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[devdutta58]

Well, of course you were using your God-given free will. But it's not relevant to the discussion with the officer, who is concerned strictly with administering the consequences of your free-will choice.

I'm not sure what you mean by "if there wasn't a speed limit..." If the law doesn't permit him to take action with respect to your speed, then it doesn't. But when I was growing up in Montana, there wasn't a NUMERICAL limit--just the requirement that speeds be "reasonable and safe." And officers could certainly ticket drivers for unsafe speeds, and did. (80 mph on a two-lane highway with hills and curves was usually good for a ticket.)


Moving on to the parallels, or lack of them, to the Garden of Eden story, we ought to recognize that the prohibition of fruit is in fact meant to represent something else: the acquisition of knowledge of a limited type, which is proverbially dangerous. The consequences are not analogous to being ticketed for speeding; they're more analogous to getting injured or killed in an accident caused by driving unsafely.

God's prohibition, in the story, is not an arbitrary restriction but a warning of the consequences, just as the old Montana speed law was a very clear statement that driving unsafely was wrong precisely because it was unsafe.

[osbourne]

*scratches head*

Ooookay.

So, in your analogy, the Officer is God? Or... Erm...

You are free to break the law... when the government declares that you will go 60 on the freeway, you are free to go 120 on the freeway, you'll just have consequences. Its like how you are free to eat until you throw up... but you will throw up, or how you are free to run around in shorts in the arctic, but you will get frostbite. Free Will is not 'Freedom from Consequences' its 'Freedom do do things that may have Consequences'.

So, to answer your questions...

Because using your God-given free will does not exempt you from punishment.

Yes, you could be cited for reckless endangerment. (but as I know what you are actually trying to ask, no, he couldn't... but the fact is that there *is* a speed limit)

Yes... but your choice of speed is already to your own discretion, there are just consequences for going too fast.

Well, I am not one to put words in God's mouth, but no, I don't think he could have... but the fact of the matter is that he *did* give a command.

And... finally.... yes, he would have been free to eat or not eat without God's interference. BUT here you are already showing your entire idea to be fallacious... God DID forbid the eating of the apple, which to you is a limitation on free will, but Adam STILL ATE IT. If thats not free will, I have no idea what would be.