Kyle

Regarding the Tree of Knowledge story, I think the real issue there isn't about knowledge at all. It's not that ignorance is good or preferable. The point of that story was that Adam and Eve were trying to become "gods" themselves . The key there is that the temptation wasn't to know stuff, the temptation was that the knowing of the knowledge of good and evil would make them like gods, so God would be irrelevant to them. It's the temptation of power. The lesson isn't that ignorance is good (it's a particular kind of knowledge that the tree's fruit gave, not just knowledge in general), but rather that we are not God and that the lust for power is bad.

On a different perspective of purgatory (and this is a view from an academic, so take it with a grain of salt). I figure the point of life is to learn some things about ourselves, eachother, God, and our relationships between all those parties. So, I figure you could look at purgatory as a remedial class. You had a chance to learn what you needed to while in this life, but you kinda flubbed it up and didn't quite get it. Purgatory's a crash course in what you should have learned but didn't quite master. And, I suppose Hell would be for people who purposely skipped class. How's that for theology for a future prof? :)

The thing I don't understand about the arguments I hear that boil down to "but you're trying to be God, and that's bad" is that if God is perfect, what higher goal could one aspire to? For example, God is forgiving... should we not attempt to be as Godlike in this respect as possible? How, then, is it so trivially obvious (because it doesn't seem to be to me) that obtaining knowledge and power is a bad thing? I think the point of the story was more to demonstrate that disobeying God is a bad idea and has repercussions. But the details are what I'm trying to elucidate here... why "Knowledge"? And how could they be trying to be gods themselves when they were tempted into it by a snake and their own overactive curiosities? I don't think they were trying to achieve a goal like "make God irrelevant" as much as they were curious what the big deal with this goofy tree was.

I understand your point about purgatory. I wonder, how would purgatory do better at teaching such lessons? I don't know that burning in hellfire would make me think so much more highly of my fellow man. More, I think burning in hellfire would simply make me afraid of further punishment, which, and correct me if I'm wrong, is not the lesson God wants us to learn, right? This is what makes me think the Hindu idea of reincarnation makes so much more sense in this regard: what more effective place to learn the lessons of life than right here?

So, you know how the old adage "money is the root of all evil" gets bandied around? But that's really a shortening of "the love of money is the root of all evil". I think in one respect, we're having a similar issue here. I think it's really important to distinguish between the lust or love of x and the thing itself. Knowledge is good, loving knowledge (in the totally non-trivial sense. We all (at least the academics of us) talk about "loving" learning, knowledge, etc. but that's not the kind of "love" I mean here. I mean the all consuming passion for something that's selfish or focused inward) is not good. So, for instance, I think in the Adam and Eve story (and people can certainly disagree about this), the goal of eating the fruit was not to become better people or learn more or help eachother, but to usurp God's power/role/whatnot.

So, the lesson here isn't to not try to be like God. We should strive to be as much like God as we can. However, we need to realize that however much we succeed in this endeavor, we aren't God himself.

"Humility" is a word that's definitely not in vogue these days, but it's really the key. Once we loose sight that we aren't God, and that we aren't perfect (a loss of humility), we cannot move closer to God. In fact, at that point, we're shooting ourselves in the foot and making negative progress.

In a trivial way, it's sort of like going to a class and thinking you know everything. You cut off your option of learning in that class of from the professor/classmates. This is absolutely destructive to learning.

Similarly, if you've decided that there's no difference between you and God (i.e. the knowledge of good and evil), then you've ceased to realize that you have a ways to go before you are really like God. I think the general idea is to strive for perfection while knowing that you will never reach it on your own. That's another place humility comes in. We can never achieve perfection on our own -- we need God's help. Without humility, you can't achieve perfection because without humility, you can't ask for help.

Now, whether the point of the story of Adam and Eve, I don't know. And I'm sure the knowledge of good and evil is key as opposed to knowledge of say, how prime numbers work. And I think the importance of the knowledge of good and evil is important for a couple reasons. Like every good story, there are a lot of different things that can be learned from it -- i.e. a discussion of free will, a discussion of the nature of temptation, etc. The way I'm thinking of it, as a becoming-God-thing, it's important because that was one key, obvious difference between God and the pre-fruit Adam and Eve.

As for purgatory, I don't particularly think that burning in hell fire would do much either, but the reality is that we have no idea what purgatory is or how it is set up. Do you just sit around in agony for a while? Do you have homework to do? Who knows, but it's kind of not important. You do good because it's the right thing to do, not because you're going to get smacked for not doing good. I'd even go so far as to say that purgatory is an artificial construct. I don't really know where it came from, but it doesn't show up in the bible anywhere. I could be wrong, but I guess I'll find out eventually. :)