The Knowledge of Good and Evil

Hello ATS. I've never made an introduction (Can't bring myself to talk about myself much), So this is my first thread. I wanted to share one of the things I have come across in my research of the biblical texts. It's a topic that's bothered me for some time, and I wanted to see what others think about it. Keep in mind, however, that I do not intend to start a flame war. I'm simply curious of other opinions, and I like keeping an open mind. So I ask that if you should respond, that you do so with some respect. Let's try to play nice, yes? So on to the topic.

In the book of Genesis it describes the creation of the two forbidden trees in the garden of Eden. It then goes on to describe the first "sin" Adam and Eve committed. It describes what the sin was, and how it happened in a few verses (of the common King James version):

In chapter 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.

And in chapter 3:

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which [is] in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. 6 And when the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, and that it [was] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make [one] wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

Now it seems to me the first sin was disobeying god by eating the from the tree he told them not to eat from. God goes on to punish Adam and Eve and the serpent (which is simply described as “ More subtil than any other beast”). At this point I cannot help but think: Clearly this God did not intend for us to know the difference between Good and Evil, or even know there were such things.

This is where I find my trouble. Did the God of the bible intent for us to remain unknowing in the ways of Good and Evil? Did he intend for man and woman to only obey his word, having no ability to understand themselves? It certainly seems so to me. The implications are a tad startling considering what God goes on to say in the next couple of verses:

22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

(Source)

From this I get: Now that they know ( or are beginning to), they surely cannot be allowed to live… For very long. Then a million questions flood my head. Was the first sin the disobeying of Gods command, Or was it learning something he did not intend for them (and us) to know? Perhaps both? Why then plant the trees there? Why make the serpent “Subtil”? How is nakedness an “evil”?

But first and foremost: Why forbid the knowledge of Good and Evil? I’ve no way to answer these, but the implications.. These make me crawl..

So I turn to you, ATS, What are your thoughts?

Interesting contemplations. Perhaps if you have the knowledge of good and evil, you then have the power to choose to be good or evil. And God did not want those who chose to be evil around forever...

According to the story, they obviously did not die that "day", but a day is as a thousand years, and Adam died at what, 930 years? Just a thought.

Originally posted by ovumcranium
Interesting contemplations. Perhaps if you have the knowledge of good and evil, you then have the power to choose to be good or evil. And God did not want those who chose to be evil around forever...

According to the story, they obviously did not die that "day", but a day is as a thousand years, and Adam died at what, 930 years? Just a thought.

That would make sense that God would not want those who choose an evil(er?) path to survive for long, if not for the idea that God seems to have wanted us to never (being able to) pick a side at all.

you also mention another oddity I found in all this. God did not kill Adam and Eve after their transgression. An Idle threat? Seems unlikely, as he did punish them. Just not as severely as killing them outright. I'm unsure what to make of all that..

Hi OP,

I love the idea of philosophy in religion. It is one of the subject areas that stimulate my thinking. Saying this i am open minded toward all religions.

A few quotes from the bible regarding knowledge:

Proverbs 1:7
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 1:29
Because they (sinners) hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord.

Daniel 12:4
But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.

As you can see there is some contradiction or confusion around wether or not knowledge is actually something God wants for us or does not want for us. I think you have to really study the bible from different perspectives to fully appreciate its wisdoms. Some people read it literally others metaphorically, algorically and even astrologically.

Personally i think the trees are metaphores and not actual trees.

i.e. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life
en.wikipedia.org...

Or...

Paths to enlightenment/wisdom (Godhead)
www.jwmt.org...

You will note the 32 paths in the above link..

Also Freemasonary has 32 degrees..coincidence? Perhaps..
www.100megsfree2.com...

Or perhaps different systems toward the same enlightenment?

Herein lies the problem or what some may consider Lucifer's grand deception.
The light/wisdom which Lucifer supposedly brings to humanity is spoken about a lot in the world of the occult as too is new ageism and enligtenment.

The bible however warns us against such things as...

"the secret powers of lawlessness" (Occult practices)
&
"signs and lying wonders" (of Satan)

So to answer in a way one of your questions i think what happened in the Garden of Eden is that Wisdom took hold of Adam and Eve and thus they ventured into the world of the occult and began to study the paths toward enlightenment.

I think the reason God did not want this is simply because it takes away from the worship of himself and bestowes the power or illusion to become god oneself (enlightenment)..

Is this a good or bad thing? I can not say..

But the bible does say...

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge..

One of the most pondered questions in our lifetimes..

The great Shakespear.. To be or not to be that is the question...

Perhaps God created us simply to be and not to think... To be meaning to life in alignment with the force of life and nature.. to stand wrapt in awe at the beauty of nature.. and not to try to understand it, ultimatly taking away from the experience of the miracle itself.

I think the deception here is quite simple..

Lucifer offers to Adam and Eve what they already had!

Just my thoughts..

Inquisitive1

Good first thread.

Well, only one of the trees was forbidden. The boon it confers, "the knowledge of good and evil," is a Hebrew idiom. The phrase appears in a few other places in the Hebrew Bible. It is, most notably, what Solomon asks as a gift from God. In those passages, it is often translated as "wisdom."

biblische.blogspot.com...

As to God not wanting people to have it, he freely gives it to Solomon, and gives Solomon some additional goodies as a reward for already having the wisdom to ask for... it.

In the Eden story, what God objects to is not that people have it (after all, at no point does he deprive the Man and Woman of it once they have it), but that they have both it and also access to indefinite life. It is the combination that makes the First Couple (momentarily) "like God."

So, God deprives them of access to the tree of life, and the problem from his point of view is fixed. The other curses are curious. Snakes crawl on their bellies anyway (there's nothing in the story about snakes once having had legs, lol), it is unclear how Adam was ever going to have food from the earth without work, and as for the reproductive curses on the All Mother, umm... babies' heads are much bigger than the unstretched vagina. This was never going to be easy.

The curses (3: 14-19) almost seem like they come from a different story than the soliloquy and banishment (3: 21-24). The latter verses implement the "penalty" announced throughout the rest of the story, death, while the former verses' penalties aren't announced earlier. There is also the confusion, only in the curses, about which tree was forbidden.

Christians, of course, see all of this as "sin" and "punishment" for failing a "test." God himself, however, complains about the intolerability of having immortal wise temporal beings running around, a factual problem, not a failure of "obedience."

There is also nothing in the story about any inherited difficulty with God once humans are deprived of access to the Tree of Life. Wisdom, however, was only too obviously not hereditary.

The first thing to consider:

If God created Earth and everything, how can we have these stories? Since there were NO PEOPLE there to record what happened, where did these stories come from? Who saw this stuff happening?

That right there throws the entire book out the window. It starts RIGHT OFF with utter BS.

Then, your "God" told them not to eat from the tree, or they would "surely die". So the first thing your "God" did was LIE.

LIE.


STrange.

SO why should you believe ANYTHING this "God" said? From the very first he was a LIAR.

Who did that "God" tell you was the Father of Lies?

reply to post by eight bits


Now there's an explanation if there ever was one! Certainly gives me more things to look into, and I thank you for the added information, Good sir. I realize the bible stories are very ambiguous at the best of times. The trees are probably a symbol of something, Like a few (Including yourself ) of my lovely responders have mentioned. In any case, It's more about why wisdom or knowledge of any kind would be at all forbidden that I'm trying to understand.. If I could do such a thing..

I like your line of thinking on the issue, But I can't bring myself to agree.. Not fully. If the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil (Wisdom DOES sound more apt) wasn't really off-limits, then why forbid them from eating it? Did they only have to ask first? you've giving me even more things to look into.

What you say is true, though, In the story God did not rebuke the knowledge from them, but sent them out of Eden. You've made an interesting case for why he kicked'em out, too. Too close to the tree of Life at that point.
That I can understand to some degree, and thanks again for sharing.

reply to post by Inquisitive1


I think the worst turn off in the world is when people do talk about themselves without being asked. However an introduction calls for this and you will be excused for doing so by all members. I never made one either.
SnF

This is how I see it. So much of the Bible was meant to be taken metaphorically, yet this book, Genesis, is, for some reason, always taken as literal. As a literal story it makes very little sense, but metaphorically, it begins to make sense, at least to me.

In the beginning there was nothing, is how it begins. What is nothing? A lack of consciousness(thought)? Absolutely incomprehensible nothing? As I see it, the nothing refers to our world, not Gods, and it means that there was no comprehension of this reality. It did not exist because the imagination of God had yet to create it. As in example, If I said there are blue oranges, you may believe it or not, but without the thought, they may never have existed as a possibility within your mind. Prior to this point we were pure non thinking, non logical, animal.

And God said, "Let there be light" and there was light. I see this as a thought, an idea. The creation of an alternate existence to that of God within his own mind or consciousness. The rest of the creation story was an expansion of this thought, by way of imagination and the story began. This "reality" was wholly within the imagination of God within the higher frequencies of thought. This is a sudden awareness of existence, ie. we became aware of ourselves and the things around us or the bi-cameral mind. The bi-cameral mind is a blend of logical thought and animal instincts guiding our actions. The animal instincts acting like an internal voice telling us to react or the voice of God. Gods laws being the laws of nature and balance.

To paraphrase, And then God created Man and Woman. I paraphrase to avoid going into the stories of Lilith(the first woman ie. the shift from male dominated sexual desire) and all that leads up to the story of Adam and Eve. I see this as the first duality, the first separation of the whole or the one. It is the separation of the imaginative mind and the logical mind and as the story continues into the eating from the "Tree of Life".

This story is a representation of Eves first logical decision to release the bi-cameral mind and enter strictly into logical consciousness or total logical control over the logical and reactive minds thus casting humanity from the voice of God or natural instincts. This "disease" became known as Eves-ill or evil. This evolution led us to the comprehension of time, aging and death(the shift in consciousness into the 4th dimension). Death then became revered as a return to the state of One or the Whole ie God. With this logical thought came judgement(emotion), both of self and others, which created the concept of right and wrong. These ideas, created by emotion(our last connection to the bi-cameral mind), began to be seen as a good and evil concept. This ideal caused two things, the destruction of the bi-cameral mind(the casting from Edin), thus the separation from God, and the development of law, which sparked the beginnings of civilization.

Adam and Eve represent the forerunners of logical thought, the first "Humans" of the race of homo-sapiens. By looking at it this way you begin to see the possibility of other "people" that were taught by Adam and Eve to become "Human". People throughout history were born with varying degrees of connection to the bi-cameral mind and the natural desire to return to the whole. This variable created the desire/belief in the gods/goddesses/God and sparked a need to gain favor with them/her/him and religious ritual or practices were born.

This is how I see the origins of thought and religion. Does this dismiss the realness or truth of gods/goddesses/God? No. Personally I believe that a balance of Imagination(Father), Logic(Mother/Son), and Emotion(Child/Spirit) is the true goal of the "Human" in their Next Evolution of the Human Mind.

reply to post by Inquisitive1

Read C.S.Lewis story Perelandra. It recreates the circumstances in another setting and will help explain the meaning of this test and the consequences that we now know so intimately.

Copy online here...
www.arthursbookshelf.com...

Enjoy!

Originally posted by CaptChaos
The first thing to consider:

If God created Earth and everything, how can we have these stories? Since there were NO PEOPLE there to record what happened, where did these stories come from? Who saw this stuff happening?

That right there throws the entire book out the window. It starts RIGHT OFF with utter BS.

Then, your "God" told them not to eat from the tree, or they would "surely die". So the first thing your "God" did was LIE.

LIE.


STrange.

SO why should you believe ANYTHING this "God" said? From the very first he was a LIAR.

Who did that "God" tell you was the Father of Lies?

I"m not much of a bible scholar, But I've often heard the bible was "Inspired by god". That he would speak or send visions to prophets of these things that have allegedly passed, and it was they who wrote the bible... Or something equally similar. In any case, I believe very few of the things I'd find in the bible. I never made the claim that that God is mine, or that my struggle was faith based, But that makes do difference.. Please being something of substance to the table.

reply to post by Agarta


I must say... I Like your line of thinking. You've given me another possibility to ponder on, and for that I thank you.

reply to post by troubleshooter


Oooo Reading material! How did you know my weakness for Sci-Fi? Never did get to read that one, And since you found it for me online, I'll get to! thank you!

reply to post by defcon5


Ahh.. I am beginning to see where you are coming from, my friend... Well, mostly.

I do understand what you mean about God's Grace, though, And that makes a good amount of sense to me. You've explained it nicely, and it seems to fit. Still, I struggle with the thoughts that would imply, though.. Perhaps I'm simply over thinking things, Too eager to understand every detail of things impossible to know fully.

It just seems to me, that my "choices" as it were, would have/and do come easier to weigh when I search for the truths of things.. When I attempt to merely understand things better be they good or bad. Otherwise my choices would be made at whim, or not at all. I hate making uninformed decisions, I like to judge a choice from all angles, and know the one I'll make would be the right one for me.

If I place Adam and Eve in this scenario, Without knowledge/wisdom, It does not seem to be free will. Not fully. They would be/are unable to understand, and their choices would be made for them as God commands.. Or at least come highly recommended. I ask: Would it not be better for them to know, And still come to the side of God?

reply to post by Inquisitive1


Hi Inquisitive 1,

I would like to come on board this convo by adding a different view, this view being unconventional, but nevertheless my view of it.

Is it possible that the bible was translated into a material, concrete view, whereas it was written on a much more etherical basis?

I see the tree of good and evil as the law of cause and effect, by which we sew and reep the positive and negative 'fruits' of our deeds. There is a view out there that this tree was not actually a phisical tree, but a system by which man gets trapped into the law of cause and effect from which it is very difficult to escape. This is due to the fact that through this law we have become disconnected from Him and can no longer see Him through our third eye and commune with Him. It is also believed that before man ate from this tree, he was so connected with the Creator Himself, that man was still in constant connection to his maker on a scale that we cannot percieve.

Is it then also possible that the reference to 'death' due to eating this fruit, refers to the fact that man will have to reincarnate, take birth and death many times in order to pay off his karma, both good and bad karma. Whereas, before involving himself with this law of good and evil, man was able to ascend straight back to the father without this process of reincarnation and death?

The law of karma makes so much sense. An easy way to see it, is that if God is the God of true Love, why would he let one soul take birth in circumstances of utter poverty, disease, pain and suffering, whilst another soul is born into decadent luxury, immaculate health, status and pleasure. Especially if we only get one life? Are these circumstances not perhaps due to our own doing from past lives? Why would the Father give one child so much joy and yet another so much misery? Maybe these are simply the fruits of our actions from past lives, and thus pain or joy that we brought onto ourselves. (remember, in the bilble it says: an eye for an eye. Also: what you sew you will reep.)

Not even through intense prayer do we experience the scale of connectivity on which man at first was still connected to God.

In many religions there are writings of the 'Golden Age', this age being so pure that man was still connected to that inner most perfect state. Paradise, or the Garden of Eden also intends to depict a time when man was still so pure due to this connection to the Creator.

The tree of good and evil, may be referring to the law that seperates good intent and good actions from bad, which then has equal but oppisite consequences. It may be a law that simply falls away when the soul progresses higher through the heavens. (Remember, in the bible it says, that: My Father's house has many mansions... Sorry can't remember where, but I definately remember reading this.) This theory also corresponds very well with other eastern religions that tell of different levels that the soul progress through on its journey back to the Father.

OP it's like in that fine Hollywodd film trology, "The Matrix".

At the end, the "Architect", is a jerk, obsessed with perfection, and with complete contempt for the individuated souls under his care. Neo (that's you, waking up) finally learns that the architect has planned for people to wake up. Remember that Neo takes the pill and in "the real world" he wakes up in a tub of goo. So the first part is that when you "wake up" as did Adam and Eve, you find that you are seriously screwed. You are painfully hooked in, floating in satanic goo, and it is hard to even think about what to do next.

OP, I would also say that all religions world wide, are child-obsessed, and not in the good way, where the child is shown love and given choices. No, the churches of this world, obsess over the young, in a parasitic and non-helpful way. They see the young child, as food, for their church. If you don't believe me, simply observe how quickly any church will flock to the child, to baptize it, to indoctrinate it, and yes, to traumatize it figuratively or literally by visions of hell if the child disobeys, or with crippling and hateful punishments like that one "righteous Texas daughter-beating judge" whose story is now being shushed up.

So the point is that if you are unlucky enough to be raised in a religious environment, you will have to have the same sort of awakening that Adam and Eve, and also Neo did. That awakening might be easy or hard, depending on how the church you grew up in, treated you as a child. As I said, most churches are obsessed with children, and not in the good way Jesus loved kids. Jesus didn't say "indoctrinate the children", he said the opposite, "The children need to indoctrinate you" ...He said "The kingdom of Heaven belongs to such ones".

So in this moment, when Jesus affirmed that children are the light of this world, he was essentially exposing the adults of his time, as being destined for some place other than heaven. You must also note from the bible story, that Adam and Eve are in adult form. It is interesting to note, isn't it, that Adam or Eve never had childhoods, yet Jesus says the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to the children?

How do fully formed adults with child minds, become our ultimate ancestors who "doom us" to sinfulness that the church or its agents hold over our heads? Why are the child-obsessed, not listening to, the children, as Jesus commanded? Why didn't Jesus tell his followers to beat their kids and indoctrinate them, when that is what every church of today, does? How do they get permission to violate Jesus' commands? Those are key questions.