I am surprised that you would liken human beings to dogs. Dogs are not conscious beings. They cannot contemplate their own existence or the nature of reality. Of course a little child has free will. You are still conflating free will with the ability to know right from wrong. They are not the same thing. Locked-in syndrome is relatively ridiculous in this discussion, but again, yes, such a person has free will. Just because his body is not functioning properly does not take away the ability for him to control his thoughts, to choose what to think, and to have desires. Locked-in syndrome is a medical problem. Do you not understand the difference? A little child may not yet understand that pushing someone into the mud is wrong, or he may not understand why it's wrong, but he still has free will to choose whether to do it.
The fact that it is a medical problem is irrelevant since you were talking about actions, and your definition of free will is again lacking: you talk about desires, thought control, existence contemplation, conciousness, but a dog can have desires, a little child doesn't "choose" what to think, a newborn doesn't "contemplate" his own existence or the nature of reality, a chimp has the upper hand on 3 years old toddlers, elephants and other species pass the mirror test. A dog doesn't understand that biting you is wrong, but he still may choose to bite you or not, just like a little child before he is thought that it is wrong, just like adam and eve before they gained the knowledge of good and evil. Pretty good analogy here.
You're still conflating free will with morality. Assuming an absolute standard for morality, certain actions are wrong whether or not an actor knows they are wrong. If you want to argue that one shouldn't be held accountable for accidentally committing a wrong, that's a different matter. Or if you want to argue whether an absolute moral standard exists, that's also another argument.
But, even assuming an absolute standard for morality, and even assuming that in such standard some actions may be wrong no matter the knowledge available to the actor, you would need to prove that this particular action (eating from a tree) despite the particular lack of knowledge (the difference between good and evil), the deception (by either god or satan) and this particular intention (becoming wiser) was absolutely wrong, and you have not done so. Read the story: eating from the tree made them open their eyes, made them wiser, made them understand the difference between good and evil. We wouldn't have this knowledge if they didn't eat from it, don't you think that knowing the difference between good and evil is extremely important, something worth having? How can it be absolutely morally wrong then? The only way out of this mess is the heynous divine command theory: you just obey, follow orders, and you better not know right from wrong, but that's a very peculiar definition of "morality".
You're simply not being logical here. In the story of the Fall, Adam and Eve did die. They did not die immediately after their sin. That does not make the fact of their death any less true. On the other hand, your example is actually a lie. Don't you understand the difference?
In your own words it is not a lie if the father surprises the poor child in the act of masturbating himself and then sticks a fork in his eyes! (which is still more charitable than condemning him to lifelong suffering and eventual death). This is a very accurate analogy to what is written in genesis: Adam and Even didn't die because they ate from the tree, as they were misled to believe: they were punished with suffering and death AFTER they ate. You can't really rewrite what is clearly written in genesis.
If you want to argue that God wasn't nice by not letting them go unpunished for their first infraction, that's fine. But ultimately that is arguing that God is not forgiving--and that's not true. God is willing to forgive any sin, and he let Jesus die a painful, undeserved death for that very purpose.
How can he be forgiving if at the very first chance he instead punished us with suffering and death? No matter if genesis is just a metaphor (of what?), was he forgiving towards the millions of people that lived and died before Jesus? If no, that doesn't sound very forgiving, if yes, what is the point of killing himself if he could just keep on forgiving? And btw, it was not an undeserved death (if it ever happened the way it is written, which it almost surely did not), he was condemned for blasfemy: isn't blasfemy a sin in your absolute morality? It's still a felony in most parts of the world...
Satan did indeed want them to gain that knowledge, because he wanted them to suffer and die. Satan did know what would happen: even if you think he didn't already know when he opened his mouth, Eve told him what God said.
This is nonsense! If satan wants us to die and is willing to mislead us in disobeying god to achieve this goal, how dumb should a god be to give him exactly what he wants? That's one more reason to simply forgive the poor humans, and avert the evil plan of the snake! Again, the only way to make sense of the story is if god really doesn't want us to become like him, so he balances that by making us mortals. It is crystal clear. There are countless ways to write down the events to make them fit your interpretation, and yet they are written in a different way that fits perfectly with the idea of a jealous god.
I want to press this father-children analogy. Is a father that tries to protect his children's innocence, protect their health, protect their happiness, and preserve their lives--is such a father sociopathic?
So after lying (as parents frequently do) to protect their lives, their happiness and their health, he... CONDEMNED THEM TO LIFELONG SUFFERING AND EVENTUAL DEATH? No second chance? no forgiveness for them? If you really want to shape this as a father-children relationship it is a brutally abusive one... Read the story, he didn't want them to become too much like him, so he made weak and mortal. You are trying to harmonize your modern (and fallacious) idea of a good and forgiving god with the ancient idea of a callous and unforgiving god that was popular 3000 years ago among the authors of the torah, and you are failing bad at that. Hell, it wasn't even a complete monotheism back then! And this isn't even the only case where god punishes us in fear of competition: the tower of babel episode is another example where modern exegesis wants to rewrite the fiction.
You aren't helping your position by being illogical. It would be better to question the nature of sin, the nature of God, and why sin must be atoned for.
It would be even better to first question the existence of sin and the existence of God, because questioning the nature of something that's not there doesn't sound particolarly practical to me. Sadly you are unwilling to question it, because no matter the evidence you would interpret it as supporting the existence of God.
Friend, your reasoning is simply faulty. You're conflating free will with the knowledge of the distinction between good and evil. Free will is the ability to choose one's actions.
A dog chooses his actions: does he have free will? Hardly. A little child chooses his actions: does he have free will? Not yet, in fact we don't prosecute little kids. A man with locked-in syndrome can't choose any of his actions: does he still have free will? Yes. A better definition should takes into account the ability to make moral choices (think Kant). And that puts us firmly in the "knowledge of good and evil" territory.
God instructed them not to eat from the tree; he did not prevent them from doing so, rather he allowed them to. He allowed them to act contrary to his instructions, therefore they had free will before they ate from the tree.
no, because THEY DID NOT HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL YET. How could they know that disobeying god was evil? They would learn that AFTER eating from the tree, that's the entire point of the tree. (Actually they learned the opposite, that their creator was a malicious lying bully and that they shouldn't unquestionably defer to authority). You can teach your dog to bring in the paper: if for some reason he doesn't do it just one time does that mean that he has free will? No!
Do you not understand the metaphor? In the story, Adam and Eve had yet to sin, nor had they even witnessed sin, therefore they did not know what evil was.
EXACTLY! How can you sin if you don't know what evil is? Can a dog sin?
By eating from the tree, they disobeyed God, and having committed sin, became aware of it, and the difference between right and wrong.
But if i don't know the diffrence between right and wrong how can i commit sin? I may accidentally kill a man, and that would not be a sin if i didn't intend on doing wrong. You can't really sin if you are unaware of sin.
God did not lie to them. He told them that they would surely die, and die they did--he did not say that they would instantly die. God did not oppose them.
Seriously? if you tell your child not to masturbate or he will become blind you are NOT opposing him masturbating? That sounds reasonable to you? Why didn't he told Adam "do not eat or i will make you suffer"?
God wanted them to remain guiltless and live, and he gave them instructions which, if obeyed, would have protected them from dying.
He wanted them to remain stupid animals in his zoo. He lied to them: if i tell you that eating this apple will make you die what would you reasonably think, that the apple is poisoned or that i will kill you for eating it? His instructions were not preventing them from dying, they were preventing them from gaining the knowledge of good and evil! why couldn't he forgive them, since it was the first time ever they disobeyed him? after that point they would know the difference between good and evil, but God didn't want them to gain that knowledge, and that's the reason they were punished. Hell, they didn't even know what a sin was, and you admit it yourself! They didn't even do that by themselves, they were encouraged by a talking snake they were never told not to trust. Lifelong suffering and death for you and all your descendents is (to put it mildly) a very harsh punishment for such a venial disobedience, but if you need to avoid your pets from becoming too powerful you may actually want to beat them down or kill them...
Satan, on the other hand, wanted them to suffer and die, and so he convinced them to disobey God--and suffer and die they did. Satan is not a "nice guy": he comes to steal and kill and destroy.
Why do you think that? It was God that did the killing! Read the story: Satan wanted them to gain the knowledge of good and evil, a knowledge he already possessed, because that is extremely important: if you don't have it you are just another animal without free will, that's what make us human. Why would he want them to die? He didn't even know what punishment God would later inflict, or do you think Satan is all knowing?
I don't know why you think you're reading the story of the Fall "properly": even atheists would recognize your interpretation as illogical.
Just because a good chunk of humanity was brainwashed from childhood in interpreting it as you do it doesn't make it illogical. But if you read it straightforwardly Satan is actually the good guy, and God was treating humanity as some kind of pets, not wanting them to know the difference between good and evil, and punishing them with death for achieving it. You wouldn't treat your dog that way, but your sociopathic God did it to all of us.
Where did you obtain your data?
Ecklund's "Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think", the output of research sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, criticised for picturing scientists as more spiritual than they actually are, despite the questionable metodology still reports a combined 72% of non theistic scientists in the USA, which is one of the most religious countries in the western world. Leuba (1916), Leuba (1934), Graffin (1991), Larson & Witham (1997), Larson & Witham (1998) are even more favorable to my claim.
I still think it's silly to keep saying, "invisible guy." That makes it sound like God is just some random guy walking down the street who isn't visible. Of course, if you want to ridicule those who believe in God, you'll imply that. But that's not what the Bible claims about God.
Whatever. I equally want to point out that to me an "invisible guy" walking down the street is no more ridiculous than any eternal, personal, caring, omniscent, omnipotent, self-sacrifying entity you could derive from any old book (and is at least internally consistent: if you are omniscent and omnipotent you don't self-sacrify yourself, that would be just crazy).
Free will is exactly what God gave people, and that verse proves it.
Dude, it couldn't be written in a more obvious way: it wasn't the tree of sin, or the tree of disobedience, it was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What's the point of such a tree if you already distinguish between good and evil? You need to eat from it to gain free will, and in fact as soon as they did they didn't die, as told by God, but "their eyes were opened", as predicted by the snake. So honestly who gave us such wisdom? God opposed and lied to them, but Satan helped, 'cause he's actually a nice guy. If you really want to base your life on fairy tales at least read them properly.
Many, if not most, of the great minds of history were religious.
For some 15 centuries in Europe apostasy was punished with social exclusion, prison or death. No wonder they all were "religious". Notice how since we got this "freedom of religion" the ratio of religious scientist literally plummeted.
He's the almighty creator of the universe. He exists outside of space and time.
Care to provide evidence for this factual statement? No? So anything goes, even an "invisible guy".
He gave you free will to do what you want and believe what you want.
No, according to your supposed sacred book (gen 2:17) he was against that idea. Satan gave us free will, that's who you should thank if you believe that "metaphor" (or whatever your "strong faith" calls it).
Where there's a will, there's a relative.
