God and Good Parenting

I was discouraged to see so much presumption in this thread. I realize that I may be drifting off topic slightly here so I will make my comments brief. My grievance is with the take on the tree that is being presented, and I must state a few things in clarification.First - We can not know the original purpose for the tree of life in the garden. we only know that God placed it there and Gave some instructions about it. Whatever the original purpose was, it was not achieved because the fruit of the tree was eaten before such time as God saw fit to allow such activity. Perhaps, and this is an OPINION, there would have been a future point where Adam and Eve could have partaken. So, among many other possibilities, I am suggesting a "not now" statement from God.Second - The Bible clearly states that Adam was not to eat of the tree. It was Eve who misrepresented God and said the tree could not be touched. If you review the passage in Genesis you will see that there is no restriction on touching the tree given to Adam. This makes sense since he is given responsibility of keeping the garden, this would include trimming, and would be required to care for the tree of knowledge.Third - Although this has been stated I feel it deserves reitteration: it was not the fruit that caused man's fall. It was disobedience to the command God gave. The only reason eating the fruit was harmful was because God said it was.So when you are dealing with this responsibility issue there must be some clearly defined code of what is right in wrong. In this case, God had the authority to set an absolute standard and expect mankind to keep it and punish makind if the disobeyed. Again, this is meant to clarify the use of the passage in Genesis dealing with the fall of man, not to steer the discussion of the main point of this thread.Russ

First, I did not intend for my statement of being discouraged over presumption to be directed at you Crashfrog, and furthermore I don't understand why you chose to take it personally.Also, I thought it would be understood but it seems to not have been, I made my second point to correct an earlier statement. Someone else had posted that Adam was not to touch the tree of knowledge. This is incorrect. The command given by God is not to eat of that tree. Touching it was fair game, and, as I already said, makes perfect sense when you consider the responsibility God placed on Adam to keep the garden.There is much that you said that I disagree with and find to be, plain and simple, an erroneous way of looking at scripture. But that is not my point. My point is to clarify certain facts pertaining to the specific point of the Tree of Knowledge. This is only because it was brought up and equated to leaving a shotgun in the living room, which, by the way, is in no way equivalent to what took place in scripture.So as to not be a detractor from the main conversation, let me conclude this post with a response to the previous post. This is an assumption plain and simple. There is nothing in scripture that suggests that Adam and Eve had no capacity for differentiating between good and evil. In fact, the discourse Eve has with the serpent shows that they were able to distinguish between the two. Without getting verbose let me just say that her choice was something that was pleasing to the eye instead of obedience to God's command. This is the issue of all sin: choosing self-rule over obedience to God's command.Russ

Crashfrog (and anyone else),I was honestly waiting for someone else to step up to bat on this one. I had not intended, with my interjection, to jump into the middle of this thing. Since no one else is piping up yet I will respond. But not now. Soon. And I hope some others will have a voice in the matter in the mean time.Russ

Crash,I know the basic material of what I was going to post but was stewing over the structure. I only post now to say I have been away for a little bit and is this thread even still going?

As per my post in "The evolutionistic faith" I will not be around to carry this discussion out. Let me just state my position and hope that will generate further study into the matter.From the text of Genesis it is clear to see that Adam and Eve were fully capable of knowing that the choice to eat the fruit was both wrong and harmful. However, they chose their own way instead of the way God had designed for them (basic definition of sin). Any analogies with a shotgun must incorporate a party that can distinguish the potential dangers of said weapon to be considered close to representing the Genesis account. Thats my position based on the text of the preserved Word of God.Russ