If Adam and Eve were created perfect, how could they sin?

I remember the WoMD argument. Many people don't realise that they tried several other 'justifications' in the weeks before the invasion, chronologically going from:
- Iraq has links to Al Qeida (but too many of the Intelligence community denied this, so the west didn't buy it); to
- Iraq has nuclear weapons (again, too many weapons inspectors / intel said no he didn't, so similar result); to
- Well, Iraq wants nuclear weapons (no history of it, so no one paid attention); to
- Well he has WoMD. This term was just vague enough that it caused a lot of fear in many people. When the UN's chief weapons inspector for most of the preceding years stated that Iraq didn't, and the chemical weapons the US supplied him had far exceeded their shelf life, and they didn't have the facilities to create more...he was heavily attacked by the US goverment. There's only one reason to behave like that.

When they asked Iraq to prove he didn't have WoMD (you can't prove a negative, and they knew that), I knew that war was imminent.

Tony Blair's later comments that the Intel was 'sexed up' was not a surprise at all.

I never did find out the reason for that invasion. Plenty of supposition - 3 even made coherent theories, but nothing concrete.

And wierdly, with the invasion under way, the politicians talked like they hadn't even thought how to end it - and it turns out they hadn't. For supposedly bright men, this was one of the most bamboozling aspects of the invasion. The surprise they suffered when it all went pear shaped. This tends only to happen when people are heavily censored from talking about what could go wrong...and yet it wasn't difficult at all to see the general nature of problems that could arise.

They thought they would be hailed as great liberators and that the people would rebel against their governments to form western-style democracies.

It does not say they were perfect.
They were tested and failed.

They just ate an apple, and all of humanity has to suffer. How does this make any sense?

If taken literally it is a stupid story. If it is taken symbolically, to suggest the awakening of self-awareness as a result of evolutionary advancement it could be hammered into something making sense.

If it was more hammered then it would make sense to more malleable minds.

Well, it does say that most just won't get it.

Someone asked me the other day when the first human emerged from evolution.

Think about that question in terms of evolutionary processes in which there is never a clear delineation between one species and the next except over multiple generations of mutations.

So to answer this question, it makes sense not to think of 'the first human' in terms of the DNA of the physical body, but rather in terms of the emergence of sentience, conscience, and moral reason.

When did a human or other hominid first go from experiencing knee-jerk shame at an emotional level (the way dogs do, for example) to becoming aware of the relationship between foresight and the consequences that occur from ignoring/foresaking such foresight?

That is what the story of Adam and Eve is about, imo. It's not really important whether we (or Moses) had knowledge of the actual precise individual humans that first understood that they had disobeyed a warning from Holy Spirit, but rather it is important that Moses was able to communicate a narrative to others about how foresight/conscience can be either obeyed or defied, and what happens as a result of defying conscience (e.g. experiencing enmity/separation from God, seeking to hide/cover-up one's true nature, etc.)

It is also interesting that Moses was able to include the use of lies to trick Adam & Eve into disobeying their consciences by convincing them that God wanted to prevent them from rising to His level, which induced a feeling of competition with God in Adam & Eve, which caused them to rebel instead of obeying, and thus to poison themselves with fruit they knew by foresight would kill them.

They knew it was convoluted when they wrote it.

If it was entitled "Eve and Adam" and interpreted as a critique against the serpent for targeting Eve in order to use her to get to Adam, it would be heralded by modern feminism as an early example of sexism critique.

Oh, it's pretty sexist as it is.

That's because it's been interpreted as such. Did you not read what I said? It could be interpreted as a critique of sexism.

Reality is sexist.

Although your way of putting it makes a point - it leaves out that in the story, it creates the the presumption that it is the woman who is most at risk to temptation, and it is the woman who has the power to lead the man astray.

I don't particularly see the story of Adam and Eve as sexist - but rather, a story. People tend to look for what they want to find in a story, as you pointed out. There's no evidence in the bible that it was used for sexist purposes, and little to none in the organised religion. Once in a blue moon you may get a person who is themselves sexist that tries to use it for such purposes, but it doesn't ever seem to catch on.

Going just on the text of Genesis, the only logical conclusion is that God wanted them both to bite the bullet/apple from the get-go. He wanted even that to be their choice though. I in their place would have done the same. Sentient beings inherently want to know what it’s all about, just too damn curious. Even the fear of death can’t stop that drive.

Your theory of evolution as the process of creating A&E is logical, but the text suggests that they did not become 'living souls' until God breathed his spirit into them. I think that would qualify them as a 'new species'.

But I fear I am becoming sexist in my old age. It’s like Solomon was saying. 'Among men I find only one in a thousand who understand. Among women, - not a single one.' paraphrased that a bit but the meaning is intact. I still hold out a small hope for women. I haven’t known that many yet.

In essence, it’s actually pretty simple.
The reason it seems convoluted is a good question though.

. The book itself suggests the reason is supernatural blindness. I’ve always wondered what transgression would warrant such a thing. I’m still not sure but it does seem to be a voluntary decision on the part of the blind.

Maybe they weren't created perfect in the first place. It's possible that the author(s) of Genesis made that part up.

Forget the blind, you've seen god on several occasions.

Tell us all about it, especially since it was a voluntary decision.

Tell us oh solomon the wise.

While you're up, you'll need to get a wriggle on about knowing women.

How so? Why didn't Adam then resist temptation from Eve?

Curiosity killed the cat, as they say; but I think the point of the A&E story is that they had the opportunity to obey foresight and because they failed, they had to reap the consequences.

God doesn't want us to die but to live. If God preferred death to life, there wouldn't be anything left alive, would there?


Soul is consciousness, i.e. the capacity to experience/perceive. Some people think that animals lack souls/consciousness, but I don't. They just haven't developed beyond emotional-reation as their driving motivation. Humans develop the ability to resist reaction to desire/emotion and make choices based on foresight and higher reason, and this is what the story of A&E describes, imo.

Bodies and brains may evolve through gradual DNA changes over multiple generations, but the birth of foresight happens at some single moment. E.g. at some moment a person gets a vision of what's going to happen and that causes them to realize that actions they take in the present are going to have future ramifications. I.e. people become aware of cause and effect instead of just reacting to desire and emotions.

There might be examples when animals do this as well, though. I've seen crows that seem to be able to pre-think what they are trying to accomplish, or a dog who understands that it can trigger a desired outcome with a relatively abstract action. Idk whether these animals are just following behavioral programming, though, or whether they actually foresee effects of causes in their mind's eye and then choose their actions based on that. If so, maybe there is a degree of humanity in some animals as well as people.


I notice patterns of miscommunication and conflict sediment in us as we age, especially in communication between the sexes. I think it's a byproduct of heterosexuality causing us to seek things in the opposite sex that they don't reciprocate or validate in the way we want, and then the resulting hurt feelings bias us against them.

People loved and were loved by their mommies and daddies as children, and they never quite find that in another person. Really, what we have to do is give love instead of seeking it, but we find that people don't want to receive what we deem as love worthy of giving because they want something or someone else.

Male-female relations are endless complex, though, so I don't think it's worth trying to sort it all out here.