@Alien826 I wanted to ask you something. It's more a question for atheists, but I'm not sure if you are. Are you atheist?
Before I ask, I left a few things unfinished.
Why not? When you were in school, did you do both good and bad things?
Yes, but we are talking about the nature of a thing.
I'm thinking the nature of something can't be opposites. It has to be one or the other... but can have a
potential toward another.
However, you may not see it that way, as seems to be the case with others.
For centuries, debate has raged across political and scientific lines over whether the fundamental nature of humans is selfish, greedy, competitive, and cruel, or altruistic, co-operative, and philanthropic.
I see where you are going. The problem arises where you say Adam was good before the fall. I would say he didn't do bad things (up to that point) because he didn't have much opportunity. I see him as being innocent rather than good. After all he didn't understand good and evil, that's part of the story. God specifically forbade him from gaining that ability. So we really don't know much about his nature. He was able to disobey God, that's not good, though I've always felt we should cut him some slack as he hadn't yet eaten the fruit that would give him the knowledge of good and evil.
You are not alone in this view.
However, many, like yourself have the mistaken idea that the tree of knowledge of good and bad was some magical tree, that once its fruit is eaten, the one eating suddenly has their brain "exploded" with all knowledge and understanding.
A careful reading of scripture though, gives a different understanding.
First of all, Adam and Eve were not like a 2 day old baby, whom has not been trained to understand what mommy and daddy wants.
Even a child 1 year old understands when daddy isn't pleased, just by a look, and they certainly understands by then, things daddy and mommy says "don't do".
Adam and Eve certainly understood that "daddy" said "don't", and like a responsible child left on its own, Eve said... "God has said about the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden: ‘You must not eat from it, no, you must not touch it; otherwise you will die.. . ." (Genesis 3:3)
So they both knew that to eat from that tree was to disobey daddy. Was it wrong to do so?
Well, one would only know this, if they knew what was wrong, and what was right, in the case of the subject, and that daddy told them something wrong.
So clearly, eating from the tree did not give them that information.
They chose to listen to... not "daddy", but snakey, who told them, "Listen. Daddy is lying, okay. He knows otherwise."
Now if we want to make Adam and Eve children, what child, without knowledge that "daddy" does not really love them... No wait.
They knew the opposite - Please read Genesis 2:7-23
If that's not showing love, then I don't know how one would show love. Certainly not by words.
That makes Adam and Eve two rebellious children, who joined someone who never gave them anything, and whom they had no valid reason to trust.
Secondly, the Bible says, (Genesis 3:6-7)
6 Consequently, the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was something desirable to the eyes, yes, the tree was pleasing to look at. So she began taking of its fruit and eating it. Afterward, she also gave some to her husband when he was with her, and he began eating it.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked. So they sewed fig leaves together and made loin coverings for themselves.
So, if Adam and Eve did not know what was good and bad, they must not have known they were naked.
Not according to scripture. Genesis 2:25 says ...both of them continued to be naked, the man and his wife; yet they were not ashamed.
After eating the fruit - disobeying "daddy", those negative emotions that weren't there previously, kicked in - guilt; shame; wrong thinking.
They sinned - fell short of the glory of God - missed the mark of tle level of perfection God set for them.
...and so, they hid from the face of their father - They hid from "daddy".
Many children try to cover up their wrong doing, and some succeed. Adam and Eve couldn't.
From this, we see that the tree of knowledge gave them no special knowledge.
Evidently it served as a representation of God's right as sovereign to determine what is good, and bad.
By taking fruit from that tree, Adam and Eve were basically saying, they did not acknowledge God's right to decide for them what is good and bad.
They did this, spurred on by the opposer (Satan), who looked for the first opportunity to lead the human family against God.
Seems to me that if Adam was so "unbroken" then he should have been able to resist such a simple temptation. A very fragile object is certainly "unbroken" before someone tries to use it and breaks, but that doesn't make it well designed.
One can face temptation, but it doesn't have to be a temptation.
For example, suppose a Christian is engaged to a fiancée.
He knows that he has to wait until marriage to engage in sexual intercourse.
Say others are pressuring him to have sex, that may be a temptation, but for him, it's not, because he knows that he soon will have a lovely wife with whom he will comfortably have intercourse.
Adam knew that eating the fruit would be to willfully disobey his father. After all, it was not the only fruit tree available to him. He had hundreds... perhaps.
To him it was not a temptation. It was a choice. One he chose to take, willingly.
(1 Timothy 2:14) . . .Adam was not deceived. . .
To put it another way, you see a car in a showroom, and it's in good shape. Not broken at all. You then take it for a test drive and it breaks down. You go back to the showroom and tell the salesman that there is something wrong with the car. He says "I wasn't broken when you took it out, so there's nothing wrong with it". The car is Adam, you are the salesman. Do you really not see that the brokenness can be evidence of poor design?
When the car left the showroom it was not in good condition.
However, from appearances it seemed "perfect".
Testing it out, showed that it wasn't.
Good illustration for the point you are arguing.
Adam is the "seemingly" perfect car. The Devil test drives it. Brings it to the designer, and says, "This piece of scrap is no good."
Unlike the disappointed customer though, the Devil has this satisfied smirk on his face.
The only, problem I have with that illustration... though it's very good
, is it doesn't quite fit the situation in the Bible.
Adam was not created with sin.
Adam was sinless - perfect - the car sitting in the showroom, in good condition.
The Devil tinkered with the parts of the car, until it broke down.
Then the Devil came to the Designer, to gloat... arguing about how easy it is - with a little "interference", the car can break down.
Then he adds, "making you look bad... Mr. Almighty."...
with an evil grin.
Taken individually, and at a low level of function they don't. Put all together and raised a level far beyond that needed for "other purposes", very much so. A cheetah can run at 100 mph for no other reason than that its prey can run fast. It doesn't need that amount of speed to walk over to a plant and eat it.
I thought the top speed was 70 mph.
Checking ...
Yeah, it's 65-75 mph.
While a cheetah's top speed ranges from 65 to 75 mph (104 to 120 km/h), its average speed is only 40 mph (64 km/hr), punctuated by short bursts at its top speed. In addition to speed, a cheetah attains high acceleration. It can reach a speed of 47 mph (75 km/hr) in two seconds, or go from zero to 60 mph in 3 seconds and three strides. A cheetah accelerates as fast as one of the world's most powerful sports cars.
Perhaps you meant Km/h.
One might say the Peregrine Falcon, whose speed doubles the cheetah, has that speed in order to catch its prey, but what would that say about slower animal... they weren't suppose to catch prey?
No. To be fair, we cannot use speed as a basis for an argument about predator / prey.
Obviously, you don't think horses are born to race, do you?
Yes, some animals play. They also hunt and eat other animals, often on the same day!
We play, and some of us hunt too.
Not many people are happy with those hunts, and they certainly don't think the hunters were "born that way".
‘Following recent outrage over the unethical death of Cecil the Lion at the hands of conservative Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer,
a big-game huntress in Idaho has reignited outrage after posting Facebook photos of herself proudly posing with the dead bodies of innocent wildlife’.
‘Following the high-profile death of famous lion Cecil, hunting has become a highly criticized and much-discussed topic amongst animal-rights activists and the general public alike’.
No, I see a predator because it predates.
Yes. That's what I said. What you are accustomed to.
Which is part of the question I want to ask.
Can you not see
this happening at all?
Is it something you think one would only see in fantasy?
If not by God, can you see it happening by man, or happening at all?
