Christianity & The Battle of the Sexes...?

[rusmeister]

Getting down to the wire in responding to thoughts. I've never seen a week like this past one for lots of people with time on their hands. I do this mainly when I'm at home guarding the fort - something I do a lot in the summer.

But saying that you haven't thought something through to the end is not an insult. It is an opinion of what is seen to be fact that does NOT aim to humiliate you.

It is an opinion of what is believed to be fact. You have not seen it to be fact. You have not seen that despair is the only endpoint of what I believe. You have not even seen verification of your own worldview, much less that mine is false. You have decided to believe that a hugely complex, but unverifiable, worldview is fact, because you like the words you've heard and read. They resonate in you. And that's fine. That's how I arrived at my worldview.

But then you use that belief as a simple litmus test for fact. Not even merely for truth, but for fact. Whatever disagrees with your worldview, simply because it disagrees with your worldview, is, by definition, false, and inaccurate. Physical evidence? Doesn't count if it disagrees with my worldview. First-hand witnesses? Insane if they disagree with my worldview.

(Spock's voice) One does not "see" a chain of reason with one's eyes, and it is not logical to demand that they must for the chain to be valid.

Perhaps a difference in how we see things is what I see to be the inordinate value you place on facts vs truth. A fact can be a useful thing - it can be understood rightly - but very often is also understood wrongly. An enormous problem with our understandings of the world is that we only know certain facts, and more importantly, we interpret these facts in a certain way, based on whatever our hermeneutic is. So truth - or truth as we perceive it - really does drive our understanding of facts. I've recently expounded on how I can agree with many facts in 19th and 20th century history, regarding women, for example, and have come to a radically different conclusion about those facts based on a completely different interpretation. So most people speak of the exploitation of women by men. I have come to the conclusion that that view of women in history is by-and-large mistaken - that it is much more the exploitation of the poor by the rich - and the latter are only too happy if we mistake it for a "war of the sexes". Our anger is thereby diverted from the real causes of injustice to women (AND to men). So we can both agree that "Susan B Anthony (or Margaret Sanger) did thus and so". We are in possession of a common fact. But our interpretation of the fact varies dramatically, and so we see things differently. So speaking of facts aside from how they are interpreted is now meaningless to me.

Then there are the thousands of facts left out of these issues. If the traditional historical portrayals as we find in myth, legends and folk tales, are left out of the picture, then we have a problem of excluded facts. Conversely, certain facts may get much more emphasis than they deserve, as I am now sure is the case with women's suffrage. If the vote has been made powerless - and the only real power is that which can affect big money and power, then the extension of the franchise is immaterial. And yet it is a banner event in our history books because the vote is assumed to have real power.

So we have exaggeration of unimportant facts, exclusion of important facts, and their ultimate interpretation that all make the fact less valuable as a determiner of absolute truth on its own, as you seem to feel.

So I would not deny physical evidence and first-hand witnesses that counter my worldview. I would suggest that the interpretation they place on their facts is wrong. They have, in one way or another, misunderstood their facts. If there IS one absolute truth about the origin of man, his nature and purpose in life, etc, then people who disagree with it must, logically, be wrong in one of these ways - they MUST have misunderstood what they thought they knew.

Since we are encouraged to do daily Bible readings, and the Bible is read extensively at every service, and the troparions and kontakions chock-full of Scripture, we get hit with it left, right and center.

And yet, you never read this part - the actual description of one of the cornerstones of your faith, the Fall. Or if you did, you didn't remember it as we were talking about it until I posted that image of the different translations. You certainly hadn't thought about it. You even said it to Fr John Matusiak:
"something that I am sure is not the case and that must have been discussed a thousand times over Church history."
How can you be telling me to put effort into understanding your worldview, which I have no reason to believe is accurate, when you haven't looked into one of its cornerstones??

Fist - I've read the part - the spin you put on it had not occurred to me. (Where exactly the cornerstones are is also a matter for discussion.) I have NOT thoroughly studied every nook and cranny of the Bible, even though I have read most of it. I focus on some parts more than others, both because I believe them to be more important than others, and my Tradition confirms me in this. I freely admit to not having personally thought of every possible question you might raise. I only say that when these questions come up, I DO find satisfactory answers from somewhere in Tradition. There are too many for me to name. "Call no man "father"" is just one of 500 questions that I have seriously pursued. Some people take your "plain reading" and infer that we should never call a priest "father" - proof to them, that Catholics and people like those Greeks with beards... uh, orthodontists or something like that - are all bad and wicked. And yet I have found the answer in Tradition to be better than the understanding that questioned it. And that's what I have demonstrated, to my own satisfaction at least, to you. You have a question, I ask, and after a little technical confusion I get a bunch of stuff from the Church fathers on it, proving my original point.

That's not "proof" on its own that the answers are true, but there ARE answers in this huge Tradition. At CCEL, www.ccel.org/ , for example, they have a whole library, of which I have hardly scratched the surface.

[rusmeister]

Your thinking is pretty good, Foul. And even if it wasn't, I wouldn't bother you about it. I'm not concerned with talking you out of your beliefs. And I'm not looking to embrace them. As I've said, I think Conversations With God is a beautiful, wise, consistent view of Christianity, and religion in general. But that doesn't mean I believe it is truly the way things are. I just take what I can from it. Which is what I do with anything. I'm only going at rus because he's always saying my worldview is impossible to embrace by a correct-thinking person who thinks it through. How can he be positive that the Church's answers to this question are correct when he doesn't know what those answers are? When he never even asked the question?? He has never thought about some pretty tough questions about his faith, yet he's telling me he's thought, and knows, more about mine than I have.

CwG has absolutely nothing with the thing that existed for 2,000 years; it is a purely modern take on it that is completely divorced from what all Christians have always agreed on. Just because someone slaps a label on it doesn't mean it really represents the thing in any coherent way that intelligent people could agree on. I can be pretty inclusive a lot of the time on other forms of the Christian faith, but it has to be that which Christians have agreed on throughout space and time. If it's something invented in only the last few decades, and contradicts that witness across space and time, then it ain't Christian. It may be a comforting way for you to imagine God, but it ain't Christianity.

I think I've already answered the rest. I've thought about quite a bit. But there's too much for any one person to think about. Expecting me to be the complete answer-man for a thing so much older than me is just plain unreasonable.

I may not know details about what you think - but I CAN comment on what you HAVE expressed, and have definite ideas about THAT. THAT is what I think I am more right than you are on, and think that I HAVE thought those particular things through further than you have. That doesn't require me to know everything that goes in in your head, and I don't pretend to.

[Vraith]

So I would not deny physical evidence and first-hand witnesses that counter my worldview. I would suggest that the interpretation they place on their facts is wrong. They have, in one way or another, misunderstood their facts. If there IS one absolute truth about the origin of man, his nature and purpose in life, etc, then people who disagree with it must, logically, be wrong in one of these ways - they MUST have misunderstood what they thought they knew.

But you can't make that statement, and pretend each part follows logically to the next, and in only one way.
I'm sure there is exactly one absolute truth about the origin of humans. But the only way you can then say there's one absolute human nature is by generalizing very broadly and excluding as "unnatural" or "sins" all those things that don't fit the generalization.
One origin does NOT necessarily imply one overarching "nature" which also does NOT necessarily imply one grand "purpose."
It's as full of false dichotomies, categorizations, and unwarranted exclusions as, for instance, "17th Century Literature." You can't build/justify the architecture of the field without setting aside that which doesn't fit. If you take everything into account, then all boundaries vanish except the completely useless fact that it was all written during those years.

[rusmeister]

So I would not deny physical evidence and first-hand witnesses that counter my worldview. I would suggest that the interpretation they place on their facts is wrong. They have, in one way or another, misunderstood their facts. If there IS one absolute truth about the origin of man, his nature and purpose in life, etc, then people who disagree with it must, logically, be wrong in one of these ways - they MUST have misunderstood what they thought they knew.

But you can't make that statement, and pretend each part follows logically to the next, and in only one way.

Uh, yes I can.

I'm sure there is exactly one absolute truth about the origin of humans.
But the only way you can then say there's one absolute human nature is by generalizing very broadly and excluding as "unnatural" or "sins" all those things that don't fit the generalization.

No it is not the only way. There ARE broad generalizations and then there are specific situations. You assume my position, both in assuming that it only "generalizes broadly" and then that it "excludes as unnatural or sins things that don't fit that generalization. Since I don't see it as doing that, I can't agree with your statement. I don't decide what is sin at all. I LEARN what sin is.

One origin does NOT necessarily imply one overarching "nature" which also does NOT necessarily imply one grand "purpose."

Of course. But one step at a time.

It's as full of false dichotomies, categorizations, and unwarranted exclusions as, for instance, "17th Century Literature." You can't build/justify the architecture of the field without setting aside that which doesn't fit. If you take everything into account, then all boundaries vanish except the completely useless fact that it was all written during those years.

Again, you speak of this "setting aside what doesn't fit". It is rather the other way around. My own faith allows EVERYTHING except that which is either specifically or logically forbidden. It is extremely liberal; you see it is limiting, foreboding, and threatening - a strange thing to me. I just smoked part of a pipe. I also got angry at my younger son for crafty behavior. Smoking the pipe is not forbidden. Letting anger control me is.
The analogy I would use would be of children - who do not fully understand what all things are for or what dangers may be in doing certain things. Some things may not be allowed at some times that may be allowed at others. Others are always forbidden. Other things not mentioned are generally allowed. And that is what we are, in a sense - children. We do NOT understand the mystery of sex - its tremendous creative power and metaphysical meaning - we only understand some biological, a very few mental and even fewer spiritual things about the divide between the sexes and the sex act. And yet, like children who see candy, we want all of the sweets now - and this is far more dangerous than candy. So it is restricted - allowed only under tightly controlled circumstances. Now we do actually hope to grow up some day - we do not propose to remain children. But in our fallen state, this ain't going to happen - we have to do something unpleasant first - and that is to die.

So I agree with your idea about 17th century lit. I don't agree that you apply it properly in understanding what sin is to the Orthodox Christian.
Because I don't want to keep going on about that, I have something to offer y'all, and I will do so in a separate thread in the Close. Like, right now. Check it out!

[Fist and Faith]

I think if two 17 year olds have sex, we should throw them both in jail for pedophilia.


There's a difference between not approving of something and forbidding it. I don't approve of homosexual activity between men. Yuck! That's my personal preferences talking. Could be any homosexual feels the same about heterosexual activities. But forbidding it is another thing entirely. I don't approve of forbidding people to do things that don't cause harm to others. That's also my personal preference. Others do approve of forbidding people to do things that don't cause harm to others.

Since we don't even agree on whether it causes harm to others, it's rather useless to preach that except to your own choir.

And yet, you continue to preach your thing, as surely as I preach mine. And I will continue to do so until you give me reason to believe homosexuality or homosexual behavior is harmful.

[Fist and Faith]

rus, you and I both look at the same facts, and find a different truth behind them all. Neither of us can demonstrate that our worldview is accurate. You cannot prove the existence of God. I can't prove no creator exists or existed. (Nor do I claim there was no creator. I simply don't believe there was one, because I haven't seen any evidence or reason to believe there was one.)

Yes, it is possible that only one of our worldviews can be right. Either there is a God who did X, Y, and Z, and who wants/expects/demands certain things from us; or there was no creator.

But it is also possible that there we were created, and the creator wants us all to find the worldview that best fits our unique combinations of fears, needs, desires, etc, and allows us to live with the most happiness and contentment. You see, a creator and my worldview are not mutually exclusive. It's just that your creator and my worldview are mutually exclusive.

Where we are different is in this: I do not deny what you say you believe, and have thought and felt. OTOH, you say it is not possible that I have thought and feel what I say I have. Your worldview requires that you make such an outrageously arrogant stand on such a thing. Your worldview cannot stand in the face of what actually is - that is, the existence of me. So it denies that I exist. That is, it denies that I can possibly have thought and feel what I have.

And it's not like I'm saying my worldview allows me to sprout wings and jump off of skyscrapers. That's easily proven, one way or the other. No, I'm talking about how I psychologically feel about the nature of existence. To say it is impossible to think about it as thoroughly as you have and not despair is an impossible a thing for you to know. And the acceptance of such a perfect understanding of all things is what prevents you from understanding so very much of reality - and from understanding what arrogance is.

[Fist and Faith]

As for specifics, I didn't "put a spin" on anything. The Bible says that God punished them for having disobeyed him, and, because they now knew Good and Evil, he would not allow them to live forever. That's not my "interpretation" of it; that's what it says. The "spin" is in saying that those words mean gaining the knowledge of Good and Evil separated us from God, in some sort of natural way. The author thought the best way to explain what happened was to say God punished them, and would not allow them to live forever.

And, again, this couldn't have been written by any human eye-witness. What is the source of these words?

Now, if you want, you can talk about understanding things in light of the time they were written. How would the culture that these words were first given to have understood the words?

And, seriously, the Fall is not one of the cornerstones of your faith?

[rusmeister]

rus, you and I both look at the same facts, and find a different truth behind them all. Neither of us can demonstrate that our worldview is accurate. You cannot prove the existence of God. I can't prove no creator exists or existed. (Nor do I claim there was no creator. I simply don't believe there was one, because I haven't seen any evidence or reason to believe there was one.)

Yes, it is possible that only one of our worldviews can be right. Either there is a God who did X, Y, and Z, and who wants/expects/demands certain things from us; or there was no creator.

But it is also possible that there we were created, and the creator wants us all to find the worldview that best fits our unique combinations of fears, needs, desires, etc, and allows us to live with the most happiness and contentment. You see, a creator and my worldview are not mutually exclusive. It's just that your creator and my worldview are mutually exclusive.

Where we are different is in this: I do not deny what you say you believe, and have thought and felt. OTOH, you say it is not possible that I have thought and feel what I say I have. Your worldview requires that you make such an outrageously arrogant stand on such a thing. Your worldview cannot stand in the face of what actually is - that is, the existence of me. So it denies that I exist. That is, it denies that I can possibly have thought and feel what I have.

And it's not like I'm saying my worldview allows me to sprout wings and jump off of skyscrapers. That's easily proven, one way or the other. No, I'm talking about how I psychologically feel about the nature of existence. To say it is impossible to think about it as thoroughly as you have and not despair is an impossible a thing for you to know. And the acceptance of such a perfect understanding of all things is what prevents you from understanding so very much of reality - and from understanding what arrogance is.

1) I do NOT propose, and never have, to prove the existence of God. My primary goal has been to refute the idea that faith-based views are irrational, while irreligious ones are somehow more rational.
2) I do NOT deny what you say you believe, and have thought and felt. I absolutely believe that you have thought and felt those things. I take your word for it. I say that your feelings are misled, and thoughts mistaken. That you really DON'T think through the implications of meaninglessness. That your thought stops one step short.

And yes, you DO interpret it in a certain way. I DO see a different interpretation of the SAME passage (and always have). It's like saying that someone saying putting a dog to sleep merely means putting it to bed for the night, because that's what "putting to sleep" means. UNLESS you know another meaning of "putting to sleep".
If a Fallen man should live forever, it would be like all the nightmarish stories and myths, of getting old, feeble and unable to die. Death is a gift in that sense - it is the last Enemy, but it is also a mercy. It puts a lid on evil. However wicked a person may become, they must die, and their wickedness must end. The extent to which they can create hell for themselves is limited. It really never occurred to me to think of it as "Let us kill man" as you proposed.
Since all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, I have no trouble grasping that the author - be it Moses or not - could be told the story by God. if we have accepted the idea of supernatural intervention, what is so hard about this?
Of course the Fall is a cornerstone. But your interpretation won't necessarily occur to someone who understands the implications of the Fall. See the "put to sleep" analogy above. It's literal - but to people privy to the second meaning, the first meaning will not be seriously entertained.

[Fist and Faith]

1) I do NOT propose, and never have, to prove the existence of God. My primary goal has been to refute the idea that faith-based views are irrational, while irreligious ones are somehow more rational.
2) I do NOT deny what you say you believe, and have thought and felt. I absolutely believe that you have thought and felt those things. I take your word for it. I say that your feelings are misled, and thoughts mistaken. That you really DON'T think through the implications of meaninglessness. That your thought stops one step short.

You are telling me what I have thought. Or, rather, you are telling me what I have not thought. Based on the only way you can possibly feel about the subject, you are deciding that everybody else must feel the same way. And anyone who does not is either not sane, or has not actually thought about it as deeply as you have. Chains of thought like this are the proof that your worldview is not rational. (Not that this proves all faith-based views are necessarily irrational.)

And yes, you DO interpret it in a certain way. I DO see a different interpretation of the SAME passage (and always have). It's like saying that someone saying putting a dog to sleep merely means putting it to bed for the night, because that's what "putting to sleep" means. UNLESS you know another meaning of "putting to sleep".
If a Fallen man should live forever, it would be like all the nightmarish stories and myths, of getting old, feeble and unable to die. Death is a gift in that sense - it is the last Enemy, but it is also a mercy. It puts a lid on evil. However wicked a person may become, they must die, and their wickedness must end. The extent to which they can create hell for themselves is limited. It really never occurred to me to think of it as "Let us kill man" as you proposed.
Since all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, I have no trouble grasping that the author - be it Moses or not - could be told the story by God. if we have accepted the idea of supernatural intervention, what is so hard about this?
Of course the Fall is a cornerstone. But your interpretation won't necessarily occur to someone who understands the implications of the Fall. See the "put to sleep" analogy above. It's literal - but to people privy to the second meaning, the first meaning will not be seriously entertained.

There is not a single word in those passages that so much as suggests God punished them and prevented them from eating from the Tree of Life for the reason you say. Where does it say something like that?

(Again, if any Christians are offended by what I'm saying, there is no need. I take some of the Bible's beauty and wisdom, without believing any of the supernatural, or even most of the non-supernatural, aspects of it. IMO, there is no problem with anybody who does believe in various divine aspects of the Bible not believing every passage must be fit into a unified whole. It's entirely possible to believe all the writings are the attempts of different people to figure out some aspect of faith, but that it does not all necessarily need to apply to you. rus, however, believes otherwise. And he claims that his beliefs are logical and well-considered. For him, these things do need to be reconciled. But he's doing a sloppy job of it. Which would be his own darned business, and I wouldn't comment, if he hadn't told me that he's thought through and understands my worldview better than I do about a hundred times in the last several years.)

[rusmeister]

1) I do NOT propose, and never have, to prove the existence of God. My primary goal has been to refute the idea that faith-based views are irrational, while irreligious ones are somehow more rational.
2) I do NOT deny what you say you believe, and have thought and felt. I absolutely believe that you have thought and felt those things. I take your word for it. I say that your feelings are misled, and thoughts mistaken. That you really DON'T think through the implications of meaninglessness. That your thought stops one step short.

You are telling me what I have not thought. Based on the only way you can possibly feel about the subject, you are deciding that everybody else must feel the same way. And anyone who does not is either not sane, or has not actually thought about it as deeply as you have. Chains of thought like this are the proof that your worldview is not rational. (Not that this proves all faith-based views are necessarily irrational.)

Yes, I am telling you what you have not thought. From there you jump to painting my view as a mere feeling, and since it is a feeling (according to you) it is therefore irrational. Not proof. If a chain of reasoning does in fact lead to the conclusion of meaninglessness; that it must be transcendent by nature, then to agree all along the way and stop at the last step because you (self-contradictorily) ascribe meaning to the here and now (that WILL become meaningless and is therefore NOT transcendent) - then, yeah, there IS that one last conclusion that your mind has stopped short of - willfully, it seems, and I can imagine reasons why it would do so.

I do NOT admit that a person with a disability is "differently abled" - he is disabled, and must learn to live with the disability. If he is blind or deaf, he must learn to accept descriptions from others. If the condition is from birth, so much the more difficult - some things simply cannot be transmitted - color, or the beauty of a violin. Similarly, I do NOT admit that your vision of things is a true alternative.

But this will only lead to a repeating of old arguments. We've already been there. We disagree with no hope of reconciliation, and only a cataclysmic event in our personal lives could shake one or the other of us to see things differently. I see it - you don't (or won't - I won't debate the difference). You see different 'truths' the purpose of which are evidently to make people happy. (And whose purpose, then is it?)

And yes, you DO interpret it in a certain way. I DO see a different interpretation of the SAME passage (and always have). It's like saying that someone saying putting a dog to sleep merely means putting it to bed for the night, because that's what "putting to sleep" means. UNLESS you know another meaning of "putting to sleep".
If a Fallen man should live forever, it would be like all the nightmarish stories and myths, of getting old, feeble and unable to die. Death is a gift in that sense - it is the last Enemy, but it is also a mercy. It puts a lid on evil. However wicked a person may become, they must die, and their wickedness must end. The extent to which they can create hell for themselves is limited. It really never occurred to me to think of it as "Let us kill man" as you proposed.
Since all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, I have no trouble grasping that the author - be it Moses or not - could be told the story by God. if we have accepted the idea of supernatural intervention, what is so hard about this?
Of course the Fall is a cornerstone. But your interpretation won't necessarily occur to someone who understands the implications of the Fall. See the "put to sleep" analogy above. It's literal - but to people privy to the second meaning, the first meaning will not be seriously entertained.

There is not a single word in those passages that so much as suggests God punished them and prevented them from eating from the Tree of Life for the reason you say. Where does it say something like that?

(Again, if any Christians are offended by what I'm saying, there is no need. I take some of the Bible's beauty and wisdom, without believing any of the supernatural, or even most of the non-supernatural, aspects of it. IMO, there is no problem with anybody who does believe in various divine aspects of the Bible not believing every passage must be fit into a unified whole. It's entirely possible to believe all the writings are the attempts of different people to figure out some aspect of faith, but that it does not all necessarily need to apply to you. rus, however, believes otherwise. And he claims that his beliefs are logical and well-considered. For him, these things do need to be reconciled. But he's doing a sloppy job of it. Which would be his own darned business, and I wouldn't comment, if he hadn't told me that he's thought through and understands my worldview better than I do about a hundred times in the last several years.)

Again, you say, "A single word in those passages". Why should the author please your desire for a full explanation to your satisfaction of the complete meaning of his words? An author writes what he writes. he may or may not take audience knowledge for granted. He is compelled, or led, or driven to write something. Not something that pleases a literary critic of the future.

I agree that Christians need not take offense - you are saying that they are wrong, not necessarily imbeciles, after all. (But you ARE saying they are wrong.)
As to "doing a sloppy job of it":
We are speaking not only of a complex library formed over more than a thousand years, but of a Tradition that extended for two more beyond that. No (intelligent) Christian claims to fully understand all of it, or to have thought of every single aspect of this enormous description of life, the universe, and everything, so to speak, let alonethink of every question that could possibly asked. But the (reasonable) questions HAVE been asked, and answered before, and so I have to apply to the sources of Christian doctrine:
Sources of Christian Doctrine
Revelation
Tradition
Bible
The Liturgy
The Councils
The Fathers
The Saints
Canons
Church Art
www.oca.org/OCIndex-TOC.asp?SID=2&book= ... 20Doctrine

Each one of these things is a branch that one could spend a lifetime studying. It might come as a surprise to you that iconography is an actual specialty - that a person, merely by virtue of being an artist, is not thereby an iconographer and cannot in fact write (the correct verb) icons until they learn at least the basics of iconography. I know only a little of those basics - enough to know that the knowledge base is huge.

Even a hierarch who has spent his life in these things does not know everything about everything. I haven't even been to seminary. I have to ask - all the time. Why you expect me to have grasped all of these things in their totality (when you haven't even looked) is beyond me. It's like expecting you (or a student of science) to have all answers on questions of science - any aspect of it, and any question I could possibly ask, at the ready, and if you don't, if you have to go do some more research, ask questions, wait...then you call it "sloppy". I'd say your expectations are completely out of proportion with what you are asking about.

[Fist and Faith]

Yes, I am telling you what you have not thought.

I know.

From there you jump to painting my view as a mere feeling, and since it is a feeling (according to you) it is therefore irrational. Not proof.

Your view of my worldview is from the outside. You cannot know what my worldview is from the inside. A simple think like asking:
There is no ultimate meaning. So how do I live the life I have while I have it?
is entirely different when viewed from within than from without. You don't know that, because you're not within. You're without. And the reason you're without is because you can't view it my way. The reason you're not a starting pitcher for the Yankees is not because you have chosen not to do that. It's because not everyone is capable of it. And not everyone is capable of viewing meaninglessness the way some of us do. Those people - people like you - are outside of the worldview. To claim to know more about it than I do, and, therefore, to know how much I've thought about it, is unimaginable arrogance. Yes, arrogance brought on by misunderstanding, by an actual inability to understand, but arrogance nonetheless.

If a chain of reasoning does in fact lead to the conclusion of meaninglessness...

Meaninglessness is not the conclusion of a chain of reasoning. Meaninglessness is simple observation. There must be reasons to conclude something other than what is observed. I have not heard of any such reasons.

The rest of that paragraph, having been based on your faulty premise (meaninglessness is the conclusion of a chain of reasoning) and your inability to view it from within is, not surprisingly, nonsense.

Again, you say, "A single word in those passages". Why should the author please your desire for a full explanation to your satisfaction of the complete meaning of his words? An author writes what he writes. he may or may not take audience knowledge for granted. He is compelled, or led, or driven to write something. Not something that pleases a literary critic of the future.

Indeed, the author wrote what he wrote. And what he wrote is: God punished us because Adam and Eve disobeyed him; and God denied us eternal life because we now have the knowledge of good and evil.

The first was the act of a vindictive bully. Pain in childbirth for women, hardship for men. That's all plain enough. That's what the author wrote.

The second? Fine, you want to say it should be interpreted through the words of a few thousand years worth of important church people, go ahead. But you're always saying we need to understand the people/culture/times that things were written, in order to understand what the writing truly means. So is that how the people who first received those words interpreted it? Show me the evidence of that. Show me that you're not interpreting things on a case-by-case basis by whichever standard best suits your desired outcome.