if god is all knowing, wouldnt he have known that adam and eve would give in to his

[redwire]

temptations in the garden? god put an fruit that was good to eat and appealing to the eye in the middle of the garden and forbade them to eat it. further he allowed the serpent to tempt them further into eating it. god was obviously tempting them. but if god made their brain wouldnt he have endowed them with the capacity to be deceitful and wouldnt god have been aware of all of this- in which case, why create man if he knew they would be damned.

[Frizby]

Of course he knew, God gave them free will to choose their own fate..

[lightperson]

52.1 Peter 1:20
He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you

Deliverance was planned before the world was formed. Why? I do not know. I am not God.

[an_gel_on]

So that His grace and mercy may abound!

God has so arranged that only those who truly love Him [marked by a life of obedience] will enter heaven - those who are indifferent to Him will never destroy His world again. I think it's a perfect way to create a perfect world. He is allowing our free wills to populate His perfect world. He has no use for those who freely choose to disagree with Him, so He, being God, will do away with them.

The only ones who will spend eternity in hell are those who freely choose to do so.

I believe we ALL will repent. Even in hell there will be repentance. But in hell, an eternity of repenting will have about as much effect as playing music to a corpse.

So, in a wonderful sense, God is allowing a perfect world [heaven] to be created by our free wills. He has allotted us; each one of us, a lifetime to choose it for ourselves for He will not impose His will on anyone. Yet, even when given the choice of taking for themselves God's free gift of grace or taking their place in eternal torment men with eyes wide open will choose eternal torment. In light of what God has done through His Son Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary, eternal torment for those who refuse God's costly gift of salvation is a very gentle demise.

<)))><

[Josue]

Because God can do whatever God wants to do!

Same thing with Hell. God is all knowing but God let Lucifer do what he was doing and God made Hell for Lucifer's angles.

[Eric]

the outcome wouldn't be just right if something happened that wasn't planned or something didn't that was.

[ANDY F]

It's a good question, and I think for a certain kind of literal-minded Christian, it may be unanswerable.

I'm agnostic, have always wondered about that passage. It just seems like a nasty set-up, doesn't it?

However, maybe God wanted human beings to acquire the "knowledge of good and evil," and actually forbade them to do so, in hopes that they would disobey his orders & become smarter.

Maybe the whole story is a metaphor for the psychological pains associated with growing up and gaining a sense of what's morally allowed & what isn't, in whatever culture you're born into.

Perhaps rebellion against your father is part of the growth process; the rebellion costs, and once you've gained the knowledge you kind of want your innocence back, but "angels with flaming swords" block the way.

Maybe this is just an "origins myth" like so many other origin myths handed down by people in many different cultures -- The Story on How Death Came into the World.

Fascinating myth, however. I think it's somewhat related to the Greek myth about Pandora's box. In both myths, a curious woman brings woe upon the whole world by being curious. However, in the Jewish myth Eve is supposedly going against God's wishes.

In the Pandora myth, Zeus is trying to keep humans from becoming too powerful, and so he deliberately booby-traps the box and presents it to Pandora in a fashion that he knows will provoke her to open it.

I believe there's also a Sumerian myth about Inanna, queen of heaven and earth and goddess of love, having trouble with a tree and a snake in a garden.

In the Sumerian myth, however, Inanna goes to her cousin Marduk to complain about her tree being infested with the serpent and with the girl Lilith, who is big trouble. Mark comes with an ax and chops down the tree, scares away Lilith and the serpent, and uses the wood to make wooden thrones for Inanna and himself.

-- reply from friendly agnostic

[Caveat Lector]

Yes, God knew. And lucky for us he didn't just wipe em' out then. He decided at the beginning that YOUR soul was worth living out this mess... so that you could be with him. But then why did he even put us here you ask? Because he wants it to be your CHOICE. Because we are made in his image, and God makes choices... Love should always be a choice. It CANNOT be demanded. It is not always natural. It seeks truth. It seeks safety. It seeks loyalty.

[twowings19]

"If we take this story in its apparent meaning, according to the interpretation of the masses, it is indeed extraordinary. The intelligence cannot accept it, affirm it, or imagine it; for such arrangements, such details, such speeches and reproaches are far from being those of an intelligent man, how much less of the Divinity—that Divinity Who has organized this infinite universe in the most perfect form, and its innumerable inhabitants with absolute system, strength and perfection.

We must reflect a little: if the literal meaning of this story were attributed to a wise man, certainly all would logically deny that this arrangement, this invention, could have emanated from an intelligent being. Therefore, this story of Adam and Eve who ate from the tree, and their expulsion from Paradise, must be thought of simply as a symbol. It contains divine mysteries and universal meanings, and it is capable of marvelous explanations. Only those who are initiated into mysteries, and those who are near the Court of the All-Powerful, are aware of these secrets. Hence these verses of the Bible have numerous meanings.

We will explain one of them, and we will say: Adam signifies the heavenly spirit of Adam, and Eve His human soul. For in some passages in the Holy Books where women are mentioned, they represent the soul of man. The tree of good and evil signifies the human world; for the spiritual and divine world is purely good and absolutely luminous, but in the human world light and darkness, good and evil, exist as opposite conditions.

The meaning of the serpent is attachment to the human world. This attachment of the spirit to the human world led the soul and spirit of Adam from the world of freedom to the world of bondage and caused Him to turn from the Kingdom of Unity to the human world. When the soul and spirit of Adam entered the human world, He came out from the paradise of freedom and fell into the world of bondage. From the height of purity and absolute goodness, He entered into the world of good and evil.

The tree of life is the highest degree of the world of existence: the position of the Word of God, and the supreme Manifestation. Therefore, that position has been preserved; and, at the appearance of the most noble supreme Manifestation, it became apparent and clear. For the position of Adam, with regard to the appearance and manifestation of the divine perfections, was in the embryonic condition; the position of Christ was the condition of maturity and the age of reason; and the rising of the Greatest Luminary was the condition of the perfection of the essence and of the qualities. This is why in the supreme Paradise the tree of life is the expression for the center of absolutely pure sanctity—that is to say, of the divine supreme Manifestation. From the days of Adam until the days of Christ, They spoke little of eternal life and the heavenly universal perfections. This tree of life was the position of the Reality of Christ; through His manifestation it was planted and adorned with everlasting fruits.

Now consider how far this meaning conforms to the reality. For the spirit and the soul of Adam, when they were attached to the human world, passed from the world of freedom into the world of bondage, and His descendants continued in bondage. This attachment of the soul and spirit to the human world, which is sin, was inherited by the descendants of Adam, and is the serpent which is always in the midst of, and at enmity with, the spirits and the descendants of Adam. That enmity continues and endures. For attachment to the world has become the cause of the bondage of spirits, and this bondage is identical with sin, which has been transmitted from Adam to His posterity. It is because of this attachment that men have been deprived of essential spirituality and exalted position.

When the sanctified breezes of Christ and the holy light of the Greatest Luminary were spread abroad, the human realities—that is to say, those who turned toward the Word of God and received the profusion of His bounties—were saved from this attachment and sin, obtained everlasting life, were delivered from the chains of bondage, and attained to the world of liberty. They were freed from the vices of the human world, and were blessed by the virtues of the Kingdom. This is the meaning of the words of Christ, “I gave My blood for the life of the world� —that is to say, I have chosen all these troubles, these sufferings, calamities, and even the greatest martyrdom, to attain this object, the remission of sins (that is, the detachment of spirits from the human world, and their attraction to the divine world) in order that souls may arise who will be the very essence of the guidance of mankind, and the manifestations of the perfections of the Supreme Kingdom."