The location of the Tree of Life

If WillowTree didn't peddle it then it lacked sufficient flambouyant crackpot glamour. WillowTree was indefagible is seeking out and dragging home only the creme de la creme of crackpot theories. Annoying as he could be I kinda miss the guy. Things are getting a little too staid, normal, and well, a trifle on the dull side since he was banished.When the routine of daily life was beginning to pale into the daily reality of the possible there was always WillowTree to come up with a new credulous tale to enliven and dramatize life on earth.The thing I appreciate about WillowTree was his dedication. He would never bore us with something "a bit reminiscent" of totally goofy whacked out crackpottery. No, WillowTree always delivered the pure concentrated essence of total implausibilty. He didn't water his drinks. The more I write the more I miss the guy. I wish Percy would invite him and Buzzsaw and a few others back. Things are getting too sane and rational around here. I don't get as many laughs as I used to. I used to whoop outloud at some of the gooofy stuff WT used to come up with. He was hilarious. God, I miss him. If he were to come back to day I'd throw my arms around and give him a great big hug even knowing that a few days later I'd be tearing my hair out over his totally freaked out obtuseness.enough of the nostalgia,
lfen

What about all the other people the Romans crucified? When we sin do we participate in nailing the spikes into their wrists and feet?lfen

Right on both counts.
1. You feel you have power over your decisions and
2. You are wrong about that, you don't have power over your decisions it only feels like you do.Both are true as I see it.lfen

Maybe he was like a lot of new parents and just didn't know how to raise children. He was facing this for the first time. Now a days most people get education in some form on how to deal safely with children like don't leave poisons and household cleaners down where the children can get into them. Put them up high or lock them up. Same thing with guns, sharp objects, small objects they could swallow and choke on. But as you point out he finally caught on and locked up the garden with the dangerous trees and put guards on the job also.Most parents know they have to do more than just tell a child not to do something, but apparantly God didn't. He planted two trees he said he didn't want them eating from right there where they could easily get to them and eat the fruit and then he left them unsupervised for periods of time. It's like putting bleach or a candle or something in a playpen and then leaving a 1 year old in it and leaving the room. You should know something is going to happen, something that presumably you don't want to have happen.The God of Christianity seeks to improve on this by making his children feel guilty because they have made him suffer so much. Now that is an improvement. Most of us did hesitate or at least feel bad after making our mothers suffer cause we didn't pick up our room, mow the lawn, etc. But relying solely on parenting by guilt is not the most skillful means of raising a child.God seems to be an awfully slow learner but there is a chance that sometime in the future he will come up with more effective ways of educating humanity.lfen

Have you ever read the I Ching? Just to name an actual book, although the translations usually include one or more commentaries. I think it can be taken in even more ways than the Bible can and the Bible is a collection of books that were written over centuries which would seemingly give it an advantage in confusing contradictions and conflicting interpretations.I'm not saying the Bible isn't an important collection of books it is. It is a source for three of the major religions and been an integral part of the history of the west for over 2000 years, but do you really want to claim it's greatness rests on it's ambiguity?lfenedit: caught "greatest" error and changed it to the word I intended "greatness"This message has been edited by lfen, 06-18-2005 03:44 PM

I think we do see choices and choices are made. One explanation is to say free will makes the choice. The explanation that makes more sense to me (that I choose ) is that the choice occurs as a response to complex conditions.Example take dinner. At about 6 p.m. I'm hungry and have a desire to eat. What do I do? I have knowledge and behaviours and resources. I could go into the kitchen and open a can of soup or make a sandwich or walk to a cafe, etc. At some point I typically engage in some sort of behaviour let's say I "decide" I don't want to go out, spend money, walk or wait. I find myself in the kitchen opening a can of soup, heating it up and eating it. We could say this was the result of free will but I'm more interested in the factors that "caused" or resulted in my eating soup rather than a fast food taco, etc.I think my choice was a response conditioned by a multitude of variables. This is a line of thinking arising from Buddhism, and modern psychology and neurology.lfen

The question quickly gets more complex. Does choice exist or is it simply an artifact of the way our nervous system operates? At present I'll hold this latter view.The difference for me using this latter model is that my experience of my "self" shifts to more of a witnessing of what is happening. I still experience choices but a little less as a choosing.For example I've accepted to go to a party even though my feeling is that I'd rather not go as much of the time will be spent in chit chat that I find tiring and not enjoyable. I accepted because I like the person and want to be present for them and I also thought the party was going to be a bit different than I'm now thinking it will be. Yet I found I couldn't bring myself to excuse myself. However, I may not go. I may decide last minute or something may intervene from vehicle breakdown to physical breakdown i.e. I may drop dead.So I experience myself as a consciousness of a process of complex interactions physical, social, conceptual, emotional etc. I am just another unfolding process in the overall unfolding process I call the universe.To explicitly tie this into the topic if the Adam and Eve Garden of Eden story historically happened then it was inevitable. Adam had no freewill. The conditions arose and everything else happened as the universe unfolded.lfen

There are more than two options.
I'll state a third option. You make an assumption that the books of the Bible are completely consistent and you contrive explanations to reconcile contradictions which is the activity of apologetics.There are a whole bunch of other approaches some having more validity than others. I'll just mention in passing the bogus processing of the Bible to find hidden "codes".Also note that the Bible is written language. I don't find the analogy of submission which describes a social relationship of dominance hierarchy which would describe the interactions between individual persons to be useful in describing reading comprehension and understanding the meaning of a text.hrrrm, I should note my irritation with you explicitly. Your making bold flat statements like there are two options and you determine what they are, a forced choice, either agree with you or you can only choose the position you've defined is what results in what you perceive as people attacking you.Your approach is so dictatorial that it often in me at least does incite hostility. This is not unique to you nor to your religion. It is something that is a characteristic of fundamentalist of Islam, Judiasm, Christianity and I imagine other religions. But realize that when you act like that you will annoy people who will get snippy back. Take responsibility for you provocation, just as I take responsibility for my being provoked.Had I not grown up in a small town with small minded Christians and their sniping back and forth at one another and science etc I might not be so sensitive. One of the things I do on this forum is reexperience how much I hate, and I mean really hate narrow minded literalist fundamentalist religion where ever it's found. And I mean that "hate" in the same way Christians "hate" the sin but not the sinner. You are involved in bad religion. And I would say that if you were a Muslim, or a Jew of a narrow minded self righteous primitive supersitious sort.And when you complain about this please remember this is not an "ad hominum" argument. I am directly personally criticizing your attitude and behaviour. It's a personal attack if you will, but that is not "ad homimum" argument which is trying to logical support or refute a statement based on who says it.lfen

Well, I know the premise of the topic is what if there really was a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in an actual Eden and what if the history is accurately recorded in Genesis. But of course that is not the case. Adam and Eve in the Garden is an origin story, a myth, that explains why people have to work, suffer, and die when in our dreams or aspirations we never have to deal with the unpleasantness of work, pain, and death.The legends in Genesis seem to be the most primitive in the Bible and well, the level of sophistication was prior to the need for consistency. Myths often have a very perceptive insight into human truths and the myth points to the burden that human consciousness of good and evil places on us. That is to me the profound point. Prior to self consciousness humans just lived with pain and death and never asked why. With language and reflective self consciousness they began to ask why and why not. This brought mental emotional suffering in addition to physical emotional pain.Now the version of the myth that was written has contradictions. The human response to those contradictions depends partly on what conclusion people want to come to. If you want the Bible to of non human authorship but rather an infallible user's manual written by the engineer of the universe than you have to bring in some interpretation to eliminate the contradiction. If you want God to be always honest and good you need another interpretation, etc.lfen

Well, that, or a revelation from God, or analysis. What purpose does life serve? What purpose do we have for living? If we really felt that we had no power over our decisions then we wouldn't have the choice to be bothered or not. Do we? You already are an entirely different person but NOT the person who believes that to be true, at least at the time you were the person who wrote that.lfen

We (by we I refer to our conscious egos or sense of being a separate entity) are an illusion so we don't make decisions it only feels to us like we do. I don't know what you mean by power. That sounds like an extraneous term. It is sufficient to ask if we "make our decisions" or "choose our choices".The question is how decisions are made. What thought is thought? What feeling is felt? What is said and done? How does the complex neural net of the brain function?lfen

I've never seen the matrix. When I visit my brother's family I end up seeing some movies cause they have a tv and either watch them or rent some or they own some. That's how I saw The Clone Wars, which I thought was very disappointing. Glad I didn't pay money to watch it. It's been several years since I've been in a theatre.The little bit I picked up here about the matrix doesn't sound like what I'm talking about it at all really. So I'll say no.lfen

RR,I don't know how to make a link but you can check this message for a fuller explanation of the nondual viewpoint I'm talking about.EvC Forum ⇒ All Forums ⇒ Social and Religious Issues ⇒ Faith and Belief ⇒ What is GOD? Msg 52lfen

Ummmmm ... where do you come from?lfen