same reason you can have anal sex and still be a virgin!
Free will. The idea is that for free will to exist you must be able to choose the wrong action.
If a supreme being rules out all wrong actions or prevented you from taking wrong actions, how could there be free will? How could you even be responsible for your own thoughts and actions. How are you not just a puppet?
Alternately you can think of it as a leveling up. It seems like the Apple is always represented as “knowledge of good and evil”. So originally they’re just animals. They take actions but there is no morality, nothing is good or bad. But if they use their free will to take this one forbidden step, they receive the knowledge of good and evil, they can act good or act bad, they know it’s good or bad, and they have the free will to choose their path. And they are accountable for those choices. Now they’re human
But if god is omniscient, then he knows what they’re going to do. And if he already knows that, then do they really have free will? Or do they just think they do?
There’s 3 philosophies I’ve seen on that question.
One is the planned domino effect, which another commentator already mentioned.
The next is the “paradoxical being” one, which is that something that is omniscient is paradoxical by default, therefore it can both know what will happen and simultaneously not know what will happen.
The last is the “unknown destiny” one, which is that even if we don’t actually have free will, as long as we think we do and can’t prove we don’t, then does it matter? Because ultimately it would be no different to us than if we actually did have it.
This s is where you have the argument that a supreme being might have set the universe in motion but deliberately does not interfere with the way it evolves. The conditions are as close to even as possible so things can go either way …. For an infinite number of decisions for an infinite time
Ahh so the real original sin is entrapment. Got it.
Bad character and plot writing. The Bible was written by hacks and scabs.
Aha! The question that has many pastors digging deep to get a good answer too. And usually they end up with the age old “mysterious ways”.
The “best” one is usually along the lines of: god wanted a relationship which involves choice and free will, so he had to create a division that would allow humankind to have a choice in the matter.
So god feels lonely, causes all misery on earth that ever was and ever will be. Because free will… On top of that he also
indirectly(oh screw it, it’s god) directly causes eternal torture in the afterlife for a vast majority of humankind. Because also, free will (I keep stressing that because that in itself is a huge problem for theologians).And then all that leads to god killing itself in the form of its own son. Because some of you touch your own genitalia in glee.
Genius.
Jason got it? Jason? Well, this is a new low. Yeah, this one hurts.
Where do I sign up!
Because you can say anything you want about a god that doesn’t actually exist. He could cure cancer, turn you inside out, and show you the inside of a black hole. Just pray and interpret silence as a “no” but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t if he felt like it.
Don’t try to apply reason/common sense/logic to ANY religion. You’ll end up with more questions than answers.
Besides, I was told that the point of the story was resisting temptation. God wanted to see if Adam and Eve could do that. Spoiler: they couldn’t.
Even though he new exactly what they would do beforehand. Being all-knowing.
Christianity is only one of the many interpretations of reality. Not reality itself. Other doctrines like gnosticism, hinduism, etc… Will give you another view.
God is also supposedly an all-knowing being, while at the same time excuses his shitty decisions and faulty creations with not being responsible for men’s actions and decisions, and also free will is a thing.
Pick a lane. Either god is all-knowing and knows what every single human being who ever lived/lives/will live did/will do in their lifetimes and free will is an illusion, or he’s not an all-knowing being.
Or… hear me out on this… He’s not real! Crazy, I know.
If God created everything, who created God? And who created the thing that created God?
Or, if God just sprang into existence, then the universe could have sprung into existence and saved a complicated and useless step.
‘Cause he’s a dick.
It was a test, but if he was omniscient, he would have known the results without having to run it. 😉
See how i didnt mention he is also “benevolent.”
There’s quite a bit of evidence to argue he is actually malevolent.
Christians then start applying “ends justifies the means” logic.
Calvin ball. Its all just Calvin ball.
Try telling that to a Christian and you’ll hear the battered wife type arguments come out sooooo quick.
I really enjoy reminding them that Satan only kills about 10 people in the Bible. He temps others to do things, but he’s only responsible for a handful.
God on the other hand… much more direct and merciless. Doesn’t really seem to give a shit at all about killing people actually. Like a kid with a magnifying glass burning ants.
I love the story where he kills everyone in the world except for that one disfunctional family.
I don’t quite have the urge to believe this, you could say I have a demiurge
beat me to it
He wanted the result, but needed it to be our ‘fault’ for weird passive aggressive reasons and so he could hold it over our heads for eaons. “Sorry son, I’d drive you to the store but you ate that apple. Remember the apple I told you not to eat?”
Embarrassment kink followed by the lack of emotional regulation to handle the outcome of a scenario they asked asked for.
The god character in Oglaf is probably the most accurate representation of God.
And if Yahweh is omniscient, he knew they would eat it, so he put the situation together so that they could be “punished”,
Yahweh is a sadist.
If I’ve learned something from listening History in the Bible podcast is that Yaweh is an asshole and that there are layers of bad translations.
Evangelicals sweep that all under the rug with “divine inspiration.”
Yet here we are with rich assholes running the world and chasing the Antichrist story and trying to summon the end of the world.
You’d think they’d be more intelligent.
Just to add to the great answers already given by others, another aspect to it all is that the mythology that developed into Judaism/Christianity/Islam was originally polytheistic. The god known as YHWH/Yahweh was one of many, but had a dedicated cult (not unlike Greco-Roman deities that often had cults of their own, revering one specific god to the exclusion of others who were nevertheless acknowledged).
So in that sense, the idea of Yahweh being omnipotent and omniscient is a bit of a retcon, meant to highlight the superiority of Yahweh over other gods as his henotheistic sect gradually developed into a more zealous monotheistic religion that rejected the legitimacy of all other gods entirely
That being said, the idea of Satan as a sort of antagonist character to tempt humans towards sin did not emerge until much later either, after the aforementioned omnipotent/omniscient revision of Yahweh. It really just boils down to whatever plot contrivances were convenient for the successive works of religious fan fiction that would later come to be canonized within each Abrahamic religion.
Worth remembering about the Gospels, which were all written decades later and served the purpose for which they were written (which was to speak to different groups at the time, which is why they all emphasized different things).
Yeah, that story has a lot of plot holes.
…talking snakes?
Fuck you, Zootopia 2 was a masterpiece.
Yeah that was a weird chapter in the bible
Why are there two different creation stories in the Bible? If Cain and Abel were the first sons of Adam and Eve, how could Cain come upon a city while he was wandering the earth? Why are there two conflicting versions of the Ten Commandments? Etc. Etc.
…if you are Christian, it doesn’t matter, it isn’t your book. It is reference for what IS your book. The one that says god’s son came to earth and told us to love one another leading to his nailing to a tree…err…
