Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to That's just silly

"In his own image" is a philosophical term.

I doubt even most medieval hard-line Christian thinkers thought God had toes, never mind most of our other equipment.

"In his own image" is generally interpreted as meaning that humanity was a thinking being.

IMO, this doesn't hold up that well--in the Genesis myth, the humans that were first created were almost robots, immortal and sin-free, and acquired the "knowledge of good and evil," i.e. the ability to make true moral choices like God, only after breaking the rules. Given that choosing between good and evil demands the ability to do so (hence things like the insanity defense), one wonders what the point was unless God put the tree there fully intending Adam and Eve to screw up, then had the nerve to punish them severely for it after they became fully human.

You really have to twiddle this around quite a bit to make it work theologically, even as a parable or myth, and I'm not the only one who's pointed it out. I'm sure C. S. Lewis or somebody did a bangup job of explaining it, but I can't remember what he said about it if he did.

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