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[Jaw Johnny]

> Free will has a full circle of choices at its disposal.

That wasn't my point. You claimed "they didn't have a sin nature; therefore no predisposition to sin." But that' can't be true. Whatever they did (sin) was a result of something in them given by God; therefore it was in their nature. To suggest otherwise would be to say that they developed something (a sin nature) outside of God's creation, which is nonsensical. The fact that 'sin' was the result of free will doesn't matter. He created humans with the capacity to sin, and then punished them for doing so.

> He couldn't make the decision for them, because if he did, then they didn't really have free will.

This is another problem with the Christian idea of free will. You're free to choose, but it had better be the right choice, or else... That's not really freedom. You understand that, right?

> He didn't punish us for using it, but for using it wrongly.

This is absurd. Free will is free will. As a Creator, you either grant it or you don't. To say you are granting it, but only if used properly is to essentially wish for robots. If He was insistent that we choose "correctly", then he should have just created robots. Instead we all inherit original sin and are forced to live under His dictatorship in the hopes of having a good afterlife.

> But if He had forced them to choose the right, over and over, then you'd scream He was a tyrant.

No, why doesn't He just leave us alone? If He wants us to have free will, why not just grant it and let us do as we will? And if He wants to rescue us in the afterlife, fine do it based upon who was a good person to others, as opposed to whether or not you believed that some guy named Jesus was the Son of God? Or how about just be good to all and not torture people once they've left this life? It's easy to come up with ways this could have been handled better had the people who invented God been more advanced morally and rationally.

> It was good, meaning functional in the way God ordered it, but it wasn't perfect. Only God is perfect.

Right, so he knew we were created imperfectly, yet punished us when we behaved imperfectly? This gets back to my main point: He created something with the capacity for failure (sin) and then got upset when it failed.

[jimwalton]

> Whatever they did (sin) was a result of something in them given by God

If I am your parent, and I take you to an ice cream shop and say, "Pick whatever flavor you want," I am not to be credited or blamed for your choice. What I gave you was a full circle of choices.

What was in our nature was the ability to choose. It was neither the propensity to choose wrong nor being forced to choose right. Their sin in the Bible was not the result of something given them by God but the consequence of being deceived by another external being, the serpent.

> He created humans with the capacity to sin, and then punished them for doing so.

Of course. If I gave you a baseball bat for your birthday, and you choose to use it to hit your brother, I'll punish you for making that choice. It's not why I gave it to you, that's not supposed to be what it's for or how you're supposed to use it. You made a wrong choice completely outside of my will, the expected intent of my gift, and the proper use of the bat.

> You're free to choose, but it had better be the right choice, or else... That's not really freedom.

Of course it's really freedom. For instance, freedom in the United States doesn't mean you can do whatever you want. You can't kill your neighbor. You can't drive at 150 mph. You can't steal other people's money. Freedom is only freedom when there are restraints and boundaries. We use the words "anarchy" and "crime" for the people who don't make the right choices with their freedom. You understand that, right?

In America we are free to eat whatever we want. But one quickly learns that if we truly eat whatever we want we will be very sick people. We have to learn to choose to use our freedom to make wise choices about balanced diets. It better be the right choices, or we eat to our own detriment.

God counsels us to make the right choices, because the wrong choices are to our detriment. That's not an abrogation of our free will.

Therefore God can grant free will but still have an expectation that we will freely choose to use it for the right. But He can't constrain us, or we would just be robots.

> why doesn't He just leave us alone?

Because He wants us to act in our own best interests rather than to our detriment. It is best to use the bat for recreation rather than violence. It is best to use food to our health and wellbeing rather than eating ourselves sick or into impairment. It is best not to cavalierly kill each other off as neighbors. It is best to drive within our capacity to control the vehicle and in consideration for the safety of all on the road. Why should God leave us alone when the stakes are high and the consequences real? He shouldn't. He shouldn't annul our free will, but by the same token he should guide us into virtue and away from harm.

> Right, so he knew we were created imperfectly, yet punished us when we behaved imperfectly?

You're looking at it totally negatively and ignoring the position alternative. He knew we were less than perfect, since we were not divine, and so He provided a way for us to achieve the fullness of life he intended despite our imperfections. His desire was for our good, and for our success. But of course there are consequences for wrong choices. We can understand this even from science. You jump off a cliff, there will be an impact to the detriment of your wellbeing. So God says, "Don't jump." But then he didn't just leave your crushed body at the base of the cliff ("got upset when it failed"), but took you to the hospital for healing. That's the story of the Bible: God tried to prevent you from jumping, grieved when you did, and provided a way for your healing without cost to you. Yet somehow you are determined to find a way to fault Him for that.

[Sure Breeze]

> the first humans didn't have a sin nature

What is your proof of this?

> The first sin (original sin),

When did this specifically occur. Please note, Adam/Eve are literal fiction.

> The real loss for Adam and Eve was not the garden

Adam and Eve are an objective fiction. They never existed. Adam was not the first man and Eve wasn't the first woman (particularly his clone). Are you explaining your religion or are you explaining historical facts because the two diverge. If you're explaining your religion then you're telling me that free will - a non-religious concept - is somehow actually related to mythology.

Unfortunately the rest of your reply hinges on Adam/Eve fiction being actual historical fact so I can't really reply to the rest.

Please let me know and if you're arguing that Adam and Eve are historical figures - as written in the Bible - then you're objectively wrong and you have no proof to make your case which means we're now arguing mythological people for a real world concept which, to me, seems silly.

[jimwalton]

> What is your proof of this (that the first humans didn't have a sin nature)?

It's a theological premise advanced by the Bible. "Proof" is not an applicable word.

> Adam/Eve are literal fiction. ... Adam and Eve are an objective fiction. They never existed.

What is your proof of this? Certainly not science. Science can't begin to prove there were no such humans as Adam and Eve.

You and I have had many conversations. If Genesis 1 & 2 are about a functional account of creation rather than a material one (as I have argued many times), then "Adam" and "Eve" were two humans selected from among the homo sapiens sapiens as representatives (archetypes) of the human race, because whatever they were capable of and would choose is what any human would. You can't begin to prove to me by science or logic that they "are an objective fiction" or that "they never existed." I understand that's your opinion, but please don't try to claim what is impossible to claim and cannot be verified as you assert.

> Please let me know and if you're arguing that Adam and Eve are historical figures

Yes. Adam and Eve are archetypes (not metaphors or allegories, please) of humanity. They were "Joe and Jane Smith," typical homo sapiens, evolved enough to be spiritually capable and morally culpable. God took them and placed them in the garden (Gn. 2.15), revealed Himself to them, taught them to make wise moral choices (wisdom being the point of the tree of knowledge of good and evil), and functioned in relationship to them. They used their free will to rebel against Him, and in that sense humanity failed the test and plunged into sin into rising into godliness. God set into motion His plan to redeem them and heal them. This is the story of the Bible, and it corroborates well with what we know from science: a genetic pool of homo sapiens who at some point in time became moral beings who developed a spiritual sense and religious practices. What we see from anthropology and sociological studies is a conflicted moral species, characterized both by amazing moral and cultural accomplishments as well as depraved violence and barbarism, exactly as the Bible tells it.

Now, I guess the burden is on you to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that all of this is untrue, and to prove that such human beings never existed.

[Yummy Yummy]

> Free will has a full circle of choices at its disposal.

I completely disagree with this statement, which is often used as a basis for the free will argument.

For example, I do not have the free will to rape a house fly. That is a type of sin that is not within my collection of options. God designed humans and house flies in such a way that it is impossible for humans to rape a house fly even if they so desired. God limited our free will, among many other ways, to exclude the raping of house flies. Similarly, we could have been physically designed to be unable or derive no pleasure in committing other types of sins -- yet God chose not to foreclose or mitigate those sins. Children get raped on a daily basis while house flies fly around naked all day as if they're asking for it.

[jimwalton]

You misunderstand the concept of free will as postulated both philosophically and theologically. Free will doesn't mean unlimited capacity. Because I have free will doesn't imply I can fly to Saturn, turn myself into a dog, or rape a housefly. Free will implies that I have a full circle of choices at my disposal that are within the scope of behavioral possibilities. It doesn't mean that I can do anything, but that among the things that I can do, I have a legitimate choice to do or not to do that particular thing.

God didn't limit my free will because I am a physical being unable to be in two places at the same time, leap over tall buildings with a single bound. Those are limitations of my being, not of my will.

To say that free will has a full circle of choices at its disposal means that I am free to choose any element of behavior within the scope of what is possible and logically consistent for me.

[Sure Breeze]

> Adam/Eve are literal fiction...What is your proof of this? Certainly not science. Science can't begin to prove there were no such humans as Adam and Eve.

Although I sometimes fail, I try to use proper words. I said literal fiction, i.e. literally how they're written in the Bible, i.e. first "man" is Adam with first woman named Eve being cloned from his rib. Literal fiction. We know this isn't true because:

1. there were no first man/woman because of how evolution works
2. even if I grant you that God has advanced cloning skills, you cannot have a species from two people unless additional magic DNA is added

This is why I said they're literal fiction.

> You and I have had many conversations.

I'm not sure if I told you this before but I try to actively forget people I debate with here because I don't want to prejudice my replies. I vaguely remember names as far as quality levels (i.e. if I should reply or not) so your name is a quality contributor to me but I really try hard not to remember so I don't remember our conversations.

> "Adam" and "Eve" were two humans selected from among the homo sapiens sapiens as representatives

If this is your case then this isn't what's in the Bible and not what's literally written, i.e. my case. So if that's your argument then I agree that this Adam/Eve could have indeed existed as far as a bunch of people existed and God simply selected two of them to be special.

> They were "Joe and Jane Smith," typical homo sapiens, evolved enough to be spiritually capable and morally culpable.

I feel like we're going backwards a bit simply because out of the thousands of people at that time, it makes no sense to only have two people hit this particular "level" especially when this level can't be measured or even proven to exist.

> What we see from anthropology and sociological studies is a conflicted moral species, characterized both by amazing moral and cultural accomplishments as well as depraved violence and barbarism, exactly as the Bible tells it.

I think it's the other way around. We are what we are and the Bible, like all other holy books, simply describe our species as we see it.

[jimwalton]

> I said literal fiction, i.e. literally how they're written in the Bible, i.e. first "man" is Adam with first woman named Eve being cloned from his rib.

Perhaps you've been swayed by a traditional rendering of the text instead of a literal one. When the Bible speaks of light and darkness functioning to give us day and night, it is literally speaking of their function. When it speaks of the earth bringing forth vegetation (Day 3), it is giving us what role and function the earth played. When it tells us on Day 4 that the sun, moon, and stars function to gives us times and seasons, it is speaking of function. When it tells us on Day 6 that the function of humanity was to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, we are being given our function and role. The text is literally about function, not about material origin. We don't have to collapse into "literal fiction" to understand the text literally.

> Adam with first woman named Eve being cloned from his rib.

Again, you have been swayed by tradition instead of scholarship. The word "rib" is not anatomical, but actually architectural. It speaks of a wing, a wall, a side of a building, etc. The text isn't speaking of surgery ("rib" is a most unfortunate translation) but of kinship and equality.

> there were no first man/woman because of how evolution works

If you read what I wrote, I didn't claim there was a single original human couple, but a couple chosen out from among other homo sapiens to represent the race. note in Genesis 2:15: "God took the humans..." Took them from where?

There are choices besides (a) the traditional interpretation, and (b) fiction.

> it makes no sense to only have two people hit this particular "level"

If you read what I said, I never claimed that there were only two people to have hit this particular level. I said they were chosen out from among the others to represent, just like our governmental system, in a sense. Senators represent the people to Washington, our president represents our nation in conversations abroad, ambassadors represent the will of our governing officials. Adam and Eve weren't the only ones, but they were fit to represent the species.

> We are what we are and the Bible, like all other holy books, simply describe our species as we see it.

Au contraire. The Bible's description of humanity is radically different from the surrounding cultures steeped in mythology and polytheism.

[Jaw Johnny]

> If I am your parent...

You're making a category mistake. You continue to look at the situation from the perspective of human to human, but we're actually talking about deity to human. As humans, we are simply responding to the situation we find ourselves in and dealing with it as best we can. As deity, God created the situation that we are all responding to. So the way a parent treats a child, or society governs itself is not analogous to a creator being and his creation. God is not just a parent trying to teach children to behave; He's the creator of the behaviors, the platform upon which we behave, etc.

This is important to understand because God didn't just give us a baseball bat (taken from your scenario), He also gave us the capacity/ability to do harm with it. He literally created the platform upon which we can do bad things with it, and enabled us to physically be able to do harm with it. Your parents didn't do that, they are simply trying to help you navigate the situation God has put us all in.

> freedom in the United States doesn't mean you can do whatever you want.

Same category mistake here. The way the US governs itself is not analogous to a deity creating a universe with all the conditions. A perfect being created lesser beings with the capacity to do good and bad (free will) and then became aghast that they sometimes chose bad. That's irrational.

> God counsels us to make the right choices, because the wrong choices are to our detriment. That's not an abrogation of our free will.

This would be correct if all He did was "counsel", but that's not how the story goes. He didn't counsel Adam and Eve, He cast them out, and condemned us all to bear the responsibility of original sin. If you stray from His way, He can also make your life more difficult, and if you refuse Him He will send you to be tortured for eternity after you're finished with this vale of tears.

It's that marking of certain choices with punishments that makes it an abrogation of free will. He created us and wanted to make us free beings, free to choose, but the moment He attached punishments to choices, He made it free will with caveats which is not truly granting free will. And again, you have to see this through the prism of deity to human, not human to human relationship.

> Because He wants us to act in our own best interests rather than to our detriment.

Again, this is a conflict with free will. If you want to create truly free actors, then that's what you do. You don't then tinker with it to make sure that they do as you like or do as you think is best.

>Why should God leave us alone when the stakes are high and the consequences real?

He created the stakes and the consequences! This is what's so dumbfounding. You act like He's saving us from a wretched outcome, but He created us as we are and He created the situation and the outcome. So He's literally saving us from Himself!

> His desire was for our good, and for our success.

If He wanted us good, then He should have just made us good. You can't have it both ways. You can't say "I want them to have free will, but I also want them to be good." You either want us to have free will, in which case He has to accept the consequences (that there will be a mix of good and bad); or you want us to be good, in which case you simply make us good (whether that makes us robots or not).

> God tried to prevent you from jumping, grieved when you did, and provided a way for your healing without cost to you.

He created me with the capacity to jump, wanted me to be free to choose to jump, then punished me when I did. All for the low cost of forever paying for Adam and Eve's sin by living in the fallen world He created to be capable of falling but yet got upset when it did.
So silly.

[jimwalton]

You are making quite a few logical mistakes and also some biblical/theological mistakes. I challenge your position that I am making category mistakes. Free will is the same kind of entity regardless of the category, whether familial, governmental, or religious. The analogy holds because free will is a constant entity across categories.

> As deity, God created the situation that we are all responding to.

This is only partially correct. In an environment where beings have free will, God has no sovereign control over the dynamics of a situation made fluid by personal choice. The serpent chose to enter in conversation, he choose to present a moral dilemma, and they chose to respond in the way they did. God neither created that environment nor dictated the outcome.

> This would be correct if all He did was "counsel", but that's not how the story goes.

It's exactly as the story goes. God told them that they had all the trees in the garden from which to eat except one, and he warned (counseled) them that eating from that one tree would have dire consequences. He didn't make their lives more difficult, they did.

> and if you refuse Him He will send you to be tortured for eternity after you're finished with this vale of tears.

Again, that's your choice. God doesn't desire that any human goes to hell, and the Bible specifically tells us that hell was not created for people, but for Satan and his minions. But if you choose to rebel and insist on being separated from God (who is life), then separation from Him is the only possibility (which is death). Your choice.

> but the moment He attached punishments to choices, He made it free will with caveats which is not truly granting free will.

This is categorically untrue. All choices have consequences. God didn't set the consequences, the consequences set themselves by the nature of the choice. If you separate from life, you choose death. It's not God being mean, but the choice you made.

> If you want to create truly free actors, then that's what you do.

If you are truly a free agent, God cannot interfere in your choice. He wants the best, but can only counsel you, He cannot force. If you are truly free, then you must be truly free, even to your own detriment. I want the best for my friends, but they don't always make the best decisions. But I can't be blamed for that. My desire is for their good and their success.

> If He wanted us good, then He should have just made us good.

He did make us good. It's very clear in Genesis 1.31.

> You can't say "I want them to have free will, but I also want them to be good."

Of course you can. This is no contradiction at all. You have to be free to choose, but I sure want you to make wise choices.

> He created me with the capacity to jump, wanted me to be free to choose to jump, then punished me when I did.

Again, you have misunderstood the Bible. He didn't punish you for jumping. You suffered the consequences of your own behavior. You'll notice in Genesis 3 that God didn't curse the man and woman, only the serpent and the ground. To the man and the woman he said, "Look what you've done. From now on here's what things will be like because of what you have done." It was natural consequences, not punishment.

> So silly.

Only because you haven't taken the time to thoroughly understand the Genesis text. You have fallen for caricatures and traditionalist interpretation without, it seems, doing the research.