Was it God who bit the apple first?
To create the world, doesn’t the creator have to change what is divine and make it worldly?
But Christianity tells us science, philosophy, medicine and invention are the devils work, we should live simple lives as farmers etc? What If the ‘Eden scene’ actually represents the nature of divinity and its complex conundrum in creating a non-divine world?
The fruit is from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Once you eat from it , you start to divide everything into two categories. You start to think in dualities.
As a result, you die. Before eating… life and death was the same to you… after eating, death is different from life - death is bad and life is good - and you are afraid and you suffer.
Where does it say that?
Which the creator must also know. He must know what the world would be like? Even if we imagine he isn’t omniscient, an intelligent being would deduce death and disease etc.
God chose to pull humanity from his ribs in full knowledge of all that meant.
‘Duality is the engine of creation’ then, no?
Or, ‘as a result we die’ + and we inherited that from our maker. knowing death automatically means you must die? how does knowing change the reality? All it means is that we become wise but the world remains as it is.
Everywhere, and i shouldn’t have to argue that point really. …it’s difficult when you start trying to pinpoint things, but surely we have a vague idea from the persecutions of history, that the word of God was seen as beyond science and man. Even herbalists were targeted as satanists for gods sake.
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Of course he knows. That’s why the serpent says in it says in Genesis3:5 -
and in Genesis 3:22 -
The physical reality does not change… what we think changes. That is why the serpent is correct in saying that Eve will not die when she eats the fruit. Rather she will have a new concept of death.
Before eating the fruit, Adam and Eve did not suffer because they had no concept of suffering. They were in paradise.
Everywhere?
You need to educate me on this.
For example, Jesus cured the sick and he told the apostles to do the same. Therefore, curing the sick, aka medicine, is good. How can it be the devil’s work?
Did you notice that the church preserved writing during the dark ages, ran schools and founded the first universities?
Did you notice that the most advanced science and technology is in Judeo-Christian countries?
Right, so God ate from it first ~ which is what i am saying here.
Because man will know of death, and so wont consider life eternal i.e. that life in ignorance of death is an ignorance.
In the same way as before the earth/creation [universe] ~ before duality, there would be no suffering. Yet it is not true that being un-knowledgeable about the earth would result in no suffering, the lamb simply gets eaten by the lion. The world has nerve endings etc.
Humanity inherited the world and not Eden, Eden had already been destroyed because God had already eaten the apple. So that statement is either self contradictory or it refers to a metaphoric spiritual situation.
I agree. …our misinterpretation. Yet he also said gods word is truth and all else is false ~ or didn’t he say that? Forgive my ignorance of specific lines, i have only read the bible a couple of times.
None of this negates the historical negatives though, so i think we have to take both perspectives as part of what the religion has been ~ in effect. Sure that doesn’t mean Christ was wrong, but would he agree that God took the first bite?
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Why would God need to eat the fruit in order to have a knowledge of good and evil? Why would He not have that knowledge without eating the fruit?
In the beginning, there was no earth, no place for the tree to grow and therefore no tree. Right?
So God must have created the tree.
If a priest molests an altar boy, that may be part of the history of Christianity. But it does not mean it is part of Jesus’ teachings or that ‘Christianity tells us to molest altar boys’.
Because that would be a contradiction. Secondly the decision to create a world with good and evil potential, suggests he made the decision with all its implications ~ took a bite of the apple.
Yes god created the tree, and the means by which life originated in the world. That in turn means there will be diseases for trees, though not necessarily intended.
True. I wouldn’t say the bible cannot be read as beneficent, but is open to other interpretations, and kinda shouts about that.
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Not all interpretations have equal merit.
What is the interpretation “medicine is the devil’s work” based on? Which text?
Doesn’t the bible say something like ‘thou shall not suffer a witch’ to live?
Is this still on topic in some way? I am not asking if the bible is good or bad, its more an issue of origins ~ how to make a universe kind of question. To make a world like what this one is, then duality has to occur and surely has origins in the creation.
That’s in Exodus 22:18. There are some statements against witchcraft and magic- most of them in the OT. But medicine is not magic or witchcraft. And plants are to be used by Adam and Eve.
Your OP had the line :
“But Christianity tells us science, philosophy, medicine and invention are the devils work, we should live simple lives as farmers etc?”
That seems to be clearly false and if it serves as one of the foundations of your OP, then the OP will be wrong.
It also had this; What If the ‘Eden scene’ actually represents the nature of divinity and its complex conundrum in creating a non-divine world?
The whole question of the op is concerned with that conundrum. I ‘may’ be wrong concerning interpretation granted, but the essential question concerns weather or not God bit the apple first. Is it part of Gods nature as well as human nature [and much of nature itself] to bite apples?
I don’t have a clue what those questions even mean. Sorry.
How can the devil be evil? We already explained that the absolute reality prior to the fruit is that there is no good or evil, life or death. Of course the world depicted prior to the fruit was actually a priori good, vegan animals and no bloodshed or misery of any kind. In the story it seems that the fruit does not create evil, but created the need for evil, boredom. After consumption of the fruit the humans realize that their lives are hollow, boring, their world, boring. God kicks them out. So they create evil to satiate themselves.
That is the story. But is it true? Or more propaganda to cater to a morally inept God? God created the world, god created the devil, but where is the blame on god? God creates the sick then heals the sick, in order to bring them to him. Suffering is an entirely unneeded process that is justified by logic of men. God could simply have never created them in first place, or simply will them to him, but creates Hell as a detour and and Satan as a teacher. Why? God’s plan is a giant social experiment to see if humans can evolve into gods. Quite simply, God is a moral idiot who doesn’t know what he was doing and never did. Who created God most likely another moral idiot.
GreatandWiseTrixie
I see we agree on something. 
Right, he doesn’t heal >all< of the sick and hospital records will attests to the fact that death and suffering are indiscriminate.
You cant create without entropy though, a sun has to burn and a human has to use and acquire fuel. Anything that changes anything involves some manner of entropy, no?
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The word “create” implies a movement of energy resulting in a transformation of that energy, usually towards more harmony and less entropy. Destroy implies a transformation of energy resulting in more entropy less harmony. In order to create, the energy would have to have some sort of “seperateness” from other energy. Did god have to create matter? Did god have to let evolution continue it’s miserable course? Entropy does not equal misery, are the stars miserable? God is a moral idiot.
I disagree with those “Christians”, first off, and challenge your interpretation as well. The graden of Eden story does not demonize creativity and invention, (Adam was charged with creating and inventing names for all the animals), but that science and medicine, in a way, became necessities in a less than perfect world. To use another example, to live in a world that is just is good, but to live in a world that does not know of an alternative is even better.
Nicely put phyllo. Very nice.
GreatandWiseTrixie
Sure but to change a blue ball into a red one destroys the red ball [that it is a ‘red’ ball]. One germ encapsulating another [eating it] converts its energy into its form destroying the other. Creation and destruction a part of the same metaphysical entity or position. Duality is the engine of creation.
So yes God did indeed have to create matter, every particle in the universe has polarity and hence are fundamentally a product of duality. Yes he did have to create evolution, because patterns take time to form and interact.
omar
IF so, does this mean that ‘duality is the engine of invention’ is untrue? Did God not bite the apple in the sense of making the original duality?
IF…
kingjamesbibleonline.org/Bib … hilosophy/
Colossians 2:8 - Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
1 Corinthians 2:13 - Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
Titus 3:9-10 - But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. (Read More…)
1 Timothy 6:20 - O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane [and] vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:
1 Corinthians 2:1-5 - And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. (Read More…)
1 Corinthians 2:6-10 - Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: (Read More…)
1 Corinthians 1:21 - For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
Colossians 2:16-19 - Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath [days]: (Read More…)
Ecclesiastes 7:1-29 - A good name [is] better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth. (Read More…)
Acts 17:18 - Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.
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I don’t want to waste time on a dozen text, but this one caught my eye. Let’s see what happened next:
Acts 17:18-32 (NIV)