I use “the god” to be sure to stay away from the notion that I am talking about a GOD. My reasons for doing so (mostly my agnosticism) are not part of this thread…and I have explained them in other threads.
Gotta go back to the Men’s freeskate. I’ll be back to respond to the others tomorrow morning.
I’ve always heard that the fall was the result of sexual sin. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was Eve, who would either bear good or bad fruit depending on her course of action. Adam was the potential Tree of Life. Satan seduced Eve with some Barry White, and Adam had sloppy seconds. Bad fruit as a result, and the Tree of Life was subsequently guarded by the cherub, signifying Adam’s failure.
I think any interpretation is a good one. Same message any way you look at it really, it’s just a story.
Why would this god even put the tree there in the first place, if it was something he didn’t want his bipedal creations to use?
Why would this god create beings who could be tempted, then punish them for it?
Why would this god put the serpent in the garden at all?
Why would this god have created the serpent in the first place?
I used to have a huge list of questions about this story. I first began my list when I was 7 or 8 years old and was taking CCD classes before my first (late) communion. Shortly after my first communion, my mother was due to convert from Presbyterian to Catholic, and I asked if I could go with her one day to talk to the priest of our church because I had some questions.
When he couldn’t answer a single question I had about this story or about the obvious conflict between biblical stories and the fossil record*, I knew he (and the whole church) were not going to a partof my life. I suspected it before, but when the head guy can’t answer questions posed by a little kid…
*Yeah, I was kind of precocious as a kid, and I was into dinosaurs and geology and archaeology at about 5 years old. There was some textbook or other simply called “Archeology” or “Introduction to Archeology” that I managed to find in every new town library, and I must have read that thing 20 times before I was 10 years old. White hardcover with green writing, I think it was. I wish I had a copy of it, but it was just something I always found in the libraries.
I think a more interesting question is why fruit remains okay to eat but the cannabis plant is a whole lotta bad.
Just recently I thought of this;
It could a metaphore for growing up.
As a child you live in a small, protected environment.
Then you grow up and you have to make your own in the world and have babies etc. You leave paradise.
Maybe the original story got hyjacked and had a different lesson than the one attached now, about sin.
Gah. you guys need to get out of my head! begbert said what I was going to say when I first saw this thread, And then Latro comes along and steals what I came up with while I was reading.
But I can at least elaborate: The idea is that while, technically, eating the fruit was wrong, God knew it was going to happen. He specifically made man with the ability to choose, and the only way he could choose is if he had knowledge of what he was choosing.
But, God, knowing this, provided a way to give Man a second chance. And decided to make the final state of Man better than the first.
As for the child metaphor, it works. Adam was a child. He was being coddled by God. He was completely and totally dependent on God. But God didn’t want someone dependent on Him. He created “man in his own image.” He wanted a fully functioning separate individual. Just like a father wants for his child. He put the tree in the garden so that, when his kid was ready, he would be able to gain the knowledge to begin to become a separate individual, i.e., grow up.
I completely agree with you here - it never made sense to me. If they didn’t know right from wrong, how on earth could they have known that to disobey god was wrong?
The god of the bible reminds me of a mafia don and has ever since I read an article by Ebon Muse, who compared god to such. “Pay me or I’ll break your knee caps” vs “Pray to me or I’ll torture you forever” (or ‘allow you to suffer forever, even though I love you…’)
I don’t think so.
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Perhaps god didn’t know? Seriously, in the garden, god has to search out for them and then questions them as to why they have covered up…
I’m of the mind set that this was one of the two creation stories floating around at the time and that when they were combined (a la the documentary hypothesis) the editors had to include it. Personally, I find that many ancient works have errors in a similar vein, so it’s not surprising that the bible has them in spades as well.
Technically they were slated to die anyway - if you remember - A&E had to eat from the tree of life in order to live forever. They were denied this, which implies they would have eventually died anyway had they never eaten the apple.
My question is, why were both trees there to begin with? It’s not like god had to eat from them in order to maintain his omniscience and eternal life. Just like you brought up, what is their purpose if NOT for a sting - a sting that an omniscient entity would already know would work.
When in these kinds of discussions about what the god of the Bible does or says, I like to think about how I would consider the actions and comments if they had come from a human instead of a purported “GOD.”
If a human were to take a naïve, innocent, unsuspecting twosome (let’s say, two kids) and put them into an environment comparable to Eden (a park/playground environment)…with lots of toys, interesting gadgets, and playhouses strewn about…
…and then placed one interesting looking playhouse right in the center of all this interesting stuff and tell the kids “you can play with or in any of these things except that one right there in the center, you cannot even look inside that one, because if you do an alligator will bite you”…
…and then put speakers around the park from which come whispered “you oughta really take a look in that playhouse right there in the center of the park—because there is something very special and fun inside it and there are no alligators there at all ”…
…I cannot conceive that any kids would be able to resist that temptation to investigate. In fact, my guess is any kid would be obsessed with the notion of getting into that playhouse…and would eventually go into it.
If the human were to punish the kids for doing so by beating them repeatedly on their heads with a claw hammer (trying to think of an appropriate analogy for the extreme punishment the god meted out to Adam and Eve, but this, although admittedly deficient, was as close as I could come) I would certainly consider it an evil thing for the human to do.
I could not, by any stretch of the imagination, consider what the kids did as evil in any way.
And I would consider the human to have lied about the alligator…and the whispered voice to have told the truth.
Which, of course, would bring me to the position that the very first story in the Bible about the god interacting with humans was to teach that the god is deceitful, deceptive, evil, and a liar toward humans.
I have no problem with people who guess there is a GOD…but I am wondering why anyone, considering this, would want this particular description of this particular god to be an accurate description of the GOD they want so much to exist.
If you are a theist who does feel this way…talk to me about it, please. I do not want to guess why you “believe” in a GOD…but why you would want this particular god to be that GOD.
(Thudlow…the Rabbinical lectures on tape are simply too long to listen to. If you can summarize the main thoughts, I’d love to hear them.)
Not only did they not know the difference between good and evil, making it impossible for them to know what they were doing was wrong, they also lived in a world where there was no death, making it impossible for them to comprehend the promised consequences for their actions.
Chakra…thanks for stopping by.
Bo…I was very, very late to coming to consciousness in this area. You were precocious. I’ve known several priests who were among the most wonderful humans I’ve ever known…but who simply could not answer questions like some you must have asked. The need for some to “believe” is compelling. My question above for the theists here seem relevant to all this.
Random Design…after many years of enjoyment of the weed of crime…I have sworn off. I truly with they would decriminalize it…and have fought quite vocally for that long before it was a popular cause. But unfortunately I am no longer able to partake…so if it happens, I will not reap any benefits from it.
Latro…I am sure some hijacking was done by the writers of that story. I am less interested in them than in the question I proposed up above to the people who think the writers did a good job of getting the story out.
Big T…thanks for your comments. Any comments on my recent post?
Meatros…I live in New Jersey, so I gotta be careful about comparing anybody or anything to Mafia Dons. (I agree with you, but keep it between us!) And the “editors” do seem to have screwed up mightily in this story!
Hope I’ve replied to everyone who has responded so far. If not, lemme know and I will.
Only that there is an assumption that human nature is the same as it’s always been. As in, did the very act of eating the fruit make us the curious creatures that can’t resist trying something, even if we know it’s wrong?
But then we run into that pesky Serpent. We know that God did not condone its tempting of Eve, as He punishes it for doing so. We also know that, up until the mentioning of the Serpent, everything does exactly what He tell it to do. Except that Serpent, who gets to defy God and tempt Eve.
Well, that’s all I got. Maybe someone else knows the traditional Serpent backstory.
I think that, as “just so” stories go, it is poorly constructed and told, and was originally never meant to be a significant part of the Biblical story. Why it eventually became “official” canon is lost in history and may never be revealed.
Ha! I hear you, but I’m in VA, so I don’t know anything about Mafia Dons… 
As to the editors screwing up; I’m not so sure I would put it that way. The editors had a task of meshing two stories, in order to appease two the now united two groups of Isrealites. They couldn’t exactly leave out material (it would tick off one of the groups). They were sort of in a catch 22.
More good comments from Big T, Czarcasm, and Meatros. Thanks.
I do hope some theists come in to comment on the question I posed above about “why this god?’
No insult or slighting of “theism" intended. I have no problem with anyone “believing” or “guessing” or “deciding” that a GOD exists.
My question is: Why do you think the descriptions given of this god of the Bible (particularly in this story in this thread) fits the bill of what you are looking for in a GOD?
Necessary compromise of indoctrination, necessity and desire would be my best guess.
I seem to recall reading somewhere that the serpent undermined The Man’s authority by telling Eve that if she touched the tree she would die. When he bumped her against it and she didn’t, he persuaded her that the injunction against eating the fruit was from self-interest on God’s part, not a warning. Adam passes the buck to Eve when he is tempted and found out-never accepts responsibility.
Cannot find any of that anywhere.
Can you cite a source for that?