Nature and the fall of man

According to this wikipedia entry: The wikipedia entry on the restoration movement indicates that these churches range from fundamentalist to liberal. It thus seems likely that there are fundamentalist churches who do not accept "the fall".

Perhaps we could assume this about Eden. But I cannot find any basis for assuming that such unusual conditions existed elsewhere on earth.While there is some weak biblical support for the idea of the fall, as it affected human souls, the idea that there were no meat eaters, no diseases and no natural disasters on earth strikes me as an invented theology, a 20th century invention intended to explain away some of the problems of YEC theology.

Did Augustine write about "Animals were not wild but tame and peaceful, and they did not eat each other"?

That's a pretty weak statement.My claim was that the part about "animals were not wild but tame and peaceful, and they did not eat each other" is 20th century. I was certainly not challenging the long tradition, within Christianity, of a doctrine of original sin.Given the weakness of your response I shall take it that, at least for the present, my claim stands uncontested.

If your cat scratches your valuable antique furniture, you don't accuse the cat of sin. You simply accept that the cat does not know better.We do know better, as a consequence of human consciousness and free will. And I suggest that is what the Adam and Eve story is really about. It is an ancient fable that attempts to explain our consciousness and our free will. The current state of nature, including sinfulness, mistakes, accidents, disasters, is the price of having free will and human consciousness. Who is to say that a world with consciousness and free will is not more perfect than a world containing only mindless zombies? It isn't up to us to dictate standards of perfection to God.

Perfect systems exist only in mathematics and in the imagination.

The "(pre-Fall) Original Perfection" is imagination.

"Perfect" is our word. We say something is perfect when it matches some ideal that we have. We know, from experience, that the physical world could not ever match our ideals, so could not be perfect.It is not up to us to dictate to God what He should consider perfect.

Hmm. You edited that. The earlier version, to which I had replied in Message 50 was:

quote:

---

This you know by divine revelation perhaps?

​

This message has been edited by Faith, 12-27-2005 04:36 PM

---

As of this moment, it reads:

quote:

---

This bit of absolute dogma you know by divine revelation perhaps?

​

This message has been edited by Faith, 12-27-2005 04:41 PM

---

I wonder what it will say the next time I look.

No. As I suggested in Message 46, perfection cannot be found in the real world.

There's nothing wrong with editing. I was just a little amused by your insertion of "absolute dogma". That's the kind of wording I am likely to delete when I rethink a post.

Evolution works very well, but it is not perfect.Jar is a little unrealistic in crediting perfection. But he is not nearly as unrealistic as Faith.

They can surely explain this as the actions of an arbitrary and capricious God.

It is literalism that brings you no GOOD God.According to literalism, God went on a murderous spree at the time of Noah, in which he destroyed most life on earth. It was so BAD, that God had to promise that He would never do anything so evil again, and he invented the rainbow (Gen 9:11-15) as part of this promise.According to literalism, God turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for nothing that she did (Gen 19:26).According to literalism, God mercilously punished the egyptian people because of what was due to God's own act of hardening the heart of Pharaoh (Exo 7:3-4).

Great. Provide the evidence, and I will gladly retract my statement. If it would take you time to look up references, then that must mean that you don't have anything readily available that would refute my statement. That hints that I am right, doesn't it. Here is part of what I wrote in Message 5
It still strikes me that way. Therefore there is nothing for me to retract.Isn't it interesting that we are now at post 104, and thus far nobody has provided any evidence that the particular YEC view - no meat eaters, no diseases and no natural disasters on earth - was accepted theology prior to the 20th century.

---

Impeach Bush