The paradox of Pain and Evil

[liamconnor]

The notion of a good God is incompatible with the world as we experience it: i.e., disease, violence, famine, etc. In other words, if God were as good as the Christians tell us, the world would be infinitely better.

Thus we conclude that there either there is no God or, if there is, it is something indifferent to good and evil.

So then, under this worldview (no God, or an indifferent power), where derives our idea that this world is not as good as it can be? Where in fact derives our standard of goodness by which we reject the notion of a good God?

[ttruscott]

This is the biblical view (see Rom 5:12)

No sir, it is your interpretation of Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned - which to me clearly states that people inherit death from Adam in their genetic code because all have chosen to be sinners. Because all sinned is the reason they are born into Adam and inherit a body that will die, that is, being human is not the cause of their sin, only of their death.

Since Eve sinned in a number of ways before she ate and the serpent entered the garden already evil with sinful intent, the only way sin could have entered the world by Adam, the third to sin in the garden, was if he was already sinful when he was sown into the garden as the first person to be brought to earth. Such considerations turn me from the orthodox interpretation of this verse as simplistic, driven by their created on earth bias.

[McCulloch]

If my mother broke her arm before I was born, I would not be born with a broken arm.

No, but if your mother contracted or was born with a genetically transmitable disease it would sadly be passed on to her off spring. Adam and Eve became imperfect and that imperfection was passed on through all subsequent générations much like a gene default.

Is that good design? Is that good biology? According to your Bible, Adam and Eve were created perfect beings. Then, in spite of their perfection, they were easily fooled into doing wrong. As a consequence of that wrongdoing, they became imperfect.

In biology, we have discovered that in general acquired traits are not inheritable. If you do something that changes you, for good or ill, it will not be inherited by your offspring. If you are injured or get sick, your children will not be affected, at least not genetically.

You claim that God created this genetic makeup. He created all life, animals, plants, fungi and microbes with this same characteristic. But when it comes to sin, God decided to change how he does things. For Adam and Eve and their sin, God decided that their actions will have consequences for all of their offspring. Why would God want to do it this way? It makes no sense. He apparently gave our first parents the ability to choose. Why not the rest of us?

The God you present to us is not too smart.

This is the biblical view (see Rom 5:12)

All the more reason to disregard the Bible.

[JehovahsWitness]

Is that good design? Is that good biology?

Well "good" is a opinion based assessement, in my opinion is it "good" that the living things pass on their characteristics through a set genetic code? er... yes, its what stops people being born with their noses under their arm pits, or a third arm sticking out at right angles from the middle of their forehead... so if we are to label "genetics" good or bad, I'd opt for good.

That's my personal opinion, everyone is welcome to disagree should he or she (or it) so choose,



For more on this line of reasoning please read my earlier post.
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 335#381335


JW

[McCulloch]

[Replying to post 13 by JehovahsWitness]

I'm not quite sure that you answered my question. Do you agree with me that God made a very poor design decision in making acquired sin inheritable particularly given that God made other acquired traits not inheritable? Wouldn't it have been better if we were all born like Adam and Eve were created?

[JehovahsWitness]

[Replying to post 12 by McCulloch]

QUESTION: If Adam and Eve were perfect, how could they sin? CAN a perfect being, sin?

Adam and Eve were created perfect beings. Then, in spite of their perfection, they were [...] fooled into doing wrong.

The fact that Adam and Eve were capable of disobeying God was not a reflection of some kind of "design fault" as some have concluded. Adam and Eve were created as free moral agents; meaning they were created with the intelligence and moral capacity to make choices as to what was good and bad. This capacity is what would distinguish humans from the animals (or from preprogramed automats), to being intelligent beings in God's own image.

To illustrate: I perfectly designed car will do what it is designed to do, namely, respond to the manipulations of its driver. The driver can use that car to do good or bad. He can speed an injured person to a hospital thus saving a life or plough into a market and cause injury and death. If the driver chooses the latter, can we say the car had a "design fault" ? No, its the same design that can help can hurt. The car is "perfect" the fault would lay in how one uses the powerful machine at ones disposal.

In a similar way, this freedom (the freedom to choose to obey or not) carried its own responsibility. It made Adam and Eve (not God) answerable for their actions and meant they would have to face the consequences for any bad choices they made ; God gave them the "car" they were warned to "drive" responsibly.

# But didn't they have to have "something bad" in them to make a bad choice?

No, they just had to be capable of thought. A human being is able to think in the abstract in a way an animal cannot. He can take any given fact and project it into the future to analyse various scenerios; we call this imagination and its a good thing. It is essentially what makes us creative. If we (humans) can look at a blank canvas and imagine a fantastic picture, or can sit in a silent room and imagine a symphony, we have imagination. An almost limitless imagination means we can without outside imput, project ourselves into the future performing either a good or a bad action. Bad being simply the contrary or the absence of good. Both concepts are part of being moral. All sin, the bible says, starts with a thought; humans were designed to self generate a limitless number of thoughts depending on any number factors. Dwelling on the bad thoughts can lead to bad actions, which is what happened to Adam and Eve.

# Our conscience: The Moral "safety switch"

Given that humans were designed with the capacity to choose between good and evil, our creator did not leave humans without a guide as to what the right choice would be. He created humans with a god given conscience, an internal "alarm switch" that makes doing bad inheritenly abhorent. Returning to our illustration of the car, it can be likened to the alarm that sounds when a door is still open or the driver hasn't attached his safety belt. The car will still operate but the alarm makes it difficult to proceed in tranquility. In short, not only did Adam and Even have direct communication with God, all the information they needed as to what choices to make, they had, what the bible refers to as a "internal law" an inborn tendence towards doing what was good that meant for them doing what was good came naturally to them. So God they were actually designed with a inclination to stay on track.


CONCLUSION: Adam and Eve were created as free moral agents. We were designed to understand the difference between good and bad; this no more a "design fault" that it is in Almighty God who also has this capacity. This was not a "design fault" it was what essentially made them intelligent humans capable of love, creativity and spirituality. Their sad choice would not be excused as a design fault it was their own willful abuse of the powers they were given.



Further Reading
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2008733



RELATED POSTS

Were Adam and Eve being tested?
viewtopic.php?p=1092257#p1092257

Why did God create a universe governed by principles of cause and effect?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 35#p381335

MORE on "cause and effect"
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 40#p381640

Genetically self replicating but not entirely genetically (as opposed to acquired) self-self repairing
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 65#p873765

Are humans being "punished" for Adam's sin?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 80#p381280

ADAM & EVE: Various other objections
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 66#p390066

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

ORIGINAL SIN , PERFECTION , and ...THE RANSOM

[Willum]

[Replying to post 15 by JehovahsWitness]

And yet not answering the very interesting question:

Wouldn't it have been better if we were all born like Adam and Eve were created?

Or touching on the observation that children do not inherit historic flaws.

Why?
Because the only answer is that it was a fable -a child's story, born in Babylon around 3000BC, copied by those who would become Jewish in 66BC, and for some reason believed as true, hence.

[Bust Nak]

So, how do we explain this impression that the world is rotten within a non-theistic worldview?

We observe the world and compare it to our ideal and find the world wanting. Need it be more complicated than that? If you want specifics, then evolution give us our senses and our brains to think.

The fact that Adam and Eve were capable of disobeying God was not a reflection of some kind of "design fault" as some have concluded. Adam and Eve were created as free moral agents; meaning they were created with the intelligence and moral capacity to make choices as to what was good and bad. This capacity is what would distinguish humans from the animals (or from preprogramed automats), to being intelligent beings in God's own image.

Which is better, a) free moral agents who were created with the intelligence and moral capacity to make choices as to what was good and go on to make the right choices; or b) free moral agents who were created with the intelligence and moral capacity to make choices as to what was good and go on to make bad choices?

No, they just had to be capable of thought. A human being is able to think in the abstract in a way an animal cannot. He can take any given fact and project it into the future to analyse various scenerios; we call this imagination and its a good thing... He created humans with a god given conscience, an internal "alarm switch" that makes doing bad inheritenly abhorent.

So what went wrong? Were their projection of various scenarios inaccurate? Or were their analysis that was inaccurate? The alarm bells should rung but didn't? The alarm bells run but didn't have the expected result?

So God they were actually designed with a inclination to stay on track.

And when a system is designed in such a way, but didn't stay on track, would you say the design is functioning perfectly?

[ttruscott]

CONCLUSION: Adam and Eve were created as free moral agents. We were designed to understand the difference between good and bad; this no more a "design fault" that it is in Almighty God who also has this capacity. This was not a "design fault" it was what essentially made them intelligent humans capable of love, creativity and spirituality. Their sad choice would not be excused as a design fault it was their own willful abuse of the powers they were given.

Granted. Does your theology say the same for all their progeny or does it say that the human race inherited degradation from them through their genes??

How am I guilty for my sins if I am not a free moral agent, unsullied and truly innocent just like they were but are the imperfect, tainted and sinful product of their decision to sin?

[JehovahsWitness]

And yet not answering the very interesting question:

Wouldn't it have been better if we were all born like Adam and Eve were created?

The Miracle of Procreation

If the bible account is to be believed, God had already created millions, perhaps billions of intelligent beings directly. These intelligent creatures were also free moral agents, capable of independent thought end decisions; we usually call these "angels" or spirits. What God chose to do for the material world and the intelligent beings that would live on this planet earth was entirely different, He chose to give them the gift of procreation.

Adam and Eve, although themselves created directly by God (Adam from the same essential elements that we find in the earth) were to become the parents of the entire human race; to achieve this God gave them the gift of procreation. Every other human, rather than being directly created by God would develop from the sexual union of a man and a woman. This would mean, as the bible puts it that Eve would be "mother of all who live", not by herself giving birth to all humans, but by virtue of the fact that her children would themselves have the ability to conceive and give birth to other humans.

Is this closed system "better" than creating independent seperate beings?

Good, worse, better, bad... are all moral opinion based judgements, everyone is entitled to their opinion as to which system is "better" . God had already created directly, the angels from what the bible says do not reproduce and are not gender bound. They were not given the gift of procreation.



Is it a gift or a curse? Of course this system meant it was possible to pass on negative traits since each subsequent generation would inherit certain genetic traits of their parents. Still anyone that has held his new born baby in his arms for the first time and seen his wife's blue blue eyes staring back at him, or watched their baby boy give the same goofy smile his grandfather used to give decades earlier, will say that the ability to procreate is not only a gift, the ability to make a whole other human being entirely unique but that has the distinct characteristics of its parents, is for some a miralce. I am of that number.


One Family; a brilliant idea.


Of course God could have made a variety of humans without our input but he did not. He chose to give us a gift with all the joys and responsibillities that would entail. To actually be able to trace how each inhabitant on the planet is genetically connected, and not just know intellecutally but really grasp at the deepest level that we are indeed all "one family" would make for a very special unity and a connection unique in the universe of intelligent beings. That humans were to be genetically related but still able to reproduce in a seeming unending variety from the stately black skinned Massai in Kenya to the blue eyed fair skinned Swedes, in every skin shade, hair texture and variey of face and body shapes in between is in my opinion an absolutelyBEAUTIFUL idea.

"God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth " - Genesis 1:28

If Adam and Eve were perfect, how could they sin? CAN a perfect being, sin?
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 03#p873903

[Willum]

[Replying to post 15 by JehovahsWitness]

And yet not answering the very interesting question:

Wouldn't it have been better if we were all born like Adam and Eve were created?

Or touching on the observation that children do not inherit historic flaws.

Why?
Because the only answer is that it was a fable -a child's story, born in Babylon around 3000BC, copied by those who would become Jewish in 66BC, and for some reason believed as true, hence.

Wouldn't it have been better if we were all born like Adam and Eve were created?