Thought experiment

[Elijah John]

Crucifixion is a tortuous death. We hear even today that sometimes evil groups like ISIS crucify innocent people.

Our natural reaction is outrage.

Why is that?

Similarly, many Christians are very quick to proclaim that "Jesus died in our place" and that we all deserved the punishment that Jesus took on our behalf.

Really?

Do we all deserve crucifixion? To be tortured unto death and beyond?

If so, where do we get our sense of outrage when innocent people are crucified?

If supposedly there is no such thing as an innocent person?

[Divine Insight]

[Replying to post 9 by Divine Insight]

Most of these objections have been dealt with in previous posts which I linked to. The link is just under the picture. I'll post here again for clarity.

How could an omniscient God not have known what the bad choices his creation would make?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 314#848314

And here was your apology for that one:

So God created Satan knowing he would cause ultimate suffering in this world yet chose to make him anyway.

Being ABLE to know everything isn't the same as knowing everything any more than being able to cook anything is the same as cooking everything. If you can do something you still have to chose whether you WILL do it or not. Just because God could know what the angel that became Satan would do, doesnt mean he necessarily chose to.

Sorry, but this is just utterly silly. Either this God is omniscient or he's not. You can't play games pretending that God only bothers listening in on things or spying on people randomly when he chooses. I reject your apology as being utterly absurd. You're just trying to make excuses for a God who would necessarily have no clue what's going on.

Plus, he still would have made a law that would have painted HIM into a corner. A very unintelligent God to be sure.

Isn't God ultimately responsible since it was He who created intelligent beings?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 875#840875

You apologies for this:

[Replying to post 240 by dio9]

I don't think God is in any way responsible for the bad things humans do.

being RESPONSIBLE has been defined as: "2. being the primary cause of something and so able to be blamed or credited for it."

# 1 OBJECTION: But God created humans, isn't he therefore the cause of their bad acts?

Being the life giver of a human doesn't render you eternally responsible for their acts. Even secular courts recognize this and do not hold parents responsible for the criminal acts of their adult children. Arguably in this, they are recongizing an individuals's "free will" ie their ability to decide (and be held responsible) for their actions.

{snip}

CONCLUSION: God is not responsible for the bad humans do. He created them as free moral agents so each individual is ultimately responsible for any bad he does.

To begin with you start off by comparing your God with what a secular court might do. But the problem is that in Christianity God DOES hold all of humanity responsible for the fall from grace of Adam and Eve. We were not given the same opportunity that Adam and Eve were given. In fact, if wouldn't matter if we were because Adam and Eve were innocently beguiled and not responsible for their fall from grace anyway.

All the rest of your objections compare your God with human parents. But a Creator God cannot be compared with human parents who are neither omnipotent, nor omniscient. So all of your objections where you try to compare God with human parents fails.

Finally, you "CONCLUSION" that God is not responsible for the bad things humans do doesn't vindicate him making a law that if the penalty for having done ANYTHING wrong is DEATH.

So this doesn't vindicate a God who makes a law that the penalty for sin is death. To the contrary if this Creator God knew that humans were not likely to be perfect he should have simply told them so and set it up so that life could be a TEST where they will be judged on how well they do on the TEST. But that's NOT the thesis of Christianity. You can't have Jesus stepping in and helping people pass a TEST that they are failing by basically taking their final exam for them. That would be CHEATING.

So thus far, your apologies have failed dramatic in every case.

Why did God have a law in the first place?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 911#389911

Your apology for this:

Who made the rules? Who put the tree there? Who designed the tree? Where do the consequences of eating it come from?

#QUESTION: Why did God put the tree in the garden in the first place?

A. Because life was not given unconditionally. Life was given subject to obedience to divine mandate. In order to establish that not only did Adam and Eve understand this but whether they agreed that this was only right and proper, God told them not to eat from one of the trees in the garden.

B. Further, God was fully aware that no society can exist without the recognition of authority. He would, as the Creator, be that authority since although man was created to understand what was good and bad, he wasn't created to decide for himself what is good or bad.

This already fails on several levels. To begin with if God knew that humans would not be able to obey authority right off the bat, he should have dealt with that specific problem directly instead of acting like this was all Adam and Eve's FAULT.

Secondly, you statement in B is FALSE. Adam and Eve were NOT created with an understanding of what is good or bad. They didn't obtain that knowledge until they had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which was supposedly their first and original SIN.

So you are trying to make up a story that is NOT Biblical.

In fact, I have often argued this. I claim that had the story been written where Adam and Eve already knew right from wrong and good and evil, and they CHOSE to pursue evil, that would have been a far more convincing story. At least it wouldn't be a blatant self-contradiction as the actual Biblical story is.

Adam and Eve had to be totally INNOCENT when they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because prior to that they could not know the difference.

So you are trying to make apologies for the Biblical story that don't even match up with what the Biblical story actually has to say.

So again. Failure for sure. Your apology here doesn't even match up with the Biblical story at all.

Was the Edenic Law absurd or unreasonable?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 066#390066

Your apology:

Although they may have had adult bodies, under the circumstances they were certainly naive and inexperienced young children mentally.

Were Adam and Eve "set up for failure"?

Today all humans are imperfect meaning we have a natural inclination to disobey and are incapable of keeping God's law perfectly. Like a shopping trolly with a wonky leg, we "bear to the left" and constantly have to reajust our actions to stay in line with God's standards. Adam and Eve however had no such defect. In fact they had to "force" themselves to do wrong since scripture says they were created in His (God's) image. Adam and Eve where therefore like God himself in some ways and doing good was far from impossible.

Once again your apology FAILS because you apology does not match up with the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve. Nowhere in the story from of the fall from grace does it even remotely suggest that Adam and Eve had to FORCE themselves to be beguiled by the evil serpent. To the contrary it clearly states that they were indeed "beguiled" by the evil serpent.

So your apology fails. You apology doesn't even match up with what the Bible actually has to say. Plus Adam and Eve could not have possibly chosen deliberately to do evil prior to having eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because prior to having be beguiled by an evil serpent into doing that they had no clue was "evil" even meant. In fact, they couldn't have even suspected that the evil serpent was lying to them. How could they think anyone could lie to them? They couldn't know what it even means to lie as that would have been knowledge of evil.

So your apologies don't vindicate the Biblical stories at all. To the contrary your apologies DENY what the Biblical stories actually have to say.

Let's take a look at your last apology:

Would God not EXPECT his law to be broken ?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 066#390066

Here's your apology:

GOD IS LEARNING!

Humans live from moment to moment, God often choses not to look into their personal futures but instead choses to experience life *with* them in "real time", limiting his exercise of power and to a degree "living in the moment". This is because He always uses his powers and abilities in a fair and just way.

If it would have been unfair to see what Adam and Eve would do before they did it, God would not have chosen to do so. Thus God did not know for sure if Abraham would obey his request to sacrifice his son and it was similar when he commanded Adam and Eve not to touch a particular tree. When God asked Adam and Eve to obey him, he didn't know for sure if they would or they wouldn't.

God is learning?

Where do you come up with this idea?

Also, once again we come back full-circle. If God didn't know what Adam and Eve would do then he shouldn't have made such an absurd LAW that if they dare to do ANYTHING wrong they must DIE!

So this doesn't help your original argument anyway.

A truly INTELLIGENT God who created humans who he knew might not do precisely as he say all the time should have been INTELLIGENT enough to realize that they would need to LEARN why this is so important.

But life on earth isn't a TEST. Remember, that NOT the Biblical thesis!

Life being a TEST is not compatible with Jesus having to die to pay the wages of sin for us. In fact life being a TEST is not compatible with a "Savior" coming down to earth to take your final exam for you either.

If life is a TEST then we should all either pass or fail depending on how well we did on the TEST.

So your apologies for the Bible aren't even Biblical apologies.

You're not apologizing for the Bible. Instead you're making up excuses for totally unrelated scenarios.

You might be able to convince children or naive adults in some "Bible Study Class" that you apologies here somehow make some sort of sense. But these aren't standing up to serious scrutiny.

If life were a TEST and we had to either pass or fail this test based on our own behavior, that would be a totally different thing from Christianity. And there would be no need for a "Savior" or "Sacrificial Lamb of God" needing to be slaughtered because we are all supposedly failing the test.

In fact, that would be problematic as well. A creator God who was losing all his student humans because they are failing his course is either expecting too much from his students, or he's a lousy teacher.

There is no excuse for the Biblical God even if life was a TEST. But that's not the Biblical thesis anyway.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 11 by rikuoamero]

QUESTION Did the punishment fit the Crime?

Adam and Eve had a single law to obey: not to eat the fruit from a particular tree. The penalty for disobedience was death. Was this not an unnecessarily harsh punishment for such a seemingly minor infraction?

• No at all. As simple as the gesture itself was, it was an act of outright rebellion. The tree signified God right to rule, effectively it was a symbol of God’s sovereignty. Just as a national flag represents the authority and the rule of law that authority imposes and burning a flag is symbolic of a declaration of independence from that authority, so the seriousness of the act of eating from the tree didn't lie in the gesture itself but in what the simple gesture was communicating. It was a message loud and clear for all concerned that as family heads, they were making a declaration of independence from divine domination.

But why impose the death penalty for a bid for independence?

• Adam and Eve were effectively saying to their Creator: "We want you to leave us alone, we will from here on in be cutting off all contact with you"

All well and good but there was a problem; humans were not created to live independent of God, their bid for "freedom" amounted to a goldfish making a bid for freedom from its bowl. Humans cannot survive long without a source of life, and God is that source. The law was actually a protection. Like a computer that unpluggs itself from the wall, Adam and Eve could survive for a while on their batteries but without a source, they would ultimately die.

Could Adam and Eve have been expected to understand the issues Involved?

• Yes, absolutely. Firstly the law and the punishment were perfectly clear and understandable. Further the bible account leads us to understand that far from innocent curiosity or hunger, Eve was driven by a desire to change her status and be "Like God" evidently she understood this act represented something profound. Whatever his motivation was it Adam like his wife, Eve where judged perfectly lucid and responsible for their decision

.





CONCLUSION Adam and Eve were not punished for a simple gesture no more serious than eating someone else's sandwich. They were in fact guilty of outright rebellion. Since that rebellion cut them of from the very individual that kept them alive, the punish was naturally death. They had been warned.

Further Reading
http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2017286#h=19



Could they have grasped the notion of crime and punishment?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 894#389894

To learn more please go to other posts related to...

FREE WILL, SIN and ...THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND BAD

[American Deist]

Or...

Jesus was crucified by order of the Roman prefect (governor) Pilate, and was made an example out of for anyone thinking about rebellion. It was only a couple of decades after Jesus' death that the Jewish-Roman wars took place. Christians took up the story and turned Jesus into a martyr, with hopes of keeping the rebellion alive.

The Bible portrays Pilate as not really wanting to execute Jesus. He washed his hands to symbolize that he had no part in his death. The early Christian writers wanted to throw the blame on the Jewish ruling caste, and told the story as if they demanded that Pilate have Jesus crucified. There's only one problem...

The Jews were not in a position to demand anything of the Romans. They were under Roman rule at the near height of the empire. Pilate could snap his fingers and have anyone executed that was not a Roman...and he often did. He was not this compassionate, understanding person that is portrayed in the Bible. The man was sadistic and extremely diabolical. He had non Romans killed for sport. His actions grew so wicked that Caligula [Caesar] exiled him due to civil unrest in the province. That's saying something, considering how twisted Caligula was!

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 13 by JehovahsWitness]

No at all. As simple as the gesture itself was, it was an act of outright rebellion. The tree signified God right to rule, effectively it was a symbol of God’s sovereignty. Just as a national flag represents the authority and the rule of law that authority imposes and burning a flag is symbolic of a declaration of independence from that authority, so the seriousness of the act of eating from the tree didn't lie in the gesture itself but in what the simple gesture was communicating.

Burning a flag can have many meanings. It doesn't have to mean a declaration of independence from an authority. If one burns the US flag, does it mean the burner wants to be independent of the US government? I wouldn't be surprised if some people burn the US flag so as to say the US government is corrupt.
Besides, your own apology here does NOT answer the question being asked: Did the punishment fit the crime? Adam and Eve eat the fruit and for some reason you waffle on about how the tree is like a flag being burned.

But why impose the death penalty for a bid for independence?
Adam and Eve were effectively saying to their Creator: "We want you to leave us alone, we will from here on in be cutting off all contact with you"

For someone who in other threads argues for Biblical based arguments...where is this coming from? Where does the Bible even HINT that Adam and Eve don't want God at all in their lives?
Doesn't Eve own up to everything and tell God what happened?

It was a message loud and clear for all concerned that as family heads, they were making a declaration of independence from divine domination.

Again, where is this coming from? I thought A & E were beguiled by a cunning snake.

Again, I thought God valued human free will?

Humans cannot survive long without a source of life, and God is that source. The law was actually a protection. Like a computer that unpluggs itself from the wall, Adam and Eve could survive for a while on their batteries but without a source, they would ultimately die.

This is nothing more than your own supposition. Is this to say God couldn't make someone immortal even if they chose to live apart from him?

Yes, absolutely. Firstly the law and the punishment were perfectly clear and understandable. Further the bible account leads us to understand that far from innocent curiosity or hunger, Eve was driven by a desire to change her status and be "Like God" evidently she understood this act represented something profound. Whatever his motivation was it Adam like his wife, Eve where judged perfectly lucid and responsible for their decision

Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Disobeying God is evil...so how could A & E understand that eating the fruit is evil?

CONCLUSION Adam and Eve were not punished for a simple gesture no more serious than eating someone else's sandwich. They were in fact guilty of outright rebellion.

To bring back your flag burning analogy - should the US government arrest those who burn the US flag?
I thought JWs were apolitical. Your analogy looks to me to be making a very strong political argument, that of obedience to the state.

Since that rebellion cut them of from the very individual that kept them alive, the punish was naturally death. They had been warned.

Since apparently the act of them eating the fruit is what introduces death to the universe, warning them that they would die would in my eyes be meaningless.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 13 by JehovahsWitness]

Also the thread you link to at the very end? Reading through it now, and this Woland person...I'd love to shake his hand. Did you think that your linking to that thread would make me change my mind? Far from it.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 16 by rikuoamero]




THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

The tree Adam and Eve were prohibited from eating from was called "The tree of the knowledge of good and evil". Some conclude that this name indicates Adam and Eve could have no notion of "evil" prior to eating from the tree and could therefore not have understood the prohibition in the fist place. Is this a reasonable conclusion? No. Why not?


What's in a name?

Many that claim it was ths tree itself that enabled Adam and Eve to understan what evil was do so based on an assumption regarding it's name. But, if it was the eating from "the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" that enabled them to grasp the notion of evil, it would be the same tree that would enable them to grasp the notion of "good". Yet is it reasonable to presume that neither could comprehend what the word good meant prior to eating from that tree?

Adam and Eve's heavenly Father, by all evidence, treated them with kindness and generosity, Adam had enjoyed discovering the wonders of creation and his expressions upon first being presented with a mate indicate he found her "good". Indeed when God had previously noted it was not "good" Adam continue alone without a mate, it was reasonably because it was having a negative (read: not good) effect on him and presumably he (Adam) had perceived this. So evidently Adam, and later Eve understood the notion of "good" and if evil is the absence of goodness, then Adam and Eve could evidently grasp both

• Note: People sometimes forget there was another tree in the garden with a similar name "The tree of life", if "Tree of ..." indicates A and E needed first to eat from said tree in order to understand a notion, would that mean they had no grasp or understanding of what "life" was?

The human conscience

• Further, the bible indicates that all humans are born with a conscience. A conscience is a natural, inborn "alarm" that signals to humans what is good and what is bad, even in the absense of a specific law. If imperfect humans are born with this capacity then reasonably Adam and Eve were also created with it. If so the ability to recognise evil was intrinsic.

Evil Explained

More importantly the command itself constituted an explanation of what "evil" was, namely disobeying God. God had clearly explainined that if they ate from the Tree, they would die. God told them NOT to do this. God was communicating that He considered the action bad. Indeed, if a given action carries the death penalty that action is clearly considered evil by said authority. So they did know what evil was because the the knowledge was implicit in the law.

So why was the tree called the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil"?

• The answer to this question lies in who had decided that eating from the tree was evil. Indeed it was their Creator that made the decision, He made the rule, he set the boundaries and he decided on the punishment. So while the tree didn't have any "magical" qualities that imparted hitherto unattainable knowledge, it was symbolic of who DECIDES what is good or bad. It stood as a reminder of the knowledge that they were not free to make moral Judgements totally independent of their Creator.

CONCLUSION Adam and Eve were evidently fully aware of the notion of what "good" was and as such it's opposite (evil). They didn't obtain that knowledge by eating from the tree, but had it prior to the event. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil represented not an opportunity to decern evil but to DECIDE for themselves what things were evil independent of their Creator.

To learn more please go to other posts related to...

FREE WILL, THE ORIGINAL SIN and ... THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND BAD

[JehovahsWitness]

QUESTION : Did Adam and Eve understand the notion of death?

... the act of them eating the fruit is what introduces death to the universe, warning them that they would die would in my eyes be meaningless.

Some presume that Adams and Eve could not have understood the notion of death rendering God’s stated punishment meaningless to them.

However, animals where not designed to live forever so death was indeed part of the universe well before their own sentence was imposed. Thus both Adam and Eve would have witnessed death* and understood it to be a termination of life. They would have seen living things grow old and die, seen how their bodies decay and return to dust and understood they faced a similar eventuality if the broke God’s law. They would have know what non-existence was, since they knew they had no memory of anything prior to their being created, and there would have been no reason to conclude that death was anything but the opposite of life ie non-existence.


* Birds, insects and mammals live for anything from a few days or weeks to several decades.



JW

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[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 7 by JehovahsWitness]

What if Adam and Eve were not real, literal people. What if the Garden story was just that, a story meant to illustrate some Spiritual truths but not to be taken literally.

What happens to all this NT "ransom" theory then?

Without a literal "first Adam" there would have been no need for a figurative "2nd" Adam. Perhaps Jesus was not a "2nd Adam" after all, but no more and no less than what he most probably was, a healer, a rabbi, preacher and prophet who only taught God's love and mercy and called people to repentance.

[Checkpoint]

[Replying to post 7 by JehovahsWitness]

What if Adam and Eve were not real, literal people. What if the Garden story was just that, a story meant to illustrate some Spiritual truths but not to be taken literally.

What happens to all this NT "ransom" theory then?

Without a literal "first Adam" there would have been no need for a figurative "2nd" Adam. Perhaps Jesus was not a "2nd Adam" after all, but no more and no less than what he most probably was, a healer, a rabbi, preacher and prophet who only taught God's love and mercy and called people to repentance.

What if there was a literal Adam and Eve. What if the story is about literal events that had spiritual meaning and consequences?

What if there were in fact two Adam and Jesus meant what he said about himself being a "ransom"?

Perhaps....

And so we go on, round and round the mulberry bush, forever and a day.

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 20 by Checkpoint]

"We"? We as in who? I most certainly am confident about what I believe. The bible speaks about leaving the elementary things behind, so I don't grapple with such issues. Jesus never said to leave people that do behind though, which is one reason why I happy to discuss them.