Original Sin

[Jamie123]

Anyone considered this dilemma before?

[Backroads]

It's really easy to get into the steps of this process of the fall, but to the  point, this is funny.

[Jamie123]

One theory I've heard is that the "sin" was not so much the original disobedience, but the fact that afterwards they blamed each other: the man blamed the woman and the woman blamed the snake. If Adam had said "Sorry, God, I messed up!" everything would have gone on as before.

I remember seeing a beaten metal depiction of the scene. (I've not been able to find a link, but I think it's in the Vatican art collection.) It shows a very stern God (depicted as Christ, with a cruciform halo) pointing accusingly at Adam, who is pointing at Eve, who is in turn pointing at the snake. (God: "What have you done!!?" Adam: "It's not my fault, God, it's hers!!" Eve: "Well, HE told me to do it!!" God: "Well then, you're ALL in trouble!!")

(I doubt anyone here will agree with this: I think Latter-day Saints believe in "the fortunate fall" - that Adam's disobedience was part of God's plan from the start.)

Edited August 21, 2023 by Jamie123

[Carborendum]

9 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

One theory I've heard is that...

Add to your bucket the following idea:  It doesn't matter if you didn't know better.  You still broke a law.

This is where we tend to differentiate the terms transgression from sin.  Normally, these two are synonymous. But when speaking specifically of the fall, we use transgression to speak of the breaking of a law without quite understanding the law.  And we avoid using the term sin precisely because they did not know better.

And as far as the LDS idea that the fall was necessary, that is exactly how it happened.

But, yes, the comic was funny.

Edited August 21, 2023 by Carborendum

[Vort]

At the risk of taking a joke too seriously, this rather obvious comic strikes at the core of the argument for "free will". Literal volumes have been written on this exact topic. Did God create our decision-making capacity? At the moment he created it, could he have done so differently? Did God in his omniscience know what choices we would make?

If the answer to each of these questions is "yes", then it inexorably follows that our decisions are God's decisions. We are merely wetware programs following our created code. Any bugs in us must be attributable to the Creator, and thus his fault.

The ancient theistic answer is that God is our Creator, yes, but God only creates good, so somehow we have polluted the process. This is manifestly a non-answer, and many (including Latter-day Saints) reject this explanation as facile and ultimately meaningless. It explains literally nothing. It's not even a good job of handwaving the argument away.

The ancient atheistic answer, extremely popular today and considered quite modern, is that "free will" is an illusion. We are puppets on the strings of our own existence, ancestry, and history. We only think that we can decide things independently; we can't really do any such thing, of course. That's just silly. A mature and intelligent person will quickly conclude that free will is a societal illusion, adopted as a coping mechanism to shield us from the harsh realities of reality. Aside from being smugly and hopelessly cynical, this idea is so deeply self-contradictory that it is safely rejected out of hand. We have no free will, including in our outlooks and viewpoints—yet somehow we can transcend that by realizing that our idea of free will is false and there actually is no such thing. It might make a good comedy routine.

It has long been pointed out that if we assume that God is truly omniscient, the clear implication is that our actions are ultimately fixed, because the future is perfectly knowable to a being like God that is in a certain position. This simply argues to the "free will is an illusion" idea, thus brilliantly reconciling the theistic and atheistic viewpoints in a magnificent orchestration of cynicism and despair.

A thoughtful modern answer would examine. not whether "free will" exists, but what the term means. That would quickly point to a discussion on the mechanisms of decision-making. Whence derives our decision-making capacity? And what does it actually mean to decide something? What are the spiritual mechanisms (or for that matter, the biological mechanisms) of choosing?

Of course, we don't know these things, and I see no immediate path to finding them out. Thus, we are left with what is actually a very scientific approach: Select a model and see where it leads. Using the solipsistic "anthropic principle", we can say that, hey, here we are, and we have to choose our model, so we might as well choose a model that allows us to have a real choice. (That would be the "free will" model.) Any other choice would be self-negating.

Granted, then, that we have the ability to choose, how should we make choices? What should be our criteria? Cue the entrance of the entirety of Western—nay, human—philosophy.

[Jamie123]

18 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

And as far as the LDS idea that the fall was necessary, that is exactly how it happened.

Not exclusively an LDS idea: from the 15th Century hymn "Adam Lay Ybounden" we have:

Quote

Nay had the apple taken been, The apple taken been

Nay never Our Lady, A-been in Heaven nay Queen

Blessed be the time the apple taken was

Therefore we may singen "Deo gratias!"

I remember singing that in the church choir many years ago and thinking "So the Mormons aren't the only ones who think that!"

Edited August 21, 2023 by Jamie123

[The Folk Prophet]

I'd like to point out that the idea (upon which the humor of the comic is predicated) that upon eating the fruit that Adam and Eve immediately developed a perfect comprehensive understanding of good and evil is false. Rather, the idea of "knowledge" of good and evil for having eating the fruit stems from (no pun intended) a path that is chosen that would lead to knowledge of good and evil.

We, being fallen as Adam and Eve became upon eating the fruit, are STILL dependent on obedience to God. We do not understand what is good and evil without God.

[Carborendum]

51 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

Not exclusively an LDS idea: from the 15th Century hymn "Adam Lay Ybounden" we have:

I remember singing that in the church choir many years ago and thinking "So the Mormons aren't the only ones who think that!"

Cool.

[Jamie123]

1 hour ago, Vort said:

A thoughtful modern answer would examine. not whether "free will" exists, but what the term means.

I've struggled with this for many years. As a teenager I stumbled across Leibniz's "monadism" and the concept of "preestablished harmony" and utterly hated it. Years later I learned about Calvisnism* and hated that too. Predestination seemed to create a world which was dead - sterile - empty of joy. It reduced God from a loving Father to a mere clockmaker, with humans as mere cogs and gears and springs. Passages like Romans 9 gave me a nasty feeling that was what the Bible taught, which made me very irritable of people who quoted them with joy - like it was somehow a cause for rejoicing that we were "predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son" - while those horrible reprobates "in the World" were predestined to roast forever and no one could do anything to stop it happening. Ugh!

When I encountered the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints I wasted a good many missionary-hours debating with them about predestination (with them repeatedly telling me "this isn't what we're here to discuss!") I recall one Elder (who had never actually taught me) giving me an encouraging smile and saying "You're doing well aren't you, Jamie? You're Elect, aren't you, eh?" I mumbled something about "I don't know about that" but I really wanted to yell in his face "EVERYONE'S TOLD ME YOUR CHURCH DOESN'T BELIEVE IN ELECTION!!!!! AND NOW YOU ASK ME THAT?????" In some ways I wish I had - though it would have been mean.

But at that time, I still somehow had the idea that "free will" was merely a stochastic process. I was only just beginning to wonder why a stochastic process was any more "free" than a deterministic one? Once that thought did come, I learned to be a bit more cautions: I had a vague idea there might be something else that was neither deterministic nor stochastic: the only word I really had to describe it was "spiritual" though I never really understood what this word means. We use it to describe so many different things: there are certain combustible chemicals called "spirits", some of which are served in bars. There are the phrases "Show some spirit!" or "That's the spirit!" of "Spirit of the Age" (or Zeitgeist as the Germans say). There are the "spirits" of dead people that mediums (supposedly) communicate with through crystals and Tarot cards and other such tosh. (My inability to take such codswallop seriously was one reason (I suspect) why my wife left me.) And then there is the Holy Spirit. But the word originally it comes from the Latin "spiritu", which essentially means "air" (though with secondary supernatural meanings) - and is a translation of the Greek "pneuma" (same meaning) or the Hebrew "ruach" (same meanings).

I can't really finish this post, except to say that I still don't really understand what free will is.

*To be totally fair to John Calvin, what is currently bandied about as "Calvinism" isn't quite what he taught. He was never (I believe) very strong on the idea of predestination.

 

Edited August 21, 2023 by Jamie123

[Jamie123]

This is tangential to the subject, but it's interesting that in Revelation 22, only the Tree of Life is mentioned.

Quote

On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.

No mention of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, as in Genesis:

Quote

In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

I've long wondered if the Tree of Knowledge represents the Law and the Tree of Life represents Grace. Prior to the atonement Law was needed, but as a temporary measure. In the world ruled by Christ, the Law (and hence the tree that represents it) is no longer needed.

Edited August 21, 2023 by Jamie123

[Carborendum]

2 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

But at that time, I still somehow had the idea that "free will" was merely a stochastic process.

I actually brought up predestination vs foreordination in my Sunday School class yesterday.  There are two schools of thought in Christianity regarding predestination.  Actually, it is a spectrum between these two.  But I'll just treat them separately, and you can distribute the spectrum as you will.

The conceptual ideas behind them are at odds with each other. But if we were to provide an exact logical definitional difference, it would boil down to what we think about choice.

1. God sets stuff up like a giant clock.  While we do have free will, God has already put things in motion, including when we are born and how we are raised such that all our interactions are already planned.  What we learn from those interactions are already planned.  This would include whether we accept Jesus as our Savior. 

So, really we're manipulated into making the choices we do.  And if that is true, we may as well not really have free will. God manipulates us into whatever choices we make.  And by such manipulation, He has already chosen who will be saved and who won't.

2. It doesn't matter if we have free will or not.  Our choices don't make any difference between who is saved and who is not.  None of us is righteous.  So, to compare Adolf Hitler to Mother Theresa is about even.  God will randomly choose whom He will to be the elect (the saved) and all the rest will go to hell because God chose it to be so.

I don't mean this to come off as sarcastic.  This is just an efficient way to put it.

We soundly reject #2 above.  I tend to think that LDS belief is somewhat close to #1 above.  But the critical point is that free will (Agency) is very real, and it can change our destiny.  Whether God has foreknowledge or not (He does) isn't a factor in the very real existence of Agency.

How can we say there is a logical difference between that idea and #1 above?  There is no human logic that will suffice.  We simply don't have the knowledge, the wisdom, or the intelligence to understand the difference.  But I take it on faith that free will is very real.  And it is our exercise of it that will help us to choose Christ.

Edited August 21, 2023 by Carborendum

[Vort]

18 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

It doesn't matter if we have free will or not.  Our choices don't make any difference between who is saved and who is not.  None of us is righteous.  So, to compare Adolf Hitler to Mother Theresa is about even.  God will randomly choose whom He will to be the elect (the saved) and all the rest will go to hell because God chose it to be so.

[estradling75]

I am not much of a philosopher... But when I step into that role I think the question of Free Will is not the right question.  The real question is "Is the all knowing, all powerful being Just?"  Everyone is worried about this being's judgement... If they are Just then we can not be punished for things we did not/do not/can not control.  If we are to be judged and the Judge is Just then we must have freewill on what we are being judged for.  If we are not being Judged... or the Judge is not Just.. then nothing we do matters.

[mikbone]

Probably why the first and likely most important covenant in the temple is the Law of Obedience.

No lawyers needed.

Edited August 21, 2023 by mikbone

[Traveler]

8 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

This is tangential to the subject, but it's interesting that in Revelation 22, only the Tree of Life is mentioned.

No mention of the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, as in Genesis:

I've long wondered if the Tree of Knowledge represents the Law and the Tree of Life represents Grace. Prior to the atonement Law was needed, but as a temporary measure. In the world ruled by Christ, the Law (and hence the tree that represents it) is no longer needed.

The Tree of Life is the "Word of G-d" -- Jesus Christ 

 

As for the Eden epoch, it seems that we keep rehashing old questions.  I will give my opinion on this subject.

First – I do not understand why eating the apple is considered the original sin.  Before the problem of Adam and Eve in Eden, Lucifer was exiled from heaven with no opportunity to be pardoned or redeemed.   If there was an original sin – it was Lucifer that invented, it and carried it out.  I am convinced that anyone that labels the transgression of Adam and Eve as the original sin does not understand scripture or true doctrine.         

Second – the cartoon demonstrates a very obvious logic conundrum that many have in trying to understand scripture.  Obviously, Adam and Eve could not be “JUSTLY” held accountable for something that they did not understand.  Many “Christian” denominations have a problem if they believe G-d is just (let alone merciful) and sentenced Adam and Eve to death over something that they did not understand.   If you were to treat your children like that – an intelligent and just society would rightfully take your children away from you.

Third – The tree in question was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  It amazes me that no one seems to ask the question – What is the knowledge of good and what is the knowledge of evil?  The answer to this question is the reason for including the Eden epoch in scripture.  It seems to me that if someone cannot answer that question that they have failed to understand the purpose of the Eden scripture.  The answer is obvious to me.  Death is the knowledge of evil.  The atonement of Christ (including the resurrection – the entire divine plan of the salvation of man) is the knowledge of good.

I believe I ought to explain something about death and the atonement.  Every human will experience death and the atonement – even a newborn child that dies before they experience any sin themselves – still experiences the wages of sin, which is death.   If anyone has a better understanding of the knowledge of good and evil – I am open to what else someone may think and why they think it so.

I would add one last notion to this post.  Only in the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the truth of the divine plan of Salvation taught.  It is the reason that a restoration was necessary in these last-days in preparation of the return of the Messiah.

 

The Traveler

Edited August 22, 2023 by Traveler

[Jamie123]

3 hours ago, Traveler said:

The Tree of Life is the "Word of G-d" -- Jesus Christ 

I don't think that's so very different from what I suggested.

[Jamie123]

3 hours ago, Traveler said:

human will experience death and the atonement – even a newborn child that dies before they experience any sin themselves – still experiences the wages of sin, which is death.

To equate this with physical death would imply that the story is literal. I've always taken "death" in the story to refer to alianation from God - the breaking of the relationship between Man and God, which required Christ's atonement to restore.

[JohnsonJones]

So, when my children were little they really liked cookies.  I knew if I put the cookie jar on the table, invariably someone would eat them (or the claims that this invisible being that no one knew was eating them was true).  I already knew the outcome.  Did that rob my children of their free will.  Did it mean that by putting it there they were FORCED to do what I knew some of them would do?

I would say that KNOWING how something will happen is different than someone ACTING TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. 

It is possible to know the outcome and still allow someone to have free will.

[Jamie123]

18 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

So, when my children were little they really liked cookies.  I knew if I put the cookie jar on the table, invariably someone would eat them (or the claims that this invisible being that no one knew was eating them was true).  I already knew the outcome.  Did that rob my children of their free will.  Did it mean that by putting it there they were FORCED to do what I knew some of them would do?

I would say that KNOWING how something will happen is different than someone ACTING TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. 

It is possible to know the outcome and still allow someone to have free will.

Did you actually forbid them from taking the cookies? (Your post doesn't make that very clear.)

As a kid I was forever taking cookies out of the cookie jar. (We'd have said "biscuits out of the biscuit barrel", but it means the same thing.) Taking cookies was not forbidden exactly, but if a grown-up saw you do it they would say something boring like "don't ruin your appetite", which spoiled the enjoyment. So you tended to do it surreptitiously. I can well remember the pleasure of getting a bunch of cookies from the cookie jar to my bedroom with no grown-up knowing about it. Cookies always tasted better when they'd been "well smuggled"!

P.S. Did you know that John Wayne based his on-screen persona on Wyatt Earp, whom he met in 1928?

Edited August 24, 2023 by Jamie123

[Carborendum]

4 minutes ago, Jamie123 said:

As a kid I was forever taking cookies out of the cookie jar. (We'd have said "biscuits out of the biscuit barrel", but it means the same thing.) Taking cookies was not forbidden exactly, but if a grown-up saw you do it they would say something boring like "don't ruin your appetite", which spoiled the enjoyment. So you tended to do it surreptitiously. I can well remember the pleasure of getting a bunch of cookies from the cookie jar to my bedroom with no grown-up knowing about it. Cookies always tasted better when they'd been "well smuggled"!

My kids have exhibited a completely different phenomenon. 

After a Halloween haul, I told all my kids that they could eat it all in a day or two, and they would suffer greatly with their health, and they would run out of candy really fast.  Or they could limit themselves to a small amount of candy each day and they would have candy all year long.

All but one of them understood at a young age what that meant.  And they were very happy.  My one son who ate it all in a couple of days was miserable when he ran out.  All the other kids had candy.  He didn't.

When Easter came around, that last son learned his lesson.  Now, they have a contest to see how long they can make their candy last.  They all have candy stashes that are YEARS-old.  Now, it isn't even about eating candy.  Their "treasure trove" is a status symbol in our family.

[JohnsonJones]

4 hours ago, Jamie123 said:

Did you actually forbid them from taking the cookies? (Your post doesn't make that very clear.)

As a kid I was forever taking cookies out of the cookie jar. (We'd have said "biscuits out of the biscuit barrel", but it means the same thing.) Taking cookies was not forbidden exactly, but if a grown-up saw you do it they would say something boring like "don't ruin your appetite", which spoiled the enjoyment. So you tended to do it surreptitiously. I can well remember the pleasure of getting a bunch of cookies from the cookie jar to my bedroom with no grown-up knowing about it. Cookies always tasted better when they'd been "well smuggled"!

P.S. Did you know that John Wayne based his on-screen persona on Wyatt Earp, whom he met in 1928?

 

I didn't know that John Wayne based his persona off of Wyatt Earp.  That's interesting to hear. 

The kids knew they weren't supposed to get into the cookies without permission.  They could get them if we said they could, but they could not just go and grab them.  It always amused me to see the amount of cookies drop throughout the week until there would be 3-4 left.  No one would touch them when they got to that amount, but before that it seemed the cookies would just magically disappear.  At least when the kids were pretty young.  It didn't happen so much once they got older. 

[Jamie123]

On 8/24/2023 at 11:13 PM, JohnsonJones said:

 

I didn't know that John Wayne based his persona off of Wyatt Earp.  That's interesting to hear. 

The kids knew they weren't supposed to get into the cookies without permission.  They could get them if we said they could, but they could not just go and grab them.  It always amused me to see the amount of cookies drop throughout the week until there would be 3-4 left.  No one would touch them when they got to that amount, but before that it seemed the cookies would just magically disappear.  At least when the kids were pretty young.  It didn't happen so much once they got older. 

The biggest problem in "cookie smuggling" was getting the lid off without making a noise. This was easy in principle, because the biscuit-barrel lid - though it was metal- rested on top of the barrel and only had to be lifted (gravity providing the only resistance). Fortunately, the knob in the middle of the lid had long come off and been lost, so you had to get your fingernails underneath to lift it. Fortunately though, the lid had been dropped so many times that its edge was bent and buckled, so there were plenty of places where you could get a purchase. The trick was not to let it "clank" against the side as you lifted it. The absolute disaster was to let it slip completely and have it clatter on the floor, telling everyone in the house that you were after the cookies. (This happened often enough to cause the aforementioned dents around the edge.)

It was another matter in my grandparents' house. The biscuit barrel there was a spherical beaten-brass affair, with a lid that fitted snugly and tightly, and needed quite a tug to remove. It was no use asking for permission, because although grandparents are always indulgent enough to say "yes", parents (if they are within earshot) have a way of chipping in with "Why don't you have an apple of a pear instead?" (As if the answer to that question wasn't obvious!)

The grandparental biscuit barrel was always on the sideboard in the dining room. The trick was to wait until all the grownups (parents and grandparents) were in the sitting room, with with the sitting-and dining-room doors both closed. My grandparents' always had Crawfords' Cheddars, which I loved: you had to make sure you didn't take enough of them for their reduction in number to be noticed.

Our biscuit barrel would have looked something like this when it was new:

However, I do not remember it being new. It must have been acquired long before I was born.

Which is about all I have to say on the subject of biscuits and biscuit barrels. I now need a new excuse to avoid doing something useful...

 

Edited September 8, 2023 by Jamie123