Anyone else struck by the parallels between Adam & Eve cast out of the garden and climate change?

[mahina]

It hit me like a ton of bricks.

[cynatnite]

1. Um...nope...

What are they?

[Dhalgren]

2. Most fairy tales contain universal themes and can be

applied to many situations. That's one of the reasons fairy tales are so great. Another one that is applicable is the Cherokee fairy tale about the eagle and the bear who tried to steal the sun. :hi:

[mahina]

3. Jospeph Campbell's work on mythology makes your point

while respecting the world's religions and cultures.

I especially appreciate the Hero's Quest, the story told a thousand times. Right now it feels like we are in the heart of darkness.

[DCKit]

5. The Russians and Americans are going to monopolize solar power?

We are screwn.

[Dhalgren]

24. Oooo...good one!

I didn't even see that! And, yes, we are screwn...

[theboss]

4. Is GM the serpent?

I'm kind of lost on this one.

[mahina]

6. I was thinking that biting the apple of knowledge (say fossil fuel burning tech)

had us cast out of the garden.

I bet it was a GMO apple, dammit.

[ColbertWatcher]

21. I think it has something to do with getting naked. n/t

[Bluenorthwest]

26. In the story, they are already naked

The thing is that they realize they are naked. Consiouness of the self.

[lurky]

7. Noah's flood seems closer to me,

but we all have our own interpretations.

[Wizard777]

11. God told Noah the next time he destorys the earth it will be by fire.

Global warming? Either way. Look out here we come.

[Wizard777]

8. That's interesting. The climate on mars is the result of global warming there.

So would you place the Garden of Eden on Mars? If it were then eden became Mars which is the Roman God of War. Then tie in, "war was made in Heaven." It just gets even more interesting.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. You're thinking of Venus.

[Wizard777]

19. No it's Mars.

Global warming hits Mars too: study

[SoCalDem]

9. nope.. Adam & eve was a story made up by a bunch of drunken medieval monks

after sampling their wares in the hot sun all day long :)

[damntexdem]

10. No -- because they still had someplace else to GO.

We've just got this world and will live or die with it.

[Uncle Joe]

12. The Power of Myth was most excellent.

It was from that PBS broadcast of Bill Moyers interviews of the late Professor Joseph Campbell and the finding of the book of the same title in my late mother's library, after the fact, that I came to view Al Gore as the modern day Prometheus Myth analogy.

Thanks for the thread, mahina.

[Beregond2]

13. For me,

the Eden story is a parable about the price humanity paid when it achieved self-consciousness. The ability to reason carries with it a profound separation from nature, from intuition, from "the will of God" if you will. All of which is symbolized by our expulsion from the Garden, and our condemnation to till the earth for our food. You could say that all of history since is a continuation of our increasing separation from nature, culminating in the destruction of our environment. So yes, I certainly do see a parallel.

An interesting point suggested in "The Dragons of Eden" by Carl Sagan, is that abstract thought is a function of the frontal cortex, which made human heads much bigger, and greatly increased the pain of childbirth; just as happens in Genesis, as one of the punishments for eating of the Tree of Knowledge.

These "fairy tales" can be pretty profound!

[kestrel91316]

14. Uh, no? Is this a trick question?

[shain from kane]

15. What about Adam and Steve? What effect does global warming have on them?

[Xithras]

17. There's a growing belief that the Garden story was a myth based on an echo of a real event.

Flaming sword myths aside, there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that the Persian Gulf was a fairly idyllic river valley shortly after the end of the last ice age. Many rivers flowed into it, the ground would have been incredibly fertile, game would have been abundant both in the valley and in the grasslands that occupied the now-desert areas surrounding it. Archaeology has already established that agriculture first arose during this period.

So what happened? The seas rose incredibly quickly as the ice sheets melted up north, and the fairly flat valley would have gone from idyllic to flooded in under a lifetime. For the people living there (and there is no doubt that people were living there), it's easy to see how it could have carried on as a legend about a lost paradise, forever stolen from them. Even the flaming sword bit may be a reference to the conversion of the once productive Arabian grasslands to the harsh desert we see today.

There's another interesting theory that posits that even the Adam/Eve story may have some basis in historical fact. Adam may not have been a man, but rather a city. One of the first cities founded by the proto-Aramaic peoples of that region. Eve, the "woman" created from his rib, may have been a second city founded when some of the first cities inhabitants left. Cane and Abel, similarly, may be a parable based on a historical echo of the conflict between the rise of sedentary farmers at the end of the last ice age, and herders who were upset at increasingly finding their best grazing lands converted to farms. It may be faint legendary echo of one of humanities first wars.

So yeah, I guess I could find a few parallels.

[mahina]

29. Thanks for the interesting response.

Based on the other responses here, either I was not communicating completely, or DUers are not as smart as I thought. The part I left unstated is that we are about to be kicked out of Eden.
Anyways, thank you, very interesting!

[crikkett]

18. I'm not. Adam & Eve were tossed out b/c of simple disobedience

and back then God walked among them, plainly seen.

[Blue-Jay]

20. .

[Pastiche423]

22. Nope

One of them is a myth and the other is not.

[lonestarnot]

23. Wha?

:think: :hurts:

[spanone]

25. no

[natrat]

27. kind of but the industrial revolution started this process way back then, this just the endgame

[Solly Mack]

28. Pass that bong and I might

[Marie26]

30. Huh, never thought of it that way before. nt