FoxyGoddess.com

God knew in advance, before he even created Adam, that Adam would eat the fruit.
God, knowing that Adam was going to eat the fruit, then told him not to.

This is like pushing someone off a skyscraper and ordering them not to hit the ground. The outcome was already known. No instructions to the victim can change the outcome of something that is already known absolutely.

Adam couldn't possibly have decided not to eat the fruit because God already knew he would. If Adam did refuse to eat it then God would have been wrong.

Of course this argument fails if you insist that God didn't know what was going to happen.

Now let's look at the consequence of eating this fruit.

God Created this tree. He created it with fruit that had certain attributes. He could have created the fruit with any attributes he chose but he chose the fruit to have the magical property of causing death to humans (loss of immortality). He designed it in such a way that it would cause suffering to the whole of humanity if just one person ate it.

The problem is that he knew in advance, before he created the tree that Adam was indeed going to eat from it. So, God is responsible for causing our suffering. He not only knew that it would happen, He designed it that way.

Here is another analogy that's very close to the original Bible story.

Bob is a single parent and has a son called Alan, an only child. Bob says he loves Alan dearly. Bob has built a fantastic play room for Alan with lots of toys. Bob has put a chocolate bar in the middle of the room containing poison that causes excruciating pain, permanent brain damage and serious genetic damage. Bob tells Alan not to eat the chocolate because it will hurt.

Alan has a playmate called Yvette.

Bob has a work colleague called Daemon.

Bob doesn't like Daemon because Daemon is after Bob's job.

One day, Daemon goes into the playroom and convinces little Yvette that the chocolate will not hurt but actually tastes really nice. Bob knows that Daemon is in the playroom trying to get his children to eat the poison that he put there. Yvette believes the grown-up and eats some of the chocolate. Yvette finds out that the chocolate tastes delicious and doesn't hurt at all. Yvette tells Alan about how good the chocolate is and that daddy was wrong about it hurting.

Bob knows that Yvette has been tricked into eating the poison by Daemon. Bob knows that Alan is going to eat some of the poison. Bob doesn't take any action. Alan tries a bit of the poisoned chocolate. Now that both the children have been fatally poisoned, Bob eventually decides to come into the playroom and beats the shit out of his kids, kicks them out of the playroom into the cellar and keeps them there until they die because he loves them so much.

Some points to note are that:

Bob knew when he was building the play room that he was going to beat the shit out of his children for eating the poison that he was going to make.
Bob put the poison in the playroom knowing that the children would eat it.
Bob knew that Daemon would trick the gullible children into eating the poison.
Bob still allowed Demon into the playroom to trick the children.
Bob has the antidote for the poison.
Bob will allow another one of his children to be murdered before he will give anyone the antidote.

Is Bob a good parent?
Who is to blame for the poisoning of these two naive, innocent children?
Had Bob not allowed Daemon to trick his children, would they have eaten the chocolate?

At best, Bob is a negligent father. The fact that it was all premeditated and engineered to happen this way makes Bob an evil murderer.

Of course this is just an analogy and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Link to the original thread

From http://groups.msn.com/AtheistVSGod/adamandeve.msnw