Is it a sin to seek knowledge?

[Greatest I am]

It means that humans gained awareness of the difference between good and evil, instead of living in innocence.

“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

They were warned that this would bring them only harm.

The myth functions to explain why there is a good/evil dichotomy within humanity and why humans must struggle with their own morality. You can also relate it to themes such as knowledge can bring problems and hardships rather than enlightenment; the ideas that innocence cannot be regained once lost, that we cannot 'un-know' something, etc.

Many of these old myths are not meant to be taken too literally, they are stories with a meaning, stories that give guidance and explain some point of wisdom. Instead of trying to identify 2 passages which contradict each other, look at the meaning of each one individually, it is possible they might both be true if you treat them as lessons rather than unequivocal facts to applied in all situations without thought or nuance.

They were warned that this would bring them only harm.

Yes. A lie because they became as Gods in the knowing of good and evil.

You are right that these myths should not be read literally.

But Christianity doing so has make it a homophobic, misogynous and evil religion by todays standards of morality.

Do you agree?

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

Gaining knowledge does not become god like.
We have brains, we seek knowledge, it's innate in all humans.

When your God is out there somewhere as most believe, you are correct.

As a Gnostic Christian, I am God so I have no problem having Gnosis make me God.

Let me explain using Christian and Jewish myths.


This Gnostic Christian’s apology for calling myself God.

Adam and Eve became as Gods when they gained a moral sense and no longer had their mind cut off from intelligent thought. As our primordial ancestors, we inherit that same trait even though Christianity wrongly thinks that to be evil and a fall. Retaining dominion over the earth, humans never revoked this inherited trait of a moral sense, --- and the right for man to judge himself. Jesus highlights this when he took the seat of judgement at God’s right hand.

When I use terms like “I am God”, or “you are God”, I am not speaking of the traditional miracle working God of scriptures and myths. He does not exist as far as we can know as he has never made an appearance to prove his reality.

What I am trying to convey to you by saying that you are a God in your own right is to be master of yourself and you need not be a sheep. You can, as Jesus says, pick up your burdens and responsibilities for your sins and follow his mind set. Be a shepherd. Lead by example.

What I am trying to convey is that the only God you can ever know is the good you find within yourself. It's your ideal of God and of the Jesus or Christ mind. That is quite different from me or someone thinking they are the traditional creator God, or thinking that they are more than anyone else. Both Jesus and the Christ in these myths are for equality. Not the misogyny that we presently enjoy. That is another topic though. We are to be co-equal with Jesus.

Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Jesus would explain this concept as one just seeing that they have joined God’s Divine Council by embracing his own Christ mind. Or better said, as this is the more eastern Jesus, we activate our pineal gland and open our third eye.

Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Divine Council - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

Do you know what is sin?

Do unto others.

Answer my questions and I will answer yours.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

You can't have the kind of knowledge that people have and not have it balanced with new problems, is the idea.

Lots of Christians have failed to understand that, of course. .

I am not a Christian but that made no sense to me either. I left what you confused me with.

Your last I understand of course. The first. Not so much.

Expand on it please.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

You are equating sin with death.

Death is not the consequence in the acquisition of knowledge.
Death would have been there anyway.

Death does not separate you from paradise.
It opens the door.

But to walk in heaven among the angelic without knowing good from evil?......I think not.

Acquisition was essential.

If you want to regard the garden event as a test....that's fine.

We passed the test.
We ARE that creature seeking knowledge, even as death is pending.

Intelligent people see that we passed the test.

Jews wrote it up as our elevation and they too see us passing the test.

Christians though think we lost it and fell.

That is how they have used it to bludgeon women into second class citizens ever since and used it to deny women equality.

As a Gnostic Christian, I do not need death to se God's kingdom.

----------------
Jesus said, "If those who attract you say, 'See, the Kingdom is

in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they

say to you, 'It is under the earth,' then the fish of the sea will

precede you. Rather, the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is

outside of you. [Those who] become acquainted with [themselves]

will find it; [and when you] become acquainted with yourselves, [you

will understand that] it is you who are the sons of the living

Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty

and it is you who are that poverty."

----------

Seeing that we live in God's kingdom and in the best of all possible worlds is hard for most of us to see because of our poverty of sight.

Candide.
"It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end.”

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

This meant that mankind has to now decide for all by themselves what is good and bad, even though they are not equipped to do so without help.

That was the whole point of letting man rule himself for a time - to gather tangible evidence that we can't do it successfully.

I well know, O Jehovah, that man's way does not belong to him.
It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step.
- Jeremiah 10:23

So you are saying that God created us defective and without a moral sense.

We are to perpetually be God's make work project.

How stupid.

I guess you must think God has nothing better to do with his time than baby sit those he creates too stupid to do without him.

All slave would think that of their owners. Right, --- slave?

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

I think back years ago they were frightened to let people seek knowledge, it was because they didn't want them to leave their belief system, and they still are doing it today.

Keep people stupid and insecure.

You have what most religions do about right.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

The funny thing is, no ancient person would have read the Eden myth and wished that the man and woman had declined to eat the fruit. They felt no need to explain why it was a good thing. Nobody wants to go back to being benighted animals. But of course modern people are just misanthropic enough to suggest that attaining sapience is the worst crime we ever committed and that we would have been better off without it. Modern people are weird.

Not all modern people are weird.

Just modern people who are foolishly reading myths literally. I question the use of "modern" to describe them as well. They are of modern times but their thinking is more foolish than the ancients.

They need to see what follows. You do not. I just hope Christian lurkers get it.

Bill Moyers Journal . Watch & Listen | PBS

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

Nobody lied in the garden event.
I got a thread around here somewhere on that very notion.

Only God who equated sin with dying.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

Looks like someone needs to sit down and read proverbs.

"Take my instruction instead of silver,
And knowledge rather than choice gold,
For wisdom is better than jewels,
And all that you may desire cannot compare with her."

-Proverbs 8:10-11

Wisdom follows from knowledge of good and evil.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

No. But what exactly was the commandment in Genesis? Not to seek knowledge of any kind, or was it specific knowledge, the "knowledge of good and evil"?


One could argue that the metaphor was that to open your eyes to death and suffering is a loss of innocence. Do recall that this was what the serpent tricked Eve into believing was the reason not to eat of the fruit? It was not God who said, "If you eat of it your eyes will be open and you will see like me". I tend to think if the metaphor of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil goes along with the other fruit of the other trees, which would mean that those were also trees of knowledge. Right? So it wouldn't have been about not being blind, that knowledge itself was hidden, but the knowledge that they are separate from God, knowing good and evil in themselves. Isn't this the metaphor?


This later injunction it to seek to reunite with the divine. It's an injunction to reverse what was foisted upon humanity by choosing to know ourselves apart from the divine. It's technically not a contraction.


God didn't tell them to choose separation. For right or for wrong, man choose to open his eyes to his nakedness, to fear, to understand death, to understand his mortality, his aloneness. Isn't what scripture says to do is to re-unite with God?


Was that the command, or your misunderstanding of the passage?


What do you imagine being more like God is? To understand science? Or does that mean something beyond that?

So to you, the blind and dumb are in unity with God but those who gain knowledge of good and evil, a moral sense IOW, are separated from God.

Why would man gaining a moral sense separate him from God?

I would think that God would be please to be over moral people instead of brain dead blind people who are too stupid to even know they are naked or able to reproduce.

Regards
DL

 

[Windwalker]

So to you, the blind and dumb are in unity with God but those who gain knowledge of good and evil, a moral sense IOW, are separated from God.

No not to me. That's your fabrication stuck on what I actually said which was this, "But what exactly was the commandment in Genesis? Not to seek knowledge of any kind, or was it specific knowledge, the "knowledge of good and evil"?" I never made up that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was a moral sense. You just made that up. I did not say that.

Do you think you know what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil means? I'll repeat what I said since you didn't read it the first time around, "So it wouldn't have been about not being blind, that knowledge itself was hidden, but the knowledge that they are separate from God, knowing good and evil in themselves". It's a metaphor to describe the cost of waking up to our own separate self. Again, I explicitly said, "For right or for wrong, man choose to open his eyes to his nakedness", which means it's simply the consequence of choosing this sort of existential angst, the awareness you are separate from the world. This has nothing to do with a moral sense.

Why would man gaining a moral sense separate him from God?

It wouldn't. That's not what I said. You said that and imagined it must be what I said despite what I wrote.

I would think that God would be please to be over moral people instead of brain dead blind people who are too stupid to even know they are naked or able to reproduce.

You are so literal. I did use the word metaphor multiple times in my post, which you apparently missed as well. Did you read my post, or just assume after two words what I was saying and fill in the rest with your own ideas of what I said? I said explicitly that it seems reasonable to assume that since the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was clearly a metaphor as there is no such thing as a literal knowledge fruit on a tree that grows under the sun, that the other trees were also "knowledge" trees. It was this particular metaphoric "fruit" that they were warned about but, but the rest of the "knowledge trees" were freely available to them. Which means they were not blind and ignorant and brain dead. Hell, you could actually argue Adam and Eve were doing science, since they named species of animals and created classification systems!

So you tell me, what does the knowledge of good and evil really mean, that in the day you eat of it you will surely "die"? Morality? I don't think so. That doesn't follow. That doesn't make sense. Look a little deeper, then get back to me with what you come up with.

 

[Kolibri]

So you are saying that God created us defective and without a moral sense.

We are to perpetually be God's make work project.

How stupid.

I guess you must think God has nothing better to do with his time than baby sit those he creates too stupid to do without him.

All slave would think that of their owners. Right, --- slave?

Regards
DL

God created us to be always reliant on him, yes.

Train a boy in the way he should go;
Even when he grows old he will not depart from it.
- Proverbs 22:6

The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom,
And knowledge of the Most Holy One is understanding.
- Proverbs 9:10

Trust in Jehovah will all your heart,
And do not rely (Lit., "lean.") on your own understanding.
In all your ways take notice of him,
And he will make your paths straight.
- Proverbs 3:5,6

"Let your love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is wicked; cling to what is good. In brotherly love have tender affection for one another. In showing honor to one another take the lead. Be industrious, not lazy. Be aglow with the spirit. Slave for Jehovah. Rejoice in the hope. Endure under tribulation. Persevere in prayer."
- Romans 12:9-12

Slave for Jehovah. Persevere in prayer. Yes this is a form of voluntary slavery. That does not make us defective. Rather it trains us in applying practical wisdom.

Once the "inclination to do bad" is removed we will no longer be prone to harm ourselves. It was never God's plan that we suffer a life of futility. But the issue of God's right to rule was raised. Was man better off independent? Rather then exterminating the rebels, he allowed time for the Devil to attempt to prove his argument. Once the issue is settled completely, things will revert to God-rule, instead of otherman-rule. The difference in quality is noted here:

"All of this I have seen, and I applied my heart to every work that has been done under the sun, during the time that man has dominated man to his harm."
- Ecclesiastes 8:9

"Furthermore, our human fathers used to discipline us, and we gave them respect. Should we not more readily submit ourselves to the Father of our spiritual life and live? For they disciplined us for a short time according to what seemed good to them, but he does so for our benefit so that we may partake of his holiness. True, no discipline seems for the present to be joyous, but it is painful; yet afterwards, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it."
- Hebrews 12:9-11

 

[George-ananda]

I understand that that can be a pain but to let this story stand when it has caused and continues to cause so much damage and injustice to women, --- would make those of us who are not misogynous just as immoral as Christians.

For that evil part of Christianity to grow, all good people need do is nothing.

Not discrediting this myth is worse than doing nothing.

Regards
DL

First of all, understand that a lot of ancient thinking secular and religious would be politically incorrect today. It would be called; sexist, racist, homophobic, etc.. Your point has nothing to do with the Bible specifically; the Bible was just the product of a different time period and intelligent people today can deal with and understand that.

 

[Nakosis]

Do you know what is sin?

Sin for Christians seems kind of vague. For Jews it's fairly simple. Sin is a transgression against God's laws.

For Christians, sin is often defined as missing the mark.

So for a Jew, what does seeking knowledge have to do with sin?

For a Christian I would guess it means false Gods, false beliefs. Maybe seeking truth outside of the Bible? Because you doubt the truth of the Bible so you seek and choose to accept false knowledge.

 

[psychoslice]

Sin for Christians seems kind of vague. For Jews it's fairly simple. Sin is a transgression against God's laws.

For Christians, sin is often defined as missing the mark.

So for a Jew, what does seeking knowledge have to do with sin?

For a Christian I would guess it means false Gods, false beliefs. Maybe seeking truth outside of the Bible? Because you doubt the truth of the Bible so you seek and choose to accept false knowledge.

Yes that's the trap of religion.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Is it a sin to seek knowledge?

Not to some of the early Gnostic traditions or paganism.

 

[psychoslice]

For me if there is such thing as sin, then not seeking knowledge would have to be a sin, why would we want to stay dumb ?.

 

[Unification]

Is it a sin to seek knowledge?

Is it a sin to want to open one’s eyes instead of being blind?

Is it a sin to do as scriptures urge us to do?

Matthew 5:48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

Gen 3:2 And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil:

Adam and Eve were doing exactly what we are all told by scriptures to do, yet God seemed quite upset.

Why is seeking knowledge and ignoring a vile command to remain in ignorant bliss wrong or a sin?

Are you sinning when you seek knowledge and becoming more like God?

Regards
DL

Sin means to miss the mark.

When our conscious and subconscious minds become imbalanced and separated, we are no longer whole.

Our conscious mind will impregnate the subconscious mind with a seed of thought, knowledge, desire that we dwell on and give rise to our created world of reality and ego.

Knowledge "of" good and evil are labels that our ego's apply and judge things by. There really is no such things as good and evil. We become judgemental, emotional, justify excuses, point fingers, blame, etc.

When the divine marriage occurs between conscious, and subconscious, and two become one and whole, one realizes this truth of life and finds true life.

 

[Unification]

Sin means to miss the mark.

When our conscious and subconscious minds become imbalanced and separated, we are no longer whole.

Our conscious mind will impregnate the subconscious mind with a seed of thought, knowledge, desire that we dwell on and give rise to our created world of reality and ego.

Knowledge "of" good and evil are labels that our ego's apply and judge things by. There really is no such things as good and evil. We become judgemental, emotional, justify excuses, point fingers, blame, etc.

When the divine marriage occurs between conscious, and subconscious, and two become one and whole, one realizes this truth of life and finds true life.

Seeking wisdom and knowledge is fine, but the ways we go about this and going about what is knowledge "of" rather than knowing/experiencing is where the judgements, labeling, and assuming comes from ego what we perceive as true usually isn't, leaving us deceived.

Seeking must be done purely, humbly, and genuinely.