Evidence for God from Science

Blob wrote:By that reasoning the penny would have dropped when they experienced making the decision to eat the fruit - before they actual eating. So was the precise moment of the fall the decision to eat the fruit rather than the ingesting?

I would say yes. But than again what do I know about the matter. Seems to me that their knowledge of good and evil came from outside themselves before they ate the fruit and it became an internal knowledge after the eating of the fruit. God told them the very complex set of rules, don't eat that one fruit, and that was there only conception of good and evil prior to the fall.

Adam and Eve walked with God. They KNEW Him. They KNEW they should OBEY Him. They KNEW it was WRONG to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but they succumbed to their desire for the things the Nacahsh (serpent) tempted them with ... he told them they, too, could be just like their wonderful God!

Genesis 3:2-3 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.(The Hebrew literally says "in dying you shall die") Yes, they knew it was wrong to disobey God and eat of the tree.

So what did they get by eating of them tree of (Knowledge of Good and Evil) KOGAE ?

They were naked before they ate and were perfectly fine with that - there was no evil in it. Genesis 2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. God made them that way and it was good. However, when they ate of the tree of the KOGAE they now KNEW (affected by their conscience) that they were naked and that it was now shameful. Genesis 3:7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.They now had a different understanding of their condition. They even made themselves underwear out of fig leaves sewed together (resourceful couple!) to cover their shame.

The tree gave them knowledge of the happiness of a holy life and holy choices, and the misery of a sinful life and sinful choices. This brought guilt and shame and the need for salvation.

God put the tree there, yes, but He also out in place His plan to save mankind with the sacrifice of His Son, the Lamb of God that would take away the sin of the world.

The reason is ...HUMILITY. Man needs to humble Himself before He can taste of the heavenly glory. Why? Else he may be predispositioned to turn out like Satan - who was made perfect in his ways, beautiful, and full of wisdom - without any testing or trying - and he was lifted up by his pride and thought himself equal to God and taught both angels and men to sin against God. (God, the giver of Life, is their only hope yet they reject Him). Fear of God is, indeed, the beginning of wisdom.

Jbuza said "I don't beleive that my son 2 1/2 fully understands the concept of good and evil yet, but he knows that he is not supposed to do certian things becasue dad says not to do them."

This actually is a pretty good example. Good job.

Blob wrote:

Kurieuo wrote:This question really presents no problem when knowledge is understood correctly. For example, lets say a tea drinker has never had the opportunity to taste coffee. If they ask what coffee tastes like, someone might respond it tastes like tea only much stronger and slightly different. The tea drinker may even know how coffee is made, and the many different varieties one can have. But would the tea drinker really "know" what coffee tastes like until they've drank a cup?

Arrghhh! An analogy!

I don't see that there is anything wrong with analogies, and the analogy I provided of proportionality I believe clearly demonstrated my argument which was not simply the analogy itself.

Blob wrote:The tea drinker's knowledge of coffee is not then just intellectual, but an intellectual extension of their experiential knowledge of drinking tea. What equivalent experiential knowledge did Adam and Eve draw upon?

The predication of an analogy need not be exactly the same (i.e., equivilant or univocal). Rather I have proportioned the "coffee" intellectual/experiential knowledge to "good and evil" intellectual/experiential knowledge. Although the knowledge within each case is different, the knowledge is still fully attributable in a precise and literal sense (albeit in different ways appropriate to the nature of "coffee knowledge" and "good and evil knowledge").

Your objection seems to be more with analogies in general for which a new topic should be open. But it still makes entirely good sense that Adam and Eve could have had an intellectual knowledge of good and evil, without the experiential knowledge which came later. No analogy is needed to state this point, although I provided one to help clarify this point.

Kurieuo

Blob wrote:By that reasoning the penny would have dropped when they experienced making the decision to eat the fruit - before they actual eating. So was the precise moment of the fall the decision to eat the fruit rather than the ingesting?

This perhaps depends on whether you are a physicalist on the mind-body issue. If one is, and something like behaviourism or functionalism is endorsed, then Adam and Eve never really made the decision to eat even if we infer that their body had determined their decision by eating.

Kurieuo

Kurieuo wrote:I don't see that there is anything wrong with analogies, and the analogy I provided of proportionality I believe clearly demonstrated my argument which was not simply the analogy itself.

Yes, there's nothing wrong with analogies. But in this thread on this specific issue several had already been provided and I wnated to move away from them.

The predication of an analogy need not be exactly the same (i.e., equivilant or univocal). Rather I have proportioned the "coffee" intellectual/experiential knowledge to "good and evil" intellectual/experiential knowledge. Although the knowledge within each case is different, the knowledge is still fully attributable in a precise and literal sense (albeit in different ways appropriate to the nature of "coffee knowledge" and "good and evil knowledge").

Yes I do see your point.

But it still makes entirely good sense that Adam and Eve could have had an intellectual knowledge of good and evil, without the experiential knowledge which came later.

I really don't see how you infer this from the bible. They were simply told not to eat the fruit. Adam and Eve were not like us - they were fully formed adults which the bible explicitly says has no knowledge of good and evil whether abstract or experienced. Therefore they had no way of judging that doing what you are told not to do is not good. KMart made an excellent point about Eve having reservations about eating the fruit before doing so, but it reads like a plot flaw to me.

Kurieuo wrote:This perhaps depends on whether you are a physicalist on the mind-body issue. If one is, and something like behaviourism or functionalism is endorsed, then Adam and Eve never really made the decision to eat even if we infer that their body had determined their decision by eating.

I am neither a behaviourist nor a functionalist. On the free-will/determinism issue I am undecided and am increasingly considering it unresolvable, as it happens.

I am neither a behaviourist nor a functionalist. On the free-will/determinism issue I am undecided and am increasingly considering it unresolvable, as it happens.

But what you're saying is assume you have free will...because only with free will can you decide.