They had free will before the fall. They could not have fallen without it.
Not only that but âfree willâ can be given to someone who lacks it just by having a âfree willerâ tell them about it.
Donât try to make any sense of it, just enjoy the ride. 
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Just three more questions: Were Adam and Eve in Gods image before the fall? And do Adam and Eve retain âfree willâ after the fall? What is the difference betw free will before and after the fall? I hope im not imposingâŚso intrigued by this new thinking
In this context, free will is the capability to behave free of Godâs will. Like when Adam and Eve acted contrary to Godâs will. Humans before Adam and Eve, created in Gen1 in âGodâs imageâ did not have a free will, but could only behave as God said. So they were made in Godâs image. But Adam and Eve were made capable to behave outside of Godâs will and therefore could not be in Godâs image. They were their own images.
You count a grave containing both males and females of high status as indicating an egalitarian society?
Yes. One consistent characteristic of egalitarian societies is the lack of male dominance. Male dominant society didnât come about until Sumer.
Donât you ever get tired of pulling stuff out of yourâŚof making things up as you go? We just had a thread discussing a paper on the Y-chromosome bottleneck in humans. The scenario which best fits the data is human societies underwent lots of male dominated clan warfare between 7,000 and 5000 years ago which led to lots of male deaths and the male (y-chromosome) having greatly decreased diversity in the human population.
Neolithic Y Chromosome Bottleneck
Sorry but the science once again directly refutes your speculation.
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Jeremy why donât you explain once and for all why not having âfree willâ makes it impossible for a society to be civilized, or invent writing, or firearms, or build cities, or have a stratified society. Your whole claim is based on that one completely unsupported premise.
When youâve done that then please explain how someone without âfree willâ can obtain âfree willâ just by being told about it.
Hmm. I guess you are free to believe whatever you want to, but these views are decidedly unbiblical in so many ways. You may believe there were people before adam and eve, but the Bible does not give such permission. And Genesis 1 plainly states that Adam and Eve were created in Gods image. Adam and Eve had free will before the fall. But after the fall, mankind is dead in sin, so freedom has been exchanged for slaveryâŚslavery to selfish, sinful appetites, and slavery to the will of real evil presence in the world. According to Scripture, freedom can be found again in the better Adam when we simply humble ourselves in admittance of our sin before a powerful, loving and just God to find new life in Godâs Son through His death on the cross.
Of course these words wont sit well with many who choose not to believe in God. Thats ok. Im just being a conduit of exactly what Scriptures say, which i know with all of my being are true in every last word. I cannot prove this scientifically. But the God i see described in scripture by God Himself transcends the natural so profoundly that i fully expect scripture and science to conflict in certain degrees which i would never claim the authority of knowing.
âbetween 7,000 and 5000 years agoâ ⌠actually, timeline wise, thatâs pretty on point as there was a significant uptick in violence around that time.
The problem youâre going to have with that theory is that by that time the world was fully populated by humans, so that warfare would have to have been incredibly deadly. Globally deadly.
Because free will brings with it a heightened sense of self-awareness. Like in the way it said about Adam and Eve, âthe eyes of both of them were opened.â Then they realized they were naked. They became self aware and aware of their individual selves separate from the natural world around them.
Once you behave in a way that is inconsistent with Godâs will youâre disconnected. You âfallâ. Now youâre on your own. All it takes is a little nudge. Just like the nudge the serpent gave Eve.
Writing, like in Sumer, was invented because of the need to keep track of what was owed or how much belonged to who. With their advanced farming practices Sumer created an economy and the need arose, because of free will, to track goods. They invented a numbering system for the same reason. They were capable of these things before, but free will made these things necessary.
Stratified society comes when youâve got some who are considered more important than others. A very uncommon characteristic among humans before free will. Personal possession is another thing it brought about. Then comes conflict. Wars. Guns.
Itâs all tied to free will. Before free will humans were very non-violent and non-aggressive. Free will changed everything.
Youâre claiming that the Central Americans had free will courtesy of Chinese visitors but North Americans did not.
Unfortunately for your thesis, the âIndians of the Pacific north-westâ that the Chinese may have visited are North Americans, not Central Americans, so if the Chinese were spreading free will youâve got the result backwards.
From your own source:
â[James DeMeo] notes that three were three main patrist areas of the Americas: Caribbean Mesoamerica (that is, where the Aztecs and Maya lived), Peru (where the Incas lived) and also the north-west Pacific (or the north-west coast of Canada, including present-day British Columbia). He speculates that Saharasian peoples may have arrived in the north-west Pacific first - possibly from Japan or China - and migrated southwardsâŚâ
The way i read early Genesis is that adam and eve, the FIRST humans were free in two senses: they were free to make a choice between Gods will or not Gods will. And they were in a sense free of heart to know that choosing wrongly would be bad. They had the ability in and of themselves by Godâs design to want what was right and not want not what was wrong. Of course Eve was deceived towards want to disobey, and Adam chose to sit idly by watching his wife err, then it hit the fan. Adam was charged with the sinfulness in mankind.
After the fall, free will still exists, but the desire or want or power to choose that which is most important: reconciliation back to right standing w God is lost, so in this sense, man is not free but enslaved. Simply having faith in admittance and repentance of wronging and faith in Jesus for our forgiveness by the cross gives power back to want what is right and to fight disobedience. As per scripture, this turns hearts of stone back into hearts,of flrsh. And disobedience is wiped away forever not at conversion, but at glory.
Not sure whats going on in this discussionâŚif there is an attempt to make sense of the existence of man before Adam, then my best to figure a way to incorporate that into a proper Christian worldview! Be prepared for some fun theological gymnastics. I see Scripture that declares Adam and Eve the first humans, and Eve the mother of all future humans, and by faith count on this, ignoring all the other voicesâŚthis make all these ideas on freedom, reconcilation easy.
You have confused âA implies Bâ with âB implies Aâ. If what you say is true and egalitarian societies lack male dominance, that doesnât mean that societies that lack male dominance are egalitarian. Further, you seem capable of ignoring everything that doesnât fit your notions, such as the words âhigh statusâ. Do egalitarian societies build giant pyramids with houses for king and priests on top?
I donât understand why you are happy to talk about this hypothetical garbage that you donât believe in but you wonât teach me about feathers.
Because you started out by assuming that fish scales and reptile scales are related, which means you are hopeless on the subject. You need remedial education before you are capable of discussing it, and I am not prepared to offer that remediation. Itâs possible that a comparative vertebrate anatomy textbook would be of help to you, and perhaps your local library has one or two.
But I think I understand why you have launched into this digression.
@Jeremy_Christian, have you read Diamondâs Guns, Germs, and Steel?
Iâm glad @Timothy_Horton mentioned that very important book. (If I could do so, I would make it required reading in every high school and college history class.)
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Thatâs a religious / philosophical claim, not a scientific one.
Perhaps you misunderstood. I asked you to support your claims, not just repeat them. The Chinese invented a symbolic means of record keeping, and advanced farming practices, an an economy spread over 100 sites, all 1500 years before Sumer existed. They have absolutely nothing to do with âfree willâ.
(facepalm) So human clans never fought each other before âfree willâ despite the huge amount of evidence we have for neolithic human violence?? Humans never had personal possessions like the ones found at Jiahu and Catalhoyuk?? Every time I think youâve hit the bottom of the loopy claims pit you dig a little deeper.
I notice one again you ducked the question of how those with no âfree willâ can get âfree willâ just by being told about it. You canât even think up a plausible sounding hand-wave for that one.
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Obviously the Chinese tiptoed across the Bering land bridge and through North American all the way to Central America while the NA natives were sleeping. The Chinese didnât speak with any NA natives otherwise those natives would have caught the highly contagious âfree willâ disease. 
All 1500 years before Sumer existed? You sure about that? So by 7000BC they had done all of that? Really? Or is it actually that an early Chinese culture was at first settled there around 7000BC, then many many centuries later did all of that?