Port Apathy is where the ambassadors of the Enthusiastic Ocean migrate through in order to get to the Indifferent Content. Watch out for the tide of the Enthusiastic Ocean...
What is the reason for life? What is it’s purpose?
In ancient times the belief was that humans were created by the gods to do the hard labour of working the fields and raising animals for the gods. This is why we always spent so much time farming. I guess people have found that spending all your day surviving is fine for animals, but seems far too pedestrian for the human race. So there must be some reason that we live this way. And the old reason was thrown out when Yahweh become the one true, all knowing, all powerful perfect god. Yahweh doesn’t need us to bring him food. He is not small like that.
The reason is that God created a paradise, and the people he placed there lost the right to paradise. And thus, we never inherited it. Therefore we were condemned to work for our lives rather than enjoy them:
Yahweh God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
you are cursed above all livestock,
and above every animal of the field.
On your belly you shall go,
and you shall eat dust all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.
He will bruise your head,
and you will bruise his heel.”
To the woman he said,
“I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth.
In pain you will bear children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
To Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to your wife’s voice,
and have eaten of the tree,
of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’
cursed is the ground for your sake.
In toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
It will yield thorns and thistles to you;
and you will eat the herb of the field.
By the sweat of your face will you eat bread until you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken.
For you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.”
Now, I think this moves away from ‘punishment’ and in to the field of ‘vindictiveness’. One has to wonder, why is the god doing this at all?
Most know the story:
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit, and ate; and she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate. The eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked. They sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. They heard the voice of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees of the garden.
Yahweh God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”
The man said, “I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”
Yahweh God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
I have been told that what is important is not the fruit or the tree or even the eating. It’s the the fact that Adam and Eve disobeyed their god. It doesn’t matter if his commandment was moral or not. It simply was. That Yahweh as a sovereign, can make up any rule he wants. The fact that it was amoral is irrelevant.
Were Adam and Eve set up? The best answer for why they weren’t setup is a free will answer. They said that Adam and Eve had the power to resist. They could have said no and walked away. But the key is that they dwelled on it. Even though they were perfect they disobeyed and fell short of what God wanted. It’s like a perfect robot hitting itself with a hammer over and over again. A perfect robot can damage itself in this manner. Because Adam & Eve ruminated on it, they bent themselves out of shape.
So they took from the tree. As an aside, I’ll point out that people often depict the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as an apple. This happened because in the Hellenistic time period the word for apple and evil were either similar or the same. So the reference became common and persists to modern day.
One interpretation of this event is that Adam and Eve decided they wanted to run things for themselves. God said ‘here’s how it is’ and they said ‘better idea, this fruit is delicious!’ So here’s what happened. God created the heavens and earth and put two people on it to populate the entire world with. He, in His Infinite Wisdom laid down the law. Adam & Eve decided that they didn’t want to live by those rules. We now suffer the aftermath.
The aftermath of Adam and Eve was that Humans were left to make the rules for themselves. The theologian might say, ‘and look at the mess we find ourselves in!’ I’ve heard it said that God can wipe us out and start again, and has the right to do so. But he has decided to let us try for 6000 years to prove that we can’t do it ourselves. We know he can be a bully and just have his way. But he wants to show us that we can’t find our own way through the wilderness.
Given this interpretation, I argue that the rules were stacked against us. Yahweh cursed the ground, threw Satan in our domain and let demons run rampant. Who wouldn’t fail under such circumstances? So the contest isn’t a fair one because Yahweh changed the rules. As it is, I don’t believe in cursed ground, Satan, or demons. But if it were true, it would not be unfair.
Finally, he finished setting up the way the world would work from then until now:
The man called his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Yahweh God made coats of skins for Adam and for his wife, and clothed them.
Yahweh God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand, and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever…” Therefore Yahweh God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed Cherubs at the east of the garden of Eden, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.
Note: The name ‘Eve’ in Hebrew means ‘life-giver’.
Here’s what I still don’t understand: this reads to me as saying that if Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge and then from the Tree of Life that we would become almost exactly god like. So was the reason that God didn’t want Adam & Eve to eat form the Tree of Knowledge because he was being petty and didn’t like competition? And had Adam & Eve not already eaten from the Tree of Life which is why banishment worked? Or do you have to keep eating from the Tree of Life?
Cracking open my New Jerusalem study Bible I was confronted with a fascinating note: I had thought that Genesis 1-2:4a was written from one source, while 2:4b until the end of the chapter was written by a second. But it turns out that the Adam and Eve and Garden of Eden stories are two seperate stories for different traditions. So, I’ve separated them out here. First, we will do Adam and Eve.
In the day that Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens, no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Yahweh God had not caused it to rain on the earth. There was not a man to till the ground, but a mist went up from the earth, and watered the whole surface of the ground. Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Yahweh God planted a garden eastward, in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
Yahweh creates the man but the story is not done. Adam needs something more.
The story picks up at 2:18:
Yahweh God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Out of the ground Yahweh God formed every animal of the field, and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock, and to the birds of the sky, and to every animal of the field; but for man there was not found a helper suitable for him. Yahweh God caused a deep sleep to fall on the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. He made the rib, which Yahweh God had taken from the man, into a woman, and brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. She will be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother, and will join with his wife, and they will be one flesh. They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
I always found it amusing that Yahweh tries to make Adam some helpers, but doesn’t find a good one in all of the million of animals he creates. In the end, he makes a help-meet just like himself.
Thoughts
Changes from WEB: Split 2:4 in to two separate sentences and joined 2:4b with 3. Removed 2:9-2:17 as they belong to another story.
The is an ancient legend of Lilith, Adam’s first wife. She was made at the same time as Adam and so thought she was equal to him. This didn’t work out and I presume they got a divorce. As the legend goes, Yahwe created Adam’s second wife while he was awake, but Adam couldn’t get the Human race going from her because he was disgusted with the fact that he saw Yahweh rip out his rip and grow it to a woman. Thus, even was created later. This all came about because in Genesis 1 God creates ‘them’ together, but in Genesis 2 Yahweh creates them separately.
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Summary of how the 2008 federal election went in Barrie. Starring Rick Jones, Myrna Clark, Erich Jacoby-Hawkins, Elizabeth May, and Patrick Brown as Sargent Slaughter.
In university one of my religious studies professors said that his interest in the Bible came from the book of Revelations, because it was about the end of the world. He suspected this might be because he grew up in the cold war. For me, it’s just the opposite. I love creation, not destruction.
The first story of the Bible is of creation. And it’s a magnificent creation from a truly awe inspiring god. This account was written by the priestly source, and so the name of the god character is ‘God’. This is the earliest account of creation that I’m aware of that really did come so close to being ex nilo (out of nothing). Ancient Mesopotamian mythology, for example, had the world being created from the carcass of a destroyed goddess, which seems somehow more mundane (ironically!). I think this story is just magical in comparison. This creation myth is more high minded and theological. God is shown as an abstract entity rather than a super human. His ways are more beyond our than other depictions of gods, including the next chapter of Genesis. The ultimate Big Bang Theory: God spoke, and BANG! It happened.
This story goes from Gen 1:1 (which is also the title of this story, so if your Bible has a title in front of Genesis 1:1 it’s being silly) to 2:4a. Yes, Genesis 2 verse 4 is two separate stories put together. If your Bible doesn’t break up this verse in to two sentence (or two stories if you have headers) it’s wrong. The final sentence is the conclusion to the opening sentence. I will put the whole thing here:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep. A divine wind was over the surface of the waters.
God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw the light, and saw that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” There was evening and there was morning, one day.
God said, “Let there be an firmament in the middle of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. God called the firmament “sky.” There was evening and there was morning, a second day.
God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. God called the dry land “earth,” and the gathering together of the waters he called “seas.” God saw that it was good. God said, “Let the earth yield grass, herbs yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit after their kind, with its seed in it, on the earth”; and it was so. The earth yielded grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with its seed in it, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a third day.
God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the expanse of sky to give light on the earth”; and it was so. God made the two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the expanse of sky to give light to the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. God saw that it was good. There was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of sky.” God created the large sea creatures, and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarmed, after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. God saw that it was good. God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”There was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.
God said, “Let the earth produce living creatures after their kind, livestock, creeping things, and animals of the earth after their kind”; and it was so. God made the animals of the earth after their kind, and the livestock after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind. God saw that it was good.
God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
God created man in his own image.
In God’s image he created him;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food. To every animal of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so.
God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. There was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.
The heavens and the earth were finished, and all their vast array. On the seventh day God finished his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. God blessed the seventh day, and made it holy, because he rested in it from all his work which he had created and made.
This is the history of the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created.
Thoughts:
Changes from WEB: I removed “God’s spirit” as this is incorrect. I changed expanse to firmament as it more clearly indicates that this is something hard. (NJB says vault.) I put a period half way through the last verse.
Notice that this is a flat world, with the water above being separated from the water below (which the world is floating in). This is very consistent with the concept of the world in that region at that time.
This myth shows many generations of life being created like other polytheistic groups had. So it’s a common story. But unlike the Mesopotamian stories of creation, The Epic of Creation and Enki and Ninhusag, where it was the gods of animals and the gods of fish and the gods of plants being born generation after generation, in this case it is one transcendent god that did all of it. Though, notice the similarity between God saying “let there be animals” and the fact that things having names are so important in the first dozen lines of the Epic of Creation.
When on high the heaven had not been named,
Firm ground below had not been called by name,
Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter,
(And) Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all,
Their waters commingling as a single body;
No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared,
When no gods whatever had been brought into being,
Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined-
Then it was that the gods were formed within them.
Lahmu and Lahamu were brought forth, by name they were called.
Man and woman were created together in this story, but separate in the fall story. This gave rise to the story of Lilith, Adam’s first wife who was created at the same time as him. As opposed to Eve, his third wife. This is not Biblical was is another ancient story to make sense of the apparent contradiction. But it was the only way to make sense of the first story saying that God made them, but the second story it says God created them separately.
I happen to know a lot of little things about this section of the Bible, but very soon that will run out, and you’ll get a more ‘gut reaction’ from me. Especially after the Tower of Babel story. I also won’t quote most of the Bible at length, but I still plan to do the creation of Adam, the fall, and the story of Babylon.
I used to order juice at restaurants–back when restaurants carried juice in the 90s. Sometimes I would ask, ‘are you sure no one mixed in alcohol with this juice, because it tastes bad.” Well, I was a kid, and I knew that sometimes you mixed alcohol with non-alcohol, but looking back on it I should have not have guessed that such a mistake would be made.
Today I drank some juice that was best served before a month ago. I realized that when juice goes bad it begins to taste like alcohol. This should not surprise anyone, as alcohol is fermented juice. But I suddenly realized so many a juice tasted like alcohol. I was probably the only person not drinking alcohol or pop at these restaurants.
I plan to start my Bible reading with the Book of Genesis. I really like the first several chapters of Genesis, because they contain my favourite type of myth: Creation myth. First, we will learn about the creation of the world. Then we will learn about becoming farmers rather than hunter-gatherers. And finally, about civilization. These first few chapters of Genesis are the richest, I think, in borrowing from other cultures.
I read the entire book of Genesis when I was in high school, back before I knew a fraction of what I currently know about Bible history. So I go in to this is a fuzzy memory of what is in the rest of the book. As for the first 12 chapters, I’ve read them over and over again in my study of other ancient myths.
The second part of the Book of Genesis is explaining how the Jews ended up in Egypt. So, we follow Abraham to Egypt for the rest of the book. Exodus then talk about Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt.
The world is a fine thing to be enthusiastic about. There are so many weird things to look at that you could travel the world several times over and not spot them all. Take for example the below. This is a map of Vulcan point.
Today I am announcing my plan to read a little bit of the Bible every week.
You may ask why an atheist would want to read the Bible, but there is a problem with that question. It assumes that wants are rational. They are not. Why do I want a taco right now? Why do I sometimes prefer to have a sundai rather than an ice cream cone? I just do. I can’t say why I want a piece of orange chocolate, but I can tell you what I like about it.
I love sociology. I love history. I love myth. Reading the Bible lets me look in the minds of people who lived thousands of years ago. I love to see how things from the Bible have changed in to modern tropes. Have you ever heard the phrase, “the writing is on the wall”? Did you know that came from the Bible?
Did you know that the ancient Mesopotamians (which includes Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires) had many myths very similar to the Bible? I love literature, and just as I enjoy seeing how myths like King Arthur and Tristen and Isolde change and meld over time, I love to see these even older myths do the same.
I will probably jump around a bit. My plan is to have two threads of the Bible going on once. First, I am to read through the Pentateuch. That’s the first five books of the Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. But these books are rather dull at times. So some months I may start a new thread, reading Job, Judges or maybe something from the New Testament. In other words, part of the Bible I think I will enjoy.
However, I do enjoy Genesis. So that is precisely where I will start. I will list all posts on canon order on my Atheist Reads Bible page, since the category page will be a little bit all over the place.
What motivates people to do things? Beliefs and desires. Desires first, beliefs second. If you desire to help people, and you believe that giving them medicine will help them, then you will probably give them medication.
I was listening to The Current‘s August 18, 2009 episode about people in Russia who love Stalin. The mentioned that Stalin destroyed several social institutions including the church, the university system, and the legal system. Why did he do this? First, he desired total power (see: tyranny, dictatorship). Second, he believed that the those social institutions posed a thread to his power. The churches were an institution that people followed, the university system taught people to think for themselves, and the legal system could stop him from doing things that were illegal.
I bring this up because people often say that Hitler targeting the church because he was an atheist. This doesn’t make sense, since being an atheist is not about having a belief. It’s about lacking a belief. You don’t do something because you lake a belief. Not believing of God doesn’t make you do anything any more than not believing in Australia. Some atheists may have other beliefs that cause them to do something. But it’s not because of their atheism. Also, people don’t do things because they believe in God. They do things because they have a belief about what their god wants.
Examples: Jehovah’s Witnesses that want their children to be live eternal life after death in paradise (desire) don’t let their children have blood transfusion (action) because they believe that blood transfusions disqualify you from paradise due to their reading of the Bible. Catholics believe that condoms condemn you to hellfire, and so oppose their use in Africa at the expense of life today. I like to eat yummy things (desire), and I think pineapples are yummy (belief), so I eat them (action).
