did anyone else catch this?

a little prologue. i bought a copy of paradise lost a few days ago and was planning on reading it... so i decided to brush up on the genesis story.

alright: god says "don't eat this fruit or you will surely die"
satan/snake thingy says "god's a liar, you won't die and you'll have knowledge"
people say "alright" then they eat the fruit... and live

god WAS lying.....

now, why isn't this subject to intensive scrutiny (especially from bible literalists)?

What did he lie about madness? They did die. He didn't say when, just that they would.

Why do you feel he lied?

Actually, the verse properly translated is, "dying, you shall die". After man sinned he came into the dying state. It took awhile but the dying state eventually did cause him and all of us (his race) to die. Do you know anyone who has been born that isn't aging (trending toward death)? Do you have any reason to believe that anyone now alive will not eventually die?
Bible literalists and other bible scholars are not intensively scrutinizing this verse because a child could understand it, even improperly translated.

Originally posted by Myrtales Instinct
What did he lie about madness? They did die. He didn't say when, just that they would.

well... they really only died because he didn't allow them to eat of the tree of life.

Why do you feel he lied?

because when people say: if you eat this you're going to die... you tend to think it's not going to be eventually. now, if you look into the hebrew it's less vague. it's more of a cause affect thing... more like it's poison instead of it being a death later in life.

and nowhere does it mention in genesis that god made humanity immortal

Madness, this is something that I see brought up a lot, and too be honest, no offense, it's a weak argument.

No where did God say that they would die immediately. No where.

Originally posted by SpeakerofTruth
Madness, this is something that I see brought up a lot, and too be honest, no offense, it's a weak argument.

it's not so much an argument as something i found to be curious.

No where did God say that they would die immediately. No where.

but nowhere does it say that people were made to be immortal.

The life of man is a gift of Yahweh contingent on obedience to/dependence on Him. Man had to be driven out of the garden because if he had continued to eat of the trees of life, you're right, he would have lived to "age-abiding" (forever, eternal, etc. are usually properly translated age-abiding which infers "until the end of an age"). Adam was perfect and even in his fallen condition and driven from the paradise, it took him over 900 years to finally fall down and actually die. Would it have been a good idea for fallen, sinful man to life "forever"? Look how much damage we are capable of doing in our short life spans. I shudder to think if we didn't have death hanging over our heads to what total depravity, degeneration and immorality we might have attained.

Originally posted by whitewave
The life of man is a gift of Yahweh contingent on obedience to/dependence on Him.

can you point out the part in the story where it says that or any of the other points that i snipped out? i snipped them out because people can just look up and read them

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
alright: god says "don't eat this fruit or you will surely die"
satan/snake thingy says "god's a liar, you won't die and you'll have knowledge"
people say "alright" then they eat the fruit... and live

You missed a few steps...

1. Garden of Eden= no sin = no death.
2. "alright: god says 'don't eat this fruit or you will surely die'"
3. "satan/snake thingy says 'god's a liar, you won't die and you'll have knowledge'"
4. "people say 'alright' then they eat the fruit... and live"
5. They die...

Originally posted by madnessinmysoulgod WAS lying.....

They were sinless, if the wages of sin is death then we assume; no sin= no death. They sinned... hence they die.

NO LIE!

Originally posted by madnessinmysoulnow, why isn't this subject to intensive scrutiny (especially from bible literalists)?

They understand what the passage means.

i want to find where people are pulling out this "garden of eden = no death" thing from. i don't see it anywhere in the story. i see that the garden of eden = no needs, and all ignorance... but i don't see no death anywhere in the story.

Well apart from the fact that this planet wouldn't be able to sustain eternal living humans, which to be honest they probably didn't really think about when they wrote it, the world was flat after all, or if god did indeed exist and had someone write it up, what did he expect to do? just have 2 humans live an eternal life in the garden of eden? If thats the case then (a little selfish yes) but im glad they ate from the tree of knowledge.

I don't want to even get into the fact that a god would wish to deny its creation the knowledge of things around it.

On the note of dieing, technically we do not start dieing until we stop growing, and even then I would argue that it is only our body's that are dieing, our mind i.e. us, you & me continues to grow and learn new things even up until our very last breath. So in that relation god may have been right in that our body's die but our minds do not.

Then considering that nothing can cease to be, everything must convert into something else, do we really die?

So I would say yes, god was wrong in bible.

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
i want to find where people are pulling out this "garden of eden = no death" thing from. i don't see it anywhere in the story. i see that the garden of eden = no needs, and all ignorance... but i don't see no death anywhere in the story.

well it depends... in order for God's threat to work... one would assume that Adam and Eve knew what death was. For example Genesis 1:29-301 says that God created plants with seed and fruit and gave it to the animals for food... i.e plant death.

But we can go further and look at the specific names Adam gave the animals. These names (for example, Hawk = "unclean bird of prey) hint towards animal death in the garden.

We assume there was no human death from this:

Romans 5:12 (King James Version)

12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

[edit on 5/6/2007 by SilentShadow]

Originally posted by SilentShadow

Romans 5:12 (King James Version)

12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

now i see where the problem is.... i'm looking for something within the story, or at least within the same book. hell, i'd even go for something in the same testament....
not something tacked on 1000 years later.

God created man perfect. Dieable is not perfect even by our fallen, human standards. When God saw the all the work of His hands, especially after having just made man a living soul, He declared it "very good". Not just good but very good. No flaws. Perfect.
When Adam and Eve were in the garden they depended entirely on the Father. They had no need outside what the Father gave them. The sin in the garden was multifarious. 1) Before, they had desired nothing other than what the all-sufficient (El Shaddai) one had provided for them. 2) They pridefully wanted to become as mighty ones (gods) knowing good and evil. And they did become as knowledgeable. (They have become as one of us.) 3) They showed a mistrust of their Creator-that He might be holding out on them by not providing something desirable, useful and worthy. 4) They thought they knew better than God's word (Yahweh's Logos) and blatantly disregarded and disobeyed His one mandate.
After creating a perfect world/planet and placing perfect people out of it to rule, why did God make one spot (the garden of Eden) better than the rest of the world? It was a picture of the Kindom. In order to enter the Kingdom, believers need to desire nothing other than what our savior provides for us, divest ourselves of pride, diligently seek to know only that which our Creator deems is needful for us to know and to obey Him (to the best of our currently fallen ability).
This is not to say that we should be ignorant or uneducated. (Study to show yourselves approved). This is not to say we should not take care of practical matters. (The Father knows that you have need of all these things). It is not to say that we have no self-esteem. (If God be for us, who shall stand against us?) The foregoing is to point out that we need to set our sights on things above, looking AWAY to Yehshua. Commit all the cares of this life into His hands, trusting that He who began a good work in us will finish it.

To answer your question, madness, the part of the story where it says that man's life was contingent on dependence/obedience to him is: Of all the trees in the garden, you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, dying, you shall surely die.
The tacit statement is: obey this one commandment and you won't die. It is possible for you to die but obedience/dependence on me will prevent death from happening to you.
If i tell my child "don't run out in the traffic or you'll be road pizza", it's a fair assumption that my child will not become road pizza if they stay out of the traffic (and even my 2 year old understood that).
You make the bible more complicated than it has to be, madness. I understand your frustration with the doctrines of men which make the word of god of no effect but, take away the doctrines of men, your own religious concepts and what are you left with? The pure word of God. It's really not that complicated.

I just find it all so very interesting how theists have to be so important in the world that they believe that when their progenitors were "created" they were perfect and could not die. That would make them unnatural, and that is wholly ridiculous.

We are entirely of the natural world. Everything else dies. So have we always done, from when we were single celled organisms, through the walking fish, through the great reptiles, to the tiny shrew ancestor, through primitive primates and ultimately man.

How would one explain how an otherwise "perfect" creator would make people to live forever? What would happen when the earth became full of people who would not die, leaching the resources and leaving a burned shell of a planet?

Oh, wait, that's happening now, except for the not dying part.

Give me a break, people don't actually believe that there was an immortal Adam and Eve and eating an apple made them prone to death? It's an allegory, a story, a fable.

The Garden of Eden is wistful nostalgia for the time when we were hunter-gatherers, before pastoral life began, when work became that much more difficult and more time-consuming. Hunter-gatherers work maybe 3 hours a day to meet their needs. THAT is what is meant by the garden of Eden. It wasn't a place, it was a time in our pre-history before we became herders and farmers and city dwellers.

:shk:

Malfunction, didn't I just say that man was created perfect and COULD die? And yes, we all are important to our Creator, even the non-theists.
That ridiculous notion of evolution (I can't believe otherwise intelligent people are still spouting that nonsense) is the equivalent of digimon. For those of you who don't watch cartoons, watch digimon sometime and see the correlation between it and evolution. Pretty funny, really, but then again, it is a cartoon.
I think people need to believe that man evolved in order to negate the need for a personal savior, an involved Creator, and their own responsibility for sin.

And I think you have it backwards: the universe is perfect and needs no creator. I don't understand how anyone can believe we were "poofed" into existence.

Evolution is a scientific FACT. It is proven.

God is a belief, it is not proven.

In fact, it cannot be proven because it does not exist.

But you're welcome to believe in fairy tales if you wish. I prefer to live my life knowing that I'm part of an infinite universe subject to natural law that has always existed and will always exist, no cosmic watchmaker necessary.

What gets me most about this story is that if they didn't have knowledge of good and evil (bad), how did they know it was a bad thing to do?

How did they know that dying was a bad thing? How did they know that not eating the fruit was a good thing? How did they know obedience was good and disobedience bad?

ABE: I can't believe someone just compared evolution to digimon, that's quite funny, clear they know little about the science.

[edit on 5-6-2007 by melatonin]

Heres the way that I look at the context of when they died, and no I don't believe God to be a liar.

Genesis 2:16: And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

KJV

Genesis 5:5: And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.

KJV


If one thousand years is as one day to God, then Adam dying at 930 years old would be verified by him dying in "ONE" God day, because he died within that thousand year time frame, (one God day) he died in God's eyes in the day that he there ate of it.

2 Peter 3:8: But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

KJV