In OT lore, humans were kicked out due to pragmatic reasons. Humans, made in god’s image, had just acquired the ability of unlimited knowledge. If they also gained immortality then they would equal god.
Humans were kicked out before they became like gods. Powerful angel things were left to guard the way back.
I like the explanation from Gnostic Christianity the best (though gnosticism is considered heretical by the vast majority of Christians). It seems to fill in a lot of plot holes, but I guess people that actually believe the stories as true don’t like to think about that.
The gist of it is that the God of the Old Testament is not the same a the God of the New Testament. The NT God is the true creator of the universe, and when He created the universe, He created lesser emanations of Himself. Each emanation had a divine spark within them that tied them back to God. One of these emanations, Sophia, tried her hand at creation by creating the OT God. However, this creation was a corrupt being as she was unable to instill a divine spark within it. So she hid him away from the rest of creation.
That God found Himself alone and created the world in His image and declared Himself as the one and only God. However, since he was a corrupted creation, the world He created was corrupted as well.
Sophia came clean about her mistake to the true God, so he sent her counterpart, Christ, to the Garden to try and spread the knowledge of the true reality to the humans. He created the Tree of Knowledge and took the form of a serpent to convince Eve to eat from that tree, which would give her knowledge of the corruption in the world. However, the OT God was jealous of the true God, so He cast them out and made them forget what they learned.
Later on Christ returned to Earth and sacrificed himself so that his divine spark could be set free into the world and fix the corruption that was inherent in its creation. His disciples were given the mission of spreading the knowledge of this to all of humanity.
Even more interesting, how close to being God can you get before it starts to matter? Say humans are 10% God. Ok cool we have consciousness, can harness physics, and live 100ish years.
Now we are 20% god or some shit. We get like super human abilities, live longer and can traverse space. Life looks different from our perspective but there is still conflict there is still suffering. All relative to our new disposition. If we are still mortal and we still suffer does elevating all of humanity really matter?
If using the fall story as a jumping off point for theorizing, my favorite take is recognizing the impossibility of a relativistic shared paradise.
Was it that eating from a tree of the knowledge of good and evil led to exile from paradise, or would developing the relative opinions of what was good and bad necessarily make one perceive current living conditions as paradise if you could imagine something better?
And this difficulty compounds when two different people might each see different things as good or bad - if they are in a shared space, can that shared space truly be a paradise to them both?
Even though it’s not the initial intent of the story, it’s a much more interesting version of it.
It was kind of the other way around - they were allowed to eat from the tree of life, and were only forbidden from eating from the tree of knowledge. It was only after eating from the tree of knowledge that access to the tree of life was lost because they were exiled from Eden.
It’s just that I guess technically in the lore the tree of knowledge was a one and done thing and the tree of life you needed to keep eating from to gain the benefits.
That must be the one and only inconsistency in the Bible…
In OT lore, humans were kicked out due to pragmatic reasons. Humans, made in god’s image, had just acquired the ability of unlimited knowledge. If they also gained immortality then they would equal god.
Humans were kicked out before they became like gods. Powerful angel things were left to guard the way back.
Why didn’t god want humans to achieve the god status?
I like the explanation from Gnostic Christianity the best (though gnosticism is considered heretical by the vast majority of Christians). It seems to fill in a lot of plot holes, but I guess people that actually believe the stories as true don’t like to think about that.
The gist of it is that the God of the Old Testament is not the same a the God of the New Testament. The NT God is the true creator of the universe, and when He created the universe, He created lesser emanations of Himself. Each emanation had a divine spark within them that tied them back to God. One of these emanations, Sophia, tried her hand at creation by creating the OT God. However, this creation was a corrupt being as she was unable to instill a divine spark within it. So she hid him away from the rest of creation.
That God found Himself alone and created the world in His image and declared Himself as the one and only God. However, since he was a corrupted creation, the world He created was corrupted as well.
Sophia came clean about her mistake to the true God, so he sent her counterpart, Christ, to the Garden to try and spread the knowledge of the true reality to the humans. He created the Tree of Knowledge and took the form of a serpent to convince Eve to eat from that tree, which would give her knowledge of the corruption in the world. However, the OT God was jealous of the true God, so He cast them out and made them forget what they learned.
Later on Christ returned to Earth and sacrificed himself so that his divine spark could be set free into the world and fix the corruption that was inherent in its creation. His disciples were given the mission of spreading the knowledge of this to all of humanity.
Which book of LOTR is this from?
If everybody on the block can do it, it isn’t cool any more
Good sounds like a jealous person then. Doesn’t He know about the 7 sins?
Even more interesting, how close to being God can you get before it starts to matter? Say humans are 10% God. Ok cool we have consciousness, can harness physics, and live 100ish years.
Now we are 20% god or some shit. We get like super human abilities, live longer and can traverse space. Life looks different from our perspective but there is still conflict there is still suffering. All relative to our new disposition. If we are still mortal and we still suffer does elevating all of humanity really matter?
If using the fall story as a jumping off point for theorizing, my favorite take is recognizing the impossibility of a relativistic shared paradise.
Was it that eating from a tree of the knowledge of good and evil led to exile from paradise, or would developing the relative opinions of what was good and bad necessarily make one perceive current living conditions as paradise if you could imagine something better?
And this difficulty compounds when two different people might each see different things as good or bad - if they are in a shared space, can that shared space truly be a paradise to them both?
Even though it’s not the initial intent of the story, it’s a much more interesting version of it.
It was kind of the other way around - they were allowed to eat from the tree of life, and were only forbidden from eating from the tree of knowledge. It was only after eating from the tree of knowledge that access to the tree of life was lost because they were exiled from Eden.
It’s just that I guess technically in the lore the tree of knowledge was a one and done thing and the tree of life you needed to keep eating from to gain the benefits.
That must be the one and only inconsistency in the Bible…