Reading another thread on this board, it occurred to me that if creationism is true God must have created man to fall or knew that man would fall by the teeth and digestive tract he would have given us. Do creationist have a response to this?
It’s always interesting when human attributes are given to a “higher power” and when they aren’t.
I’m gonna be someone thinks “God” could have known the future, but just didn’t look.
Others will argue that “He” knew and that it’s with purpose and we need to trust “Him.” He really does care for us, he’s just developing us as a loving parent would their own child.
I say both of those as a former student-to-be-pastor… they are arguments I’ve seen. Sometimes maybe even used.
Now I’m atheist.
I am NOT trying to strawman. I’m curious, too.
How many creationists are there on this board anyway?
I am not a creationist, but speaking academically,*
It has been proposed that Adam was created as a hermaphrodite . There’s nothing that says that the flawed and frail physical form of humans after the fall is the same as when the first man was created in God’s image.
- I am not an academic. And technically I’m not speaking.
The way I’d heard it explained was that God gave us the gift of free will, a temptation, and an eternity to be tempted. The same way he created lions with sharp teeth and claws, even though they have no use for them prior to the fall. He knew it was gonna happen. I see it as a cop-out so that God can have a more interesting world to look at while making man feel all guilty about it. Then again, I’m an atheist.
Well, if you are a free will libertarian, then Adam and Eve’s choice was literally not determined or set when they were created. So you could argue that God didn’t know they would fall, since at the time of their creation there was no fact as to whether or not they would fall–it was genuinely indeterminate, undetermined. Omniscience = knowing all facts; if there was no fact as to whether Adam and Eve will choose to obey God or not, then God didn’t know; but this doesn’t represent a limit on his omniscience.
Or you could say God knew (maybe God exists outside of time and so all actions are present to him), but it’s not clear what difference that makes. Even if God knew Adam and Eve would fall, that doesn’t make him responsible. Unless you want to get into the whole free will and divine foreknowledge debate.
I assume the OP is directed to Young-Earth Creationists who believe there was no death at all before the Fall.
I’m an Old-Earth Progressive Creationist (occasionally Theistic Evolutionist) and I have no problem with death before the Fall.
…and then there are a large group of believers in God, that think man never fell at all.
Do you suppose that the OP is addressing the other groups of believers in God that do?
Old question, actually – go to Ambrose Bierce’ The Devil’s Dictionary and look up “infralapsarian.”