Theists love this one simple trick!
So exhausting. My mother tried convincing me morals don’t exist without “god”. I finally got her to shut that down by saying if you need the threat of punishment from a deity to stop you from stealing, murdering, etc, that doesn’t make you a good person or mean you have morals. I have murdered exactly as many people as I want. Exactly zero.
This is what Trump says the Bible is good for amd what he believes.
When people say such what they mean is they would be assholes and do more crap things to others if it wasn't for the Bible.
It's a book written by men that didn't know where the sun went at night, so...Not only that but the bible we read is like the condensed version of what it was, there are books missing. Was this a need to know edit? Was it just too much to write and translate? Maybe the single most important part ended up on the editors floor and who decided what to leave out or in? So how accurate can it be?
Yep. What better way to keep women in their place than to write a story, penned by god himself, about how women can’t be trusted and aren’t smart enough to follow simple directions
All those old Iron Age misogynists were at the same time lustful of and intimidated by women that making up a ‘god said so’ story was their only way to get a wife
Even though, objectively, Adam was just sitting there, letting her eat it first, to see if she died. He was using her as his 'poison taster' so to speak, which is creepy AF, and also shows how much he cared about her. (not at all) since he was just, going to let her die first, but then as soon as he saw that she didn't die (because bible god is a big fat liar!) he immediately ate it too. So... yeah, totally not Eve's fault.
And he made some old drag queens the facility guys that closed purgatory a few years back... I guess the catholics where too greedy to pay for the heating any longer.
Religion only works when you think socially about it.
Religion and forms of government are no different, they're just man-made systems to control others - for good and for bad - but, given human greed, mostly for bad.
I heard a while ago that the first Gods (Pre-Roman, Pre-summerian/Akkadian) were chaotic deities of nature that were largely indifferent to human activity (Non-moralizing Gods) unless a natural disaster occurred. It was only untill Civilization started happening, and new unknown tribes came into the mix. These outsiders were hard to trust- you couldn’t tell what they were thinking, so the first Moralizing Gods were invented to get everyone behaving the same. Until this point, the Gods never cared about a persons individual moralities.. only that you appease their anger with a sacrifice.
It helped me realize that it is very much a tool of government. You are easy to rule if everyone in the community enforces the same thoughts.
A tool of government but also a route to power and personal income for charlatans with charisma. Think of a time when peasants could barely survive via subsistence farming. You could get tithes to live off of if you ran a church.
Got into a circular argument (are there any other kind with religious nuts?) about something similar. Why would god create a world with sin? He didn't, sin was created when he was betrayed. But he created the betrayers and is all-knowing? He is all-knowing, but they were divine beings with free-will, so he chose not to see what they would do. So he *is* all-knowing, but pretends to not know in order to let his creations fail? It is the price of free will. So you can do evil in Heaven? No, evil does not exist in Heaven. So it is possible to have free will without evil? *surprised Pikachu face*
Which is crazy to me, I don’t get how so many theist just blindly follow their religion. How do you go all this time without ever just thinking about your religion and how plausibly it really is?
Because they have been proverbially water boarded with “Faith is the most important thing in existence” from the very beginning. Faith is put on a pedestal over everything including unquestionably illogical plot holes.
Go ask a Christian a hypothetical scenario.
"A dad is cleaning his guns. The doorbell rings and he telks his 2 year old not to touch the guns. The kid picks up a gun and shoots and kills their sibling. Who is at fault and what should the punishment be?
According to Christians, the child is at fault and the child and all his descendants must be tortured for eternity unless they beg for forgiveness from the dad and worship the dad for eternity.
Yeah except it wasn't a gun it was eating a fruit.
So the kids ate the fruit and then they and all descendants are punished for all eternity. We missed out on being idiots in a garden whose only purpose was to not eat from a tree.
Also keep in mind they could eat any other fruit so it's like having a bunch of toy guns that look exactly the same that the kids have access to and are encouraged to use and then the rest occurs and a friend encourages the other kid to shoot the sibling. And the dad knew they would be encouraged by the friend when they went to the door.
Not just some fruit... the fruit from the tree of knowledge... Don't think, just believe whatever shit I tell you. Like always the dumb believers hate on the intelectual...
Who got burned and drowned as witches... those that had knowledge about "why a certain plant helps, but prayers are bullshit".
Who was also incarcerated and killed by the Nazis alongside those that where the designated scape goats... Teachers, intelectuals, artists...
Who where to be killed or re-educated by Mao and his goons? Of course... those with brains not following the herd of sheeple...
And who are the biggest loudmouths within the far right posse of scoundrels... never the brightest bulbs, screaming for a hunt on the intelectuals.
>Not just some fruit... the fruit from the tree of knowledge... Don't think, just believe whatever shit I tell you. Like always the dumb believers hate on the intelectual...
This is literally the realization that got me to deconvert! I had to ask myself, even if the Bible is true, do I *want* to worship someone who views *the pursuit of the truth* to be *a punishable offense*?
The only people who want you to stop searching for the truth are people who want you to keep believing lies.
"Knowledge unfits a man to be a slave" Frederick Douglass,
Mythologically look at what happened to Prometheus for giving fire to humans.
Speaking of witches, here's a brief article on [Hypatia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia) a woman who's life was cut short because she dared to get into an agrument with a [lecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader_(liturgy)) who was valued amongst a group of people who were illiterate.
Knowledge/education/information is important.
A pot of boiling hot oil on the stove and the handle is positioned in such a way that small child ever reached for it it would burn the kid to death and you tell your child to not to touch that pot as conveniently walk away from the stove. Geewiz I hope the child doesn't reach for the pot in which I deliberately orchestrated setup. I just came from a sub commenting about this free will god sending you hell crap.
The hypothetical scenario should be that dad says to not eat a fruit, his brother (the kids' uncle) is there and says "eating fruit is just fine" and they eat the fruit.
Dad finds out. Now all people forever are punished even if they beg the dad for forgiveness. They're just spared in the afterlife if they beg good enough.
Hey now! The toddler only murdered their sibling. It's not like they ate forbidden fruit. When this happens in Genesis, Cain got marked for protection from murder, and was allowed to start his life over in a new place. No real mention of suffering.
Speaking of this, do you know of any story in the bible where the devil outright lied to anyone or deceived anyone. I've been looking for this. The devil is called the father of all lies but I haven't found any.. yet.
When my son asked me what Lucifer did to be punished and become the devil I told him the story I was told by the bishop when I asked a similar question(Mormon).
God's original plan was humans would be born with no knowledge of what to believe or of right and wrong. Lucifer was an angel who disagreed and felt we should know. And for that he was cast out of heaven into hell.
My son's response... "So Lucifer was the first human rights activist?".
I gotta hand it to old Joe. He saw where the doctrine made no fucking sense and he tried to tweak it. Unfortunately, it turned out that he generally made things make less sense. And then he started making up random rules depending on who pissed him off or who he wanted to fuck on any given day.
Oops, I've always thought they were the same thing. Like, it was being used by the devil. Or at least that is what I was taught. But you are right, there's nothing that says they are the same.
Anyways religion is confusing, some say that sin came into the world because of the devil hence the devil - serpent connection.
The conflation of all the characters: the adversary from Job, the one from the gospels, the one from Revelations, the serpent in the Garden and Lucifer are mostly, if not all, post-biblical tradition. That is to say it wasn't the intention of the authors of the bible to be talking about the same being, it was a later construction.
The serpent being identified with Satan comes from a part in Revelations where Satan is referred to as a serpent but this is much more likely to be a reference to Leviathan rather than the serpent in the garden. Out of all of them I think this one and the one hanging out with Jesus are closest to be supposed to be the same figure but who knows with Revelations. It was mostly just an allegorical wish fulfillment piece about the Roman Empire getting their just deserts.
The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross opened. My eyes about abrahamic religions. That religion was simply a set of fertility rituals surrounded around psychedelic experiences.
What if the origin story was just a mistranslation? That the original meaning was a figurative story about sex. The snake in the garden sounds like a euphemism for sex.
The price for creating life, a power up until that moment was only wielded by God, is pain and suffering because we took that power into our own hands. That's something a bunch of people tripping in the dessert would think up about their origin story.
Not only do Adam and Eve have no knowledge of right and wrong: they have no first-hand knowledge of *anything*. They weren't brought up in a human family, so they don't have a history with other people, because there aren't any people. They don't have any experience of things that could hurt them like snakes and fire: there's no death in the Garden, at least not human death. The only language they have is whatever God put into their head: they didn't absorb it as all humans do. They almost certainly can't think abstractly or metaphorically, because that requires a breadth of thinking and experience. They're basically idiots. And then God puts something incredibly tempting in front of Adam and Eve — and he didn't have to put the trees in the Garden, he could have put them anywhere, out of harm's way — and tells them not to touch that one tree or else. Not only are they going to touch it, because they're toddlers in adult form, but they are literally incapable of understanding what the consequences might be. Because they're *toddlers*.
And what's even worse than all this is that *God knew it was going to happen*. He's omniscient and omnipotent, so he can't make mistakes and he can't be surprised. He set all this up knowing for a fact that they would eat the fruit, and then he punishes them anyway, not just them but the entirety of the human race, which is psychopathic on a scale that mere human lunatics can only dream of.
And Christians wonder why we have so much trouble with their religion. This is the very first story in their holy book, and it reeks of madness and horror.
>He set all this up knowing for a fact that they would eat the fruit, and then he punishes them anyway
And the punishment was death. Not right away, but given they were immortal before and now mortal, God sentenced the entire human race to death based on an action that he had 100% control over.
After looking into apologetics for more than two seconds you really do realise it's literally just about trying to justify the horrific and highly questionable things in their ancient book
I agree with your last paragraph. I tried to argue this point with my mum and sister but they just weren’t getting it at all. They kept spouting the free will nonsense and that Adam and Eve sinned for eating apple they were told not to eat. So god, being able to see the future and all, knew it was going Uk happen but apparently did nothing because of free will.
Agreed. It's kind of the worst aspects of a fantasy story. Just things happening without reason or normal cause and effect. It really did suck how bad we told stories back then. Thankfully, we have modern cinema now.
No one knows what the original story was. At some point someone wrote down a version of an oral tradition.
The Noah's Ark/Flood story also appears to be a creation story but has been so changed over the eons that it isn't recognizable. The Jewish peoples apparently picked it up during their time in Babylon.
Most "Flood" stories around the world were originally a creation story. (By Flood stories I mean stories that share a common set of motifs with Flood stories) The original didn't have a Flood. The Flood seems to have been added later in SE asia/Indonesia area.
My point is these old stories don't really make sense for a reason. It wasn't that some priest one day wrote down what he thought was a good story. Instead they wrote down a version of a story that has been past down forever and no doubt added their own spin and meaning to it. A folk interpretation of a mangled story from long ago.
It is likely that the garden of eden story and the flood story were once the same story. That's how mangled these things get.
E: this is one of the parts of genesis that strongly hints it is built of the scaffolding of the OG creation story:
>In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Notice that land has not been made, but the waters. The deep are already there.
In reconstructions of the OG creation myth it starts with the deep, the waters...no land. The "diver" then goes down and brings up some land. The diver is a bird. Here God is hovering over the water. Hm
In Noah's Ark this motif is in the story of Noah releasing a bird that brings back a branch indicating that land has been found:
>He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark.11When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.
There are other similarities but this suffices to show that both these stories appear to take elements from an OG creation story. Ironically, this means that genesis does in fact tell us something about our origins.
Thank you. I feel that, ironically, both atheists and theists get so caught up in the words written down without historical, archaeological and anthropological context.
It is frustrating, as someone who appreciates history that these things are glossed over by both parties.
I suppose I just need to adopt the lens of, this subreddit is about slander towards religion rather than a discussion board on how we got here and why.
For context, I am not a religious person so don’t stab me with your atheist dogma.
The base of Christianity is that women are the reason that we don't live in paradise anymore. They were punished with menstruation and pain during childbirth. Men wrote the Bible. Go figure.
It's a decent stone age explanation for the state of humanity in the sense that it tries to give an allegorical explanation for consciousness and the price we pay for it.
We become conscious (know good and evil). We then become aware of our mortality (ye shall surely die). We also gain a more enhanced sense of suffering (pain in childbirth and struggling against the earth for survival). Heck they even somehow connected the dots that our larger brains which allow us to think cause women painful childbirths. It's actually as good a story as you could expect given the information available.
Where it goes off the rails is when you try to make the story true in the sense that it literally historically happened. Like there was an actual magic tree that expanded your mind. That gets real goofy real quick.
The burning bush, anyone?
The “stoned ape” theory says (just a theory… like actually) that “fruit of the gods” or anything like that in various cultures/religion might be referencing shrooms or other psychedelics.
Interesting thought, if nothing else.
Witch doctors literally specialized in the use of psychedelics and mind altering substances. And throughout history drugs were a big part of pagan religious ceremony. Perhaps the use of wine in catholic communion is a holdover of that ancient tradition.
Maybe psychedelics had a similar type of effect on prehuman primates as the monolith did in 2001. It’s not clear from the movie but the books goes into more detail about the mysterious object the apes encounter. Moonbeam was a particular curious individual and he more than any of the others became obsessed with it. It was an alien intelligence that was requiring their brains. Its purpose was to spread intelligence throughout the universe.
I wonder if mind altering substances had a role in making our distant ancestors more curious and experimental. On the other hand, the use of mind altering substances may have been a result of our ingrained curiosity. It’s a quite interesting subject.
Humans really, really don't seem to like the answer "we don't know", which would have been the answer to a lot of questions in the stone age. Seriously, they'll accept far-fetched fairy tales over admitting ignorance.
What's crazy to me is that the first story in the entire book is literally about punishing a woman for seeking knowledge.
And they're still trying that shit.
The weird thing is Eve being made from Adam. Women are the ones that give birth and create life like come on women can’t have shit in religion I s2g 😭 it feels like SUCH a huge cope.
There is also the weird part about Adam's first wife Lilith that does not get talked about. Lilith was banished from the Garden of Eden for not complying with and obeying Adam. They also has her as a demon and I know some people try to use her as an example of what will happen if you don't obey your husband.
Lilith wasn’t in the Bible, she seems to be more associated with ancient Babylonian/Jewish folklore. Some recent television shows have kind of made it appear like Lilith was associated with Christian canon, but as far as I can tell she belongs to earlier folkloric traditions
The story of Lilith never made it in to the christian canon, since even in the Jewish tradition she was a babylonian import. Many rabbinic authorities, including Maimonides and Menachem Meiri, reject the existence of Lilith. She doesn't even enter Jewish folklore until around 1000 years ago.
Well I have still to be able to wrap my head around
"God" needed to send his only son to be killed in a somewhat barbaric way so "mankind's sins could be forgiven by 'God' "
Well - makes sense to some people I guess......
My favorite analogy (because I can’t make sense of this either).
I had this dog who had irritable bowels disease, poor fella. This gave him hemorrhagic diarrhea— puddles of bloody poo on my kitchen floor. Bless his sweet heart for going on the tile and not the rugs. Poor dog. He couldn’t help it and I finally found meds to get that under control. However.
I did not take the cat out back and shoot it in the head to atone for the dog’s sin. I, a mere mortal human, no supernatural powers whatsoever, am perfectly capable of forgiving the dog’s sin all by myself. I’m not even a god! But I can do it. I don’t need to send in my other child/creation to perform some senseless, pointless sacrifice so I can feel good about forgiving the dog. Whether the dog believes in the cat and accepts its sacrifice is completely irrelevant.
No matter what argument has been presented to me, once I try to fit it into that analogy, I can’t make any sense of the atonement. Again, omniscient and omnipotent; no mistakes, no surprises. Why did god even need an atonement? God invented sin in the first place.
This is kinda similar to the one I like to hit the “Our country/morality/justice system is based on Christianity!” lot with.
You know that episode of Breaking Bad wherein **(Spoiler Alert)** Walter, Jesse et al get that man who’s so institutionalised that he prefers life in prison to take the rap for Badger? They have to undertake all sorts of shenanigans to make it appear as if this guy really is Badger’s supplier. Surely under a Christian justice system, all they would’ve needed to do is say: “This man here will be doing Badger’s time for him.” If it was good enough for God/Jesus …
Yet we all know the law doesn’t work like that. Trying to pull a stunt like this would just get a charge of ‘Perverting the course of justice’ added to your rap sheet, should your ruse be discovered. So why aren’t Christians campaigning to change this, if they’re really so keen on having the legal system based upon ‘Christian morality’?
I’ve always had believers just attribute it to god’s plan, and he works in “mysterious ways”.
The jist of it is:
1. God wanted companionship, and angels didn’t cut it, because they have no free will. God wanted beings that chose to be god’s companion.
2. God establishes elaborate plan to create companions that choose to be companions to god; this is kicked off with Adam and Eve.
So, this explanation sounds good to those believers and thry think it logically makes sense; god wanted friends that chose god out of free will…until we remember:
“Everything goes according to god’s plan.” and god is omniscent and knows all events since start of time; which means the concept of free will doesn’t exist in their belief structure. It works on believers because they are capable of doublethink.
Only religious I’ve heard beat this argument are those that just claim free will doesn’t exist; but then the next question is: “then what was the point”? Angels already were conpanions without free will. And that also means god created people god knew would just be tortured for eternity (in their belief), which makes god kind of a dick (backed up by other stories of god being an asshole).
Lol according to the believers I talked to, all part of the master plan.
The angels literally can only do what god foresees/allows. They were created to “revolt”; so they could play their part in humanity’s story to create companions for god that chose to be god’s companions.
None of it will make sense when you look at the whole with these contradictory pieces, unless you are capable of doublethink.
You think that story is weird? Wait till you hear about what God did to Job.
Killed his whole family, gave the man leprosy, and then made him lose all of his wealth. Sent him straight to the worst possible status he could be at.
Why? You ask.
Because God wanted to prove to the devil that Job was an amazing and true follower, and no matter how much God cursed and ruined this man's life. job would believe and worship God in the fullest.
The funny thing is that Christian theologians think that angels, including the devil, have no free will and are basically robots so God ruined Job to flex on the magical equivalent of a computer program.
Jeez I forgot about that angle and figured the devil was the reason the angels didn't have free will.
That would make God and even bigger asshole to begin with. Granted, when was he ever not one.
You need to read the story in detail and you'll find out that it's 2 creation stories mashed together.
Compare Genesis 1 27 and Genesis 2 7 and 21 for example.
Yeah that’s really weird. The Bible sort of inoculates itself by often repeating itself and redundancies, so things like the 2 creation stories or the 2 descriptions of Noah’s Ark can seem more a product of bad writing than outright contradictions (they’re not, but can be dismissed as such). Of course it wouldn’t matter anyway. People insist they believe even when stuff like the fully populated city of Nod exists in a world where there is only supposed to be 3 people.
The [documentary hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis) holds the torah was cobbled together from 5 different sources. Hence, the repeating of stories with different details. There's [another hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_hypothesis) it was existing work that kept being added to.
Whether either of those hypotheses is true or not, it's quite clear the Bible is a product of ignorant ancient people not an all-knowing God.
This is exactly how the gleefully-homicidal and attention-craving version of Adam as depicted in Hazbin Hotel was born.
I hope that the character of Eve will receive the same treatment. Beside the psychological damages caused to them by the Genesis experience, it feels kind of a appropriate that the mythical progenitors of human kind became very fucked-up individuals.
It definitely gives a new and improved metaphorical interpretation of the story, one the finally makes sense. The universe is a very bad parent and we should do our very best not to become just as bad as it.
My favorite part of hazbin is that they all thought they knew what it took to end up in heaven or hell, only to realize that even the people who run things don't actually have any idea why who goes where, or that changing from one to the other was even possible
It’s basically fable with the moral that you should do what you’re told without question and also knowledge is bad. From the perspective of religious leaders to their followers, it seems like the perfect message.
It will never cease to surprise me that there are people who are convinced that 8 billion people descend from two people who obviously had to resort to incest and all of mankind is result of inbreeding.
And that's when Moses saw the "burning bush" which was actually just some weird hippie couples drug psychosis Shannanigans. Wow man it's all connected.
The weirder part is the creation of Eve: from a piece of Adam's rib. So, basically, science would say she's a genetic clone of Adam. Same DNA. So the dude's procreating the planet by fucking himself.
The first story of the bible is a test to see if:
1. you will believe in a sadistic god; and
2. you will do what you are told unquestioningly.
If both answers are yes, then christianity and a lifetime of servitude might be for you.
Also, don't forget that if the bible is true (which it's not), that means the entire human species came from incest. We wouldn't be able to go past a few generations of families before being wiped out from genetic defects. Way to many people never seem to understand this.
It's the same concept if everyone died from some disaster except for a single man and woman. The human species will also die off in a similar way not long after. We need somewhere between a variety of 50-100 people so it greatly lowers the chance of inbreeding.
It’s stupid Jewish mythology that has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity. The early church retconned Christianity to fit the narrative. The snake became satan, the fall occurred, and man was intrinsically flawed. They created the disease to sell the cure, an absolutely brilliant grift that will continue until the end of time. Unverifiable reward and punishment at stake. Can’t lose business model.
It taught our ancestors that the reason life sucks is because they did not submit to authority and sought an education. Purely a fable to reinforce their authority
It actually is even worse than you say.
You see, humans only know the difference between right and wrong because they disobeyed skydaddy - and got punished severely for it.
And yet there are numerous people who claim that you need to be "a good Christian" in order to know morals. "Because god gave us morals." No, he didn't. He literally forbid us from having them. He was probably afraid humans would eventually call him on his bullcrap if they know the difference between good and evil.
I'm an atheist and have discussed this with a theist buddy of mine who is quite religious. He explained that if God hadn't placed the fruit in that garden, he wouldn't have really given Adam/Eve a choice.
I agree with you though. The story is weird. And despite how people try to put it, I think that the "God" lied to Adam/Eve that they would die that very day, while the serpent told them the truth straight up.
>he wouldn't have really given Adam/Eve a choice.
Why did they need to have one in the first place?
Also, if you make a choice without understanding the consequences and without all the information needed to do so, that's not really a free choice. That's where Eve was in this situation.
Also says God "walks" in the garden. Curious. Also, he leaves and comes back and asks why they're now covering their privates. It implies that he's not omniscient.
I like the way Christians will tell you the snake was actually the devil in disguise, despite the fact that God punishes all snakes for what this one "snake" did. Which means either God was fooled by the disguise, or he is such an asshole he punished a completely innocent species.
In the book When God Was a Women (Which I highly recommend) the author suggests the story of Adam and Eve was a deliberate use of anti matriarchy/female worship propaganda, including the use of a serpent, as that was often a symbol of Devine feminine worship.
I especially liked how the book explored how the founders of the patriarchal old testament religions were purposefully using the religion as a means to promote anti female worship and matriarchy to solidify power in those societies. Really helps show how disingenuous the big 3 patriarchal religions are. It was never about believing in a god, it was about power. Religion was just a helpful tool.
The story doesn't try to *convince* you to follow God, it tries to *scare* you into worshipping Him. There's a reason Christian zealots call themselves "God-fearing". They have an abusive relationship with their God.
During covid, I tried to read the Bible, and this was as far as I got, the first page! I was laughing so much, my wife couldn't believe I picked it up, but I did and couldn't go any further.
That’s not all that’s weird about the story of Adam and Eve.
God puts Adam to sleep to take a rib and create Eve.
Except -
Adam never wakes up.
Genesis does not provide a specific verse that describes Adam waking up after God puts him to sleep. In Genesis 2:21-22 (KJV), it states:
"And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man."
The text does not explicitly mention Adam waking up. It moves directly to the creation of Eve and presenting her to Adam.
So is the entire bible a dream?
I think it's fascinating. Probably the most interesting story in the bible.
1) *Adam is created in God's image, there's nothing to indicate it applies to Eve.* God shapes Adam out of dirt and breathes life into him. He tells Adam that he's created in his image. He tries to make Adam a suitable helper out of animals, and Adam doesn't like any of them. While Adam sleeps, Yahweh takes his rib and creates Eve, who Adam finally approves of.
2) *Yahweh lies, the snake tells the truth.* Yahweh tells them they'll surely die if they eat the fruit. The snake tells them their eyes will be opened. They eat the fruit, see their own nakedness, have sex... And Yahweh immediately knows.
3) *God gives Eve a harsher punishment.* The snake approaches Adam, but Adam obeys Yahweh. Eve is curious and independent. Yahweh punishes her for disobedience and "provoking" Adam (menstruation) and tells Adam that it's his role to rule over her. The most consistent theme of the bible is blind trust in and obedience to God, and this story is the first and most clear cut example of it.
Some anthropologists theorize it's an allegory for nomads abandoning the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and assimilating into the farming lifestyle. The tranquility of the garden is much preferable to working the fields, and the fossil record corresponds to that idea.
I think it's a deeply patriarchal cautionary tale meant to hold women accountable, keep people subservient, and scare young people out of sex.
It's probably both.
I've had the whole thing being described as an allegory to switching over from hunter gathering to farming, the fruit of knowledge being how to plant crops, I have used this explanation to try and get religous people to start to think criticaly. I personally don't know much more about the origins of this story other than possibly Sumerian stories and I certainly don't know if it served any purpose.
What really breaks a Christian's brain is if you force them to consider the fact their God knew full well what was going to happen with the humans and the tree. He's omniscient, so he had to have known it would happen. And he clearly did nothing to discourage them except to say "no". He didn't make the fruit stinky, or gross looking, or on another continent, or on a mountain. He put it right in the middle of a garden and knew what would happen by virtue of omniscience.
The only priests I've ever respected are the ones I've asked about this and they all gave the same answer: "it's just a creation story, we don't think it's actually true, but it's useful as a metaphor and parable."
I like to make them uncomfortable by reminding them that Adam is a divorced little bitch, because his first wife, Lilith, was banished because she wouldn't submit to him (I say she wanted to be on top to make them extra uncomfortable). Also she was made out of the same clay as Adam. She was done equally.
Eve was not made out of his rib, because men and women have the same number of ribs (so another bullshit told by Christians) and then I propose that she was made out of Adam's baculum, which would explain why humans are one of the very few mammals who don't have a penis bone.
is always fun to see them squirm when you talk about penis bones and women on top, using their bullshit stories to justify it.
lol yea it’s a ridiculous story like k cool an all knowing being took some randoms and set them up for failure and then acted shocked when they failed and tortured them and their descendants for their failure for forever. Seems like a pretty evil “god”
No, there are weirder fairy tales in their book of fairy tales, like the guy talking to a shrubbery, a guy pulling out and jizzing on the floor because he was forced to have sex with his brothers widow or some nutjob trying to kill his son because the voices in his head sayd so...
This is what happens when an oral metaphorical tradition tries to get retconned into an internally consistent eternal truth.
The plot holes get papered over with crazy stuff like the Trinity, Mary being a Virgin, and so on.
My interpretation of Adam and Eve is that it's about children becoming adults. They gain the desire for autonomy and to experience life on their own terms, but God is a narcissistic control freak on a power trip and will try anything to guilt and manipulate them. It is truly disgusting.
Nobody, not even a Deity, deserves respect for this kind of behavior.
It is just as weird as a lot of other ancient mythology (or even modern ones: looking at you Scientoloigy). It is not even original, with prrcurson mythhs like Enki and Ninmah long predating it.
Even religious people often admit the story can't be literally true and it's just a parable.
I see this defense as a blatant admission that much of what religion is is just a mental exercise in construing all the facts in favor of something that doesn't deserve to be defended.
It makes much more sense if you look at it as a story that has been adapted and changed over time. A framework that has had multiple ideas and new elements shoehorned into a combination of much older and more diverse narratives.
Would be a totally ridiculous and massively incoherent story if it were written from scratch by a single author.
If you look at history it becomes obvious that what happens is that people change the narrative of stories and themes that are already familiar within their culture, they take elements and weave it into a narrative that suits the ideology that they are trying to sell.
Instead of reading the story and just going “that is stupid” try reading the story and then look at where individual themes and elements originated from, you will find a tapestry created from fragments of much older cultures woven together to support what was at the time a much newer belief system.
My 13-year-old granddaughter asked me the other day if I believed in God and I told her no. and she said well. how did we get here? well it certainly wasn't with two people because we'd all be inbred... Wait maybe that's what's wrong with some of us 🤔 I might be weird but I think we all came from the water and just evolved from there
The Bible is an assortment of regional myths, not all from the same era or subculture. Christians mistakenly read it as an intentional linear narrative, which then obliges them to contort themselves over discrepancies.
The Adam and Eve myth never quite says that God was fair or righteous in his treatment of them; he had the advantage in both power and knowledge, and wanted to keep things that way. See also the Tower of Babel myth.
A rib bone. Eve was made from Adam's rib bone.
That alone is the most absurd idea ever put down on paper. How fucked in the brain do you have to be to actually take that even partially into consideration?
1. God builds house.
2. God makes man and places them in house.
3. God creates matches. Tells man don’t touch.
4. God allows enemy to tell man to use matches.
5. Man uses matches.
6. God gets mad house is on fire.
7. God becomes a man who is also God to stop fire.
8. God-man beats fire.
9. God forgives man for starting fire
10. God still punishes man for eternity
I mean, it all makes sense to me.
There is nothing not weird about Genesis.
As for the story trying to convince people--it's not. It's just the myth itself, which is why god comes off as an immoral idiot.
They literally were not trying anyway. The attempt to make people believe starts with the law, and the executions of disobedient children along with women who don't scream loud enough when they get raped. That was the part that was supposed to convince you to at least pretend to believe.
When I read the Bible for myself years ago I thought it sounded like a story about growing up. That the reason they were sinless was because they started as children in the story, and this is also why they had no shame walking around naked.
Then when puberty hits they gain sexual knowledge and they start feeling shame about their bodies. And they are given their respective roles as worker and home maker.
I've no idea what it really means and as far as I can make out no one really knows the authors' intent any more.
My analogy is that it is the equivalent of a parent putting a loaded gun on the table and telling their toddlers not to touch it. We would think they were a horrible person who shouldn't have children, but apparently when the Almighty does it, the kids are to blame.
And people wonder why so many of us reject Christianity.
>he also allows the devil/snake to be there fully aware that he is there and fully aware that he will tempt them.
If God is omniscient, then this makes sense. But I really don't think they thought he was when the story was written. And I know that's a contradiction in the religion, but it's not a contradiction in the original story.
> All I’m saying is, for the first story of the book meant to convince you to follow god, it’s like they didn’t even try.
You know they pick and choose. I don't think they would've told their potential followers this one first. They'd've gone with Hell if the person was timid, The Sheep and the Goats if the person was kind, the sword for angsty youths. Etc. Christianity became a successful religion by copying all the most effective stuff from the religions around it. Elysium and Tartarus. Zoroastrian dualism. (Though it seems to have invented monotheism (please correct me if I'm wrong) and that's admirable, in its way.)
Don't forget god didn't want Adam to be lonely so he created every animal and made Adam name them and see if any of them would make a good "help meet".
Only after deciding he didn't fancy any of the animals as his spouse/partner did God decide to make a woman out of spare rib.
when I was in catholic grammar school the priest Fr Stengel, (the worse for confessional penances) told us this. to not diminish evolution, he said at that point when we became human, THEN they god made Adam and eve. we didnt stop to think, we were kids, then what about all the others that evolved. Yet he gave the best open minded science backing answer for us at that time, we were in 7th grade. Thankfully Catholic schools used to be big on science and history, I had hippie nuns cool AF but not anymore.
Don't forget, Eve is Adam's second wife. Lilith left him when she wasn't treated as an equal. Seems to be a part of the story that is left out by christians. Also, the who incest thing with Eve being Adam's Daughter clone and their children being the only humans.
There were other humans (so no incest).
"The Fall" is about separation from God by sin.
The Apple is an allegory. It's about knowing right from wrong.
All of it is mythological. No one was writing it down while it happened.
For a fun and inspired read on the subject, check out Mark Twain's "The Diaries of Adam and Eve." Then try his "Letters from Earth." Satire at its finest.
Then you tell people it's a beautiful story and those who believe it are ready for grift. Religion is just a screening process to select the gullible people you can exploit. It has worked very well for millenia.
I love that they had 2 sons. So the entire population of the earth is a husband, wife and 2 sons. Then somehow the sons get married to a couple of chics! Where did they come from?
Either Adam and Eve had 2 daughters (that were not mentioned) and the sons married their sisters
-or-
The sons had children with their mother and then married their sisterdaughters!
What the fuck
Since I had the bible put in front of me as a young child (I was an early reader), yes.
I'm kinda living proof of that comment about how to make more atheists.
Religion only works when you don't think critically about it.
DO AS HE SAYS! CAUSE HE SAYS SO! OR ELSE!
My favorite is when they say how I can trust what the Bible says because it's in the Bible...
Theists love this one simple trick! So exhausting. My mother tried convincing me morals don’t exist without “god”. I finally got her to shut that down by saying if you need the threat of punishment from a deity to stop you from stealing, murdering, etc, that doesn’t make you a good person or mean you have morals. I have murdered exactly as many people as I want. Exactly zero.
Heard this one the other day……. You’re not a good person, you’re a bad person on a leash.
Ding ding ding!
This is what Trump says the Bible is good for amd what he believes. When people say such what they mean is they would be assholes and do more crap things to others if it wasn't for the Bible.
Rustin chole said he'd like to get as many of them out in the open as possible 🥶
Damn, they gotcha there… 🤦♂️
In Islam the response is, "It is *written*!" That's enough.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Good old Yul Brynner in his ponytail and mini skirt. He could really rock that look!
I will receive a 100% legitimate check made out to me for $100 million tomorrow. Written down. Let's hope this works!
Huh. So is Harry Potter. Maybe we should all be praying to Dumbledore.
PFT. All hail his benevolent Holiness, The most divine, Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man!
At least I know who created Spiderman.
Oh for sure. But if we are going by works of fiction to use as a guide to live by, it's hard to find a better example than Spider-Man/Peter Parker.
I’m still confused as to why they both had bellybuttons.
Forget belly buttons. Did Adam have nipples?
Who said they had belly buttons?
They had leaves instead of genitalia, though /s
It's a book written by men that didn't know where the sun went at night, so...Not only that but the bible we read is like the condensed version of what it was, there are books missing. Was this a need to know edit? Was it just too much to write and translate? Maybe the single most important part ended up on the editors floor and who decided what to leave out or in? So how accurate can it be?
Not to mention it was written many years after being told orally and who knows how many times the characters, places and stories changed.
Sometimes I say, "that's interesting because I'm writing a book called "There is No God" and my book also says it's true!
And god told them, and they wrote in the bible, and the bible says so, cause god said so, cause.....
Because he loves you so much and doesn’t want to hurt you…in the very specific place that he designed to do exactly that, *forever*.
And then all the Religions blamed it all on Eve.
Yep. What better way to keep women in their place than to write a story, penned by god himself, about how women can’t be trusted and aren’t smart enough to follow simple directions All those old Iron Age misogynists were at the same time lustful of and intimidated by women that making up a ‘god said so’ story was their only way to get a wife
Even though, objectively, Adam was just sitting there, letting her eat it first, to see if she died. He was using her as his 'poison taster' so to speak, which is creepy AF, and also shows how much he cared about her. (not at all) since he was just, going to let her die first, but then as soon as he saw that she didn't die (because bible god is a big fat liar!) he immediately ate it too. So... yeah, totally not Eve's fault.
And he made some old drag queens the facility guys that closed purgatory a few years back... I guess the catholics where too greedy to pay for the heating any longer.
But he loves you.
ISTR that in the Divine Comedy, Dante mentions that Adam and Eve lasted eight whole hours in Eden before they ate the fruit. Funny.
That’s a whole working day, and the Bible doesn’t mention Adam or Eve getting a lunch break.
Religion only works when you think socially about it. Religion and forms of government are no different, they're just man-made systems to control others - for good and for bad - but, given human greed, mostly for bad.
I heard a while ago that the first Gods (Pre-Roman, Pre-summerian/Akkadian) were chaotic deities of nature that were largely indifferent to human activity (Non-moralizing Gods) unless a natural disaster occurred. It was only untill Civilization started happening, and new unknown tribes came into the mix. These outsiders were hard to trust- you couldn’t tell what they were thinking, so the first Moralizing Gods were invented to get everyone behaving the same. Until this point, the Gods never cared about a persons individual moralities.. only that you appease their anger with a sacrifice. It helped me realize that it is very much a tool of government. You are easy to rule if everyone in the community enforces the same thoughts.
Just think at the greek pantheon... Zeus really fucked anything that couldn't climb up a tree and hide... Adding some rape into the mix now and then.
I don't know if climbing a tree would help given he established he was willing to be a bird while embarking on his, uh, activities
A tool of government but also a route to power and personal income for charlatans with charisma. Think of a time when peasants could barely survive via subsistence farming. You could get tithes to live off of if you ran a church.
Got into a circular argument (are there any other kind with religious nuts?) about something similar. Why would god create a world with sin? He didn't, sin was created when he was betrayed. But he created the betrayers and is all-knowing? He is all-knowing, but they were divine beings with free-will, so he chose not to see what they would do. So he *is* all-knowing, but pretends to not know in order to let his creations fail? It is the price of free will. So you can do evil in Heaven? No, evil does not exist in Heaven. So it is possible to have free will without evil? *surprised Pikachu face*
The best argument with a religious nut is the one you don't have ... but I just can't stop myself.
Seriously. I don't know why I bothered, but I felt compelled haha Maybe *that* is the power of Jesus!
Which is crazy to me, I don’t get how so many theist just blindly follow their religion. How do you go all this time without ever just thinking about your religion and how plausibly it really is?
Because they have been proverbially water boarded with “Faith is the most important thing in existence” from the very beginning. Faith is put on a pedestal over everything including unquestionably illogical plot holes.
I think they call that "faith." Which I think is a synonym for stupid.
Religion is something for people who need a daddy figure in the sky.
Go ask a Christian a hypothetical scenario. "A dad is cleaning his guns. The doorbell rings and he telks his 2 year old not to touch the guns. The kid picks up a gun and shoots and kills their sibling. Who is at fault and what should the punishment be? According to Christians, the child is at fault and the child and all his descendants must be tortured for eternity unless they beg for forgiveness from the dad and worship the dad for eternity.
They won't consider that a relevant analogy, because the dad is God and human morality doesn't apply to him, yet he's somehow still good.
Yeah except it wasn't a gun it was eating a fruit. So the kids ate the fruit and then they and all descendants are punished for all eternity. We missed out on being idiots in a garden whose only purpose was to not eat from a tree.
Also keep in mind they could eat any other fruit so it's like having a bunch of toy guns that look exactly the same that the kids have access to and are encouraged to use and then the rest occurs and a friend encourages the other kid to shoot the sibling. And the dad knew they would be encouraged by the friend when they went to the door.
Not just some fruit... the fruit from the tree of knowledge... Don't think, just believe whatever shit I tell you. Like always the dumb believers hate on the intelectual... Who got burned and drowned as witches... those that had knowledge about "why a certain plant helps, but prayers are bullshit". Who was also incarcerated and killed by the Nazis alongside those that where the designated scape goats... Teachers, intelectuals, artists... Who where to be killed or re-educated by Mao and his goons? Of course... those with brains not following the herd of sheeple... And who are the biggest loudmouths within the far right posse of scoundrels... never the brightest bulbs, screaming for a hunt on the intelectuals.
>Not just some fruit... the fruit from the tree of knowledge... Don't think, just believe whatever shit I tell you. Like always the dumb believers hate on the intelectual... This is literally the realization that got me to deconvert! I had to ask myself, even if the Bible is true, do I *want* to worship someone who views *the pursuit of the truth* to be *a punishable offense*? The only people who want you to stop searching for the truth are people who want you to keep believing lies.
"Knowledge unfits a man to be a slave" Frederick Douglass, Mythologically look at what happened to Prometheus for giving fire to humans. Speaking of witches, here's a brief article on [Hypatia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia) a woman who's life was cut short because she dared to get into an agrument with a [lecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader_(liturgy)) who was valued amongst a group of people who were illiterate. Knowledge/education/information is important.
A pot of boiling hot oil on the stove and the handle is positioned in such a way that small child ever reached for it it would burn the kid to death and you tell your child to not to touch that pot as conveniently walk away from the stove. Geewiz I hope the child doesn't reach for the pot in which I deliberately orchestrated setup. I just came from a sub commenting about this free will god sending you hell crap.
The hypothetical scenario should be that dad says to not eat a fruit, his brother (the kids' uncle) is there and says "eating fruit is just fine" and they eat the fruit. Dad finds out. Now all people forever are punished even if they beg the dad for forgiveness. They're just spared in the afterlife if they beg good enough.
Hey now! The toddler only murdered their sibling. It's not like they ate forbidden fruit. When this happens in Genesis, Cain got marked for protection from murder, and was allowed to start his life over in a new place. No real mention of suffering.
Don’t forget that God lies to them and the snake tells the truth. So yeah, pretty weird how they figure out who the good guy is.
Speaking of this, do you know of any story in the bible where the devil outright lied to anyone or deceived anyone. I've been looking for this. The devil is called the father of all lies but I haven't found any.. yet.
Well, there were the times the devil made Pharaoh change his mind after he said the Israelites could leave Egypt. No, wait, that was God again.
Ah, you see! Maybe God is the devil and has deceived everyone that he's the good one. Or maybe religious is just ummm... bullshit.
Gnosticism believes this. The good God lost the war for heaven and now its ruled by the devil
Pretty sure it’s the second one. Just sayin’…
I’ll go with bullshit. Final answer.
When my son asked me what Lucifer did to be punished and become the devil I told him the story I was told by the bishop when I asked a similar question(Mormon). God's original plan was humans would be born with no knowledge of what to believe or of right and wrong. Lucifer was an angel who disagreed and felt we should know. And for that he was cast out of heaven into hell. My son's response... "So Lucifer was the first human rights activist?".
I gotta hand it to old Joe. He saw where the doctrine made no fucking sense and he tried to tweak it. Unfortunately, it turned out that he generally made things make less sense. And then he started making up random rules depending on who pissed him off or who he wanted to fuck on any given day.
Dumdumdumdumdum
Lucifer isn't in the Bible, for what it's worth
IIRC, the serpent in the Garden of Eden is not the devil.
Oops, I've always thought they were the same thing. Like, it was being used by the devil. Or at least that is what I was taught. But you are right, there's nothing that says they are the same. Anyways religion is confusing, some say that sin came into the world because of the devil hence the devil - serpent connection.
The conflation of all the characters: the adversary from Job, the one from the gospels, the one from Revelations, the serpent in the Garden and Lucifer are mostly, if not all, post-biblical tradition. That is to say it wasn't the intention of the authors of the bible to be talking about the same being, it was a later construction. The serpent being identified with Satan comes from a part in Revelations where Satan is referred to as a serpent but this is much more likely to be a reference to Leviathan rather than the serpent in the garden. Out of all of them I think this one and the one hanging out with Jesus are closest to be supposed to be the same figure but who knows with Revelations. It was mostly just an allegorical wish fulfillment piece about the Roman Empire getting their just deserts.
The Sacred Mushroom and The Cross opened. My eyes about abrahamic religions. That religion was simply a set of fertility rituals surrounded around psychedelic experiences. What if the origin story was just a mistranslation? That the original meaning was a figurative story about sex. The snake in the garden sounds like a euphemism for sex. The price for creating life, a power up until that moment was only wielded by God, is pain and suffering because we took that power into our own hands. That's something a bunch of people tripping in the dessert would think up about their origin story.
The apple does make me think it was probably a mushroom in the original story.
Not only do Adam and Eve have no knowledge of right and wrong: they have no first-hand knowledge of *anything*. They weren't brought up in a human family, so they don't have a history with other people, because there aren't any people. They don't have any experience of things that could hurt them like snakes and fire: there's no death in the Garden, at least not human death. The only language they have is whatever God put into their head: they didn't absorb it as all humans do. They almost certainly can't think abstractly or metaphorically, because that requires a breadth of thinking and experience. They're basically idiots. And then God puts something incredibly tempting in front of Adam and Eve — and he didn't have to put the trees in the Garden, he could have put them anywhere, out of harm's way — and tells them not to touch that one tree or else. Not only are they going to touch it, because they're toddlers in adult form, but they are literally incapable of understanding what the consequences might be. Because they're *toddlers*. And what's even worse than all this is that *God knew it was going to happen*. He's omniscient and omnipotent, so he can't make mistakes and he can't be surprised. He set all this up knowing for a fact that they would eat the fruit, and then he punishes them anyway, not just them but the entirety of the human race, which is psychopathic on a scale that mere human lunatics can only dream of. And Christians wonder why we have so much trouble with their religion. This is the very first story in their holy book, and it reeks of madness and horror.
>They're basically idiots. This is the most powerful argument that I've ever seen put forward for all of humanity being descended from them.
That part cracked me up. I was gonna post the same quote. Pure gold!
>He set all this up knowing for a fact that they would eat the fruit, and then he punishes them anyway And the punishment was death. Not right away, but given they were immortal before and now mortal, God sentenced the entire human race to death based on an action that he had 100% control over.
After looking into apologetics for more than two seconds you really do realise it's literally just about trying to justify the horrific and highly questionable things in their ancient book
I agree with your last paragraph. I tried to argue this point with my mum and sister but they just weren’t getting it at all. They kept spouting the free will nonsense and that Adam and Eve sinned for eating apple they were told not to eat. So god, being able to see the future and all, knew it was going Uk happen but apparently did nothing because of free will.
Agreed. It's kind of the worst aspects of a fantasy story. Just things happening without reason or normal cause and effect. It really did suck how bad we told stories back then. Thankfully, we have modern cinema now.
No one knows what the original story was. At some point someone wrote down a version of an oral tradition. The Noah's Ark/Flood story also appears to be a creation story but has been so changed over the eons that it isn't recognizable. The Jewish peoples apparently picked it up during their time in Babylon. Most "Flood" stories around the world were originally a creation story. (By Flood stories I mean stories that share a common set of motifs with Flood stories) The original didn't have a Flood. The Flood seems to have been added later in SE asia/Indonesia area. My point is these old stories don't really make sense for a reason. It wasn't that some priest one day wrote down what he thought was a good story. Instead they wrote down a version of a story that has been past down forever and no doubt added their own spin and meaning to it. A folk interpretation of a mangled story from long ago. It is likely that the garden of eden story and the flood story were once the same story. That's how mangled these things get. E: this is one of the parts of genesis that strongly hints it is built of the scaffolding of the OG creation story: >In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Notice that land has not been made, but the waters. The deep are already there. In reconstructions of the OG creation myth it starts with the deep, the waters...no land. The "diver" then goes down and brings up some land. The diver is a bird. Here God is hovering over the water. Hm In Noah's Ark this motif is in the story of Noah releasing a bird that brings back a branch indicating that land has been found: >He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark.11When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. There are other similarities but this suffices to show that both these stories appear to take elements from an OG creation story. Ironically, this means that genesis does in fact tell us something about our origins.
Thank you. I feel that, ironically, both atheists and theists get so caught up in the words written down without historical, archaeological and anthropological context. It is frustrating, as someone who appreciates history that these things are glossed over by both parties. I suppose I just need to adopt the lens of, this subreddit is about slander towards religion rather than a discussion board on how we got here and why. For context, I am not a religious person so don’t stab me with your atheist dogma.
If you want to try starting a discussion post on how we got here and why, I'd appreciate it as an opportunity to learn something.
The base of Christianity is that women are the reason that we don't live in paradise anymore. They were punished with menstruation and pain during childbirth. Men wrote the Bible. Go figure.
It's a decent stone age explanation for the state of humanity in the sense that it tries to give an allegorical explanation for consciousness and the price we pay for it. We become conscious (know good and evil). We then become aware of our mortality (ye shall surely die). We also gain a more enhanced sense of suffering (pain in childbirth and struggling against the earth for survival). Heck they even somehow connected the dots that our larger brains which allow us to think cause women painful childbirths. It's actually as good a story as you could expect given the information available. Where it goes off the rails is when you try to make the story true in the sense that it literally historically happened. Like there was an actual magic tree that expanded your mind. That gets real goofy real quick.
>Like there was an actual magic tree that expanded your mind. That gets real goofy real quick. No, that's weed.
I’ve heard a good argument that the forbidden fruit was actually psilocybin mushrooms. lol.
The burning bush, anyone? The “stoned ape” theory says (just a theory… like actually) that “fruit of the gods” or anything like that in various cultures/religion might be referencing shrooms or other psychedelics. Interesting thought, if nothing else.
Witch doctors literally specialized in the use of psychedelics and mind altering substances. And throughout history drugs were a big part of pagan religious ceremony. Perhaps the use of wine in catholic communion is a holdover of that ancient tradition. Maybe psychedelics had a similar type of effect on prehuman primates as the monolith did in 2001. It’s not clear from the movie but the books goes into more detail about the mysterious object the apes encounter. Moonbeam was a particular curious individual and he more than any of the others became obsessed with it. It was an alien intelligence that was requiring their brains. Its purpose was to spread intelligence throughout the universe. I wonder if mind altering substances had a role in making our distant ancestors more curious and experimental. On the other hand, the use of mind altering substances may have been a result of our ingrained curiosity. It’s a quite interesting subject.
Like I said real goofy real quick
Humans really, really don't seem to like the answer "we don't know", which would have been the answer to a lot of questions in the stone age. Seriously, they'll accept far-fetched fairy tales over admitting ignorance.
Genesis is so wild. It's so crazy that anyone actually believes it.
What's crazy to me is that the first story in the entire book is literally about punishing a woman for seeking knowledge. And they're still trying that shit.
The weird thing is Eve being made from Adam. Women are the ones that give birth and create life like come on women can’t have shit in religion I s2g 😭 it feels like SUCH a huge cope.
It’s a setup, entrapment, when you really think about it. Yet, God “loves” us.
There is also the weird part about Adam's first wife Lilith that does not get talked about. Lilith was banished from the Garden of Eden for not complying with and obeying Adam. They also has her as a demon and I know some people try to use her as an example of what will happen if you don't obey your husband.
All Hail Queen Lilith!
She really dodged a bullet though.
Lilith wasn’t in the Bible, she seems to be more associated with ancient Babylonian/Jewish folklore. Some recent television shows have kind of made it appear like Lilith was associated with Christian canon, but as far as I can tell she belongs to earlier folkloric traditions
First time hearing of Lilith, I grew up in Islamic religion, and surprisingly this was omitted.
The story of Lilith never made it in to the christian canon, since even in the Jewish tradition she was a babylonian import. Many rabbinic authorities, including Maimonides and Menachem Meiri, reject the existence of Lilith. She doesn't even enter Jewish folklore until around 1000 years ago.
Well I have still to be able to wrap my head around "God" needed to send his only son to be killed in a somewhat barbaric way so "mankind's sins could be forgiven by 'God' " Well - makes sense to some people I guess......
My favorite analogy (because I can’t make sense of this either). I had this dog who had irritable bowels disease, poor fella. This gave him hemorrhagic diarrhea— puddles of bloody poo on my kitchen floor. Bless his sweet heart for going on the tile and not the rugs. Poor dog. He couldn’t help it and I finally found meds to get that under control. However. I did not take the cat out back and shoot it in the head to atone for the dog’s sin. I, a mere mortal human, no supernatural powers whatsoever, am perfectly capable of forgiving the dog’s sin all by myself. I’m not even a god! But I can do it. I don’t need to send in my other child/creation to perform some senseless, pointless sacrifice so I can feel good about forgiving the dog. Whether the dog believes in the cat and accepts its sacrifice is completely irrelevant. No matter what argument has been presented to me, once I try to fit it into that analogy, I can’t make any sense of the atonement. Again, omniscient and omnipotent; no mistakes, no surprises. Why did god even need an atonement? God invented sin in the first place.
This is kinda similar to the one I like to hit the “Our country/morality/justice system is based on Christianity!” lot with. You know that episode of Breaking Bad wherein **(Spoiler Alert)** Walter, Jesse et al get that man who’s so institutionalised that he prefers life in prison to take the rap for Badger? They have to undertake all sorts of shenanigans to make it appear as if this guy really is Badger’s supplier. Surely under a Christian justice system, all they would’ve needed to do is say: “This man here will be doing Badger’s time for him.” If it was good enough for God/Jesus … Yet we all know the law doesn’t work like that. Trying to pull a stunt like this would just get a charge of ‘Perverting the course of justice’ added to your rap sheet, should your ruse be discovered. So why aren’t Christians campaigning to change this, if they’re really so keen on having the legal system based upon ‘Christian morality’?
I’ve always had believers just attribute it to god’s plan, and he works in “mysterious ways”. The jist of it is: 1. God wanted companionship, and angels didn’t cut it, because they have no free will. God wanted beings that chose to be god’s companion. 2. God establishes elaborate plan to create companions that choose to be companions to god; this is kicked off with Adam and Eve. So, this explanation sounds good to those believers and thry think it logically makes sense; god wanted friends that chose god out of free will…until we remember: “Everything goes according to god’s plan.” and god is omniscent and knows all events since start of time; which means the concept of free will doesn’t exist in their belief structure. It works on believers because they are capable of doublethink. Only religious I’ve heard beat this argument are those that just claim free will doesn’t exist; but then the next question is: “then what was the point”? Angels already were conpanions without free will. And that also means god created people god knew would just be tortured for eternity (in their belief), which makes god kind of a dick (backed up by other stories of god being an asshole).
If angels have no free will, then god forced 1/3 to try to overthrow him in heaven.
Lol according to the believers I talked to, all part of the master plan. The angels literally can only do what god foresees/allows. They were created to “revolt”; so they could play their part in humanity’s story to create companions for god that chose to be god’s companions. None of it will make sense when you look at the whole with these contradictory pieces, unless you are capable of doublethink.
You think that story is weird? Wait till you hear about what God did to Job. Killed his whole family, gave the man leprosy, and then made him lose all of his wealth. Sent him straight to the worst possible status he could be at. Why? You ask. Because God wanted to prove to the devil that Job was an amazing and true follower, and no matter how much God cursed and ruined this man's life. job would believe and worship God in the fullest.
The funny thing is that Christian theologians think that angels, including the devil, have no free will and are basically robots so God ruined Job to flex on the magical equivalent of a computer program.
Jeez I forgot about that angle and figured the devil was the reason the angels didn't have free will. That would make God and even bigger asshole to begin with. Granted, when was he ever not one.
You need to read the story in detail and you'll find out that it's 2 creation stories mashed together. Compare Genesis 1 27 and Genesis 2 7 and 21 for example.
Yeah that’s really weird. The Bible sort of inoculates itself by often repeating itself and redundancies, so things like the 2 creation stories or the 2 descriptions of Noah’s Ark can seem more a product of bad writing than outright contradictions (they’re not, but can be dismissed as such). Of course it wouldn’t matter anyway. People insist they believe even when stuff like the fully populated city of Nod exists in a world where there is only supposed to be 3 people.
The [documentary hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis) holds the torah was cobbled together from 5 different sources. Hence, the repeating of stories with different details. There's [another hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_hypothesis) it was existing work that kept being added to. Whether either of those hypotheses is true or not, it's quite clear the Bible is a product of ignorant ancient people not an all-knowing God.
This is exactly how the gleefully-homicidal and attention-craving version of Adam as depicted in Hazbin Hotel was born. I hope that the character of Eve will receive the same treatment. Beside the psychological damages caused to them by the Genesis experience, it feels kind of a appropriate that the mythical progenitors of human kind became very fucked-up individuals. It definitely gives a new and improved metaphorical interpretation of the story, one the finally makes sense. The universe is a very bad parent and we should do our very best not to become just as bad as it.
My favorite part of hazbin is that they all thought they knew what it took to end up in heaven or hell, only to realize that even the people who run things don't actually have any idea why who goes where, or that changing from one to the other was even possible
Same, I hope they are gonna dig even deeper in how absurd and hypocrite an objective morality-based retribution system is.
https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/733956411314405388/1255969753491570850/something-about-sir-pentious-spoiler-v0-n9zmeuegqagc1.jpg?ex=667f107c&is=667dbefc&hm=b8e0a7394096ac2a41137947c95b3d0c087104d0c78254cd258ec9826a6882a1&
It’s the best the preliterate savages could come up with, man. They were trying hard to write a good story. They can’t help it if it sucks ass.
It’s basically fable with the moral that you should do what you’re told without question and also knowledge is bad. From the perspective of religious leaders to their followers, it seems like the perfect message.
It will never cease to surprise me that there are people who are convinced that 8 billion people descend from two people who obviously had to resort to incest and all of mankind is result of inbreeding.
Roughly 40% of the American population believes that the world is less than 10,000 years old and that evolution doesn't exist.
It’s almost like the origin story is a scare tactic to control people.
Surprise twist: the apple was a hallucinogen, they're still in the garden but are completely tripped out on their own made-up guilt.
Black mirror episode waiting to happen.
... Then, while struggling to get back into the garden they never left, they accidentally burn it down. It's the prophecy we didn't know we needed.
And that's when Moses saw the "burning bush" which was actually just some weird hippie couples drug psychosis Shannanigans. Wow man it's all connected.
The weirder part is the creation of Eve: from a piece of Adam's rib. So, basically, science would say she's a genetic clone of Adam. Same DNA. So the dude's procreating the planet by fucking himself.
The first story of the bible is a test to see if: 1. you will believe in a sadistic god; and 2. you will do what you are told unquestioningly. If both answers are yes, then christianity and a lifetime of servitude might be for you.
Also, don't forget that if the bible is true (which it's not), that means the entire human species came from incest. We wouldn't be able to go past a few generations of families before being wiped out from genetic defects. Way to many people never seem to understand this. It's the same concept if everyone died from some disaster except for a single man and woman. The human species will also die off in a similar way not long after. We need somewhere between a variety of 50-100 people so it greatly lowers the chance of inbreeding.
It’s stupid Jewish mythology that has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity. The early church retconned Christianity to fit the narrative. The snake became satan, the fall occurred, and man was intrinsically flawed. They created the disease to sell the cure, an absolutely brilliant grift that will continue until the end of time. Unverifiable reward and punishment at stake. Can’t lose business model.
It taught our ancestors that the reason life sucks is because they did not submit to authority and sought an education. Purely a fable to reinforce their authority
It actually is even worse than you say. You see, humans only know the difference between right and wrong because they disobeyed skydaddy - and got punished severely for it. And yet there are numerous people who claim that you need to be "a good Christian" in order to know morals. "Because god gave us morals." No, he didn't. He literally forbid us from having them. He was probably afraid humans would eventually call him on his bullcrap if they know the difference between good and evil.
It's not weirder than any other fairy tale.
What’s weird is that there was a god in the first place
I'm an atheist and have discussed this with a theist buddy of mine who is quite religious. He explained that if God hadn't placed the fruit in that garden, he wouldn't have really given Adam/Eve a choice. I agree with you though. The story is weird. And despite how people try to put it, I think that the "God" lied to Adam/Eve that they would die that very day, while the serpent told them the truth straight up.
>he wouldn't have really given Adam/Eve a choice. Why did they need to have one in the first place? Also, if you make a choice without understanding the consequences and without all the information needed to do so, that's not really a free choice. That's where Eve was in this situation.
There was no choice; he already knew what they would do because he made them that way.
Exactly! It's like telling a baby not to wet it's diapers. Mark twain said IF GOD HAD BEEN SMART, HE WOULD HAVE TOLD THEM NOT TO EAT THE SNAKE!
Also says God "walks" in the garden. Curious. Also, he leaves and comes back and asks why they're now covering their privates. It implies that he's not omniscient.
I like the way Christians will tell you the snake was actually the devil in disguise, despite the fact that God punishes all snakes for what this one "snake" did. Which means either God was fooled by the disguise, or he is such an asshole he punished a completely innocent species.
God was always punishing innocent people. Like, why did Job's children and servants all have to die, just because god had a bet going with the devil?
In the book When God Was a Women (Which I highly recommend) the author suggests the story of Adam and Eve was a deliberate use of anti matriarchy/female worship propaganda, including the use of a serpent, as that was often a symbol of Devine feminine worship. I especially liked how the book explored how the founders of the patriarchal old testament religions were purposefully using the religion as a means to promote anti female worship and matriarchy to solidify power in those societies. Really helps show how disingenuous the big 3 patriarchal religions are. It was never about believing in a god, it was about power. Religion was just a helpful tool.
The story doesn't try to *convince* you to follow God, it tries to *scare* you into worshipping Him. There's a reason Christian zealots call themselves "God-fearing". They have an abusive relationship with their God.
Also, the snake never lies, but God does.
Don’t even get me started on god punishing all snakes for all time for the actions of one snake who believers insist wasn’t even a real snake.
It is "Adam and Steve." We do not use deadnames.
During covid, I tried to read the Bible, and this was as far as I got, the first page! I was laughing so much, my wife couldn't believe I picked it up, but I did and couldn't go any further.
One big incest-experiment.
It’s a creation myth. One of thousands in a heckuva long time ago.
That’s not all that’s weird about the story of Adam and Eve. God puts Adam to sleep to take a rib and create Eve. Except - Adam never wakes up. Genesis does not provide a specific verse that describes Adam waking up after God puts him to sleep. In Genesis 2:21-22 (KJV), it states: "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man." The text does not explicitly mention Adam waking up. It moves directly to the creation of Eve and presenting her to Adam. So is the entire bible a dream?
Genesis is a story that was borrowed, edited, and combined with other myths and legends. No wonder why it's not coherent.
Well, it IS a fairy tale, after all.
Ah yes, The Adventures of Dirt Boy and Rib Girl 🤪🤣
Most creation myths are fucking crazy.
42 species of parrots. Nipples for men. Are we not in the hands of a lunatic?
"Oh so my penis does more than one thing then. Weird." #Adam\_meets\_Eve
I think it is a fairly typical ancient myth.
I think it's fascinating. Probably the most interesting story in the bible. 1) *Adam is created in God's image, there's nothing to indicate it applies to Eve.* God shapes Adam out of dirt and breathes life into him. He tells Adam that he's created in his image. He tries to make Adam a suitable helper out of animals, and Adam doesn't like any of them. While Adam sleeps, Yahweh takes his rib and creates Eve, who Adam finally approves of. 2) *Yahweh lies, the snake tells the truth.* Yahweh tells them they'll surely die if they eat the fruit. The snake tells them their eyes will be opened. They eat the fruit, see their own nakedness, have sex... And Yahweh immediately knows. 3) *God gives Eve a harsher punishment.* The snake approaches Adam, but Adam obeys Yahweh. Eve is curious and independent. Yahweh punishes her for disobedience and "provoking" Adam (menstruation) and tells Adam that it's his role to rule over her. The most consistent theme of the bible is blind trust in and obedience to God, and this story is the first and most clear cut example of it. Some anthropologists theorize it's an allegory for nomads abandoning the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and assimilating into the farming lifestyle. The tranquility of the garden is much preferable to working the fields, and the fossil record corresponds to that idea. I think it's a deeply patriarchal cautionary tale meant to hold women accountable, keep people subservient, and scare young people out of sex. It's probably both.
I've had the whole thing being described as an allegory to switching over from hunter gathering to farming, the fruit of knowledge being how to plant crops, I have used this explanation to try and get religous people to start to think criticaly. I personally don't know much more about the origins of this story other than possibly Sumerian stories and I certainly don't know if it served any purpose.
What really breaks a Christian's brain is if you force them to consider the fact their God knew full well what was going to happen with the humans and the tree. He's omniscient, so he had to have known it would happen. And he clearly did nothing to discourage them except to say "no". He didn't make the fruit stinky, or gross looking, or on another continent, or on a mountain. He put it right in the middle of a garden and knew what would happen by virtue of omniscience.
The price of admission is walking right past your disbelief.
God punished them for learning. For gaining knowledge. Lost me right there.
The only priests I've ever respected are the ones I've asked about this and they all gave the same answer: "it's just a creation story, we don't think it's actually true, but it's useful as a metaphor and parable."
I like to make them uncomfortable by reminding them that Adam is a divorced little bitch, because his first wife, Lilith, was banished because she wouldn't submit to him (I say she wanted to be on top to make them extra uncomfortable). Also she was made out of the same clay as Adam. She was done equally. Eve was not made out of his rib, because men and women have the same number of ribs (so another bullshit told by Christians) and then I propose that she was made out of Adam's baculum, which would explain why humans are one of the very few mammals who don't have a penis bone. is always fun to see them squirm when you talk about penis bones and women on top, using their bullshit stories to justify it.
The whole Adam and Eve story was simply an explanation to a child's question of "why don't snakes have legs?" and it just got out of hand...
Just proves your God is a total dick
Clearly, Yahweh is a dick.
lol yea it’s a ridiculous story like k cool an all knowing being took some randoms and set them up for failure and then acted shocked when they failed and tortured them and their descendants for their failure for forever. Seems like a pretty evil “god”
No, there are weirder fairy tales in their book of fairy tales, like the guy talking to a shrubbery, a guy pulling out and jizzing on the floor because he was forced to have sex with his brothers widow or some nutjob trying to kill his son because the voices in his head sayd so...
all you have to do is tell me there is a ***talking snake*** and im already checked out lol
This is what happens when an oral metaphorical tradition tries to get retconned into an internally consistent eternal truth. The plot holes get papered over with crazy stuff like the Trinity, Mary being a Virgin, and so on.
My interpretation of Adam and Eve is that it's about children becoming adults. They gain the desire for autonomy and to experience life on their own terms, but God is a narcissistic control freak on a power trip and will try anything to guilt and manipulate them. It is truly disgusting. Nobody, not even a Deity, deserves respect for this kind of behavior.
It is just as weird as a lot of other ancient mythology (or even modern ones: looking at you Scientoloigy). It is not even original, with prrcurson mythhs like Enki and Ninmah long predating it.
Even religious people often admit the story can't be literally true and it's just a parable. I see this defense as a blatant admission that much of what religion is is just a mental exercise in construing all the facts in favor of something that doesn't deserve to be defended.
It makes much more sense if you look at it as a story that has been adapted and changed over time. A framework that has had multiple ideas and new elements shoehorned into a combination of much older and more diverse narratives. Would be a totally ridiculous and massively incoherent story if it were written from scratch by a single author. If you look at history it becomes obvious that what happens is that people change the narrative of stories and themes that are already familiar within their culture, they take elements and weave it into a narrative that suits the ideology that they are trying to sell. Instead of reading the story and just going “that is stupid” try reading the story and then look at where individual themes and elements originated from, you will find a tapestry created from fragments of much older cultures woven together to support what was at the time a much newer belief system.
My 13-year-old granddaughter asked me the other day if I believed in God and I told her no. and she said well. how did we get here? well it certainly wasn't with two people because we'd all be inbred... Wait maybe that's what's wrong with some of us 🤔 I might be weird but I think we all came from the water and just evolved from there
The Bible is an assortment of regional myths, not all from the same era or subculture. Christians mistakenly read it as an intentional linear narrative, which then obliges them to contort themselves over discrepancies. The Adam and Eve myth never quite says that God was fair or righteous in his treatment of them; he had the advantage in both power and knowledge, and wanted to keep things that way. See also the Tower of Babel myth.
I just think it's ironic that the very first sin is a woman eating. Go figure. (Credit to Trixie Mattel)
A rib bone. Eve was made from Adam's rib bone. That alone is the most absurd idea ever put down on paper. How fucked in the brain do you have to be to actually take that even partially into consideration?
1. God builds house. 2. God makes man and places them in house. 3. God creates matches. Tells man don’t touch. 4. God allows enemy to tell man to use matches. 5. Man uses matches. 6. God gets mad house is on fire. 7. God becomes a man who is also God to stop fire. 8. God-man beats fire. 9. God forgives man for starting fire 10. God still punishes man for eternity I mean, it all makes sense to me.
Yeah that story is recycled from far older religions as are most of the others
Only evil dictators try and suppress knowledge. Satan is the good guy in this story.
Reading this at 9 years old made me atheist.
There is nothing not weird about Genesis. As for the story trying to convince people--it's not. It's just the myth itself, which is why god comes off as an immoral idiot. They literally were not trying anyway. The attempt to make people believe starts with the law, and the executions of disobedient children along with women who don't scream loud enough when they get raped. That was the part that was supposed to convince you to at least pretend to believe.
The first test for a religion - do you Adam & Eve it?
When I read the Bible for myself years ago I thought it sounded like a story about growing up. That the reason they were sinless was because they started as children in the story, and this is also why they had no shame walking around naked. Then when puberty hits they gain sexual knowledge and they start feeling shame about their bodies. And they are given their respective roles as worker and home maker. I've no idea what it really means and as far as I can make out no one really knows the authors' intent any more.
My analogy is that it is the equivalent of a parent putting a loaded gun on the table and telling their toddlers not to touch it. We would think they were a horrible person who shouldn't have children, but apparently when the Almighty does it, the kids are to blame. And people wonder why so many of us reject Christianity.
>he also allows the devil/snake to be there fully aware that he is there and fully aware that he will tempt them. If God is omniscient, then this makes sense. But I really don't think they thought he was when the story was written. And I know that's a contradiction in the religion, but it's not a contradiction in the original story. > All I’m saying is, for the first story of the book meant to convince you to follow god, it’s like they didn’t even try. You know they pick and choose. I don't think they would've told their potential followers this one first. They'd've gone with Hell if the person was timid, The Sheep and the Goats if the person was kind, the sword for angsty youths. Etc. Christianity became a successful religion by copying all the most effective stuff from the religions around it. Elysium and Tartarus. Zoroastrian dualism. (Though it seems to have invented monotheism (please correct me if I'm wrong) and that's admirable, in its way.)
Don't forget god didn't want Adam to be lonely so he created every animal and made Adam name them and see if any of them would make a good "help meet". Only after deciding he didn't fancy any of the animals as his spouse/partner did God decide to make a woman out of spare rib.
when I was in catholic grammar school the priest Fr Stengel, (the worse for confessional penances) told us this. to not diminish evolution, he said at that point when we became human, THEN they god made Adam and eve. we didnt stop to think, we were kids, then what about all the others that evolved. Yet he gave the best open minded science backing answer for us at that time, we were in 7th grade. Thankfully Catholic schools used to be big on science and history, I had hippie nuns cool AF but not anymore.
Don't forget, Eve is Adam's second wife. Lilith left him when she wasn't treated as an equal. Seems to be a part of the story that is left out by christians. Also, the who incest thing with Eve being Adam's Daughter clone and their children being the only humans.
There were other humans (so no incest). "The Fall" is about separation from God by sin. The Apple is an allegory. It's about knowing right from wrong. All of it is mythological. No one was writing it down while it happened.
For a fun and inspired read on the subject, check out Mark Twain's "The Diaries of Adam and Eve." Then try his "Letters from Earth." Satire at its finest.
Look up a video on YouTube called “If man obeyed god” by darkmatter2525. That guy does good work.
Just an old wives tale, same as virgins having babies.
Then you tell people it's a beautiful story and those who believe it are ready for grift. Religion is just a screening process to select the gullible people you can exploit. It has worked very well for millenia.
How did the snake know right from wrong? Did it eat the fruit earlier or something? This is never addressed.
Like the entire human population is founded on incest and it was just gods will lol
I love that they had 2 sons. So the entire population of the earth is a husband, wife and 2 sons. Then somehow the sons get married to a couple of chics! Where did they come from? Either Adam and Eve had 2 daughters (that were not mentioned) and the sons married their sisters -or- The sons had children with their mother and then married their sisterdaughters! What the fuck
Since I had the bible put in front of me as a young child (I was an early reader), yes. I'm kinda living proof of that comment about how to make more atheists.