Who really believes this stuff?

by trevor 8 Replies latest jw friends

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  trevor

  Adam my hero

  This poor guy called Adam (no surname) Starts his life as the only human on the planet with no mother or father, brother or sisters or grandparents. He wanders around unaware that he is naked and could do with a little support. Being first is good but it can get lonely. Alcohol has not been invented and a good steak is out of the question, so he wanders around naming animals. Shops have not yet been invented - but then again neither have women. One day he wakes up to find himself one rib short of a ribcage. He then meets the only woman in the world, who is genetically his twin sister, but God who is spying on him 24/7 tells him it?s ok to have ?knowledge? of her. The poor guy is a virgin and has no mates to get advice from. Anyway our hero manages to overcome his inhibitions and fathers the human race.

  His sister ,who is now his wife, has been off flirting with a snake, who has a good chat up line. Adam is encouraged to relax over an apple! (I went scrumping as a kid unaware that eating he wrong apple could plunge the world into darkness but unlike Adam I came from a long line of cunning a devious survivors with thousands of years to learn the eleventh commandment.) The eleventh command is - don?t get caught. That?s a tall order when God is following you round the only garden in the world, which he happens to own.

  Now this hapless fellow find himself responsible for all the sins of mankind and God shuns him. This is just the begging of a wonderful bestseller called ?The Bible.? From there on it goes downhill. Any one ho calls out the ?right name? can live forever but Adam is totally stuffed. As he has died for his sin he is unable to call on the name. He won?t be resurrected because because he was born perfect. If he was born perfect, how come he****** up so badly. Did anyone tell him that biting an apple was going to lead to billions of people suffering and dying. Of course he blamed the woman who ?gave it to him.? We assume this was a reference to the apple. Eve for her part is now responsible for all the pains of childbirth for millennia. Why would either of them want to come back to this God forsaken planet. They might find it difficult to get invitations to dinner parties and the conversation could be difficult. Would you adam & Eve it?

  Give me a break this guy?s a hero. I would like to believe that I am a descendant of his but alas, it is more likely I came from a less classy pedigree.

  Who really believes this stuff?
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  Cygnus

  Lots of people believe it. Good people. Intelligent people. I once believed it. I wish I had something to replace it with but it seems nihilism and apathy are all that's left.
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  stevenyc

  I don't blame eve, god gave them a language and the mental process of reason with ALL the thoughts for survival. They couldn't develope a natural 'free will' decission process because they were invented/created as adult humans, not raised from childbirth. So ANY mistakes made are the resposibility of the designer that imprinted their thought patterns. No getting around it. Its JEHOVAHS Fault that we're suffering and millions now living will die. (does this make me an apostate of the highest order??)

  steve.
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  itsallgoodnow

  Nope, it's just a myth. I always liked the way it was described below...

  http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-11/ann-druyan.html

  ?Genesis, this first story, this founding myth of ours, in which the first humans are doomed and cursed eternally for asking a question, for partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It's puzzling that Eden is synonymous with paradise when, if you think about it at all, it's more like a maximum-security prison with twenty-four hour surveillance. It's a horrible place. Adam and Eve have no childhood. They awaken full-grown. What is a human being without a childhood? Our long childhood is a critical feature of our species. It differentiates us, to a degree, from most other species. We take a longer time to mature. We depend upon these formative years and the social fabric to learn many of the things we need to know.

  Their father is a terrifying, disembodied voice who is furious with them from the moment they first awaken. He doesn't say, "Welcome to the planet Earth, my beautiful children! Welcome to this paradise. Billions of years of evolution have shaped you to be happier here than anywhere else in the vast universe. This is your paradise." No, instead God places Adam and Eve in a place where there can be no love; only fear, and fear-based behavior, obedience. God threatens to kill Adam and Eve if they disobey his wishes. God tells them that the worst crime, a capital offense, is to ask a question; to partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. What kind of father is this? As Diderot observed, the God of Genesis "loved his apples more than he did his children."

  This imperative not to be curious is probably the most self-hating aspect of all, because what is our selective advantage as a species? We're not the fastest. We're not the strongest. We're not the biggest. However, we do have one selective advantage that has enabled us to survive and prosper and endure: A fairly large brain relative to our body size. This has made it possible for us to ask questions and to recognize patterns. And slowly over the generations we've turned this aptitude into an ability to reconstruct our distant past, to question the very origins of the universe and life itself. It's our only advantage, and yet this is the one thing that God does not want us to have: consciousness, self-awareness.

  Perhaps Genesis should be read as an ironic story. Here's a god who does not give us the knowledge of good and evil. He knows we don't know right from wrong. Yet he tells us not to do something anyway. How can someone who doesn't know right from wrong be expected to do the right thing? By disobeying god, we escape from his totalitarian prison where you cannot ask any questions, where you must never question authority. We become our human selves.

  ...
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  Taylor S.

  That's the best take on the Creation story I ever read.

  Thanks for that link.

  tSiluwe
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  kazar

  It always puzzled me that there is no mention in the bible that Eve expressed shock that a snake could talk; even more that she didn't go straight to Adam and say, "a snake talked to me!"
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  trevor

  Thanks for all your comments.

  Barney - I don?t know if it was an apple or not. You would think in view of the trouble this fruit caused and the millions of deaths that are supposed to have resulted, that God would tell us what it was. We could then avoid it in the way the Jehovah?s Witness avoid birthdays.

  Certainly pregnant women would want to avoid it in view of it being responsible for their birth ?pains.? Which reminds me, that was just one of the punishment this loving God inflicted on our heroic couple along with their loss of eternal life, when God threw a wobbly. The ground was cursed.The snake was cursed, lost its legs and was told it would eat dust for the rest of its days. Strange because snakes don?t eat dust.

  And all because his experiment went wrong. Or did it? We are told that god made the man in his image so he was just as keen to have some control as the God he was fashioned after. Of course God took none of the blame, he was not involved he only created them, made up the rules, spied on them and then punished them!

  They were God?s children with no parents to love them or guide them and having not interacted with other people, travelled beyond the Garden or been to school, would have had the mental age of children. Wouldn?t it have been enough to make them stand by a tree, as corners had not been invented, with their hands on their heads? After all it was a first offence but the one strike and your out rule was applied with vigour.

  The only winner was the devil. He was vindicated as Adam & Eve did come to know good from bad and certainly had their eyes opened. I wonder what they thought of their father after this God sized tantrum.

  Back to the present. Why would anyone want to live in a new world or paradise restored? The same bad tempered control freak in charge and only Jehovah?s Witnesses for friends.

  Could it just be that the God of the Bible - created in man?s image - is nothing like the real intelligent God responsible for our wonder universe?
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  kwintestal

  What makes you think it was an apple?

  DUH !!! How'd you think you got that Adam's Apple in your throught?!?!?!

  Kwin
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  trevor

  Kwin

  I felt a lump in my throat as I read your post.