The Adam and Eve story continues to plague theologians, for we know from genetics that it’s wrong—modern humanity did not all descend from two contemporaneous ancestors—and yet the concept of sin and redemption through Jesus is desperately important to Christians. Without a literal interpretation of the Fall, what sense does Jesus’s sacrifice make?
David Lose, who has appeared on this site before, has a solution in a new piece at HuffPo: “Adam, Eve and the Bible.” Lose is Director of the Center for Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary, but not a literalist. He apparently accepts the scientific refutation of Adam and Eve’s existence, but when it comes to facing its implications for Christianity, he waves away the problem:
The second argument against reading Adam and Eve as mythic story rather than historical account is that later theologians, most notably the Apostle Paul, base some of their theology on the Adam and Eve account. Lose Eden, the theory goes, and you’ve lost Paul as well. This I name the “house of cards” understanding of theology, because if any single element of a larger theological argument appears flimsy then the entire confession is at risk. This creates for conservatives tremendous insecurity about the validity and integrity of Christian theology that must be kept at bay at all costs.
The Apostle Paul, however, betrays no such insecurity. Striving to describe mysteries that surpass him, Paul presses language to its limits in order to witness to God’s work in Christ. Paul is not trying to explain divinity but rather pay homage to it. For this reason he reaches for familiar stories, symbols and characters to give voice to his testimony of how the man crucified as a criminal unexpectedly emerges as God’s divine solution to our human plight. Working at times with Adam and at others with Abraham, drawing comparisons to the sacrificial system of Judaism at some points and Greco-Roman house ethics at others, Paul stretches language and metaphor to render God’s accomplishment as vivid and accessible as possible rather than reduce it to historical or even theological formulas. Jesus is neither a data point in Paul’s larger rational argument nor a cog in some machinery of salvation; rather, he is the narrative linchpin and interpretive key that holds together and makes sense of all of Israel’s stories and, indeed, all the stories of the world.
I guess he’s saying here that the redemption of humans from sin through the crucifixion, and the status of Jesus as God’s son, are merely metaphors rather than historical facts. Jesus is reduced to a “narrative linchpin” to make a larger point. And what is that point? Lose returns to it at the end when discussing Genesis, Adam and Eve:
Yet read these stories literally and all the artistic nuance and poetic beauty of these distinct confessions is immediately flattened by the need to have them conform to post-Enlightenment ideas of rational verifiability imported in the mid-19th century to repel attempts to read the Bible as a historical document.
“Conforming to post-Enlightenment values of rational verifiability,” of course, is a theologian’s way of saying “true”. So if the story isn’t true, what can we take from Adam and Eve? Just this:
If, however, we look to Genesis not for historical datum from which to construct a pseudo-scientific cosmology we find a different story all together. It’s a story about the insecurity that is endemic to humanity and the ever-present temptation to refuse the identity that comes from the vulnerability of authentic relationship in favor of defining ourselves over and against each other. Read this way, the story of Eden is the history of humanity writ small, and Adam and Eve are, indeed, the parents of us all. It’s a more complicated story, for sure, than we’ve sometimes been offered, but it is also more interesting and compelling and, ultimately, one I’m inclined to believe.
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I know it has nothing to do with what most Christians see as the meaning of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. How nice of God to tell Lose what the Bible really means, and how accommodating of Lose to give Christians a way to abandon one of the central tenets of their faith.
Anybody else read the entire essay and notice that he conveniently forgot to explain why Jesus and the Resurrection are real but Adam and Eve are just poetry?
Cheers,
b&
Since original sin and the fall are the entire rationale behind Jesus and the resurrection, it seems that he has completely undermined Christianity in his attempts to save it from evidentiary scrunity.
Talk about collateral damage.
“The Adam and Eve story continues to plague theologians” who don’t see it for what it is, a story, more than two millennia old, which probably spoke to the origination of the human species. It’s significance varies with each interpreter. The essential in the story for me is “eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil..” according to the Christian Old Testament. It’s “good and bad” in the JPS Tanakh leading one to ask whether all that is bad is evil.
What does it mean ” Take your pick. For me it means the human distinction is that we get to choose and chose to go our own way, not the way of nature alone. Many theologians, not unlike the rigid thinkers in other fields, evolution excepted, of course, are locked in to rigid thought, hence rationalizing what was written millennia ago to force fit it into contemporary knowledge based on an apparent premise that what was known then was eternally true. They deserve what they think as do I. There are many more “Adam and Eve” stories, each of them likely born of the same human sentiment. They’re good stories, fictions, with meaning.
Yet another way to piss down your back and tell you it’s raining, which hardly ever works.
Lose makes a comparison of the Adam and Eve story to the Tim Burton movie ‘Big Fish’ in which the central story is about a son’s gradual understanding of his fathers habit of telling tall tales about his life. The trouble with that analogy is that in the movie we learn that the stories were essentially true, albeit exaggerated by the father. We find out because at his funeral many of the characters of the tales turn up to mourn him. In the case of Adam and Eve we have solid scientific evidence to show that it simply couldn’t have happened as told in the bible. It’s not an exaggeration, it’s a fabrication. Population genetics (and archaeology, linguistics, anthropology etc) have revealed that the Adam and Eve story is even less plausible than the Mormon story of middle easterners coming to the Americas by boat. If it’s a bad analogy then why treat it as a useful metaphor?
“Conforming to post-Enlightenment values of rational verifiability,”
I am so using this phrase with my local fundies.
I predict a lot of blank looks.
That’s the guaranteed effect of a sophisticated theologian upon the unsophisticated religious masses.
LOL. It’s quite amusing to watch theologians (especially liberal theologians) twist, wiggle, and squirm when attempting to deal with the totally refuted Adam & Eve myth. Without Adam & Eve there was no Fall, and without a Fall there is no need for Jesus or redemption (I’ll leave the insane and illogical story of Jesus’ surrogate “sacrifice-to-forgive-sins-he-is-responsible-for-causing” for another day).
I will say one thing for the literalists, though. At least they have the cojones to completely reject empirical reality in favor of their magical stories. And they will stick to their guns about it no matter what myth-destroying evidence from reality is presented to them. It takes some serious resolve to be so stubborn and willfully ignorant in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. If only that resolve could be put towards ideas and activities that benefit humanity instead of causing untold damage to it.
Great comment. I re-posted it on my blog.
I, too, like the literalists better. They take their shitty holy book seriously and will defend it to the death, or at least their understanding of the words in said book that they may or may not have read. A sophisticated religionist is literally just making up his or her own religion based on his or her predispositions and education. They often aren’t complete morons and are at least semi-capable of hiding behind weasel words and will willingly stuff their god into the darkest corner of the attic, only to pretend that that part of the house was built before anything else and is the most important. The process is to have an idea about God, learn something that contradicts that idea, then make something up that shows how that contradiction isn’t a contradiction at all, but rather a confirmation. It all turns into a frustrating game of move-the-goalposts.
So Jesus died for a metaphor?
Seriously, without the notion of Original Sin transmitted to us through our ancestors, why does Jesus need to sacrifice himself (for a weekend)? If “the Fall” is just a metaphor for our general sinful nature, then doesn’t that mean that the Christian god screwed up when creating humans? The point of the Adam and Eve story is that they made a choice, and the repercussions of that choice are passed to us. If there is no actual Original Sin, then why do we need baptism and all the other joo-joo intended to clean us of it?
Perhaps Jesus only died metaphorically!
Little did we know that Jesus was actually a stand-up comic, and just came up against a really tough crowd.
Like so:
I don’t see how a being could sit around and one day decide to whoosh a world into existence and cook up a wonky system like Christianity all as some kind of test to see who was worthy of coming up to heaven with him and playing games of who can be the most-boring for all eternity, and be regarded as a good being for doing so. That being is either a jerk or incompetent if the Adam and Even story is a story to explain a fundamental truth.
Finally, someone didn’t just say “it’s a metaphor”, but attempted to explain what it was a metaphor for:
Except that I can’t really understand what he’s saying. If I read Genesis metaphorically, I only see a story that emphasizes the need for obedience, warns against the dangers of curiosity, and warns against women. Guess I’m just not sophisticated enough.
I was about to say the same – that particular sentence is the most absolute twaddle. Either he is producing post-modernist garbage or he does not know what he exactly wants to say!
My best guess is that “the identity that comes from the vulnerability of authentic relationship” means going through life with your heart open and your bullshit detector turned off (to borrow a phrase from George R.R. Martin), while “defining ourselves over and against each other” means keeping your guard up and your brain engaged. So basically he’s saying that being skeptical and thinking for yourself somehow cuts you off from genuine emotional connections. I think.
I think he’s saying that we (sinfully) try and follow our own way through the world rather than following God’s way. And since humans still do that, Adam and Eve are better thought of as representing sinners rather than being the origin of sinners.
However, that’s just a guess. And such an argument presumes that there is a God’s way, and that every human knows it well enough to reject it…some pretty whoppingly big assumptions.
The bit I like is how the Jesus story is the Story of Everything. I’ll wait for Lose’s next article on how Jesus explains the enormous tragedy in Japan – or Haiti, Somalia, etc.
The A&E tale is no harder to believe than the virgin birth, incarnation, and resurrection of Jesus. Would he claim that those things about Jesus are “allegory” as well?
I don’t know if it’s bad form or not, but I wrote a blog post about some actual instances of allegory in the NT that ironically most Christians think really happened.
http://deusdiapente.blogspot.com/2011/08/problem-with-christian-allegory_17.html
Get out of accountability card. Golden.
That’s a very interesting article. You and Ben Goren should get together!
Allegory just makes things worse. The storyteller is making a point, and has gone out of the way to author a story to illustrate that point (rather than merely be an impartial observer of something interesting). It’s a virtual reality constructed solely to promote the message of the allegory.
And when the storyteller is the Jesus character, and the moral is, “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me,” you know you’ve fallen in with a really bad crowd.
Cheers,
b&
In seminary, yes, in church, no.
But see, humans evolving from less self aware ancestors is *completely* different than the story presented in Adam and Eve. With evolution, there is no “Fall” into sin, we evolved from creatures that had lives that were far more ruthless and brutal than our current ones. Our incremental increase of intelligence and language enabled us to actually understand one another, and to imagine what other people were thinking, versus making dominance displaces and biting others in the face.
Adam and Eve is about showing how hopeless and failed and broken we are, the better that God can redeem us, while evolution shows us a work on progress, and that while we are not perfect, we can become better, and we *have* become better.
I followed (not necessarily in agreement) the first 3 quoted paragraphs. Then I came upon the 4th one and found myself staring up Mr Lose’s backside, which is apparently where he ended up whilst trying to reconcile the irreconcilable.
Someone fetch a rope!
It’s a story about the insecurity that is endemic to humanity and the ever-present temptation to refuse the identity that comes from the vulnerability of authentic relationship in favor of defining ourselves over and against each other.
What the hell does this mean? I can’t follow a thing. We (humanity) are insecure and constantly tempted by our competitive definition. We wouldn’t be defining ourselves this way if we only became vulnerable to authentic relationship? And even if we gave in to this “authentic relationship” we’d still be insecure.
What the hell does that mean? Tempted to do what? Relationship with whom? Authentic as measured by what? How do we get rid of the insecurity?
I’m not smart enough for this sophisticated theology, methinks…
Think in terms of the man projecting his own insecurity with his faith, and then I think it becomes clearer.
Lose is a very insecure person.
Another version I’ve heard from liberal Christians lately which tries to keep the incarnation and resurrection literal but Eden allegorical goes something like:
Because we’re evolved creatures we’re imperfect (this is what “sin” is at its core), and “salvation” is a kind of perfection of the body and soul. Instead of a return to a state of paradise, it’s a lifting up of our present “fallen” (i.e. evolved) state to a higher state, as the culmination of our evolution. The incarnation connects human nature with divine nature, and the resurrection conquers death to pave the way for our last evolutionary step. It makes the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection into ontological events rather than atonement events, and salvation a process rather than a transaction.
The Eden ruse is needed because god knew we weren’t culturally ready for that kind of truth so he had to provide a story that was a baby-step to the next level of understanding (at the end of the process the fruit of the tree of knowledge will be “digestible”). All the groveling over sin is seen almost as a type of meditation that keeps us humble — no one has achieved enlightenment and no one can even get on the path without the spirit… etc. (In a weird way some of this actually is closer to rather early Orthodox ontology and soteriology.)
It’s always amazing (and annoying) how much people are willing to make things up to keep hold of these beliefs.
…wait for scientists to explain it instead.
Once again we’re back to the age old question of how and who decides which parts of the bible are parables and allegory and facts. Still complete BS.
We’re also ignoring the role of “divine inspiration” and have been through recent threads. When someone tries to explain away problems in the bible by talking about oral tradition, the need for filters, metaphor, etc., then that person is ignoring or denying what is a central tenet for many christians, that god “inspired” the writing of the bible (for various definitions of “inspire”). In other words, the more talk of metaphor, of Paul paying “homage” rather than explaining, the more acknowledgement that the bible is a purely human invention and wasn’t given to us by the big guy in the sky. The questions of fact vs metaphor can be interesting or entertaining, but the shrinking of god’s role in the creation of the bible is just as interesting and entertaining to me.
Never mind divine inspiration.
Where’s Jesus’s blog?
The dude went out of his way to stage his own torture and mock execution just to make sure everybody knew how important his message is, yet he can’t be arsed to sign up for a Facebook account? Is the WiFi reception really that bad at the right hand of YHWH’s throne?
Give me a break!
Cheers,
b&
Not only that, but it’s been TWO WEEKS since Rick Perry’s “Response”, and the economy is still in the shitter and it hasn’t rained in Texas.
What’s up with that? A god that create a whole universe out of nothing in 6 days can’t even make it rain in Texas?
I think this god fella is getting senile. Keeps forgetting where he put the rain stuff.
I know where he put the rain, it’s over here in Australia. It’s been pissing down for months in Sydney I hear!
I know it’s off topic here – but that damned Osprey video is still yelling at me in the background. I would have though it had dropped off the current page by now, but apparently not.
It was a nice video – but, for future reference, the auto-start aspect is really annoying!
If you’re using Firefox or Chrome, use Flash blocker plug-in. It’s a sanity saver and your pages will load much quicker.
Thanks but I’m using Safari
Try here:
http://hoyois.github.com/safariextensions/clicktoplugin/
Cheers,
b&
That works nicely – thanks a lot – the bird calls were upsetting the cats as well as me!
If you liked that, you’ll love this one:
http://code.google.com/p/adblockforchrome/
Cheers,
b&
+1
I agree with you, but here’s a possible solution that works for me…
In Firefox install the Flashblock add-on
Quote from developer:
Other solutions are available for other browsers
Thanks.
“It’s a more complicated story, for sure, than we’ve sometimes been offered, but it is also more interesting and compelling and, ultimately, one I’m inclined to believe”
Is it just me, or does make no sense to say you believe a metaphor?
it*
That’s an interesting question. According to some scholars of language, a metaphor is literally false. Can you believe something that is false, almost by definition?
From “A Shakespearean Grammar” by E.A. Abbott (the author of Flatland):
‘It is the essence of a metaphor that it should be literally false, as in “a frowning mountain.” It is the essence of a personification that, though founded on imagination, it is conceived to be literally true, as in “pale fear”, “dark dishonour.” A painter would represent “death” as “pale”, and “dishonour” as “dark”, though he would not represent a “mountain” with a “frown”, or a “ship” like a “plough.” ‘
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bertrand Russell, “There can’t be a practical reason for believing what isn’t true… Either the thing is true or it isn’t. If it is true, you should believe it, and if it isn’t true, you shouldn’t.”
That is a marvellous interview. There’s no obvious response to Russell at that point, other than to say, “yes”. Mind you, Russell did, for a short period of time believe in Anselm’s Ontological Argument.
You can’t literally believe in a metaphor, but you can metaphorically believe in a metaphor. It’s metaphors all the way down.
Can haz sophistimicated theology degree now?
When I say that Lose is a weasel twisting down the rat-hole of biblical theology, that’s a metaphor.
Lose’s deliberate obfuscation is glaringly highlighted by his first sentence quoted above where he claims that Paul based “some” of his theology on the garden when in fact it is Paul’s core principle, justification by faith, that was based on a literal Eden. The only way Lose can keep Paul the Theologian (and thereby safeguard his Lutheran heritage) is to lie to himself about what Paul the Communicator actually claimed.
Dear Ceiling Cat,
Could not you organize a competition between theologians? The sentence that destroys the most of religious claims would be the winner. Or the most comical, or meaningless, or whatever. The FSM would preside the ceremony.
That brings tears to my eyes!
…much like cutting raw onions…
Indeed it is a house of cards. And the more the “modern” theists try to insist that it makes no difference if a few cards are pulled out, the more they sound like closet non-theists who are trying to retain their faith in the face of all their true beliefs. As Shakespeare said: “The lady (or laddie in this case) doth protest too much, methinks.”
If, however, we look to Genesis not for historical datum from which to construct a pseudo-scientific cosmology we find a different story all together. It’s a story about the insecurity that is endemic to humanity and the ever-present temptation to refuse the identity that comes from the vulnerability of authentic relationship in favor of defining ourselves over and against each other.
Yes, it’s a story. It’s a story about Prometheus (the snake) bringing fire (knowledge of good and evil) to mankind. Like Prometheus, the snake gets punished for his altruistic deed. Unlike Prometheus, he also gets cast as a villain.
Lose in his article says:
“The Bible calls the faithful not to a safe haven of absolute knowledge but instead beckons believers into the stormier but more interesting waters of faith hope and love. Where knowledge demands cognitive assent, faith calls for equal measures of courage and imagination.”
As an ex-Christian I would turn this on its head. The atheist is called not to the safe haven of absolute trust in the existence of God, but to set out on the stormier and more interesting waters of personal responsibility,human reasoning,encouraging human kindness and love. Where faith in God demands blind assent, to be a dissenter calls for equal measures of courage and cognitive imagination.
+1
My sentiments exactly. Well put.
Really excellent, John Edwards.
Adam & Eve were basically punished for being shown God’s first and “original lie”, namely that even God couldn’t tell the difference between right and wrong in a eternal Groundhog Day, when his puppets are being told that there is no other way than to act forever as the main cast of his personal Truman Show.
The “original sin” is exposing said lie. That’s why God condemned all of humanity, forever and why Jesus threatens people with Hell; for once you stop being blind, a wolf is still a wolf, but you stop being sheep.
agreed, that was well said.
+ 3, & a special shout-out to HuntingGoodWill as well.
“Conforming to post-Enlightenment values of rational verifiability,” of course, is a theologian’s way of saying “true”.
Best pithy statement I’ve seen.
As a former liberal-Lutheran, I have to admit with some embarrassment that Lose’s “argument” is familiar and is the kind of thing I used to eat up. Thankfully I can now see that what I was eating up was the cake I was having and all the while wondering why I was still hungry.
This really is the most awful nonsense! It’s hard to imagine someone having written that last bit you quote, sitting back, and saying to himself: “Now, that should do the trick!” How could he have thought that that was something that he believe true? But perhaps the strangest thing of all is that he thinks that the ideas of evidence, confirmation and reason have been imported just — how did he put it now? — “to repel attempts to read the Bible as a historical document.” What can one say to someone who thinks that standards of reasoning are employed for the sole purpose of discomfitting the religious?! Truly head-waggingly bizarre!
“…to repel attempts to read the Bible as a historical document.” Lose makes this sound like a bad thing when it’s done with “post-Enlightenment ideas of rational verifiability”, but it’s a good thing when it’s done by recognizing that much of the bible is metaphor, and that Paul is stretching language and metaphor to the point where we don’t have any idea what, if anything, actually happened. At least we can be content in the knowledge that all that stretching makes sense of all the stories of the world.
And he’s supposedly a liberal christian. And they’re all fully supportive of reason and science(so we are told).
This is why you can’t trust moderates. Their loyalties are divided. When push comes to shove there’s a good chance they’ll choose faith over reason.
What a goddamned blowhard!
Person hearing the A&E story 2,500 years ago – “So, you’re saying there was an actual 1st couple?”
Teller – “Well, no, it’s a metaphor.”
Person – “Metaphor for what?”
Teller – “Well, in a couple thousand years people will actually uncover how humans came to be, it’ll make a lot more sense then, but right now I couldn’t really tell you. Live a good life and stuff maybe?”
Person – “Oh, ok, I’m fine with that.”
REALLY?!?! I’m just not buying that people took this as a metaphor and were ok with the vast emptiness of knowledge behind it. I think they took it as the literal story of creation, which we’ve shown is false, which is why the time for gods as an explanation has passed.
Saying it’s ok to accept A&E as a metaphor now even though it obviously wasn’t a metaphor then, but an attempt at an actual explanation, is akin to saying that alchemy is a metaphor and is ok to use it in relation to understanding modern chemistry. Uh, wrong. It was shown to be false. GET OVER IT!
A philosopher and a theologian were engaged in a dispute, and the theologian used the old quip about a philosopher’s being like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that wasn’t there. “That may be,” said the philosopher, “but a theologian would’ve found it.”
–Julian Huxley
+1!!!
I’ve just run into a theist like this. They suddenly can declare that no one *actually* belived in such silliness, but were only using it as an example. what BS. I do enjoy them gutting their religion as it becomes more and more untenable.
Don’t enjoy it too much. The gutting only occurs while you are looking; as soon as they are back among the faithful, the body of belief is magically restored to its whole form.
I do enjoy them gutting their religion as it becomes more and more untenable.
well, to be more accurate, the attempt to generalize and mythologize parts of their religion really is an attempt to make it MORE tenable from a modern perspective.
what they are also doing in the process, is un-dogmafying their religion.
once their religion is removed of all dogma, then it is also removed of all power.
works for me.
if people want to have little more than fairy tales to gather round the campfire and tell their kids, that’s fine.
can’t make laws based on fairy tales.
“… if any single element of a larger theological argument appears flimsy then the entire confession is at risk.”
And what if, as is the case in reality, *all* elements of theology are flimsy? This is the problem with many people – they wave away inconvenient facts one at a time and lose sight of the fact that there is no substantial basis whatsoever for their belief.
Judge: Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give will conform to post-Enlightenment values of rational verifiability?
Lose: Only within a context of my own choosing, which of course can be altered depending on circumstance and personal whim, for example if any evidence or argument is presented that may cast doubt upon anything I present as factual.
Judge: I’ll take that as an answer in the affirmative. Crown Prosecutor, you may begin.
CP: Mr Lose, we already have your signed statement but for the benefit of the jury, please tell us where were you on the night of June 4, 2011 C.E., between the hours of 9 and 11 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time.
Lose: My location is neither a data point in the Crown’s larger rational argument nor a cog in some machinery of evidence; rather, it is the narrative linchpin and interpretive key that holds together and makes sense of all of the Crown’s stories and, indeed, all the stories of the defence.
CP: According to your statement and the video file currently held in evidence, you were at home masturbating with both hands in front a very large mirror dressed as Sonic the Hedgehog.
Lose: In some interpretations, yes.
—
END SCENE
“In some interpretations, yes.”
but only if we force materialistic presumptions out of it.
or did those end up on the mirror afterwards?
Your Honour, I must strenuously object!
That’s just ichy.
No understanding of Applegate is complete without reading the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Replacing falsehoods with gibberish is not an improvement. At that point, why even bother to try to reconcile them at all? The only reason I can see why not to call it a mythic narrative is ‘it’s my mythic narrative’ leads to an even greater case of special pleading.
pfft, and yet they criticise atheists for not learning theology…
Oh come on: If Adam and Eve are not real and sin did not enter the world through their choices, then everything falls apart. Ant theologian who makes them a metaphor is simply one of those most disgusting atheists who claims to be a Christian.
And we must all remember that the Serpent told Eve the truth about what the fruit would do. The Serpent said the fruit was good for food and that it would open he eyes and make her like God, knowing good from evil.
Eve ate the fruit and her eyes were opened. The Serpent did not deceive.
God has been kicking out asses ever since.
Fundies, qua fundies, do not believe in right and wrong. Some of them have normal human sympathies, but they suppress their goodness thinking that Authority equals Asskicking, even if it’s in an afterlife.
Some fundies respond to reason, but once they back into Divine Command Theory, you’re dealing with a sociopath. My hope is some day we secularists may come to have the influence that these sociopaths can be detained and receive treatment so that they can function in secular society.
Ant theologian who makes them a metaphor
damn those ant theologians, so utterly wrapped up in their authoritarianism…
I think you meant, “authoritariantism.”
Cheers,
b&
Mr. Lose: would you treat your own children the way your god treats his “creation?”
Would you condemn your children and every one of their descendents for making a mistake, a mistake that they weren’t equipped to avoid, a mistake that is ultimately YOUR fault?
If not, then guess what: you’re BETTER than the god you worship. Maybe it’s time for you and your god to get a divorce.
“It’s a more complicated story, for sure, than we’ve sometimes been offered, but it is also more interesting and compelling and, ultimately, one I’m inclined to believe”
What did he believe before he came with this one? Was he a non-believer?
“It’s a story about the insecurity that is endemic to humanity and the ever-present temptation to refuse the identity that comes from the vulnerability of authentic relationship in favor of defining ourselves over and against each other.”
This is a fine mess of world salad, something that I, sad to say, have seen quite a bit of over the years. Translating word salad is never a fun task and it’s one of those jobs that makes the translator feel as if a great amount of time has been wasted. I think the author is trying to say that humans are by nature insecure and we don’t like that. Often we engage in competition with each other and avoid meaningful relationships because we are tempted to do so. Or something like that…
The problem I see is that none of this has anything to do with the Adam and Eve story. A&E were ordered to not eat from this one special tree. A snake talked Eve into doing so anyway, and A&E, and all of humanity by extension, were banished from paradise. Key word here is punishment. What does that have to do with an insecure human species? I’m truly befuddled.
And there it is again. Five good minutes totally wasted trying to interpret and “grade” word salad. I told myself I wouldn’t do this anymore…
I find this website very strange. If you don’t believe in God, if you don’t believe in the Bible, if you don’t believe in Jesus…. then why do you spend so much time talking about it, looking up articles about it, doing research on it? I don’t believe in ghosts, and in an average day, they never cross my mind and I don’t search for groups of like-minded people to bash ghost believers with. Whatever you believe, this whole discussion is hateful
Suppose politicians ran on the platform of upholding “the traditional dybbukian-ghostian values that this country was founded upon!”
Would you find yourself thinking about ghosts more often, even as you rejected the concept of dybbuks and ghosts as ridiculous?
Here’s how I see the Adam and Eve story:
God created human beings and kept them in a garden just so He could watch them having sex and play with them like toy things. God wanted to keep humans stupid as his slaves, but Lucifer came along, took pity on humanity and told man to eat the fruit of knowledge, so that humanity could become like God, knowing good and evil.
Notice that God told humans that they would die IN THE DAY they eat the forbidden fruit, but the serpent (Lucifer) told humans that they would become like Gods, knowing good and evil. Adam and Eve not only did not die in the day they ate the fruit, but God appeared right after that and said “now man has become like a God, knowing good and evil.”
In short, the serpent told the truth.