Creationists: How exactly did the fall of man change biological organisms?

[Ophiolite]

And let's not forget all those moons of Jupiter and Saturn...

Indeed. The possibilities for substantial bodies of liquid water in the solar system currently stand as:

• Mars - In porosity at depth
• Jupiter Moons
  
  • Europa - postulated 100 km deep ocean beneath the icy crust
    
  • Callisto - possible small ocean 100 km or more below the surface
  • Gannymede - possible multiple oceans sandwiched between different ice phase layers
• Saturn Moons
  
  • Enceladus - probable (almost certain) large, 10 km thick ocean at the south pole
  • Rhea - modelling suggests plausible internal ocean produced by radioactive heating
• Pluto - various lines of evidence point to a sub-surface ocean

If only a few of these possibilities pan out the liquid water in the rest of the solar system would exceed that in all the oceans, lakes, rivers and ice caps of the Earth.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

So what would this look like with regards to my above examples? No banks? No money at all and thus no choice to steal said money?

Probably; it would obviously be a very different world - as I suggested.

Let's say I steal money, I become frustrated after being arrested, and I learn not to steal, as per your statement of a positive learning experience. But this sounds like suffering to me, being arrested.

When I say that any wrong choice would be frustrated, I mean in the sense of impeding or obstructing, i.e. the action would not be completed; e.g. if there were banks and you decided to rob one (why, if everyone's primary motivation is utilitarian?), circumstances would prevent you. No arrest would be necessary, and you would be taught the error of your ways in an enjoyable and memorable way.

Personally, I think the idea of calling God good or evil seems strange because we tend to think of these terms with respect to things like superheroes and villains of comic books. But really I view God more as justified when I think of the term "good".

It's not a question of calling God, good or evil, it's judging God by its creation. It seems to me that there is considerably more suffering in this world than can reasonably be attributed to an all-powerful, all-loving creator (I suspect there's very likely considerably more suffering than happiness).

IOW, it's the Problem of Evil and the awkward contrivances of theodicy.

 

[Job 33:6]

Probably; it would obviously be a very different world - as I suggested.

When I say that any wrong choice would be frustrated, I mean in the sense of impeding or obstructing, i.e. the action would not be completed; e.g. if there were banks and you decided to rob one (why, if everyone's primary motivation is utilitarian?), circumstances would prevent you. No arrest would be necessary, and you would be taught the error of your ways in an enjoyable and memorable way.

It's not a question of calling God, good or evil, it's judging God by its creation. It seems to me that there is considerably more suffering in this world than can reasonably be attributed to an all-powerful, all-loving creator (I suspect there's very likely considerably more suffering than happiness).

IOW, it's the Problem of Evil and the awkward contrivances of theodicy.

I would say that the obstruction itself would create an instance of suffering. If not obstruction by circumstances relating to arresting officers, If I were to walk toward the bank, and let's say a wall of some sort appeared magically in my way, I would either physically experience displeasure when I hit this wall, or I would experience psychological displeasure in coming to find that my plans, ideas or interests could not be fulfilled.

To truly remove this displeasure, this pain, of having my intentions obstructed, something would have to be removed from the equation. Perhaps my free will to decide to rob the bank, or perhaps the bank itself.

When asked if we might remove banks from the equation, you responded with "probably". If we removed every object from existence that could be used as a tool for sin, as opposed to removing the free will of people, I would say that creation would essentially be erased into nothing. Remove every stairwell that I could push someone down, remove every bank, remove every fork that I could poke someone with, remove every 2x4 that I could break someone's window with (and thus every house made of 2x4s) etc. In this view, a world without suffering simply couldn't exist. But we could go further into psychological pain. Remove every girlfriend that ever broke your heart, remove every potato chip that was upsettingly stale, or every sound of a vehicle that made you cringe because it squeeked too loudly that it hurt your ear drums. If we continued to remove all of these objects, to get to a position in which no one suffered in any way, we would ultimately be left with nothing at all.

I disagree with the second part of your statement, I think it falls in line with the above statements.

 

[coffee4u]

If you insist on free-will including the ability to choose to do harm (why?), it could arrange that any such choice would always be frustrated and provide a positive, reinforcing, learning experience.

I am sure the why behind it has been explained before.

As a creator God could have make it so it was impossible for us to sin, to never go against him, but that isn't us choosing him of our own free will -which is what God wants.
To be able to choose or reject means we had to be free to have our own thoughts and the ability to love and hate, accept and reject.
Guaranteed love isn't worth much if the object of your love is bound to you.
I am sure you have heard the expression of "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never meant to be."
God choose to let us go and those who want to return can and those who don't, don't.

 

[Kylie]

I am sure the why behind it has been explained before.

As a creator God could have make it so it was impossible for us to sin, to never go against him, but that isn't us choosing him of our own free will -which is what God wants.
To be able to choose or reject means we had to be free to have our own thoughts and the ability to love and hate, accept and reject.
Guaranteed love isn't worth much if the object of your love is bound to you.
I am sure you have heard the expression of "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never meant to be."
God choose to let us go and those who want to return can and those who don't, don't.

But surely, since God can do everything, he could have made it impossible for us to sin in a way that still lets us choose him of our own free will.

 

[coffee4u]

But surely, since God can do everything, he could have made it impossible for us to sin in a way that still lets us choose him of our own free will.

How is it free will if you can't choose to reject?

That would be like being told "You can pick any flavour ice cream you like, so long as you choose vanilla"

 

[Kylie]

How is it free will if you can't choose to reject?

That would be like being told "You can pick any flavour ice cream you like, so long as you choose vanilla"

I admit, it's a logical impossibility. But are you saying that God is bound by the limitations of logic?

 

[Bungle_Bear]

I am sure the why behind it has been explained before.

As a creator God could have make it so it was impossible for us to sin, to never go against him, but that isn't us choosing him of our own free will -which is what God wants.
To be able to choose or reject means we had to be free to have our own thoughts and the ability to love and hate, accept and reject.
Guaranteed love isn't worth much if the object of your love is bound to you.
I am sure you have heard the expression of "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never meant to be."
God choose to let us go and those who want to return can and those who don't, don't.

Why do we have to choose God? What is so important about that specific choice?

If you give a creation freewill to choose, how is it reasonable to punish that creation for making a choice? You make your God sound like a petulant narcissist.

 

[coffee4u]

I admit, it's a logical impossibility. But are you saying that God is bound by the limitations of logic?

He is bound by his own rules,yes. But since he is the one who set them, it is what he wants.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I would say that the obstruction itself would create an instance of suffering. If not obstruction by circumstances relating to arresting officers, If I were to walk toward the bank, and let's say a wall of some sort appeared magically in my way, I would either physically experience displeasure when I hit this wall, or I would experience psychological displeasure in coming to find that my plans, ideas or interests could not be fulfilled.

To truly remove this displeasure, this pain, of having my intentions obstructed, something would have to be removed from the equation. Perhaps my free will to decide to rob the bank, or perhaps the bank itself.

This would be a different world; an all-powerful and all-benevolent God could thwart you in any number of harmless ways - perhaps making the bank appear closed to you, or letting them happily give you whatever you wanted, but it just evaporated as you left... use your imagination. Then, knowing what motivated your attempt, an alternative way to sublimate those desires could be provided.

But in this scenario, you would have no material reason to rob a bank, and - as I said originally - if a benevolent God's creatures were created in its image instead of having evolved, they need not be given the aggressive and overly competitive feelings and emotional drives of evolved creatures, they would likewise be fundamentally benevolent - if there were such things as banks, you wouldn't consider robbery, but you might think about helping out. This is all fantasy, but it's just a way of exploring what one might expect from an all-powerful all-benevolent God creating in its own image.

When asked if we might remove banks from the equation, you responded with "probably". If we removed every object from existence that could be used as a tool for sin, as opposed to removing the free will of people, I would say that creation would essentially be erased into nothing. Remove every stairwell that I could push someone down, remove every bank, remove every fork that I could poke someone with, remove every 2x4 that I could break someone's window with (and thus every house made of 2x4s) etc. In this view, a world without suffering simply couldn't exist. But we could go further into psychological pain. Remove every girlfriend that ever broke your heart, remove every potato chip that was upsettingly stale, or every sound of a vehicle that made you cringe because it squeeked too loudly that it hurt your ear drums. If we continued to remove all of these objects, to get to a position in which no one suffered in any way, we would ultimately be left with nothing at all.

OK, you seem not to have followed my argument... what I'm saying is that an all-powerful, all-benevolent creator does not need to create a physically evolved fine-tuned universe like ours, and an Earth populated by biologically evolved creatures; it can simply create a world that is safe (either by its very nature or as a result of ongoing divine intervention) and creatures that are fundamentally benevolent by nature. Of course it wouldn't be a world anything like our own, that's the point.

The fact that what we actually experience is the polar opposite of what one would expect from an all-powerful, all-benevolent creator, has necessitated theodicy, an entire field of contorted explanations for this stark contrast between what we'd expect from an all-powerful, all-benevolent creator, and what we actually experience.

I disagree with the second part of your statement, I think it falls in line with the above statements.

I'm not asking you to agree, just to understand and acknowledge the argument and/or give a reasoned counter-argument - unless you have another explanation of the need for theodicy?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

As a creator God could have make it so it was impossible for us to sin, to never go against him, but that isn't us choosing him of our own free will -which is what God wants.

If not accepting God is a sin in itself, that would be a logical argument, but such an "if you're not with me you're against me", "accept me or else..." argument would itself devalue free will - and reinforce the apparent lack of benevolence. It seems to me that for a true or full exercise of free will there should be no threat or coercion, and not accepting something or not believing something is not necessarily rejecting it.

To be able to choose or reject means we had to be free to have our own thoughts and the ability to love and hate, accept and reject.

We can be free to have our own thoughts and make our own choices without hate and aggression. I don't know why so many Christians seem wedded to the idea that to have free will necessitates being able to hate and act with malice.

Guaranteed love isn't worth much if the object of your love is bound to you.

Exactly the point I make at the top.

I am sure you have heard the expression of "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never meant to be."
God choose to let us go and those who want to return can and those who don't, don't.

That would be fine if God made his existence or presence incontrovertibly clear to everyone - but he doesn't. I have no more reason to believe in an Abrahamic God than a Norse god, or any other kind of god. Why is that?

 

[coffee4u]

Why do we have to choose God? What is so important about that specific choice?

Well you don't have to choose God. You can choose not to follow then face judgment and the second death of the body. The spirit is immortal it can't die.
Ecclesiastes 12:7
and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

The soul is also immortal. Since it can't be with God it has to go to a place without God. People call it hell, but often seem to indicate it's the body there when it isn't. Hell isn't walking around in a burning fire, it is separation from God where the soul has to deal with the weight of it's own sin.

Jesus said of Sodom and Gomorrah a land well known for it's wickedness that:
“Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!"
Indicating wicked as they were, that they would face less torment of the soul then another city. The amount of torment is equal to the sins. It is isn't God heaping burning coal on your head night and day (the body has gone in the second death) it is your soul dealing with every sin you ever committed and your own rejection of God.

God's plan is to remake the earth for those who choose him. At that point there will be no more ability to sin since the decision to live with God and follow him had already been made. Which is what this life is for, to reject or accept. There will be no sin or rejecting after God remakes the world. At that point it will be more like what was suggested above.

But surely, since God can do everything, he could have made it impossible for us to sin in a way that still lets us choose him of our own free will.

If you give a creation freewill to choose, how is it reasonable to punish that creation for making a choice? You make your God sound like a petulant narcissist.

A narcissist would never die for you while offering to take your sins.
You don't understand the concept of what the punishment is. If the soul has rejected God it can't expect to live with God later, so it has to live where God isn't.
If the offer of having sins taken by Jesus while alive was rejected then you can't expect him to take them after death. If you could choose all of this after death it would invalidate the choosing now. In that case everyone would sin to the max and say "I'll ask for forgiveness once I'm dead"
If you are complaining about the second death, this has to be, as the body would have no spirit or soul.

 

[Kylie]

He is bound by his own rules,yes. But since he is the one who set them, it is what he wants.

So God can't do it because he has made the rules which say he can't, but he really wants to, and is more than capable of changing the rules, but he doesn't, because... reasons?

 

[Bungle_Bear]

Well you don't have to choose God. You can choose not to follow then face judgment and the second death of the body. The spirit is immortal it can't die.
Ecclesiastes 12:7
and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

The soul is also immortal. Since it can't be with God it has to go to a place without God. People call it hell, but often seem to indicate it's the body there when it isn't. Hell isn't walking around in a burning fire, it is separation from God where the soul has to deal with the weight of it's own sin.

Jesus said of Sodom and Gomorrah a land well known for it's wickedness that:
“Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!"
Indicating wicked as they were, that they would face less torment of the soul then another city. The amount of torment is equal to the sins. It is isn't God heaping burning coal on your head night and day (the body has gone in the second death) it is your soul dealing with every sin you ever committed and your own rejection of God.

God's plan is to remake the earth for those who choose him. At that point there will be no more ability to sin since the decision to live with God and follow him had already been made. Which is what this life is for, to reject or accept. There will be no sin or rejecting after God remakes the world. At that point it will be more like what was suggested above.

Lots of words but no explanation why we have to choose God rather than just having a default belief in him.

Ultimately the argument will turn out to be "reasons".

A narcissist would never die for you while offering to take your sins.

Sacrificing yourself to yourself to make yourself feel better about your own mistakes while blaming somebody else is definitely something a narcissist would do.

You don't understand the concept of what the punishment is. If the soul has rejected God it can't expect to live with God later, so it has to live where God isn't.
If the offer of having sins taken by Jesus while alive was rejected then you can't expect him to take them after death. If you could choose all of this after death it would invalidate the choosing now. In that case everyone would sin to the max and say "I'll ask for forgiveness once I'm dead"
If you are complaining about the second death, this has to be, as the body would have no spirit or soul.

You're completely missing the point. Why must there be a punishment for doing something you are designed to do? And here's the kicker - when you break the rule you don't understand right & wrong nor do you understand what the punishment actually entails.

Queue handwaving and moving goalposts.

 

[coffee4u]

If not accepting God is a sin in itself, that would be a logical argument, but such an "if you're not with me you're against me", "accept me or else..." argument would itself devalue free will - and reinforce the apparent lack of benevolence. It seems to me that for a true or full exercise of free will there should be no threat or coercion, and not accepting something or not believing something is not necessarily rejecting it.

Yes, not accepting is a sin in itself and Jesus says something really close to what you wrote.
Luke 11:23
“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters."

What you call a threat is a warning. Or would you rather have been given no warning?

We can be free to have our own thoughts and make our own choices without hate and aggression. I don't know why so many Christians seem wedded to the idea that to have free will necessitates being able to hate and act with malice.

Hate and malice are sins and not what Jesus taught.
Matthew 22:39 ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ is what he taught and what we as followers of him should be striving to do every day.
The trouble is people are not perfect and their emotions get involved. Emotions tend to be messy and if the emotion is anger it easily leads to sin. Anger itself is not a sin, it depends what a person does with it. There are dozens of verses about anger.
“If you become angry, do not let your anger lead you into sin, and do not stay angry all day.” — Ephesians 4:26

That would be fine if God made his existence or presence incontrovertibly clear to everyone - but he doesn't. I have no more reason to believe in an Abrahamic God than a Norse god, or any other kind of god. Why is that?

He says that he did.
Romans 1:20 "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

 

[coffee4u]

So God can't do it because he has made the rules which say he can't, but he really wants to, and is more than capable of changing the rules, but he doesn't, because... reasons?

I'm sure he could, but he won't since if he said one thing and kept changing his mind that would make him a liar.

 

[coffee4u]

Lots of words but no explanation why we have to choose God rather than just having a default belief in him.

What is a 'default belief'? You think God should have made you believe?

 

[Job 33:6]

This would be a different world; an all-powerful and all-benevolent God could thwart you in any number of harmless ways - perhaps making the bank appear closed to you, or letting them happily give you whatever you wanted, but it just evaporated as you left... use your imagination. Then, knowing what motivated your attempt, an alternative way to sublimate those desires could be provided.

But in this scenario, you would have no material reason to rob a bank, and - as I said originally - if a benevolent God's creatures were created in its image instead of having evolved, they need not be given the aggressive and overly competitive feelings and emotional drives of evolved creatures, they would likewise be fundamentally benevolent - if there were such things as banks, you wouldn't consider robbery, but you might think about helping out. This is all fantasy, but it's just a way of exploring what one might expect from an all-powerful all-benevolent God creating in its own image.

OK, you seem not to have followed my argument... what I'm saying is that an all-powerful, all-benevolent creator does not need to create a physically evolved fine-tuned universe like ours, and an Earth populated by biologically evolved creatures; it can simply create a world that is safe (either by its very nature or as a result of ongoing divine intervention) and creatures that are fundamentally benevolent by nature. Of course it wouldn't be a world anything like our own, that's the point.

The fact that what we actually experience is the polar opposite of what one would expect from an all-powerful, all-benevolent creator, has necessitated theodicy, an entire field of contorted explanations for this stark contrast between what we'd expect from an all-powerful, all-benevolent creator, and what we actually experience.

I'm not asking you to agree, just to understand and acknowledge the argument and/or give a reasoned counter-argument - unless you have another explanation of the need for theodicy?

Having my money evaporate as I walked away would surely still upset me. I would suffer as a result of my unpleasant realization that I had failed to succeed.

Then I'd also consider that if I went to rob a bank and the bank happily gave me money, who's money would they be giving me? Or would they simply print money at the cost of inflation every time I wanted more, at the cost of society.

I think that your scenarios, even though you add in ideas such as evaporating money that at surface sounds harmless, yet they continually demonstrate a need for suffering in creation, as noted in my last post as well.

 

[Job 33:6]

I admit, it's a logical impossibility. But are you saying that God is bound by the limitations of logic?

I think this is exactly it. Could God create a burrito so hot that he himself cannot eat? I think the simple answer is no (maybe coffee thinks otherwise but I don't think God could make a triangle with 4 corners for example). Exactly why God couldn't defy logic I suppose is up for discussion, but when we think about even just natural suffering, I would say that suffering simply has to exist in creation. Or alternatively, man's free will to reject God or Gods laws would have to be taken away.

Let's say we consider murder a sin, that if committed would be an act in rejection of God (as scripture states). If God were to let someone commit murder, then the act would result in suffering. Alternatively, God would have to remove the person's ability to choose to commit the act (and not only would God have to remove mankind's freewill, God would have to remove the free will of everything that could ever have free will as well).

And I don't think that there is an in-between option.

@FrumiousBandersnatch gave some interesting ideas for in-between options with respect to my bank robbery analogy. Maybe my money would disintegrate once I had finished robbing the bank and walked away. But even this seemingly "in-between" option would still involve suffering, as I excitingly open my bag to find not money, but perhaps just dust blowing in the wind, I myself would experience sorrow, a hurt ego and suffering as I gained awareness that my hard efforts and stolen cash would have been for nothing.

So either this suffering exists, or God takes away my free will. I don't think there could be a logical in-between option, but for God perhaps not to create anything at all.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Yes, not accepting is a sin in itself and Jesus says something really close to what you wrote.
Luke 11:23
“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters."

What you call a threat is a warning. Or would you rather have been given no warning?

Threat or warning, my point remains. I don't think you have a free choice with a metaphorical gun to your head, there must be a neutral option, neither for nor against. The 'no neutrals' policy is a fascist trope.

This is related to the difference between strong atheism and weak atheism/agnosticism. The former doesn't believe in a god or gods because they believe that a god or gods don't exist, the latter doesn't believe in a god or gods because they don't know if a god or gods exist. Hence my point that an omnipotent all-benevolent God should have both the desire and the capacity to make itself incontrovertibly known; i.e. there should be no atheists or agnostics. You have to believe in something before you can reject what it offers.

Hate and malice are sins and not what Jesus taught.
Matthew 22:39 ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ is what he taught and what we as followers of him should be striving to do every day.
The trouble is people are not perfect and their emotions get involved. Emotions tend to be messy and if the emotion is anger it easily leads to sin. Anger itself is not a sin, it depends what a person does with it. There are dozens of verses about anger.
“If you become angry, do not let your anger lead you into sin, and do not stay angry all day.” — Ephesians 4:26

I know, that was my point. I'll repeat it: an all-powerful, all-benevolent creator, making creatures in its own image could make them too fundamentally benevolent without depriving them of free will - there are even some real people that are apparently free of hate and malice (one person I know appears to have sadness and compassion instead). These people have free will but hate and malice simply don't occur to them. It's possible they do occasionally feel hate or malice, but the point is that if a few members of a species so prone to hate and malice have the freedom to make the choices they want, and what they want rarely or never involves hate or malice, then an all-powerful, all-benevolent creator could easily have made all his creatures like that. Instead, we have creatures that reflect precisely what we'd expect from an evolutionary heritage.

He says that he did.
Romans 1:20 "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

It may have been written, but clearly, the claim is totally unfounded - there are many millions of people who have never heard of the Abrahamic God, millions that have only heard about it as something that other people believe in, and millions more that are aware of the story and the claims, but find it no more believable than any of the thousands of other god beliefs through the ages.