Akivah
Well-Known Member
People should feel bad when they commit errors. But all in all, the events proved to us humans that we don't belong in the garden. G-d didn't create us to do nothing. We need the selfish impulse to do good in the world.
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Life Without The Apple Incident
- Thread starter Skwim
- Start date
People should feel bad when they commit errors. But all in all, the events proved to us humans that we don't belong in the garden. G-d didn't create us to do nothing. We need the selfish impulse to do good in the world.
Skwim
Veteran Member
As professor Higgins said in My Fair Lady, ""Tis a puzzlement."
I'd say it depends on the error. 5+3 =9 is an error, but hardly worthy of feeling bad about.
Of course not. For one thing, according to the tale he banished us from it.
Gotta agree. He created us for his amusement, so we have to do something.
"Selfish"?
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sealchan
Well-Known Member
What would our life be like today, 6,021 years since the creation of Adam & Eve, if they never "fell"?
Overpopulation?
No wars?
No competitive spirit?
No hate?
No comparative love?
Nowhere to necessarily go on Sunday mornings?
Your reckoning _____________________________________________________.
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There would be no free will...no knowledge of good or evil...no sense of morality.
I see this story at getting at the mystery of how such knowledge, which troubles humanity but no other creature, came about. It also tries to distance God from responsibility for such developments but I think that the story also implicates God.
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Scott C.
Just one guy
I was partly trying to be funny, but partly speculating too. I believe Adam and Eve were immortal at the time and had bodies that were not "fallen", meaning they could not get sick, die, feel pain, etc. So, they probably ate pure food, the body processed it perfectly, with no waist. For that matter, I don't think they needed to eat in order to live. But I am speculating.
Skwim
Veteran Member
There's no freewill now anyway.
And there'd be no need to know good and evil.
No sense of morality? Absolutely. Morality and Immorality would be empty concepts.
?
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sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
Apple isn't the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's in Eden guarded by two capable cheribim. We have Apple trees on the outside.
sealchan
Well-Known Member
The mystery of free will, the ability to choose between good and evil, is the aim of the Adam and Eve story and their fall from the Garden of Eden. Even today we might debate whether human's even have free will but I think you would agree there types of inner experiences which we can point to that make us believe we have free will. I think we do have free will but understanding exactly what free will is is a task in and of itself.
Was Eve free to choose if she didn't even know the value of obedience versus disobedience to God's instruction? Did she sin by intent or was she forgive-ably naive? When she thought over her decision about eating the fruit was she fully aware of good and evil or only partially?
I believe that the facts of everyone's experience is that we exist, especially in our childhood, in a state of ambiguity regarding understanding the potential for good or evil in the choices that we make. In Oregon teenagers lit fireworks and dropped them into a canyon during a particularly windy and dry summer season causing millions of dollars of fire damage which directly and indirectly threatened people's lives. Should they be punished as if they intentionally wanted to start a massive forest fire or should they be let off the hook? If punished would it benefit them to experience the consequence or would it only cause them to feel sorry for themselves? Should their parents receive the punishment?
God creates a little garden on a great big planet, puts a tree in the very middle of the garden that Adam and Eve otherwise have free reign over and says "do not eat!" Sounds like a sure way to guarantee that they will think of nothing else. Then add a serpent (a clever trickster figure) into the mix and Adam and Eve's lack of moral awareness is sure to be exploited. Who is responsible for this? Who knew the difference between right or wrong before Adam and Eve?
As parents we hope that our children get that the rules they are told are meant to protect them but often enough they seem to be mere impediments to innocent fun and self-satisfaction. Failure is indeed a great teacher (thank you Yoda for reminding us of this). Adam and Eve, like everyone else, learned the hard way that in our naivety and innocence we are going to fall into error. This freedom we have to stumble painfully into our knowledge of what is good and evil in this world seems like a trap that our parents or whoever is responsible for this world into which we are born are ultimately responsible for. But when we realize that they too went through this self-discovery of how choices impact one's life and that they too were victims and that, in the end, the whole chain of painful discovery must lead back to the very origins of human understanding, then we see that we are all victims. When we realize that the punishment received is best used as a lesson learned then we all see the blessing this same experience can potentially be.
There are, perhaps, two types of the experience of free will that the Adam and Eve story point to here:
- the sense of free will inspired by the tension raised by a difficult choice between two conflicting options (Eve's deliberation: Genesis 3:6)
- the sense that by remembering what has happened before one can make a different decision under similar circumstances in the future (Genesis 3: 11-13 where we see Adam and Eve making excuses)
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil and its fruit are metaphoric of our experience of free will as a sort of collaborative freedom between a conscious (moral) agent and the world in which that agent has some flexibility to respond given its ability to deliberate over future actions. The tree which bears fruit IS our own God given ability to make choices and experience the consequences of the outcome of those choices.
This is, IMO, the meaning of the Adam and Eve story. Without this story it would suggest we, as humans, didn't actually have this type of universal experience of our own consciousness and our awareness of right and wrong.
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sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
Eve was beguiled.
sealchan
Well-Known Member
Certainly. Aren't we all?
The question for me is "Well, what am I going to do about it?" The choice seems to be between blaming God or blaming myself...or, perhaps, sharing that responsibility and realizing that parent and child can work together on this.
There may be other forms of this story in myth. I would take it that if this and all other such stories no longer existed the human race would have little to show for itself compared with the next primate on the evolutionary tree.
Skwim
Veteran Member
You mean to say that god was incapable of investing a particular apple tree in the garden with the capability of imparting knowledge of good and evil? Curious limit you impose on god here. And where do you get the idea that it was guarded by "two capable cherubim."?
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sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
An apple by any other name and Genesis 3:24.
Skwim
Veteran Member
So the aim of the story is to invest free will with mystery. Don't understand how it does so, but if that's what you believe, so be it.
Absolutely, and it's called self deception or illusion, if you like.
I've found that an excellent working definition, and I'm not alone in this, is
The ability to have done differently
Nope, no one is free to choose anything. Thing is, choosing doesn't exist. We do as we do because we cannot do otherwise.
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Skwim
Veteran Member
Ah, you said;
"Apple isn't the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's in Eden guarded by two capable cheribim."
Indicting the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the tree the two cherubim were guarding. Genesis 3:24. says the tree the two cherubim were guarding is the tree of life.
Genesis 3:24
"So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
They're not the same tree. "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
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sandy whitelinger
Veteran Member
Sorry, brainfart.
Skwim
Veteran Member
whirlingmerc
Well-Known Member
What would our life be like today, 6,021 years since the creation of Adam & Eve, if they never "fell"?
Overpopulation?
No wars?
No competitive spirit?
No hate?
No comparative love?
Nowhere to necessarily go on Sunday mornings?
Your reckoning _____________________________________________________.
.
Moot?
sealchan
Well-Known Member
So you agree that free will exists as a purely psychological experience but that as such it is an illusion, correct? And illusions exist as well as a purely psychological experience, correct? And the mind also exists but its impact is limited to itself?
I venture to think that you might also agree that a person who believes in free will might act differently than one who does not...is that correct? That is because there are different causal factors at play for people depending on their beliefs. If someone loves someone in trouble they might be more likely to help them even if it is risky for themselves, for instance.
Akivah
Well-Known Member
Sure, the level of 'badness' we feel is equivalent to the type of error that is made. I think if you made such an addition error, you'd briefly feel bad about it.
The A&E story didn't actually literally happen, it's a story for teaching us. We learn that humankind isn't meant to be sitting around doing nothing and being fed by G-d. We are meant to strive and grow. Rather than thinking leaving Eden was a failure on humankind's part, it was actually a celebration of humanity growing up. Leaving Eden enabled us to grow and improve. G-d didn't create us to do nothing.
Skwim
Veteran Member
Pretty much.
Not at all. I believe that just about everything one does outside the mind has its genesis in the mind.
Not at all. I, for instance, go through life acting as if I truly choose things. Why? because I have no choice but to do so. I can't help it.
Just as you do. 
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Skwim
Veteran Member
And for those who've never heard the tale, are they any the worse off? I don't think so. From what I can see, the story only serves to excuse god from saddling mankind with all the pain and suffering he has to endure. It wasn't his fault, but that of stupid Adam and Eve. That the punishment doesn't fit the crime is irrelevant---one doesn't entertain such notions---just keep in mind that GOD DIDN'T DO IT!..... GOD...DID...NOT...DO...IT!..... Mankind did.
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