emeraldsforest

I would like to begin this by stating that I used to be a full fledged "born again" christian. I really took to heart the philosophy that I looked at as "Christ" representing truth and honesty, ( as they go hand and hand).

Today, many fundamentalist christians simply do not look at truth for fear of face, (ego). This saddens me because it proves to me that they are actually anti-christ while professing to be christian. They are so afraid of what others may think of their declarative past or simply are afraid of what might happen if they actually do face truth, and try to save themselves against all ration, which again is anti-christian.

I know, from being in that world for so many years, that the foundations that all fundamentalist judeo-christians build is highly complex and like a thick wall. This, however should be no excuse for hiding oneself from truth. In fact the very act of hiding oneself from being honest with themselves and being truthful would not find favor with "Jesus" himself as christians know it is said: "He that hath eyes, let him see, He that hath ears let him hear".

Also I would like to point out that I learned how to read when I was seven years old. I have excellent reading comprehension and do not need any concordance, minister, or claimed bible expert to interpret for me what I read. Besides, if "God" is all powerful, then "He" certainly was powerful enough to have these men and possibly a few women, write "His" message without need for embellishments from all sorts of interpreters!

ADAM & EVE:

The first point about the story of Adam and Eve that I would like to make is that a perfect world and creation needs no testing. Testing is part of discovering and "God" who is claimed to be all-knowing simply wouldn't need to have such a test.

The second point is that Adam and Eve obeyed the commandment of "God" not to eat from the tree of "Life" nor the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil". But this wasn't enough for the story that makes no sense. "God" allowed a serpent of evil to tempt them even further.

The third point of ridiculousness is that the Serpent actually tells "Eve" that she should surely not die and in fact after she and Adam eat of the fruit, they do not die! So who was telling the truth; the deceitful serpent or "God"? Doesn't "God" have the knowledge to be descriptive enough as not to be confusing on what "death" is and meant? Or is this something again left to further interpretation for all to argue about for millenia?

A fourth point about the story is that they did not eat from the tree of life. Why not? Would they die if they had eaten from the tree of life?

A fifth point is that society needs rights and wrongs anyway just to survive. If there is more than one person, rules need to be set and understood. Right and wrong exists naturally and I can't imagine how it could be any different as it is a matter of survival. Anyone studying the animal kingdom knows this almost immediately as mothers need to admonish their young for many reasons perhaps the most important being safety.... speaking of which brings me to my sixth point.

The sixth point about the story is that the whole scenario itself goes against our natural morals of protection and safety for humans. If our morals as christians say are "God" inspired, then we would have a very sick view of morals. Consider:

You have to innocents in your care, (young or old they don't know the difference between right or wrong yet). You have a lovely home where there is a fabulous designed greenhouse that is surrounded by two way mirrors even above. You place your two innocents in this greenhouse and there is fruit and vegetables everywhere. Now you place a plate of cookies that are deliciously aromatic and filled with poison on a table in the greenhouse and you tell the innocents that you created, not to eat these for they will surely die if they do. The innocents supposedly understand what you mean by death.

And to your not surprise, because you know everything anyway, they do not eat any of the cookies.

Now you decide to let into the greenhouse a cute little bunny with a fuzzy cotton tail that can talk to further your little test, which you know the results anyway.

This little bunny can talk, in fact and you know that it is going to tempt your innocents further.

Off you go hiding behind the two-way mirrors where you can see everything. You watch as the bunny talks to the lass. And lo and behold, finally, she is convinced to eat of the tree of knowledge of "Good and Evil". You stand there watching behind the mirror as she reaches for the plate that YOU placed on the table.

At any time you can go in and stop her... save her from this poison you have placed on the table... but no, instead you simply stand outside and watch.

The girl grabs a cookie and goes to take a bite. ....Still you stand there not doing anything to protect her from this poison.

The girl then gives a cookie to the lad. ...You do the same thing... you stand there not doing anything to protect him from this poison.


Summary: Any court would find you guilty of child endangerment and murder. You would spend the rest of your life in jail if most of society had anything to say about your morals!

Also, have you ever thought of any logical way of having only the innocent lass eating the cookie and the lad refusing?


Simply this is an archaic tale told and retold under the bright lit stars and by fires of old. It was told in a world where superstitions abounded and was simply someone's poor attempt at describing how good and evil came to humans.

This story gets the :down:

Emeralds

rosy tetra

To continue the story…

The kids have just eaten the cookies. You walk into the greenhouse and find them with crumbs on their faces, looking uneasy at the sight of you. You ask the obvious, “Did you eat those cookies?� They answer, “Yes, the bunny told us they were good, not poisonous at all, so we ate them.� You say, “Well, they weren’t technically poisonous. I was testing you to see if you would believe me. Now I can’t bear the sight of you anymore since you didn’t trust me, so I’m going to make you move out of here, sell you into slavery where you’ll have to work long hours, suffer great pain, lust after foolish things, and then die. That’s what I meant by the cookies being poisonous. Here’s a set of clothes. Now, go!�

emeraldsforest

The shame of it all... and to think there are those who actually think that after eating the fruit from the tree of "Knowledge of Good and Evil", Future humans had bigger heads which led to the greater pain of childbirth!

Yet still others contend that there were other humans around at the time of Adam & Eve. What happened to their heads?

Emeralds :wave:

TheBigKahoona

I dont want to get drawn into an argument about this, but don't adam and eve die years after as a direct result of eating of the tree?

unregistered_user_1

From a copy of the 1611 KJV, Genesis 2:17

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." In that day. Nothing was said about eventually dying years later.

If this story was to have happened the way the bible said it did, Adam could have watched eve for a day or so before realizing that she never died from the "fruit", and then come to the conclusion that god was wrong, or lying, since she did not die on the day she was to have eaten the fruit.

Hell, that'd probably be how she would have convinced him.

What god had said turned out to be wrong, so why should he get punished for doing something when the warning was apparently false? You'd think god would have said that they'd "spiritually die" or "die eventually" after eating that fruit, but, no. He said "that very day".

bwcourtn

hello, as much as i hate the bible, i believe that all of your line of reasoning is absurd. The context makes it plain that it wasn't talking about immediate physical death but rather death in a more general sense.........we all realize that the biblical authors are not the brightest stars in the sky, but whoever wrote this genesis passage would not have been so ignorant as to forget to have them killed as soon as they ate..........he was obviously implying that death would start the day they ate. if i was an apologist, i'd be laughing at all of you, as your anti-apologetic in this case is born of ignorance.

emeraldsforest

You hate the bible? Why? You reveal yourself right in the first sentence.

Christians are programmed to believe that people who do not believe the bible as the "Word of God" hate the bible. In fact, they are programmed to use the word, "Hate" more than most people because it is used in the bible over 150 times.

You obviously are coming from some sort of a christian educated viewpoint and if you deny this you are simply lying.

I am not denying the possibility that you "hate" the bible, but surely you must realize by now that those persons who realize it is an anthology of stories written by what could be over 100 men over a 1000 year period which has absolutely NO original writings as we have only copies of copies of copies, (even the Dead Sea Scrolls are not original writings) do not have feelings of "hate" toward something we simply believe isn't true. I don't "hate" the "Grimm's Fairy Tales".

For you to claim that you "know" what condition of intelligence the author was in and what the author was implying, is laying down claims of personal knowledge that you simply could not have. You don't even know if people had changed the original story, or if it began as an oral story.

"Die" could be referring to ego, soul, the human race, the relationship to "God", physical death, or who knows! And who knows if the characters of "Adam" and "Eve" even knew what the word meant? Did the serpent have a different definition? If so why? It is all open to interpretation, which is a problem itself, because shouldn't "God" know how to perfectly communicate?

Grow up.

emeralds :down:

bwcourtn

Hello bright one, I hate any book that enslaves people; if the crusades, the inquisition, etc. stemmed from grimm's fairy-tales, then I could easily hate it as well. As far as you saying that we don't know the mind of the author, so we can take it to mean basically anything, i'd say that anyone can easily distort anything to mean anything they want it to mean (hence, making it essentially meaningless) and this logic that this passage has no meaning beyond some relativistic bullshit like you imply don't carry much weight, imo. The context makes it pretty clear what is going on and i believe you're the type to speculate for the sake of speculation, not to come up with anything of value. to put it bluntly, it means what it says.

ArchAngel

The story of Adam and Eve is true because it's in the bible.

TheBigKahoona

Somebody call the sherriff! This is going to get ugly real fast!