um...no i didnt make an assumption...read the line a little close...niether am i a christian....my point was that anything "christians" see as contrary to thier belief is considered ..pagan, evil, satans work..etc...hence anything we dont see eye to eye with christians

Gwendolyn ...if Adam and Eve lack the knowledge of good and evil before they ate the fruit ......then how would they have the knowledge to disobey God to eat the fruit...they had to have had that knowledge beforehand either due to God or to Satan

also since Adam and Eve didn't realize they were naked or even knew what clothes were ...wouldn't you agree that they lack general knowledge ...how hard is it to realize that everytime you walk or run that you see your body parts flinging around

oh no the dreaded dictionary debate but anyway that's an easy one ....a God is a person place or thing that wants or needs for naught ...therefore anything that has a need is not a God and exist as evil and sin

all knowledge is not created equal,,,the ability to learn, I believe, is a blessing


some of the wordly things that we are able to learn, I believe, are a curse(not literally, but figuratively) which distracts from and confuses whatever our purpose happens to be

I believe these distractions are courtesy of Satan

God gave you the abilty to learn Satan gave you the desire to do it

You made an assumption: you say with "other" Christians, assuming that I am a Christian.

I am not.

And even if I were, that is not a definition of "god."

um...no i didnt make an assumption...read the line a little close...niether am i a christian....my point was that anything "christians" see as contrary to thier belief is considered ..pagan, evil, satans work..etc...hence anything we dont see eye to eye with christians


By your phrasing and the inclusion of the word "other," it indicated collusion. :)

You miss the point of the "lesson" to be learned from the myth. Adam and Eve were able to understand language, and Yahweh told them not to eat the fruit; he also told them the reasoning behind not eating it. They DISOBEYED him. The lesson is more about blind obedience than it is the acquirement of knowledge. It wasn't a matter of good vs. evil prior to the eating, but about doing as they were told.

They knew that they were naked--they just didn't realize that they "shouldn't" be naked.



Define what is "not" god.


My point is the subjectivity of god--to a pantheist, everything is god. To most, the rock laying in the road is not god.



I was not asking for a dictionary definition but trying to make the point that "god" differs from person to person, religion to religion, and culture to culture.

You defined god as you perceive Christians perceiving god--or your personal perception, but in the scope of history, your reply is inadequate. In Egypt, Sumeria, and Norse myth, gods were subject to death, hunger, and pain as were non-gods. Instead of needing "naught," they needed a lot. The Greek gods were immortal, but were still subject to pain and were not omniscient--they, too, had needs.

Some gods embody evil: Set kills Osiris out of jealousy. Loki brings about Ragnarok, the destruction of the gods. Gods consistently committed acts of adultery, rape, even bestiality. They killed unfairly out of rage.

You made my point.

um...no i didnt make an assumption...read the line a little close...niether am i a christian....my point was that anything "christians" see as contrary to thier belief is considered ..pagan, evil, satans work..etc...hence anything we dont see eye to eye with christians


By your phrasing and the inclusion of the word "other," it indicated collusion. :)
now your assuming....
"other" is meant as not every christian...im not naive enough to think every one of them is so close minded...

Syntactically speaking, the way you phrased your statement included both you and me in the realm of Christianity.

To make it mean what you wanted it to mean, the phrasing would have to be different, i.e. "Anything that you and I do not see eye-to-eye with other people, especially some Christians."

The "other" here indicates a commonality with people; when it was used in conjunction with "Christians," it also indicated a commonality. I teach writing;; trust me on this one;

Gwendolyn..explain how Adam and Eve knew they were naked or what naked was ...who in the garden of eden were wearing clothes? ...the sheep?

Gwendolyn if you are going to suggest to everyone else to keep on point to the myth then shouldn't you do the same

the myth does not claim that God is subjective it claims that God is a presence .....

Gwendolyn ...the problem is that you keep going off the point ...the God we are referring to is the one in the old testament ....so we are not talking about Zeus and his buddies ....that is what happens when people asks for definitions

well.....................................i believe in MR. Hanky.

(goes and eats one blueberry, and takes a bite of banana)

lighten up this isnt writing 101...nit picking everything not stated in grammatical correctness on this site would last you s life time....try just taking it at face value and dont read so much into it.....
..btw...before you grade this response...i do this all from my phone so ...no spell check. i tend to leave comma's, periods and the like out.......

ps...my name is jeff btw, im s happy wiccan..
nice to meet and chat with you gwendolyn..
i dont take things personal, just like to see debates on the issues not symantics......its all good...look forward to hearing more from you...

ps...my name is jeff btw, im a happy wiccan..
nice to meet and chat with you gwendolyn..
i dont take things personal, just like to see debates on the issues not symantics......its all good...look forward to hearing more from you...

You are taking this myth MUCH too seriously! IF you take that it has realistic validity, which it doesn't, then Adam and Eve would have known because they had received "knowledge" of what they should be doing and what they shouldn't be doing.

In this case, it was that they "should" be wearing clothes.

Myth has symbolism, yes, but in this case, the lesson to be learned is that disobedience has consequences. Compare this to the Greek myth of Pandora and you will see the same symbolism. In this case, it was an urn or chest; Pandora was told NOT to open the chest, but she did. Because she was disobedient, she let escape all the ills that plague humanity.

If you want to tilt, you should be jousting with religious orders that interpreted and still interpret myth in order to justify their own gains.

Knowledge was not "evil" because of Adam and Eve, but because church hierarchies were established to put some people in power and to keep others powerless. The best way to keep people powerless is to keep them ignorant.

However, in the nonexistent days of Adam and Eve, the only hierarchy that existed was that of god--and by YOUR definition of god, "he" wants naught; ergo, he was all powerful.

Examine the inconsistencies of Genesis overall: the two creation versions, the disparities between Yahweh and Elohim, the two versions of Noah's ark. You are trying to reconcile a MYTH with reality to support your thesis, but myth doesn't play according to the standards of reality.

Your real beef is with religious orders and your argument would be better served by asking how and why Christianity used the myth of Adam and Eve to further their own gain of power.

The hymn "Trust and Obey" sums it up: blindly trust god, and god is served by the pope, the preacher, the elder, the deacons. Don't ask, just do.

I can't tell you who the giants in the earth were; I can't tell you how the sons of god intermarried the daughters of men; again, applying standards of reality to the origins of myth lost in time is often a useless tasks. While the origins of many mythoi can be explained, others can't.

I am not going off the point and I also notice that you do not address some of my comments and points.

The Jewish god and the trappings of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are based on older gods and older myths--myths from Egypt, Sumeria, and Semitic tribes--including the Semitic "El."

And not only that, to which "version" of god in the Hebrew Scriptures do you refer? Are you talking about Elohim? Are you talking about Yahweh? Are you talking about the Jewish god from a Jewish perspective or from a Christian perspective?

The "Old Testament" is a Jewish book! The concept of god in the Jewish faith is not the concept of the "same" god in Christianity.

Perhaps you should be more exact in delineating your discussion points.

Your point about knowledge being evil is not supported by the Hebrew Scripture that you brought up in the original post, but beyond that, if you examine both Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, they are highly contradictory.

I usually only make comments about the phrasing if the intent is unclear, and your intent was unclear. While I understand that people who post on forums are not scions of grammatical perfection, it is still important to make points that are understandable. If I can't understand the intent, then the point is moot, eh?



Hail and well met. I am largely a pagan atheist.

People who take forum posts personally shouldn't post on forums.

The debate on semantics wouldn't arise if everyone wrote clearly enough to be understood!