mojobadshah said:
In other words it reads like whoever wrote this didn't want men to become smarter, like it was an attempt to subject men to ignorance.
in fact, what it makes clear that you cannot become truly human without knowing the difference between good and evil. adam, in the edenic state, was not truly human - he had neither free-will, nor, consequently, did he have to bear the consequences of his actions, namely, the potential for sin. animals do not sin, because they do not make moral choices (although you could make an argument around dolphins, i think). if man had remained ignorant, he would not have truly become man. saltmeister makes this point more comprehensively here:
http://www.interfaith.org/forum/eat-from-the-tree-of-14624.html#post254277
Etu Malku said:
The significance of eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is this spiritual evolution to that of an animal that is fully aware and conscious of itself.
another pithy way of putting it.
Amergin said:
Moses sent his version of the SS, the Levites, to murder 3000 of the belief sinners.
you are truly both ignorant and foolish to make such a statement. there is a very clear pattern observed in the sort of person that insists on equating jews with nazis.
Moses knew the dangers to those in control if the people obtained knowledge and learned to think.
only someone completely ignorant of jewish culture, texts and history could think such a point represented anything but prejudice and bigotry.
What made me atheist? The Bible which I read without being told in advance how to believe it.
which pretty much confirms what i just said. it's not about belief. it's about interpretation. if you walk into an australian aboriginal ceremony, or look at an aboriginal painting, how exactly are you supposed to understand what you are experiencing without guidance?
A man with a glassy-eyed facial expression and sardonic smile says, "you have a free choice." He holds a 50 calibre Desert Eagle Hand gun to your forehead. He says "you can freely choose to kneel before me and fondle my Johnson, or refuse and try to walk away." If you refuse I will fire 8 shots into your head. Free will indeed.
i really, really, really suggest you actually study a bit of philosophy if this is how you believe free will actually works. free will is inalienable even in such a situation.
Hypatia of Alexandria was arrested by Catholic monks on orders of SAINT CYRIL and dragged through the streets of Alexandria by chains, beaten, tortured, and finally while still alive drawn and quartered (look it up.)
the evil jewish actress rachel weisz played hypatia in the recent and rather good film "agora", which i unfortunatlely missed the end of because mrs bb sent the dvd back before i'd finished it.
I believe based on my experiences and the Bible, that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are frankly EVIL.
although, of course, you don't really know anything about judaism. there's a word for people like that.
It is an unproven assumption that man suddenly achieved a different awareness. We don't know if it was fundamentally different from Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, or Homo neandertalensis. We don't know if it was qualitatively different from other Apes, monkeys, cats, or dogs. All we know it that we acquired speech long before we became Homo sapiens. Neandertals and Heidelbergs had the same identical FOXP2 gene that is required for vocal speech. We know that many animals understand our language even though they cannot talk (lack the FOXP2).
all of which is very much beside the point as far as the garden of eden is concerned. incidentally i actually know rather more about this than i do about virtually any other aspect of genetics (which isn't much) because a close friend of mine is a rather prominent expert in the field; i rather gathered that how FOXP2 works is a bit more complicated than you suggest, also what etu malku said about the sociolinguistic evidence base.
The line separating human animals from non-human animals is just an arbitrary designation of human chauvinism and narcissism.
tell that to centuries of moral philosophers.
There is no evidence that there was a Tree of Knowledge. That was a fable to keep people stupid and obedient to the war lord.
really? aren't there rather better ways of doing that, particularly given that jewish culture is based on rather exacting questioning?
I spent three years in Ruanda during the Civil War, plague, and famine. At the time I believed I made a serious mistake. People were dying of wounds, starvation, or treatable diseases for which I often ran out of antibiotics. I was shot at, briefly captured by Ugandan troops. I suffered from seeing my patients die despite my best treatment. I was suffered terribly to see children emaciated from starvation die of an otherwise treatable disease. Yet that part of my life is my proudest in my memory.
i salute you for this; it is the act of a moral being. do you have a problem believing that someone jewish would do the same thing?
I do consider American Fundamentalism to be evil, despite its adherents not recognising that evil.
well, you've also called me, as a practicing jew, evil, with absolutely no justification or evidence.
IowaGuy said:
You think the small Protestant church near my house, mostly attended by little old ladies, is EVIL? The one that does service projects in the community? The one that consoles community members at a time of need? The one that fundraises if one of its members becomes ill and can't afford the hospital bills?
unfortunately, you will find that there are many who do; apparently theism is a thoughtcrime so heinous that it disqualifies one from civilised society, as far as some are concerned. it is a spectacular lack of proportion which is notable for its similarity to the violence of thought displayed by.....well, i guess you know where i'm going with that.
Thomas said:
Careful contemplation of the text might indicate (dependent upon the insight of the contemplator) that rather than gain by the act, man would lose by it ... that is the discreet yet orthodox tradition, made explicit in the term 'fall'....It is evident that prior to the act, man did not, nor would he, know death as we understand it now.
with his usual precision, thomas highlights exactly where judaism and christianity part company, philosophically speaking
Ben Masada said:
Adam and Eve ended up eating from the tree of knowledge and did not die.
not immediately, no, but they certainly did die.
Etu Malku said:
There is no Freedom of Will to "refrain from doing evil" rather from what another (in this case god or at the very least those that believe there to be a god) dictates is Good or Evil, you have come under the Will of another's definition.
only if you lack your own moral capacity to assess what it is that is supposedly being "dictated" - as we say, "everything is in the hands of heaven - except, of course, the awe of heaven".
What you consider moral decisions are based on how your faith sees morality. Otherwise you are not following your chosen belief system. If indeed that is the case, then you are acting under the Will of another, and this is not Freedom of Will.
philosophically speaking, as ben has already made clear, this is because of the "subsidiarity" of free will that is activated by your free choice to consider what you call the "will of another" - what we call the "yoke of heaven"; it is a free choice, on an ongoing basis, whether to accept it or not. similarly, you may not experience it as a "yoke", albeit it cannot be denied that moral responsibility is a heavy burden; i actually rather commend "luciferians" (at least insofar as i understand what they believe) for recognising just how significant and important it really is as a principle.
b'shalom
bananabrain
