It’s also not the Tree of Knowledge, it’s the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And that presents a problem:
If Adam and Eve did not yet understand what is and is not a good thing to do, they could not possibly have understood that it was not good to disobey God. Eve did not know the serpent was evil. And yet he punishes Adam and Eve for doing what they did not realize was wrong of them to do.
Yes, I realize he knew he did something wrong after he did the wrong thing. The point was he didn’t know it was wrong before and when he did it. Which makes the god of Genesis supremely fucked up.
Side note, and God created the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil. God created everything. Therefore, God created evil.
Further, God does evil.
After the flood, there is a line that says “and God repented of the evil he had done”
And to me, that just basically means that evil is circumstantial. Not that there is a pure drop of evil in the universe, but rather that a thing that is meant to be a good thing can be an evil thing based on its interpretation.
To whit: it wasn’t evil that Adam and Eve were naked. God made them that way. And yet because they became aware of it and changed a innocent thing into an evil thing, that is what the evil was.
Which makes a lot more sense when you know these stories are adaptations of earlier myths. The polytheistic religions they came out of had no problem thinking the gods do evil things sometimes because they feel like it. As things transitioned to monotheism, and “God is good and merciful” was taken as a given, you end up having to jump through hoops to explain why this passage explicitly says God did evil. Even if the explanation is on some level convincing, it’s going to be more convoluted than “these stories evolved from earlier polytheistic religions”.
It’s also not the Tree of Knowledge, it’s the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And that presents a problem:
If Adam and Eve did not yet understand what is and is not a good thing to do, they could not possibly have understood that it was not good to disobey God. Eve did not know the serpent was evil. And yet he punishes Adam and Eve for doing what they did not realize was wrong of them to do.
Consider that it is the knowledge itself that cast us down.
It doesn’t matter. They were being punished for something they didn’t know not to do.
Adam was told not to, but only afterwards did he know. These early part of Genesis are interesting in the way the world supposedly unfurled.
Yes, I realize he knew he did something wrong after he did the wrong thing. The point was he didn’t know it was wrong before and when he did it. Which makes the god of Genesis supremely fucked up.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse or whatever 🙄
You say this like punishing people who don’t understand the rules isn’t a fundamental part of christianity.
Adam and Eve was pre-Christianity though.
He mostly punishes Eve. The first few pages are sexist as fuck
Also God kinda lied to them or at least deceived them by saying they’ll die if they eat the fruit from memory.
Side note, and God created the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil. God created everything. Therefore, God created evil.
Further, God does evil.
After the flood, there is a line that says “and God repented of the evil he had done”
And to me, that just basically means that evil is circumstantial. Not that there is a pure drop of evil in the universe, but rather that a thing that is meant to be a good thing can be an evil thing based on its interpretation.
To whit: it wasn’t evil that Adam and Eve were naked. God made them that way. And yet because they became aware of it and changed a innocent thing into an evil thing, that is what the evil was.
Which makes a lot more sense when you know these stories are adaptations of earlier myths. The polytheistic religions they came out of had no problem thinking the gods do evil things sometimes because they feel like it. As things transitioned to monotheism, and “God is good and merciful” was taken as a given, you end up having to jump through hoops to explain why this passage explicitly says God did evil. Even if the explanation is on some level convincing, it’s going to be more convoluted than “these stories evolved from earlier polytheistic religions”.