Adam & Logic, 2nd Edition

[Bahman]

It is my understanding that just knowing is part of our experience, so it can’t. be treated as something apart from our experience I can only assume that they didn’t have the understanding of the difference between good and evil, as they never had this experience before The tree represented the experience of the difference., what it is to have good, and what it is to have evil, or the absence of good (you never miss the water till the well runs dry)

So what they ate was good since evil does not exist.

 

[Bahman]

Why Adam didn’t eat the fruit of tree of life then the knowledge?

 

[fhansen]

How the tree of knowledge with a fruit which teach you good and evil could exist? There is nothing like evil! Evil by your definition is the absence of good.

We learn about the absence of good by disobedience of the Good, Himself. That very disobedience is the first instance and experience of veering away from perfect good, i.e. the first instance, for man, of evil. The consequences were immediate.

 

[fhansen]

Why Adam didn’t eat the fruit of tree of life then the knowledge?

Very good question. I’d assume that Adam lacked the wisdom to make the better choice.

 

[Bahman]

After all a conscience is none other than man’s intelligence informed with the knowledge of right and wrong, and how he chooses to apply it to his choices. Adam didn’t have knowledge of the experience of disobedience to God, and he may not have had the appreciation of what he did have. But took what he had for granted. Since the fall he experienced and knew the difference and came to appreciate the gift God gave him, and what could happen if he didn’t obey God (moral law) some thoughts.

Hence, we are punished because of our innocence?

 

[Bahman]

**What I was trying to point out was that when we say they ate from the tree and sinned, they then knew what Evil was, through experience. But they didn’t need to experience evil because they had an understanding of it. **
So did they experience Good or did they just have an understanding of Good?
If they experienced Good, then the tree would just be called the tree of Evil. But if they hadn’t experienced both, then the tree was named Good and Evil.
If we have conscience that means we already know what is Good and what is Evil, so we can hopefully choose the Good, and we don’t always need to experience Evil to know this, but we need to experience Good, so we can see what Evil can be.
We would say they experienced Good and that they just needed to trust in God and avoid the tree. But it seems the experiential knowledge of both were placed in the garden, because you can’t have one without the other.

Hence, they perform an evil act at the moment of deciding about eating the fruit rather then when eat the fruit. How this situation could be actualized?

 

[wmw]

The problem I see with suffering and death coming along after Adam and Eve is that suffering and death were a part of the biological processes attending life long before there were such things as humans, which is what Adam and Eve ostensibly were. My point is that I have reason to believe that humans have always been subject to suffering and death.

Glad to talk with you,but I’m not going to just repeat myself. I’ve said that with God there is no before or after. I agree that biological processes have been in place from the beginning. Still, there is much room in the world that a small place of it had a first pair and started original sin. It’s just that I’m not convinced of talking animals and lions that eat grass.

Also, if we trace the lineages in the Old Testament back to Adam and Eve, it places them as having lived about 6,000 years ago. These things were written before it was known that humans have been around for at least 200,000 years, and there were lots of us, not just two.

It is also well known that these are stylized lineages that have missing gaps. They are to show from what houses of kings, prophets, and heroes the later characters sprang. They were never intended to be used as a time line and so they don’t work as one.

“lots of us, not just two” - this is a very short reference to a very long subject. Science has been very definite that we are from a single woman and a single man. Just 5 years ago these were separated by many thousands of years. More work has been done since and the spans of time have been shrinking so that the errors in time estimation are beginning to overlap. The total numbers have also been brought down to the point that about 10,000 are likely, but we are talking about probabilities with standards of deviations etc. In science deviations of 6 times the standard is not realistic and unscientific, but with God nothing is impossible. Yet, it isn’t that bad the chance that the human race started with 2 not 10,000 is far less than 6 standard deviations.

I’m sure it could be a literary device. I personally think that original sin might be in reference to the development of agriculture or perhaps language,

There are truths that the Catholic church have determined from these passages one of them is Original Sin that is strictly about the three deprivations I’ve listed above. To say that because the Bible uses stylized language and literary devises is to say that it is intended to teach these specific truths not answer the scientific questions that anyone wants to test it by.

The question is what is it that stops living.

Is there a question that the individual, the organs, and every cell of a dead man or animal dies? No, it is you who must explain that the bodies in the tombs need no resurrection to no longer be dead.

I am not suggesting that there is no such thing as a soul. I am offering the idea that there are no souls (plural).

So, you don’t believe in a resurrection, just an assimilation into a sort of oneness. This is not Catholic, not christian

I think walls between us and God and perceived rather than real. With regard to good and evil, they are simply the front and back of the same thing. When viewed as a whole, the world simply is.

Just mix in a little Buddhism and Confucianism and stir.

I’m not so interested in this stuff that you are just picking up on the side of the road. No, theology is not just a bag full of ideas that are jumbled together.

 

[fhansen]

Hence, we are punished because of our innocence?

We’re here to learn, from the experience of evil (life separated from the ultimate Good, God) that life is worthless and futile without Him. “Apart from Me you can do nothing”. John 15:5

 

[Bahman]

We’re here to learn, from the experience of evil (life separated from the ultimate Good, God) that life is worthless and futile without Him. “Apart from Me you can do nothing”. John 15:5

That Kinda sounds selfish. If I was God I would create humanity that is capable of showing that the life is worthful and precious when you learn how to stand inside strong and alone.

 

[Bahman]

Can we have knowledge of good without appreciation? I think we can And can we have knowledge of the good we have, and then consider something we think is better, minimizing the appreciation of what we have, This might be the scenairio that Adam and Eve experienced they had the good, but they were tempted to seek something they thought better, to be like God. I think we can have knowledge without FULL appreciation of what we have, and by loosing that good the impact really hits us by its lose and contrast. I believe this is a real human experience. Some thoughts

What temptation means to a good quality?

 

[fhansen]

That Kinda sounds selfish. If I was God I would create humanity that is capable of showing that the life is worthful and precious when you learn how to stand inside strong and alone.

Not selfishness, just necessity. Man stands strong to the extent that he’s not alone.

 

[Bahman]

Could you please define what is good? To me right is a quality experienced in consciousness which directs us toward an end, opposite to wrong. Good to me has different meaning than right as evil has different meaning from wrong.

 

[Bahman]

Very good question. I’d assume that Adam lacked the wisdom to make the better choice.

They knew that they will die after eating the fruit. How such a situation could be tempting?

 

[fhansen]

They knew that they will die after eating the fruit. How such a situation could be tempting?

They didn’t believe what they’d been told; they didn’t believe in the One who told them, rejecting His godhood, departing from Him, IOW. They thought they’d be better off, happier, without Him, being their own “gods”-alone, as you say. And that’s why the world has so much misery and evil in it.

 

[Bahman]

They didn’t believe what they’d been told; they didn’t believe in the One who told them, rejecting His godhood, departing from Him, IOW. They thought they’d be better off, happier, without Him, being their own “gods”-alone, as you say. And that’s why the world has so much misery and evil in it.

But they didn’t know what risk is! They are two sayings, one from God who is the creator and another from Satan who the servant. The existence of Satan in the garden is questionable after his fall but anyhow. If they know two different verses then how they could decide knowing that they didn’t know what risk is.

 

[Bahman]

Well, granny, if you’d been paying attention we’ve been discussing that paragraph right along. You seem to me to stretch its meaning beyond the knowledge given there, tho, near as I can tell. Man refused to accept his created status. He believed a lie rather than the truth spoken by his Creator. He should have known better. He behaved otherwise. Obviously being made in Gods image didn’t prevent him from doing something very foolish. He paid the price. Act One of “Salvation History”.

Hence there was not love between creator and creature. How he could feel so pity about himself. Do you think that is a just creation?

 

[fhansen]

Hence there was not love between creator and creature. How he could feel so pity about himself. Do you think that is a just creation?

The Fall of man only represented “Act One”. God already had His salvific plan in place, deeming to use the evil of man’s disobedience to ultimately bring man back to Himself, like the Prodigal back to his father after experiencing life in the pigsty. God’s love never wavered. Man, OTOH, had to learn of the value of that love, the value of* God.* And this is part of mans’ “divinization”. Once man loves God with his whole heart, soul, mind, and strength his justice is complete, the universe is in order; man is saved, no longer lost. God has completed His plan, having first created His world in a “state of journeying to perfection” as the catechism puts it.

 

[fhansen]

But they didn’t know what risk is! They are two sayings, one from God who is the creator and another from Satan who the servant. The existence of Satan in the garden is questionable after his fall but anyhow. If they know two different verses then how they could decide knowing that they didn’t know what risk is.

A being with free will can always be tempted to depart from God along with His authority.That’s the main significance of the serpent. We echo the same experience everyday when we’re tempted to question our own consciences-and deviate from them. Evil, opposition to God’s will-is always a potentiality for any sentient being with free will who is not, himself, God,

 

[Gary_Sheldrake]

From WMW:

Glad to talk with you,but I’m not going to just repeat myself. I’ve said that with God there is no before or after. I agree that biological processes have been in place from the beginning. Still, there is much room in the world that a small place of it had a first pair and started original sin. It’s just that I’m not convinced of talking animals and lions that eat grass.

Good evening WMW: I’m glad you don’t believe in talking animals, although I am intrigued by the vocabulary of certain Bonobos, Gorillas and birds, and their ability to use language. Of course, they were taught by humans, but so were most of us.

It is also well known that these are stylized lineages that have missing gaps. They are to show from what houses of kings, prophets, and heroes the later characters sprang. They were never intended to be used as a time line and so they don’t work as one.

They were commonly used as timelines until we discovered the problems posed by the timelines.

“lots of us, not just two” - this is a very short reference to a very long subject. Science has been very definite that we are from a single woman and a single man. Just 5 years ago these were separated by many thousands of years. More work has been done since and the spans of time have been shrinking so that the errors in time estimation are beginning to overlap. The total numbers have also been brought down to the point that about 10,000 are likely, but we are talking about probabilities with standards of deviations etc. In science deviations of 6 times the standard is not realistic and unscientific, but with God nothing is impossible. Yet, it isn’t that bad the chance that the human race started with 2 not 10,000 is far less than 6 standard deviations.

The results of these chromosome studies are inconclusive. As I understand it, one of these studies traces us back to a common chromosome with a man who lived 135,000 years ago, and a woman who he probably never met who lived 99,000 to 148,000 years ago. Another study shows that we have common ancestor who lived 180,000 to 200,000 years ago, and still another study revealed that a number of men in Africa share unique, divergent Y chromosomes that can be traced back to a man who lived 237,000 to 537,000 years ago. None of these are thought by scientists to be the first modern humans on the planet. They are just the oldest tracing we can make on certain mutations that suggest a particular lineage shared today. Humans were undoubtedly suffering and dying before these subjects came along.

There are truths that the Catholic church have determined from these passages one of them is Original Sin that is strictly about the three deprivations I’ve listed above. To say that because the Bible uses stylized language and literary devises is to say that it is intended to teach these specific truths not answer the scientific questions that anyone wants to test it by.

I don’t think there is any deductive way to conclude that there was such a thing as an original sin.

Is there a question that the individual, the organs, and every cell of a dead man or animal dies? No, it is you who must explain that the bodies in the tombs need no resurrection to no longer be dead.

I think you have missed the point I was making. Humanity is an organism embedded in larger organism made up of all animals, and the ecosystems we share are organisms embedded in a larger organism which is the earth, which is part of a larger organism which is the universe. It appears to be an organic nested hierarchy. Each part is integral to the whole, and the whole regenerates and persists.

So, you don’t believe in a resurrection, just an assimilation into a sort of oneness. This is not Catholic, not christian

I didn’t say that I believed in or didn’t believe in a resurrection. However, I think that if there was a resurrection, it was much farther reaching in its implications than the explanations commonly trafficked from the pulpits.

Just mix in a little Buddhism and Confucianism and stir.

Confucianism is an ethical-sociopolitical set of teachings, and such things don’t interest me a lot. Buddhists, or at least some forms of Buddhism believe in reincarnation, and I am not very much bought into that idea either. I also do not believe that stilling the mind is a very natural state of being. I am curious as to how you have found a concrescence between these thought systems and anything I have said. Can you explain?

I’m not so interested in this stuff that you are just picking up on the side of the road. No, theology is not just a bag full of ideas that are jumbled together.

Everything I have offered on this thread are my own thoughts based on my own direct experience and observation. Theology on the other hand can be said to be a bag of ideas that is institutionalized and shrink wrapped for public consumption as truths. I think each person is capable of seeing truth for themselves. And the truth I see in theology suggests that a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to rationalize the world into a template that matches pre-set beliefs, rather than to let the world manifest itself as it is and to allow people to bear witness to it for themselves. Like the whole Adam and Eve episode and trying to use chromosome studies as support of there being traces of truth in a story from Hebrew tradition. There simply isn’t any confluence between the two.

All the best,
Gary

 

[grannymh]

In general, pre-set beliefs are similar to the initial axioms in the deductive method of reasoning.