If Yahweh is so powerful...

Correction....It is Matthew 17...not 7...

 

Free will.

 

Maybe he has a phobia of snakes and I bet the fact that it talked didn't help...

 

Rod of Asclepius and Caduceus are symbols of healing, snakes coiled around a staff.

 

Theist cop out response!

If god gave mankind free will then he knew beforehand that they would sin (because he "created" the capacity to sin himself) so instead "free will" is nothing more than entrapment by god.

 

Well you see you need some context. That was one baller ass OG snake. No ordinary death adder poser muthaf***a.

 

The whole idea of free will is BS.

How can someone say the snake was free to enter the garden of eden and then turn around and justify god banishing Adam and Eve from the Garden for something the snake was already doing? If he had no problem with the snake (IE Lucifer) being in the garden, why would he have any real issues with Adam and Even after they ate the fruit?

I think that the story is supposed to be allegory for humanity not needing god. God wanted humans to be fully dependent on him for everything and it angered him that they had the knowledge made them able to break free from him.

It isn't about sinners being cast out of paradise, since Satan was already allowed in the garden, it was about God punishing humans for gaining the knowedge that allowed them to no longer be dependent upon god for everything in their lives.

 

I think it's a myth that doesn't think through the ramifications of its own story in terms of free will or determinism. If they gained knowledge that allowed them to no longer be dependent on god then why do the next 65 books focus on people being unable to be independent from god? It seems to me that the curses laid upon humanity are the true causes of our misfortune, not some fruit whose effects are contradictory and undetermined. God curses Adam to toil in the field and he curses him to die. All humanity inherits this defect. Later in the book of Genesis god has to destroy all of humanity in a flood and curses the survivors to shortened life spans. When humanity recovers from that flood and attempts to build a tower that goes to heaven God is like , "well I better bring out my curses again. If we let humans go on like this they will be able to accomplish anything" so he causes everyone to lose their ability to understand one another and thus different languages begin.

If eating the fruit were just about separating from god then trying to make it on our own there sure is a lot of intervention to make sure we fail.