” and the child went ahead anyway, the father would be duty bound to throw the child out.

Except he did not say that. Only did it.

Otherwise his word is meaningless.

His word was already meaningless when he talked about the certain death - which did not happen.

 

[seagal]

The point is that they could not have known that disobedience is wrong - before the event. That is why they cannot be held responsible for it.

It doesn’t matter if they knew it was “wrong” as we know wrong. They knew they were told not to do it and they did it anyway, so they are totally responsible.

Every lousy parent says it. The good ones modify the circumstances, so that fatal errors cannot occur.

Clearly you’ve never been a parent to a 3 year old. Yes, parents are responsible for making their environment as child proof as possible to keep them safe but you also have to prepare them for when you are not present. But this thread is not about child rearing and Adam and Eve were not strictly speaking children.

His word was already meaningless when he talked about the certain death - which did not happen.

But it did. You mentioned the Catholic teaching that death didn’t exist until they “ate the apple”. They didn’t die immediately but death was inevitable.

 

[Spock]

It doesn’t matter if they knew it was “wrong” as we know wrong. They knew they were told not to do it and they did it anyway, so they are totally responsible.

That is only your take on it. I already explained why I disagree. If you can’t see it, that is not my problem.

 

[seagal]

That is only your take on it. I already explained why I disagree. If you can’t see it, that is not my problem.

Ditto.

 

[fhansen]

Well, I have never seen an authoritative, dogmatic proposition, just how should one read and understand the story. So, all I can do is read it according to my best ability.

1. We talk about the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”.
2. Before eating the fruit A&E did not know right from wrong (or good from evil). They could not have known it, otherwise what was the point of the tree?
3. Therefore they were not moral agents, just like a child is not a moral agent. As such they were not culpable.
4. The usual objection is that God commanded them not to touch the tree. He told them about the consequences. God told them that on the day they eat from the tree they will “surely” die.
5. But the Catholic teaching is that “death” was absent from the world until the “fall”, death was the result of the fall, so the word “death” was meaningless before the fall.
6. The next objection is that whether they understood the meaning of “death”, it was still a command, and they disobeyed it.
7. But, is plain “disobedience” - in and by itself - wrong? If it is not wrong, then why the punishment? If it is wrong, then they could not have known it, since they gained knowledge only after eating that fruit.

So my conclusion is simple. A&E were like children, who did not know right from wrong, and who did not understand what the word “death” meant. They could not have known that disobedience is wrong. No loving father would throw a child out from his home after ONE act of disobedience. “One strike and you are out” is overreacting, to say the least.

We don’t know the level of sophistication of their knowledge-but their knowledge of *good *would’ve been far superior to ours as scripture says they walked with God and the Catechism tells us they had an intimate relationship with Him. They would’ve known His goodness and love in a more immediate manner than we do. They would’ve been rejecting the authority of something they knew to be far superior to them-they would’ve been rejecting that superiority itself.

The split that resulted was not a rift with some autocratic tyrant God. It was a split with nature itself- and with their own natures- a division within their selves. This division meant they were now exiled from the garden, separated from the God in whom they live and move and have their being-in the moral sphere, in terms of how they would conduct themselves and what they would value. They became barely conscious of Him. Their freedom was simply great enough to do this. We’re free to continue to do this.

So, OK, now we know good and evil-and the experience of evil can help turn man back to God. We’re not just in the eyes of God-by His knowledge-until we turn fully back to Him. As this is a process, not necessarily totally accomplished in this lifetime, there is no one just-or healed/restored-enough for God to have chosen from, looking down through the corridors of time. And temporality is at the heart of this issue, because, in practice, people simply don’t choose the good continuously and permanently, to Gods satisfaction. From a believers standpoint I think that time, as experienced here on earth, could be looked at as a created “pause” in eternity, for the purpose of pausing justice, where we literally have time to work out whether or not we’ll choose good over evil, after experiencing -after knowing- both in this world.

In any case it’s not as if one person is born choosing good continuously with another choosing the opposite. We must learn to fully embrace the good by coming to know the reason why we should. Meanwhile evil-injustice-is allowed to co-exist with good until we’re finally tired of evil-no longer attracted to any vestige of it.

 

[Spock]

We don’t know the level of sophistication of their knowledge-but their knowledge of *good *would’ve been far superior to ours as scripture says they walked with God and the Catechism tells us they had an intimate relationship with Him. They would’ve known His goodness and love in a more immediate manner than we do. They would’ve been rejecting the authority of something they knew to be far superior to them-they would’ve been rejecting that superiority itself.

We are not talking about the “good feeling” of being close to God. We are talking about “moral good”, knowing “good from evil”, which was the symbolic or literal eating the forbidden fruit.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

Apologists assert that God gave us free will, and therefore God is not responsible for our free actions. As usual, they stay on the surface of the question, and this proposition sounds plausible. Of course it is totally wrong. One example will prove that they are wrong.

Suppose you have a psychopath in your custody. You know that this person has already committed some serious atrocities (murders, rapes, etc…). You also know that this person will commit more atrocities, if given half a chance. (Omniscience) You have the option to release him or not. (Creating that person) If you release him knowing full well what he will do, then you cannot “hide” behind the defense that you, personally did not do those acts, he did them out of his own volition, and you just wash your hands Pilate-style.

All his acts are the result of you opening his prison cell and setting him free. You are responsible for what he did. Can you deny it?

Spock, I see a pattern with all your arguments against God, you create an analogy where God is equated with a human being; prison warden , police officer, etc. and then complain that God doesn’t act just as a prison warden or police officer would.

You forget that we are just players in this world, a police officer has a job while in this life to protect people, it’s part of his duty while in this life, a life that will prepare for the life that follows after his death. According to Christianity we all have a life that follows after this one. To whine that God doesn’t act as a cosmic police officer is really kind of silly.

 

[Spock]

Spock, I see a pattern with all your arguments against God, you create an analogy where God is equated with a human being; prison warden , police officer, etc. and then complain that God doesn’t act just as a prison warden or police officer would.

What else is there than using analogies and parables? It is a time-honored method, used by Jesus himself.

You forget that we are just players in this world, a police officer has a job while in this life to protect people, it’s part of his duty while in this life, a life that will prepare for the life that follows after his death. According to Christianity we all have a life that follows after this one. To whine that God doesn’t act as a cosmic police officer is really kind of silly.

Funny, that believers assert an “absolute” morality, and when I point out that based upon that “absolute” moral code God’s behavior cannot be excused, then all of a sudden that “absolute morality” is not so absolute any more. God is exempt from his own commands. So there is no “absolute” morality any more. A clear contradiction. If you wish to argue that God is exempt from his own moral commands, you commit the fallacy of special pleading. What else is new?

 

[fhansen]

We are not talking about the “good feeling” of being close to God. We are talking about “moral good”, knowing “good from evil”, which was the symbolic or literal eating the forbidden fruit.

God is love and goodness personified-the knowledge of Him is the ultimate knowledge, i.e. direct, intuitive “knowingness” or apprehension, of good.

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

What else is there than using analogies and parables? It is a time-honored method, used by Jesus himself.

Funny, that believers assert an “absolute” morality, and when I point out that based upon that “absolute” moral code God’s behavior cannot be excused, then all of a sudden that “absolute morality” is not so absolute any more. God is exempt from his own commands. So there is no “absolute” morality any more. A clear contradiction. If you wish to argue that God is exempt from his own moral commands, you commit the fallacy of special pleading. What else is new?

I’m just pointing out that these continued threads you create where you complain that a “good” God would never allow any suffering in the world all start to look exactly alike. No matter how many ways people explain the Christian position on evil and suffering in the world, you keep moving along asking the SAME questions over and over. I kind of starts to look like a broken record, isn’t there other questions you could pose once in a while?

 

[mark_avery]

What would be the point of giving us free will and then removing our ability to act on our choice?

the devil had free will need i go further"lead me not into temptation"

 

[butterbattle]

I still don’t see that my original argument has really been addressed…

Surely, it is the individual humans which have free will. So, if some of the individuals didn’t exist, then the other individuals would still have free will. Ergo, to make the world better place, it’s just a matter of creating individuals that are more predisposed to do good things. Of course, they don’t have to be entirely sinless, but any slight difference better is a slight difference better, is it not?

 

[jmcrae]

I still don’t see that my original argument has really been addressed…

Surely, it is the individual humans which have free will. So, if some of the individuals didn’t exist, then the other individuals would still have free will. Ergo, to make the world better place, it’s just a matter of creating individuals that are more predisposed to do good things. Of course, they don’t have to be entirely sinless, but any slight difference better is a slight difference better, is it not?

Everybody has the ability to choose to do good things, right now, if they wanted to. God has left it up to us, the human race, to decide whether we want a good world, or an evil world. It is human beings who have chosen to make it evil - not God.

If everybody in the whole world decided, all at the same time, that they wanted the world to be a good, safe place for everyone, it could happen. But for whatever reason, we keep on choosing not to do that.

 

[PAboy57]

God created man out of love in His own image and likeness.

Man has free will. Because God knew what he would do doesn’t make Him guilty of sin.

I don’t think we want to place God on trial for the mistakes of all the people that have lived throughout the ages. Otherwise we won’t be here. Remember the flood?

God is God. He expects goodness. It’s His universe and there is no other game in town as far as I know. He set the rules of engagement. We choose and the stakes are big. I would like to see us all get it right as just mentioned.

Let’s discuss Job???