Satan gave man love. Was it worth the hate?

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

Satan gave man love. Was it worth the hate?

Adam thought so. He instantly and without argument or hesitation ate of that knowledge when Eve offered love to Adam.

Without Satan causing Original Sin, mankind could no know of love or hate as love and hate are subject to being good or evil.

Would you do as Adam did?

Was Satan right in opening our eyes to love and hate?

Should we venerate Satan more than Yahweh who tried to deny mankind love?

Regards
DL

 

[Tom Sawyer]

From the point of view of the Genesis story, it was the eating of the apple and getting kicked out of Eden which turned us into humans. Absent the ability to process the consequences of our actions, we were really just automatons who did whatever we were ordered to do because there was no way for us to distinguish between the results of following orders or not following them.

We'd be able to display affection, just like any other animal, but the cognitive processes to take it beyond that and turn it into something which we could define as love just weren't available.

So yes, Satan got the ball rolling.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Satan gave man love. Was it worth the hate?

Adam thought so. He instantly and without argument or hesitation ate of that knowledge when Eve offered love to Adam.

But that wouldn't count. Adam would have been the one person in the garden unable to judge whether or not the knowledge was worth it. Whatever was in the fruit, Adam literally had NO KNOWLEDGE of it, and no way to assess its worth.

I downcheck God for blaming Adam for the consequences of an act he was ill equipped to make, I can't see giving him upchecks for the same blind decision.

Would you do as Adam did?

But that's a completely different question. I have felt love. And hate. And suffered the consequences of both. Totally unlike the blank slate that Adam was... Better to ask my car if it would make the same choice.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Ya, you can't give either Adam or Eve any credit or blame for what they did or didn't do before eating the apple. Absent the cognitive ability to process consequences, all potential actions are exactly the same.

 

[abaddon]

It's a tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not just a tree of knowledge (or thinking). Adam was busily naming things, and he and Eve were enjoying the garden and their marriage unashamedly before eating the fruit. I agree with posts above that they didn't know how to project into the future well, since they were more here-now sensualists. But it's possible to exaggerate how dim such a mind is -- they don't strike me as altogether like the other animals in their edenic state.

Eve didn't seem very curious until a "crafty" snake encouraged her to "contemplate" what more she could have. She couldn't know she was trading the bliss she had, to instead be powerful like gods (manipulators of nature). But clearly curiosity (or "temptation") was part of her nature already. So it doesn't look like Satan did that to her. Maybe the snake is a symbol of her curiosity instead of some metaphysical entity. Keep in mind it's a myth, so it's psychological regardless if anyone ever intended it as a literal history.

Eating the fruit somehow made the unashamed enjoyment of their bodies and nature to disappear. Suddenly they were worried about being naked. So it looks more like a tale of increased self-consciousness than anything else.

The OP's looking at the myth and wondering what lesson for life to learn from it. I see it as descriptive of how people split the world into "good" and "evil". To make my point, I need to compare a bit with other traditions that make this habit of mind clearer than the hebraic tradition generally does.

Ancient and modern psychotherapies say we suffer discontent with the conditions of the world (like having to work and being mortal and the rest) when we project judgments onto it instead of accept what "just is".

Here's a Buddhist text's advice (from the Chinese Ch'an tradition) to help illustrate my view of what this myth suggests about the mind:

The Great Way is not difficult
for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent

everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the smallest distinction, however,

and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth

then hold no opinions for or against anything.

To set up what you like against what you dislike

is the disease of the mind.

So from this POV, humans did not permanently leave "Eden" because of a poor choice, but rather our habit of mind to make judgments obscures reality. As self-conscious beings we tend to paint the world over with our judgments. This Hebrew myth projects the judger outside the mind and into another entity -- God. Adam and Eve were afraid of getting judged, as self-conscious people to be.

Likewise Satan is a projection of the mind too. God's the judgmental "be careful it's dangerous!" bit. Satan's the curious "I wonder what this does?" bit.

Psychotherapies for worries, anxiety and depression involve much the same advice as that Buddhist advice, just less totally -- they seek to alleviate rather than fully transcend the stress caused by our judgmental minds. "Mindfulness" is increasingly important in western therapies. It's the practice of "being present" to the senses more than to the imaginations about the past and future or to the "awfulizing" habit of the mind (our warning system that there are threats all around and we need to control them all).

So, my argument is, if you strip this myth of any metaphysical overlay, it's pretty well descriptive of how the mind is. Our "fall" happens as we get self-conscious and start going "eww" at reality.

That may look like a stretch after centuries of folk wondering "So who's the one we should blame?!" in response to it. How about no one's to blame? And how about there's no one to venerate either? It's a myth, so it's an expression of the human imagination, so it's open to a comparative analysis with other traditions of how the human imagination works. Why venerate any of the characters in a story, especially if they're symbols for traits of the human mind?

 

[Jobar]

The Adam & Eve tale is pretty plainly a re-telling of an ancient oral tradition of the switch from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to those of herders and agriculturalists.

From what we can tell today, nomadic hunter-gatherers are at least as violent and murderous as any other group of humans, however they get their food. Some are far more violent than others; consider the Yanomamo. I would say the perception of hunter-gatherers as innocents resulted from more civilized humans looking back at such a lifestyle with nostalgia; but probably their lives were more 'nasty, brutish, and short' than were those of people who lived in more organized groups.

 

[Politesse]

Satan gave man love. Was it worth the hate?

Adam thought so. He instantly and without argument or hesitation ate of that knowledge when Eve offered love to Adam.

Without Satan causing Original Sin, mankind could no know of love or hate as love and hate are subject to being good or evil.

Would you do as Adam did?

Was Satan right in opening our eyes to love and hate?

Should we venerate Satan more than Yahweh who tried to deny mankind love?

Regards
DL

Satan claimed that he taught us good and evil. He also claimed that we would live forever, like one of the gods. Is there any solid evidence that either of these rewards was attained?

 

[WAB]

Satan gave man love. Was it worth the hate?

Adam thought so. He instantly and without argument or hesitation ate of that knowledge when Eve offered love to Adam.

Without Satan causing Original Sin, mankind could no know of love or hate as love and hate are subject to being good or evil.

Would you do as Adam did?

Was Satan right in opening our eyes to love and hate?

Should we venerate Satan more than Yahweh who tried to deny mankind love?

Regards
DL

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

- William Blake

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Ohhh...he gave man, "love."

I read "Satan gave man love" differently.

 

[bilby]

Satan gave man love. Was it worth the hate?

Adam thought so. He instantly and without argument or hesitation ate of that knowledge when Eve offered love to Adam.

Without Satan causing Original Sin, mankind could no know of love or hate as love and hate are subject to being good or evil.

Would you do as Adam did?

Was Satan right in opening our eyes to love and hate?

Should we venerate Satan more than Yahweh who tried to deny mankind love?

Regards
DL

Satan claimed that he taught us good and evil. He also claimed that we would live forever, like one of the gods. Is there any solid evidence that either of these rewards was attained?

Nope. But the various Christian denominations still make those claims to this day.

Personally, I see no reason to distrust the overwhelming scientific evidence that anyone who promises eternal life for anyone is full of shit.

And it's been known for centuries that an authoritarian standard of good and evil (as claimed by the churches) is logically impossible.

So it sounds like both sides are talking out of their collective backsides.

 

[PyramidHead]

Without Satan causing Original Sin, mankind could no know of love or hate as love and hate are subject to being good or evil.

That doesn't make any sense and is false.

 

[ruby sparks]

Without Satan causing Original Sin, mankind could no know of love or hate as love and hate are subject to being good or evil.

That doesn't make any sense and is false.

Nail on head twice, imo.

 

[Politesse]

(Also, shouldn't a Gnostic of all people know that Satan isn't necessarily the snake in the garden? Most Gnostics I have ever met consider the snake to be something along the lines of a messenger from the true God, if not a prefigurement of Christ himself.)

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Satan gave man love. Was it worth the hate?

Adam thought so. He instantly and without argument or hesitation ate of that knowledge when Eve offered love to Adam.

But that wouldn't count. Adam would have been the one person in the garden unable to judge whether or not the knowledge was worth it. Whatever was in the fruit, Adam literally had NO KNOWLEDGE of it, and no way to assess its worth.

That makes no sense at all. Man was created to tend to the Garden. He couldn't do that without knowledge of something. And certainly it can be argued that there was never a prohibition on eating the fruit, God warned them they'd die if they ate it.

Serpent comes in, tells them they won't die if they eat the fruit (which is true). Then they eat the fruit.

Ultimately, God boots them from the Garden not because of eating the fruit, but because if they ate from the Tree of Life (noted for the first time in the narrative here), they'd become like gods. So he evicts them. This gives us the understanding that God meant man to be a servant, and when man could have become like gods, God just didn't want to have it. Here... have some leather garments.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

(Also, shouldn't a Gnostic of all people know that Satan isn't necessarily the snake in the garden? Most Gnostics I have ever met consider the snake to be something along the lines of a messenger from the true God, if not a prefigurement of Christ himself.)

Ya, but the story's been ret-conned to have the snake be Satan. Doesn't matter what it was originally.

It's like how in the Superman comics, it's pretty much canon right now that an alien called Brainiac was the one who blew up Krypton. While anyone can point to over fifty years of stories regarding the end of Krypton which don't involve Brainiac, as well as produce documented evidence that Brainiac is actually a human from Metropolis who didn't get any powers until Superman was already an adult, so he couldn't have blown up the guy's planet while the man was an infant, that's irrelevant to current discussions of Brainiac. When he's discussed, he's discussed as the alien who blew up Krypton, and the previous lack of relation between him and the planet's destruction isn't important.

It's the same with Satan. He is now accepted as the guy who tempted Eve in Eden. The fact that he didn't used to be isn't all that important to the current discussion.

 

[Politesse]

(Also, shouldn't a Gnostic of all people know that Satan isn't necessarily the snake in the garden? Most Gnostics I have ever met consider the snake to be something along the lines of a messenger from the true God, if not a prefigurement of Christ himself.)

Ya, but the story's been ret-conned to have the snake be Satan. Doesn't matter what it was originally.

It's like how in the Superman comics, it's pretty much canon right now that an alien called Brainiac was the one who blew up Krypton. While anyone can point to over fifty years of stories regarding the end of Krypton which don't involve Brainiac, as well as produce documented evidence that Brainiac is actually a human from Metropolis who didn't get any powers until Superman was already an adult, so he couldn't have blown up the guy's planet while the man was an infant, that's irrelevant to current discussions of Brainiac. When he's discussed, he's discussed as the alien who blew up Krypton, and the previous lack of relation between him and the planet's destruction isn't important.

It's the same with Satan. He is now accepted as the guy who tempted Eve in Eden. The fact that he didn't used to be isn't all that important to the current discussion.

Well, granted. But Gnostic Christian Bishop, if he is the same person I think he is at other sites, is hardly an orthodox Protestant type. Canon-wise, he is usually more the DC-Superman equivalent of a heartfelt Smallville fan. Hence my curiosity.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Wait, Smallville fan like “First three seasons of Smallville” fan or “I even liked the last seasons of Smallville” fan?

I need to know if I can respect his decision making abilities.

 

[Rhea]

I went looking for a thread that I thought I started long ago asking, “why did god create Satan.” I couldn’t find it, but I found this and it was interesting, so I am resurrecting it.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Because the OP doesn't draw the Sunday school conclusions about Genesis 2 and 3, it really amounts to a nonbeliever saying, "Isn't this a dipshit story," and I agree.
I do like what happens when the heat comes down. God: Who told you you were buck naked? Did you eat the fruit I told you not to eat? Adam: This thing with the boobs and the bad temper you made for me. She brought me the fruit, and what did I know, so I ate it. She told me to.
The first ratting-out in history. Or "history". I like to think that the writer meant this as a natural proclivity in Adam, and mankind: rat out your buddy and don't cop to anything 'til you know the score. It would be disappointing to me if he didn't have that skill set prior to the tree lunch. Little kids today seem to be born with it.

 

[Gnostic Christian Bishop]

Because the OP doesn't draw the Sunday school conclusions about Genesis 2 and 3, it really amounts to a nonbeliever saying, "Isn't this a dipshit story," and I agree.
I do like what happens when the heat comes down. God: Who told you you were buck naked? Did you eat the fruit I told you not to eat? Adam: This thing with the boobs and the bad temper you made for me. She brought me the fruit, and what did I know, so I ate it. She told me to.
The first ratting-out in history. Or "history". I like to think that the writer meant this as a natural proclivity in Adam, and mankind: rat out your buddy and don't cop to anything 'til you know the score. It would be disappointing to me if he didn't have that skill set prior to the tree lunch. Little kids today seem to be born with it.

In reality, Genesis is a rather good coming of age story that stupid people decided to read literally.

Christianity screwed up royally when they turned Eden into our fall, ignoring that tyhey Jews had written it up to show success for both man and god and not a fall at all.

Jews see Original Virtue as I and not a fall.

Oddly, Christians still sing of Adam's sin being a happy fault and necessary to god's plan.

Regards
DL