The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

[Anonymous]

I had a thought this morning about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Why would partaking of knowledge be a forbidden thing?

In fact, ‘knowledge’ of church history or other indelicate issues with the church causes me to be in the middle way. So I wondered if this partaking of the tree of knowledge was related to the church’s evident desire to supress real knowledge about history and fallibility of scriptures and the brethren. But, as I researched and thought about the topic, just the opposite seems to be the case. I wrote a blog on this, and I welcome comments.

I propose that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the really the mental schema intended to enslave the mind to dualistic thinking. Churches create and encourage a hierarchal mental schema (“Tree of Knowledge”) that is intended for us to know what is good and evil without having to think for ourselves. When church members accept a doctrine without thinking, pondering, praying, and sorting out the truth for themselves, they’re partaking of the fruit of the tree, which is delicious to the taste and very desirable, because it provides the comfort of certainty.

Take a ‘testimony glove’ for instance. In using this gimmick, a child can quickly learn the five things that s/he is supposed to say in a testimony. The result is that the child can say the s/he knows these five things. But does s/he know them? Does s/he believe them? Are they true? Is s/he justified in making the knowledge assertion? Absolutely not. Yet, the shortcut to knowledge is to say the words, have a positive experience because s/he said them, so the child affirms and locks the affirmations into the schema. Once the child accepts the basic mental paradigms about god, the church, to follow the prophet no matter what, then all future knowledge must fit within that paradigm in order to avoid ‘dissonance’.

So, by shielding children, having them go to classes that repeat the same affirmations, by home schooling, seminary, going to church schools, a mission, preparation for temple marriage, being so busy following the program, most TBM LDS (as well as members of other ‘one true churches’) tend to create a rock solid, iron-clad mental schema about the world, god, and the whole schmear. Good and Evil become extraordinarily well defined, such that any sensory input that is in harmony with the mental schema is ‘good’, and anything that is not in harmony with the schema is ‘evil’. Fundamentalist Christians will say that Darwin and Evolution are evil theories because they do not fit into the literalist viewpoint of the BIble. Likewise, any statement to the effect that “JS and BY spoke speculative things as if they were revealed doctrine” is evil, apostate thinking. If the prophet says that pornography is evil, and nudity is pornography, then a stamp with a raphael painting of the madonna and nude jesus is pornography, right? These things happen because people accept the schema, the doctrine of the church, without thinking. When the brethren speak, the thinking has been done.

In my blog, I equate partaking the fruit of this Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to the colloquial expression “Drinking the Kool-Aid” — meaning accepting the party line without questioning. Then it occured to me that origin of the “Drinking the Kool Aid” expression is exactly why partaking of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil results in death. Literally.

Forgive my rambling thoughts here — I would love to have your feedback on my thinking here…

[Anonymous]

Quote:

For in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

it seems to me, that perhaps exposure to knowledge may lead some to be lost, and that risk is not what God or the church wants to be responsible for, and so it is forbidden.

However, to learn and progress, at some point, we must choose for ourselves if we will take that risk, for the reward of understanding things at a greater level.

Eve set an example, while Adam was strictly obedient without doubting or thinking about things, Eve thought that it can be worth the risk, and is actually part of the plan to do such. But it is when I choose to take those steps, even if that means I may die, or be separated from God or the church to journey on my own, to gain knowledge that makes me more powerful.

The church cannot tell me to do that, but I can choose that, even if i must pass through sorrow to know the good. Separation from church for a time may actually lead to good things. Not receiving answers to my prayers for a time may push me out of the safety of Eden for a time to learn things in a new way. And if I approach it right, it may be pleasing to God in the end.

I find Adam and Eve a symbolic story that can apply to my life in many ways. The tree is another part of that symbolic meaning in my life.

[Anonymous]

Hmm, those are interesting thoughts. I have not really thought about that. Why was it forbidden, if it was part of the plan? More meditation on this is probably necessary, and may even help me (in some ways) with the Temple ceremony I just experienced a week ago.

At the top of my head, I was taught that it was a test to see which law of God, one wants to obey. Which law is more important. That may be verbatim what the church teaches, but to me it does make sense. Also it was forbidden, but they had a choice weather to partake of it, or not. Adam only heard that he would die it seems. And he didn’t want to die. Eve on the other hand, heard and reminded Adam that God commanded them to be fruitful and replenish the earth.

That is the top at the thought of my head. But I really do like your interpretations of it too. It may in fact represent a dichotomy thinking, that things are either Good, or they are either Evil. I think in our working to become like God, we are meant to come down to an earth, where we are presented with this dichotomy. It is pleasurable to be in the pursuit of knowledge of the good, but also with it, comes some things that are bad, because we can’t know Good (any level of it) without knowing bad (any level of that). I think at first Eve and Adam found out the fruit tasted sweet and pleasurable, but the after taste was sour, and hard to go through because they where thrown into the lone and dreary world to labor and have sorrow. But also immense joy. It was Eve, not Adam who declared that without pain they would never know joy. I think she in that sense probably was the one most capable of that considering she had labor and pain in way which Adam did not, by the bearing of children in this world. But that is another post. (An interesting related post to this).

:think:

[Anonymous]

wonderingcurrent wrote:

Hmm, those are interesting thoughts. I have not really thought about that. Why was it forbidden, if it was part of the plan? More meditation on this is probably necessary, and may even help me (in some ways) with the Temple ceremony I just experienced a week ago.

At the top of my head, I was taught that it was a test to see which law of God, one wants to obey. Which law is more important. That may be verbatim what the church teaches, but to me it does make sense. Also it was forbidden, but they had a choice weather to partake of it, or not. Adam only heard that he would die it seems. And he didn’t want to die. Eve on the other hand, heard and reminded Adam that God commanded them to be fruitful and replenish the earth.

That is the top at the thought of my head. But I really do like your interpretations of it too. It may in fact represent a dichotomy thinking, that things are either Good, or they are either Evil. I think in our working to become like God, we are meant to come down to an earth, where we are presented with this dichotomy. It is pleasurable to be in the pursuit of knowledge of the good, but also with it, comes some things that are bad, because we can’t know Good (any level of it) without knowing bad (any level of that). I think at first Eve and Adam found out the fruit tasted sweet and pleasurable, but the after taste was sour, and hard to go through because they where thrown into the lone and dreary world to labor and have sorrow. But also immense joy. It was Eve, not Adam who declared that without pain they would never know joy. I think she in that sense probably was the one most capable of that considering she had labor and pain in way which Adam did not, by the bearing of children in this world. But that is another post. (An interesting related post to this).

:think:

You really have good insight into what you’ve experienced. I like the way you’ve interpreted it.

many years ago, the endowment had an explanatory phrase in it saying, ‘this however is simply figurative so far as the man and woman are concerned.’ I think it important to keep that in mind as you experience the endowment.

There is deep symbolism here. My views may not be your views, and that’s entirely ok — in fact, whatever your view is, is as good as anyone else’s is — there is no standard defintion. However, at the same time, one’s own interpretation of the endowment is private to you. What is revealed to you in the temple through the spirit becomes your personal gift of understanding.

I’m looking at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in an alternative context — not really associated with the endowment, in which the promise is that Adam and Eve will have ‘knowledge’ as a result of partaking; not specifically limited to moral, ethical knowledge of good and evil. Therefore, the temple version of this story has it’s own definition to it, different than what I’m suggesting here, and very close to how you’re speaking of it in your post above.

very best regards.

[Anonymous]

I started writing this long post in response to wonderingcurrent’s post, but I don’t want to take away from her insight from her recent temple experience. I think there are many ways to interpret the garden of eden story, and the temple account has its own, specific purpose.

For this discussion, I am setting aside the standard interpretation of the events of the garden of eden, including that which one might get in the temple. The way I see it, the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” is the corpus of pre-defined knowledge we receive as members of the church defining all the things we are supposed to think and do. When we come into the church, we learn a set of standard things we’re supposed to know: knowledge about what to do and think (the good), and what not to do or think (the ‘evil’) (I’ll leave the bad to Lee Van Cleef and the ugly to Eli Wallach).

Knowledge has a certain structure: there may be ‘network structure’, which is that facts are related to other facts without regard to hierarchy. However, knowledge structured in the form of a hierarchy may defined as a ‘tree’ of knowledge. Think of the a tree as having a root, a trunk, branches, and so forth. Taxonomies are ‘trees of knowledge’.

But the tree in the garden of eden wasn’t the tree of ‘all knowledge’. It was a specific type of knowledge — knowledge of good an evil. A taxonomy of good and evil might be called ‘moral ethics’, or the like.

I love how standard interpretations of scripture always land on a very selective set of words, and forget the context or complete sentence. When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit, it was not a ‘tree of [general] knowledge’, it was a tree of specific knowledge: knowledge of good and evil. it was the revelation to them of pre-defined morality and ethics.

Shocking that god should forbid such a thing. There is no parallel in western thinking that god would want his children to be in ignorance. But there is a lot of discussion in eastern thinking about how the enlightened mind is non-dual. Advaita, in sanskrit, means ‘non-dual’, and there is a n entire body of knowledge that is not about ‘good and evil’, but rather, how to live a unified existence.

In Bhagavad Gita, there is a sloka as follows (and forgive the sanskrit, it’s the way it works best for me)

Bhagavad Gita 2:50 wrote:

Buddhiyukto jahatiha ubhe sukrta dushkrte

“the unified, enlightened mind sets aside both good works as well as evil works”

Likewise in daoist thinking, the noise of too much prejudicial knowledge prevents the mind from learning new things — thinking you know everything prevents you from knowing the Way, because you have already set your mind to it. Therefore, the ideal mind in philosophical daoism is ‘pu’, the uncarved block, the native, natural mind, uncluttered with predefined morality and knowledge.

Even in LDS and Christian thinking, humility is revered, meaning the ability to learn, to observe, to suspend judgment and appraise the situation as is.

Yet the challenge is that most people want to take the easy way out. They want to have a predefined set of facts, certainty of what is good and evil, what to accept and reject. If I have a predefined schema of knowledge that says “everything the brethren say in conference is the truth”, then I don’t have to think about it — it’s by definition true. By the same measure, everything an atheist says with respect to moralilty must therefore be evil, but atheist is BAD, is EVIL. To partake of this dualistic thinking is delicious to the taste, and very desirable, because I don’t have to think. I am safe following the prophet because I will never be led astray. When the brethren speak, the thinking has been done.

What I am suggesting is that partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the act of accepting dogma without thinking, and following its praxis without regard to consequence. It is the way of most religions and cults. And while it would be nice to think that if I’m aligned to the ‘one true church’, and if the church leadership is truly ‘infallible’, and the scriptures are ‘inerrant and infallible’, then following the praxis of such a tree of knowledge of good and evil might be a good thing.

but wait a minute. With the exception of Jesus Christ, every person on this earth who has ever lived on it is IMPERFECT. they make mistakes. There is no such thing as an infallible leader, because as a person they make mistakes. Scriptures are guides, created, presumably by inspiration through people who made mistakes. There is no such thing as infallibility, inerrancy, and ‘one true church’ that is 100% correct. Therefore the fundamental premise of partaking of any church’s tree of knowledge of good and evil will lead a person astray.

The moral of the story — and myths always had a moral, that’s the point of myth — is that partaking of the easy-way-out for knowledge leads to death. I use the story in my blog entry of what happened in Jonestown. Jim Jones had constructed a ‘tree of knowledge of good and evil’ for his followers, and eventually the fruit of his teachings was cyanide-laced kool-aid. Literally, partaking of his ‘fruit’ caused the death of the followers.

Likewise, to partake of the standard party line of a church without thinking leads to some very unhealthy behavior.

– Accepting that women are entirely dependent upon men for their salvation can lead to abusive marital situations.

– The condemnation of masturbation, an inherently natural act for most teenagers, as a sin next to murder, leads to serious emotional issues for a significant percentage of young men.

– The requirement to pay tithing as a regressive tax, with eternal penalties if you don’t can lead to unhealthy financial decisions, and does not consider the weightier matters of the law, to give to the poor.

– The 1972 letter of the first presidency making birth control essentially a selfish sin led to a situation where Utah County had the highest incidence rate of child abuse until the FP withdrew the teaching.

– How the doctrine of polygamy was instituted and how it was removed had disasterous affects on families and individuals in its history — a history largely hidden from view (yet my family has the scars from it).

– The discrimination against blacks with respect to the priesthood was a life-destroying practice, furthering a system of apartheid in the church. At a very minimum, blacks were denied the blessings of ‘eternal life’ by virtue of this policy for over 120 years.

– And finally, Proposition 8 inherently sanctifies the bigotry among members of the church against gays, lesbians, and others.

Given all this evidence, can anyone honestly say with absolute certainty, “If you follow the brethren you will never be led astray”?

Before my daughter came out as gay, we spent years on suicide watch with her. It was so common, that when I would tell my colleagues at work that she had tangible plans for her next suicide attempt, they thought I was callous. She really tried to be a faithful member, but the guilt associated with her feelings crushed her self esteem and her very existence. She was not a practicing gay through all this suicidal period. Once she came out, she has never felt the need to commit suicide since, and this is now 8 years later. We kept her close to the family, and tried to continue to have her incorporated into our church participation. Once the church took the position on Proposition 8, my daughter no longer identifies with our family in terms of religion or spirituality at all. The door is closed. hard.

So, when I say that partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil as defined by the Church leads to death, I have a tangible testimony of this, based upon vivid personal experience.

[Anonymous]

Wow, I liked that long reply. I love hinduism, and doaist way of thinking, it does certainly challenge my mind. I was thinking in terms of the Temple. But I can see now in that context why God would prohibit a dual way of thinking. Though doesn’t daoism teach in a certain context that all things have a dual nature, Yin has a bit of Yang and viceversa? I think so. At least that is the way I understood it when I learned of it in my world religions class, and what I have studied on my own.

maybe that is why we needed the fall. We needed to learn that there is Good and Evil, but sometimes there is gray and paradoxical oneness in the Universe. Maybe Adam and Eve fell not so much that they ate the fruit, but that they needed to learn how to live with in Paradox. Maybe we all do.

Intersting post. I am going to be thinking about it, and reading it for a while.

[Anonymous]

wonderingcurrent wrote:

Wow, I liked that long reply. I love hinduism, and doaist way of thinking, it does certainly challenge my mind. I was thinking in terms of the Temple. But I can see now in that context why God would prohibit a dual way of thinking. Though doesn’t daoism teach in a certain context that all things have a dual nature, Yin has a bit of Yang and viceversa? I think so. At least that is the way I understood it when I learned of it in my world religions class, and what I have studied on my own.

maybe that is why we needed the fall. We needed to learn that there is Good and Evil, but sometimes there is gray and paradoxical oneness in the Universe. Maybe Adam and Eve fell not so much that they ate the fruit, but that they needed to learn how to live with in Paradox. Maybe we all do.

Intersting post. I am going to be thinking about it, and reading it for a while.

daoism is nondual in that dao represents the unity of yin and yang. unity does not make everything the same, but rather, things work in absolute harmony.

[Anonymous]

I was reading some Jewish commentary on this, and some Jews think that the first sin was not taking the fruit, because they didn’t know what they were doing, it was lying to God about it afterwards… because then they did know they were committing evil.

[Anonymous]

I have nothing really to add. Just wanted to thank Wayfarer for taking the time to write all that out. That is a very deep and fascinating way to work the Garden of Eden story. I always say that paradox in scripture is a sure location marker for the richest veins of gold to mine.

[Author]

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