God Lies and the Devil Tells the Truth
April 1st, 2011
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
In Genesis 2, God clearly states that Adam and Eve will surely die after they eat the fruit, but they actually continue to live after doing so. In serpent form, the Devil informs them that they will know the difference between good and evil, which they do. It’s not like they were immortal before and then had their immortality taken away. In Genesis 3, God himself says that they have become “one of us,” so the serpent really did tell the truth when he said that Adam and Eve “shall be as gods” once they knew good and evil. Unfortunately, God kicks Adam and Eve out of the garden so that they cannot eat from the tree of life and live forever.
Some have suggested that they experienced a spiritual death. If that is true, then why doesn’t God say so? Instead of doing that, he rattles off various punishments that they will endure. The snake eats dust while women hate him. Eve gets painful childbirth and submission to men. Adam must work the cursed land to get his food. God doesn’t say anything about any death, spiritual or otherwise. Christians may deny this and make rationalizations all they want, but the textual evidence shows that God lied and the Devil told the truth.
The story itself is unfair. Adam and Eve didn’t understand the difference between good and evil before eating the fruit. They didn’t know that it was bad to go against God before they did this, so he is essentially punishing them for something that they didn’t have the capacity to fully comprehend. God shouldn’t have placed the tree there to begin with, because they would have had free will without it.
If no one was supposed to eat from it, why not root it up? Why leave it there to tempt the first two humans? In addition, why does God want to prevent Adam and Eve from gaining knowledge? Faith, belief without evidence, is what he places the most value on. If he exists and is omniscient, then he placed the tree there because he knew that the first two humans would eat from it. He wanted them to blindly follow him rather than to learn anything. When Adam and Eve ate from the tree out of ignorance, he cursed them and their descendants for all eternity. That is evil and deceitful, and his punishments are extreme and cruel. This is not a good god.
The only logical conclusion to come to is that both sides of the Christian pantheon are imaginary. Gods, devils, angels, demons, Heaven, Hell, the afterlife, and even the supernatural, everlasting soul are all notions that stem purely from the human imagination. Christianity is but mythology and superstition that hardens our hearts and enslaves our minds.