RE: Hal's Reply

Your first point is that the big bang jives nicely with a notion of ruined creation but it fails on this point. The Big Bang Theory postulates that there was a singularity which contained all of the matter in the current universe as it is currently constructed but in a primal and infinitely dense and stable state. The problem with your theory is that the Bible tells us that the war between Satan an God happened in Heaven, so if you are right then the singularity is Heaven and said singularity no longer exists ipso facto Heaven no longer exists. It also says that Satan was cast to the Earth after the war which indicates an Earth which existed when Satan fell. Therefore if you are right then there must have been a fully created earth into which Satan was cast which was then destroyed and remade. It makes no sense to say that the war in heaven occurred in the primal universe and that Satan fell to an earth which did not yet exist.

Also you cannot invoke entropy as the natural state of the universe because in Romans 8 Paul tells us that the Creation has been subjected to futility by God and that it and we await the revealing of the Sons of God. That is, the fallen state of the universe is tied to our situation not the other way around. Also Paul tells us in 1Cor:15 that it was by a man that death came and in that man, all die. In other words before Adam's fall death did not exist. If death did not exist then Adam's body was not breaking down and therefore entropy did not exist. The universe was in a perfect fixed state which changed and fell when Adam sinned which we know for sure because Gen 3 tells us that God cursed the ground because of Adam.

So what is the nature of Adam's fall? You say that he fell because he was tempted by Satan, but Adam was not tempted by Satan. Adam chose to listen to his wife instead of God. And you cannot say that, "Well Eve was tempted by Satan and Adam was around so..." because God very specifically tells Adam that he is cursed for having listen to his wife and not heeding God's word. God never says anything about Adam being tempted by Satan and the reason why is that he was not. Furthermore if being deceived by Satan was the cause of the Fall then why do not all die in Eve? Since, after all, it was she who heeded the words of the Serpent and ate before Adam did. Adam's fall had nothing whatever to do with being tricked but rather the deliberate choosing to ignore God because he wanted to be as God choosing for himself right and wrong.

You also cannot argue that they were naked and unashamed means that they were blind to their nakedness because the implied assumption here is that nakedness is shameful which is an idea which foreign utterly to the Bible and if you don't believe me read Song of Songs.

Also your idea fails the test because you assert that God created the universe from pre-existing materials. First a language study and then an historical one.

Two words for create in Hebrew. One is qanah which means to erect or create and carries with it the idea of making something from pre-existing materials. As in the create a table from lumber. The other is barah (which is the word used in Gen 1:1) and this word also means to create but it carries some very special connotations. One, this type of creating is only ever done by God in the Hebrew. Men never barah men only qanah. Only God barah. Also the idea of the word carries the implication of having created out of nothing and that is really important, and here is why.

Now the historical study. At the time Moses compiled the Torah the prevailing world views of creation were that of a primordial disorderly state over which the gods of order and the gods of chaos warred with the gods of order conquering and thus the universe was... well a universe instead of chaos. It is also important to know that this idea was believed by the Egyptians who thought that the great Celestial Cow had given birth to the order in the universe. It is not coincidence that Aaron fashioned a golden calf. The Israelites had been told this God was the One who created all things and Aaron declared that God to be the celestial cow. That is why God was offended because the notion of the Israelites was that Moses' God was one of the Egyptian gods. So when Moses wrote the first line of the Torah he very specifically picked out a word for create which sets aside the notion of a primal universe which existed before God fashioned it as it is now.

So your baseline assumption, which I admit is internally consistent, is not Biblical. And while of course you are free to believe this, my assertion was that you could not make this argument in defense of Orthodox Christianity. And the reason why I said it was Platonic was because it is, and I did not want to call you a neo-Platonist or a neo-Gnostic as the names are offensive to the Christian ear. And if you choose to say it comes from elsewhere that is fine too, but the point is that it does not come from the text of Holy Scripture.

My point is I think your entire argument is annulled because your first point is invalid.

Also, I am quite surprised that you would say that an argument did not make sense because you didn't pick it out. That is a little insulting... if not worse.

The argument I made was, since Adam did not exist in an already fallen body, then we had to understand the nature of the fall being one of absolute free will disobedience and outright rebellion to God. And the reason why I said Satan offered them a legitimate thing in an illegitimate way is because that is what the text says. Gen 3:4&5 "But the Serpent said to the woman you shall not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be open and you will be like God knowing good and evil." and Gen 3:22 "Then the Lord God said, 'Behold the man has become like one of us in knowing good from evil...' ". The plain reading of the Text is that what Satan told Eve was true, but she was not meant to have it. As far as God eventually leading them to the Tree, that is supposition on my part based on the Nature of the Son being fully submitted to God the Father, but that supposition is not in any way to be taken as Scripture.

One more thing, the word used which is translated 'know' in the text is the Hebrew yada, which means, to know, to perceicve, to discern, to discriminate. That is why I said that the knowing in the case of Gen 3 is one of discriminating. That is to decide for themselves what is and is not good. Which is exactly what Adam did when he listened to his wife and ignored God. He deliberately chose to decide for himself that the fruit was better than God's command. And I think the unveiling is that they both saw what they had done, not as children afraid of being caught, but as adults who do thus and so and then immediately regret what they have done. That is why they were ashamed.

One more thing and this just because I'm a dork. Entropy does not bother the universe at all, and in and of itself does not argue for a fallen state. Since I think the universe is energy, entropy is nothing more than massed up coagulated systems of energy becoming simpler smaller systems of energy, and because of Newton's Laws of Thermodynamics we know that said energy is not lost so the universe doesn't care in the least about entropy. It is not a bad thing based strictly on surface observation.