Do Christians value their moral sense?

[Greatest I am]

Do Christians value their moral sense?

 

Was Eden, the fall or the elevation of mankind?

 

A moral sense is what is developed by our study of morals and ethics.

 

In Eden, this study came in the form of a tree of knowledge of good and evil.

 

Adam and Eve, as neophytes to life, were not aware of what was good or evil because they had yet to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and had yet to develop morals, until after absorbing the information set out by God for their consumption.

 

This assumes of course that God wanted man with autonomy and a moral sense.

 

This gain is clearly spoken of by God when he stated that A & E had become as God’s, knowing good and evil. The fact that he threw a sissy fit when we did elevate ourselves is why Christians call Eden the fall of man.

 

I find it strange that Christians see our gaining of a moral sense as a fall. Christians do not seem to give a high value to their moral sense and think that we were in Eden strictly to obey and not learn that we are autonomous beings.

 

Yet strangely, most Christians say that they would do exactly as Eve did and that they would not stop her. They value it yet call it a fall.

 

The Jews and Hebrew interpreted their scriptures as Eden being our elevation. Not our fall. They were quite surprised when Christianity began to read scriptures literally, even the Jewish ones, that the Jews never took literally.

 

Did Christianity get the story wrong?

 

Was Eden our elevation and not our fall?

 

Do you value your moral sense or would you stop Eve if you could?

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0kdxgJB9is

 

http://www.mrrena.com/misc/judaism2.php

 

 

[lemur]

God tried to warn them but it didn't work because they didn't know the difference between good and evil. If they would have known the difference, Eve would have known the serpent was lying and Adam would have known that Eve was giving him a bad apple. Moral sense is an asset insofar as it helps you make better choices but it is a mixed blessing because it always comes with some failure that you couldn't foresee. So you can always get through a trauma by being glad that you learned your lesson, but it was still a trauma. Maybe it would be clearer to think of the term, "fall," in the literal sense of a baby learning to stand and walk by trying and falling down. Every time the child falls, they learn not to make that mistake again, but that doesn't mean s/he's looking forward to the next fall either.

[Marat]

This is like that old saw of philosophy classes: Is it better to be a happy pig or a miserable Socrates? Eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a fall in the sense of entering a more sophisticated type of existence where one's moral status is at stake, as opposed to persisting in a minimally conscious barely self-aware, animalistic state. But it is also an improvement since one becomes a more important type of entity, able to make significant moral choices, though having to face the consequences. I think almost everyone would recognize the more sophisticated state as a better option, and the fact that God punishes people for choosing the better option reflects poorly on his own sense of value.

 

Another way to concretize this option is to imagine a world where nearly the whole human population could be permanently hooked up to a device which constantly stimulated the pleasure center of everyone's brain, so we would all be perpetually and deliriously happy. Only a tiny subset of the population would be exempted from this state and assigned to maintain the pleasure-inducing machinery. The price for living in such a world, however, would be that no one would every write a Beethoven symphony again; there would never be another Kant or Einstein; and we would all just be happy pigs. On the other hand, the enormous misery and terror of life would also be avoided. If you love Beethoven's music and you've worked in a cancer ward, this question never goes away, but you are increasingly inclined to answer it in favor of the happy pig option.

[Greatest I am]

God tried to warn them but it didn't work because they didn't know the difference between good and evil.

 

True but they did not die did they?

In fact, depending on how you look at God preventing them from eating of the tree of life, it can be seen as more of a murder.

 

If they would have known the difference, Eve would have known the serpent was lying and Adam would have known that Eve was giving him a bad apple. Moral sense is an asset insofar as it helps you make better choices but it is a mixed blessing because it always comes with some failure that you couldn't foresee. So you can always get through a trauma by being glad that you learned your lesson, but it was still a trauma. Maybe it would be clearer to think of the term, "fall," in the literal sense of a baby learning to stand and walk by trying and falling down. Every time the child falls, they learn not to make that mistake again, but that doesn't mean s/he's looking forward to the next fall either.

 

A good analogy but in the case of the Bible, when we fell, God added on the obstacles for us to fall over. That is the insane part.

 

Further, I see man gaining the moral sense that comes with the knowledge of good and evil as a blessing without the failure that you indicate.

 

It is not a failure or defect in ignoring a command to remain as dumb as a common animal. What you see as a bad apple, I see as a perfect apple.

 

Regards

 

DL

 

 

 

This is like that old saw of philosophy classes: Is it better to be a happy pig or a miserable Socrates? Eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a fall in the sense of entering a more sophisticated type of existence where one's moral status is at stake, as opposed to persisting in a minimally conscious barely self-aware, animalistic state. But it is also an improvement since one becomes a more important type of entity, able to make significant moral choices, though having to face the consequences. I think almost everyone would recognize the more sophisticated state as a better option, and the fact that God punishes people for choosing the better option reflects poorly on his own sense of value.

 

Another way to concretize this option is to imagine a world where nearly the whole human population could be permanently hooked up to a device which constantly stimulated the pleasure center of everyone's brain, so we would all be perpetually and deliriously happy. Only a tiny subset of the population would be exempted from this state and assigned to maintain the pleasure-inducing machinery. The price for living in such a world, however, would be that no one would every write a Beethoven symphony again; there would never be another Kant or Einstein; and we would all just be happy pigs. On the other hand, the enormous misery and terror of life would also be avoided. If you love Beethoven's music and you've worked in a cancer ward, this question never goes away, but you are increasingly inclined to answer it in favor of the happy pig option.

 

 

If we were to embrace your idea that to grow up is a fall, I wonder what the world would look like if we all tried to keep our children from growing up.

 

Yuk.

 

Regards

 

DL

 

 

[lemur]

True but they did not die did they?

In fact, depending on how you look at God preventing them from eating of the tree of life, it can be seen as more of a murder.

You seem obsessed with taking sides with the serpent against God. That's irrelevant to the point of the story, which is the irony that you have to know consequences through experience to make wise choices. You could look at it this way; if you would make a choice that does cause you to die, only those who survived you could gain wisdom from your experiment with that choice. In that sense it is logical that the curse for taking the tree fruit was to have to eat from the plants of the field, i.e. because if you survived watching others die from eating tree fruit, you would avoid it. Maybe the story really refers to the way superstition works in general. I.e. you see someone walk under a ladder and have bad-luck or whatever and then you start avoiding it and telling others that it is bad luck to walk under a ladder.

It is not a failure or defect in ignoring a command to remain as dumb as a common animal. What you see as a bad apple, I see as a perfect apple.

I think you're too caught up in the status/ego of being good or bad, perfect or imperfect. The issue isn't judging people's worth or the value of morality. Morality isn't a beauty contest. It's just beneficial to gain the wisdom to make good choices, but it's a mixed blessing because to know the consequences of bad choices, you have to know them which means someone known to you must have suffered the consequences of making them.

 

If we were to embrace your idea that to grow up is a fall, I wonder what the world would look like if we all tried to keep our children from growing up.

Maybe, but you can also ask what the world would look like if every child would get themselves killed with bad choices.

 

 

[Greatest I am]

You seem obsessed with taking sides with the serpent against God. That's irrelevant to the point of the story, which is the irony that you have to know consequences through experience to make wise choices. You could look at it this way; if you would make a choice that does cause you to die, only those who survived you could gain wisdom from your experiment with that choice. In that sense it is logical that the curse for taking the tree fruit was to have to eat from the plants of the field, i.e. because if you survived watching others die from eating tree fruit, you would avoid it. Maybe the story really refers to the way superstition works in general. I.e. you see someone walk under a ladder and have bad-luck or whatever and then you start avoiding it and telling others that it is bad luck to walk under a ladder.

I think you're too caught up in the status/ego of being good or bad, perfect or imperfect. The issue isn't judging people's worth or the value of morality. Morality isn't a beauty contest. It's just beneficial to gain the wisdom to make good choices, but it's a mixed blessing because to know the consequences of bad choices, you have to know them which means someone known to you must have suffered the consequences of making them.

 

 

Maybe, but you can also ask what the world would look like if every child would get themselves killed with bad choices.

 

 

 

 

Why not side with the talking snake?

 

It, as well as A & E are victims of Christians not reading Genesis the way the authors intended. They turned a successful rite of passage story into a fall.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XnnKA4o2Ao

 

Regards

 

DL

 

 

[lemur]

Why not side with the talking snake?

 

It, as well as A & E are victims of Christians not reading Genesis the way the authors intended. They turned a successful rite of passage story into a fall.

 

Because it's just a story and siding with the snake makes you a satanist. There is no difference between siding with a repressive image of God as with opposing a (false image) of a repressive God. Both will lead you into complicity in your own self-repression by the belief that repression is a fact that you should fight against. Succumbing to the temptation to fight and tempting/provoking others to fight is the stuff of satanism and generally evil, or just call it mean if you don't like dramatic language. If you want to interpret these stories and critique their validity, that I understand. I don't get why you would want to pick a fight with God and people who take sides with goodness by taking sides with the snake and trying to drag people into deceit, conflict, etc. If you want to praise the snake for being an angelic instrument in the enlightenment of A&E, why don't you just say that instead of making it into a fight with Christians who also acknowledge the misfortune of losing the garden of Eden?