DailyJim: Have I (or we) been misinterpreting the story of Adam and Eve?

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. This is Monday, May 20th, 2024. I am reporting from Bremen, Germany, Deutschland.

And today I want to talk about whether the question, have I or we been misinterpreting the story of Adam and Eve? Eve. And I'm reporting from a room that's got a little bit of echo, so I don't know if that'll affect it. And so, I don't know how I got on this topic. I was thinking about it the other day, last night, and started researching. And having not grown up in the church, not grown up with organized religion, a lot of these things are somewhat distant for me. But I've heard the the story of Adam and Eve, the whole idea of being in the Garden of Eden, eat the apple or the fruit, the forbidden fruit, and therefore get banned from the Garden of Eden. And Christians often believe in this idea of original sin, where, okay, that was the moment when the fall of man, when we kind of got in God's bad graces, kind of like disfavored by God in many ways. And i was reading it and it said that the tree that had the fruit was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and i thought.

It's always been portrayed to me i think that this is when man started to sin this is when man started to behave evilly in a way. But when I read it, it's like the name of the tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, not the tree of good and evil, or not the tree of evil, really, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And I think some people tell the story as this is the time that we disobeyed God. And so therefore, that's why we got in trouble because because we disobeyed. And I wonder, because it had me thinking of an episode that I've done before, I'm pretty sure that I call it, I think, the theory of moral superposition.

This idea that everything is good and bad, but thinking makes it good or bad. So if you're familiar with With quantum physics, it's the idea that once we observe something, it actually changes the state.

I don't know if it decomposes. I forget the word. It settles into a particular state. Whereas when we're not observing it, it's in both states at the same time. And I think about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And what seemed to happen is that once they... Uh, ate from the tree, they realized that they were naked and therefore tried to cover themselves up. And I think God even said, how did you know that you were naked? And so I don't know if it was a, an, a sin of being naked. I don't, I think before eating, being naked was fine. Being naked was good and bad. It was just kind of, it is what it's just that superposition of being good and bad at the same time, and there was uncertainty about it. But once eating, I think what happened is it sounds like they had more certainty over how bad they were. It's almost like they became certain that they were shameful or certain that there was something wrong with them. And I wonder if that is the sin. I wonder if the sin is that when we crave certainty over things, we tend to lump them into good and bad categories. If I am certain I know something, I think it is good or I think it is bad. I think it is right. I think it is wrong. I think it is true. I think it is false. I think the more that I am certain over something, the more likely I believe I am to place it into one of these categories. And maybe that was the thing that in the beginning of the Old Testament or whatever people label the book of Genesis as, maybe that was the warning. Maybe the warning was, don't be so certain that what you know is good or is bad. Maybe everything is good and bad. Maybe everything just is. Which is almost more of a Buddhist perspective in a way, I think. Or maybe a Taoist perspective. perspective, but this idea of just.

Not obsessing over the knowledge. Because I think there was even a passage in there, and I've just read it quickly, and I'd love to have a conversation with other people about this who are more knowledgeable on the topic. But there's something about, oh, basically like, oh, so now you've eaten of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, therefore you are like me, you are a god like me because you know everything. I think it was that kind of like, you think you know everything? Ha ha, okay, now go. And this kind of false certainty sometimes that we take on life and how maybe that idea of being so certain on what is good and bad causes us to live a life of misery. That we are not eating of the tree of life, which some say is the other tree in the story, because we are stuck in the tree of judgment or the knowledge of what is good and is evil. Maybe a better name for it really is the tree of judgment. So maybe the sin is not, oh, extramarital sex or a sloth or I can't remember the other, lust. Lust there's what the seven deadly sins or whatnot maybe maybe that's not actually anything to do with it because he said you could eat from all of the trees except the tree of knowledge of good and evil so maybe you're allowed to eat from the tree of sex and the tree of lust and the tree of sloth and the tree of all these other things but just not the knowledge of saying that this is a good or bad thing and putting that judgment man what would it be like if it was called the tree of judgment, instead of the tree of the knowledge of what is good and what is evil.

This feels like a revolution to me, like a radical realization, but maybe someone in the last 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 years hasn't thought about this before. So I'm curious to hear your response to it, because this is a topic I really want to talk about, because what if we have been misinterpreting it for many, many, many, many, many years? And what if we change our interpretation of it? What impact would that have on our lives?

Maybe it would be both good and bad. I don't know. All right, I'll talk to you all tomorrow. Take care.