"....you will be like gods, knowing good and evil." (page 2)

moanzy

Trying to wrap my brain around a different concept of Satan is similar to learning the Watchtower Society was full of crap!!! I totally agree that Satan didn't lie, but that name still says evil in my mind.

Moanzy

elatwra

"us", is used in the first chapter of genesis: "let us make man in our image according to our likeness"gen 1:26

Satan would have to have been "invented" already before the serpent incident.( I was surpirsed at the WT teaching that the first evil act of Satan was to trick eve. Everybody else believes that Satan was already bad and just got in to mess with God's creation). Or else evil would not have existed as an option.(also about the snake being the same person as Satan:"so the great dragon was cast out , the serpent of old, called the devil and satan, who deceives the whole world"......Rev 12:'9

Also on not dying immediately: maybe God did not "scrap them and start over" because they were deceived by satan.If they were not talked into it, we don't know whether they would have eaten the fruit or not.

daystar

As kind of a side note, relating to the nature of good and evil, I just started reading the book "Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" by Gregory Maguire.

Most everyone knows the story, at least from the film, but this book lends a distinctly different viewpoint than that of the well-known books and movie. I highly recommend it.

Gill

God created the 'sin' in the first place by putting the 'tree of knowledge of good and bad' in the garden.

What's wrong with knowing what's good and bad. Either it's good or it's bad. It wasn't the 'tree of make your mind up yourself what's good and bad'!

God's fault.

But then it didn't happen in the first place.

They didn't die 'on that day'. They were dying already as he hadn't let them 'eat from the tree of life' either.

The whole thing was a set up.

God is Guilty!

The defendants are free to go.

lost_light06

also about the snake being the same person as Satan:"so the great dragon was cast out , the serpent of old, called the devil and satan, who deceives the whole world"......Rev 12:'9

That scripture is in Revelation which was written centuries later. The Genesis account does not specify the serpant was Satan therefore to say he was is simply an assumpition by the WT, the writer of Revelation and anyone else who makes that claim.

daystar

That scripture is in Revelation which was written centuries later. The Genesis account does not specify the serpant was Satan therefore to say he was is simply an assumpition by the WT, the writer of Revelation and anyone else who makes that claim.

I think the assumption is supported by the fact that the serpent in Genesis does appear to be directly in philosophical opposition to Yahweh, much as Satan appears to be. (Though not exactly.)

Lilycurly

But is he in opposition? When you read that passage with nothing else in mind, as if it were a new story. You can't help but feel that the Serpent doesn't look like a mean or deceiving character, but more like one who is trying to help the humans out. And God actually looks like he is pissed that the Serpent told them the truth and ruined his little game of submission....

lost_light06

I think the assumption is supported by the fact that the serpent in Genesis does appear to be directly in philosophical opposition to Yahweh, much as Satan appears to be.

Yes, but the Good vs. Evil concept is present in all stories therefore you can’t make that claim simply because there is an evil opposition to God in the Adamic account. I’m no scholor, barely literate really, but it seems to me the mere mention of Satan in the bible isn’t until much later (many centuries). Making that assumption is saying “Satan is God’s nemesis so the Serpent must be Satan”. There is no way of knowing if “Satan” as he is understood in Revelation was even a concept at the time of Genesis.

poppers

When one accepts the idea of "knowing good and evil" and becoming "like gods" then they submit themselves to living life from dualism, which is what the Bible and most other religions are based on. Living life from a dualistic perspective condemns you to living life in delusion, ping-ponging back and forth between the pairs of opposites. There is something more sublime that is being missed when dualism is believed to be "the way it is".

funkyderek

elatwra:

Satan would have to have been "invented" already before the serpent incident.

I don't mean that the person of Satan didn't exist. I mean that the character of Satan hadn't been thought up at the time - we are talking about mythology, after all. There is, in fact, little mention of Satan in the Old Testament at all outside the book of Job and it's not at all obvious that those passages are talking about what most people now think of as the devil. (Compare for example 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21)

(also about the snake being the same person as Satan:"so the great dragon was cast out , the serpent of old, called the devil and satan, who deceives the whole world"......Rev 12:'9

As lost_light06 pointed out, Revelation was written a thousand years or more after Genesis by a different writer. Furthermore, it lends absolutely no support to the belief that Satan was the serpent in Eden, it merely likens him to a serpent (and a dragon).

"....you will be like gods, knowing good and evil."

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