Adam and Eve: What's So Bad About It??

[WritingIsMyReligion]

I don’t mean for this to be flamebait…I hope we all can agree that free will is a GOOD thing….

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I’d just like to thank Eve and Adam for their work in the Garden of Eden. Just think: this woman comes and decides to disobey her god anyway, despite what he says about eating from the Tree of Knowledge, and all of a sudden she’s not this god’s puppet anymore. Poor god…He was really angry, wasn’t he, when he found out that he didn’t have a plaything anymore—-and, what was more, that uppity bitch had dared to “tempt” her companion into following her down this bad path.

Think about it. The snake in this legend, who tempts Eve to take the fruit from the Tree, is obviously Satan, the devil, Lucifer, whatever the hell you want to call him. Remember: this is a Tree of Knowledge—-eat from it, and suddenly you have free will, and your god’s short a puppet, poor thing. So what did this snake do? He helped Eve to decide to choose free will over being the toy of her “creator.” She gave us knowledge. Pretty good choice, if you ask me.

I think of it this way: before Eve made that momentous choice, the world was pretty cut-and-dry, black-and-white, good-and-bad. Afterwards, with the introduction of free choice, the world became a lot more complex than that. I can see why fundies and Bible-pushers dislike Eve so much: the world would be simpler if we could all just be fat, dumb, happy slaves in Eden. That’s the thing about fundies: they despise the thought that the world is more complex than Devil-God, bad-good, black-white.

Unfortunately for them, it is. The idea that spiritual truth might be subjective—-what you believe to be true IS true; there is no “right” spiritual answer; that the universe is pretty damn ambiguous—-must be pretty frightening to people whose whole faith rests in the fact that all their little enemies will be crushed by their creator-puppeteer, and that THEY ALONE are in the right.

Dangerous, dangerous people…

[Mythsaje]

1. I always saw it as entrapment, personally...

An omniscient deity (setting aside the unlikelihood of this in the first place) puts the people down there, tells them not to eat of the forbidden fruit, meaningwhile knowing the whole time that they WOULD eat from the fruit (remember--omniscient) and then punishing them for doing exactly what he knew they'd do in the first place.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

2. Yeah, that God's a bastaaaad......

;)

[Warpy]

3. First, god never said a word to Eve about that fruit

he only forbade Adam to taste it.

Second, god didn't seem particularly perturbed when Eve ate it. It was only when Adam came along and noted the lack of an upset deity and tasted it for himself that all hell broke loose. I guess women can handle the knowledge of good and evil and remain in Paradise but men can't.

Adam then blamed it all on Eve, and the fundy god, having a penis of his own, decided to curse Eve for leading his boy astray.

Adam has always seemed like a real weakling to me, and his rush to blame Eve for his own sin is horribly typical of the tendency to blame somebody else for all bad choices.

Of course, preachers, having penises of their own, never seem to see it that way.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

9. Sexism, anyone?

(Not your post...The legend. :D)

:crazy:

[Zebedeo]

14. Eve knew good and well about the prohibition

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' " Genesis 3:1-3

Also, I don't see how you come up with "God didn't seem particularly perturbed when Eve ate it." Both Adam and Eve ate of the fruit at about the same time. "she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it." Genesis 3:6.

[rogerashton]

4. I certainly think the idea that spiritual truth is subjective is dangerous

According to this view, if Ali Sistani thinks homosexuals ought to be murdered then (for him) it is true that homosexuals ought to be murdered. Yes, that is a damned dangerous idea. Some things are not true for anybody, no matter how fervently they believe them.

edit: misspelling

[ChristianLibrul]

6. Eden

Tell me again, who did Cain and Abel marry?

[unschooler]

16. Welcome to du, ChristianLibrul!

:hi:

[unschooler]

15. Al Sistani's problem is that he doesn't know "spiritual truth" is

subjective and therefore he ought not to impose the death penalty on people who don't share his spiritual understanding.

[rogerashton]

20. But doesn't that mean

that the rightness of the death penalty is "true for him?"

Objective fact: anybody who thinks God talks to him is a dangerous person. Anybody who thinks God talks to his leaders is even more dangerous.

[unschooler]

21. Anybody who thinks God has empowered him to enforce

"Gawd's Law" is scary as hell.

[Montauk6]

5. I'm surprised the tale isn't bandied about more by the pro-incest crowd.

I wonder will the Creationist or Logical Origin (senior moment: help me out... what are they calling it nowadays???) crowd mention to the little kiddies how Eve would have HAD to have become a grandma.

I'm just saying...

[ClintonTyree]

7. It's a parable.........

don't eat from the tree of knowledge. Stay stupid and blindly obey. Some also equate it with Republican ideology. Closely examine the average freeper and you'll see exactly what I mean.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

10. That's just the problem with it....Fat, dumb, and happy people.

:crazy:

[soothsayer]

8. If it weren't for Eve, I wouldn't be enjoying my period right now.

Thanks alot!

[WritingIsMyReligion]

11. LOL

Yup.

:thumbsup:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

12. A couple of thoughts

First, archeologists have traced our DNA back about 200,000 years to one woman. So apparently everyone alive on earth today is descended from her, if mitacardial DNA is to be believed (read this in the National Geographic in my doctor's waiting room-it was one minor tidbit in a fascinating article about how DNA has been used to trace migrations of humans out of Africa).

Second, the Adam/Eve story is only one of many creation stories. Personally, right now I'm looking at the Mayan concept of creation of consciousness, and find it fascinating because it merges evolution with spirituality in a very interesting way-and explains what is happening to us now. If you're curious, you may wish to check out this article about the Mayan calendar: http://www.mayanmajix.com/art024.html (BTW, the folks who did this Mayan website have been very down on Bush for quite some time.)

[niyad]

13. read "when god was a woman" by merlin stone to learn the truth about

that particular piece of patriarchal propoganda. A story carefully crafted to call into question the beliefs of the indigenous peoples whom the followers of yahweh were invading and destroying.

[The Straight Story]

17. It echoes rebellion and today's world - a liberal lesson

In a perfect world even mankind is unhappy - always wanting more.

Even if you have all you want, you want more. You consume more than you need.

To me it has always been a message liberals should heed and call conservatives on.

God tested mankind - and we failed. We were, and are, greedy consumers. Never content we want, always, more and more then we have.

We had a perfect world which we have polluted and rebelled against for our own selfish desires. Are we happy? Nope. We want more. More oil, more money, more food, more more more.

Adam and Eve took this path of more. To what end? That is the message I think.

[charlie]

18. Well then, I wish the lesson had been less parable-y

and more obvious for the chowderheads. Their regard of Adam and Eve as the TRUE HISTORY of mankind has been the cause of endless crap, from trying to jettison evolution from textbooks to legal initiatives to keep gays in their place.

[The Straight Story]

19. And yet, it is the true history of mankind

We have, and continue to, rebel against that which is best for us.

The story has one consistent theme - We have what we want but we want still more. What more do we need? We are here but a short time - but in that time we keep wanting more and more.

Do we need the newest big screen tv, newest mp3 player, etc an so on? While many suffer in this world we still want more for ourselves that will make life 'better'.

We had it all, have it all, but still we squander it and want more. In the US we have a great standard of living - yet we still bitch and whine that it could be better while many elsewhere starve and seek the basics.

Never happy with what we want - we desire more.

Perhaps that is the lesson.

[Roaming]

23. I think you nailed it /nt

[sutz12]

26. I have a different spin...

I think people concentrate too much on the Tree/fruit and not enough on the relationship between God and Adam.

The parent/child analogy is applicable because it is one almost all of us experience in our own lives. Now, all (normal) parents want to protect their children from injury, and that is what most religious people focus on with the Adam & Eve story. There is a lot of truth there, but there is also something else present. Most parents profess a desire that their children have a better life than they themselves had.

There is a reason that this is the first story in the Bible. It is, after all, one of the first stories in all of our lives, and it is one we have to experience if we wish to grow up. In a Biblical/anthropologic sense, living in innocence, while it protects us from sin, also prevents us from growing individually to our full potential.

The truth is, and I learned this partly in my profession as an engineer, that no progress will occur until someone 'breaks the rules.' Probably the most visible example of this in the present day is the whole evolution/creation argument. Charles Darwin broke the rules by postulating a non-Biblical version of how the Earth came to be as it is. This took many people out of their comfort zone, which of course led to recriminations and arguments--'death' in this case being an expulsion from accepted society, or loss of the keys to heaven if you like. However, pretty much all of modern biology and most of the advances in modern medicine spring from this also. Metaphorically, science is a constant feeding at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

On a more personal note, we all have to at one time or another rebel against our parents. If we do not, we risk never having a life of our own. It does not have to be a big violent rebellion, it might be as small as where do you go for Thanksgiving dinner. I would argue that the more repressive the core/home family, the greater the need for a stressful and potentially violent rebellion, while a more open accepting family will not need so great of a rebellion. The stereotype of the minister's children being over sexed and prone to mischief is based on some real psychology, if not on real satistical evidence. We accept that paradigm because it makes sense to us, even though it may not be reflected in reality.

Our parents are always our parents, and our children are always our children, but until children grow up and break away from their first family, they cannot experience the full growth of their potential and form real families of their own. I would argue that many religious moralists, who base their entire moral foundation on just the Bible, have not eaten of the tree. Only until one makes a difficult moral decision wherein they are faced, not with a choice between an obvious good versus an obvious evil, but between the lesser of two evils, or the greater of two goods, on their own part do they grow into a full person. As long as people blindly follow others' moral judgements they remain, effectively, children.

One of the great misunderstandings that occur between religious and non-religious people is the definition of good and evil. Believers tend to think in black and white, while non-believer tend to believe that some evils are greater than others and sometimes one is forced to choose there, and not in the comfort zone. Re-watch Sophie's Choice. Where was the 'good' in the choice she was forced to make?

Until we each take a bite of that fruit, we will never be better, and will remain less, than our parents. If there is a God, and if that God truly loves us, would not that God want us to reach our full potential? In order to do so, we must move beyond the restrictions that bind us. We must learn to make our own choices, and will never learn to do so until we jump in and take a bite of that fruit.

[Roaming]

22. "Suddenly" have free will?

Just some things that jump out at me as I read this--

If Adam and Eve never had free will prior to eating the fruit, they wouldn't have eaten the fruit in the first place (i.e., they had a choice)... They were created with free will and made the wrong choice.

I don't think God's purpose was to create puppets but companions, ergo the constant comparison with the parent/child relationship. The Bible constantly talks about God's love for his children. Puppeteers certainly don't "love" their puppets in this way--it's about relationship not control.

I think that yes, God was probably angry, but it also broke His heart when they disobeyed Him. Kind of like when MY kid does something that is wrong and it ends up hurting him.

The tree wasn't the tree of all knowledge, but the knowledge of good and evil. Once that knowledge of evil was encountered is when the fall of humankind took place. So in effect by "knowing" evil the evil entered into human hearts. (Sometimes the Bible talks about sex that way--"knowing" someone--I personally believe that is what this knowledge of evil was like..., an intimate but horrible entry into the human heart.)

Just my two cents'.

[treegiver]

24. Put some clothes on, for God's sake

I hope we all can agree that free will is a GOOD thing

I know we can't. I don't even think it's a thing, let alone a GOOD thing.

Be that as it may, the Tree in question has nothing to do with free will; it imparts moral knowledge: Knowledge of Good and Evil. And what was the first bad thing noticed? Nudity.

[Strong Atheist]

25. Welcome to D.U. Enjoy your stay.

Since the human body is not ugly or evil, but beautiful and good, nudity is, of course a VERY good thing!

[Radio_Guy]

27. Adam did what all men tend to do

He blamed his wife. Eve then blamed the snake. The snake, well, he didn't have a leg to stand on.

[Strong Atheist]

29. Lol! nt.

[raccoon]

28. This parable is about the difference between being human and

being an animal. That's how Harold Kushner explains it in WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE, and I agree with his take. After Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they were able to make choices in areas where animals can't--able to make moral decisions.

He used as an example, when we say a dog is "bad" or "good" it doesn't refer to the moral value of what the dog does; it's about whether it's convenient or inconvenient for us, same as the way we refer to "good" and "bad" weather.

Personally, I've always hated the Adam and Eve story.

[Goblinmonger]

30. Don't you think it could be about sex?

Sorry to play Freud's advocate here, but, come on, SNAKE? This would be in the same train of thought that the "kissing the frog" in fairy tales is about girls becoming women and actually thinking the frog (aka penis) is no longer ugly.

Or maybe I am just an English teacher on spring break with nothing to keep my mind busy.