The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

[TXatheist]

This is something that I have never understood. But to be honest, I have never done any extensive research on it, so hopefully this will be an enlightening thread for me as well as others.

Why did the Christian god create the tree of knowledge of good and evil and then place it in the garden? Moreover, why would he do it if he knew man would fall because of it (I'm assuming god is omniscient as Christians claim)? Isn't this like setting a toy in front of a child and demanding that they not touch it and then leaving the room, all the while knowing they will touch it and that you will have to punish them for it? I can actually understand doing that if one were trying to teach a child a particular lesson; maybe showing them that there are consequences for disobedience. It's still cruel to set them up like that. Regardless, man's punishment was not simply given to teach him a lesson. Everything changed after Adam and Eve ate the fruit. God cursed the ground, cursed man, cursed woman, new pains arose, new toils, man became mortal, animals became carnivores etc. Every hardship that every one of billions and billions of people has ever had to go through came from that one disobedient act.

So why did god do it? What purpose did it serve other than to ruin what he had created? After one of god's angels went bad, he had to kick him out of heaven. Then he creates his ultimate creation, man, and then shoves the very thing that will ruin man right in front of him and says, "don't touch." It almost seems like he is a glutton for punishment.

[Cathar1950]

your changing the analogy...go back to the drugs one and answer that

and again...its not the gun...its the act of disobeying...the gun one is not appropriate

The point is that they were in paradise....where God was....they were given much and yet they chose to disobey. The tree is still there in paradise...where God dwells.

I did answer "the drug one." Go back and read it.

Show us the tree!
As I said I doubt you really have any kind of understanding of the myth and you claiming the tree is still there shows me I was correct. I suggest you go read the stuff that was written at least a thousand years older for some understanding besides some Sunday school lesson. Read the stories from Sumer and Assyria.

[TXatheist]

Its like having a teenager in your house and when you tell them not to touch or take something they do it anyways....should we blame the father because he shouldn't have allowed the kid to be tempted to take it or is the blame with the teenager because he disobeyed?

In this scenario, would you blame the teenager and then impose an extremely severe punishment on him as well as every one of his descendants for the rest of time? Do you think that would be fair?

[kayky]

The story of the Garden of Eden is a myth, not literal history. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil symbolizes the evolving of a self-aware consciousness able for the first time to make judgments about good and bad.

[Cathar1950]

The story of the Garden of Eden is a myth, not literal history. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil symbolizes the evolving of a self-aware consciousness able for the first time to make judgments about good and bad.

We make value judgements about what works or is good and what doesn't work and is evil. We see the world the way it should be or at least how it can be better or worse. We are like the gods and we are responsible or at least are part of the problem.
But the story didn't happen and humans did not bring death into the world.

[kayky]

Death is an imperative of the evolutionary process, not a punishment from God.

[Cathar1950]

Death is an imperative of the evolutionary process, not a punishment from God.

It is what makes life living. We have never experienced anything else in all the living world except death. It is the natural order and it seem odd we should be blamed for it entering the world. I mean what a load to place on your children.

Child:Daddy why do things die? Why did grandma die?

Father:Because of something you did when I told you not to.

[Ankhhape]

This is something that I have never understood. But to be honest, I have never done any extensive research on it, so hopefully this will be an enlightening thread for me as well as others.

Why did the Christian god create the tree of knowledge of good and evil and then place it in the garden? Moreover, why would he do it if he knew man would fall because of it (I'm assuming god is omniscient as Christians claim)? Isn't this like setting a toy in front of a child and demanding that they not touch it and then leaving the room, all the while knowing they will touch it and that you will have to punish them for it? I can actually understand doing that if one were trying to teach a child a particular lesson; maybe showing them that there are consequences for disobedience. It's still cruel to set them up like that. Regardless, man's punishment was not simply given to teach him a lesson. Everything changed after Adam and Eve ate the fruit. God cursed the ground, cursed man, cursed woman, new pains arose, new toils, man became mortal, animals became carnivores etc. Every hardship that every one of billions and billions of people has ever had to go through came from that one disobedient act.

So why did god do it? What purpose did it serve other than to ruin what he had created? After one of god's angels went bad, he had to kick him out of heaven. Then he creates his ultimate creation, man, and then shoves the very thing that will ruin man right in front of him and says, "don't touch." It almost seems like he is a glutton for punishment.

How do you know it was the Christian God? Perhaps it was the Hebrew God or perhaps even the Egyptian God Amon?
-from the Gospels of Nag Hammadi: Testimonial of Truth
"the God whom most Christians worship, the God of the Hebrew Bible, is 'himself' one one of the fallen angels, from whose tyranny Christ came to set human beings free.

TOT (3:4-5)
it reveals truth only when one reads it in reverse, rcognizing that God is actually the villain, and the Serpent (Lucifer) the holy one

Reality of Rulers (Nag Hammadi)
"It is Samael and his fellow 'rulers' of the Darkness (Eph.6:12), not the true God, who formed Adam's physical body, set him to work in Paradise, "to till and cultivate it" then put him to sleep and fashioned his female partner out of his rib.

It is this God that commanded Adam not to eat of the Tree of Knowledge, which could open his eyes to the Truth.
When Adam & Eve, enlightened by the feminine spiritual principle who appeared to her in the form of the Serpent and deified them.

God threw mankind into great distraction and into a life of toil, so that humankind might be occupied with worldly affairs, and might not have the opportunity of being devoted to the Holy Spirit / Higher-Self / HGA

*Just something to think about

[orthodox]

You must first understand the basic concepts of Creation.

We were created as Spiritual beings in a state of higher grace then we are now. We were to become like God. When God told them not to eat of the tree it was not until the Serpent tempted Eve saying they will be like God and they could take that knowledge.
What happened in between man's creation and the first temptation? Adam had no problem moving throughout creation ignoring the tree - we were not as children.

Perhaps one day God was going to let Adam and Eve eat from the tree and fulfill their destiny to be like God but instead they fell to temptation and tried to take God's knowledge.

It is the classic example of the protagonist of a story trying to take what is not his...gets caught...and spends the rest of the movie redeeming himself and in the end gets the object he tried to steal.

What do you expect God to do once he found them trying to take the knowledge?

It was from that sin that Man's grace became twisted and corrupted, hence Man taking on flesh and being in a lesser state than when we were created.

But if you do not accept that Man was not created as we are now then this will not make sense to you.

And if the Creation story is true then it would make sense for the Tree of Life symbol to be found in multiple cultures around the world.....just as there is a Catastrophic flood in every mythology in the cultures around the world.

[kayky]

You must first understand the basic concepts of Creation.

We were created as Spiritual beings in a state of higher grace then we are now. We were to become like God. When God told them not to eat of the tree it was not until the Serpent tempted Eve saying they will be like God and they could take that knowledge.
What happened in between man's creation and the first temptation? Adam had no problem moving throughout creation ignoring the tree - we were not as children.

Perhaps one day God was going to let Adam and Eve eat from the tree and fulfill their destiny to be like God but instead they fell to temptation and tried to take God's knowledge.

It is the classic example of the protagonist of a story trying to take what is not his...gets caught...and spends the rest of the movie redeeming himself and in the end gets the object he tried to steal.

What do you expect God to do once he found them trying to take the knowledge?

It was from that sin that Man's grace became twisted and corrupted, hence Man taking on flesh and being in a lesser state than when we were created.

But if you do not accept that Man was not created as we are now then this will not make sense to you.

And if the Creation story is true then it would make sense for the Tree of Life symbol to be found in multiple cultures around the world.....just as there is a Catastrophic flood in every mythology in the cultures around the world.

This is my take on the Garden of Eden myth. The serpent tells Eve that God has banned the fruit of this tree because to eat of it would make one "like God," knowing both good and evil. What is the nature of this lie? Like drawing shadow from light, separating evil from good would be completely unlike God, who is the union of all opposites.

Adam and Eve realize that they are naked. I think it was not until this moment that we have a true split between masculine and feminine as it appears that they had no understanding of their differences prior to this.

But God asks them, "Who told you that you were naked?" This seems to imply that this belief in both good and evil is an illusion of our own making. Is leaving the Garden merely a symbol of our ignorance of this illusion, believing in this conflict that we have actually personified into a human-like god and a scary devil?

"Finding" God involve a resolution of this conflict, making a life of love possible. The judgment we dread really coming from our own hearts and not from God.

[Ankhhape]

You must first understand the basic concepts of Creation.

We were created as Spiritual beings in a state of higher grace then we are now. We were to become like God. When God told them not to eat of the tree it was not until the Serpent tempted Eve saying they will be like God and they could take that knowledge.
What happened in between man's creation and the first temptation? Adam had no problem moving throughout creation ignoring the tree - we were not as children.

Perhaps one day God was going to let Adam and Eve eat from the tree and fulfill their destiny to be like God but instead they fell to temptation and tried to take God's knowledge.

It is the classic example of the protagonist of a story trying to take what is not his...gets caught...and spends the rest of the movie redeeming himself and in the end gets the object he tried to steal.

What do you expect God to do once he found them trying to take the knowledge?

It was from that sin that Man's grace became twisted and corrupted, hence Man taking on flesh and being in a lesser state than when we were created.

But if you do not accept that Man was not created as we are now then this will not make sense to you.

And if the Creation story is true then it would make sense for the Tree of Life symbol to be found in multiple cultures around the world.....just as there is a Catastrophic flood in every mythology in the cultures around the world.

This is my take on the Garden of Eden myth. The serpent tells Eve that God has banned the fruit of this tree because to eat of it would make one "like God," knowing both good and evil. What is the nature of this lie? Like drawing shadow from light, separating evil from good would be completely unlike God, who is the union of all opposites.

Adam and Eve realize that they are naked. I think it was not until this moment that we have a true split between masculine and feminine as it appears that they had no understanding of their differences prior to this.

But God asks them, "Who told you that you were naked?" This seems to imply that this belief in both good and evil is an illusion of our own making. Is leaving the Garden merely a symbol of our ignorance of this illusion, believing in this conflict that we have actually personified into a human-like god and a scary devil?

"Finding" God involve a resolution of this conflict, making a life of love possible. The judgment we dread really coming from our own hearts and not from God.

God tells Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, "for surely if you do on that day you will die" . . . the Serpent told them the Truth, you would not die, that their eyes would be opened (enlightenment) and you could become a God.