Adam and Eve

So for anybody who's unaware of the story, it goes like this: God woke up one day and decided He was awesome, so he made a little dude in his image and called this little dude Adam. Being an empathetic sort of divine energy mass, God realized little Adam looked lonely and decided to tear out one of Adam's ribs to make a little lady friend for him, and named her Eve. Realizing His living dolls needed a house to play in, He then created a paradise on Earth for them to live in, called Eden.

This was ravishing, as far as God and the two newcomers were concerned. Unfortunately, God had also made a snake at some point, who may have been an emissary of Satan, or the Big Ugly himself, and in either case was one of those individuals you invite to your work party even if you don't want him there, because otherwise he will be quite put out.

The garden of Eden also had a tree within it, which carried fruit containing knowledge (of some variety; people get twisted about this part a lot). Adam and Eve were told to "not bloody well eat that," so of course they decided to listen to the mysterious snake in their garden and eat it anyway. When He found out his creations had realized they were naked and invented fashion, He was reportedly quite peeved and cast them out of the garden, making them mortal and cursing them to live in the world and Original Sin and yadda yadda.

So, if you take this story literally (which you shouldn't, because that would be stupid, but we'll get to that), people take issue with several points. First of all, man being created in God's image is a problem for a lot of people. Additionally, the idea of women being created out of men (and, implicitly, secondary/inferior) gets many people in a twizzy, and the idea of original sin pisses off pretty much everybody.

Before I really start, I want to point out that the entire argument over this story is pretty much moot, because it's in the book of Genesis, which is in the Bible, which is a religious scripture, and is therefore a giant mass of allegory written by people inspired by a brush with the divine but informed by the sociological and cosmological context of an ancient society. That, however, is a long sentence with lots of words, and we don't like them round here.

The first point!

The idea of the Imago Dei (humans being modeled after the divine) is irritating to people for a few reasons. Some take the idea to mean that we're modeled after a sublime being and should therefore be rather more sublime ourselves, and are frustrated with our flawed species. Others take this to mean that we are inherently subservient to that sublime being, and nothing gets people angry quicker than saying there might be something more interesting than they are. Indeed, the idea of being "made" at all has come under a lot of fire, because of the "creation vs. evolution debate."

I won't talk about this at great length, because the idea of debating it bores me, to be totally honest. I'll just frame my opinion in two points for you.

1. I don't think we interpreted the "made in His image" part quite right. I think what was meant was: "we were made by the divine, of the divine." Since the entity in question is divine, I doubt we look much at all like it, and indeed I doubt it "looks" like anything as we'd understand it.

2. The debate over whether creationism or evolution is the right theory has never ceased to amaze me. It seems to me that yeah, everything did have a single origin; it was probably the Big Bang, we think. For people who think this should disprove the existence of God, or whatever point they have, I have a point. What specifically you believe in actually has no bearing on this, now that I think of it. Does anybody (sane) honestly believe that, through our mortal intelligence and scientific apparatus, looking at the workings of the infinitely vast and complex universe around us, we could ever possibly figure it out? 

The second issue!

It bothers people that, in this allegory, women seem to have been created strictly for a man's companionship, and were made out of him, implying fundamental subservience. That's pretty understandable; I think all genders are equal and ought to be treated that way, and this binarization in the creation myth bugs me a little too. I think, however, we could alleviate this by thinking about it a little more.

Firstly, for humor's sake, remember that Adam was made out of some scraped-together dust to have "dominion over the Earth," which at that point basically made him God's appointed cat-sitter/gardener. If ever anybody (presumably male) starts to get uppity with this story as part of his argument, just toss him that one.

Secondly (and more seriously) I think it bears keeping in mind that, before eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve didn't have much of a sense of the world around them. They weren't even aware that they were naked, to give you an idea of the state these folks were in. Realizing this, then, I have to conclude that Adam and Eve couldn't even have known gender existed, and therefore (because gender is largely a matter of perception), it didn't. We look at this story in terms of our established gender binary, which is the source of our anger and angst over the topic. However, it bears keeping in mind that this binary is a culturally-mediated phenomenon, and there's nothing inherently binary about the nature of things. To cut this short before I ramble, I'm going to compare culture to quantum mechanics (because obviously). We perceive things to be binary: white and black, male and female, yes and no, whatever. The universe, however, is actually made out of things that defy this binary perception; we named them "positively" and "negatively" charged, in keeping with our perceived binary structure, and then we found out there were neutrons and oops.

The third problem!

People of all denominations get upset by the idea of original sin; those who believe it feel variously doomed, hopeless, and unworthy, and those who don't assert that it's a tool to make people feel inferior to keep them in line. I thought about this one for a long time, and came to a few points that change the nature of the issue.

For the first one, stick with me in the Christian tradition for a second. Adam and Eve, as with all other things, are actors in a great divine scheme of Stuff. They were made from dust by God, and to dust and God they inevitably return. In the Christian idea, God is a funny being; He simultaneously knows everything that will happen but does not void the principle of free will. Knowing this, then, He made Adam, Eve, the tree, and the snake, and caused them all to come together. Given that God knew what the result would be and still chose to combine all these ingredients in His Great Big Chemistry Set, I have to come to the following conclusion: He knew, and humans eating the fruit (that is, allegorically becoming self-aware and knowledgeable actors) was what He planned.

Furthermore, the "punishment" for their "transgression" was to be sent out into the Earth we're all familiar with, away from the unique intermediary/semi-divine plane that was Eden. This was enacted in response to their new status as beings equipped with knowledge that they themselves had chosen to acquire, and they were left to their own devices on Earth.

Well, now, hold on a minute, what the hell?

Adam and Eve were ostensibly created to have dominion over Earth, and that's where they wound up, freely roaming and founding the great family that is humanity. They were also supposedly created in the image of God, a being of infinite knowledge, and they wound up with great knowledge of their own.

Finally, Adam and Eve were "punished" to wander the Earth for the duration of their natural lifespan, ending with death, at which point they would return to the transcendent state. I want you to do something for me now, dear reader; go outside your house, or apartment, or dormitory, or wherever you live. Lift your gaze away from the pavement and the bustle, and look up at the sky, at the treeline, at the ocean, whatever you can see. Feel the wind, hear the birds sing, smell the falafel frying, whatever, and think about anything you want, using that miraculous instrument that is your brain.

Adam and Eve (those lovely metaphors again) were "punished" by being placed into this state.

Not a very harsh sentence, in my book.

TL;DR It's long as hell, I dunno. Religion is metaphor, God is you, me, everyone we know, and everything we don't, humanity is in a good spot.