World Events
Topic: What is a Christian to you?

#	Author	Message
221	utahjosh Tue 5/6/2008 9:15a	I don't know exactly how and why everything in the Garden of Eden went the way it did. My guess is that God knew it was the best way to introduce Man to the earth as it now is, to give us our agency to choose and learn to have faith. I believe I'm here on earth to learn to love.
222	Dabob2 Tue 5/6/2008 9:38a	<By the way, when it comes to origins, there are only two things we are required, as Catholics to believe. 1. God created everything. How He did it is open to personal opinion. 2. We must believe that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were unique (possessing a human soul) and that they did commit the first sin.> So (serious question): is a Catholic then required to believe that Adam and Eve were literal people, not metaphorical or a parable? And that they were created all at once out of whole cloth, and not evolved from an earlier species?
223	mele Tue 5/6/2008 3:29p	Wow, I must have had my cranky pants on this morning. I didn't mean to sound so contrary. Sorry about that. :-(
224	EighthDwarf Tue 5/6/2008 5:13p	I like the Adam and Eve story - I think there is a profound meaning to it whether it actually happened or not. My personal take, assuming there is a god, is that life is about learning how to give the fruit back now that we have it. How we originally got it seems a bit irrelevant (though I suppose the whole guilt thing is necessary for religion).
225	cmpaley Tue 5/6/2008 5:57p	Catholics are bound to believe in a literal Adam and Eve. There's a lot more to the story than the simplistic reading most people get out of it. First, God wants us to love Him freely. In the case of what God wants, love isn't simply a good feeling toward someone or something, but it is an act of the will that becomes a virtue. St. Paul defines love well in his second letter to the Corinthians. In order for man to demonstrate that he loves God above all things, there must be the ability for the choice to not obey God out of love and trust. Thus, the simple commandment of "don't eat of this tree." Nothing more, nothing less...except to tend and protect the garden. Most people think that the failure was in eating. Nope. It was the failure to protect...for Adam to protect his wife, Eve, and to protect the garden. How so? Well, why did Adam stand there silently as the serpent was tempting Eve? Here was an invader in the garden and Adam isn't doing his job of protecting. This is what lead to the fall of man. It wasn't the mere eating...the sin was already done once they'd done that. And that's the point. If Adam had chosen to do combat with the serpent and protect his wife and the garden, he would have likely died. Jesus said, "no greater love has a man but to lay down his life for his friends." While Adam may have died, he would have also fulfilled his job and been resurrected. But alas...it didn't happen that way and every Easter at the vigil mass, we hear these words: "Father, how wonderful your care for us! How boundless your merciful love! To ransom a slave you gave away your Son. O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!" God knew what He was doing and He knows what He's doing today. Our job, as Christians, is to trust Him.
226	Mr X Tue 5/6/2008 6:08p	***Catholics are bound to believe in a literal Adam and Eve.*** But evolution is okay? How does that work? Where do the Neanderthals fit into that picture? How about the bones I saw in New York of "Lucy" an early protohuman? Was she "before" or "after" this literal Adam and Eve? Was she their parent, perhaps? You can't believe both, there's no way for it to jive. It's just the hubris of the church to dismiss it as a "non-issue" and yet insist you have to literally believe in these "first" two humans.
227	DisneyFreak96 Tue 5/6/2008 7:08p	<<Was she "before" or "after" this literal Adam and Eve? Was she their parent, perhaps? You can't believe both, there's no way for it to jive. It's just the hubris of the church to dismiss it as a "non-issue" and yet insist you have to literally believe in these "first" two humans.>> Yes, she could have been their parent. Adam and Eve could have easily been the earliest actual human beings. One does not have to exclude the other.
228	DisneyFreak96 Tue 5/6/2008 7:26p	<<I'm not sure a cat and medicine is quite the best analogy. At least medicine has a purpose, a need. What purpose did this supposed Tree of Knowledge have? Just to tempt humans into failing? Great. So, using your analogy, instead of medicine, it's more like putting a salmon steak on your kitchen counter and making sure your cat knows it's there. Point it out to the cat and then tell the cat "no".>> We don't know the reason God had the Tree of Good and Evil in the garden when Adam "moved in". According to the Bible, it was the serpent that tempted Eve, not the tree, or any other stuff. In fact, according to Genesis, she did not even think the tree fruit looked "good" until tempted (Gen. 3:6)
229	mele Tue 5/6/2008 8:32p	Uh huh. God put the tree right in the middle of the garden and said to Adam "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." That was before Eve even existed and it's apparent that Adam and Eve spoke of the tree before the serpent ever showed up. (Or Eve and God talked about it.) (Surely, Adam did die...how many "hundreds" of years later? That doesn't sound particularly honest to me but what can you do?) Listen, I don't really want to get into different bible interpretations and verses, etc. Pointing to a bible verse to prove that the bible is true won't convince me. There are plenty of places in Genesis (and the entire bible) that are contradictory. It works much better as an allegory than a literal version but you're, of course, entitled to believe as youwant to believe. I just believe that the more people try to define God and His plan, things begin to fall apart. The more literal people try to get, the more questions arise that cannot be answered and then people try to make up more answers. Just my opinion, not trying to prove anything or convince anyone. :-)
230	mele Tue 5/6/2008 8:34p	Oh, and I don't even want to go into how Eve's part in this story has been used to demonize women and/or keep them in a subserviant position for centuries. Argh

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