Because he gifted humanity free-will? I thought that was like the main reason
The usual explanation is because God wanted humans to have free will, so interfering in their ability to self-determine would negate that.
The reality is because it makes no fucking sense, like much of the Bible.
It’s a judeo-christian-muslim god.
Fanfiction/Please permit me to make wild allegations, I was also looking at this yesterday and wondered: is it the apple of knowledge of sexual reproduction? (I know the book says good and evil, I get it)
The other tree was the fruit of eternal life. They did not consume this fruit.
So, as for the story, humans could neither sexually reproduce nor live forever/a long time prior to eating the fruit of the knowledge of sexual reproduction. Life and death. Good and evil.
They ate it, wanted to have sex with each other and were ashamed and covered themselves to avoid sexual arousal.
The free will they received was the ability to sexually reproduce.
In the story, angels cannot sexually reproduce with each other?, but seemingly live forever/a long time, and angels supposedly did get very excited that they could now sexually reproduce with humans: nephelim. Hybrids. There are no female angels.
Two different technology trees: humans with sexual reproduction and limited lifespan and angels with longevity/eternal life/angel powers/no females.
This gave the world a third (unintended?) hybrid nephelim class and this upset the balance of power on earth/the creation.
The chaos that ensued inspired yahweh to flood his creation and try again?
Wild shit! For me these are the chaotic and confused retelling of a story of extraterrestrial influence on the development of the human species.
This particular chapter is focused on origins and bloodlines of humanity so it makes sense to me in that way 🙃
Thank you for your time.
same reason you can have anal sex and still be a virgin!
Bad character and plot writing. The Bible was written by hacks and scabs.
Free will. The idea is that for free will to exist you must be able to choose the wrong action.
If a supreme being rules out all wrong actions or prevented you from taking wrong actions, how could there be free will? How could you even be responsible for your own thoughts and actions. How are you not just a puppet?
Alternately you can think of it as a leveling up. It seems like the Apple is always represented as “knowledge of good and evil”. So originally they’re just animals. They take actions but there is no morality, nothing is good or bad. But if they use their free will to take this one forbidden step, they receive the knowledge of good and evil, they can act good or act bad, they know it’s good or bad, and they have the free will to choose their path. And they are accountable for those choices. Now they’re human
But if god is omniscient, then he knows what they’re going to do. And if he already knows that, then do they really have free will? Or do they just think they do?
There’s 3 philosophies I’ve seen on that question.
One is the planned domino effect, which another commentator already mentioned.
The next is the “paradoxical being” one, which is that something that is omniscient is paradoxical by default, therefore it can both know what will happen and simultaneously not know what will happen.
The last is the “unknown destiny” one, which is that even if we don’t actually have free will, as long as we think we do and can’t prove we don’t, then does it matter? Because ultimately it would be no different to us than if we actually did have it.
Interesting, thanks.
Addressed the first one on that other comment.
The second one just seems contradictory tbh, how can it be both?
The third one is interesting - but subjectively feeling like we have free will isn’t the same as objectively having it.
And if there was a god and he was allowing (in fact, causing) us to believe we had free will, when we actually didn’t, would just create the situation where god had misled us.
I think the best way out is that we do have free will, but god isn’t omniscient (if he exists at all).
The second one just seems contradictory tbh, how can it be both?
Well that’s the nature of paradoxes, isn’t it? But paradox philosophy is a whole 'nother can of worms and a very long discussion in of itself, though you’ve probably encountered some examples before, such as this one:
The next sentence is true. The prior sentence is false.
It results in an endless loop. Contradictory, yes, yet both sentences still exist, and are sentences.
The third one is interesting - but subjectively feeling like we have free will isn’t the same as objectively having it.
Yes, true, but the point of that third one is that the result would be the same in the sense that in both cases, humans believe they have free will, and therefore their actions are determined by that, whether or not that path was outlined beforehand by a being we cannot fathom / fully comprehend or not. The actions will still become as they are.
I’ve also heard this third argument combined a bit with the second one as an attempt to better make sense of the paradox (although by doing so, it’s really not a paradox anymore), and that is that God knows all possible paths humans would take, but not necessarily which one / God made infinite path he knows the outcome of but we are free to pick which one we take.
This issue I have with that one is that it’s no longer a truly full omniscient being at that point.
This s is where you have the argument that a supreme being might have set the universe in motion but deliberately does not interfere with the way it evolves. The conditions are as close to even as possible so things can go either way …. For an infinite number of decisions for an infinite time
It’s not a question of interfering or not though, it’s about foreknowledge.
Either god had foreknowledge of their choice, and therefore A&E couldn’t have made any other decision than they did, or they had genuine free will meaning he wasn’t omniscient.
Ahh so the real original sin is entrapment. Got it.
Ford Prefect: Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting ‘Gotcha.’ It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it.
Arthur Dent: Why not?
Ford Prefect: Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end.
Aha! The question that has many pastors digging deep to get a good answer too. And usually they end up with the age old “mysterious ways”.
The “best” one is usually along the lines of: god wanted a relationship which involves choice and free will, so he had to create a division that would allow humankind to have a choice in the matter.
So god feels lonely, causes all misery on earth that ever was and ever will be. Because free will… On top of that he also
indirectly(oh screw it, it’s god) directly causes eternal torture in the afterlife for a vast majority of humankind. Because also, free will (I keep stressing that because that in itself is a huge problem for theologians).And then all that leads to god killing itself in the form of its own son. Because some of you touch your own genitalia in glee.
Genius.
Jason got it? Jason? Well, this is a new low. Yeah, this one hurts.
Where do I sign up!
Don’t try to apply reason/common sense/logic to ANY religion. You’ll end up with more questions than answers.
Besides, I was told that the point of the story was resisting temptation. God wanted to see if Adam and Eve could do that. Spoiler: they couldn’t.
Even though he new exactly what they would do beforehand. Being all-knowing.
It was a test, but if he was omniscient, he would have known the results without having to run it. 😉
See how i didnt mention he is also “benevolent.”
There’s quite a bit of evidence to argue he is actually malevolent.
Christians then start applying “ends justifies the means” logic.
Calvin ball. Its all just Calvin ball.
Try telling that to a Christian and you’ll hear the battered wife type arguments come out sooooo quick.
I really enjoy reminding them that Satan only kills about 10 people in the Bible. He temps others to do things, but he’s only responsible for a handful.
God on the other hand… much more direct and merciless. Doesn’t really seem to give a shit at all about killing people actually. Like a kid with a magnifying glass burning ants.
I love the story where he kills everyone in the world except for that one disfunctional family.
I don’t quite have the urge to believe this, you could say I have a demiurge
beat me to it
He wanted the result, but needed it to be our ‘fault’ for weird passive aggressive reasons and so he could hold it over our heads for eaons. “Sorry son, I’d drive you to the store but you ate that apple. Remember the apple I told you not to eat?”
Embarrassment kink followed by the lack of emotional regulation to handle the outcome of a scenario they asked asked for.
The god character in Oglaf is probably the most accurate representation of God.
Christianity is only one of the many interpretations of reality. Not reality itself. Other doctrines like gnosticism, hinduism, etc… Will give you another view.
God is also supposedly an all-knowing being, while at the same time excuses his shitty decisions and faulty creations with not being responsible for men’s actions and decisions, and also free will is a thing.
Pick a lane. Either god is all-knowing and knows what every single human being who ever lived/lives/will live did/will do in their lifetimes and free will is an illusion, or he’s not an all-knowing being.
Or… hear me out on this… He’s not real! Crazy, I know.
If God created everything, who created God? And who created the thing that created God?
Or, if God just sprang into existence, then the universe could have sprung into existence and saved a complicated and useless step.
Because you can say anything you want about a god that doesn’t actually exist. He could cure cancer, turn you inside out, and show you the inside of a black hole. Just pray and interpret silence as a “no” but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t if he felt like it.
If I’ve learned something from listening History in the Bible podcast is that Yaweh is an asshole and that there are layers of bad translations.
Evangelicals sweep that all under the rug with “divine inspiration.”
Yet here we are with rich assholes running the world and chasing the Antichrist story and trying to summon the end of the world.
You’d think they’d be more intelligent.
Just to add to the great answers already given by others, another aspect to it all is that the mythology that developed into Judaism/Christianity/Islam was originally polytheistic. The god known as YHWH/Yahweh was one of many, but had a dedicated cult (not unlike Greco-Roman deities that often had cults of their own, revering one specific god to the exclusion of others who were nevertheless acknowledged).
So in that sense, the idea of Yahweh being omnipotent and omniscient is a bit of a retcon, meant to highlight the superiority of Yahweh over other gods as his henotheistic sect gradually developed into a more zealous monotheistic religion that rejected the legitimacy of all other gods entirely
That being said, the idea of Satan as a sort of antagonist character to tempt humans towards sin did not emerge until much later either, after the aforementioned omnipotent/omniscient revision of Yahweh. It really just boils down to whatever plot contrivances were convenient for the successive works of religious fan fiction that would later come to be canonized within each Abrahamic religion.
Worth remembering about the Gospels, which were all written decades later and served the purpose for which they were written (which was to speak to different groups at the time, which is why they all emphasized different things).
