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Nic Paolini

“Birds” by Nicole Ferrara

One of the many issues people have with the idea of God is if and how we are judged by Him. We are all familiar with religious texts, such as the Ten Commandments, but the idea of God having rules begs certain questions about sins and repentance. The Bible tells us that God does not like us to sin, but that if we beg for forgiveness, then we can be forgiven for all of our sins. What, then, is the relationship between sinning and God's acceptance? Is all of human life just some psychological, philosophical experiment put on by God? In this paper, I argue that sin cannot exist in a world with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient God.

At the beginning of this argument lies the story from Genesis of Adam and Eve eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge. Theists claim that we are all born with sin and that our entrance into Heaven will be based upon our repentance of our sins. Some also threaten that God wants us to follow his commands and that if we do not then we will spend all of eternity in Hell. The story of The Garden of Eden tells us of man's first sin. It claims that Adam and Eve, having been warned not to eat from the tree of knowledge, disobeyed God and chose to sin.

The primary issue in discussing these actions, then, is whether or not we, as human beings, have free will. First, in order to discuss sin we must assume God actually does exist. If God exists, then He either created us with a preplanned fate or has allowed us to have free reign on every decision in our lives. If God does not exist, then we can safely say that it is only possible that we do indeed have free will, for there is no other possible being that could command it to be otherwise. Therefore it must be the case that God either gave us free will or has already determined the course of all human life on Earth.

God, being all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing, could have made the world without sin. The problem of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient God and sin is very similar to the problem of evil. J. L. Mackie illustrates that evil cannot simultaneously exist in a world created by a God that "...is both omnipotent and wholly good" (Mackie, 78). Clearly, if God were indeed all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing, then there is no possibility for evil to exist anywhere in the world. Mackie, however, points out that it is the case that we observe evil in our world today and that there must be something inherently wrong in our concept of the God we have previously defined. Believers argue back that perhaps what seems to be evil to us may actually be all part of God's grand scheme of things; He is, after all, the all-knowing Creator of the Universe. One of the answers to Mackie's objection, which parallels an answer given to our question of sin, is the idea that "Evil is due to human free will" (Mackie, 83). Believers further claim that it is far better for humans to do good autonomously than in an entirely determined manner. Again, when we refer back to God's omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient nature, we see that this answer is simply insufficient. God is omnipotent, so God could have made the world and human beings without evil. Evils are typically related to sins; we tend to regard them both as incorrect ways of living. Sin is considered by many theists to be punishment for wrongdoings, disobeying God, and evils are, by definition, the absence of good; and an all-good God should not allow for either.

Regardless of the potential benefits of evil, it is still true that God could have made the world without it. While it is true that the existence of evil challenges the human race to rise to the occasion and overcome it, one cannot help but wonder why God would feel the need to incorporate so much evil into the creation of the world. If evil was created in order to let us truly appreciate goodness, then "...a minute dose of evil would presumably do. But theists are not usually willing to say, in all contexts, that all the evil that occurs is a minute and necessary dose" (Mackie, 81). If we translate this argument into terms of sin, we can reason that even if Adam and Eve had "sinned" against God, it would not be logically necessary to pass that "Original Sin" on to all future generations of man.

Before we conclude anything, we must also consider the possibility that free will does not exist. If God has created all human life as determined, then we must examine who has what responsibilities. If it is the case that God determines each of our lives, and we are each simply following our own individual destiny, then no one would be able to claim that Adam and Eve had any other choice but to do as God had set out for them: to eat from the tree of knowledge. Adam and Even can only be held accountable for their actions if they were acting fr