Genesis 3

This here is a tough chapter. It's one of the chapters that were instrumental in leading me to a long stint of militant atheism (starting age 12 or so). It's the Original Sin chapter. In its standard reading, the reading I was taught, it places the blame mostly on Eve and partly on Adam and the serpent. But when I read it I thought it was impossible to blame anyone but God himself for what happened. Observe:

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made.

Verse 1 of the chapter begins like this. And by this very way, it reminds me that God was to have made the snake and, by logic, must have made him crafty. Furthermore, is crafty being used as a pejorative here?

He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ ²The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; ³but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” ’ ⁴But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; ⁵for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’

Here, the crafty serpent implies that God lied. Eve took his "you shall surely die" comment literally and the serpent explained that she will not die but that she will become more knowledgeable. This is a continuous problem, especially in the new testament: God, or Jesus, says something, people take him literally, hilarity/tragedy/misunderstanding ensues. If God and/or Jesus say something that is not intended to be taken literally, they should have had the foresight to make themselves more clear, better understood. Knowing what we know after reading Genesis 1 to 3 we must assume that God was not being literal about eating from the tree of knowledge leading to death, otherwise it would make him a liar. But EVE TOOK HIM LITERALLY! Why didn't God see this coming?

So, back to the event. Who's at fault here for the fall? The snake, maybe, for enticing Eve. But God made the snake, God knew the snake had the mental capacity to trick Eve, God was certainly watching all of this transpire. Maybe Eve is at fault, but God made Eve, God knew Eve had some obedience issues, God gave her one rule and it took her all of one conversation with a serpent to break it, God knew this would happen when he created Eve, God must have made Eve with very little will power, and God simply watched our simple Eve be swayed by the crafty serpent.

⁶So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

Again, the desire to make yourself wise is also responsible for man's fall. When I read verse 6 I cringe, I want to cry. Because there is no arguing a literalist on this point: Wisdom brings sin. As a student or academic, I perpetuate the problem (see the Amish for more illumination on this point). By extension, a critical reading of the bible is frowned upon as it will only lead to trouble. Also, Adam was hanging around watching all of this. He didn't even have the will or foresight to say anything, he just went ahead and ate. Is it his fault? It's clear to me that God made Adam even dumber than Eve.

⁷Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Thus, knowledge made us prude.

8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

God is omnipresent. He is everywhere and he is watching. God may be walking in the garden but he already knew all that had happened and all that will happen. Why is God being coy?

⁹But the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ ¹⁰He said, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.’ ¹¹He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?’ ¹²The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.’ ¹³Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this that you have done?’ The woman said, ‘The serpent tricked me, and I ate.’

God continues to be coy. He pulls out a confession as would a parent with a child covered in chocolate. "what did you do?" -- "nuffin" -- "tell me the truth, did you eat the cookies?" -- and so on. Furthermore, the interaction presented here, where God asks "Who told you that you were naked?" hints to me of a very strange relationship between God and his creation.

The question always lingers: Why would God create us/anything? It's one of those unanswerable questions, but my best guess given his interactions with humans throughout the old testament is that we are his simple playthings. Whether he observes us for entertainment or as some weird experiment gone awry, the old testament, beginning with Genesis 3:11, makes me feel that he created us simply as a means to feel something: anger, dismay, joy, laughter, depression. Before we came along, God had no reason to feel anything. He created us silly creatures so that he could feel something. As the old testament progresses we'll see him experience all kinds of emotions on account of our actions.

¹⁴The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this,
cursed are you among all animals
and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life. ¹⁵I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.’ ¹⁶To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.’

Genesis 3:16 == HARSH. Especially the "he shall rule over you" bit.

¹⁷And to the man he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife,
and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you,
“You shall not eat of it”, cursed is the ground because of you;
in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; ¹⁸thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field. ¹⁹By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread until you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken; you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.’

Let me explain in more detail my BIGGEST problem here (in case you haven't deduced this yourself). God creates man. He knows he has created a creature wich is stupid, has no will power, can't even follow a simple rule, a FLAWED creature. Even worse, in God's omniscience (he knows EVERYTHING) God was aware, even before creating him, that man would betray him. Yet he plays the game, goes through the motions, and punishes him for his sin.

This is like a baker, baking a cake, he forgets to add the eggs or the sugar. Out of the oven the cake looks or tastes horribly, so what does the baker do? He gets mad at the cake and tosses it down the stairs. Excuse me, baker, but you forgot the eggs (or, in this case, you intentionally left them out).

This is a simple deduction. I know that people have argued about this for a thousand years. This very story leads us to our 'free will' argument: The idea that God gave us free will and, with it, we can surprise him and do things he did not expect. Well, that's fine if you want to believe that God does not know our intentions, but then you have to concede that God does not know everything. If God does not know everything, then why is he God and not god or that guy, sam, who happened to put us together and hoped for the best? Anyway, this is Philosophy 101 stuff, so let me move on.

I feel that God can only be worthy of our praise if he is a super genius, if not omniscient. God's behavior in Genesis 3 is so far below super genius that it shames me. How can anyone read this chapter and assume God is a fair, nice person? I suspect that the only way to do this is to make excuses, attempt to dig through what is written and try to find an explanation that would allow God to come out of this tale looking a bit less like an overemotional, bipolar amnesiac and more like a caring, loving nurturer.

20 The man named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all who live. ²¹And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.

22 Then the Lord God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’— ²³therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. ²⁴He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.

So that was how we were punished by God. Some denominations believe that this original sin is a source of continued punishment. Some believe that if we are not baptized before death, regardless of how good we'd been in life, we would still go to hell because of what Adam and Eve did. As if there is some legal, techincal loophole that God won't fix forcing the continued suffering of mankind because of something our incredibly ignorant ancestors did 5000 years ago.

At 12 years old, after reading and re-reading this chapter, asking my Chatechism teacher about it and receiving no response, I lost faith in my fellow roman catholics. How can you not have a response to Genesis 3 for a 12 year old? How can you read this chapter literally and go on with your happy worshipping? How can you, after reading this, deduce that the acquisition of knowledge is a reason for punishment? How can you not blame the creator for the flaws of the creation?

And it isn't just the roman catholics:

Genesis 3 is a chapter that demands the reader to understand God. People read chapter 3 and without a thought move on to chapter 4. Why? Because, chances are, you heard the story of chapter 3 when you were 6 and it made complete sense to you.

"Of course God would be mad, that's what happens when you don't listen to rules. I know from experience! Yesterday when I ate the cookie even though mom told me to wait till after dinner I got a spanking! God is just spanking Adam and Eve..." and so on.

I want everyone who believes in the infallibility of the bible to stop and pay attention to Genesis 3. Read Genesis 3 and pay attention and don't assume that the reason you don't understand the problems is because you didn't major in theology. When human beings say horrible things like "Gays are going to hell" or "Women shouldn't have the right to vote" we are saying them because of literal interpretations of the old testament. But what happens when we follow the logical, literal interpretation of Genesis 3?