“Before Adam sinned …”

Where in Genesis chapter 3 does it specifically say Adam sinned? According to the story, Adam disobeyed God’s command, but Adam didn’t know it was wrong, i.e. it wasn’t a moral choice. How can one sin without being able to know what good and evil is?

“… God doesn’t talk to people that way since sin separates us …”

Then why can Satan show up and talk to God, as depicted in Job? What, God can’t talk to us, but the Prince of Darkness can show up and talk to God?

~David D.G.

This does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that a person outside the field cannot critique something inside the field. Nor does it free a trained person from having to justify their assertions.

There is no serious field of study where the viability of methods in the field cannot be verified and critiqued outside the field. None. If theology were a serious branch of inquiry, its methods would be open to analytic scrutiny by anyone, regardless of formal theological training. If William Lane Craig, for example, is saying anything meaningful about gods in the Kalam arugment, anyone who can decode the jargon and follow the form of the argument ought to be able to follow it and evaluate it on its merits. If not, then Craig is simply not contributing anything to human knowledge — the whole POINT of knowledge is that it’s publically shareable. Even literary criticism, insofar as its specific purposes are kept in mind, produces shareable insights that can be understood, appreciated, and evaluated by non-literary-theorists.

But theology doesn’t work this way. The purpose of theology is to insulate god claims from all non-theological scrutiny. I see no reason why anyone is obligated to take it seriously.