Does the Christian God Play with Free Will?

I'll play devil's advocate for a moment since I was a fundee christian at one time. By doing so I hope to let you in on the standard answer that christians give to your question:"Do you honestly believe that you've done something so bad...?" St. Augustine of Hippo, a church bishop in the 4th century AD is generally credited with the idea of 'original-sin'. This idea says that when Adam&Eve sinned, they brought sin and the penalty of sin not only upon themselves, but on the whole world. IOW it's sort-of a bad genetic mutation that every human inherits at birth. Therefor everyone who lives after Adam is sinful and must die. And depending on the denomination, babies right out of the womb are sinners also and must die. It's no longer about works anymore or how good or bad a person is. It's about an 'inherited disease' so to speak. Much of the christian church (most denominations) picked up Augustine's "ball" and ran with it. Just listen to Jerry Falwell rant on about original-sin sometime and you'll see how diabolical it all is. On second thought, don't torture yourself! What does all this have to do with free-will and God making us believe in him or not. Simple: God according to the theology I was taught, anyway, doesn't force his will on us to believe in him. The Holy-Spirit(God) bothers people with their problems(thru christian witnesses) and they eventually choose to believe because they become convinced that they are sinful. So according to this theology we do have free-will. You may still question wether God's bugging us constitutes coersion. Probably.[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 12-03-2003][This message has been edited by Prozacman, 12-03-2003]

Sorry this reply is late. Well, yea this god did force us to be sinners when Adam and Eve were tricked by the serpent, unless god had no ability to fortell what was going to happen. Then he might be innocent of making us sinners. But christianity says he did have forknowledge, and so we are left with a god knowing full-well what would happen, allowing the serpent(who was Satan in christian theology) to trick our "first ancestors"; to test A&E's faith in god because as we read in Genesis; man was made in the "image" of god. Christians and Jews take that to mean that people are like god in that they have free-will. So if this god wanted to make beings like himself who he could relate to, then they would have to have free-will like he does. Therefor god has to risk the possibility that beings like himself may choose to go their own way and not wish relate to Him. That's what I was taught anyway, and that's what the story of the "Fall" seems to teach. In the end I think that this god is so insecure that he couldn't let well enough alone. So we get the mythical tales of the OT where god is pushing himself at us like a neglected spoiled-brat who just can't seem to get his way. Yes, St. Paul taught that the "works of the law" will not get you into heaven, but faith in Jesus will. IOW works condem a person but faith saves. That's the christianity I was taught. If christians on this forum think something different, please speak up! Anyway faith in Jesus is just another condition just like works for getting close to God. In my opinion, God needs to grow up and stop trying to corner the beings he made in his image with conditions for relating to him.[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 12-08-2003]

You are correct about no one telling A&E to eat of the tree of knowledge(of good & evil), but god did warn them NOT to eat of it or they would die. But what does it mean to "die". Well, as I used to see it, A&E didn't die physically; the serpent told the truth there. Instead they died spiritually. To a x-ian, spiritual death is what matters, not physical death. Spiritual death according to x-ianity is defined as separation from a relationship with God, and that is what I was taught when I was a fundee x-ian. So, x-ians ASSUME that the serpent was the devil AND wanted to get A&E in trouble with god. X-ians believe that the serpent was trying to trick A&E into thinking that god lied. Why? Because x-ian's believe that the devil used to be an angel of god who rebelled against god, therefor god threw the devil and his buddies out of heaven onto the earth where the angry devil-serpent messed up gods prime creation. Of course the big problem is that god didn't tell A&E what he meant by 'death' in the first place. From a christian perspective the serpent-devil tricked A&E, but from a literary-critical perspective he was just a talking animal that god cursed. From my perspective x-ians must "read into" Genesis what is not necessarilly there in order to maintain their beliefs, one being that the serpent is the devil. Your example of the vase&baby is precicely the kind of reasoning it took for me to honestly & critically begin questioning my previous faith. I haven't been able to counter that kind of argument yet. Perhaps a x-ian on this forum can do better than I on this(yeah right)! I agree with you,A&E were innocent and didn't deserve the treatment they got, but if god wanted to make them like "us knowing good & evil", then he might have done it differently; how differently?, Jeesh, I don't know! What a myth! Yep, according to the christian theology I was taught, an ax-murdering, sexual predator who sinned constantly every day of his life, and then believes in jesus on his death-bed goes to heaven, while a good honest angel of a person who never believes goes to the firey-pit to conciously suffer in hideous screaming pain all over his body forever and ever! And the only thing I have to say to that is: "APOCALYPTIC-BLASPHEMING-ABOMINATIONS"

Yes, I agree you know. Why is the serpent being picked on?? From the christian perspective the answer is that he is a rebellious angel and he wants revenge against god for throwing him and his demons out of heaven. Unfortunately the theology is inconsistent because the devil seems like some kind of tool which god uses to test A&E's faith. This idea seems to be more consistent with ancient Jewish idea that the serpent was the adversarial angel who worked with god to test Job's faith. Again unfortunately, that idea isn't very consistent either because as you have pointed out, why should A&E's faith be tested when they are innocent and have no concept of right &wrong and rebellion against god? They have no faith in god to begin with because they have no idea what it is to not have faith. I think, maybe this is a mythical story that teaches about child/parent relationships, and how parents set rules for children in order to keep them safe. A&E are told by god for instance; "don't touch that stove-top, or it will burn you." But A&E see the shiny red color and feel the warmth,(the serpent comes in here) and think anyway:"burn??, what in the world is 'burn'?", and the curious little tykes find out by themselves what 'burn' is all about! Not to blame them, and not to blame the shiny red stove-top or their "natural curiosity"(the serpent). But as I see it, if the parent here does'nt want his child burned, then the child needs to be kept away from the stove(the tree of knowledge). Sounds to me like the parent(god) is irresponsible or is prone to letting accidents happen. But all that's just a mythological analysis of the story, whether or not it makes any sense. Christians define the "natural curiosity" of children, and people in general, as a manifestation of St. Augustine's "original Sin"= the idea that humans inherited sinfulness from A&E, as I have already mentioned. Hopefully I'm not too redundant here, but I'm attempting to show that the A&E story may be the ancient people's way of explaining why we humans have faults, problems, etc. Myths always include a god, god's or fantastic events in explaining why the world is the way it is, and so myths, although they are not always based on fact, can be true(human faults,etc.) nonetheless.Ok, I'll respond to the rest of your points. Yes, the language used in Genesis does speak of a physical death. Unfortunately some christians think it was only a spiritual death that A&E suffered, while other christians believe it was a physical death, but that A&E would die later because of the "curse" where god said, 'OK A&E, I'm throwing you out of Eden because you did what I told you not to'. These christians interpret this as physical death because god spoke to his 'court' and said, 'let's put angels with flaming swords in the way to keepA&E from going back and eating from 'the tree of life' and live forever'. So god, according to these x-ians is trying to avoid a worse situation than the one A&E are already in! Imagine a rebellious humanity that lives forever and you can see why God blocked the way to Eden! You are right, there is no warning of a 'spiritual death' in Genesis. Christians however take different verses from various places in the Bible and create a 'theology of the Fall' from them. Certain passages in Revelation, & Paul's ideas of the soul mixed with the Fall story are an example. Does this make any sense? Only to the faithful.
Yes, I do think there's no justification in assuming that the 'devil' wanted to get A&E in trouble with god. As I have said elswhere, it may have been a conspiracy. Lastly, if my theorizing is correct, that the Fall story is a myth, and if we are both correct in saying that A&E were innocent, then I propose that A&E who were innocent 'children' so-to-speak, and had no idea what it
meant to 'die'. Yes, I agree with you, the passages speak of a physical death, but innocent children have no idea what death means until someone in their family tries to explain it to them. That may be the reason why god doesn't explain. How on god-scream-earth does a parent explain death to an innocent child without some pain involved? Beats me! Either the parent has to tell the child that daddy is gone forever, and make the kid feel suicidal, or the parent has to soften the blow by saying something like:"Daddy's gone to heaven to be with God", assuming the kid was taught a religion to begin with. In any case death was a painful experience for god, and so some x-ians reason that's why he didn't explain it to A&E. But this idea makes christian god more human than some christians would like, or as Revelation says 'death will be the last enemy destroyed'.[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 12-11-2003][This message has been edited by Prozacman, 12-11-2003]

Yikes, if I were as emotion/faith driven as I used to be, I would think you were personally attacking me. But, I know better that you are just a good critic and your arguments are very rational. I thought it would be easier to play the 'Devils advocate'! I don't have time right now, so I'll respond to your points in a day or so.
PM

I can almost tell how one might respond to these Bible verses, but I'll give them anyway since I'm playing at a christian response here. 2nd Corinthians 11:3, 4, 14; Romans 16:20; John 8:44; 1st Timothy 2:14 may imply but don't directly state that the devil may be the serpent of the Fall story. As far as I can tell, only Revelation 12:9, & 20:2 directly call Satan "that ancient serpent". I have not found any other verses which could possibly give one the idea that Satan or the devil was in any way related to the serpent in the Fall story. Christians reading this may wish to correct me if they know of some verses I may have overlooked. I'd like to know what they think. Agreed; the Bible doesn't necessarily say what people claim it does. That's why for example Jews don't like christians reinterpreting their Bible to contain references to the messiah, and then saying it was Jesus Christ. After thinking it over, I don't see a Biblical basis for the idea that Job's 'Satan' was in any way related to the Fall story serpent. You are correct; the serpent is an animal in the story. Actually I should have said that christians in general believe that A&E died both a physical & spiritual death, and I'm sorry if my previous post was misleading on this. Their physical death happened when Adam was 900&something & supposedly also was Eve; but I don't think the Bible even mentions Eve's death; correct me if I'm wrong. Their spiritual death happened when they disobeyed god's order to not eat of the tree of knowledge. Again Paul implied this when mentioning Adam's transgresion in Romans 5:13-14. But of course that's Paul reinterpreting Jewish texts to bolster Christian doctrine. I can't figure out either how god dares to tell Adam that he would "die that very day", and then it doesn't happen. But since x-ians refuse to believe that god was lying, then they must twist that passage to mean that a spiritual death occured for A&E. Again, refer to Paul's letter to the Romans. There seem to be only 5 or 6 verses in the whole Bible which may lend credence to the idea that the devil had something to do with the serpent. Since all of these verses(given above) are questionable in regards to the identity of the 'serpent', I think that they are flimsy evidence to base important religious doctrines upon. It would be interesting to read a few christian rebuttals(?) to the arguments stated in our posts. Any takers?[This message has been edited by Prozacman, 12-16-2003][This message has been edited by Prozacman, 12-16-2003]

But that's what christians have done ever since Paul wrote his letters, & that was a point I clearly raised in my 2 previous posts. Of course Christiany imposes it's theology on Jewish stories, especially the A&E story, and that's how X-ianity gets it's veiws on salvation, sin, & free-will. If x-ianity didn't do this, then it wouldn't survive as a religion. For Pete's sake' aren't we talking about the x-ian god playing with free-will. Your original ? is about the x-ian god, right? Therfor, it only makes sense to get an x-ian's opinion of his god playing with free-will wether or not his opinion is rational. Heck, CALLING ALL CHRISTIANS: CAN YOU PROVE TO US THAT YOUR GOD WAS BEING RATIONAL BY ALLOWING A&E TO GAIN FREE_WILL?? PLEASE RESPOND.

You are quite correct. The history of the christian movement from the beginning sought to use Jewish writings like Genesis to try to back up their claims about sin, death, and the Devil. As I see it, there is no devil in Genesis, and the christian devil can't be equated with the serpent of the A&E story in any case. It is interesting though that the original x-ians were Jewish and of course they would include Genesis as one of their holy writings. The problem for the original christians unfortunately was that they didn't stay a sect within Judeaism, like the Pharisees turned Rabbinic, or the Essenes who were wiped out by the Romans. Like Matthew who interpreted the OT to try to show that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah, christians from then on attempted to find things in the OT that they could possibly use to base their evolving doctrines on. This is where St. Augustine came along & interpreted the fall story in christian terms; a bad twist on the story as I see it now. PM

Allow ME to refrase that question slightly. If I lie to you about aliens being responsible for co-mingling with "the daughters of men", and giants were born, then these giants evolved into the Yeti, Sasquatch, & Bigfoot, and these monsters kidnapped gullible people in order to do wierd experiments on their bodies inside pyramid shaped spaceships from the Orion Nebula, & then we agreed about the lie and convinced a whole bunch of 1960's dope-smoking hippies up in the mountains somewhere that this crap was actually taking place, does that make the lie appear to be true? Well, YES, but only to those idiots in the mountains who don't have any critical-thinking skills. Now, does the nearly universal appearance of truth constitute truth? No way; just because there's a "univeral" belief that the sun revolves around the earth does not make it so. Thank goddess hippies are not universal.

And as we continually fail to observe the sun orbiting the earth while also observing the earth orbiting the sun, then we gain more confidence that our observations are correct. It's kind'a hard to do repeatable tests of possible events in history.

Carl Sagan recently requested(before he died) that we turn the camera of the Voyager space probe around to get a picture of the 'Pale Blue Dot' we live on, and this to me gives a humbling and yet grand perspective of our 'place' in the universe. There will probably come a day when astronauts living on stations or planets & satellites for more than a year at a time, will look up at their place origin and watch it arch in movement about the star that keeps us alive. What we have are indirect observations from spaceships, alot of smart astronomers, and some good mathematics. I would be surprised if our observations turned out different than expected or predicted, but I would cautiously accept the outcome only because I am no expert in matters of science. That having been said, unlike the church inquisitors who refused to look thru Galileo's telescope because what they saw might ruin their faith, some would not hesitate to look. Which reminds me of the time a couple of years ago when I went into an x-ian bookstore & there in an obscure isle containing anti-evolution books was a small one with a picture of stars all over it titled "Geocentrism". As I scanned thru it, the author who was a PHD & creationist attempted to argue (over my head) that we humans are indeed at the "center" of God's universe! Good Grief! PM

I see what you're getting at. A scientist needs to to keep an open mind in a sense, because for example, Einstein realized that Newton's Laws of Motion did not account for everything in the universe; things that exist below the level of the atom. Perspective also helps when talking about the earth or sun being at the center of the universe. At the level of superclusters of galaxies the question doesn't matter because as maps of galaxies show, our whole galaxy(the milky-way) reduces to a central microscopic point! See for example the URL:http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/galaxy.html and zoom out a few times. Fascinating.