[ben_w]

Tangential topic, but I've been thinking about that part of the bible recently.

It makes no sense to me.

I don't mean that God, supposedly all good and all knowing, didn't know about the serpent and intervene at the time — despite Christian theology being monotheist, I think the original tales were polytheistic, and the deity of the Garden of Eden was never meant to have those attributes[0].

I mean why was it appropriate to punish them for something they did in a state of naivety, and which was, within the logic of the story, both prior to and the direct cause of gaining knowledge of the difference between good and evil? It's like your parents suing you to recover the cost of sending you to school.

[0] Further tangent: if they're al the same god, why did it take 6 days to make the world (well, cosmos) and all the things in it, but 40 days to flood the Earth to cleanse it of all human and animal life except for the ark? It's fine if they're different gods, a creator deity with all that cosmic power doesn't need to care so much about small details like good and evil, and a smaller and more personal god that does care about good and evil doesn't need to have such cosmic power.

[mlrtime]

Your first mistake (by trying to make sense) is reading the Bible as a historic book of records that actually happened.

The bible isn't a book by an author (Like the Quran claims to be). It is a mix/match of stories over long periods of time from different people. You read it as parables from the times, not as a history lesson.

[ben_w]

> Your first mistake (by trying to make sense) is reading the Bible as a historic book of records that actually happened.

Why do you think I'm reading it like that? I thought me saying "nah, polytheism" might have been a hint that I don't take it at all literally.

Likewise that I was referring to the internal logic of the story.

[wolverine876]

> I was referring to the internal logic

That's the problem. I think the first question is interesting (and a fundamental theological question - similar to why does God make people 'harden their hearts' and do evil at times), it's applying the Bible to the outside world.

The second question just seems purely internal - how does that affect our external reality?

[ben_w]

> how does that affect our external reality?

It doesn't have to — I can say a plot item in Star Trek makes no sense just as easily.

That said, I guess I am curious what this story might have meant to be, at one time? How could it be reinterpreted in a way that isn't immediately self-defeating?

And I really don't get how people take this literally, given apparent contradictions like this, but biblical literalists are too alien to my world view for any explanation to really help me understand how they perceive things.

[wolverine876]

>> how does that affect our external reality?

> It doesn't have to — I can say a plot item in Star Trek makes no sense just as easily.

We can say anything we like, but my question is really, what does it matter? Internal consistency matters much more to Star Trek, an adventure and grist for geeking-out, than the Bible, which provides material to help us spiritually. The point of the Biblical story is, what can we learn?

[ben_w]

> The point of the Biblical story is, what can we learn?

That Christians worship an unreasonable, malicious or mad, god with unreasonable standards. "Even when you were a gullible idiot and faced an influence I'd not accounted for despite being all knowing, I'm still going to punish you and all your offspring forever for what you did wrong, especially the woman and that's why childbirth hurts."

That, even as literature, it shows the human condition is one of the vibes of a story without paying attention to details, one where just-so stories which get written backwards from observables don't need to make logical sense when read forwards in order to convince people.

Like I said, the difference world view is alien. I assume the same is true in reverse, and that True Believers (and perhaps not even casual holiday-only believers) can't understand how I might not see things the way they do.