I recently posted an argument about Adam and Eve and God’s moral culpability for human failure and sin, most of which went like this:
- If Adam and Eve are properly representative of humanity, and failed the test, then God’s design of humanity is ultimately sub-optimal. This appears to render God as sub-optimal. God has created an entity which would fail that test every time, or most every time, such that it was fair and representative that Adam and Eve were chosen to take that test on behalf of humanity.
- If Adam and Eve are not properly representative of humanity, and failed the test, and humanity are punished as a result of this failure, then god is quite obviously not fair. God has chosen two people who are in some meaningful way different to the rest of humanity and any other test case may well have passed the test and not eaten the fruit. If we are all being punished (and this potentially includes the whole carnivorous animal kingdom) as a result of that unrepresentative moral decision of Adam and Eve, then something is rotten in the state of Eden.
I now want to open this up to you, the readers. I am going to compile a list of the problems with Adam and Eve and update this post as more issues come in, and then present a complete and concise list of theological and logical issues pertaining to their existence, and the reasons for their supposed existence. Here are some quotes from commenters from the last post to start us off:
- God had a 100% failure rate when it comes to designing humanity. If you want to blame it all on Eve, it’s still 50%. Supposedly imperfect humans would find that failure rate in a manufacturing process extremely wasteful.
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It always seemed odd to me that Adam and Eve were blamed for disobeying god when they were innocent children with no concept of good and evil, and therefore no concept of obeying/disobeying.
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And then, when they did eat of The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil they were not amazed by the amount of good in the world, but were ashamed of being naked, the natural state in which they were created. (And thus sexuality was deemed evil for evermore.)
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Or if they had a concept of obeying and disobeying, they had no way to know which was the good thing to do. Think about the mystery shows where someone who is supposed to keep some piece of legal or medical information confidential, takes out the relevant file, puts it on their desk in front of the cops, then says “I have to make a few phone calls. Of course, you won’t touch that folder,” meaning, “I may be a lawyer, but I’m still a human being and if this will help you investigate the murder of a child, then by all means, note the information I moved to the top of the file and left for you.” The cops know that if they don’t take the opportunity to peek, they will actually be doing a morally wrong thing by leaving the lawyer with the guilt of his bending the rules and no justice gained by it.
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Ultimately we have a god who punished everyone because two people learned something.
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A god that supposedly created a Universe cannot even design a biological being without it being faulty from the start? A being that doesn’t even perform to his own specs? And then he does not take the responsibility for flawed design but blames the product?
“Under the CPA, the ‘producer’ of a product is liable for any defects. The producer is the manufacturer of the finished product or of a component of the finished product, or any person responsible for an industrial or other process to which any essential characteristic of the product is attributable. Liability may also be imposed on any party who holds itself out to be the producer through the use of a name or trade mark, and any person who imported the product into the European Community.” http://www.out-law.com/topics/…
Just a lousy product development without warranty and no responsibilities taken. The recall then an atrocity involving suffering on a global scale and the second iteration still sub standard according to his own specs? How incompetent can one be and still get away being called a god?
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The worst part of it is that they failed the test when they were still innocent. It was the fruit they ate that supposedly taught them about good and evil. But it was only another one of God’s creations that tempted these innocent people to eat it.
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How is it that the talking snake with legs was more clued-in to his surroundings than the mud man and rib woman? Indeed, the snake appeared, in order to be able to tempt Eve, to have some idea already of good and evil, and without God knowing, or getting hitherto angry.
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Even worse the snake was punished too. The implication of the snake being punished meant that it shared some of the blame, so therefore Eve’ blame should be slightly diminished. She was not entirely at fault.
In secular law, we have stipulations for people who were coerced, or manipulated. Often they have their charges reduced. Our man-made laws are superior to anything that god could supposedly come up with.
It’s like an older kid egging two younger kids on to touching the stove after their dad said not to. Would their dad throwing them out of the house then be right (let alone blaming his grandchildren)?
- God knew all this in advance of the testing.