If God knew beforehand why did he go through with it?

[cottage]

you quote Genesis, I quote the Psalms: God knew me before I was in my mother's womb.
If our souls are part and parcel of God's Spirit, then that would seem to indicate eternal life, no?

Not quite.
"The Lord called me before my birth. From within the womb he called me by my name...He said to me, `You are my servant'..." (Isaiah 49:1,3 TLB); "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13).

 

[sojourner]

There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding here, evident where you say [the explanation] may not make sense to me because there is no evidence to support it.’ Metaphysical reasoning doesn’t need evidence; it simply needs to be logical. ‘Ruach’ is a metaphysical explanation similar to mind/body dualism. There may not be proof for the concept of disembodied existence but it is not illogical. Reincarnation isn’t illogical. There is nothing logically absurd in the idea of a thing existing in a different form, even though we cannot be aware of it through our sensible faculties. But if God is the creator then we exist at the point of our creation and not before. And from my understanding Bible speaks differently of soul and spirit. Soul is of the body whereas spirit is indestructible.

Let's see...
You have dismissed belief on the basis of no evidence to support such beliefs, yet now you say that "metaphysical reasoning doesn't need evidence."

"There may not be proof for the concept of disembodied existence but it is not illogical" against your complete dismissal of the resurrection.

reincarnation isn't illogical, (which requires the preexistence of a soul, as it pertains to any subsequent incarnation) but the preexistence of the soul isn't logical.

 

[sojourner]

No, the difference is that you couldn't be expected to know your son would be injured playing hockey, whereas God knew in the smallest detail exactly what would occur in the case of Adam and Eve. If it is the nature of God is that he has no contradictions, and evil is an anathema to him, then the Fall is a logical impossibility.

One small problem in your analysis:
In the Genesis account, God is not necessarily omniscient.

 

[sojourner]

But there is an evident contradiction where an all-loving God is directly implicated in the evil that he supposedly abhors.

How are you certain that the fall was necessarily "evil?"

 

[sojourner]

If it was logically impossible that A & E would not sin, it must therefore be logically impossible for God to prevent it. And so the simple unavoidable truth of the matter is that if A & E sinned then it was either because it was God's will or it was because he was usurped and confounded by his own creation. Either way you have a contradiction. It is the Adam and Eve thing that is self-contradictory, metaphysical mumbo jumbo.

It was God's will that we have the capacity to make our own choices. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

 

[sojourner]

If an engineer designed a bridge and let it be built, while knowing it to be faulty, he would be held criminally responsible in event of a tragedy. A prescient God was fully aware of every inadequacy and insufficiency that would exist in the human creature, yet it he produced it anyway! The story is nonsensical in its entirety.

If we were perfect, we'd be God.
The onus isn't on God to create perfectly or not. The onus is upon us to understand as best we can why we are here.

 

[sojourner]

God still hasn’t made the bridge safe, annihilated evil, or alleviated suffering, since it continues even until this very day. The contradiction stands, as God cannot undo what is done nor can he re-write history.

"making the bridge safe" isn't the issue. "Providing a way for us to be saved" is the issue. If you're going to assume one part of the theological story, you have to assume all. You're conveniently leaving out the "salvation" part, because you want it to mean something other than what the producers of the story think it means. You can't write your way into the story like that.

 

[cottage]

Let's see...
You have dismissed belief on the basis of no evidence to support such beliefs, yet now you say that "metaphysical reasoning doesn't need evidence."

That’s correct. Metaphysical theories, interesting speculations though they are, cannot be proved true or false. (However, they must make sense, and so the laws of logic still apply.) For example Karl Marx’s dialectical materialism, Bishop Berkeley’s idealism, Descartes’ dualism (God, mind and matter), Stoicism etc, Platonic knowledge etc.

"There may not be proof for the concept of disembodied existence but it is not illogical" against your complete dismissal of the resurrection.

I have to keep explaining things that I’ve already made clear in previous responses, and which should in any case be quite obvious. I dismiss the Resurrection as illogical not because of a dead body coming to life again after three days (highly improbable but not impossible), but because the act itself was self-defeating and contradictory. Go back and read my arguments.

reincarnation isn't illogical, (which requires the preexistence of a soul, as it pertains to any subsequent incarnation) but the preexistence of the soul isn't logical.

As I understand it reincarnation requires first that someone lives, that is to say they are born and then die before they can be reincarnated?

 

[sojourner]

I dismiss the Resurrection as illogical not because of a dead body coming to life again after three days (highly improbable but not impossible), but because the act itself was self-defeating and contradictory.

But the act wasn't self-defeating or contradictory.

As I understand it reincarnation requires first that someone lives, that is to say they are born and then die before they can be reincarnated?

And the soul, therefore, is preexistent with regard to a subsequent birth -- which goes against AK4s theory, with which you agree.

 

[Willamena]

Metaphysical theories, interesting speculations though they are...

(Interesting branch of philosophy that it is...) are necessarily about truth.

 

[cottage]

But the act wasn't self-defeating or contradictory.

The death wasn’t death. Jesus laid down his life…and then took it up again! Ergo there was no sacrifice.
“Mankind, you are guilty of sin and evil, for which the sentence is death. However, as I have died and come alive again for your sins, you are now forgiven. You will not die, even though people all around you appear to be dying. And don’t worry about the fact of sin continuing because all future sins are also forgiven. What’s that you say: ‘Why if the penalty has been paid are some people still being penalised?’ Well, it says somewhere in Hebrews that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” Matthew 10:34

And the soul, therefore, is preexistent with regard to a subsequent birth -- which goes against AK4s theory, with which you agree.

I understand reincarnation as referring to the previous self, which returns in a different body?

 

[sojourner]

The death wasn’t death. Jesus laid down his life…and then took it up again! Ergo there was no sacrifice.

Please stop embarrassing yourself with your abysmal lack of knowledge with regard to theology.

I understand reincarnation as referring to the previous self, which returns in a different body?

Meaning that the "previous self" -- note: PREVIOUS self -- existed before the "different body" existed.

 

[cottage]

If we were perfect, we'd be God.
The onus isn't on God to create perfectly or not. The onus is upon us to understand as best we can why we are here.

We don’t have to be perfect. There is no reason at all why God shouldn’t create imperfect beings, and there is no reason at all why evil and suffering shouldn’t exist. But since he did and they do, it is absurd that the Almighty Artisan then sought to punish his own handiwork because of the design faults that inhere in it.

 

[cottage]

It was God's will that we have the capacity to make our own choices. That's a good thing, not a bad thing.

Choice doesn’t have to imply evil. In order for something to be possible, to exist as a choice, it must first exist. And God not only made evil possible but he also knew it would be chosen.

 

[cottage]

"making the bridge safe" isn't the issue. "Providing a way for us to be saved" is the issue. If you're going to assume one part of the theological story, you have to assume all. You're conveniently leaving out the "salvation" part, because you want it to mean something other than what the producers of the story think it means. You can't write your way into the story like that.

It is the salvation part that is illogical. ‘Providing a way for us to be saved’ from…what? Where is the logic that insists that provision needs to be made to save the creation from the wrath of its creator, as if God were the bad guy?

 

[sojourner]

We don’t have to be perfect. There is no reason at all why God shouldn’t create imperfect beings, and there is no reason at all why evil and suffering shouldn’t exist. But since he did and they do, it is absurd that the Almighty Artisan then sought to punish his own handiwork because of the design faults that inhere in it.

Punish? How? God does not punish as we deserve. God holds back God's hand. god prefers to show mercy and kindness.

But yet, because evil does exist, then a good God cannot.

Yeah.

 

[sojourner]

Choice doesn’t have to imply evil. In order for something to be possible, to exist as a choice, it must first exist. And God not only made evil possible but he also knew it would be chosen.

That's not a problem for the rest of us.

 

[sojourner]

It is the salvation part that is illogical. ‘Providing a way for us to be saved’ from…what? Where is the logic that insists that provision needs to be made to save the creation from the wrath of its creator, as if God were the bad guy?

I didn't say God was wrathful. Nor did I say that we needed to be saved from such a God. We're saved from ourselves and the poor choices we make.

 

[cottage]

Please stop embarrassing yourself with your abysmal lack of knowledge with regard to theology.

It’s just one ad hominem response after another, isn’t it?
Where a statement is illogical, attaching the term ‘theology’ does not alter that state of affairs in the least.

Meaning that the "previous self" -- note: PREVIOUS self -- existed before the "different body" existed.

If reincarnation means rebirth, then self-evidently a person has to be born before the person can be reborn, to exist in another life. The phenomenon is based on past lives, and we don’t live before we are born. Therefore the process cannot begin unless there is an initial birth.
And anyway, as you know, reincarnation is not compatible with Christianity: “It is appointed for men to die once, and after this comes judgment.” Hebrews 9:27

 

[Willamena]

Where a statement is illogical, attaching the term ‘theology’ does not alter that state of affairs in the least.

If Jesus didn't "lay down his life" then the entire mythology is for naught. It's kind of a vital bit.

we don’t live before we are born.

Unless, of course, we do.