Why did Adam eat?

[ellzeena]

That’s why I said that one has to decide where to stop I mean: is only the fruit a metaphor? is the snake a metaphor too? maybe even the Garden of Eden with its glorious, perfect Adam? maybe even the dialogue between man and a totally anthropomorphized God? The stories of Creation in the OT are based on Oriental popular legends - every tribe or nation has such legends meant to explain the unexplainable basic facts of life: the origin of man, his relationship with nature and gods and his shock when he grows up and discovers that there is so much suffering in life. These legends were simple (why do we have to suffer and die? because our ancestors trespassed a divine command and were cursed; why the snake crawls on its belly? because it tempted our ancestors and was cursed). Then they were interpreted and invested with countless philosophical, theological and even political meanings, according to the fantasy (see here) and the cultural and religious background of each interpreter.

I had a dreadful thought last night: suppose THIS (what we are doing here) is the “sin”? Suppose Homo Sapiens began to attempt to “understand” God and, in doing so, divided itself from Him because it interrupted the free flow of communication? Hmmmmm. :bigyikes:

 

[ellzeena]

Dare I use the ‘evolution’ word, or even the ‘Ah Ha moment of cognition/recognition/understanding or the concepts of Right and Wrong/Good and Bad/Good and Evil’?

Yes, you may use it! And why not? God did. Apparently. To some extent.

 

[vames]

There are literal books written on Adam and Eve, tombs found in the Talmud. This is studied in the manner of face value right down to the intuitive knowledge. Someone teased that I should be looking for an Hasidim forum lol, perhaps so, but they deny Jesus and I would be immediately shunned.

Yeah, this is only natural. Every organized religion wants to differentiate itself from all the others and to define itself by denying other teachings perceived as threats. And in the process, the effort to combat heresies and other religions leads to certain emphases on certain teachings which end up by building a whole conception about God and man that probably wouldn’t have developed as such if the people who theorized it hadn’t been so preoccupied with combating other theories. You’ll see people who say that we don’t worship the same God as them. The story of Genesis and the concept of Original Sin are no exceptions to this process.

An Orthodox perspective:
pemptousia.com/2011/11/original-sin-orthodox-doctrine-or-heresy/

A Jewish perspective:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=10811524&postcount=14
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=11036891&postcount=36
forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=10814923&postcount=6

 

[vames]

I had a dreadful thought last night: suppose THIS (what we are doing here) is the “sin”? Suppose Homo Sapiens began to attempt to “understand” God and, in doing so, divided itself from Him because it interrupted the free flow of communication? Hmmmmm. :bigyikes:

We are doing this in good faith, I think
My oncle had a prayer book which was given to him by his priest when he was a child, in the '50s. On the blank page there was a pressed edelweiss and a drawing of two triangles, one inside of the other, with a short explanation - quoted from my memory: “This (the smaller triangle) cannot comprehend/include/encompass that (the larger triangle)”, suggesting that our mind can’t fully comprehend God. “But your motto should be like this: Altius! Altius! = higher, to the heights, like the edelweiss lives on the highest mountains], until you will reach eternal happiness.”
No contradiction here: man has the duty to know and follow God, as far as it is possible, as the Epistle of Peter tells us: “But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ”. God gave each of us brains to make the best use of them, not to shut them out. Indeed, looking at the extremes, to say that we can fully understand God is pride and to say that we can’t understand God at all is despair. But Jesus wasn’t angry with Thomas the Doubter, because He knew how painful it is for humans to have such a limited knowledge about God and about themselves. He just tells us: “Seek and you will find”. The distance between Creator and creatures, God and man was huge from the beginning and it wasn’t created as such by man, so why would God want to punish man for something that wasn’t created by him?