johnbc
Full Member
Roman Catholic
Posts: 110
Likes: 63
Religion: Catholic
Philosophy: Anarcho-capitalist, Anti-communism
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Post by johnbc on Sept 19, 2020 22:13:43 GMT
The Garden of Eden is one of the most misunderstood passages in the history of the Bible. When it comes to knowledge of good and evil, it is the divine knowledge of good and evil. There was no other. Is God’s knowledge of good and evil a purely cognitive knowledge? Where does He look at good and evil, recognize that good is good and evil is evil? No. He determines good and evil. So, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is not knowing how some things are bad and others are good — if it were this sense it would be absolutely self-contradictory.
If the knowledge of good and evil were only to know good and evil, that would be incompatible with the idea of God giving them an order. If God has given a commandment, it is clear that obeying the commandment is good and disobeying it is evil. So, God cannot give an order and, at the same time, forbid the guys from knowing good and evil (in the human sense of this knowledge). So it is obviously not a question of this — of mere discernment. God cannot forbid them (Adam and Eve) to know good and evil and then complain because they listened to the serpent… This cannot be the point.
It is divine knowledge, therefore the ability to determine by its very nature what is good and evil
On the contrary, man cannot do this, he lives within a field where there is good and evil predetermined by God; this knowledge he can have, what he cannot have is divine knowledge and that is why it is said that the tree of good and evil was at the center of paradise. So what did they try to do? Usurping the divine authority to determine good and evil… God does not arbitrarily determine good and evil, but according to the expression of His nature.
You are not forbidden to know the truth humanly or to know good and evil (humanly). You are prohibited from trying to be the cause of all things and the generating factor of good and evil, which is exactly what modern culture is trying to do by saying that “good and evil is your choice. There is no morally condemning act… They are cultural creations, etc.”
Now, if you understand that the prohibition against touching the tree of good and evil is a prohibition of knowledge, then you will fall into the Gnostic interpretation — that God made Adam and Eve two idiots (who could not know anything) and that from there came the saving serpent and showed them the horizon of knowledge. They had no precedent for human knowledge of good and evil; only God knew good and evil. So, if it didn’t have a human precedent, it could only be divine knowledge.
The knowledge of good and evil is not a discernment operated by conscience, but the controversial action of trying to obtain that knowledge in a self-sufficient way. When God commanded Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2: 17), He respectfully positioned human freedom as the sole parameter of discernment between good and evil, not mattering that actually eating the fruit of the said tree would contain some kind of cosmic revelation. Not even the tempting serpent identified itself with “evil”, it just exploited the intelligence of Adam and Eve saying: “You will be like gods” (Genesis 3: 5), revealing what actually drove original sin, and which was less a lie than a suggestion. Once the effects of sin were released, man remained ignorant of the nature of evil until the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, who alone became aware of good and evil on the Cross, when the fruit returned to the tree, man became the image of God and the evil of man was redeemed, but still, without any intervention of human intelligence.
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Post by Eugene 2.0 on Sept 20, 2020 15:17:13 GMT
It sounds quite strange for me. Not that I am disagree, but as you know the Euthyphro dilemma that asks:
God loves x, because x is good, or x is good, because God loves it?
I want to understand why God needs any knowledge of good or bad? Why? Doesn't God know anything?
My quick answer on this is:
a) to join God we must truly want it; b) to prove such a pure wish we have to do something; c) doing something is showing our true loyalty;
Any skeptic might object a through c, because "doing something" doesn't seem to be necessary for our access to heaven. So, it's logically obvious that God could allow us to get back to heaven without any challenge. So, what makes God to set such a challenge?
And I guess that there is nothing that makes God to set such a challenge, it is our gods within us. I mean that inside of us grow some little "gods", and this gods are those we call "selves". Those worms started to grow in us when we had seen God firstly. It's our greedy selfishness. It eats us from the inside.
But what makes me imagine all this? I guess that if we'd try to use any logic at the question "what makes God to set any challenge" we'd failed in any interpretations. Logically none of them are firm and trusted. But if we'd look at the situation in metaphysical shoes we would hope to find some. I'll explain:
If God had created another God that would be a real problem. It would be the problem if God was just God, not the Trinity God as Christians know God. So, I accept the Trinity, the Holy Trinity as God. But Trinity is the ultimate case for any God to be as God. I mean no other way to add another God to the Holy Trinity. Any attempt of this would lead to what it had lead finally - creation of humanity.
I think that even logic is tied up with inner divine problematical appearence, or, briefly, with all the metaphysical discourse.
So, in general the discussion of what is good, and what is bad is so difficult that it must be raised at more metaphysical level, and it must be started from divine nature and the act of creation another creation by the Creator, etc.
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Post by jonbain on Sept 20, 2020 16:56:44 GMT
Certainly this is the most intriguing riddle I have ever considered.
Let us just look at two types of knowledge: facts and principles. Facts are simple physical truths that even the lowest animals or most ignorant children have.
Example: That foot wants to stamp on me so i better run. or A nipple is where the food of life comes from.
These can be learnt by habit; by-rote learning, even as instinct.
Knowledge of principles are however quite different. With such knowledge we can infer facts of which we have no experience.
Example: Newton's law of gravity brings the discovery of outer planets, by deduction.
So this is akin to knowledge of good and evil, in that its about universal laws that apply in experiences beyond that which we have learnt.
It not only applies to logic and math, but also to the more emotive knowledges of empathy, wisdom and ethics.
Sometimes we do have to kill. How do we know when? Well, once you accept and absorb the essence of knowledge of principles, you can figure it out, though the full details go beyond a post like this.
However, 'Thou shalt not kill', for instance is only the 6th commandment. It thus technically has an inferior position in the hierarchy of ethics to the 5 commandments before it.
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