How would you interpret the story of the Prodigal Son in light of this? Bad analogy for God? After all, he gave the druggy son just as great a reward as the good son.
If it is eternal or self created, why could the universe itself, which must be less complicated than any proposed creator, not also be eternal or self creating?
Empirical observation. The Big Bang is the beginning of the universe. So, if you believe in the Big Bang, you believe that the universe DOES have a beginning, no?
Now, if I misunderstand the nature of the Big Bang and it is not the beginning of the universe, one could argue that the universe is eternal and eliminate the philosophical need for something else eternal. But otherwise, yes, you are left with the need to refer to something beginningless to explain the origination of something with an observable beginning.
All real responsibility is a form of enlightened self interest.
So, that is how you choose to define responsibility.
What of love, then? Is acting in another's interest instead of your own never enlightened?
I think you should be cautious of oversimplifying the answers to difficult moral questions that humans, some perhaps almost as bright as you, have struggled with for millenia and still not arrived at complete consensus.
If you've made contact with a larger intelligence it's your duty to your species to provide evidence of this intelligence.
That's your problem, not his.
A hypothetical "larger intelligence" is under no obligation to contact you or communicate with you in any particular way you might demand. And the kind of evidence you demand may not be available, if the "larger intelligence" elects not to provide it.
Now, you may not be obligated to take the original poster's claim at face value. But that does not necessarily translate into a duty on him to justify anything in particular to your personal satisfaction.
Faith keeps women from leaving abusive husbands because the hope they'll see the light. Faith keeps people from speaking out against the government because they hope their God will intervene. Faith keeps people from enjoying the only life they know they have because they hope that the words in a particular book are true.
Perhaps it is important to have faith in the right things, or the right kind of faith?
Martin Luther King, Jr. was incontrovertibly a man of faith. His faith absolutely did not keep him from speaking truth to his government.
As to enjoying life, faith gives a lot of people a totally unreasonable amount of happiness, peace, and comfort. I'm not so sure that all atheists are happier and more content than all people of faith.
The key to all of this lies in the fact that a good many churches, including big ones like Catholicism, Lutheranism and Anglicanism, do not espouse Biblical literalism. Not every word of the Bible had to be a literal truth for the book to still be the word of God.
I think a lot of people, both Christian and atheist (excluding all other faiths for simplicity), get tripped up on the "literalism" of the Bible.
How to explain color to a blind man? I think the Bible faces this same problem. Why does Jesus speak so much in parables? In my opinion, at least partially because it is literally (heh) impossible to describe the things he wants to describe using human language. He is describing ideas and experiences beyond our comprehension, but at least giving us something to latch onto, some analogy to at least understand something about the greater thing we do not understand.
So what sense does it even make to say something describing God is literal or not? Perhaps the universe, all of humanity, everything, is just a poor analogy for God in the first place. Maybe we don't even have direct access to "literal" truth.
How do we even know that there isn't something of the creation account that points to truths we have not yet comprehended? A fun take on this is a guy who wrote a book trying to reconcile the Biblical and scientific worldviews. He did a calculation on the relativistic time experienced from the "viewpoint" of the initial reference frame of the Big Bang until now(hope I'm not mangling this too badly). His result? About 6 days.
I think this also goes over the heads of atheists criticizing the Bible: "Why doesn't the Bible answer all our scientific questions if God is so smart?" Because God has other priorities? Trying to get us to love each other, maybe? Now, you can argue about the efficacy of the Bible as a means to that goal, but why do you think God's number one priority is giving people accurate scientific knowledge? If He is God, he can just make us live forever and never get sick with a thought. Maybe he wants us to focus also on spiritual truths?
Which opens a whole other raft of questions, the problem of pain, etc. But the point is now we are firmly in the realm of philosophy, morality, and, yes, religion. Which is where the Bible resides and should remain, despite attempts by Christians and atheists alike to the contrary.
Or, to put it another way, why are some stupid sheep herders who'd be impressed by a light bulb more worthy of direct physical contact and proof of God than we today, who understand enough of science to know something truly miraculous when we see it?
My guess is that it has something to do with the arrogance of people thinking they are inherently more worthy of hearing from God than a bunch of stupid sheep herders, just because of the circumstance of having been born at a time after the lightbulb was invented.
So, your argument is that because Christian teachings are made to appear on banknotes, that this is evidence that atheists have influence where they previously didn't?
His argument is that Christians have not infiltrated the system because they ARE the system. No need to infiltrate your own home.
It was not a particularly complex argument. Perhaps you should expend a little more effort trying to follow simple arguments in the future.
You seem to be under the impression that DVD players originally came out at the same price they're selling for now.
DVD was also originally priced for early adopters. Maybe a basic technology commoditization lesson is in order?
Almost every new technology, the initial price is out of reach of the common consumer. Only the extremely motivated and high income people even consider it. Also, production costs for a new technology are always very high. Therefor, high initial prices.
But with pretty much any technology you can think of, costs fall rapidly as volume increases. Which brings you to today's situation with free DVD players in cereal boxes.
There's no reason to think BluRay/HD-DVD won't follow the same path. HD anything is the new hotness. LCD HD screens are following Moore's law, and everyone who watches an NFL came in HD on a big screen wants one. HD TVs will drive adoption of BluRay/HD-DVD, not the reverse. And prices will plummet soon enough.
In summary, if you have to ask the question "Why would I spend $600 or more just to watch the same DVDs on the new player?", you are NOT the current target market for these technologies:). When Sony can only deliver low 100,000s right now in any case, price is almost irrelevant.
I think it's trendy to believe that religion is what is holding the U.S. back today.
But I think it's more complicated than that. Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. was at least as religious as it is now. But it also led the world in scientific discovery and application.
For the most part, Americans are both religious and lovers of scientific progress. Certainly technical progress with tangible results.
India I would say is very religious, but also much in love with scientific learning. China is only irreligious because of intense religious persecution, and I don't think we want to go there. Japan is very secular, and very good at science, but maybe not so good at the creative and innovative aspects of discovery as Americans, culturally speaking (although they may be making progress in those areas). South Korea has a lot of born again Christians, and still is full heartedly embracing technology and science.
Europe is extremely secular, but I don't think they have the cultural values to innovate and compete over time with the countries I just listed.
The Muslim world, of course, is ultra religious and vehemently anti-modernity, which carries over into a disdain for science.
So I think if you want to be objective and scientific in your view, the correlation between religious fervor and scientific progress is far from fixed. In my opinion, it is the U.S. system of separating church and state that has enabled both religion and science to thrive here. Yes, there have been attempts to throw that balance out of whack recently, but let's dispose of our bathwater and keep our baby, shall we.
Our problem is cultural, there's such an anti-intellectual problem in schools and the rest of society, actively encourage exploration (you know, the heart of science) throughout the development of today's youth, and within one generation we'll be sorted.
Automatically, most of these, if you mention them to some random person off the street, will bring up an image of smart nerds doing super smart nerdy things and getting rich. I think we've already forgotten the 90s. Being geek was ultimate chic. Being smart and having a good education was seen as the fast track to an early retirement into a life of luxury.
I just don't believe that our culture has been totally upended since that time. I do think that people have become disillusioned by the fact that now you can be brilliant and hard working, yet still priced out of the market by someone willing and able to do the same work for an order of magnitude less pay.
So no, I do not believe for a second it's a cultural problem. It is a broadly recognized problem that globalization helps the desperately poor and makes the rich ultra-richer, but screws the middle class. Americans would love to return to those heady, long ago days of the late 20th century where it seemed like being smart, curious, innovative and hard working was likely to be rewarded with a modicum of prosperity.
The best thing that could happen to the future of the world is the advent of a more universal, worldly, consciousness and an ascendency of non-theism. After all, there'd definitely be less or no wars (no God to justify them, no virgins in Heaven), less suffering (no wars plus no religious barriers to medical research), better integration (no separation of the righteous and 'wicked'), and hopefully more compassion (less Godly judgement), and definitely more time spent on learning about science and the natural universe and less about the supernatural, religious texts.
Sigh.
Remember Communism? No religion. They still had a few problems.
And religious people have gotten into a lot of trouble over the years, too. And then there are Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, and Mother Theresa.
Could everyone, atheist, theist, whatever in this thread stop with the shallow ad hominem? There are plenty enough examples of bad atheists, good atheists, bad theists, good theists to go round in circles without ever getting anywhere.
Considering that I've been told by more than one Christian (true story here) that atheists do not have the capacity for morality, I absolutely love the idea that I might be able to catch up with gay people on the social pecking order.
I think atheists are now trying to catch up in this regard. Sam Harris often seems to be suggesting that every religious person is going to go out tomorrow and fly a plane into a skyscraper.
A fertilized egg and an 11-month-old baby have two things in common: neither of them is a sentient being but both have the potential to become one.
So...you are self professedly in favor of killing babies...and you wonder why religious people question the moral capacity of atheists?
Sorry to be so blunt, but if atheism leads people to accept without any qualms behavior considered nauseatingly vile by the vast majority of humanity, is that a good endorsement for following atheism to wherever it takes you?
Any other atheists here want to go out on a limb and speak out against killing babies?
Also, haven't you just validated the slippery slope argument put forth by the "life begins at conception" crowd?
Men should be rational because it brings good to the individual, to society, to other species on the planet, to the planet itself. Because it caused science to arise; because science is a system that continually generates advancement in knowledge and goods; because when we look at irrational systems like religion, we see far fewer benefits of any particular significance.
But that is not a Materialist, or Logical Positivist, or whatever you want to call it, statement.
"Should"s have no role in material, scientific discourse. There is only what is and what is not, and their various probabilities. Once you start throwing around the word "should" you are using a different mode of thought.
This is nothing more than the Free Will Argument in sheep's clothing. Does man control his own destiny, or is fate pre-determined? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Sophisticated biological entities exist without clear and well-defined demarcation between systems and sub-systems, in a spiral of scaling complexity that extends to the subatomic. In totality, it is not possible to both quantitatively and qualitatively measure the exact nature of such systems and the environment that influences them, thus no perfect prediction of individual human thought is possible, even if it is pre-determined by physical law.
Wouldn't it have been easier to just say "Yes, our thought processes are controlled by physical laws"?
If anything, this suggests to Adam that he will eat from the tree.
It's like a Dr. Who episode. Tenses and qualifiers get funny when you can see the future.
Let's say tonight you get a vision in a dream of someone murdering someone else, and that vision comes true in the future. Are you responsible for the murder?
I would argue that this concept is responsible for the pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality that prevents many of the affluent from doing their share to help those less fortunate.
But, do you honestly believe, that the Bible as a whole, and particularly the New Testemanent, and particularly the words of Jesus, is an endorsement of any mentality that suggests the affluent not help those less fortunate?
You might reply with something about free will, but that's garbage. If you believe in heaven, then you believe in a perfect place, free of sin. Why didn't god create heaven on earth to start with, if he loved his people?
Heaven's not Heaven if it has people who don't want to be there, is it?
Also, isn't that basically what he did with the Garden? No problems, life of leisure. But he gave them the option of leaving and making it on their own if they so desired. Which they chose. The Apple was nothing more than a signifier of their choice.
About the free will thing, there's a book I've been meaning to finish: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. One thing I think is interesting in it is just how utterly annoying the Angels are. They are extremely literal and seem kind of dumb. But isn't this inevitable in a creature with no free will? How many SciFi stories are there where someone invents a world filled with others who conform to the creator's desire, and how hollow, empty and tragic that world necessarily turns out?
Are you sure there is no value in creating free will?
Slashdot Mirror
How would you interpret the story of the Prodigal Son in light of this? Bad analogy for God? After all, he gave the druggy son just as great a reward as the good son.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
If it is eternal or self created, why could the universe itself, which must be less complicated than any proposed creator, not also be eternal or self creating?
Empirical observation. The Big Bang is the beginning of the universe. So, if you believe in the Big Bang, you believe that the universe DOES have a beginning, no?
Now, if I misunderstand the nature of the Big Bang and it is not the beginning of the universe, one could argue that the universe is eternal and eliminate the philosophical need for something else eternal. But otherwise, yes, you are left with the need to refer to something beginningless to explain the origination of something with an observable beginning.
All real responsibility is a form of enlightened self interest.
So, that is how you choose to define responsibility.
What of love, then? Is acting in another's interest instead of your own never enlightened?
I think you should be cautious of oversimplifying the answers to difficult moral questions that humans, some perhaps almost as bright as you, have struggled with for millenia and still not arrived at complete consensus.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
If you've made contact with a larger intelligence it's your duty to your species to provide evidence of this intelligence.
That's your problem, not his.
A hypothetical "larger intelligence" is under no obligation to contact you or communicate with you in any particular way you might demand. And the kind of evidence you demand may not be available, if the "larger intelligence" elects not to provide it.
Now, you may not be obligated to take the original poster's claim at face value. But that does not necessarily translate into a duty on him to justify anything in particular to your personal satisfaction.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Faith keeps women from leaving abusive husbands because the hope they'll see the light. Faith keeps people from speaking out against the government because they hope their God will intervene. Faith keeps people from enjoying the only life they know they have because they hope that the words in a particular book are true.
Perhaps it is important to have faith in the right things, or the right kind of faith?
Martin Luther King, Jr. was incontrovertibly a man of faith. His faith absolutely did not keep him from speaking truth to his government.
As to enjoying life, faith gives a lot of people a totally unreasonable amount of happiness, peace, and comfort. I'm not so sure that all atheists are happier and more content than all people of faith.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Faith is great. It might well be the best of all human qualities.
As you may know, Paul rejects the idea that faith is the best human quality. He emphatically says love is greatest, and faith is worthless without it.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
The key to all of this lies in the fact that a good many churches, including big ones like Catholicism, Lutheranism and Anglicanism, do not espouse Biblical literalism. Not every word of the Bible had to be a literal truth for the book to still be the word of God.
I think a lot of people, both Christian and atheist (excluding all other faiths for simplicity), get tripped up on the "literalism" of the Bible.
How to explain color to a blind man? I think the Bible faces this same problem. Why does Jesus speak so much in parables? In my opinion, at least partially because it is literally (heh) impossible to describe the things he wants to describe using human language. He is describing ideas and experiences beyond our comprehension, but at least giving us something to latch onto, some analogy to at least understand something about the greater thing we do not understand.
So what sense does it even make to say something describing God is literal or not? Perhaps the universe, all of humanity, everything, is just a poor analogy for God in the first place. Maybe we don't even have direct access to "literal" truth.
How do we even know that there isn't something of the creation account that points to truths we have not yet comprehended? A fun take on this is a guy who wrote a book trying to reconcile the Biblical and scientific worldviews. He did a calculation on the relativistic time experienced from the "viewpoint" of the initial reference frame of the Big Bang until now(hope I'm not mangling this too badly). His result? About 6 days.
I think this also goes over the heads of atheists criticizing the Bible: "Why doesn't the Bible answer all our scientific questions if God is so smart?" Because God has other priorities? Trying to get us to love each other, maybe? Now, you can argue about the efficacy of the Bible as a means to that goal, but why do you think God's number one priority is giving people accurate scientific knowledge? If He is God, he can just make us live forever and never get sick with a thought. Maybe he wants us to focus also on spiritual truths?
Which opens a whole other raft of questions, the problem of pain, etc. But the point is now we are firmly in the realm of philosophy, morality, and, yes, religion. Which is where the Bible resides and should remain, despite attempts by Christians and atheists alike to the contrary.
-jimbo
In one place he's smiling on David, who is stealing other men's wives and having them killed so that they're widows and he can marry them.
Huh? Smiling?
-jimbo
Or, to put it another way, why are some stupid sheep herders who'd be impressed by a light bulb more worthy of direct physical contact and proof of God than we today, who understand enough of science to know something truly miraculous when we see it?
My guess is that it has something to do with the arrogance of people thinking they are inherently more worthy of hearing from God than a bunch of stupid sheep herders, just because of the circumstance of having been born at a time after the lightbulb was invented.
Just a thought.
-jimbo
So, your argument is that because Christian teachings are made to appear on banknotes, that this is evidence that atheists have influence where they previously didn't?
His argument is that Christians have not infiltrated the system because they ARE the system. No need to infiltrate your own home.
It was not a particularly complex argument. Perhaps you should expend a little more effort trying to follow simple arguments in the future.
-jimbo
People need to learn to read and interact with a basic interface, if they can't, then they will get left in the dust, same as other dinosaurs.
Or, more likely, they'll learn to shop at someplace other than wawa where they can get service from a real human being.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
That's not tolerance, that's religious blindness.
Do you realize what you just wrote?
Tolerance means living peacefully alongside people you don't always agree with. Not everybody agreeing with everyone else on everything all the time.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
You seem to be under the impression that DVD players originally came out at the same price they're selling for now.
DVD was also originally priced for early adopters. Maybe a basic technology commoditization lesson is in order?
Almost every new technology, the initial price is out of reach of the common consumer. Only the extremely motivated and high income people even consider it. Also, production costs for a new technology are always very high. Therefor, high initial prices.
But with pretty much any technology you can think of, costs fall rapidly as volume increases. Which brings you to today's situation with free DVD players in cereal boxes.
There's no reason to think BluRay/HD-DVD won't follow the same path. HD anything is the new hotness. LCD HD screens are following Moore's law, and everyone who watches an NFL came in HD on a big screen wants one. HD TVs will drive adoption of BluRay/HD-DVD, not the reverse. And prices will plummet soon enough.
In summary, if you have to ask the question "Why would I spend $600 or more just to watch the same DVDs on the new player?", you are NOT the current target market for these technologies :). When Sony can only deliver low 100,000s right now in any case, price is almost irrelevant.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
I think it's trendy to believe that religion is what is holding the U.S. back today.
But I think it's more complicated than that. Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. was at least as religious as it is now. But it also led the world in scientific discovery and application.
For the most part, Americans are both religious and lovers of scientific progress. Certainly technical progress with tangible results.
India I would say is very religious, but also much in love with scientific learning. China is only irreligious because of intense religious persecution, and I don't think we want to go there. Japan is very secular, and very good at science, but maybe not so good at the creative and innovative aspects of discovery as Americans, culturally speaking (although they may be making progress in those areas). South Korea has a lot of born again Christians, and still is full heartedly embracing technology and science.
Europe is extremely secular, but I don't think they have the cultural values to innovate and compete over time with the countries I just listed.
The Muslim world, of course, is ultra religious and vehemently anti-modernity, which carries over into a disdain for science.
So I think if you want to be objective and scientific in your view, the correlation between religious fervor and scientific progress is far from fixed. In my opinion, it is the U.S. system of separating church and state that has enabled both religion and science to thrive here. Yes, there have been attempts to throw that balance out of whack recently, but let's dispose of our bathwater and keep our baby, shall we.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Our problem is cultural, there's such an anti-intellectual problem in schools and the rest of society, actively encourage exploration (you know, the heart of science) throughout the development of today's youth, and within one generation we'll be sorted.
Google. Microsoft. Apple. Yahoo. Amazon. Ebay. Biotech.
Automatically, most of these, if you mention them to some random person off the street, will bring up an image of smart nerds doing super smart nerdy things and getting rich. I think we've already forgotten the 90s. Being geek was ultimate chic. Being smart and having a good education was seen as the fast track to an early retirement into a life of luxury.
I just don't believe that our culture has been totally upended since that time. I do think that people have become disillusioned by the fact that now you can be brilliant and hard working, yet still priced out of the market by someone willing and able to do the same work for an order of magnitude less pay.
So no, I do not believe for a second it's a cultural problem. It is a broadly recognized problem that globalization helps the desperately poor and makes the rich ultra-richer, but screws the middle class. Americans would love to return to those heady, long ago days of the late 20th century where it seemed like being smart, curious, innovative and hard working was likely to be rewarded with a modicum of prosperity.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
The best thing that could happen to the future of the world is the advent of a more universal, worldly, consciousness and an ascendency of non-theism. After all, there'd definitely be less or no wars (no God to justify them, no virgins in Heaven), less suffering (no wars plus no religious barriers to medical research), better integration (no separation of the righteous and 'wicked'), and hopefully more compassion (less Godly judgement), and definitely more time spent on learning about science and the natural universe and less about the supernatural, religious texts.
Sigh.
Remember Communism? No religion. They still had a few problems.
And religious people have gotten into a lot of trouble over the years, too. And then there are Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi, and Mother Theresa.
Could everyone, atheist, theist, whatever in this thread stop with the shallow ad hominem? There are plenty enough examples of bad atheists, good atheists, bad theists, good theists to go round in circles without ever getting anywhere.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Considering that I've been told by more than one Christian (true story here) that atheists do not have the capacity for morality, I absolutely love the idea that I might be able to catch up with gay people on the social pecking order.
I think atheists are now trying to catch up in this regard. Sam Harris often seems to be suggesting that every religious person is going to go out tomorrow and fly a plane into a skyscraper.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
A fertilized egg and an 11-month-old baby have two things in common: neither of them is a sentient being but both have the potential to become one.
So...you are self professedly in favor of killing babies...and you wonder why religious people question the moral capacity of atheists?
Sorry to be so blunt, but if atheism leads people to accept without any qualms behavior considered nauseatingly vile by the vast majority of humanity, is that a good endorsement for following atheism to wherever it takes you?
Any other atheists here want to go out on a limb and speak out against killing babies?
Also, haven't you just validated the slippery slope argument put forth by the "life begins at conception" crowd?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Like everybody else, I was not born religous.
There's research that suggests people generally ARE born religious:
http://www.cs.umb.edu/~marc/tics/kelemen.txt
But they shouldn't be labelling others who haven't made bizarre philosophical and lifestyle choices.
Er, you label others "bizarre" while asking others not to label you. OK.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Running Windows, OSX, and Linux in the home - I am a slave to no one's propaganda.
Dude, I was, like right with you when you were all "Keep yourself open to Jesus, Buddah, Marx, Herbert, Dawkins, whoever" and everything.
But the idea that you can use Windows, OSX, and Linux without choosing one exclusively and mocking all the others, that's just crazy talk, man.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
One last thing - is the Continuum Hypothesis true, or false?
Very interesting. Thanks for the link.
But not sure the connection with the question of whether or not God invented logic...?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Men should be rational because it brings good to the individual, to society, to other species on the planet, to the planet itself. Because it caused science to arise; because science is a system that continually generates advancement in knowledge and goods; because when we look at irrational systems like religion, we see far fewer benefits of any particular significance.
But that is not a Materialist, or Logical Positivist, or whatever you want to call it, statement.
"Should"s have no role in material, scientific discourse. There is only what is and what is not, and their various probabilities. Once you start throwing around the word "should" you are using a different mode of thought.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
This is nothing more than the Free Will Argument in sheep's clothing. Does man control his own destiny, or is fate pre-determined? At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. Sophisticated biological entities exist without clear and well-defined demarcation between systems and sub-systems, in a spiral of scaling complexity that extends to the subatomic. In totality, it is not possible to both quantitatively and qualitatively measure the exact nature of such systems and the environment that influences them, thus no perfect prediction of individual human thought is possible, even if it is pre-determined by physical law.
Wouldn't it have been easier to just say "Yes, our thought processes are controlled by physical laws"?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
If anything, this suggests to Adam that he will eat from the tree.
It's like a Dr. Who episode. Tenses and qualifiers get funny when you can see the future.
Let's say tonight you get a vision in a dream of someone murdering someone else, and that vision comes true in the future. Are you responsible for the murder?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
I would argue that this concept is responsible for the pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality that prevents many of the affluent from doing their share to help those less fortunate.
But, do you honestly believe, that the Bible as a whole, and particularly the New Testemanent, and particularly the words of Jesus, is an endorsement of any mentality that suggests the affluent not help those less fortunate?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
You might reply with something about free will, but that's garbage. If you believe in heaven, then you believe in a perfect place, free of sin. Why didn't god create heaven on earth to start with, if he loved his people?
Heaven's not Heaven if it has people who don't want to be there, is it?
Also, isn't that basically what he did with the Garden? No problems, life of leisure. But he gave them the option of leaving and making it on their own if they so desired. Which they chose. The Apple was nothing more than a signifier of their choice.
About the free will thing, there's a book I've been meaning to finish: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. One thing I think is interesting in it is just how utterly annoying the Angels are. They are extremely literal and seem kind of dumb. But isn't this inevitable in a creature with no free will? How many SciFi stories are there where someone invents a world filled with others who conform to the creator's desire, and how hollow, empty and tragic that world necessarily turns out?
Are you sure there is no value in creating free will?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo