I asked this about a week ago somewhere, and the response I was given was “Adam and Eve disobeyed God by listening to Satan, which resulted in them being removed from Eden and forced to endure the pain and suffering that would then be passed on to all of humanity through their children.”
My only thing is… God is ALL KNOWING, correct? If god is all knowing, then, he knew satan would betray him… and he knew Adam and Eve would disobey… yet he didn’t stop it. God created everything and everyone KNOWING what the fallout would be, and yet, blames us for it. To me, that’s just illogical, and I don’t understand.
Comments
Because religion is made up
It’s illogical because God isn’t real. There was no Adam and Eve and the entire thing is illogical.
The real answer is because imaginary creatures aren’t responsible for anything. But if you want to assume that God is real then he’s not responsible for pain and suffering because he says he’s not. It’s shitty circular logic but that’s religion for ya!
Dude need drama~
Thru tortured pretzel logic. The manufacturer isn’t responsible for his product it’s somehow the products fault. Oh yeah free will so it’s our fault? Even tho god is perfect and already knows the future and who’s going to fail. You can’t make complete solid logic out of it.
You’ve rephrased the problem of evil. Attempted answers to this question are called “theodicies” and nobody has had a satisfactory answer for the at least centuries for which the problem has been described and considered.
Well if you believe in God you know that he is responsible for all of these things as that is what he uses to test your will and resolve that’s why I’m not fucking religious I already go through enough shit I don’t need some space dude making my life worse
God isn’t an old man father with a beard.
It’s a wind, blowing from the very start that demands complexity and interaction.
God is what turns rocks, water, and sunshine into people bull-shitting on reddit.
Because the dumbass who made up the story didn’t think about plotholes… and there are people who are dumb enough to believe it
Gnostic Texts teach us our world was created by a lesser god who created this flawed material reality. The lesser god keeps humans and all of creatiion as experiments.
The serpent was actually from the REal God to offer humans a way to get out of the terrarium called Eaden. Adam & Eve had the curious spark & wanted to break free.
Jesus came later as a messenger from the True Creator to help us know our inner spark and Spiritual Nature.
Love is from the Ultimate Creator- everything else is from an unsophisticated jailor.
The biggest failure in your reasoning is that religion is illogical, so trying to rationalize something that is irrational will just never work. It is not real, so people can come up with any stories they want and explain anything away with either “trust me bro” or “magic, obviously”. According to Christianity, the universe can’t have possibly existed for all of eternity, yet at the same time, God supposedly existed for all of eternity until one day he thought “fuck it, let’s do things now”.
Everything makes a lot more sense when you take God out of the equation
This is a potential issue. I do know people who have left religion over it. The idea that God is all powerful, all knowing, and all good is logically problematic. Most Christian religious philosophers agree that God simply isn’t all powerful. It’s a misinterpretation of the text to apply that label to Him.
There’s something ontological about evil. It simply does exist, and not even God can eradicate it.
Because you have free will
Leaving gods presence was essential to the plan-the plan of having human experience and having the opportunity to return to him. The only way they could leave gods present a was to disobey him, because only perfect things can be in his presence. He made the rule knowing they would disobey, and expecting that they would, so that they would be imperfect and cast out.
What you are struggling with is the concept of free will. God gave humanity the freedom to choose their own fate. This greatly increases the value of people choosing to believe in God or not. God values this above all things, to the point that God chooses NOT to intervene with the choices of man, even if the result is hardship and pain. If God were to step in everytime a person was tempted to sin, then we would be no different than a machine.
The tricky part is that people (especially redditors) are quick to place their own morals and ethics onto a being that is literally outside of time. It’s like having an ant try to tell a human how to act. An ant is literally incapable of understanding what we can comprehend and so it has no place in deciding what is morally right. The beauty of God is that we humans are NOT forced to believe in a divine being and have the freedom to choose. But with freedom comes consequences.
There is no God. God is a made up myth to control the lower classes from rising up against the ruling class that wants to control us.
You’ve just discovered what most atheists figured out years ago.
God gave us free will.
Christian god doesn’t have this answer.
Gosh the top answers so far are so pathetic and edgy. Yes, okay, thanks, you don’t believe in religion, great, why are you answering a religious question? It’s like asking “If flat earthers believe in X, what about Y?” and answering “Well Earth isn’t flat, so…” Great, what a useful contribution, thanks for that.
To answer you from a religious perspective OP:
So, assuming God is real and Christianity is mostly real and etc etc, the presuppositions necessary to answer this question…
Gods wants to be worshipped. I suppose being an all-powerful being is pretty boring if you’re alone. Thing is though, being worshipped doesn’t mean anything if people don’t have a choice. Then you’re just making robots that you program to speak how you want, and THAT is no fun.
So God’s creation needs free will. They need to be ABLE to disobey, ABLE to tell God to fuck off. And just CHOOSE not to. That’s valuable. That’s the good stuff. And we see that in life too. Most people would rather have friends who WANT to be their friend, rather than friends who have no choice.
And so that’s what God did. Created people who had free will, who would choose to worship him. And for who-knows-how-long, this worked. (Because one assumes that, in Christian mythology, humans didn’t sin on like, Day 12, but rather it was more like Year 300 or somesuch, given that there were more humans than Adam and Eve when they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden). For all that time, God had humans CHOOSING to worship him, and it was grand. The best thing. Everything was perfect.
Then Eve sinned, and progressive churches will say Adam sinned too because he went along with it. Thus, in their free will, they chose incorrectly and ruined everything. It was always a risk, giving free will, and yes if assuming God is fully omniscient, God knew it would happen. But it was worth it. And presumably IS worth it, because it’s still ongoing. And at the end of the line it will ultimately be worth it.
Also, don’t forget. According to Christian mythology, Earth is just a stepping stone to the next life, to Heaven. So “suffering” and the like, pain, bad things happening? That’s just a brief blip, both in existence, and in this person’s personal experience.
I’ve never met a god, and I don’t know anyone that has. It’s not really cool to blame someone or somebodies who may or not exist for all these things.
I always get annoyed when people say god is all knowing. There is no reason to assume if a god existed they would be all knowing. Like how would one god kick another god’s ass if the other one always knew when they were going to throw a sucker punch? It just doesn’t make any sense.
You should stop listening to the words of man about deities that, if they exist, are beyond our comprehension as it stands.
They’ll just gaslight you with the free will stuff. Even though it’s nonsense.
The garden of Eden is viewed by most Christians I know as a parable. What it means is that human beings are flawed, imperfect creatures. although we are capable of living Christian lives and loving our neighbor, we are always going to be tempted towards sin by our nature. Interestingly, it also implies that human reason and knowledge is only possible because of this propensity towards sin.
We were born with free will. I’m no Bible scholar or have read the Bible. Honestly don’t know why things happen (bad things) like war, disease and disaster but understand there’s a reason for it. Maybe so we know our situation isn’t so bad? What we’ve went through can help someone else?
You are not going to get a satisfactory answer here. Because it won’t align with you or you’ll find it empty not fulfilling.
The same for those who don’t believe in God. They will give you a sound argument or opinion, that either you will accept or not. Or those who will just bash and come off as angry.
Once you find a satisfying answer that resonates and brings you peace, then keep growing.
The only logical explanation is that if god does exist he isn’t all knowing and does not particularly know the future. He never said he does know the future, just when he will do what he plans to do. Humans put the “know the future” tag on god.
I’m not religious or anything but it’s the only way I can see him not being at fault for so much.
Simple, God isn’t real.
I’m a current agnostic and former Christian, so I feel qualified to weigh in.
Christianity allows people to oversimplify many complex issues, writing off every bad thing a person does as simply giving into the devil’s temptation because they are weak and nothing without their abusive, sadistic, narcissistic, and manipulative “savior”.
Your discussion really comes down to these statements being imaginary rules for imaginary people, so you’re never going to win that discussion.
He is. He says it several times he is the alpha and the omega he started all wars and he will end them he is life and death. Good and evil. He gave us free will so we could abuse it because it’s the only thing that add weight to the choice. If we couldn’t choose to be evil we would just be the angels. Beings that could only be good and only serve. He created the enemy that tempts us so that good people would be better for resisting and the wicked would be judged but after Jesus and the new covenant are sins including the ones we haven’t committed yet are atoned for we just have to accept that and repent. I’m fairly new to faith tho so it’s still a struggle to minimize it but it makes a certain amount of sense. In mass effect every one would play renegade if there were no consequences and only benefits and paragon play they was just you starting the trilogy as Jenkins and never making it off Eden prime while renegades got the space ships and the money and the sex. With god being the source of good and evil it maintains a balance. It’s actually kinda similar to eastern religions. You can have too much yin and not enough yang or vice versa but the truth lies in seeking the center.
Adam and Eve is merely a parable for free will. God gave people the ability to make their own decisions without his intervention. Without free will, we would merely be mindless robots.