Originally posted by Believer:

PDM:
This is a God who made a 'good' creation which turned out 'bad'.

Believer:
Yes we do it every day it's called having children. .....

But 'we' are not God and our children, though they may appear perfect to us, are not the immediate creations of a perfect God.

Adam nd Eve, however, were, supposedly, the brand new perfect creations of a perfect God.

PDM:
How could a perfect creation be sinful?

Believer:
While our bodies were perfect and without death or sin, we were also given the freedom to choose. Adam & Eve choose incorrectly, and opened the door for sin and death to enter into this world.

But how could a brand new, perfect creation of a perfect God make an imperfect choice?

Indeed, how could brand new people know how to behave at all ~ they were as new babies to the world ~ supposedly?

PDM:
Why would God make a sinful creation?

Believer:
He didn't we didn't know sin until the fall.

But the 'fall' was almost immediate. These people should have been perfect. They were made by a perfect God, If they were not perfect, then that is because God made them imperfect.
How could a perfect God make an imperfect creation?
Why could a perfect God make an imperfect creation?

And people have tried to explain this to me before, but I cannot accept these explanations.

Annihilating peoples, murdering babies, raping virgins ~ all according to the will of God, or of his loved and designated leaders.

If this happened today we would be talking about criminal behaviour ~ war crimes, murder, genocide, crimes against humanity.

I don't see it.

I don't believe in Adam and Eve, anyway, but I certainly don't understand why Christians think that the perfect God, whom they worship, would behave like this.

Would you follow a present-day politician who behaved like this?

what would you expect from a creation who doesnt know whats right or wrong in the first place?

was God successful in cleansing Israel of sinners?

so God saw those people who prayed to other Gods as evil and wanted them all killed, ok.

so we shouldnt be suprised if say the vatican as commanded by God wanted Muslims, Buddhist, Hindus and all people who worships other gods be slaughtered...babies and old ladys included?

if the members of the largest religion believes that they would be doing them(babies) a favor by killing them(like you believer said, chance in heaven, better die now than suffer in hell and that this life is not all there is) and that it would be for the greater good...what a wonderful world of gore it would be. :p

with this logic, if you're pregnant and you knew that your child would become a killer since your whole family is a killer, then youre better off having it aborted. but then the church doesnt allow it...

God created Adam and Eve, put them in a paradise. a beautiful garden... where an evil snake gatecrashed :p (if you were God, would you allow a snake enter your babies room? heck i would try my very best not to let a bad influence near my child) . he told them not to eat from this tree coz if they do they will die (its like putting a rat poison within babies reach). but then Eve ate the fruit and gave some to Adam.(Where was God all this time, busy with something? if youre taking care of a toddler, you should always be on your guard and watch them) then they were punished and lead out of the garden.

bad parenting?

no offense.i just think that a good parent would do much better with Adam and Eve.

Why does everyone think that Adam & Eve had the minds of babies? This was a woman who was able to give birth to children & Adam had enough intelligence to know how to take care of all the other stuff God created. Sounds pretty intelligent to me.

And, it also never says how long Adam & Eve had been in the garden when all of this happened. Genesis 2 talks about them being created & so forth, & then Gen 3 talks about the fall. It never states how much time has passed.

PDM:
How do you know that?

[quote]Originally posted by MrsJF: [b] PDM: [quote] But the 'fall' was almost immediate. [/quote]How do you know that? [/b][/quote]Well, I don't 'know' and since I don't think the story of Adam and Eve is true, I don't feel that there is anything to 'know'. I just think that the Genesis story makes it sound as if the fall occurred pretty soon after the supposed creation of Adam & Eve. When Adam describes Eve to God, he talks of her as someone he has just met, not as a spouse: [i]The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." [/i][Genesis 3:12] In fact, it doesn't really matter how soon it supposedly happened ~ these were said to have been newly-created beings, made by a perfect God, in the image of God. How could they be imperfect if that was the case? The snake, too, was supposedly a creation of this perfect superbeing ~ why was the serpent created evil?

the serpent wasn't evil, he was just the adversary - this idea reoccurs in the q'ran. i also don't see the expulsion from the garden as a fall. its more about loss of innocence, which is an inevitability, unless of course eden was free from death and disease, and there is nothing in the bible to suggesst any such thing. there is also nothing to indicate how long they lived in the garden before getting into apples, and how long after that it was that they were busted.

were adam and eve intellingent? questionable, because most of what we see as intelligence is actually learnt from previous generations. in the absence of previous generations, adam and eve were absolute beginners, so the child - like mind is not too far off the mark. it takes no intelligence whatsoever to have babies (could make a caustic remark here but i won't), and adam and eve had nothing to take care of in the garden other than their stomachs.

and where the hell did cane abel and seth, adam and eve's sons get their wives from? maybe from some parralel creation being executed simultaneously by another god? or maybe they were the incestuous daughters of eve and her sons? stand back and watch the chrtistian camp fail to resolve that one!

While the [fictional? allegorical?] Adam and Eve may not have been babies, per se, they certainly had no "knowledge" of good and evil until they ate of the forbidden fruit. Evil was apparently doing what God had forbidden. Yet, what innocent person among us obeys - either from desire to please or from desire to avoid punishment or for benefit to self, before becoming acquainted with the consequences of his/her actions?

Here, unless there are many steps left out of the "account," we have the closeness (walking with God), the one injunction, and then when the injunction is disobeyed, the punishment of banishment amidst a world no longer perfect and with pain and death. Pretty heavy for creatures who were "good" and then led astray.

They had no knowledge of good and evil until they ate of the forbidden fruit.

What would have happened if they had not eaten? Would there have remained just the two of them in this wonderful garden? They didn't even realize they were naked. Presumably they didn't need clothes for warmth, protection, and they didn't know shame. That came afterwards.

So would they have remained as automatons - able to converse, but with no real knowledge, or basis of choice?

Maybe the forbidden fruit was a way to teach them to make choices in life. Maybe they were never intended to remain innocent and in that garden.

Rather than being "doomed" by the "fall," maybe it was part of the plan all along. Maybe God wanted creatures who could choose to love Him and obey Him, rather than "pets" who had no choice.