BANANA

Yikes! Those things are an atheist’s nightmare!

just imagine how bad it would’ve been if it had been a pineapple instead of just plain apple – we’d probably be extinct like those naughty dinosaurs.

Or even scarier, creepier, confusinger still, what if the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil was actually a…………..BANANA!! (Hitchcock’s “Psycho” screech! screech! screech! screech!)

So perfectly designed for mankind to use! The implications of God’s being a sneaky trickster are mind-boggling!

In particular, it explains

why there is evil in the world and why people do bad things,
why we feel shame and guilt when we break the rules,
why we instinctively know right from wrong,
why God is mean to those that disobey Him and is just to punish them for it,
how God can be a nice guy (He made a paradise for us) and also kick our collective ass (we blew it all by disobeying His direct command),
why Satan is a low-down, dirty snake,
why snakes crawl on their belly rather than proceed upright,
how angels do God’s dirty work,
why men shouldn’t trust women (it’s only prudent–look what happened to the first man),
why people are ashamed to be seen naked (why we wear clothes),
why it’s okay to hate women (’cause they deserve it–they got us booted out of paradise),
why women have great pain in childbirth (it’s punishment don’t you know),
why men have to go off to work each day and why they sweat doing it,
why some bushes grow thorns and thistles,
why the world is not an idyllic paradise,
and last but not least, why people die and their bodies turn to dust.

I’m sure there are even more angles to this story that I have overlooked, but that’s just what I can recall (haven’t read that story in some time).

Ah, what a message! It just keeps on giving right up to the present day. What kind of morality are we expected to derive from this story? Let’s see, there’s lust, fear, shame, guilt, blame, cowardice, trickery, crime and punishment. I see an All-Powerful, All-knowing Being flexing its muscles against two mere mortals who didn’t know right from wrong because they made the mistake of letting themselves be enticed by an attraction that the Almighty put right in the middle of their living space, with a little help from Satan. Makes sense.

Religion very well may have positive aspects, but we cannot excuse its evils in the name of a few good acts. We cannot allow bigotry simply because bigots may occasionally give alms to the poor.

I have to agree with this one.

Here’s where we fall down the rabbit hole. I have been told that the first sin was the act of rebellion against God when man decided to listen to eve and eat the apple.

Now, how could Adam have know it was evil if he didn’t know the difference between Good and Evil?

Now folks contend that there’s evil in the world because God gave us free will. But it seems to me that Adam created free will in the moment he decided to take a bite. And somehow that created evil…. synonymous with knowlege of the difference between good and evil, synonyomous with rebellion, synonymous with making choices contrary to God’s Law.

any way you slice it, what Adam did was the very beginning of inquiry, doubt, self-determination, and that act is symbolic within the three great monotheisic faiths as the moment when evil entered the world and we became exiled from God.