Roland

Something about the Adam and Eve myth has always puzzled me.

How could they be held accountable and then punished for eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil if their actions took place BEFORE they knew evil existed? In other words, how could they know they were doing wrong if they didn't understand what "wrong" was, having not yet eaten of the fruit that would tell them it was wrong? Didn't they have to eat the fruit FIRST before they understood that what they were doing was "sinful"? Something about this story just doesn't make sense.

Javaman

First, it's a story. It can be enjoyable to watch literalists discuss this, though. I'll go look for some of the other threads about this (there have been several). Second, what was the tree of life for? Third, why did the snake tell the truth? Fourth, is the snake actually Satan? Lots of fun questions from Genesis... but only if an inerrantist is playing. Although they're the vocal types of believers, they aren't the majority.

Javaman

Here are some of the more recent threads about this (the second and third are probably the most informative):

Eating Forbidden Fruit and Death
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve: there was no "spiritual death"

Clutch

As my ex-Texan political science prof drawled (or drolled), when we were reading excerpts from the OT as a political work: "It doesn't matter whether the snake spoke. What matters is what the snake said."

Magdlyn

That one I can answer. No. It was Asherah or Christ.

Hey, I'm a fun girl.

dado

assuming we're reading the story as allegory or myth...

there is a difference between punishment and consequence: they weren't punished, they simply could not exist inside Gan Eden once they had acquired the ability to make choices. perhaps more accurate to say Gan Eden cannot exist where there is free will, so once the ability to make choices was obtained, Gan Eden had to cease existing.

edited to add:

serpent <-> morpheus.
fruit <-> red pill (or is it blue pill? i forget...)
expulsion <-> consequence, not punishment

Roland

So did God intend for us to have "free will" or didn't he? If "paradise" can only exist if there is no free will, then is lack of free will therebye the "ideal" state of Man? This story really doesn't make much sense when one tries to delve into all its ultimate implications and ramifications.

Quality

Is free will lost when one goes to heaven then?

dado

note that Eden is never actually called a paradise: the most literal name is something like "Land of Pleasure". there are lots of ways to read the text, what you wrote above is almost explicit in some radical x'ian interpretations: the idea that only through complete subjugation can one find "peace". i reject that notion, but it is a defensible reading.

what i personally get out of it is that we simply aren't built to be caged - and make no mistake, Eden was very much a cage. if Eden isn't created on our terms, we don't want it. we may not know what we want, but we do know what we don't want.

gregor4

Excerpts from my essay 'Creation, Human Society, and Suffering'
(and at www.mts.net/~chs2000/chs.html )

From Part 2 Page 17

Genesis chapters 2 & 3, the biblical basis of our
spiritual life with God, as if we were originally
spirits and residing in the company of God.

If by Genesis, before Eve and Adam chose to know
evil, they MUST have been without any sin
(perfectly lawful) and MUST have known perfect
life without death, even as Jesus decares the way
to eternal life is by perfect lawfulness and death
is by sin. 'Eden' could NOT have been a bodily life
on earth. (in the material realm) Genesis is false,
relative to moral innocence/perfection and matter's
natural limit.

(Matter is in limit and occurs in the context of what
we believe is an 'unlimited' expanse of space.
In conceptual terms, matter is as space which exists
in the most opposite state to that which is infinite.
Logically, in this circumstance of Universal opposites
where material life is limited, material life without
death cannot possibly ever exist and everlasting
material life has NEVER been and will NEVER be possible.)

From other pages in my essay:

(and the Bible cannot be perfectly good, but must be both
good and evil, as ALL things in the material domain are
both good and evil. That which exists has goodness, but
as it exists only for a limited time it is sothen also
evil. Life is good, death is evil; health is good, disease
is evil, etc.)

Furthermore, it appears to me both Heaven and hell are
irrelevant, for as the material realm's natural limits
makes all ones harms against any other life limited and
all ones contributions to the good of any other limited,
sothen ones merits and rewards are limited and ones
punishments are limited, making both eternal, infinite
punishment and eternal, infinite reward unjust.
(Does capital punishment not intend to be an everlasting
punishment?) It also reasons behavioural, moral, political
perfection is impossible to attain, and none on earth have
ever been nor will ever be morally perfect.