[thechat] Religious dependance

m-s s-u-c-k-s mssux0rz at hotmail.com
Sat Jan 18 01:03:01 CST 2003


>From: Lachlan Cannon <luminosity at members.evolt.org>

>m-s s-u-c-k-s wrote:
>>>So what about people dying from cancer and disease? How is that
>>>something that must happen for us to have free will?
>>
>>because adam and eve were given free will. there was also no
>>sickness/disease/problems in general. except of course there was the
>>serpent
>>(the devil) who used mans curiosity/greed against him. as the story goes
>>adam ate the fruit and evil was let into the world.
>
>See, now that doesn't make sense to me. If God is a just God as you
>assert then why should we be punished now for what some idiot did aeons
>ago? How is that just? That's like a court whacking me and my family in
>jail because my grandfather committed murder.

let's say there is a room with a big red button on the end of a short
pedestal in the center of the room. this button is very important in that it
can never be pushed except by the person who owns it because it will cause
much desctruction and only the person who owns it has the sense to determine
whether or not it's time to push it. pressing the button will release 1000
"weapons of mass desctruction" throughout the world to specific targets.

and lets also say that there is a man in this room who has two duty's. the
first being that he take care of the room and keep it clean, the second and
equally important duty is to never touch the red button. he is to clean the
room, and never touch the red button. the man is told only not to touch the
button but is never told what will happen if he does. he knows only that he
is not to touch it.

this is a really big responsibility for this man and he does his two duties
dilligently. but only for a time. one day a visitor comes to the door of
this room and asks to be let in. the man being a trusting man he let's the
visitor in and they begin to have a nice conversation as far as the first
man is concerned. as the two converse the visitor begins to ask the man
about the button and why he is not supposed to touch it. the man says he
does not know why he is not supposed to touch the button, he says, "i only
know that i am not supposed to touch, and not what will happen if i do." the
visitor then reasons with the man convincing him that there couldn't
possibly be anything wrong with touching it and that he should ahead and do
it. afterall, if it was really such a big deal why would the mans superiors
put him in charge of it?

the man decides the visitor is right and pushes the button.

as i'm sure you guessed the world was destroyed because of the 1000 "weapons
of mass destruction" that were launched against unknown targets in far away
lands. not only did the far away lands get hit with these weapons but they
also sent weapons in retaliation, thus destroying everything because of the
fallout that occurred after the dust settled.

the end.

in the same way that this man screwed up and ruined it for everyone else, so
did adam screw it up for everyone else. the people of the world with the
button who were killed by the man that disobeyed his superiors did not
deserve to die. nor did they deserve to have their bodies crushed by the
shockwave of the blasts. as do neither you or i deserve to get sick or be
hurt in any way. but it happens anyway because of one mans poor decision.

to have free will requires that there be more than one choice to be made.
otherwise how could it possible be free will? with adam it was a choice
between right and wrong. god told adam not to eat the fruit, he did anyway.
the tree was called "the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil". before
adam ate the fruit he knew only good, he could not conceive of evil. he did
not have knowledge of what evil was. god didn't tell adam what would happen
if he ate of the fruit because that would require god to explain evil to
him. adam wasn't told, "bad things will happen if you eat this" because adam
would not comprehend what bad meant. he was only told, "don't eat this
fruit."


>>what do you mean by "no-one else made the decisions, did they?" i'm not
>>sure
>>what "decisions" you are referring to. i will try to respond anyway.
>
>You were talkign about him deciding to give us free will. You said we
>couldn't blame himt hat things happened because of that. I was saying we
>could. Sure, we might have chose the same thing, but it was him that
>chose it.

i believe this is the same thing you said earlier, and this is what i do not
understand. "we might have chose the same thing, but it was him that chose
it." i don't understand this. what "same thing" are you referring to? if
it's in regards to free will, we did not choose to have free will, it was
given to us. god said "here, have free will." and we had it. what we did
with it was our own business.

>>you don't give credit/blame to the company that makes the bat that hits
>>the
>>ball, you give credit/blame to the person who wields the bat that hits the
>>ball.
>
>The people that made the bat didn't make the person who uses it.

yes that is true. but i don't think that's important that's why it wasn't
accounted for, although i did think of it. the problem i came to was that,
anything that the bat company could make to wield the bat and use it as a
tool would not be equal to what god created in man. that is, mans free will
cannot be duplicated by any technology or system. i thought that to be
unimportant to the analogy since mans reasoning ability cannot be
duplicated, therefore a suitable equal could not be used in an example
except to say "the bat company also made a man to wield the bat. this man
was equal in every way spiritually and mentally and physically as the man
created by god." since that sort of thing is not possible it could not be a
factor in the example.


>Now, having never read the bible my grip of these things is shaky... but
>isn't this sin stuff originating from eating an apple from a tree which
>they were forbidden to eat. A tree that they were expressly forbidden to
>eat from, and was placed right in the middle of where they were staying?
>
>Modern laws call that kind of thing entrapment. What possible purpose
>was there for that tree to be there but to tempt them into eating from it?

(in the last episode...) to give man a free will god had to set two choices
in front of adam otherwise it could not be free will.

let's put it this way... if god put the tree in a room with a locked door
and hid the key to the room in his dresser drawer and still told adam not to
eat the fruit, doesn't it stand to reason that adam could respond with "how
can i do as you say if you don't even give me the ability to disobey?" where
is the free will in not being able to go more than one way?

it's like communist countries...

dictator: "hey everyone! you can have anything you want! (as long as it has
nothing to do with doing anything other than what we tell you to do.)"



chris.

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