Reading Time: 2 minutes The Fall is a thoroughly problematic theological mechanism at the best of times. But if you combine it with other terrible concepts and events, it looks even more incoherent. Most understandings of God entail an OmniGod conception: God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving. All-knowing or omniscience also includes divine foreknowledge—knowledge of all future events and […]
Adam and Eve
Posted inHistory, Religion
How John Milton Changed Hell — Again (Journey Into Hell #13)
Reading Time: 7 minutes Hi and welcome back! During our Journey Into Hell series, we’ve sure seen the Christian concept of Hell change a lot from its humble origins. And now, it’s changing again. John Milton, who wrote Paradise Lost, brought a unique point of view to Christians’ existing package of Hell-beliefs. That point of view would become an […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Religion
Pearced Off! #12 – Nonsensical Theology: Adam, Eve & the Two-Horned Dilemma
Reading Time: < 1 minute I am running a series of the old podcast segments from my Pearced Off! section of the Skepticule Podcast (a British skepticism-based podcast now on hiatus) that I used to contribute to. Some of the earlier ones have some quieter audio. Apologies. They run at around ten minutes. Something to keep you company outside of Netflix and the news… […]
Posted inReligion
Not Seeing OmniGod through Philosophy and Logic: Adam & Eve
Reading Time: 2 minutes Introductory spiel: One of my more recent books, Not Seeing God: Atheism in the 21st Century (UK), has a plethora of gems in it for the reader and a smorgasbord of variety. It was a labour of love and was particularly rewarding due to the fact that so many great writers had been involved in the production of […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Religion
A Dialogue on Morality: Response to Guy Walker (Pt 2)
Reading Time: 6 minutes As regular readers will know, I am engaged in a debate concerning morality and whether, as humans, we are exceptional in comparison to the animal world or whether morality can be fully explained in the context of biological and natural evolution, without invoking some other mysterious unknown such as God or similar. I set out […]
Posted inUncategorized
Adam and Eve, and Failing the First Free Will Test
Reading Time: < 1 minute I have posted a number of times on the Genesis account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. One commenter on one of the posts reminded me of my favourite meme: And this is nowhere more apparent than with the eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Religion
Having a Chop at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
Reading Time: 10 minutes I recently posted on the incoherence of the narrative in Genesis concerning Adam and Eve and the eating of the apple. The upshot was this: Adam and Eve were expected to morally follow the moral proclamation of God in not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil such that they can’t […]
Posted inEthics and Morality, Religion
Adam and Eve: A Few Flaws…
Reading Time: 4 minutes I recently posted an argument about Adam and Eve and God’s moral culpability for human failure and sin, most of which went like this: If Adam and Eve are properly representative of humanity, and failed the test, then God’s design of humanity is ultimately sub-optimal. This appears to render God as sub-optimal. God has created […]
Posted inReligion
Adam & Eve as Bad Test Cases, and God’s Moral Culpability
Reading Time: 2 minutes There is a two-horned dilemma concerning Adam and Eve that Christians of any persuasion (who take the pair’s existence as somehow true, and certainly see the Fall as making sense) must overcome. We have a situation whereby Adam and Eve fail some kind of test and, as a result of this failure, humanity is punished […]
Posted inUncategorized
Adam & Eve as a Two Horned Dilemma; God as Morally Culpable
Reading Time: 3 minutes Adam and Eve present a real problem, a thorn in the side of believing Christians. There is a two horned problem of using Adam and Eve as representative of humanity. If they are just like humanity and fail as a result, then God has badly designed humanity to fail. If they are not representative of […]