The Knowledge of Good and Evil

[William]

If we humans really had the knowledge of good and evil, wouldn't this suggest that good and evil are absolutes and that we should be able to agree on which is which?

What does it actually mean to have the KoGaE?

[Divine Insight]

Well, just to put this in the context of Christianity, it makes absolutely no sense that Adam and Eve had no knowledge of Good and Evil before they ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.

Think about. If they had no knowledge of Good and Evil before they had eaten the fruit, then they could not possibly have made a conscious choice do to something "evil" as they could not have known that it would be evil to do it.

Also, why would they doubt anything the serpent had told them. If they had no knowledge good and evil prior to eating the fruit then they could not have any clue about lying or that lying was even possible. So they would have no reason to even suspect that the serpent wouldn't be telling the truth.

Clearly these ancient fables weren't even well-thought-out when they were created.

~~~~~

As far as the concepts of "Good and Evil" go in the real world, it should be crystal clear that humans do not agree on what constitutes good versus evil on every aspect of life.

Sure it's easy to find consensus of many things. For example, most humans will agree that torturing innocent babies is wrong (i.e. evil). But there are actually some humans who won't agree with this. We just shrug those people off as being "sick".

However, when we get into many other areas, like whether it should be considered to be wrong to have a preference for a particular gender identity, or a particular partner of the same sex, human opinions vary greatly.

So clearly there is no such thing as "absolute good and evil". It's all a matter of human subjective opinion. As a society we tend to give the majority consensus opinion the most credence.

But then again, we don't really need to label every single possible action as being either good or evil.

For example, why should we even bother judging personal relationship or sexual behavior as being either good or evil? Why do we need to assign a moral value to it at all.

Some actions and behavior are probably better off recognized as being amoral. Not needing to be judged as good or evil. Kind of like eating ice cream. Is eating ice cream morally good, or morally evil?

Why not just say that it's neither. Eating ice cream simply has no moral value at all.

We don't need to assign a moral value to every possible act that could ever be undertaken. It's just not necessary.

[bluethread]

Well, just to put this in the context of Christianity, it makes absolutely no sense that Adam and Eve had no knowledge of Good and Evil before they ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.

That is because what is spoken of is not the concept of absolute "good" and "evil" as one thinks when one looks at those two English terms. The term tov does not refer to the Greek telios or highest purpose, it refers to Adonai's ways for his people. Also, the term ra' does not refer to absolute malevolence, but to the ways of the nations, i.e. that which is not part of Adonai's ways for His people. Therefore, knowing that something is not acceptable to Adonai is not the knowledge of tov and ra'(good and evil). It is the actual knowledge of the nations that is ra'(evil). One can not truly say that one know something, simply because one knows of it. One knows something when one takes of it and begins to digest it, as one would eat fruit.

[1213]

If we humans really had the knowledge of good and evil, wouldn't this suggest that good and evil are absolutes and that we should be able to agree on which is which?

What does it actually mean to have the KoGaE?

I am not sure if all have that knowledge, maybe. But even if so, it is possible that people can ignore the voice that says something is wrong. And often it seems that people who want that what is wrong, they close their ears so that they dont hear that voice. that seems to be the case often, and if someone says that it was wrong what you did the reason why the wrong doer gets mad is that he doesnt like that the voice he has suppressed, gets stronger. The voice of bad conscience can be really annoying for person who wants evil.

Sometimes I have taught that the Holy Spirit that Bible is introducing is like conscience. And because it is given for those who are baptized to be disciples of Jesus, is that conscience only in those people. Difficult to say, when I cant read peoples minds normally.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 4 by 1213]

Difficult to say, when I cant read peoples minds normally.

Normally? As in, there are times you CAN read minds?
What video game was I playing today?

And because it is given for those who are baptized to be disciples of Jesus, is that conscience only in those people.

I really hope you don't mean that the only people who have a conscience are baptised Christians...

[Divine Insight]

Well, just to put this in the context of Christianity, it makes absolutely no sense that Adam and Eve had no knowledge of Good and Evil before they ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.

That is because what is spoken of is not the concept of absolute "good" and "evil" as one thinks when one looks at those two English terms. The term tov does not refer to the Greek telios or highest purpose, it refers to Adonai's ways for his people. Also, the term ra' does not refer to absolute malevolence, but to the ways of the nations, i.e. that which is not part of Adonai's ways for His people. Therefore, knowing that something is not acceptable to Adonai is not the knowledge of tov and ra'(good and evil). It is the actual knowledge of the nations that is ra'(evil). One can not truly say that one know something, simply because one knows of it. One knows something when one takes of it and begins to digest it, as one would eat fruit.

At first glance this sounds like a fair apology, but when examined carefully it doesn't hold up.

Genesis 3:5 violates your apology.

Genesis 3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil

According to this if Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of good and evil they will then "be like the gods knowing good and evil".

Therefore according to your apology God himself would need to have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, God himself would need to have "known evil", and by your apology this means that God would have had to have partaken in an evil act.

So this then blows the entire religion out of the water. It can no longer be about an all-righteous God. This could work if we were talking about Greek mythology and Zeus, because no one ever claimed that Zeus is not an evil God. But it can't be made to work in the Biblical arena. We can't have the Biblical God "knowing evil" if that means that he must have committed evil acts.

There's always a serious problem with every apology for this religion. Every apology ultimately backfires and ends up causing more problems than it was intended to solve.

[bluethread]

At first glance this sounds like a fair apology, but when examined carefully it doesn't hold up.

Genesis 3:5 violates your apology.

Genesis 3:5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil

According to this if Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of good and evil they will then "be like the gods knowing good and evil".

Yes, and it was not appropriate for them to seek to be like deities.

Therefore according to your apology God himself would need to have eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In other words, God himself would need to have "known evil", and by your apology this means that God would have had to have partaken in an evil act.

No, Adonai dose not need to do anything to be a deity. Of course, Adonai was able to understand the ways of the nations. He created the nations. Now, by slight of hand, you are reintroducing the definition of absolute wrong, that I explicitly said does not apply to ra'. Tov(good) is that which is acceptable for Adonai's people, it says nothing about what is acceptable for a deity.

So this then blows the entire religion out of the water. It can no longer be about an all-righteous God. This could work if we were talking about Greek mythology and Zeus, because no one ever claimed that Zeus is not an evil God. But it can't be made to work in the Biblical arena. We can't have the Biblical God "knowing evil" if that means that he must have committed evil acts.

"Good and evil" works if one is talking about Greek mythology, because it is a Greek concept. That concept does not work in the biblical arena, because that is not the concept espoused by the Scriptures. The Scriptural concept is tov and ra'. There is nothing inappropriate about a deity entertaining the ways of the nations. That is the point of that verse you quoted.

There's always a serious problem with every apology for this religion. Every apology ultimately backfires and ends up causing more problems than it was intended to solve.

Well, one ignores the point being made, it is often the case that one would see it that way.

[William]

[Replying to post 2 by Divine Insight]

Clearly these ancient fables weren't even well-thought-out when they were created.

That certainly appears to be the case...but since Abrahamic religions are an aspect of humanity it would stand to reason that these kind of not-well-thought-out 'explanations' derive from ignorance - an ignorance which humanity has regarding is actually KoGaE...

As far as the concepts of "Good and Evil" go in the real world, it should be crystal clear that humans do not agree on what constitutes good versus evil on every aspect of life.

This is essentially why I am asking the question. We have a religion which claims humans have the KoGaE. but we have evidence which supports the opposite reality.

Sure it's easy to find consensus of many things. For example, most humans will agree that torturing innocent babies is wrong (i.e. evil). But there are actually some humans who won't agree with this. We just shrug those people off as being "sick".

Is it sickness or an expression of evil?...given that Christians have the belief that "we are actually demons placed into human form and that there is a GOD who sends children to hell for an eternity of suffering...because it is acceptable since we are all actually demons - except of course those who are 'the sinful elect' who shall marry that GOD because the are repentant demons who have chosen to believe that this GOD is their creator."

So is that kind of belief an externalized mental illness people suffer and not really evil, as they 'know not what they say and do'?

And since Abrahamic religion is believed by such a large proportion of the human population, is it accurate to say "most humans will agree that torturing innocent babies is wrong"?

Also, does 'torture' include dropping bombs on these innocents? Or are we so ignorant of the KoGaE that we have another category for this type of practice?

Also - who defines what 'innocent' is? Is it a lack of KoGaE? Or something else?

However, when we get into many other areas, like whether it should be considered to be wrong to have a preference for a particular gender identity, or a particular partner of the same sex, human opinions vary greatly.

So clearly there is no such thing as "absolute good and evil". It's all a matter of human subjective opinion. As a society we tend to give the majority consensus opinion the most credence.

So sometimes societies may be mentally healthy and other times mentally deficient...depending upon the underlying consensus?

But then again, we don't really need to label every single possible action as being either good or evil.

For example, why should we even bother judging personal relationship or sexual behavior as being either good or evil? Why do we need to assign a moral value to it at all.

Well I suppose it is 'a rose by any other name'. Some sexual behavior may be assigned in the negative because it has been observed by human beings to cause stressful ripple effects into the community.

Some actions and behavior are probably better off recognized as being amoral. Not needing to be judged as good or evil. Kind of like eating ice cream. Is eating ice cream morally good, or morally evil?
Why not just say that it's neither. Eating ice cream simply has no moral value at all.

One could argue nowadays that dairy products and even meat-eating is linked to climate change. So partaking of one is contributing to the other. Is that a moral problem though? Does it matter if humans beings destroy their environment because of ignorance - ignoring the warnings? Is willful ignorance a form of evil or just mental illness?

We don't need to assign a moral value to every possible act that could ever be undertaken. It's just not necessary.

Obviously many would disagree, but nothing is every black or white in terms of what constitutes Good or Evil, so in that it is clear that humans do NOT have the knowledge as is claimed in the biblical story of the Garden incident.

We don't need to assign a moral value to every possible act that could ever be undertaken. It's just not necessary.

The idea of the thread topic and question has to do with whether humans actually have the KoGaE rather than it being the question of assigning moral value to every possible act that could ever be undertaken. The key idea is in that if we don't really know good from evil, we would not be able to assign any moral value to any human activity, necessary or not.

[William]

[Replying to post 4 by 1213]

I am not sure if all have that knowledge, maybe. But even if so, it is possible that people can ignore the voice that says something is wrong. And often it seems that people who want that what is wrong, they close their ears so that they dont hear that voice. that seems to be the case often, and if someone says that it was wrong what you did the reason why the wrong doer gets mad is that he doesnt like that the voice he has suppressed, gets stronger. The voice of bad conscience can be really annoying for person who wants evil.

So you are saying that the KoGaE is represented in the voice of conscientiousness and that it is good to go with, rather than against, the 'advice' of said inner voice?

I myself see some sense in this view. However, rather than place the analogy of how humans came to have this inner voice of conscientiousness as per the Garden story, I see it in terms of biological evolution in observing how different humans are in relation to other animals.

I imagine humans used to lack this ability and it developed over time through repetitive behaviors which slowly and surely became more and more established and the 'voice' might have been something else 'heard' even before the development of language.
It may have been a 'notion' which was expressed in other emotive ways which language had no part in.

A clear case of dot-joining in order to shape knowledge about best options vrs worst options.

All to do with surviving, and surviving in relative comfort.

There was a time when sex with offspring was neither a here nor there thing, and the repetitive employment of this practice was simply done quite naturally enough, but at some point - perhaps through observation of results over long periods of time it became obvious that the practice had to cease because of stress on the tribal group which could be directly linked to the practice.

Thus anything which threatened survival of the group became 'evil'. Anything which helped the group survive with least stress became 'good'.

And any who resisted the group dynamic by wanting to continue practicing anything which the group had deemed 'no longer appropriate because of evidence which showed stress and threat were caused' were also seen as stressful and threatening to the group and were dealt with, or on occasion the antagonist managed to influence others sufficiently to take control of the tribe and reintroduce said outlawed practices...or variations on that theme.

This is to say of course that the 'voice of conscientiousness' is able to be tampered with through external means. Nor that it is necessarily always right or is any indication that human beings actually possess the KoGaE. The 'voice of conscientiousness' can be far too fickle for that. Or completely rigid and unbending...but therein is the problem...if the Garden story was true, then why doesn't everyone have the same knowledge or inner voice of conscientiousness? It appears that the KoGaE is itself defective or lacking something essential to knowing, if indeed humans have it at all.

And that is the question.

The introduction of the HG gives an added twist to the idea that the individual human inner voice of conscientiousness can be so bamboozled by external voices shaping it, that one is simply unable to clearly differentiate, and in that - enter 'the HG' to help the individual overcome that problem, only well...2000 more years of external voices insinuating their twists on things and the HG can also suffer at the hands of those who use the external to put words into the mouths of GODs, in order to influence the inner voice of the individual to giving over to that external voice under the assumption that in doing so, they 'follow GOD' and are 'GOOD'.

Humanity is such a sticky little mess of a thing, yes?

[Divine Insight]

Also, does 'torture' include dropping bombs on these innocents? Or are we so ignorant of the KoGaE that we have another category for this type of practice?

You hit the nail on the head right there.

It's only considered to be evil if we disapprove of it. But if we approve of it, suddenly it become justified as the "Right thing to do".

Human morality is definitely subjective. I don't see how there can be any doubt about that.