(December 25, 2010 at 2:38 pm)GANIMEDE Wrote: Then, after eating of the "Forbidden Fruit", both Adam and Eve attained "awareness of their nakedness". This means that some of the knowledge they obtained, I surmised, must have been sexual knowledge. So, after eating and obtaining knowledge, Adam and Eve had "lost their innocence" and had become sexual beings. The deity "God" verifies this when he tells Eve that she shall, therewith in the future, "bear offspring in great pain and cling to her husband and thereafter there shall be emnity between you and The Serpent", (whos arms and legs had been removed by the deity "God") . . . . . . And so Satan became the ultimate symbol of seduction and was assigned the task of eventually accepting the blame for "all evil in the world" and someday be forced to jump into a bottomless pit, taking all evil and all his followers with him. This former Angel was assigned the role of ULTIMATE SCAPEGOAT! . . . . . . . THIS IS A BIZARRE AND DISCUSTING STORY. . . . I rejected this religion.
Good story, but I think you missed an even more fundamental problem: Why would God put a tree that would apparently mess with the lives of his humans on the Earth in the first place?
It doesn't take omnipotence to know that at some point, somebody's going to test the waters and see just what happens if they do eat from the tree. Since Adam and Eve were apparently as curious as their descendants would be, this was particularly inevitable. In particular, God's warning that they would die when they ate it wouldn't seem like a particularly strong deterrent, since nothing seems to indicate that the newly-created humans would have much of an idea as to what death even is. It's like Peter Pan running away from home the day he was born so he wouldn't have to grow up. So, assuming the Garden of Eden story is true, we are left to assume one of three options:
A) God is not only not omniscient, but an idiot for assuming that the naive people he created would have enough sense to stay away from something in a garden that was apparently created for them.
B) God is a sadist (Clearly not benevolent) who was looking for an excuse to punish his creation, however bullshit it may be. The fact that he waited no less than four millenia (if the Ussher chronology is to be taken seriously) to do something that would only partially undo this doesn't exactly help matters.
C) God is not responsible for the creation of that tree, so, therefore, he didn't create everything, and thus, his power is undermined, and he comes out as less than omnipotent.
At this point, it makes the most sense to say it's all bullshit.
Comparing the Universal Oneness of All Life to Yo Mama since 2010.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.
I was born with the gift of laughter and a sense the world is mad.