god is a prick!

Great Debates
1

I was being preached to today, (it happens a lot) and the guy mentioned something I’d never thought too much about. He mentioned that the fruit that Adam and Eve were forbidden from eating was the “fruit of the knowledge of good and evil”. Now that got me thinking:
All of a sudden you exist, a being tells you that he is all powerful, and that you can do what ever the hell you want except eat this yummuy-looking fruit.
A snake comes along and tells you he other guy is full of shit, and to go ahead and eat the fruit. You are now getting conflicting orders from two equally credible (in your mind) sources, so you go with your gut–which tells you to eat the fruit. Suddenly you realize that the snake was lying to you, and that first guy is going to be mad.

So this god who is billed as just and kind punishes you (and all your children for that matter) for breaking the rules, but the only rule you have broken was that of learning the rules! What a prick!

2

This assumes, of course, a completely literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. Or a belief in God in the first place, for that matter.

It seems that God wanted to set up a paradoxical situation… didn’t he tell Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply”? And wouldn’t the act of procreation have been impossible without the eating of the forbidden fruit? It seems to me that his first order (“go forth and multiply”) should take precedence over the second (“don’t eat the forbidden fruit”).

Or did the “go forth etc.” command come AFTER they ate the fruit?

I may be disremembering my Genesis… if so, I apologize.

3

Am I missing something here? On what do you base your assumption that it would be impossible to be fruitful and multiply without eating the fruit? Just wondering.

4

One of the things that the Forbidden Fruit supposedly taught Adam and Eve was that “sex = babies”. Before that, they were like two completely innocent little cherubs (Note Genesis 3:7… “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked”). 'Course, this is just one interpretation. Feel free to offer up another.

(Note: These “teachings” came from my upbringing in the Mormon religion, and the stuff I learned from my time in a Catholic school. Just so you know what “slant” is given on this. For the record, I believe in neither.)

5

Hmmm. Not quite what I learned, as a tyke. Of course, YMMV; lots of room for different interpretations here, it being a religious argument and all that. But what I was taught was that the “fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” was simply the choice to disobey God; the shame at being naked was not that now they knew sex was bad — sex is not bad, in and of itself, but that they now were tempted to have sex in ways that were against God’s will. In other words, now that they knew they could choose to disobey God, nakedness is a bad thing; it is a source of temptation to do just that — disobey God.

But that’s just what I was taught.

Back to the OP:

Well, that’s not how I look at the story, nor how it was taught to me. The snake is not “equally credible” in the story, according to my reading or to the folks that taught me (or the Church, for that matter). God created them, after all, and they know that (their behavior says so — when they eat the fruit, they don’t run to the snake for protection, they hide from God because they know they have done wrong by him). There is no real indication that the snake is “equally credible” in Genesis, nor that either Adam or Eve really believed that. They knew what they were doing.

Of course, if you are not a literalist (and I am not), this is a myth that represents the choice we all make many times each day — to follow God or to not follow Him. It really is pretty clear, and the alternative is not “equally credible” at all. So (at least in my mind) I judge God “not guilty” on the “prick” charge in this case. Again, YMMV.

Now, if you want to make a “prick” charge against God stick, you might try the book of Job. Even with the happy ending, I’ve always had problems with sending a bunch of really nasty stuff against a poor guy just because of a drinking game with Satan (my interpretation). Or, for that matter, sending a bunch of she-bears to tear apart a bunch of kids just because they are making fun of Elijah for being bald. Seems a little stiff to me. Lots of places to lay a “prick” charge against God besides Genesis. You just stopped reading too early.

But I’ll let someone else take up those arguments…

6

My interp:

God makes people. He likes having little sentient beings to work in his garden.

For some reason he puts the keys to the end of their slavery in the garden, but tells them not to use them. The tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (which makes them ethical and intelligent beings) and the tree of Life (which would make them immortal).

They eat from the tree of Knowledge. Realize what’s going on. Realize their potential. Become sentient. Obtain free will. God gets pissed. He wants no rivals (up to this point, only he has had free will.) Expels them from the garden so they don’t eat the fruit of immortality and become gods like him. Woe, toil, suffering, etc.

WHaddaya think? Add the goddess Sophia (“wisdom”) to send the snake, and you’ve got at least one variety of Gnosticism.

7

Wow. A battle between a turd and a penis. I would participate, but then I would miss the Clippers versus Girzzlies game. :smiley:

8

If we are going to accept symbolism to explain the Garden of Eden, then we must first consider that Adam and Eve are also symbols and that we are dealing with an anthropological set of historical data (ie, archaeological myth/legend).

It makes alot of historical sense if Adam and Eve symbolize the “first” forced converts to the feudal method of colonialism as civilization spread across the world (hunting-gathering to ranching-farming). They were blamed for their poverty, shamed in their nakedness, and enslaved to work their former paradise as their distant landlord’s field. It still happens every day, over and over, in the rain forests, and guess what the missionaries are teaching?

Note: This paradise theme is very important, it justifies a return to the same. Also, Noah’s ark made a very important adjustment to the operating creation myth, accounting for post-colonialism and developing fenced farms, by dimensions, with human-saved animals that have become rightful property and features strict animal husbandry and monogamy with village tendencies.

9

Assuming that it is evil to sin, then how could Adam (or Eve, for that matter) have been the first sinner? They had no idea that they were sinning; in fact, sin didn’t exist. Not until they ate from the tree, of course…

This makes Cain the original sinner; he knew what he was doing was wrong, and did it anyway.

10

A talking snake is a credible source (as compared with Oz The Great And Terrible)? There are consequences to being too dumb for the Garden.

The Old Testament Lord was a little closer to previous deities in his capacity to be occasionally arbitrary, vengeful and cruel. Remember poor Prometheus, who took fire to give to mankind and was punished by Zeus - chained to a rock with an eagle perpetually gnawing at his liver. Now there was a god with an attitude.

11

God isn’t a prick in as much as God is a powerless dweeb when it comes to overcoming the devil.

If it’s the devil that tempts you, then what’s up with God tempting you? What’s that all about?

12

Why are you all so sure that God didn’t want the to eat from the tree? Because he told them? Please - give the deity some credit for subtlety.

13

Of course, it could all be a myth those deeper, more subtle meaning is lost to us because we don’t know the historical and cultural context in which it was originally presented.

14

In these discussions it seems to me that people are really talking about totally different things without realizing it. Some are talking about why God did a certain thing, others about what really happened versus what parts of the story were changed since, and still others about why religions make this stuff up, i.e. how these stories benefit the religion. This last group can be positive like Joseph Campbell or negative like, well, like me.

I see religion as an entirely human method of controlling people. From this perspective, all the clothes, holy books, tenets, rituals and other aspects of religion are strands of a web that accomplishes nothing more than cocooning the victim’s mind in a soft, but phony, pseudo-reality that hands over her or his political authority to the religion and its ministers. It is so effective at this that its very effectiveness is more than sufficient to explain the entire activity outright. History is still waiting for a GOOD reason to believe it, and has been for a long time.

fecal_nugget’s original allegation seems clear but leaves murky the core of his/her argument. Is he/she saying:

  1. God exists, and is a prick, and that’s disturbing.
  2. God exists, but this story is false, because that would make God a prick, and I don’t believe that about him.
  3. God may not exist, this story (and possibly the rest of the bible) is false, because it would make God a prick.

…or some other interpretation?

Personally I believe option 3, Nonsensical Biblical Story Helps Discredit Entire Religion, but that’s just me.

Anyway, this confusion covers up fecal_nugget’s thesis, which I summarize this way. When God told them not to eat of the tree of knowledge, wasn’t that a moral injunction? If good and bad are defined as what God says to do and not to do, then Adam and Eve were already under a moral injunction when they supposedly didn’t have the moral sense.

The Christian religion claims that morality is simply the difference between obeying God and not obeying God. To disobey God has the exact same meaning as “to sin” according to this view. But Adam ate the apple when he had no knowledge of sin, yet God still punished him as though he had. This is indeed an error on God’s part, if God is just. So God is either not just or makes mistakes. QED, God is not perfect, and Judeo-Christianity dissolves in the dust of Yet-Another-Absurdity. Well done, fecal_nugget.

Of course, what it really proves is that the real author of the bible didn’t notice that he was assuming a prior moral sense to the one given by God through the tree of knowledge. It reveals the author as human.

And Alessan, He may be subtle, but He still punished two people for an act committed when they had no moral sense. Whether he knew all along that that would happen is irrelevant. It still proves that the God of Genesis cannot be perfect as advertised, and so cannot exist as stated.

15

dlb wrote:

I’ve always wondered what kind of a God would imbue His creation with a drive to have sex against that God’s will…

16

No, no, no. You have it all backwards. In 1993, Satan was a pick!

17

Who said he punished them? He shouted at them and kicked them out of the house, but that doesn’t mean he was angry. Perhaps he knew that a moral - i.e. free-willed - being couldn’t endure in the perfect, unchanging stasis of Eden. Or perhaps he knew that truly independant beings like Adam and Eve now were needed hardship in order to evolve, grow up. After all, the Hebrew God was never supposed to be a nice guy; he loves his creations, sure, but it’s tough love.

Look at it this was - every adolescent has to disobey his parent, get into an argument and assert his or her independence. It’s part of the growing process, and isn’t that what God ultimately wants from us - that we be strong enough, mature enough to no longer need him?

That’s just one option, one I’m not sure I believe in myself, but you should be aware of the fact that there are a lot more than three possible explanations.

18

Alessan wrote:

Oh, just about every Christian who believes that Original Sin carries with it an eternal sentence in Hell…

19

Tracer -

A. I’m Jewish.

B. We wrote the damn story.

C. Hi Opal!

20

**Alessan wrote:

Look at it this was - every adolescent has to disobey his parent, get into an argument and assert his or her independence. It’s part of the growing process, and isn’t that what God ultimately wants from us - that we be strong enough, mature enough to no longer need him?**

I like your hypothesis here, but doesn’t it imply that there’s no need for the “redemptive” aspect of the Messiah, then? If humanity is just being a rebellous teenager toward the God/parent, then we don’t need to be “saved” as we were just asserting our independence, not sinning.