Is the ongoing punishment of Adam and Eve justifiable?

I doubt Christian dogma says they were murdered, since murder is wrongful killing and dogmatic Christians tend to NOT view God as doing things that are wrong.

It’s a little unclear what is meant by the tree of good and evil, since when those two categories were presented in a phrase back then it was a trope meaning everything.

I am not a big punishment advocate, but I suppose I can imagine scenarios where I would be angry at my children for finding out things I told them not to - perhaps around privacy issues or if the information was too adult for them (violent, say, especially combining sex and violence) or had to do with things I thought they were not ready to handle or I wanted to have a careful stepwise introduction of the knowledge or consult with my wife first. Given that the knowledge made them ashamed, I suppose their might be exposure to things that could be called knowledge I would want my children to stay away from - anything that made my children feel ashamed of themselves or their bodies - perhaps because they did not have the tools to interpret and place in context whatever this information was - I would not want them to come into contact without some parental guidance. And since I had told them not to - go online to specific websites or whatever - sure, I might do something punitive, especially if it was part of a pattern of not listening to me or us.

I find the whole Eden story quite open ended in terms of interpretation. Fundamentalist Christian interpretations are often pretty offensive. What the actual story is trying to get across, I don’t know and scholars seem to have different opinions. I feel a giant shrug.

Many do just end in shrugging their shoulders and ignoring the story.

many do not want to recognize how this myth has been used by Christianity to enhance and advance their ability to apply and teach their homophobic and misogynous policies.

For evil to grow, all good people need do is not call B.S. on Christianity’s interpretation.

Regards
DL

I haven’t ignored the story. Nor do I ignore the ways the story is used - obviously, given what I wrote.

I am not sure how the Garden of Eden myth is used homophobically, but I suppose creative homophobes may manage somehow. And yes, the story is used to support hatred of women. But you were focused on a theological issue around punishment for going against God’s order and God punishing because of this. You put this in the context of parents and children. I shrug in relation to that issue and to the story itself, given what I wrote and that the story is not clear.

Sure, I’ve done that in other contexts. Here I answered the question you asked, and you ignore that answer.

I’ll add here, that going directly at the GofE story seems like a really poor tactic. First, attack the mysogeny, for example, then if the G&E story is raised to justify it, show 1) how the story was originally interpreted in Judaism 2) show the wide variety of interpretations in Christianity 3) challenge the logic of punishing current humans for what Adam and Eve did back then 4) point out that even in the Bible it is clear that Adam and Eve are not the only ancestors of humans, so the story must be symbolic and the symbols can be interpreted in a variety of ways 5) get them to name the authority they base their interpretation on - and it will have to be a human- and ask if that human might be fallible.

Of course this will likely not change many minds either- though perhaps a few more than yours - but your approach which starts with the story seems like a weak approach and is itself confused, in part because what you focus on is not necessarily silly but further is not the real weak area of what some Christians do with the Gof E story. I still have a shrug about that.

And the ‘for evil to grow’ statement makes it seems like if one does not take the tactical and hermeneutic position you do one is contributing to the growth of evil’ How propagandistic, how simplifying of a complicated situation with many many different possible good approaches and how hysterical.

I haven’t read every word in the Bible, but I’ve never heard of this before. I thought Adam and Eve were the theological beginning from which all men sprung (not the evolutionary well though). Who were the other ancestors?

Karpel Tunnel

I can and do readily admit that my style, delivery, etiquette, grammar etc. etc. is not the best. Self education will do that.

If you are volunteering to prof read and ghost write to add eloquence to my self taught and not formally uneducated grammatical and writings, I am all in for that.

Being French, I need all the help in English I can get, given that it is not nearly as good of a communication language as French.

If not volunteering, then you will have to accept that my style, is what it is. :blush:

Regards
DL

You are correct.

Christianity cannot assign their phony Original Sin without an original sinner.

Regards
DL

I don’t know, but their children get wives. Where did they come from? And I believe Adam and Eve only had sons, so…

heaven represents total pleasure hell represents abscence of pleasure.

if you obey the rules you are promised with heaven. if you disobey the rules you are promised with hell.

this is viewed as moral in the sense that we derive our morals from pleasure and pain. And in this self-referntial context, disobedience would cause pain to self, therefore disobedience in of itself is immoral.

This circular reasoning causes Christians to dogmatically obey.

Indeed.

While Christians ignore that purposeless torture in hell would only be practiced by an insane God.

Only morally corrupted Christians and Muslims will follow such a vile God.

Regards
DL

I wonder how that Story would have been written if it had been told/written after we attained to all of the knowledge about evolution, science, ad continuum ~~ ALL OF IT?

Perhaps it would have not been told at all.

It is just myth, human infallible men trying to make sense of things as they were back then. Perhaps they did the best job they could with what they had to work with.

You might as well discuss Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf.

??

Has Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf created a religion that has victimized so many women and gays with a homophobic and misogynous ways?

Has Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf use Inquisitions and Jihads against humanity?

For evil to grow, all good people need to is ignore the evils of religions and see those vile and damaging stories as just a version of Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf.

Do you really see a moral equivalence in the two myths?

Regards
DL

Karpel Tunnel,

What do you see as the real weak area?

Greatest I am

The point that I was trying to make is that much of it is myth and fantasy just as many stories are written, from one’s imagination albeit there is also much history there.
Do you ever stop to consider and mention the good things about the bible, the beautiful pearls of wisdom there?

Have you ever stopped to consider that humanity (at least much of humanity) has reached more of an enlightened stage than there was back then? When you consider these things, do you ever have THAT in mind?

No, but people who are the despots and the puppeteers have a need to have things their way, their beliefs practiced their way, their thinking and ideas their way, are the real big bad wolves.

I love wolves and I am sorry wolves that I maligned you in such a way. :evilfun:

This is what you do not see at least I think you do. You take everything in the bible so literally and you do not take into account the culture and beliefs of that time.

For evil to grow all people ALSO need to do is to not see the good which comes from some religions. There is always another aspect of things - the light and the dark, the good and the evil, the hot and the cold, the thinking and the unthinking.
You are actually throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Unless you can also see the good, you may also be adding to the corruption of a religion.

Religion is composed of PEOPLE, INDIVIDUALS. Perhaps if you read the NT you can see that there is much good in the words of Christ whether or not he existed is another thing.

It is not necessarily a bad thing ~~ it is probably a good thing to point out the negative unenlightened areas of the bible like anti-semitism, hatred and bashing of gays, incest, et cetera, but if you do not see and also point out the good parts, you lose your credibility. If you cannot understand that many if not most people back then were ignorant meaning never having learned about something in the first place, how can come to the truth about things.

You cannot just show one side of something without the other and get at the truth, can you?

Original Sin in general as a concept. Apart from taking the story literally and then having Adam and Eve’s kids finding wives, which is a recipe for a mindfuck. I mean who did they marry? But the idea of original sin is horrendous.

Jews know this but somehow the Christians missed it.

Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV) "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice. [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason]

Christians are so keen to ride their scapegoat Jesus into heaven that they forget that Jesus, a Jewish Rabbi, would tell them that they are choosing Satan’s ways and not his.

Regards
DL

I show where I stand and position and leave it to dissenters to show theirs.

Like here, if asked, I show the good I see as well as the evil, and show my verdict.

You are quite slow to show your verdict and thus promote the immorality of the religions you do not condemn.

As Jesus said, be hot or cold. Get off the fence.

Regards
DL

They may not have the concept formally, but they, like nearly everyone else confuse guilt with love and self-hatred with some positive form of humility. And let’s not forget shame.
There are a lot of ways to undermine someone and Judaism competes quite well the Christianity.

I do not see Jews competing with Christianity. They mostly ignore Christians from what I can see. That or try to show Christians where they went wrong but most Christians ignore this as if they have forgotten where Christianity plagiarized it’s religion from.

The Abrahamic cults, Christianity, Islam and Judaism, do not respect each others contradicting views.

Gnostic Christians like me dislike their ideologies and say that the only good Christian is a Gnostic Christian and we do not mind arguing our case. Those who can discern a good ideology from a poor one will agree. That is why they use Inquisitions and Jihad to grow while Gnostic Christians just use sound and moral arguments. They could not best us and resorted to murdering us.

Regards
DL

Greatest I Am,

I am going to whittle this down quite a bit here.

Let us leave God out of this …or not.

Is there any way in which you can look at the above and learn from it, derive any truth or wisdom at all from it?

Yes.

If I did not already, I would not use the quote.

There is some cases where the children will suffer from their parents actions, but to legislate or demand that suffering is immoral.

Regards
DL