Adam and Eve

I've been meaning to put something up here for sometime on this one.

Over at Action Skeptics, a great blog that I really must read more, Akusai has put up a brilliant and brutal assessment of who was culpable for Adam and Eve being kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

In a nutshell, these are the conclusions that he reaches:

1. God creates a tree containing fruit that allows the eaters to know right from wrong and bans Adam and Eve from eating it. If they don't know what's right or wrong, then, well they're going to eat it, aren't they? It's as simple as that. The fact that God told them not to do it becomes immaterial.



2. If God is omniscient, then it's His fault that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, because He knew that they'd disobey Him. This also makes their mental state immaterial.



3. If God is omnipotent but not omniscient, then point 1 applies. The fact that God created Adam and Eve without the ability to determine right from wrong further incriminates God. God could be reasonably expected to know that eventually, Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit. (It is assumed in points one, two and three that God is not stupid.)



4. Lastly, if God is an idiot, then he's culpable through negligence. He's negligent for setting "up a dangerous situation".

I'm still pondering the last point - negligence necessarily implies a duty of care, and I'm not sure what the duty of care is, and to whom it is owed, but it's a very minor point.

Anyway, it's a very humorous story told with much merriment.

Check it out here.

And after you do that, Beep Beep It's Me! has been at it again.

She pretty much comes to the same conclusions regarding the whole matter, and comes up with another one:

If God is omnipresent, and He wanted them to not eat the forbidden fruit, He could have stopped them easily at any time. Plus He would have seen them do it. So why did He go through the charade of coming down to the garden to investigate?

Beep's assessment is here.

It looks pretty bad for God. He's pretty much fully responsible for this whole debacle, no matter what way you look at it.

His goose, as they say, is cooked.