Then you wanted to contradict yourself.
The difference is the word âONLYâ a figure of speech.
But this is not the only way it might be talked about.
Itâs very easy to refer to IT, rather than Him.
How?
Please give details
I think that when we communicate with Sculptor, we are talking past each other. The thought came to me when reading this:
These careful ones may like to remind themselves that the vision of the world presented to us by all the great artists and poetsâthose creatures whose very existence would seem so strange to us, were we not accustomed to themâperpetually demonstrates the many-graded character of human consciousness; the new worlds which await it, once it frees itself from the tyranny of those labour-saving contrivances with which it usually works. Leaving on one side the more subtle apprehensions which we call âspiritual,â even the pictures of the old Chinese draughtsmen and the modern impressionists, of Watteau and of Turner, of Manet, Degas, and Cezanne; the poems of Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Whitmanâthese, and countless others, assure you that their creators have enjoyed direct communion, not with some vague world of fancy, but with a visible natural order which you have never known. These have seized and woven into their pictures strands which never presented themselves to you; significant forms which elude you, tones and relations to which you are blind, living facts for which your conventional world provides no place.
Evelyn Underhill â Practical Mysticism 1914
"God rejoices in infinite perfection; and such rejoicing is accompanied by the idea of himself, that is, the idea of his own cause: now this is what we have described as intellectual love.â
God as cause of all things is most importantly of all cause of what is most important to us - which has many names, one of which is used here: rejoicing in our ground. In sculptors case, his enjoyment of dogs and dog videos. What he knows as love, where his loyalty is. That is his most intimate connection to God, where he truly knows (his) reality.
God as a cold, indifferent cause makes no sense, what would then be the source of our deepest valuing? Something outside of God, something better, more important than God.
Guys, why the pointless tic for tac; did you get the message.
And if anybody watches âPointlessâ, itâs time to look inward and find a more fulfilling hobby than a tv program which is plainly telling you that it is wasting your time.
I was trying to bring the Adam and Eve story from the realm of religious allegory, back in to human relevance.
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My take on it⌠hu[man] was never supposed to eat that of/from the land, for they diminish -not replenish- the human spirit.
Maybe the apple is a symbol of free will.
If your talking about not eating animals, well we have to raise our consciousness before we are able to do that.
The apple is a symbol of Free Will, but a warning to the development of Maturity, recognising action and consequence.
But God accepted Abels offer of meat and not Cains of vegetable.
Adam and Eve had to discard the warning to be free. Freedom came at a heavy price.
Animals do not grow of/from the land, but off the land, but plants and trees do⌠we were never supposed to be eating plants.
The âappleâ is a symbol of that⌠so mesmerising⌠enticing⌠forbidden!
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The conception, of the notion, of âforbidden fruitâ?
That proves my point, nicely⌠; )
Cro-magnon and Neanderthalensis were hypercarnivores, only supplementing their diet with fruits, berries, nuts, seeds, and roots when meat-sources were scarce.
I also bet that Floresiensis, Denisovans, et al, also did likewise, and they also never went extinct but live on in the modern populations, as their [respective] descendants.
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The array of plant-foods available to us now is on a monumental scale, that has never been seen before⌠the modern version of the âappleâ and the Garden of Eden?
Frankenstein foods⌠letâs eat! ![]()
The story is endlessly polysemous. On the threads of ILP alone youâll find hundreds of interpretations. Itâs in no danger of irrelevance. Nor is a final reading of its meaning clearly in sight. So, as a generator of meaning it is a living text. That, while it makes no sense from the literal modern scientific point of view. Itâs a literary work of archaic genius, a generative matrix written in a style that uses a great economy of words.
If you go back, youâll see I wasnât contending that the only way to talk about God was using personal pronouns, but rather the use of metaphor in general. I have no problem using impersonal pronouns, except in such an instance as this, when that isnât what the author did. I recognize you have an explanation for that, but I havenât seen that itâs an explanation that Spinoza himself ever gives. So it becomes the semantic basis for a kind of plausible interpretation, but one that, to my knowledge, Spinoza himself never endorsed. If he did, just point me to it, and Iâll happily drop the matter.
Spinozaâs God is impersonal, infinite, necessary, rational, beyond good and evil, and everything.Without needs, desires or character.
Work it out for yourself
I am.
Like Brahman then?
Yes. The Existence-Consciousness-Bliss Absolute wherein the personal and impersonal are reconciled along with all other opposites.
If we go back to the text of the original story, in the third chapter verse 20, after YHWH curses the serpent, the woman and the man it reads âThe man called his wifeâs name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.â At that point in the narrative she hasnât given birth to a human baby, yet Adam calls her the mother of all living. Itâs a verse for which most expositors donât have a good explanation. The mother of all living would make her more than the first human female. She would be the source of all life. In Greek mythology, Gaia, the primordial goddess of the Earth, is considered the source of all life, often referred to as the âmother of allâ.
The Homeric Hymn XXX to Gaia as translated by Evelyn-White reads
âTo Gaia (Gaea, Earth) the Mother of All. I will sing of well-founded Gaia (Earth), mother of all, eldest of all beings. She feeds all the creatures that are in the worlds, all that go upon the goodly land, and all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly : all these are fed of her store. Through you, O queen, men are blessed in their children and blessed in their harvests, and to you it belongs to give means of life to mortal men and to take it away. Happy is the man whom you delight to honour! He has all things abundantly : his fruitful land is laden with corn, his pastures are covered with cattle, and his house is filled with good things. Such men rule orderly in their cities of fair women: great riches and wealth follow them: their sons exult with everfresh delight, and their daughters in flower-laden bands play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field. Thus is it with those whom you honour O holy goddess (semne thea), bountiful spirit (aphthone daimon). Hail, Mother of the gods (theon mater), wife of starry Ouranos (Uranus, Heaven); freely bestow upon me for this my song substance that cheers the heart!â
So it seems, we have a deeper layer of meaning hidden in plain sight in the text of Genesis.