Adam and Eve---Mere Myth ?

by Blueblades 40 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  LittleToe

  Shotgun:
  If you remove what has been added to augment to Adam & Eve story you come up with far less details.

  • Neighbour gives a newstart access to his "Nudist Orchard", but says that if they touch his prize blooms, he'll kill them that very day
  • Boy meets girl
  • Girl speaks to snake
  • Boy and girl go scrumping for apples in their neighbours orchard
  • Neighbour tells girl that childbirth will be greatly increased
  • Neighbour tells boy that he's gonna sweat a lot when he grows stuff
  • Neighbour gives them some clothes and kicks them out of the orchard to fend for themselves.

  Later the bible tells us that Satan WAS the serpent (do snakes have souls?).
  We also hear that sin and death was brought into the world (even though the animals didn't sin), through Adam.

  We may make certain connections, but I don't think the tale necessarily tells us:

  • Because of fruit, we all die physically
  • All women will have worsened labour, than originally planned
  • We all struggle to eat
  • That Satan "used" a snake
  • And perhaps a whole raft of other things that we take for granted.

  It's been a long week - I'm starting to ramble and get incoherent.
  I'm going to wander off into a corner and eat my own feet...
• 

  gumby

  Regarding neanderthals, I have seen no consistency there, either

  I was only funnin ya on that part LT

  I'm not an advocate of evolution either, as I do not know enough about it , though I do not totally doubt it.

  Gumby
• 

  shotgun

  LOL littletoe...makes alot more sense when its laid out that way....no pun about the laid out.

  Enjoy all your posts BTW
• 

  rocketman

  Posts by shotgun and LT were quite funny - and yet very interesting and made excellent points. When I read the account, it always comes across as a fairy tale. It just seems to pat, too easy. For example, notice that the first humans sinned without so much as putting up a fight against the temptation, and it seems to conveniently occur before they bear children.

  Shotgun made an excellent point about God warning Cain, and yet not saying much to Eve when approached by the most diabolical creature of all time, Satan T. Debbil himself. Then yes, Adam and Eve get the death sentence while murdering Cain just has to move around a lot for the rest of his life.
• 

  LittleToe

  EvolutionI actually don't have much difficulty believing that evolution may have been a mechanism used in creation. It was something I wondered about even as a JW.
  I do think that some evolutionists are as dogmatic as some of the Fundamentalists, though.

  Life certainly has an amazing adaptability.
  As for genetics, we're just scratching the surface, with our current understanding.

  DeathSomething I've also pondered (recently in fact) is that since all things seem to die, as a natural cycle of life and death, was physical death really what was being spoken about in the Adam & Eve story?
  It seems to me that it may have been a reference to them becoming spiritually discombobulated.

  Myth?There's usually a grain of truth in every myth, and a moral behind every story.
  I suspect that the moral behind this one has nothing to do with "beware of talking to sweet-toothed reptiles on dark nights".

  I wouldn't be surprised if there was a couple (maybe later named Adam and Eve) who were involved in some of the recorded events. I suspect that there's a rich tapestry of surrounding events that have been left out, though. Maybe the story made far more sense nearer the time.
• 

  micheal

  God had absolutley no concern for the human race. Instead he made it personal between himself and satan. God made a very emotional decision.
• 

  gumby

  Ok LittleToe.....do you know......where you go?

  There are many ifs in your ideaology about the OT stories which obviously conflict with popular Christianity....and again.....that's good by me. When your point of view about the bible changed as you journeyed out of the forest of dublife......it changed different than mine.

  You saw it in a different light and viewed it as still believable. Believable enough to doubt the OT as literal but to believe the NT enough to the point of putting your life into the hands of a savior the NT speaks of that you believe is real and his promises are real.

  I am not making light in anyway of the road you took. My intrest are WHY people who read similar material about a subject can come to different conclusions? Would this happen if it were a different subject such as how to change a starter in a Ford Truck? Why is it we see things different on the point of religion yet can usually agree on the meaning of a movie we just watched or a novel we just read?

  Me....I don't know the answer if each person is being true to self.

  Gumby
• 

  LittleToe

  Gumby:
  Are you going to hurry up and contribute to that Renga thread, or not??

  I don't know if you've ever worked on an auto, with the manuals, and ever come across a different component. I have, several times, and had to adapt what I was reading to the reality of what was presented before me.

  I'm pretty sure that the writers of the manual weren't playing a practical joke, but sometimes things change, or else I'm looking at something from a different angle from that presented in the picture on the page. I tell ya, I've had many unhappy hours scratching my head with oil covered fingers.

  Analogy over, let me tell you about my path:

  • It started with an epiphany that knocked my socks off
  • It continued with my doctrines unravelling as I became insatiable to read the bible and other texts
  • As I took this voyage of discovery the "falsehood" of what I'd been taught, as well as some misunderstandings in translation leapt out of the page at me
  • I continued to ponder on what I had experienced and learned (and continue to learn)

  Now, I've stated a few times here that I'd rather take the title "Unorthodox Christian", because not all my beliefs are mainstream. Some think that a copout, because I want to believe what I want to believe. But here's the rub - quite a number of mainstream churches are quite happy for you to hold your own theories and beliefs. It's part of something called Christian Liberty.

  On Wednesday nights I usually go to a religious service of just an hours duration, including prayers, Psalm singing and a half-hour lecture on some subject or other.
  After that a group of us (it varies between 12 - 36) go to one home or another, have something to eat together and discuss issues, passages of scripture, services, ideas, questions, whatever. It makes for some robust and healthy debate, and I personally love it because it's everything I couldn't do as a dub.

  My opinions are continually evolving as my studies bring fresh insight to my mind. The nice thing being that I can do that. I don't have to feel a failure just because a cherished belief has crumbled before my eyes. I only wish that some others here would get to that point.

  With regards to the Adam and Eve story, I leave room to believe that it could be true (just as it's stated) because there is so little real detail. I think that some of the details are a little suspect, but I was raised to "doublethink", so I can juggle dichotomies in my mind. It's the healthy examination and turning of concepts, that brings us fresh understanding. Taking a linear approach is often too simplistic, especially when so many of the pieces are missing.

  With regards to the bible and some of the stories therein, I suspect there's a good smattering of personal opinion, rather than totally true reporting. I think John tried to report what he "saw". I know that Paul offered some opinions. All of this has to be taken in the context of the times that influenced the writers, as well as what had already come into their experience. In all honesty, in many ways we aren't much further forward, for all our gizmo's. In fact we're returning to an age of magik, where we don't understand how half the devices around us work.

  IMHO the creator is a Mathematician, a joker (duck-billed platypus), and a Father who wants His children to grow, explore, examine, question and evolve.
  We might rail against Him, and argue His existence, but that changes nothing (including His opinion of us).
• 

  Blueblades

  Thank you all for your thoughts on this topic.The one thing that gets in the way of my dismissing the Adam and Eve account is : Jesus' words to the Pharisees,"Have you not read that He who made "THEM"at the beginning made them male and female..."

  While,I am aware that what Jesus said in the Bible is also put into question because the belief in the
  "Inspired Word of God" is also just that ,it is based on a" Belief System."

  With that on the side,that is putting Jesus' statement about the Adam and Eve account on the side,what do I have left?

  Either its true or its mere myth.Either the ancients have something to say about this,and the Bible is picking up on what the ancients believe,or,its all left up to each and every one of us to personally research and then decide.

  As for me answering my own topic,???????? undecided.

  Blueblades, Hoping for Eternal Life somewhere,without having to chase a carrot!
• 

  Abaddon

  There is nothing in the Bible to distinguish its creation myth from any other faith's creation myth.

  Scientists acknowledge that the human race is a single family with a common origin.

  Yeah; however, the races of man have existed far longer, and the languages of man have been diverging far longer than the myths in Genesis allows for, and later aspects of the Bible (the Flood, e.g.) make it clear you are not reading a literal account but rather, if anything other than a pure myth, a distantly remembered event; with the Flood for example, a story of a cataclysm that affected the known world of those it happened to, rather than the entire globe.

  At this point, along with the contradictions between human biology and Biblical law, I lose interest in the Bible. The idea of god using such an innacurate flawed book to communicate with man suggests god is having a very bad joke at our expense, or else that he doesn't exist at all, or not in the way the Bible talks of him. If the first possibility is true, god already knows what he can do with it.

  Anyone who wonders why the races of man have diverged so little should really just read a few books on human evolution. Alternately go to your local library and read the Scientific American of 17th May 2003 from cover to cover. This would give you a very good overview of current theories and make you realise that the question is very easy to answer.

  We have certainly evolved to fit different environments; the early Cro-Magnons in Europe have African body shapes, and probably had African skin tones (obviously the last point is conjecture). Inuits have specific cold adaptations. But as most of man's survival skills comes from the massive organ that consumes 1/3 of his energy, and this organ is capable of coming up with solutions to survival problems that do not require several thousands of generations to be effective, since humans diverged from Africa only certain adaptations have been triggered by natural selection.

  There are some that are works in progress; those with one sickle cell gene have good protection against malaria, and a lower fatality than those with no such genes. Even though having two sets of the gene is very very bad for you, the mortaility rate of those with these genes, including those that die from having two genes, is less than of those without the genes. Thus in areas where malaria is rampant and has been for generations, you find significant proportions of the population with sickle cell genes. In areas where there is no malaria, this mutation would have died out as it had a higher mortality rate than not having those genes.

  So,Bible or not,could there be any truth,proof,about this event,is it possible to have eternal life on earth or, are the stories among the ancients only Myths?

  There is no indication that eternal life was ever a possibility or would ever be a possibility naturally. The best chance we have is modern science developing ways to retard aging or perhaps prevent aging.

  Obviously until I have a happy fanny... no, that's not right, I mean an internalised religious experience, all I have to go on are facts, and these facts just turn god into a boogie monster that kisses it better if you keep the priests happy. Some people have attaempted to make religions more liberal, but those is their roots.

  I'm still waiting for a creationist who actually knows enough about evolution to attack the real weak points in evolutionary theory, but I find they attack parts of the theory that are so well established in various ways their attempts to fit god into them fail.

  Of course, I'm not going to give away what the weak points are; but it's significant that no creationists seem to know either, as they normally run their arguments off a bullet-pointed list from some web site and have no in-depth knowledge of the subject. Anyone seen Jerry Bergman recently?