The FLOOD, God's Great Failure?

[It Aint Necessarily So]

How does the evidence factor in to the odds making ?

It doesn't. I was imitating your argument - either something is true or not, therefore it is 50/50. Evidence doesn't weight into such an analysis.

That is what you said, right? If I recall correctly, you said it about God.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Well mr. 180 IQ (?) all systems have variables, even the perfect example of the 2nd law, an engine, so using variables as an excuse is not warranted. As to your snowflake answer, what information is required to produce a snowflake, none, it is made as a direct reaction to water changing temperature, a physical property.

It's certainly warranted when you linked one variable to the existence of all life on Earth. There are other known energy sources, for example, which have entire life systems dependent upon them and which are independent (to an extent) of solar reliance. The Earth, today and for eons prior, has received periodic introductions of new material into its system via the bombardment of random solar objects - comets, meteors, planetary ejecta, and all forms of other matter. We radiate energy constantly out through our system boundary (the atmosphere) and off into space. Some is reabsorbed through passing - some lost forever...

The reason I ever engaged you in the first place was because of your misuse of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Though not naming it directly, you argued for a gradual decline towards greater disorder - implying that order (life, as you described it) could never come from disorder (non-life).
As used, your argument is patently false.

Snowflakes are a perfect example of your misuse of the Law - just as is the formation of anything known to Cosmology. According to your usage of the Second Law, Planets should not exist... Solar systems should not form... Nebulae should never produce new stars... The organization of local clusters among the Galaxial arms should never happen, etc.

"How can the coalescing of water molecules form such obvious microscopic patterns under the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?" "Does not the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics disprove planetary formation?"

It's akin to asking how negative numbers can exist when addition only leads to positive outcomes... It's absurd.

There are no inherent properties in chemicals, water, rock or whatever you choose to manufacture complex links of information in the right order, with the right timing, in the right number encoded exactly to work in a living organism, yet abiogenesis and the entire resultant chain of evolution requires that very complicated, properly encoded, information to exist, before the first organism. So, please tell me, from what of the alleged early planet do you extrapolate the manufacture of this information, what is the process ?

Again, by your same argument, those very things that you've mentioned, which you say have no inherent properties, should not even exist... "How can chemicals, rocks, water, or whatever we choose to discuss, exist in the right order for them to appear as they do?"

All matter contains inherent properties (information), and all inherent properties can be converted.
Stellar nucleosynthesis - Wikipedia

The full process of abiogenesis is unknown - but it's not a complete mystery.

Miller–Urey experiment - Wikipedia
The Origin of Life
RNA world - Wikipedia
Life As We Know It Nearly Created in Lab

Those four links show something tantalizingly close to the replication of life from non-living parts. How do you respond to that information, when it should all be impossible, according to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?

To answer your question fully, I don't know.
We don't fully know. But we're pretty damn close. And applying an out of place scientific principle certainly doesn't do anything to hinder the continuation of that study.

Keeping in mind, of course, that rock runoff, lightning, heat/cold, radiation and alleged chemicals come together and systematically create this perfect information to operate the organism they will produce. While we are at it, lets not lose sight of the properties of the alleged environment allowing a simple bit of DNA to form, let alone complex chains.

Perfect is a strong word - it's not perfect; it's pragmatic. In any system the only information that gets passed on from one time period to the next is information that works. Anything that doesn't work is discarded - life is a natural process that lends itself to functionality - not perfection.

This is true of planetary formation, river gorges, snowflakes, and people.

How do you think entropy in a closed, or alleged open with sunlight system, would influence these extremely complex and unknown ?

I don't know what the last word was supposed to be - I imagine it was either organisms or variables(?) But it introduces an energy source by which biochemical processes can fuel their work... That's all that's needed, isn't it? Instead of burning through the supplied internal energy source of a planet, objects on it's surface can use both the radiant energy from a system's core as well as the daily supply of external energy from it's parent Star.

Titan, for example, is a very volatile and active moon due in large part to the external influences of the Sun, like Earth, as well Saturn's immense gravitational tides. The combined energy sources have created an interesting environment where active weathering and seasons occur on what should otherwise be a dead chemical wash under a toxic, hazy atmosphere.

None of these changes should be happening, according to the creationist application of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, but they are... Interesting.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Well let's see Mr. Science The standard evolutionist response is that entropy increases in a closed system, but since the earth is an open system, because it receives sunlight ( energy) from the sun, the second law does not apply. So, in the process of disorder ( no life ) turning into complex order ( a living organism), please explain to me how sunlight can produce detailed information perfectly designed to to govern the machinery of a living organism, in the proper code for the "operating system " of the yet to exist organism to read and utilize. So, in your understanding of the second law of thermodynamics in a closed or open system, does it allow the chaos of chemicals to move to the order of a living organism, and if so, where in the chaos was the information produced, without which the organism to be created could not function ?

Where does the "information" instructing a planet to orbit a star come from? What you are calling information is just matter, energy, force, time, space, and form doing their dance. The puddle assumes the shape of the hole it forms in without instructions, and proteins are generated from nucleic acids without instructions. Purines bond to pyriminidines, and ribosomes assemble proteins the way holes in the ground assemble puddles - passively, blindly,and in accordance with natural laws.

Here's a better way to view information:

What's out there is form, not information. Information requires a mind - a mind to become informed. The form out there enters the brain and mind, and becomes form in the theater of the mind, or in-form-ation.

You might site something from information theory calling a signal like the one carrying my thoughts to you information, but that's just shorthand. The information is in the mid that generated it, and may end up informing another mind. In between, it's just like the puddle and the ribonucleic acids: form: The shape of the base pairs, the t-RNA, and the amino acids, one passively determining the physics of what happens to the other.

Consider the fact that you cannot decipher the string of bits until they are converted into pixels or something else that you can comprehend. Likewise with a radio wave broadcasting a song. There is no information until it is rendered into sound and informs a conscious mind capable of understanding it.

Regarding the thermodynamics of life, there is some very interesting work being done by a Jeremy England at MIT that takes of where Prigogine ended in the discussion of dissipative structures and far-from-equilibrium states. It's a new way of conceiving of life, and suggests that its existence, far from being an unlikely stroke of luck, is probably inevitable wherever it is possible.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

It's certainly warranted when you linked one variable to the existence of all life on Earth. There are other known energy sources, for example, which have entire life systems dependent upon them and which are independent (to an extent) of solar reliance. The Earth, today and for eons prior, has received periodic introductions of new material into its system via the bombardment of random solar objects - comets, meteors, planetary ejecta, and all forms of other matter. We radiate energy constantly out through our system boundary (the atmosphere) and off into space. Some is reabsorbed through passing - some lost forever...

The reason I ever engaged you in the first place was because of your misuse of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Though not naming it directly, you argued for a gradual decline towards greater disorder - implying that order (life, as you described it) could never come from disorder (non-life).
As used, your argument is patently false.

Snowflakes are a perfect example of your misuse of the Law - just as is the formation of anything known to Cosmology. According to your usage of the Second Law, Planets should not exist... Solar systems should not form... Nebulae should never produce new stars... The organization of local clusters among the Galaxial arms should never happen, etc.

"How can the coalescing of water molecules form such obvious microscopic patterns under the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?" "Does not the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics disprove planetary formation?"

It's akin to asking how negative numbers can exist when addition only leads to positive outcomes... It's absurd.



Again, by your same argument, those very things that you've mentioned, which you say have no inherent properties, should not even exist... "How can chemicals, rocks, water, or whatever we choose to discuss, exist in the right order for them to appear as they do?"

All matter contains inherent properties (information), and all inherent properties can be converted.
Stellar nucleosynthesis - Wikipedia

The full process of abiogenesis is unknown - but it's not a complete mystery.

Miller–Urey experiment - Wikipedia
The Origin of Life
RNA world - Wikipedia
Life As We Know It Nearly Created in Lab

Those four links show something tantalizingly close to the replication of life from non-living parts. How do you respond to that information, when it should all be impossible, according to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?

To answer your question fully, I don't know.
We don't fully know. But we're pretty damn close. And applying an out of place scientific principle certainly doesn't do anything to hinder the continuation of that study.


Perfect is a strong word - it's not perfect; it's pragmatic. In any system the only information that gets passed on from one time period to the next is information that works. Anything that doesn't work is discarded - life is a natural process that lends itself to functionality - not perfection.

This is true of planetary formation, river gorges, snowflakes, and people.


I don't know what the last word was supposed to be - I imagine it was either organisms or variables(?) But it introduces an energy source by which biochemical processes can fuel their work... That's all that's needed, isn't it? Instead of burning through the supplied internal energy source of a planet, objects on it's surface can use both the radiant energy from a system's core as well as the daily supply of external energy from it's parent Star.

Titan, for example, is a very volatile and active moon due in large part to the external influences of the Sun, like Earth, as well Saturn's immense gravitational tides. The combined energy sources have created an interesting environment where active weathering and seasons occur on what should otherwise be a dead chemical wash under a toxic, hazy atmosphere.

None of these changes should be happening, according to the creationist application of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, but they are... Interesting.

Good and informative post.

By this creationist reckoning, a zygote developing into complex multicellular life is a violation of the 2nd Law.

I like the guy who said (paraphrasing), "You don't get to use the science you like to try and undermine the science causing you consternation"

 

[Muffled]

It doesn't. I was imitating your argument - either something is true or not, therefore it is 50/50. Evidence doesn't weight into such an analysis.

That is what you said, right? If I recall correctly, you said it about God.

I remember when the God Particle was just a a mathematical theory because evidence had not been found yet. The evidence of God's existence has been extensive. However the design that needs a designer theory is similar to mathematical theory is it not?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I remember when the God Particle was just a a mathematical theory because evidence had not been found yet. The evidence of God's existence has been extensive.

You understand, do you not, that "the God Particle" is not about deities. It's a catchy name for the Higgs boson, which is thought to give particles mass. It's not evidence for a god.

It's interesting that Christian proselytizers offer biblical prophecy as evidence of the Bible's divine origin, but the existence of the Higgs boson was a stunning prophecy of the highest quality. It predicted something previously unexpected specifically, unambiguously, and in great detail (mass, charge, spin, parity).

"Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?" - Carl Sagan

However the design that needs a designer theory is similar to mathematical theory is it not?

I'm not clear on what you're asking.

 

[12jtartar]

I only post the following in light of the contention that god is infallible and can do no wrong.

Genesis 6:5-7 (NKJV)
5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have
created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

Now if anyone sees the flood as a success please point it out.

.

Skwim,
The flood was a failure indeed, but not of God, but of mankind.
Think about what had done for Adam and Eve, and what they lost for rebellion against God.
They had Everlasting life!! They had a perfect home, where everything they did would be successful!! They had only one prohibition, not to eat of one tree, when they had hundreds they could eat from. They both had perfect marriage mates. They had the use of 100% of their brain, not 3% as we do today. They could have relatives all over the world, being the father and mother of all humans.
Even though they had everything you could want, Eve wanted more, to be like God, knowing good and evil, Genesis 3:1-7. They lost everything, not only for themselves, but for their progeny.
I would consider these things a loss for them, not for God.
Have you heard of Covenant Theology, or Federal Theology??
This is a branch of Theology that dels with the subject of salvation, thatws then offered to all the descendants of Adam and Eve, who would try to obey God, and would walk I the footsteps of His son Jesus, the Christ.
Since God made another way to cause His purpose to be fulfilled, I would say it was not a failure of His, because His purpose for the earth and mankind will, not only be fulfilled, but be fulfilled in the exact time that He had originally determined, specifically at the end of the seventh day, in which we are living.
The Almighty God is always in total control and His purpose WILL come true, so what did God lose???

 

[shmogie]

Good and informative post.

By this creationist reckoning, a zygote developing into complex multicellular life is a violation of the 2nd Law.

I like the guy who said (paraphrasing), "You don't get to use the science you like to try and undermine the science causing you consternation"

The open system because of sunlight isn't my observation, it is the observation of many who want to void the argument of the second law of thermodynamics applying. Their reasoning is that in an open system entropy doesn't occur.

 

[Brian Schuh]

I only post the following in light of the contention that god is infallible and can do no wrong.

Genesis 6:5-7 (NKJV)
5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
6 And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7 So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have
created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

Now if anyone sees the flood as a success please point it out.

.

To make it worse, remember that the first time God made the universe it collapsed on itself and the earth became "formless and void." Genesis 1:1. So God got it wrong twice but then gave us the rainbow as a promise that he finally got it right and the world will never be destroyed again.

As for Noah, they say he wasn't that righteous but looked righteous in comparison to the rest of his generation.

 

[12jtartar]

"A little leaven leavens the whole lump" I think it was Gods way of showing us that he can't even leave someone like Noah alive. A flood won't fix things, which is why there is a "last day".

Kemosloby,
It seems, by your mention of the last day, that you have a wrong understanding of what the last day means.
The last day means the last day that God will allow wickedness to continue. God has assigned His son to judge this world, in righteousness, Acts 17:31, both the living and the dead, 2Timothy 4:1, John 5:28,29. This will be at Armageddon!! After Armageddon Jesus will reign as King for for The Thousand Year, judgement Day, in which all who live through The Great Tribulation, and all who are resurrected back to earth, will be judged by their actions during The Judgement Day. There will be a final test of the people on earth,when Satan is loosed from the abyss, Revelation 20:4-15. All who live through that final test will be granted Everlasting Life.
Today, we are living in the very last days of the Last Days. There is a very short time for us to decide whether we want to live under God, or die forever along with the god of this system of things, Satan the Devil, 2Timothy 4:3,4, Revelation 19:11-21.
Matthew chapter 24, Mark chapter 13, and Luke chapter 21, along with 2Timothy 3:1-7, Romans chapter 1 form a composite sign of 39 conditions on earth, that signal the certainty that we are living in the last days of this old wicked world, just before the return to earth of Jesus. Agape!!!

 

[Skwim]

Skwim,

Think about what had done for Adam and Eve, and what they lost for rebellion against God.

Why? It's immaterial to the issue.

.

 

[Skwim]

To make it worse, remember that the first time God made the universe it collapsed on itself and the earth became "formless and void." Genesis 1:1.

Genesis 1:1-2 (KJV)
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
​

Don't see a thing about the universe collapsing in on itself and the earth becoming formless and void.

So God got it wrong twice but then gave us the rainbow as a promise that he finally got it right and the world will never be destroyed again.

Think this was the first appearance of rainbows on earth?

.

 

[Brian Schuh]

Genesis 1:1-2 (KJV)
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
​

Don't see a thing about the universe collapsing in on itself and the earth becoming formless and void.


Think this was the first appearance of rainbows on earth?

.

First off, the Tanakh (the Bible) is not the only book that I study or believe in. With that being said, the second time God created the universe, he created the laws of nature in such a way that allowed the possibility that humankind could fall into hopeless depravity without chance of redemption. At the flood, he refined the laws of nature so that this possibility would no longer exist and also this slight refinement of the laws of nature allowed the rainbow to exist. So it was God's mistake to allow a world to exist where humankind could fall into hopeless corruption. I learned this from Dr. Michael Schulman who is not only a physicist but also a Torah scholar.

 

[shmogie]

It's certainly warranted when you linked one variable to the existence of all life on Earth. There are other known energy sources, for example, which have entire life systems dependent upon them and which are independent (to an extent) of solar reliance. The Earth, today and for eons prior, has received periodic introductions of new material into its system via the bombardment of random solar objects - comets, meteors, planetary ejecta, and all forms of other matter. We radiate energy constantly out through our system boundary (the atmosphere) and off into space. Some is reabsorbed through passing - some lost forever...

The reason I ever engaged you in the first place was because of your misuse of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Though not naming it directly, you argued for a gradual decline towards greater disorder - implying that order (life, as you described it) could never come from disorder (non-life).
As used, your argument is patently false.

Snowflakes are a perfect example of your misuse of the Law - just as is the formation of anything known to Cosmology. According to your usage of the Second Law, Planets should not exist... Solar systems should not form... Nebulae should never produce new stars... The organization of local clusters among the Galaxial arms should never happen, etc.

"How can the coalescing of water molecules form such obvious microscopic patterns under the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?" "Does not the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics disprove planetary formation?"

It's akin to asking how negative numbers can exist when addition only leads to positive outcomes... It's absurd.



Again, by your same argument, those very things that you've mentioned, which you say have no inherent properties, should not even exist... "How can chemicals, rocks, water, or whatever we choose to discuss, exist in the right order for them to appear as they do?"

All matter contains inherent properties (information), and all inherent properties can be converted.
Stellar nucleosynthesis - Wikipedia

The full process of abiogenesis is unknown - but it's not a complete mystery.

Miller–Urey experiment - Wikipedia
The Origin of Life
RNA world - Wikipedia
Life As We Know It Nearly Created in Lab

Those four links show something tantalizingly close to the replication of life from non-living parts. How do you respond to that information, when it should all be impossible, according to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?

To answer your question fully, I don't know.
We don't fully know. But we're pretty damn close. And applying an out of place scientific principle certainly doesn't do anything to hinder the continuation of that study.


Perfect is a strong word - it's not perfect; it's pragmatic. In any system the only information that gets passed on from one time period to the next is information that works. Anything that doesn't work is discarded - life is a natural process that lends itself to functionality - not perfection.

This is true of planetary formation, river gorges, snowflakes, and people.


I don't know what the last word was supposed to be - I imagine it was either organisms or variables(?) But it introduces an energy source by which biochemical processes can fuel their work... That's all that's needed, isn't it? Instead of burning through the supplied internal energy source of a planet, objects on it's surface can use both the radiant energy from a system's core as well as the daily supply of external energy from it's parent Star.

Titan, for example, is a very volatile and active moon due in large part to the external influences of the Sun, like Earth, as well Saturn's immense gravitational tides. The combined energy sources have created an interesting environment where active weathering and seasons occur on what should otherwise be a dead chemical wash under a toxic, hazy atmosphere.

None of these changes should be happening, according to the creationist application of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, but they are... Interesting.

Miller Urey was done over 50 years ago, no living organism as a result. It doesn't really signify anything. The only "constructed"living organism there is was developed as a 10 year effort by numerous bio chemists, and other specialists, but it still required the introduction of naturally occurring DNA to function. Once again, you are trying to confuse the issue. First energy is matter and vice versa, you know that. From the singularity at the big bang, energy and then matter was created (unknown how) and following the laws of physics all unliving matter was produced. Information was not required. Your example of a snowflake, the creation of the planets, the creation of our planet was the result of Einsteins relativity, and the result of other laws of physics, nothing more. The universe, being a closed system, will reach a state of total entropy, and die. Now, to the creation of life. There are no laws of physics that will create a computer from it's raw ingredients, then program it. Gravity won't, inertia won't, any law you can name will not. The computer I am typing on, a fairly modern one, is very simple when compared to a living cell. Once again, here is the point, energy of any type, whether rushing toward entropy or being continuously supplied in an open system, cannot by the laws of physics create detailed information, it can go so far, then no further. A conglomeration of chemicals in a primordial sea cannot combine naturally in any fashion to write a detailed and functional code for a computer, then produce the computer to read the already written code. Again, life is much more complicated as to the information required, as is an organism more complicated than a computer. The second law prevails when it comes to life, the various laws produce more matter in more order till it all breaks down at the information stage. All the chemicals in all the universe combined in any environment in any way can not produce information to make an organism function properly. It is possible that there may be a natural explanation , but it is extremely unlikely, especially as research advances on genetics, the complexity of DNA, and the complexity of the cell, that makes the natural production of this information less likely. The tenets of science require that a theory be verified by observation, application, and reproduction. NONE of these have occurred with abiogenesis

 

[Skwim]

First off, the Tanakh (the Bible) is not the only book that I study or believe in. With that being said, the second time God created the universe, he created the laws of nature in such a way that allowed the possibility that humankind could fall into hopeless depravity without chance of redemption.

Gee, wasn't that nice of him.

At the flood, he refined the laws of nature so that this possibility would no longer exist and also this slight refinement of the laws of nature allowed the rainbow to exist.

For a god, one would expect him to have gotten it right the first time.

So it was God's mistake to allow a world to exist where humankind could fall into hopeless corruption.

Yeah, god and his mistakes. One would expect him . . . . . .

.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Their reasoning is that in an open system entropy doesn't occur.

I'll reply to your longer post when I have a bit more time - but to just quickly address this part of your understanding, that's not what's happening at all. And it's not what anyone is saying. If you've come across that argument before, then you've come across a bad argument.

The entire Universe may very well be headed for an eventual heat death, whereas a total balance of all available energy for work is expended and work stops being done because of a great cosmic energetic equilibrium. That's the most likely outcome, given everything we know to this point. (If multi-verses are discovered, or other external sources are impacting our Universe somehow, then the whole assumption gets moved one step further out, for example) But none of this has anything to do with the current ability of work to be accomplished in the meantime, which was the whole point of my last two responses to you regarding the inaccurate creationist application of the 2nd Law to more minor systems, like Evolutionary Biology.

You're conflating ideas that do not mesh and attempting to disarm one branch of science by using another that does not apply. Show me a biological mechanism that inhibits the observed adaptations in populations, and then you can start making a decent argument for the "impossibility" of evolutionary change.

 

[TheMusicTheory]

What did God ask the first humans to do? Just obey one simple command....it wasn't difficult and would not have disadvantaged them in any way. That command would have protected them from evil for all time to come.....but the thing is, when to have knowledge revealed to you, there is no way to "unlearn" it. Once the 'genie' was out of the bottle, there was no way to send it back. Evil was in the world and God would deal with it in the wisest way.....looking always to the future.

This is actually one of the big flaws in the bible, to be honest. Which is weird because it would have been easy to fix via another draft.

Yes, God gives Adam and Eve a command, but at this point Adam and Eve are as children. Infants, really. They have no knowledge of good and evil. None. People see them eating the fruit as "evil" because of disobedience but they fail to realize that in a person with no knowledge of those things, they would not have been able to know that disobeying was evil. They would have had no concept of consequences because they had no concept of right and wrong.

So when the serpent tempted Eve, she had no reason to doubt what it said, that the fruit was fine. She didn't know what a lie was because she didn't have knowledge of it.

So God sets up his creation to fail (which was a 100 percent certainty because, again, they think like infants) and then blames that creation for failing. He catch-22'd Adam and Eve so hard that apparently the reverberations continue to this day.

It is not ethically OK to punish a creature for doing something you didn't give them the insight to understand the consequences of. All god did was say "if you eat this fruit you will die" and then he walked away for a while (I guess he went to run some errands? Who knows.).

So you put this big pretty tree with nice looking fruit right in the middle of the garden. Right where you *know* it will entice your brand new ignorant-of-the-world-and-everything-in-it children, tell them "OK now don't eat that!", run off and leave them to their own devices, and then act surprised when the bad influence kid from down the street tells them "nah, it's fine, don't worry about it" and they eat it? You knew darn well that your kids lacked any kind of understanding of right and wrong. They can't even form the concept in their minds because you have denied them that. So you set up this Rube-Goldbergian machine of fool-proof failure so that you can blame them for failing?

Yeah, no thanks.

 

[shmogie]

This is actually one of the big flaws in the bible, to be honest. Which is weird because it would have been easy to fix via another draft.

Yes, God gives Adam and Eve a command, but at this point Adam and Eve are as children. Infants, really. They have no knowledge of good and evil. None. People see them eating the fruit as "evil" because of disobedience but they fail to realize that in a person with no knowledge of those things, they would not have been able to know that disobeying was evil. They would have had no concept of consequences because they had no concept of right and wrong.

So when the serpent tempted Eve, she had no reason to doubt what it said, that the fruit was fine. She didn't know what a lie was because she didn't have knowledge of it.

So God sets up his creation to fail (which was a 100 percent certainty because, again, they think like infants) and then blames that creation for failing. He catch-22'd Adam and Eve so hard that apparently the reverberations continue to this day.

It is not ethically OK to punish a creature for doing something you didn't give them the insight to understand the consequences of. All god did was say "if you eat this fruit you will die" and then he walked away for a while (I guess he went to run some errands? Who knows.).

So you put this big pretty tree with nice looking fruit right in the middle of the garden. Right where you *know* it will entice your brand new ignorant-of-the-world-and-everything-in-it children, tell them "OK now don't eat that!", run off and leave them to their own devices, and then act surprised when the bad influence kid from down the street tells them "nah, it's fine, don't worry about it" and they eat it? You knew darn well that your kids lacked any kind of understanding of right and wrong. They can't even form the concept in their minds because you have denied them that. So you set up this Rube-Goldbergian machine of fool-proof failure so that you can blame them for failing?

Yeah, no thanks.

They didn't need insight, they knew exactly what was right and what was wrong, very simple. They were aware of the consequences. They weren't children, they were highly intelligent beings who were able to make rational choices without being influenced by previous experience, genetics or other factors. So they simply chose not to obey, they weren't "set up", they were given perfect freedom, then chose to throw it away

 

[TheMusicTheory]

They didn't need insight, they knew exactly what was right and what was wrong, very simple. They were aware of the consequences. They weren't children, they were highly intelligent beings who were able to make rational choices without being influenced by previous experience, genetics or other factors. So they simply chose not to obey, they weren't "set up", they were given perfect freedom, then chose to throw it away

This directly contradicts what is in the story. The fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is exactly what allowed them to know right from wrong in the first place. They didn't know what they had done until they had done it.

 

[shmogie]

This directly contradicts what is in the story. The fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is exactly what allowed them to know right from wrong in the first place. They didn't know what they had done until they had done it.

This directly contradicts what is in the story. The fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is exactly what allowed them to know right from wrong in the first place. They didn't know what they had done until they had done it.

Good or evil wan't the issue. Obeying your creator was the issue. It is irrelevant as to whether they knew good from evil, they knew to follow what they were told. They substituted their judgement ( not knowledge ) for God's judgement and instruction. It was a relationship based upon faith and trust, not knowledge. They had the ability to choose because they were free beings. They knew exactly what they were doing, they were presuming on Gods mercy, without considering Gods sense of justice. Just doing what they were told in faith and trust would have stopped the problem before it began. Only their choice made it good or evil.