I came across an Atheist Bible Study blog online today, and was impressed and engrossed in what I found. There was a particularly interesting post about the second creation story, to which I began an immediate reply before discovering that the blog has since been abandoned to the ether… so I will post the original and my response here, instead…
Original:
“One of the things I found out in reading Genesis, was that there are actually two creation stories. The first thing I noticed about the second one is that it seems to be written in a completely different style. It is almost as if the two stories were written by different people, and were sort of "glued" together to form the beginning of Genesis.
The second story does not follow the "7 days" approach to creation of the world, but instead quickly goes through the creation of the earth and the heavens, the animals and plants, and creation of Adam from the "dust of the ground". He also does the trick of making Eve our of Adam's rib. No messing about here, as the point of this story seems to be what happens AFTER creation.
Once man and woman are created in the Garden (naked mind you, this will be important later), the "serpent" shows up. It also tells us that God made the serpent. The serpent tells us that God told Adam and Eve not to eat from a particular tree in the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So I'm going to assume that Adam and Eve do NOT know the difference between good and evil at this point. So the snake tempts Eve and she eats the fruit. So my first question is... how is Eve "tempted"? I mean, she has no idea what is 'good' or 'evil'. In fact, here we see something that seems to conflict.. The bible says...
So 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 desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
So wait. She doesn't know what is good, but she can see that it's "good" for food, and that it is a "delight" to the eyes? Isn't that seeing the difference between good and evil? Let's take an apple for instance. We KNOW that an apple is pleasing to the eyes, and tastes good. In fact, BECAUSE an apple tastes good, we find images of apples pleasing. If we had no idea if an apple was good for you, or poison, we would have no opinion about the "goodness" or "badness" of an apple, the exact same state that Adam and Eve find themselves. They have no idea if eating the apple is a good thing or a bad thing. They know that God told them not too.. but how do they know God is good? How do they know the snake is evil? The point I'm trying to make here is that Adam and Eve cannot be held responsible for eating the fruit. If God doesn't give them the knowledge of good and evil, then they would not know how to behave at all. They wouldn't know who to believe or not believe. So, whose fault is it? Sounds to me like God can take the blame here, or maybe the snake... but God created the snake... it says so right in the scripture:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal hat the Lord God had made.
I guess the question becomes, is "crafty" a good thing or a evil thing? Why would God make such a crafty creature? Why would God create beings that cannot know the difference between right and wrong and then tell them NOT to do something? It seems like entrapment to me.
So anyway, Eve eats the fruit, then gives it to Adam who eats it as well. Then God gets all pissed (did he not know this was going to happen?) and throws them out of the garden. He also curses the snake and tells it "upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat". This is plain weird, as I have no idea why snakes should eat "dust". As far as I know, they don't do that.
He also gives women pain in childbirth (could they have children painlessly before this?), and kicks them out of the garden otherwise they might now "eat from the tree of life and live forever".
Is God worried man will become as powerful as God if he lives forever? How can God be worried, isn't he all powerful and all knowing?
Another curious notion is that Adam and Eve now suddenly realize that they are "naked" and they are ashamed and hide from God. Why is nakedness so important?
Now, during all of this, I haven't even mentioned the biggest question I have about this story. I can sum it up like this; Do you really believe this happened? But this is really most atheist's biggest problem with the Bible in general. We just don't believe that this stuff happened the way it is described. I hope that all of posts don't devolve into this, but so far it's not looking good. The next stories I'll be writing about are the Cain and Able story and then it'll be on to Noah and the Flood.
So, Christians, do you REALLY believe this stuff actually happened? Is this a huge parable or metaphor for something else? If so, I'd sure like to know what, as it seems fairly obfuscated.” (From http://reasonableatheist.blogspot.com/2007/11/atheist-bible-study-second-creation.html )
The second story does not follow the "7 days" approach to creation of the world, but instead quickly goes through the creation of the earth and the heavens, the animals and plants, and creation of Adam from the "dust of the ground". He also does the trick of making Eve our of Adam's rib. No messing about here, as the point of this story seems to be what happens AFTER creation.
Once man and woman are created in the Garden (naked mind you, this will be important later), the "serpent" shows up. It also tells us that God made the serpent. The serpent tells us that God told Adam and Eve not to eat from a particular tree in the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So I'm going to assume that Adam and Eve do NOT know the difference between good and evil at this point. So the snake tempts Eve and she eats the fruit. So my first question is... how is Eve "tempted"? I mean, she has no idea what is 'good' or 'evil'. In fact, here we see something that seems to conflict.. The bible says...
So 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 desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
So wait. She doesn't know what is good, but she can see that it's "good" for food, and that it is a "delight" to the eyes? Isn't that seeing the difference between good and evil? Let's take an apple for instance. We KNOW that an apple is pleasing to the eyes, and tastes good. In fact, BECAUSE an apple tastes good, we find images of apples pleasing. If we had no idea if an apple was good for you, or poison, we would have no opinion about the "goodness" or "badness" of an apple, the exact same state that Adam and Eve find themselves. They have no idea if eating the apple is a good thing or a bad thing. They know that God told them not too.. but how do they know God is good? How do they know the snake is evil? The point I'm trying to make here is that Adam and Eve cannot be held responsible for eating the fruit. If God doesn't give them the knowledge of good and evil, then they would not know how to behave at all. They wouldn't know who to believe or not believe. So, whose fault is it? Sounds to me like God can take the blame here, or maybe the snake... but God created the snake... it says so right in the scripture:
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal hat the Lord God had made.
I guess the question becomes, is "crafty" a good thing or a evil thing? Why would God make such a crafty creature? Why would God create beings that cannot know the difference between right and wrong and then tell them NOT to do something? It seems like entrapment to me.
So anyway, Eve eats the fruit, then gives it to Adam who eats it as well. Then God gets all pissed (did he not know this was going to happen?) and throws them out of the garden. He also curses the snake and tells it "upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat". This is plain weird, as I have no idea why snakes should eat "dust". As far as I know, they don't do that.
He also gives women pain in childbirth (could they have children painlessly before this?), and kicks them out of the garden otherwise they might now "eat from the tree of life and live forever".
Is God worried man will become as powerful as God if he lives forever? How can God be worried, isn't he all powerful and all knowing?
Another curious notion is that Adam and Eve now suddenly realize that they are "naked" and they are ashamed and hide from God. Why is nakedness so important?
Now, during all of this, I haven't even mentioned the biggest question I have about this story. I can sum it up like this; Do you really believe this happened? But this is really most atheist's biggest problem with the Bible in general. We just don't believe that this stuff happened the way it is described. I hope that all of posts don't devolve into this, but so far it's not looking good. The next stories I'll be writing about are the Cain and Able story and then it'll be on to Noah and the Flood.
So, Christians, do you REALLY believe this stuff actually happened? Is this a huge parable or metaphor for something else? If so, I'd sure like to know what, as it seems fairly obfuscated.” (From http://reasonableatheist.blogspot.com/2007/11/atheist-bible-study-second-creation.html )
Response:
There are more possibilities for this story than belief or disbelief. Full belief requires the ability to buy in to the literal presence of G-d in this place of perfection (the perfect Earth?), the fact that humanity was created perfect (and ruined it all by thinking for themselves), and that snakes once had legs (slight evolutionism?). Disbelief tends to lead people into atheism and rebellion from the whole history recorded here- which I think is a little bit of an overreaction.
Personally, I don't fall into either category. I do not believe that any point in time G-d ever physically walked in a garden with a man named Adam and a woman named Eve (who was lovingly created as a sub-human for Adam's enjoyment, by the way). Stories were created differently in this period of history (or periods of history) however, and if the predominant dogma of our day was Native American, we would be complaining about how stories of the White Buffalo Woman don't make literal sense.
This creation story is most likely the creation story that has its roots in Judaism. The cosmology that begins Genesis is more of a Babylonian story, and was probably inserted by the Jews who were exiled to Babylon in the 6th century BCE. "In composing the Patriarchal history the Yahwist (the name of one voice in the first five books of the canon) drew on four separate blocks of traditional stories about Abraham, Jacob, Judah and Joseph, combining them with genealogies, itineraries and the "promise" theme to create a unified whole.[12] Similarly, when composing the "primeval history" he drew on Greek and Mesopotamian sources, editing and adding to them to create a unified work that fitted his own theological agenda.[13] The Yahwistic work was then revised and expanded into the final edition by the authors of the Priestly source.[14] (Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Genesis> ) There is more history here that I can reference regarding the Babylonian records of the Hebrew nation, but I digress…
This was written around the same time as many of the Greek Gods and Heroes stories, and has some of the same themes- it is supposed to be a legendary history, rather than fact.
I like to see this story as a self proclamation of the Jewish people of 538 BCE. "We once lived in harmony with G-d, and walked in the Garden of Eden- before we were exiled to this god-forsaken place. We didn't feel the need to hide ourselves (naked in G-d's eyes), but then there was the treachery of the serpent. We were betrayed and led astray by the crafty elements of the world, and all our sufferings are a result."
My point is that the Bible has incredible value as a history whether or not you decide to worship the G-d that is portrayed there. This is the oldest continuous historical record in human history!
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