Jehovah, The Imposter God

THE SHOOTIST

What was Jehovah thinking when he put that tree in the middle of the garden and the told Adam and Eve not to eat of its fruit? The real all-knowing God would never have done such a thing. Didn't he know that making the tree and the fruit would absolutely ruin this perfect man and woman? Didn't he know the result would be be a perpetual, deadly curse upon the world from then on? If you didn't want them to partake of it, why put it there in the first place? So now we have Jehovah, an imposter God whose knowledge is either limited or terribly flawed. Only the worst of demons would be so cruel as to actually enact and produce the conditions leading to endless suffering for billions of innocent mankind. If humans must be judged and tested, why not God? Joshua 24:19 "Ye cannot serve the Lord: for he is an holy God; is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions nor your sins."

DaCheech

God is very good at making people sin. Look at what he did to Pharoah heart, when the Jews were leaving Egypt

Gretchen956

Once upon a time there was a place where people worshipped the goddess instead of the god. They called her mother. Women were revered as the bringer of life. Not as being above men, but respected for how important a role they played in the circle of life. The snake was revered as a potent symbol of life's ever changing nature, and how we can shed adversity and grow stronger as a result of it. The tree was sacred to all. This is a true story, actually, archeology has uncovered vast amounts of evidence.

Suddenly patriarchal religion appears and these people who's economy was agriculture based, were wiped off the earth, killed, raped, tortured, only a few spared, mostly women who were captured and forced to learn a whole new way of life. They also had to learn a new religion. A religion where god replaced goddess. Where fear ruled instead of love and peace. Suddenly there is sin, a totally new concept.

Not too much later another religion appears. In its holy book the woman is no longer revered as giver of life. She is blamed and cursed for eating fruit from the tree. The snake is now recast as a deceiver and object of fear. The tree of life is taken away. Goddess worship was difficult to wipe off the earth. Now its most sacred and holy symbols were reworked. What better way to make them go away than to make them feared?

--see the books: The Chalice and the Blade and/or When God was a Woman

Sherry

moshe

The knowledge of good and evil is what separates us from the animals. Some modern Jewish thought on the garden of Eden -it's actually a story of when pre-humans crossed the mental void from animal instinct to modern man- with a moral conscience , self awareness, fear, greed and knowledge of death. In many ways the life of an animal is uncomplicated . Are we better off as a modern homo sapiens? G-d warned there would be painful consequences.

peace,

Moshe

Shazard

The Shootist.
That's your problem... you make question, you answer them by yourself and then get some conlcusion.
Do you know that basic of deduction - that if you have right premises and use right methods you will get ONLY right answers. And in opposition if you have wrong premises or use wrong methods you will get ONLY wrong answers.
In your case it is wrong premises... You compar Christian God with some your own mind construction - god. Get to know God then you will understand why he put the tree.
I can answer... He knew what can happen. BTW nice topic to think about... and if you get conlcusion in 2 minutes, you surely are on wrong way! :)
But I know our time... you need "fast-food" religion, "fast-food" answers to complicated questions. In this case you end up right where you allready are :)

tetrapod.sapien

shootist,

i know. ebonmusings.org has a good essay called An Almighty Screwup. touches on the idiocy of the OT god.

moshe,

Are we better off as a modern homo sapiens?

heh. ya, i know what you mean. and i think that the genesis account as a metaphorical description of man finally looking around at his world and starting to think abstractly, is actually rather haunting, in a beatififul way.

technically, we still have animal brains. wired for the propigation of our genes. it's our *minds* that have evolved the most. i mean our brains have somewhat, for sure. but nothing compared to our minds, imo.

shazard,

That's your problem... you make question, you answer them by yourself and then get some conlcusion.

and your problem is that you go to the bible for answers. it's laughable that you critisise someone for thinking critically of the bible, and then you turn around and answer the critical questions from guess where? the bible!

Do you know that basic of deduction - that if you have right premises and use right methods you will get ONLY right answers. And in opposition if you have wrong premises or use wrong methods you will get ONLY wrong answers.

ahh. i get it now. so the world is that black and white for you huh? and how do you know that your premise is "right"? oh yes! i know i know! you know because the bible told you so! can anyone say "circular mental discontinuity"?

In your case it is wrong premises... You compar Christian God with some your own mind construction - god. Get to know God then you will understand why he put the tree.

were you ever a jehovah's witness? because now you sound like the governing body. i have a funny feeling that many atheists have tried a lot - a LOT - harder to get to know "God" than you ever have. the very fact that you are so bloody sure of your answers, shows that you have not delved very deeply into the issue and the implications.

I can answer...

of course you can! you have the TRUTH!

He knew what can happen.

and this is a good answer because he told you in the bible that it was a good answer? or because you thought about it for 3 minutes instead of 2 minutes?

In this case you end up right where you allready are :)

oh, okay then! listen up everyone! shazard has the truth of the universe! he has really tried to find it, and lo and behold, it's right there in the bible! what a moron i feel like now!! all i had to do was try a little harder to see it, instead of spending all that time reading about archaeology, and secular history! jeez, what a rip off! that stuff was "fast food" compared to the rich spiritual banquet that ~~jehovah~~.... er, i mean jesus (sorry, my bad) has provided for us!

praise jesus!

TS

daystar

I think sherry and moshe have some good ideas. Sherry and I will disagree on many things however because she embraces a philosophy that was superseded by the patriarchal age, while I embrace one which supersedes the patriarchal.

Sherry embraces the Age of Isis, the Mother. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc. lies within the Age of Osiris, the Father. To me, sherry and those like her have rejected the Age of Osiris, and perhaps rightly so. However, rather than progressing forward, they have gone backwards.

The age that some believe follows is the Age of Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child, the Androgyne, the individualist. This is the age of the god within rather than the god without. It involves recognition that the Divine is not to be found so much in some being external to ones' self (Goddess or God) as it is to be found within. (And of course, ultimately, all of this is a meaningless mental construct anyway. This is simply one way to present the ideas.)

That being said, the story of the Tree of the Knowlege of Good and Bad, and of the garden, etc. is simply that, a story. It is a philosophical illustration of how certain ones believe that mankind must submit to a higher authority or pay the consequences. It sets the basis for an entire structure with the primary purpose of control of the individual.

The story is much less a story of how God actually had this Tree and Adam and Eve actually ate from this tree, and more a story constructed by the priesthood in order to proclaim authority over the matters of mankind. The serpent is set up as the antagonist. It is proclaimed as evil, when in fact it is nothing of the sort, so that control may be maintained.

james_woods

Perhaps this is the story of "ourselves (humanity) " rather than the secrets of the universe...

Perhaps it is not such an easy thing to accept that we have self awareness...

I.E. the power to choose between GOOD and EVIL...

Maybe that is why we were left to work it out for ourselves; just with a little help from above...(sun, moon, stars, etc)

BUT NOT SO MUCH THAT WE DO NOT HAVE TO RESEARCH AND THINK!!!

Hellrider

The knowledge of good and evil is what separates us from the animals. Some modern Jewish thought on the garden of Eden -it's actually a story of when pre-humans crossed the mental void from animal instinct to modern man- with a moral conscience , self awareness, fear, greed and knowledge of death. In many ways the life of an animal is uncomplicated . Are we better off as a modern homo sapiens? G-d warned there would be painful consequences.

WoW, I had never thought of Genesis in that way! Yeah, that`s mindblowing, puts it all in perspective, in both a scary and beatiful way. Hm, now I wonder: Of course, the author didn`t mean this in the sense "we were once apes, then we crossed over to humans", but he might have meant...the leap from the "animal-like" man (living in caves, walking around with a primitive blunt instrument to whack animals over the head and eat them raw), there were probably still tribes that lived that way even when the first civilisations arose, and man came up with their first stories about God and creation and stuff...so that could even be some of the intention of the text. Fascinating

Leolaia

Sherry....You've seen my post on how the Garden of Eden may have a polemic against the reverence of the mother goddess Asherah in the Temple (= the tree of life, the epithet Hawwah/Eve for Asherah as associated with serpents), and how the expulsion of Eve from the Garden reflects the expulsion of Asherah from the Temple in the reforms of Josiah?

Jehovah, The Imposter God

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