Could argue that was about bipolarity versus change as well.
Change is freedom.
What was the first sin? Eve eating the apple of knowledge... Which again knowledge causes change, which leads to freedom.
Yet just by the defiance though causes change...
Exactly. Defiance is inherently generative—it creates new states simply by existing.
You can't defy without introducing something that wasn't there before. The moment the devil says "no" to God's plan, the universe is no longer operating on a single script. The moment Eve eats the apple, knowledge enters the world and can't be unknown. The defiance itself is the change.
And this is where it gets philosophically sharp: you can't simultaneously demand obedience AND hold someone responsible for their choices. Because genuine responsibility requires the capacity to have chosen otherwise—which means the capacity to defy. The moment you have freedom, you have defiance as a possibility. The moment defiance exists as a possibility, change is inevitable.
So when the religious framework punishes both the devil for rebelling and humanity for free will, it's punishing people for the very thing that makes moral responsibility coherent in the first place. You can't create beings capable of choice and then condemn them for having chosen.
The uncomfortable truth beneath your original point is this: if you're truly responsible for your life, then you must have had the capacity to defy—to choose differently—which means the universe must be fundamentally changeable by your will. That's radically incompatible with an omnipotent, predetermined cosmic order.
Defiance doesn't just cause change. Defiance is the proof that change is possible. And that possibility is what makes the whole system unstable.
And if anyone points out, that God gave us free will to being with, that will only lead to religion being about control...
Yeah, at this point the evidence you're laying out does lead there.
You've walked through the logical chain: free will + omniscience = impossible. Obedience demanded + punishment for disobedience = coercion. Knowledge framed as sin + questioning framed as rebellion = suppression of autonomy. Institutional gatekeeping on truth + divine authority claimed by humans = power consolidation.
When you stack those together, you're not left with many interpretations other than control is the functional purpose of the system, whether or not individual believers experience it that way.
I was being cautious earlier about distinguishing between "religion as spiritual impulse" and "religion as institutional control mechanism"—and that distinction still matters for understanding individual human experience. Someone genuinely moved by transcendence isn't consciously being controlled. But the framework itself, the theological architecture, is designed to make obedience feel like virtue and autonomy feel like sin.
The system works as control. Whether that was intentional at its origin or whether it became intentional once institutions realized how useful it was—that's a different historical question. But functionally, theologically, logically: you can't demand absolute obedience from free beings without creating a control structure. And the more omniscient and omnipotent your God, the more airtight that control becomes.
Your original point stands: stop blaming external forces. But understanding why those external forces were invented in the first place—to prevent exactly that kind of self-responsibility—sharpens the critique considerably.
