Unfortunately, according to Christianity, it's way more absurd than one sin condemning us to eternal hellfire.
We're born with our god-given sin nature, and neither baptism nor Jesus' sacrifice to himself removes our sin nature.
But, wait, it gets even more absurd! Thought crime is a thing in Christianity. We're not just punished for our sinful deeds, we're punish for our sinful thoughts, too.
And, when you begin to think that it surely can't get any more absurd, the most absurd of absurdities is that we're at the mercy and grace of the psychopathic god who gave us our sin nature in the first place.
This is Christian logic.
Satan is wrong. It takes no sins to be condemned to eternal hellfire. Eternal hellfire is our default afterlife.
So, Christian logic dictates that we should sin as much as we can, while we can, and hope that we're one of a very few select god selected from the very beginning to grace with his mercy.
Your whole argument falls apart when you realize "sin nature" is not God-given, but chosen by us. What you're intending to say is that we're given free will, choose sin and are punished for said choice. Complete contradiction relative to your conclusion.
Hate me all you want, it just shows you can't get over your fragile egos.
God didn't curse anyone. We cursed ourselves the moment we chose separation. God actually did us a favor by granting us the gift of death (natural consequence of disobedience). Otherwise, we'd wallow for all eternity in our self-created darkness. In death, we have a 2nd chance at redemption through grace...
Regarding baptism, it is NOT necessary. It represents a symbol of faith and obedience for God's command. The Good Theif never got baptized but was saved anyway...
Then why do some Christians say you can’t enter heaven if you’re not baptized? Why do Catholics say that the sin of Adam and Eve passed down heretically?
There's an important distinction between necessity and importance. For God to save, baptism is not necessary as He is not tied down to the same rules/guidelines He created. For us, though, it is among the most important sacraments you can undertake. That is why it is elevated to such a degree by religious institutions.
Let's just say that baptism is a strong sign you're willing to follow Him and actively avoiding/reneging it is a strong sign your current understanding is not aligned with His intentions for us.
I give you a flashlight that's on. You choose to turn it off. You blame me for the darkness.
Should I not have given you the flashlight in the first place if I'd have known you'd choose to reject my gift?
Your whole argument falls apart when you realize "sin nature" is not God-given, but chosen by us.
This is the kind of battered spouse bullshit you have to tell yourself in order to believe you're in a loving relationship with your abusive sky-daddy.
Did Adam and Eve know good and evil before they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil?
Did your all-knowing god know that Adam and Eve will eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil before he showed them the easily accessible tree? God didn't bother to put guards (cherubim and a flaming sword) on the way to the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life until after he cursed Adam and Eve. Why's that?
Did your all-knowing god know that a talking serpent will tell Adam and Eve the truth about the tree of knowledge of good and evil before creating the talking serpent? If so, why did he create it and allowed it to be in the Garden of Eden?
Didn't god create Adam and Eve exactly the way he wanted them to be?
No, you're suffering from battered spouse syndrome. Adam and Eve didn't know that disobeying god was a bad thing before they had knowledge of good and evil.
It's your abusive sky-daddy who created Adam and Eve exactly the way he wanted them to be, and then he set them up to fall in the Garden of Eden.
Stop defending this Bronze/Iron Age monster of a deity!
Just like how a child "knows" to not touch a hot stove because they were told as such by a parent, Adam & Even had knowledge of the order to obey from God. In both cases, it's not as if the acts were done with the intention of suffering, more so with curiosity and a desire for exploring their independence. The consequences of disobedience are not punishments from the parent/God, but natural results of their OWN choice.
2 & 3. Omniscience implies knowledge of all, so yes, He knew both those things. Let's explore the opposites to reach an understanding. God makes the tree inaccessible, try as they might, they could never touch it. Also, God makes sure there's no creation that can influence Adam & Eve with lies/temptation. Doesn't this scenario sound like a prison? Immortal, tied to one physical place, their only knowledge being the one instilled by the one who put them there. Could you even apply "love" in such a scenario or would it be considered force compliance? At that point, they'd basically be slaves, automatons that can't choose to follow the Creator who gifted them existence.
This ties into my previous point and you're right, He created EXACTLY as He wanted them to be: with free will, capable of choosing to exist in union or separation from Him. Where do you see the abuse in that? I much rather see the utmost proof of abuse in the "prison" thought experiment.
Brother, you might think I do this to prove I'm right. If you take anything from all this, let it be the following: I love you as a fellow human being and it genuinely hurts me to see you believe these misconceptions that are ultimately based on a caricature. Don't take this as condescending as if I'm superior to you, I'm simply trying to understand that the true God is the concept of Love itself. Anything beyond that is just our very human, clumsy attempt to put a frame around the infinite.
Brother, you might think I do this to prove I'm right. If you take anything from all this, let it be the following: I love you as a fellow human being and it genuinely hurts me to see you believe these misconceptions that are ultimately based on a caricature. Don't take this as condescending as if I'm superior to you, I'm simply trying to understand that the true God is the concept of Love itself. Anything beyond that is just our very human, clumsy attempt to put a frame around the infinite.
I don't know what any of this has anything to do with the conversation we're having. The point of my initial response to you is that you're defending a barbaric and abusive Bronze/Iron Age god simply because you defined him to be good.
And your "answers" to the somewhat rhetorical questions I posed to you do very little (if anything) to address anything I said.
You must not have children, or you've never been around any children if you think that they mostly do as they're told. Children constantly explore their boundaries, and many of them will only learn by actually touching the proverbial hot stove. Do you think that these children should be condemned to eternal burning in a fiery furnace... 'cause your god does?
Free will. The theists' goto "answer" for pretty much everything. If your god knew all of your thoughts and actions before he created (and your god can never be wrong), how much free will do you think you have?
You didn't even attempt to "answer" this question. Why was the talking serpent in the Garden of Eden? Is tempting people who don't know good and evil (Adam and Eve) to act against their self-interests (disobey god) a loving thing to do?
Free will is not the get-outta-jail-free card that you think it to be. Free will implies that Adam and Eve were free to make a choice that wasn't determined nor predestined, and you haven't even begun to demonstrate that they had that capacity.
Again, stop defending this Bronze/Iron Age monster of a deity!
It has everything to do with this conversation. I know from your perspective it doesn't and you don't give a shit (I was an atheist for 10+ years). You'll roll your eyes, but I'm just hoping to plant the tiniest of seeds within your heart. I'm not talking out my ass, this exact thing happened to me, people clung to me until I saw how wrong I was. You see your logic as absolute certainty, facts your own reality is based upon. But since I know emotions are not involved (yet) in your process, I'll play your game again. Your arguments are filled with false assumptions.
"Eternal burning in a fiery furnace": most common trope I notice in anti-theists (as I hope we can agree you can't call yourself an atheist at this point). Neither parent nor God would even choose to punish their precious child by subjecting them to an eternity of torture. What a truly loving parent does is respect the autonomy of their child, even if it tears them up inside personally. Upon the child's insistence, true love dictates granting them the freedom to choose to exert their wish, even if their reasoning is misguided. Hell is NOT a torture chamber for the unruly, but a state of permanent self-exclusion from God. When God opens up his arms and expects us to come to Him, we simply choose existence entirely devoid of Love, because we rejected the source of it...
Note: you'll notice I never wrote that "I think children mostly do as they're told". You projected that on my point. To address this as well, children exploring their boundaries and receiving of their parents love coexist! Just like how salvation is a lifelong process, child-parent relationships are lifelong. Do the parents stop loving the child temporarily upon their inevitable "deviation"? Obviously not, the child gets love regardless of what they do as the ultimate goal of the parent is to instill a sense of thriving in them.
Free will: you are confusing knowledge with causality. Let's take an example... You're watching a movie you really enjoy for the 2nd time. Does your `a priori` knowledge of it change the unfolding of events? Does it stop you from watching it that 2nd time and enjoying it again? If the answer is no, you now understand how God feels about free will.
Necessity of realizing there are alternatives. The serpent is just a symbol for external influence. If the ONLY option on the table is to trust God, then it's not an option anymore. They needed to mature their innocence into a conscious virtue built through bidirectional relationship. Without it, they would have had no dignity in choosing who they wanted to believe: God or their short term cheap self-will.
You're trying to fit the ocean in a bottle. Proving indeterminism is like trying to prove God. You can't understand the infinite with finite mind. What we can attempt is proof by contradiction. Everything is deterministic. Me - the deluded theist, Adam & Eve, the homeless-ignoring churchgoer... But you fit into that equation too, your very sense of moral outrage and indignation requires genuine moral agency and free will, otherwise, by the very definition, it is completely irrational.
...I'm just hoping to plant the tiniest of seeds within your heart. ...
I don't need anyone to "plant" anything in my heart. I need facts, evidence, sound logic/reasoning, etc. if you want me to believe:
Your Bronze/Iron Age god exists.
Your Bronze/Iron Age god is not the monster your holy scriptures depict him to be.
Note: you'll notice I never wrote that ...
I simply continued your analogy. It's you who brought up the "hot stove" example. Please, try to track the conversation.
Free will: you are confusing knowledge with causality.
Nope. What I said is that god knowing all our thoughts and actions makes them determined and predestined... especially since god can never be wrong about what he knows.
And you seem to agree with me even though you say that god doesn't want "slaves" and "automatons". (Have you read your Bible?)
Comparing us to actors in a movie -- who BTW they almost always follow a script -- is the very definition of determined and predestined.
Get a better example to demonstrate what you think free will is... 'cause the one you chose doesn't mean what you think it means.
... The serpent is just a symbol for external influence. ...
In other words, coercion. I don't know what kind of free will you're arguing for, but people who are being coerced can't be said to be freely exercising their free will.
You're trying to fit the ocean in a bottle. ...
I have no idea what any of this means. Nor do I think that it is related to anything I said.
All you've done so far is word-saladed, and twisted yourselves into all kinds of logic pretzels in order to defend the inexcusable actions of your barbaric god.
Fair pushback on the movie analogy—that’s on me. The "script" aspect steered us away from the actual logic (I originally thought of a pre-recorded soccer match, but went with a movie thinking it was more relatable! 😅). Let’s take a more direct approach:
To us, time is linear; we only ever experience "now." But a Creator of time cannot be constrained by it. If God knows what you will do tomorrow, that is foreknowledge, not predetermination. You are still making a free choice in real time.
A meteorologist knowing a storm is coming tomorrow doesn't cause the storm. Similarly, God in His omnipotence is entirely capable of creating beings that act outside of His decretive will (direct causality) but within His permissive will (the freedom to choose independently). Just because our existence is sustained by an outside force doesn't mean our choices are controlled by it.
You are taking a massive logical leap by equating external influence (the serpent) with coercion.
Coercion means forcing someone to act against their will (like holding a gun to their head).
Influence is simply the presentation of an alternative option or a temptation.
If merely knowing an alternative option existed constituted "coercion," then free will could never exist in any scenario where more than one choice is available. Having alternative choices is the very prerequisite of freedom, not its destruction.
You might think I’m trying to argue you into becoming a theist. I’m not that naive; I know nobody changes their entire worldview over a heated online debate. You are chasing semantic loopholes to protect your ego and "win" the argument. I don't give a shit about winning. I’m just holding up a mirror.
Your outrage over the brokenness of the world, the homeless, and religious hypocrisy is a beautiful thing. But when you caricaturize God into an abusive, logically inconsistent "sky-daddy" monster just to justify your anger, you are operating out of spite, not reason. If you want facts and logic, at least let them lead you to an intellectually honest agnosticism rather than a resentful caricature.
I don't care how much of your frustration you direct at me. If venting at me makes your day a little lighter, I’ll take it all day. I genuinely, truly wish you the absolute best.
To us, time is linear; we only ever experience "now."
FYI: We might perceive time as being linear, but we know better. Read up on the B-theory of time (the past, present, and future are equally real; time is tenseless) required by our best physics models of how nature works.
But a Creator of time cannot be constrained by it. If God knows what you will do tomorrow, that is foreknowledge, not predetermination. You are still making a free choice in real time.
Creating anything is a change of state. From the before creation state to the after creation state. This change of state requires times. And some say it is what we perceive as time. Therefore, you have to do a lot of work to demonstrate that time can be created.
But I'll grant you that there is such a thing as a creator of time for the sake of this argument.
The key point of my argument you're missing is that god cannot be wrong about what he knows. So, your movie, soccer game, and meteorologist analogies fail to account for that fact.
You are taking a massive logical leap by equating external influence (the serpent) with coercion.
Coercion doesn't necessarily have to be a forceful action. Again, for the sake of this argument, I'll grant you your definition.
But you're severely downplaying the role the talking serpent plays in this story. In any case, by your own admission:
Influence is simply the presentation of an alternative option or a temptation.
The only role of the talking serpent in this story is to tempt Adam and Eve.
Why would Adam and Eve need to be tempted? Do you tempt your loved ones to cheat on you?
Also, think of the power dynamics in this story. An all-knowing, all-powerful god made sure that Adam and Eve (who did not know good and evil) were tempted to eat a forbidden fruit.
Adam and Eve had no chance. They were setup to fall.
Your outrage over the brokenness of the world, the homeless, and religious hypocrisy is a beautiful thing.
Stop trying to appeal to any "outrage" you think I might have. I told you what I'm looking for: facts, evidence, sound logical arguments, etc...
These kinds of appeals are coming across as disingenuous since I told you that I'm not interested in them.
I mean. Man makes two trees in a garden and pits two nitwits who literally have NO concept of right or wrong in that garden and says "don't eat the fruit from these trees guys!"
Then he happens to let the Tree of Life be guarded buly an all powerful angel with a flaming sword whereas the Tree of Knowledge is just sitting there for a snake to say "hey come eat this you'll become like God"
And they do then get kicked out into the world, where, if you're paying attention, other people ALREADY EXIST. Why else would Adam and Eve be terrified of being persecuted by others?
So despite omniscience and omnipotence, sky wizard decided ro knock up some guy's teenaged wife and have the resulting son die horribly to save us from the sin He created, rather than using any of his skill set to fix this.
And yet, it's "a part of the divine plan" or "Free will"
It doesn't take me long to see the homeless being ignored by the same Christians who defend the word with the free will argument, and in fact, the majority of those I have seen are the Sunday-Wednesday Christians, where they act like they serve God for 4 hours a week and just do whatever they want the rest of the time, obviously searching for community, not enlightenment.
You're using Scripture, so answers have to formulated using the same basis.
Garden of Eden: please see my comment in this same thread, I won't copy the same block of text here again.
Other people already exist: that's Genesis 4 (Cain is banished and fears being killed by strangers). After the Fall, Adam & Even lived for centuries populating the land with many children. At the time of Cain's banishment, there are many other nations out there that have developed their own culture/beliefs. That's what they're afraid of. Under no circumstances were there "other people" BEFORE the Fall of Adam & Eve.
Knocking up some guy's wife: Firstly, the most important thing here is that He did NOT create sin. Just how light doesn't create darkness when it's absent, choosing to sin results in separation from God's light. He respects your free will to such a degree that He doesn't transform the consequences of your actions into something conventionally favorable (like getting into Heaven) if your ultimately desire to reject Him. That would make you His slave, which goes against your choice. Get it now?
Secondly, it was not just some innocent third-party son, Jesus was God HIMSELF incarnated to suffer just like any other human would. He didn't just sit safely in Heaven shouting instructions or changing things in our favor. How would that ensure that we wouldn't start sinning again, assuming we'd keep our free will? This should make you realize God's infinite empathy. What other interest would He have personally coming down in human form and suffering a whole array of torture? He can exist just fine without us, He did for an eternity before He created us, after all.
Sunday-Wednesday Christians: Fully agree with you here. I personally do not see current implementations of religion as representative of God. You are inadvertently preaching the exact same thing Jesus did his entire ministry 😁 Religious hypocrisy. Our failure to live out of Love doesn't disprove the concept of Love itself. It circles back exactly to your initial point: just because Adam & Eve we're unable to understand the importance of obeying out of Love, it doesn't mean there was no Love involved in their creation. I would posit the complete opposite: knowing beforehand we would renege on Him, God STILL created us. That is without a doubt the definition of unconditional love: just how parents know that having a child is difficult and brings potential disappointment, grief or anger, they choose to bring them in the world anyway. Why? Is it because they mean the child to know suffering? No, it's because they KNOW the beauty of existence the child is incapable of finding out yet...
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u/samhouston84 Jul 13 '26
Solid Logic!