Man, made in the likeness of God

In the bible, it states that God made man in His likeness. The literalists take this to mean that God is bipedal, upright, male, and with excessive growths of hair in unnecessary places. Liberal interpretations take the likeness to mean something more abstract; moral capacity, choice, freewill. Man is different to animals because we can make moral decisions, and distinguish right from wrong.

It could of course be argued that man did not have this capacity until he ate from the tree of knowledge, but this isn't strictly speaking true. God gave Adam and Eve free run of the Garden of Eden and gave them but one command, to not partake of that one tree's fruit. However, if he gave them a command and they were able to do otherwise, they already had the capacity for choice and there would be no need to test their obedience. So when God made man in His likeness, the more generally accepted interpretation is that we are talking about God giving man choice.

I don't think this is correct however. If the likeness is choice, then it means that God has a choice. If God has a choice, it means that he has a capacity for both good and evil; and it is inconceivable for God to have evil maxims.

What does this mean for God? Either he can be evil, or he has no choice at all; a deity completely devoid of freewill. He would be closer to Dr. Manhattan than he would be to Zeus..

It could be said that while all beings have a capacity for evil, God would never or could never make an evil decision. If He would never, well, He would have to know this. And if this is known, he could not do otherwise, meaning he does not have free will. If he did otherwise, like I suspect he did with the whole Job incident, and that's just a dick move. If he could not do otherwise, he has no choice, and we have a god who does things not from moral decision making. Who knows why then? Like a manufacting machine throwing out product after product without rhyme nor reason.

As a mild aside, I would like to make mention of the tale of Prometheus. Most people know that he stole fire from the gods and gave it to man, and was punished by being tied to a rock where the crows would devour his entrails every day. He was a titan, so they grew back, but still it had to suck.

But the story is a little different.Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus were charged by the gods to populate the world; Prometheus' task was to create man. In order to demonstrate his craftsmanship, when he made man, he gave them TWO advantages designed to give them dominion over the earth. One was sacred fire, stolen from Mount Olympus, and the other was upright form in the image of the gods.

It seems unnecessary for me to point out that this story seems to have been plagarised by the Christians to make their creation story (I'll do it anyway though.) But come on! We get way cooler stuff from the Ancient Greek story than the Christian one. We only ever get fire and such from the Christian God when he gets pissed off and decides to smite some guys or to talk through bushes.