Paradise on Earth

[onewithhim]

When I learned that the Bible speaks of a restored Garden of Eden and the restoration of mankind to the perfection and endless life that Adam forfeited, I was thrilled. Who doesn't want to keep living on this beautiful earth, with our loved ones, and being able to do all the things we love to do---endlessly?

If God said to you today, "When do you want to die?" would you say "now!!"? I don't think very many people would say that.

We CAN live forever here on Earth. The Bible tells us that we can.

Matthew 5:5
Psalm 37:9-11,29

[onewithhim]

Religion has its place in this world just like any other systems of man some good and some bad but is this not how it all began in the garden of Eden? Did not God plant the tree of both knowledge of good and evil? Baby-lon (religion) is a golden cup in the hands of the Lord. The word religion comes from the Latin word religoo which means to restrict, control taboo and that is what religion does. Its called bias and be it religion, atheism or what ever the world is full of it. I am a Christian but at the same time very anti religious.

To me it is vitally important for people to see what I believe is the real story behind the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil." God didn't plant it in the GoE to trip His human creations up.

(1) How else (other than "the tree of the knowledge of good & evil") could the translators of the Bible express the following idea? The idea that Adam & Eve could decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to acquiesce to God's instructions and laws or decide for themselves what was good or evil. That was the reason the tree was put there. Humans were created with free will, and they could've exercised that free will and decided to run their own show (which they indeed did), or they could've continued to be obedient. As long as they left the tree alone they were showing the universe that they loved and respected their Creator and Friend.

(2) Jehovah gave them that opportunity because He truly loved them deeply. Doesn't a loving father give his children ample opportunities to show their love for him? You might say to your son, for example, "Don't climb on that trellis over there; it's a special flower trellis that I built for the flowers to hold on to." Then your son feels proud that he willingly obeys his father by not climbing on the trellis. He is happy to show his love and respect. The little boy beams when his father acknowledges his obedience. God cared that much about his human creation to allow them to exercise their feelings of love for Him, knowing that a healthy attitude would be expressed in their willingness to obey Him, and they would feel good within themselves.

(3) The tree was not something that contained unknown knowledge. They wouldn't have become smarter or have learned facts that would make them "like God." I believe that God had instructed them concerning everything they should know to live happy, secure, and safe lives. They chose to disobey and make themselves "like God" by deciding (for themselves) what was good or what was evil, something that only their Creator, God, should do.

[onewithhim]

[Replying to post 352 by Joe1950]

This is my own feeling. I don't know if any other of my spiritual brothers and sisters feel this way: I don't believe that Jehovah ordered the deaths of babies. I like to think that some day we will be given all the facts about history and we will find out that the children were taken from the pagan cities and taken care of by God's people.

[onewithhim]

Back to the original post.

How long is a human life span? Our best estimate is probably around 120 years at the most. That is under optimal conditions. The human body slowly deteriorates over time. So, there is no possibility that any individuals will live on earth indefinitely. Not to mention how crowded it would be over time.

Adam was created to live forever, as long as he obeyed Jehovah. This was good because what other laws would be better for humans? God wanted humans to be happy and healthy.

When Adam disobeyed, his DNA changed radically, undoubtedly, so that he would eventually die. Unfortunately his progeny would inherit his new-found imperfection and eventually die also. A genetic thing. We now live an average of 70 or 80 years. A drop in the bucket of what we were intended to live.

The whole reason that the Bible was inspired and made available to us is because Jehovah wants to un-do the sentence of death that Adam brought onto his children. God's purpose then became to have a perfect man (like Adam was before he rebelled) counteract the original disobedience and resulting death by dying in the place of each human that ever lived. Because of that we have the hope of living forever on a physical earth, in paradise conditions. This was what the earth and mankind were meant to be right from the beginning. If we simply accept the gift that Jesus Christ extends to us, and then follow his teachings, we will be given back the ability to live forever on Earth---during Christ's Millennial Reign.

We don't have to worry about the earth getting too full of people. Right now, if all the humans who ever lived came back, there would be an acre of land for every person. This has been figured out scientifically. We believe, according to evidence in the Bible, that the end of this satanic world is near at hand, so there won't be many more born into sadness and suffering. There IS a question as to how the planet will sustain any more people, say, born into the new system of things (paradise Earth). Who knows? Maybe there will be travelling to other planets like Earth. God would surely be able to make it happen. And we'll have forever to do our travelling, so a few hundred years to Alpha Centori will be no problem. Jehovah might even show us the way to be "beamed" to another planet! There is so much to look forward to!

[onewithhim]

[Replying to Joe1950]
This is true if you limit who and what we are to the physical but God is a spirit

Yes, I agree, God is a spirit. (John 4:24) However, He made physical people to live on a physical earth forever. Adam threw a wrench into the plan, but Jehovah didn't allow that to destroy His purposes. Mankind just temporarily got side-tracked. God created us to live a physical life and that's what we'll continue to do.

"Evildoers will be cut off, but those hoping in Jehovah are the ones that will possess the earth....The righteous will possess the earth, and they will reside forever upon it." (Psalm 37:9,29)

"This is what Jehovah has said, the Creator of the heavens, the Former of the earth, the One who firmly established it, who did not create it simply for nothing, who formed it to be inhabited..." (Isaiah 45:18)

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 363 by onewithhim]

When Adam disobeyed, his DNA changed radically, undoubtedly, so that he would eventually die. Unfortunately his progeny would inherit his new-found imperfection and eventually die also. A genetic thing.

It'd be nice if we could examine this supposed genetic change. Which genes were involved in this? If, as you say, an ancestor of mine had substantially different DNA than mine, where is your evidence of this?

Oh? You don't have any? It's just a logical inference you've formed based on holding a certain story from thousands of years ago to be true?

[onewithhim]

[Replying to post 365 by rikuoamero]

There is, of course, no way to know which genes were involved in causing Adam to eventually die.

And yes, I figured it out myself, based on what the Bible says.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 365 by rikuoamero]

There is, of course, no way to know which genes were involved in causing Adam to eventually die.

And yes, I figured it out myself, based on what the Bible says.

If someone else says to me "An ancestor of yours had different DNA to you, he had...flippers (to suggest something off the top of my head)", I'd expect for him to point to the genes in question. Show me the DNA sequence of this ancestor, compare it to my own and point to which genes are responsible for him having flippers, and show how I don't have those genes myself.
If he cannot substantiate said claim, I reject it. You have nothing more than a logical inference.
I think up logical inferences all the time, so do lots of other people. What should be done afterwards, which is the step you seem to have missed, is look for evidence to substantiate it.

[onewithhim]

[Replying to post 365 by rikuoamero]

There is, of course, no way to know which genes were involved in causing Adam to eventually die.

And yes, I figured it out myself, based on what the Bible says.

If someone else says to me "An ancestor of yours had different DNA to you, he had...flippers (to suggest something off the top of my head)", I'd expect for him to point to the genes in question. Show me the DNA sequence of this ancestor, compare it to my own and point to which genes are responsible for him having flippers, and show how I don't have those genes myself.
If he cannot substantiate said claim, I reject it. You have nothing more than a logical inference.
I think up logical inferences all the time, so do lots of other people. What should be done afterwards, which is the step you seem to have missed, is look for evidence to substantiate it.

OK, then you reject the idea that Adam's genes were somehow changed, though of course it cannot be proven one way or the other. We don't have samples of his genes before and after the Fall, and it is impossible to scientifically determine just which genes were involved.

Thank you for saying that my inference is "logical."



.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 365 by rikuoamero]

There is, of course, no way to know which genes were involved in causing Adam to eventually die.

And yes, I figured it out myself, based on what the Bible says.

If someone else says to me "An ancestor of yours had different DNA to you, he had...flippers (to suggest something off the top of my head)", I'd expect for him to point to the genes in question. Show me the DNA sequence of this ancestor, compare it to my own and point to which genes are responsible for him having flippers, and show how I don't have those genes myself.
If he cannot substantiate said claim, I reject it. You have nothing more than a logical inference.
I think up logical inferences all the time, so do lots of other people. What should be done afterwards, which is the step you seem to have missed, is look for evidence to substantiate it.

OK, then you reject the idea that Adam's genes were somehow changed, though of course it cannot be proven one way or the other. We don't have samples of his genes before and after the Fall, and it is impossible to scientifically determine just which genes were involved.

Thank you for saying that my inference is "logical."



.

Logical inferences aren't all that great by themselves.
Premise 1: All men are immortal
Premise 2: Rikuoamero is a man
Conclusion: Therefore, Rikuoamero is immortal

That is logically valid, in that nothing in there contradicts itself. Should I trumpet my newly-realised immortality though to everyone I meet?
What if the Genesis story said that Adam originally had two heads (no, not counting the one covered by the fig leaves! )? According to your logic, the fact that we ourselves don't have two heads now must mean that Adam had the genes for two heads, and those genes were changed.

[William]

[Replying to post 330 by Joe1950]

Who doesn't want to keep living on this beautiful earth, with our loved ones, and being able to do all the things we love to do---endlessly?

If God said to you today, "When do you want to die?" would you say "now!!"?

I don't think very many people would say that.

I have to agree that this is the case with a lot of people. I also think that people would get board with it after a few thousand years, and perhaps even sooner.

At present there are scientists working on prolonging human life indefinitely. This is a serious pursuit and well invested in.

You think that people would really get bored after a few thousand years or sooner?

It would depend on what knowledge is available and what can be done.

What would people do to avoid ennui?

Admittedly I was being rather conservative with the number of years. When people talk about this 'kingdom on earth' they have more of a romantic kind of perception of what that might be like.

How could anyone be bored with living? It's either live or don't live.

That would depend largely on how the living is done and what options are available.

There is no end to what we can learn, so how could a person get bored?

In this universe there would be an end to what can be learned because the universe is going to end. Before that, the earth is going to end, because the sun is going to end.

So then, the options would be to find ways of avoiding ending with the earth as well, which obviously equate to figuring out how to move off the planet and into the galaxy.

Look at the technology we have. Isn't it exciting to think that technology will get even more interesting?

Well yes it is - but how long will the excitement last when we fully understand our predicament in relation to the universe and its inevitable demise? To be effectively trapped within it like a genie in a bottle. Even that the time for this to happen will be billions of years, it is still going to happen.

So in that we would be looking for ways to avoid being the causality of the demise of the universe. We would be looking for ways to survive the inevitable. It would become less something to be excited about and more a question of how to survive it.

You bring out the fact that scientists are working on prolonging human life. Why do you make that point if you think that people will be bored with indefinitely extended life?

I understand the excitement of the possibility. I have been following Jason Silva for some years now, and he is a proponent of this idea and I used to think it very exciting until I actually thought about it from a less emotional, more logical position.
I am just acknowledging that this is where science is taking the human race, and naturally enough that it is. One can take GOD out of the equation and focus on that, but in doing so one has to come from the position that GOD does not exist in any external alternate reality and also that there are no options (like alternate realities) and I am not convinced that this is the case and thus to choose what appears to be the only option may in fact be robbing oneself of other experiences in choosing this one to be the only option.

Death may indeed be the doorway to those other options, and to prolong life in this universe to the point where death is no longer any option, closes that door. All we are left with then, is this universe and we may be denying ourselves far better options, in doing that.

It seems, really, that people don't want to stop living on this earth, and are looking to prolong life so that we don't necessarily die. You say that this pursuit is "well invested in." Then longer life can't be thought of as boring, can it?

Okay - so I was ultra conservative in my saying that after a few thousand years, things might get a tad boring.
But you are speaking about an eternity. Even given the shelf life of this universe is an extremely long time, it is still not an eternity.

But just taking the expected shelf life, that is surely more than enough time to get very bored with the same old same old. There is no avoiding that conclusion because there are only a limited amount of things with which we can DO with the materials in the universe, and specifically this involves technology and machinery.

We can transform the material into a machine. Perhaps we can then make the machine allow for us to have simulated experiences of things which this universe cannot provide. Perhaps we can even get it to give us experiences of the past in which to occupy our living time within it? Perhaps as we move in a space ship away from the earth and to another sector of the galaxy, we might use these things to keep us occupied, but all of this will be essential to keep ennui from the door and keep us entertained through those long trips..etc...do you get where this is going?

A genie in a bottle limited to whatever ideas the genie has which can alleviate the boredom of living eternally within the physical universe.

Doesn't sound to me like the greatest of options, taking all things into consideration...through removing the overly romantic idealism from that equation by getting real about it.