Does anybody, besides myself, know what the Tree of Knowledge actually is? If you did, you would know that the question and answer are both invalid. You assume they were offered eternal life in exchange for obedience, but that isn’t what the parable is about. Were they offered eternal life? Did they know what they were consuming when they ate from the tree? If you don’t know what the tree is, then it’s possible that you have already eaten a big bellyful of its fruit, without ever stopping to ask yourself what the consequences might be. Eating from the tree was inevitable, and shouldn’t be thought of as an eventful choice between two alternatives. Certain choices were available to them, but they did everything exactly as was expected of them.
Ok, so, ecmandu, greatest - would you agree religion seems to be a tool to bolster authority…?
Umm… dude.
The tree of life is a different tree.
As the story goes in genesis, the instant Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, god cast them out of eden so that it would now be impossible for them to eat from the tree of life.
I have to add here:
I really hate Buddhism.
Buddhist teachings are that nobody can possibly sin because EVERYTHING is your “karma”
Someone kidnaps you to torture you “hostel style” like the movie Hostel.
They say to you “I am cleansed of all my sins because this is your karma, all I can possibly do is the right thing”
God people do the same thing, “I wouldn’t be allowed to do this if God didn’t ordain it, I’m sinless in gods eyes”
- 1
Nice to see a sound mind.
Regards
DL
Yes. If not, it would follow truth and not foster supernatural lies.
Note that all inquisitions and jihads, the favored tool to end all opposition to the lying authorities within those religions, is all the religions had to grow as they do not have decent moral arguments to convert.
Regards
DL
That is not what the myth says if you read it sequentially and do not alter or add to it the way you have done.
It says that after they were expelled, god murdered his new children by negligence and neglect and wantonly locked up what would have kept them alive. The tree of life.
Did A & E deserve chastisement and death when your own Christian Exultet hymn says that Adam’s sin was a happy fault and necessary to god’s plan.
If necessary to god’s plan, why do you think their furthering and maintaining god’s plan is wrong?
Would you prefer that they derail god’s plan?
I do not expect you to answer as most just run from that logic and reason even as it is endorsed by your own hymn.
Regards
DL
Dude. You’re wrong. The tree of life was also in eden.
By expelling Adam and Eve from the garden for eating from the tree of knowledge, god made 100% sure that they could never eat from the tree of life.
I did not make this up in anyway sequentially or not.
You know, for someone who posts on the Bible a lot …
You actually don’t even know the basics.
You shuffling the scriptures show your lack of whit and poor reading comprehension.
Your ignoring that you sing and seem to prefer that god’s plan be derailed.
If you do not have the whit to deal with your own contradictions, then I would say that you are the one who does not know your basics.
It seems we are at a stalemate and done here, so thinks for the chat.
Regards
DL
I’m an atheist dude!
You are wrong about scripture.
The Tree of Life? I was talking about the Tree of Knowledge. And Buddhism? You have me down as a Buddhist now, do you? … even though I never mentioned Buddha. But since you bring them up, I’ll talk about them both.
Like Nietzsche, I have a love/ hate relationship with Buddhism. (But don’t assume I’m a Nietzschian, just because I mention Nietzsche) I admire the stoic mindset of the Buddhist master. But in the end, its still a nihilist philosophy. Why get uptight about this, that or other things, because, in the end, nothing is going to change, and it doesn’t really matter. Just accept things the way they are. I kind of hate Buddhism too, but there are worse things out there. But when I said that it was inevitable that they would eat from the Tree of Knowledge, I was talking about human nature, and the predictability of human nature; not fate, destiny, karma, or whatever you want to call it.
Now … the Tree of Life. As I said, I was talking about the Tree of Knowledge -the Tree of the serpent (Princess #1). Eve (Princess #2) took some fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and she and her man were chucked out of Paradise, and, as you say, denied ever again from partaking of the feast offered by the Tree of Life. This was the tree of Princess #3, although in the Genesis story, Princess #3 is conspicuously absent from this narrative.
Notice that Adam & Eve were not forbidden from the Tree of Life, as they had been the Tree of Knowledge. The story implies that the Tree of Life would make them immortal, but only after first eating from the Tree of Knowledge. What was it that would do nothing for them, before eating from ToK, but make them immortal after eating from it? The Tree of Life is simply the indictment entered against Princess #1, Princess #2 and their prince, Adam, by Princess #3. But since this story conveniently omits #3, we’re left to assume that this indictment is the judgement of God, not the condemnation of a jealous half sister.
The indictment, before they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, meant nothing to them, because they knew not what it was about, or whom. The Tree of Knowledge opened their eyes, and they would have realized that they were the subject of the indictment. I say “would have”, because they were not interested in entertaining any negative opinions about themselves. When they saw that they were naked, their only thought was to conceal their nakedness. Their nakedness is a metaphor, and has nothing at all to do with people walking around with their genitals hanging out. It simply means there were parts about themselves (their nature), which they did not wish to acknowledge. This should have been obvious from the parable: When asked why he ate from the tree he wasn’t supposed to eat from, the man blames the woman, and the woman blames the serpent. Nobody wants to take responsibility for his or her actions.
This is the reason God denied them the Tree of Life. They did not yet have the maturity to own up to their shortcomings -not because they had disobeyed. The act of disobedience could be forgiven, but the unwillingness to admit one’s mistakes is indicative of a lack of desire to reform one’s nature. They would not know what was in the indictment if they were unwilling to acknowledge their basic faults.
Child_in_time!
Lol!!! Anyone who reads your post from a few posts up knows that you confused the tree of life as being the exact same as the tree of knowledge (thus my reply!)
And then! You criticize me for not following the book and making shit up (which I didn’t)
But I’ll be damned if every sentence of your last post is not making shut up!
Honestly man, just admit you didn’t know the Bible when you posted.
It’s much easier for you.
Child…
I confused you with greatest I am…
Apologies.
I’m a massive ptsd drunk who drinks to help with ptsd…
I miss things now (quite a bit)
Apologies
In saying all that, you do have a fictional narrative of the Bible.
So do not open yourself to ridicule by miss-reading the myth.
Leave errors to Christians and show yourself to not be a liar the way they do.
Where is your atheist pride?
Regards
DL
Given that Christians sing that Adam’s sin was necessary to god’s plan, Adan kept the plan on track.
What shortcoming do you see when if he would have done otherwise, he would have derailed god’s plan.
That would have been a bad thing for Yahweh the prick, right?
His omnipotentship likes his plan as it was going to include genocides and other entertaining things.
He would be peeved if Adam and Eve had not saved his bacon.
Regards
DL
Hey Greatest.
Ok. So, you initially said something along the lines of religion being useless to society, alongside its many and obvious detrimental qualities. I pointed out though, that every society has one, despite these flaws, and there are no surviving irreligious societies, which seems paradoxical - imagine if the two-legged marathon runners kept losing to the paraplegics, it would raise some eyebrows.
Let’s remember we are talking about religions both modern and primitive throughout history.
Religions have been used by kings and other sources of authority to help legitimize their reigns and successions.
Purely in terms of social stability and the knock on effect of uninterrupted social progress, surely you must accept that having a religion operating within your group is a major plus…?
Falsities are useful if society hasn’t caught up to you yet.
For example:
In the slavery days, “underground railroads” (people involved in trafficking slaves to freedom) would lie about having slaves in their homes.
Once society caught up with them, this lie was no longer needed.
Lies against non liars have always proven useful to combat injustice.
This parable is much older than Christianity; indeed, it is probably older than Judaism even. The Christians took a parable they never understood to begin with, and built a whole theology around it. So no, I’m not trying to defend the Christian interpretation of it … but … you say God is a prick. Well let’s just go with that. Is God a prick?
War, genocide, raping, pillaging, murdering. That’s been pretty much the history of humanity, hasn’t it? Now I’m not one of those who goes around saying “God is love”, and all the evil in the world is really just part of a plan for the greater good. It says right in the Creation Story that man was made in the image of God. Now one would think that if God is perfect, then anything made in his image would also tend towards perfection. So it’s possible that God isn’t perfect, and if you want to say that he is a prick, that’s your right. But let’s not try to absolve ourselves of responsibility for a messed up world, by laying all the blame on God’s doorstep. We have to acknowledge that we are us much to blame as God.
Now what would happen if God took man and sent him to obedience school? And what if he not only sends him to obedience school, but puts one of our own in charge of instruction. You might be interested to know that he actually did try this, and in our lifetime (if you’re old enough to remember). This was when Princess #1 (as I’ve called her) got promoted to queen, and there was no profit to be made from wars, or violence of any kind. And men had to respect women. It was an idyllic time, and it could have continued if we had appreciated what we had. But as soon as the queen’s reign ended, we got out of school, and things went back to normal, we soon forgot everything we had learned, and in no time we were back to our old ways of wars, murdering, pillaging, etc. You might think like Ecmandu that I’m just making this shit up, but it’s true.
Yes we were made in God’s image, and perhaps the mold we were shaped from has its imperfections. But we can rise above what we were /what we are. But it’s up to us to take that step. God won’t do it for us. And if we can’t admit our own shortcomings, it may well be that we are doomed, and God will just sit back and watch us destroy ourselves.
ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 1&t=195545
Regards
Child…
I was literally made king of this world back when I didn’t even know much of anything. Why make the most insanely suicidal person on earth the king? Makes no sense to me either! Man did I ever fuck shit up!
I’ve wised over the years. I actually despise power differentials … so I just walked off “the throne” I dropped the “crown” on the floor and walked away.
I don’t regret it one bit. Sure, some dude can beat me up now, where before, that was impossible. When I was king… someone who wanted to kick my ass was possessed by spirits to simply (against their will) simply walk away. It would scare them so much that they never came after me again!
Now, I’m an open target. I don’t regret my decision.
Dude you NEVER give up your superpowers. wtf were you thinking? I don’t care what kind of a deal you made. You gotta get your powers back. you know what you must do, son of Jor-El.
Like I said: I don’t like power differentials.
I don’t like being someone’s superior or inferior.
Why choose the most suicidal person on earth?
Because I’m incorruptible.
Sure. I didn’t know shit. But as I learned, I had the spirit to not be corrupted by fame or power.
And that’s why death knelt before me and stated, “the crown wears heavy sir”
When death kneels before you, that’s instant kingship of the world.
Good kings lead by example, and part of that example is not putting yourself higher than.