Problems in Genesis: The Fall of Man, chapters 3-5

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Alex_Pond66's picture
Problems in Genesis: The Fall of Man, chapters 3-5

How fun, now we get into the talking snakes and awkward means of carrying out the family name, oh lovely. First off, I can not emphasize this enough, snakes do not possess vocal cords, lips, or tongues suitable for speech but according to Genesis 3:1-4, this one does. There's not much more I can say about that, it's either you're uneducated enough in the areas reptilian biology to actually think talking snakes are possible, or you did the smart thing and started skepticizing directly after this passage.

With that being said, the downfall of humanity, the agenda of this hypothetical talking snake was to get Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, which God instructed them not to in Genesis 2:17, stating that "you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." First off, just a little trivia fact, no where in the bible is the fruit of the tree of knowledge revealed to be an apple, it could have been a mango for all I know. So let's get this straight, God creates everything, including moral standards, and then instructs man to never eat from the one thing that would give the knowledge of God's moral standards of good an evil. So now, by Genesis 3:6 the hypothetical talking snake persuades Eve to eat from the tree, who in turn persuades Adam to eat as well. As an immediate result in 3:7, Adam and Eve both realize that they are naked and immediately feel shamed, meaning that nakedness in public was a violation of these moral standards which God, who wrote these standards, decided not to tell them. So this deity writes moral standards but then decides not to command his creation to live by these standards, so why write them at all? Following this, said deity walks into the garden and wonders where everyone is, which is odd, considering he's omniscient and therefore would know exactly where they were and what they had done before it even happened, and starts reprimanding the hypothetical talking snake. So, in Genesis 3:14-15 he says to the hypothetical talking snake:

14. "Cursed are you above all livestock and all the wild animals!" (Snakes aren't livestock, and they certainly aren't animals, but the one thing I want to know is what the animals all did to become cursed)
"You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life." ( So now he's commanding the snake to "crawl on it's belly", first off, snakes can't crawl, they slither, second, the passage it making it out to sound as it a snake wasn't the creature it is now with no limbs.)
15. "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers, he will crush your head and you will strike his heal." (Personal note, no where in this chapter does it state that the snake was an evil being by the name of Lucifer.)

After scolding the snake, who apparently doesn't only have lips, vocal cords, and a tongue suitable for speech, but also has ears and a brain suitable for understanding human language (which if you know anything about biology, you would know that snakes don't have ears, they only have vibration sensitivity to sense predators), he goes on to reprimand Eve in Genesis 3:16 saying

"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing: with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."

First, you can thank God for contractions and 12 hour birthing periods, he is after all a very loving and benevolent god. Second, you can sense a little bit of sexism in this declaration considering he did enforce that women should subject to the rule of their husbands, as an unfortunate dictatorship resulting from a craving for a mango. And then we get to Adam, who never really got any special curse granted on him except the condemnation to need to eat until the end of his days (Genesis 3:17-19), which makes the assumption that eating up until then was nothing but a recreational activity, I didn't know chocolate cake was meant as a punishment.

So after everyone gets scolded, this deity goes on to say (to either himself of someone else who isn't clarified) "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." First observation, the use of the pronoun "us", which is confusing because I got the assumption that this book was about there being one god and not plural. Second, apparently there is also a Tree of Life located somewhere in the garden along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as stated in 2:10-14, which grants immortality, meaning either these guys weren't already immortal and therefore were already dying BEFORE this deity condemned them to return to dust, or they just got cheated out of heaven which therefore would make this entire endeavor futile.

Now, lets jump back a few passages. So before Adam and Eve ate from this tree which contains knowledge of moral standards, good and evil were not known to them because this deity never granted them the ability. Therefore, this deity gave them an order to never eat from the tree, but never endowed them with the ability to know that disobeying this order would go against moral standards. As a result, Adam nor Eve were aware that their actions were wrong until AFTER they ate from the tree which would enlighten them. So now this deity is punishing his creation for breaking moral standards which they weren't aware of until after their wrongdoing, and in Genesis 3:23-24 decides to banish human kind from the garden of Eden... oh yeah, and stations a being that's half lion with a human head and eagles wings with a flaming sword to protect the entrance to the garden which as of our knowledge of the Middle East seems to have apparently vanished completely.

But that's not all, chapter 4 focuses solely on the downfall of Adam's first born son Cain after he supposedly killed his brother Abel. So in 4:12, this deity curses Cain so that his farming land will no longer yield crops to him, curses are a little underrated don't you think? Oh and that's not the pressing part, confusingly, in 4:15-16 this deity actually put a safeguard on Cain so that no one can kill him (doesn't work out well for Sam and Dean), protecting the first hypothetical murderer (this curse is just so awesome I have to give it a name, gimme a minute). It just goes down hill from there, directly after as claimed by this book, Cain moves to the Land of Nod (4:16) and has a son named Enoch with his wife... who I don't really understand the means that led to her existence considering Cain at the time was Adam and Eve's only son and Cain was banished... so... this is either his sister or the daughter of his parents 3rd son Seth, making the wife his niece. As for the curse set on Cain, it's also revealed in 4:23-24 that Cain's descendants are ALSO under the Murder Me Not clause granted by Mr. Benevolent. So following lovely banishment as documented with no other written proof but this lovely book, 1056 years of family incest results in the population of the earth and the birth of Noah as stated by chapter 5:1-32, with ANOTHER 500 years going by before Noah's 500th birthday present is revealed to be three kids by the named of Shem, Ham and Japheth (note to self don't name your kid Ham.)

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