NOM

On Sunday there was a family discussion about Adam and Eve, the unanswered question was why did God give contradictory commandments: "Don't eat the baby-making knowledge fruit" and "Make babies"

My TBMs have tried to explain this many times and the whole thing seems... full of crap. My Dad's answer was that Satan just wanted to do things out of order, like God was going to come back and say, "Ok, NOW you can eat the nakedness-is-awesome fruit." The follow up question was then, "Ok, didn't God know Satan was going to mess this up?" and then "So did God intend for Satan to muck things up?" Then we got a "mysteries of God shrug" and it sort of stalled.

When my youngest asked about it, I told her the story was symbolic and not literal, which was the only answer that placated her, because she stopped trying to make sense of it. Not sure how DW feels about that answer yet...

Am I missing something here? Did this ever seem to make sense to anybody in their TBM days?

The only answer that doesn't run afoul of 1 Ne 3:7 is that God was going to provide a avenue that wouldn't have been in violation of the commandments to not eat the fruit and to multiply and replenish the Earth. Even arguing that god would have eventually revoked one of the commandments seriously undermines the message in 1 Ne 3:7 of going and doing. Revoking a commandment isn't the same thing as providing a way to do it.

It made sense... for a while. My parents explained it like this:
There are many commandments we are given, but we aren't in the season of life to do them.
For example, focusing on genealogy research when youre raising small children makes little sense.
In respect to the garden, we are commanded still "not to partake" and have kids arent we? Adam and eve could not partake and be in the garden just as i couldnt and live in their house. (Later siblings proved this wrong of course)
Once they decided to partake, they had to enter the "real world" because heavenly parents would no longer provide. So Adam selected his mate, moved out and lived his life knowing what was expected of him and needed to do it with minimal help from "dad" since he had been caste out, namely have a family, provide for it and raise it in righteousness.
They claimed it help mirror the eternities as we were in a garden/eternal childhood but decided (as did adam and eve) we were ready to have more and left it.

So tl;dr version chosing to partake meant they chose the next step, which they had to do at some point, and doing so didnt mean they would NEVER keep the second part, but they better be ready when they do!

I think the best answer is looking at it from a kind of Buddhist koan sort of angle. The paradox isn't the problem. Rather the paradox itself is the answer. It teaches us essential truths.

The reality is that life is full of paradoxes. Reality is awash with them. Even at some of the most fundamental levels. When it comes to human interaction, society is filled with paradoxes. Religion especially. When your wife asks, "Does this dress make me look fat?", the answer is almost never, "Yes". Even though honesty is an important, essential aspect of an intimate marriage relationship. Eating fat was assumed to make people fat because they were consuming fat molecules which would then gather in their system and make them fatter. But it turns out it doesn't work that way. Cutting taxes on the ultra-wealthy doesn't trickle down and make more jobs and income for the less fortunate. Gays are not a violation of survival of the species. (Admittedly some of these are examples of true paradoxes and some are examples of people just not understanding what they're talking about.)

These two commandments create a paradox and the lesson to be learned is that paradoxes exist. I know of no clearer example in all of Mormonism of this truth, though once you see it, you start to recognize it all over the place. If there were any value to the Mormon plan of salvation, it would have to hinge around the lesson in this paradox. If we were placed by god upon this earth to learn anything that would prepare us for the Mormon hereafter, it would have to be rooted in this paradox. It would be essential that we learn that two commandments (or two "goods", two good goals) are placed in opposition and that we can only grow and learn when we weigh the two opposing ideas and make a good, meaningful choice, based upon a good understanding and determination of which choice will yield the best result in the situation at hand. The choice inherent in resolving the paradox for the better good, is where learning occurs. It is where we grow. It is how we learn to make better choices and better policies. (The same is true even without god. Even without god, how we handle these paradoxes and the choices we make are where we understand and demonstrate our moral character.)

In the Garden of Eden story, particularly in the Mormon version, Eve recognized the paradoxical choice that was placed before her and made the correct choice. She saw that she couldn't resolve both at once, so she chose one that would cause pains and troubles but with results that would be worth it.

All throughout life and throughout Mormonism we have to choose between one thing and another. There are many other things I could, or perhaps should, be doing right now, but I choose to be writing this response.

I find this the clearest and most powerful example of a Mormon koan, sometimes called a "moan".

The problem is that Mormonism has reduced everything to the simplest possible ideas and tries to insist that they all work coherently together, when they clearly don't. The idea that there is always a choice between good and bad is simply wrong. The idea that everything is simple and makes sense is contradicted by reality. We are better off when we abandon these unworkable, stifling ideas.

Dravin wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2018 2:24 pm Even arguing that god would have eventually revoked one of the commandments seriously undermines the message in 1 Ne 3:7 of going and doing. Revoking a commandment isn't the same thing as providing a way to do it.

mooseman wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2018 2:39 pm There are many commandments we are given, but we aren't in the season of life to do them.

I have gone down this path, why didn't God teach the actual principle to A&E? "You aren't ready for this fruit, but you will get it in time." Wouldn't that have affected Eve's decision when confronted with the choice? Seriously you can't spend a little more time to explain? And then why intentionally be obtuse then put Stan down there in the mix? I still can't make it work.

Jeffret wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2018 2:48 pm The paradox isn't the problem. Rather the paradox itself is the answer. It teaches us essential truths.

Ok I could buy this, but I don't think its a very TBM answer, in fact it speaks more the wisdom of the ancient that wrote the story in the first place. IMHO its flies in the face of the "I am so perfect it hurts" culture of the church and its policies.

Yep I think Jeffret explains it well. I think it can be summed up as you can't have your cake and eat it. It's impossible to do both. Even God can't solve that paradox apparently so it was left to them to choose.

As for whether this is TBM approved or not, from the endowment it seems Eve clearly recognizes the paradox and talks Adam out of his black and white thinking. Whether many members recognize it is another story.

Edit: I should add, I don't blame members for this. The church clearly tries to push the "obey all commandments" side of it while not recognizing the garden story. I've had many conversations with members about this and it clearly causes dissonance.

Here is a good write up at Wheat and Tares about Adam and Eve.

slavereeno wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2018 2:11 pm On Sunday there was a family discussion about Adam and Eve, the unanswered question was why did God give contradictory commandments: "Don't eat the baby-making knowledge fruit" and "Make babies"

My TBMs have tried to explain this many times and the whole thing seems... full of crap. My Dad's answer was that Satan just wanted to do things out of order, like God was going to come back and say, "Ok, NOW you can eat the nakedness-is-awesome fruit." The follow up question was then, "Ok, didn't God know Satan was going to mess this up?" and then "So did God intend for Satan to muck things up?" Then we got a "mysteries of God shrug" and it sort of stalled.

When my youngest asked about it, I told her the story was symbolic and not literal, which was the only answer that placated her, because she stopped trying to make sense of it. Not sure how DW feels about that answer yet...

Am I missing something here? Did this ever seem to make sense to anybody in their TBM days?

Only because I wanted it to.

The way I see it, the story of creation is so stupid that JS probably did the best he could to make it make at least some sense, but in doing so he also made it make less sense in a different way. It's a catch-22. Any Christian religion is stuck with this myth, but there's only so much that can be done with it.

First of all, you start with a pagan story about an argument between two different Gods, well, a God and a Goddess. In this story, the Goddess of Wisdom wants to give knowledge to humans and the male God wants to keep his pets stupid. But the Goddess of Wisdom gets sneaky and sends her familiar the snake to talk to them about the benefits of wisdom, and Eve likes it. But the male God gets angry and kicks them out of his garden.

Second to bend this story to fit into Jewish beliefs. Then you Christianize it. Then you Mormonize it. THEN you try to make logical sense out of it. Good luck with that.

And you haven't even brought up his first wife, Lilith! The wife who was his equal, created from the same dirt, not his rib... add that to the story and now you've got a real soap opera.

slavereeno wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2018 2:11 pmI told her the story was symbolic and not literal, which was the only answer that placated her, because she stopped trying to make sense of it.

This. This is the only answer that makes any sense.

If you try to make it literal, then you also have to explain how the Noah's Ark story is literal. (All 500,000 species of just beetles(!) made it on the ark? God transported all the Koala's out of Australia to save them, then popped them back in place? The creation story is real? And the mountains of evidence for evolution aren't real? God just popped all those fossils and biological evidence into place to deliberately lead us astray?) You also have to explain why God is such a jerk in the old testament.

Like the Book of Mormon, the bible is a collection of stories (not real ones) that you can sometimes draw life lessons from. Take the good from it that you can. Ignore the children's stories that were intended to explain the world in a time when nobody had any answers, and to scare little kids, and sometimes adults, into being good.

crossmyheart wrote: ↑Wed Jan 31, 2018 10:17 am And you haven't even brought up his first wife, Lilith! The wife who was his equal, created from the same dirt, not his rib... add that to the story and now you've got a real soap opera.

Ah, but the story of Lilith comes after the Hebrews had stuck the story in their Bible just after another story about creation. Then with two stories that they were reading as one, they got confused and said, but God just created man and woman. What happened that God is now creating a woman from Adam's rib? And so, to make it make sense, they made something up.

When people don't understand that X is nonsense, and then try to make sense out of it, all they can do is come up with more nonsense. Garbage in, garbage out.

slavereeno wrote: ↑Tue Jan 30, 2018 2:11 pm Did this ever seem to make sense to anybody ...?

The story of the fruit from the tree of knowledge spoke to the contentment of being a creature of pure instinct vs the multitude of emotions which can occur in sentient beings.

Symbolism of that sort is more palatable than literal mind altering fruit such as peyote buttons or psilocybin mushrooms. Even if Eve was the original flower child, Adam should not have narced on her and God should have been more accepting of his children rather than going overboard with that "tough love" parenting. Stories like that can set a bad example for future generations.

BTW, the creation story in the Finnish Kalevala is very poetic.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/kveng/kvrune01.htm

Why can't young parents do family history? I had way more time for it before my kids got to be teens. I never understood that example of FH as somehow illogical for young adults.