Where is the Garden?

[wil]

Study: Martian soil may contain life - CNN.com

I don't think this affects other religions as much as it does Abrahamic ones. Life on other planets.

We constantly have to adapt what has been said for millenia...heaven up there...oops not...hell down there...oops not...the garden of eden on earth...oops not.

I remember reading a Catholic Priest a number of years ago saying, "No one said the Garden was on Earth"....well I'm thinking we always did, as we didn't assume life was everywhere....back when it was written we didn't think anything was anywhere except what was where we were...stars stuck up on the firmament above separating the waters and all that...

Anywho, what does your religious leader have to say to the location of the Garden possibly being in some other galaxy or universe or are their multiple gardens??

[Gatekeeper]

My church has always assumed that Eden was on earth. To be honest, we haven't even explored other possibilities, lol.

[farhan]

Why does it have to be in material world anyways?

All praise be to God, lord of the worlds (Quran1:1)

[wil]

Originally Posted by Gatekeeper

My church has always assumed that Eden was on earth. To be honest, we haven't even explored other possibilities, lol.

Well, let's explore! As Jews, Christians and Muslims, for most of our existence, for most of us we deny some accidental creation of life, some cosmic impossibly improbable chance...and then the evolutionists come by with their theories and we (the royal we...most of us) give them the boot.

Well they've got a point so we come up with some intelligent design....but hmmm if'n there is life on another planet...was that one of them there impossibly improbable chances?? Especially when we talk hydrogen or methane based life....whee.

Of course we can discount it, they are just talking about microbes, some little germy thing...and the evidence is specious as it is...or is it...and if we continue to deny what do we do when we find planet x, inhabited....and what if we can communicate....can you imagine the other religions we'll have to deal with then???

So I say explore away, your Rabbi, Hazzan, Priest, Preacher, Reverend, Imam....what say they?

I so look forward to everyone's report!

[flowperson]

Hi wil:

It's a generally accepted theory these days among scientists who study such things that seeds of rudimentary life forms arrived here over the past few billion years in the materials that have constantly bombarded and rained down upon the Earth over that time period. It's still going on. Over the past few years there have been mysterious "red rains" over the south of India containing unknown and unexplained molecular materials. Outer space origins have been suggested.

Others believe that life sprang to reality around hot vents on the oceans' floors that cooked the chemical raw materials of life forms into molecular forms long ago that then eventually self-organized into evolving life forms.

In the 1950's chemists assembled chemical raw materials in test tubes and cooked up amino acids (the protein building blocks of life forms) in their labs. Current predictions are that totally artificial life forms will be created within the next five to ten years. I once worked with a brilliant gentleman who invented the first genetically manipulated and engineered life forms (psudemonas bacteria that are now used to ameliorate pollution problems since they were modified to eat pollutants under controlled conditions).

In other words, take yer pick. Life always finds a way to continue and persevere, with or without our interference. But then I don't think that's an accident, and that's something that all holy people are likely to agree upon.

Yes Farhan...Lord of the Worlds would be the best description.

flow....

[omner]

it's always sounded to me like a state of being more than a place... but i had a dream it was a place and in the dream there was a song singing that's in everything, like a musical sort of where all the parts of the place come together to sing this song, and everything is moving in time to the music. it was a happy dream and i call the place home, i don't know if it's eden but it certainly seemed like paradise to me and i was sad to wake up.

i can't really remember the words to the song but i'll do my best. i still remember the tune a little and maybe the words were something like this

let me tell you a story about a place i know
when you hear my story you may wish you could go
there too ... mmm hmmm ... it's true!

it's got a tree in the middle and the grass grows green
the water bubbles up and flows into a stream
for you ... and me ... and you!

high above the tree the sun shines clear
the birds fly down and whistle in your ear
in tune ... in june ... that soon!

all around the place the people go
singing this song that everybody knows
it's so nice ... to sing ... this song

there's a tree in the middle and the four winds blow
water bubbles up from deep below
into pools ... cool clear ... pools!

the stars come out and dance around
the moon shines down onto the living ground
silver moon ... in june ... what a moon

down by the river's where the children play
jumping in the water all night and day
it's nice ... so nice ... like a paradise

sometimes i wish i could be there now
but things i've got to do in the world and how
but then ... i'll be back ... with you!

until then keep this song within your heart
it'll remind you about the place where life did start
by the tree ... our tree ... you'll see.

well it doesn't really have a start or finish. it's just sort of a song that sings itself in this dream place. there's a name for that in greek, songs that sing themselves in dreams. i found a web page about it one time when i was looking. i forget the word. euphonia or something but i don't think that was it but something like that. i have a lot of these songs in dreams that sing themselves but this was one of the nicest, and i could feel the place it seems almost more real than the real world somehow.

anyway that's my idea : eden is a place like heaven, where our souls came from and go to and where we take our rest when we're done with the world. scripturally speaking, fair amount of support for this idea in the new testament.

i record some of my songs but this one hasn't made it up onto my web site yet, or i'd give a link. sorry.

[Dondi]

What if the Garden of Eden was a real place, but on another plane of existance? That Adam and Eve had an angelic quality about them in their innocent state yet with a physicality that prevented decay and disease and death? And that the Fall of Man was a translation of Adam and Eve from that reality into a crystalization into the world we see now? Maybe the Universe was formed in the manner as scientists describe, even allowing for the evolution of species (guided by the hand of God, of course) to the point that when Adam and Eve fell, they took on a fallen form in evolutionary prepared Homo Sapien bodies, and thus cursed with death and disease.

What if Eden is still in existence, guarded be the Cherubum, that is hidden from this plane of reality, until all things are restored and a new heaven and new earth are created to fit the same kind of reality of Eden (the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven)? Revelation decribes this New Jerusalem as having the Tree of Life, which was originally in the Garden, but sigificantly omits any mention of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone, but my head hurts now. So i think I'll stop for now.

[bob x]

Omner, your song sounds a little like "Big Rock-Candy Mountain"

[Thomas]

In Catholic Doctrine the Garden — and Genesis I-XI generally — is read as a mythical and metaphysical document.

Interestingly, René Guénon has parallelled the Hexaemeron (Days of Creation) with the Vedas, and found striking similarities in the processes involved ... this leads many to assume a meta-text from which the great religious texts derive ... which is like saying that one author must be responsible for all of the world's great literature, because of the common themes therein.

The commentaries of traditional exegetes reveal a profound metaphysical system conveyed according to cultural form – the Hebrew text being primarily phenomenological, and thus overtly mythical, the Christian reading being influenced by reflection in the Greek philosophical tradition ... so a tendency to the more speculative.

But I do think the Great Tradition 'creations' are essentially metacosmic — they treat of the Kosmos as a whole, or the process of becoming as such, not simply of this planet or that event ... so the argument of life on other planets is something of a sideshow and a distraction.

Similarly the exact 'location' of the garden is unimportant, its 'spiritual location' being the object of the sacred scribe. Thus Genesis I locates man in the created order, Genesis II deals with the nature of man as a spiritual being, and Genesis III with the appearance of the process of individuation and the loss of that Primordial Unity.

In fact the Greek Fathers are a lot more adventurous and speculative than often given credit for ... the proposed, among other things, the idea of a non-solid physicality, not spiritual, but not densely physical, a transmateriality? quantum matter?

The plasticity of time ... different forms of procreation/reproduction ... a cyclic state of being that did not involve 'death' as an end ... a 'day' that could last an aeon ... but no aliens, no technologies, no interstellar bacterium (as far as I am aware) ... and nor does the addition of such add anything to the discourse, rather just diverts it from its point.

The nature of being.

+++

Thomas

[Ahanu]

Actually, our church never really discusses it.

We constantly have to adapt what has been said for millenia...heaven up there...oops not...hell down there...oops not...the garden of eden on earth...oops not.

The garden of eden was a real location on the earth. The garden was wiped out by the historical flood. Everything that existed before the Flood was ‘deluged and destroyed.’ (2 Peter 3:5–6).

I remember reading a Catholic Priest a number of years ago saying, "No one said the Garden was on Earth"....well I'm thinking we always did, as we didn't assume life was everywhere....back when it was written we didn't think anything was anywhere except what was where we were...stars stuck up on the firmament above separating the waters and all that...

Eden is described in Genesis 2:10–14:

‘A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.’

We can take Christopher Columbus, with his belief in the medieval idea that fresh water might be coming from one of the rivers of Paradise, and know that he was influenced by Dante's world, for instance.

According to Joseph Campbell, "in attempting to show that there was somewhere on earth a garden of Paradise, Saint Thomas Auinas had declared, writing only two centuries and a half before Columbus sailed: 'The situation of Paradise is shut off from the habitable world by mountains or seas, or by some torrid region, which cannot be crossed; and so people who have written about topography make no mention of it.'" [Myths to Live by, p. 6] He clearly shows how the story of the garden of eden influenced the minds of people living hunreds of years ago.

There are lots of things I would like explained to me with no jargon.
For example, Revelation 2:7 "To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God." What? I honestly do not understand this. . .

[wil]

Originally Posted by Thabrownbaptist

Actually, our church never really discusses it.

The garden of eden was a real location on the earth. The garden was wiped out by the historical flood. Everything that existed before the Flood was ‘deluged and destroyed.’ (2 Peter 3:5–6).

Maybe it is time for discussion!

If life is found on Mars and it also looks like a moon of Saturn, and surely before long planets outside our solar system... how did it get there? Of course we can always hang our hat on the "In G!d all things are possible" but that really simply is like 'do as I say not as I do'...surely our Father has a better answer than that!

Yes Dondi, would your contemplation fall into the multiverse theory?

Being eternally literal is perceived as limiting to those outside of said system but so freeing to those inside...the answer is always open book!

[Dondi]

Yes Dondi, would your contemplation fall into the multiverse theory?

Not necessarily. Maybe it is an interdimensional thing. I don't think you have to believe in multiverses for this. There is a lot of string theory stuff out there that implies up to 10 dimensions, perhaps more. Or perhaps there is some existence outside of the space-time continuum, after all where was God before He created the Universe?

[Penguin]

Originally Posted by Dondi

Not necessarily. Maybe it is an interdimensional thing. I don't think you have to believe in multiverses for this. There is a lot of string theory stuff out there that implies up to 10 dimensions, perhaps more. Or perhaps there is some existence outside of the space-time continuum, after all where was God before He created the Universe?

Exactly!

[wil]

Originally Posted by Penguin

Exactly!

As I currently understand it the multiverse theories that answer most of the questions purport an infinit-verse which fit your various dimensions...

[Tariki]

For the garden is the only place there is but we shall not find it until we have searched everywhere and found nowhere that is not a desert.

W.H.Auden