RE: Monkeying Around in the Garden of Eden
June 8, 2016 at 8:03 am
(This post was last modified: June 8, 2016 at 8:08 am by Fake Messiah.)
(June 8, 2016 at 5:45 am)Constable Dorfl Wrote:(June 4, 2016 at 11:50 am)IATIA Wrote: Actually, did not the bible suggest that after eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge that we did know as god knows?
Genesis 3
22 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
It goes one further, it suggests that man knows as the gods know. By inserting the plural it acknowledges that yhwh was simply one of a pantheon of gods.
Speaking of pantheon of gods: Hebrew myths came from Egyptians myths with a problem, that Egyptians were allowed to have pantheon of gods while Jews had to have only one. So they had to re-make them with all the magic but only one god.
So it starts with Atum, the creator from Lower Egypt - Heliopolis, had two kids Shu and Tefnut. Shu is identified as the principle of life and Tefnut is identified as the principle of moral order, a concept that the Egyptians referred to as Ma’at - same as with the two special trees in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the myth the Atum (which they wrote in the Bible as Adam) is instructed to eat his daughter Tefnut aka moral order. So both myths have chief deity who created two fundamental principles, Life and Moral Order. In the Egyptian myth, Atum is told to eat of moral order but in Genesis, Adam is forbidden to eat of moral order. Difference lies because Hebrews were monotheists so idea that humans could become god-like contradicted the basic theological concept of biblical religion.
Hebrew story is actually an attack on the Egyptian doctrine of moral order leading to eternal life. It begins by transforming Life and Moral Order from deities into trees, eliminating the cannibalism of Atum eating his daughter. Then, Adam was forbidden to eat the fruit of Moral Order.
Next, Adam was told that not only wouldn’t he achieve eternal life if he ate of Moral Order but that he would actually die if he did eat it. To make sure god expelled Adam from the Garden before he could eat from the Tree of Life and live for eternity.
But of course there is a huge plot-hole in the Bible since as an all-powerful deity, he can reverse the cause and effect and return things as they were? Or why make Noah bring all those animals on board, why not just create new ones? As well as Tower of Babel - I mean God fearing large tower as if he was afraid humans will be able to peek from the windows when he's masturbating.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"