Q: “How can a perfect creator produce an imperfect world?”

After all, a creator who is perfect by definition cannot create anything that is the slightest bit imperfect – otherwise this creator would not be perfect. One could even take this notion further and say that a infinitely perfect, self-sufficient being wouldn’t need to create anything at all. What possible amusement could such a figure derive from “creation”?

This is a question that I have posed to Christians from time to time. As expected, their answer usually relies on the Biblical tale of Adam and Eve, the first two human beings as presented by the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Because Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit, “an inseparable gap between God and man was created”. We are all doomed to suffering because “Man rebelled against God”.

This is heard so often that I feel compelled to comment on it.

Firstly, “Man” did not rebel against God. Eve and subsequently Adam “rebelled” against God. It is inappropriate and downright mystifying that Eve sinning can somehow be equated to all of mankind sinning. Especially due to the fact that no where in Genesis 3 is there any mention of God condemning all of humanity to inherent this sinfulness. Humanity’s inclination towards evil is not mentioned until the end of the Flood story, in Genesis 8:21, when God says, “…for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth.” The reason for this is not stated, nor is it in any way explicitly linked to Adam or Eve (indeed, one can question why a perfect creator would create humans with evil inclinations and then lament that fact).

No matter how you might try to phrase it, punishing all for the act of two simply can not be justified. Even if you adhered to the second commandment’s abhorrent pledge that God will punish “the children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who reject [Him]“, you could still not justify the type of all-encompassing punishment that many Christians ascribe to God. Even the Israelites eventually recognized this. The prophet Ezekiel said (in direct contradiction to the second commandment), “The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child” (Ezekiel 18:20).

I submit, rather, that neither Eve nor Adam in the context of the story can be held responsible for the actions in which they partook. If God had not wanted His creation to eat a piece of fruit (as threatening as that sounds), then He quite frankly should not have placed that tree there in the first place. God created Eden, God put the trees there, and God created the Serpent – it’s God’s fault. If you grant God infinite wisdom, then He must have known before He created anything that Eve would disobey His command anyway and now His actions become completely inexcusable, if not downright absurd.

You might protest, “but despite all of this Eve STILL disobeyed God!” Did Eve really disobey God? Remember that it was only after she ate the fruit that she acquired the knowledge of good and evil – prior to that she was completely ignorant of what was wrong and what was right. She could not have known that her disobedience was an immoral thing to do until she had already done it. You can no more punish an infant for crying during the middle of the night than you can punish Eve for disobeying God’s command.

God’s original mandate to Adam and Eve was, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree…or you shall die.” God explains to Adam and Eve that their punishment for eating the fruit is death – period. This of course, does not happen. Adam goes on to live a long and fertile life of 930 years. Presumably Eve lives nearly as long. What does happen, however, is that God condemns the snake to slithering on the ground and then condemns man and woman to a few labors such as “pangs in childbearing” and the need to farm or “toil” the land. While as tiresome as these things may be, this is hardly the universal “suffering”  - death, war, and misery – as Christians like to play it up as (and which this wall from the Creation Museum in Kentucky represents).

But what about this “inseparable gap between God and man” that was allegedly created the moment they partook of the fruit? For one, it seems as if Christians are granting too much power to man over God. Secondly, it does not jive with what the Bible states in Genesis 3. In fact, quite the opposite seems to happen as a result of Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit. A gap that had already existed between man and God is described as shrinking. Where do I get such an idea? From Genesis 3:22, which shows God as saying, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” It appears, from what’s actually stated in the Bible, that Adam and Eve’s disobedience has actually made man more like God and that subsequently eating from the tree of life would actually make man a god. God’s fear of man becoming like the gods (notice the plural used in the above passage) is also repeated in the Tower of Babel story. There God says, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” (Genesis 11:6, italics added). Rather than a wall being raised between God and man, God is presented in at least two cases as being fearful of quite the opposite happening – man becoming a god.

The story of Adam and Eve is nothing but an ancient etiology (explanation of origins) for some of the labors that iron age peoples had to endure in life. Paul (and ultimately Christianity) mangled the meaning of this by claiming it to be the source of all man’s sins, as he does in Romans. The story, if you take it on its own terms, does not even claim to be the basis for all of the world’s suffering today.