Randolph is mentally incompetent

Lee Randolph, resident genius over at DC, has done a post on the Fall:

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2008/08/gen-216-324-adam-and-eve-were-mentally.html

“This an article to show that Adam and eve did not know the difference between good and evil before they ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil therefore could not understand the consequences of what they were doing.”

Here he’s arguing on the basis of what the tree is called. On that interpretation, the tree would be the source of their moral discernment.

However, he then makes the following admission:

“Another interprtation of "Fall of Man" story is that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is really the tree of all knowledge where the terms Good and Evil are used as a merism ("bookends" or "upper and lower limits") to express a range, in the same manner as the term "young and old". This is considered a common usage in Biblical Poetry. I don't use this interpretation for this document but it wouldn't change the conclusion anyway.”

But it would change the conclusion since he could no longer infer the innocence of Adam and Eve from the name of the tree. The fact that Adam and Eve don't know everything doesn't mean they know nothing. Lee will have to argue for their innocence on some other ground.

BTW, that's not the only way to interpret the phrase. Hamilton takes it to denote moral autonomy.

“Here is where people become accountable for knowing about the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. At this point they still do not know the difference between good and evil.”

That’s an inference from the name of the tree. But if the name of the tree is an idiomatic merism, then the inference is invalid.

“God was being ambiguous and therefore deceptive by saying "you will surely die".”

Lee doesn’t explain how God was deceptive. He simply makes a bare assertion.

Perhaps Lee is alluding to the timeframe: “on the day.” But that’s a Hebrew idiom for "when." And, in fact, Adam and Eve did die. They lost the hope of immortality.

“Eve is now introduced to her first experience with someone whose intent may be to decieve her and possibly manipulate her, and she doesn't know the difference between Good and Evil.”

Why doesn’t she know the difference between good and evil? Is this an inference from the name of the tree? If so, the inference is invalid.

“There was evidently no warning about the snake. There are several default reasoning schemes that people commonly use and seem to present naturally. It takes education and experience to be able to overcome these. Presumably, since Eve and Adam were human, uneducated and with no life experience to speak of, they were susceptible to most if not all of these.”

i) Adam and Eve weren’t ordinary human beings. They were human prototypes of ordinary human beings.

They didn’t grow up. They were created as adults, with a certain amount of innate knowledge which would ordinarily be the result of the maturation process, but was, in their case, a natural endowment. For example, they could use language from the moment they were made. They didn’t acquire that knowledge although that knowledge is ordinarily acquired.

ii) Moreover, even if you’re an ordinary human being, you can’t acquire a knowledge of good and evil from experience. Experience doesn’t distinguish between a good experience and an evil experience. At most, experience gives you a knowledge of certain consequences. But experience doesn’t tell you if those consequences are good or evil. So the knowledge of good and evil must either be innate, revealed, or both (to one degree or another).

“People like stories and are willing to give the teller of the story the benefit of the doubt about the truth of it.”

i) The Serpent didn’t tell Eve a “story.” He wasn’t a storyteller. He wasn’t some Homeric bard.

ii) I like lots of fictitious stories. The fact that I like the story doesn’t incline me to believe it.

But Lee may be an exception. That would explain why he’s an atheist. He likes the just-so stories of Richard Dawkins.

“People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from someone they like.”

Gen 3 doesn’t say that Eve had a liking for the Serpent. Rather, she had a liking for the fruit, and what the fruit would confer.

“People are more likely to believe a story if it fits with what they already believe or want to believe.

i) It didn’t fit with what she already believed. It contradicted what she already believed. It contradicted the divine prohibition.

ii) It may have fit what she wanted to believe. A temptation naturally appeals to what a person wants. So what?

“People look for confirmation of what they already believe and disregard things that contradict.”

Yes, we can see that in the willful gullibility of Lee and other credulous unbelievers like John Loftus.

“People are more likely to believe a story if it comes from an authority.”

i) The prohibition came from an authority-figure—God.

ii) There’s no evidence that Eve regarded the Serpent as an authority-figure.

“The snake told the truth.”

No, he told a half-truth. That's more deceptive than a lie because it's more plausible. But Adam and Eve did suffer the death penalty for their sin.

“And Eve did not have any experience with "Bad people" or know the difference between "good and evil" people.”

Actually, if a person contradicts what God told you, that makes him a bad person.

“Eve gave the snake the benefit of the the doubt, she evidently did not dislike him”

i) To like someone and not to dislike someone are not the same thing.

ii) Moreover, you don’t have to like someone to succumb to temptation. The relevant consideration is not whether you like the person, but whether you like what he offers you.

“What he said fit what she wanted to believe.”

True, that’s how temptation works. And it works on people with a lot of experience. Indeed, the experience of evil can predispose someone to give into temptation.

When dealing with a truly innocent person, there is no predisposition to evil. No preexisting hook.

“And she undoubtedly took it to be authoritative about the Tree.”

How does that follow? Temptations can work with possibilities or probabilities rather than certainties. That’s why people gamble. They will take a big risk for a big potential payoff.

They don’t know their bet will pay off. Indeed, the risk factor is, itself, part of what may make a temptation appealing.

“Neither Eve or Adam had any wisdom or knowledge of good and evil at this point.”

Notice that Lee only has one argument, which he repeats ad nauseum.

“She trusted the snake because she did not have any reason not to.”

She had a perfect reason to distrust him: he contradicted God.

“There is no indication that they had any idea about lying.”

i) They had a lot of innate knowledge.

ii) And even if they had no prior idea about lying, if God says one thing, and the Serpent says the opposite, that, of itself, would acquaint them with the idea of lying.

“Adam and Eve both had built in cognitive biases that come into play here, such as trusting what others say.”

The account doesn’t say that Adam and Eve had a built-in bias to believe whatever someone told them. And temptation doesn’t depend on trust. For example, a criminal syndicate doesn’t depend on trust. It relies on greed and fear.

“Desire was apparently built into Eve as described in Gen. 3:6.”

Desire is a necessary condition for temptation, but hardly a sufficient condition.

“They were following the natural cognitive processes that they were born with (untempered by education).”

Adam and Eve weren’t “born.”

“The snake could not have known the difference between good and evil unless it had acquired it from somewhere.”

It says something about Lee that he thinks you must acquire a knowledge of good and evil through personal experience. That’s a rather revealing and damning admission, don’t you think?

According to Lee, I don’t know that murdering someone is evil until I have that experience. If that is Lee’s philosophy of life, then the police might consider him a person of interest.

Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t be eager to go under the knife of a surgeon with who shared Lee’s philosophy—especially under general anesthetic. I might wake up in his basement with various parts of me floating in vials of formaldehyde.

“In any case It was smarter than Eve because it knew that she would not literally die.”

She did literally die. Does Lee think that Eve is still alive? Where is she hanging out these days? Stockholm? Madrid? Barcelona?

“Eve…didn't know that dying was bad.”

How does that follow? Most of us only die once. Our personal experience of death is uniquely limited. Yet most of us try to avoid premature death.

You see, God endowed man with a faculty for abstract reasoning. You can understand many things without having to experience them.

Lee began his post by talking about stories. You don’t have to experience a fictitious story to understand it. That’s the whole point of using your imagination. You can conceive of possibilities that fall outside your personal experience. Indeed, you can conceive of possibilities that fall outside human experience.

“Or that disobeying god was bad.”

Once again, how does that follow? Does Lee mean you can’t know something is bad unless you experience the consequences?

i) Even this wouldn’t tell you that something is morally wrong, but merely unpleasant—sooner or later.

ii) Once again, this raises disturbing questions about the scope of Lee’s experience. He doesn’t know that molesting a child is wrong unless he engages in child molestation.

“The desire was built into her and Humans have or acquire cognitive biases that must be unlearned.”

Why would a Darwinian say that we must unlearn our cognitive biases? What is Lee’s frame of comparison?

In his post, Lee has done a wonderful job of proving that Lee is mentally incompetent. Was he mentally incompetent before he became an apostate? That would explain his apostasy. Or does apostasy induce mental incompetence? There’s empirical evidence to support both explanations. One aggravates the other.