An Athiests Guide to the Bible: The Disobedience of Man (including “God Pronounces Judgement” and “Adam and Eve are sent out of the Garden”)

In the previous Guide we looked at the Garden of Eden as a place, now we are looking at the events that transpired there, according to the biblical narrative. As per previous Guides, I will look at the scientific likelihood, as well as the actual biblical story and how it fits within the scheme of other stories within the bible. So, let’s jump in …

Now the snake was the most cunning animal that the Lord God had made. The snake asked the woman, "Did God really tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?"

Well, I’ve never met a talking snake and we have quite a few species here in Australia, so I can’t speak to the veracity of this claim but if God is all-powerful then it’s very possible for him to make a snake able to talk or a woman able to understand snake. But all-knowing God didn’t know that in making the snake, this would happen? And we know that God supposedly endowed humans with free will, but did he do this for other creatures, too?

"We may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden," the woman answered, "except the tree in the middle of it. God told us not to eat the fruit of that tree or even touch it; if we do, we will die."

First off, God told Adam not to eat the fruit, now it’s that they can’t eat or even touch it? Me thinks God keeps moving the goalposts, or did the writers add a little flourish? We keep coming back to this duel idea of the bible being the word of God, in which case it should have no changes, additions, or contradictions, or it’s a book written by man to be used to explain a world they couldn’t explain and to control a population by appealing to a higher authority.

The snake replied, "That's not true; you will not die. God said that because he knows that when you eat it, you will be like God and know what is good and what is bad."

Again, God’s all-knowing/all-powerful vibe is taking severe hit because, even with the idea of free will, God has to know what every single possibility will be, yet he still created this as a possibility. Now the snakes calls out God as a lie, and is ultimately proven right, meaning that the snake could be seen as the good guy in this story, telling the truth, while God has lied from the get go.

The woman saw how beautiful the tree was and how good its fruit would be to eat, and she thought how wonderful it would be to become wise. So, she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, and he also ate it. As soon as they had eaten it, they were given understanding and realized that they were naked; so, they sewed fig leaves together and covered themselves.

In this section we find a small contradiction. In the previous Guide the tree was named – The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is often shortened to the Tree of Knowledge and the passage above certainly implies that it is simply knowledge that is gained from eating the fruit, yet why be so specific only a few paragraphs earlier in naming it Knowledge of Good and Evil? While it might not seem be too much of a difference, the knowledge of everything that God knows is vastly more than simply the knowledge of good and evil.

Regardless of whether we take the knowledge to be of everything or just good and evil, the realisation of nakedness is written as a bad thing, and we know from other passages in the bible that anything to do with sex, genitals or the like is regarded as sinful. It starts early in the bible, as we can see, and doesn’t let up. Whatever knowledge the tree has given to Adam and Eve has been placed within the tree by God, so God is responsible for not only their nakedness for it being seen as evil or sinful.

That evening they heard the Lord God walking in the garden, and they hid from him among the trees. But the Lord God called out to the man, "Where are you?" He answered, "I heard you in the garden; I was afraid and hid from you, because I was naked." "Who told you that you were naked?" God asked. "Did you eat the fruit that I told you not to eat?" The man answered, "The woman you put here with me gave me the fruit, and I ate it." The Lord God asked the woman, "Why did you do this?" She replied, "The snake tricked me into eating it."

Problem number one is that when Adam and Eve hide from God, he apparently doesn’t know where they are, and has to call out to them. This whole passage reads as a parent who knows their child has done something wrong and is playing dumb. It seems a little petty for an all-knowing God to be playing such a human mind-trick on Adam and Eve.

But then problem number two is that Eve lies. The snake doesn’t trick her. He was absolutely truthful. Why does she lie? Surely having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, and now being as wise as God, she knows that God is all-knowing and will surely know she is lying. It’s a bizarre circumstance.

Then the Lord God said to the snake, "You will be punished for this; you alone of all the animals must bear this curse: From now on you will crawl on your belly, and you will have to eat dust as long as you live. I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite her offspring's heel."

Here we come back to the scientific inaccuracies of the bible. All-knowing God curses the snake to crawl on its belly, which it does, and to eat dirt, which it clearly does not. It sounds more metaphorical than a literal eating of dirt, but did the people who wrote the bible know what snakes eat, or did they actually assume that snakes ate dirt?

The idea of snakes and humans being enemies is also somewhat dubious. It is highly likely that an innate fear of snakes, due to many of them being poisonous, is responsible for this part of the curse. We also know that many people are not afraid of snakes or, at least, a live and let live relationship with them. The concept that all of Eve’s offspring would be afraid of snakes is obviously not true, yet all-knowing God says it will be.

Lastly, I’m not sure that snakes are particularly afraid of humans, and probably have not enough brain power to come up with the idea of any other species as being an enemy. Snakes, depending on species, are only aggressive when threatened. I once went bushwalking through a local national park and came across and red-bellied black snake sunning itself on the path. I am not particularly afraid of snakes but I live in Australia and many, including red-bellied blacks, are poisonous so I have a healthy respect for their abilities. My first thought wasn’t to kill the snake, I was in its territory. I just waited for it to slither off into the bush and continued on my way. It wasn’t worried about me and I wasn’t worried about it, we just avoided each other.

And he said to the woman, "I will increase your trouble in pregnancy and your pain in giving birth. In spite of this, you will still have desire for your husband, yet you will be subject to him."

This part annoys me, as a woman. First of all, God lied to Adam and Eve when he told them they’d die the same day if they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Then he doles out a punishment far in excess of what the “crime” calls for. This makes God out to be a petty, vengeful god with no moderation or sympathy. Also, God is clearly male or created by males, with the style or explanation of the punishment – pain for something only women can go through and subjugation.

And he said to the man, "You listened to your wife and ate the fruit which I told you not to eat. Because of what you have done, the ground will be under a curse. You will have to work hard all your life to make it produce enough food for you. It will produce weeds and thorns, and you will have to eat wild plants. You will have to work hard and sweat to make the soil produce anything, until you go back to the soil from which you were formed. You were made from soil, and you will become soil again."

And what is God’s punishment for Adam, who is just as culpable as Eve? A bit of hard work in the garden. A bit of weeding, and cultivating the land. Doesn’t quite seem fair. As I have already mentioned, the bible has a misogynistic bent throughout its entire duration, and that misogyny has pervaded Christian culture to this day.

I have to say, not all Christians are misogynistic, but many do cling to the tenants set out in the bible which has caused many problems all over the world. I’m not even talking about extremists, or fundamentalists. We will deal with different reactions to events that go against biblical societal norms as we continue through the bible with these Guides.

Adam named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all human beings. And the Lord God made clothes out of animal skins for Adam and his wife, and he clothed them. Then the Lord God said, "Now these human beings have become like one of us and have knowledge of what is good and what is bad. They must not be allowed to take fruit from the tree that gives life, eat it, and live forever."

So, now we’re back to the knowledge being that of good and bad. This explains why God had to make clothes for Adam and Eve, rather than the fig leaves they were wearing since eating the fruit, because they haven’t become wise like God, as described earlier. We also find God using the word “us” implying other God-like beings. This is completely in line with religions which predate Christianity and Judaism. The God of the bible is just one of many Gods or God-like beings. This actually makes far more sense than monotheism and we’ll talk about the idea of monotheism versus polytheism when we get to the ten commandments.

Also, what’s the deal with Adam and Eve not having eaten from the Tree of Life already? If I were in the Garden of Eden and was told there was a tree which made you live forever, it’d probably be the first tree I’d eat from. But the bible is full of these little oddities.

So, the Lord God sent them out of the Garden of Eden and made them cultivate the soil from which they had been formed. Then at the east side of the garden he put living creatures and a flaming sword which turned in all directions. This was to keep anyone from coming near the tree that gives life.

God is really weird. Instead of removing the Tree of Life to avoid tempting anyone to get to it, he put a flaming sword and some creatures there to protect it. Obviously, it’s a powerful sword because it was created by God, but of all the things he could have done, why a flaming sword? And which living creatures? Dragons? That’d be pretty cool. Moths? Not exactly the scariest of creatures. A large 3 headed dog like in Greek mythology? We’ll never know, I suppose.

In the end, this part of the bible is a way to explain certain things in life – like pain during child birth and the need to cultivate the land – and to give an excuse for the ongoing degradation of women by painting them as weak in being “tricked” by the snake and to continue the subjugation of women as it’s their curse and God’s will (as opposed to allowing themselves to be governed by the free will given to them by God.)

Until, next week …

An Athiest's Guide to the Bible: The Garden of Eden

We’ve covered off the first several billion years (or 6000 years, depending on which camp you’re in) of Earth’s history in the previous Guide. Now we’re going into a bit more detail with the Garden of Eden. We’re looking at the mechanics of the Garden of Eden, not the events: that comes next in the next Guide.

When the Lord God made the universe, there were no plants of the earth and no seeds had sprouted, because he had not sent any rain, and there was no-one to cultivate the land; but water would come up from beneath the surface and water the ground.

Again, we have this conjoining of the universe and planet Earth. In the bible, the Earth is the entire universe. We could be even more narrow in our interpretation, and state that the Middle East in the entire universe because, for all intents and purposes, the writers of the bible didn’t travel much so had no idea of what was outside of their sphere of influence.

Also, the idea that rain is the only source of water above ground is nonsense as we know of many plants which collect water from the atmosphere in the form of condensation.

Lastly, plants don’t necessarily need cultivating to survive. Many areas of the world are not cultivated by humans, some not even inhabited by humans. We know, scientifically, that plants existed long before even simple animal forms, therefor cultivation is a redundant idea when talking generally about plants. Cultivation, in fact, is only needed when plants are grown as crops for consumption.

Then the Lord God took some soil from the ground and formed a man out of it; he breathed life-giving breath into his nostrils and the man began to live. Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the East, and there he put the man he had formed.

Laying aside the physical impossibility of soil turning into flesh, if we agree that the God of the Bible is all powerful (read: magic) then it is within the realms of possibility that this God could fashion a human out of soil. It’s not an uncommon device for gods from various cultures to fashion humans out of soil, clay or rock of some sort.

It’s also entirely possible for that god to create a garden in which the human they’ve just created can live. The God of the Bible is not only all powerful but all knowing, so they knew that man would need somewhere to live and something to eat.

He made all kinds of beautiful trees grow there and produce good fruit. In the middle of the garden stood the tree that gives life and the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad.

In the midst of this garden are these two trees. Of course, no evidence has been found for the existence of either of these trees but the concept of them is fascinating. If I were creating paradise for the creature I had just created I’d want there to be a tree which gives life to those who eat its fruits. Seems pretty reasonable. Then there’s this other tree: the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad (hereafter known as the tree of knowledge). You’d think knowledge would be a wonderful thing for this creature, this human, to have, especially as you’ve given them the task of naming everything. But it’s not just any knowledge, which might be useful. It’s knowledge of good and bad. But we’ll come back to this in a moment.

A stream flowed in Eden and watered the garden; beyond Eden it divided into four rivers. The first river is the Pishon; it flows around the country of Havilah (pure gold is found there and also rare perfume and precious stones.) The second river is the Gihon; it flows around the country of Cush. The third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates.

There is some debate about the exact location of the Garden of Eden, given than only two of the rivers listed are still called what they are in the Bible: the Tigris and the Euphrates. What became of the Pishon and the Gihon rivers is a mystery, as they are no marked on any modern maps. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers join in modern day Iraq, near Basra.

Flowing south is the Shatt al-Arab River, also known as Arvand Rud, which runs into the Persian Gulf. This could be the original stream that flowed through the Garden of Eden. A possibility of some note for the Pishon Rover is the Karun River which joins the Shatt al-Arab River at Khorramshahr in Iran. The Gihon River is somewhat harder to nail down. There are several canals which could follow the paths of ancient rivers. It is entirely possible that the river simply no longer exists.

Some biblical scholars get around this ambiguity by arguing that the flood of Noah’s time (which we will come to in subsequent Guides) has altered the landscape so much that the terrain of the present bears little resemblance to that of the time of the Garden of Eden. I would argue that, given the Bible was written after Noah’s time, the writers might have been able to at least given a more accurate description, with the modern equivalents named in conjunction, especially as it is supposed to be the unerring word of God.

Still others conjecture that it is impossible to tell where the Garden of Eden really was because, when Noah and his descendants named all the places post flood, they could have simply done as early British colonialists did and named things after what they were familiar with, and so the rivers known as the Tigris and the Euphrates might not be in the same location as they were pre-flood, just like there is Wales in the United Kingdom and New South Wales in Australia. This means that the original rivers could have been anywhere in the world. It’s a convenient loophole, if you ask me.

So, where was Eden? Nobody really knows but, if you take the position of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as they are now, and take the Karun river to be the modern name of the Pishon River, the Garden of Eden was probably located somewhere in the region of the Khuzestan Province of Iran, possibly stretching as far as the Persian Sea.

Then the Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it. He told him, "You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; if you do, you will die the same day."

This passage raises two questions. The first being, why didn’t God want the human he has created and placed into the Garden to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? Surely, with God being all knowing, he could see what was going to happen and wouldn’t put temptation in the way. That’s what I’d do, anyway. As a mother, I wouldn’t put a whole plate of cakes in front of my child and tell them they could eat any of the cakes except the one with blue icing, and then be surprised when they ate the one with the blue icing. The caveat, of having said that they’ll die if they do means very little, because the first human would have no concept of death any more than a very young child does.

The second question I have is with exactly the caveat I just mentioned simply because it’s not true. We’ll come to the whole eating of the apple in the next Guide but I will touch on it now. Adam, being that first human that God created and told not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, didn’t die the same day as eating the apple. We know this because the bible mentions his expulsion from the garden and his children, etc. We could take dying in a more metaphorical sense. This could lend some plausibility to the die-the-same-day concept. It could be taken in a “you’re dead to me” way, in that God rejected them, much as those loving Christians reject their atheist offspring. It could also mean that on that day, Adam brought the concept of death to himself and that previously he was immortal. Either way, it’s a pretty harsh punishment for eating an apple. But we’ll discuss that more in the next Guide.

Then the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to live alone. I will make a suitable companion to help him." So, he took some soil from the ground and formed all the animals and all the birds. Then he brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and that is how they all got their names.

Now, I don’t know about you but, if I were God, I wouldn’t leave it to a human to name all of my creations. Humans are notoriously bad at naming things. This is why we have scientific names for things, because people are really, really bad at naming things properly. Take the mantis shrimp, for example. It is neither a mantis, nor a shrimp. It falls directly into the say-what-you-see category of naming things. If I were God, I’d get so cranky at Adam for getting all the names so badly wrong, I’d kick him out of the garden for that.

So, the man named all the birds and all the animals; but not one of them was a suitable companion to help him. Then the Lord God made the man fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took out one of the man's ribs and closed up the flesh. He formed a woman out of the rib and brought her to him. Then the man said, "At last, here is one of my own kind - Bone taken from my bone, and flesh from my flesh. "Woman' is her name because she was taken out of man." That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one. The man and the woman were both naked, but they were not embarrassed.

And so, we come to the creation of the as yet unnamed Eve. All powerful god couldn’t just make a woman out of soil, like he did Adam. Don’t be silly, that’d just make another man. He had to take a bone from Adam, obviously one that was superfluous to requirements, to do that. Did God not know how DNA works? What he was essentially doing was creating a clone of Adam. Now, I’m not up with the latest cloning techniques but I do know that if you clone a male, you’re going to get a male. So, this whole bone being necessary to avoid God just making another man is completely absurd, because of the laws of cloning and because, well, God is all powerful. It’s also bizarre to me that God didn’t realise earlier on when he was creating all the companion animals for Adam than none of them were going to work.

The last part of this passage is really odd. They were naked but not embarrassed. Well, they’d only just been created, so they didn’t know what embarrassment was, or nakedness for that fact, just like babies. And being embarrassed over nakedness is very much a social construct, not an inherently human one. Again, we’ll deal with this a bit more in the next Guide as we deal with consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. The concept of concealing the human form as a way to hide nakedness is a fairly recent idea. Early man used clothing in a far more practical manner, for protection from the weather. Even today, we see tribal societies who wear little to no clothes and have no concept of embarrassment about the human form, much to the horror of many a Christian missionary.

Next week, we’ll dissect the story of the disobedience of man, where Adam and Eve eat an apple at the behest of a talking snake.