Who was doing the deceiving in the Garden of Eden?

#maklelan2257

[DoggishPrince]

I really enjoy that you not only combat apologia on the internet, but you also answer genuine questions to those even if it means this is a step in their deconversion. Thank you, Dan

[archivist]

He asked good questions, and got great answers.

[thescoobymike]

It’s crazy how Dan is able to completely dismantle the most deeply held beliefs, that affect millions of people, in just a couple minutes.

[DoloresLehmann]

It's just another iteration of "once our kids figure out that nothing happens on the count of three, we're f*ucked."

[susanburns]

Lucky guy! He got his questions answered by Dan

[markrothenbuhler]

We need a national "Snakes Tell the Truth" day.

[chrisrubin]

My dad started reading us the bible too late for indoctrination. I was ten and we got to the end of the garden of Eden, and I said pretty indignantly “God is Evil!”

[jezzaroddy]

This person truly did ask some great questions.

[LoveAllAnimals]

Ahhh, creative storytelling. Love it.

[IsraelAndersonShow]

Thank you, Dan. I don't know if your support of my arguments is intentional or unintentional, but it's great to have someone that validates so much of what I teach. Often, you're the only one. Would love to connect anytime.

[RTVG]

As always, Dan, love the work. Would you ever consider doing a video / Data Over Dogma on how the view of God has evolved over the centuries? It seems like God was viewed one way in the Torah, that at times he was a physical being, and that changed in the latter parts of the Old Testament, then in the New Testament, and to what we have today? How much of that evolution was dictated by outer influences (i.e. Greek, Roman forms of worship, etc).?

[maskedsaiyan]

At the end of the day, God gave them a warning that didn’t come to pass if they ate the fruit. The serpent was correct.

[bengreen]

haha - changed their mind. Love it. Turning the screw.

[stormy]

At the end of the day we must realise that it is just a story and not literal history. This is like asking if Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny had a conversation.

[nlyThis]

It is unlikely that the sole created living being of Genesis 2 would have been capable of comprehending the notion of death. The LORD's "warning", it would appear, was intended not for Adam but for the fable's audience, setting the scene for what the author(s) knew was about to follow.

[BettyBloomfield]

One day with the Lord is as 1000 years, Adam lived close to that, so God never lies😊

[ThinkitThrough-kdfn]

God created man in His image. Man wants to be like God. God goes ballistic on Man. This seems odd to me. What if you told your favorite teacher in high school, "Gee, Mr. Johnson, I think you're great. When I grow up, I want to be just like you." He responds by having you expelled.
This is essentially the story of Genesis.

[ericjohnson]

Actually, we may in fact now have the real story of what happened in the garden, as told by the angel Solonia, who was the "voice in the garden." She was tasked with guarding the Tree of Life, and reminded Adam and Eve every month, when they ate the fruit from it, (keeping them immortal), not to stray from their assigned task of having over half a million descendants of the violet race before interbreeding with the evolutionary humans. They were biological uplifters, sent here to improve on the human genome which evolution had produced. But Adam and Eve were impatient to see results of their efforts and took matters into their own hands (or sex organs to be more precise). This got them demoted to mortal status and could no longer benefit from the tree's fruit.
She wrote a number of Papers in the Urantia Book, beginning with Paper 73.

[theoutspokenhumanist]

Taken literally, instead of as a metaphorical explanation of why human life is so hard, none of it makes sense.
A Christian tradition later arose that death itself entered the world through the original sin of Adam but Genesis 3.22 makes it clear that God was concerned about the pair eating from the other tree and becoming immortal, meaning they must already have been moral.
When we analyse Genesis, and the rest of the Torah/Pentateuch, we see that not only is it myth posing as history, it in fact cannot possibly have happened.

[yahdahjames]

Ezekiel 31:9 I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches: so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.