What things causes stupidity,ignorance?

[Something completely different]

Why did he punished Eve from eating from the tree of knowledge,i have the right to be smart i want to be smart and educated why did god punished her for this?
we were thrown from the garden because of a women? How can they even believe in Christianity,when they are the cause of death,suffering, misery?

I found this story completly silly, even as a child.
Probably because when I was told bible stories I happened to be told nurseries and childrens fables at the same time. Which probably made a kind of conection for me that both were untrue.
Anyway, the question of why god doesnt want his people to be educated is irrelevant here, where god doesnt claim to have power in politics anymore (or better put: his followers).

[Confused Ape]

To me, it seems that God set mankind up to fail in the garden, but that was the whole point. Prior to the fall, everything was perfect, they wanted not, and nothing they did was wrong. However, in this state, they would never experience failure, and never experience loss. One cannot recognize that one is free until one has seen that one's actions have consequences; you can't strive and experience the basic of choice, if you've no knowledge that you can fail, or that you can lose something. Adam and Eve would not truly touch their essential freedom, God's greatest gift to them, until they experienced failure and loss as a result of the choices they had made. The fall in the garden was God's plan to introduce them to their essential freedom, by letting them fail. In a sense, it was the existential version of pushing them out of the nest. So the fall wasn't intended as a punishment, the fall was God's way of teaching mankind of its essential freedom. The fall was God teaching man to fly.

The above adds another layer of possible meaning to the story. God could have planted the tree of knowledge of good and evil up in his own realm but he chose to put it in the Garden with Adam and Eve. After Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit God turns up again.

Genesis 3:8 And they heard the voice of Jehovah God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Jehovah God amongst the trees of the garden.

9 And Jehovah God called unto the man, and said unto him, Where art thou?

10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

13 And Jehovah God said unto the woman, What is this thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

This strikes me as God giving them a chance to take responsibility for their actions but they behave like kids who try to put the blame on someone else even though everyone knows who did the dirty deed. It's all part of the learning process, however.

Now I don't believe in the fall, of course, so my interpretation was just an excuse to go outside and stretch my neurons. However, the potential for radically divergent interpretations suggests that there are many interpretations which go undiscussed; and that the traditional polemics that is often used by secularists in discussing the fall is to take on the classical theological interpretations of the fall lock-stock-and-barrel, and only a select variety of them. When you get locked into one particular way of viewing the story, with a view toward attacking or defending the beliefs surrounding the story, it limits your vision.

The symbols which turn up in myths and dreams etc. don't have one simple meaning which everyone agrees on. It seems that how people interpret them can be influenced by personal and cultural world views. The Serpent is a particularly complex symbol because it has many shades of meaning throughout different traditions. Genesis isn't the only mythical place where a serpent and a tree are found together eitherSerpent and Tree

In many myths the chthonic serpent (sometimes a pair) lives in or is coiled around a Tree of Life situated in a divine garden. In the Genesis story of the Torah and Biblical Old Testament, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is situated in the Garden of Eden together with the tree of life and the Serpent. In Greek mythology Ladon coiled around the tree in the garden of the Hesperides protecting the entheogenic golden apples.

Níðhöggr gnaws the roots of Yggdrasil in this illustration from a 17th century Icelandic manuscript. Similarly Níðhöggr (Nidhogg Nagar) the dragon of Norse mythology eats from the roots of the Yggdrasil, the World Tree.

Under yet another Tree (the Bodhi tree of Enlightenment), the Buddha sat in ecstatic meditation. When a storm arose, the mighty serpent king Mucalinda rose up from his place beneath the earth and enveloped the Buddha in seven coils for seven days, not to break his ecstatic state.

The Vision Serpent was also a symbol of rebirth in Mayan mythology, fueling some cross-Atlantic cultural contexts favored in pseudoarchaeology. The Vision Serpent goes back to earlier Maya conceptions, and lies at the center of the world as the Mayans conceived it. "It is in the center axis atop the World Tree. Essentially the World Tree and the Vision Serpent, representing the king, created the center axis which communicates between the spiritual and the earthly worlds or planes. It is through ritual that the king could bring the center axis into existence in the temples and create a doorway to the spiritual world, and with it power". (Schele and Friedel, 1990: 68)

The Sumerian deity, Ningizzida, is accompanied by two gryphons Mushussu; it is the oldest known image of two snakes coiling around an axial rod, dating from before 2000 BCE.

Sometimes the Tree of Life is represented (in a combination with similar concepts such as the World Tree and Axis mundi or "World Axis") by a staff such as those used by shamans. Examples of such staffs featuring coiled snakes in mythology are the caduceus of Hermes, the Rod of Asclepius, the staff of Moses, and the papyrus reeds and deity poles entwined by a single serpent Wadjet, dating to earlier than 3000 BCE. The oldest known representation of two snakes entwined around a rod is that of the Sumerian fertility god Ningizzida.

The roots of these mythological stories probably go back umpteen thousand years and variations developed as humans spread out across the planet. Different tribes and cultures then met up again so mythological stories ended up borrowing elements from each other.

[fr0d0]

I don't get how anyone can think that the story is anything other than allegorical. The story perfectly sets out the nature of humanity as us Abrahamites understand it.

[Confused Ape]

I don't get how anyone can think that the story is anything other than allegorical. The story perfectly sets out the nature of humanity as us Abrahamites understand it.

How do you, personally, interpret the story as an allegory? So far there's only two different interpretations in this topic so it would be interesting to have some more.

[fr0d0]

How do you, personally, interpret the story as an allegory?

I just said?

[Confused Ape]

How do you, personally, interpret the story as an allegory?

I just said?

I was hoping for a few more details.

[Angrboda]

One more snake tale: the story of Pārśvanātha, a Jain Tīrthańkara (literally “ford maker” — one who creates a ford across the river of samsara to moksha).

One of the most striking features of these tales of the earlier lives of Pārśvanātha is the emphasis throughout on the ruthless opposition of a dark brother whose development is the very antithesis of that of the savior. Pārśvanātha increases in virtue, but his dark brother, simultaneously, in evil, until the principle of light represented in the Tīrthańkara finally wins, and the brother himself is saved. The enmity between the two is represented as having begun in their ninth incarnation before the last. They had been born, that time, as the sons of Visvabhuti, the prime minister of a certain prehistoric king named Aravinda. And it so happened that their father, one day thinking: “Transitory surely is this world,” went away on the path of emancipation leaving his wife behind with the two sons and a great store of wealth. The elder son, Kamaţha, was passionate and crafty, whereas the younger, Marubhūti, was eminently virtuous (the latter, of course, being the one who is to be Pārśvanātha in the final birth), and so when their king one time had to leave his kingdom on a campaign against a distant enemy, he committed the safety of the palace not to the elder brother but to the younger Marubhūti; and the elder, in sinful anger, then seduced his brother's wife. The adultery being discovered, the king when he returned asked Marubhūti what the punishment should be. The future Tīrthańkara advised forgiveness. But the king, commanding that the adulterer's face should be painted black, had him seated, facing backwards, on an ass, conducted through the capital, and expelled from the realm.

Deprived thus of honor, home, property, and family, Kamaţha devoted himself in the wilderness to the most extreme austerities, not in a humble spirit of renunciation or contrition, but with the intent to acquire superhuman, demonic powers with which to win revenge. When Marubhūti was apprised of these penances, he thought that his brother had at last become purified, and therefore, in spite of the warnings of the king, paid him a visit, thinking to invite him home. He discovered Kamaţha standing — as had been his custom day and night — holding on his upstretched hands a great slab of stone, overcoming by that painful exercise the normal states of human weakness. But when the future Tīrthańkara bowed in obeisance at his feet, the terrible hermit, beholding this gesture of conciliation, was so filled with rage that he flung down the great stone on Marubhūti's head, killing him as he bowed. The ascetics of the penance-grove, from whom the monster had learned his techniques of self-affliction, expelled him immediately from their company, and he sought refuge among a wild tribe of Bhils. He became a highwayman and murderer, and in due course died, following a life of crime.

This grotesque story sets the stage for a long and complicated series of encounters, full of surprises — a typically Indian affair of deaths and reappearances, illustrating the moral theory of rebirth. The wicked Kamaţha passes through a number of forms paralleling those of his virtuous, gradually maturing brother, reappearing time and again to repeat his sin of aggression, while Marubhūti, the future Tīrthańkara, becoming more and more harmonious within, gains the power to accept his recurrent death with equanimity. Thus the dark brother of this Jaina legend actually serves the light …

…According to our serial of tales, then, though both Kamaţha and Marubhūti have died, this death is not to be the end of their adventure. The good king Aravinda, whom Marubhūti had served as minister, was moved, following the death of his officer, to abandon the world and take up the life of a hermit; the cause of his decision being a comparatively insignificant incident. Always pious, he was planning to build a Jaina sanctuary, when one day he beheld floating in the sky a cloud that looked like a majestic, slowly moving temple. Watching this with rapt attention, he became inspired with the idea of constructing his place of worship in just that form. So he sent in haste for brushes and paints with which to set it down; but when he turned again, the form had already changed. A weird thought then occurred to him. “Is the world,” he mused, “but a series of such passing states? Why then should I call anything my own? What is the good of continuing in this career of king?” He summoned his son, installed him on the throne, and departed from the kingdom, became an aimless mendicant; and wandered from one wilderness to the next.

And so he chanced, one day, upon a great assemblage of saints in the depths of a certain forest, engaged in various forms of meditation. He joined their company, and had not been long among them when a mighty elephant, running mad, entered the grove — a dangerous event that sent most of the hermits to the four directions. Aravinda, however, remained standing rigidly, in a profound state of contemplation. The elephant, rushing about, presently came directly before the meditating king, but instead of trampling him, became suddenly calm when it perceived his absolute immobility. Lowering its trunk it went down on its great front knees in obeisance. “Why are you continuing in acts of injury?” the voice of Aravinda then was heard to ask. “There is no greater sin than that of injuring other beings. Your incarnation in this form is the result of demerits acquired at the moment of your violent death. Give up these sinful acts; begin to practice vows; a happy state will then stand in store for you.”

The clarified vision of the contemplative had perceived that the elephant was his former minister, Marubhūti. Owing to the violence of the death and the distressing thoughts that had been harbored in the instant of pain, the formerly pious man was now in this inferior and rabid incarnation. His name was Vajraghoşa, “Thundering Voice of the Lightning,” and his mate was the former wife of his adulterous brother. Hearing the voice of the king whom he had served, he recalled his recent human life, took the vows of a hermit, received religious instruction at the feet of Aravinda, and determined to commit no further acts of nuisance. Thenceforward the mighty beast ate but a modicum of grass — only enough to keep its body and soul together; and this saintly diet, together with a program of austerities, brought it down so much in weight that it became very quiet and emaciated. Nevertheless, it never relaxed, even for a moment, from its devout contemplation of the Tīrthańkaras, those “Exalted Ones” (parameşţhins) now serene at the zenith of the universe.

Vajraghoşa, from time to time, would go to the bank of a nearby river to quench his thirst, and on one of these occasions was killed by an immense serpent. This was his former brother, the perennial antagonist of his career, who, having expired in deep iniquity, had been reincarnated in this malignant form. The very sight of the saintly pachyderm proceeding piously to the river stirred the old spirit of revenge, and the serpent struck. Its deadly poison ran like fire through the loose and heavy skin. But in spite of terrific pain, Vajraghoşa did not forget his hermit vows. He died the death called “the peaceful death of absolute renunciation,” and was born immediately in the twelfth heaven as the god Śaśi-prabhā, “Splendor of the Moon.”

— Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies of India

(Vajraghoşa is one of my alternate internet names.)

[fr0d0]

I was hoping for a few more details.

Lemme try then.

Take the whole story at face value. Where it ends up is our nature, from this perspective, that man is fallible.
The actors are iconic, and not just because they are so ingrained into our culture. The names chosen have meaning related to their part in the story. Adam: mankind/first man.
Just as Genesis one never addresses mechanical processes, but sets out a theological foundation upon which the rest of the Bible emanates, so Genesis 3 describes humanity's function on that stage. Meaning and purpose are all that religion addresses. With the foundations set out in the Torah, we build a theology.

Trying to bend over backwards to explain fantastical subjects like trees of knowledge of good and evil and talking snakes etc etc as if they were real are absurd diversions. This language is characteristic of the culture and its wider influences, as can be attested to by the preceding and parallel accounts that closely match this one.

[paulpablo]

No i think the story is about the apple of knowledge giving knowledge of sinful things rather than just knowledge itself

[Confused Ape]

One more snake tale: the story of Pārśvanātha, a Jain Tīrthańkara (literally “ford maker” — one who creates a ford across the river of samsara to moksha).

Thank you for posting that. I've spent an interesting hour or so looking a few things up in relation to this story.

The first thing that struck me was the theme of the two brothers. The eldest one is evil and he murders his younger brother. (In Genesis, Cain is Abel's older brother.) The theme of the good and evil brothers has turned up all over the place, including in 'Dallas' where evil JR is the oldest son and much nicer Bobby is the youngest son.

Thus the dark brother of this Jaina legend actually serves the light

This reminds me of your interpretation of the fall.

So the fall wasn't intended as a punishment, the fall was God's way of teaching mankind of its essential freedom. The fall was God teaching man to fly.

From this point of view, the serpent in the Garden of Eden also serves the light by persuading Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.

I looked up Parsvanath and found -

Lord Pārśvanātha is always represented with the hood of a nāga shading his head. This nāga usually has three, seven or eleven heads.

Serpent symbolism again. Does the naga represent his brother in serpent form because the serpent's attack resulted in Vajraghoşa being reborn as a god? From the serpent symbolism article again -

As snakes shed their skin through sloughing, they are symbols of rebirth, transformation, immortality, and healing.

The Yaksha Dharanendra and the Yakshi Padmavati are often shown flanking him.

These attendant deities were reborn snakes.

I wonder how old the roots of all these stories are. We'll never know.

PS:

Take the whole story at face value. Where it ends up is our nature, from this perspective, that man is fallible.
The actors are iconic, and not just because they are so ingrained into our culture. The names chosen have meaning related to their part in the story. Adam: mankind/first man.

That's another interesting point of view.

Trying to bend over backwards to explain fantastical subjects like trees of knowledge of good and evil and talking snakes etc etc as if they were real are absurd diversions. This language is characteristic of the culture and its wider influences, as can be attested to by the preceding and parallel accounts that closely match this one.

We're not talking about these things as if they are real - it's what they stand for in human thought. We're the same species as the people who originally developed these myths.

PPS:

No i think the story is about the apple of knowledge giving knowledge of sinful things rather than just knowledge itself

What kind of sinful things?