Quote from another forum: the first sin

[Da_Ze_Ir]

________________________________________

Q u o t e:

It started with the fruit of knowledge - humans broke a perfect world when they chose to glorify themselves over God. You could say that God is showing us the consequence of sin, a taste of a world without God.

________________________________________

No, the search for truth -the Knowledge- IS what love of true God is all about. A good God would have rather had Adam and Eve going for knowledge than mindlessly obeying him for eternity. An evil god, again, would have had them suffer and accuse them of something beyond their control.

________________________________________

Q u o t e:

It wouldn't have been mindless. They would have had made the conscious choice to obey Him, to love Him.

That's why they had free will to begin with, and that's why Eve was able to resist Satan at first, knowing perfectly well that she was not supposed to eat of the fruit. Genesis 3:2-3, notice how she was aware of the consequence?

________________________________________

and LOL. How far does interpretation go?

Does the tree of KNOWLEDGE ring a bell?

It's either knowledge or mindlessness at genesis point, or at any point for that matter.

________________________________________

Q u o t e:

I mean, check Acts, when God caused Ananias and his wife to drop dead for trying to cheat the church. God was using this to show how serious He is about it, that being in Christ is not a license to go on in depravity.

________________________________________

That is exactly the kind of thinking that goes with the inquisition.

When will people understand that it is not good to kill for your ideals?

______________________________________

Q u o t e:

The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. This could mean a knowledge of WHAT good and evil consist of, not necessarily that it would give them a moral compass - since if Adam and Eve were really that dumb, why would God have taken the time to explain what death was to Adam and Eve? If they weren't capable of understanding simple laws of reaction, why would God have wasted His effort in explaining it to them?

________________________________________

Then there was never any decision, as decision implies undestanding. There was never ever choice between God and whatever because there was never ever the capacity to choose. And even so, if man was destined to live happily and mindlessly, God did not protect them from Satan, which is absurd since man had no defense.

________________________________________

Q u o t e:

Doesnt anyone ever think God gave people free will to let them pick between good and evil themselves, but wouldnt be able to do so without Satan tempting them to do evil?

If people are good by nature they won't give into such temptation, as it says in the bible that "Temptation is not from God".

________________________________________

But they had to know good and evil first, they had to understand. There can be no choices otherwise. In that eden, they were given a choice when they could not choose. The first choice: to be able to choose or not. In any scenario, they would not have had the mind to understand this choice.

_______________________________________

Q u o t e:

Even animals without a rational thought process make choices. You don't need to understand to make a choice, most people nowadays make choices and try to understand why after the fact.

And everyone person is born with a certain nature, what they see and experience after they are born has nothing to do with it, because they will react to those things based on the core person they are.

________________________________________

Not true. Animals act on their instincts, therefore have something, and even so they almost always fail in moral positions.

Humans had no feeling to base decision upon.

Finally, all choices you claim are made "quickly" are actually based on reflexes from experience.

________________________________________

Q u o t e:

And everyone person is born with a certain nature, what they see and experience after they are born has nothing to do with it, because they will react to those things based on the core person they are.

________________________________________

There IS NO SUCH THING as a core person. That is a fattaly flawed concept. Even if what forms you is within your mother's womb, there was still some form of experience or insticts that you were fed to become what you are. Any man is the sum of his experience, where experience is considdered a wide cooncept.

________________________________________

Q u o t e:

Everyone is different, some people cry easier, some people get over things faster, some get angry quicker, and most have many things and experience in common.

________________________________________

Yes but the factors that filtered that experience made the difference. All were motivated to interpret their individual experience in different ways

________________________________________

Q u o t e:

So even if experience does effect your decisions, it doesnt do so to the point you think it does.

________________________________________

All people use their character in forming and interpreting experiences. All people do their best in that regard. Some feel more motivation and others less, and in different regards. It is always their nature and felt duty to do their best, yet it is always in their own way.

Experience is always a bonus toward making better decisions, even if the roads it takes go "miles apart".

Some happen to stumble on the straight way, even a wormhole, while others go chaotically.

________________________________________

Q u o t e:

To help support your claim I will add a question: "If you set a baby down and put a choice of 2 pictures: A picture of Hitler, and a Picture of the Pope. And the baby picks the 1st picture is the baby evil?"

________________________________________

Good examlpe, thanks.

[Dude_Doc]

An interesting angle of the Tree of Knowledge, is that intelligence of humans surpasses all other animals (that is not to say that other animals are stupid or something). With that knowledge, humans are able to do many interesting things, but also a great deal of bad things - like wars, starvation, dicease, pollution and so on. For example, what other animal could possibly contaminate this world as much as we have done? Industry may have created good stuff, but the cost of those things can and is causing us harm.

Living could be another example. We can choose to live in harmony with our environment and "regulate" ourselves, or we can desolate an area and move to the next, without taking responsibility for our movement.

[chatfsh]

I

[Warskum]

First...what was the sin that forced God to drop Adam and Eve out of paradise?

I'd like to advice everyone to ask for Gods help when reading the bible, or you will not even understand the most simple things underlying it.

Remember in revelation that only Jesus is able to explain and ''open''  the bible to those who believe (Rev. 5:1-10).

Man was made very good as the bible says, and man had free choice.

God had given man all he needed and had given man 1 commandment, not to eat from the tree of knowlegde of good and evil.

They ate from it and knew about good and evil and now lok at the bold parts in 12 and 13 please. KNOWING good and evil, they both choose not to do good, which is to admit that THEY where wrong and repent, if this would have happened then God would have surely forgiven them. However, as we can see in 12, Adam actaully blaims God by saying the women "YOU put here". Non of them takes the blaim and repents and therefore God throws them out of paradise. So after knowing good and evil, man choose for EVIL.

God had given man free choice, since God is love and does not want robots loving him back, but people who actually choose to love him for who He is. However, having this free choice, man choose to be LIKE GOD as we seen in the bold part of 4. Man was not happy with what he had, eventhough he had all he would ever need. Therefore man ate from the tree to become like God. May I point out that the Devil has been thrown out of heaven for a similar thing, he wanted to put his throne above Gods.

Now note 15 that bolded, right after the sin God shows His love. That part refers to Jesus, as we can see in Revelation satan start to chase the women and finaly Jesus comes and beats him. So right after the sin was done, God already planned his salvation.

God knew what would happen, but he let it happen since he gave man free choice and not allowing it to happen would have course not be free choice. BUT, He also offered a way to salvation through Jesus Christ. So that everyone who would believe would not be lost but would gain eternal life.

Genesis 3

The Fall of Man

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me

[Kokiri-Mentat]

"In general, is the world a better place as a result of mankind existing?  Or would this earth and animal kind be far better off had we not stepped foot on it?"-Hwi Noree

If mankind didn't exist there would be nothing on this secular earth (that we're aware of) capable of mentally processing concepts such as "better off".  You could argue dolphins and mice (hitchhikers fans), but let me know when you master the language of squeekish or clickian, then maybe I'll listen. 

Someone once said something to the effect of, "Mankind is the only creature that laughs and weeps because it is the only species afflicted with ability to recognize the difference between how things are and how things should be."-somebody

Without sentient life existing on the planet, (or at least able to observe and experience it), then I argue that the "quality" of the place we call earth would be irrelevant, meaningless.