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Adam was formed from the soil of the earth as a fully mature human in one day. Then later, Adam was put to sleep and God operated on him, took out the female sex organ (no it wasn't a rib, but a hollow angular organ) from him and built the woman around it from the soil. This is why, when their is coitus between a man and woman they are one. The two parts (one part of the man and the other taken from the man are joined as one again). He didn't use parts of animals to form her. She was fully human that day she was made.
Uhm, sure ... because God couldn't have simply poofed humans into existence. No sirree, he had to go through all of these bizarre procedures - needing to "make" Adam from dirt (is that the primary ingredient for cooking up a fresh batch of humans?), and then putting Adam to sleep and performing an "operation" to withdraw female sex organs (why the EFFF would God put the female sex organs inside of Adam if he knew he was just going to have to remove them?!?)
That story is just a convoluted mess of rituals that no one would even see. And how nice it is that God must have sat down with Moses and gave an interview so that Moses would know all of this stuff. No wonder he climbed down off the mountain with white hair - I wouldn't believe it either.
Ah Grasshopper . . . you have come a long way, my friend. Your insights are multiplying faster than day flies! Cannot rep you yet.
I can, and did. I agree. Chango is right in that it is an effort to use a tale to illustrate the idea of becoming 'conscious' in the sense of thinking about things rather than just behaving instinctively.
This is an old problem with the idea of being unaware of morality, in fact, is essentially a state of childlike perfection, not doing wrong things because one does not even think of them. I won't go into what's wrong about this idea, but would observe that it is a recurring theme with noble savages, a longing for a 'golden age' the Hippy and luddite rejection of the complex and industrial society and returning to a simple age when everything was..simple.
I believe this was never true, and while we can accomplish the wiping out of entire villages in minutes rather than hours, we at least see further than a god -blessed conflict.
The real point of the thread, however, is not those who see the story as metaphor, symbolic or best- guess myth, but is about those who see it as fact. Historical actually happened fact.
They are here saying that it really happened that way. It may be objected that these are a deluded minority, but I am not so sure.
Uhm, sure ... because God couldn't have simply poofed humans into existence. No sirree, he had to go through all of these bizarre procedures - needing to "make" Adam from dirt (is that the primary ingredient for cooking up a fresh batch of humans?), and then putting Adam to sleep and performing an "operation" to withdraw female sex organs (why the EFFF would God put the female sex organs inside of Adam if he knew he was just going to have to remove them?!?)
That story is just a convoluted mess of rituals that no one would even see. And how nice it is that God must have sat down with Moses and gave an interview so that Moses would know all of this stuff. No wonder he climbed down off the mountain with white hair - I wouldn't believe it either.
God didn't "poof" anything into existence.
Just because you personally believe what God did was bizarre does not mean it actually way.
Today doctors do that which was done around 6,000 years ago by God. They also use anesthesia to put people under and perform sex changes.
Why would God put the female sex organ in Adam? Because He originally made Adam a hermaphrodite. Adam was complete in himself. By taking out the female sex organ Adam was missing that which made him complete. When having coitus with Eve he felt complete or "one" again. It is really genius on God's part to do it this way.
Where in the Bible does it say Moses' hair turned white when He came down off Mt. Sinai?
I wrote that the story was an allegory. Do you not know what an allegory is? Your question suggests that you do not. What you ask is akin to "How does the tale of the Three Little Pigs prove that humans are not as prepared as they should be for calamities?"
You seem to be insisting that the story be taken literally, and of course in order to do that one has to pretend that science has discovered nothing regarding the actual origins of humans.
I know what an allegory is.
Please tell us all what the allegory is in God forming man of the soil of the ground, breathing into him life and man becoming a living soul?
Now I don't for one minute doubt there are spiritual connotations to the Genesis account. But that does not prove the actual, historical account of Genesis is bogus. The writers of the New Testament always based their spiritual understanding of the Old Testament on what were actual facts.
The goof is to read the story literally. It's not a story about how humans physically came to be, it's actually about what it means to be human in the first place.
In the story, Adam and Eve existed in a state of "ignorance is bliss" basically on the same level as other animals. Once they partook of the "tree of knowledge" they were elevated in consciousness to that of a standard human being, becoming subject to all the consequences which come from it, both good and bad.
In other words, the ancient writers correctly placed the birth of humanity at the point when human consciousness became fully realized and what that means to every conscious human being. They used an otherwise fluffy story to illustrate it, but it's no tale written by idiot goat herders just for fun.
The important lesson of the story is to realize that being a sentient human being with all that extra stuff going on in our heads carries dire consequences which we all must come to terms with... and perhaps the most difficult of those consequences is our ability to foresee the general path of our future (we all know that barring an accident, we are gonna go though the cycle of life from youth to maturity to old age and inevitably die).
The stupid ones are not the writers of the story but the religious folks who have interpreted it wrongly as an actual event and the anti-religious folks who like to laugh at the religious folks for believing it was an actual event without trying to understand the philosophical meaning of the story themselves.
Actually the goof is reading the creation of Adam and Eve not literally. Adam is in Christ's genealogy. He was an actual person actually created the way it is written. To believe otherwise is to be like the uneducated.
I see, so when God supposedly made the universe, from where did he get the original materials? Yep, he poofed them into existence. Even if there was some unstated "process" involved in creating a universe, there is still that nagging question about "something from nothing." Christians claim that is impossible, therefore, God must have created the universe ... but out of WHAT? Oh, unless he poofed something into existence to begin the building process, there was nothing with which to build.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
Just because you personally believe what God did was bizarre does not mean it actually way.
It is bizarre - just like I find most creation myths bizarre. Fact is, I'm pretty much on the fringes of society, disenfranchized and a non-participant in the human race. Not by choice, mind you, but that's beside the point. What's important to note is that I see things without the bias of culture weighing me down; as an outsider looking in, I perceive humanity MUCH differently than you do.
Therefore, when I see a mythological story like Adam and Eve, stories many people believe in with an almost shameful conviction, I see nothing special. It's just another story - like hundreds of others with equally primitive and fanciful notions of gods using magical powers to create humans out of a variety of different materials. I would think that the Christian myth would have something to make it stand out as true, but it doesn't, and therefore I see no reason to assume the Christian myth is true merely because I happen to live in a Christian-dominated nation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
Today doctors do that which was done around 6,000 years ago by God. They also use anesthesia to put people under and perform sex changes.
Yes, that is true - but why would God need to perform a "sex change" operation?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
Why would God put the female sex organ in Adam? Because He originally made Adam a hermaphrodite.
That's in the Bible somewhere, I presume?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
Adam was complete in himself.
Then why was it necessary to make Eve?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
By taking out the female sex organ Adam was missing that which made him complete. When having coitus with Eve he felt complete or "one" again. It is really genius on God's part to do it this way.
Okay, so what you have going on here is this: God made Adam complete in himself, but for some mysterious reason, God decided to remove the female part of Adam, which suddenly made him incomplete. Why God did that to Adam, who really knows - I guess we're just supposed to accept it without question. So once Adam was incomplete, instead of just putting the female sex organs back, God decided to make a completely new human in the form of a woman.
You see, it's not really genius in my book because it doesn't really make much sense. The best theory is always the one with the least amount of assumptions - and this story is filled with them. There are also a boat load of questions that really need answered but to which there are no answers except the stuff Biblical scholars make up to fill in the rather large holes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eusebius
Where in the Bible does it say Moses' hair turned white when He came down off Mt. Sinai?
LOL! It doesn't say that in the Bible, but now you see my point. People make stuff up all the time and present as "fact" things that aren't even mentioned in the Bible - like Adam being a hermaphrodite and God removing female sex organs from him.
Actually the goof is reading the creation of Adam and Eve not literally. Adam is in Christ's genealogy. He was an actual person actually created the way it is written. To believe otherwise is to be like the uneducated.
Damn... now I have to throw away my Anthropology degree, those last 20 years of study, thought and earnest searching for understanding.
If only I had realized Christ is special because he was a direct descendant of Adam, the first man on earth... who all humans are literally descended from only about 6000 years ago. I feell so dumm now.
I can, and did. I agree. Chango is right in that it is an effort to use a tale to illustrate the idea of becoming 'conscious' in the sense of thinking about things rather than just behaving instinctively.
This is an old problem with the idea of being unaware of morality, in fact, is essentially a state of childlike perfection, not doing wrong things because one does not even think of them. I won't go into what's wrong about this idea, but would observe that it is a recurring theme with noble savages, a longing for a 'golden age' the Hippy and luddite rejection of the complex and industrial society and returning to a simple age when everything was..simple.
I believe this was never true, and while we can accomplish the wiping out of entire villages in minutes rather than hours, we at least see further than a god -blessed conflict.
The real point of the thread, however, is not those who see the story as metaphor, symbolic or best- guess myth, but is about those who see it as fact. Historical actually happened fact.
They are here saying that it really happened that way. It may be objected that these are a deluded minority, but I am not so sure.
It's the generations of people for centuries afterwards who latched onto the literalist interpretation and are determined to hold onto it while completely missing the subtle wisdom and elegance contained within the story.
. But that does not prove the actual, historical account of Genesis is bogus. .
As noted, science has proven that the Genesis story is bogus.
To spare you time and a possible series of furious posts from you.....
Unless you have something other than declarations and assertions which come with no supporting evidence, I am uninterested in your position on these issues. So....please do not bother.
It's the generations of people for centuries afterwards who latched onto the literalist interpretation and are determined to hold onto it while completely missing the subtle wisdom and elegance contained within the story.
I take your point, too, but if the story is taken as Symbolic, metaphorical or best guess, then the thread is pointless. Except in the best guess, and that is only to say they didn't know what we now know.
No, the only way the thread even had purpose is where those who believe the Eden story for a fact claim the writers got it all right, and that is where we are looking for goofs enough to argue that the story cannot be true.
While those who claim that it is may deny the findings of science or explain away the 'goofs' by having God do a bit of magic or pointing to what can be done in a lab, and dismiss Shirina's valid observation that none of it was necessary and did not even work as god produced a flawed product that had to be factory recalled in a flood and replaced by another marque of human who turned out to be no better, and even after Jesus, we are no better or less sinful than we ever were - they are in the position of denying, explaining away and dismissing more and yet more evidence, leaving them with nothing but faith is a pretty goofy story.
I cannot be repeated often enough that the only person who can make a Genesis -literalist fundy come to their senses is themselves. The ones who benefit from sound reasoned argument are those who shake their heads and do not fall into the trap of regarding genesis as literal, historical fact.
A Merry Xmas to all, and may Santa fill your stockings with Wiz.
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