/lit/ - Literature

>>6524143
DUDE APPLE LMAO

oh jeez

>>6524149
>>6524157
If you don't care about the subject you may as well refrain from comments. But by all means, thank you for the bumps.

>>6524143

for me, the whole Idea of the Fall and original sin looks.. 'oppressive'. why should I be crushed by guilt of original sin if I haven't done anything??

my general view is that we are somehow trapped in this material universe. and our mission is to find a knowledge about ourselves ('know thyself') that will liberate us from ignorance.

returning to the issue of the Fall -- I think it is a metaphor for a Fall from Unity. Original Man - Adam - was somehow 'androgynous', meaning his masculine and feminine parts were balanced.

>>6524143
'Original sin' and 'Fall of man' aren't present in the text, they're a later Christian reading. The serpent is probably a Canaanite symbol, and the tree of life has parallels in other Near Eastern mythology. If Eden was a blissful situation, it's clear that it always contained the seed of destruction, because the serpent was created along with the other animals.

Since it falls between an etiology for marriage and an etiology for childbirth, it makes sense to see the serpent and fruit narrative as an etiology for sexual maturity. It's also the first in a long line of cases of man turning away from God (the man and his wife refuse dialogue with God by hiding), and the inevitable consequences that follow.

>>6524228
The serpent is presented as a changeling that crept beyond Eden's Gates, tempting Adam and Eve.

It's an interesting thing; how the Serpent figure has over the time been associated with various archetypes. I think it all boils down to the position in regard to the nature of God as presented in the Abrahamic traditions. For fundamentalists, the Serpent is equivalent with The Deceiver; for others - a Saviour that cometh from beyond the Realm of the Blind God.

Genesis for the most part is retellings of polytheistic myths. The Creation myth was heavily influenced by the Enuma Elish, the story of Noah is a retelling of the Epic of Atrahasis and the story of the Garden of Eden also builts upon earlier versions from Mesopotamia.

So basically, the story of the Garden of Eden is monotheists trying to recast a polytheistic story as a monotheistic one. That's where most of the contradictions come from

The way I read it, expulsion from paradise was not the punishment for eating from the tree, but the consequence thereof. "Blisfull ignorance" might be a good albeit superficial term to describe the situation of humans in Eden. Paradise is a state of mind.

The snake can be read, as the other anon said, as a sexual metaphor, but I also think this is where mythological influence on genesis shows. The snake as a villain is a theme seen quite often in ancient mythology, because it was one of the very few animals that could have actually been dangerous to humans, so we are naturally afraid of it and its sneaky nature. Obviously genesis also serves as some kind of world-explaining text, describing why the snake has no legs.

>>6524227
>why should I be crushed by guilt of original sin if I haven't done anything??
Because your very existence causes suffering for others, and you simply can't help that. The "original sin" thing really is just a christian meatphor for basically that. "Humans can't live without sin." Christians obviously ran with it and read it as all kinds of stuff, leading in part to the repression of sexuality, etc.

>and our mission is to find a knowledge about ourselves ('know thyself') that will liberate us from ignorance.
Let me semi-quote Heinrich von Kleist's reading of Genesis as a response to this: "We have spent millenia trying to gain knowledge, only to eventually find out that all this knowledge gains us nothing, and the whole process should be reversed, even if that would just make the circle start all over again."
Basically, knowledge for knowledge's sake ain't all that great, since it seperates us from our natural state of innocence yadda yadda. Also God is dead, and we should have never found out. (Though Kleist obviously did not say that.)

>>6524285
>That's where most of the contradictions come from
For example? I am honestly curious.

Stay sneaky beaky, brother.

>>6524286
>Also God is dead, and we should have never found out.

He is dead as a 'cultural phenomenon'; meaning that now we're living in secular nation-states and no one is forced to believe etc. however it doesn't matter that your prayers won't be answered. Knock and you will be opened -- I really believe in this.

Otherwise, Creation, Creator and 'all this' would be a huge faggotory. and I don't think the most high is a faggot.

>>6524302
>however it doesn't mean

>>6524227
so she was a futa?

>>6524309
god is an anime

>>6524313
I hope G-d-senpai notices me! O////O

>>6524313
Does that mean he doesn't have a nose?

Christian here.

The key behind the Fall is the notion that man is not how he ought to be- that he is fundamentally incomplete in a basic sense, and that what would complete him is found in the God from whom he is estranged.

The prelapsarian world is presented as one of harmony- man, with nature, and with God. With the divine harmony "in the beginning," things come easy to man, and man is able to set to his tasks as man- to name things (i.e., appreciate and represent the world), to rule and subdue the earth and exercise his dominion for the good of all, to enjoy company with his sexual complement.

Prelapsarian man is free in very important senses: first, he is freed from external necessity, but acts only from his own nature, being made in the image of God as namer and king over the world. Second, he is free to do all that fulfils him, in highest degree: to love God without estrangement, to love his wife without shame or strife, to love creation and participate in it.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil represents the temptation to self-divinize- for man to find his fulfilment in his own strength in exploiting the world with himself as the end, rather than in right relation with God. That is, it represents the very illusions through which man forsakes loving obedience to his creator. He is given good notice that it leads to death, but of course they don't listen.

The liberation and godhood promised by the serpent is a lie- the lie that your freedom will be more complete exercised apart from the divine will, when it is the divine will which provides you with all that you are and could be. The serpent is an image of cunning. It is alien to man, just as sin is ultimately alien to human nature, yet it is a distorted image of genuine humanity: the power of rationalization rather than rationality, of sophistry as opposed to philosophy (which is a love of reality), of base as opposed to rightly-ordered desire.

When Adam and Eve fall for the serpent's sophistry, their folly is revealed to them: where they had thought they were self-sufficient, indeed they were dependent upon a grace they took for granted. Thus they are cast from a state of grace to make their own way in the world, subject ultimately to death, because life was found only in communion with God, by the grace of God, from which they have estranged themselves.

In the end, God gives the humans what they had chosen- independence (in a sense) from Him. Then they find that their own nature, considered only in itself and apart from grace, is a horror to them. They are confronted by the loss of harmony leading to relations of domination. They are confronted by the finitude of their strength in providing for themselves, and the vulnerability of their bodies to suffering even in the midst of flourishing (childbirth). All human beings inherit this condition: we are estranged from God and confined to the terms of our finite nature alone, and this is the source of all our unhappiness.

>>6524288

I think that in the Mesopotamian version, a king has to guard the tree of life, and that some of the themes of being tricked by a god came from the Epic of Gilgamesh

>>6524355
No, I mean the contradictions you were speaking of.

I always wonder how things would have turned out if Adam ate from the tree of life instead. Would we have become eternal madmen?

>>6524354
Great post, a good explanation for somone who does not really have an access to christian faith.

>>6524354
>man forsakes loving obedience to his creator
>They are confronted by the loss of harmony leading to relations of domination

it's like you people don't even pay attention to the psychotic shit you spew

>>6524416
It's like you don't even know the difference between loving obedience and subjection to mere domination. The former is found in the obedience of a child to their father, or a beloved to their lover. The latter has its basis in coercive power (though of course, in a fallen world, coercive power is necessary to secure what justice we can).

>>6524354

I'm gonna go ahead and take the stance of the sophist snake here, because I've been fascinated by the story of Genesis 3 for a long time and felt drawn to it.

If we are to believe that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was placed in the garden of Eden for eternity, and so have been Adam and Eve, wouldn't the logical conclusion that them disobeying the rules and eating of the fruit was just a question of time? Since, if you have a choice and an infinite amount of time, aren't you eventually just going to do it?

Did Adam and Eve truly posses the faculties to make that choice, given that before partaking of the fruit, they didn't even know they were naked? And where did the snake come from? If God created him, what was the reason for punishing him for his disobedient nature, with which he was created (much like Adam and Eve)?

>>6524228
>>6524268
thx lit for actual knowledge, i was really happy to read that
i dont want to dismiss the other opinions here, the former are just the way to think i prefer

so bump i guess

>>6524420
the fact you convince yourself there's a difference shows just how much this steamer of a narrative has seeped into your conscious.

The child to father i can let slide, though it's weird he had children but never wanted them to grow up, and punished them when they did.

the lover to lover one, pretty unhealthy basis for any relationship really

>>6524371
It is clearly stated that Adam and Eve had interdiction of eating from the Tree of Knowledge (of good and bad), but were continuously in contact with the Tree of Life. The fact that they were tempted by the Serpent to do so has consequently broken them off from the Tree of Life, making them mortals and Falling from Paradise.

>>6524143
I'm fucking sick of chapters 1 & 2.

>>6524292
...never out of signs from the Ineffable, I see. A joy, brother.

READ
GILGAMESH
Seriously better version of the same story

>The child to father i can let slide, though it's weird he had children but never wanted them to grow up, and punished them when they did.

To "grow up" doesn't mean to become a distinct atomic individual, as if it were wise to attempt to sustain one's own life and being in oneself. You've presupposed the serpent's view of maturity- that it is something to be seized in conflict with God, rather than grown into in harmony with God. To thus lift oneself up by one's own existential bootstraps, given who God is, is flatly impossible, since nothing, insofar as it exists, exists but for his power sustaining it in being. Rather than grow in wisdom in the manner that is good for them, Adam and Eve's disobedience rendered them existential orphans, forever stunted in ignorance and weakness.

But the point of the comparison is that a child doesn't obey his father because of coercion, but because that is what is conducive to his flourishing, and which emerges rightly out of his nature as a child. So it is with all legitimate authority- of lovers over each other, of fathers over children, of sovereigns over subjects and of God over men.

>the lover to lover one, pretty unhealthy basis for any relationship really

Obedience is not in itself the basis, but comes about precisely because of love. All love is like this, but it is easy to see in the subjection of a husband to the wishes of his family, or in a wife to those of her husband, or a friend to another. It is a strange and darkened world that you live in, where the choice is between an absurd individualistic atomism that holds the individual qua individual supreme, or else domination by purely coercive power.

>>6524143

I think the entire book is an allegory for how societies appear far too perfect but always have something rotten hidden beneath them once you get under the skin, for Eden that was the snake.

>>6524561
>>6524466

>gnosticism

>>6524434
You bring a very interesting point to the table.

A theory is that Adam and Eve, before the free-will infusion brought about by the Serpent, we're very much living alike plants in terms of conscience. Mostly representing some sort of social complex being; one with the Oversoul of YHWH. If you consider that the Abrahamic God is a Lesser one, a Sub-Logos, then the theory falls into place.

I find this to be a plausible explanation and argumentation of the Demiurgic nature of the Worshiped God because otherwise I cannot comprehend how God would allow for such novelty to appear in his Creation. Only if it was known by him and planned as such; which also infers some sort of personality in Him which is only a Sub-Aspect of his supposed Infinite, Allmighty encompassing nature.

You cannot harbor Pride and Vengefulness without a limited set of characteristics. This does not comply with the "Infinite" nature of the Ultimate God.

Another theory that falls into place is that "God" observed that his little Garden experiment is not sufficiently growing in terms of development; so he accepted the help of the Luciferic principle to introduce the Catalyst of Free Will into his Creation. He expected that his offspring would remain loyal; and when contradicted he wrathfully thrown them "down" in the harsh world.

>>6524434

>If we are to believe that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was placed in the garden of Eden for eternity, and so have been Adam and Eve, wouldn't the logical conclusion that them disobeying the rules and eating of the fruit was just a question of time

No, not really. We aren't given how things would have turned out if they had not eaten the fruit. Maybe eventually God would have lifted the prohibition on the fruit, when the time was right. We have no idea, since the point of the story is to illustrate in mythic form the roots of human alienation from the world, to situate man and God in the position in which we find ourselves now.

>Did Adam and Eve truly posses the faculties to make that choice, given that before partaking of the fruit, they didn't even know they were naked?

Sure, they were warned. They knew death was a bad thing but were still seduced by the promise of divinity.

>And where did the snake come from? If God created him, what was the reason for punishing him for his disobedient nature, with which he was created (much like Adam and Eve)?

I think this is a bit of an unnecessary question, since the story is a myth, and the interesting questions are about its meaning, rather than its strict logical consistency. Nevertheless, I think you do raise an interesting question about evil. Where does it come from?

I don't think it's possible that God create something with a disobedient nature in the strict sense, since all nature is what it is in obedience to His creative will. Yet disobedience is possible, not through the nature of the disobedient thing, but through the corruption of nature, which is not nature itself, but a lack in or deformity in nature. God allows such to happen because he foresees some good which will come of it, but this doesn't make it any less appropriate to render to the corrupt the fruit of their corruption.

Though the goods which God brings out of specific acts of evil can't easily be known, the one reason which can be known why God creates things, even things he knows will be evil, even the damned, is because he loves them, and love is fundamentally the will-that-the-beloved-be. He knows that these particular individuals will fail him, but he loves them so much that he judges their existence at all worth the failure.

>>6524590

what board is this from?

/x/?

>>6524605
it's pretty funny though.

Eve was the first schizophrenic and Lilith the first adulterer?

>>6524611
Could be. Lilith in some texts appears as the First Bride of Adam, but mated with Samael in the form of the Serpent and gave birth to Cain. Afterwards she was banished and God created Eve out of Adam - who gave birth to Abel and Seth subsequently.

>>6524611
Haven't read the bible but isn't Lilith non canon?
Or is she in some versions?

>>6524625
Non-canon. Apocrypha

>>6524143
The snake had legs at point in the story during which this drawing takes place.

>>6524634

So the snake was a wyvern or dragon?

>>6524561
so what in the scripture indicates that god was going to allow the growth of this intellectual and spiritual maturity while in the garden?

Furthermore, why, when we see god himself call mulligans, were adam and eve not allowed make mistakes in their growth to this god-like wisdom? An omniscient being would have surely seen his own mistakes on the horizon and accounted for an imperfect, naive being making similar errors in judgement.

This all leads through lame and repeated arguments, though it reaches a point I feel lies at the heart of my issue with religious ideology, the nature of the relationship with god itself.

If obedience is the true marker of love; not reciprocation, not altruism, not some ethereal and undefinable power; and if this marker is the preached and inarguable definition of ideal relations between one person and another; and if this idealised version of what one should give and receive to prove love has pervaded society, unchecked, for millennia, then we are doomed to be an empty and sad species indeed.

>>6524143
It is obviously a symbolic representation of how free will results in evil and how the world we live in is not and can never be utopic because it is imperfect and because humans have free will.
The serpent is a symbol of evil and how humans, as moral agents, can choose to violate moral laws and attempt to ignore reality, both of which lead to needless suffering.

>the description in the Bible
>apple

well i'm not posting in this shithouse thread

>>6524641
It was likely just a lizard.

>>6524227
'Original Sin' refers to the change in human nature reflected by the actions of Adam; his exercise of free will to commit an evil act simply means that all humans are likewise not just capable of evil but can tend towards it.

>>6524699
it was a poor joke. If you took the time to read through the comment, you would see that it doesn't take the subject superficially.

>>6524696
but this is it, isn't it?

If that's all it is. A philosophical allegory for why people be trippin, why do we still put so much stock in it?

>>6524228
The term 'Fall of Man' reflects a Jewish understanding of the text and is older than Christianity

>>6524605
yeah it's a /x/ meme

Snake=Satan
Duh

>>6524709
Because it is accurate. It is a very clear explanation of 'why bad things happen to good people'; a simple and concise answer to Theoficy, etc. about 90% of atheists' arguments against Christianity can be answered with 'just read Genesis 3 and *get a clue*'

>>6524354
You should write a blog about Christianity my dude.

the serpent is a seraphim,seraphim means flamming serpent they'e angels of the fith heaven of which satan(samael, gadreel, lucifer the serpent changes on the book) belongs. there are good and bad seraphim, be it the fallen angels or unfallen angels.

>>6524763
apostasy

>>6524765
theres a lot of meaning to the beggining of genisis. it's kabbalahistic, metaphysical, and cosmological importance can't be over looked by taking a strictly literal approach.

>>6524717
in no way is it a very clear explanation of why bad things happen to god people.

>lol, can't help it if you try

deserves no greater power over my rights, and no greater say over my life on a government level than

>lol, random chance

>>6524685
If we're looking at it from the Christian point of view, the answer to what the mature Man looks like is in Jesus, the Second Adam. He certainly was no naive child, but the pinnacle of spiritual and intellectual maturity in his humanity. More than any other, he understands the true gravity and price of evil, even though evil cannot touch him. Anything which Adam may have lacked in the prelapsarian innocence would, if the model of humanity Jesus provides is any indication, have been amply made up in the course of time.

God surely does account for the mistakes of his creations- he purposes to bring goods out of them which would not otherwise have existed, like the death and resurrection of Christ for our sake. But that neither excuses those who bring about the fall nor in itself renders possible the redemption of humanity, once it is estranged from God. The whole arc of Christianity, indeed, is the outworking of just what is necessary for redemption to happen, and for the course of humanity to be restored and made better. It turns out that the whole rigmarole of incarnation, death and resurrection is necessary, when all the data is in. The price of our disobedience is the death of God, the ultimate divine gesture of self-sacrificial love.

Obedience is not the "true marker" of love, but like everything else is redeemed in love, and as love is the supreme virtue from which all virtues are derived, obedience is an aspect of it. Love cannot, therefore, be reduced to obedience. The reason why disobedience is emphasized is because the temptation to self-divinization is strongest when it militates against obedience for the sake of pride, as you seem to demonstrate quite well. Obedience to God is, however, ultimately obedience to what we are. It is thus the only authentic freedom, for what God wills for us, as our loving creator, is what we truly are, rather than what we in our ignorance vainly imagine ourselves to be.

This doesn't mean that there is only one way to be, though certain virtues, like the love of God, are obligatory for all. Adam, if you remember, is in the beginning given freedom to name things as he sees fit, to exercise his own agency and rule in Creation, and so be the particular person he is, rather than a mere abstraction. But the particular is not at war with the universal in Adam, nor in Christ. Far from being a rootless, empty and bare particular, defined only in setting oneself against everything else, in Christ we see the unique pinnacle of love, both inescapably individual yet bound up in relation with that which it loves.

Empty indeed is the life of alienation we are otherwise doomed to lead- to fall short of the promise of our nature in death, and to war against the uttermost fount of our own strength in the meantime, chasing feeble facsimiles of true joy when beatitude is there for the receiving.

OP here. Thank you all for this great thread; did not expect to go as such.

I will return after a while. Looking forward to it.

>>6524787
>obedience to what we are

this is an interesting point. What are we? not in the philosophical sense. As you have indicated, it is an obedience to what the scriptures say we are, with room for interpretation.

If what we are is exemplified, as you say, by the ideal of jesus, and this is the goal we should ascribe to, as he is what god originally planned for adam, why then would an example have been sent well after the fact (original sin) rather then prior to, when we are dealing with an omniscient being?

Your rhetoric is nothing but massive, retroactive leaps of logic. You quote nothing from the scripture that indicates an overarching plan, just assumptions that 'because Y happens later in the scripture, it validates X happening earlier.'

So we reach my original point
>>6524416

>>6524787
>Empty indeed is the life of alienation we are otherwise doomed to lead- to fall short of the promise of our nature in death, and to war against the uttermost fount of our own strength in the meantime, chasing feeble facsimiles of true joy when beatitude is there for the receiving.

"If there be God - please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul," she wrote.

"How painful is this unknown pain - I have no Faith."

- Mother Teresa

Daily reminder that god doesn't exist and faith leads to an empty life still. Stop giving people false expectations.

>>6524143

>It was entirely Eve's fault that her and Adam got kicked from Eden

So would you say that women are more likely to commit evil deeds than men are?

>>6524883
The philosophical sense and the theological sense of man are really not ultimately different- different things about man can be discovered through either discipline, but it is the same nature which they illuminate. What we are is, on one hand, Aristotle's rational animal, but what it is to be a rational animal is to be made in the image of God, to be able to stand not just in a contemplative, but a personal relation with God- to know him, as it were, "face to face." Hence, as Jesus says, the greatest commandments are to love God, and love our neighbour. Of course that's not all that can be said, but that's the broad strokes.

>If what we are is exemplified, as you say, by the ideal of Jesus, and this is the goal we should ascribe to, as he is what god originally planned for Adam, why then would an example have been sent well after the fact (original sin) rather then prior to, when we are dealing with an omniscient being?

The Son incarnated when he did to die for us on the Cross and restore us to right relation with God. Who knows what he would have done otherwise, were such a radical act of redemption unnecessary? Second-guessing the omniscient is a pretty unfruitful thing to do.

>You quote nothing from the scripture that indicates an overarching plan, just assumptions that 'because Y happens later in the scripture, it validates X happening earlier.'

Firstly, I never make the argument that just because Y happens later, it validates X happening earlier. The Christian tradition does show that the later parts of Scripture help make sense of the earlier ones, if read as part of a theological progression culminating in Christ. If you don't read them that way, you won't see it, but then neither will your reading be the Christian reading, in which case we Christians will be happily be able to agree that the reading you derive from scripture does not (except insofar as it agrees with Christianity) correspond to fact.

Secondly, I was not trying to derive orthodox theology from the text, but showing that your objections are against straw men. In this, I think I have succeeded. I'm not too concerned with making detailed textual arguments to someone whose gripes with Christianity and uncharitable interpretations of Scripture are ideological and philosophical in nature.

>Daily reminder that god doesn't exist and faith leads to an empty life still. Stop giving people false expectations.

Some struggle with it more than others. Certainly, from the subjective view, life doesn't stop being tough for the Christian, and may indeed be tougher. Christianity doesn't promise that the vale of tears will, this side of death, become a bed of roses. On the contrary, it promises suffering and death. Objectively, however, the Christian's soul is safe in the hands of God, and as long as he loves Christ, he has eternal life and the friendship of the one true God, and will rise again to see the world to come.

>Some struggle with it more than others.

I see, it can't be the fault of a book, no, it's just the people reading it.

>Certainly, from the subjective view, life doesn't stop being tough for the Christian, and may indeed be tougher. Christianity doesn't promise that the vale of tears will, this side of death, become a bed of roses. On the contrary, it promises suffering and death.

No shit. You can't explain earthquakes and other horrible crap otherwise.

>Objectively, however, the Christian's soul is safe in the hands of God, and as long as he loves Christ, he has eternal life and the friendship of the one true God, and will rise again to see the world to come.

I sincerely hope those are just words you typed out for the sake of appearances, including to yourself.

>Genesis, Chapter 18
>God: I'm going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because they're bad.
>Abraham:What if I find there 45 good people?
>God: Then I won't destroy them.
>Abraham:What if I find there 40 good people?What then?
>God: Find 40 good people, and I won't destroy them.
>Abraham:What if I find there 35 good people?
>God: Fine, find 35 good people, and I won't destroy them.
>Abraham:What if I find there 30 good people?
>God: Alright, go find 30 good people, and I'll leave them alone.
>Abraham:What if I find there 25 good people?
>God: Ok, Ok. Find 25 good people, and I won't destroy them.
>Abraham:What if I find there 20 good people?
>God: 20 good people. OK. Find them and I won't destroy them.
>Abraham:What if I find there 15 good people?
>God: Find 15 good people and I won't destroy them.
>Abraham:What if I find there 10 good people?
>God: Alright, already! 10 good people and I won't destroy them.

>Abraham doesn't even go looking for them.

God is a moron for letting a talking snake into the garden of Eden.

>>6524143
Let's not.

>>6525080
>>6525141
>>6525170
>>6525184
You triggered these guys pretty hard OP

>>6524286

>>6525170
>he hasn't read Paradise Lost
>he doesn't understand basic theology
>he doesn't understand free will
>he shitposts about God on an Anime forum
oh boy

>>6525488
Not him, but is Paradise Lost worth reading for potential theological edification? Also, is Dante also worth it, or are these works to be read mostly as works of literature?

>>6525510
Milton was a protestant theologian, but if your main interest is in theology, you're better off reading his essays on theology rather than Paradise Lost. Both poems you should still read, though, as they're hallmarks of Western Canon, and they can introduce theological ideas while still being entertaining. I'd say they have some theological value, but don't read them just for that, otherwise you'll be missing out on a lot of cultural depth.

>>6525556
I worded that rather poorly. I want to read them already for the literary value; however, I had not thought that they could be read as theological works as well.

>>6525197
>Idiots BTFO
>We were only trolling

He is laughing at you right now. He loves watching Christians fail. You know who 'He' is.

>>6525588

>>6525593
I don't get it.

the fall is twofold: the ability to have a will separate from God's will, and the establishment of civilization

one through the capacity for disobedience, the other through a foundation of murder, ie cain the agriculturalist murders his brother the pastoralist nomad, ie one who seizes and holds property by force and the other a transient who holds no property but what sustains him

the beginning of genesis essentially tells us that we have sin because we can, that our sin was pride, the desire to be like God, that God's eschatological project of the redemption of humankind began immediately upon our sinning, and that civilization is built on murder

>>6525170
he is all knowing though, he knew the snake would enter the garden. the point was to let the free will of men decide what what to do when confronted with it.

>>6524143

how are you suppose to discuss the book of genesis without going deeply into hebrew grammar?


shiiiit

>>6525690
>free will

>>6525704
>tfw I only know latin, but lack hebrew and greek

Why was I consigned to such a cruel plebian fate?

>>6525710
>sam haris

>>6525710
you have to assume its true under the system of Christianity just like you have to accept scientific truths if you are doing work in the system of science.

>>6525713
>greek

I hope you mean the ancient dialects

>>6525739
m8, I think it goes without saying I meant koine greek.

>>6525008
>god kicks man out from garden, because man didn't follow his plan for reaching true salvation

>this recurs, god purges earth, never tells anyone what he wants in any certain clarity

>ages later he gets jack, sends a bit of himself down to show the way

>shit so far gone it doesn't even help

>definitely adam and eve's fault, you must obey me from now on to prove you love me, definitely not my fault

bullshit

>>6525833

So you are gnostic?

>>6525718
Obliviously skewers hacks repeating is/ought as if they were philosophers, and as if it was relevant to Harris' argument, pretty well.

When Chomsky frequently compares acts by terrorists and states and mentions they are the same and therefore should be treated the same, the is/ought problem is suddenly forgotten by those upset with Harris. Chomsky and Harris' positions are both consequentialist and much closer to each other than observers seem to realize.

Does the fact that it was Hume matter? Is it important to personify the arguments of the dead? Are the great and dead philosophers' personal opinions worthy of all the respect a starry eyed undergrad is capable of?

But what if the hack were wrong? What if, in fact, if Hume were alive Harris and he would be besties? How would this relate to the argument? The picture attached to this post is meant to illustrate this hypothetical and generate discussion on /lit/.

>>6525865
i figure i'm an alright person, with faults, who does his best.

I also figure i'll close my eyes one day and then there with be either something, or nothing.

If there's nothing, i'm sweet.

If there's something, I've been a good person. If that something doesn't like me based on my not kissing up to it, then I have enough integrity to face hell.

After that what I believe, nor what anyone else believes, hasn't, nor should it, any bearing on my existence

>>6525891
This has to be the most autistic post I've ever read.

>>6525891
Hume was pretty much an ass, he was friend with the worst kinds of merchants and was a personification of everything we consider jewish this days.

>>6525891
How is the is-ought problem a problem when we consider goals in mind?

>>6526282
contd
If you think about "good" or "bad" in English they also carry he meaning of "able to achieve a certain goal".
The lamp is a good lamp if it gives good light.
A light is good if it is bright enough to allow me to do what i need to do.
Good and bad are pragmatic judgments.
I speak 3 languages(not just indo-european based) and it is true for all of them.

>>6526282
It isn't a problem, as long as you have a denotative account of goals.

>Genesis 3:22
>And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."

Confirms that the fruit made Adam and Eve "like gods" as the Serpent promised

>>6526321
Well, then i dont see how Chomsky comparing Muslim terror and US military strikes and exclaiming they are both the same and should be stopped is problematic.
I assume his goal is to stop violence, both of those propagate violence.
He believes in violence when it comes to self defense but seems to claim authoritatively that the US is not in fact defending itself.

>>6524143

The expulsion from Eden is really difficult to read in any way but that it represents nostalgia of an early agricultural civilization for pre-civilized life of humanity.

The notion that man came from idyllic state and declined into the shit contemporary world is rife in old myth. Hesiod speaks of an Age of Gold, in which people were nigh-immortal and did not do work. (Ovid actually specifically embellishes that agriculture and architecture did not exist at this time) This is followed by Age of Silver which is bunch of long lived impious assholes, Age of Bronze where everyone is just killing each other all the time, Heroic Age which is the same but it's cool guys and heroes who are killing each other, and then the Age of Iron (now) where shit sucks. Similarly early Chinese myths center around guys like Emperor Shun who legendarily establishes things like agricultural organization and magistracy, Emperor Yu who invents mass irrigation, and from then on basically it goes to shit with immoral asshole kings all the way through to the collapse of the Zhou Dynasty (i.e. times of "accurately" recorded history).

>Some, as the gnostics, have sustained over the centuries that the Fall represented the moment when humankind became self-aware (remember the description in the Bible after they tasted from the apple)

This is close but not quite right. The fall is about how humans used to be in a state where things like morality didn't exist. Literally nobody had gotten together books of rules yet saying what you should or shouldn't do, people just acted by their preferences or dispreferences, and did not have religions or laws or cultures telling them what to do. The fall is about what happened together with the end of that state, it's the rise of agricultural civilization.

>>6524143
For me, it represents the acquisition of power, authority and glory.
Our Earth is pretty beautiful if you ask me. When we got banished from Eden, we transitioned from being garden gnomes in a palace to being kings in a mansion.
> So I guess its like the question "Would you rather be the best player of a bad team or the worst of a good team?"
> I pick the former

“The Garden is a metaphor for the following: our minds, and our thinking in terms of pairs of opposites--man and woman, good and evil--are as holy as that of a god. The power of life causes the snake to shed its skin, just as the moon sheds its shadow. The serpent sheds its skin to be born again, as the moon its shadow to be born again. They are equivalent symbols. Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That’s an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life.

Furthermore, the serpent represents the primary function of life, mainly eating. Life consists in eating other creatures. You don’t think about that very much when you make a nice-looking meal. But what you’re doing is eating something that was recently alive. And when you look at the beauty of nature, and you see the birds picking around — they’re eating things. You see the cows grazing, they’re eating things. The serpent is a traveling alimentary canal, that’s about all it is. And it gives you that primary sense of shock, of life in its most primal quality. There is no arguing with that animal at all. Life lives by killing and eating itself, casting off death and being reborn, like the moon. This is one of the mysteries that these symbolic, paradoxical forms try to represent.

Now the snake in most cultures is given a positive interpretation. In India, even the most poisonous snake, the cobra, is a sacred animal, and the mythological Serpent King is the next thing to the Buddha. The serpent represents the power of life engaged in the field of time, and of death, yet eternally alive. The world is but its shadow — the falling skin.

The serpent was revered in the American Indian traditions, too. The serpent was thought of as a very important power to be made friends with. Go down to the pueblos, for example, and watch the snake dance of the Hopi, where they take the snakes in their mouths and make friends with them and then send them back to the hills. The snakes are sent back to carry the human message to the hills, just as they have brought the message of the hills to the humans. The interplay of man and nature is illustrated in this relationship with the serpent. A serpent flows like water and so is watery, but its tongue continually flashes fire. So you have the pair of opposites together in the serpent."

>>6526428
Now lets get back to reality and examine the culture from which the writers of the bible emerged. Not Indians, not the Chinese but Mediterranean polytheists.

>>6526396
This post is the closest to the truth. Especial when you consider that cain and abel was an allegory for the rise of agricultural civilization.
I'm on my phone and can't elaborate more but will try to when i get home

>>6526504
Have a thread bump then, just in case.

Reading in Hebrew its clear the garden of eden story and the eating of the apple is an explanation of becoming aware of sexuality, turning from a child into a man.
Children do not work, they play. men work.
Their myths came to explain the word they saw, lets not forget that.
The story itself also is very specific about the location of the garden, this might be because it was trying to rewrite the myth of the Mesopotamian garden of the gods.
The serpant might be a recreation of Mušḫuššu the serpent, an animal of marduk the god that became the most important in babylonian culture.
This animal was often associated with the strongest of the gods in the pantheon.
The snake was seen as representing the underworld and evil as it lived in holes under the ground and came out of them.
It was a bizarre animal, it had no legs,only a body and a head, which doubtfully fascinated many cultures around the world.

>>6524143
The serpent is a phallic figure. God stumbles upon Eve and Adam having sex. The knowledge they discover is carnal. Basically Eve eats a phallic fruit ( a pomegranate, tons of seeds, or a fig, they DID NOT HAVE APPLES) and then gets horny. And gd says this is not the place for fucking. Its good allegory. That sex makes us adults, not a particular age or title.

>>6526712
contd
Children, like today, were seen as naive, there is nothing in the story that would suggest references to agriculture or civilization.
They are first portrayed as kids(if you think about creation in light of what you see you realize that kids are born first before they turn into adults thus a creation story where first kids are created makes sense), told not to do something and they of course do it. Its a simple silly allegory but they were naive, simple people.
This is the point where they have a will of their own and they also become sexually aware.
We still see remains of it in the jewish bar mitzva and bat mitsva ceremonies at 12 and 13.
Sexual maturity paralleled awareness and adulthood in general.

>>6526490
U mean Sea Peoples?

>>6526732
Of course the woman is also seen as the bringer of sexuality, as the temptress, as she was seen as the source of male sexual desire in the patriarchal Mesopotamian societies.

>>6525895

>If there's something, I've been a good person. If that something doesn't like me based on my not kissing up to it, then I have enough integrity to face hell.

Everything instantiates some good, insofar as it exists. To claim that one is a "good person" is, therefore, no great achievement. Certainly, it isn't a great enough achievement to merit the infinite or unqualified good, which completes human happiness. That good can only be achieved by the grace of the infinite good himself, through a certain relation between that good and ourselves.

What is left for those who do not enjoy right relation with the infinite good, once the finite good of mortal life is exhausted, is death, or as close to it as human nature is capable. There is no integrity worth speaking of, in this state- one is frozen in failure as a human being.

>After that what I believe, nor what anyone else believes, hasn't, nor should it, any bearing on my existence

That seems pretty implausible. Certainly, there is no great moral merit in merely believing true things about God and salvation. However, beliefs do have a bearing on your existence, since what you think is true about the world influences your dispositions toward that world, which in turn govern your actions for good or ill. This is perfectly true in ordinary life.

When it comes to matters of eternal life, what you put your trust in to secure your happiness and that of others will depend upon your beliefs about where happiness is to be found, and how it is to be achieved. To believe that one is entitled to infinite happiness for a finitely good life, much less a mediocre life, and therefore to trust in one's own finite moral strength to justify one's eternal fate, will have the consequence that one's moral strength will fail to justify infinite happiness. And why shouldn't it be so?

>>6526804
in that case, i'm cool with the long sleep.
If i have to bow to you, you're not worth bowing to

>>6526396
Best post ITT, rest of it is a mistake

>>6527075
>If i have to bow to you, you're not worth bowing to

Surely the only things worth bowing down to, are those which you ought to bow down to.

>>6524466
Lol the ideology "enlightenment" capitalism at it's best

Cautionary tale about the risks of trusting women and their frail moral fibre ;^)

>>6527437
but if something 'ought' be bowed down to, shouldn't that be an inherent action, to a power that deserves or has earned the privilege?

From 'let there be light' the dude hasn't really done fuck all but make things more difficult.

the dude is an emotionally vampiric, egotistical ass, if we read his memoirs honestly. I wouldn't put up with his shit from a girlfriend for more than a year. Christ, he gets upset when I wank off. I tell horror stories about this chick to my mates over a few beers.

REQUIRED VIEWING FOR THIS THREAD


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVsbVAVSssc

>>6527730
ALSO EXTREMELY RELEVANT TO THE DISCUSSION OF THIS THREAD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdmsnbz1-EE

FEDORAS NEED NOT VIEW BECAUSE THEY WON'T APPRECIATE IT ANYWAY

>>6527666
>but if something 'ought' be bowed down to, shouldn't that be an inherent action, to a power that deserves or has earned the privilege?

Firstly, being the object of worship does not at all benefit God. How could the perfect being, after all, be dependent upon outside entities for its own fulfilment, in any respect? So it's not a matter of God receiving "privileges" from us.

We ought to worship God because it is good for us, as creatures capable of understanding and revering what is good, to do so. In doing so we fulfil our rationality and act as we ought, given our nature. It is because God is himself the infinite good, that he is capable of supplying to us the most complete happiness. If God wants us to worship him, it is for our good, not his own.

Secondly, God does not create only at some point in the past, but continually upholds the created order from moment to moment, such that it could not persist a moment without His sustaining power. Everything good and wholesome thing comes to us by his action. As the source of all goods, then, there is hardly a being worth more reverence than God. So certainly he deserves our gratefulness.

>dude is an emotionally vampiric, egotistical ass, if we read his memoirs honestly.

This seems like a projection of human tyranny onto God. Sure, a human being making the claims upon us which God does, would be an ass, but God is no human. I think, whether deliberately or accidentally, you are not conceiving of God as he is presented in scripture and Christian tradition, instead inventing a small and petty being which you can easily reject. If, on the other hand, one is actually looking to learn from the scriptures, a quite different picture emerges.

>Christ, he gets upset when I wank off

Seems a pretty silly thing, to spurn the infinite good because you want to wank.

>>6528844
>Infinite good
>Logically no way to be more good than this entity
>Has personally killed multiple people

tip top tip of my hat to you

>>6528844
>How could the perfect being, after all, be dependent upon outside entities for its own fulfilment, in any respect?
> It is because God is himself the infinite good,
>Everything good and wholesome thing comes to us by his action. As the source of all goods, then

Your entire argument is resting on this massive implication
>implying this god is perfect
>What is OT?