There’s a bit of discussion going around concerning the ontological status of Adam and Eve — is the story literally true, useful metaphor, not really true but based somehow in reality, or what? For me, it would be hard to think of a less interesting question. But I do have a serious issue with the A&E story, which I rarely see discussed: it’s a terrible lesson on which to found a system of belief.
The story is told in Genesis, chapter two and chapter three. God sets up Adam in the Garden of Eden, and soon takes one of his ribs and makes Eve. For the most part the Garden is a pleasant place, and there doesn’t seem to have been any duties more onerous than coming up with names for the different animals. But for reasons that are not explained, God placed in the Garden something called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and commanded that Adam and Eve not eat from it. (Translational difficulties being what they are, there is a school of thought that argues that “good and evil” should be understood as simply meaning “all things, both good and evil.”) Eventually, of course, they take a bite, with a little urging from a crafty serpent. God gets angry, curses them, and casts them out of the Garden forever — the Fall of Man, as Christians would have it.
The choice given to Adam and Eve was a simple one: (1) obey, or (2) attain knowledge, in particular of good and evil. If those are my two choices, I’m choosing “knowledge” every day. Count me on Team Eve on this one. As far as I’m concerned, this wasn’t the Original Sin, it was the Original Heroic Act.
I want to see a religion founded on exhortations to disobey authority and seek the truth at any cost.
Sorry, I haven’t followed the whole conversation here, but did read a comment that needs correcting.
Reginald, you completely missed the point. Any competent theologian will tell you that the story of the fall is one of spiritual, not physical (biological), death. If you’re going to point out “points” that religious people “should have noticed”, at least make them good ones.
J
I’m not sure about it’s history or tenets, but you gotta love Theosophy’s motto: There is no religion higher than truth.
All religions should have a cool motto, but the Theosophists need to give their emblem a makeover. It contains both a swastika and a serpent. Maybe we should flood their e-mail with suggested replacements.
J – the story is not for theologians but for the folk. So Reginald’s comment is completely in place. As a matter of fact I remember distinctly reading this in my catechism class and thinking how stupid was the fact that God was lying and the serpent was obviously right and helpful.
Adam and Eve were not dead physically and spiritually (please don’t bring the original sin and Jesus into it), they ate the fruit and poor serpent deserves a lot of credit for getting humans out of that Nazi-style Eden. We should feed him a mouse rather than step on his head.
You know, to make childbirth painful for such a minor transgression, Yahve is a psycho. Thank Serpent for the c-section!
Forget Adam & Eve … how about the story of Abraham willing to sacrifice his son Isaac at the supposed request of God? In what alternate reality is that an admirable quality?
And then there’s the concept of Hell and eternal damnation with no hope for parole. Guess that’s why I agree with the minimalist philosophy that the only worthy lesson from the Bible is to “Do unto others …”
@ 14. You must be a GWB 43 Republican!
There *are* different meanings of the word knowledge, and the intended use in the story is *not* knowledge gained through skeptical inquiry. Life experience is different than the results of scientific experimentation. Whether you learn about rattlesnake venom by studying its affects on mice in a laboratory or by getting bitten while hiking in the woods matters a great deal, and I hope you would agree that while the former can indeed yield valuable knowledge, the latter should be carefully avoided no matter how much one would learn about the subject. Adam and Eve’s choices were not to study venom in a lab, but to get bitten.
Considering another example, one may learn about crack by studying all of the physiological, financial, social, and legal troubles that come from using it, and then one may learn about crack by undertaking the experience of using it and becoming an addict.
One learns more about what is right and wrong by thinking about what makes an action right or wrong, not by doing what one knows is wrong. If Adam and Eve wanted knowledge of good and evil, they could have philosophized about ethics. If they wanted knowledge about the fruit, they could have cut it apart and examined it.
The tree wasn’t called “of the knowledge of good and evil” because eating its fruit would magically give a person knowledge of some subject that happened to be good and evil. Maybe some have interpreted it as such, but that’s unnecessarily complicating a simple story. Eating the tree’s fruit was itself an evil act, having been forbidden. One who ate it would know evil by experience, and would know good from the outside.
Adam and Eve knew eating the forbidden fruit would be wrong and did it anyway, not to learn more about good and evil, but to gain more power – to “be like God” as the serpent promised. Then, having done evil, they knew more about good and evil. They felt shame. The choice wasn’t obedience or knowledge, it was obedience or betrayal.
The serpent is only the hero if crack dealers are heroes. They offer first-hand experience that gives a person a certain type of knowledge that cannot be gained any other way. It’s hardly wise to take them up on it, though.
#29 @Ray: You should read Kirkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. The inexplicable perversity of the request and Abraham’s willingness to carry it out is the whole premise of the book. He finds from it (eventually) a religiously positive conclusion: that of the ‘leap of faith.’ But even for the enlightened godless who cannot agree with his conclusion, it’s a great book.
Adam – wow, you’re really displaying your ignorance of theology.
Theologians don’t just dismiss it as a “story for the folk”, but try to make sense of it within the context of the rest of the Judeo Christian belief system. You can’t just say “don’t bring in original sin” or “spiritual death” because of what you or I believe about it. If you’re going to bring up criticisms of any system of thought, religious or not, criticize something actually in it. Instead, you’ve made up something that is easy to criticize and isn’t true of the system of thought, just so you can sling mud one something you already don’t like. You and Reginald are committing the same intellectual sin as proponents of “intelligent design”.
“I want to see a religion founded on exhortations to disobey authority and seek the truth at any cost.”
That’s what Creationists and climate change denialists think they’re doing all the time… disobeying the imposed authority of the educated intellectuals and scientific elites and seeking that there “real truth”.
The irony of this whole thing is that the origin of this Creation story actually has the connotations you’re talking about, Sean, but it’s not apparent without the social context. Joseph Campbell actually makes a big deal of this in his comparative mythology works, but manages somehow to interpret it wrongly.
Basically, the image of a woman and a snake and a tree is not exclusive to Judaism. In fact, it appears as a common image throughout ancient Mesopotamia with positive associations of fertility and wisdom… Pretty close to the meanings you ascribe to it. Campbell notes the frequency of this image and says that it was adopted and coopted by Judaism, tying it somehow or other to the conquest of Canaan. I suspect that he interprets it this way because he never seems particularly disposed towards Judeo-Christian ways of thinking and tends to try and find harmonious resonance between mythologies. It never quite enters into his mode of thinking that one group might be deliberately subverting the mythology of another.
If one examines the relationship of ancient Hebrews to the empires of Mesopotamia – the ones upholding this image of women and snakes and trees dispensing wisdom – there is one thing that becomes painfully apparent. These same empires were always conquering and carting off the Hebrews into slavery. Its during their tenures as slaves that they picked up the stories that were subverted in Genesis. After all, none of the Hebrew Scriptures were written before the exile in Babylon. As an example, the first Creation story of an orderly activity by a benevolent Creator is in stark contrast to Babylonian myths of the cosmos being created out of the entrails of the violently slain dragon Tiamat. Also, a myth about the building a giant Babylonian Ziggurat, at the top of which were temples, becomes a meditation on the “language barrier” between the oppressors designing the society and the oppressed who have to build it.
Likewise, Hebrews took this image of a woman and a snake and a tree and subverted it. They are critiquing the mythology of their oppressors by saying that it did indeed bring knowledge of good and evil, and along with that it brought the suffering of imperialism, warfare and slavery. Of course there are a lot of layers in each of the myths in Genesis, but the preference of God’s lifegiving morality (i.e.: don’t kill people, jerk) against adhereing to the commands of flawed and oppressive societies built on selfish human judgement (i.e.: kill people because the government tells you to!) is a major theme. None of the Old Testament… not a word of it… can be read or interpreted in a reasonable way that does not account for the fact that the “primal event” of Judaism, the whole interpretive framework of the religion, is liberation from slavery.
In conclusion, what you’re actually railing against here, Sean, is that these uppity Jewish slaves don’t like being slaves and are challenging the imposed authority of their imperial masters. It’s the exact opposite of what you’re claiming to support.
Actually, the story sets up quite nicely for the rest of christian theology. Gaining knowledge of good and evil, mankind must now make their own choices. To gain access to heaven after you die, you must make the right choices. This is why it is called the original sin: without this act, all of mankind would be without sin by default, in a state of blissful ignorance. It is not(IMO) a judgment on the morality of the act in this case.
Edit: Or come to think of it, if morality is to maximize happiness(whatever that is), then an act which removes humans from a blissful trance is in fact morally wrong 😉 Considering how there was no concept of happiness back when the bible was written and how Christian morality does not seem to be about maximizing happiness at all, this of course makes no sense.
“I want to see a religion founded on exhortations to disobey authority and seek the truth at any cost.”
Wouldn’t be much of a religion then, would it?
Sean says “I want to see a religion founded on exhortations to disobey authority and seek the truth at any cost.”
Sadly such a comment only highlights your awareness of (or lack thereof) Biblical and Church history. What do you make of the Old Testament narratives, the New Testament description of a man who disobeyed authority and paid the ultimate price, of his disciples who followed him even unto death, of the hordes of martyrs? What do you make of the Church that is even prepared to be counter cultural and unpopular to hold onto and protect the truth?
One wonders if you’d even recognize the truth even if it stood on a hill with his arms outstretched.
Brilliant reflection. When you think about it, that explains a lot why some Chrisitans dislike the idea of a secular society. A secular society figures out as it goes along what is good and what is evil, establishing laws to protect its citizen from evil and declaring rights to spread out what is good. It attains knowledge of good and evil through observation and critical thinking. Policies are eventually re-evaluated based on how they perform, irrespective of (ideally) any ideology. A secular society not only bites in the forbidden fruit, it tries to eat it all. And yes, in the process, you discover that religious ideologies possess far from the best definitions of good and evil. If you taste the forbidden fruit, it is you who banish of God, not God who banishes you. This, and all that follows, is where the Bible went wrong 🙂
#33@Stuart: Since God eventually stops Abe; wouldn’t the conclusion be that following a “Leap of Faith” is the wrong action?
“is the story literally true, useful metaphor, not really true but based somehow in reality, or what?”
Pure fiction.
J, that sounds an awful lot like “God lied to Adam, but theologians didn’t like that answer and decided it was all a metaphor.” Even if God really meant “spiritual death” (whatever that is), would Adam have interpreted it that way? No, surely when he heard “Don’t eat the fruit or you’ll die” he would have thought God meant he’d actually *die*. So it seems the story makes God ought to be deliberately deceptive.
I believe that God was warning us that a man who listens to a woman who disobeys God because she in turn hs listened to another person who is disobedient will bare the consequences of a life of pain. It is important to listen to God directly and not to be influenced by others who are disobedient.
Many biblical stories are warnings about the pitfalls of life of not walking a straight line. We need to put obedience first on our list of priorities and secondly we should avoid being influenced by others who are disobedient. Bible stories reflect our everyday lives and it is the best reference book on what not to do and what to do with our lives. Stories are often the best method of getting a message across to humans without hurting or humilating them.
@Ray Gedaly: No, Abraham was supposed to follow until God revealed it was all a sadistic test. If God had punished Abraham for listening to him, *then* the lesson would be not to make the leap, or more specifically “Don’t follow people who tell you to kill your kids, no matter what kind of authority they have.” (Which would be a better lesson, in my opinion.)
#40@Ray: well, firstly, I rather like Wilfred Owen’s take on that aspect of the story, especially as set in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem where it sits perfectly alongside the corresponding part of the mass.
In Fear and Trembling the focus is upon the psychology of doing the deed (as representative of the psychology of belief in general), not the meaning of the event per se. This is why it is an interesting read even for atheists: although the final conclusion is a pro-religious one, the investigation is a real trek through (C19th view of) human motivations, and reaches some pretty nihilist interim conclusions (not for nothing is Kierkegaard known as the father of existentialism).
The Leap of Faith is Abraham’s willingness to do as instructed _despite_ the fact that the sacrifice seems to lack any kind of reason. Kierkegaard admits that we have no rational reason to believe. But as Kierkegaard can only see nihilism and despair without the consolations of religion, he concludes that we must knowingly and willingly cast aside reason and adopt religion, just as Abe knowingly and willingly trusses up Ike.
The book genuinely is interesting, partly because it is quite a sophisticated analysis, and also because it helps me to think about one of the Big Questions of religion: why it is that otherwise apparently extremely intelligent and rational people can still hold religious beliefs. (I don’t subscribe to the school who just throw mud at these people.)
J #26: Reginald, you completely missed the point.
So there’s only one point, and you are in sole possession of it? How convenient.
Any competent theologian will tell you that the story of the fall is one of spiritual, not physical (biological), death.
Drop the word “competent,” that’s your easy escape clause. Clearly any theologian who disagrees with you is incompetent. I understand the ego people like you have. What exactly does competency in theology require?
My point is that even the most literal Bible believers are willing to deviate from literality when it is convenient in preserving their faith. Gen. 2&3 says nothing at all about a “spiritual fall.” And you, any competent theologian, any incompetent theologian, or anyone else who prattles on about a “spiritual fall” is deviating from a literal interpretation of the text. Even the most ardent Young Earth Creationist who believes that Noah boarded dinosaurs on the ark will overlook the clear implications of Gen 2&3 that Yahweh lied.
J #34: Adam – wow, you’re really displaying your ignorance of theology.
And you’re displaying an impressive mixture of arrogant condescension and thickitude. Get over yourself.
Theologians don’t just dismiss it as a “story for the folk”, but try to make sense of it within the context of the rest of the Judeo Christian belief system. You can’t just say “don’t bring in original sin” or “spiritual death” because of what you or I believe about it.
Oh then, what is the justification for bringing in “spiritual death”? It is merely because they don’t like the implication that Yahweh lied, while the Serpent told the truth.
If you’re going to bring up criticisms of any system of thought, religious or not, criticize something actually in it.
Done and done. Selectivity in literalism is clearly on display, and I criticise it.
Instead, you’ve made up something that is easy to criticize and isn’t true of the system of thought, just so you can sling mud one something you already don’t like. You and Reginald are committing the same intellectual sin as proponents of “intelligent design”.
You are wrong. Selectivity in literalism is clearly a property of Judeo-Christian theology; example already provided. Now go @#$% yourself.
@44, TimG:
There is actually a school of Midrashic thought which suggests that Abraham failed the test because God had to intervene. Of the Mesopotamian religions of the time, Judaism was the only one not to sacrifice children, so there was a reasonable question as to why. Supposedly it goes back to Abraham not sacrificing Isaac. This school of thought I mentioned suggests that Abraham was supposed to have refused, but was too enculturated (he was from Babylon, after all) so God had to stop him. It’s also fairly consistent with the overarching Biblical narrative, which is that major figures tended to learn more and move closer to God through their mistakes.
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I will also point out, in general, something that I should have before. Original Sin is not the same thing as the Fall. Those tend to get thrown around interchangably, but they describe two different things. The Fall is the narrative event of that first disobeyal of God (and I admittedly find it amusing that so many people are quick to call God a liar because He was merciful). “Original Sin” describes the current state of humanity, which is that no matter how good of a person you are you will inevitably do something to hurt somebody somehow, even through inactivity. Every now and then I get people proudly telling me that they don’t believe in Original Sin, to which my snarky, sarcastic reply is “Well you’re entitled to disbelieve in it all you want, but that doesn’t stop wars from happening.”
When we place a treat on a dog’s nose and command him to sit there and not eat it, we are most like God.
(and I admittedly find it amusing that so many people are quick to call God a liar because He was merciful
Now there’s an example of what “J” calls “something that is easy to criticize and isn’t true of the system of thought.” We call Yahweh a liar because he lied. You are instead making up a different argument and pretending that we said it because you prefer to argue against that instead.