Not being someone who takes the bible literally (if at all), this question facinated me.
i was reading Demo’s “Answer the Bible Studying Guy” In Great Debates, and something in the OP caught my attention.
Adam and Eve were allowed eat from the Tree of Life but not the Tree of Knowledge.
So if I was to eat from the tree of life I could live forever, be in eternal bliss, but be completely oblivious to any other experience, have extremely limited will and be no more intellegent than your average gnat.
If I ate from the Tree of Knowledge, I would have free will, and the ability to persue happyness, as well as all the abilities and emotions I have now, along with all the Cons of beiong a free willed human, mortality and persecution.
Eternal, absolute bliss comes only from an inability to comprehend suffering. On the other hand, there is no suffering until it is perceived and acknowledged as such.
Suffering, then, is a function of knowledge. Knowledge is a thing of man. Man has control over all that is his.
I would rather have the ability to perceive and understand suffering so as to pursue true happiness, rather than ignorance, beyond suffering by deconstructing my concept of suffering and finding peace.
This is, of course, just a more cumbersome statement of what Coldfire has already suggested.
Can I graft the two trees? What kind of fruit are we talking about? (I don’t like pears.)
Actual Answer:
Good question. I’ll go with Knowledge myself. Generally I’ll take any “free will” option. Besides, I don’t really want to live forever. Just 'till I’m 90 or so.
What I want to know is why the hell didn’t Adam and Eve, with their new-found knowledge - just run right over to the tree of life and start chowing down? Would have solved a lot of our problems!
There have been some years where Life would have been in the lead.
Now, I dunno. I’ve got a handle on most everything, so I think Knowledge is safe. From some of the people I’ve met, I think they took a nibble off the Life tree anyway.
