The Universal Moral Law & Devolution since the Fall

If you have no knowledge of right and wrong, you have no way to decide and so follow the last advice given regardless of source.Until Adam & Eve had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge they have no way to tell right from wrong.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I must admit that I am not a student of the bible and must rely on the kindness of strangers to enlighten me as to its content. You have certainly enlightened me with your response and taken this thread into some fascination new territory. So the snake, of his own evil volition directs Eve to disobey god, telling us that Adam and Eve are not alone amongst god's creatures with free will. If the snake, as you point out, is capable of thwarting god's will from his own initiative, then he must have free will and consequently a soul to be the base of that free will. If the snake has free will, then we can conclude that all the animals of god's creation have free will.This in one fell swoop answers a lot of questions that have been raised in this forum: why does god drown all the poor innocent beasts of the field in the great flood? Because they are not innocent, but like man have a free will and soul that have become as corrupted as man's; Do animals have souls (the subject of a previous thread that I haven't taken the time to read)? Yes, for at least the snake has a soul and there is no reason to think him unique. This also explains why death and disease are rife throughout the animal kingdom. Not just the animal kingdom, since trees and plants were destroyed in the flood and are cursed with endless sorts of diseases and death. I now feel a lot better about the two beloved trees I recently lost to oak root fungus. I'm sure they now enjoy the blessings of their heavenly abode.I'm not clear on how Noah knew which pairs of animals were sinless and deserved to survive the flood. Whenever I read about the flood story, I get this image that when the word got out that Noah was going to save one pair of unclean animals, but seven pair of clean animals, that there was a run on all the soap products at the local mini-marts. I can just see all those beasts of the field frantically scrubbing away.Thank you for clarifying this issue for me. God puts the tree of knowledge in the garden as part of his plan to test Adam and Eve's obedience. This makes perfect sense. Why else would god even create the ToK? By tempting Eve, the snake helps god execute this plan, which is a vile and sinful thing for the snake to do. This also makes perfect sense. At least it makes perfect sense if you spend one full hour staring at Faith posts. I guess it makes sense in a Falwellian way, given that Falwell insists that the 9/11 terrorists were carrying out god's plan to punish the US for permitting feminism, but were still committing sinful acts that would destine them to hell. I guess my pathetic little mind just can't comprehend these higher logical constructs. Stupid neurons!Regards, AnInGe------------------All of Noah's grandchildren married their first cousins. Explains a lot about the human condition.

Hi Faith-Some thoughts-

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We all inherit the original sin from Adam, and original sin is the inclination to sin, and individual sins accumulate since then. God's role has been more sustainer and protector in all this.

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I’m constantly amazed at what an impotent view of God I often hear from Christians, especially creationists. A protector tries to keep something from harming someone, generally because the protector doesn’t want that harm to happen. If God is the protector of humans from disease, disaster or anything else, he’s doing a pretty poor job.If, on the other hand, God is intentionally causing some people to be hurt, then I wouldn’t call him a protector. I guess either everything happens according to God’s plan (in which case he isn’t a protector, but rather an instigator), or it doesn’t. If God is really in charge, then sin didn’t enter the world through Adam’s choice, but rather through God’s choice since everything is God’s choice if God is really in control.

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And by the way there is no such thing as a "Christian God." God is God. The Bible reveals many things about the true God. He's the God of all things, ruler of everything, including you.

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There’s no such thing as the Muslim God. What you call the muslim God is really the one true God, who is the God of all things (including you), as revealed in the Q’uran.There’s no such thing as the Hindu God(s). What you call the Hindu God(s) is really the one true God(s), who is the God of all things (including you), as revealed in the Vedas.There’s no such thing as the Gnostic God. What you call the Gnostic God is really the one true God, who is the God of all things (including you), as revealed in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.There’s no such thing as the Egyptian God. What you call the Egyptian God is really the one true God (Ra), who is the God of all things (including you), as revealed in the Book of the Dead.There’s no such thing as the Mormon God. What you call the Mormon God is really the one true God, who is the God of all things (including you), as revealed in the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith.

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Those who outright reject Christ are something other than those who never learned of him.

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All the non-Christians I know haven’t rejected anything. You can’t reject something you don’t think is real. Have you accepted the gift of eternal life and blessed pinkness from the invisible pink unicorn, or do you reject this gift? Or are you living a life of sadness due to your missing pinkness?

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God is merciful; it will all make perfect sense in the end.

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Isn’t that what Saddam said to those Kurds? Remember, according to the Bible, God has decided to create the majority of people specifically so he can torture them for all eternity. God decided they would be torture before their birth, and according to protestants, they had exactly zero choice in saving themselves.

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This wasn't to be a thread about Christianity but about the Biblical revelation of the Fall and the implications of that for our physical degeneration which I believe would show in the genome if we would only study it with that in view.

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There are some testable things there. I’ll come to that.

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I would expect Lao Tse, and any who follow his principles of humility and avoiding desire and conflict, to live a long healthy life. Certainly those principles would keep him from sins against the Ten Commandments.

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Again, you are being completely unscriptural. The Bible makes it very clear that commandment #1 is the most important. Lao Tse absolutely fails in commandments 1 through 4 (more important, according to Jesus). Yahweh has burned people for much less than that. The fact that he keeps the lesser commandments is not worth anything, as Paul goes on and on about in Galatians and elsewhere. You quote Paul as an authority elsewhere, but here you apparently don’t think Paul’s writings matter?More later. Gotta go. Have a fun day everyone!-Equinox

It's already sin to have an inclination to sin?Does that make sense to you?By that logic, being inclined to be righteous makes one righteous already. Is this what you believe?And where does that leave Jesus, who 'in every respect has been tested as we are'? If he's tempted to sin but doesn't, he's already damaged goods by this logic. You've just told us the inclination equals the deed..

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

You're equating inclination with temptation; The two aren't synonyms.
Not at all.Inclination: A characteristic disposition to do, prefer, or favor one thing rather than another; a propensitySynonyms: tendency, trend, current, drift, tenor, inclinationBeing tempted says nothing about your inclination to respond, one way or the other

did you bother to read the rest of what I wrote or are you just picking a nit?
my comment was in the context of faith using paul to read genesis, which i don't care what some guy 1000 years later has to say about what he feels genesis is saying why would you read someone who knows next to nothing about what the other wrote? i don't believe the bible, you can see it even in this thread i don't, i said genesis is a myth as much as anything written during that time

Because this is all a story to explain why we have these things, as i asked faith, who basicly claims they some how have an insite track with god, but it makes the trees useless since they somehow knew these things they never did before.
why does adam get cursed to toil MORE? he never did this before
why does eve get cursed to feel more pain in child birth? she hadn't had children yet, why would this be terrible to someone who never did these things?
why would they be scared of death, if everything was immortal? they would have no context to work with to fear itthis is a retroactive story to explain pain suffering death and other things humans cope with, while having the good ol' days before themthis is a myth it is not history

We ALL fail in obeying the commandments, most especially the first four of them, and most especially those of us who KNOW the ten commandments, and it was Paul who taught that we sin the more, the more we are told not to, and the law was given to show that we can't obey it.Scripture also teaches that there is such a thing as a person who had no contact with God's revelation to the Hebrews who nevertheless followed his conscience and obeyed what light he had, and was counted righteous for that. Job is in fact an example of such. So is Noah and all the righteous patriarchs before and after him.Surely Lao Tse can be counted in that number; and Gautama Buddha and numerous unknown others. And beyond that, Jesus preached the gospel to the dead before his resurrection, among whom would have been that entire company including Lao Tse, and if he received the gospel of Christ he is now in heaven with Him. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm starting to think that christian fundies equate "The Fall" with original sin, rather than realizing that the fall has little to do with original sin.
i read that islam and judeaism do have a fall but its nothing like the christian one, they believe they have failed god and adam caused a disjunction, and part of our job is to fix this. nothing remotely close to the christian "fall" no genetic sin, or perfection before it happened
no born with sin or anything like that, lot better since it allows free will and doesn't condemm those who just live thier lives

What MJF said, Message 80.

Thanks. I checked the thesaurus and concede your point that the two are not synonyms. Scratch the aside about Jesus being tempted.That still leaves us with main 'current, drift, tenor' of my post.
Sin was defined as being synonymous with the inclination to sin. I asked if this is logical.If so, the corresponding opposite would seem to be just as reasonable: an inclination to be righteous is the same thing as being righteous..

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

never mind.Edited by Righteous Skeptic, : too late

Yes the Fall came about through Original Sin. Yes, they are synonymous.

What? The Fall has everything to do with original sin. Original sin is what is in every human being from birth, the natural sin that is in us all. This sin came through Adam, the process of sin coming into the world through Adam is called the Fall.
If you want to read the rest of the passage for context, it's at Romans 5 NIV - Peace and Hope - Therefore, since we - Bible Gateway

Hey Faith,
What do you mean when you say the Fall and Original Sin are synonomous? Original sin is a result of the Fall, the two are related(cause and effect), but they're not the exact same thing.