As a Baha’i, I do not believe in the doctrine of Original Sin, but rather that story has allegorical meanings:
30: ADAM AND EVE
But let’s just say the story was true and Adam and Eve sinned by disobeying God. Two important principles come into play here:
1) God is a not a human being, so is not subject to human laws and rules such as the Attractive Nuisance principle.
2) Adam and Eve were not children, they were adults, so they should have known better.
1) God may not be human, but the same principle applies if we're going to say that it's all due to human free will coupled with a claim that God does nothing to intervene or interfere. I don't agree with that claim. Obviously, God
is doing something here. He's not a disinterested bystander by any means.
2) All they really knew was that God told them not to eat the fruit. They didn't know why, because God didn't tell them. He just put a tree there as a temptation, in addition to allowing a serpent to egg them on. If God didn't want them eating the fruit, then He shouldn't have put the tree in the first place or allowed the serpent into the Garden.
He should have known better.
The whole thing was a set up.
I see God as the Maker of this big chessboard we call earth. God has given humans this chessboard and we are the pieces moving around on the chessboard. God does not enter into the game and God is in no way responsible for how we move around or what we do with the chessboard. Once every 500-100 years, God sends a messenger with a set of instructions as to how to better play the game, but if people ignore those instructions then they don’t play the game as well as they otherwise might. There is no way they can blame God for that because humans have free will so they can choose to read the instructions.
As far as rules are concerned, I do find value in the Golden Rule and various common sense directives, such as "don't lie," "don't steal," "don't murder," etc. But again, a lot of it seems like a set up due to the way that we were made. Apart from the rules of the game, there are certain realities and limitations to our existence which were presumably designed by God - for reasons only He knows.
For example, the need for humans to sleep for 6-8 hours every night. That's not "free will," that's a design flaw that humans have no control over. If humans can't get enough sleep (which may also be outside their control if they have insomnia or other sleep disorders), they can become psychotic or suffer other mental breakdowns which would affect their choices.
Another example is the need for food and what occurs when people don't get enough. Hunger can drive a person to madness, even to the point where they might steal or even kill. Again, is that a reflection of "free will," or is it just the way God designed us? Humans have no control over that.
Even our own minds can play tricks on us, and our memories are quite fallible. How can anyone claim we have "free will" when humans can barely control their own minds and thought processes?
We have no control over where we're born, who are parents are, or much of anything else in our lives in the first few years, yet this is the time when humans' characters are formed, setting the basis for choices and decisions they might make in the future. And yet, most people can't even remember this period in their lives.
God is a not a human parent who is responsible to protect His children from themselves, so God is not subject to behave like a human parent.
People don't need protection from themselves. "Free will" is used as a justification for God's punishment. God sends people to Hell because they sinned, and the implication is that it's their own fault that they sinned, all based on the claim that humans have "free will." God may not be a human parent, but He still presumes to judge and punish people for their sins. This would mean that people need more protection from God's abject injustice and tyranny for holding people accountable for sins that aren't really their fault.
Maybe you think it is God’s fault that some people commit adultery since God created them with sexual organs whereby they could commit adultery...
In a way, yes. Although I would probably mention the sin of "lust," which also carries a stern punishment, according to some religions. If I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I might feel a brief tinge of lust that I can't really control. Sure, I can control my actions and not actually do anything, but in my heart, I've already sinned in the eyes of God. I would already be condemned over a brief surge of lust that I couldn't control due to how I was designed and hard-wired.
But those who believe in "free will" would claim that it's my fault for having such a feeling.
If we follow this idea out, we can blame God for everything, because after all He created a material world in which people would do bad things.....
Yes, exactly my point. Or at least, if He'd give us true free will, where we would at least have control over our minds and bodily processes, then He could justifiably hold us responsible for what we do. Without that, then frankly, God is the one to blame (if there even is a God, which there probably isn't).
We might at least have a legitimate case to hold God responsible for the Creation, since it was His Idea to create it, but if we are going to blame God for the bad things in the material world then we also have to give God credit for the good things... it cuts both ways.
Perhaps. The thing is, it's not really "God" which is being blamed, but more the idea of God and those who propagate that idea. I don't actually know if there is a God or not, but I'm reasonably convinced that no one on Earth (past or present) has the faintest clue as to what they're talking about when they talk about God. How can they?
