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If the judeo-christian god is omni-powerful why would he instruct Adam and Eve not to eat the apple? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 5 months ago* by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[–] 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Free will. The idea is that for free will to exist you must be able to choose the wrong action.

If a supreme being rules out all wrong actions or prevented you from taking wrong actions, how could there be free will? How could you even be responsible for your own thoughts and actions. How are you not just a puppet?

Alternately you can think of it as a leveling up. It seems like the Apple is always represented as “knowledge of good and evil”. So originally they’re just animals. They take actions but there is no morality, nothing is good or bad. But if they use their free will to take this one forbidden step, they receive the knowledge of good and evil, they can act good or act bad, they know it’s good or bad, and they have the free will to choose their path. And they are accountable for those choices. Now they’re human

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Ahh so the real original sin is entrapment. Got it.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago*

    Ford Prefect: Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting ‘Gotcha.’ It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it.

    Arthur Dent: Why not?

    Ford Prefect: Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    But if god is omniscient, then he knows what they're going to do. And if he already knows that, then do they really have free will? Or do they just think they do?

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    There's 3 philosophies I've seen on that question.

    One is the planned domino effect, which another commentator already mentioned.

    The next is the "paradoxical being" one, which is that something that is omniscient is paradoxical by default, therefore it can both know what will happen and simultaneously not know what will happen.

    The last is the "unknown destiny" one, which is that even if we don't actually have free will, as long as we think we do and can't prove we don't, then does it matter? Because ultimately it would be no different to us than if we actually did have it.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Interesting, thanks.

    Addressed the first one on that other comment.

    The second one just seems contradictory tbh, how can it be both?

    The third one is interesting - but subjectively feeling like we have free will isn't the same as objectively having it.

    And if there was a god and he was allowing (in fact, causing) us to believe we had free will, when we actually didn't, would just create the situation where god had misled us.

    I think the best way out is that we do have free will, but god isn't omniscient (if he exists at all).

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    The second one just seems contradictory tbh, how can it be both?

    Well that's the nature of paradoxes, isn't it? But paradox philosophy is a whole 'nother can of worms and a very long discussion in of itself, though you've probably encountered some examples before, such as this one:

    The next sentence is true. The prior sentence is false.

    It results in an endless loop. Contradictory, yes, yet both sentences still exist, and are sentences.

    The third one is interesting - but subjectively feeling like we have free will isn't the same as objectively having it.

    Yes, true, but the point of that third one is that the result would be the same in the sense that in both cases, humans believe they have free will, and therefore their actions are determined by that, whether or not that path was outlined beforehand by a being we cannot fathom / fully comprehend or not. The actions will still become as they are.

    I've also heard this third argument combined a bit with the second one as an attempt to better make sense of the paradox (although by doing so, it's really not a paradox anymore), and that is that God knows all possible paths humans would take, but not necessarily which one / God made infinite path he knows the outcome of but we are free to pick which one we take.

    This issue I have with that one is that it's no longer a truly full omniscient being at that point.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    This s is where you have the argument that a supreme being might have set the universe in motion but deliberately does not interfere with the way it evolves. The conditions are as close to even as possible so things can go either way …. For an infinite number of decisions for an infinite time

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    It's not a question of interfering or not though, it's about foreknowledge.

    Either god had foreknowledge of their choice, and therefore A&E couldn't have made any other decision than they did, or they had genuine free will meaning he wasn't omniscient.

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