God’s (Malicious) Sense of Humor
In the beginning, God created the world, all the animals, and ultimately a man and a woman, right? Whatever went through the minds of the only two people in existence at that time had to have been put there, explicitely, by God, right? I mean, unless someone else was involved in the whole creation thing. Ok, but one of the things that God put in the brain of Adam and Eve was the, now infamous, capability of free will. This meant that they were both able to make choices, either this or that, go left or go right. Remember, God put that ability into Adam and Eve himself. He hadn’t created himself as Jesus yet, so there’s really no one else to blame at this point.
This is where the fun stuff happens. Adam and Eve, using some of that splendidly glorious free will that God explicitly made sure to put into their heads, ate a single fruit off of a single tree, the one and only tree in the entire garden of Eden that God told them they couldn’t eat of. The ironic part is that this fruit came from the tree of knowledge of right and wrong. Yes, boys and girls, God told Adam and Even not to do something that he would think was bad, before they had the ability to tell bad from good, right from wrong. They also used their free will, something God probably put into their heads to be used, not ignored.
So what happened? Oh, we all know what happened, don’t we? God punished Adam and Eve for doing what they couldn’t possibly know not to do, since they couldn’t know that what they did was wrong and God himself made them capable of choosing whether to obey or disobey, thanks to free will. But he didn’t settle for punishing those that wronged him, nooo… He punished all of mankind, forever! Because, apparently, that’s a fair punishment when you’re God.
The ridiculousness of the Christian creation myth isn’t what bothers me the most. All old cultures and religions have their own explanations for things that they, at the time, couldn’t understand. What bothers me is how they ignore the complexities of choice, morality and free will. They think it’s all black and white because their book says it is. They think that automatic damnation for each and everyone is a fitting punishment for doing, well, what you were made to do. I don’t see how God can have created us, and therefor alone bear all responsibility for how we turn out, yet punish us for doing exactly what we were supposed to do.
God, infinitely omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent as he is, could have created the world without choice, without free will. Had he done that, we wouldn’t have disappointed him by making the “wrong” choice (which he already knew we would, omniscient as he is) and both of us would have been happier today. After all, we humans are only aware of the choices we know about, so we’re still blissfully ignorant of all the choices we never knew about. Imagine how blissful we would have been without the knowledge of any choice whatsoever!
Ok, I began this post with an actual point, and I’ll try to make before sending all of you to sleep. The mythical story of the vengeful God that punishes man for something he made us do is one thing, but the more modern apologetic interpretations of the implications of God’s actions in that myth are completely senseless. They go against all logic, reason and evidence, and is maintained purely for the sake of scripture and people’s own sense of satisfaction. People want the ability to choose, but want to blame God’s “mysterious ways” whenever something goes wrong. They want to have “absolute” morality, but still want to be saved from the inevitable punishment. It bothers me that they don’t understand how oxymoronic it all is, that they don’t even want to understand. Ignorance is one thing, and defensible, but willful ignorance is, in my opinion, unforgivable.
Hello Friend;
I don’t know if you will read this, but there are some mistakes at your post, if you are talking about Bible’s concepts.
You said: “He hadn’t created himself as Jesus yet, so there’s really no one else to blame at this point.” If you read Genesis chapter 1 versus 26 you’ll read: “And God said, Let us make man in our image”. Do you really think that He was talking with the animals?
You said: “God punished Adam and Eve for doing what they couldn’t possibly know not to do, since they couldn’t know that what they did was wrong and God himself made them capable of choosing whether to obey or disobey, thanks to free will.” Again, by reading Genesis chapter 2 versus 16 and 17 you’ll see: “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” So I ask you: How couldn’t they know what to do? It is a gift to receive the free will, but remember that, even to us, this comes with a big responsibility. What God wanted was that his creatures obeyed him at one single law because they wanted to do it, not because they were programmed machines.
There are a lot of other inconsistent statements at your post, and I suggest you to be careful. To not believe in God is a choice that you have, but to respect the choices of others is a duty that your free will not gives to you a chance to choose, you just have to do it.
Hi AriBL,
Unfortunately, the only mistakes are in your reply. Here’s why:
If Jesus is not God himself, but a separate person that can be spoken to, what does that make of the sacrifice? If Jesus is God, then God was not speaking to the animals, he was speaking to himself. You chose which is more convenient to your beliefs: A god that will sacrifice other people for the sins of a third group of people, while taking no responsibility for any of it himself, or a God that does what in people would be a clear sign of mental illness.
Without knowledge of good and evil, how were Adam and Eve supposed to know it was bad to disobey God? To them, it simply was. It was neither good nor bad, it simply was, and they simply did. God told them to do something, yes, but how were they supposed to comprehend that not doing something they are told is bad before gaining the knowledge of good and evil?
Your answer betrays the fact that you have not even considered this problem, instead merely taken what the Bible says literally, and trusted that it all makes sense in the end. Well, it doesn’t, and now that I’ve pointed this out, what will you do?
This doesn’t even make any sense. So, you’re saying I have free will, but I don’t have a choice? What good is free will without the ability to make choices? If I “just have to do it”, then how am I any better than what you call “programmed machines”?
Do point out all my other “inconsistent statements”, I’m eager to hear them. But before you do, try thinking about your own statements, and whether or not they are consistent. Being a hypocrite is indeed worse than simply being inconsistent, wouldn’t you say?
Hello friend;
You raised others points beyond those ones that you first comment. Talking about sacrifice? I told you the inconsistent of your arguments inside your text, and you are pushing a discussion endless. It would be more productive if you keep thinking about the errors you pointed at the Genesis history, what do you think? See this way, and I can’t see the logical in your point yet. I could trash all your argument after reading your opinion that God was alone at the creation of the humans. So, or you start again accepting that God was not alone, or we can stop here – and that for me is alright, if YOU want to change the Christian’s concepts.
About the other think, the “supposition of good and bad”, common! You are acting like child – just as they did! If you say a child to not put the hands in the oven, they really need to know “the moral” of that??? Do they need to burn themselves to know that is bad? It’s is a law, and period. I have the “free will” of deciding to use drugs, even when lots say that this is not that bad. So, I don’t have to know for sure that something is bad to obey someone who I admit that is more clever that me. That’s free will, but whatever my decision is, It is my responsibility.
To end this, you didn’t understand my last point, the “So, you’re saying I have free will, but I don’t have a choice?” thing. Of course you have choices, but remember that you freedom goes until the point you disturb the freedom from another. I respect you if you think that there is no sense in any beliefs, and I pointed out what you forgot to tell AT YOUR ARGUMENT. So, unless you admit that your post is wrong from the beginning (as you said that God was alone) I’ll stop from here.
Thank you very much by your attention.
First of all, your comment is barely coherent, and it’s a little hard to discern what your argument really is (other than that I’m apparently wrong).
I did think about what you claim are errors, but your problem is that I explained why they aren’t errors. That you fail to understand the logic I’ve presented is not a failure on my part.
As far as I’m aware, at no point in the Old Testament does it say that God was anything other than the One God, YAHWEH. There is no mention of Jesus or holy ghosts, and nothing to indicate that God wasn’t alone at the creation of the universe. You claim otherwise, so I ask that you present the chapter and verse from the Old Testament, specifically Genesis that you keep referring to, where it explains who, beside God, there was to talk to.
You’re also completely missing the point of my initial argument, which is valid even if God had, in fact, manifested himself in different personas or aspects. Does it make a difference if free will was given to Adam and Eve by Jesus? Is there anyone making God give humans free will? If not, what is your argument, exactly?
If you tell a child not to put their hand in the oven, but the child doesn’t even know what an oven is, how is it to know what not to do?
Let’s say I tell you, “don’t do that!” Now, you have no idea what it is I’m telling you not to do, but that’s not my problem. As soon as you do it, I’ll punish you. I don’t care that you have no idea what I’m talking about.
Now, when God told Adam and Eve that they shouldn’t eat the fruit, they understood that. They even understood why (because God said so) and what would happen if they did (they’d be cursed and die). I’m not arguing with you here. What I’m saying is that before eating the fruit, they did not possess what which the fruit was there to give, and that very thing was necessary for them to understand that not doing what God told them to was wrong.
Get it?
I did understand it, but it seems you did not even understand what it was I had a problem with. You said, and I quote, “to respect the choices of others is a duty that your free will not gives to you a chance to choose, you just have to do it”. You’re telling me that I have no choice in this matter. Those were your exact words. So, if I don’t have a choice, I don’t have free will.
If God wasn’t alone, then you show me the verse that says who else was there. Until then, you haven’t in any way proven me wrong.
Lastly, you’re assuming the Bible is literally true, which is a problem in itself. If you mean to tell me that the mere usage of the words “us” and “our” proves that God was not alone (which in itself doesn’t actually have anything to do with my argument), are you also arguing that everything that follows Genesis is literally true? Is the earth 6000 years old? Did Jonah really live in the belly of a whale? Did zombies really rise from the graves after Jesus was crucified? Did Jesus actually curse a fig tree for not bearing fruit in off-season?
Either you’re a biblical literalist, or you accept that mere prose does not actually prove anything.