Only atheists and fundamentalist Christians take the Bible literally.
We are sentient now (some more than others) but our ancestors were not sentient. There was nothing that was artificial before we were sentient and everything was nature. There was no good and evil, there was just finding food eating the food and surviving another day.
At some point humans became sentient. Aware there is more going on than just eating and pooping. If a monkey kills another monkey it’s just doing what it has to do to survive. If a human kills another human, that’s murder. There is no good and evil without sentience. There was no sin in the Garden of Eden before humans had knowledge. Being sentient means you’re aware of evil, and you have free will. You don’t have to follow God’s will.
Maybe we’d be better off if we remained monkeys living in trees? All of the other lifeforms on the planet would certainly be better off if we had. There’s a pretty good argument that humans becoming sentient wasn’t a good thing to happen to the world.
But it is what it is, we are sentient. Can’t change that. We can’t go back to the Garden of Eden. After you’ve eaten something you shouldn’t have, you can’t undo it. Once you have knowledge, you can’t just unknow things. Ignorance is bliss and knowledge can be a curse.
I can accept metaphorical truths, but I’d argue that any resemblance of them is coincidental.
There is so much redundant or unnecessary nonsense in the bible, that some of it is bound to line up with some fundamental truth farther down the path of knowledge.
Obviously, whoever wrote genesis was not aware of evolution, and I’m not implying that you are proposing this insinuation as an explanation (it’s just an example of what I mean).
Regardless of being unable to un-knowledge ourselves, one of the things I was pointing at was the absurdity of free-will as a concept.
God is supposedly omniscient, he knows the test will fail.
If you want to get metaphorical on that, you could probably spin it in some pretty weird ways.
Regardless, Christians cannot reconcile the literal claim that God is all-knowing from the notion of free-will.
Only atheists and fundamentalist Christians take the Bible literally.
We are sentient now (some more than others) but our ancestors were not sentient. There was nothing that was artificial before we were sentient and everything was nature. There was no good and evil, there was just finding food eating the food and surviving another day.
At some point humans became sentient. Aware there is more going on than just eating and pooping. If a monkey kills another monkey it’s just doing what it has to do to survive. If a human kills another human, that’s murder. There is no good and evil without sentience. There was no sin in the Garden of Eden before humans had knowledge. Being sentient means you’re aware of evil, and you have free will. You don’t have to follow God’s will.
Maybe we’d be better off if we remained monkeys living in trees? All of the other lifeforms on the planet would certainly be better off if we had. There’s a pretty good argument that humans becoming sentient wasn’t a good thing to happen to the world.
But it is what it is, we are sentient. Can’t change that. We can’t go back to the Garden of Eden. After you’ve eaten something you shouldn’t have, you can’t undo it. Once you have knowledge, you can’t just unknow things. Ignorance is bliss and knowledge can be a curse.
i would argue the word is seriously
I can accept metaphorical truths, but I’d argue that any resemblance of them is coincidental.
There is so much redundant or unnecessary nonsense in the bible, that some of it is bound to line up with some fundamental truth farther down the path of knowledge.
Obviously, whoever wrote genesis was not aware of evolution, and I’m not implying that you are proposing this insinuation as an explanation (it’s just an example of what I mean).
Regardless of being unable to un-knowledge ourselves, one of the things I was pointing at was the absurdity of free-will as a concept.
God is supposedly omniscient, he knows the test will fail.
If you want to get metaphorical on that, you could probably spin it in some pretty weird ways.
Regardless, Christians cannot reconcile the literal claim that God is all-knowing from the notion of free-will.