Friday, May 29, 2015

The Tree Story is Impossible

So, I was just thinking to myself a bit ago about my own creation story, how I would have done things if I was a creator of a world and people.

I was thinking about helping people learn as they go in life, which is pretty much what we do for our own children now, no different; correcting gently as things go along, and then it hit me:

There is no way the tree of the knowledge of good and evil story can be true.

1. If no one had eaten from it, then life would go along, but eventually something would come up where there would be a conflict of some sort.  Maybe it would be a disagreement on property ownership or one man lusting after another's wife and causing jealousy, or whatever.  This is where people would know good and evil.  No tree necessary.

2. If they were inherently perfect, where nobody would ever possibly enter a conflict of any sort, then they were never really created with free will, as free moral agents.  And in that case, why would they have been created in flesh in the first place, if being spirit-bodied is supposedly the state of perfection?

Also, how would it be sin to realize—to "know"— there are bad consequences for some actions, which is what happens when we learn something is bad, as it's learned normally through our experience or observation of someone else's?  It's called learning.

It's only foolish or wrong if, after learning, the behavior is repeatedly practiced.  Again, it can't be a transgression to come to the knowledge of good and evil, because if it is:

1. Then the god of the bible (which is no creator of mine, I know now) is the ultimate transgressor, since he knows good and evil.

2. It was inevitable.  We know how we come to know good and evil.  It's when we learn from experience or from the experiences of others.  If someone eats a fruit off a certain plant, and it kills him or her, we know not to eat that fruit!  In other cases, if we've seen lots of people eat that fruit with no ill consequences, but then someone comes along, and he dies afterward, we know it was only evil for him and similar others (he was allergic).  So we were forced into "sin," anyway, since it was inevitable to learn what good and evil is without the tree!

3. El, the Canaanite bible god, supposedly told Adam and Eve to not eat the fruit from that tree, but why put the damned tree there in the first place, if they're inevitably going to learn what's good and evil on their own, anyway?!  And then he tempted them with it by telling them not to do it but leaving the serpent in the garden with them.  Whatever that serpent was, whether a snake with legs or the Satan or whatever, it obviously knew things and talked, and it didn't even lie as people claim, because exactly what he said would happen did indeed happen.  Their eyes were opened so that the knew good and evil like El.  They also didn't die.  As a matter of fact, they supposedly lived nearly a millennium!  We don't live that long today.  If it was the supposed "second death" that was referred to, then damn, that's sick.  I love my babies waaaaay too much, and they've done a whole lot worse than simply eating something I told them not to (they've done that, too), and it's not in my heart to bring them back from the dead only to kill them again in flames.  I'm too loving for that.  And too just for that.  Feel like I should throw that one in, too.

As a matter of fact, even though I wish they (and myself) were perfect, I would rather live eternally with my kids just the way they are (the good outweighs the bad by far) than to burn them to death.

So how's that?  I challenge anyone to answer me on this.

Perhaps someone out there can show just how evil he or she is and show the true nature of his or her heart by trying to argue this, but I don't know who would want to do so.

My eyes are indeed open to knowing good and evil, and there's a lot more evil in the "old testament" books than good.  So for my choosing the good, who wants me to burn?