Nekkids

OK, so Adam and Eve were created "good" by god, and what they did was "good" until they ate the fruit, right? Well, after they ate the fruit is when they realized they were naked and were embarrassed by it. Apparently, before they ate the fruit, they were naked and they realized afterwards that it is bad to be naked. But, they were wholly good before eating the fruit even though they were naked.

This creates a contradiction. Either they were good when they were naked and it is still good to be naked, which modern Xians don't agree with and certainly those who wrote the Bible didn't agree with. Or, they were not good when they were naked, meaning that there was sin before they ate the apple. Which is it?

There is another way, of course, but it requires the theist to resort to relative or situational morality. This, however, is anathema to most Xians in that they claim to believe in absolute morality, so this option is not actually open, no matter how often they cling to relative morality when it suits their whims.

Adam and Eve Redux

OK, some apologists just don't get it, so let's use an analogy.

Let's say your kid who is all of 2 years old like to run in your garden and you don't like it. You go and confront the little kid and tell him, "Don't run into my yard, for the next time you do so, you shall surely feel my wrath." You don't put up a fence or do anything to keep the kid out - in fact you do the opposite and put something in the garden that the kid will be irresistibly drawn to just so that you can ensure the kid will enter the garden. Next thing you know, the kid is in your garden again. If you were an insane, egotistical, sadistic, angry person, you might take the following actions:

1. Banish the kid from your house forever and toss him out on his ass.
2. Inject him with some sort of genetically designed virus that causes birth defects in all his off-spring for all eternity.
3. Blame the kid for everything and convince him that it's all his fault that you are taking such extreme actions, but that you are doing it out of love.
4. Create a place of torture for this kid and all his descendants to go to if they don't bow down and kiss your feet and convince them it's all their fault.

etc. etc.

If you think that those actions are pretty insane, then consider god's actions against Adam and Eve. Yes, the analogy falls a little short, only because god's actions are even harder to defend and even more insane - he knew they would eat the fruit, he actually puts people in hell for all eternity, etc.

Knowledge

The story of Adam and Eve is particularly troublesome for Xianity for many, many reasons. But, one that is especially galling to me is it's treatment of knowledge.

In the story, Adam and Eve eat the fruit and god gets angry and tosses them out of paradise. The fruit they eat, however, is the fruit of knowledge of good and evil and god clearly states that he is throwing them out because of the knowledge they have gained. The inescapable conclusion is that knowledge is a bad thing and it seems that Adam and Eve are being punished for gaining knowledge. It seems that god wants us to be ignorant and unlearned. He doesn't want us to discover new things, he simply wants us to do as he commands. Incidentally, this also argues against the Xian conception that god wants us to have free will. No he doesn't. He punishes Adam and Eve for using their free will. He wanted them to simply obey and be ignorant.

Sadly, this anti-knowledge streak persists to this day. There are tracts in the NT that speak against knowledge and Xianity tends to eschew it in many ways. Through the dark ages, the Catholic church refused to do mass in any language but Latin, thus assuring that the masses could not understand the words (I believe they still do this). This trend continues to the modern day where we see virulent anti-science sentiment among many Xians. These Xians are all too eager to use the latest technology - cell phones, computers, airplanes, etc. - while holding scientists in disdain and engaging in anti-evolutionism and anti-climatism among other science denials.

Genetics of Sin

And god threw Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden and proclaimed that all of their descendants will be sinful because of their bad choice. OK, that's paraphrased, but it's the gist that counts. This is a greatly immoral action on god's part, but let's skip that for a moment. This is also a rather hateful ideology, but we'll skip that for the moment as well. god creates a situation where sin is passed from parent to offspring when he throws Adam and Eve out of the garden. The mechanism that science has uncovered for this is through our genetic make-up. So, is there a sin gene?

Let's say, for a moment, there is a sin gene. Is it possible that this gene can mutate and be selected out by evolution? It's quite possible that this would be the case, although it's true that certain genes persist for long stretches of time due to their necessity (if they mutate, the organism dies). Considering that Adam and Eve would not have originally had this gene (when did god insert it?) it seems unlikely that it would be necessary for survival, so it's possible that it would be susceptible to mutation and loss or change of function.

To get even deeper into the idea, with modern genetics we might be able to locate and isolate such a gene. This would open up the possibility of us modifying it (in the future of course) in order to design humans that would be free from sin. This would make it possible to undo god's work. Wouldn't this negate the Xian concept of the need for Jesus?

Mistake?