INTRODUCTION
At the outset, I should make clear that I am not a biblical scholar. What I’m writing below is based entirely on my observations of the plain text of the first few chapters in the biblical book of Genesis. I am writing about the creation myth and the myth of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Scholars, professional philosophers, theologians, rabbis, priests, ministers, and preachers may have different things to say. For this essay, I’m taking the text at face value. I assume that the text is a myth, written down by human beings. My goal is to nitpick and point to contradictions and/or inconsistencies that appear to my untrained eye.
After watching a video in which Alex O’Connor pointed out a few things about the creation myth I decided to reread it to confirm what Alex had to say an draw som conclusions of my own. I was actually surprised by what I saw in the text itself, things I had never considered before. Keep in mind that as far as I’m concerned the text is a creation myth and nothing more.
There are many versions and editions off the Bible. For that reason, I’m not going to cite chapter and verse like a preacher. Nor will I give citations which would elevate this essay to the status of scholarship. Nevertheless you can look it up, as they say, if you have any doubt about the details I provide here.
I find some of the elements of the story humorous and ironic, but as I point out in the conclusion, there is really nothing funny about people waisting their lives chasing a false promise — a myth.
We can do better.
THE STORY
In Genesis, it’s written that after creating the world, there were no plants or herb because 1) the god had not caused it to rain, and 2) there was no one to till the ground. After a stream appeared and watered the ground, the god added some water to the dust of the earth, formed a man and breathed life into him. By the way, making some clay, sculpting a man, breathing life into it — that’s a good trick, but the god wasn’t the only one who could do it. A couple thousand years later, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel did the same thing in Prague. I first heard that story while walking with a guide through the Prague Jewish cemetery — The guide wouldn’t lie, would he? Oh, but that’s another story.
Then, the god planted the garden with every tree that was pleasant to look at and good for food. The god also planted a tree of knowledge (of good and evil) and a tree of (eternal) life. First the man was made and only then the garden was planted. When the man put into the garden to till it — there was no mention of a John Deere tractor. The god told the man that he could eat anything in the garden EXCEPT the fruit from the tree of knowledge, because if you do, on that day, you will die. I want to emphasize that the man was told he would die on the day he learned the difference between good and evil — on that day.
After the man was ensconced in the garden, the god put the man to sleep, extracted a rib an made a woman. It’s interesting that before performing the costectomy the god used an anesthetic.
Later, the serpent showed up to have a word with the woman, Eve. The first thing to notice was that the serpent was an animal. More crafty than the other animals, but an animal — not the devil disguised as an animal. And the story tells us that all the animals were made by the god. “The serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the lord god HAD MADE.” (My emphasis). I just want it to be clear that the serpent was a wild animal.
When the woman told the serpent they were forbidden to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, or even touch it — in other words, look but don’t touch or eat, because if you do, you’ll die. The serpent said: “You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
The woman saw this tree that looked good, the fruit was good to eat, and it “would make one wise.” After she at it, Adam took some too. They didn’t die, but they saw that they were naked. Being naked caused shame so they grabbed some fig leaves and sewed some loincloths.
That night when there was a nice breeze, the god walked through the garden (the story doesn’t say what the god was doing during the day). The god didn’t see the people so it called “where are you.” When the man told the god that they were hiding because they were ashamed of being naked, the god knew right away what had happened. The man blamed the woman and the woman claimed the serpent had tricked her.
As a result: 1) The serpent was cursed to crawl on its belly; 2) The woman was cursed with increased pain in childbirth and subjection to her husband; 3) The man was condemned to toil and sweat to grow food — cursed is the ground, thorns and thistles it shall bring forth, “until you return to the ground, for out if it you were taken. You are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Then the god made them clothes and banished them from the garden, lest they eat from the tree of life and live forever. To make sure they didn’t return and eat the fruit that would let them live forever, the god put “the cherubim” with a flaming sword to guard the way to the tree of life.
Verbum Domini — I kid you not. Can we talk?
THE OMNISCIENT AND ALMIGHTY GOD
Christians teach that god is omniscient, i.e. the god knows everything, even what is in a persons brain — I know people like to say that god knows what’s in their hearts. I know what’s in your heart too — blood. Our thoughts are in our brain, are they not? But if god is all knowing, why did it not know where Adam was. Adam was hiding and it was only when he told the god he was naked that the god knew he had dated the forbidden fruit. Seems strange, does it not? Also if the god is omniscient, why didn’t it know Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit — it wasn’t until Adam said he was ashamed of being naked that god figured out what had happened.
Likewise, if this almighty god didn’t want the people to eat something that would let them know good and evil — the essence of being a god, why did the god plant the tree of knowledge in a place to which the humans had access? If the answer is so that the god could test the humans, recall that the humans didn’t know good and evil, right and wrong. Knowledge of good and evil came with the fruit of the tree. Well, maybe the trees of knowledge and life were already there. No, the myth is explicit, first the god caused a stream to rise and water the ground, from that water and some dust the god made a man, then the god planted the garden that had all the trees, including the tree of life and the tree of knowledge.
“We learn from the forbidden fruit, for brains there is no substitute.” (Robert Frost, Quandary). There were about ten then that caught my eye as I reread the myth.
First: The god lied. The god said the humans would die that day. The god didn’t say that if they ate the fruit, eventually they would get sick or suffer an injury, or just die of old age. No, on the very day you eat it, you will die. Instead, they lived for hundreds of years. Eventually the life span of humans was set at 120 years. It was the serpent who told the truth. “You will not die” — and they didn’t.
Second: The humans had access to a tree that granted eternal life, but that didn’t interest them. They chose the one that made them like the god with knowledge of good and evil. On one hand it would seem like knowledge was more attractive than life, but we have to remember that until they ate the fruit, they didn’t know what was better, they didn’t know good from evil.
Third: If the essence of a god is the ability to know good from evil and only gods, and those like gods, have that ability, why did this almighty god create evil and introduced into the world in the first place? Is it even possible to have good without the opposite? The god knew that evil exists, it just didn’t want to let the humans in on the plot. Perhaps good and evil are just facts of life. As Robert Frost wrote about bad, “It was by having been contrasted that good and bad so long had lasted.” You can’t have good unless it’s opposite is there too, so how is it that we are told that evil entered the world because of original sin?
Fourth: None of the punishments introduced anything new, the consequence was that the serpent and the people would be aware of the status quo.
The serpent was condemned to crawl on it’s belly, but the story doesn’t mention that the serpent had legs, or wings, or any other means of locomotion.
The woman would have an increase of pain during childbirth and would be number two on the totem pole.
The man had already been charged with tilling the garden, it was the very reason the god mixed some mud - water and dust, and made him. Now he would be aware how much work it was to grow food on ground full of thorns and thistles. Evil was not a consequence of becoming like a god, it was knowledge of how evil their life was that was their punishment. The lying god didn’t want the humans to know how evil it (the god) was, but the serpent blurted out the truth.
Fifth: It was the man who was punished with laborious farming cursed soil. The irony is that in early human societies, it was the women who did the farming, while the men went off to “hunt and fish” — a likely story. Like Ulysses, the men were probably off swapping stories about one eyed monsters and mermaids singing irresistible songs. So the woman got the short end of both sticks: pain, painful childbirth and subservience, and still got stuck doing the farming. The real transgression wasn’t eating the fruit — it was being female.
Sixth: If the god feared that humans would become like gods, why place the means within their reach? Remember the god planted the garden with the trees after he made the man. Did the evil god set them up to be punished? It sounds evil on its face.
Seventh: What makes a being godlike is the ability to learn and discriminate twixt what to love and what to hate, to paraphrase Frost again. The irony is, the more knowledge we gain the fewer gods and demons we are haunted by. In the few thousand years since the story was first told, we have gone form living in a world without fire or wheels to world of atomic energy and the ability to fly to other planets — some of our space craft are now traveling through deep space beyond the reach of our sun. We know why the sun rises in the east, we know why the planets rotate around the sun, and we know that the stars are not just little lights to make the night sky a little brighter. We know how the universe was formed and we know how life evolved. And we know that all these things work without any divine intervention.
Eighth: Christianity teaches that eating the forbidden fruit was a sin so heinous that only crucifixion and resurrection could fix it. But if we follow the story, it wasn’t the humans who sinned — it was the god who lied. The god placed the temptation, allowed the crafty serpent into the garden. Before they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge, the humans lacked the capacity to know right from wrong. So where was the sin? Perhaps the Christian story should be revised showing that it was the god who required the forgiveness of the humans.
Ninth: If the god lied from the beginning, why believe anything else it says? This same god later promises eternal life after a life of suffering. Okay, …fool me twice, shame on me.
Tenth: Once the man and woman knew good from evil, the first thing they did was to make clothes from fig leaves. Apparently, the knowledge of good and evil doesn’t extend to fashion. Before banishing them, the god made them proper clothes from animal skins. “You’re not leaving my garden in fig leaves. Here—this will do until you find Dolce & Gabbana,” said the god doing its best imitation of Bruno.
CONCLUSION
Today we know this story is a myth. We know that humans, like every other living plant or animal evolved. There never was a “first” human. There could have been no original sin which required redemption. The ultimate end of the myth, at the other end of the Bible, no makes no sense — No god, no original sin, no virgin birth, no death and resurrection. The whole kit and caboodle is a myth, much like the other myths that were common in that part of the world.
Whether we examine the original creation myth or modern religions, one thing clear: religion of any kind is irrational. Gods, demons, serpents — these no longer belong to the world in which we live. Whether the myth is preached from a pulpit—or echoed while walking through a cemetery—it remains just that: a pie in the sky lie.
Why does all this make a bit of difference? Because there are still millions, if not billions, of people around the world that still believe it and waste their lives chasing a myth rather than learning how the world really works. People find comfort and meaning from a story that has no basis in reality. Any feelings of personal comfort or feelings of morality are meaningless when grounded in a falsehood. And the fact that it makes people comfortable or like they want to do the right thing or somehow provides a purpose to live, does not make it any less false. Religion makes claims about the world that are not true. It’s cruel to make false promises and false claims.
Can’t we do better? What’s the alternative? Rational secular humanism grounded in Enlightenment values.
Mike Messina