Intermediate step to beginning of life uncovered

[*rfaulk34*]

(06-15-2015, 01:34 AM)oncemoreuntothejimbreech Wrote: And I've made an argument which doesn't deal with with a literal translation.  I don't believe in a God who would create Adam and Eve in innocence, create the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil he told them not to eat from, create the serpent who deceived them, and place them all together in the Garden of Eden fully knowing the Fall of Man would occur because they were innocent and without knowledge of good/evil/right/wrong and then get pissed off because Adam, Eve, and the serpent all did exactly what he knew they would do before Creation itself and punished them for doing what he knew they were going to do.  That is a classic example of setting someone up for failure.  He knew they were going to fail before Creation and allowed it.  That story is so illogical a Creator rational enough to create the human nervous system is too rational to act that irrationally.  Therefore, I reject the whole premise as nothing more than a myth no different than any of the other creation myths Christians reject as myth.

It is also said God cannot lie.  Yet, he told Eve if she ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil she would die.  She didn't die when she ate the Forbidden Fruit.  God lied.  But, whether a non-believer argues a literal interpretation or an allegorical interpretation, the believer will always argue for the opposite.

If Christians who didn't believe in inerrancy weren't a part of my life and the political landscape of this country then they wouldn't be a part of this conversation.  Until then, I'm including them.

In the end, Adam and Eve had the option to do it the easy way or the hard way. You say it's illogical that God would create them the way He did, knowing they would fail; yet without the option to fail, free will doesn't exist. Free will exists so that each person chooses to accept Him, on their own. If free will was created so that they could choose, where is the logic in creating them without the ability to fail? 

All that said, let's assume He knew they would fail. I've always been one to advocate personal responsibility for one's actions. Them failing, even though He created the situation isn't God's fault because they had the option to follow His instructions or not follow them. Ultimately, they choose not to do what He said. The good news is, it didn't end there. Once they fell, he created a way for them to atone. Since the original fall, He did that not once, but twice. The second time making it so easy, all you had to do was simply ask His forgiveness, when previously you had to engage in sacrificing an animal. 

Where you see an irrational, illogical God, i see a God that loves man enough that he keeps making a ways for them to atone for their sins.

God didn't lie to Eve. In the beginning, they were not supposed to die. After the original sin, they did. So Him telling her that she would die doesn't necessarily mean she would die right away because he said "you will certainly die" not "you will instantly die".

People who see an illogical, irrational God, focus on the situation that caused the fall or the situation that caused a fail and they ignore how God kept creating ways for man to atone for his mistakes. 
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On another note, a question(s) i have is; why would so many historical men write different books on the same subject, which would eventually become one book, to the point that so many millions of people would follow it and create followings and churches(ignoring for a second how that's not necessarily a good thing--the fracturing and differences), making it such a polarizing subject over thousands of years? Where else has a story been told, in the history of man, that has had the kind of effect on civilizations that the bible has? If we're speaking of illogical, it seems very illogical to me that something(s) written over a couple thousand years would be condensed into one book and it would have the kind of effect it has had...if it were indeed, fiction.