Hi Jeanie

Yep, he did know. Actually Adam and Eve made the right choice, but he had to let it be their choice and he warned them of the consequences so they knew what they were doing.
The plain words of the bible suggest clearly that they did not really understand the choice they were making. They understood it in the sense that innocent children understand that taking cookies is wrong maybe but this was not a cookie they were eating. The consequences of this choice were far more profound than they were capable of realizing it appears.

Eve, at least, realized it was right after she did it.
That’s getting to the crux of the problem I see with the story. Yes they had a choice to make, a choice setup by god who already knew what choice they would make (so was it really a free choice in any real sense) but they did not know good from evil, right from wrong until after they had made that choice.

the earth also fell quite literally from its place in the heavens when it took its present place in the solar system.
Sometimes we come across claims made in the bible that can be tested against physical evidence and this is one of them. There is much physical evidence that shows that the earth has been orbiting the sun without interruption and with a predictable though changing period of travel around it and a variable rotation rate since long before humans first appeared here. In short the physical evidence is unequivocal on this point, what you are suggesting never happened. What do you do when your beliefs rely on claims that are demonstrably false? Is this where you stop looking into or accepting science Jeanie?

It's like they start to have a real conscience or something.
Do you believe it’s a magic number? What about the bell curve? We are all individual, we all reach the various milestones at different times, some children are much earlier than others, some much later. Does your belief take that into account? I have met 5 year olds with far more conscience than some 10 year olds I know.

But anyone who dies before that goes straight to the celestial kingdom....
Should we not just kill them all as soon as they are born, it’s a free ticket to heaven while the alternative is fraught with the possibility of going down the wrong path. What about the idea of keeping them totally ignorant of god. If they have never even heard of him they can’t be condemned for not believing in him so again it’s a free ticked to heaven. Why do christians never consider these possibilities? Why do christian missionaries exist at all given that they will condemn at least some of those the teach to hell who would otherwise have had a free ticket to heaven?

As far as anyone else, I believe God sees things on an eternal level and, sometimes, its better for the greater good and our eternal welfare to cut things short. He knows what he's doing.
I guess we’ll just have to chalk the proof of that one up to faith!

Not sure what you are speaking of, exactly, other than the flood, though, because mostly he has just let us destroy each other.
Mostly maybe though in Numbers 31 he seems to be doing more than just allowing a massacre, he is dictating terms to ensure it is done correctly and even takes some of the booty including 32 virgins if the bible can be believed. What exactly would god do with 32 virgins and how would Moses get them to him?

Yes I understand that the standard line is that Jesus was a volunteer but the bottom line is that the system was setup by god and under that system the only way we could be saved was if his son was painfully murdered. Volunteer or not would any father worthy of being considered moral come up with such a scheme when he had the absolute power to find another less bloody approach?

Yes I understand that he did it to allow us to overcome the wages of sin, to overcome death and achieve a state we have not earned and are not worthy of but think about it for a moment. God setup this system, god controls it, god has to have the absolute power to invent a less brutal one yet he chooses this as his best solution to a problem he created when he created imperfect man? Do you really believe that an all powerful being could not do better than that? Is that your idea of the best that perfect morality could hope for? I am not perfect or all knowing but I can see several possibilities that are more moral IMHO than that.

Is that a moral way to behave?
Jeanie: See above.
OK consider this, is that the most moral way you can possibly imagine for god to have behaved?

Jeanie: Yes, God could've just given it all to us, but we would not have made our own choices to choose good over evil. It was easy to choose the right while in God's presence like before in the premortal life, but in order for us to really grow, we needed the opportunity to come to earth and have bodies and learn to live through faith.
Have you heard of last Thursdayism? Under this idea god created the entire universe last Thursday with all of the appearance of age that we detect around us including our memories already in place. To be all powerful and all knowing he must be capable of doing that. He must also be capable of creating his perfect future kingdom complete with people who made the right choices. The people who would have made the wrong choices and suffered for it never existed but those who exist remember the full history that seems so important to god, they remember choices freely made even though these choices did not really occur. If god knows what we are to do before we do it we don’t really have free will anyway, we can’t chose anything other that what is already in god’s knowledge. Under this scheme god gets his perfect world full of the perfect people he seems to want but without all of the suffering. In effect he just creates the exact state that that world will be in after it is completed but without going through the painful history to get there. He must be capable of this to be all powerful. He must want this if he is truly moral because no truly moral being could wish the suffering of this life on anyone and especially not on a whole planet full of thinking feeling suffering beings. The beings in such a scenario would be identical to those who had gone through this world to get there, only god would know the difference. Is god doing this just to make myself fell right with the world? He does not need to do so for our benefit, for us there is no difference in the overall outcome or he is not all powerful and all knowing.

All the best Jeanie

Russell