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Deep thoughts...

I'm currently reading John Locke's, "An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Government" and came across this passage:

“Adam was created a perfect man, his body and mind in full possession of their strength and reason, and so was capable from the first instant of his being to provide for his own support and preservation, and govern his actions according to the dictates of the law of reason God had implanted in him.”

Being an atheist who doesn’t believe in a god who created everything, I started mulling over these questions about the story of creation:

• When Adam was created, what was in his mind?
• Did God give him a memory, or was he like a baby that had to be taught? If given a memory, then a memory of what? If he gave him a memory, did he, upon his creation, know that he was just created, or did he think he just woke up from a sleep? If he had a false memory, was god lying to him?
• Did God give him a language (the Bible implies that he did), and if so, what concepts could he really understand, without any prior experiences?

I know creationists would have rationalistic answers to these questions and I’m not asking for answers… just something to ponder…

sfvpool 7 Dec 25
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14 comments

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0

I doubt that early man spoke a language it is likely that he made animal like noises to signify danger or food. When two or more individuals adapted their noise making to a common pattern language was born. The world of primitive man would have been filled with many events that were beyond his understanding. Imagination gave rise to an explanation for natural events that he could not comprehend and myths were born.

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Ponder away .. I reckon a slow crawl from primeval swamps and evolution to what we havew become is hopefully a more realistic concept .. and maybe over time, if there is that much time, mankind will evolve into something useful to this world

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Read the writings about Lilith his first wife. Adam wasnt so perfect.

Also when reading historical texts remember to read it with a prejudicial eye to the historical context. Their paradigm of the world was quite different than ours today. It doesnt invalidate their works, just puts a different spin that we would have if written today.

@Gwendolyn2018
She was made equal to Adam from the soil, not from one of his ribs. As such she refused to accept anything short of equality. Adam complained to god who then banished her so he could make another from Adams rib. Therefore. Eve was lesser to Adam as she was from Adam and not ftom the Earth as Adam was.

@Gwendolyn2018 Typical patriarchal rationalization that we have been brainwashed to believe.

I hear Lilith must have been fun to be with.

@Gwendolyn2018 for which Adam was a fool.

@Gwendolyn2018

thank you Gwendolyn. You have added information I did not know. I appreciate that. You filled in some gaps. Again thank you.

@Gwendolyn2018

This I was aware of previously. It just makes her all the more intetesting.

@Gwendolyn2018. New information as well. Thank you

@Gwendolyn2018 this was all quite fascinating. Thank you! Now onto reading about all this....

@Gwendolyn2018 yes I seem remember something to that effect reading your posts. Yours is a brain worth picking.

1

This reminds me of two things. One, that accepting the premises of the question causes us to try to make sense of something that is not real in the first place. The sense we take from myths and stories is to apply them to life, not to take them so literally that we impose a kind of hyper-realism onto them as if they were straight history narratives. And two...I can still remember in my undergraduate days (English literature) a professor telling us to be careful when analyzing the psychology of characters in stories. Characters in stories may have been written to have certain psychologies, but fictional characters aren't real, and thus applying real human psychology to them as if they ARE living people can be irrational. (Such as the people who try to diagnose Sheldon from BBT with Asberger's, etc. It is a bit bizarre that we suspend our disbelief so fully with some characters that psychoanalyzing them seems perfectly natural.)

My pondering this was for the purpose of seeing the ridiculousness of the story. And, like I mentioned in my post, I wasn't looking for answers. I know there are no answer to the questions, because the story is fiction.

0

"Adam was created a perfect man, his body and mind"
I'm more interested on how the author justifies that.. as I was pretty sure the bible never said that..

And if memory serves, Eve was created because Adam was lonely. How can a perfect being be lonely? Sounds like an imperfection to me.

I think you're correct that the Bible never said that Adam was created perfect. The creationist answer would be something like, "Adam and Eve were created perfect by God, because whatever God makes, is perfect." Of course, at the time of John Locke's writing, almost everyone in Europe believed in creation. He died more than a hundred years before Charles Darwin was even born.

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tis group is Silly Random Fun. This belongs in a religion group which are many.
please remove and place in correct group

p

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I shall explain this to you. Of course when Adam was created there was nothing in his brain, and so it is today, he, he. Just kidding.

1

Questioning anything from the Bible is a virtual buffet of nonsensical propaganda. I still can't figure out how rapidly they, Adam and his rib manifestation of a presumably "perfect" woman, Eve. must have reproduced. So they pro-created snd then what? Their offspring reproduced - no wonder why we are messed up, our supposed origin is the product of some heavy incest.

0

And language!!! WTF .. if Adam knew the hassle he was letting himself in for with language and Eve .. men cursed for eternity

1

Because this site is "agnostic" , I may be out of place commenting (being a misotheist myself) but my take is, the "creator" used his tinker toy set to create "adam" and adam was imperfect. Proof, cancer, lupus, autoimmune diseases, etc, etc. The human body is NOT perfect and never has been. "God threw together some slime and mud and mucus and such and our ancestors crawled out of the ocean and at some point in evolution "he" slapped some sort of cognizance into homo sapiens or homo erectus or whatever and , voila, adam and eve. How many "adams" and "eves" were created is a question no one asks.

You are not out of place commenting. I purposefully posted this in the "Silly, Random, and Fun" section... so anything goes..,

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If Adam was fully aware of all the things, then why did he eat the forbidden fruit?

He was horny for Eve.

0

It amuses me how bible bashers day everything in the bible is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth but when you point out a number of things that contradict each other they sit there with a dumb look. They think they have all the answers until they are challenged with logic

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I find it silly the amount of energy both sides of the god debate expand on a pointless question. The true power of religion is in the manipulation of fear and doubt as to a persons purpose. The only value of faith of any kind is in its use as a tool to build a healthy personal point of view on ethical and positive behavior both for yourself and others. If a religious institution does good works, feeds the poor etc great though the actions link to coercion in relation to conversion pollutes many such actions. Adams creation has value only in so far as it applies to reinforcing or teaching positive action or thought. Too me it does neither. It simply cements the idea men are superior to woman. For me the only real value of the creation story is the idea that ultimately god allowed satan (being omniscient and all) to lead us down the path to free will because he/she/it did not want to have a population of dumb slaves. Eve being smart enough to have some imagination ate the apple thus moving god's real plan along nicely. Me I am a firm believer in making your own versions of any myths as they are all up for interpretation anyway.

Quarm Level 6 Jan 11, 2019
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