Why do I have to inherit Adam and Eve's sin?

@Lithium phil,

I agree with you, Fido. But isn't that quite Nietzschean? To view the birth of morality from what helps the group survive -- to me this is sensible.

I think we can even compare specific morals to genes. Those which help the group survive, survive with the group.. Behavioral memes...

@Lithium phil,

Ethics as morals comes from a primitive stage of society... Such societies were not moral by choice...All the virtues we consider were necessary for the survival of people in close groups surrounded by enemies...People want morality, but they do not want the conditions that made people moral...And I sympathize, and yet we must learn to recreate at least some of the conditions that made morals...Our enemies may not be wolves, or lions, or human like animals; but those who stand alone are god's own victims...They are doomed...No one can fight city hall, or their church, or a corporation...The advantage rests with communities and not with individuals..

@Lithium phil,

I agree, and this is why Romanticism is generally tragic. Byronic rebels are brought low. But they attract us with their intensity. Perhaps when life becomes comfortable, intensity becomes a luxury. Think of all the action movies. The old war-hunting module needs its itch scratched.

You're quite right about the vulnerability of the individual. But how often is the corporation or the church exactly the group this individual joins. In general man acts much less heroic than the action heroes he admires. It's like looking at tofu while eating bacon. I wonder whether group morals can be a living force in a society so based on individual initiative, property rights, and the worship of money. Rather we tend to see the escapist updates of life-philosophies like stoicism, cynicism, Buddhism, taoism.... We are atomized. Speaking of which: have you read this guy? Here's a link. Best contemporary novelist I can think of.Michel Houellebecq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;110446 wrote:

I agree, and this is why Romanticism is generally tragic. Byronic rebels are brought low. But they attract us with their intensity. Perhaps when life becomes comfortable, intensity becomes a luxury. Think of all the action movies. The old war-hunting module needs its itch scratched.

You're quite right about the vulnerability of the individual. But how often is the corporation or the church exactly the group this individual joins. In general man acts much less heroic than the action heroes he admires. It's like looking at tofu while eating bacon. I wonder whether group morals can be a living force in a society so based on individual initiative, property rights, and the worship of money. Rather we tend to see the escapist updates of life-philosophies like stoicism, cynicism, Buddhism, taoism.... We are atomized. Speaking of which: have you read this guy? Here's a link. Best contemporary novelist I can think of.Michel Houellebecq - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The individual seeks freedom at any price, and the corporation gives him a mortgage on it...You need it by the mile, and they sell it by the inch...

No...I have come to reading only fiction to reading only fiction under the label of non fiction...

@Fido,

Fido;110492 wrote:

The individual seeks freedom at any price, and the corporation gives him a mortgage on it...You need it by the mile, and they sell it by the inch...

No...I have come to reading only fiction to reading only fiction under the label of non fiction...

I like this. Both parts. And to be on-topic. Let's say that debt is the sin we inherit. And Adam and Eve are the working class.

@Lithium phil,

That is too fatalistic for me...The purpose of some myths is to explain what is: why the bear has a short tail, or why people suffer..Philosophers must know better...

@Lithium phil,

But it's only fatalistic if the irony is ignored. Tone is a huge part of meaning. This is the advantage of living speech. Connecting dots is a sport of the mind. If I were president, I would play different games. Instead I'm in some corner of the Empire. Yes, I like the sort of myths you mention too.

On topic, though: A person has to inherit Adam and Eve's sin because Adam and Eve are not the two first humans but humanity in general. I believe that the word "Adam" means man and the word "Eve" mother. If I'm wrong, forgive and correct me. But it does seem that a story with Man and Mother for characters was intended from the beginning to be symbolic.

@Lithium phil,

It is nonsense to consider pain as resulting from knowledge... The story falls apart...God worried for the lonliness of man, and why if man could not feel pain; and it was for hunger that food was sought, and food was eaten... We were not punished more before than after... It is just a why for a what story...We certainly are at fault for our own pain, but each generation has the power over its own, if they would only take it for good, we could be fine...I do like in the story that the Devil is presented as rational, and immoral... Reason is contrary to morality...Eve acted rationally given her knowledge, as people do, for blindness of consequences does not present a counter argument to our desires....

There is a moral here: Even those whose lives are like Paradice, having every need satisfied, still suffer the misery of their desires...For those who cannot govern their passions, no law of God or man will stop their investment in misery...

@Fido,

Fido;111007 wrote:

It is nonsense to consider pain as resulting from knowledge... The story falls apart...God worried for the lonliness of man, and why if man could not feel pain; and it was for hunger that food was sought, and food was eaten... We were not punished more before than after... It is just a why for a what story...We certainly are at fault for our own pain, but each generation has the power over its own, if they would only take it for good, we could be fine...I do like in the story that the Devil is presented as rational, and immoral... Reason is contrary to morality...Eve acted rationally given her knowledge, as people do, for blindness of consequences does not present a counter argument to our desires....

Nietzsche attacks Socrates as a sort of counter-traditional rationalists. He thought the Greeks lost touch with their tradition, needed a radical cure. So Socrates comes in with his head-religion, to replace the broken heart- religion. Socrates didn't care for music until the end. He chattered and chattered, putting tradition into question. In the name of what? Reason. But reason that is contrary to life is not so reasonable. This is from the beginning of Twilight of the Idols. He also goes in the Eden myth, later in the book. You may know all this but it comes to mind.

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;111013 wrote:

Nietzsche attacks Socrates as a sort of counter-traditional rationalists. He thought the Greeks lost touch with their tradition, needed a radical cure. So Socrates comes in with his head-religion, to replace the broken heart- religion. Socrates didn't care for music until the end. He chattered and chattered, putting tradition into question. In the name of what? Reason. But reason that is contrary to life is not so reasonable. This is from the beginning of Twilight of the Idols. He also goes in the Eden myth, later in the book. You may know all this but it comes to mind.

I have not got much regard for Nietzche or Socrates...Knowledge is not Virtue as Socrates said... So in this respect, Nietzsche was correct... Athens was dying because its morals were dying, and its morals were dying because of its success as a money economy, which as in our own days divided society between rich and poor, and no unity equals no morality...To live in the larger society we need knowledge and reason, and it is inevitable that nation states will throw together diverse peoples who do not share the same morality as the Athenians once did...But that time was passed... The Greeks were a wide spread people crumbling with their morals...And morals are life... A people's natural morals flow out of their natural relationships...A money economy disrupts all that, and Socrates in searching for a morality supported by reason was planting a cross on the grave of natural morals...He did not kill it; but said it was dead, and the end had begun for Greece...Their natural morals set them against each other, and universal morals had not taken over, as if they ever do, to unite the Ionians and Dorians into a single people...

A single morality based upon reason as law should be might save this nation...The power of law is bent to the service of the powerful, and law attacks natural morality, so we are left with essentially the same state as Socrates faced...We are deeply divided, and like Athens, mostly empoverished, and are only waiting for a more organized and united society to crack us like a nut...

@Fido,

Fido;111068 wrote:

I have not got much regard for Nietzche or Socrates...Knowledge is not Virtue as Socrates said... So in this respect, Nietzsche was correct... Athens was dying because its morals were dying, and its morals were dying because of its success as a money economy, which as in our own days divided society between rich and poor, and no unity equals no morality...To live in the larger society we need knowledge and reason, and it is inevitable that nation states will throw together diverse peoples who do not share the same morality as the Athenians once did...But that time was passed... The Greeks were a wide spread people crumbling with their morals...And morals are life... A people's natural morals flow out of their natural relationships...A money economy disrupts all that, and Socrates in searching for a morality supported by reason was planting a cross on the grave of natural morals...He did not kill it; but said it was dead, and the end had begun for Greece...Their natural morals set them against each other, and universal morals had not taken over, as if they ever do, to unite the Ionians and Dorians into a single people...

A single morality based upon reason as law should be might save this nation...The power of law is bent to the service of the powerful, and law attacks natural morality, so we are left with essentially the same state as Socrates faced...We are deeply divided, and like Athens, mostly empoverished, and are only waiting for a more organized and united society to crack us like a nut...

Basically I agree with the diagnosis. Technology is a big factor. Big capital behind big bombers. It's the new element in world history that makes things less predictable.

@Lithium phil,

Lithium;84423 wrote:

Why did I have to inherit Adam and Eve's punishment of eating from the tree, when no decision (excluding the "earthly Jesus") from any other person in my life can make an impact on whether I will able to go to heaven? After all, we should all have free will... right? Ponders: Shouldn't I have had the choice of whether I wanted to live this kind of life? Why is Adam and Eve's decision placed on a higher level of importance? Did God deceive man? Meaning, if he knows every decision one will make, then why did he plant the tree in the first place. Isn't this just as bad as Satan tempting man?

?
Uhmm, as far as I can tell, I don't think being wise, intelligent nor knowledgeable is a punishment.

It's all in your mind.

@Lithium phil,

What you inherited was Luther's wrong view of Original Sin
" Our doctrine of original sin is not the same as the Protestant doctrine. "Original sin," with us, cannot be called sin, in the mere ordinary sense of the word "sin;" it is a term denoting Adam's sin as transferred to us, or the state to which Adam's sin reduces his children; but by Protestants, it seems to be understood as sin, in much the same sense as actual sin. We, with the Fathers, think of it as something negative, Protestants as something positive. Protestants hold that it is a disease, a radical change of nature, an active poison internally corrupting the soul, infecting its primary elements, and disorganizing it; ...for by original sin we mean, as I have already said, something negative, viz., this only, the deprivation of that supernatural unmerited grace which Adam and Eve had on their first formation,—deprivation and the consequences of deprivation. "

@Lithium phil,

You did and so did us all who inherited the benefit of being alive. They couldn't procreate inside the Garden so they broke out. Adam premeditated a plan and Eve launched it playing the role of the new guy.

@Lithium phil,

Inherit from the year of 10,000 years ago would be different from how used in the end of our story. Evolution I was tricked to believe was wrong. Later I found it was fine. In the beginning of the story the heaven was in war...likely they would be banished from Edin, sent tp earth due to large scale weapon deploying. Nitzche is a name of a person I sort of like.

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