The usual explanation is because God wanted humans to have free will, so interfering in their ability to self-determine would negate that.
The reality is because it makes no fucking sense, like much of the Bible.
Because he doesn’t exist, so even questioning it is irrelevant
When one person believes a delusion, it’s schizophrenia. When millions do, it’s religion.
It’s a judeo-christian-muslim god.
It was a test, but if he was omniscient, he would have known the results without having to run it. 😉
See how i didnt mention he is also “benevolent.”
There’s quite a bit of evidence to argue he is actually malevolent.
Christians then start applying “ends justifies the means” logic.
Calvin ball. Its all just Calvin ball.
Try telling that to a Christian and you’ll hear the battered wife type arguments come out sooooo quick.
I really enjoy reminding them that Satan only kills about 10 people in the Bible. He temps others to do things, but he’s only responsible for a handful.
God on the other hand… much more direct and merciless. Doesn’t really seem to give a shit at all about killing people actually. Like a kid with a magnifying glass burning ants.
I love the story where he kills everyone in the world except for that one disfunctional family.
I don’t quite have the urge to believe this, you could say I have a demiurge
beat me to it
He wanted the result, but needed it to be our ‘fault’ for weird passive aggressive reasons and so he could hold it over our heads for eaons. “Sorry son, I’d drive you to the store but you ate that apple. Remember the apple I told you not to eat?”
Embarrassment kink followed by the lack of emotional regulation to handle the outcome of a scenario they asked asked for.
The god character in Oglaf is probably the most accurate representation of God.
because he was a pussy
Because he gifted humanity free-will? I thought that was like the main reason
He’s also omniscient and created every atom of their being, meaning he knew exactly how it would play out. It was a setup.
Would it really be free will if there was fate or destiny? Would he be a Laplace demon and by thinking about mankind eating the apple he was creating a simulation where mankind actually does eat an apple?
you’re trying to bring logic where logic goes to die. It won’t work.
If I’ve learned something from listening History in the Bible podcast is that Yaweh is an asshole and that there are layers of bad translations.
Evangelicals sweep that all under the rug with “divine inspiration.”
Yet here we are with rich assholes running the world and chasing the Antichrist story and trying to summon the end of the world.
You’d think they’d be more intelligent.
it sounds like you’re flirting with the Epicurean Paradox
I understand the epicurean paradox but I also understand for god to exist as some believe it would have to be paradoxical. I also understand that any true religion, anything not just societally and culturally forced, would not take hold as a probability based on geographical location of birth. I believe in a god that can give humans divine inspiration but I do not believe in a religion that is just a long tradition of group think. Any god that choses to create these structures of religion and call them right and just is of no interest to me.
I like that guy jesus, tho. He was a bro.
Yeah, that story has a lot of plot holes.
…talking snakes?
Fuck you, Zootopia 2 was a masterpiece.
Yeah that was a weird chapter in the bible
Bad character and plot writing. The Bible was written by hacks and scabs.
Ey Eve, bet you are too scared to try this apple.
Don’t try to apply reason/common sense/logic to ANY religion. You’ll end up with more questions than answers.
Besides, I was told that the point of the story was resisting temptation. God wanted to see if Adam and Eve could do that. Spoiler: they couldn’t.
Even though he new exactly what they would do beforehand. Being all-knowing.
Why are there two different creation stories in the Bible? If Cain and Abel were the first sons of Adam and Eve, how could Cain come upon a city while he was wandering the earth? Why are there two conflicting versions of the Ten Commandments? Etc. Etc.
…if you are Christian, it doesn’t matter, it isn’t your book. It is reference for what IS your book. The one that says god’s son came to earth and told us to love one another leading to his nailing to a tree…err…
Free will. The idea is that for free will to exist you must be able to choose the wrong action.
If a supreme being rules out all wrong actions or prevented you from taking wrong actions, how could there be free will? How could you even be responsible for your own thoughts and actions. How are you not just a puppet?
Alternately you can think of it as a leveling up. It seems like the Apple is always represented as “knowledge of good and evil”. So originally they’re just animals. They take actions but there is no morality, nothing is good or bad. But if they use their free will to take this one forbidden step, they receive the knowledge of good and evil, they can act good or act bad, they know it’s good or bad, and they have the free will to choose their path. And they are accountable for those choices. Now they’re human
But if god is omniscient, then he knows what they’re going to do. And if he already knows that, then do they really have free will? Or do they just think they do?
There’s 3 philosophies I’ve seen on that question.
One is the planned domino effect, which another commentator already mentioned.
The next is the “paradoxical being” one, which is that something that is omniscient is paradoxical by default, therefore it can both know what will happen and simultaneously not know what will happen.
The last is the “unknown destiny” one, which is that even if we don’t actually have free will, as long as we think we do and can’t prove we don’t, then does it matter? Because ultimately it would be no different to us than if we actually did have it.
Interesting, thanks.
Addressed the first one on that other comment.
The second one just seems contradictory tbh, how can it be both?
The third one is interesting - but subjectively feeling like we have free will isn’t the same as objectively having it.
And if there was a god and he was allowing (in fact, causing) us to believe we had free will, when we actually didn’t, would just create the situation where god had misled us.
I think the best way out is that we do have free will, but god isn’t omniscient (if he exists at all).
The second one just seems contradictory tbh, how can it be both?
Well that’s the nature of paradoxes, isn’t it? But paradox philosophy is a whole 'nother can of worms and a very long discussion in of itself, though you’ve probably encountered some examples before, such as this one:
The next sentence is true. The prior sentence is false.
It results in an endless loop. Contradictory, yes, yet both sentences still exist, and are sentences.
The third one is interesting - but subjectively feeling like we have free will isn’t the same as objectively having it.
Yes, true, but the point of that third one is that the result would be the same in the sense that in both cases, humans believe they have free will, and therefore their actions are determined by that, whether or not that path was outlined beforehand by a being we cannot fathom / fully comprehend or not. The actions will still become as they are.
I’ve also heard this third argument combined a bit with the second one as an attempt to better make sense of the paradox (although by doing so, it’s really not a paradox anymore), and that is that God knows all possible paths humans would take, but not necessarily which one / God made infinite path he knows the outcome of but we are free to pick which one we take.
This issue I have with that one is that it’s no longer a truly full omniscient being at that point.
This s is where you have the argument that a supreme being might have set the universe in motion but deliberately does not interfere with the way it evolves. The conditions are as close to even as possible so things can go either way …. For an infinite number of decisions for an infinite time
It’s not a question of interfering or not though, it’s about foreknowledge.
Either god had foreknowledge of their choice, and therefore A&E couldn’t have made any other decision than they did, or they had genuine free will meaning he wasn’t omniscient.
Ahh so the real original sin is entrapment. Got it.
Ford Prefect: Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting ‘Gotcha.’ It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it.
Arthur Dent: Why not?
Ford Prefect: Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end.
If you’re not looking for a genuine answer from a Christian, skip this.
First thing: the translation of “the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil” isn’t really that good of a translation. It’s closer to "the right to define good and evil. That means that eating the fruit is basically saying “fuck you, God. Imma do my own thing”. That’s not how God designed humans to live, and is incompatible to living alongside someone as powerful as God, which is why God told them not to eat it.
But why create that tree in the first place? Essentially, choice. When you’re in the supermarket and you see 50 different flavors, but everything is from the same brand, do you really have any choice? Same thing with God. Unless you have the option of rejecting God, choosing to him means nothing.
Couldn’t he have created the world in a way where all that is not necessary? Or one where there would be no bad choices?
Seems kinda evil on his part to design for the option of evil.
You don’t have to agree with the poster but they already answered that. There can be no acceptance without the ability to reject. Consent is meaningless without the capacity for dissent. Theodicy is a different matter.
There can be no acceptance without the ability to reject. Consent is meaningless without the capacity for dissent.
If god is all-powerful, then that is a choice, not a natural restriction.
So the answer is “because god is a jerk”?
If god is all powerful everything is a choice and there are no natural restrictions. Why an omniscient and supposedly loving deity created us to suffer and die is a question of theodicy and that is separate from the question of free will. Because god is a jerk is a likely and valid argument in this framework.
A better example for the god is a jerk is Satan/Lucifer. Angels were not given free will and are servants of God by design. Still, Satan and his host were cast down and separated from the light of God’s love for their rebellion. Not being endowed with free will, the angels were apparently set up. In this situation, god made beings a certain way and then punished them for it while not giving them access to the tools of salvation (free will.)
Free will is incompatible with omniscience. People really want it to work, but it doesn’t.
Free will is observer-dependent, and is short for “I can’t predict the behavior of this thing”. For an omniscient observer, there is no thing that it can say that about.
Free will is not an inherent property of a thing, and that’s what trips people up so much.
To ponder it a bit, does a rock have free will? A dog? A human? A super-intelligent AI that we can’t hope to comprehend? Why or why not for each step?
The definition above explains it all. Of course a rock doesn’t, we can predict its behavior with physics! Maybe a monkey does, people disagree on that. Of course human do though, because I do!
Now ponder what the super-intelligent AI would think. “Of course the first three don’t have free will, their behavior is entirely predictable with physics”
If free will is observer dependent than why would the omniscience of some other observer relieve us, the observer who is not omniscient, of free will? Something else being able to predict my actions has no effect on my ability to predict the actions of others.
We’re not “relieved” of free will. It’s not an intrinsic property that one “has”. It would be like having “big” or “near”. You don’t “have” big, it’s a relative term.
It’s simply a description of observed behavior. That’s all it really is in the end, even though people treat it as this super mysterious thing.
So, subatomic particles have free will, but humans don’t?
Why not? It might seem absurd, but can you prove they don’t “choose” to flit about here or there? A super-intelligent AI might also be able to “pierce the veil” and determine the underlying mechanics, like a video game character determining the math behind the random number generator that powers their world.
That’s also only one interpretation of quantum mechanics, mechanistic interpretations aren’t ruled out (though a number of variants have been).
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
if there was a god, there wouldn’t be a trump. That’s all the proof i need that god doesn’t exist.
His design was flawed, then, if humans managed to do something they were not designed to do.
I’ve never heard that translation, how does that justify them noticing they’re naked as a bad thing? The idea there is simple with the fruit granting the knowledge, but doesn’t make sense with a fruit that allows you to define good and evil. But even then there’s another thing you got wrong, they’re not kicked out of paradise for eating from the tree, they get punished for that but the reason why they’re kicked out is so that they don’t eat from the immortality tree:
22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever”.
the reason they’re kicked out is so that they don’t eat from the immortality tree
I said that having eaten from the tree of good and evil put them in a state that humans were not designed to be in, so by kicking them out God is basically saying “it’s better for them to die than it is for them to live forever like this”
Well, as a descendant from someone who ate of the tree and understands good and evil I would say that’s pretty evil and egotistical, he expulsed them so they don’t become like him in two fields since they were already like him on one.
Also, you didn’t explained how they knew to cover themselves.
This boils down to the best of all possible worlds argument, already well-skewered in Candide centuries ago.
Why create the world exactly the way it was? Is it impossible to create it, so that of their own free will, one more person makes the “right” choice? That’s some sorry omnipotence if so. If not one person, why not two? And so on, until you face the question of, “Why not create the world so that everyone, of their own free will, makes the ‘right’ decision”.
Calvinists are intellectually brave enough to accept the metaphysical consequences of their beliefs. Others, not so much.
I’d like to see some citations on that. They’re are several scholarly theories about the what the tree represents, but I’ve never heard this one.
In a really generalised way, the tree and the fruit is kind of a metaphor.
If you live the life style I tell you to, then live in this garden and I will care for you. If you want to make your own rules then you’re on your own.
I’ve never seen it this way before but this actually makes sense really.
