Setanta wrote:That whole dog and pony show in the "Garden of Eden" is a prime example. I refer to the exact description in the text, and not the spin doctor treatment the bible thumpers are always obliged to subject it to.
For what it's worth, here's my "non-bible thumper" interpretation of the whole Garden of Eden thing....
The tree of knowledge of good and evil is the key to the story, it's what the authors of that section wanted to observe about humanity.
Despite the fact that the people who wrote that section were thousands of years less advanced than we are in science, they apparently knew the true nature of humanity as a consciousness which had risen from a more primitive form.
I believe that the Garden story describes a point in natural history which must have occurred when humanity first acquired self awareness and the ability to apply Judgements to the world around us.
The Garden begins by representing the innocence of the purely animal though process (ignorance is bliss). Humans at one point in their history were like animals, and didn't apply judgements to actions, so no matter what happened in the world it wasn't good or evil because our minds didn't yet possess the ability to apply those thoughts.
But then at some point in human history our minds did acquire the ability to apply judgement to the world around us, and in essence, we ate the apple. Once that event occurred, the innocence and perfection of "the garden" was shattered forever, not because the garden was changed, but because we had changed. In acquiring the capacity for human thought, the bliss of ignorance was forever lost to us.
There are two sad aspects to this story. For one, humanity really had no choice about eating the apple or not. If we hadn't, then we would not be human, or at least, the thinking creatures that we are. And lastly, it appears that our primitive ancestors who wrote the bible, had observed something profound about the natural world (the birth of human thought), but the meaning of the story they wanted to tell has been lost right along with our appreciation of the wisdom and vision of the men who wrote it.