This thread is mainly an answer to a topic alanmolstad raised in another thread but I welcome the input of anyone who wishes to chime in. NOTE: To avoid confusion, I've snipped out the parts that are not relevant to the topic of this thread.

Clarifier: I am a nonbeliever. When I speak about the God of the Bible, this doesn't mean I acknowledge his existence. Rather, I speak of God in the same way as I would speak of any character in literature (e.g. Rhett Butler of Gone With The Wind).

Quote Originally Posted by alanmolstad View Post
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But lets go back to the beginning and look at how this all got started.

God made man.
God put man in the garden to tend to it's care.
God told man that he could enjoy all the food found on the trees of the garden he was tending and careing for.
Then God told the man not to eat of the tree smack in the middle of the garden...do that and die.


So what we have an a type of contract between God and man.
Where man tends a garden and gets to eat and live off food from the garden.
But also part of the contract is the prohibition against eating one food on sentence of death.

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Now how did this contract end up?
Well the man violates the part of the contract about not eating one food, and thus he is sentenced to death...
The problem is that right after this the man begins to reproduce.
And the "death" that came because of the contract violation and the fact that the man reproduced after the violation, the death of this single man was p***ed on to his children...over and over....year after year...child after child.

All born after the same sentence of death p***ed on due to the violation of the contract.

all doomed.
The whole human "experiment" is a total FAIL.

Thus enter into the story the person of Christ...who is not only 100% man, and so under the same sentence as the rest of the men, but also 100% God.

In the person of Christ the whole of humanity has the opportunity to be "redeemed' under the the same contract that the first man was under...
For as we read, there was even at the start the understanding in God's eye that only He would be able to make whole the broken contract between God and man.

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I can't help wondering why God would permit Adam and Eve to reproduce instead of simply destroying them and starting over with a set of new and improved humans. And I doubt I'll ever see the justice in holding all future generations accountable for a "crime" committed by their ancestors.

The most interesting part of what you say here is that "[t]he whole human "experiment" is a total FAIL." I would expect an all powerful God to do better than that. I suspect that you'll probably say it was the humans who failed. However, it was God who made them as fallible beings, was it not? If God hadn't made humans with this flaw, then Adam and Eve wouldn't have "fallen" and there would be no need for a savior.


Quote Originally Posted by alanmolstad View Post
I attempt to make use of the story in my post to help describe how I look at the relationship God has with both humanity and the whole universe in general.

The way I see it, and from what Im looking at in the text, it seems to resemble at many points a "contract" or a "covenant" between two parties....
The relationship that we read about between the man and the Lord in Genesis seems like a case of a violated contract, with yet a hint of redemption there in it as well.
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I don't see this "contract" as valid and it would likely be declared unenforceable in a celestial court of law (if such a thing existed and ***uming our earthly laws would be similar) for the following reasons:

Duress, undue influence, misrepresentation and fraud.
Getting consent for a contract through sketchy ways -- such as coercion, threats, false statements (as well as misleading silence) and improper persuasion -- can render a contract unenforceable. The court may strike the contract down as unenforceable or the victim of the unfairness can void it.

Unconscionability. If the process of making a contract or terms in the contract are shockingly unfair to one party, then a court may deem a contract unenforceable. The court will look at whether a party had unequal bargaining power or difficulty understanding the terms (due to literacy or language barriers, for example), and whether the terms were inherently unfair.

Source: Unenforceable Contract? 5 Common Errors by By Aditi Mukherji, JD on August 21, 2013

The "contract" between God and his human creations placed Adam and Eve under threat of death (i.e. duress) and the consequences of holding all future generations accountable is unconscionable.