One of my biggest pet peeves is the lack of accountability. With unaccountability comes the excuses that simply don't hold any weight. Let's take a textbook example: Adam & Eve:
"The snake told me to do it, therefore I'm innocent & the snake's at fault." But who was stupid(or smart) enough to eat the damn fruit?
Gnosticism shows a refreshing way of looking at this.
Maybe it's not about who's right or who's wrong. Maybe it's not about who's fault it is. Maybe it's not about any of that. What if the whole point of that story was to show a principle of human nature: our yearning for knowledge.
That apple represents knowledge. Before they ate the apple, they didn't know that they were naked. Eating the apple gave them consciousness, and in turn, knowledge. Why would that be bad?!
Would a perfect god not want us to be well-informed? Would that perfect god be afraid of what we might learn from the truth?
It shows us another very critical part of human nature: our unwillingness to accept our error in judgment. After all, why would you take the blame for something you could get away with?
I love how people try to blame the snake for "suggesting" that they eat the apple. I also like how people have tried to blame eve because she was the first to eat the apple. Why not blame adam & eve for eating the apple, themselves?
Or, you could even blame god for making a "forbidden fruit tree". That's like putting 300 horny straight men on an island (no homo) with the one hottest woman that they've all ever seen, installing cameras that clearly aren't plugged in, hiring security guards that look away and whistle at the slightest sign of trouble, putting a fence that's only a foot high, and putting a sign that says "if you're horny, approach this woman" on that fence, then telling them NOT to approach the woman...
Did the perfect god not see that coming? Or did the perfect god see it coming, & put a trap there? I don't even need to put a conclusion, because you should be able to see where I'm going with this...
Blame yourselves for YOUR actions. Everything/everyone else was only a factor in your decision.
Peace,
- knowledge
Knowledge,
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree with your your last point "Blame yourselves for YOUR actions.". But I think everyone has it in them to blame someone for their mistakes or when anything bad happens to them.
To go to your point about wouldn't God know what would happen when they ate the forbidden apple? For sure, but think of it this way. Why do our parents tell us not to do drugs? They know its bad for us and that it could ruin our lifes. But we all want to experience it for ourselves, or see the effect it has on people. But in Adam and Eves case they had nothing to compare it to. They had Gods word against the snakes word. But for some reason we all want what we can't have. Or are unhappy with what we do have.
Also, I'm pretty sure that God didn't create the forbidden fruit, it just happened to come up. Like weeds in your grass. You don't go out and plant them they just show up.
Well that's my opinion,
Adrian
The problem with temptation is that it renders us incapable of rational choices. What we might truly believe to be the logical choice of action is thrown by the wayside in favour of what we want. Essentially its pro-choice, taken to a whole new level.
ReplyDeleteKnowledge, I think you've misunderstood the whole point of this bible story.
It seems to me like what you are trying to say here is that god is imperfect, as he was trying to trick the humans, or he should have seen it coming. But what if his intentions were, as some interpretations of the bible have it, to teach humans that they need to learn how to control their desires.
Think about it. We all know that anyone who wants to interpret the Old testament of the bible has the intellectual authority of sara palin. There was no "Garden of Eden" as the bible story depicts it, and humans definitely did not all descend from Adam Eve, Cain and Abel.
So what then was the purpose of this mythical tale? To teach the Jews an important moral lesson. Sort of like a fairy tale. Don't give in to your temptations, if you do this, bad things will happen: nudity, murder etc. Now I am hardly saying that this is correct, hell temptations make life worth living, but hardcore Pentateuch thumping Jews living during 523 BC in Buttfuck, Diaspora needed a way to tell the younger generations why they shouldnt steal mana from the mana jar. (and also to explain to their kids why they lived in a desert instead of someplace way nicer, like Tahiti)
So i agree knowledge, people do need to realize they should be held accountable for their actions, but that is exactly what this story is telling them to do, after all, Eve blamed it on the snake, Adam on Eve, and they both ended up getting tossed out. This establishes the morals, be accountable for your actions, if you get caught, whats the point in blaming someone else, you're only gonna get screwed harder.
And as far as the whole imperfect God argument goes, this story is no proof either way.
@ Adrian:
ReplyDelete"To go to your point about wouldn't God know what would happen when they ate the forbidden apple? For sure, but think of it this way. Why do our parents tell us not to do drugs? They know its bad for us and that it could ruin our lives"
But why test people if you already know the answer? Then condemn them for doing what they were meant to do? Wouldn't it just make sense to get rid of curiosity as a trait, altogether? The difference between good and our parents is that god (in theory) should be able to just remove drugs, or take away our wanting of it...instead of creating it in the first place.
"But for some reason we all want what we can't have. Or are unhappy with what we do have."
Exactly, but is striving for something that we think is better, such a bad thing?
"I'm pretty sure that God didn't create the forbidden fruit, it just happened to come up. Like weeds in your grass. You don't go out and plant them they just show up."
According to the bible, god did. He also created everything else in that environment.
- knowledge
@ Spider:
ReplyDelete"But what if his intentions were, as some interpretations of the bible have it, to teach humans that they need to learn how to control their desires."
Then that's great, but is the price for knowledge a punishment for all of eternity?
"So what then was the purpose of this mythical tale? To teach the Jews an important moral lesson."
That was hardly it, though. The point of this story is to show man's first sin & its alienation from god. Now, given those premises...it would seem that this "perfect" god should've seen this coming. Notice that this story (symbolically) determines our loss of immortality. Now, we're one characteristic further from god...then told for the rest of our life to strive to be like god.
You see where I'm going with this?
There also could've been way more suitable things to call the tree. How about the tree of sin? The tree of temptation? The tree of curiosity, etc.
Instead, it got called "The tree of the knowledge of good and evil". My question here, is: why is the acquiring of knowledge (in terms of good vs. evil) a bad thing? Why see this as mans first sin, or a bad period in mankind's history (if this can even count as that).
Like I said above...it shows that we have a yearning for knowledge - and I can't see how that'd be a bad thing.
- knowledge
"Then that's great, but is the price for knowledge a punishment for all of eternity?"
ReplyDeleteNo, Adam and Eve were not actually real people. The Garden of Eden did not exist. no one here was punished and there was no utopia to get thrown out of. It was a moral tale meant to tell humanity, or the Jews in this case, that turning away from god has very negative consequences, such as being thrown out of paradise. Its really just one big metaphor: Even your ancestors were not immune from this god of all gods, and you will be screwed too just like they were if you turn away from this god.
Moral of the story: don't turn away from god or you will fall from grace. there was no punishment for all eternity occurring here, only a very strong warning.
" Why see this as mans first sin, or a bad period in mankind's history (if this can even count as that)."
I think what i said just now answers this as well Knowledge, the Jews needed to be told that there was a great potential for reward from this god (eden) but also the great potential for getting raped up the ass.
That was the whole purpose of this story, not to show anything else.
And I'll get you on the imperfect God argument in a bit
@ Spider:
ReplyDeleteYou're speaking very matter-of-factly.
Actually, the Garden eden might have been a place. They've narrowed it down to 4 possibilities (from the descriptions given in Genesis & the talmud): central mesopotamia, northern mesopotamia, the persian gulf, and some place in Africa. Many of the bible's stories have been situated in real places of the middle east. Many of the stories also do hold some historical (but exaggerated) significance.
There are better ways to teach people lessons - almost any other story does a better job at that than the very first one...
"That was the whole purpose of this story, not to show anything else."
That's arguable - different sects (or even scholars) have interpreted the "purpose" of this story. As posted above, that was (loosely) Gnosticism's
- knowledge