Original Sin and Omniscience

Last night there was a story on NPR (National Public Radio) that made a reference to original sin and it got me thinking. I have thought about this before and had come to similar conclusions, but I think yesterday was the first time I had put all of the pieces together at one time.

God, in Christian thought, is omniscient or all knowing. This means that when he supposedly created Adam and Eve he knew he was creating something that was imperfect by his own stated standards and did it anyway. He then placed the Tree of the Knowledge of Life and Death in the Garden of Eden, again, with the full knowledge that they would eat from it. Adam and Eve, doing essentially what they were created to do, eat from the tree and then god punishes them.

I have heard the argument here that this is where free will comes into the story, but that makes little sense because god knew they were too flawed to follow his directions yet set them up for failure anyways. Free will doesn't mean much if god already is supposed to know everything.

This makes me wonder how Christians, Muslims, and Jews can believe both in a god who knows everything and the idea of heaven and hell. In my own case, god knew when he was creating me that I would be an atheist and would be sent to hell, but did it anyways. This makes no sense. Why have a heaven and hell as concepts of rewards and punishment based off a decision the subjects had no control over. If god knows everything and wants me to go to heavan then he simply would have made me better.  

If I were to build a toaster that didn't toast bread I surely couldn't blame the toaster, but it becomes even more ridiculous if one considers that I built a shitty toaster knowing it would be shitty and still blame the toaster.

Yes, it's all very silly. You will go mad if you continue to try to reason it out. Stop while there's still time!

I'll never forget the time that a co-worker found out that me and another worker were atheists, he asked us "What keeps you from going out and killing people?".  I absolutely get off on that kind of ignorance.

Oh man - the Christian faith is absolutley beautiful ain't it?

A beautiful little baby is born........but it's got the stain already of original sin......and the only way to get clean?

Well come over here - we've got the answer.

The problem of evil has never been satisfactorily answered by Christian thinkers, despite great efforts to do so.

The problem is neatly set out by the homily, 'If god is great he is not good.  If god is good he is not great.'

There's a nice inversion of the problem of evil - a planet where people believe in an all-evil god, and have to find arguments against the so-called 'problem of good'.

http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/03/god-of-eth.html

Wonderful article.

EinsteinFan is 100% right and 0% wrong.  God, as described by an evangelist, must be the cruelest sumbich imaginable.  Invariably, belief in a cruel god must make for a cruel man and explains the horrors dealt out by the "righteous".  Like many, I don't know what is out there, however, I have a good sense of what isn't.

Just read the Steven Law blog.  Spot on.

So that's when you stared intensive at him for a few seconds, before starting a classical madman-laugh?



On topic: About the whole, white light in the tunnel thing, far from everyone sees it.

Tricklev, it doesn't matter if everyone sees it or truly if anyone does. All that matters is that people believe they see it or that someone they know has seen it. That is the best part about all of this. The facts are irrelevant.

That kinda sums up humans in general.  An ounce of image is worth a pound of substance.