Adam and Eve and free will

by inbetween 125 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  inbetween

  Pondering over this dilemma:

  Lets just say, for arguments sake, the report in Genesis about the first humans is not an allegory, but a true event:

  Watchtower teaches, that Adam sinned, because he used his free will to disobey.

  God grants free will to his human creation, because he wants them to serve him out of love.

  ok, good, but I give an example: I meet a girl, tell her, she is free to love me, but if not, I kill her.

  Would you call this free will ?

  Of course, JW may say, God did not kill them, they just suffered the consequences of their behaviour.

  But it comes to the same: Who set the conditions for the consequence of disobedience ? God again.

  real free will would have granted Adam and Eve eternal life, without god, he would not be upset, because he leaves it up to them to decide.

  Somehow the concept of sin in connection with free will doesnt really make sense to me.
• 

  jookbeard

  the whole account makes no sense, they had zero knowledge about the consequences of sinning why not make them imperfect at the outset and then revert them to perfection so they could weigh up the odds of both existences, it's annoying,frustrating and to make hundreds of billions suffer because of these 2 angers me.
• 

  Deputy Dog

  Somehow the concept of sin in connection with free will doesnt really make sense to me.

  That's because it can't/won't with the WT baggage and "free will" attached.
• 

  bohm

  inbetween: Lets say you meet a girl, fall in love with her, and want her to obey and worship you and noone else because you are very jelous.

  fixed it for ya ;-).
• 

  Leolaia

  As I read the story, there is a major catch-22. The two characters are prohibited from eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and their eating thereof effects a change in their awareness, bringing about shame. Informed compliance with the prohibition however requires a knowledge of good and evil, i.e. that it is evil to break the commandment, which would then incur punishment. This I believe reflects the maturation theme of the original myth: Like young children, they are naive and lack sophisticated understanding of morality, and must follow rules without understanding them just as young children do. And they feel no shame at their nakedness, as young children do. The interpretations that focus on free will or willful sin miss, I believe, the point of the story. According to J, it was the creator's intent to keep humans naive and live as caretakers of his garden on par with the animals (compare with Sumerian myth, in which humans were created to be workers for the gods); the granting of human intelligence and morality is something that occurs despite Yahweh's intentions. The story thematically is parallel to the Greek myth of Prometheus, who steals fire and gives it to humans against the gods' wishes, which allows people to become truly human. Or one could compare the wild and naive Enkidu who transforms into a man when he loses his virginity to Shamhat in the Gilgamesh Epic. Within J, the closest parallel is the story of the Tower of Babel. Again, humans begin to encroach on the divine through their ingenuity and ability ("Nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them"), and Yahweh keeps humans to their place by confusing their language, thereby preventing them from entering into Yahweh's domain.
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  sabastious

  I believe that what you said is actually what is happening. God created us with free will and everything in this world is a product of our decisions as a race wholly because of the free will given to us by our Creator, who or whatever that may be.

  -Sab
• 

  notverylikely

  Of course it doens't make sense. The idea of free moral agency was something added in later in an attempt to make god not seem like such a douchebag.

  And you are right, if the consequence of free will is death, then it's not really free.
• 

  cameo-d

  What about the part of the story where this God makes little masonic aprons for them?
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  JWoods

  Continuing with what Leolaia wrote: there is a pretty well-established philosophy that humanking were actually better off after Adam's sin, because he took the adult step of thinking for himself and acting upon it. Sort of a primeval "live free or die" code of behavior.

  There is also a rather back-water gnostic system of belief that the Satan of Genesis was actually the same as the Jesus of the New Testament - that he gave mankind free will in this sense, (because the YHWH would not) and later "bought them back to everlasting life" to make it even out.

  I don't claim to believe either one, but I found them both interesting.

  BTW - the JW view of earthly paradise pretty much reduces all humans left on earth back to the robotic state of Adam and Eve had they not sinned - thus, to my viewpoint - pretty much without free will again.
• 

  cameo-d

  Leolaia: "Yahweh keeps humans to their place by confusing their language, thereby preventing them from entering into Yahweh's domain."

  Most interesting, considering that the confusion of language in our day began in 1914.

  Legalese is an English term first used in 1914 [1] for legal writing that is designed to be difficult for laymen to read and understand , the implication being that this abstruseness is deliberate for excluding the legally untrained and to justify high fees. Legalese, as a term, has been adopted in other languages. [2] [3

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_writing

  I guess that makes The Crown Temple Yahweh's domain.