The safest course of action - and by safest I mean to say the way that keeps us from not incrementally lowering a standard - is to never deviate from the standard in the first place.Evil is nothing more than the absence of good. Evil does not exist on it's own. It is the absence of something else, in this case good. Just like cold is the absence of heat or darkness is the absence of light.And yet what this Christian saw was the self evident truth that man knows right from wrong and when he violates it, rather than abandoning the concept of right and wrong, he rationalizes that he did not violate it. And that man is the only animal capable of knowledge of good and evil. No other creature has this concept. Sure animals can have empathy, but not like man. Animals function on impulse and instinct. Man functions on these too, but in man's case he has the unique ability to override his impulses and instinct for the sake of good. That is free will. It's a choice. Everything is choice.The common thread here is that all those problems are through the Christian bastardization of The Judaic teachings/ concepts/precepts.
They don't become fails or confused when using the original understanding/descriptions.
I agree.
Note how Christians see a fall in Eden while Jews see man's elevation.
Christians got the beginning wrong so it is not surprising that they would get most of scriptures wrong.
Regards
DL
Genesis isn't implying that had Adam and Eve never committed the original sin, we would live in paradise forever. Genesis is saying that man has the capacity to do good and evil. So then the question begs why did God create such a world. I believe that that is an artifact of life. In other words, I don't believe God had a choice. It is part and parcel of the extant nature of good. I know people will howl that I said God had no choice but the reality is there are things God can't do. For instance, God can't oppose Himself; He can't go against His own nature.
So there are two very interesting things which come out of free will. One is that evil has the effect of making good better. It's like salt and sugar. Salt makes sugar taste sweeter. We are told elsewhere that He uses all things for the good of those who love Him. Among other things the Jews discovered is that there is meaning in suffering. 07 Judaism
The other interesting thing is that good has no meaning unless there is evil. In other words, it is not virtuous if you are forced to be virtuous.
In closing, man prefers good over evil. We don't do evil for evil's sake. We do evil for the sake of our own good and when we do, we rationalize that we didn't do evil. But from these acts, goodness will arise and we will be stronger for it. It is a self compensating feature whose sole purpose is to propel consciousness to the next rung in the anthropological ladder.
Now go fuck yourself.
To prefer good over evil, man must have the knowledge of good and evil.
Regards
DL
Man does prefer good over evil. He doesn't need to experience evil to know that he prefers good over evil. What he needs to do is stop rationalizing that when he does evil he is doing good.
Reminds me of when we dropped the bomb on Japan. We justified that what we were doing was not evil. But then we can't see that the Taliban didn't think they were doing evil on 9-11.
And then the native American indians. Were they evil? They scalped their victims. They enjoyed war. They enslaved their captives. Were indians evil? They sure sound a lot like Boka Haram don't they?