Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Fooloso4]

Felix:

As I said earlier, it's clear to me that "eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil" denotes a change in consciousness rather than just a change in lifestyle as Fooloso4 has suggested.

I have suggested nothing of the sort. It has nothing to do with a “lifestyle”. Of course there is a change in consciousness. How could having their eyes opened not be a change in consciousness?

Before eating this fruit, Adam and Eve's consciousness was united with God's, but after they ate the fruit, He could not find them or know what was on their minds.

There is no textual support for the claim that their consciousness was united with God’s. There is no term in the Hebrew Bible that is the equivalent of consciousness. It is an anachronistic concept. If their consciousness had been united then God would have known exactly what was going on. He would have know that Eve had spoken to the serpent and that she had been seduced into eating. He would have known that she gave Adam the fruit to eat. God’s questions were not the result his not knowing where they were hiding or what had happened. His questions are a challenge. We still speak this way when reprimanding a child or dog. We know what they did and scold them by asking: “what did you do?”. See God’s questioning Cain regarding his brother Abel. He knows what Cain did:

The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! (4:10)

but asks him:

Where is Abel your brother?
What have you done?

I think you are right to the extent that the relationship between Man and God changed. They are no longer dependent upon him and must learn how to be independent. To say it is a change in lifestyle trivializes it. As if the fundamental change to their lives was a matter of changing their “style”.

[Whitedragon]

fooloso4 said,

Probably not much. I do not see how this relates to the story.

It relates to the story, because Adam and Eve would not have had the knowledge of good and evil, had they not eaten from it. As stated, wisdom accompanies worry and sorrow. There does seem to be two kinds of wisdom, one of obedience and one, (in this case), of good and evil. From the Genesis story itself we cannot make distinction between knowledge and knowledge of good and evil, but it certainly seems there is an option to interpret it in that way.

From some sources, we gather that evil had a nebulous existence and did not exist in the minds of humans before the fall. It is the mixing of good and evil that plays a role to create humankind’s downfall.

-- Updated December 24th, 2016, 7:00 am to add the following --

Before sharing anything personal, do you agree that science cannot prove telekinesis or the existence of ghosts? If not, why can you make the allowance for it to exist in your paradigm of beliefs, but leave no possibilities for the existence of the Lord?

This can be a good point, if we refine it just a bit.

It does seem credible to suggest that there may very well be things going on over our heads that we can't really grasp, given that every other species on Earth is in this same position. To the degree that is your point, if it is, then I think you're on to something I could be open to.

It seems far less credible for any of us to suggest that we understand the details of such things that may be going on over our heads, for example, a god's policy on homosexuality. This is the point where religious ideologues typically lose credibility with those not already part of their ideology.

Strange that you should bring up homosexuality; yes, there is many things going on over our heads, but homosexuality is not one of them, neither is sex in general. As said once before, sin, right and wrong are terms that came into being for practical reasons. Sin is nothing, if not practical based, since it addresses practical matters. Churches have trouble keeping up, because they do not understand where these things came from or why. Since the invention of condoms and birth control, sex is safer, but still leaves us with social and psychological challenges. Without understanding why the concept of sin exists, we cannot apply it successfully in our lives and endangers the credibility of those who employ, claiming to understand it. In short, humanity is confused.

-- Updated December 24th, 2016, 7:11 am to add the following --

Dclements, you say there are some good in the Bible and call the rest clutter, but you should know that not all is instruction, but rather literature of mistakes of others from which we can learn lessons.

[Ormond]

There is no textual support for the claim that their consciousness was united with God’s.

Perhaps not, but there is ample support for the proposition that the earliest humans lived in a deep intimate psychic bond relationship with nature, just as the wildlife they emerged from do.

My wife has rehabbed and released about 1,000 orphaned baby squirrels. When it comes time to release them the juvenile teenage squirrels ALWAYS leave the safety of the warm, dry, well stocked release cage with a comfy nestbox filled with clean linens to go sleep out in the rain, work for their food, and face the dangers of predation. They aren't old enough for sex yet, so that's not the reason.

If they stayed in the release cage they'd live about ten years, in the squirrel equivalent of a five star hotel. In the wild they live a year or two, and have to struggle daily to survive. Their choice makes no sense, unless we factor in the deep psychic bond with nature.

Imho, that deep psychic bond with nature was undermined for us as thought became more dominant in the human experience. The symbolic realm became increasingly distracting as it overtook human psychology. This isn't a theory, you can see it yourself just by carefully observing the experience of being "lost in thought" which dominates our daily lives.

As thought emerged and became more dominant, the previous experience of unity was divided in to "nature" and "me". Nature was given a human form in the concept of God, because personalizing the relationship makes it easier to rebond. The urge arose to "get back to God" ie. recover the lost unity with nature, and we call this process religion.

At it's heart religion is not really about ideological assertions. Those assertions are just a means to the end of re-establishing the lost psychological bond with Nature/God. Thus, all conversations which focus exclusively on the assertions wind up being an essentially shallow enterprise. The experience is what matters, not what we say about it.

None of the above is a commentary on whether something like a God actually exists or not. I see that question as being largely irrelevant, and certainly beyond my tiny human ability to resolve.

[Whitedragon]

Ormond said,

To be fair to the outnumbered Whitedragon

Thanks for the assist.

In conversation, why do you think, or, does it also bother you that some philosophers say nothing can exist outside of our horizon?

[Ormond]

In conversation.... does it also bother you that some philosophers say nothing can exist outside of our horizon?

I see that kind of view as having the same source as the religious view. As humans we typically have a strong bias for wanting to feel we know what's going on, because knowing what's going on makes us feel safer. This is after all how humans survive, by knowing things.

I see the God debate as a conversation between two groups, each with a need to feel they know what the big picture is. Each group wants to feel that they understand the basic rule book of reality and are just filling in the details. One group turns to the religious clergy, another group turns to the science clergy, but both groups share a need for clergy, for authority figures who can present the image of knowing what's going on, of being in charge, of leading us to utopia, we're in good hands etc.

The harder and louder each side of the God debate argues it's position, the more they are alike, the more they are sharing the experience of strongly needing to know. The great divide between these two groups is mostly an illusion.

Standing aside from this dance are the Fundamentalist Agnostics, who worship the fact that we don't know the answers and probably don't even know the right questions, who see in our ignorance the answer we are really looking for.

[ChanceIsChange]

Many people, and they are increasing in both numbers and in percentage of the population in North America, believe that a god does not exist. They can't all be wrong.

Most people (at least) in the growing Stone Age population believed that the Earth is flat. Since they were in the majority and can't all have been wrong, the Earth must be flat.

[Fooloso4]

Whitedragon:

As stated, wisdom accompanies worry and sorrow.

According to the story it is the other way around.

There does seem to be two kinds of wisdom, one of obedience and one, (in this case), of good and evil.

Obedience is not the whole of wisdom, only the beginning:

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom (Proverbs 9:10)

This is not a separate kind of wisdom. It is what sets us on the right path.

From the Genesis story itself we cannot make distinction between knowledge and knowledge of good and evil, but it certainly seems there is an option to interpret it in that way.

Right, but it gets back to the problem of what we seek from an interpretation. If the story does not make the distinction does that mean that when we interpret it that way we are changing the meaning? The story itself seems to address the problem of interpretation. Compare what God tells Adam to what Eve tells the serpent God said. This may have had more to do with the change from an oral to a written tradition, but there is still the problem of what is said versus what is understood.

From some sources, we gather that evil had a nebulous existence and did not exist in the minds of humans before the fall. It is the mixing of good and evil that plays a role to create humankind’s downfall.

I do not know what sources you have in mind, but this sounds as if it might be reifying evil, as if it was an entity. In any case, we know from the story that Eve saw that the tree was good for food. We also know that God warned them if they ate they would die. And so they must have already had the ability to distinguish between good and evil, however poorly.

Ormond:

Perhaps not, but there is ample support for the proposition that the earliest humans lived in a deep intimate psychic bond relationship with nature, just as the wildlife they emerged from do.

I agree. And this is one reason why knowledge is double edged. There is something gained and something lost. Agriculture was a major change to the way we live and relate to our environment. I pointed out that Cain built a city because this was another change to the way we live and relate to our environment. Our environment has increasingly become a made-made environment.

The urge arose to "get back to God" ie. recover the lost unity with nature, and we call this process religion.

One problem with this theory is that Genesis makes a sharp distinction between God and nature. It is God who creates the world. It is God and not the sun and moon and stars that are the source of light. Man is to subdue the earth and rule its creatures.

There is an interesting story here about lost unity though - Adam’s lost unity when something is taken from him to make Eve. What was separated is now to be re-unified when they become “one flesh”. Plato tells a similar story in the Symposium of division and re-unity. No doubt the story is much older. It is the story of love and strife.

[Whitedragon]

To Fooloso4

At the risk of running in circles and deviating too far from the OP question, who would you say was in error, Adam and Eve, or the Lord?

[Fooloso4]

Whitedragon:

At the risk of running in circles and deviating too far from the OP question, who would you say was in error, Adam and Eve, or the Lord?

If you want to look at it in terms of error I would say they both were in error. Adam and Eve because they were seduced by desire and disobeyed, but God because a) he put a tree in the garden he did not want them to eat from, and b) he made man as a whole that he then had to destroy to make a suitable helpmate for him. Did God not know that they would be tempted to eat from the tree of knowledge? Why put something within their reach that would harm them? Did God not know that it was not good that man be alone until after he had made him? Did God not know that they would desire to “know” each other? If they had each been made whole as one flesh would there have been the desire to become one flesh?

[Whitedragon]

Whitedragon:

At the risk of running in circles and deviating too far from the OP question, who would you say was in error, Adam and Eve, or the Lord?

If you want to look at it in terms of error I would say they both were in error. Adam and Eve because they were seduced by desire and disobeyed, but God because a) he put a tree in the garden he did not want them to eat from, and b) he made man as a whole that he then had to destroy to make a suitable helpmate for him. Did God not know that they would be tempted to eat from the tree of knowledge? Why put something within their reach that would harm them? Did God not know that it was not good that man be alone until after he had made him? Did God not know that they would desire to “know” each other? If they had each been made whole as one flesh would there have been the desire to become one flesh?

Being omniscient does not mean one can act on a future, which has not yet come to pass. Creating humankind, the Lord already knew there was disobedience and rebellion in them, but he could not deny them paradise, solely on what he knows. Moreover, the future is not set in stone. He had to have a documented history to base his judgement on. Therefore, if anything, he still gave them a fair chance, but not putting the tree there would mean he would allow them to live with the seed of disobedience, dormant, but ready to spring forth at a time, which might have been more inconvenient and with far worse ramifications.

[Fooloso4]

Whitedragon:

… not putting the tree there would mean he would allow them to live with the seed of disobedience, dormant, but ready to spring forth at a time, which might have been more inconvenient and with far worse ramifications.

But we are not told of anything else that might have tempted them that was forbidden to them, and they were given no other orders that could have been disobeyed.

If, as you say:

Being omniscient does not mean one can act on a future, which has not yet come to pass.

Then God could not have put the tree there in order to avoid some future possible event which might have been more inconvenient and with far worse ramifications.

You did not address the second “error” God made by making man complete but alone. Why not either make his help-mate from the start? Or, having realized his error, why destroy his wholeness to make her instead of making her whole?

There are two other errors to be considered. The first is why God made human beings prone to disobedience and rebellion? The standard answer is to appeal to free will. But that begs the question. Why make man with free will? But there is a more basic error that comes out in Genesis 6:6:

The LORD regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.

So, if we are to look at this in terms of "error", the error was in making man.

[Sy Borg]

Creating humankind, the Lord already knew there was disobedience and rebellion in them, but he could not deny them paradise, solely on what he knows.

It seems rather unfair to be deliberately designed to have "disobedience and rebellion" within us and then be punished or sent to oblivion after death for acting in accordance our nature.

Then again, believers always give God a get out of jail free card. Frail little struggling humans are judged and damned for the tiniest of errors while the (near) omnipotent and omniscient creator can get way with absolutely anything, no matter how awful. In that sense God reminds me of fossil fuel billionaires, who control so much of our standard and style of living and create ever more problems for ever more people, but those problems are always blamed on others, or on nature.

When problems with the purported Iron Age Abrahamic deity are pointed out, suddenly we find that God isn't very powerful after all - "the morality of the gaps". As it turns out, most people seem to worship a god who is actually just a really big nonmaterial guy who creates living stuff to be tortured and killed, and occasionally, be lucky. It reminds me of the way humans treat pigs - a very few lucky ones are pets, valued and treated well, but the rest are chattel.

[Whitedragon]

To fooloso4, in other texts outside the Bible, we read of Lilith, who was complete, but turned out to be evil. Taking from man to create Eve did not mean Eve was incomplete or Adam lost anything. Lilith was vastly different from Adam and by taking from Adam; it would mean personal and intimate connection between the two.

To Greta, we were not designed to be disobedient, as an evolutionist you should be able to appreciate that.

[Dclements]

To be fair to the outnumbered Whitedragon, I'll attempt a challenge to your case.

Why it is easier for me to believe in ghosts and the possibility of very weak telekinesis/PK energy is that I have seen phenomenon that suggest it is possible of either of them to exist where the evidence for 'God' is incredibly lacking.

To me, it seems more precise to say that while proof is surely lacking, evidence is not. First, every species on the planet is unaware of what is going on over it's head, so it seems reasonable to propose we may be in the same situation. Second, billions of people report experience of God. Their reports are not proof, but to dismiss billions of people out of hand doesn't seem very objective. Third, evolution suggests a movement of matter and lower life forms towards complexity, intelligence, and power. Again, not proof, but not a lack of evidence either.

Your argument is both appeal to popularity and an appeal to authority fallacy; just because a fly sees a lot of other flies hanging out on some fly paper doesn't mean it is a good idea for it to land there. There also was a time when people thought the world was flat, but that didn't turn out to be true either. I could go on but I think it is safe to safe that there have often things that have been believed to by most people at certain times in history that turned out to be not true.

There is also plenty of events where people report experiences of seeing UFOs, being abducted, or encounters with something they think is a supernatural being, but nothing has been recorded to proof most of it; even if the number of reports suggest that there is some kind of phenomenon(even if it is almost all human caused) behind it. However reports with 'zero' physical proof is difficult at best not to be debunked by skeptics. As far as I know there is 'zero' proof that there is an actual 'God' (even though there has been endless attempts to find it) and when every time we try to 'peek behind the curtain' at how 'God' does something we find impersonal natural processes causing whatever magical thing that 'God' is supposed to be doing for us.

On top of that most of what is taught by Abrahamic religions is in complete opposition to what the word of 'God' should be; making mainstream religion more heresy/unholy than anything 'divine'/'holy'. The bible may contain some truth here and there, but it is buried in so much rubbish that it is hardly worth the effort.

I agree there is a lot of rubbish inserted by clerics over the centuries, but for instance, the core teachings of the New Testament seem very much worth considering. "Die to be reborn" is very profound advice which shows deep insight in to the human condition.

Yeah it would be great for an all powerful 'God 'to resurrect one of his puppets/avatars after it was killed but leave the rest of us to die and rot. If 'God' created several billion of these avatars and then let them die it would change anything since they where only puppets to being with and not independent human beings that could sacrifice themselves and die as we mortals do. Also the story was most likely borrowed/stolen from pagan religions, which tell of the same thing happening to their sun god(s). It would be nice if we could extend our lives beyond what we currently can do, but giving money to indifferent churches and praying to an indifferent or non-existent 'God' is highly unlikely to solve anything other than creating a placebo for our egos.

Of course it would be silly for people to worship or have reverence for some kind of collective conscience when it is easier to worship a cartoon of some old guy in the sky watching over us and a collective conscience can only show people a way to be 'good' or how to do what must be done instead of any kind of salvation, heaven, and eternal life; but I guess that kind of sums it up.

Except that the "old guy cartoon" story has lasted for at least 3,000 years and has deeply affected the lives of billions of people, whereas relatively few would have any idea what is meant by "collective consciousness" if they cared enough to even ask the question. Again, this is not proof of Abrahamic religion, but the incredible social success of this world view can not be dismissed casually. The most influential person in the history of Western culture is an obscure Palestinian carpenter with a three year career. Sounds pretty close to a miracle to me.

That is even if Jesus ever existed in the first place. A lot of history is fabricated and a story of a guy that could walk on water and can pretty much perform any other miracle at the drop of a hat sounds to me too fantastical to be true. As far as I can tell, the story of Jesus was created piecemeal from various stories of other people and interwoven along other mythical ideas and figures; in order to create the 'messiah' everyone was waiting for if nobody really fitting such a description could be found.

The fact that the church had as almost as efficient propaganda/advertising as Madison avenue (or perhaps even better) before Madison avenue even existed just speaks of their ability to win hearts and minds to their beliefs; but effective propaganda itself doesn't make it actually true.

There also exists the problem of there not being any 'collective conscience' at all, however I think science has reversed engineered some of how it works for us to accept it works on some level, It is also interesting to note there is hardly any difference at all between the phenomenon in the West where people claim to 'talk' or be 'touched by God' and Eastern Dharmic/Buddhist claims of what they experience when they become 'enlightened'.

An argument which validates the Abrahamic tradition more than it debunks it.

I don't see how the possibility of a collective conscience and/or the Buddhist experiences with 'enlightenment' in any way help to prove the existence of 'God'. Such things paint a very different picture of things from what official church doctrine claims.

At any rate, from what I know there is little that can be done to prove the pie in the sky 'God' that some fools keep believing in can be proven to exist without us also being 'Gods' ourselves; because only some being that as omniscient and nearly as omnipotent as 'God' can prove that either himself or someone other than himself is 'God'.

This is based upon an assumption that human reasoning is relevant to subjects as large as gods, a highly speculative assertion which is much easier to defeat than prove.

There also is the problem of what makes 'God' actually 'God', other than him being the creator and/or unmoved mover, if there happens to be more beings that omniscient and omnipotent beings than just 'God'. And even if 'God' happens to be both the creator and/or unmoved mover (on top of being omniscient and omnipotent), it isn't a given that those properties make him actually 'God'.

Same error as above.

Right, only people that talk about 'God' existing can be an 'authority' and knowledgeable about such matters, but anyone questioning such doctrine must be too ignorant to know what they are talking about. This isn't that different as those who expect others to do as they say but not as they do.

In a nutshell, I'd rather just stick to what I know through or about collective conscience, Dharmic teachings, and work from Søren Kierkegaard, than have to bother with some candy coated 'God' that is supposedly watching me from the sky or wherever else he might be.

Ok, this is a personal choice which everyone is entitled to. I'm not debating your personal choice, only any claim that such a choice can credibly speak to the largest of issues in a universal manner.

The only problem with my 'credibility' when compared to any theists is that I choose not to believe while they do. Also I should note that attacking my credibility/character and not my argument is merely an ad hominem fallacy.

I've studying and dwelled on the matter far longer than most other people, and much longer than I probably should have. You can claim my opinion is just my opinion, but the problem with that it is true of every other person including all theist. It may be just my belief but I think if I'm not knowledgeable to talk about such matters, then it is very unlikely that there any theist that are knowledgeable enough to have any authority to talk about such matters either.

[Whitedragon]

dclements said,

That is even if Jesus ever existed in the first place. A lot of history is fabricated and a story of a guy that could walk on water and can pretty much perform any other miracle at the drop of a hat sounds to me too fantastical to be true. As far as I can tell, the story of Jesus was created piecemeal from various stories of other people and interwoven along other mythical ideas and figures; in order to create the 'messiah' everyone was waiting for if nobody really fitting such a description could be found.

It is not uncommon to set a prominent historical figure in a model of older narratives