But why create humans without free will before creating Adam? Isn’t that a superfluous step? I will also point out that your mention of Genesis 1 creation being good was exactly for the purpose of contrasting that with Genesis 2 creation, which by implication was not good.
Actually, in Genesis 6 when the Adam batch start intermingling with the Gen1 humans, it then says God “regrets” placing these humans on the Earth. So, it would seem He agrees with you.
How would it be possible for God to regret anything? Isn’t he omniscient? And it isn’t the Genesis 1 or 2 humans he regrets; it’s all humans.
Finally, you’re contradicting yourself again. Is his creation good or isn’t it?
Everything God did was good. He is the measure of good, so He’s always going to qualify. Like it says in Romans 5, sin entered into the world through Adam. All God did was good, bad wasn’t possible until Adam. And he started doing bad immediately.
You’re going to love this. The answer again is free will.
It’s made apparent all through the story that humans do things that God didn’t anticipate. The regret in Gen6 is the first of many examples.
Take the testing of Abraham. God tested Abraham because He did not know what Abraham would do. Of course God can see all time, past and future, but if Abraham was never made to make this decision then there’d be no event to look to in the timeline to determine what he would do. God actually had to test him to find out.
It’s a key detail in the story. God observes, tests, makes adjustments, all along the way. The flood was in reaction to this first observation, the dispersion at Babel was in response to another. The test of Abraham was another. God is experimenting with an element that is truly free of Him. It is truly independent.
Again, sticking to context, the one exception he makes is from batch 2.
This is an example of me talking about things that are “of free will”. Note these things are not evil. Social stratification you could make a case for, but not writing. I wouldn’t even put weapons in the evil category. This is an eat or be eaten world. Not evil. Just fact. What was done with the weapon, that very well could be evil. But it could be for the sake of good as well. These are things that exist because of free will. Good and bad.
Adam took from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It’s required that Adam already have free will to even be able to eat it, because it was forbidden by God. But, once he did, he (and everyone since) began to gain the knowledge of good and evil. That’s what we’re doing now. All the good things and all the bad things that free will is capable of. That’s our human history from the cradle of civilization forward. And it’s ugly in parts, but it’s also quite beautiful. It’s the knowledge of good and evil.
No, again you’re not only wrong, but painfully and obviously so. In a deterministic universe one can still have deliberative minds. It’s just that if perfect information were available to an outside observer of such a universe, he could predict the outcome of that deliberation.
Yes, exactly. It’s predictable because you can properly apply the information (plug the figures into the formula) and work through the cause/effect physical chain to reach the eventual conclusion. That’s consistent with what I said. Cause and effect. A deliberating mind in a deterministic universe can only arrive at the destination predetermined by the minds state in that moment and the laws that govern the elements throughout the cause/effect chain of brain activity. Because those laws are set by God then no destination through deliberation can land outside of the restriction of those laws. Like violating the laws of nature. Hence, unnatural.
Only with free will can you veer into any territory that might result in violating law.
In the absence of free will it is only God’s will. And God will not Himself, or through any of His creation, do anything evil.
No, there’s nothing inherent in a deterministic universe that precludes deliberation leading to choices one might consider “evil.” Nor is there any imaginable way that those two things could be made inconsistent.
God is what is inherent in a deterministic universe that precludes deliberation will not lead to choices one might consider “evil”.
The will is the factor. The will that drives the deterministic mind. The brain and the body, that’s just a vehicle. It’s the will that drives it. All living things are driven by God’s will. He said do this in Gen1, that’s what life does. There’s no want or desire to do anything other than what’s willed by God. Evil, and any possibility of evil, is null/void. Impossible. That would mean God himself is willing evil be done.
You are a mass of self-contradiction. I don’t think anyone will be able to untangle the knot you have tied yourself in. I don’t think anyone will try, but who knows?
As you recall, writing was invented, so you say, to record possessions. It’s all a tool of social stratification.
Not what the story says. Once he did, he didn’t just begin to gain the knowledge, he gained the knowledge. Free will, of course, has nothing to do with knowledge of good and evil.
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There is no contradiction. Confusion, yes, common and expected. I’m putting a lot of already familiar stuff into a slightly different light than what’s typical and it can seem like a web of contradictions initially. I get it.
It says their ‘eyes were opened’ and they immediately realized they were naked. This does not mean that they immediately gained knowledge and that new knowledge made them realize they were naked. Why would being naked be evil? They realized they were naked because they just severed themselves from God and now recognize themselves as individuals standing there naked.
Free will gives one the freedom to choose good and to choose evil. No knowledge of it, just the capability to do it. Knowledge is gained through actually taking the bite and diverging from God’s will, splintering off and becoming an individual. Once that connection is severed, we’re on our own. Like toddlers with handguns.
From that point through to today life has played out with free will running rampant and we’re thus gaining the knowledge.
It’s a tool for accounting for one’s property. Rather than the tribe mentality that came before, now self-interest is the defining dynamic. This creates writing and social stratification, among other things.
Are you claiming that humans used to be Borg?
I’m claiming they had no self-interested aspirations or drive for anything other than what they are willed by God to do. Be fruitful, multiply, fill and subdue the Earth, rule over the animal kingdom. This is exactly what homo sapiens did right up until the dawn of civilization. Up to this point God is the only author of reality.
From Adam forward other authors began to add to the story.
It would seem that being fruitful, for most species, including humans, involves a great deal of self-interest. Competition for mates is a serious business. I really don’t think you’ve thought all this through.
Sure, life’s always been an eat or be eaten world. We were literally forged by challenge.
But humans since the beginning have always lived and worked in groups. And the dynamic was always egalitarian. From hunter gatherers up to largely populated farming communities, what remains consistent is equality.
When that changed that’s when we broke from our previous patterns and modern humanity began.
A big challenge for your idea is that the hunter gatherer - primitive agricultural community, egalitarian dynamic to which you refer might be explained as 1) wishful thinking despite contrary evidence, or 2) selection bias due to poor preservation of vicious conduct which has simply been forgotten due to the absence of history from groups with no writing and limited building. These concerns are of course, not mutually exclusive.
Yeah, free will also offers the benefit of making archaeological investigation easier with their tendency to build large structures and write stuff down.
That’s why I focus on, and have already sited multiple times in this thread, the early farming communities of northern mesopotamia/ modern day Turkey. One example …
Catal Huyuk (7,500 to 5,700 BC)
Highly populated, organized, and lasted for nearly 2000 years. And at no point are there any signs of any sort of inequality among the inhabitants. No ruling class.
Typically, sites like this aren’t generally called “cities” or “civilizations” until there’s social stratification, strong centralized authority, military power. Basically all the things that began to appear after the change.
How do you fit Cahokia into your scenario?