I don't think you do. — uncanni

I think I do given that you did not refute anything I put or answer the simple question.

Thanks for your opinion though. I will give it the attention it deserves.

Regards
DL

Meaning lower life-forms work mostly from instinct. Where higher life-forms (self-aware Beings) are born with more of a blank slate — 3017amen

Experiments with babies show they know good and evil and how to choose from the two options.

They do not have a road map but to say they have a blank slate would be wrong. They have their instincts which is not blank at all.

Regards
DL

If you think humanity ‘learned ethics’ at this point, then you haven’t been paying attention. We haven’t even ‘learned ethics’ now — Possibility

Yet our secular law has surpassed the morality of the old ways and only poor thinkers will not see that.

Regards
DL

I think you are trying to read Genesis like a contemporary whodunit novel. The way I read it: A&E are banished from the garden and forced to go out and experience all the joys and pains of human life. It's kind of condensed down to farming and childbearing, but God gives them the entire gamut of human experience in the expectation that they will learn how to do it right.

God never planned to keep them like a Barbie and Ken in the garden: they wouldn't have been human if they hadn't responded to God's command with the NO of the two-year-old who is acquiring both the physical coordination and the mental calculations to make her/his own decision: "NO: I'ma do things my way. I must be fully human and make my own mistakes--not a doll, an automaton."

I believe that God had to let go completely when humans were created: God understood that it was creating a species incapable of being controlled or limited by instinct. God's still waiting for us to get it right, and repair the world, tikkun olam... — uncanni

You seem to think we have a free will. Your bible says differently as it says god controls, by his hardening of hearts, who will believe and who won't.

I am not reading in a who done it way.

If you cannot recognize that god murdered A & E by neglect by insuring they would not eat of the tree of life, then you are not reading the story right.

Like the J W who murder their children by denying them a life saving blood transfusion, god denied A & E their transfusion from the tree of life.

If you lock up the pantry and let your children starve, then you would be analogically murdering your children.

Regards
DL

The natural is seen as unnatural to A&E, so they invent clothing to cover up their private parts. I would call this a form of implicit guilt about/terror of sexual desire. — uncanni

I see.

Do you go about naked in front of others now that you have matured?

Do you dress because it is expected of because of your shame?

The story of A & E is a coming of age and knowledge/wisdom yarn.

It has nothing to do with sex. There is no tree of sex. Just of the knowledge of good or evil sex.

Regards
DL

Why are you mentioning the bible? You think if the bible says something that's good evidence it is true? Sheesh. — Bartricks

No. The bible is a book of ancient wisdom and myth created to enhance discussions and debates.

That worked well until Christianity began to read their myths literally.

Here is some history for you.

I hope you can see how intelligent the ancients were as compared to the mental trash that modern preachers and theists are using with the literal reading of myths.

https://bigthink.com/videos/what-is-god-2-2

Further.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

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 the literal reading of myths.

"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."

Matt 7;12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

This is how early Gnostic Christians view the transition from reading myths properly to destructive literal reading and idol worship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02ciandvg&feature=BFa&list=PLCBF574D

Regards
DL

I have a hard time taking seriously the idea of some kind of divine supervillain who created everything just to torture it! — petrichor

Oops.

Nice that you are not ready to become a Christian by allowing your morals and intellect to go into a dysfunctional Christian mode.

Regards
DL

You'd probably gain a few things from it to go with what you are already bringing forth. — Serving Zion

I have spoken of most of the issues you put but thank you for the thought.

Regards
DL

I wouldn't call that "ethics," — uncanni

Then you are not good at analogical thinking.

Gen 3; 22 And the LORD God said: 'Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil;

If you know of good and evil, that would mean you have attained moral thinking and know of the ethical actions that should be taken. Right?

If you would not say they learned ethics, what do you think is meant by their knowing and learning of good and evil?

Regards
DL

I don't live that way though, and the world wasn't like that to begin with — Serving Zion

Are you that foolish as to believe that there were real talking serpents and donkeys?

If you are that big of a literalist fool then best to ignore me as I think you are a waste of good air if you are that mentally dysfunctional

I use this on occasion as the writer asks a good question on who is a good Christian and who is a poor one. You live in poverty while i live in wealth.

Regards
DL
.

How does it happen that you don't see it? 1 Corinthians 13 is a popular definition of love, including: — Serving Zion

Sure but your god is not an example of love, according to your own definition.

Regards
DL

Until you bring your views to align with the facts, — Serving Zion

There are no real facts in a book of fiction.

Only fools read myths like it was history.

Regards
DL

You have ejected the founding facts from the story in order to express that view. The world was paradise in absence of sin (Genesis 1:31), and it becomes the opposite through it (Genesis 6:5-7). — Serving Zion

So you think that man's higherst form is to be too stupid to even know we was naked and having his moral sense as bling, as scriptures state was the state of A & E.

Would you deny your children the tree of all knowledge and an education?

Would you think they were their best when as bright as bricks?

Regards
DL

So, for example, if you are a parent and you know that the child doesn't understand how dangerous the road is, would you say it is immoral to warn them to not go there? — Serving Zion

A warning is good, but you forget that what god warned about was exactly want he put Satan in Eden himself, which had the ability do deceive the whole world.

That takes quite the prick of a god, especially when his warning was followed by his murdering A & R by neglect and his hiding away what would have kept A & E alive. The tree of life.

You seem to think that those murders by god to be justified. Do you?

How do you suppose your question fits with the doctrine in John 14:10?

"Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words I say to you, I do not speak on My own; but the Father dwelling in Me does His works." — Serving Zion

So you like that a man does not take responsibility for his own words.

No wonder you are promoting a god who wishes you to use a scapegoat.

I think that you do not want to step up to your own responsibilities as well.

You have swallowed a lie and don’t care how evil you make Jesus to keep your feel good get out of hell free card.

It is a lie, first and foremost because, like it or not, having another innocent person suffer or die for the wrongs you have done, --- so that you might escape responsibility for having done them, --- is immoral. To abdicate your personal responsibility for your actions or use a scapegoat is immoral.

You also have to ignore what Jesus, as a Jewish Rabbi, would have taught his people.

Ezekiel 18:20 The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.

Deuteronomy 24:16 (ESV) "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.

Psa 49;7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him:

There is no way that you would teach your children to use a scapegoat to escape their just punishments and here you are doing just that.

Jesus is just a smidge less immoral than his demiurge genocidal father, and here you are trying to put him as low in moral fibre as Yahweh. Satan applauds you though as you are doing her work.

Regards
DL

Does non-disclosure presuppose cowardice? — The Owl

Yes.
It shows lack of confidence in what is being held back.

Regards
DL

we have done something to deserve her contempt. — Bartricks

What do scriptures say of god and man forgiving?

7 x 70 times I think are the numbers.

God may not be able to count.

Regards
DL

What a mean Guy; With 'friends' like Him, we hardly need the Devil. — PoeticUniverse

I don't know if I appreciate this guy preaching for Gnostic Christianity. Rather gothic.

He does not speak too badly though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNcRXeCzpno

Regards
DL

Why would the god be a coward? Maybe he hates us. I mean, that seems more plausible to me. The god doesn't want anything to do with us. Not cowardice, but contempt. — Bartricks

Quite possibly. All I can tell for sure is that he is a deadbeat dad who will not visit us, the children of god.

Regards
DL

Isn't faith often - or always, by definition? - without facts? — Pattern-chaser

The way the term is used today, yes.

Regards
DL

Trump is not unlike the strict Master controller, and many republicans are fundamentalists. — PoeticUniverse

I hear you.

Trump is a saint as compared to the god those right wingers follow.

The Christian god is a fascist and so is Trump.

Regards
DL

Too much good is no good. — Shamshir

Why?

Regards
DL

Accordingly I had a similar issue that I posed to Gnostic Bishop but didn't really get his take on it. — 3017amen

Let me give it as a response here.
Ignorance is bliss has a benefit for believers. It makes them a tad happier than non-religious, believers live longer although generally fatter lives. Not longer by much and non-believers would rather die a couple of days earlier if it means doing as sheeple do and put their minds into intellectual and moral dissonance.

That ignorant bliss shows the least fit in society as compared to the more mentally fit non-religious who will protect their more sound thinking.

Regards
DL

the snake could have been female; in fact, I have the distinct feeling just now that the Snake in Eden was definitely female). — Bitter Crank

If you look at the Vatican's expulsion painting you will see that Satan is definitely portrayed as a female.

If you read what the church fathers had to say of women, you will understand why that was done.

If you read of all the many serpent using mystery schools, you will see why Christianity was against those as well.

Regards
DL

Even some of our cooperation became due to its necessity to help in the hunt, whether of animals or enemy tribes. — PoeticUniverse

Indeed, and it was mostly by fighting that wives were found and that pattern was quite long until people found that a trade war killed a lot fewer than a fighting war.

Regards
DL

Original sin is more like an innate tendency in human design rather than useless philosophical babbling due to poor definitions or whatnot. — PoeticUniverse

Indeed.

Let us all thank Gaia and nature for giving us the ability to compete and sin when we are not cooperating, which is what we mostly do.

Without sin, our evolution would end and we would go extinct.

The mistake Christianity did was make the Jewish Original Virtue into a sin and the success of Eden into a failure.

Stupid is as stupid thinks.

Regards
DL

"I can unequivocally state, but not prove to you, that transformation and revelation exists in consciousness." — 3017amen

I fail to see the problem as our friend is quite good at analogical thinking.

Regards
DL

good point — Bitter Crank

It makes a huge difference in how scriptures are to be understood.

Regards
DL

LOL, man you got to give me something harder than this LOL!

What were the conflicts largely based upon? Self inflicted? Here's a clue: Human volitional existence.

Mmmm and throw in a little bit of human Ego, and there you have it!!!! — 3017amen

You were too busy laughing.
Do try to make sense next time.
Regards
DL

Or more specifically, the belief in Jesus is both a Subjective and Objective truth. Is that a true statement? — 3017amen

Not according to the dictionaries I use.

In some senses, their is a bit of truth in both statements.

Jesus can only be a subjective entity, as we all have our own view of what he represents in our minds.

Gnostic Christians say you read white while I read black.

A miracle working Jesus, to be an objective reality, would have to return to show that he is as objective as written up to be.

The subjective is a truth while the objective remains a myth.

Logos and mythos are being mixed and that sort of makes it all speculative nonsense, as must be when the supernatural is in play.

Jesus used logos, not mythos.

Regards
DL

Can we can agree that Jesus was a Pacifist?

Can we agree he would not endorse extremism (both politically far right or far left) or otherwise in Religion? — 3017amen

No.

Jesus said, "Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war.

Luke 19:27 But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and kill them in front of me.

Qur'an 8:7 "Allah wished to confirm the truth by His words: `Wipe the infidels out to the last.'"

That Jesus seems to be quite extreme.

Then again, that is the Rome created Jesus. Not the more eastern mystic Jesus that I follow.

My Jesus is not a pacifist although my founders were and look at how easily the inquisitions wiped them out. If Christianity ever thought Jesus a pacifist, they sure did not follow his ways.

Regards
DL

I'm a fan of Gnosticism. — javra

All moral people will give the ancient Gnostic Christians points for putting morality at the top of their list for their god and calling out Yahweh for the vile demiurge he is.

All who idol worship Yahweh are idolizing genocide and a satanic god.

Regards
DL

Coin toss or not - a choice is a choice. — Shamshir

I would expect that from a fool.

Regards
DL

Name the three origins of the Edem story, or stop spitting. — Shamshir

It is well known that the Sumerian and Egyptian myths were plagiarized for the bible. That mekes your request irrelevant as I am dealing with the biblical myth.

Regards
DL

Hello GCB! I see that you are a little upset, from what I can infer from your posts to me (& other's). — 3017amen

Upset, no. Disappointed, yes.
I hate to see people with I.Q.s and morals that are lower than plant life.

what would YOU do differently? — 3017amen

I think that the literal reading of myths was the worst mistake Christianity ever made. They became idol worshipers instead of the perpetual seekers after god that Jesus preached.

Christianity should have followed it's older and wiser esoteric teachings and not accepted a genocidal prick as a god. Christians end in calling evil good.

Gnostic Christianity chose morals over power while Christians have accepted an immoral prick for a god.

Have a bit of history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02ciandvg&feature=BFa&list=PLCBF574D

Regards
DL

the Book lends itself to surprisingly astute observations about the human experience. — Possibility

Yes, including the fact that humans want a powerful god and not a moral one.

That is why they choose to follow a genocidal moral monster instead of seeking a good god.

Regards
DL

"Image" denotes looks, whereas "likeness" denotes character or, maybe better stated, one's nature as a being. Its the difference between "wear what JC wore" and "be like JC in spirit", for one hypothetical example. — javra

I can agree with this and accept it as an decent analogy.

Regards
DL

They started from a blank state - meaning no bias, meaning they were truly free. — Shamshir

Not when Satan or the talking serpent is there with a power that god gave her to deceive the whole world.

Or do you think the serpent had no role in Eden? Was she just a useless character?

Wrong. To make a free willed choice, one must merely choose. — Shamshir

So a coin toss as they knew not what they were choosing.

You can - and you'll be informed whether it is or isn't available. — Shamshir

Another coin toss.

Then how were they tempted? Because they could. — Shamshir

You indicated that Satan had no role. Did she or didn't she and if she did, what role?

Regards
DL

How about a tree? Is a tree good or bad? — TheMadFool

Show which tree and where it is growing.

In your driveway is evil but in your back yard, it could be good.

Do try harder as I do not write anything that does not logically compute.

Refute or accept.

Regards
DL

So I say quit waving the Fundy flag judging mankind and make an educated renewed paradigm. Isn't it simpler to say something along the lines of " the interpretation of the allegory is that we are not perfect beings". — 3017amen

Yes, it would be quite simplistic to take your view, given that the moral of the story is that we are perfect and evolving to a more perfect state at all times.

We are always doing the best we can withy what we have and can demonstrate that we are living in the best of all possible world, --- given the past that got us here, --- and that this is the only possible world.

Regards
DL

How do you understand the fall of man in a different way? — TheMadFool

Try the original/better thinking.

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/10/20/comparative-theodicy/
‘Instead of the Fall of man (in the sense of humanity as a whole), Judaism preaches the Rise of man: and instead of Original Sin, it stresses Original Virtue, the beneficent hereditary influence of righteous ancestors upon their descendants’."

Regards
DL