Christianity and other forms of theism are full of oddities. This is the first of a series of posts pointing out the oddities and asking theists to explain how they understand, deal with, or rationalize these oddities.
Today’s question:
Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If they didn’t know good from evil until after eating the fruit, then they were punished for doing something they didn’t know was evil.
Does this make sense to you? If so, why?
No, it doesn’t.
Hmm, I’m not a theist, so I suppose I shouldn’t have answered.
Back when I was a theist (say, in my teens), I saw the A&E story as a kind of “Just So” story. But I did not see it as trying to explain sin. Rather, I saw it as trying to explain why humans are different from animals.
It at least makes some sense that way.
Playing devil’s advocate, they did know it was forbidden.
I always thought it meant that evil didn’t previously exist. Then suddenly all creation was red in tooth and claw. Not just the offender.
So if if you find yourself in heaven, watch yourself. And your neighbor. It could all go bad pretty quickly.
Neil:
For most Christians, the rebellion of Adam and Eve was the original sin. The doctrine of original sin holds that we all inherit Adam and Eve’s guilt, so that even a newborn baby is already condemned merely for being born a human.
But my question remains even if you reject the idea that what Adam and Eve did constituted a sin. Why were they punished (by being banished from the Garden) for doing something that they could not have known was evil?
petrushka,
Yes, but without the ability to discern good from evil, they couldn’t have known that it was wrong to disobey God.
That’s what a lot of Christians believe. Adam and Eve’s sin somehow magically transformed all of creation into a bloodbath.
Lions and deer* were gentle, harmless creatures before the Fall. They only became carnivorous afterward.
*Yes, it’s true. Deer are opportunistic carnivores.
They didn’t know good and evil because that subroutine didn’t exist in v 1.0.
The two versions of Genesis reflect the temporal disturbance of rebooting the system with a modified OS. Future updates — flood, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad , Moroni — would be installed without a reboot due to the impatience of the creator. Or perhaps his budget was cut.
This is fun. Do people get paid for making this stuff up?
Seems to me you are more likely to get feedback from theists on a blog such as biologos.org. Denis Venema has a series of posts up on Adam and Eve, for instance.
Alan,
I’m sure you’re right. It’s just that I’m trying to limit my participation to a few blogs.
Perhaps I should visit a few theistic blogs and extend invitations to join us here.
I guess I’m thinking of someone like Denyse O’Leary or Gordon/KF issuing challenges to “Darwinists” at Uncommon Descent when the blog doesn’t register on the radar of mainstream scientists.
I mentioned BioLogos because your OP prompted me to have a look (remembering their “accomodationist” stance at reconciling science and evangelical Christianity).
Piotr might be interested (or already seen) this paper that a commenter in one thread linked to, A comparison of worldwide phonemic and genetic
variation in human populations”.
ETA: I’m tempted to drop in a comment at BioLogos, myself, though the comment columns seem to be a lot less busy than I recall they used to be in its early days.
On the question in the OP; one translation of the relevant text runs:
And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
and then it runs on and makes no sense at all except as a children’s fable.
You can find a pretty standard take here. Relevant bit: “We find them when we look in the mirror. We are Adam, and we are Eve. … The man and woman of Genesis … are intended to represent an Everyman and Everywoman. They are paradigms, figurative equivalents, of human conduct in the face of temptation, not lessons in biology or history. The Bible is teaching religion, not science or literalistic history.”
I see BioLogos have a thread on that idea. I posted Keith’s question there.
If it’s teaching religion, the lesson seems to be, run away. Religion makes no sense.
I don’t expect fiction to be completely logical.
Since about ags 12 I have assumed religion was invented to support political power. A story about punishment for disobedience makes perfect sense to me. Priests and patriarchs are to be obeyed.
petrushka,
Believe and obey the tribe shaman may have an evolutionary advantage in social primates.
You don’t touch the red button. No, the point isn’t fairness or any such thing, don’t do it.
Well, there is that, with a bit of the oriental despot thrown in. Mostly, though, I think it’s about why so much of life sucks, which includes a rather remote unreasoning deity who won’t fix things for you because he got mad at your ancestors once (the point is that he got mad, not that it was reasonable). So weeds, painful childbirth, death, evil snakes. Pray, and it’s not going to change, really, so it’s an explanation involving a deity that wants its own way.
Relatively reasonable Christians will go with that, except that many will add on some sappy “meaning” that it’s supposed to portray, and the unreasonable Christians–think UD–will endlessly defend the God there by non-literally shifting the story The snake is Satan, what-not. Word games, etc. Except that they can ignore this piece, so they will, while yammering about deficiencies of “materialism” that poofery magically fixes.
Glen Davidson
I’m sure it did, although I would classify that as cultural evolution. The specifics of who is in authority have changed, but it’s still conducive to survival to obey authority figures who carry guns.
I’m inclined to believe that tribalism has genetic and cultural components. I suspect that the inclination to “believe” does also. For the individual, it’s not so much what is true or rational, as it is what works.
Anyway, unless disobedience is in and of itself, evil, the lesson was that actions have consequences.
The part that defies both reason and faith is applying consequences to individuals who took no part in the disobedience. That is Stalinesque.
“For most Christians, the rebellion of Adam and Eve was the original sin.”
Then there was the sibling rivalry that resulted in murder between Cain and Able. And don’t forget the incest that was necessary to allow the species to continue. It seems that the odds were stacked against the “First Family”.
To me, the instruction by god, and the consequences that ensued, is nothing more than a fear tactic by those in authority to warn against questioning the status quo. Do as I say, don’t think about it. The whole heaven and hell bit was also a nice touch.
keiths,
An exquisitely designed IC CSI-full bloodbath that could not possibly have arisen through ‘naturalistic’ processes!
They didn’t have the knowledge. Their crime was done out of evil motives. So it was all the worst. ut was pure rebellion. Ut was not a general understanding of what evil, was.
They didn’t know rebellion was wrong, Robert.
How can this be a question for “other theists”? Don’t you pretty much have to be a Christian (and a Biblical Literalist at that) to consider the story literally true?
I do have what I consider an interesting take on the non-literal story, though, from my Sant Mat days. Adam and Eve represent souls existing in a spiritual state beyond where concepts like “good” and “evil” organize experience into competing conceptual dichotomies and archetypes. The act symbolizes an essential choice of leaving the comfort and “oneness” of that spiritual realm to “eat the fruit” of a different kind of experience, where such things as good and evil exist (where knowledge of good and evil exists).
One could say that the nature of what god is “banished” them from paradise, but it was their own choice to leave paradise (eat the forbidden fruit) and experience a different kind of existence. It wasn’t a punishment, and it would have led to their capacity to die, even if death didn’t mean non-existence.
Get back under your cardboard pyramid.
As Keith pointed out, the imaginary characters adam and eve couldn’t have known that eating fruit from the so-called tree of knowledge of good and evil was evil (or wrong in any way) until after they ate the fruit. According to the story, until they ate the fruit, they could not have known or understood in any way what good and evil were, no matter what the ‘good’ or ‘evil’ applied to.
Until they ate the fruit they could not have understood in any way any warnings/threats from ‘God’, since to understand any warnings/threats they would have had to understand ‘negative consequences’. They would have had to understand ‘punishment’ and especially ‘death’ since ‘God’ warned/threatened them with ‘death’ if they ate the fruit. Until they ate the fruit they couldn’t have even understood ‘good’, so how could they have had any way to understand any differences between ‘good’ and ‘evil’?
Here’s the quote that Alan posted again:
“You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Since, according to the bible, there was no such thing as death before adam and eve ate the fruit they couldn’t have understood what death, or a threat of death, means. It would be like warning/threatening a newborn baby with death if it does something that you tell it not to do. A newborn baby doesn’t have knowledge of good and evil and doesn’t understand what death, or a threat of death, means. To punish a newborn baby (and all of its descendants and every other living thing) with death (or any other punishment) for not obeying a warning/threat that it cannot understand would be, to put it mildly, despicable.
The bible is horrible, and ridiculous.
William J. Murray,
“How can this be a question for “other theists”? Don’t you pretty much have to be a Christian (and a Biblical Literalist at that) to consider the story literally true?”
william, can you show where Keith said anything about believing that the adam and eve story is “literally true” (or not) is required for various theists or anyone else to comment on it? What’s the matter, don’t you want “other theists” (or non-theists) to comment on biblical fairy tales?
And you obviously missed this: “…and other forms of theism…”, and this: “This is the first of a series…”. I think it’s safe to say that Keith also intends to bring up “oddities'” in religious beliefs other than christianity.
Creodont,
My point was that his specific questions only make sense in light of a biblical literalist interpretation of the story. Is it keiths’ intent to demonstrate that there’s lots of stuff in the bible that doesn’t make any sense if taken literally? That seems to be an awfully low bar to invest one’s time and effort in hurdling.
I mean, where the heck did the other people come from that Cain & Able married? Aren’t we all products of incest if the Bible account of Adam and Eve is literally true?
I haven’t even read the Bible and I’m familiar with several literalist oddities.
I think it’s a much harder problem to make a case against the account if one takes it on as a spiritual metaphor or allegory about how souls came into the world in the first place.
Yes, punching smoke typically is difficult.
First prove souls exist. Then I might care about how they “came into the world in the first place”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_in_Islam
William,
No. My question is directed at all theists, including those who don’t believe the Genesis story.
Here it is again:
William,
No. You can have an opinion on whether Jack should have climbed the beanstalk even if you don’t believe the story.
That isn’t what I’m trying to accomplish. Didn’t you read my OP? I said I wanted to know
William J. Murray,
“My point was that his specific questions only make sense in light of a biblical literalist interpretation of the story. Is it keiths’ intent to demonstrate that there’s lots of stuff in the bible that doesn’t make any sense if taken literally? That seems to be an awfully low bar to invest one’s time and effort in hurdling.”
Keith’s questions make sense. Yours don’t.
“I mean, where the heck did the other people come from that Cain & Able married? Aren’t we all products of incest if the Bible account of Adam and Eve is literally true?”
Yeah, whether christians believe that the bible is literally true or not, the claims in it, and the various ways in which christians try to justify or dodge the ramifications of the claims, deserve ridicule.
“I haven’t even read the Bible and I’m familiar with several literalist oddities.”
From what I’ve seen, you’re very familiar with and accepting of a lot of oddities, whether they’re biblical or “literalist” or otherwise.
“I think it’s a much harder problem to make a case against the account if one takes it on as a spiritual metaphor or allegory about how souls came into the world in the first place.”
As OMagain said: “First prove souls exist. Then I might care about how they “came into the world in the first place”.”
At Biologos, JohnZ writes:
Sure, but why punish Adam and Eve for an act they didn’t even know was evil? Particularly when God was responsible for their ignorance?
At UD, Silver Asiatic writes:
SA seems to be suggesting that A & E were punished for their “sin” because they “knew” in one sense that it was evil, even if they didn’t know it intellectually. But what is the evidence for this contrived interpretation? I see nothing in the text to support it.
http://biblehub.com/hebrew/3045.htm
They didn’t “know” it was sin in the Biblical sense, I suppose. It’s as good as SA’s tripe, anyhow.
Well, I did mention the word games before they were played. Obvious, of course, but nice that they’re so predictable.
Glen Davidson
keiths,
According to the biblical fairy tale, the fruit was from the tree of “knowledge” of good and evil. There’s no understanding if there’s no knowledge, and the knowledge came after eating the fruit.
keiths said:
Okay, well short answer is I don’t. I don’t understand the oddities; I don’t “deal with” them because there’s no reason for me to; I don’t attempt to rationalize them because – again – there’s no reason for me to. I also don’t have to deal with, rationalize or understand any Hindu, Jewish or Muslim beliefs.
Presumably that’s also why you don’t deal with the consequences of your claims?
For example, you made the claim:
I then asked you if the changes observed in Lenski’s experiment counted as such a “feature”?
If so, then “Darwinistic mechanisms are capable of generating such features” and if not you could explain why not and offer an example of what you would consider such a feature.
But you won’t do that will you? You are afraid to walk through the door you yourself opened. And of course you’d have to have more then a surface level understanding of your own claims at that point, and why bother with that eg? Too much like hard work I guess.
Coward.
Creodont2 said:
One would have to make the argument that A & E didn’t understand that statements from god divided the world into things they should do, things they were allowed to do, and things they were not allowed to do. As a child, one doesn’t need a concept of good and evil to understand the difference between pleasing a parent (doing what they say) and receiving punishment from a parent when one disobeys them.
They may not have known they were committing an evil act, but they did know they were disobeying god. that this would displease him, and knew there was a punishment involved ( …you will surely die.) Is that not what sin means in Christianity, to “miss the mark” of what god wants you to do?
Why bother to make such an argument when Adam and Eve never actually existed.
Is it evil to make a claim you know you can’t support?
I have in the past found the story interesting, however. For example, if one is trying to rationalize the story, why put the tree there in the first place? Why even give A & E the opportunity to get themselves thrown out of paradise and experience death?
If one is going to seriously try to rationalize this, then the presence of the tree had to be necessary for some reason – A & E had to have the opportunity to defy god/rebel for some reason. The tree seems to me to be more symbolic than anything; not that the fruit imparted some magical knowledge upon those who ate it, but rather that it symbolized a choice to defy/rebel against god.
For example, being naked prior to the consumption of the fruit obviously wasn’t “evil” or else god would have created them clothed; yet after they ate of the fruit, “they saw that they were naked” and tried to cover themselves, as if gaining knowledge of good and evil would make them realize nakedness was “evil” – but, nakedness couldn’t have been evil in the first place.
IMO, this only makes sense if, again, eating from the tree is taken as a symbolic act of defiance, after which one’s concept of the world is broken into dichotomous categories of “good” and “evil”. Nakedness was not seen as evil until A & E defied god and then suddenly they were ashamed of their nakedness – why?
It seems to me that the story means that there is no evil seen in anything (such as nakedness) until one defies/rebels against god (by so asserting their own individuality via free will with such an act), then suddenly all sorts of things are “known” to be “evil”, and other things are “known” to be “good”, and one is “cast out” of paradise to eventually suffer death.
If sins of forefathers is a legitimate thing (spoiler: It isn’t) – why aren’t we hunting down Hitler’s / Sadam Hussien’s / Ghengis Kahn’s progeny?
Since priests are the one who communicate god’s will to the riff-raff, the story is a warning not to question or disobey the priests.
Anyone ever notice that god’s will can be redivided to be god swill?. Coincidence, or design?
Not a bad term for BA77’s extensive spamming, anyhow.
Glen Davidson
William J. Murray,
“One would have to make the argument that A & E didn’t understand that statements from god divided the world into things they should do, things they were allowed to do, and things they were not allowed to do. As a child, one doesn’t need a concept of good and evil to understand the difference between pleasing a parent (doing what they say) and receiving punishment from a parent when one disobeys them.
They may not have known they were committing an evil act, but they did know they were disobeying god. that this would displease him, and knew there was a punishment involved ( …you will surely die.) Is that not what sin means in Christianity, to “miss the mark” of what god wants you to do?”
OMagain is of course correct in saying: “Why bother to make such an argument when Adam and Eve never actually existed.”, but I’ll respond because it’s fun to point out the stupidity of the bible and your way of thinking:
Any child that understands what it means to displease its parents is a child that has learned what it means to displease its parents. In other words, it has gained knowledge of what it means to displease its parents. A newborn baby does not have that knowledge, and as I said before, no knowledge of good and evil also means no understanding of any punishment/negative consequences.
Before they ate the fruit the imaginary biblical characters adam and eve would have been as unknowledgeable (if not more so) as newborn babies when it came to understanding displeasure or any other negative (or good) consequences. They couldn’t have understood “disobeying”, “punishment”, “sin”, “death”, “should do”, “allowed”, “not allowed”, and “miss the mark”.
And what the hell happened to free will? LMAO
By the way, william, at UD you said:
“I think that Mr. Rickert is constructing an apologetic narrative that diverts attention from a very obvious question: why should anyone trust someone who has no objective grounding for moral or ethical behavior?”
What “grounding for moral or ethical behavior” could adam and eve have had or used before they ate the fruit? Remember now, they couldn’t have understood anything about morals/ethics until after they ate the fruit.
And before you say that they trusted, or could have trusted ‘God’, you’ll have to come up with a good story about where or from whom ‘God’ got ‘his’ “objective grounding for moral or ethical behavior” (yeah, like the horrible christian ‘God’ is objective, moral, and ethical). You’ll also have to come up with a good story about how newborn babies (adam and eve) could have understood “trust” before they ate the fruit.
Oh, and what or who is your “grounding for moral and ethical behavior”?
William,
No, one merely needs to make the argument that they didn’t know that it was evil to disobey God. How does it make sense for God to punish them when he purposely withheld the knowledge they would have needed in order to avoid sinning?
The question isn’t whether they had reason to expect that God would punish them, though I’ll say more about that below. It’s about the fairness of punishment.
But if they didn’t know that disobeying God was evil, how does their punishment make sense?
That’s not entirely clear from the story.
No, they only knew that God had told them that they would die. They didn’t know that it was true, and in fact the serpent persuaded them (or at least Eve) otherwise:
They also didn’t know that they would be banished from the Garden, that they would have to work for food, etc.
Yes, but again, the question isn’t whether they disobeyed. It’s about whether they deserved punishment.
Creationists — even ancient creationists — do not think things through.
But the message is clear enough. Disobey authority and you die.
This is still in effect in countries where religion and government are the same thing.
Have any of you seen the documentary Rise of the Black Pharaohs? I saw part of it on PBS a little while ago. One of the guys in the show (I think he was an African archaeologist but am not sure) said some things [about] controlling people with religion.
http://www.pbs.org/program/rise-black-pharaohs/
Keith,
Adam and Eve were responsible for their actions because they knew the difference between right and wrong. The moral law was specified and the prohibitions were made explicit in advance. Evil is another matter.
As usual, you failed to define your terms. so I will do it for you:
Metaphysical evil = privation of the good
Moral evil = perversity of the will.
Adam and Eve had no way of knowing about (nor were they affected by) either element until after the fall,
Question: Do you understand the difference between a wrong act and its evil consequences?