this God is very local
Published on August 18, 2008 By greywar In Religion

     The Bible has some wonderful stuff in it but if you are looking for moral or ethical help I would suggest avoiding Genesis like the plague.

 

      The first recorded instance of setting someone up for ethical failure:

 

 15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

 

     Also note the first instance of a deity telling an outright lie to man up there when he tells them that they will die from eating the fruit. Imagine their surprise when they ate it and didn’t die but rather figured out that they were naked (the horror!) :

 

she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

 

     Followed closely by over-the-top cruelty to Eve (keep in mind that God already lied about the penalty for eating the fruit and apparently has now decided that knowledge of good and evil is just not painful enough) :

 

16 To the woman he said,
       "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
       with pain you will give birth to children.
       Your desire will be for your husband,
       and he will rule over you."

 

    Why was God so pissed (and why did he lie about the tree) ? Well obviously it was because he didn’t want them to start eating from the trees that God and his peers (apparently he has peers in the garden) wanted to keep for their own:

 

     And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." (a good point to keep in mind is that this passage with it’s attendant implications is the progenitor of many aspects of modern would-be “hermeticists” - GW)

 


 

 

       God follows up his ethical misdirection here by randomly promoting sibling rivalry when Adam’s sons bring him part of the food they have worked so hard to make. Apparently God is a meatetarian:

 

3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. 4 But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor.

 

     At this point it is important to note that the God of Genesis is not an omniscient God in any manner and that there are apparently other men in Nod that God did not create:

 

Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me."

 

     Who will kill him then? God’s creations at this point number Adam, Eve, Cain, and the now dead Abel. The Noddites were apparently already there from some other God (perhaps one of God’s buddies who hang out with him in the Garden eating fruits of knowledge and life while knocking back some brewskies?).

 

     This brings us to one of the bigger conflicts in the “early” bible… Who is the Lamech’s family? Note that I don’t just mean there are two people ambiguously named Lamech here but rather that there are two lineages for the exact same Lamech. Was he of the house of Cain (the cursed) or of Adam. We are about 3 pages into the bible and it is a train wreck of consistency:

 

Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. 18 To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.

 

     So Cain was the head of Lamech’s family? Wait for it:

(ok I am abbreviating here):

 

Adam’s line:

 

Adam – Seth- Enosh- Kenan – Mahalalel – Jared – Enoch – Methuselah – Lamech – Noah

 

    Since the narrative runs that Noah was a nice guy we can assume that Cain’s Lamech didn’t father him since that Lamech is a vengeful ass (then again God in this version is also a vengeful ass so maybe that just makes Lamech ibn Cain “godly”):

 

23 Lamech said to his wives,
       "Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
       wives of Lamech, hear my words.
       I have killed
[y] a man for wounding me,
       a young man for injuring me.

 

    I wonder if he ever killed a man for snoring?

 

    Keep in mind that at this point we are only up to Genesis 5! God needs a new proofreader. If I make it through these classes without an aneurism that really will be a miracle.

 

 

 

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Comments (Page 1)
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on Aug 18, 2008
Isn't realizing your naked as bad as dying? hehe. Same thing basically, right?
on Aug 18, 2008
Adam and Eve are still alive! Wow!

Oh wait, they're dead.
on Aug 18, 2008

LW - I had seen that on my read through and before that as well and I have heard it used as the basis for several rascist memes. Generally the accepted reading is that the first bit is a recap of the whole process and the the bit where Adam and Eve's creation is detailed is a later in depth exploration of the "them" mentioned.

 

Of course I have no stake in how it reads one way or the other. From my perspective it is pretty plainly an amalgamation of many accounts of the same creation story.

on Aug 18, 2008
Only if you're fat, hahaha.


Check!
on Aug 18, 2008

Well, I could debate a bunch of the conclusions that you came to, but what's the point?

I chalk it up to God had pretty crappy proofreaders....humans.


on Aug 18, 2008

Mortality, I believe, came from the fruit of good and evil. Are Adam and Eve alive?

on Aug 19, 2008

Mortality, I believe, came from the fruit of good and evil.

 

Actually if you see the Bible quotes above God pretty clearly states that eternal life comes from yet another tree that he won't allow them to eat from now that they figured out the tree of knowledge thing. This is the explicit reason he tosses their ass out of the garden and guards the gate.

 

Anything else and you have gone extra-canonical which is fine but at that point you can pretty much make up anything.

on Aug 19, 2008

I chalk it up to God had pretty crappy proofreaders....humans.

 

That seems to be the exact problem. When these texts were being copied and amended there were competeing scholars who each had their own versions of the Torah scrolls and had based their careers on their version being correct. When compromises had to be made for political reasons you sort of ended up with wierd bits and chunks from one being included while parts of another were exised etc... the end result is a text which doesn't hang together internally for even 3 pages.

on Aug 19, 2008

Adam and Eve were set up. Don't push the button. The big button. The shiny red button. The glorious button.

Oops, you pushed the button, now you've gone and done it. No, really?

For there to be free will, somebody MUST screw up for screwing up to be an option. Otherwise you've just got a mechanist view of the universe, what with the omniscence and omnipotence.

on Aug 20, 2008

For there to be free will, somebody MUST screw up for screwing up to be an option. Otherwise you've just got a mechanist view of the universe, what with the omniscence and omnipotence

They were 'tested' not 'set up'.  They knew everything they needed to know to pass.  It was an opportunity to do something great for all who would come after them, but they didn't.  If your parent lets you go to a party, and you drink yourself under the table, did they set you up to make a bad decision or did they give you a growth opportunity?

 

Anyway, about the 'mud people' and 'racists'... if the mud people were around before the flood, they weren't around after the flood, so they're not around now.  So there's still no reason to think there are people without souls around.

on Aug 21, 2008

They were 'tested' not 'set up'.

This is called "creating false ethical dilemnas" and it is among the shittier things one being can do to another. When you set it up under false conditions as well and then get called on it by your victim you tend to lose your moral authority over them.

 

Examples: Don't drink at the party or you'll become addicted to booze!

                Don't masturbate or you go blind/grow hair on your palms.

When people try the activity and the promised problem doesn't happen then anything useful and true you might have told them get lumped into the "bullshit" pile with the lie.

on Aug 21, 2008

More like, "Don't get pregnant or you will have a baby!"

You don't have the baby right away, it takes time.  Just like God didn't say they would instantly die - just that they would die.  And they're dead.

on Aug 22, 2008

And they're dead

 

Did you catch the bit about keeping them out of the garden so that they couldn't eat from the *other* tree? That why they died. So in essence it was "Don't eat from the tree of life or I will kill you by witholding vital things." That would have been honest though.

on Aug 22, 2008

They couldn't very well obey him of their own free will if he didn't give them any commands.  And neither Eve nor Adam would have ever thought to eat of that tree without the serpent.

God doesn't lie, but he doesn't necessarily give the whole truth either.  Jesus spoke in parables, you know.  He could have just come out and said what the message was, but He didn't.

on Oct 20, 2008

My, my, greywar, I am happy to see you are at it again. You are not the first reader of Gensis 1 to see the problems that this chaper and many other chapters offer. If you are looking for a perfect answer to all of these problems, you will be at it until the Second Coming. I have had grade school intelligent students ask me: How could the earth come before the sun? How could plants that live on photosynthesis grow before the sun appeared?

The Bible is not a book of science that tells us how in detail that God created all the earth. It just teaches a truth to guide our lives: That everything is created from God not how he did it. He did all out of love for us.

The early bible writers tried in their own human way to explain how they thought things came about. When I read the Bible, I try to read it critically but from the standpoint of what is the message here that will lead me to live a life reflective of the love God showed when he created such beauty and wonder in creation. I pray that like the protoypes of Adam of Eve, I won't screw it up by my selfish acts.

oleteach 

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