Thanks for your post. My responses are below.

Aemmyjah:


When the Bible says Adam was perfect, it meant that he lived up to his standards in creation. For example, in a class, you may mark someone work as good, bad, poor, excellent or perfect.

I agree something is perfect if it is in the standards set by its creator but your answer would mean that God did not make man in his image. My question on freewill is meant in the context that we are made in the image of God who cannot do evil. In other words, how can a creature made in the image of God do evil? Unless you also implying God can do evil then this does not make sense to me.

Aemmyjah:


Still God gave him freewill to do what he pleases.

Why did God give us the freewill to do whatever we please knowing full well that only the good choices will really benefit us?

Aemmyjah:


Still God gave him freewill to do what he pleases. That freewill was not to be automatic but his choices should come from his heart. He may choose to obey his Creator or not, do what is bad or not if he wishes. Satan himself was perfect but he misused his freewill too. Joshua even urged his people to use their freewill to serve God when he said that if it seem good to them, they could choose to serve God or not.
Adam could eat whatever he likes, drink and breathe. That does not mean that because he is perfect, he can stay without air or just eat any kind of food or climb a cliff to land headfirst. His freewill will help him and us as well to decide what we WANT to do regarding moral laws. Accept them or reject them.

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This sounds nice but when one really looks at it, the fact is that evil has ultimately no advantages but only harmful consequences so what then is the greatness that lies in the capacity to choose evil? The fact is also that you can have freedom in only good choices because there are many, and unlimited good things to do, a lack of freewill for evil does not need to mean being able to do whatever you want without the choices being evil, but only being able to make the good choices.

Aemmyjah:


God is love and he expects his intelligent creatures to show that same attitude of love towards him. If won't make sense if they were like robots. Jesus christ too was tempted and we all know of his temptation yet he CHOSE to want to obey God. Something Adam and Eve foolishly failed to do

God is love so should creatures made in His image not merely be a reflection of love rather than beings that have the capacity to do something unloving, where does that capacity come from? How do you know Jesus chose to want to obey God? There is nothing in the story of how He handled that temptation that indicates he could have chosen to not obey God. In fact, there are many statements in the Bible that tells us Jesus cannot do anything but the will of God the Father.

Overall, your post explains the perfection of freewill but in the context that we are not made in the image of God or in the context that God has the potential for evil which I do not believe and is not in that context I am asking for.

Dtruthspeaker:

God did not create us to do evil behold, He even kept evil trapped in a fruit.

Therefore, we enjoyed the advantage of being good and exercising the freewill of doing all good.

I don’t understand this part. Perhaps you are referring to something related to the Adam & Eve story. Please clarify.

Dtruthspeaker:


I saw you at the bottom but I see you did not respond to my call for clarity.

So I think you deliberately asked this question with malice.

For you deceivingly imply God caused man to unlawfully harm which is not True for it is not God Who caused it but Satan. Therefore, this is a bad faith question,

Giving you fair hearing I therefore ask, is my surnising True? Then kindly state what your True question is.

No, I did not ask my question with malice and it is my true question. I first modified the original question to fix the error then went to type another post to rephrase my original post. In addition, I was doing some things on the side.

My intention is to come to an understanding of the perfection of freewill because I believe everything God creates must be perfect in it's own way but with freewill, I cannot wrap my head around it being perfect since it constitutes the potential for evil. You have to be patient with me as I am still getting used to writing posts on nairaland.

Dtruthspeaker:


Could you make your question clearer?

Yes. My mistake, I made a typographical error but I have corrected it, so it may be clear enough for you to read now. Incase it still is not clear enough, let me rephrase below.

Dtruthspeaker:


Potential for evil is not evil like battery acid is potentially evil.

But the battery acid is also potentially good.

Agreed.

Dtruthspeaker:


So what then is evil?

Evil means unlawful use which causes harm

And the potential to harm or to refrain from harming lies in the exercise of your power to act freely aka freewill

Agreed but my question is why did God make us with the potential to harm and do evil which is integral in free will?

Dtruthspeaker:


Potential for evil is not evil like battery acid is potentially evil.

But the battery acid is also potentially good.

So what then is evil?

Evil means unlawful use which causes harm

And the potential to harm or to refrain from harming lies in the exercise of your power to act freely aka freewill

Thanks for your reasonable post. I see your point but what is the reason God gave us that ability to harm with battery acid or cause unlawful harm?

Kobojunkie:
What aspect of living and being able to make choices that directly impact your existence are you having a problem with?

Why is God not allowed to create the kind of creatures He sees fit to create?

The ability to make choices that directly impact ones existence makes sense to me but I do not understand the logic as to why that ability also has the potential for evil choices when the ability is made by a God who is good and incapable of evil.

Say an engineer were designing an item, ideally he will make that item with as little possibility for fault as he can but the engineer is limited by his abilities and nature so there will still be some possibility for faults. Surely, if God is designing an item then the item would have 0 faults as God is above limitations. So if evil is a fault in God’s eyes then it makes one wonder why He would make the possibility of it.

Hello everyone,

It is often agreed that all the evil in the world comes from humanity through our free will and not from God. Yet God created humanity and the ability of free will we possess. Why would God who is good and against all evil create creatures who have the potential for evil?

OJODEL10:
I saw a laptop of 97k
i borrowed 50k from mum
i borrowed 50k from my dad too making it 100k
i bought the laptop and i am with 3k
i gave my mum 1k,my dad 1k and kept 1k
to myself
i am now owing my mum 49k and dad 49k
（49k + 49k equals 98k +1k i kept to myself equals 99k, where is 1k missing）

Hi OJODEL,

1K is not really missing. There is a logical error in the question, whether intended or not, I don’t know. The question is calculating the debt out of a 100K, money should not be added unless the total amount of money that is to be paid has increased. The correct way to calculate his remaining debt is to minus the money he has paid from the money he is to pay and stop there, instead of then adding money back into what he has already paid.

The missing 1K comes from that the child added an extra 1K to the money he is paying his parents. So instead of 100K total, he has 101K total now.

Let me know if you need further clarifications.

Thanks.

Hello Deepsight.

People have mentioned what I understand to be that there is a big picture in this which accomplishes something good such as the animals remaining active and the population of the animal being kept fresh. Perhaps the apparent brutality to achieve this is mostly in our eyes. Aside from that they feel pain and similar emotions, we do not know how the animals really find this. Are they disgusted by it like we humans, repelled by it even or are they pleased in having to act on their instincts of fear in running from predator or pleased with the pain they go through in being killed by a predator when it comes to that? Likewise for the predator too. Inconceivable for a human to take pleasure in that, I know. But a human is not an animal, and is the animal not really very inconceivable to man?

What I am saying is that perhaps the sense of brutality is personal to the species and not the same for all. What we humans call brutal in the animal kingdom may be normal for them. And what we humans call civilized, the angels in Heaven may look at as brutal.

As for why we see the animal brutal behavior in humans as well. For killing animals for food, I agree with the explanation Justcool gave. In other areas like war for competition of resources, my answer is that every or at least most human beings know that these things are wrong, are innately repelled by them and are capable of doing what is right, if the person still decides to do evil then that is their choice and not what they are forced to do by nature.

I believe that this world can be much better if we human beings pulled ourselves together and stated striving to do what is right. The idea that we are forced by nature to do evil is an excuse in my opinion because the reality is that the nature is for us to decide. Many people have been tempted to do evil before and successfully resisted, why did nature not force them to do evil there or does nature just force us to do whatever, how senseless and aimless is that and inconsistent with the sense and purpose we see everywhere in nature?

Thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpW3qvf42Xs