A question about the morality of God

[Evointrinsic]

This question has been plaguing my mind ever since I learned more about the bible when I was younger. No one seems to be able to answer it, quite soundly at least, and thus the reason why I am creating this topic.

In the bible God is said to be all knowing. During the creation of the universe, planet earth, Man and animals comes a troubling event. That is the additional - and seemingly unnecessary - creation of the forbidden fruit.

Surely, if God is all knowing then he would have known that the forbidden fruit were to be eaten. At the very least the fruit could have been something a bit less tantalizing. Perhaps "do not drink from the stinking bog of acid that burns flesh at the very touch of it's liquid."

It seems a bit irresponsible to place something that would essentially destroy that which man had at the time of creation and in the garden that god also knew they would consume, ultimately bringing their doom upon them. The same goes for the great flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. If he knew that these people would be so evil in their hearts and so wrong, why allow their creation in the first place?

The worst of it all is that the people who commit these acts - of which could have been prevented - burn in hell for their sins. For eternity! Constant torture day after day for ever. Infinity is quite the scale of time. So long that our minds have a massive difficulty trying to comprehend it's vastness.

What could possibly be so needed as to let these events and lives come to this level without intervention or preventative measures?

[Wootah]

I would disagree that Adam and Eve were children. They knew good. They knew right and wrong. What they didn't know was evil. When you consider the thread title question I ask you - How could a good being teach another being evil? No father gives his son a rock when he is hungry, etc.

In the myth, God is all good but knows evil. How can he teach others what he knows? Seems like an easy task for an all powerful, all knowing being. He could have created them with the knowledge he had and then let them make their own choices. Instead, he created them ignorant of many things. Including knowing evil as God himself did. The intentional creation of ignorance? Evil.

It's absurd to claim that a parent must teach their child evil or the parent is evil.

[Thatguy]

I would disagree that Adam and Eve were children. They knew good. They knew right and wrong. What they didn't know was evil. When you consider the thread title question I ask you - How could a good being teach another being evil? No father gives his son a rock when he is hungry, etc.

In the myth, God is all good but knows evil. How can he teach others what he knows? Seems like an easy task for an all powerful, all knowing being. He could have created them with the knowledge he had and then let them make their own choices. Instead, he created them ignorant of many things. Including knowing evil as God himself did. The intentional creation of ignorance? Evil.

It's absurd to claim that a parent must teach their child evil or the parent is evil.

Not a point I was making, but we can explore that if you want to talk about it instead of directly discussing what I said.

What is it to "know evil"? Is it to know what evil is? If you give someone free will to choose between good and evil but don't let them know what evil is then you have not given them meaningful free will. If a parent lets a child learn what evil is on the street from talking snakes then the parent has been remiss in preparing the child to make a choice. If the parent then kicks the kid out of the house to die, the parent's not acknowledging its own share in the problem. If "knowing evil" means something else, let me know.

[Cewakiyelo]

This question has been plaguing my mind ever since I learned more about the bible when I was younger. No one seems to be able to answer it, quite soundly at least, and thus the reason why I am creating this topic.

In the bible God is said to be all knowing. During the creation of the universe, planet earth, Man and animals comes a troubling event. That is the additional - and seemingly unnecessary - creation of the forbidden fruit.

Surely, if God is all knowing then he would have known that the forbidden fruit were to be eaten. At the very least the fruit could have been something a bit less tantalizing. Perhaps "do not drink from the stinking bog of acid that burns flesh at the very touch of it's liquid."

It seems a bit irresponsible to place something that would essentially destroy that which man had at the time of creation and in the garden that god also knew they would consume, ultimately bringing their doom upon them. The same goes for the great flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. If he knew that these people would be so evil in their hearts and so wrong, why allow their creation in the first place?

The worst of it all is that the people who commit these acts - of which could have been prevented - burn in hell for their sins. For eternity! Constant torture day after day for ever. Infinity is quite the scale of time. So long that our minds have a massive difficulty trying to comprehend it's vastness.

What could possibly be so needed as to let these events and lives come to this level without intervention or preventative measures?

I noticed that you desired comment from some that take the scripture more literally. I would say I fall into that category.

Where to start? I guess with my understanding of the scriptures as a whole. It is a narrative of one line of people. Adam's line after he partakes of the forbidden fruit.
You see in Genesis we have some things that are shown to us that are usually overlooked by the masses because of how it has been handed down and taught to us.

Genesis... Adam and Eve, first man and first woman created by God. We tend to believe that this means that they were the only humans created by God and all of mankind springs forth from them. This may or may not be the case. You see there are some issues that arise that need to be explained in order for scripture to be believable. Adam and Eve have sons Cain and Able. Are these sons their first children? or only the first children mentioned? Why is this important? You see Cain kills Able and then flees to the land of Nod where he finds his wife. This implies that there are other people not accounted for in the Genesis story. Either these people come from another creation of mankind not related to Adam and Eve or Adam and Eve had other children prior to Cain and Able that went on to become other cultures. So why would these peoples not be included in the Genesis story line? Simply because the story is not about them. You see the real story of Genesis is not a story of Creation as much as it is a story of what happens when we fail to respect God. We don't see what Adam and Eve does prior to when they partake of the forbidden fruit. Because there was nothing to tell. They were in harmony with the rest of creation. If they had children they too were in harmony with creation. If others of Mankind were created they too were in harmony with creation. This story is about what happened after they ate the forbidden fruit. It is about what this toxic plant did to them and to the rest of their offspring from that point on. It is a tale of the sickness that has plagued their lineage ever since.

You see, God warned them that if they ate of that plant they would die. However the serpent says that you won't die and that they will be as God knowing Good from Evil. Man still see this a a good thing. But there is a problem, it is not true. They did not receive an understanding of Good and Evil as God sees it. When they eat of it they become aware of their nakedness and feel shame and seek to hide themselves. This is the first clue to the fact that they are not seeing clearly. God placed them in the garden perfect, naked and without shame of being so. Yet after they eat this plant they felt shame at their nudity. They feel it wrong, bad, or evil and seek to correct it by covering up. This plant has warped their minds and they act upon this new warped understanding they have. Now if they see that something is wrong to them the seek to change it. They begin to enforce their will upon their offspring based upon this twisted understanding that the toxins of that plant provided. Perhaps it even altered them genetically. They pass these traits and teachings on to their offspring from that point on. A sickness that can be passed on from one generation to the next, and from one person to another like a virus. This is why God pushed them from the garden. So that the rest of mankind that still dwelled in harmony with Gods creation would not become infected by Adam and his offspring.

If we look at other cultures around the world we find pockets of peoples that do not see things the way the majority of the rest of the world does. Tribes in the rain forests that roam naked. They feel no shame at their nudity. They live in a garden where all their needs are met. The do not own the land nor do they disrespect the land. The Native Americans also shared these values prior to European influence. They did not seek to own the world or control nature and their surroundings. They saw themselves a part of nature and understood that nature yields it's self up to them with out having to force it. Adam's line however had to till the soil and toil their lives away to eat. But once Europeans come into a land they begin to infect the inhabitants. Their greed, their selfishness, their contempt spreads to those who allow it to infect them.

Genesis 4:6-7 6Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you furious? And why are you downcast? 7If you do right, won't you be accepted? But if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it." ... If we do not do right sin is at the door. Sin's desire is for us, but we must master it. Desire is one big clue to our downfall. The serpent tempts Eve with the desire of being like God. Perhaps the forbidden fruit magnifies our desire for those things that will destroy us. Desire for more more more. Can't get enough. More sex and sexual partners, more money, more power, more attention to me me me. These desires draw our attention away from God and what he has created for us and focuses it on ourselves and how important we think we are in our own eyes. We can do it with out him. We achieve greatness without him. We are so blinded by our own self righteous greatness that we refuse to see that He is the One responsible for our continued existence. Every bit of food we eat was given to us by Him. We steal it from him and call it our own, and force others to pay us for it. None of it can we say we made. Oh, sure we alter it in futile attempts to make it better but, we cant create it. The goal should be to overcome the desires of sinful behavior and see that God is there to help us.

The moral of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit is not that when man sins God punishes us. The moral is that when we sin we loose sight of God. We walk away from God. We are turning our backs on him. He gave us free will to choose His way or our way. Adam and Eve chose their way over His. The moral deepens in that it shows us that our sin, our bad choices are not ours alone. Our poor choices affect those around us also for generations to come. The Scriptures tell us that God hates divorce and that if we separate and remarry that we make ourselves adulterers. If we do this we are sinning, walking away from God. But we are also setting an example for our children. They will tend to see this as appropriate and will not think wrong to divorce when they choose to. Our sin is learned and passed on. We help turn others away from God. We help perpetuate sinful behavior.

Freewill. Our lives are about freewill. Would you want to be forced to marry someone you did not want? Of course not. We can not be forced to love or respect someone. And just as we do not want to be forced to bow to someone else or made to serve someone else by force, God does not want to force us to love or serve Him. He wants us to do it of our own free will. He wants us to understand that it is our choice to love him or turn away from him. We walk away because we want to serve ourselves. We walk to Him because we want to serve Him. He is the creator of life and can offer us life after death if He chooses. We can create nothing nor can we offer ourselves anything beyond death but death its self. He want to feel, as any dad would, that His children truly love him and want to be with Him

Hell... Study shows death be be the grave. As in dead and final. Nothing more. The Spirit ceases to exist. It is not necessarily the torturous pit of fire where the soul shall be tortured for an eternity. Biblical authors often tend to magnify or exaggerate things in order to put fear of the Lord into them in attempt to get people to turn away from their sinful ways. But God doesn't want us to turn away from sin out of fear of torturous punishment. He wants us to turn away from it because we love Him and we are grateful for what He has given us, and we believe that he has even better things waiting for us as reward for overcoming our desire to sin. He offers life after death, something we can not gain by doing things our way. Furthermore, these whom are lost to their sins and destined for hell, are still God's children. He does not want to see them walk away to their ultimate destruction. And it just might be that hell, spiritual death, no more existence, is a kindness to them in that they would no longer be faced with the the things that weight heavy on our spirit. The suffering of life and sin that we cause upon ourselves.

As far as irresponsibility in the forbidden fruits creation I would say that irresponsibility would have been not to give any warning and then hold them accountable for their mistake. But God did warn them. Told them they would die if they ate it. They chose not to believe His Word. We to shall die for not heeding His Word. A better question would be why did God not just strike them down right then. Why let them carry on and have children that would cause the problems that we see today. Because some who are infected will overcome. Just because we are sinners and have learned how to be evil does not mean we have to be. It is a daily choice we make. We choose to do the right thing or the wrong thing. As was said in Genesis 4:7, sins desire is for them but they become masters over sin. These people become Gods elect in a new kingdom. They become those that God allows to receive life after death to live and dwell with Him as we once did in Eden. He gives us the tools to overcome sin.

So as you see I take the scriptures pretty literal in that I believe the stories hold the truth. However the truth is not always as it is passed down and taught to us. Sometimes the biblical authors embellish the story so that it becomes more fierce-um to scare the listener straight. These people seem to tell the story of a vengeful God. But if we look close we can see that the bible is not about His anger for us but rather His love for us. Story after story He is offering us aid so that His creation, His people can pick themselves up and dust themselves off and turn their lives around and walk to Him. But we defiantly keep walking away. But we choose that for ourselves. It isn't His fault.