That's what the serpent said to Adam and Eve, and I believe it.
Thoughts before I discuss?
Please quote me if you want a response back.
Thoughts before I discuss?
Please quote me if you want a response back.
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If you knew all good and evil, would you be God?
- Thread starter robocop (actually)
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Frank Goad
Well-Known Member
I guess you can think of it as an oreo cookie.One part is cookie.And the other frosting.So in order to get the full taste you need to eat it all.
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Also, would Jesus Christ descending below all things help God to understand good and evil and to judge?
I would believe the serpent was lying and that God knows of no Good or Evil. Good and Evil are a result of the fruit and what separates mankind from God. God knows and see's all and mankind knows and see's differences. Differences between Mankind and God. Differences between man and woman. Differences between man and animals.
I don't accept that myth.
What if it was metaphorical? Then do you have an answer?
Adam and Eve ate it so... Did they become like God?
Like God, maybe knowledge of good and evil is only one aspect. So maybe the serpent meant like God only in this respect.
My view, the serpent hid knowledge of what is. Good and evil is a false dichotomy. IOW, what is is truth. To have knowledge of good and evil one has to be unaware of the truth. In the beginning Adam and Eve knew the truth. After eating the fruit the truth was hidden from them. Instead of the truth they saw only good and evil.
Man sees reality and decides it is good or evil but the truth escapes us.
In this case I suppose the serpent lied.
Huh.. Pretty close to what I was trying to say.
I am starting to think that you must have all knowledge to be God, but knowing good and evil is enough to become a judge or Judge or even be judged. That's how I see it now.
LightofTruth
Well-Known Member
To know evil is to experience it. That's what the word "know" means. The knowledge of evil was known by experience. And to know evil is also to know what is good.
After Adam and Eve experienced evil they knew what they were(evil) and also what God was....good.
I take the story as symbolizing a certain level of mental development in humans. Animals don't have a sense of good/right and evil/wrong. At a certain point in evolution, people's brains developed to the point that they have a moral/ethical sense. This lead to cultures developing rules for what is good in the culture and wrong in the culture. The Maya, for example, had a very different set of rules than we do today.
So people developing a sense of good and evil does not make them God. But rather the reverse, that those who fully experience Divinity know the role of good and evil in the world.
As a side-note, if you want to look at non-literal interpretations of that story, Jewish theologians would be a go to source. Such as The Immortal Myth of Adam and Eve - TheTorah.com
Well, maybe then God knew it through His Son.
Have you given thought to what the "knowledge of good and evil" actually meant in the context of the Garden scenario?
In all of creation there are equal opposites and obvious symmetry, which is why we find symmetry attractive and also why we see justice as fair...it has an equalizing effect.
Since evil exists as an opposite of good, why did God want to keep the knowledge of it to himself? It is apparent that he never wanted them to have to choose between the two. He wanted them to allow him to protect them from evil whilst only allowing the good.....like any good parent. But the devil deceived the woman and offered her something that sounded better than what they already had. Appeals to self-interest still work to this day.
We only have to look and see what happened when humans broke their relationship with God by choosing to obey another 'wannabe' deity. They would never have direct access to him again because of sin. But he did not abandon them. He appointed a mediator as a "go between" so that the humans who chose to be faithful to God would still have access to him in prayer.
Right from the beginning the knowledge that was unleashed, led them to entertain evil thoughts....the first was in connection with their nakedness, something that had not even dawned on them up to that point. But now they felt "shame" for the first time when inappropriate thoughts of a sexual nature flooded their minds. As a response, they covered up their reproductive parts, but for God, that was not good enough....he made long garments out of animals skins to cover their bodies.
By having to decide between good and evil, humans have not been able to draw a clear line, all down through history. Sometimes what appeared to be good was evil and what appeared to be evil was good....only God knows the true definition.....so he placed that in his own jurisdiction. If the humans had just obeyed, respecting the one thing that he claimed as his own in all of creation, none of us would ever have had to deal with evil in our lives, or in the world. God knows better than we do, and we show him that we trust his judgment better than our own by obeying him even when it is difficult to do so.
osgart
Nothing my eye, Something for sure
IMO, Knowing good and evil is not a hard thing to do. To be a good judge you must also have the knowledge of evidence, be of deserving character and integrity, and the wisdom on how to apply judgment.
If you can imagine being all knowing would not speak to one's character. A God must be of excellent, unfailing character, and have the power, wisdom, and authority to do whatsoever such God wills to do.
An all knowing being without good character would be a devil. And a devil to me is one whom deceives in order to do horrific harm to an innocent being. And innocence I define as blamelessness of character.
So a devil to me is the antithesis of a God. Of course I have heard other definitions of a God. But I would not trust such as gods.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
With all knowledge, one would be 'Pansophic' or 'Polymath'. God is human imagination.
Heyo
Veteran Member
Going with the narrative, El confirms the serpent's story partially. He banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden so that they can't also eat from the Tree of Life and become like the gods. So the serpents story was only half the truth.
The gods of the bible are pretty adamant in keeping their privileges to themselves. They later also disperse the people of Babel because mankind could accomplish anything they want if united.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
The Tree of Knowledge of good and evil is connected to law. Law differentiates behavior into what is good and acceptable, and what is evil, unacceptable. If know the law you have knowledge of good and evil.
Most of law has nothing to do with the natural environment or the things of God's creation. Rather 99.999% of law is connected to humans and the artificial environment called civilization. For example the IRS in the USA, alone, has 70,000 pages of law. These laws are makeup by man and have little to do with God. The ten commandments is one page.
The symbolism of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, brings to mind a tree, whose trunk is rooted in the earth; earth=natural. From there the tree begins to branch and subbranch and subbranch, etc., with these smaller and smaller branches heading to blue sky; no longer attached to the earth. Law started naturally but became more and more subjective or blue sky.
For example, the PC laws of proper language is not in the bible. It is part of the blue sky upper branches of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It allows some people to lord over others to the point where you can force conformity, and even get people fired from their jobs; the pretend gods as promised by Satan.
The trunk of the tree is rooted in the earth; natural. These are God's laws that are connected to the earth and nature. Beyond that it is manmade; civilization, and often subjective. For example, marijuana laws are not universal. These allow some humans, in certain places, to lord over the others, and act as mini gods; judges, police and politicians.
Jesus did away with law through the forgiveness of sins. In other words, if you break a law, you commit a sin and can be punished. If sin is forgiven through Jesus, the law is made void. In this case, you can act with the same end result, as someone who obeys the law; both get no eternal punishment. The idea was to prune the tree of knowledge of good and evil, back to the trunk and roots, and void the endless branches of the laws of man and mini gods.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
We DO know good from evil, and we are not God. However, we are like God IN THIS RESPECT.
I don't think we know total good from evil.
IndigoChild5559
Loving God and my neighbor as myself.
If you are saying that our moral sentience has room for further evolution, I agree.