Is it a sin to seek knowledge?

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Mankind obviously has a degree of dominion over the earth but we must not get too arrogant and believe we never need to humble ourselves or we will use everything up and pretty much implode on ourselves.

Satan is a destructive force, a tempter. He is the one that will put things in your way that can trip you up or destroy you, "tests" is what some refer to them as. You either overcome them or perish. He will disguise lies as truths and make you believe something is good or for the best when it will actually complicate or ruin your life. He can brainwash you or deceive you easily. It can be difficult to keep a clear head when Satanic energy has muddled your thinking.

God of this world, supposedly, is also imperfect which is why your see such an imperfect world before you which is just a fancy way of saying, the world we live in is imperfect and you cannot ever make it perfect but you can improve it.

The ancients did not see the serpent as death. To the contrary and why it was venerated, they saw it as a renewer of life as they would see it reborn when sheading it's skin.

Remember as well that venom and poisons, in minute doses, is medicine. The serpent also represents universal or eternal. It swallows it's tail and completes or encircles eternity.

Regards
DL

I do not see the imperfections you do.

As a Gnostic Christian, having pushed my apotheosis, or better said, having found Jacobs ladder, I see as Jesus did. The perfection all around us.

Jesus said, "If those who attract you say, 'See, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you.
If they say to you, 'It is under the earth,' then the fish of the sea will
precede you. Rather, the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is
outside of you.
[Those who] become acquainted with [themselves] will find it; [and when you] become acquainted with yourselves, [you will understand that] it is you who are the sons of the living Father.
But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

Here is a mind exercise. Tell me what you see when you look around. The best that can possibly be or an ugly and imperfect world?

Candide.
"It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end.”

Regards
DL

How can you deny imperfections? You see them everywhere. Crime, disease, violence, death, wars, rigid ideologies that promote violence, poverty, pollution, conspiracies, brainwashing. These are but some of them. There was even a conspiracy between God and Satan in the book of Job so there you go. God even partakes in one. The world is not perfect, far from it and, apparently, God isn't perfect, otherwise, why would he be so vengeful and demanding. A perfect God would have coddled his good servant Job for being so obedient.

Focus on reality.

Are we living in the best of all possible worlds?

After all, even with what you and I see as imperfections, --- according to our own opinions, --- this is the only possible world that we can have. Right?

To have it otherwise we would have to had billions of other conditions happen in the past. Right?

To make it easier for you. Try to think of time as stopping right now. You will see that even with our wish list of improvements, the world cannot be better than what it is.

So we can say that we live in the best of all possible worlds because it is the only possible world.

Regards
DL

I don't believe perfection exists unless you superficially refer to something as perfect because you are contented and happy. Perfection exists in the mind only but it's something that cannot happen in reality. Our world is an unpredictable one even today. We are made comfortable by central heat and air. Our minds are occupied by gadgets. Mass production is possible so more and more have access to what very few would have a few hundred years ago. We still face challenges as a species and there's no indication the way we live today will be the way folks will live fifty years from now. It could be better, or, it could be worse.

I believe it is a form of psychological violence to demand ignorance or to deliberately suppress truth.

I'm not sure this relates to the OP's question or not.

I've heard a lot of rhetoric about how this was required for salvation but I don't buy it.

Unless it's allegory about what is broken in human brains that makes us want all this complexity and stimulation while, say, dolphins are clearly having a ball with big brains and not all that much of what we'd call knowledge.

We could have been stupid and happy but we're not? if that's the case, I don't think it has anything to do with sex and reproduction.

maybe "original sin" is just something the catholics made up?

Even so, god could have created man with the capacity for knowledge and foregone all this betrayal and fall from grace nonsense.

I believe Max Hiendel definitively answered this one.

We didn't have separate identities or really much self-awareness prior to involving into matter. Neither 'ye shall be Gods' or 'surely ye shall not die' were both essentially correct but also Yahweh's message of pain and toils to Adam and Eve were not a curse so much as the essential course of events needed to see out that path of development to completion - ie. the polarities of good and evil, movement and inertia, etc. etc..

If you have a lot of rough cut gems sitting around and your happy with that then that's what you have then they're free to be without any structural abuse. However if you want to polish and shine them up they take a heck of a lot of beating and abuse in the process (really polishing in and of itself is a specifically directed assault to the body of the mineral but if the result of a smooth and refined gem is desired it's par for the course). It's part of why I'm also increasingly forced to look at the pain and anguish that exists in this world with a lot of humility - that is the profundities of the anguish can't not be equal to the profundities of the alchemical processes at play.

The answer for me is simple, per 'Is IT a Sin to Seek Knowledge'.

If IT does not exist on the beach without foot prints of humans;

IT does not exist other than imagination and creativity of human beings.

That's a double edged sword; Humans live in both heaven and hell;

Often of their own making, mostly with 'books', one way or the other.

I buy my own salvation with innate instinct and intuition; it's free,
whether big black books
or other humans
like that
or
NOT..
Something me
and a Seagull
named 'Jonathan'
have in common..

By seeking knowledge one doesn't become more like God simply because God need not seek anything. By knowing more one may be said to be a fraction of an inch closer to God, but because God's knowledge is in earthly terms infinite, there is no danger of stepping over any alleged forbidden line. Jesus encouraged people to become like him, so why not also in this respect. Asymptotically, never reaching the divine level.

From time immemorial, scholarly career has been highly esteemed among Judaism, not necessarily so among Christianity. But after the Catholic Church got over the Galileo incident, they too have promoted earthly, scientific learning.

It is no sin.

No argument on perfect ands that is why I dropped using perfect and went to best of all possible worlds.

You do no seem to get it so I will move on.

Regards
DL

Absolutely. It puts us on the same page and shows that we both recognize that God was real prick in Eden.

If anyone fell there it was him.

Regards
DL

To the Jews who wrote Eden, God did.

They do not have an Original Sin concept and saw Eden as man's elevation and not the fll that Christianity latter placed on it.

I see Christianity as quite an immoral creed as compared to what the earlier Jews and Gnostic Christians had.

If you have a spiritual itch to scratch, I suggest investigating Jewry of better yet, Gnostic Christianity.

Regards
DL

Sigh.

Regards
D

I agree but the church never mentions that God was unjust in punishing A & E or doing what the church now support.

That is clearly a double moral standard where they forgive God for doing what they would condemn a man for doing.

That is the problem of idol worship.

Regards
DL