Adam was a perfect man......... (page 3)

RAF

LS : If you take away Adam and their whole perfection theory, then that leaves the entire after-stories hanging out to dry-like "paradise".
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Terry

Let's just actually THINK about Adam for a minute or two. No knee-jerk responses. Just THINK!

We are human, you and I.

We were born when our mother gave birth to us. We were in our mother's womb and part of her body for about nine months.

ADAM had no mother! Adam was not born! Adam was not formed in a woman's womb!

THINK about that.

We were held and cuddled and smiled at and sung to as we looked up into the face of the person who cherished us most.

ADAM couldn't and didn't!

THINK about that!

We were born into a FAMILY. Adam was not. Adam's parentage was invisible!

Human children are integrated into family life and society very gently, gradually and over constant exposure to all sorts of sensory information.

ADAM was alone!

We humans are spoken to by our mother and father and grandparents as we absorb language with intense fascination in response to their attention.

Language, communication, our identity is part of a larger WHOLE of family which ADAM had none of!

If we are to accept the Bible as some sort of accurate record of how Adam came to be what do we actually learn?

Instead of a mother's womb; Adam was formed in dirt!

Instead of being cuddled and nurtured and held he was one of a kind and as alone as humanity can be.

IN WHAT WAY IS ADAM HUMAN?

I'm serious!

Are you able to THINK about this?

Humans have a psychology which makes them human. ADAM too had a psychology.

It should surprise no one that Adam would desire to be like his Father knowing good and bad or that Adam was influenced by the only other human on planet Earth who offered him something to eat.

It should surprise no one that Eve could be deceived. Both Eve and Adam were about as pig-ignorant as two isolated beings could possibly be.

THINK ABOUT IT!

1.Adam had no childhood, no experience making decisions or seeing others make decisions.

2.Adam was forced to seek companionship among lower animals!

3.Adam's sensory deprivation (contact with parents, family, etc.) created a deep need and longing psychologically.

What does this mean?

WE CANNOT VIEW THE STORY OF ADAM or EVE without being mindful of who/what they are in terms of a NORMAL PERSON.

They were dysfunctional in every way you could possibly be dysfunctional as a person.

ADAM was healthy physically, however, one makes decisions with more than physical perfection. THE MIND makes decisions based on needs and knowledge which mostly defers to experience.

Without a history of decision-making and no experience it is no surprise Adam and Eve were completely INEPT intellectually and psychologically.

You cannot be a sane person without knowing Good and Bad. You learn Good and Bad over a lifetime with thousands and thousands of interactive experiences and corrections through parents, family, society.

ADAM and EVE cannot possibly be viewed as PERFECT!

Perfect IS as perfect DOES. Adam could not make a perfect decision. No way.

Consequently we can only see him as a pathetically deprived, emotionally starved freak of nature caught up in circumstances beyond his experience.

The familar doctrines about Adam comes straight out of the Catholic Church's most famous religous philosophers, Augustine and Aquinas.

THINK for yourself!

Just THINK rationally about this once and you'll see how wrong the PERFECTION of Adam is or having "free will" is. It is a lie and a cruel joke.

Terry

Here is a glimpse of the origins of our modern day theology of Adam. It comes from St.Augustine:

Augustine's theory
Augustine saw original sin as working in two ways:
inherited guilt for a crime
spiritual sickness or weakness
Augustine thought that humanity was originally perfect ("man's nature was created at first faultless and without any sin"), immortal and blessed with many talents, but that Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and introduced sin and death to the world.
Augustine didn't see any need to provide a good reason why Adam, who had originally been created perfect, chose to sin, or why God hadn't created a perfect being that was incapable of sin.
As far as Augustine was concerned the point was that Adam had sinned and humanity had to deal with the consequences.
Modern people would think it unjust that human beings should suffer for something that happened long before they existed, but to people in Augustine's time the idea of punishing later generations for their parents' crimes was familiar.
Why Adam's sin affects everyone
Augustine developed the following argument:
the whole essence of human nature was contained in Adam, the first man
when Adam disobeyed God, the whole of human nature disobeyed God
thus the whole of human nature became sinful
thus the whole human race was damaged for all time.
Nothing remains but to conclude that in the first man all are understood to have sinned, because all were in him when he sinned; whereby sin is brought in with birth and not removed save by the new birth...it is manifest that in Adam all sinned, so to speak, en masse. By that sin we became a corrupt mass. Augustine
Bible scholars think that this element of Augustine's theory was partly based on a mistranslation in the Latin version of the Bible. However, Augustine does not base his entire argument only on that particular text, and his theory is not wrecked by this error.
Having established that every human being had inherited guilt from Adam, Augustine taught that this was why that all human beings were damned, even if they didn't commit any extra sins of their own.

RAF

BTW when I'm talking about God I'm talking about EVERYTHING (that's why I do translate my own personal understanding the way I do) related to human behaviours and inherant right (free will) I mean it's not only about the bible and it's litteral story it's about (out of context) everything it can tell us spiritually talking (and of course if we have to differe on what spiritual means, we will differ about it also)

Terry

And, now we have the Church's star philosopher Aquinas:

Aquinas was known to remain virgin throughout his life. Aquinas blames Adam for releasing man’s appetite for sex and all the other passions:
"The harmonious integrity of the original state depended entirely on the submission of man’s will to God. Consequently, as soon as the human will threw off the yoke of subjection to God, the perfect subjection of the lower powers to reason and of the body to the soul likewise disintegrated. As a result, man experienced in his lower, sensitive appetite the inordinate stirrings of concupiscence [sexual appetite], anger, and all the other passions. "

In the original integrated state of man reason controlled our lower powers perfectly and God perfected the reason subordinated to him. This state was lost to us by Adam’s sin, and the resulting lack of order among the powers of our soul that incline us to virtue we call a wounding of nature. Ignorance is a wound in reason’s response to truth, wickedness in will’s response to good; weakness wounds the response of our aggressive emotions to challenge and difficulty, and disordered desire our affections’ reasonable and balanced response to pleasure. All sins inflict these four wounds blunting reason’s practical sense, hardening the will against good, increasing the difficulty of acting well and inflaming desire. (Thomas Aquinas, Summa, 270-71)

Awakened07

I have a question that is related to this subject, that I'll use in another thread (maybe):

- Do JWs (or anyone else, for that matter) teach that animals, the Earth itself, and even the universe became imperfect after Adam & Eve had sinned? I mean - the fact that animals eat each other and suck blood etc. should be "evidence" of this, since they are told to eat plants in the creation story, and they are said to eat hay and grass in the new, future Paradise? So - animals changed because of the human sin - - did the universe as well? Anyone remember or know what we were taught about this? I seem to remember the verse "All of creation cries and moans to this day" (paraphrase) is used to show this, but I'm not sure.

TIMBOB

WHY the hell created god bloodsucking animals, when blood is SO sacred?

Never though of it that way, good point.

lonelysheep

Awakened--that was my point. Take away Adam's "perfection" and you take away all that appears to be pouring off that umbrella.

Awakened07

Sorry lonelysheep - I read your reply and didn't mean to take away from it or push my own view - more like add to it. But actually the most important thing for me right now is to know if JWs learn that the universe became imperfect after A&E sinned? Has that ever been said or implied?

lonelysheep

I was trying to convey that we agree. Sorry, I don't always write well when I'm rushed (sneaking, really).

Adam was a perfect man.........

Augustine's theory

Why Adam's sin affects everyone

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