[Didymus Much]

Originally Posted by zacariah88

God's garden is holy and he planned for man to be in paradise and will be.

How futile will asking you for references and citations in support of your claims be?

[MitzaLizalor]

Following a question from a friend, I asked:

Originally Posted by MitzaLizalor

I can't find where God forbade the woman from eating of the tree specified. At the time of His prohibition, no female humans existed

Genesis 2:16a And the LORD God commanded the man

How should I answer this criticism?

We already know about Adam. My question related to Eve. Without that knowledge, how should we understand anything about God's Love and Mercy?

[Johny Joe Hold]

Atheists are so desperate because of Christain proof God created Adam and Eve they are reaching for ridiculous reasoning. One of them is now saying that if God created Eve out of a rib from Adam, instead of creating her directly, then Eve "evolved" out of Adam's rib. In other words, God practiced evolution, not creationism.

Give it up, atheists. God created Eve out of a rib.

Atheists go on with their foolishness. They are saying Adam's rib was male and the rib did a transformation, "trans" they call it, into a female rib.

No atheists, God hates trans. Fuhgeddaboudit.

[MitzaLizalor]

Another stunt often attempted, futilely, is the almost but not entirely equivocation fallacy. I'm not sure whether it's an attempt to make stuff up on the run, misrepresent actual knowledge, demonstrate the magnitude of ignorance required, so many possibilities but anyway an example does involve The Garden Of Eden.

God could have just incinerated Adam & Eve on the spot (I was not directly involved in this conversation) apparently, once sin entered Eden. He did not do so. We know that demonstrates His love and mercy, even in the face of sin which is completely revolting, and that the paradise He planted was imbued with perfection. There are two reasons [1] because God is perfect and [2] because there was no sin. And that's where the equivocation started.

Voile

“God did not say that Eden was perfect,” I heard, “He said it was ‘good,’” which is about as nit-picking as you can get (I thought) because any environment not containing sin cannot be improved upon. What better condition is there? Good in this usage means pleasing to God and the least jot of sin ruins everything like a bottle ink tipped over the linen voile kaftan you'd spent all week making ready for spring.

Ink

Furthermore, we know that Christians cannot sin because God says so! Maybe there are faux-churches out there cooking up doctrines without reference to Jesus and maybe they have a doctrine that Christians are not perfect but forgiven. Perhaps even most of them do have that doctrine – but it conflicts with the teachings of Jesus. How is that equivocation? It demands that the concept of sinlessness be treated one way in one context [before sin entered Eden] but in quite another way [from believers no longer in Eden] when Jesus commands perfection. From an objective standpoint, in both cases the motivating factor is the same: to please God. That is the true context and I have trouble deciding, is it ignorance of the source material? Did the speaker misrepresent actual knowledge for some nefarious reason? Or are dissipated wretches making up nonsense on the fly for a more piquant embrace of Eve's transgression.

So sad.