Jung’s proposition that the gods are archetypes of the collective unconsciousness as evidenced by world mythology, dreams and other spontaneous imagery makes sense to me.
Felix, I know that I am not the most intelligent being in the world by far but I think that you have insulted what intelligence I do have here. lol
Are you telling me that you thought that I believed this was “real”? Even when I believed in God, I knew this was myth, kind of like a fairy tale actually. We just cannot “swallow” everything that is told to us.
Perhaps the writers of the bible put that down to keep us lowly human beings in tow hoping that we would think that if we went in search of knowledge, we would evolve and rebel and the powers that be would not have much control of us. They wanted us to think that we just might burn in hell. lol
I’m sorry you felt insulted by my words. I was merely analyzing the garden of Eden story structurally instead of looking at the characters as if they were historical persons. The writers of the Hebrew Bible didn’t have the Christian view that people would burn in hell for eternity. That interpretation was superimposed on the story later by Christian theologians.
Why do you say this?
That statement kind of points to God as a puppeteer in my opinion. If it was inevitable that they ate from the tree, it seems to me that they had no free will in the first place.
Well, perhaps in a sense, they did have free choice and made it. What responsibility belongs to God since this entity had knowledge of what they would do? You might think that a discussion between the three of them would have been fair before their God kicked them out of paradise.
Again I am interested in knowing why eating from the tree was inevitable? Basic curiosity of us humans? The inevitability of the Word having to come to pass?
Exactly. Which doesn’t necessarily make the interpretation wrong. Interpretations change with time and circumstances. Apart from the Genesis account Hebrew Bible largely ignores the Adam and Eve story. But it became a big deal beginning in the first century of the common era and extending up to the present time as evidenced by the number of times it comes up on this forum for instance. I’ve already given my interpretation based on evolutionary psychology which is that the story is about the emergence of self consciousness. Under the category of sin are many of the impulses, drives and behaviors associated with being a primate. Humans were primates before they became self-conscious. So the idea that" sin entered" has it backwards. Sin was already there, unrecognized until people became self-conscious about it. Their shame at their nakedness in the story is tied up with the recognition that they are animals… apes without much hair. Buckminster Fuller had a theory that humans were once semi-aquatic living on beaches close to bodies of water where food was abundant and easy to catch. He thought that would explain our lack of hair and our flipper like feet, our salty tears etc. Of course the dominant theory is that we spent most of our evolutionary history on the African veldt.
The idea of Hell as eternal punishment is attributed to Augustine. I agree with Felix that the so-called Fall was a fall into self consciousness. The characters in the Eden story are metaphors for evolving parts of the human psyche. Serpent=the primitive urges; Eve=the urging for action; Adam=action taken. The tripartite psyche aligns with Paul MacLean’s theory of brain evolution. Our myths cannot be divorced from our evolutionary experience, which is replayed at every development from a fertilized egg to an adult. For Paul MacLean’s theory see Carl Sagan’s “The Dragons of Eden.”
In an ideal world of abundant plenty there would be no sin… or kept to a minimal at least, and unnecessary want of individual hoarding of resource only serves to worsen the situation… trace history back to that point, and you’ve got your answer.
I think the OP may be eluding that it started with the revering of gods… designed to coerce its citizens into a false state of contentment, because god’s got this for you… they’ve got this, so sit back, relax, and simply pray to god for whatever you need, and if you don’t get it you’ve obviously been sinning.
Move on to what, when we still follow genocidal, homophobic and misogynous gods, whose religions still do so much harm to so many?
Gnostic Christianity has evolved while Christians are stuck in the idol worship of a satanic god.
Which religion is better.
Those who idol worship genocide or those who recognize that only a satanic god would be as vile as Yahweh, and only a satanic religion would idol worship such a vile god?