Dan Rowden wrote: The parent, being an egotistical dipshit (which the God of Genesis so obviously is) then punishes the child for a wrong they couldn't have known was wrong.
That's pretty much the Freudian view, with God being an abstraction of the parent (the superego). It's an abstraction of authority that is, in the end, arbitrary. Things are wrong because "I said so" or because "God said so."
It's no wonder that the Fundies have the mentality they do, because the God of the OT is a terrifying idiot.
Maybe they relate to this mythology because their parents are...?
The OT God loves drama; it seems to be much more of a concern that the good vs. evil thing. Good vs. evil (in this context) seems like mostly a way to create an "us" and a "them," for the purposes of drama (conflict).
Matt Gregory wrote:I think the general attitude towards women in the Bible runs along these lines:
1 Corinthians 11:3
1 Corinthians 14:33-35
Matt, all this stuff was made up by Saul of Tarsus, a guy who never even met Jesus (in the flesh at least). In fact most of the nuts-and-bolts theology of Christianity was coddled together by Saul. The whole "blood of the lamb" concept, that God needed a blood sacrifice to redeem Humanity, and not just any blood but his only begotten son (whateverthehell begotten actually means) is Saul's construct. Much of it is an attempt to put a positive spin on the lynching of Jesus by the "fundies".
Interesting side note, the Romans were actually quite tolerant of religious diversity, so how was it the Jews managed to bring down the might of the Empire on their own heads?
Dan Rowden wrote:The tree of knowledge represents consciousness, the source of duality, therefore of good and evil. It means an awakening.
The Creation story, in general, is fairly typical of the banality of the human mind. The parent forbids a certain action, but the child has no idea why because the action itself is the only thing that can grant the child such knowledge. The child is supposed to have blind faith in the parent's judgement but such faith goes against human nature so the child disobeys and in disobeying then understands why they have done so. The parent, being an egotistical dipshit (which the God of Genesis so obviously is) then punishes the child for a wrong they couldn't have known was wrong.
I don't even understand the point of reinterpreting things like scripture. Are you saying that the author of Genesis had that purpose in mind when he wrote it, or are you saying that he was subject to external forces that caused him to write in the way that he did, or are you saying that the creation story matches up nicely with the family situation by coincidence, or what?
Matt Gregory wrote:
I don't even understand the point of reinterpreting things like scripture.
What a party pooper. Interpreting scripture is a virtual national sport! Everybody's got an ax to grind here, especially the guy(s) who wrote the original tract, none of whom witnessed the story that they so thoroughly describe.
And I think it needs reinterpreting, the common spin is profoundly negative and is a burden on the planet and its inhabitants. Ever hear of the word "apocalypse"? It all springs from the same source: the Fall of Man. No Fall, therefore no need for a Messiah, no particular need for the world to end, though it has many times already and likely will again.
Matt Gregory wrote:
In the beginning "God" was the most powerful god (there was Baal and others). It was only later in the Bible that he became the only god.
I appreciate the assertion big guy as it is a very interesting one, but I'd appreciate it even more if you'd support it with a few juicy passages. If we're gonna argue the Bible, quotes are the currency of choice.
So many good online Bible search websites, finding the right pasasge is easier than ever!
reedsch wrote:
Katy, clearly Eve was intrigued by the possibility being offered:
Perhaps this gives credence to the idea that my orthodox jewish friend was talking about. Adam and Eve weren't the first people, just the first with the possibility of attaining consciousness. Maybe a better way to look at it is if people had been animals and Adam and Eve had the consciousness of a year old child. Enough to want to get into mommy's makeup, or whatever. Can't wait to grow up...
So perhaps not totally unconscious, but still not discerning.
Besides, if there is no right and wrong, then you don't even have enough consciousness to say "disobeying God is wrong" So you're basically talking about a curious child with one voice saying yes and one voice saying no...
Again, check out the plural reference: GODS LIKE US!
No, that's just a weird grammar thing that exsists in Hebrew... much like the "royal we" in English.
The tree of knowledge represents consciousness, the source of duality, therefore of good and evil. It means an awakening.
When I read this story I saw the fruit of "The Tree of Knowelege" as a narcotic, not a pleasant apple. This is the allegory of mankind's enterance into sensualism, materialism and yes, I agree, dualism. Actually, their entrance seems to start slightly before eating the forbidden fruit but if you read this story with this in mind you will see that God remains the good guy and the snake is the liar after all. it all makes much better sense ....also, it allows those statements of Jesus Christ here oft quoted make better sense (atleast their continuity can be seen).
kennyvii wrote:
When I read this story I saw the fruit of "The Tree of Knowelege" as a narcotic, not a pleasant apple. This is the allegory of mankind's enterance into sensualism, materialism and yes, I agree, dualism.
So does this mean that one is not possible without the other? Wisdom is not possible without the ability to not be wise. Sounds reasonable to me.
[/quote]
Actually, their entrance seems to start slightly before eating the forbidden fruit but if you read this story with this in mind you will see that God remains the good guy and the snake is the liar after all. it all makes much better sense ....also, it allows those statements of Jesus Christ here oft quoted make better sense (atleast their continuity can be seen).[/quote]
Matt Gregory wrote:
In the beginning "God" was the most powerful god (there was Baal and others). It was only later in the Bible that he became the only god.
I appreciate the assertion big guy as it is a very interesting one, but I'd appreciate it even more if you'd support it with a few juicy passages. If we're gonna argue the Bible, quotes are the currency of choice.
So many good online Bible search websites, finding the right pasasge is easier than ever!
Actually, I took a class in college called Greek and Bible Values and I remember the professor telling us that. I don't think there are any explicit passages about it, other than what's implied in things like the first commandment: "You shall have no other gods before me."
Matt, wikipedia does mention the NT - Revelation 12:9
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
Looking at the time this was written, the whole Satan business is rather modern. In the book of Job which is one of the older books in the bible, it seems clear Satan is just a servant of God.
Which points to the original Jewish view that God is the source of good and evil. God/Devil is Dualism. Which explains why Elohim was so negative about eating the fruit while at the same time tempting Man to eat it (by putting the tree out and letting the snake roam around). The garden refers to a non-dual state where law and breaking of the law are one.
The Gnostic variant solved this dilemma by seeing the creator-God as evil - since steeped in matter and dualism he cannot be the ultimate God. But this thought opened the door to the thought of seeing creation (dualism) itself as evil - something to escape from after your death. The danger here being that by describing the veil as evil or live as vile, one remains under the spell.
Now-wait-just-a-damn-minute...
I am not a Bible scholar but I play one on TV ;-) So the Fall of Lucifer does not occur iuntil the book of hallucinations e.g. Revelations, the last book in the N.T.? That seems strange. But given #2 below, perhaps it is irrelevant. My own personal frame of reference in all this is my own Catholic upbringing; obviously those folks had a field day spinning this story.
We have established so far according to the book of Genesis:
#1, good and evil existed before the Fall of Man
#2, no clear relationship between Satan and the serpent, in fact no reference to Satan at all (in the King James version).
#3, multiple gods
#4, Eve was attracted by the possibility of sharing some attributes belonging to God
#5, The snake calls God a liar, which in a narrow sense is true because they do not immediately die after eating the fruit
#6, God's reasons for (a) not wanting A&E to eat the fruit and (b) after eating the fruit to deny them access to the Tree of Life are never stated.
Again, check out the plural reference: GODS LIKE US! Katy said:
No, that's just a weird grammar thing that exsists in Hebrew... much like the "royal we" in English.
Katy, can you substantiate that statement? There are 2 plural references in the sentence god(s) and us. God is addressing someone, who?
Ah, it was a trick question. You said Bible, but you were testing me!
And who said we couldn't use Wiki in this forum?
I quote:
"It is noteworthy that the Old Testament itself does not at any point actually mention the rebellion and fall of Satan. This non-Scriptural belief assembled from interpretations of different passages, would fall under the heading Christian mythology, that is, Christian traditions that are derived from outside of church teachings and scripture."
So it's basically B.S.!
It's NOT IN THE O.T.
The only hook to hang the argument on is Revelations, which is a total B.S. book anyway.
IMHO This is getting more interesting as we go along. It appears that most of the traditional story I picked up along the way was from Milton's "Paradise Lost" rather than from Moses or Jesus or whomever.
When I read this story I saw the fruit of "The Tree of Knowelege" as a narcotic, not a pleasant apple. This is the allegory of mankind's enterance into sensualism, materialism and yes, I agree, dualism.
Katy wrote:
So does this mean that one is not possible without the other? Wisdom is not possible without the ability to not be wise. Sounds reasonable to me.
me too, I mean, we wouldn't need wisdom if there was only ever the option of doing something right.
kenny wrote:
Actually, their entrance seems to start slightly before eating the forbidden fruit but if you read this story with this in mind you will see that God remains the good guy and the snake is the liar after all. it all makes much better sense ....also, it allows those statements of Jesus Christ here oft quoted make better sense (atleast their continuity can be seen).
Katy wrote:
How so?
Well, just read it again. Do so while pretending you are a child. A child should understand it best since he isn't predisposed to one idea or another to start with.
Christiandom and Buddhism agree on the idea of dualism but they shouldn't if both were being honest.
reedsch wrote:
Katy, can you substantiate that statement? There are 2 plural references in the sentence god(s) and us. God is addressing someone, who?
Got it from a friend who was once southern baptist but de-converted while going through seminary. I don't know anything about the language myself, and am not a biblical scholar, so that's really all I have.
kennyvii wrote:
Well, just read it again. Do so while pretending you are a child. A child should understand it best since he isn't predisposed to one idea or another to start with.
Christiandom and Buddhism agree on the idea of dualism but they shouldn't if both were being honest.
*starts looking for an argument... or point... or something*
So does this mean that one is not possible without the other? Wisdom is not possible without the ability to not be wise. Sounds reasonable to me.
This is what I thought "duelism" was and I thought in the above statement that you were affirming that the Allegory of Creation in Genesis concerning "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" agreed with your own understanding of duelism.
I thought it would be helpful if I told you that the Allegory means the exact opposite of what is commonly attributed to it. The story does not affirm duelism but clearly disputes duelism. Most people, including (it seemed to me) the bright posters in this discussion, didn't notice this.
Maybe they did after all.
So you finally got this started. But it is so much more fun to argue with someone who actually believes the stuff. My one Christian on the heaven and hell thread ran away. They scare so easily!
And why is that? Because in this dream of a life, the closer the scrutiny, the more things dissolve.
The need for a messiah comes because there is something wrong with humanity. The Bible gives a story to outline that there is a problem.
If a creation myth is pivotal to a culture, then certainly we can also wonder what atheistic materialistic dead modern 'scientific' theory does to the culture. A shitty choice, and one that directly morphed out of the ugliness of the prior.
The bit about Eve coming from Adam's rib is because at the time this text was written human consciousness was transitting from extreme veneration of the female as mother to putting her down so as to elevate the male. This was a political reversal, so as to say, despite all the evidence we have from life itself, it is actually the female who owes her life to the male.
A possible interpretatiaon of them knowing they were naked is that slaves were unclothed in those days, and wearing clothing was a sign of superiority. Slaves were commonly naked or seminaked. Adam was a slave race, and they were ignorant of that. When their eyes were opened, they saw the true situation. And why didn't God want that? Because there is more than one God in the OT. You have to read Genesis as a topsy-turvy book. Good is bad and bad is good. Meaning, the serpent was the benefactor and truth teller, not God. Same story with the tower of Babel. The humans were gaining technology. Gotta put them back down. This is so clear! Twice in Genesis, the gods said - the humans are going to be unstoppable, let us prevent that.
I have two interpretations of the fall. One, it was not bad, because we must indeed have knowledge of good and evil if we are to mature into an adult race. Innocence is babyhood. The path of knowledge of good and evil is the path to wisdom and enlightenment.
Two, the fall from grace is a common theme around the world and reflects that during the time when humanity lived in harmony with nature they perceived things quite differently, and while they were not pure and completely ethical, their bad actions tended to be self-limited, and because they were hunter-gatherers, they just did not have things like overpopulation, division of labor, rich and poor, kings who could say "off with his head!" a priesthood to suppress and frighten the people, dogma and coercion, or heavy labor to produce their food. Hunter-gatherer people tend to work just an average of 3 hours a day, and while we might think they have a hard life with few comforts, they routinely consider the earth and the creator as generous and bountiful - i.e., a garden.
In this case, the 'apple' was agriculture.
Are you aware that in that part of the world and others parts as well, that serpents were symbols of wisdom? Only later was it considered bad by christianity. Even Moses used a serpent.
It is difficult to say whether God or Satan lied about the death. Because I interpret the death aspect as meaning that when people have a spiritual fall, they fear death and death is real to them. Fear runs the show. I really think love runs the show, but it is deeper down. So you can do a good job of laying out how fear is a primary motivator, and fear of death is the primary fear. So this poisons our whole life. The fall is a loss of contact with God, which brings fear.
Yeah, God was definitely a plural, and all the peoples in that whole part of the world believed in multiple Gods. the Hebrews were not monotheists, they were henotheists. If you look at the OT with that in mind, you'll see they did not negate the reality of other Gods at all - nor did Jehovah!
Iolaus wrote:
I have two interpretations of the fall. One, it was not bad, because we must indeed have knowledge of good and evil if we are to mature into an adult race. Innocence is babyhood. The path of knowledge of good and evil is the path to wisdom and enlightenment.
Two, the fall from grace is a common theme around the world and reflects that during the time when humanity lived in harmony with nature they perceived things quite differently, and while they were not pure and completely ethical, their bad actions tended to be self-limited, and because they were hunter-gatherers, they just did not have things like overpopulation, division of labor, rich and poor, kings who could say "off with his head!" a priesthood to suppress and frighten the people, dogma and coercion, or heavy labor to produce their food. Hunter-gatherer people tend to work just an average of 3 hours a day, and while we might think they have a hard life with few comforts, they routinely consider the earth and the creator as generous and bountiful - i.e., a garden.
In this case, the 'apple' was agriculture.
Iolaus, why do you see them as two different interpretations? Growing up means learning through suffering, right? Until fully matured. The path to wisdom for the whole of humanity might have included ripping up the Earth and being in slavery for a few centuries. A price a hunter-gathering population didn't want to pay perhaps. The farmer Cain slew his hunting-gathering brother and became a lost sheep, separated from the herd - cursed.
Iolaus wrote:
In this case, the 'apple' was agriculture.
This interpretation is also used by Daniel Quinn in one of the books in the Ishmael series. However, in his interpretation it is a negative thing. His explanation is that humans don't gain the wisdom they seek, but believe that they do, and thus begin acting as gods without understanding of what they're doing and ruin the perfect life they have.
Katy, you mght like Rebalancing the World by Carol Flinders if you like Quinn.
I consider them two interpretations because I am not convinced that the fall was a good thing. I go with the idea that we got thrown prematurely into it. I see many of the problems of civilization as a group psychic disorder. I know I am guilty of idolizing the noble savage somewhat, but it makes a lot of sense.
When a child gets traumatized in small ways, they regress to more babyish behaviors. I see many so-called civilized behaviors as regressions, and it is interesting that many tribal peoples around the world, while being amazed at our technology, consider us immature, greedy and childish. I think we have regressed into some chimpanzee behaviors that more dignified hunter-gatherers would never submit to.
So the question is, could we have remained in the web of life and yet slowly evolved wisdom and knowledge as a species without going through all this angst? I think so.
Did we have to become destructive, murderous, ungrateful and inwardly dead to make spiritual progress? I don't think so.
