VOY: Mortal Coil Review

[Madner Kami]

According to Bible, we lived in a world of eternal bliss and innocence, until humans fucked it up. What a surprise.

Let's be more accurate about that: God, who can see everything remember, decided to do bugger all about the talking snake. As In, he would have been sitting on his ass watching that happen and then got pissy about it. I dont see how its on us. But then sitting on his ass as bad things happen is kind of what he does so at least there is consistency.

The real downfall there is not, that he did nothing. One can always argue that he wanted to see whether we can face off the evil and turn away or if we indeed would fall to the evil influence. The real downfall is, that if God is omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent, then he would know the outcome in the first place and the error is not our lapse of judgement (least to forget, that we could not tell good from evil yet, since we had not yet eaten from the fruit and God did not give us that quality when creating us), but that he designed us in a way that left us vulnerable to the influence of evil.

I always found this story is a good indicator for God not always having been the OP fucker that he is later made out to be. He created flawed beings and decided to let things develop naturally. This is a sign of a God that is not omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, a sign of a much older story being tempered with.

[Yukaphile]

Perhaps God is simply 26-D and not actually omnipotent, lol.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

According to Bible, we lived in a world of eternal bliss and innocence, until humans fucked it up. What a surprise.

Let's be more accurate about that: God, who can see everything remember, decided to do bugger all about the talking snake. As In, he would have been sitting on his ass watching that happen and then got pissy about it. I dont see how its on us. But then sitting on his ass as bad things happen is kind of what he does so at least there is consistency.

Well, then you get the Paradise Loss interpretation, where the one thing that Yaweh is incapable of comprehending is Ignorance. An omnipotent being doesn't understand what it's like to NOT have perfect foresight. A bit like the Prophets talking to Cisco in the pilot episode.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Political implications of God's power become a bit dubious when a lot of this rests on the fact that the material world is utterly insubstantial to heaven for all unfathomable consideration. Like, whatever you go through on this earth and God's will that allows it just kinda doesn't matter anyway.

In other words you're all selfish for wanting his plan to favor you in the material world.

[Beastro]

If you want to posit a world where suffering is a requirement in any way, then we just move the argument up to the construction of such a universe, and where the blame for that is placed.

Still based on the assumption that suffering is bad and should be removed if possible.

That's understandable for a person to express, but it's similar to a kid bitching about wanting total freedom, no responsibility and his parents only being there to save his ass when bad things happen only to butt out when not needed for that.

Your average kid might love the idea of that and enjoy it, for a time, but that does not go towards the good development of a child. There's more to life than happiness and pleasure, and they're not even at the top of the bar, cept we Moderns have decided otherwise and continually face the reasons why they fail to measure up things like meaning and fulfillment.

Let's be more accurate about that: God, who can see everything remember, decided to do bugger all about the talking snake. As In, he would have been sitting on his ass watching that happen and then got pissy about it. I dont see how its on us. But then sitting on his ass as bad things happen is kind of what he does so at least there is consistency.

And in both cases we're getting into the territory of "God, just do everything for me and leave me a helpless being without choice, but a happy one" essentially a pet, rather than something more that's crucial to not only His reaction in Genesis, but also the burden of responsibility placed upon Man.

According to Bible, we lived in a world of eternal bliss and innocence, until humans fucked it up. What a surprise.

Such is the life of an animal, even if as they die. It's always been clear to me that, regardless of how you see Genesis, it's clear the Garden touches on the dawn of consciousness and how that changed the world for Mankind irrevocably from that of other life on this planet.

[Yukaphile]

I see it as how we're better off not knowing some things, that in innocence there is contentment and peace and happiness. Knowledge is power, and power is dangerous...

[clearspira]

Let's be more accurate about that: God, who can see everything remember, decided to do bugger all about the talking snake. As In, he would have been sitting on his ass watching that happen and then got pissy about it. I dont see how its on us. But then sitting on his ass as bad things happen is kind of what he does so at least there is consistency.

And in both cases we're getting into the territory of "God, just do everything for me and leave me a helpless being without choice, but a happy one" essentially a pet, rather than something more that's crucial to not only His reaction in Genesis, but also the burden of responsibility placed upon Man.

He had a choice too. Do something about the snake, put a fence around the tree, not put the bloody tree there in the first place and instead somewhere else, have a balanced punishment instead of ''leave my garden of paradise forever and BTW Eve you will now have tremendous pain in childbirth that even hundreds of thousand of years later women will still suffer.''
I dunno, maybe its just me, but someone who is all loving wouldn't make women two hundred thousand years later suffer for the theft of one bit of fruit. You talk of man's burden; man's burden has been trying to find ways to wipe up the vindictive shit he saddled us with.

[FaxModem1]

Is it responsible to put poisonous medicine next to some candy, and call that responsible parenting if they learn which is which the hard way, or what the consequences of eating the candy is?

If not, then God is not being responsible.

[TrueMetis]

If you want to posit a world where suffering is a requirement in any way, then we just move the argument up to the construction of such a universe, and where the blame for that is placed.

Still based on the assumption that suffering is bad and should be removed if possible.

Seems to me that the assumption here is that an all powerful being that created the universe and set all it's parameters could get whatever benefit you think is caused by suffering, without the actual suffering. So the suffering is pointless and just straight up sadism.

Unless you're positing a god that couldn't do that, in which case you're not talking about the Biblical god most Christians worship.

And in both cases we're getting into the territory of "God, just do everything for me and leave me a helpless being without choice, but a happy one" essentially a pet, rather than something more that's crucial to not only His reaction in Genesis, but also the burden of responsibility placed upon Man.

Well, no. We're in the territory of "don't deliberately set people up to fail" All powerful all knowing being remember? It knew that the fruit would be eaten even before it created anything. If I leave out poisonous food, my toddle is not at fault if it eats it, I am. Yes even if I tell it not to, because I had the knowledge to foresee this outcome. The god of the bible deliberately created two people who would eat the fruit. That's fucking entrapment.

Such is the life of an animal, even if as they die. It's always been clear to me that, regardless of how you see Genesis, it's clear the Garden touches on the dawn of consciousness and how that changed the world for Mankind irrevocably from that of other life on this planet.

You're really struggling with the implication of omnipotence aren't ya? Besides, we are animals, and most animals are neither eternally blissful nor innocent. Both of those states are things only humans have ever come close to achieving.

[Darmani]

According to Bible, we lived in a world of eternal bliss and innocence, until humans fucked it up. What a surprise.

Let's be more accurate about that: God, who can see everything remember, decided to do bugger all about the talking snake. As In, he would have been sitting on his ass watching that happen and then got pissy about it. I dont see how its on us. But then sitting on his ass as bad things happen is kind of what he does so at least there is consistency.

Think of free will like this you don't create the destination or the paths but there are multiple ones in front of you despite this many of them will have the same destination but who you are is shaped by the choices that you make. And as such those choices are significant even if they have the same results. No matter what you will die. So does that mean nothing you do matters? Does the fact that someone is destined to die me and you should not help them? Does the fact that wealth will no longer be in your hands when you die mean it's okay to steal? Simply put choices have to have significance. Now if a human mind can figure out that as long as that fruit is there and there is someone who is so spiteful that they would attempt another person in order to eat it that inevitably that fruit is going to be eaten so yes I'd have to assume God planned for that. But at the same time it's kind of important that you have a choice. Some view the entire story of the Garden of Eden as symbolic not deliberate or direct. Mainly humans are given a choice between innocence or having the knowledge of Good and Evil. The act of eating the fruit that's open their eyes to what is possible making them more like God. But at the exact same time that doesn't necessarily get them what they think that they want and guarantees all of their knowledge of their flaws without necessarily any idea of how to be good. And no matter what they are banished from the garden with only a token amount of assistance

So it's not so much the fruit infected us so much as the decision reshaped us.

I am perfectly fine with a. That allows and even makes bad results for bad decisions or allows for people to make wrong choices. Particularly when he's making it possible for us to make good choices and more importantly loves and supports us in our suffering. You can argue whether or not we should have a world without suffering but then I have to think what if we done in order to earn that?

Because I've been given so much I'm willing to accept a lot of the bad with the good. So at the very least I'm going to have to be a lot better before I start thinking that I could remake the world and my image all the better as opposed to work and toil to improve my own condition and to Aid those around me