In Which the Origins of Mankind Turn Out to be Incredibly Stupid
I was never going to do a big "Adam and Eve" post, mostly because everyone already knows that stuff. I mean, I know I did a Noah's Ark post and a Jonah and the Whale and/or Big Fish post, but those were done to remind people about the stuff that's usually left out, like Jonah being a whiny little bitch or Noah getting date-raped by his son. But I recently got in to two separate conversations on the same day with friends of mine about Ken Ham's Favorite Bible Story, so what the hell, we're here. Let's talk about how Adam and Eve are just the worst.
Genesis Chapter 1, God gets bored because there's nothing out there in pre-existence, so he spends most of a week fixing that by creating the entire universe, bing, bang boom. On day six, he invents man and woman, promises them that everything in the world is under their domain, tells them to bang out a baby already, and lies down to take a nap.
We open chapter two with God taking said nap, which is now called Saturday, and its awesome because you don't have to do anything on it, you can just screw around and party all day. Saturdays rule. But then in verse 4 something weird happens, and God has to remake all of creation, again, from at least Day 4 status, and if you think I'm joking, go ahead and check it out. God makes the universe.... and then he makes it all over again on the next page. THIS IS NEVER PROPERLY EXPLAINED.
Now, I know, because I'm really not an idiot, that Genesis is actually a very condensed volume of a bunch of different stories, all loosely tied together with shoddy editing skills (like, even worse than most other books in the bible). These are two different myths of creation with similar parts that got slapped together by someone, and somehow no one ever fixed the blatantly obvious discrepancy in the book itself. Now, if you want any sort of official religious explanation for this, you have to start reading byzantine Jewish mystical texts (or just google stuff) to learn about Adam's FIRST wife, Lilith, and how she was a badass lady who liked to have sex on top, and that was awesome, so of course God had a problem with it, so she was banished out of paradise to become the mother of demons and stuff. Which, yes, is pretty great stuff. So, obviously it doesn't count as official in the damn Bible.
Anyway, whatever. So God creates everything again or whatever, but this time just makes a man, Adam, and no lady who might want to ride him cowgirl style. Also, this second time around, God tells him that he can have whatever he wants again, EXCEPT for this one tree, it's off-limits. Maybe it's a punishment for enjoying awesome, non-missionary sex in a non-canonical text, I don't know. But no fruit from this one tree right here, ever, or you're going to die. Apparently foxglove is totally safe, because this one tree is the only source of danger at all to early man, and God is too busy to bother putting up a fence around it.
One day God walks by, and finds Adam asleep, so he removes one of his ribs (What.) and magically transforms it into a woman. I know that this is after all the "creating the universe in 6 days" magical nonsense, but surely at some point some member of the early Hebrew priesthood must have realized how little sense that made. I just.... huh. Moving on. They then spend naked time together, but no cowgirl this time.
So, later on, there's this snake, see? The snake can talk. It's gender is not revealed, but I'm going to refer to it as a he, simply because most people do. Also, this snake has legs. So... It's sort of less a snake, more of a long lizard? I mean, come on, bible nerds, I know you take this stuff way too seriously, but even you guys have to admit that this legged, talking snake thing is completely insane. And don't give me that Catholic nonsense "the snake is secretly the Devil!" stuff, because one.) that's not at all even suggested in Genesis, you added that crap later, and two.) bullshit, this is the part of the myth where we learn why snakes DON'T have legs. It's mythic storytelling 101, don't make this weird. And think about it, following your literal interpretation nonsense, every single species of snake ever is the direct descendant of this one, particular snake, six thousand (or whenever) years ago? That is not possible, in like... a bunch of ways. I'm not a herpetologist, but seriously, come on now.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay, so this talking, walking around-ish snake sees Eve, right? And he basically decides to mess with her head, because snakes are jerks like that. We all know that snakes are jerks. So, he's all like, "Yo, Eve, so you can eat anything you like, right? Like, anything you see is up for grabs?"
And Eve's all like, "Why hello, Mr. Talking Snake that also walks on actual legs! Basically, yes, we can eat whatever we want, except for this one tree way over there, if we eat anything off of it, we could die. But everything else is ours!" Eve is way earnest, in my version. Like, she is just so excited and happy, you know? She is also dumber than a sack of hammers. I mean, come on now. Talking snake. Is there anything more sinister and evil than a talking snake? Other than a talking spider, maybe?
So, since the snake is obviously evil, he basically just tricks this rube into killing herself. He goes, "Oh, babe, listen here. You won't die, if you eat that. God has magically made you immune to all poisons, as the writer alluded to six paragraphs ago. All that happens is, if you eat that fruit, you'll become, like, super smart, so that you'll never ever be conned into doing something really stupid by an obvious charlatan."
Poor judge of character that she is, Eve automatically believes this sinister serpent's sadistic silver-tongue, and she goes to the tree and grabs some fruit. As she's chowing down, Adam sees her and goes, "Hey babe, whatcha-"
"EAT THIS!" she demands, because whether it's an apple or a fig or a pomegranate or whatever, this fruit is delicious. And he eats it, because of course he does, he's AT LEAST as dumb as Eve is. But then the magic fruit makes them embarrassed of being naked, because this magic tree is way repressed, so they make clothes. Apparently the knowledge of Good and Evil involves a Home Economics class.
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Later, God comes back to the garden, and he can't find Adam and Eve, despite being omniscient. So he calls out, "Yo, Adam, where you at, dog?" And Adam pokes his head out from behind the bushes, because even though he and Eve made themselves clothes all of three verses ago, they never quite worked out how to put said clothes on, because they're both goddamn morons. (I cannot stress that point enough.)
So Adam says to God, "Hey, dude, sorry I'm hiding, it's just that I haven't figured out how to put pants on yet, and so I'm letting it all hang out at the moment."
And God is all "Wait a damn minute! How do you know you're naked? You're dumb as hell, I made you that way on purpose for some undefined reason! Have you been eating off the Out-of-Bounds Tree?" Adam has, of course, but along with being a moron, he's also a dick, so he immediately narcs on "The Woman" (actual quote) and places all the blame on her. She tries to explain that she was tricked by a talking snake, and basically at this point, everything is fucked. Except God decides not to kill them, but there's no explanation of why he does that, because basically the writers forgot that key point. He just punishes everybody, instead.
For being the clever little jackass that started all this, God takes away the snakes limbs, which is why all snakes everywhere don't have them- though no mention is made about removing his ability to speak, so maybe all snakes everywhere can secretly talk, but they don't do it around humans because that fucked them over last time? THAT SEEMS PLAUSIBLE. Then, to punish Eve for being so stupid, God makes women have painful periods and other gross things, and promises to make childbirth awful from now on (The fact that no one has ever given birth before- therefore no one would notice a difference- is best left ignored). And Adam can't stay in paradise any more because of RULES, but hey, tricked by a hot naked chick? God's been there before.
(God is pretty sexist, you guys.)
Adam and Eve leave paradise forever, and they go out to have babies that would end up inventing murder, and also A LOT of incest is implied. So, if you believe this story is actual, literal truth, they were expelled for some amazingly stupid reasons that were easily preventable if the omniscient creator of the universe had even a lick of sense. Alternatively, if you think of this story as more of an allegorical myth about mankind attempting to "be like the gods" with that silly "knowledge of good and evil" stuff, well, Prometheus is a better story.
Oy. God is terrible. Adam and Eve are terrible, and dumb, and they inherited God's awful parenting skills. The snake is terrible, but at least he gets a pass, because you just expect a talking snake to be evil, EVE. Jesus Christ Monkey Balls. This story is waaaaaay dumber than you remember when you really look at it. Wow. Answers in Genesis? My aching ass.
Genesis Chapter 1, God gets bored because there's nothing out there in pre-existence, so he spends most of a week fixing that by creating the entire universe, bing, bang boom. On day six, he invents man and woman, promises them that everything in the world is under their domain, tells them to bang out a baby already, and lies down to take a nap.
We open chapter two with God taking said nap, which is now called Saturday, and its awesome because you don't have to do anything on it, you can just screw around and party all day. Saturdays rule. But then in verse 4 something weird happens, and God has to remake all of creation, again, from at least Day 4 status, and if you think I'm joking, go ahead and check it out. God makes the universe.... and then he makes it all over again on the next page. THIS IS NEVER PROPERLY EXPLAINED.
Now, I know, because I'm really not an idiot, that Genesis is actually a very condensed volume of a bunch of different stories, all loosely tied together with shoddy editing skills (like, even worse than most other books in the bible). These are two different myths of creation with similar parts that got slapped together by someone, and somehow no one ever fixed the blatantly obvious discrepancy in the book itself. Now, if you want any sort of official religious explanation for this, you have to start reading byzantine Jewish mystical texts (or just google stuff) to learn about Adam's FIRST wife, Lilith, and how she was a badass lady who liked to have sex on top, and that was awesome, so of course God had a problem with it, so she was banished out of paradise to become the mother of demons and stuff. Which, yes, is pretty great stuff. So, obviously it doesn't count as official in the damn Bible.
Anyway, whatever. So God creates everything again or whatever, but this time just makes a man, Adam, and no lady who might want to ride him cowgirl style. Also, this second time around, God tells him that he can have whatever he wants again, EXCEPT for this one tree, it's off-limits. Maybe it's a punishment for enjoying awesome, non-missionary sex in a non-canonical text, I don't know. But no fruit from this one tree right here, ever, or you're going to die. Apparently foxglove is totally safe, because this one tree is the only source of danger at all to early man, and God is too busy to bother putting up a fence around it.
One day God walks by, and finds Adam asleep, so he removes one of his ribs (What.) and magically transforms it into a woman. I know that this is after all the "creating the universe in 6 days" magical nonsense, but surely at some point some member of the early Hebrew priesthood must have realized how little sense that made. I just.... huh. Moving on. They then spend naked time together, but no cowgirl this time.
So, later on, there's this snake, see? The snake can talk. It's gender is not revealed, but I'm going to refer to it as a he, simply because most people do. Also, this snake has legs. So... It's sort of less a snake, more of a long lizard? I mean, come on, bible nerds, I know you take this stuff way too seriously, but even you guys have to admit that this legged, talking snake thing is completely insane. And don't give me that Catholic nonsense "the snake is secretly the Devil!" stuff, because one.) that's not at all even suggested in Genesis, you added that crap later, and two.) bullshit, this is the part of the myth where we learn why snakes DON'T have legs. It's mythic storytelling 101, don't make this weird. And think about it, following your literal interpretation nonsense, every single species of snake ever is the direct descendant of this one, particular snake, six thousand (or whenever) years ago? That is not possible, in like... a bunch of ways. I'm not a herpetologist, but seriously, come on now.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay, so this talking, walking around-ish snake sees Eve, right? And he basically decides to mess with her head, because snakes are jerks like that. We all know that snakes are jerks. So, he's all like, "Yo, Eve, so you can eat anything you like, right? Like, anything you see is up for grabs?"
And Eve's all like, "Why hello, Mr. Talking Snake that also walks on actual legs! Basically, yes, we can eat whatever we want, except for this one tree way over there, if we eat anything off of it, we could die. But everything else is ours!" Eve is way earnest, in my version. Like, she is just so excited and happy, you know? She is also dumber than a sack of hammers. I mean, come on now. Talking snake. Is there anything more sinister and evil than a talking snake? Other than a talking spider, maybe?
A brief poll of my friends could not reach a consensus over which is the lesser evil.
So, since the snake is obviously evil, he basically just tricks this rube into killing herself. He goes, "Oh, babe, listen here. You won't die, if you eat that. God has magically made you immune to all poisons, as the writer alluded to six paragraphs ago. All that happens is, if you eat that fruit, you'll become, like, super smart, so that you'll never ever be conned into doing something really stupid by an obvious charlatan."
Poor judge of character that she is, Eve automatically believes this sinister serpent's sadistic silver-tongue, and she goes to the tree and grabs some fruit. As she's chowing down, Adam sees her and goes, "Hey babe, whatcha-"
"EAT THIS!" she demands, because whether it's an apple or a fig or a pomegranate or whatever, this fruit is delicious. And he eats it, because of course he does, he's AT LEAST as dumb as Eve is. But then the magic fruit makes them embarrassed of being naked, because this magic tree is way repressed, so they make clothes. Apparently the knowledge of Good and Evil involves a Home Economics class.
Its a rule that any time you write about Adam and Eve you have to include an old time-y painting of them.
Later, God comes back to the garden, and he can't find Adam and Eve, despite being omniscient. So he calls out, "Yo, Adam, where you at, dog?" And Adam pokes his head out from behind the bushes, because even though he and Eve made themselves clothes all of three verses ago, they never quite worked out how to put said clothes on, because they're both goddamn morons. (I cannot stress that point enough.)
So Adam says to God, "Hey, dude, sorry I'm hiding, it's just that I haven't figured out how to put pants on yet, and so I'm letting it all hang out at the moment."
And God is all "Wait a damn minute! How do you know you're naked? You're dumb as hell, I made you that way on purpose for some undefined reason! Have you been eating off the Out-of-Bounds Tree?" Adam has, of course, but along with being a moron, he's also a dick, so he immediately narcs on "The Woman" (actual quote) and places all the blame on her. She tries to explain that she was tricked by a talking snake, and basically at this point, everything is fucked. Except God decides not to kill them, but there's no explanation of why he does that, because basically the writers forgot that key point. He just punishes everybody, instead.
For being the clever little jackass that started all this, God takes away the snakes limbs, which is why all snakes everywhere don't have them- though no mention is made about removing his ability to speak, so maybe all snakes everywhere can secretly talk, but they don't do it around humans because that fucked them over last time? THAT SEEMS PLAUSIBLE. Then, to punish Eve for being so stupid, God makes women have painful periods and other gross things, and promises to make childbirth awful from now on (The fact that no one has ever given birth before- therefore no one would notice a difference- is best left ignored). And Adam can't stay in paradise any more because of RULES, but hey, tricked by a hot naked chick? God's been there before.
(God is pretty sexist, you guys.)
Adam and Eve leave paradise forever, and they go out to have babies that would end up inventing murder, and also A LOT of incest is implied. So, if you believe this story is actual, literal truth, they were expelled for some amazingly stupid reasons that were easily preventable if the omniscient creator of the universe had even a lick of sense. Alternatively, if you think of this story as more of an allegorical myth about mankind attempting to "be like the gods" with that silly "knowledge of good and evil" stuff, well, Prometheus is a better story.
Oy. God is terrible. Adam and Eve are terrible, and dumb, and they inherited God's awful parenting skills. The snake is terrible, but at least he gets a pass, because you just expect a talking snake to be evil, EVE. Jesus Christ Monkey Balls. This story is waaaaaay dumber than you remember when you really look at it. Wow. Answers in Genesis? My aching ass.
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