Is the concept of The Fall reasonable?

The questions I asked myself as you asked that is, do animals sin?
Do they know good and evil?
Did they fall with us?

I would assume not. They're just part of fallen nature. They went down with the ship.

To deal with the rest of the argument, then

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the other part is that evolution gives us a naturalistic explanation of the origin of man--thus no god needed.

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This only provides an alternative option for the origin of man, and does not even count as good evidence against the existence of a God.

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If one believed in special creation by God, one could believe in a Fall. But if one accepted evolution, one could not believe in a Fall. And if one cannot believe in a Fall, then there was no argument one could advance to explain the cruelty of nature

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This is juat a repeat of the argument I referred to in the previous post.

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So special creation by an all-powerful, all-good God necessitated a belief in the Fall.

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This remains to be seen. It has not even been shown that "the Fall" is consistent with the idea of "creation by an all-powerful all-good God" and there are good reasons to doubt it. (An "all-good" God would not set someone else up to do his dirty work, nor refuse to accept responsiblity of the consequences of His actions).

Perhaps it could be argued that one type of action an all-good God would perform would be to provide his creatures with free will.

Invoking free will as the answer has numerous problems.Firstly there is the question of what constitutes free will. So far as I can determine libertarian free will is an incoherent concept, yet it is hard to see how compatibilist formulations could be of real help.Secondly the God concept we are dealing with typically has knowledge of the future - including actions that are supposedly freely willed (e.g. Peter denying Jesus three times). This in itself undermines the concept that a creator-God could honestly deny responsibility for such decisions since they would be a forseeable and necessary consequence of His actions.Thirdly it is certainly hard to say that free will is in itself responsible for even all human suffering, let alone the suffering in nature. Yet if free will is not adequate in itself then the rest of the explanation must be provided.Fourthly if free will is considered a good sufficient to justify the suffering then we would have a theodicy adequate to explain the existence of suffering. Thus we would no longer have need for a "Fall" as such. But if it is not a sufficent good then the creator would be wrong to permit it.

For free will to be possible, one needs an incorporeal mind. We could designate that, I suppose, as the "soul." To know someone is going to do something is not the same thing as making them do it. Nature fell when man fell, as punishment for his sin. The concept of the Fall is necessary to explain the cruelty of nature.

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For free will to be possible, one needs an incorporeal mind. We could designate that, I suppose, as the "soul."

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You are simply repeating an assertion you cannot support. And it isn't even relevant to the point.

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To know someone is going to do something is not the same thing as making them do it.

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This is a strawman since I made no such assertion.

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Nature fell when man fell, as punishment for his sin.

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Thus you propose a God who punishes the innocent and is therefore by your standards "evil". Since you propose the idea of a Fall as a way of avoiding such a conclusion this argument is self-defeating.

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The concept of the Fall is necessary to explain the cruelty of nature.

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If the presence of free will is an adequate justification for the suffering, and free will is an adequate explanation for the existence of suffering then the Fall as such is not required. Again you are making an assertion that requires support.

With all the cut n' thrust of debating its possible to forget the basics. Maybe the wind against which we attempt to pee is of our own making.

Robin, if I were to arrive on this site having never seen it before but having a grasp of the issues - I might have had you pegged as a Christian apologist.But I'm not in that position. So, as an quick off-topic-er, can you tell me your absolute top three favorite objections to Christianity at this current time.This message has been edited by iano, 24-Feb-2006 10:46 PM

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For free will to be possible, one needs an incorporeal mind. We could designate that, I suppose, as the "soul."
  —robinrohan

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Perhaps I view "free will" differently. I don't think that free will in the way a lot of people view it (being able to make different choices arbitrarily) exists whether there is a god or not. I don't think a soul changes that in any respect.I do believe, however, in choice. The ability to weigh options and choose one based on the expected results does exist, again, regardless of a soul. I fail to see how this "soul" changes that in any regard, but then again, I reject the popular notion of "free will" anyways.I apologize if I rambled, and if this is off-topic. =/

Any religion, not just Christianity, is an attempt to deny what seems to me obvious--the arbitrary, accidental nature of life.Bring in evolution, and religion has a real problem on its hands.

Who does the choosing? A "self" of some sort? Where is this self?

So, are you saying that the Fall is the Christian way of denying the arbitrary accidental nature of life?

That's exactly what it is.

So what are you picturing? Some time in the past somebody or a committee of somebodies sat down in order to solve this problem of the arbitrary accidental nature of life and came up with the Fall?