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Originally Posted by A264172
Quote:
when you have the ability to think it thru for your self
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Consider the possibility that the beings are not in the same hierarchy. Your perception of the relationship might be reversed if it took place between a retina and a hippocampus.
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If 'eating fruit of knowledge of good/evil' is a metaphor for being out of sync with a 'higher' process, then it's not a decision that the thinking animal is qualified to make. The problem then becomes that religious prescriptions are generally delivered via the interpretation of hierarchically equal thinking animals and might not be trustworthy or applicable.
As an example of the precondition, a current state is that the animals try to actuate that they, their faction, or whatnot will win favor and success in the future, and conceive that 'what they do now' has purpose toward that future which they may or may not be able to participate in.
Their thought process looks for patterns through observation. Looking back through the patterns of the past, they see species becoming extinct, nations being sundered, cities disappearing, families dieing of diseases, being eaten by wild animals, poisoning, starvation, incineration... Since we can never know now the out come of all our subsequent actions, we look for clues and indications about the possibilities that lie in the distant future (beyond the realm of the minds predictive abilities) that some process is unfolding and can be allied with. This is quite normal animal life thus far.
That some potential outcomes are viewed as evil and others as good places the animal in a relative position to the flowing structure of reality. Some outcomes are good some are evil but relevance to the real structure is the only possibility of 'salvation' or success. So it doesn't matter if the animal thinks it's model is appropriate or not. It's success will be determined by obedience to the real structure.
How effectively it can align itself with the real structure, beyond predictability, is another question entirely that I don't pretend to address. But it is potentially appropriate to bow to supreme being with structure that encompasses ones own if that process is fulfilling of the animals model and that model can't be perfected beyond that through the available process.
Or perhaps where you say "Conceding absolute moral authority to someone else " I would say, if you remove "to someone else", it can be a virtue.