Christians: If before the Fall we were originally Intelligently Designed to hate sin, how could Adam/Eve sin?

Question

If we were originally Intelligently Designed to hate sin, how could Adam and Eve have chosen to sin?

If the all-knowing and all-wise Intelligent Designer has good reason to hate sin as much as Christians claim, why would He not design His creations with a hatred of sin as well?

If you could design your child to never stick a fork in a light socket or eat poison, you would, wouldn't you? You wouldn't be worried about infringing on the child's "free will" to protect his/her life, would you?

And if He did design us to hate sin, how could Adam and Eve choose to disobey God when they are designed to hate sin and know that disobeying God is a sin?

Or are we to believe that an Intelligent Designer who is all-knowing and all-wise and who has good reason to hate sin chose to design us with an addiction to sin?

As if we would design a child to eat poison ...

Please explain why God would design us to have an addiction to sin?

Answer 1

I'm a Calvinist, so my answer is probably going to be different than most of the ones you'll get. I'm not going to bother quoting the Bible to support my views. I'm just going to explain them. But I am getting these views from the Bible.

All intentional acts are done for a reason, so our actions are determined by the reasons and motives we have for making them. All that's required for a person to sin is that the person have some motive to sin. Adam and Eve had no natural motive to disobey God. They had to be talked into it. The snake created a motive in them to disobey God by using pursuasion and trickery.

Adam and Eve, as well as their offspring, fell because of their sin. The inclination to sin is now a natural part of all of us such that we need only have the opportunity to sin in order for our natural motives to rebel against God's moral law to cause us to sin. Sin (rebellion against God) is now our natural state until God regenerates us.

God did not intend to regenerate everybody. Our of all the people who are living in rebellion to God, God chooses a few to save, and he saves them by atoning for their sins and then regenerating so that they are able to overcome their rebellion and submit to Jesus.

Although the fall resulted in us having sinful dispositions, and not God's design, it was nevertheless according to God's purpose. God's purpose in leaving some in rebellion while saving others is to glorify himself by demonstrating his wrath on those he leaves in rebellion, and to make known the riches of his glory to those he chose to save.

That's the Calvinist answer to your question. From a non-Calvinist position, your question is incoherent. It assumes something that non-Calvinists don't accept. Namely, it assumes that our actions follow necessarily from our design.

Libertarian free will, which non-Calvinists usually hold to, is the view that there are no antecedent conditions that determine our actions. If there are no antecedent conditions that determine our actions, then no design on God's part could determine that our actions are good or evil. Whether, then, we act good or act evil has nothing to do with God's design.

Answer 2

God could not have designed them to hate sin (at least to the point of them being incapable of sinning) because then they would only be automatons rather than moral agents. "Being designed to hate sin" and having free will would be a contradiction. Free will is a good thing because, although it can be (mis)used for evil, it is also necessary for the capacity to love.

The problem with designing a child that wouldn't stick a fork in a light socket or eat poison is just that... it (for it might as well be a robot) will always be dependent on us to make the right decisions. It will never be able to grow spiritually or morally.

Answer 3

The Bible doesnt say we were created to hate sin. That is your mock assumption based on what you think the Bible says and its false. Just because we didnt know sin, doesnt mean we hated it.

We had a choice in it and we blew it.

God wouldnt have been pleased with animal like creations that do everything theyre preprogrammed to do. But the ones that do what is right out of their own volition is something to be cherished. Is that what you want to be? An animal?

Paul rightly teaches in Romans 1 that the more sin the world is exposed to, the more darkened and corrupt it becomes. You ARE quite correct that people have become slaves to sin but not of design but by their own volition.

If you spend any time with believers, youll notice they DONT live by the sinful nature and are not sinfully addicted creatures like the world. We once were, but we have been bought and paid for by Christ and have moved onto something different.

Answer 4

If one were to "design" a child to not stick a fork in a light socket, that child would not have free will. Free will necessarily requires the ability to chose and follow an undesirable path. If the child is "free" to do everything except the light socket, the child is no different from a robot following Asimov's laws of robotics. Such a robot has explicit limits on its behavior and therefore is not free, though it may have a degree of choice.

If you have a robot that does everything you program it to do, you may be satisfied with its usefulness, but it is still a mere machine. If it were to express admiration for you, you would dismiss that as merely acting out its program.

God wants humans to love and serve Him of their own volition, so that love would be genuine and unquestionable. To accomplish that, He took a risk. He gave humans complete free will and the power to accomplish whatever they will. Humans could choose to do good or evil even to the point of overcoming their own needs and desires for accomplishing a purpose (e.g. a soldier who falls on a grenade to save his comrades).

For some reason, he also gave the first humans ignorance of what is good or evil. Actually, He still does: every child born today is likewise ignorant.

He also gave us curiosity to explore our world. That is how we "fill the world."

A curious child who is ignorant of electricity has the unfortunate ability to stick a fork in a light socket and a curious child who is ignorant of poison may be tempted to eat it.

The reason for addiction is that some sins derive certain pleasure, encouraging repetition until dependency is achieved. A teenager who is ignorant and curious about drugs winds up hopelessly addicted in his 20s and dead of OD in his 30s. Still further sin may be committed to support the addiction. The same addict turns to theft to support his habit. He wasn't born an addict nor a thief, yet his choices made him just that.

The parent of such a child would be sad indeed.

But if instead that teenager passed on drugs and thievery and instead entered peaceful enterprise. If he built up his community rather than taking from it. His parents would be overjoyed at how he chose to live his life. BUT, if he did that merely because he had been programmed to, his parents would merely be pleased at their own ability to make him.

Answer 5

Just like Adam blamed Eve when the Lord approached him in the garden of Eden......"The woman thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat ( Genesis 3:12 ). So has all the generations since the beginning of time pointed the blame at God or other people for their own personal choices. Nowhere in Scripture does it say that God "designed" us not to sin. He created us in the image of Him with free will to "choose." Why? Because He does not want robots computerized to react upon command. I am so very thankful that God did things the way He did for we never would understand the awesome depth of His love and mercy and how wonderful it is to be His child because we know the corruption and serperation from Him that wrong choices make.

Answer 6

when you get a robot toy it's fun for a while but when it doesnt shut up and all it does is the same thing time after time you want to kill it. It'd be boring if you made a race of people and everything they did was predictable and they had no other choice but to love you now wouldnt that be stupid? God didnt make us with an addiction to sin he gave us the choice to sin.

Answer 7

Were designed with free will. Adam and Eve had never seen sin prior to the snake.

God did not design robots.

Answer 8

Its all a matter of free will. There has to be sin in the world so that we would have a choice in whether or not we follow God. Without sin, we would have no choice but to follow God. He wanted us to have a choice in the matter. I don't think that God put an addiction to sin in us. I think that once people choose a certain path, they stay on it. Free will.

Answer 9

Adam & Eve were tempted into sin by that other "intelligently designed" creation of God's, the serpent.

Answer 10

All Religion is based on Faith, not logic.... Adam and Eve didn't "sin", according to the story they 'fell from grace' because they ate the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil", thus "their eyes were opened" to knowing the difference, and they therefore were not allowed anymore to be innocent and free living in the garden....
What I learned from it was the whole thing was kind of planned by God, because He wants to be obeyed by choice, not just automatically. He created man to love and obey him, and to hate sin by choice,not to be automatons that of course would never do any wrong to begin with . Before they ate of the fruit they were still automatons.
Now that we are all cast out of the Garden, at least we have choice.