Derek Kidner’s Adam and Eve Model

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@LogosOfLogic: rather than continuing to simply react to your (often incoherent and unsubstantiated) claims, I thought I would attempt to marshal my own views.

Free Will

  1. The Bible only appears to involve the concept of “Free Will” to the extent that humans are not automatically obedient to God’s will.

  2. This would seem to also apply to non-human animals, so it is unclear that animals lack Free Will, in the biblical sense.

  3. This would also not conflict with any form of Determinism, so would appear to be, at most, making a claim of Compatibilistic Free Will.

  4. The Bible appears to provide no explicit information on the nature of Angels, and is silent on whether they have Free Will. What we ‘know’ about Angels appears to come solely from extra-biblical speculation.

In conclusion, there appears to be no reason to view God as seeing “Free Will” as anything special.

Monotheism and God-known-by-other-names

  1. There does not appear to be evidence that Ancient Egyptian religion was originally monotheistic.

  2. There is evidence within the Bible that Judaism was not originally monotheistic (and may have developed from Canaanite polytheism via monolatry).

  3. Many polytheistic religions, e.g. Norse and Greco-Roman paganism, show no sign of a monotheistic origin.

  4. Non-theistic/pantheistic religions such as Buddhism and Taoism are even more difficult to make the claim of monotheistic origins for.

  5. Although the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, share a common root, their outlooks and perspectives (and thus the God they envision) differ considerably. This makes it difficult to make the claim that they share a common God. Even if that claim is made, it is clear that these religious differences serve to obscure that commonality, rather than leading its adherents to “know” this common God.

  6. I have seen Hinduism described as having elements of polytheism, pantheism, and panentheism, as well as monotheism.

  7. Cherry-picked quotes of the Riga Veda are unpersuasive. What would be needed would be expert interpretation based on the entirety of that text.

  8. Even if it were demonstrable that Hinduism was originally monotheistic, that would not demonstrate that it has the same creator god as Christianity. The latter claim would require comparison of the attributes/perspectives/embodied-values of the respective gods. Zeus and Thor are both Gods of Thunder – but they are nothing like each other and any claim that they’re the same god would be laughable.

In conclusion, it cannot be shown that “God is known by 1001 names to over 10000 different peoples”.