I'm a big fan of argument analysis, and in William Lobdells post he listed several common Christian heuristics for dealing with the problem of apostasy. In the comments section of his article you can see one of our christian guests using some other common heuristics which I've taken a moment to analyze. I welcome William, and I hope he'll consider joining DC as an author.
This is a list of some of the heuristics William handled in his post:
Criticism: You’re anti-religious or anti-Christian.
Criticism: You are trying to lead people away from God and/or Jesus Christ
Criticism: You’ve confused the sinfulness of man with a perfect God.
Criticism: You were never really a serious Christian, so you didn’t really lose your faith, you never had it.
Criticism: You’ve consigned yourself to an eternity in hell
In the comments section of that article one of our guests used quite a few common heuristics laying them out nicely for an opportunity for analysis. In my view these heuristics are the result of various cognitive biases and unskilled thinking. A couple of Good books on that sort of thing are "How We Know What Isn't So" by Thomas Gilovich and "How To Think About Weird Things" by Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn
BLAMING THE VICTIM
"no you have not lost your faith – just exchanged it. "
This depends on belief being a voluntary action. Try believing that the sun won't come up tomorrow, or the sun will not set around the time its forecast. I can't do it, and I don't think anyone else can either. One can commit to an idea, but that is completely different than having a belief or an emotional investment in it. I can say "Sir" or "Ma'am" completely independent of whether I think its deserved or not.
One practical test of whether belief is inherently "rational" is to look through trivia game cards and choose the right answer from four or five options. Sometimes there will be one that the observer thinks right away could be the answer, then see another that the observer "feels" more likely to be the right answer. Then the observer is wrong and it was the one the observer thought before but didn't feel right. This kind of thing happens to me all the time. Belief, for the most part, is not consciously controlled, if at all.
"Without proof absolute either way to believe there is no God is as much of a leap of faith (more in my opinion) as to believe there is a God."
A lack of proof of something SHOULD cause a belief that a real world state is not being accurately described by the data. The commenter seems to say that the belief that the datum is unlikely given the lack of evidence is EQUIVALENT to believing it without evidence. The quality of the evidence is relevant only to the observer. The evidence may foster a belief in some people but not in others.
It is appropriate to doubt a datum that lacks support, it is NOT appropriate to commit to a datum that lacks support. The commenter faults the apostate for appropriately doubting the datum on the grounds that the evidence does not nurture, support, cause, sustain or warrant his belief. Therefore the commenter faults the apostate for not ARTIFICIALLY sustaining his emotional investment.
"I really think you are taking cheap (and intellectually weak) shots at the religion that has not met your expectations – by the way, did you meet Christ’s expectations of you?"
This depends on the apostates expectations being inappropriate. Were the apostates expectations inappropriate? If the apostates expectations were based on sound principles in support of the apostates value system then how can it be inappropriate? What expectations does the apostate have that is inappropriate? I think its safe to say that apostates are apostates because the evidence doesn't nurture, support, cause, sustain or warrant their belief. If the only definitive proof is some inner knowing about God, then if God is of One Mind, this inner knowing should be consistent across people and multiple denominations of Christianity are evidence that its not.
THE "TU QUOQUE" FALLACY
"But why should we expect more of Christians and their institutions than of secular organizations?"
"Secular organizations do it too!"
Is it inappropriate to fault something because other things exhibit the same behavior. But it can be appropriate to fault things even though the behavior is exhibited by the speaker. Should I NOT reprimand my child for vulgar language even though I do it too? My child has every right to reprimand me, and to further reprimand me for not being consistent. In this case, how Secular organizations behave has no bearing on how Christian organizations should behave.
THE CIRCULAR ARGUMENT
"it is rational to expect Christianity to attract more than its fair share – where else would they go in an unforgiving world?"
This presumes Christians are in a constant state of "recovery" from their sin. The guest concludes that there are more "sinners" in church exactly because "sinners" see church as place they can go to help overcome their "sin". Therefore it should be expected that one would find "sinners" in church. After all, people that go into an Ice Cream shop have a desire for and are lacking ice cream, so we would expect to find people lacking ice cream in the ice cream shop.
The missing qualifier in that reasoning scheme which disconfirms it and which is the qualifier that breaks the circle is the effectiveness of the ice cream shop in providing Ice Cream. People do get their ice cream because the ice cream shop is effective at selling it to them. So if customers of ice cream never left the store, we should see more of the customers that have had ice cream, and can get it anytime they want and less of those that want it, do not have it and have not had it.
I'll concede that we are all in constant state of recovery from undesirable human behavior. That is what education and learning how to associate in a society is all about. But this leads to the question of HOW EFFECTIVE CHRISTIANITY IS at dealing with undesirable Human Behavior (Sin) compared to other methods. When you assess the effectiveness and efficiency of Christianity on dealing with undesirable human behavior, its evident that it has no advantage.
"[the apostate says] 'I indeed was a serious Christian' Well you certainly went through some of the motions!"
This asserts that though the apostates behavior was consistent with a true believer, his apostasy proves that he never really believed at all. This missing qualifier which disconfirms the statement and breaks the circle is the intent behind the actions. What benefit would the NON-BELIEVER have in ACTING LIKE A BELIEVER? Obviously to act like a Christian is a result of believing oneself to be a Christian or believing their is some benefit to pretending to be a Christian. To say that someone pretended to be a Christian for over a decade and then decided to renounce it and advertise it requires some forethought and premeditation to what benefit? To put oneself into an undesirable minority? Not bloody likely.
THE SLIDING WINDOW
"have fallen into what seems to be a common atheist trap on giving up religion – finding in the literalistic interpretation of the bible anything that can be criticised."
The guests seems to be saying that though the Bible is the revealed word of God, it shouldn't be taken at face value. Its only accurate so far, but they won't define any parameters. Bring some parameters for how to measure what is an accurate representation of a real world state and what is not to the table and there might be a case for a non-literal interpretation. As it stands, it is not clear that the author of the scripture did not intend for it to be taken literally except where there is an obvious use of metaphor such as in the case of parables.
"Given the social context of His time there were many things Jesus did not directly seek out against – capital punishment etc."
This seems to presume that it was somehow inappropriate for God on Earth to speak out against slavery, or not killing witches. If Jesus was God on Earth, then in order to Qualify as God he must have been the ultimate authority, so how would it have been inappropriate? Is it NOT a sound principle that the most qualified should lead, or that the authority should exercise that authority, or that beings should be prevented from intentionally or otherwise harming themselves or others? To make the guests claim tenable the criteria for appropriate behavior in an authority and the criteria for appropriate behavior by the observer of suffering must be modified.
THE SELF-CENTERED STANDARD FOR CHRISTIANITY
"The problem you seem to have faced was that when you realized God was not in the beliefs you held you seem to have decided there is no God rather than that God might be different from what you believed or wanted Him to be."
This is the old "I Got Mine, Why Can't You Get Yours?" argument. If the apostate understood Christianity the way our guest understands it, the apostate would still be a believer. Meaning that if the Apostate would ignore disconfirming qualifiers in the standard Christian reasoning schemes, then they would still be a believer. I Agree.
Link to all my articles
Showing posts with label Adam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adam. Show all posts
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Gen. 2-3, Normal-form Game Matrix Shows That God Chose The Worst Outcome
When presented with a choice of outcomes the rational decision maker will choose the outcome with a positive payoff, but not God.
- God is Omnipotent
- God made the universe
- God made the world
- God made Adam and Eve.
- God is Omniscient.
- The best way to understand something is to build it.
God must have known the properties and tolerances of everything he created, just like a baker and just like an engineer. Since he is omniscient and has a plan, the events that played out in the Garden Of Eden should have come as no surprise to Him.
DECISION AND GAME THEORY
Decision Theory and Game theory were developed to help make predictions about outcomes and analyze how certain outcomes come about. It is used heavily in economics and evolutionary biology. Using one aspect of them, we can assign relative values to events, organize them in a matrix, iterate through all the possible outcomes and derive a value that is equal to the relative value of the outcome. The outcome with highest value is the "dominant strategy", any outcome lower that that dominant strategy is called a "dominated strategy".
"Stochastic Dominance: If action A has a better payoff than action B under each individual state of nature, then we say that action B is stochastically dominated by action A. If the payoff matrix truly represents every thing the decision maker hopes (or fears) to receive from the decision in question, then no rational decision maker will ever choose to perform action B."
Whalen, Thomas. "Payoff Matrix and Decision Rule", Whalens.org. Date of Internet Publication Unknown. Sponsoring organization unknown. 07 Sep. 2008. [http://www.whalens.org/Sofia/choice/matrix.htm].
OTHER RELATED LINKS
- Wikipedia, Stochastic Dominance
- Answers.com, Stochastic Dominance
IF ADAM HAD GOTTEN SICK AND DIED AFTER EVE HAD GOTTEN PREGNANT, THEY PROBABLY WOULD HAVE LEARNED THEIR LESSON AND ADAMS OFFSPRING WOULD HAVE POPULATED THE WORLD ANYWAY.
Adam and Eve are like a cake. The Baker knows what it takes to make them turn out a certain way. God must have known what it takes to make Adam and Eve turn out a certain way. For example if god had made the fruit smell like week old road kill with maggots living in it, chances are they would not have eaten the fruit or would have gotten sick and died. If they had gotten sick, threw up and one of them died, then that probably would have taught them the lesson God wanted them to learn without any ambiguity, but since the fruit was fashioned in a way that appealed to them, they ate it. In fact god built desire into Eve and therefore into Adam (since Eve was derived from Adam) and since she didn't know the difference between good and evil, she couldn't know that disobeying god was evil. However, she did have the desire and an agent telling her what she desired and liked to hear (1, 2, 3). Liking something is neither right or wrong, good or evil, it just simply is. Separate the "like" from what is right and wrong. Good and Evil, for the most part, are cultural judgments. They underwent some sort of transformation which caused them to realize they were naked, good from evil and introduced sin into themselves and therefore indirectly to the world.
KEY EVENTS IN THE FALL OF MAN RELATIVE TO THIS ARTICLE
- God made the man
- planted the garden
- then made the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil grow in the garden
- and placed the man in it
- warned the man about the tree
- by telling him he would die using the word die in an ambiguous non-standard way.
in that order.
2:7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
2:8 The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.
2:9 Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
2:15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
2:16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;
2:17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."
DERIVING THE NORMAL-FORM GAME / PAYOFF MATRIX
To derive the Normal-form game payoff matrix, we use analytical schemes (AKA "thinking tools") known as a Time-line chart, a weighted ranking matrix, a causal diagram and an event tree. It would take too much time and space to do some of them here, but I have already done some of them in my other articles referenced below. However, since they aren't very complicated, we can do them in our heads for now and create the matrices. We broke the events down and sorted them chronologically. Then we made an event tree, a causal diagram and then assigned values to them in the weighted ranking scale.
In the weighted ranking, it is necessary to place a value on events relative to each other. In other words, an obedient Adam in the garden is more valuable than a disobedient Adam in the garden, so the Obedient Adam gets a higher value. Systematically iterating through the possible combination's yielded the weighted ranking scale shown below.
Now we derive the columns and rows based on the causal flow diagram and the event trees to create our Normal-form game / Payoff Matrix.
In the first row and first column cell, we can see that the combination of "No Adam" ( equivalent to 0 according to our weighted ranking) and the "Tree in" [the garden] (equivalent to 1 according to our weighted ranking) results in a score of 0, 1 for a total value of 1. In the second cell in that row, we get a score of 0, 0 for a total value of zero. The chart below reflects the total value with regard to Adam in each row. As we can see, God clearly chose the worst outcome for Adam in his plan.
The question we are left with after thinking this through is "why?". Some possible reasons are
- that the story is folklore
- that god artificially created a problem so he could solve it as Jesus
I'll explore more of them in my follow on articles.
REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING
Articles supporting Non-Historicity of Adam and Eve
A. Disqualifying Adam And Eve
Articles supporting Internal Inconsistency in the story of the Fall of Man
1. Gen. 2:16-3:24, Adam And Eve Were Mentally Incompetent
2. Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey
3. Gen. 2:7-3:6, Adams Sin Was An Emergent Behavior
4. Gen. 2:6-9, God Ignored Adams Admonishment Option
PRIOR COMMENTS FROM FIRST POST DATE
This post was reformatted and the comments were lost. It was reposted and the comments were included as part of the text.
bahramthered said...
How many times are we going to debate the graden around here?
Lets move onto something new before people start moving onto new blogs.
3:47 PM, September 07, 2008
oliver said...
While I do appreciate the use of Game Theory, we have to realize that Game Theory will only convince those who are Game Theorist (i.e. not people like my mother who will read the Genesis account and then tell me a beautiful story about why it's bad to disobey God.)
4:20 PM, September 07, 2008
charles w. said...
Thanks for another useless post, Lee.
4:25 PM, September 07, 2008
xxxx said...
No one is forcing you to do anything, and I recommend that you read other blogs to make you a more well rounded person. Are blogs mutually exclusive? If you don't understand the significance of something, just ask.
I'm writing for the fence-sitter and casual believer.
There's no point in preaching to the choir is there?
do me a favor. Write out romans five (so you understand it as well as possible), then cross out all references to adam and tell me what you have left over.
FYI, I have a plan and a strategy for this argument that takes me out to thanksgiving if I do one a week. After that I'll move on to Cain and Abel and keep on until I get to the end of Gen. 11.
So I guess I won't be your favorite blogger.
In my opinion christianity is never going to be debunked until the source is discredited. Fighting a battle on multiple fronts, rarely succeeds. Debating hard to grasp concepts that leave wiggle room for christians, in my view, is not going to do it, especially when some of them don't get that fact that god having a plan and being omniscient negates free will.
Adam is at the root of christianity. As long as there is credibility for adam, there is credibility for christianity.
4:36 PM, September 07, 2008
xxxx said...
forewarned is forearmed.
Just so you know,
here is my plan for "the fall of man" articles for the coming months. the date in brackets is the estimated publish date, the name of the article follows along with its viewpoint.
[20080914] Blaming the Victim, psychology related
[20080921] God Caused The Problem of Sin so He could Solve it, psychology related
[20080928] Talking Snake, humor, paleontology related
[20081005] God Was Not Omniscient in the Garden, Logic Related
[20081012] Comparing The History Of The Needle, anthropolgy related
[20081019] Comparing The History of Agriculture, anthropology related
[20081026] Sex and Death, You Can't Argue With Success, psychology related
[20081102] Adam and Eve are FOLKLORE, summary of the previous articles
[20081109] Analyzing Romans 5, argument analysis, informal logic related
4:49 PM, September 07, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi Oliver,
I'm not a game theorist either, but if I get it, so will other people.
I think that you do a dis-service to your grandmother by underestimating her.
people surprise you when you think you know what they're capable of, which weakens your position.
the take home is that we can see by thinking it through, that the outcome was what was intended. Now we have to figure out why.
and besides that, I'm trying to introduce some tools of thinking and demonstrate how to apply them to real life problems.
5:12 PM, September 07, 2008
richard said...
This theory and the post in general is nonsensical to say the least!
6:23 PM, September 07, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi Richard,
well, you did say the least,
so why is it 'nonsensical'?
6:33 PM, September 07, 2008
stan, the half-truth teller said...
I'm just guessing, but perhaps Richard thinks it nonsensical because he doesn't get it?
Perhaps he doesn't understand how it could be that god's alleged decision to create this world is worse than choosing not to create anything at all.
Perhaps he doesn't realize that because he chose to create (assuming the existence of god for the sake of argument), god is culpable in both the successes and failures of his creations (if he is omnipotent and omniscient).
Perhaps, rather than any of this, he is lazy and a fool.
--
Stan
8:42 PM, September 07, 2008
bahramthered said...
Lee; I like this blog since I've been here I've learned a lot. New arguments and such.
But still on the garden I havn't learned anything in the last two posts and honestly am starting to get bored with it.
I don't know about anyone else but I don't have time to keep coming back to blog that's not exploring something new.
But it's your blog (among others).
8:48 PM, September 07, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi Bahram,
what topics would like to see explored?
brainstorm a little bit, give me some topics.
maybe i have something in draft that I can finish up post for you. I have lots of scraps of ideas and notes in my googledocs.
12:20 AM, September 08, 2008
tigg13 said...
I say, keep it up Lee!
Providing several arguments from different sides of the question only solidifies your position.
And providing alternate arguments just makes those of us who find ourselves crossing swords with christians better prepared.
1:26 AM, September 08, 2008
xxxx said...
tiggers are wonderful things!
your check is in the mail.
;-)
6:42 AM, September 08, 2008
bahramthered said...
Tig; last couple of these feel the same, just explained differently. Least to me.
Lee;
So far your adam theory been intresting I just think it's kinda beating a dead horse at this point.
Topics I'd like to explore;
Why the bible is so pro slavery.
God's war with the egyptian gods (I only know a little based on a couple semi factual movies)
Some of the more ridiculous genisis claims (always fun). Mainly what happens after the ark (Like a drunk Noah cursing one of his kids into slavery forever and god backing him on it)
And exactly how god reconciles the claim that witchcraft (the wiccan kind) is evil
7:25 AM, September 08, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi bahram,
if you want to see what has been written on DC about a topic, you can use the search field in the top left of the screen.
- here is a link to all the articles with a "slavery" label
- I've never heard of gods war with egyptian gods, maybe you could be more specific?
- I plan on doing an article on why the noahs ark is folklore, but you can see what my schedule is so it'll be a while
- do a search for witches in the search field.
another option is that you can research one of these topics on your own and submit an article to us for publishing. If you're interested in that, I'll give you an email address to submit it to.
8:15 AM, September 08, 2008
rich said...
Hi Lee,
I wanted to explore a possibility that the assigned values for Adam in obey and Adam in disobey. If these values are based on a payoff, then what payoff do you base these values on? It seems as though they are placed on Adam obeying and remaining in the garden and disobeying and being kicked out. So if that is the payoff then I would agree with the values. But if the payoff is something further down the road then the garden, maybe it changes things.
First you must realize that I am looking at this from LDS doctrine, which differs a bit from evangelist doctrine with regard to the fall. I did post a link to another blog article in one of your other posts that I hope you had time to read.
LDS say that Adam was in a state of innocence in the garden, didn't know good from evil, they wouldn't have a reference to understand joy and sorrow, maybe some other differences. They would remain in this state until they gained knowledge of good and evil. I also began to argue before that they didn't understand that they were naked, which is a key factor, in having offspring. I would agree that at some point they could figure out how to have kids but then the kids would be in the same innocent state.
In the plan of salvation that I know, our goal is to become like God. We have to have the knowledge of good and evil, be able to make choices and learn through those choices that consequences come of all choices, good or bad. As we make bad choices, we see the negative consequences and make changes. If we make good choices we see good consequences. We gain a working knowledge of good and evil, through the choices we make here. If we succeed in learning to make good choices and correct the mistakes, then we can become perfect, eventually, like God is. So if we are left in the garden in a state of innocence without the knowledge and experience necessary to progress.
You spoke before about your dogs. I also have dogs, and I leave them inside when I am not home. I hate coming home and cleaning piles up. Lots of people told me to use the old newspaper rub their nose in the pile method to train the dogs. I don’t like that because I doubt the dog wants poop on his nose. Instead when I come home and find a pile, I give the dog no attention, completely ignore it, since he likes to play and have my undivided attention, this is not desirable to the dog. When I come home to no pile, I over emphasize my attention and play time with him. It wasn’t very long before I had no stinking piles to clean up when I got home. This is true freedom to the dog, he can roam around the house when I am gone, doesn’t have to be locked in some room, and I can trust that he will want to please.
Now in your dog story, you effectively removed your dogs from the kitchen of Eden, and keep them from entering the kitchen, some might even suggest that you force them out because they have no choice in the matter, so they won’t put their nose on the table of life. I’m not proposing that I am a better dog God than you, but your dogs are restricted in their behavior, being removed from the room, and they have no choice but to chew toys or sleep until you grant them access to the kitchen again. I’m sure you would rather have the dogs free to come and go as they please and choose not to put their nose on the table. Once again, true freedom to the dogs.
God would like the same from us, being able to have every choice available to us and be trusted to always make the right choice. Coming here, removed from his presence, to learn the consequences of our choices is our time to learn from our mistakes, keep our noses off the table and piles off the floor because we choose to.
If this is correct then I would swap the two values because being innocently oblivious to the knowledge of good and evil means we would never be able to become like God, which would be more desirable than existing in a garden forever without experiencing joy.
3:11 PM, September 08, 2008
rich said...
Just a note I thought of, the same trick hasn't worked to keep my dog of the furniture while I'm gone.
3:13 PM, September 08, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi Rich,
welcome back,
It sounds like you are a better Dog God than I am and a better Dog God than god is.
How does the way you handle your dogs compare to the way god handled adam?
It sounds like your dogs get the extended version of the prisoners dilemma, they get a chance to react to subsequent encounters. Like a training phase or something. Or have I misunderstood?
4:28 PM, September 08, 2008
xxxx said...
doGs will be doGs won't they? what to do, what to do?
4:45 PM, September 08, 2008
anonymous said...
I think the problem here is that virtually every mainline religion that maintains the Hebrew scriptures regard this story as allegorical? I always thought that the main idea here is that there is that we are imperfect and incapable of perfecting ourselves. I rather like that "lesson".
If you are off arguing with the crazies about a literal reading of the Old Testament, I can think of a billion other ways to spend time productively. On the other hand, if you can read a literary myth for its intrinsic worth, perhaps you'd contribute something useful.
9:37 PM, September 08, 2008
evan said...
Anonymous ... you're simply wrong.
40% of AMERICANS believe the earth is less than 10000 years old.
That means a majority of Christians in the US (about 75-80% of the US population is Christian) believe in the literal story of Genesis.
If you think we ought to argue against a minority position rather than target overtly crazy beliefs that are held by the majority of Christians, you don't understand the purpose of this site.
11:08 PM, September 08, 2008
xxxxx said...
anonymous,
yea, what evan said,
and moreover you didn't read this comment above
"do me a favor. Write out romans five (so you understand it as well as possible), then cross out all references to adam and tell me what you have left over. ....Adam is at the root of christianity. As long as there is credibility for adam, there is credibility for christianity."
if you cross out all references to adam, what you have is an empty assertion that the killing of Jesus had some mystical meaning.
If you've ever worked in security, crowd control, you know that, theoretically, to handle a riot, you have to take out the leaders. That was a tumultuous time in jerusalem, the romans needed to maintain control, and so when jesus showed up with his gang of merry men carrying swords, the authorities caught him and hung him out to dry.
Paul used some pre-existing biases to create this rationalization out of cognitive dissonance that created a nice neat frame put Jesus in for the rest.
does that clear it up for you?
Its not about arguing over myths, its about stopping FRAUD.
11:30 PM, September 08, 2008
richard said...
Bahramhered,
Yes, I agree. To quote Einstein, "Insanity means doing the same thing over and over expecting different results."
12:21 AM, September 09, 2008
xxxx said...
Richard,
of course you would because you have no rebuttal to my argument so you just attack me personally.
typical christian strategy.
Might makes right. Biblical principle.
12:24 AM, September 09, 2008
richard said...
Ha, ha, do you honestly believe that you can disprove the God of the universe by using a silly game matrix?
12:43 AM, September 09, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi Richard,
bad move #2,
ridicule.
Got any rebuttals handy?
1:21 AM, September 09, 2008
xxxx said...
oh and richard,
in case you didn't get the memo,
"disprove" presumes there is something proven. No one has proven any "god of the universe", but feel free to try your hand at it. Maybe you can get him to roust me out of bed in the morning.
3:57 AM, September 09, 2008
xxxx said...
Triablogue has a response to this article. They really seem to have put a lot of work into it, but in the end its really only nay-saying.
Heres the link to it.
However it is a good example of an argument from ignorance premised by a conclusion drawn from unverifiable sources.
I recommend you go take a look at it and see what I had to say about it.
9:40 AM, September 09, 2008
- God is Omnipotent
- God made the universe
- God made the world
- God made Adam and Eve.
- God is Omniscient.
- The best way to understand something is to build it.
God must have known the properties and tolerances of everything he created, just like a baker and just like an engineer. Since he is omniscient and has a plan, the events that played out in the Garden Of Eden should have come as no surprise to Him.
DECISION AND GAME THEORY
Decision Theory and Game theory were developed to help make predictions about outcomes and analyze how certain outcomes come about. It is used heavily in economics and evolutionary biology. Using one aspect of them, we can assign relative values to events, organize them in a matrix, iterate through all the possible outcomes and derive a value that is equal to the relative value of the outcome. The outcome with highest value is the "dominant strategy", any outcome lower that that dominant strategy is called a "dominated strategy".
"Stochastic Dominance: If action A has a better payoff than action B under each individual state of nature, then we say that action B is stochastically dominated by action A. If the payoff matrix truly represents every thing the decision maker hopes (or fears) to receive from the decision in question, then no rational decision maker will ever choose to perform action B."
Whalen, Thomas. "Payoff Matrix and Decision Rule", Whalens.org. Date of Internet Publication Unknown. Sponsoring organization unknown. 07 Sep. 2008. [http://www.whalens.org/Sofia/choice/matrix.htm].
OTHER RELATED LINKS
- Wikipedia, Stochastic Dominance
- Answers.com, Stochastic Dominance
IF ADAM HAD GOTTEN SICK AND DIED AFTER EVE HAD GOTTEN PREGNANT, THEY PROBABLY WOULD HAVE LEARNED THEIR LESSON AND ADAMS OFFSPRING WOULD HAVE POPULATED THE WORLD ANYWAY.
Adam and Eve are like a cake. The Baker knows what it takes to make them turn out a certain way. God must have known what it takes to make Adam and Eve turn out a certain way. For example if god had made the fruit smell like week old road kill with maggots living in it, chances are they would not have eaten the fruit or would have gotten sick and died. If they had gotten sick, threw up and one of them died, then that probably would have taught them the lesson God wanted them to learn without any ambiguity, but since the fruit was fashioned in a way that appealed to them, they ate it. In fact god built desire into Eve and therefore into Adam (since Eve was derived from Adam) and since she didn't know the difference between good and evil, she couldn't know that disobeying god was evil. However, she did have the desire and an agent telling her what she desired and liked to hear (1, 2, 3). Liking something is neither right or wrong, good or evil, it just simply is. Separate the "like" from what is right and wrong. Good and Evil, for the most part, are cultural judgments. They underwent some sort of transformation which caused them to realize they were naked, good from evil and introduced sin into themselves and therefore indirectly to the world.
KEY EVENTS IN THE FALL OF MAN RELATIVE TO THIS ARTICLE
- God made the man
- planted the garden
- then made the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil grow in the garden
- and placed the man in it
- warned the man about the tree
- by telling him he would die using the word die in an ambiguous non-standard way.
in that order.
2:7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
2:8 The LORD God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed.
2:9 Out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
2:15 Then the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
2:16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;
2:17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."
DERIVING THE NORMAL-FORM GAME / PAYOFF MATRIX
To derive the Normal-form game payoff matrix, we use analytical schemes (AKA "thinking tools") known as a Time-line chart, a weighted ranking matrix, a causal diagram and an event tree. It would take too much time and space to do some of them here, but I have already done some of them in my other articles referenced below. However, since they aren't very complicated, we can do them in our heads for now and create the matrices. We broke the events down and sorted them chronologically. Then we made an event tree, a causal diagram and then assigned values to them in the weighted ranking scale.
In the weighted ranking, it is necessary to place a value on events relative to each other. In other words, an obedient Adam in the garden is more valuable than a disobedient Adam in the garden, so the Obedient Adam gets a higher value. Systematically iterating through the possible combination's yielded the weighted ranking scale shown below.
Now we derive the columns and rows based on the causal flow diagram and the event trees to create our Normal-form game / Payoff Matrix.
In the first row and first column cell, we can see that the combination of "No Adam" ( equivalent to 0 according to our weighted ranking) and the "Tree in" [the garden] (equivalent to 1 according to our weighted ranking) results in a score of 0, 1 for a total value of 1. In the second cell in that row, we get a score of 0, 0 for a total value of zero. The chart below reflects the total value with regard to Adam in each row. As we can see, God clearly chose the worst outcome for Adam in his plan.
The question we are left with after thinking this through is "why?". Some possible reasons are
- that the story is folklore
- that god artificially created a problem so he could solve it as Jesus
I'll explore more of them in my follow on articles.
REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING
Articles supporting Non-Historicity of Adam and Eve
A. Disqualifying Adam And Eve
Articles supporting Internal Inconsistency in the story of the Fall of Man
1. Gen. 2:16-3:24, Adam And Eve Were Mentally Incompetent
2. Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey
3. Gen. 2:7-3:6, Adams Sin Was An Emergent Behavior
4. Gen. 2:6-9, God Ignored Adams Admonishment Option
PRIOR COMMENTS FROM FIRST POST DATE
This post was reformatted and the comments were lost. It was reposted and the comments were included as part of the text.
bahramthered said...
How many times are we going to debate the graden around here?
Lets move onto something new before people start moving onto new blogs.
3:47 PM, September 07, 2008
oliver said...
While I do appreciate the use of Game Theory, we have to realize that Game Theory will only convince those who are Game Theorist (i.e. not people like my mother who will read the Genesis account and then tell me a beautiful story about why it's bad to disobey God.)
4:20 PM, September 07, 2008
charles w. said...
Thanks for another useless post, Lee.
4:25 PM, September 07, 2008
xxxx said...
No one is forcing you to do anything, and I recommend that you read other blogs to make you a more well rounded person. Are blogs mutually exclusive? If you don't understand the significance of something, just ask.
I'm writing for the fence-sitter and casual believer.
There's no point in preaching to the choir is there?
do me a favor. Write out romans five (so you understand it as well as possible), then cross out all references to adam and tell me what you have left over.
FYI, I have a plan and a strategy for this argument that takes me out to thanksgiving if I do one a week. After that I'll move on to Cain and Abel and keep on until I get to the end of Gen. 11.
So I guess I won't be your favorite blogger.
In my opinion christianity is never going to be debunked until the source is discredited. Fighting a battle on multiple fronts, rarely succeeds. Debating hard to grasp concepts that leave wiggle room for christians, in my view, is not going to do it, especially when some of them don't get that fact that god having a plan and being omniscient negates free will.
Adam is at the root of christianity. As long as there is credibility for adam, there is credibility for christianity.
4:36 PM, September 07, 2008
xxxx said...
forewarned is forearmed.
Just so you know,
here is my plan for "the fall of man" articles for the coming months. the date in brackets is the estimated publish date, the name of the article follows along with its viewpoint.
[20080914] Blaming the Victim, psychology related
[20080921] God Caused The Problem of Sin so He could Solve it, psychology related
[20080928] Talking Snake, humor, paleontology related
[20081005] God Was Not Omniscient in the Garden, Logic Related
[20081012] Comparing The History Of The Needle, anthropolgy related
[20081019] Comparing The History of Agriculture, anthropology related
[20081026] Sex and Death, You Can't Argue With Success, psychology related
[20081102] Adam and Eve are FOLKLORE, summary of the previous articles
[20081109] Analyzing Romans 5, argument analysis, informal logic related
4:49 PM, September 07, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi Oliver,
I'm not a game theorist either, but if I get it, so will other people.
I think that you do a dis-service to your grandmother by underestimating her.
people surprise you when you think you know what they're capable of, which weakens your position.
the take home is that we can see by thinking it through, that the outcome was what was intended. Now we have to figure out why.
and besides that, I'm trying to introduce some tools of thinking and demonstrate how to apply them to real life problems.
5:12 PM, September 07, 2008
richard said...
This theory and the post in general is nonsensical to say the least!
6:23 PM, September 07, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi Richard,
well, you did say the least,
so why is it 'nonsensical'?
6:33 PM, September 07, 2008
stan, the half-truth teller said...
I'm just guessing, but perhaps Richard thinks it nonsensical because he doesn't get it?
Perhaps he doesn't understand how it could be that god's alleged decision to create this world is worse than choosing not to create anything at all.
Perhaps he doesn't realize that because he chose to create (assuming the existence of god for the sake of argument), god is culpable in both the successes and failures of his creations (if he is omnipotent and omniscient).
Perhaps, rather than any of this, he is lazy and a fool.
--
Stan
8:42 PM, September 07, 2008
bahramthered said...
Lee; I like this blog since I've been here I've learned a lot. New arguments and such.
But still on the garden I havn't learned anything in the last two posts and honestly am starting to get bored with it.
I don't know about anyone else but I don't have time to keep coming back to blog that's not exploring something new.
But it's your blog (among others).
8:48 PM, September 07, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi Bahram,
what topics would like to see explored?
brainstorm a little bit, give me some topics.
maybe i have something in draft that I can finish up post for you. I have lots of scraps of ideas and notes in my googledocs.
12:20 AM, September 08, 2008
tigg13 said...
I say, keep it up Lee!
Providing several arguments from different sides of the question only solidifies your position.
And providing alternate arguments just makes those of us who find ourselves crossing swords with christians better prepared.
1:26 AM, September 08, 2008
xxxx said...
tiggers are wonderful things!
your check is in the mail.
;-)
6:42 AM, September 08, 2008
bahramthered said...
Tig; last couple of these feel the same, just explained differently. Least to me.
Lee;
So far your adam theory been intresting I just think it's kinda beating a dead horse at this point.
Topics I'd like to explore;
Why the bible is so pro slavery.
God's war with the egyptian gods (I only know a little based on a couple semi factual movies)
Some of the more ridiculous genisis claims (always fun). Mainly what happens after the ark (Like a drunk Noah cursing one of his kids into slavery forever and god backing him on it)
And exactly how god reconciles the claim that witchcraft (the wiccan kind) is evil
7:25 AM, September 08, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi bahram,
if you want to see what has been written on DC about a topic, you can use the search field in the top left of the screen.
- here is a link to all the articles with a "slavery" label
- I've never heard of gods war with egyptian gods, maybe you could be more specific?
- I plan on doing an article on why the noahs ark is folklore, but you can see what my schedule is so it'll be a while
- do a search for witches in the search field.
another option is that you can research one of these topics on your own and submit an article to us for publishing. If you're interested in that, I'll give you an email address to submit it to.
8:15 AM, September 08, 2008
rich said...
Hi Lee,
I wanted to explore a possibility that the assigned values for Adam in obey and Adam in disobey. If these values are based on a payoff, then what payoff do you base these values on? It seems as though they are placed on Adam obeying and remaining in the garden and disobeying and being kicked out. So if that is the payoff then I would agree with the values. But if the payoff is something further down the road then the garden, maybe it changes things.
First you must realize that I am looking at this from LDS doctrine, which differs a bit from evangelist doctrine with regard to the fall. I did post a link to another blog article in one of your other posts that I hope you had time to read.
LDS say that Adam was in a state of innocence in the garden, didn't know good from evil, they wouldn't have a reference to understand joy and sorrow, maybe some other differences. They would remain in this state until they gained knowledge of good and evil. I also began to argue before that they didn't understand that they were naked, which is a key factor, in having offspring. I would agree that at some point they could figure out how to have kids but then the kids would be in the same innocent state.
In the plan of salvation that I know, our goal is to become like God. We have to have the knowledge of good and evil, be able to make choices and learn through those choices that consequences come of all choices, good or bad. As we make bad choices, we see the negative consequences and make changes. If we make good choices we see good consequences. We gain a working knowledge of good and evil, through the choices we make here. If we succeed in learning to make good choices and correct the mistakes, then we can become perfect, eventually, like God is. So if we are left in the garden in a state of innocence without the knowledge and experience necessary to progress.
You spoke before about your dogs. I also have dogs, and I leave them inside when I am not home. I hate coming home and cleaning piles up. Lots of people told me to use the old newspaper rub their nose in the pile method to train the dogs. I don’t like that because I doubt the dog wants poop on his nose. Instead when I come home and find a pile, I give the dog no attention, completely ignore it, since he likes to play and have my undivided attention, this is not desirable to the dog. When I come home to no pile, I over emphasize my attention and play time with him. It wasn’t very long before I had no stinking piles to clean up when I got home. This is true freedom to the dog, he can roam around the house when I am gone, doesn’t have to be locked in some room, and I can trust that he will want to please.
Now in your dog story, you effectively removed your dogs from the kitchen of Eden, and keep them from entering the kitchen, some might even suggest that you force them out because they have no choice in the matter, so they won’t put their nose on the table of life. I’m not proposing that I am a better dog God than you, but your dogs are restricted in their behavior, being removed from the room, and they have no choice but to chew toys or sleep until you grant them access to the kitchen again. I’m sure you would rather have the dogs free to come and go as they please and choose not to put their nose on the table. Once again, true freedom to the dogs.
God would like the same from us, being able to have every choice available to us and be trusted to always make the right choice. Coming here, removed from his presence, to learn the consequences of our choices is our time to learn from our mistakes, keep our noses off the table and piles off the floor because we choose to.
If this is correct then I would swap the two values because being innocently oblivious to the knowledge of good and evil means we would never be able to become like God, which would be more desirable than existing in a garden forever without experiencing joy.
3:11 PM, September 08, 2008
rich said...
Just a note I thought of, the same trick hasn't worked to keep my dog of the furniture while I'm gone.
3:13 PM, September 08, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi Rich,
welcome back,
It sounds like you are a better Dog God than I am and a better Dog God than god is.
How does the way you handle your dogs compare to the way god handled adam?
It sounds like your dogs get the extended version of the prisoners dilemma, they get a chance to react to subsequent encounters. Like a training phase or something. Or have I misunderstood?
4:28 PM, September 08, 2008
xxxx said...
doGs will be doGs won't they? what to do, what to do?
4:45 PM, September 08, 2008
anonymous said...
I think the problem here is that virtually every mainline religion that maintains the Hebrew scriptures regard this story as allegorical? I always thought that the main idea here is that there is that we are imperfect and incapable of perfecting ourselves. I rather like that "lesson".
If you are off arguing with the crazies about a literal reading of the Old Testament, I can think of a billion other ways to spend time productively. On the other hand, if you can read a literary myth for its intrinsic worth, perhaps you'd contribute something useful.
9:37 PM, September 08, 2008
evan said...
Anonymous ... you're simply wrong.
40% of AMERICANS believe the earth is less than 10000 years old.
That means a majority of Christians in the US (about 75-80% of the US population is Christian) believe in the literal story of Genesis.
If you think we ought to argue against a minority position rather than target overtly crazy beliefs that are held by the majority of Christians, you don't understand the purpose of this site.
11:08 PM, September 08, 2008
xxxxx said...
anonymous,
yea, what evan said,
and moreover you didn't read this comment above
"do me a favor. Write out romans five (so you understand it as well as possible), then cross out all references to adam and tell me what you have left over. ....Adam is at the root of christianity. As long as there is credibility for adam, there is credibility for christianity."
if you cross out all references to adam, what you have is an empty assertion that the killing of Jesus had some mystical meaning.
If you've ever worked in security, crowd control, you know that, theoretically, to handle a riot, you have to take out the leaders. That was a tumultuous time in jerusalem, the romans needed to maintain control, and so when jesus showed up with his gang of merry men carrying swords, the authorities caught him and hung him out to dry.
Paul used some pre-existing biases to create this rationalization out of cognitive dissonance that created a nice neat frame put Jesus in for the rest.
does that clear it up for you?
Its not about arguing over myths, its about stopping FRAUD.
11:30 PM, September 08, 2008
richard said...
Bahramhered,
Yes, I agree. To quote Einstein, "Insanity means doing the same thing over and over expecting different results."
12:21 AM, September 09, 2008
xxxx said...
Richard,
of course you would because you have no rebuttal to my argument so you just attack me personally.
typical christian strategy.
Might makes right. Biblical principle.
12:24 AM, September 09, 2008
richard said...
Ha, ha, do you honestly believe that you can disprove the God of the universe by using a silly game matrix?
12:43 AM, September 09, 2008
xxxx said...
Hi Richard,
bad move #2,
ridicule.
Got any rebuttals handy?
1:21 AM, September 09, 2008
xxxx said...
oh and richard,
in case you didn't get the memo,
"disprove" presumes there is something proven. No one has proven any "god of the universe", but feel free to try your hand at it. Maybe you can get him to roust me out of bed in the morning.
3:57 AM, September 09, 2008
xxxx said...
Triablogue has a response to this article. They really seem to have put a lot of work into it, but in the end its really only nay-saying.
Heres the link to it.
However it is a good example of an argument from ignorance premised by a conclusion drawn from unverifiable sources.
I recommend you go take a look at it and see what I had to say about it.
9:40 AM, September 09, 2008
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Adams Sin Was An Emergent Behavior
The best way to understand something is to build it.
In my recent articles I have been facilitating discussion on Adam and Eve and I have been collecting explanations about how Adam came to disobey god. This article identifies the parts of those arguments and diagrams one of them, and tries to tease out whether Adam could in any reasonable way be held accountable by his maker for his transgression and the resultant overall negative result that emerges from Gods Creation. However if we take Adam and God out of the equation, then the properties that emerge from nature are what we should expect once we understand them, and labeling them "good" or "bad" outside of any context becomes meaningless.
Basically it is self-organization or a property or behavior of a thing that results from the combination of all its other properties and its interaction with its environment.
- Hurricanes
- Termite "Cathedrals"
- Patterns in plants in nature
- Color
- Patterns in Clouds
- Friction
- Classical Mechanics
- Statistical Mechanics
- Weather
- Patterned ground
- Temperature
- Convection
- Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology
- Flocking
- Herds
- Patterns that birds make when they fly together
- Fractals
CULTURE
- Traffic Patterns
- Forming Lines
- Cities
- Political systems
- Economics
- The Stock Market
- The World Wide Web
- Placement of pathways in building complexes
MATHEMATICS
- Mobius Strip
- Chaos theory
- Clustering in Probablity
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE [link to an AI Lab where they depend on emergence to build robots]
- Self-assembling robots, [video] [more links]
- Morphological properties of components for locomotion
HUMAN BEHAVIOR
- Emotions, Fear, Joy, etc
- Some actions, scratching and itch, catching a ball,
- Unconscious Decision Making (AKA Intuition)
- and in my opinion, the SUPERNATURAL emerges from the poor reasoning schemes of an untrained mind.
Emergence is highly efficient and economical. That is exactly what should be expected from a perfect being. If a perfect being created something, we could reasonably expect the perfect being to build is so that it would be self-organizing, efficient and economical meaning that additional properties would emerge from the raw material.
If that is the case then the way the world is, is the only way it could have turned out, which means that Adams transgression emerged out of the way he was made.
While I haven't yet got a Christian to put any culpability on God for anything that supposedly went on in "the fall of man", they do accept every premise up to the conclusion, and circle back to the fact that "Adam made the choice" while affirming that God knew what was going to happen and the fact that it was predestined.
HP. stands for Hidden Premise. A Hidden Premise is a premise that the argument depends on but is not explicitly stated. The commenters did not state these premises but they were understood as a dependency.
P. Stands for the premise. Premises are effectively data, or conclusions of other arguments used to support the inferrence to the conclusion.
C. The conclusion is derived from the inferrences made from the premisses.
xxxxxxx said...
Yes, I agree, that according to scripture,
HP1. God is omnipotent
HP2. God is omniscient
HP3. God made adam
HP4. God has a plan
P1. God knew that Adam would disobey,
P2. and not only knew it, but predestined it.
C. Scripture says that this happened so that the second Adam (Christ) would come into the world to accomplish what Adam failed to do and to redeem his people from the curse of sin.
In the Diagram below, the Hidden premisses HP1, HP2 and HP3 collectively support the premise that God knew that Adam would disobey. HP4 supports the premise that adams transgression was predestined. The two premises explcitly stated support the conclusion.
<
Diagram for the Argument Above
The Best Way To Understand Something Is To Build It
The arguments that follow are restatements and variations of the argument above from Christian comments
xxxx said...
I agree with most of the article.
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. I think that God not only knew Adam would transgress,
P. he counted on it and
C. that was part of the plan of salvation.
xxxx said...
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. The way this seems is that God had a plan,
P. he put it into action and
P. put Adam and Eve here to start, the first two people out of the gate failed
C. so he had to go to plan B. If it wasn't planned, there would be no need to label Christ as the redeemer from the foundation of the earth.
xxxxx said...
I would disagree that God had a plan B.
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
C. God has one plan and one plan only and it always comes to pass.
xxxxx said...
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. Not to mention that it is said that he failed, except he was part of a plan that played itself out.
C. So it seems that the failure on Adams part would have been to not eat the fruit. I never see anyone give him the opportunity to be a part of an infinite atonement.
xxxxxx said....
My intent is to agree with much af what Lee has brought up in his post. I don't think Adam is a villian,
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. he did exactly what he was suppose to do,
P. and just like every single other person who makes a mistake,
P. he was forgiven of his sins
C. just like we can be.
xxxxx said....
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. Adam's transgression separated us from God,
C. which left us the ability to be able to choose for ourselves between the recently aquired knowledge of good and evil.
2. give them free will, desire, speech, cognitive bias, but not the knowledge of good and evil.
3. put them in the Garden, wait long enough for Adam to Disobey (disobeying a God that you can have a discussion with is insane in itself)
4. then use that as a reason to kick them out of the Garden,
5. introduce sin into the world,
6. kill everyone in a worldwide flood because they were so sinful,
7. make a covenant with Abraham, who had strong reasons not to disobey
8. impregnate a virgin with his holy seed, without giving her a choice
9. occupy the body of a sinless human who had compelling reasons not to disobey, effectively compromising any free will he had
10. come into jerusalem on the passover,
11. have one of his disciples report him, who may or may not have know the consequences, had no choice since he was key player in the plan and consequently died a horrible death
12. get crucified as a human sacrifice during the passover so that he could meet the ritual requirements,
13. take all the sins of the world onboard,
14. become resurrected in three days,
15. and take off to disappear into heaven.
16. And leave us with the free will to believe all this on meager evidence or not.
So now lets look at the results and see what has emerged from this plan.
Lets asign some values to some things and see how they play out.
God = 0, because he is perfect.
Christ = -1 because he was god but tainted by man
Adam = -2 because he was not perfect and sinned and he was not god
Please follow along in the chart below. The left side represents the values for God, Jesus and Adam and the bottom represents the timeline from creation to 3000 CE. I projected past today's date since Jesus is probably not coming anytime soon.
So now god creates Adam and things go to -2.
That's counter-intiutive in a perfect being.
Now we need a Christ to set things right so we subtract -1 and we are back to -1.
Things aren't perfect but hey, god can be imperfect if he wants to because because he can do anything.
God created just so he could create an overall negative? This is not very efficient or economical. There is a lot of wasted resources built into this plan.
If god was like the Greek gods, which seems to be the case throughout Genesis 1-11, then this would be more coherent. But he's supposed to be perfect which means that he should not need anything, even company. Creating this mess was worse than not creating.
However, if we take Gods plan out of the equation, we can reasonably deduce that it probably wouldn't be any worse than this.
In my recent articles I have been facilitating discussion on Adam and Eve and I have been collecting explanations about how Adam came to disobey god. This article identifies the parts of those arguments and diagrams one of them, and tries to tease out whether Adam could in any reasonable way be held accountable by his maker for his transgression and the resultant overall negative result that emerges from Gods Creation. However if we take Adam and God out of the equation, then the properties that emerge from nature are what we should expect once we understand them, and labeling them "good" or "bad" outside of any context becomes meaningless.
Emergence
Wikipedia says that the term “Emergence” was coined by G. H. Lewes. Its an old concept recognized as far back as Aristotle.Basically it is self-organization or a property or behavior of a thing that results from the combination of all its other properties and its interaction with its environment.
Some examples of Emergence from Wikipedia and some I thought up.
Feel Free to suggest some more in the comments.
NATUREFeel Free to suggest some more in the comments.
- Hurricanes
- Termite "Cathedrals"
- Patterns in plants in nature
- Color
- Patterns in Clouds
- Friction
- Classical Mechanics
- Statistical Mechanics
- Weather
- Patterned ground
- Temperature
- Convection
- Physics -> Chemistry -> Biology -> Psychology
- Flocking
- Herds
- Patterns that birds make when they fly together
- Fractals
CULTURE
- Traffic Patterns
- Forming Lines
- Cities
- Political systems
- Economics
- The Stock Market
- The World Wide Web
- Placement of pathways in building complexes
MATHEMATICS
- Mobius Strip
- Chaos theory
- Clustering in Probablity
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE [link to an AI Lab where they depend on emergence to build robots]
- Self-assembling robots, [video] [more links]
- Morphological properties of components for locomotion
HUMAN BEHAVIOR
- Emotions, Fear, Joy, etc
- Some actions, scratching and itch, catching a ball,
- Unconscious Decision Making (AKA Intuition)
- and in my opinion, the SUPERNATURAL emerges from the poor reasoning schemes of an untrained mind.
Emergence is highly efficient and economical. That is exactly what should be expected from a perfect being. If a perfect being created something, we could reasonably expect the perfect being to build is so that it would be self-organizing, efficient and economical meaning that additional properties would emerge from the raw material.
If that is the case then the way the world is, is the only way it could have turned out, which means that Adams transgression emerged out of the way he was made.
While I haven't yet got a Christian to put any culpability on God for anything that supposedly went on in "the fall of man", they do accept every premise up to the conclusion, and circle back to the fact that "Adam made the choice" while affirming that God knew what was going to happen and the fact that it was predestined.
Comments from an article accumulated from two Christians
In the discussion below, the components of the arguments are labeled with initials.HP. stands for Hidden Premise. A Hidden Premise is a premise that the argument depends on but is not explicitly stated. The commenters did not state these premises but they were understood as a dependency.
P. Stands for the premise. Premises are effectively data, or conclusions of other arguments used to support the inferrence to the conclusion.
C. The conclusion is derived from the inferrences made from the premisses.
xxxxxxx said...
Yes, I agree, that according to scripture,
HP1. God is omnipotent
HP2. God is omniscient
HP3. God made adam
HP4. God has a plan
P1. God knew that Adam would disobey,
P2. and not only knew it, but predestined it.
C. Scripture says that this happened so that the second Adam (Christ) would come into the world to accomplish what Adam failed to do and to redeem his people from the curse of sin.
In the Diagram below, the Hidden premisses HP1, HP2 and HP3 collectively support the premise that God knew that Adam would disobey. HP4 supports the premise that adams transgression was predestined. The two premises explcitly stated support the conclusion.
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Diagram for the Argument Above
The Best Way To Understand Something Is To Build It
The arguments that follow are restatements and variations of the argument above from Christian commentsxxxx said...
I agree with most of the article.
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. I think that God not only knew Adam would transgress,
P. he counted on it and
C. that was part of the plan of salvation.
xxxx said...
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. The way this seems is that God had a plan,
P. he put it into action and
P. put Adam and Eve here to start, the first two people out of the gate failed
C. so he had to go to plan B. If it wasn't planned, there would be no need to label Christ as the redeemer from the foundation of the earth.
xxxxx said...
I would disagree that God had a plan B.
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
C. God has one plan and one plan only and it always comes to pass.
xxxxx said...
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. Not to mention that it is said that he failed, except he was part of a plan that played itself out.
C. So it seems that the failure on Adams part would have been to not eat the fruit. I never see anyone give him the opportunity to be a part of an infinite atonement.
xxxxxx said....
My intent is to agree with much af what Lee has brought up in his post. I don't think Adam is a villian,
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. he did exactly what he was suppose to do,
P. and just like every single other person who makes a mistake,
P. he was forgiven of his sins
C. just like we can be.
xxxxx said....
HP. God is omnipotent
HP. God is omniscient
HP. God made adam
HP. God has a plan
P. Adam's transgression separated us from God,
C. which left us the ability to be able to choose for ourselves between the recently aquired knowledge of good and evil.
Reconstructing Gods Plan From What We Know
1. Gods plan was to make Adam and Eve,2. give them free will, desire, speech, cognitive bias, but not the knowledge of good and evil.
3. put them in the Garden, wait long enough for Adam to Disobey (disobeying a God that you can have a discussion with is insane in itself)
4. then use that as a reason to kick them out of the Garden,
5. introduce sin into the world,
6. kill everyone in a worldwide flood because they were so sinful,
7. make a covenant with Abraham, who had strong reasons not to disobey
8. impregnate a virgin with his holy seed, without giving her a choice
9. occupy the body of a sinless human who had compelling reasons not to disobey, effectively compromising any free will he had
10. come into jerusalem on the passover,
11. have one of his disciples report him, who may or may not have know the consequences, had no choice since he was key player in the plan and consequently died a horrible death
12. get crucified as a human sacrifice during the passover so that he could meet the ritual requirements,
13. take all the sins of the world onboard,
14. become resurrected in three days,
15. and take off to disappear into heaven.
16. And leave us with the free will to believe all this on meager evidence or not.
So now lets look at the results and see what has emerged from this plan.
Lets asign some values to some things and see how they play out.
God = 0, because he is perfect.
Christ = -1 because he was god but tainted by man
Adam = -2 because he was not perfect and sinned and he was not god
Please follow along in the chart below. The left side represents the values for God, Jesus and Adam and the bottom represents the timeline from creation to 3000 CE. I projected past today's date since Jesus is probably not coming anytime soon.
God Operating In The Red.
Diagram showing the resultant prolonged negative value over the course of 6000 years, projected beyond the current date to 3000 CE.
So now god creates Adam and things go to -2.That's counter-intiutive in a perfect being.
Now we need a Christ to set things right so we subtract -1 and we are back to -1.
Things aren't perfect but hey, god can be imperfect if he wants to because because he can do anything.
God created just so he could create an overall negative? This is not very efficient or economical. There is a lot of wasted resources built into this plan.
If god was like the Greek gods, which seems to be the case throughout Genesis 1-11, then this would be more coherent. But he's supposed to be perfect which means that he should not need anything, even company. Creating this mess was worse than not creating.
However, if we take Gods plan out of the equation, we can reasonably deduce that it probably wouldn't be any worse than this.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Gen. 2:6-9, God Ignored Adams Admonishment Option
Breaking the law is risky behavior.
In my view, to go around breaking the law of society or of a God, is unnecessarily risky behavior. Those that do break the law have some other frame of reference. For example, they don't put as a high a value on the risk as I do, or they may be mentally handicapped in some way, and the former may follow from the latter. I know that if I broke the law I would worry about being caught, then perform some inconvenient tasks such as lying or hiding to resolve it, then, if I got caught I would pay some fine or spend some time in Jail. For the most egregious acts, the punishment can last a lifetime. For example, the punishment for murder can get a person put in Jail for the rest of their life, and on the other hand, for stealing a piece of fruit and eating it, you may get a fine if anyone cares enough to pursue litigation.
When I want to spend time with my dogs, we laze about the house, tug on a stuffed toy and they get a little petting. We all love each other (I guess they love me) and I pet them, praise them, give them instruction in the form of a stern "no", or a "sit" or a "go lay down" and they understand me and comply. When they don't, I admonish them.
I do it in a nurturing way because I don't want them to become afraid of me or they will want to avoid me. I admonish them just enough so they respect me and follow my instruction. I know that because of their nature (how they are composed), they act a certain way and we work with it. In doing so we have a happy, healthy nurturing life together. I didn't make my dogs, but I know how they act, and I accommodate their behavior, adjust and compromise with them.
How much disobedience do I tolerate? I tolerate quite a bit. What type of transgressions would get them kicked out of the house? Biting the kids.
If my dogs are not in the kitchen, they decide to sleep or chew toys and have no option to disobey. They don't worry that their free will is impeded, they understand that they just have a limited number of options because an infinite number of options would just confuse them.
If my dogs are in the kitchen with me they get a warning. They will either be with me or without me, but I'll focus on when they are with me because its analogous to Adam and Eve living in the Garden with God walking around. If they put their nose on the table I have three options but one of them is not obvious. The two obvious options are to ignore the behavior or to admonish them. Ignoring the nose on the table, in my view, is out of the question. So I opt for the admonishment option. This way I can reprove them and they will stop until they are overcome by their nature and I reprove them again or they learn that to stay in the kitchen with me, they have to keep their nose off the table.
The other option that is not so obvious is the option to abandon them to the street and never have any animals in the house again until one of them kills themselves to show me they can obey. I don't choose that option for a variety of reasons. The overriding one is that I'd never have thought of it without the story of Adam and Eve in the bible and another reason is that it is freaking stupid. In my view the admonishment and instruction is by far the best option to sustain a healthy loving relationship between myself and my dogs and this is the event labeled in the diagram as the “Teaching Phase”.
Once again I'd like to draw your attention to the area labeled “Teaching Phase”. You may have noticed that the Event Tree is the same as the Dogs Event Tree. The algorithm is exactly the same. The analogy is the same. The difference is that God did not choose the admonishment option. He chose to break off the relationship rather than nurture it.
How much and what type of transgressions should God tolerate and work with? I think that most people get along well enough and follow the rules to sustain a society. Are the transgression of these people, or should I say, are your transgressions serious enough to not warrant nurturing admonishment? Think about all the things you've done today. How many of them would you be embarrassed about? How many of them are even worthy of being “exalted” to a “TRANSGRESSION” [thunder and lightning in the background]
Parents don't kick their kids out of the house the first time they disobey, most of the time they put up with a lot of transgressions.
In my view, to go around breaking the law of society or of a God, is unnecessarily risky behavior. Those that do break the law have some other frame of reference. For example, they don't put as a high a value on the risk as I do, or they may be mentally handicapped in some way, and the former may follow from the latter. I know that if I broke the law I would worry about being caught, then perform some inconvenient tasks such as lying or hiding to resolve it, then, if I got caught I would pay some fine or spend some time in Jail. For the most egregious acts, the punishment can last a lifetime. For example, the punishment for murder can get a person put in Jail for the rest of their life, and on the other hand, for stealing a piece of fruit and eating it, you may get a fine if anyone cares enough to pursue litigation.
Teaching and changing behavior.
The reason people get fined and go to jail is to pressure them to change their behavior and to condition them to follow rules. It is a form of education. Education is important to facilitate sound judgment and conformance to societal standards. From the time children are born to the time they finish their formal schooling, they undergo conditioning. They learn such things as the rules of Grammar, Math, Science, Physics, Music, Art and the lessons of History. To advance to the next level they must satisfactorily demonstrate their grasp of the information, and their proficiency is monitored periodically along the way to ensure they are progressing toward the goal of advancing. Education and changing behavior is a sound principle, but it is not limited to people. It works on animals as well.My dogs want to put their noses on the table.
I am an expert on the behavior of my dogs, but not to the degree that God must have been an expert in Adams behavior. When I have dinner, my dogs stay out of the kitchen, where the table is, because they like to put their nose on the table (they're big dogs). I can tell them a hundred times not to put their nose on the table but after awhile, they do it anyway. So I make them stay out of the kitchen and I do not feed them from the table.When I want to spend time with my dogs, we laze about the house, tug on a stuffed toy and they get a little petting. We all love each other (I guess they love me) and I pet them, praise them, give them instruction in the form of a stern "no", or a "sit" or a "go lay down" and they understand me and comply. When they don't, I admonish them.
I do it in a nurturing way because I don't want them to become afraid of me or they will want to avoid me. I admonish them just enough so they respect me and follow my instruction. I know that because of their nature (how they are composed), they act a certain way and we work with it. In doing so we have a happy, healthy nurturing life together. I didn't make my dogs, but I know how they act, and I accommodate their behavior, adjust and compromise with them.
How much disobedience do I tolerate? I tolerate quite a bit. What type of transgressions would get them kicked out of the house? Biting the kids.
Decision/Event Tree for teaching my dogs not to put their nose on the table.
In the diagram below I would like to draw your attention to the box labeled “Teaching phase”.
If my dogs are not in the kitchen, they decide to sleep or chew toys and have no option to disobey. They don't worry that their free will is impeded, they understand that they just have a limited number of options because an infinite number of options would just confuse them.
If my dogs are in the kitchen with me they get a warning. They will either be with me or without me, but I'll focus on when they are with me because its analogous to Adam and Eve living in the Garden with God walking around. If they put their nose on the table I have three options but one of them is not obvious. The two obvious options are to ignore the behavior or to admonish them. Ignoring the nose on the table, in my view, is out of the question. So I opt for the admonishment option. This way I can reprove them and they will stop until they are overcome by their nature and I reprove them again or they learn that to stay in the kitchen with me, they have to keep their nose off the table.
The other option that is not so obvious is the option to abandon them to the street and never have any animals in the house again until one of them kills themselves to show me they can obey. I don't choose that option for a variety of reasons. The overriding one is that I'd never have thought of it without the story of Adam and Eve in the bible and another reason is that it is freaking stupid. In my view the admonishment and instruction is by far the best option to sustain a healthy loving relationship between myself and my dogs and this is the event labeled in the diagram as the “Teaching Phase”.
Decision/Event Tree for Adam in the Garden
We all know the story. Boy meets girl, girl gets motivated when she sees that snake, and carries her fruit over to her boyfriend to share it with him. Adam follows the script, disobeys God and God kicks them out of the garden until he and the holy spirit can come back four thousand or so years later as a perfect human that obeys himself to follow the course of events of his plan that ultimately end up with his human part dying as the perfect sacrifice and he and his holy spirit bail out just before the end. The happy ending is that the human part gets resurrected and disappears amid rumors that the body was stolen, or that he was taken down before he died. It usually takes longer than a few hours to die impaled on a cross. That is why the Romans used it. In fact Josephus talks about a couple of his friends that survived a crucifixion.
Once again I'd like to draw your attention to the area labeled “Teaching Phase”. You may have noticed that the Event Tree is the same as the Dogs Event Tree. The algorithm is exactly the same. The analogy is the same. The difference is that God did not choose the admonishment option. He chose to break off the relationship rather than nurture it.
How much and what type of transgressions should God tolerate and work with? I think that most people get along well enough and follow the rules to sustain a society. Are the transgression of these people, or should I say, are your transgressions serious enough to not warrant nurturing admonishment? Think about all the things you've done today. How many of them would you be embarrassed about? How many of them are even worthy of being “exalted” to a “TRANSGRESSION” [thunder and lightning in the background]
Being in a relationship means to nurture.
Parents don't kick their kids out of the house the first time they disobey, most of the time they put up with a lot of transgressions.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey.
God was omnipotent, and God must have known the properties and tolerances of everything he created, just like a baker and just like an engineer.
If he was omniscient, then he had foreknowledge and if he didn't have foreknowledge (for whatever reason), he could have made reliable predictions based on his intimate knowledge of his creation and its properties and tolerances. To refute this would necessitate showing why God cannot be expected to have the same capabilities as any other Engineer or Baker.
God made Adam as a Man in Gods image, whatever that means. Since god made Adam as a man, Adam necessarily possessed all the qualities that qualify Adam to be classified as a man. From the story, we can see that Adam had desire, cognitive biases (such as trusting someone he liked) but he didn't posses the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So from Adams perspective all options were more or less equal. These choices he made from the options and characteristics that he possessed guaranteed certain outcomes were more likely than others.
6 But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.
7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Since Adam had no family, no history, no education, no culture, no frame of reference with which to view the world, he had to make decisions based on information he picked up from the time of his inception or from what God instilled in him at creation. Since God made him without the Knowledge of Good and Evil, his options would be determined by that frame of reference. If God made him without language, his options would be limited accordingly. If he made him without an opposable thumb his options would be limited accordingly. Based on Adams properties, Adam could be expected to behave in certain ways. For example, we don't expect Adam walked on all fours even though he could have. We expect and assume he walked upright because of his body structure. He, like us, had parameters that made it more comfortable to walk upright than on his hands and knees. He, like us, had desires that made it more likely that had the ability to place value on things and have a hierarchy of preferences. In fact, he did not choose a helper. While its strange that God did not make woman when he made the animals once Adam gave up trying to choose, God made Eve in such a way that it was likely that Adam was going to accept her as a his helpmate. If God had made woman when he made the animals, Adam could have avoided wasting time looking for a suitable helper from the animals.
2:20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
2:21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.
2:22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
An example from close to home. My grandmother was an expert about what she cooked. When my grandmother used to make biscuits, she used only a certain type of flower, and she added Crisco and other ingredients to make the best biscuits ever. When I asked her for the recipe she said it was in her head, and when i asked her to dictate it to me is was full of dashes and pinches of this and that. She did that with everything and she was a great cook. She knew exactly how each ingredient would affect the outcome of the texture, taste, consistency etc. I imagine that God would have been like my grandmother with Adam. He would have known exactly how each ingredient in each proportion would affect the outcome of Adam and Eve and all the animals that he made from scratch.
Another example are engineers for the space program. They used engineering principles to make predictions and test them to find solutions to problems that never existed before. They used mathematical models to derive solutions, then tested them empirically, and when their collective confidence was strong, they put their plan into action. Without any foreknowledge or omniscience, engineers put men on the moon by ensuring certain conditions were met, and they enjoyed many successful outcomes.
When Adam disobeyed Gods order not to eat the fruit, he was making decisions based within the boundaries of his frame of reference. Being the first human, mistakes should have been expected. Using myself as a standard, with my life experience, and generally knowing Good from Evil, I cannot see myself disobeying a God that I was confident existed. I know this about myself because I choose to abide by the Law and the Law is something less than a God. Since I choose to abide by the Laws of my society, I would likewise choose to abide by the Laws of a God that I believed existed. To me it is obvious that Adam made a mistake because he did not understand what he was doing.
In fact, Adam did not, on a whim, decide to disobey God. There were many other factors that led to that act that should be considered. There is no doubt that he knew that God said not to eat the fruit, but he could not have known it was wrong to trust Eve's new information and revise his options and choices. People that are not capable of flexibility in their decision making are severely handicapped in life and in business. Of course revising opinions and making decisions on the information at hand can lead to mistakes, generally it guarantees more successful outcomes. Adam and Eve revised their thinking based on new information but because they were missing the component that enabled knowledge of Good and Evil, they were mentally incompetent as detailed in the article "Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent". They did not have knowledge of Good and Evil before they ate the fruit, they possessed desire, exhibited preferences, and exhibited several cognitive biases that put enabled them to be persuaded by the snake.
1. Adam Existed
1.a. Adam and Eve had desire built in (Gen. 3:6)
1.b. Adam and Eve were missing some cognitive processes (Knowledge of Good and Evil, experience with bad people) (Gen. 3:7)
1.c. Adam and Eve had Cognitive Bias built in (trusting someone they like) (Gen. 3:6)
2. Adam was put in the Garden
3. Eve existed
3.a No Warning about the snake
4. Snake Existed
5. Tree Existed
These were the factors involved in causing Adam to disobey God. If any one of these factors had not existed, the likelihood that Adam would have disobeyed God would decrease. This is obvious in hindsight, but since God is supposedly Omniscient, and he engineered everything, if he didn't know it, he should have been able to reliably predict it.
If he was omniscient, then he had foreknowledge and if he didn't have foreknowledge (for whatever reason), he could have made reliable predictions based on his intimate knowledge of his creation and its properties and tolerances. To refute this would necessitate showing why God cannot be expected to have the same capabilities as any other Engineer or Baker.
Stipulating that the story of the Fall of Man is true in some sense, God was an expert in how to make Adam. He understood Adam intimately.
God made Adam as a Man in Gods image, whatever that means. Since god made Adam as a man, Adam necessarily possessed all the qualities that qualify Adam to be classified as a man. From the story, we can see that Adam had desire, cognitive biases (such as trusting someone he liked) but he didn't posses the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So from Adams perspective all options were more or less equal. These choices he made from the options and characteristics that he possessed guaranteed certain outcomes were more likely than others.
6 But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground.
7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
Since Adam had no family, no history, no education, no culture, no frame of reference with which to view the world, he had to make decisions based on information he picked up from the time of his inception or from what God instilled in him at creation. Since God made him without the Knowledge of Good and Evil, his options would be determined by that frame of reference. If God made him without language, his options would be limited accordingly. If he made him without an opposable thumb his options would be limited accordingly. Based on Adams properties, Adam could be expected to behave in certain ways. For example, we don't expect Adam walked on all fours even though he could have. We expect and assume he walked upright because of his body structure. He, like us, had parameters that made it more comfortable to walk upright than on his hands and knees. He, like us, had desires that made it more likely that had the ability to place value on things and have a hierarchy of preferences. In fact, he did not choose a helper. While its strange that God did not make woman when he made the animals once Adam gave up trying to choose, God made Eve in such a way that it was likely that Adam was going to accept her as a his helpmate. If God had made woman when he made the animals, Adam could have avoided wasting time looking for a suitable helper from the animals.
2:20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
2:21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.
2:22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
If certain conditions are met, we can reasonably expect a certain outcome.
An example from close to home. My grandmother was an expert about what she cooked. When my grandmother used to make biscuits, she used only a certain type of flower, and she added Crisco and other ingredients to make the best biscuits ever. When I asked her for the recipe she said it was in her head, and when i asked her to dictate it to me is was full of dashes and pinches of this and that. She did that with everything and she was a great cook. She knew exactly how each ingredient would affect the outcome of the texture, taste, consistency etc. I imagine that God would have been like my grandmother with Adam. He would have known exactly how each ingredient in each proportion would affect the outcome of Adam and Eve and all the animals that he made from scratch.
Another example are engineers for the space program. They used engineering principles to make predictions and test them to find solutions to problems that never existed before. They used mathematical models to derive solutions, then tested them empirically, and when their collective confidence was strong, they put their plan into action. Without any foreknowledge or omniscience, engineers put men on the moon by ensuring certain conditions were met, and they enjoyed many successful outcomes.
Adam worked with what he had. Generally, a small number of mistakes are expected.
When Adam disobeyed Gods order not to eat the fruit, he was making decisions based within the boundaries of his frame of reference. Being the first human, mistakes should have been expected. Using myself as a standard, with my life experience, and generally knowing Good from Evil, I cannot see myself disobeying a God that I was confident existed. I know this about myself because I choose to abide by the Law and the Law is something less than a God. Since I choose to abide by the Laws of my society, I would likewise choose to abide by the Laws of a God that I believed existed. To me it is obvious that Adam made a mistake because he did not understand what he was doing.
In fact, Adam did not, on a whim, decide to disobey God. There were many other factors that led to that act that should be considered. There is no doubt that he knew that God said not to eat the fruit, but he could not have known it was wrong to trust Eve's new information and revise his options and choices. People that are not capable of flexibility in their decision making are severely handicapped in life and in business. Of course revising opinions and making decisions on the information at hand can lead to mistakes, generally it guarantees more successful outcomes. Adam and Eve revised their thinking based on new information but because they were missing the component that enabled knowledge of Good and Evil, they were mentally incompetent as detailed in the article "Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent". They did not have knowledge of Good and Evil before they ate the fruit, they possessed desire, exhibited preferences, and exhibited several cognitive biases that put enabled them to be persuaded by the snake.
A list of factors follows leading up to Adams disobedience.
1. Adam Existed
1.a. Adam and Eve had desire built in (Gen. 3:6)
1.b. Adam and Eve were missing some cognitive processes (Knowledge of Good and Evil, experience with bad people) (Gen. 3:7)
1.c. Adam and Eve had Cognitive Bias built in (trusting someone they like) (Gen. 3:6)
2. Adam was put in the Garden
3. Eve existed
3.a No Warning about the snake
4. Snake Existed
5. Tree Existed
These were the factors involved in causing Adam to disobey God. If any one of these factors had not existed, the likelihood that Adam would have disobeyed God would decrease. This is obvious in hindsight, but since God is supposedly Omniscient, and he engineered everything, if he didn't know it, he should have been able to reliably predict it.
Causal Diagram of Adams Transgression.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent
This an article to show that Adam and eve did not know the difference between good and evil before they ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil therefore could not understand the consequences of what they were doing. It uses a timeline and a matrix for analysis. Points in time are defined and used to document the point along a timeline where one event occurred in relation to another. It concludes that since Adam and Eve were missing a vital element in decision making, were uneducated, had no life experience to speak of and had no reason not to trust anyone, they were mentally incompetent to be held accountable for disobeying God and causing the punishments of Sin and Judgment to be given to every human thereafter.
Another interpretation of "Fall of Man" story is that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is really the tree of all knowledge where the terms Good and Evil are used as a merism ("bookends" or "upper and lower limits") to express a range, in the same manner as the term "young and old". This is considered a common usage in Biblical Poetry. I don't use this interpretation for this document but it wouldn't change the conclusion anyway.
Keep in mind when you read this, that since Adam and Eves situation is counter-intuitive, meaning that no-one but a person with a mental handicap or a child knows what it is like not to understand the difference between good and evil. It may be hard to avoid slipping into a "normal" frame of reference when discussing their state of mind before they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (K, G & E)
Here is where people become accountable for knowing about the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. At this point they still do not know the difference between good and evil and have never had any other relationships with anyone else except God whom they trust completely. God was being ambiguous and therefore deceptive by saying "you will surely die". He wasn't exercising the principle of clarity in communication.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
T02 - God decides to make a helper for Adam from the animals
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
T03 - Adam names the animals and tries to pick a helper
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found.
T04 - Adam did not choose a helper so God decides to make one for him from his rib, effectively making him the first mother.
21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh.
22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
T05 - They were naked and felt no shame.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
T06 - Eves first experience with someone she shouldn't trust.
Eve is now introduced to her first experience with someone whose intent may be to decieve her and possibly manipulate her, and she doesn't know the difference between Good and Evil. There was evidently no warning about the snake. There are several default reasoning schemes that people commonly use and seem to present naturally. It takes education and experience to be able to overcome these. Presumably, since Eve and Adam were human, uneducated and with no life experience to speak of, they were susceptible to most if not all of these. A partial list of Cognitive Bias and Factors of Persuasion relevant to Adam and Eves situation taken from one of my other articles follows.
- People like stories and are willing to give the teller of the story the benefit of the doubt about the truth of it.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from someone they like.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it fits with what they already believe or want to believe.
- People look for confirmation of what they already believe and disregard things that contradict.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from an authority.
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,
3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman.
5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Eve took this as new valid information and acted on it. According to the context of the story, it should not be possible to know that disobeying God was Evil. She had no concept of Good or Evil.
The snake told the truth. Even if his intent was to get Eve and Adam to disobey god, he still exercised the principle of clarity better than God did. And Eve did not have any experience with "Bad people" or know the difference between "good and evil" people. Eve gave the snake the benefit of the the doubt, she evidently did not dislike him, what he said fit what she wanted to believe and she undoubtedly took it to be authoritative about the Tree. She exercised her naturally occurring reasoning schemes.
T07 - They eat the fruit.
Neither Eve or Adam had any wisdom or knowledge of good and evil at this point, she trusted the snake because she did not have any reason not to. There is no indication that they had any idea about lying. Adam and Eve both had built in cognitive biases that come into play here, such as trusting what others say, and Desire was apparently built into Eve as described in Gen. 3:6.
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. The bible says, through inference, that she was missing wisdom. She wanted to gain wisdom.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
T08 - God calls for Adam and Eve to come out of hiding
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
Because it was likely that he would trust her.
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
Because it was likely that given the opportunity, this would happen.
T09 - God distributes the punishment establishing the origins and explanations of several things
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
15 And I will put enmity
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
16 To the woman he said,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
19 By the sweat of your brow
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
T10 - Adam names Eve
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
T11 - God makes clothes for them
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
T12 - God realizes the fact the Adam might eat the fruit of the Tree of Life
22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from
the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
T13 - Banishment
23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
T14 - Closes Eden off
24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
The Hypothesis that "Adam and Eve did not know the difference between a good and an evil act" is the least inconsistent with the data, therefore, I conclude that they were not at fault. They were following the natural cognitive processes that they were born with (untempered by education), and when prompted by a new agent, they innocently did what it suggested. To suggest that Adam and Eve were somehow immune from cognitive biases that have been shown to be commonly naturally occurring in humans is pure speculation. Since it has been demonstrated by the timeline that Adam and Eve were missing a vital element in decision making, were uneducated, had no life experience to speak of and had no reason not to trust anyone, they were mentally incompetent to be held accountable for disobeying God and causing the punishments of Sin and Judgment to be given to every human thereafter.
Another interpretation of "Fall of Man" story is that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is really the tree of all knowledge where the terms Good and Evil are used as a merism ("bookends" or "upper and lower limits") to express a range, in the same manner as the term "young and old". This is considered a common usage in Biblical Poetry. I don't use this interpretation for this document but it wouldn't change the conclusion anyway.
Keep in mind when you read this, that since Adam and Eves situation is counter-intuitive, meaning that no-one but a person with a mental handicap or a child knows what it is like not to understand the difference between good and evil. It may be hard to avoid slipping into a "normal" frame of reference when discussing their state of mind before they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (K, G & E)
TIMELINE OF EVENTS
GENESIS 2:16
Time 01 - Warning about the Tree of G&EGENESIS 2:16
Here is where people become accountable for knowing about the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. At this point they still do not know the difference between good and evil and have never had any other relationships with anyone else except God whom they trust completely. God was being ambiguous and therefore deceptive by saying "you will surely die". He wasn't exercising the principle of clarity in communication.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
T02 - God decides to make a helper for Adam from the animals
18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
T03 - Adam names the animals and tries to pick a helper
19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.
20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found.
T04 - Adam did not choose a helper so God decides to make one for him from his rib, effectively making him the first mother.
21 So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh.
22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
23 The man said,
"This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,'
for she was taken out of man."
24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
T05 - They were naked and felt no shame.
25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
GENESIS 3: THE FALL OF MAN
T06 - Eves first experience with someone she shouldn't trust.
Eve is now introduced to her first experience with someone whose intent may be to decieve her and possibly manipulate her, and she doesn't know the difference between Good and Evil. There was evidently no warning about the snake. There are several default reasoning schemes that people commonly use and seem to present naturally. It takes education and experience to be able to overcome these. Presumably, since Eve and Adam were human, uneducated and with no life experience to speak of, they were susceptible to most if not all of these. A partial list of Cognitive Bias and Factors of Persuasion relevant to Adam and Eves situation taken from one of my other articles follows.
- People like stories and are willing to give the teller of the story the benefit of the doubt about the truth of it.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from someone they like.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it fits with what they already believe or want to believe.
- People look for confirmation of what they already believe and disregard things that contradict.
- People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from an authority.
1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,
3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman.
5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Eve took this as new valid information and acted on it. According to the context of the story, it should not be possible to know that disobeying God was Evil. She had no concept of Good or Evil.
The snake told the truth. Even if his intent was to get Eve and Adam to disobey god, he still exercised the principle of clarity better than God did. And Eve did not have any experience with "Bad people" or know the difference between "good and evil" people. Eve gave the snake the benefit of the the doubt, she evidently did not dislike him, what he said fit what she wanted to believe and she undoubtedly took it to be authoritative about the Tree. She exercised her naturally occurring reasoning schemes.
T07 - They eat the fruit.
Neither Eve or Adam had any wisdom or knowledge of good and evil at this point, she trusted the snake because she did not have any reason not to. There is no indication that they had any idea about lying. Adam and Eve both had built in cognitive biases that come into play here, such as trusting what others say, and Desire was apparently built into Eve as described in Gen. 3:6.
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. The bible says, through inference, that she was missing wisdom. She wanted to gain wisdom.
7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
T08 - God calls for Adam and Eve to come out of hiding
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.
9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."
11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
Because it was likely that he would trust her.
13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
Because it was likely that given the opportunity, this would happen.
T09 - God distributes the punishment establishing the origins and explanations of several things
14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
15 And I will put enmity
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
16 To the woman he said,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
19 By the sweat of your brow
...OMITTED FOR BREVITY...
T10 - Adam names Eve
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
T11 - God makes clothes for them
21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.
T12 - God realizes the fact the Adam might eat the fruit of the Tree of Life
22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from
the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
T13 - Banishment
23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
T14 - Closes Eden off
24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
HYPOTHESIS MATRIX
This is a Hypothesis matrix testing the hypothesis that Adam and Eve didn't know the difference between Good and Evil when they disobeyed God. The data are labeled with a "C" for consistent with the hypothesis, "A" for Ambiguous (it doesn't make a difference but is worth mentioning), and "I" for Inconsistent. The hypothesis that is least inconsistent with the data is the better hypothesis.| Data | Didn't Know | Did know |
| God is all knowing | A | A |
| God is all powerful | A | A |
| T01 Gen. 2:16 Adam can eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, but he doesn't. Evidently he is not interested in it or maybe he doesn't realize what it means. God may have known that he wouldn't eat it although what God says at T12 in 2:22 contradicts his supposed omniscience. | C | I |
| T01 Gen. 2:17 Commands the man not to eat the fruit of the Tree of K, G&E or he will surely die, but neglected to tell him the truth which is that he will know the difference between good and evil and as a result will realize that he is naked | C | I |
| Until man eats the fruit he will not know the difference between good and evil | C | I |
| T02 Gen. 2:18 Adam was alone and has never had any experience with anyone he shouldn't trust | C | I |
| T06 Gen. 3:4-5 The snake could not have known the difference between good and evil unless it had acquired it from somewhere. If it did, then it had the advantage over Eve. If it didn't know the difference between good and evil then it did nothing wrong by telling Eve the truth. In any case It was smarter than Eve because it knew that she would not literally die. The serpent clearly described what would happen with the Tree of K, G&E better than God did. This is where Eve got the truth about the tree. | C | I |
| T07 Gen. 3:6 Eve trusted the serpent, evidently because she didn't know not too, she didn't know that dying was bad, or that disobeying god was bad. The desire was built into her and Humans have or acquire cognitive biases that must be unlearned. | C | I |
| T07 Gen. 3:7 After they ate the fruit, their eyes were opened and they knew that being naked was bad. This is a cultural rule, not a natural one. | C | I |
The Hypothesis that "Adam and Eve did not know the difference between a good and an evil act" is the least inconsistent with the data, therefore, I conclude that they were not at fault. They were following the natural cognitive processes that they were born with (untempered by education), and when prompted by a new agent, they innocently did what it suggested. To suggest that Adam and Eve were somehow immune from cognitive biases that have been shown to be commonly naturally occurring in humans is pure speculation. Since it has been demonstrated by the timeline that Adam and Eve were missing a vital element in decision making, were uneducated, had no life experience to speak of and had no reason not to trust anyone, they were mentally incompetent to be held accountable for disobeying God and causing the punishments of Sin and Judgment to be given to every human thereafter.
Further Reading on Cognitive Biases and Persuasion Principles
The Role of Persuasion and Cognitive Bias In Your Church
Friday, August 8, 2008
Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey.
God was omnipotent, and God must have known the properties and tolerances of everything he created, just like a baker and just like an engineer.
| If he was omniscient, then he had foreknowledge and if he didn't have foreknowledge (for whatever reason), he could have made reliable predictions based on his intimate knowledge of his creation and its properties and tolerances. To refute this would necessitate showing why God cannot be expected to have the same capabilities as any other Engineer or Baker. Stipulating that the story of the Fall of Man is true in some sense, God was an expert in how to make Adam. He understood Adam intimately. God made Adam as a Man in Gods image, whatever that means. Since god made Adam as a man, Adam necessarily possessed all the qualities that qualify Adam to be classified as a man. From the story, we can see that Adam had desire, cognitive biases (such as trusting someone he liked) but he didn't posses the Knowledge of Good and Evil. So from Adams perspective all options were more or less equal. These choices he made from the options and characteristics that he possessed guaranteed certain outcomes were more likely than others.6 But a mist used to rise from the earth and water the whole surface of the ground. 7 Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Since Adam had no family, no history, no education, no culture, no frame of reference with which to view the world, he had to make decisions based on information he picked up from the time of his inception or from what God instilled in him at creation. Since God made him without the Knowledge of Good and Evil, his options would be determined by that frame of reference. If God made him without language, his options would be limited accordingly. If he made him without an opposable thumb his options would be limited accordingly. Based on Adams properties, Adam could be expected to behave in certain ways. For example, we don't expect Adam walked on all fours even though he could have. We expect and assume he walked upright because of his body structure. He, like us, had parameters that made it more comfortable to walk upright than on his hands and knees. He, like us, had desires that made it more likely that had the ability to place value on things and have a hierarchy of preferences. In fact, he did not choose a helper. While its strange that God did not make woman when he made the animals once Adam gave up trying to choose, God made Eve in such a way that it was likely that Adam was going to accept her as a his helpmate. If God had made woman when he made the animals, Adam could have avoided wasting time looking for a suitable helper from the animals. 2:20 The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. 2:21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. 2:22 The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. If certain conditions are met, we can reasonably expect a certain outcome. An example from close to home. My grandmother was an expert about what she cooked. When my grandmother used to make biscuits, she used only a certain type of flower, and she added Crisco and other ingredients to make the best biscuits ever. When I asked her for the recipe she said it was in her head, and when i asked her to dictate it to me is was full of dashes and pinches of this and that. She did that with everything and she was a great cook. She knew exactly how each ingredient would affect the outcome of the texture, taste, consistency etc. I imagine that God would have been like my grandmother with Adam. He would have known exactly how each ingredient in each proportion would affect the outcome of Adam and Eve and all the animals that he made from scratch. Another example are engineers for the space program. They used engineering principles to make predictions and test them to find solutions to problems that never existed before. They used mathematical models to derive solutions, then tested them empirically, and when their collective confidence was strong, they put their plan into action. Without any foreknowledge or omniscience, engineers put men on the moon by ensuring certain conditions were met, and they enjoyed many successful outcomes. Adam worked with what he had. Generally, a small number of mistakes are expected. When Adam disobeyed Gods order not to eat the fruit, he was making decisions based within the boundaries of his frame of reference. Being the first human, mistakes should have been expected. Using myself as a standard, with my life experience, and generally knowing Good from Evil, I cannot see myself disobeying a God that I was confident existed. I know this about myself because I choose to abide by the Law and the Law is something less than a God. Since I choose to abide by the Laws of my society, I would likewise choose to abide by the Laws of a God that I believed existed. To me it is obvious that Adam made a mistake because he did not understand what he was doing. In fact, Adam did not, on a whim, decide to disobey God. There were many other factors that led to that act that should be considered. There is no doubt that he knew that God said not to eat the fruit, but he could not have known it was wrong to trust Eve's new information and revise his options and choices. People that are not capable of flexibility in their decision making are severely handicapped in life and in business. Of course revising opinions and making decisions on the information at hand can lead to mistakes, generally it guarantees more successful outcomes. Adam and Eve revised their thinking based on new information but because they were missing the component that enabled knowledge of Good and Evil, they were mentally incompetent as detailed in the article "Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent". They did not have knowledge of Good and Evil before they ate the fruit, they possessed desire, exhibited preferences, and exhibited several cognitive biases that put enabled them to be persuaded by the snake. A list of factors follows leading up to Adams disobedience. 1. Adam Existed 1.a. Adam and Eve had desire built in (Gen. 3:6) 1.b. Adam and Eve were missing some cognitive processes (Knowledge of Good and Evil, experience with bad people) (Gen. 3:7) 1.c. Adam and Eve had Cognitive Bias built in (trusting someone they like) (Gen. 3:6) 2. Adam was put in the Garden 3. Eve existed 3.a No Warning about the snake 4. Snake Existed 5. Tree Existed These were the factors involved in causing Adam to disobey God. If any one of these factors had not existed, the likelihood that Adam would have disobeyed God would decrease. This is obvious in hindsight, but since God is supposedly Omniscient, and he engineered everything, if he didn't know it, he should have been able to reliably predict it. Causal Diagram of Adams Transgression. |
|
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Disqualifying Adam and Eve
(Revised: added a poll at the end just for fun) Since most people in the world (some of them Christians) don't believe in Adam and Eve based on the conclusions resulting from scientific disciplines such as Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology from now on I will disqualify it as a datum in any discussion I have on this site. That means that I will no longer accept the historicity of Adam and Eve as a premise supporting any conclusions, I will dismiss it out of hand and I encourage this viewpoint from others.
In my view, to entertain or even to discuss the historicity of Adam and Eve is irrelevant. They have already been shown to be infinitesimally unlikely by fields such as Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology. In my view it is a sensible position to commit to the view point that Adam and Eve are folklore until the introduction of new information warrants reconsideration. In my view to recognize the possibility of the existence of Adam and Eve as a premise in a discussion is to give it the appearance that it is a real consideration and worthy of discussion. I say that it is no more worthy of discussion than a flat earth or the existence of Leprechauns.
Logically, using the same criteria to support the existence of Adam and Eve, one could argue for the existence of Leprechauns. To concede that the existence of Adam and Eve is a possibility is to prevent the discussion from going forward toward a resolution because the insistence of the opponent to disregard the conclusion of the disciplines of Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology is counter to the most widely held viewpoint in the world and is irrational in the face of sound reasoning. If another Christian doesn't believe it why should I give it the benefit of doubt? Why should I allow it as a premise in any discussion?
Now an apologist may accuse me of appealing to authority and the bandwagon fallacy. However, those are labels for a fallacious reasoning scheme. To apply that label to my process of reasoning in this case necessitates showing that my presumption about the validity of the conclusions drawn from those disciplines is flawed and/or that the viewpoint of the majority is based on the underlying fallacy of the conclusions drawn from those disciplines. It necessitates discrediting the conclusions of those disciplines. That is an uphill battle if there ever was one. In both cases I am insulated from the charge of fallacy.
In my view, the persistence of groundless beliefs such as Adam and Eve is due to the tolerance of them in discussion by those that know they are groundless. We can still tolerate other viewpoints until those viewpoints begin to intrude or become harmful in the practical and pragmatic business of day to day life. Discussants need to make the same commitment to discourage and challenge the use of inaccurate information in their personal lives that they do in other areas of their lives.
In my view, to entertain or even to discuss the historicity of Adam and Eve is irrelevant. They have already been shown to be infinitesimally unlikely by fields such as Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology. In my view it is a sensible position to commit to the view point that Adam and Eve are folklore until the introduction of new information warrants reconsideration. In my view to recognize the possibility of the existence of Adam and Eve as a premise in a discussion is to give it the appearance that it is a real consideration and worthy of discussion. I say that it is no more worthy of discussion than a flat earth or the existence of Leprechauns.
Logically, using the same criteria to support the existence of Adam and Eve, one could argue for the existence of Leprechauns. To concede that the existence of Adam and Eve is a possibility is to prevent the discussion from going forward toward a resolution because the insistence of the opponent to disregard the conclusion of the disciplines of Anthropology, Paleontology, Archeology, and Biology is counter to the most widely held viewpoint in the world and is irrational in the face of sound reasoning. If another Christian doesn't believe it why should I give it the benefit of doubt? Why should I allow it as a premise in any discussion?
Now an apologist may accuse me of appealing to authority and the bandwagon fallacy. However, those are labels for a fallacious reasoning scheme. To apply that label to my process of reasoning in this case necessitates showing that my presumption about the validity of the conclusions drawn from those disciplines is flawed and/or that the viewpoint of the majority is based on the underlying fallacy of the conclusions drawn from those disciplines. It necessitates discrediting the conclusions of those disciplines. That is an uphill battle if there ever was one. In both cases I am insulated from the charge of fallacy.
In my view, the persistence of groundless beliefs such as Adam and Eve is due to the tolerance of them in discussion by those that know they are groundless. We can still tolerate other viewpoints until those viewpoints begin to intrude or become harmful in the practical and pragmatic business of day to day life. Discussants need to make the same commitment to discourage and challenge the use of inaccurate information in their personal lives that they do in other areas of their lives.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil
This article explores one aspect of the relationship between the Problem of Evil and the Fall of Man. It is based on a reasoning scheme known as 'poisoning the well'. However, as with most reasoning schemes, its application determines whether it is a fallacy or not. Its intent is to weaken the Christian argument that we don't know enough about Gods intentions to say anything about Evil. I intend to show that we can't confidently say we know anything about God.
For the sake of this argument, I will stipulate the premise of Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man and the existence of God are true.
If Adam and Eve are related to the problem of evil then we have to accept the whole premise literally, the world is less than 10,000 years old, that evolution didn't occur and that the whole field of science is based on factors that are causing the sound principles of Logic and Inference to fail. That raises questions of uncertainty about the principles of Logic and Inference in general. If we accept the old earth creation then the world could be 4.5 billion years old, and we start getting into deciding which parts of the bible are metaphorical and which are not.
If we presume that humans have free will and choose to sin, then the introduction of personal bias is likely and
- The initial writers of the scripture should be suspect.
- Since we don't have the original text, the reproduction of the scripture should be suspect.
- any intepretations based on those scriptures should be suspect.
If we presume that humans cannot understand the mind of god, then those interpretations should be suspect.
- Teachings coming from someone who interprets the bible should be suspect.
Using this principle the phenomena of doctrinal differences between denominations becomes plausible. However, the principle that we can understand Gods word as it appears in the bible becomes implausible because our nature prevents us from interpreting the 'word' correctly. If we say that we receive guidance from the Holy Spirit, the nature of Human Beings prevents the Guidance from being accepted as it was given. Since the only information we have about the christian god comes from the bible and humans are not capable by nature to intrpret the word, then we cannot really trust what we should take to be metaphorical and what we shouldn't and we cannot confidently say we know anything about the Christian God.
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