Accusations Against God: Too Few Restrictions (Adam and Eve)

By BlogSpotThinker
September 24, 2011

God appears to be accused by some of cruelly and negligently allowing adversity that He could have prevented. Other accusations apparently reasonably perceived to suggest that God’s allowing the negative circumstance to occur constitutes God’s intent for the outcome to manifest itself in the way that the Bible appears to report. The accusation appears to suggest that the Bible’s portrayal of God as omniscient and omnipotent suggests that God could have prevented Adam and Eve from making the wrong choice in the Garden. This accusation appears to suggest that the Bible’s portrayal of God’s management of humanity falls below the human standard for parenting.

The Bible, however, appears to suggest that God established an environment with one restriction and made that restriction clear, arming Adam and Eve with the necessary knowledge (Genesis 2:16 and 17, Genesis 3:2 and 3). The Bible appears to suggest that, having done so, God left the choice of whether or not to abide by that restriction to Adam and Eve.

Even in the context of human parenting, when given an exemplary information and child-development experience, a child appears reasonably expected to eventually make decisions on its own. It appears further generally expected that even a well-intentioned human parent will not attempt to control a child’s environment beyond a certain point. Attempts to do so appear generally considered to be excessive by the vast majority of opinion that appears to be considered reasonable, if not also considered to be similarly so by the child. Such attempts to control a child’s environment might even reasonably be considered to impinge upon the freedoms of others that are part of that environment. However, I humbly and respectfully submit that the above is not intended to opine on the apparently widely-variable context of specific parenting choices.

The Bible appears to suggest that Adam and Eve ultimately chose to accept a false depiction of God and, as a result, the corrupt leadership of the falsifier rather than the apparently falsely-maligned leadership of God. As a result, as the Bible appears to suggest, human perspective and discernment was damagingly altered, apparently resulting in less-wise decision-making that resulted in negative outcomes. Similarly, human children, even including those perhaps considered to be impeccably-raised, appear reported to make inappropriate choices. Whether those choices are attributable to parent failings, to the child’s nature, or to some other factor appears to be a matter somewhat inconsistently assessed in retrospect.

An example of the apparently suggested intervention by God that appears to be generally considered to be undesirable appears to be eliminating the potential for murder by eliminating human physical capability to manipulate objects or by eliminating components of the environment that can be used to commit murder. Greater intervention by God to prevent undesirable human choice by eliminating human capacity to choose would appear to offer even greater potential for God to be misrepresented and misperceived as being overly restrictive and, as a result, as infringing upon human freedom, individuality and self-determined potential.