I look forward to it.
I must admit that it was only as I was writing the post that I realized that it is God who created evil by making a rule. Far from from all evil being created by “desire” (humans) and “disobedience of the rules” (humans), evil was created by the being that created rules - God. The orthodox interpretation begins to look like victim-blaming.
What really puts the lid on the whole episode is that God was wrong to think that if Adam and Eve ate the apple, they would “become as we are” i.e. gods. They did not become gods.
Come to think of it, who planted the tree in the garden in the first place?
That is a key insight. Filling that out would be an interesting exercise.
Being able to follow a rule is dependent on making a choice. Making a choice is deciding what ought be done. It is inherently normative.
By introducing the rule, God introduced Eve to normativity.
In contrast, for example, God might have simply made it so that Eve became somewhat nauseous at the sight of an apple, ensuring that she never ate the forbidden fruit. There was no need to obligate her to make a choice.
In introducing the rule, God constructed the very logical space in which right and wrong subsist.
This works as a response to @GregW. If God had indeed desired Adam and Eve to be morally innocent, he ought not have introduced the rule; for he thereby placed them in a moral position, removing their innocence.
Sorry for jumping in like this, but I couldn’t resist.
The myth of Adam and Eve describes a fundamental evolutionary principle and a serious crisis for the evolution of humanity. This is done in an allegorical, or mythological way, which could be understood by people of the day.
So to identify and critique this crisis, requires a reinterpretation of the myth in modern evolutionary terms.
The tree of knowledge represents the development of the intellect in the human brain. The eating of the fruit represents the application of this intellect in human life and society. The serpent represents our inherent animal nature. The temptation represents the opportunity for that animal nature to make use of the newly developed intellect in human behaviour. Adam and Eve leaving the garden of Eden represents the stage where our early human ancestors left behind their evolutionary niche (prior to the development of intellect) as forest margin Hunter gatherers. Resulting in the crisis of human evolution I refer to.
This is the fundamental lesson of the bible and the rest of the book is about how humanity has coped with and should cope with this predicament.
The fall of man is hardly allegorical, even under a mythological lens. God created A&E and they were given clear instructions not to eat from a particular tree, or “you will surely die.” The fork-tongued one tempted Eve and Adam and the story ends with A&E being banished for their transgression to earth, Adam to toil in farms and Eve to endure the pains of childbirth.
However, I’m not saying we can’t/shouldn’t put our own private spin on the story. It also looks as though God was teaching humanity about gravity. Remember Newton and the apple and don’t forget Einstein, the greatest scientist of the 20^{th} century; gravity is all about falling, part of the sequence of events when you jump. Resistance, of course, is futile.
I don’t understand this. In the first place, it is hard to believe that people were capable of writing alleories about evolution hundreds of years BC. On the other hand, we might, I suppose, apply our interpretation to the old story and benefit in some way.
But I don’t see any lesson in this, never mind a biblical one. There’s no God and no morality in it.
Mind you, our double nature - rational and irrational - is indeed a predicament. But that needs exploring another time.
God could not create a perfect world. The perfect world of God already existed with God, as a part of God.
God could have done all these things that you have mentioned. If God had used His power to deny Adam and Eve their desire for knowledge, then the history of mankind would not exist.
The story of Genesis, as all creation stories, are written in the language of mythos by poets. Poetry may be literally true, it may not be literally true, or it may reveal a greater truth.
God created Adam and Eve as His favorite free-range pets in paradise. This was His original plan.
God did not created the possibility evil by making a rule. God was not punishing Adam and Eve for their desire for knowledge. God acceded to their desire for knowledge, power, and freedom to live the life they choose as human beings. God tried to dissuade Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of knowledge, because He knew that mankind with knowledge, power, and freedom will create evil.
The serpent was acting as the advocate. The serpent is the least favorite free-range pet of God.
So hence you concede that Genesis is mythology; of course, if that mythology is literally true, then what we have been arguing still applies — so thus either Genesis cannot be treated as literally true, or God is not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not omnibenevolent.
Of course, there is one argument we could have made that we have largely ignored — what if God could not create a world without the serpent or without Eve being successfully tempted by that serpent?
That, of course, calls God’s omnipotence into account — but of course the Problem of the Stone (for reference, that is the paradox raised by the assertion that an omnipotent being could create a stone so heavy that even they could not lift it — if that being could not lift the stone they would not be omnipotent, but if they could not create the stone they would not be omnipotent either), inherently limits any hypothesized omnipotence, even that of an Abrahamic God.
And that does not solve the moral dimension of the matter that has been raised earlier. Even if God simply could not create a world without the serpent or the temptation, God still forbade Adam and Eve from eating the apple but simultaneously refused to tell Adam and Eve of this and God still used the successful temptation of Eve as grounds to eject all humans from paradise.
Both of these are distinctly immoral unless you reject the concept of morals pertaining to God — but if morals do not apply to God, why does God care about things such as temptation in the first place?
Even if one argues from a Christian perspective that God eventually changed His mind and decided to send his Son to redeem humanity and enable humanity to eventually return to paradise, what about all the humans that had lived and died before Jesus came on the scene, or all the humans who were born into societies which did not follow the teaching of Jesus? Is there any reason why they should not receive salvation too?
Without the rule, there could be no possibility of going against god’s will. So he did create the possibility of evil by introducing the tree and the rule.
If Adam and Eve had “desire for knowledge, power, and freedom to live the life they choose as human beings” it is because that is how god made them.
The world was perfect and then God messed it up. Was that one of his perfections or just a mistake?
Are you suggesting that God wanted them to have knowledge of good and evil? That’s not what the story says.
Forbidding someone from doing something bad when they don’t understand the difference between good and bad is a very bad way to prevent them from doing it. If you put down a bowl of food in front of an untrained puppy, it’s no good saying “Don’t eat that”. If you don’t want the puppy to eat the food, don’t put it down on the floor. If God didn’t want A & E to eat the fruit, he shouldn’t have planted the tree in the first place.
Have you read the story lately?
Anyway, the serpent had no way of knowing that it was doing anything bad, since it couldn’t know the difference between good and evil any more than Adam and Eve could.
If God is not omnipotent, not omniscient, or not omnibenevolent, then what is God?
Then the world would be without the serpent or without Eve being successfully tempted by that serpent.
I think I understand what you are trying to say, but you are confusing omnipotence, all powerful, with perfectly powerful. God is perfectly powerful, which means that He cannot use His power for evil or use His power to create perfection. A perfectly heavy stone is not created by God. A perfectly heavy stone, like all perfect things, are a part of God and can be lifted by God.
I do not understand this statement.
I do not reject the concept of morals pertaining to God. Morals are a part of God. God care about things such as temptation because He care about the human condition.
There is no reason why they should not receive salvation too.
“For by Grace are ye saved through faith, and not of yourselves: It is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
