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Adam and Eve incorrectly blamed?

HadouKen24

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This is why I don't take Bible stories like this literally. It causes too many problems.

Taking them metaphorically doesn't. Of course, then you have the problem of which of the possible meanings is the right one... and then the question of whether there is only one right one, or many.

:help:
 
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Dyrwen

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Rainbow. said:
Temptation lead Adam and Eve to sin, they had everything they ever needed in their garden and only had to live by one rule God gave them....Do not touch the fruit on the tree of knowledge .
In their hearts they must have known it was wrong, as they repeated the direct order God gave them to the Serpent.
Also they did this when God was not there with them. (If you get what i mean)
Why, if they thought it was not a sin, didn't they try the fruit in Gods presence? :confused:
How is it temptation, if they did not know what was right or wrong? Can you honestly be tempted to something, if you do not know of any consequence to it? If you have had no experience to the issue at hand, are you capable of saying "That is wrong" without ever experiencing or hearing of anything to relate this to it?

Their hearts had no idea whether it was right or wrong. As Pooty stated in a sort: If this guy named God says not to do this, and I don't, then I should be ok. But hey, this guy says God didn't tell me everything, he must know more than God, I better take his advice.

God said not to eat it, he never told them what would happen to their minds, besides that they would die. I also doubt they knew what "death" was seeing as they hadn't experienced it to any extent, as they are the first 2 people ever. They have experienced no loss and know it not to be a bad thing. Death is just another word to the first two people ever around.

Why didn't they try it in God's presence? Probably because they were so naive` enough to think that the serpent who apparently has more knowledge than God (whom is merely their creator) would probably be safer to trust. They tried it out, and seemingly, did something without truly knowing who to trust.
 
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love&forgiveness said:
God isn't someone, He is God the almighty powerful Creator, they knew he was God and what he was capable of, they knew that they themselves had no power like His. Why should they question God? He gave them life. He gave them all things in their perfect natural state. Everything was good they knew no difference. Why should they trust the snake that had no power over the one who ...{was all-powerful}. They doubted and took their trust away from God, knowing of His power and greatness, and believed a powerless creature. I think this was a great insult to God.
Sorry if you don't like your post exited for basic grammar, it's just an impulsive aspect of my nature to get unreasonably ****ed off at people who apparently don't understand really basic rules for constructing a sentance. Capitalization doesn't bother me, but not putting spaces after your commas... that's excessive, don't you think?

Probably not.

Anyhow. You assume:

a) Your God isn't a person, though he deserves personhood status in being obeyed and loved.

b) Your god created the universe, everything in it, and us.

c) Adam and eve knew that he was their creator

d) They knew they themselves had no power like His

e) He made all things in a perfect state

f) Even though they didn't know of evil, and that they knew of nothing in the world that was evil, that they somehow knew that evil was something to be feared.

g) The snake had no power.

h) They doubted God.

i) They took their trust away from God.

j) Belief in a powerless creature insulted God.

Ok. a) Strikes me as absurd. Please explain. b) Strikes me as unprovable. c) and d) Seem plausable, within the context of the story. e) is unprovable, absurd, but an interesting possibility f) seems unreasonable. g) seems unlikely, and is unprovable h) and i) would seem to be strange, unlikely, or inplausable, esp. considering that sin and badness had not entered into the world. (remember, we were perfect) j) I have mixed feelings on this one. On one hand there's the verse, "I the lord your God am a jealous God," on the other, humans often trust one another, even when we're frail, faulty, silly, stupid, and very often amazingly powerless, and God doesn't seem to mind that at all. We call it "Love".
 
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HadouKen24 said:
This is why I don't take Bible stories like this literally. It causes too many problems.

Taking them metaphorically doesn't. Of course, then you have the problem of which of the possible meanings is the right one... and then the question of whether there is only one right one, or many.

:help:
Glad we've got some sensible people around here. :D

Thanks.

Seriously, to the crazy folks out there, if you literally think that there really was a literal garden of Eden, in which a talking snake d a m n e d most of humanity because of a bit of eaten fruit, and you think this is JUST, you should have your head examined.
 
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Apologist

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Infinity's Dice said:
Glad we've got some sensible people around here. :D

Thanks.

Seriously, to the crazy folks out there, if you literally think that there really was a literal garden of Eden, in which a talking snake d a m n e d most of humanity because of a bit of eaten fruit, and you think this is JUST, you should have your head examined.
The ad hominem attacks begin. :(
 
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Philosoft

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Andre said:
You don't have to know good from evil to know that death is not something that you want to happen,
Right, because we've seen things die. We watch people suffer when they die. None of this occured in the Garden.
it's an instinct, animals don't know good from evil, but they are afraid of predators because they don't want to die.
Yeah, evolution explains this exceedingly well. The Garden of Eden explanation makes no sense whatsoever.
 
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L

love&forgiveness

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they never really knew evil, for they'd never experienced it, they knew not the difference between good and evil they only knew the word of God, which they chose not to trust,they didn't know that evil was something to be feared, they only knew this by the word of God, the word of God was all they knew and whatever He told them they automatically believed for that's all they did know, but satan (the serpent) came along and gave them another choice, and they chose to believe this over their Creator.

God does mind if we trust one another when instead of trusting Him, for only Gods word is to be trusted, if a man being of God speaks the word of God, then this is the word of God being spoken through man, you can never really fully trust another human being, unless they are of God, the word of God is there for us for that is the whole truth.even a man who may claim to speak the word of God, may not be speaking the truth, Gods word being the bible is the truth for if you read this and truly believe you will see the love of God and realise there's nothing of this world that holds any comparison.

God bless.
paul
 
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Teh Wiccan

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Pooty said:
I've never really been able to figure this out...

Adam and Eve, before eating of the tree of good and evil did not KNOW what was good or evil, or right or wrong. Since to 'obey' is 'good' and to disobeyis 'evil'. Now, when they were told they could eat of the tree by the snake they did. not only because they did not and could not understand that the snake was evil, and should not be obeyed and that god was good, and should be obeyed. So they ate from the tree not realizing that what they were doing was wrong. Since disobeying could only be considered wrong by someone who knew of good and evil so they could construct morals and values. So, God punished Adam and Eve for doing something they didn't know was wrong...

What do you think?
Lets see... Logically, Adam and Eve did not have the capability to know why to choose either. Therefore, they cannot be held responsible they did not know how to handle. Its like a random Joe to design a new bus, down to the fuel tank and everything, when knowing nothing about what a car is. The car blows up, who's fault is it? The Joe for not knowing, or the person that hired them, KNOWING that they didn't know how to design, KNOWING that someone would tell them to do the wrong thing, and knowing that nthe would choose that in the first place?
 
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love&forgiveness

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infinity's dice you say about my grammar and not knowing the basic rules for constructing a sentence, when you then criticise yourself as you know not the basic spelling of sentence, only kidding.

we as humans are not to be trusted, no one can trust us fully, we are not capable of real love and forgiveness, unless we have it of God first.for God is real love, one who we can put all our trust in.He is the only thing that is completely loving and trustworthy.
 
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Apologist said:
The ad hominem attacks begin. :(
Oh, cry me a river.

Talking snakes don't exist. Never have. Unless you consider the curious matter of lawyers...

(Sorry to the lawyers out there. Anyways, even THAT wasn't an Ad Hominem. Look the term up before you use it.)

If you have a problem with the statement that "a literal interpretation of the creation account in Genesis is insane" please address the statement. Don't pretend that your (apparent) inability to make the inplausable seem reasonable is due to someone else's fault.

That said, maybe I shouldn't have used language that was as inflamatory as I did. I'm a guest on this forum, and I humbly apologize for the manner, though not the content, of my message.

Now offer something meaningful to the discussion, please.
 
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love&forgiveness

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teh wiccan, they knew of God and His power and chose not to trust Him, they called Him a liar, they trusted not His word when He gave them everything out of love. they were completely spoilt, they had all they needed for a perfect life, they chose not to trust the one who gave them all. they chose this creatures word who had shown them no love ,they rejected the truth for a lie, they may not of known the lie but they knew the truth, and all the love it had shown them.
 
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love&forgiveness said:
infinity's dice you say about my grammar and not knowing the basic rules for constructing a sentence, when you then criticise yourself as you know not the basic spelling of sentence...
Heh. A point to love&forgiveness. :D


love&forgiveness said:
we as humans are not to be trusted, no one can trust us fully, we are not capable of real love and forgiveness, unless we have it of God first.
I can respect that you believe this, but I cannot mirror your belief myself because I could not respect myself for believing in something without some sort of reasonable proof for the veracity of that belief. What proof do you have for the four claims you put forth here? I'm not saying I entirely disagree with all of them, I mostly just want to see if you've thought these through, or if you're half-quoting from what someone else has said.

love&forgiveness said:
for God is real love, one who we can put all our trust in.He is the only thing that is completely loving and trustworthy.
Here you make the claim that a) God exists, and b) God is perfectly trustworthy. I'm pretty sure that neither claim can be proven, though I'm open to new evidence.
 
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Rainbow.

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Dyrwen said:
How is it temptation, if they did not know what was right or wrong? Can you honestly be tempted to something, if you do not know of any consequence to it? If you have had no experience to the issue at hand, are you capable of saying "That is wrong" without ever experiencing or hearing of anything to relate this to it?

Their hearts had no idea whether it was right or wrong. As Pooty stated in a sort: If this guy named God says not to do this, and I don't, then I should be ok. But hey, this guy says God didn't tell me everything, he must know more than God, I better take his advice.

God said not to eat it, he never told them what would happen to their minds, besides that they would die. I also doubt they knew what "death" was seeing as they hadn't experienced it to any extent, as they are the first 2 people ever. They have experienced no loss and know it not to be a bad thing. Death is just another word to the first two people ever around.

Why didn't they try it in God's presence? Probably because they were so naive` enough to think that the serpent who apparently has more knowledge than God (whom is merely their creator) would probably be safer to trust. They tried it out, and seemingly, did something without truly knowing who to trust.
Ok... to ME temptation is ,when you have been told/asked not to do something,you go ahead and do it anyway because you want to find out for yourself!
The consequence's of their actions isn't the point..whether they knew it was good or evil
is secondary to what they did.
Surely they would realise that they were above a serpent!
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
So please dont think that Adam And Eve where some kind of innocents who knew no better. :p
 
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I intended to just post a link to the appropriate passages, but I'm not allowed until I reach a post count of 15, so I guess I'll just post the actual passages themselves. Hope I'm not breaking any rules by doing this:





Genesis 3 said:
The Fall of Man
Genesis 3 said:
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.' "

4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"

10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"

12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me-she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it."

13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"

The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,



"Cursed are you above all the livestock

and all the wild animals!

You will crawl on your belly

and you will eat dust

all the days of your life.

15 And I will put enmity

between you and the woman,

and between your offspring [1] and hers;

he will crush [2] your head,

and you will strike his heel."



16 To the woman he said,



"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;

with pain you will give birth to children.

Your desire will be for your husband,

and he will rule over you."



17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'



"Cursed is the ground because of you;

through painful toil you will eat of it

all the days of your life.

18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

and you will eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your brow

you will eat your food

until you return to the ground,

since from it you were taken;

for dust you are

and to dust you will return."



20 Adam [3] named his wife Eve, [4] because she would become the mother of all the living.

21 The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." 23 So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side [5] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.







At what point did Adam and Eve call God a liar, love&forgiveness?

Hope this is useful for further discussion of this section of the Bible.
 
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HadouKen24

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I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the Gnostic version of the garden story yet.

In Gnostic Christianity, the snake was not Satan. The snake was a messenger of Sophia, the "mother" of the Demiurge, the "God" who created the world, mistaking himself for the One True God. The snake was a good thing. He liberated humanity. Or at least gave them knowledge. So they weren't trapped, stupid and hardly sentient, under the thumb of the half-insane Demiurge.

I have to say, this version makes a little more sense than the standard Christian version. After all, what kind of God would forbid people to gain knowledge?

Of course, even assuming that this one is right, it couldn't be taken literally. Which wasn't a problem at all in Gnostic Christianity.
 
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Teh Wiccan

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love&forgiveness said:
teh wiccan, they knew of God and His power and chose not to trust Him, they called Him a liar, they trusted not His word when He gave them everything out of love. they were completely spoilt, they had all they needed for a perfect life, they chose not to trust the one who gave them all. they chose this creatures word who had shown them no love ,they rejected the truth for a lie, they may not of known the lie but they knew the truth, and all the love it had shown them.
The key thing is, they did not know right from wrong. If they did not know right from wrong, how could they not know the snake in the garden was better? Blaming them for being unable to choose correctly because God made them incapable to do so doesn't seem to be correct to me. In my opinion, it is Gods fault for creating them so that they could not choose the right answer.
 
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Rainbow. said:
Ok... to ME temptation is ,when you have been told/asked not to do something,you go ahead and do it anyway because you want to find out for yourself!




So what's with this bit in the New Testament, where the devil tempts Christ? I thought the whole point of that was Christ DIDN'T give in.

And Christ knew it was wrong in the first place. Unlike, apparently, Adam and Eve.

Let's try a dictionary.

temp·ta·tion: noun
1 : the act of tempting or the state of being tempted especially to evil : ENTICEMENT
2 : something tempting : a cause or occasion of enticement




No, Merriam-Webster doesn't agree with you either.



Rainbow. said:
The consequence's of their actions isn't the point..whether they knew it was good or evil is secondary to what they did.



Sorry, that's a reprehensible form of morality.

If a person does something unknowing that what they do is wrong, that what they do is hurting other people, the should not be held accountable for having done wrong.

Secondly, there's the nature of what they did. They ate a fruit. From this fruit, they gained knowledge. Does this mean that God would prefer us to be ignorant?

Rainbow. said:
Surely they would realise that they were above a serpent!

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."


The latter verse is supposed to support the former claim, I assume? How so? If a person has a childlike simplicity, and no need to labor (or I assume have dominion over the animals of the earth) why would that person be suspicious of any creature created by their God? And why would he or she assume that they were superior to the creatures of the world?

Rainbow. said:
So please dont think that Adam And Eve where some kind of innocents who knew no better.


You haven't shown otherwise, hon.
 
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HadouKen24 said:
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the Gnostic version of the garden story yet.

In Gnostic Christianity, the snake was not Satan. The snake was a messenger of Sophia, the "mother" of the Demiurge, the "God" who created the world, mistaking himself for the One True God. The snake was a good thing. He liberated humanity. Or at least gave them knowledge. So they weren't trapped, stupid and hardly sentient, under the thumb of the half-insane Demiurge.

I have to say, this version makes a little more sense than the standard Christian version. After all, what kind of God would forbid people to gain knowledge?

Of course, even assuming that this one is right, it couldn't be taken literally. Which wasn't a problem at all in Gnostic Christianity.
Actually, I wasn't really aware of this interpretation. Thank you for sharing! Would you, perchance, happen to know of a high-quality online resource where I could read more about this? I'd greatly appreciate a link. Thanks.
 
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HadouKen24

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http://www.gnosis.org/genesis.html

It's a little pro-Gnostic, but it does give you an accurate picture of what Gnosticism taught. It even has translations of original Gnostic scriptures available! (They were virtually unknown until they were found at Nag Hammadi in the 1950's.)

I'd also recommend "The Gnostic Gospels" by Elaine Pagels. It's a fairly short book that presents a basic overview of Gnostic theology from a scholarly perspective.
 
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