What Is The Meaning Of This?

[Solomon]

That Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge.

[waiting for hope]

1. It has something to

to do with innocence and original sin.

"Adam and Eve would have attained absolute perfection and retained immortality had they succeeded in withstanding the temptation to eat from the Tree. After failing at this task, they were condemned to a period of toil to rectify the fallen universe. Jewish tradition views the serpent, and sometimes the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil itself, as representatives of evil. Evil's job was and is to mislead Mankind and give the appearance that God does not entirely control Creation. Adam's task was to see through this veil. After his failure, this became humanity's task through history.

Snip

Western Christianity generally affirms St. Augustine's doctrine that humanity has inherited both sin itself and the guilt for Adam and Eve's sin. By eating of the fruit of the Tree, Adam and Eve chose to substitute their own knowledge of good and evil for God's. However, since human knowledge is limited, human morality is inherently flawed. From God's perspective, human morality is depraved, although different denominations debate whether this depravity is total or partial, and to what degree humanity can freely choose to follow God's morality. By contrast, Eastern Christianity believes that the fruit of the tree distorted humanity's nature; sin itself is inherited, but not the guilt for Adam and Eve's sin.<1> A minority of Christians affirm the doctrine of Pelagius, which states that while Adam and Eve set a bad example by eating from the tree, their sin does not directly affect the rest of humanity. Rather, Pelagianism states that every individual faces the same choice between sin and salvation that Adam and Eve faced."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Knowledge_of_Good_and_Evil

[Hissyspit]

2. Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil, not the tree of knowledge.

To eat that fruit meant to become aware of good and evil, thus a loss of innocence.

It's a creation myth, incorporating the values and assumptions about human nature; one among many creation myths meant to explain why things are the way they are/how they came to be. Creation myths have many aspects in common, but their differences tell us things about the beliefs of a particular culture.

[Solomon]

4. Same thing.

[Hissyspit]

7. Not hardly.

Good and evil is a simplistic concept. Knowledge in general includes the idea that there may not be any such thing as good and evil or that it is more complicated than that (and thus no God).

[Az]

14. Major difference and it creates one of the central paradoxes of the story

If it took eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil for them to be aware of good and evil then prior to that they could not be aware of good or evil. Thus when God told Adam not to eat of the tree Adam could only accept that as an instruction. He had no means to determine whether it was good or bad. No moral perspective. And when the serpant told Eve to eat of the tree she had no choice but to comply because she had no sense of whether it was good or bad.

Without an ability to discern good or evil Adam and Eve were effectively automatons regarding deciding what instructions to follow. They had no sense if hiarchy. Thus to them God was no different than the serpant.

So yeah... it makes a bit of difference.

[Solomon]

28. Good point. But that means God postulated a garden in which only

two automaton humans were to exist. What the heck is the purpose for that?

I mean,if it is imagined that one could gain all the knowledge they want except for the knowledge of good and evil, isn't that dnagerous? I mean you could develop some kind of bomb like an atom bomb and wipe out a good deal of the garden and not know that it was wrong. Or technically, it wouldn't be wrong to do so.

[cmkramer]

61. in the Bible story,

the serpent told Eve that the real reason God didn't want them eating the fruit is because if they did, they would become just like God -- all-knowing. The most serious sin of all is to want to be like God. By that I mean, to be all-powerful, all-knowing -- to know and do the things that only God knows and does.

[baldguy]

5. Tell that to the morans who want to eliminate science from society.

[sam sarrha]

9. it is a story from about 10,500BC it is not a "Jewish" myth.. just brought from Sumeria after the

weather changed causing famine and migration.., Abraham's father was an Idol maker.. he stoled one that became the one true gOD and migrated to Egypt, and the 'thou shalt have no other gOD's before me' ment position, the others had to be behind the True god,

the story is a lot, Lot longer and a hell of a lot more interesting from the clay tablets than the little scrap of it in the old testament.

[southerncrone]

3. Ignorance is bliss.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

6. It's to support the Christian dogma that

to be smart is sinful. Otherwise, how could the charlatans shake you down for your money if you had half a brain. I think it also makes them feel that being stupid is good.

[boomboom]

8. oh for pete's sake

It is NOT against democratic principles to believe in Scripture, you know. I believe in the living word of God. And still believe science is a gift from God. It's all in the book........every single thing happening today is prophesied in the Bible. Quit being such a hater. We don't all use scripture as a tool for anger or division.. that's a political wedge. Don't fall for it. Some of us worship the Living God. However, as always, you're entitled to your opinion..........

[Freedom_from_Chains]

13. every single thing happening today is prophesied in the Bible

Oh please, if and when you ever develop some understand of the Bible, feel free to come back and we can talk.

[ret5hd]

17. Why does god hate amputees?

And people with cleft paletes?

Why has god never once, despite all the prayers, ever once cured an amputee?
Cancer?...pfft! I wanna see that all powerful god cure an amputee.

[kiahzero]

19. You act like you've posed some sort of novel argument.

Sure, the rhetoric is different, but theodicy is nothing new:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy

[ret5hd]

21. Merely asking a question...

Definitely not asking about the nature of evil.

http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

<snip>
The thing that makes the situation with amputees so interesting is the fact that God treats amputees in such a consistent way. God never answers the prayers of amputees to restore their lost limbs. It is not like God occasionally regenerates a leg. God never regenerates legs spontaneously, even though he clearly has promised to do so in the Bible and has the omnipotent ability to do so according to the Standard Model of God.

Consistency is key. When we see that God consistently ignores the prayers of amputees, it is an important piece of data.
</snip>

[kiahzero]

34. "Why do bad things happen to good people" counts. (n/t)

[ret5hd]

37. But that is NOT my question...

MY question is: Why does god hate amputees? And those with birth deformities?

Why will god cure (at least according to televangelists) cancers, the heartbreak of psoriasis, heart disease, kidney disease, lumbago, the rheumatis, lupus, macular degeneration, leprosy, etc etc etc...

BUT NOT ONCE, NEVER, NOT IN THE BIBLE OR ALL OF HISTORY SINCE, HAS GOD ONCE --EVEN ONCE-- magically regenerated a missing limb!

So, I ask again..."Why does god hate amputees?"

[murielm99]

18. Thanks for speaking up,

boomboom.

I am sure you realize that it is about as hopeless to defend your faith here as it is to defend or like Hillary Clinton.

I don't entirely blame them. The religious right has given all Christians a bad name. But it does get old to have the right tell us we are not Christians at all, while some on the left make fun of us for having any faith.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

33. Having faith is Ok, if one needs to.

It's being unable to separate faith, or belief and myth, from fact and reality that's a problem.

[More Than A Feeling]

35. That never works in here.

Although its possible that every believer has said it. I said it myself. Being on the same side politically does not stop people in this forum from questioning each other's religious beliefs or lack thereof. Nor does it stop the occasional development of harshness and ill will.

[Chulanowa]

55. Easy to say that about prophecies...

The Bible has two kinds of prophecies.

The first are your normal, everyday prophecies that are nice and generic "Ther will be war in the area in the future" is not a hard one. When you live in a desert / monsoon area, predicting a drought is something any fool is capable of doing.

The other kind of prophecy are the sorts that people can make happen if they so want. The "prophecy" regarding the reestablishment of Israel, for example. Israel would not exist as a state today if it weren't for people trying to fulfil that prophecy. It is not a natural fulfilment it';s people going "Well the book says if this happens, the world will end and we'll all go to heavan, so let's make this happen.

Never beleive a prophecy that doesn't provide a timeframe.

[sam sarrha]

10. but it isnt a christian story it is Sumerian from about 10,500 BC

it is a long story and the old tesitment has only a scrap of the origional..

[Freedom_from_Chains]

11. Pretty much most of everything in the Bible,

particularly in the New Testament, comes from somewhere else. Spend some time reading classical greek mythology and you will find a lot of it. Not to mention I think it makes more sense in the Greek version

[Crunchy Frog]

12. What evidence do you have that the story originated

at that time and place. Writing wasn't even invented until around 7,000 years later. What evidence is there for the existence of a story 7,000 years before it could have had any written documentation?

I apologize for the question. I just like for assertions to be backed up by evidence.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

31. Most stories like this we transmitted orally before writing

came along. In fact they were all transmitted orally.

[Crunchy Frog]

41. I completely agree with you on that.

The point that I'm making is that we can't possibly know what the actual content of these oral traditions was, when they left no written record, and they were being transmitted many thousands of years before the emergence of writing.

We can certainly speculate on what the content of those oral traditions might have been, but when we're talking of something from the end of the last ice age and many thousands of years before the emergence of writing, it is going to be very speculative indeed.

If we were talking about the oral traditions from a highly developed culture that left a very detailed archaeological record, from a period just before the emergence of writing, our speculations might be considerably closer to the mark. This isn't the case with the situation we're discussing here.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

43. Oh absolutly, at best we're just guessing.

So then maybe I misunderstand, what is the question you are getting at?

[Crunchy Frog]

53. The question I was getting at?

I was just asking him to explain how he, or anybody, could know what the details and content were of oral traditions that existed 12,500 years ago, or around 7,000 years before the emergence of the earliest written records. He claimed that he knew, so I was asking for some documentation. That's all.

[Freedom_from_Chains]

54. Oh, ok, yeah it's all just guesswork and estimations and such,

which continually change over time as we accumulate more information. Although, some of it is probably reasonable accurate, the fact is the further one goes back in history the foggier it gets. Which is of course why I get aggravated when I run into people who think about this stuff in absolute terms. One just can't do that when talking about antiquity i.e. the Bible.

[sam sarrha]

38. see link>

http://www.art-creation.com/a/agene/PA12.html

[Crunchy Frog]

42. Thank you for the clarifying link.

The site that you link to actually refers to Sumerian legend of 4,000 BC. This is a few hundred years before the emergence of writing in the region, and I find it to be considerably more plausible than your claims for it's being from 10,500 BC.

A difference of 6,500 years is pretty significant in this context. :)

[sam sarrha]

44. who is to know how old it was when first recorded.. my Hopi friends told me the kiva's are were the

'People' go to, ..one of the uses-. pass on the oral history of the 'People'. when young people are initiated into the Clans they are given the History of the People, they must remember it word for word.. there are prescribed days during the year where the clan members meet and each tells the story to the scrutiny of the elders.. any deviation from the story is corrected.. so everyone knows the same story and will pass it on to their children.

i was told the story goes back to the ice age... so who is to know when the story started.. certainly not limited to when it just shows up physically recorded.. not very scientific to make such assumptions.

[Crunchy Frog]

52. That's just my point.

There is no way to know how old it was when first recorded. We have no idea how strict the laws and traditions were for passing on oral histories, or how those may have changed over time. There is no doubt that there were dramatic social changes that occurred around that region during that 7,000 year period that must have produced major alterations in the oral histories and the rules according to which they were transmitted.

Just think how much things have changed in relatively recent times. Unless you are a scholar of Anglo-Saxon, you couldn't even understand the English language as it was spoken only one thousand years ago. We can barely even imagine the kind of social changes that occurred during the 7,000 years that separate the end of the last ice age and the emergence of the first writing. During that time period, agriculture was invented, animals were domesticated, people began living in settled communities rather than as nomadic hunter-gatherers. The level of organization of society went from the village to the town to the city to the state. pottery was invented, textiles were invented, metal-working was invented, the wheel was invented, priesthoods and bureaucracies and trading systems were developed and there were major migrations and mergings of different population groups with different languages, different myths and different oral traditions. I would be very, very surprised if there was much of anything in the oral traditions of southern Mesopotamia of 3,500 BC that had survived intact from 7,000 years earlier.

In the absence of a written record, there is simply no way to document what the content and details were of any particular culture's oral tradition at that level of antiquity or how much it may have changed prior to the invention of writing.

I will just add your own disclaimer onto the end of my post, and leave it at that.

DISCLAIMER: i do not intend to ANNOY anybody, Everything i post is simply my own uninformed opinion not directed to anyone in general..

[kiahzero]

16. What story?

I'm a bit of a mythology geek. Do you have any sources for reading more about this?

[sam sarrha]

36. here are some links.. the Stichen story is based on the translation on one word different than the

traditional.. it describes a 'Vehicle' relative to traveling Continental distances.. Stichin said it was obvious it was a 'Winged Disk' because on the clay tablets it describes the earth as the 7th planet in the solar system.. it is the 7th if you are coming into the solar system from the outside.
http://www.surfingtheapocalypse.com/sitchin.html i am only refering to his work on the sumerian clay tablets involving the creation myth not his later work.

http://www.art-creation.com/a/agene/PA12.html click on all the links

http://faculty.gvsu.edu.webstern_Elish.htm

the story is about people dropped of on earth from the 10th planet to mine essential metals they needed, they got behind and decided to do do some DNA work combining the local Primates with some of their DNA, we are only 2% different from the higher primates..

the story goes that the resulting beings were capable of training and did the necessary work, and were sterile like mules/crossbred species.. apparently there were 4 or 5 mining centers, south america, africa...etc etc and Mesopotamia..

it seems hoverer that the off-planet beings got a little lonely and bread with the female crossbred beings.. in Genesis it speaks of the giants breeding with the women of the earth.. that union added enough DNA to make those beings fertile.. when the off-planet beings left they destroyed all the double cross bread creatures.. except some that got away in the mesopotamian jungles.. where they spread out from

it is my feeling that they spread into africa and then Togo erupted and destroyed all human live on the earth except about 1000 beings which spread back out of africa.. mitacondrial DNA studies in Europe have shown that approximately 18 beings entered the european area after the glaciers receded, and populated the area before modern times

[muriel_volestrangler]

39. Any good links?

The first is a crackpot; the second an artist, and I can't see where the date of 10,500 BC comes from; the 3rd link is broken.

[sam sarrha]

45. make youself happy no one else can...

[muriel_volestrangler]

46. Seriously, you could at least correct the last one

It would seem to be meant to lead to a university, so might be serious, but is also clearly a malformed URL. The artist may have good work, but doesn't make any claims about dates. I wouldn't want you to disappoint the other people who asked you for sources.

[sam sarrha]

48. it is the address that showed when on the site.. and i dont have to do 'anything' for you, if you

were serious about a quest for knowledge.. you could have followed the lead yourself..

you are obviously a cynic and i have no interest i playing that game

[muriel_volestrangler]

50. Oh, I did some searching myself

and found, as I had previously thought, that Sumerian writing doesn't date back before about 3000 BC; and found nothing about "10,500 BC". Now, one of your other posts seems to show you got that date from American Indians who told you their stories go back to the Ice Age. Even if you take their word for that, it tells us nothing about Sumerian myths. I found plenty about Sumerian myths on the web, including their possible relationship to the Genesis story of eating from the tree; it's just a shame your links had nothing about that at all.

For those who are interested in some genuine scholarship on this, try http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/sumer-faq.html#A1.6

[TRYPHO]

47. Ok, i've heard enough...

I've read some really interesting books that cover what you are saying. They talk about the relationship between cultures around the world separated by 1000's of miles all doing the same thing at the same time, and calling their Gods by similar sounding names. They all make massive time-pieces, sun-dials and space-ship or aeroplane landing strips, they all simultaneously domesticate animals, they all build enormous buildings from enormous rocks which they moved from far away, built to incredible specification that we'd be hard pressed to do today. They also mention DNA ancestry, and the age of the people that may or may not have been sharing this out-of-place technology and breeding with the locals. These are very interesting ideas from a clever author, and I enjoyed reading them. What you have done is NOT read anything.

You talk of oral traditions handed down from the ice-age and somehow you forget or neglect to mention the Jewish Talmud? Are you that ignorant? I guess you are.

And I shall not comment on your other theories and the quality of your URL links.

You haven't done your homework, you believe what you are told, you have taken no reference point in your argument, you offer no logic or proof, and your bias transcends your emotion.

Get some facts.

TRYPHO

[smirkymonkey]

59. Ignorant people are easier to manipulate.

[lvx35]

15. The idea is that before dividing the world into "good and evil" it was bliss.

the ego divides the world into good and evil based off of desire. The state before desire is eden. That's how I look at it...The still desireless mind which sees no good and evil is blissful, an idea that you see also in Hindu scripture and Buddhist practice.

[Warpy]

20. Notice god told them a lie, that they'd die if they ate the fruit

while the serpent told them the truth, that they wouldn't die but that they'd gain knowledge.

Never could quite figure that one out.

[bananas]

23. They were both right

God wasn't telling a lie, he was telling the truth - if they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, they would surely die - but the flip side is that even if they didn't eat, they would die anyway. So he was telling them a half-truth, it wasn't untrue, but it wasn't complete - usually "a lie" means something which isn't true.

[Solomon]

27. Well there were two trees in the midst of the garden: the tree of

knowledge and the tree of life. They were free to eat of the tree of life, which presumably means, they would never die. But once they ate of the tree of knowledge, God put an angel there to keep them from eating of the tree of life again.

[ret5hd]

24. Well, they did go from "immortal" to "mortal"...

And the knowledge they gained was the knowledge that "now that i know somethings are right and some are wrong, i know there are some things i should not do"...

Maybe their death wasn't immediate, but it was a reality. And that knowledge wasn't as liberating as knowledge was made out to be, was it?

But don't mind me, i'm an atheist. :-)

[Warpy]

30. When were they ever immortal? I don't recall that ever being

part of their creation. Not only that, but remember that the rest of us had been created earlier, "male and female created him them." Appalling sentence structure, but there you have it. Plus, it kept Cain and Abel from incest.

My point is that the god of Eden created these two yahoos and kept them as pets. He told Adam, but not Eve, that the fruit would kill them. The snake came along and clued them in that the god/pet owner was full of it and just didn't want them to know what the score was. Eve ate, and nothing happened. Adam grabbed some for himself and god had a hissy fit and threw them out of the cage.

Of course, I'm only an atheist, too, but that particular story has always troubled me because the god is such a sexist, juvenile cretin and the only one with brains and compassion is the SNAKE.

[boomboom]

49. did they not die? God never lies, but the serpent sure does

[kiahzero]

51. What did the serpent lie about?

“Of course you will not die… for God knows that, as soon as you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God himself, knowing both good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5).

In the story, that is the truth.

[trotsky]

63. God never lies? The bible says differently.

1 Kings 22:23
Now, therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee.

2 Chronicles 18:22
Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets.

Jeremiah 4:10
Ah, Lord GOD! surely thou hast greatly deceived this people.

Jeremiah 20:7
O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived.

Ezekiel 14:9
And if a prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet.

2 Thessalonians 2:11
For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.

[bananas]

22. biblical "to know" meant sex

so "eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge" meant swallowing.

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. That ideas of morality don't come from humans, or nature, but God and his priests

It's a myth told by priests to emphasise that humans aren't meant to have their own ideas of good and evil, or to think they can obtain them from thinking about the natural world; they must only come from God, and thus through his appointed agents on earth, the priestly class.

[Solomon]

29. The tree contained the universal ideas of good and evil, but God had

his own peculiar ideas of good and evil. He wanted them to inculcate his version and not the universal version. (Another alternative)

[struggle4progress]

26. They were in a state of innocence, in which they had not deliberately

chosen to do what was wrong, and they were told not to lose this original innocence, as the loss would cause them grave harm

[Evoman]

32. The story kind of loses me at the talking snake bit.

I mean, I can believe that there was a garden where to people were created "as is" by a angry, lying sky god. I can even believe that there was a tree that dropped fruit with some sort of neurostimulant that somehow made two idiots who didn't know what their genitals were for all of a sudden realize...damn, I'm horny. Oh yeah, and evil exists.

But c'mon...a talking snake? Geez...people will believe anything.

[immoderate]

40. Does that mean you don't believe that god spoke through Balaam's ass?

:shrug:

--IMM

[Solomon]

56. LOL!

Pardon me. I had to chuckle.

[immoderate]

57. No offense taken.

Interesting avatar there.

--IMM

[Evoman]

58. Thats easy to believe! My AP god talks to me all the time..I posted about it in AA group

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=263x23069

[immoderate]

60. Yep. I saw that.

--IMM

[Lydia Leftcoast]

62. It's an allegory of the evolution of humanity from instinctual behavior to

conscious decision making and awareness of the consequences of one's actions.

While animals definitely have emotions and feelings of fairness and unfairness, we don't apply moral categories to them. We don't say that a lion is murderer or a cat is a slut; they act the way they act because that's an inborn trait of their species.

Human beings can choose to kill or not, choose to have sex or not, choose to steal or not, and can imagine possible consequences of whichever choice they make.

In some ways, it's easier to be an animal. You just act within your more or less limited set of genetically determined options, and you don't spend a lot of time worrying about it. If you're in your proper habitat, food is easily available.

If you're a pre-industrial human who not only has to deal with all the human emotions and options but also has to work hard day in and day out, an animal's limited options might look pretty good.