I don't agree. Both respect and trust are chances we must take if we are to get anywhere in this life; if we only trust those who have proven trustworthy, nobody ever gets a chance to prove their trustworthiness; "you have to give respect to get respect." I believe disrespect and distrust are earned, though. Has God (not his followers, but God himself) earned disrespect and distrust in your personal life? Have you given him respect only to see that he disrespects you? Have you trusted him only to have that trust broken? (I'm not saying that these things are impossible from a human perspective; I really want to know how you think he has hurt you).

Let's say you were blind and mute, and yet through Helen-Keller hand signals you could communicate to me and I had gotten to know you and to like you. Now let's say I wanted to introduce you to my friends, who didn't understand your hand signals (yet). I believe at first you wouldn't mind if I let the details slide as I introduced you to my friends, but if I persisted in introducing you as some personality I made up, how would you feel? And, if you knew how to teach others your hand signals, would you be any less fair or loving in correcting me?
God has given us his Word and Spirit (not to mention his authorship in creation and his hand in history) to get to know him better. Someday he is coming back to let us really get to know him firsthand. He has made it clear that he wants us to believe in Jesus, his son, as our salvation (John 14:6). This is the detail he won't let slide. Are you ready for that?

Scientist Francis Collins, in an interview on salon.com, says:
When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we were coming. There are 15 constants -- the gravitational constant, various constants about the strong and weak nuclear force, etc. -- that have precise values. If any one of those constants was off by even one part in a million, or in some cases, by one part in a million million, the universe could not have actually come to the point where we see it. Matter would not have been able to coalesce, there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets or people. That's a phenomenally surprising observation. It seems almost impossible that we're here. And that does make you wonder -- gosh, who was setting those constants anyway? Scientists have not been able to figure that out.
If you want to ignore these 15 constants, I guess we could all be here by chance. Or if you want to argue that there are an infinite number of parallel universes and we happen to be in the one that chanced upon life, I guess you can explain away God. But I think it takes a lot more faith to believe that we're all here by chance than that there's an Originator to this thing we call Life.

I've ignored my kids for long enough today that I don't have time to respond to this video (truthfully, I'm avoiding it), but I'm not going to avoid it forever. I set it as my goal to respond to it (again, though I'll try to abide by your guidelines for a "good" response) sometime in the coming week.

Why must the being which created everything have been created? Why couldn't he exist beyond the realm of time, so that he has no origin, needs no origin? Time is only a dimension within which we are trapped. There is most certainly the possibility of someone existing in a higher dimension who can look upon time just as we look upon virtually 2-dimensional artworks. This would explain why God can predict the future; because to him, each future event is just another painting on the wall, so to speak. We have full choice in bringing about these events, but to him, it's as if they've already happened, to put it poorly in a way we time-bound creatures can understand it.
If God is in another dimension, we can also expect apparent contradictions in what he says to us. Just as a 2-dimensional creature cannot fathom a 3-dimensional world, and any attempts to explain it would be confusing, so also when God tries to explain the big picture to us, he seems to contradict himself. For example, if I were to plant my 2 feet on the ground in which a 2-dimensional world existed that I could contact, the beings there would assume, since there are two blobs in their flat world, that I was either the one blob talking to them or the other, but I could not be both. Perhaps I were a set of twins to them, but they would have to really TRUST me to believe that the two blobs in their world were really part of one person. I think the Trinity is similar; we can't comprehend three persons being in essence only one God, but if we TRUST what he says, we have a better grasp on truth than someone who doesn't believe this outrageous claim, even though we don't fully understand the mystery.
Also, regarding the constants, considering all those numbers needed to be set so precisely for us to come into being, it is most likely that someone did set them. The chance of them occurring randomly is so small as to be negligible, even preposterous. laughable.
And finally, it's too bad about your essay. In a way I was dreading it, but I was also looking forward to it. Your thinking must be very complex--and yet when you present arguments, they're so simple to understand and difficult to refute. You must enjoy having such a sharp wit.

The first question asked, "How could God justify a punishment of 2 people before they had any knowledge of good and evil?" is a false predicament. When God put the tree in the garden and told them not to eat of it, they had some knowledge of good and evil: they knew that what God said was good and disobeying God was evil. So it wasn't that the fruit produced a new knowledge within them; it just created the desire for more knowledge of good and evil.

"Since they didn't even know they were naked (inferring they were stupid), how were they supposed to handle a complete contradiction?" Adam was not stupid: in a single day he thought up names for all the animals, and later he knew how to sew fig leaves together (I've never seen a fig leaf, but it can't be easy to invent sewing that works on leaves). Also, Adam had the advantage of being able to talk directly with God, the creator. Adam got to see that all the living creatures (including the serpent) obeyed God's command when he called them to come before Adam for their naming. So Adam knew that God had authority over creation and knew how it worked. Surely if anyone could be trusted, it was Adam's friend and creator God. They (Adam was by Eve's side the whole time) should have been able to use TRUST to withstand the complete contradiction from one of God's creatures who was obviously inferior to the One who created it.

Genesis 2:16 appears as if God is lying and the serpent is telling the truth regarding their death on that day. Unless you read it in the Hebrew, where God uses the verb for "to die" twice, essentially saying "dying you will die". Not only does the repetition strengthen the force of this warning, but it also serves to clarify that, once eating the fruit, they will die and also be dying (mortal). The full death spoken of that occurred that day is a spiritual death and the dying process which started that day is mortality, physical death. Why didn't God spell that out to them? Scripture does not record the entirety of God's conversations with mankind; it may very well be that he did spell it out to them. Why didn't God spell that out to us? He did, through the apostle Paul, explaining that we are spiritually dead in our sins, and through Jesus, showing that we lack a spiritual body which will be restored to us when we become like Jesus in the last day.

Why would God ask Adam where he is when he knows everything? This is a conversational tactic to give an offender the chance to redeem himself and speak up. It's like if your child's shoes are peeking out from behind the curtains and you notice your favorite vase lying in pieces on the floor, you ask the child questions that you already surmise the answers to, to give that child a chance to confess and learn from his mistake. Also, if God was used to sensing Adam's spiritual presence and suddenly that presence went blank, God would have to acknowledge the change in situation somehow--why not with a question?

Why wouldn't God foresee the snake bit and specifically forewarn them about that confrontation? Again, we don't have the entire record of God's conversation with Adam; it may be that God did warn of this encounter, but Adam chose not to trust God's explanation. Whatever the case, God knew that Adam would fail the test, and that's why God had a plan of redemption waiting.

Why did people get angry and show insecurity when the narrator posed his questions? Why was he discouraged from thinking? This is the usual reaction when people bring up questions that they don't know the answers to. There are definitely exceptional people who can handle new questions without resorting to anger, but most of us want to appear intelligent and find it difficult to do so when faced with original questions. They only wanted to encourage thinking in areas of life where they knew what the answers were; they were not really encouraging free thought at all, just leading him through the thought processes that they had come through.
My initial reaction to the movie demonstrates this point.

Did I miss any questions that the movie addresses?

Although I still find the movie blasphemous, I have to thank you for helping me to learn and ponder more about this account of history. I found http://home.att.net/~natespdf/genesis2.pdf to be especially helpful in clearing up some doubts, and the responses to this YouTube presentation helped me as well, although I would not recommend watching them (they're poorly presented and tedious to watch).

Just to clarify, I didn't think the presentation you posted was tedious; it was indeed very well presented. The YouTube REPLIES posted to this presentation were the ones that I found difficult to watch, even though I found what they had to say helpful.

Unless you can give a bible account of them actually knowing good from evil, then that is pure speculation and non-sense. Essentially, you are lying to yourself; making excuses.

Jewish commentators explain that the word “knowledge” here means “desire for” (Soncino), and Keil &
Delitzsch (cf. Vos) note that the mere existence of this tree along with the command not to eat from it
would produce a knowledge of good and evil within man, whether or not the man ate from it, for even if
he didn’t eat from it, he would be practicing his knowledge that to disobey God is evil and to obey God is
good. Good and evil came into existence, not with the eating of the tree, but with the command concerning
the tree.

I don't need to give a biblical account of them knowing good from evil; it's right there if you use logic. You are the one lying to yourself and making excuses not to listen to the logic offered by commentators.


I disagree. I believe the author was implying (or inferring.) that God had not educated Adam enough. Stupidity, and lack of education, are not the same, despite the fact that they do react on each other in many circumstances.
Considering that we can not actually tell what the author meant, my point, and your point are moot. 
Are you referring to the "author" of Genesis or the author of the movie? And implying is what someone speaking/writing does, inferring is left up to the audience/reader.


What if I read it in Japanese, or Slovenian? What would it say then? A translation is a translation, if you thinks translations don't get it right, then your book isn't divinely inspired and you should throw it out. The only thing you should own is a book with multiple different languages in it that are a direct copy of the bible. (Hebrew wasn't the only language used.) Have fun reading it!

You're making excuses again. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew (except parts of Daniel and Ezra in Aramaic), so if we have confusion in what a passage says, we go to the original language to see if translation has caused a problem in understanding. Here we see that this is exactly what has happened.
When God speaks to mankind, he must do so within the restraints he has placed on mankind, and one of those restraints is fragmented language. Each language comes with a restricted cultural view of the world, and because each language/culture group sees the world differently, it is difficult to translate words directly and accurately from one language to another (if you're studying Spanish you are hopefully being exposed to this difficulty). God confused language at the Tower of Babel and He, too, has to live with the consequences. If God didn't see the need to throw out the whole attempt to communicate with mankind, then I'm not going to throw out that attempt. And since I don't have time to learn Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, I'm going to be content with an imperfect English translation unless apparent contradictions come up, and then I'll look to experts like Nate Wilson to clarify the language difficulties to me.


Excuses. Again. Why doesn't scripture record the entirety? If it leaves stuff out, it isn't divinely inspired to the fullest extent. Because it isn't fully divinely inspired, throw it out, its useless. (Just like the Macabees 'ey? I totally butchered that spelled, but I'm sure you can infer what it is from the sound of the word.)
Why on earth should I expect God to record the entirety of conversations when we never do that in reporting historical events; we're lucky to get any conversation at all! Your excuse to throw out the Bible as "not fully inspired" is baloney.
Good use of the word "infer"! I'm not sure what you're referring to with the Maccabees. Please explain.


Oh, really? Where the hell does it say that? You are making excuses again. 
I have to admit here I'm making guesses (actually, it was my Sunday School teacher who passed this conjecture on to me). But it makes sense, whereas an omniscient God truly not knowing where Adam was does not.


Excuses.
I addressed your concern here already. Notice that the theme of the day here is TRUST. Adam had to trust that God's warning was valid, and we have to trust that God knew what he was doing when he omitted the warning about the serpent. Why did God have a plan of redemption waiting?