Abortion and Original Sin

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Then why does everyone blame Eve? Then it's really Adam's fault!

Oh, they're held accountable all right. It's the lake of fire and sulfur for them. Don't you worry about a thing. Ever-lasting torment, yet they won't know what hit them, having never had the privilege of attending bible school.

but if he really isnt that involved isnt it possible that any previous involvement might have been fabricated to a large extent by humans?
maybe he simply "got the ball rolling",

this is one of the issues with religion, one can find such diverse knowledge, philosophy and wisdom if one looks alternatively on these religions, yet religions form large groups of "devout" worshippers that end up ignoring these wisdoms in the name of dogma, i can imagine a christianity that would bring mostly good into the world but it is a far cry from any organization i have heard of today.

In pint of fact, mon ami, I did not forget zombies. I decided not to complicate the living and dead categories. Consider the first paragraph hhere, bitte: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie] In the first case, the zombie is alive. In the second case it is a corpse reanimated. Just special cases of living and dead respectively. Same for the Frankestein products..

I also omitted werewolves. I actually do not know about the DNA of werewolves, mantigers, and the like. If vampirism alters the DNA [I could not find any sources on this] the undead MAY have to be removed.

Note - we also have - technology not having gotten that far in the day - no data on the DNA of the resurrected Christ.

That really doesn't fly if you look at the New Testament, can't think of the exact quote but Jesus basically implied that young children go to heaven.

It is only fair to say, though , that as with many other points there have been and are different stances on the issue of the kiddies. Even when Christ's words are clear and unambiguous, een when manuscripts and translations agree, not all churches will take them the same way.

The point of the Adam and Eve narrative is not to show God punishing people for the way he made them. It is about who we are as a species and the human condition: we chose the freedom to know, our rebellious nature, men have tunnel vision (basically Adam listened to whoever spoke to him last), women are the more advanced of the two, etc.

The point is not to blame either of these characters but to accept them as part of who we are. By doing so, we accept our humanity because we all have more in common with these two characters then some of the people that live on our own street.

That said, Eve came out the better of the two in the story. It's not that the women is more persuadable then men, or that their evil, or cunning, or dumber. She had received the instructions second hand, the serpent appealed to her logic and lied to her about the conditions that God put on them, she can only conclude that the serpent is right after eating and not dying, her eyes are opened sexually, she's getting wiser, etc.

Why did Adam eat? Because Eve gave him a fruit... That's it.. he was given a fruit and unquestioningly ate it despite knowing that God had specifically given him the instructions not to eat from that one tree of all the trees in the garden.

Why did Eve eat? The serpent goes through this whole routine: You will be wise, God is wrong, Don't you want to know everything, The Tree is Beautiful. It appealed to her senses, it appealed to her mind, it appealed to her logic, etc. She comes out the more impressive of the two, no question.

I am using a torah with commentary by reform rabbi Gunther Plaut and a normal KVJ that was retranslated by TBN with commentary and commentary by orthodox rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (who tends to try to make the torah look better then it is).

1.) They never had immortality to begin with(we assume this because of how this constructed narrative ends).
2.) They didn't die either when they ate the fruit so that consequence was representative of the ending of their innocence and not a physical death.
3.) And they did gain knowledge of sex - which is in essence what divides the innocent from the non-innocent.

Like the story of Job, we don't know if Adam and Eve ever existed, but the point of the story is still just as powerful. It is not written for God's sake, or for Adam and Eve, but rather, constructed for our(the reader) own sake. They were given by God the chance to live forever in innocence and enjoy a subsidized living, and to procreate freely with liberty in an animalistic sense void of sex... in all ramifications of that word... in the ugly, in the beautiful, in the romantic, in the erotic, in the dirty... and they opted for the human condition as We today - reading this story thousands of years later - know it.

So to say that they were:



is not accurate.

The whole story is alogorical - so we are talking symbolic here, including the names chosen for their two sons, Cain(acquired) and Able(emptiness) - or in other words: Earthling(from the earth) came together with Life and began humanity and their first two children are acquired and emptiness. The two trees represent life and death. Whether the choice was freely offered or not is not important to the narrative: given the two choices, they opted for the one that the torah feels most humans would have opted for.

It is clear that God told them not to eat that one specific tree, but it is used to construct a key point of the story for the reader - you hear the serpent mis-interpret God's instructions when it approaches Eve. The purpose is so that - make no mistake: Adam and Eve both knew about this tree. It was beautiful to look upon, etc. Eve was tricked and had heard the story second hand but she still knew that this tree had significance.

Genesis 3:9 - And the LORD God called unto the man, and said unto him: 'Where art thou? 'God came looking for Adam and Eve not because he didn't know where they were. It is because Adam and Eve tried to "hide" from him behind trees - why they think they could hide from God is puzzling. It is written to "clue" or bring to attention something to the reader. God knows that they had eaten of the fruit of knowing life, and that their nakedness had become apparent to them.

Genesis 3:14 - And the LORD God said unto the serpent: 'Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou from among all cattle, and from among all beasts of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. Genesis 3:15 - And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; they shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise their heel.' God doesn't even bother questioning the serpent. He doesn't ask the serpent why he did what he did because the serpent was guilty from the beginning: it's only purpose di-diefy the serpent which was praised as a God amongst many cultures that interacted with the Jews in its early history. It was chosen for this story clearly an anti-pagan polemic - the mixture of the human and animal in paganism was very great, and this is to set straight that humans are humans and serpent is serpent and the two don't mix, serpents aren't Gods, and people are above animals.

The word punish doesn't occur in the text. The text is very specific in its choice of words and there are words in hebrew for punishment.

1.) Only the serpent is cursed,
2.) God curses the earth on behalf of the man in that life will not be subsidized and that you will have to work for your survival, and
3.) Women are not cursed at all.

So both man and woman are not cursed and both of what is then laid out following the cursing of the serpent are consequences of their choices, not punishment.

Adam(earthling or from-earth) sees the earth punished not because he listened to his wife, God's fury(which I won't focus much on unless you'd like my insights) is because he listened to his wife over listening to God - who had given him the specific instructions not to eat from that fruit. Fair enough.

Genesis 3:16 - "To the woman He said, 'I will greatly multiply yourpain in childbirth. In pain you will bring forth children: Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." God removed the protections that he had in place that trumped nature by equalizing the genders. In nature, the strong - regardless of gender - generally call the shots. The point is to show that the original intent was that man and women are to be totally equal. It is also proof of God's "un-natural" tampering with the natural order when he says he will increase a womens pain in childbirth. What happened was they opted for the tree of knowledge, and God then removed his un-natural protections that trumped nature, and is now letting nature have its way - as in the strong(men) rule the weak(women) and women will feel the full affect of bearing a child. This isn't explaining the way things are in Judaism or amongst Jews. It is paradigmatic of Human History, much of which has been ruled by Men, and their women subservient to them.

In a sense you are right, but they had free will before eating from the tree of knowledge and since the entire story is constructed with the plot and ending that it has, taking it all together, the point is quite clear that they(humanity) were given choices, and humanity opted for one.

These two characters were given the choice to live forever and eat a vegetarian lifestyle and play with all the animals that God had created and procreate freely but they opted for right to know death, pain, and sex. Death makes life meaningful. Pain makes life's rewards worth fighting/working for and meaningful - because they are not the norm unless you are born with a silver spoon. Sex without awareness is just procreation. That is the point of this story: what it means to be human.

Length of rant =/= quality of rant.

God reacted in a petulant way, typical of a bronze aged person. And, err I'm pretty sure humans were cursed, that whole childbirth, sweat of your brow, you know the dickish stuff god assigned to them and all their descendants.

But on the plus side, at least you're not a creationist.

We don't know if adam and eve existed or not, the narrative is constructed with our reaction (as represented by Adam and Eve) the way it is to tell - in the Torah's view - the story of humanity. So we do know that he didn't "assign" those things to us, but rather, allowed nature to take its course. I did write that in my rant.

To say that God won't intervene and prop up our life so that we may live an idyllic existence is not dickish - it is the mature person's preference. To live a natural existence in accordance to natural law is the way that we currently live(thank you curse), and even with all its drawbacks and hardships, most people on earth still say that life is worth living. Why are you complaining about something you don't even prescribe to? It's not like you believe in the genesis account.

And also, I'm not sure what the difference between creationist and ID is but from how I understand ID, I do believe in Intelligent Design - the Human being was Designed.

There is no difference between ID and creationism.. Unless you're meaning divinely guided evolution, still un-falsifiable and victim to occams razor, but at least it isn't anti-science.

And Yahweh is basically a dickish character, the most parsimonious interpretation is that of Yahweh being dickish. And no, I don't believe in it, but I respect the OP's use of contradictions in an amusing way.

...but that brings me to..

If you don't believe in original Sin, why did Jesus have to be sacrificed?

OK... so post up what it says, and how you are managing to get from the text to your interpretation. You asked me to do the same and I obliged.



Yes, it is. That is exactly what verses 22-24 say:
Genesis 2:22-24: Then the Lord God said, "See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"-therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.
(emphasis mine)

So yes, that is exactly what the text says. God did not want them eating from the tree of life, and so sent them out of the garden.


It is important to your interpretation. And it certainly is important to the narrative, as it changes the entire nature of the relationship between man and God.

Maybe God is like the Highlander. There can be only One.

ruveyn

Why did God not want human to be this way? Does God have some sort of entitlement issue? Why did he create human? Wasn't God originally alone? If God created only lesser beings, won't God always be, in a sense, alone?

Why did God create the natural order for females to be weaker (plus the whole painful-childbirth thing)? Then God wouldn't have to tamper with nature. Did God know this "fall" was inevitable? If so, then what was the point of the whole "test"?

What diference does it make if the unborn are innocent?
To the abortion debate, I mean.

It's illegal and immoral to murder a person, regardless of whether the victim is a saint or a sinner.
Therefore, those who consider the unborn "people" are opposed to abortion.