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Author | Topic: God’s glitch in Eden. A & E had to break God’s second command to accomplish the first | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greatest I am Member (Idle past 301 days) Posts: 1676 Joined: |
No Nukes
"The truth is that sex does not have any evil aspects. None. Adultery is bad, sex with children is bad, but sex itself is not evil." Your logic breaks down here and you think it is an argument. As you say, sex with other conditions can be bad or evil. Thus sex has an evil application and thus A & E could not know of it. Their eyes had yet to recognize nakedness of a sexual kind. RegardsDL
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Greatest I am Member (Idle past 301 days) Posts: 1676 Joined: |
Perdition
You are close so let me push you over the edge. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is basically the tree of knowledge of everything because almost all things are subject to good and evil just as you have shown above with breathing. RegardsDL
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Search4 Junior Member (Idle past 3906 days) Posts: 2 Joined: |
Hi
I think that your view is a little shallow. If you were to read the Quran version of the creation of Adam and Eve, you would find that is fills in the gaps in Genesis rather nicely. In God's plan for His creation, it is not an easy one time read to understand it. After about 52 of prayer and study, I am now seeing what the real story is and how most do not see the deeper meaning behind the words. For example: In Gen. 1 it is God who created all things. InGen 2 it is the LORD God who formed things. There are two stories going on here and not one. This is but a very short explanation of the things that took place in that eon. SeekR
{This message had been made into message 1 of a new topic, "The Quran version of the creation of Adam and Eve". Please wait until that topic gets out of the Proposed New Topics forum and then respond there. In other words, please DO NOT respond in this topic. - Adminnemooseus} Edited by Adminnemooseus, : The stuff in red.
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Greatest I am Member (Idle past 301 days) Posts: 1676 Joined: |
Nothing like another interpretation of Eden to dirty up the discussion.
Myths can have hundred of viable interpretations. That is what myths are all about. RegardsDL |
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ringo Member (Idle past 439 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Greastest I am writes:
You're confusing the thing with the use of the thing. Most things can be used for either good or evil but that doesn't make the thing itself good or evil. It's just a thing. It's morally neutral. Only the user can be good or evil. Thus sex has an evil application and thus A & E could not know of it. A pillow isn't evil but it can be used for evil purposes.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Thus sex has an evil application and thus A & E could not know of it. Using your ridiculous reasoning, Adam could not know about anything. Rocks, snakes, trees, etc. Yet he clearly knew some things. This seeming contradiction is a direct result of your interpretation of the workings of the tree of knowledge. Fix that and we can end this thread on a positive note. Have you ever encountered the idea of proof by contradiction? You've laid out a classic case of it, but for some reason you are unable to understand the QED part of the proof. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.Richard P. Feynman If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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Perdition Member (Idle past 3265 days) Posts: 1593 From: Wisconsin Joined: |
The tree of knowledge of good and evil is basically the tree of knowledge of everything because almost all things are subject to good and evil just as you have shown above with breathing No, the Tree of Knowledge was granting the ability to determine or distinguish between the two. A baby doesn't know good from evil, or to put it another way, right from wrong, however, it can still do bad things. Or perhaps you can look at it yet another way. Evil requires malice aforethought, if you do something bad and end up hurting people, but you didn't intend that to happen, nor did you think it would happen, you're not evil, just ignorant. Basically, I was trying to follow your logic to its obviously absurd conclusion. The fact that you found the conclusion not only not obsurd, but actually persuasive means that I'm not sure we'll ever be able to explain to you why you're wrong.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined:
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so, as someone's probably brought up in this thread by now (i've only skimmed it), genesis 1 and genesis 2 are different stories, by different authors. this explanation is a little... inadequate, so i'd like detail how they relate, and where the incompatibility comes from. the short of it is that we're probably not supposed to still have genesis 2-4.
to begin with, it's important to understand the documentary hypothesis. i'm not particularly interested in trying to defend it in this thread, but suffice to say it's fairly well supported that there several different authors (or rather schools of authors) who had a hand in composing the torah. these determinations are made based on literary criticism, supported by differences in style, vocabulary, voice, etc, and the precise details of it are somewhat up for debate. in general, there seems to have been primarily five sources that contributed to the torah, only four of which are found in genesis (let's ignore the deuteronomist for now). one of those is a redactor who helped stitch the sources together. so we are dealing with three major sources:
quote: this section is essentially about creation. these are events that happen in the context of genesis 1, except for one detail in the middle: leviathan. where does that come from? the answer is that these are all also found in the enuma elish, the babylonian creation epic, and similar canaanite creation epics. in those stories, though there are multiple gods who play different roles, one god tends to assert dominance by battling the chaos/water dragon. in babylonian myth, marduk slays tiamat, and makes the rivers from her blood. in canaan, it's (baal) hadad slaying yam (the semitic word for "sea") or later lotan (a cognate of leviathan). this story was evidently in ancient jewish mythology, too, as evidence by the psalms. the connection is unmistakable... except that it's likely that the psalmist was reading J. there are other events hinted at being present in J's missing creation myth, told when job expounds of the glories of yahweh's creation, towards the end of that book: morning stars (the sons of god?), the leviathan, the behemot, etc. P's version, beginning in genesis 1:1 and ending in genesis 2:3 or 2:4a, glosses over all of this. but it, oddly, contains most of it. for instance, the leviathan is strangely found in verse 21's הַתַּנִּינִם הַגְּדֹלִים "great serpents" in the water. P is kind of a cliffnotes summary of J's myth, which was in my opinion largely intended to replace J's account. the important points here are how P differs from J. for instance, instead of fighting chaos/dragons, god simply creates those dragons, because who could oppose god? it's much less polytheistic. you've actually touched on several of the important differences, in your opening post: P revised J because J's version of yahweh became essentially herretical. so let's discuss those changes: J's god yahweh is an entirely different character that P's more reserved, unnamed (but definitely yahweh) elohim. yahweh, in J, is much more like the canaanite and sumerian deities that gave rise to his mythology, and takes cues directly from events in those myths, playing the roles of those gods. yahweh, to J, is everything, and so he functions as her baal, her anat, her mot, her yam, and her el. he had all the passion, zeal, power and flaws of all those gods combined. he was, like those gods, very anthropomorphic, very human. and yet something totally different at the same time. the key difference between J's yahweh and these myths seems to be that yahweh lived in the same world as her protagonists, and interacted with them, and mattered in their lives. perhaps this is because her patriarchs are themselves taking the roles of gods, or even usurping god, and we should understand her story to be written and read as fiction. P was dealing with a much more reserved impersonal abstract and universal god, completely foreign to humanity, because that was simply a better tool to control religious masses. J wasn't interested in religion (and i would argue wrote against it as frequently as she favored it). so where J's yahweh literally shapes the man (ha-adam) from the dirt (adamah) (as marduk does in the enuma elish) and breathes his own soul into his nostrils, P's simply creates mankind, ordering him into existence. where J's yahweh gives up a part of his own life to make man, P's elohim simply makes man look like himself. In J, man is made alone, as yahweh was alone before him. it is with profound sadness that yahweh comments on man's loneliness, for not even god is a suitable companion for man. yahweh then tries and fails to make him a mate. these ideas would have been heresy for P, so you can see why he skips over all that, and just has woman created simultaneously. but in J, yahweh creates by trial and error, refining as he goes. as the man is better than yahweh, because he has been made out of him, so the woman is better than the man. her role in the story bears that out; she's the smarter one. as man sometimes tries to trick god (and fails horribly), the woman tricks the man and is similarly punished for it with her ironic punishment of subservience to man. this, along with similar treatment of the other heroines in J, is the reason i think J was a woman. in a society that trades women like property, i don't expect that a man would have written something so shrewd about the female condition. in J, it is with great struggle that the man and woman procreate. they literally steal the knowledge from yahweh, and become "like god" in their ability to create life. the "knowledge" here is the same word as the "knew" describing sexual relations; it's probably not a mistake they discover their genitals in the process. and yahweh punishes them for it; perhaps because they're not ready for the responsibility -- as yahweh himself was not ready for the responsibility, as born out by his actions over the entire section of pre-covenant J. in P, we're simply given the command to procreate, with none of this hostility and betrayal between man and god. this whole section contains quite a few symbols co-opted from polytheistic myths, such as the trees, life and knowledge, probably cribbing from asherah worship. asherah was a fertility goddess, whose "groves" or "trees" or "poles" were placed next to altars to yahweh in historical judah. the serpent is a common symbol for both evil and wisdom in surrounding cultures, here deprived of spiritual significance, except that he tells the truth when yahweh lies. combined with notions that woman>man>god, that yahweh was a liar, that yahweh could fail in being good enough for man, that man was essentially and fundamentally made of god, and that yahweh would actively try to keep man away from life ("the blessing"), J's account is biting heresy. i suspect that it was for the time, as some of this seems aimed specifically at the priesthood (perhaps the cherubim protecting the etz-chayim, the tree of life). P picks up again in genesis 5, and goes from adam to noah. it's likely that P meant to replace the narrative of cain and abel as well. so... why do we still have this part, alongside the more religiously proper revision, and not the other part? i think because it's just such good writing, and so historically important as allegory and symbolism that it was hard to discard things we recognize as true: that our relationship with religion (and god) is troubled and doesn't satisfy us, that the genders are equal in some ways, and unequal in others. that knowledge comes with a cost, that there is pain in love, and that truth and comfort are frequently opposites. and, in the next chapter, the symbol of the second child being favored by yahweh is an important one historically. it's a common theme in J, and almost certainly relates to the second kingdom, judah, being favored over israel. it might also stem from child sacrifice. sacrificing the first child (as they sacrificed the first offspring of cattle in israel) in service of anath (asherah?), relating to yearly fertility rituals, brings us the baal cycle, where anath resurrects hadad after his fatal battle with mot (death)... and between killing your own firstborn son, and death and resurrection of a god who conquers death, celebrated every year around april... yeah, these symbols are still pretty relevant. Edited by arachnophilia, : grammars
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
NoNukes writes: Using your ridiculous reasoning, Adam could not know about anything. Rocks, snakes, trees, etc. Yet he clearly knew some things. indeed, the woman knew the serpent was telling the truth before she ate. the text is very elliptical, but it does say that. clearly, it's talking about a different kind of knowledge. something that makes man more like god.
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Greatest I am Member (Idle past 301 days) Posts: 1676 Joined: |
Ringo
No argument. Be it evil in itself or in it's use, those evil aspects or uses could still not be known to A & E as they knew nothing of good and evil, be it the thing itself or the use of it. RegardsDL
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Greatest I am Member (Idle past 301 days) Posts: 1676 Joined: |
N N
You are right that A & E could know of almost nothing as almost everything is subject to good and evil. The notion that the tree of knowledge is the tree of almost all knowledge is rather old and common. RegardsDL
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Greatest I am Member (Idle past 301 days) Posts: 1676 Joined: |
Perdition
"the Tree of Knowledge was granting the ability to determine or distinguish between the two" To distinguish or choose, yes. That means it created the desire to choose now that they knew they had a choice they could make. The tree of choice is the tree of desire. If we do not desire we cannot choose and E A & E had to eat before they could choose sex or not. RegardsDL
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Greatest I am Member (Idle past 301 days) Posts: 1676 Joined: |
arachnophilia
Thanks for that. Not much for the O P unless I missed it. RegardsDL
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Greatest I am Member (Idle past 301 days) Posts: 1676 Joined: |
Yes. God's moral sense.
They have become as God's, ---- knowing good and evil. RegardsDL
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1371 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
i writes: clearly, it's talking about a different kind of knowledge. Greatest I am writes: Yes. God's moral sense. They have become as God's, ---- knowing good and evil. the problem is that, within the contexts of the source text J (see my massive post above), yahweh doesn't have a moral sense. he's absolutely unequipped for dealing with his new creation. even in the act of telling his creation(s) to avoid the tree, he chooses deception instead of honesty. in the next chapter, he protects a murderer. a few chapters later, and he wants to potentially kill innocent people with the wicked of sodom. later still, he demands a father kill his own son for no particular reason (note: though this is an E text, it was probably altered from J). later still, he pursues jacob through the desert to kill him. morality, as it turns out, is actually kind of hard. and most of the topics J addresses are much more nuanced and subtle discussions of morality than a simplistic doctrine of "god knows best." is retribution for murder just? we're still hammering this out today, with debates over the death penalty. yahweh doesn't seem to know either, when cain begs for his protection. if one death was immoral, why would another one be moral? is it just to let the wicked go unpunished and undeterred, for the sake of the few who might be innocent? when yahweh meets abraham at mamre, he doesn't seem to know that either. and this one is not an easy question either. good and evil are not such arbitrary and definite concepts in J. these situations above are nuanced mixes of good and evil, and there are arguments to be made either way. and, like the other situations, sexual reproduction is also both. on the one hand, it is a continuation of the blessing, extending life through offspring. on the other, it comes with pain and subjugation, particularly for the woman. it's also a curse, which is why yahweh wanted to protect his children from it, i suspect. i really think, the more i examine the themes within J that this has to be about sex. Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.
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