(no subject)

[danuv]

Yesterday I got sidetracked from John Cage by the Gnostics again. I keep coming back to them because they interest me but I can only take in so much before it is overwhelming so I'm chipping away at it a bit at a time.
The Gnostics got me to thinking about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. This whole topic has been interesting to me since I was young.
I was taught that God created man because he wanted companionship that would chose of their own free will to commune with him, something the angels could not do. So why did God create men without free will to begin with. Why did their have to be this entire set up? Tomas argues that he did it intentionally knowing that man would sin and it wouldn't be his fault. Pfft, that still makes it his fault. The entire thing makes no sense to me.
I was taught that God was good. That he was a God of love. I believed growing up that bad things happened on the earth because of sin and mans bad choices and that because of Original Sin we were in need of salvation which God provided though Jesus. The more I think about it though, the more completely cruel the entire thing seems. What a game to play.
It makes more sense to me to believe in a god removed completely, a god who created but has no emotional involvement or involvement at all with his creation. Or maybe to believe in a god who is more like us or more like other gods in other religions, complicated and neither good nor evil. The Christian idea of god just confuses me right now.

In addition to that, are there things that we are born believing are right and wrong? Is everything taught to us? Are good and evil ideas entirely constructed by men?

My head hurts.

Comments

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

See, the problem here lies in wanting to deny the original texts, but then only doing so on the idea that they can be taken as Literal Truth or Rejected.

[danuv.livejournal.com]

I was trying to understand it from within the context of Christianity. I understand that one can be a Christian without taking the Bible literally but there's still a base of some kind of logic going on there and that's where I get tripped up (not that my brain processes concepts very easily anyway). I'm not entirely sure I know what you're saying (but what else is new ;) ).

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

Heh, I'm not that complex, I just don't complete thoughts. Keeps me seeming mysterious.

If we keep it in the realm of myth-metaphor (which is not to say "just some made up story"), God, whatever that may mean, created Man, and in a state where sin was unknown. A non-theist interpretation I've read construed this as meaning when consciousness as we know it evolved from mere animal-awareness into rational thought. The fall became the development of morality, and God/Nature "knew" this would lead into "sin" because without consciousness, nothing is "wrong" -- therefore, yes, right and wrong is simply a construct of the human mind. Prior to that, no sin because there was no awareness to decide what a sin was, therefore, "Man fell." Nature provided the tools (bodies, consciousness, the framework where man could decide something was right vs. wrong) which equals the Garden, and the tree within the Garden.
Then the tree of life was denied until we could "be like unto God" and create life and extend it indefinitely through our own exploration of consciousness.

[danuv.livejournal.com]

Ok! I think I get what you're saying now except for the last sentence which my brain is still stumbling over but I'm sure I'll figure out. :) Thank you that all makes a lot of sense and I haven't thought of it that way before.

[macaholic.livejournal.com]

good and evil is a societal construct taught by man to man