Sin Is The Necessary Prelude To Learning: Adam And Eve's Original Sin Was "Eating Knowledge"

Adam, Eve And The Tree Of Knowledge
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_the_knowledge_of_good_and_evil

Alan: In the New Testament, the word that is typically translated as "sin" derives from the Greek word "hamartia," a marksman's term for "missing the mark."

All marksmen know -- and the rest of us quickly understand -- that learning depends on error... and the subsequent correction of error.

Children learn to walk by falling down.

Punish them and you will cripple them.

Punishment Rarely Reforms But Instead Tends To Reinforce Wrongdoing

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/12/punishment-rarely-works-to-reform-but.html

Conservative Christians Delight In The Punishment And Pain Of Others

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/09/conservative-christians-delight-in.html

How The Urge To Punish Islamics For Being Islamic Promotes Terrorism

NPR

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/12/how-urge-to-punish-islamics-for-being.html

American Plutocracy: Who's Punished And Who's Not
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/03/american-plutocracy-whos-punished-and.html

"Is Perfectionism A Curse? Paul Ryan Tells The Truth"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/paul-ryan-tells-truth.html

Religion and Perfectionism

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/11/religion-and-perfectionism.html

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts On "Too Pure Principles" And The Collapse Of Conservatism

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/02/compendium-of-best-pax-posts-on-too.html

As a Spanish language teacher, I tell my students that "errors are your best friends. If you are not courageous enough to make mistakes -- indeed to welcome them... to be grateful for them -- you will never produce enough spoken language to learn how to converse." 

Practice makes perfect and practice is the willingness to make mistakes in order to learn from them.

Without a "mound of unformed dough," there is nothing to knead into shape.

The advancement of knowledge is a process of perpetual re-calibration based on previous failure.

"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  

"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton

More Merton Quotes

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/merton-best-imposed-as-norm-becomes.html

Love Covers A Multitude Of Sins

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/07/love-covers-multitude-of-sins.html

Mercy Is Not Fair

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/04/mercy-is-not-fair.html

Which Do You Value More? Mercy? Or Justice?

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/which-do-you-value-more-mercy-or-justice.html

Pope Francis: "A Little Mercy Makes The World More Just"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/09/pope-francis-little-mercy-makes-world.html

Hey Christian! How Many Of Jesus' Moral Stands Do You Approve? Take The Test!

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/12/how-many-of-jesus-moral-exhortations.html

Punishment Rarely Reforms But Instead Tends To Reinforce Wrongdoing

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/12/punishment-rarely-works-to-reform-but.html

The United States Is A Singularly Cruel, Vengeful Nation. Solitary Confinement For Kids

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/america-is-singularly-cruel-vengeful.html