What does in God’s image mean? He created Adam & Eve without a moral sense.

[Greatest I am]

What does in God’s image mean? He created Adam & Eve without a moral sense.

I take, in God’s image, to refer to God’s and our mental image and not the physical. God does not look like us in any way. He and his form is quite alien to us.

Genesis shows that Adam & Eve were created without the moral sense that would make them like Gods. That being the case, they had to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil to be in God’s mental image. That is without a doubt a requirement to the development of a moral sense and is confirmed by God after Adam and Eve disobeyed his command to stay dumb and without a moral sense.

If they were created in God’s image then they would have already had the moral sense that comes from the knowledge of good and evil and would therefore not have been tempted by Satan to eat of the tree of knowledge because they would have had that knowledge already. This would also mean that God was punishing them unjustly.

One must conclude from these biblical facts, that God did not make mankind in his image.

The only other logical alternative is that God does not have a moral sense and that he too, like Adam and Eve, was basically as dumb as a cow.

Could that be why God is shown as doing other immoral things in scriptures?

The two main ones that come to mind is God having his own son murdered for the forgiveness of sin when there was no real need to and the genocide of Noah’s day.

Does being in God's image mean not having a moral sense?

Regards
DL

 

[Syne]

Why do you insist upon taking allegory so bleeding literal?

 

[Saturnine Pariah]

God or Gods are based on the templates of human mannerisms, behavior and their current relation to the natural world. Gods are depicted in our image as a much more consolable means of indentifying with said deities on much more deeper interpersonal level.
I understand your question... "if god is perfect but creates defective creatures/beings..is god not perfect?" the answer is simple: Humans like any other organism that has existed throughout the 3.5 billion years of life on this planet has imperfections, whatever they create or do is imperfect, by that logic a God with human characteristics will display those flaws...or the authors needed a way to explain original sin base on the context of the time.
Coincidentally before the supposed creation of man God created angels as his company (just a pleasantry for having people worship his egotistical ass) one angle that we all know as Lucifer was able to convince himself and other angels that they were better than god therefore deserved much more from him.
Perfect Creatures...Who experience, pride and envy, revolt against their creator and are banished to the place where get this, he puts his new creations to live…seems like god is setting them up to fail.:shrug:

 

[Greatest I am]

Why do you insist upon taking allegory so bleeding literal?

Because I want to refute it as Christian literalist and fundamentals have used the allegory of Eden and our fall to refuse women equality and give men power over them.

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

God or Gods are based on the templates of human mannerisms, behavior and their current relation to the natural world. Gods are depicted in our image as a much more consolable means of indentifying with said deities on much more deeper interpersonal level.
I understand your question... "if god is perfect but creates defective creatures/beings..is god not perfect?" the answer is simple: Humans like any other organism that has existed throughout the 3.5 billion years of life on this planet has imperfections, whatever they create or do is imperfect, by that logic a God with human characteristics will display those flaws...or the authors needed a way to explain original sin base on the context of the time.
Coincidentally before the supposed creation of man God created angels as his company (just a pleasantry for having people worship his egotistical ass) one angle that we all know as Lucifer was able to convince himself and other angels that they were better than god therefore deserved much more from him.
Perfect Creatures...Who experience, pride and envy, revolt against their creator and are banished to the place where get this, he puts his new creations to live…seems like god is setting them up to fail.:shrug:

It seems so and the Church has good reason for doing so.

People will pay many $$$$$$$$$ to be helped up from a fallen state.

The Jews did not read Eden as man's fall but his elevation.
I guess that the Jews did not need as much $$$$$$ or they just wanted to be honest.

Regards
DL

 

[Syne]

Because I want to refute it as Christian literalist and fundamentals have used the allegory of Eden and our fall to refuse women equality and give men power over them.

Then why did you abandon every argument you made in your "Lilith or Eve" thread?

The "image" of a god is its free will, and this is the fundamental essence that allows for disobedience. No creator could create without the free will to do so.

 

[Grumpy]

Greatest I am

Man created god in his own image, not the other way round.

Grumpy

 

[Greatest I am]

Then why did you abandon every argument you made in your "Lilith or Eve" thread?

No idea what argument you are speaking of here and I try to make each O P stand on it's own with its own purpose.

I only abandon what is going nowhere.

The "image" of a god is its free will, and this is the fundamental essence that allows for disobedience. No creator could create without the free will to do so.

If he wanted free will to be expressed, then why did he punish A & E the very first time they did their will and not God's?

Regards
DL

 

[Greatest I am]

Greatest I am

Man created god in his own image, not the other way round.

Grumpy

I agree.

Regards
DL

 

[Syne]

If he wanted free will to be expressed, then why did he punish A & E the very first time they did their will and not God's?

Really? So laws preclude freedom, huh?

 

[Greatest I am]

Really? So laws preclude freedom, huh?

Certainly. So do threats.

Thanks for ignoring my point. Good way to not refute it.

Regards
DL

 

[Syne]

Really? So laws preclude freedom, huh?

Certainly. So do threats.

Thanks for ignoring my point. Good way to not refute it.

So if there were no laws and criminals could infringe on your human rights with impunity, you'd be free, right?

What, ignore the point I missed because you don't seem to know how to use the quote function? Learn how to use a forum already.

No idea what argument you are speaking of here and I try to make each O P stand on it's own with its own purpose.

I only abandon what is going nowhere.

These two threads have the same purported purpose, and you seem to abandon what you cannot successfully argue, as you did in that one.

...and our fall to refuse women equality and give men power over them.

...for the fall, that women must be submissive to men. -http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=112724

 

[Greatest I am]

So if there were no laws and criminals could infringe on your human rights with impunity, you'd be free, right?

No law is chaos. In a chaotic system, I cannot see anyone being free.
Everyone would be forced to concentrate on the fear of others and survival.

Laws are good if we make good laws.

Regards
DL

 

[Syne]

Really? So laws preclude freedom, huh?

Certainly. So do threats.

No law is chaos. In a chaotic system, I cannot see anyone being free.
Everyone would be forced to concentrate on the fear of others and survival.

Laws are good if we make good laws.

Good. Now you should be able to see how the admonition against A&E was equivalent to a law meant to protect them from the natural consequences of being aware of value judgments. They had free will, regardless. The admonition was in the hope that they wouldn't use that free will in a way that may harm them.

 

[Greatest I am]

Good. Now you should be able to see how the admonition against A&E was equivalent to a law meant to protect them from the natural consequences of being aware of value judgments. They had free will, regardless. The admonition was in the hope that they wouldn't use that free will in a way that may harm them.

So God murdering Adam and Eve is a good way of protecting them from natural consequences!

Ok.

Insane but that is God for you.

Is this the way all parents should do it?

Regards
DL

 

[Saturnine Pariah]

Setting them up to fail...setting up them up to fail ( laughs )

 

[Syne]

So God murdering Adam and Eve is a good way of protecting them from natural consequences!

Murdering, or just A&E becoming aware of their preexisting mortality? Were all of the animals in Eden physically immortal?

 

[Aqueous Id]

What does in God’s image mean? He created Adam & Eve without a moral sense.

I take, in God’s image, to refer to God’s and our mental image and not the physical. God does not look like us in any way. He and his form is quite alien to us.

Genesis shows that Adam & Eve were created without the moral sense that would make them like Gods. That being the case, they had to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil to be in God’s mental image. That is without a doubt a requirement to the development of a moral sense and is confirmed by God after Adam and Eve disobeyed his command to stay dumb and without a moral sense.

If they were created in God’s image then they would have already had the moral sense that comes from the knowledge of good and evil and would therefore not have been tempted by Satan to eat of the tree of knowledge because they would have had that knowledge already. This would also mean that God was punishing them unjustly.

One must conclude from these biblical facts, that God did not make mankind in his image.

The only other logical alternative is that God does not have a moral sense and that he too, like Adam and Eve, was basically as dumb as a cow.

Could that be why God is shown as doing other immoral things in scriptures?

The two main ones that come to mind is God having his own son murdered for the forgiveness of sin when there was no real need to and the genocide of Noah’s day.

Does being in God's image mean not having a moral sense?

Regards
DL

Another way to look at this passage is to note that it was Elohim - the Godhead - who says we shall make humankind in our image, our likeness which shows that the Creation Myth has its roots in a polytheistic (or pantheistic) predecessor system of belief.

From this perspective, that it's myth-weaving, I see that it might be advantageous to connect the deity with humans in this way, not so much to develop a sense of morality, but to try to establish a physical connection. Here I'm thinking of the apotheosis traditions - of actual people, such as pharoahs, or in other myths such gods who have parents, or other mythical figures that are part god, part human.

The Canaanites may have felt a need to preserve this idea in order to continue to show that their God was greater than the competing gods of the region. It also may have helped answer the question what does God look like?

It doesn't make a lot of sense from a religious perspective to have risked leaving in the plural form other than to preserve the meaning, that is, that there is a physical connection to God. But this doesn't seem to be for the purpose of elevating humans to sacred status, since it was by the Covenant that the Canaanites became the Chosen People, not because of godliness - which was imparted to all humans anyway, even the ones turned to pillars of salt. So that's where your question come in. It doesn't jibe with the intended purpose of showing God to be greater than evil.

I think they lacked a lot of analytical skills in thinking through the stories they created, and then eventually some of it just got cast in concrete, beyond repair by anyone but apostates, and locked into some later myth that the words themselves were sacred. Who knows what the early story tellers thought about the odds that their campfire story would go viral, or how they might have wanted to polish it a bit before handing it down (as, no doubt, sometimes happened anyway).

From a counter-fundamentalist point of view, though, your question is of course perfectly valid. It's one of basic ideas that makes fundamentalism seem so farfetched to a lot of people.

It may also be one (of many) reasons that Gnosticism (the view that the God the Father is evil, and God the Son is good) arose in the very early Christian era, probably before the first Christian gospel was written, basing itself on a failed God (who never delivered on the Covenant, allowed His temple to fall twice, and for the kingdoms of Israel to be constantly victimized) vs a martyred hero, Jesus. The Gnostics may have seen the passage you mention as an admission by the Creator God that He made people evil because He Himself is evil.

By the way, it is entirely possible that the first Christian gospel was written specifically to put down the Gnostic movement, which would have made Christianity an intolerable insult to the Jews.

 

[Trooper]

It is generally accepted that some of the texts of the Hebrew Bible have precedents in earlier ancient (Bronze Age), near Eastern religions and mythology, especially Mesopotamian, but to a lesser extent also Ancient Egyptian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panbabylonianism

I personally, think there’s a lot of similarity between Ancient Egyptian and the Hebrew bible but the consensus of the scholars is that there’s only a little.

This is very similar to the Books of Proverbs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction_of_Amenemope

Like all creation myths, Egypt’s is complex, but they even believed that it all began with the first stirring of the High God on primeval waters. The hieroglyphs were sacred writing, transmitting secret, mystical knowledge. You know that it had to influence Moses with his little commandments.

Exodus 4:15
And thou shalt speak unto him, and put words in his mouth: and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Moses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_origins

 

[Epictetus]

Firstly, although I was not always, I am now an atheist, so who am I to say? But I took God's image to mean mind, not moral sense as the original poster (Greatest I am) suggests.

I mean I think that it is our intelligence, such as it is, and our free will. For instance, why does a dog chase a car? Because he operates on instinct, not intelligence, and his instinct tells him that if it flees, you chase it. If the dog had our type of mind, he'd say, 'Aw hell, I chased cars before and what did I get for it? I'm just going to hang back from now on.

So it is the ability to think for ourselves that makes us 'godlike'. You're right it has nothing to do with arms and legs, feet and hands or gender.