Harmi 说:
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.
I really don't see the problem with that. Not when we have already a) been created against our wills, and b) given a certain nature against our wills. Did you ask for testosterone?
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.
Well,
we don't have free will, either. We have the freedom of choice, sure, but we invariably choose our actions based on our personality. And we do not choose our personality. Our personalities are formed by outside influences.
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.
Yes, within our programming. I have the
option to go and rape a porcupine, but I'm not gonna. I am going to do what I
want to do instead. But I never chose what to want. Think about it, if people could
choose what to want, there'd be virtually no infidelity. Because I dare say that most, if not all of those who are unfaithful would rather be without the desire to stray. I haven't cheated myself, but I'd be lying if I tried to claim that my girlfriend is the sole focus of my fantasies. If I could choose, I'd choose to want only her, and I'd choose to want her as badly as in the beginning of our relationship. But choosing desires is impossible. I am free to act on my personality - or my programming, if you will - just like any computer. Just like a computer is programmed to react certain ways to certain inputs, so are
we conditioned to react certain ways to certain inputs. After all, what is upbringing, if not programming?
Because we can follow him or not follow him. That's the idea of this whole concept.
Yes, and we would all have that choice if we were all like Enok. More knowledge doesn't deprive us of choice, it makes our choices more informed.
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.
You're doing fine. Better, in fact, than many native Enlish speakers I have come across.
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.
They did not know what death was at the time. This is a minor flaw in the story, but a significant one if you take it at face value.
Also, even if they did know what death was, they still would have no concept of "wrong". So they could not possibly know it was wrong to disobey. And if we would apply this to a real life scenario:
Let's say you have a young son, a 3-year old. You're doing some gardening, and you have a bottle of weed killer with you. Your 3-year old looks on. Then you get up to fetch something, leaving the opened bottle of weed killer behind. You tell your 3-year old, "don't drink that, it's bad for you." Now, who would be to blame if your 3-year old took a sip? Adam and Eve may have been created with fully grown bodies, but they were blank templates. They had no experiences, no knowledge - only their innate human curiosity. They would have been like children, wanting to find out things for themselves.
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.
Metaphors are not usually explained. Just like jokes are not usually explained: the explanation kind of kills it.
They also had knowledge of good and evil, just like everyone else.
No, not
just like everyone else. Each culture defines good and evil its own way.
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.
People will always find ways to justify their actions. A thief may justify his crimes by thinking, "I have so little, and they have so much. And yet they don't even share with people around them. This little act of pilfering is nothing more than an inconvenience to them, and it's an inconvenience they bloody well deserve, the rich bastards." Or even with really big things, like genocide: "They are scum, they will destroy our society given half the chance. They are evil, they're not like normal people. And it's either them or us." This God-written conscience did not stop the conquistadores, it did not prevent the 30 Years War, it did not prevent the Holocaust. This is because we are very good at dehumanising "them". "They" are not like "us", and so we have a
right. If "they" oppose "us", then "they" are in the wrong - by default. And anything "we" do to "them", they brought on themselves. Even those who aren't particularly athletic are capable of some fantastic mental gymnastics.
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.
But if Peter
did kill him, you wouldn't have a problem with that - because it'd be in the Bible. If you object to my assertion here, I must ask if you have a problem with Moses's judgement of the man who was gathering firewood on the sabbath.
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.
They had a very
different idea of who God was. If they thought the Israelites were the one true God's own chosen people, there is no way they would want to oppose them.
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.
How can you say such a thing? They were just as religious as the Israelites, they just believed in
different gods. Sure, they wanted to teach the Israelites their ways - but how is that different from the Israelites wanting to teach other tribes
their ways? Or the Christians wanting to convert non-Christians? Here's the thing:
everyone believes themselves to be right.
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."
And the Israelites were just as free to live in peace with the others. But they insisted that their way of doing things was so superior to everyone else's, that they had the right to murder for it.
