The Eden Story

by choosing life 27 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  JamesThomas

  Choosing life, you pretty much recapped what I was saying.

  Interesting how many of the sacred scriptures of different religions have kernals of truth to be extracted.

  Yes, perhaps at the core of all religious writings is hidden the same truth. However, I am no fan of the Bible as it seems 99.9% of the time it is a divisive trap which reinforces a sense of separate broken self, and so then prolongs the suffering of mankind. Yet, once you have seen the fallacy of the isolated-self, there can be seen glues within the Bible. In other words too often the Bible is a map whose roads are only visible once you have arrived at your destination. Such a map, if dry, is good for starting a fire.

  Eckhart's book on the other hand, explains the goal, twist and turns of the journey as clear and precise as probably has ever been drawn out. I hope you enjoy it and come to see the treasures within yourself to which the book can only point the way.

  j
• 

  Mum

  Ilyrian and Narkissos have a point about the first and second chapters of Genesis.

  At the time the story was written, there was no Satan in it. There was only a serpent. Satan was "grandfathered" in after the Hebrews were influenced by the Persians and adopted the idea of an evil god from the Zoroastrians.

  Where is Satan when you need somebody to blame?

  Regards,

  SandraC
• 

  zack

  How can innocents go head to head with Satan? Adam and Eve didn't stand a chance. God knew exactly what would happen. It may all be part of his plan.
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  Sarah Smiles

  Maybe they did not know bad! Who wants to know bad?
• 

  quietlyleaving

  At the moment I'm going through a phase wherein I 'm seeing the the Eden story as humans theorizing about their situation and how to make sense of it.

  I'm sure I've read all this somewhere, probably here, lol.

  So in theory the garden of eden represents a time when humans were very secure in nature/their world, then they were confronted with the evolutionary leap to becoming human. they became self conscious which is represented by the issue of nakedness.

  Satan for me represents the growing awareness that they could use their minds as a tool to think and choose and theorise about life, but at the same time there is a sense of ambivilance.

  How am I doing so far

  God represents their angst and also the direction they want to head in.
• 

  Mariusuk.

  It is quite simple really

  God says eat what you like (except for the animals because you are vegetarian at moment!) but DO NOT eat off that tree with the REALLY nice looking fruit.

  They did (with a little persuasion from a talking snake)

  God got annoyed

  The rest is history

  as a footnote the punishment God metted out on the snake (who was the cause of ALL of the crap I may add) was to make it crawl on it's belly for the rest of is days

  hmmmm
• 

  AllAlongTheWatchtower

  Something just occurred to me while reading this thread, that I never thought of before. Several people mentioned how Adam and Eve were created as full grown, yet innocent adults-childlike. God would have had to teach them everything, including language. The way you teach a child language, is to give them a few words at a time, starting with the names of things. Yet in the bible, god has Adam name all the animals. How in the world do you teach someone language, when nothing has a name yet? Just more evidence, in my opinion, that the creation story is bunk.

  Come to think of it, if you consider Adam and Eve as little more than adult babies, the creation story takes on a whole new silly aspect...imagine them wearing diapers, and god changing them.
• 

  Anti-Christ

  where does it say in the bible that they were created as adults? Maybe they were created as children and later sinned wen they were adults, but I still think it's all myth.