Genesis 3 New International Version (NIV)
The Fall
3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but
God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the
middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To
Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the
tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
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Let's have a basic discussion about morality here since this is the source in which we (even us atheists) derive all of our morality from. This is the fall. This is where man fell from God's good graces.
Lesson One: What's the first thing we can notice here as I've highlighted in bold the important bits? God is against us KNOWING things. OK we can't say he is against us knowing all things of course but we can say that God is against us KNOWING good and evil, for by eating from the forbidden Tree of KNOWLEDGE of Good and Evil you will die.
Lesson Two: God's morality is baseless. We cannot "be like him" by knowing of the "good and evil". So god's morality. - the perfect moral lawgiver who holds the keys to all morality will not let us KNOW it. What?
Lesson Three: The first moral lesson - PUT SOME CLOTHES ON! As we see in most religions that have ever been invented throughout human history - God hates nudity. There is always an obsession with sexual purity. Why this is? Someone tell me please!
Lesson Four: God punishes the vessel. From what I have always been told the snake in this story was Satan. So Satan possessed this poor serpent (one of the first of the species since creation I would imagine) but God punishes the possessed snake and all of his relatives. Why? Oh and also *See my blog post about proof of other species of animals besides humans having souls.
Lesson Five: After laying the smack down (AKA the Fall of Mankind) on the representative selected pair of early hominids Adam and Eve and the species of snake unlucky enough to be possessed by the devil the perfect Moral Lawgiver shows His craftier side and fashions Adam and Eve cute little animal skin matching outfits because exposed genitalia that he literally just created is icky.
I am not a Biblical scholar but apparently in the beginning there were all sorts of magical trees granting perfect moral knowledge (which again, first lesson - cover up your junk!!) and eternal life. Makes one wonder what the hell are these magic trees doing on this newly created Earth. Was there something before nothing? Did God take these magical trees originally grown in heaven down to his new Earth just to fuck with his newly created species of primate? We'll never know!
I think there is one main lesson we should all take away from this Bible passage of "the fall of mankind" and I think it is obvious when reading this Scripture passage. The lesson is that the billions of years prior to mankind's creation where literal monsters roamed the Earth shredding every other living thing for millions of years followed by a nightmarish landscape of unimaginable volcanic activity that made all the oceans stagnant death pools and made methane burp which caused the entire planet to smell like rotten eggs, overall ending in the death of 99% of all living species of god's creation - ALL due to Eve eating that fruit because a possessed snake talked her into it. I think that much should be clear.
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Genesis 11 New International Version (NIV)
The Tower of Babel
11 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward,[a] they found a plain in Shinar[b] and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel[c]—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
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In the first chapter, if one was reading this passage from Scripture for the first time you might think - Oh how nice! Everyone getting a long and speaking one language. I mean it's a tad socialist for my taste but nonetheless uplifting. However, as you read on it gets weirder and these lessons seem obvious.Lesson One: Never come together to build cities or towers within that city. God disapproves of most urban areas right off the bat here and just human ingenuity overall.
Lesson Two: Our Perfect Moral Lawgiver contradicts himself in the New Testament (Philippians 4:13) and says nothing is impossible through shared language and culture. So, it's not just his Son that strengthens you that allows all things to be possible BUT apparently it's sharing a language and culture.
Lesson Three: God is the God of confusion. Another deep moral lesson for our Bible study today. God loves confusion. Apparently the entire cast (God, Son, Holy Ghost) came down to confuse their language. What a weird sight that would have been. What does that look like exactly?
Lesson Four: AGAIN DON'T BUILD CITIES!
To sum up our two lessons here we see God hates human progress, loves confusion, despises nudity of one species of hairless ape (because all the animals are freaking still walking around without pants on!) and god originally didn't want his chosen creation to KNOW anything about good and evil. This my friends is the basis for all morality we see today! Remember that!
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