Genesis

In Genesis, God intends to create a perfect paradise. However, the world he created doesn't seem to be that perfect. He doesn't allow Adam and Eve to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then why he creates that tree in Eden. Also, if he thinks that his world is perfect, then how can he allow the evil snake to appear? Isn't it so contradictive? Don't you think he never created a perfect world?

Or...
Maybe the idea of paradise comes from a common sense of human longing and idealism. And that combined with the nature of dualism: in that we cannot experience one thing without its counterpart. Good versus evil and so forth.

And so perhaps the idea of paradise becomes linked with the notion of guilt (and sin), and this rather conveniently becomes a means with which to manipulate the unruly masses.

Rather like our current idea of a global paradise today, being a place of wholesome natural beauty with clean air and plenty of good dry land which exists in service to Humanity. And now we have the guilt part: YOUHAVE ALL RUINED IT with your use of motorcars, and appliances etc, which have 'caused' global warming. And so now should we wait to be punished? or 'turned out from the Garden of Eden'?

Or are we perhaps once more being manipulated in a 'time-honoured' and very old fashioned way?

i think he never created a perfect world to begin with.

in fact he never said it was perfect. just certan aspects of it look good
" like God made light" and then said " God saw the light and said it was Good"

and why should he make a world that was good? what fun do you have if every thing just obeys ever single thing you say.
so he didnt demand loyalty he wanted to see if man could love and obey him without somebody having to prompt him like a slave and whip him into shape. so he put the tree to see if man could hold his own (guess not). the snake i dont know what to say about the snake. other than it needs a beat down

I think someone made "Genesis" up and that it has nothing to do with anything.

And if god is testing people, he's probably testing their bullshit detectors, which don't seem to work too well.

quote:

---

I think someone made "Genesis" up and that it has nothing to do with anything.

And if god is testing people, he's probably testing their bullshit detectors, which dont seem to work too well.

---

Leftwood, please forgive me for absolutely adoring virtually everything you have to say...but I do. You are everything (and more) that anyone could want Spider Man to be..

quote:

---

the snake i don't know what to say about the snake.

---

Now I begin to think I actually like the snake! After all the snake serves to expand their consciousness by tempting a bite from the tree of knowledge. Three cheers to Eve for being bold enough to do so, and for releasing them both from a life of obedient ignorance!

Maqbe God did want to test Adam and Eve but he actually was testing which one would use their free will (which he gave them to set them aside from the Angels). Perhaps he was actually secretly pleased that Eve was brave enough and intelligent and curious enough to want more than a life of the same old boring bliss day after day in Eden. Maybe she wanted to have more of God's knowledge so she could talk to God because Adam was so boring and didn't want to enjoy more out of God's glorious garden paradise. If life was so perfect why was it lacking in the enlightenment departement?

If I was in the Garden of Eden I think I'd probably eat from the tree of knowledge (after a couple years of R&R of course). Paradise gets old. I'm sure at some point I'd long for an adventure or a challenge and set fire to the cradle God so lovingly built for me. If this world wasn't constantly changing, people would get bored and kill themselves. End of story.

Of course it was perfect, till the snake (man) screwed it up out of arrogance matched only by ignorance.

Who is to say that "perfection" means all good? Maybe we as humans have idealized the very ideal of perfection. It could very well be that the idea of perfection is actually a delicate balance between what is good (God's presence in the Garden of Eden, man, and woman) and what is "evil" (the snake and the fruit). Perhaps Eden was not a land of complete good but rather a place of "yin-yang" balance. What set off the balance? Was it the good (man and woman) partaking in what was supposedly bad? Or is anti-conformity the thing that throws off balance? And if the latter is true, perhaps the world has gone into a different kind of perfection: a perfection of individuality.

That is a very profound post for a 15 year old.