7,000ish Years Ago
Several Months Later…
Six Days Later…
Three Weeks Later…
Adam and Eve
One of my favorite Bible stories is the story of Adam and Eve. It reads just like an ancient myth, except people in 2019 take seriously. Half of the United States thinks it makes perfect sense and you really can’t hold public office unless you believe it. I don’t know, maybe I’m being unfair. Let’s look at the story a little closer.
So, after several trillion years of existing, God decides to make people. His plan is for people to live forever in peace and harmony on Earth. The plan works great until literally the first humans ever ruin it.
This is comedy gold and I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t find it hilarious. It’s not like humans existed for thousands of years and a dumb one eventually eats from the forbidden tree. No, the FIRST PEOPLE eat from it. Man, if that really happened can you imagine the head slap God must have done while all the angels quietly snickered and exchanged bet slips with each other?
How did this situation happen? When you take a lot of the teachings of the Bible on their own they seem reasonable enough. God is all-knowing. Okay, great. God also has this big plan for people to live in harmony with the vegan lions and all the other animals. Sweet. The first people ruin his plan.
How did he not see that coming? If God DID see the whole fruit-eating situation ahead of time, why would he put the magic tree in the garden of Eden in the first place? Unless of course, he planned on them eating it and subsequently getting kicked out of the garden. In THAT case, it was never really his plan for people to live forever in harmony on Earth. So why go through the charade of pretending that was the plan?
This seems like a pretty cut and dry paradoxical situation. Christians believe God is all-knowing, so he must have known they would eventually eat the forbidden fruit. So why the pretend plan that the Garden of Eden was supposed to be an ongoing situation?
Also, what was that tree doing there?
I mean, right? If you’re God and you know the ONLY thing that can derail your grand plan- that you’ve had an eternity to work on- is this one stupid tree…hello? I’m not a master strategist or anything, but jeepers.
Also, wouldn’t the whole story have made more sense for Eve to be the first person?
God could have done one of those immaculate conception deals and had Eve give birth to Cane and Abel. Just skip Adam altogether.
Having Adam first makes absolutely no sense, but it’s not like we can have a WOMAN be the first person, amirite conservative Christians? The most logical way to go about things is to have a MAN first and just take some bones from his ribs to make the woman.
Again, God planned this whole thing out. Did he really not plan for Adam to be lonely? Why not make both people at the same time? Isn’t that what he did with all the other animals? Did he just take a rib from the lion too?
In the Garden of Eden, there was no suffering. Lions laid down with lambs. Did carnivores have completely different digestive tracts back then? Did God initially plan for a bunch of what we now think of as carnivores to just be vegan forever?
Speaking of things not making sense, where did the rest of the people come from? Adam and Eve had two sons- Cain and Abel. Why does the Bible not talk about the next step in the process? Did Adam and Eve also have a bunch of daughters that just didn’t make it into the final cut? Did God make a bunch of additional couples and Adam and Eve were just the first ones? This seems like a pretty major loose end to not wrap up.
What was the serpent doing there? Was it Satan? If it WAS Satan, why would God let him hang out in his sinless garden? If it wasn’t Satan, then what the hell? Just a random talking snake up to no good?
The whole story is squirrely.
Let’s recap: God is lonely-or whatever his reason- so he creates people. He plans for them to live forever in the Garden of Eden. Sin isn’t a thing in the garden, therefore, no death. Except, there’s this dickish snake. One portal for sin to enter + one deceitful snake who gets to be there for some reason despite clearly being a bad guy + two gullible idiots= Curveball, humans mess up. Sin enters the world and with it comes death. Life is hard and lions eat meat.
Asking these questions feels as ineffective as picking apart Greek mythology. It’s like saying, “So, how DOES Zeus hold onto his lightning bolts?”
The creation story seems like an obvious case of allegory, but people really believe it. I’m fine with people believing it and am in fact quite jealous of them. I want to live in a Lord of the Rings type world where everything in the Bible is just true and not completely irrational. But even if it IS true, it’s also totally irrational. There’s nothing that says God couldn’t have created the world just like Genesis says-vegan lions and all- but it certainly isn’t logical.
Believing in the literal Bible is fun. There may as well be dragons. Speaking of which, where were the dinosaurs while all this was happening? Eating plants with the rest of the critters I suppose.
Anyway.
I don’t know. I’m sure it all really happened.
Next: On God Part VIII- Pascal’s Wager
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