Kissaki 说:
An omnipotent being would be able to instill that knowledge in us without the need for testing.
Of course, but then he would've done it against the will of the target. If you're an engineer, you can't say that your machine is having a free will if you programmed it to do some specific tasks. Let's say, bottle milk. It would be forever bottling milk and nothing else because it only has the power to do the programmed tasks. But you have the power to bottle milk or do
something else.
That does not follow. We invariably choose to do what we want to do, so if he programmed us to want to do only good, then we would do only good. We'd all be doing tasks to God's satisfaction, and we'd all be doing all the things we wanted to do. After all, the Bible says that Enok was so good that he didn't die - God simply took him without death, because of his righteousness. Did Enok have no will of his own? Add to that the fact that Jesus suggests that it is sinful to have even sinful thoughts, Enok could not have wanted to do much wickedness.
Because we can follow him or not follow him. That's the idea of this whole concept. However, free will is a very complex thing and there are multiple ways to talk about it. I am not sure if I have enough knowledge to start talking about this, especially not in English which is not my main.
The purpose of the story of the Fall is to illustrate sin-nature. We are sinful because we know right from wrong. Adam and Eve could commit no sin before they were imbued with that knowledge. "They were naked, but they were not ashamed". And after the fall, they were hiding because they were naked. They knew - according to Biblical morality - that they were indecent, and it was shameful to bare their naughty bits. But this had hitherto been ok, because they didn't know any better. And God's reaction: "Who told you you were naked?" The thing is, Adam and Eve could not be blamed for eating of the Tree of Knowledge, because they had no way of knowing that it was somehow wrong to disobey God.
I don't agree with this theory. The tree was everything they knew about good and evil. They knew that God said them to not eat from it because if they do, they would die.
1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any animal of the field which Yahweh God had made. He said to the woman, "Yes, has God said, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?'"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat,
3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'"
You might draw the parallel to the difference between children and adults. We excuse little children for certain behaviours, because they don't know any better. I see the whole story of the Fall as a metaphor for how children will eventually grow up and leave the nest, creating a life for themselves. In the garden of Eden, they were like children with God providing for their every need. After they were kicked out, they had to provide for themselves. God wasn't going to babysit them anymore.
Now that metaphor is not from Bible. It's literally the first time I see it and definitely never seen it in Bible itself. Of course, we can make thousands of alternative ways to decode every single sentence in the Bible, but it does not mean that any those are the way the author wanted them to be read.
Baal worshippers were not only just not worshipping God. They actually were doing literally everything against God.
You think they saw it that way?
They also had knowledge of good and evil, just like everyone else. We have the conscience that is written to us by God. It will provide us the needed info so that we know if we are doing good or bad things.
The Israelites were just as fond of violence, and perpetrated every bit as much of it as Baal worshippers. And the reason is that both Israelites and Baal worshippers were people. People don't do things because their preferred god wants them to, they do them because they, the people want to. And they decide what their god wants from them. That's the way it's always been. Proof positive of this is seen with how Christianity has constantly changed to fit the times, even though the texts have stayed the same. So you have a book with various claims and instructions, and these claims and instructions have always been interpreted by different people to mean different things - all according to what they want the Bible to say. So there is no reason to assume that we would have been any worse off with Baal just because that religion included human sacrifice. That religion could have changed just as easily as Christianity did. Followers invariably pick and choose as they please. Christians don't burn heretics anymore, either. Well, except some places in Africa.
In middle age when so-called Christians were burning people, their motives were not based on true knowledge of Bible or the lessons Jesus taught. During that time only rare people used to have the ability to read the text. But just like we people do, we can find a way to use the tools available to benefit us. Let's say that you want something that someone else has. His farm for example. If you know that the time is sensitive for some reason for some things, you can blame your neighbor with those sensitive things and made him to be punished. By that way, you can also take his farm. You can read from the Bible when Paul meets a man in Acts 19:19 and didn't kill him even when it was a known thing that the man was a witch. Also on 8:9 Peter didn't kill the sorcerer.
Not really huge alarm bells and claxons, though, was it? Two new guys coming to town, they warn one dude and his family and decide that the rest of the city isn't worth warning. And in Deuteronomy 20, no warnings at all are given:
However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.
Deut. 20:16-18
You underestimate the people of that time very much. They had their own "twitters" from which they heard things. Those people knew very well who Israelites are and who is God and what Israelites are after. But those people were not interested in following God, instead, they were looking for opportunities to teach Israelites to follow their gods and do their acts. Also, Israel never was a closed nation. Anyone could come to them and live in peace with them. "You shall not wrong an alien, neither shall you oppress him, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt."
