Adam & Eve to be blamed, or god!

But those commandments didn't exist at that time?

You are correct. According to Legend, which, if you remember, is defined asThe early Bible described a time of many cultures all seeking identity. (Genesis 1:11) The Jewish people found God, or rather, He found them.
(I know that most of you won't believe this! Others, who also claim to have found God, DO believe this!) These people wanted to know what they must do. As Legend has it, God gave them a set of laws because they wanted to do something that made them worthy of Him. They not only had ten primary ones, but hundreds of other minor jots and tittles.

Hi - if you are replying to me - you need to click on the reply to button at the bottom of my post. It allows us to track who is speaking to whom.

KGE would work both ways, would it not? You now know that talking to this other woman will make your wife angry. You're able to judge this action and decide about the potential the conquences. Not only can you see the conquences, you can avoid the action all together. So does a pre-KGE Adam have any capacity to love God? I don't have any proof but I've always assumed love = good.thanx
PM1K

There are several interesting angles here:
1)Indeed, does a pre-KGE Adam have any option NOT to love God, at least not with all his heart, soul, and mind?(evidently, yes.) Did the pre-KGE Adam have good? If good=love, did he have love for God? Evidently not, for he got booted from the garden. Many argue that he was an innocent baby. Kinda like if your baby spilled the milk, you threw him out the door! Innocence implies lack of knowledge, however. I would argue that Adam and his wife(pre KGE version 1.0) had no lack of knowledge. After all, they named the flippin animals,right? Question#1: What did they lack?(pre-KGE)
The snake promised them that they would be like god IF...If your wife told you that she did not want you to talk to other women, would you listen?
2)Note the word, capacity. If we are to believe that Adam+Eve pre KGE were perfect, it follows that they must have been fully equipped...or, in other words, filled to capacity. They lacked nothing. Jesus said that Satan had nothing in him. Why? Because Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit. He passed his temptation tests, while pre KGE Adam failed. If both were perfect, whats the diff?This message has been edited by Phatboy, 08-10-2004 01:05 PM

em that your post totally dodges the question put to you?Maybe that's the diff?

SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! Sorry, I couldn't resist.I can't see how we can say that Adam "lacked nothing" or IOW was "perfect." If one lacks for nothing then one cannot gain anything. If Adam is in this state, Gen 3:7 doesn't make sense.

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Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

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The phrases "eyes ... were opened" and "realized they were naked" both imply an addition of knowledge. Clearly Adam had lacked something. What did he lack? God tells us in Gen 3:22.

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And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

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Adam gains KGE after the tree incident. Jesus, on the other hand, clearly has this knowledge. However, is KGE really needed to resist temptation? Here you write that Jesus resists Satan by being filled with the Holy Spirit.Please elaborate on what the Holy Spirit imparts. How are we certain that the Holy Spirit is solely responsible for Jesus overcoming the temptation? Also please explain how we know that pre-KGE Adam did not possess the Holy Spirit. Until we know for certain Adam did not have this same Holy Spirit aspect as Jesus then the only difference I can see is the lack of knowledge.Also, I was unclear if you meant Adam did or did not have the ability to love before he gained KGE.thanx
PM1K

Jar,Googling has failed me or more likely my memory. Can't find the quotes I want so will have to paraphrase.I was looking for what I recall as a quote from a zen teacher that went something like this. "Only cease to make distinctions. A hairsbreadth of difference and the ten thousand things appear and you are caught in good and evil."What is "evil" about KBE is the you've got there through dualistic thought which now obscures the non dual "truth" of real nature, yours, god's, the universe. From a non dual viewpoint the KGE story tells of the birth of dualistic consciousness, samsara, and suffering. But the typical priests understanding of that in those times and in that part of the world seems to follow a literal belief in language and thus create many paradoxes.One of the main streams of western religious thought (I'm being careful here not to make sweaping statemeents) takes words to be literal truth and will assert the truth of dualism. This naive position leads to self contradiction such as omniscience vs. omnipotence. If you think in circles slowly enough you might miss the contradiction. Huang Po, http://hjem.get2net.dk/civet-cat/zen-writings/huang-po.htmI've read a little of Meister Eckert and the books of Bernadette Roberts, both christian contemplatives. It seems infrequent but some christians do awake and know the non dual.lfen

So we are suggesting pantheism rather than dualism? BTW, Christianity is Monotheistic. The devil is not a co-deity.

My reference is not to two gods but to the dualism of subject/object, the consciuosness of a subject separate from everyone, everything else which is an object for the ego or self subject.I am saying that the fall in Genesis ascribed to the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, could be interpreted as a story of the arising of the dualistic subject/object consciosness and the feeling of sin as a separation from god comes about with the arising of a feeling of an ego as a separate entity. I am not claiming that the redactor who wrote Genesis held that notion. I know very little about jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah but as far as the text of the Torah goes I don't see any evidence that the writers were aware of non dualistic consciousness.Pantheism is one approach to non duality. Buddhism is another, Advaita Vedanta still another and there are a very few christian non dualists in the contemplative traditions of catholicism. I am very impressed with Bernadette Roberts' book, THE EXPERIENCE OF NO SELF.I was raised in the Episcopal church so I've a lay understanding of Christianity.lfen

OK...I respect that. I am not one of those fanatics who think that everyone needs to see things my way. I trust that God will show ALL of us where we were, where we are, and where we are going!
Personally, I am a believer in Biblical scripture. I have seen the sites that espouse scriptural inconsistancies and errors, and I have read them. I was going to look up all of the references and attempt to explain some of them, but I am too lazy! Some of the scriptural inconsistencies cannot be ignored, but just as the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater, the Bible should not be thrown out, either. What would a Christian have left, except vague Spiritual experience? Yes, I guess that I am too cowardly to jump to another belief paradigm! Plus, I truly DO love Jesus and I believe in Him. Why are you a fan of Buddhism? Is it the kinder, gentler alternative??
BTW..check this out:http://christian-philosopher.com/...icalInconsistencies.htmlThis message has been edited by Phatboy, 08-12-2004 04:38 AM

I think all scriptures were conceived and written by people. There is a class of scriptures that the people claim to have received accurate information from the source of the universe. These sorts of claims can be found today. I catagorical believe that the source of the universe has not communicated directly in language. I will cite Korzbyski and Wittgenstein to point to the limits of language to expess "truth" and "reality".So, yes the kinder gentler aspect of Buddhism does appeal to me. I think that partially is a consequence of the Buddha's refusal to comment on the source of universe. He did seem to have a very modern understanding of the limits of language and that is something I like about Taoism and Buddhism.Much of the problem I see with near eastern religions that are book based is that they don't factor in the limitations of language and so are left with inevitable contradictions that arise from the nature of a symbolic system for mapping the universe.Language is a powerful tool but it has limitations.Buddhism has a semantic sophistication that I find lacking in revealed religion. To get back to the thread topic. (I am interested in your topics but I think if we are to talk about them you would need to start a new thead.) The question of Adam and Eve and the human sense of sin is something that non dual thought addresses in a very different way. I just wanted to show an alternative to assigning blame. I wanted to give the view point that the knowledge of good and evil requires a state or better is a state that produces suffering. That is that it's not a punishment like a jail sentence it's just that in the buddhist understanding the sense of separation is suffering. The buddhist understanding and solution is very different from the near eastern approach though.lfen

Phatboy writes:

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The alternative view is that a spontaneously regenerating universe need not have a God or gods as sources.

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True, but just because it doesn't need it doesn't mean it doesn't have it.Where was it agreed that the only way the god and the universe can exist is as a creator-created relationship?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Phatboy:

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Innocence implies lack of knowledge, however. I would argue that Adam and his wife(pre KGE version 1.0) had no lack of knowledge. After all, they named the flippin animals,right?

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Logical error: Equivocation.You have gone from "knowledge" meaning "understanding" to "knowledge" meaning "intellect."Adam and Eve weren't stupid. They were innocent. Innocence does imply lack of knowledge in Genesis because it directly says so. They're running around naked and are not ashamed. It isn't that they don't understand what "being naked" means. It's that they do not have any emotional sense of shame attached to that concept.Adam and Eve, being innocent, were incapable of sinning due to their inability to comprehend good and evil. Sin requires deliberate intent to do evil. That doesn't mean an innocent person cannot engage in an act that is evil. It means that an innocent person cannot engage in an act with the specific intent to do evil. If being naked is a sin (which the Bible clearly seems to think it is), then Adam and Eve running around naked is not a sin because they do not know what evil is. They aren't naked because they are being willful, deliberately flaunting the rules. It's that they do not understand why anybody would wear clothes. They didn't have them to begin with, god didn't give them any, so why would they bother to make them when they seemingly did not need them? They didn't need protection from the elements, so what would spur them to put on clothes? It isn't "modesty" because that requires knowledge of good and evil with modesty being "good."

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The snake promised them that they would be like god IF

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And the snake was right. They became as gods precisely as the snake said they would.What the snake didn't do was tell them to eat from the tree. Just because they would become as gods does not mean they had a desire to do so.

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If we are to believe that Adam+Eve pre KGE were perfect, it follows that they must have been fully equipped...or, in other words, filled to capacity.

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But if they were perfect, how could they possibly have sinned?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

So now, we need to define "gods". The Bible apologist would imply that God does not equal "god or "gods."
The spirit of the snake would disagree. We could reinterpret ye shall be as gods. The meaning would in essence become "you will wannabe".No, they merely had a desire for freewill.
Perhaps they disobeyed, but is obedience contrary to freewill?(I am a theist, remember. I am playing devils advocate, here.(snakes advocate???) Pre KGE Adam lacked only one thing. the desire to be. The desire to exist without holding Daddys hand. Apologists would say that this desire would equate to Lucifers mistake leading to his fall from heaven. He wanted to be like Daddy. Others would ask:
Whats so wrong with wanting freethinking independence? Comments? This message has been edited by Phatboy, 08-20-2004 07:53 PM