Not only is the Adam and Eve story stupid, it makes the Abrahamic god “Yahweh” or “El” (whichever you want to call him) seem like even more of an asshole than he already seems like. Sure, you can read a book by Dan Barker to get a full picture of what an asshole the Abrahamic god is, but why not start by taking a look at the first story in the Bible. Which is really about God’s favorite candy bar.
Here’s an animated version for kids if you want a refresher.
To review, Adam and Eve were in a garden. What grows in a typical garden these days? Fruits and vegetables. But in God’s garden at the beginning of time, it looks like there is only fruit, and no vegetables. There is no mention of eating animals in the Garden of Eden, nor hunting animals, slaughtering livestock, or taking bird eggs. There is slight reference to livestock (being given names) but no mention of butchering it and preparing it for food. In fact it isn’t really until the Noah story do we hear anything about eating meat.
Riddle me this: what are the chances that fruit at the beginning of time was A) not full of undigestible fiber, and B) not loaded with unabsorbable fructose? That chance would be zero percent, because that is essential to the definition of what fruit is. What chance would there be of fruit at the beginning time having all of the essential vitamins and minerals a body needs? That chance would also be zero percent. Now, I understand one might want to say, “Well, God’s fruit is different because it’s God’s fruit in God’s garden.” Of course, anybody saying this is a bible literalist, and a fruit-denier, and doesn’t understand what actual fruit is. A bible literalist would have an easier time trying to say that Adam and Eve were built genetically different compared to today’s humans to where they weren’t in so much need of essential vitamins and minerals. Similar to maybe the skinny teenagers you knew in high school that could live off Coca-Cola and Snickers bars at lunch time and still make the grade.
A fruit-realist understands that fruit is candy. Sure, some fruit is wild, like huckleberries. But 99% of the fruit you see at any grocery store is man-made. All of it is genetically engineered to be sweeter, bigger, and as delicious as possible. That said, what is really the core of gardening? Genetic engineering. Remember learning about the Christian friar Gregor Mendel and his experiments with peas in your high school biology class? Well, never forget. Farmers today are only different in that they are better at it than Mendel was.
Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden are essentially starting out life as fruitarians. Fruitarianism is actually a real thing in this day and age – a radical extension of the unhealthy eating disorder called vegetarianism. Fruitarianism is even more radical and more deleterious than veganism. If you look on YouTube, you can find actual people who are trying to live by exclusively eating only fruit. (It’s gross.)
We don’t really hear about eating meat in the Bible until Genesis 9:3. And just for fun, let’s take a look at the Jewish vegetarian/vegan advocacy website, JewishVeg dot org. On their website, they say:
Let’s look directly at Genesis 9:3, the verse that Jews have cited countless times over the millennia to justify the eating of meat.
Yes, Genesis 9:3 does quote God as saying, “Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat.”
But when you look at the verse in its context, it is clear that God is only grudgingly giving humans this permission.
Sure, maybe their opinion about their Bible’s author’s intent is right. But, realists who understand the Bible is a work of fiction understand how retarded this kind of literalism-mixed-with-opinion is. It’s fascinating how deep and entrenched the religious roots of plant-based-eating goes. And since it’s coming from the Old Testament it’s obviously rippling through every branch of Abrahamism and you’ll see plenty of religious types falling for the plant-based lies. (Obviously these eating disorders are already popular in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism – but for this article we’re focusing on the Adam and Eve story.)
What’s funny is the typical Abrahamist blames the serpent in the story for convincing Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. (Which was not necessarily an apple, by the way.) Say we go along with bible-literalism just for fun, would it be possible that the serpent was in fact the savior that saved Adam and Eve from their eventual anorexic skeleton-looking malnourishment and death that is the inevitable fate of all fruitarians? For cryin’ out loud, get out the garden and go get some eggs and bacon. In fact, maybe what the serpent said was: “You look sick! Let me help you get out of here so you can go get some eggs and bacon!”
Surely eggs, meat, and dairy are the true food of the Gods. Fruit is candy and candy is kid stuff. Growing up means getting out of the candy store. Abrahamists can thank their Genesis-serpent for getting them out of the garden and into the real world.
People like to point out that Yahweh/El lied when he said to Adam that he’d “die” if he ate the forbidden fruit. Taking a realist perspective, Adam and Eve were already headed for a brutal death-by-malnourishment with their fruit-exclusive diet. That’s like being in a candy store and God tells you the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups will kill you, but everything else is fine. Hello? What?
What then is the “knowledge of good and evil” that you get by eating God’s Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? Let’s back up a second. This implies that they don’t even know what “good” is yet. Thus to Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden just “is.” It’s not good, it’s not evil – it’s just kinda there and they’re in it. Technically, they don’t have the ability to say “this is great, I love it here” because they don’t have knowledge of good or evil yet. Well, the result of eating God’s favorite candy was they made God mad. And God’s intention of banishing them from the Garden was to make them uncomfortable. So really, they get knowledge of evil in the form of God’s dark side, or God’s “wrath.” And their knowledge of good is only remembering a time before they saw God mad at them. So their initial concept of what “good” is, is just the “opposite of bad.” Thus they really only received knowledge of evil, and then from there the story suggests they have a life-long pursuit of hopefully finding good again and who knows whether they ever found it. Which actually might be an adequate takeaway, to be honest. If you’re willing to indulge in this off-the-beaten-path candy bar perspective of the Adam and Eve story, this would be the sort of thing that kept Greek philosophers up at night. “What is good?” And, “What is bad? And, “How do we know?”
There is an an untold story here. That story is that Adam and Eve never really knew what to eat. They lost the teenage good looks they initially had in the Garden of Eden, and then after they were banished from the Garden, the serpent got them onto every fad diet and workout plan possible until they finally found something that worked, which was the carnivore diet, and they got their high-school bodies back again at old age, which was better late than never. And that’s how they finally learned to know what “good” is. And eventually they learned that other indigenous people of the earth that were hunting for their food this whole time and eating exclusively animal-based diets were light years ahead of them in terms of health and physical fitness.
Now if Jews want to re-write the Adam & Eve story, the Garden of Eden could have rivers of raw milk and trees that grew eggs and bacon. In fact, if that was the case the Bible would’ve ended at Genesis 2: “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” BAM!