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Well, this is another topic about some stuff in The Bible.

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and femal he created them." Gen. 1:27

So, by this logic, then we at least physically appear like God in some sort of way, right?

"'You will not surely die,' the serpent said to the woman. "For God knowsthat when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Gen. 3:4-5.

Now, we're talking about the tree of knowledge and the serpent here. Now, does this not say that we would be like God even more so than in appearance? I guess you could argue the serpent was only lying to us if you were to interpret the serpent as Satan.

Woops, forgot the part about ignorance, now, wouldn't him not wanting us to eat from the tree of knowledge make him want us to be ignorant?

Anyway, thoughts on the subject?

i haven't fully digested the posts above me, but while i work on a suitably... not retarded answer... what if in the original post, you switched the word 'ignorant' with 'innocent'. would that shed a different light on the subject?

i'm not quite sure i follow your post, were you referring at the end to just being naked and thinking it was suddenly wrong?

it just seemed to me as if your train of thought started out talking about the original topic and i followed you as far as the possibility of illusions of good and evil... but i got lost at the end.

interesting views. Innocent and ignorant, certainly the chose of words can morph this from a rather easy-to-the-hearts of Christian's to a "he wanted you to be stupid" argument.

Anyway, innocence (not the legal innocence, but, like, when we talk about a young child) and ignorance I view as the same thing. It's merely expected as we age to become more educated, and instead of, when we make a mistake, we're not said to be "innocent", rather "ignorant". Same thing to me.

I certainly find the idea about the tree of illusion of good and evil to be a very intriguing concept.

Concerning the concept of God and us being of similar design, I would propose to tell you that if He did create us in all of this that He probably made a lesser version of himself. "In His own image" doesn't necesarilly imply that we're a mirror of him. I always take that as a very literal interpretation as that we look like him, physically. Some would argue though that we can't see God and therefore to assume we look anything like him is rash and heretical.

Anyway, just to clear things up, I'm agnostic, I just raise questions about the Bible a lot. Gee, like that's anything new from an agnostic mrgreen .

in the way that supposedly christianity borrowed and adapted concepts from many of the religions it swallowed, the idea of crafting 'in his own image' but not 'in his mirror image' reminds me of... i want to say sympathetic magical beliefs, but i'm not sure that's the correct term. it's the concept basically of one small piece being the same as the larger whole, much like vodu dolls. in other words, if you took the very very smallest tip top of a pyramid and looked at it... it would still be the exact same shape as the overall larger pyramid.






just to raise a quick note here... i'm sure in my hurry to get to work, i read your post wrong or i missed something, but at one point you state that god intended us to be obedient, and in another point, you say that god intended us to have free will. i'm just unclear whether you intended to state both as being the case (meaning god gave us free will, but prefers us to be obedient), or if you meant something else that i didn't catch.

isn't God (with a capitol 'g'), by nature and definition, all-knowing? in which case, how can he believe anything was the right course of action since he'd have to know the consequences as well.

God must be able to see every possible futuristic outcome (given modern ideas about time and multiverses)... or time is in fact out of God's control, making Him not all-knowing... and by definition, not God.

although he could have indeed forseen all things and decided this was the best course of action to lead to some eventual outcome... letting the idea of 'God's great plan' have merit... or something silly like that.

There are several different interpretations of this passage in Genesis. The two most relevant interpretations are the "orthodox" (scare quotes intentional) versions of Judaism and Christianity.

Post-Augustine orthodox Christianity has included the concept of 'original sin' as a fundamental component of its system. (This has evolved in recent centuries, but this is still the historical norm.) Because of this doctrine, Christians tend to focus on the good-versus-evil aspect of the story. On this interpretation, it wasn't that God wanted us to be ignorant, but rather that he wanted us to be innocent, an important distinction that has already been raised. (There is also an interesting presentation of having to know right and wrong in order to do right or wrong, if this interpretation is taken.)

But this orthodox Christian interpretation is not at all the understanding held by orthodox Judaism. Judaism lacks the 'original sin' concept of Christianity, not to mention the Christian emphasis on grace -- the soteriology of Judaism is entirely works-based. Traditional Judaism also lacks a Satan figure, at least as pictured by Christianity. Though God had instructed Adam and Eve (who, according to Judaism, are not specific figures, but rather representative of the human race in general) not to partake of the Tree of Knowledge, it was part of His long-term plan to initiate the system of salvation that was later outlined in the laws given to and through Moses. God never really intended humans not to eat the fruit, so humans never lost anything by eating it.

This passage is the subject of heated debate in many theological circles, so these particular explanations are... overly-brief, at best. But that's the idea: Christianity stresses the innocence over the ignorance, and Judaism says that making the Tree of Knowledge about either innocence or ignorance misses the point entirely.

there is no need to read the bible and take everything literally. firstly what can be said is that we are made of the substance of god, thus from the image of god not in the physical form of god, god is without form. some would also say that this also means that we are self aware as god is.
second is about the fruit. think of this, there are two trees in the garden of importance. The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. no where in the bible is it said that the serpent is satan, this is a misinterpretation. a serpent is a symbol of knowledge. now to me this story represents a transition in the evolution of man at one point he was like any other animal, ignorant of his own condition, living naturally. this in itself is neither good nor bad it is the way it was. at some point we changed, we began to think, to like and dislike, to evaluate, to acquire knowledge. this can be seen as the "fruit" of the tree of knowledge. all of society and technology is built from the fruit of that tree and we no longer live like animals but like twisted gods. but that is not all that it says about the eating of the fruit, it also implies that after having eaten such fruit that mankind will bear a burden, and what is left out is that the tree of life is redeeming(see kabalah). this burden can perhaps be clarified if we consider the four noble truths of Buddhism. life entails suffering(in Christianity of apparent causes here being discussed), and the origin of that suffering is attachment, in this case i will point out that a knowledge of good and evil can be included here, evil causes suffering, lack of good causes suffering, no amount of good can over come the fact that it will at some point be lacking. it is the attachment to these judgments and the focus of these judgments that cause such a condition. the second two have to do primarily with the practice of Buddhism, that is that the cessation of suffering is possible and the eight-fold path is the way to end suffering.
so we can see here that though the knowledge of good and evil can make us "like" god it also comes with a burden and perhaps the way they tell the story is to say that though god gave us the ability to progress he may not have encouraged us to take on such a responsibility. and oddly enough i find it that in the modern bible very little is said of the tree of life, which is our redemption, the path to union with god.
we cannot be god, though we can be like him. he has given us our form, not our bodies, emotions or minds but the energetic force behind our being.