nutshell
Well-Known Member
Victor said:Would a good analogy be me placing my son in the ghetto for personal growth that he could not get otherwise?
No. I don't believe that's a good analogy at all.
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Victor said:Would a good analogy be me placing my son in the ghetto for personal growth that he could not get otherwise?
From Sarna ...Willamena said:Well, I don't agree with your definition of supernatural, and that would change the argument. But I don't see any flaw with the argument the way you've presented it. Denying us the tree would have also denied us education, civilization and the ability to ask each other these hypothetical questions.
Probably not until he's a little older, Victor. It's obviously hard for a parent to allow a child to venture into the world, knowing that there are some pretty unsavory characters out there and a lot of opportunities to get hurt. But most parents realize that there comes a time when they have to do just that. Protecting our kids forever isn't doing them any favors. You'll love your son when he's 21 as much as you do now, but by then you will have undoubtedly given him the freedom to learn and grow and, yes, even to make some mistakes that might be pretty painful.Victor said:Would a good analogy be me placing my son in the ghetto for personal growth that he could not get otherwise?
Reminds me of Aristotle's "essence" of things, similar to Plato's "ideal", sometimes equated with the supernatural --the essential nature of things all around us. An "ideal essence" of the world could certainly be described as a "Paradise". Is that what you were referring to?doppelgänger said:Why do you say that? Paradise is all around us, but people just don't see it.
I've heard good things about Sarna. What is a "merism"?Jayhawker Soule said:From Sarna ...It is more satisfactory, however, to understand "good and bad" as undifferentiated parts of a totality, a merism meaning "everything." ... It should be noted that "good and bad," exactly in the Hebrew form used here (tov va-ra'), occurs again only in Deuteronomy 1:39: "Moreover, your little ones who you said would be carried off, your children who do not yet know good from bad ..." There the context leaves no doubt that not to know good and bad means to be innocent, not to have attained the age of responsibility. In the present passage, then, it is best to understand "knowledge of good and bad" as the capacity to make indepentent judgements concerning human welfare.
- JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis
No. I'm referring to the idea that life is joyous without needing to judge everything as "good" an "evil" or find some unique purpose or meaning in it. The idea is that "eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil" compels us to create judgments that turn the "garden of paradise" into a threatening place - and it no longer appears to be a garden.Willamena said:Reminds me of Aristotle's "essence" of things, similar to Plato's "ideal", sometimes equated with the supernatural --the essential nature of things all around us. An "ideal essence" of the world could certainly be described as a "Paradise". Is that what you were referring to?
113 His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?"
"It will not come by watching for it. It will not be said, 'Look, here!' or 'Look, there!' Rather, the Father's kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people don't see it."
Willamena said:I hesitate to do so, because I am not learned in philosophy, and when I start talking about such things people start throwing big words like "epistemology" at me. But if you promise not to do that, I'll give it a go.
The supernatural is often referred to as the unexplained, the undefinable, the immaterial, so I find it best to define it in terms of what it is not. A thing's nature is the sum of all its characteristics, traits and qualities, everything that we can know about the thing. Supernatural is viewed as the opposite, so it is everything that we cannot know about a thing, often interpreted as everything that we don't know about the thing, which is how you used the word earlier. Things we don't know can be rectified; the supernatural cannot. Common though that idea may be, the word "super" means "above or beyond," which doesn't imply an opposite of knowing, but rather a "dimension" or component of unknowableness about the thing.
So the supernatural is something we cannot know about a thing, but that is still a component of it. Talk about undefinable. I often refer to the supernatural simply as the "unknown/unknowable". (I'm agnostic...) The natural and the supernatural together make up a thing, and the conclusion of that is that the supernatural requires the natural to exist. (...and I don't believe in ghosts.)
The word "immaterial" derives from such a concept of the supernatural, in both its literal and figurative meanings. A thing that is beyond our ability to study can easily become so insignificant that it doesn't matter anymore. Certainly it will never matter to science, whose main concern is explaining and defining things for the use and betterment of mankind.
But it does matter to a lot of people. Our brains have this lovely faculty to create and utilize symbols in a way, and to a degree, that sets us apart from other life-forms on this planet. The supernatural is intuited through the natural, as a 'living' part of it. Symbols of meaning are allocated to the concurrence of events or other symbols (god, spirit, demon, etc.) and purposes and intents intuited. We call these "omens," and they are our guides. The spirits are real, and they are around all the time, a 'living' part of the world we live in --a part of it because we are human.
Booko said:It's not just the "tree of knowledge" but the "tree of knowledge of good and evil."
I look on that story, in one way at least, as an allegorical tale illustrating what makes us different than animals -- a moral sense.
The "innocence" is a state like animals are in now. (as far as we know) they don't have any sense of ethics. They work pretty much on instinct and learned behaviour, but not out of a moral sense.
So do many humans..........I react very much to 'bad' patterns of learned behaviour (a tendency to being a recluse because going out 'worries' me); don't you ever drive your car (if you have one), and suddenly realise that you are at the destination, but haven't noticed the specifics of the journey, because you have been thinking about 1001 things whilst driving?They work pretty much on instinct and learned behaviour
Jayhawker Soule said:From Sarna ...It is more satisfactory, however, to understand "good and bad" as undifferentiated parts of a totality, a merism meaning "everything." ... It should be noted that "good and bad," exactly in the Hebrew form used here (tov va-ra'), occurs again only in Deuteronomy 1:39: "Moreover, your little ones who you said would be carried off, your children who do not yet know good from bad ..." There the context leaves no doubt that not to know good and bad means to be innocent, not to have attained the age of responsibility. In the present passage, then, it is best to understand "knowledge of good and bad" as the capacity to make indepentent judgements concerning human welfare.
- JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis
nutshell said:I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Who is God fliping coins with?
If it is Satan then yes it's a case of "Heads God wins, Tails Satan Looses."
If it is the case of Adam and Even then it is "Heads we all win, Tails we all win." We don't believe Adam and Eve lost anything except a pseudo-Paradise where they weren't learning anything more from God because they did not yet have the capability to do so. LDS belief does not come down hard on Adam and Even like the majority of Christianity. They were a carefully selected pair to "flip the switch" for God, making it possible for all of us to be here. Was the result separation from God? Yes. But we wouldn't have progressed if we stayed in God's presence. There came a time when we needed to get out and experience things on our own, very similar to parent/child relationships today.
michel said:I am talking about us - Fallible humans.
We were innocent, man was destined to eat the fruit, thereby turning paradise into our perceived world here; in which we need to struggle to lose half of the lessons learned from the tree (the bad bits)...........why the 'charade' from God ? Why not keep us in paradise, and innocent, and bypass the 'life' bit?
That wouldn't be classified as "supernatural" at all. It would be consider "unnatural" and "artificial" to Williamena's grandparents.Michel said:Don't you think that your grandparents would have believed (when they were young) that altering DNA or examining genes to find a defect would have come under the same umbrella you use for 'supernatural'?
gnostic said:That wouldn't be classified as "supernatural" at all. It would be consider "unnatural" and "artificial" to Williamena's grandparents.
You are seeing the whole thing with genetic/DNA science in the wrong way. I would call it "unnatural" or "artificial" to tamper or alter genes. What scientist have done, is nothing magical.
Supernatural is also unnatural, but it is unnatural in a different way. Supernatural on the other hand, is either magical or divine. Like Jesus healing a leper or blind man through the touch of his hand, or simply the words "You are forgiven; sin no more." And the blind person can see and the leper is healed.
Until a scientist can alter DNA or gene with the wave of his hand, then it is not supernatural.
What, precisely, is your point?michel said:Was Hitler innocent? ... Maybe a bad example, but I wanted to find one that highlighted the point, to an extreme.
I have no idea what my grandparents might have thought, but I doubt it. Science wasn't a stranger to people in the early 20th Century. Neither was Jung. But, what are you getting at with this question?michel said:Don't you think that your grandparents would have believed (when they were young) that [insert remarkable scientific technological achievement] would have come under the same umbrella you use for 'supernatural'?
Okay; but the unknowable I speak of is also necessarily unperceivable, no matter how much elevating we as a species might do. If we can eventually detect it, it doesn't fit any definition of 'unknowable'.michel said:You see, my contention is that there is nothing 'unknowable'- not if we can elevate our abilities to perceive; ie, learn a new 'range' of perception ? (which is something that science has helped us do for many years).
The "unknown/unknowable", I would suggest, is a (at our stange of development) decreasing 'level' of comprehension. As we have gained knowledge (in all fields), there has been less in your "unknown/unknowable" 'heap' and more in the "known" heap........
Cannot know, ever. Mind you, knowing and understanding are two diferent things, too.michel said:Again, your focus on the supernatural "so it is everything that we cannot know about a thing", whilst I underatnd your comment, from your point of view, I would like to substitute "cannot understand at this time" for "haven't the ability to perceive"....
Does that make sense ? because that is a point (as I see it) from where we need to be in unison in understanding, before we drift off into using the word.
nutshell said:Ahhh...but that day may come. I personally believe there are scientific laws behind the miracles performed that we just haven't discovered yet.
For example, planetoids beyond Pluto have been discovered over the years. Does that mean they weren't there before? No...we just became aware of them through discovery. Miracles are the same, IMO. Is it something without explanation? No, we just have found that explanation yet. I guess that's why it's easy for me to believe we can become like God someday. Because I believe we'll just continue growing in our understand of the laws of the universe until He grants us the infinite knowledge he has.
gnostic said:There are some Christians who can accept scientific explanations and still have faith or belief of theism (existence of God) and in miracles. And there are some Christians who don't accept scientific explanations behind miracles, but accept that God is behind them.