ramifications of omnipotence for God

I think what was being articulated is that Christians often claim that man's propensity for disobedience to God, as exemplified by the original sin, is the necessary consequence of God giving Man free-will. That is, God placed choices in our path, by placing the tree of knowledge and giving Adam and Eve the option of obedience or disobedience. Eve and Adam chose disobedience - this was the first act of man’s willful and open disobedience to God.Most Christian doctrine asserts that we have a natural propensity to disobey God because we are Adam's seed and we require the Grace of God to overcome are sinful nature.The question is why is this so? Why does free-will necessarily require a propensity to disobedience to God?God could make us with an inherent and overwhelming desire to obey him and still have free-will.Phat even asserts that this is necessary so that we have a personality. Considering the alleged consequences of disobedience it is absurd to think that God would purposefully create us with the consequence of eternal punishment just so we can "personality".

Wow I can't believe that I used "are" for "our" I guess I need to reread what I write. I didn't say survival or self-interest, I said propensity to disobey God as Adam (and Eve) so well demonstrated. I think you are missing Sidelined's point. The issue is that God supposedly made us with a stubborn propensity to disobey and sin. Christians say that this is the consequence of God giving us free-will; otherwise, or so the line goes, we would be mindless robots without personality. This is a lame arguement as free-will and propensity to disobey God are not correlated.

Well an act or rebellion or disobedience to God is certainly not necessarily a survival instinct! In the myth of of Adam and Eve, was survival the motivation for taking the bite from the fruit? What survival reflex causes people to use the Lords name in vain? violate the sabbath? dishonor your parents? covet thy neighbors spouse.... errr.... scratch that last one. I believe you still are, because you say crazy things like this.... So do more intelligent people have more free-will? If God granted us a doubling of our intelligence would our propensity to disobey God also necessarily double? No that is not what I am saying or anything close. Again free-will and propensity to obey God are not correlated.I going to use an analogy even though I beginning to hate analogies as means to communication an idea.Take a wolf pup and a border collie pup and raise these animals in a similar environment. These animals are closely related and have roughly equal intelligence (free-will according to you). However, the wolf will completely disobey any and all commands, will never come when called, almost impossible potty train, will escape at the first opportunity, etc.However, the border collie has a built in desire to please its master, is easily house broken, can be easily trained, comes when called and will return love and affection.They both have the same measure of free-will but one is noticeably more obedient. We are so happy that you are so patient with our simplistic difficulties While these objections maybe simplistic I also find them fundamental.The response that rationalist have too simplistic objections to articles of faith allows the faithful to imagine that there are a wonderful set of sophisticated, complex, and a water-tight religious justifications which are just too deep for the uninitiated to grasp and permits them to shrug off pointed, obvious and specific criticisms.Remember the most sophisticated and complex defense of a false belief doesn't somehow rescue that false belief from being wrong! Even if we grant that there are complex and sophisticated theological ideas, arguments, and beliefs, none of that matters if the ideas and arguments are bad and beliefs are false.

Right! and this brings us right to crux of the matter. God could have given a much stronger innate desire to know and follow the one true master - the Godhead, and not some other false master. God could have given us the same measure of free-will but a desire to follow him and his laws so that disobedience to God is extremely rare. Whoaa the motivation to disobey God was *not* self-preservation, they supposedly already had eternal life. God warned that if they eat they will die - the serpent said if you eat you will not die - ie don't believe God. Eve actually risked death to be like God. The motivation was the temptation of being like God."When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." You really believe that? Do more intelligent people by and large have a greater propensity to disobey God's calling and participate in debauchery to a greater degree? hmmmm..... the history of religious ideology and theology serves as a forceful counterpoint.Let's examine something we can probably both agree that doesn't make sense; Astrology - doesn't reflect anything we can observe and doesn't make sense - but has a history of thousands of years.

Actually I prefer to look at it asMyth = SymbolicThis is similar to a parable. The actual Eve in the Garden did not really exist in the same way there wasn't really a specific merchant who sold all to buy the pearl of great price. In our usage here the Eve story is metaphor that can be applied to humanity in general.

ICANT myths and parables are symbolic in nature and don't convey actual events. If you like here goes.From: myth | Definition, History, Examples, & Facts | Britannica

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Myth a symbolic narrative, usually of unknown origin and at least partly traditional, that ostensibly relates actual events and that is especially associated with religious belief.

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You don't? So you think that there really was a specific merchant the sold all to buy the pearl?http://bibletools.org/...m/fuseaction/Library.sr/CT/BS/k/182

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"Parable" (Gk. parabole, Strong's #3850 from #3846) is a "similitude, i.e. (symbol) fictitious narrative (of common life conveying a moral), apothegm or adage." In the KJV this Greek word is rendered "comparison," "figure," "parable," and "proverb." Thus, a parable is not a straightforward description of an event just as it occurred or will occur. It is intended to be similar to a real event, a comparison that has to be interpreted to reveal the true meaning.

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Check out Strongs if you have more interest - i don't care to continue this line of off topic diversionary chatter.

Back to my Dog/Wolf analogy. The dog and wolf pup have the same measure of free-will however the dog pup has a greater propensity to obey his master. The dog could (ie have the freedom to) clamp down on your leg every time you walk by, but he is not inclined to do so. Does this somehow make the dog's tendency towards obedience any less valuable or commendable?I won't respond to the parent/child relationship as I don't think it has bearing here, however I want to stress I am not talking about God being a "control freak" and making choices for people. You can have the freedom and free-will but I am referring to the inclination or propensity. A person can have free-will but varying measures of inclination to disobey or sin. Again free-will and propensity to obey/disobey or sin/not sin are not necessarily correlated. Errr.... that is contrary to what you said earlier. Now in reference to ideas hanging around that are shown to false. You say Astrology is an illusion and demonstratively false - yet it persists. My point is response to your earlier comment.... Which is wrong. Bad and false ideas persists irrespective if the contrary evidence.

What have I not demonstrated? That is not a straw man as I understand the term.Again there may be choices but there is also the propensity for specific choices.

Everything you said is completely nonsensical. You have some impaired logic and word definitions.If some agent provides evidence for some concept you have a *choice* to be convinced or not. I suspect what you are trying to convey is that since the heavens are majestic that should be convincing enough that the Christian God is real and true so you can choose to believe in this God or not.In truth there is nothing in the majesties of the universe that points to the Christian God or the validity of the bible. Nothing. In fact in the Genesis there is a parenthetical phrase "he made the stars also" which has to be one of the greatest understatements of all time. Millions of people believe in other Gods too... So. Millions of people for thousands of years believed that the earth was the center of universe also.... again so. You make it sound like God wants a army of gullible people who fail to use the rational gifts he provided.Further you speak from an arrogant position by making stupid statements such as "that is the way God wants it" You have no clue how God wants it or not.

You are side stepping the consequence of your own stated logic. You said... Adam and Eve must have been allegedly quite convinced of God existence, walking and talking with God, and yet they had free-will.This is stark contradiction to your statement that ones level of convincement is inversely proportional to choice. Those who do not understand the fallacy of Pascal's wager are doomed to confuse and fool themselves.Pascal's wager - WikipediaICANT your religion is very self-centric and self-adsorbed endeavor with your complete focus on redemption theology and the potential of saving your own stinking ego. This hedging your bets, so to speak, is really a cowardly, dishonest and lazy approach to God. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

Because Genesis speaks of earth as the centerpiece of creation and the stars are an afterthought. We now know that the earth is not the centerpiece and in relation to the rest of the universe the earth is but a speck of dust. This passage demonstrates complete ignorance of scale and nature of reality and the earth position with creation. No I said gullible. Gullibility is not necessarily correlated with education or intelligence.

But you are. You have intonated verbatim Pascal's wager several times here. You *know* God is real based on what? Let see.... These are all subjective evidences. Very similar to what a Hindu or Muslim would present as evidence for their faith. Yours is only different by flavoring and cultural tinting.How did you know it was not yourself just fooling and talking to yourself. But you said clearly that if God convinced us that he existed then we would have no choice. Adam and Eve were allegedly convinced but had free will. One can have undeniable and unavoidable convincing evidence for the existence of a God and still have all their free-will intact.You are being prideful and dishonest not acknowledging this error in your logic. Sidelined noted it also. Here you go again. The story of Adam and Eve from your own religion disproves this notion. Further Judas and the Jews who crucified Christ had all the objective and physical evidence in the world yet allegedly exercised free-will! Your own holy book provides many examples counter to your often repeated statement.It seems that you are so programed to in repeating this doctrine that you are unable to rationally examine it. Yes but did you continue beyond that point and read the criticisms of this approach? Did you read what William James said about it... By consciously making this bet or using it as an evangelical arguement to convince others based on the expectation of a reward and the fear of punishment you have robbed the very essence of a valid belief or a true faith in a religion and its god. What you have left is superstition.

We started this whole vein of thought with your following statement... Adam and Eve were quite convinced of God's existence. Yet they had freewill. You have not resolved this contradiction of thought.

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But it is a very flawed statement of fact. The only real statement of fact you are making is that your vision of God is a Thug.It makes a mockery of "faith". It turns faith into an extortion game based on fear and uncertainty. It is obviously one of your "evangalising tools" as you use it frequently.It makes God like some thug knocking on your door demanding money for "fire insurance". He could be bluffing and then maybe not. Should you pay him? In your case you believe it to be "Hell avoidance insurance".Second and this is important you have not thought it all the way though.Here are the possibilities that you are considering...

The bible is true and you go heaven and the skeptic goes to hell

The bible is NOT true and it does not matter to either

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But wait there are other possibilities which actually seem more reasonable.

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Perhaps God Rewards honest courageous searching and reasoning AND punishes blind fear based self-centric faith. In other words God rewards rationally minded individuals who place honesty and ethics before blind faith and punished those who blindly cling to a faith with the express intent of "saving their skins". In which case

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You go hell and the honest skeptic goes to heaven

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As Richard Carrier put it in his essay "The End of Pascal's Wager: Only Nontheists Go to Heaven"

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It is a common belief that only the morally good should populate heaven, and this is a reasonable belief, widely defended by theists of many varieties. Suppose there is a God who is watching us and choosing which souls of the deceased to bring to heaven, and this God really does want only the morally good to populate heaven. He will probably select from only those who made a significant and responsible effort to discover the truth. For all others are untrustworthy, being cognitively or morally inferior, or both. They will also be less likely ever to discover and commit to true beliefs about right and wrong. That is, if they have a significant and trustworthy concern for doing right and avoiding wrong, it follows necessarily that they must have a significant and trustworthy concern for knowing right and wrong. Since this knowledge requires knowledge about many fundamental facts of the universe (such as whether there is a god), it follows necessarily that such people must have a significant and trustworthy concern for always seeking out, testing, and confirming that their beliefs about such things are probably correct. Therefore, only such people can be sufficiently moral and trustworthy to deserve a place in heaven--unless god wishes to fill heaven with the morally lazy, irresponsible, or untrustworthy.

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ICANT I have diligently read everything you have written and even visited your post 145 and reread that. You have said nothing to support your contention - that being convinced removes free-will. But you have not presented *any* evidence why God would reward blind faith! Further why would God reward blind faith that is based on the self-centered underlying intent of saving your skin. You have not been able to express why you believe the Bible is God's Word. You just keep repeating endlessly that you are a Child of the King and thus you get to go to heaven..... yippeeee! Lets test this proverb. For centuries "fear of the LORD" ruled western thought - they are called the dark ages for very good reasons.Fear of the LORD is the beginning of superstition - not knowledge or wisdom. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

ICANT you avoided the Rrhain question. "What if that book is right" is a completely unsatisfying answer. What if the Koran is right? The Book of Mormon? What if the Catholics are right that there is no salvation outside the Church?