The book of Genesis tells us that Eve had been tempted by a serpent to eat from the tree of knowledge. What was the reason for humankind’s Fall? It was the curiosity, the thirst for knowledge. Why is the curiosity, the knowledge, something wrong? How can anyone know God’s moral nature if he or she doesn’t know what is good and what is evil? Knowing God, according to the Bible, and knowing His moral nature, is the sense of the eternal life. (John 17; 3) How can anyone know God and establish if He is good or if He is evil if that person doesn’t know the difference between good and evil? To be in the likeness of God means firstly to have a moral nature like Him, but that is impossible unless one has a good knowledge of what good and evil mean. 

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About the knowledge of the good and evil there is a big contradiction when comparing Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2. In Genesis chapter 1 mankind was made in the likeness of God but in chapter 2 the aspiration of humankind to be like God, knowing good and evil, was harshly punished. The text in Genesis chapter 1 sets forth: 

“26 Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind* in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth,* and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ 27 So God created humankind* in his image, in the image of God he created them;* male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1; 26-27 NRSV) 

Contrary to the declaration found in Genesis chapter 1, in Genesis chapter 3, verse 22, man became like God following the acquisition of the knowledge of good and evil and not from the beginning of his creation. According to the book of Genesis humankind would have been created in a blissful ignorance, a situation similar to that of the children who depend totally on their parents. At the same time, children don’t always remain in that stage of development, they turn into mature human beings and in this way they become like their parents. A similar process would have happened with Adam and Eve; they would have followed the natural stages of human development in their way to become like God, their divine Parent. What is strange in the biblical texts is that God would have tried to stop this natural process of human development, preventing the first human beings becoming like Him. No good parent does such a thing and this divine intervention in the course of human history according to the book of Genesis would have generated a colossal drama.

God didn’t offer the knowledge of good and evil freely to humankind and the price for the possibility to acquire this knowledge was their eternal lives. If they wanted to be like God they had to die because living eternally and being like Him would have been an unwanted competition against Him. 

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“22 Then the LORD God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’— 23 therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.” (Genesis 3; 22-23 NRSV) 

The texts from Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 3 contradict each other. Humankind was made either in God’s likeness from the beginning of their creation or they became like Him against His will after eating from the tree of good and evil. Both statements don’t go together. 

In the continuation of the story, Eve was allegedly deceived by a serpent but that animal was telling the truth and truth can never be deceiving. Everything said by the serpent happened in practice. After eating from the tree Adam and Eve really became like God, knowing good and evil as the serpent said, and that was confirmed by God.

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 Man did not die on the same day, as God said in Genesis chapter 2, neither physically nor spiritually, but he lived for many centuries ahead. 

“15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Genesis 2; 15-17 NRSV) 

 In Genesis chapter 3 the reader is informed how Eve has been deceived by the serpent:  

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ 2 The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 3 but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” ‘ 4 But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; 5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,* knowing good and evil.’ 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” (Genesis 3; 1-7 NRSV) 

Many commentators maintain the opinion that man and woman died spiritually the same day after eating from the tree, but this is contradicted by the Bible which says that the Spirit of God dwelled in the human beings long after the Fall. (Genesis 6; 3) It is obvious that when the Spirit of God dwells in some persons those persons cannot be dead spiritually. 

Was woman informed about the command given by God, asking man and woman not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Woman has known the command and repeated it to the serpent. She understood that she should not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the Garden nor shall she touch it or she shall die. 

Did woman understand death? If death entered into the creation only after human beings’ Fall nothing was there to prepare her to understand death, and unless she would have known what the command meant in its essence, it didn’t have any meaning for her. Woman couldn’t have known if death was something good or something evil because she couldn’t have known the difference between good and evil. God had asked human beings to understand the difference between good and evil before they could have known what the good and the evil meant. Again, we are confronted in the book of Genesis with a reversed order. 

Was blind obedience to God something good or something evil? How could mankind have done that kind of moral evaluation if they didn’t know what good and evil was? Blind obedience is usually wrong. Did God create human beings with the curiosity for knowledge in their nature or with the tendency toward blind obedience? Adam and Eve have chosen knowledge and not blind obedience. They have reacted according to their inbuilt nature created by God. 

The principle of freedom of choice wouldn’t have had any meaning for Adam and Eve if they didn’t know the difference between good and evil. 

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    The only guiding principle would have been their natural curiosity. Real choice cannot be made if one isn’t able to choose between the good and the evil, and there isn’t any freedom in lack of moral choice. 

What was the wrongdoing done by the serpent? The serpent is obviously a mythological personage because only in the myths a serpent can talk. Did Eve notice that animals don’t talk or was she very naïve and considered a talking serpent a normal thing? A talking animal would have been a very surprising thing for a normal human being. If a lion or another animal would have started to talk, would that have been unsurprising for Eve? In a natural reality, an animal which could talk would have been an extraordinary thing even for Eve, but that is possible only in a mythological narrative. Not only that a serpent cannot talk, not having the necessary vocal apparatus in order to utter the words, but it cannot think such a complex plan as the deception of human race. Those two aspects are downplayed by incredible explanations offered by some commentators: 

“Because there is no other place in Scripture that reveals Satan or demons can cause animals to speak, it makes more sense that the serpent could make the sounds capable of speech and Satan used this to his advantage. In essence, Satan likely used this feature that the original serpent had and caused it to say what he wanted. Although this may sound farfetched, there should be caution about limiting what God did or didn’t do in the perfect Garden. There is a possibility that many other animals had the ability to “speak” before the Curse. Many animals have types of sound-based or mimickry forms of communication today.”[1] 

 A perfect Garden is just another euphemistic expression for a world in which Satan could have acted unhindered. The Garden couldn’t have been perfect if within its limits Satan was able to make operational his plan. A place where the evil would have been present wasn’t a perfect place. 

In order to be able to use words, human beings have evolved for a very long period of time and this evolution has involved mainly the morphology of the language apparatus. 

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   The presumption that before Adam and Eve’s Fall many animals would have been able to utter words but they lost this ability after the Fall, is contradicted by the fact that long after the alleged Fall parrots can mimic human language. They didn’t lose their ability following the alleged human Fall. At the same time, they are an exception in the world of animals. It seems that their vocal apparatus exceptionally permits such a feat, but if it would have been a Fall, parrots also would have lost their ability to utter words. In any case the alleged Fall couldn’t have had the power to change God’s creation by generating new species of animals. An animal which can talk is very different from an animal which cannot talk. The animals cannot talk but if they could that would have influenced their evolution. The use of language has changed the human condition dramatically and would have done the same thing with other species also if it would have been a reality. 

Many commentators identify the serpent with Satan who would have taken the body of a serpent and would have spoken to humans. In another opinion, Satan would have spoken with a human voice in the presence of Eve and of the serpent and that could have created the illusion that the animal speaks, but the animal couldn’t have had any active involvement in the story. If the serpent was used only as a screen it wasn’t any reason to punish it. Why don’t serpents speak any more? That is because serpents don’t possess the morphological apparatus for this activity. 

Beside the Fall of Adam and Eve another incredible explanation is that in connection with the curse addressed to the serpent by God:

“Of course today, serpents don’t speak, but the Curse in Genesis 3:14 probably had something to do with this. Recall the physical changes in Genesis 3. Perhaps this is the reason the particular kind of serpent that deceived the Woman did not pass along the ability to speak or may have even become extinct since the Fall.”[2] 

 If not all serpents had the ability to speak why were all serpents cursed to move on their belly? It doesn’t make sense. A serpent with legs isn’t a serpent and the extinction of the kind of serpent which would have tempted Eve contradicts God’s curse regarding that serpent. 

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“14 The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.’ (Genesis 3; 14-15 NRSV) 

 What enmity could there have been between the offspring of the serpent and a woman’s offspring, if that kind of serpent was extinct? The answer is obviously a negative one. 

Usually humans are afraid and very suspicious of serpents but Eve had been very courageous and engaged in conversation with the animal in an unusual way. It seems that before going on their bellies serpents could have walked, so the serpent which deceived Eve would have been different from what we understand today by the name serpent. The problem is that such an animal would have been very different because we name by the word serpent those animals which usually go on their bellies. A serpent with four feet or other kind of walking members would have been a kind of crocodile or alligator. Such an animal would have generated repulsion in Eve, taking also into consideration that it would have been a wild and not a domestic animal. The book of Genesis says that “the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made.” Being a wild animal the serpent would have been avoided by humankind. 

The serpent promised knowledge to Eve and she rightly understood knowledge of good and evil as a desirable thing. As a matter of fact, knowledge of good and evil is what gives humankind their humanity and separates them from animals. The serpent did not lie to Eve but for Satan that is an extraordinary thing. He said that humankind wouldn’t die if they ate from the knowledge of good and evil, and that the knowledge itself was something good and would have allowed humankind to be like Good. Everything which the serpent spoke would have happened exactly as the serpent said. Humankind didn’t die according to God’s words and human beings became like Him and He declared it.

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Before jumping to the conclusion that the serpent was one and the same personage with Satan, one should analyse the serpent as a mythological character in other Near-Eastern mythologies where the serpent is not connected with the biblical Satan. What was in the mind of the author of Genesis chapter 2 when writing about the serpent? Did he understand the serpent as a mythological character, an animal able to speak, or as Satan the enemy of God? The serpent doesn’t look like a negative personage in Genesis chapter 2 but more like a positive one. Bringing knowledge is a positive thing by any standards. 

Adam and Eve did not die after eating from the tree, not even spiritually, because they remained in contact with God. Spiritual death means separation from God but this wasn’t the case of Adam and Eve after their Fall. As a matter of fact, eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the reason for a moral and spiritual rebirth rather than for spiritual death. Spirituality without morality, the knowledge of good and evil, is the most absurd proposition. The hope of eternal life did not die either, even if access to the tree of life was blocked. 

The serpent brought the knowledge to humankind and that was the most important moment in their existence. Without knowledge humankind wouldn’t have been complete conscious beings. 

At this point the only problem caused by the serpent was that he determined human beings to become like God, but seemingly He did not want them to be like Him. According to Genesis chapter 2, God had preferred man and woman to remain in a state of ignorance, not knowing the good and the evil. God wanted to keep man and woman in a sort of childish innocence retaining the knowledge of good and evil only for Him. God created a man and a woman but He wanted to prevent them from discerning what is good from what is evil. Why? Human beings without the ability to discern what is good from what is evil would have been no more than some evolved animals without consciousness. 

What danger would have emerged for God if humankind possessed the knowledge of good and evil? The Bible gives us a very strange story. It implies the well-known principle that information is power and God did not want to give knowledge to people. Knowledge is power and God wanted humankind to be entirely dependent on Him. 

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If this is true the idea that God gave humankind free will is absurd because free will without the knowledge of good and evil doesn’t mean anything. According to Genesis chapter 2 God had created man and woman who were destined to blindly obey all commands, but the serpent changed this plan and invited humankind to modify their status and to know what is good and what is evil through their actions. 

God had interdicted any contact with the tree of knowledge for humankind but, at the same time, He placed the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden. If God wanted to prevent humankind eating from the tree He could have left that tree out of the Garden of Eden. The presence of the tree would have been a continuous temptation for humankind even if the Bible says that God doesn’t tempt anyone.  

“13 No one, when tempted, should say, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one.” (James 1; 13 NRSV) 

James wasn’t right saying that God doesn’t tempt anyone because the book of Genesis maintains that He had tempted Adam and Eve by placing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the Garden of Eden. The Bible also says that the knowledge of good and evil was a real temptation for the human beings, therefore this is an instant in which God would have tempted someone. 

God had created humankind with a certain nature visible also today and He tested them using that nature. God made curious human beings on Earth and He expected them not to be inquisitive and thirsty for knowledge. 

The value of such a test would have been very much diminished because the persons who were tested wouldn’t have had any preparation for it. The human nature is hostile to blind obedience. 

The serpent offered to human beings exactly the same thing which Genesis chapter 1 declares was already done, the likeness of God, but He would have interdicted them reaching this standard in Genesis chapter 2. 

In Genesis chapter 1 God would have created humankind in His likeness, therefore the offer to be like Him couldn’t have raised any suspicions to human beings.

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    Genesis chapter 3 implies that God would have tested humankind by prohibiting them from His likeness which would have come by eating from the tree of knowledge. In such a case, blind obedience would have determined human beings to remain forever inferior entities, never being like God and never knowing good and the evil. 

In the context of the book of Genesis the desire of human beings to reach the full potential created by God in them, which was His likeness, was legitimate and its condemnation is nonsensical. The command not to eat from the tree of knowledge was against this potential. Obedience to God when the command was contrary to what God created in human beings, His likeness, would have been a negative attitude. In other words, Adam and Eve obeying God about the tree of knowledge would have meant at the same time contradicting the manner in which He created them. This is another contradiction in the book of Genesis working between the manner of creation of humankind in Genesis chapter 1 and the interdiction to eat from the tree of knowledge in Genesis chapter 2. Eating from the tree of knowledge would have made human beings like God but that was exactly the manner in which humankind was created in chapter 1. Why interdict that which was already granted? It is nonsensical. 

Let’s us accept for the moment that eating from the tree of knowledge was only a test. Once this test was passed successfully God would have allowed humankind to eat freely from that tree. This solution has a flaw because the knowledge of good and evil would come logically before the test and not after it. Any test presupposes the ability to choose between two or more possibilities but for a successful outcome the knowledge of good and evil was a necessary element. People who cannot tell the difference between good and evil must not be asked to do any test. 

Freedom presupposes the ability to differentiate between many choices on the basis of moral criteria also. Adam and Eve weren’t moral persons if they didn’t know the difference between good and evil, they were somewhere far from ethics. At the same time the freedom of choice is individual by definition. Adam and Eve’s obedience to God wouldn’t have been a guarantee that all their offspring would have chosen the same attitude toward Him. In other words, Adam and Eve’s choice to obey or to disobey God regarding the knowledge of good and evil would have been their personal choice and not necessarily the option of each human being living on Earth.

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If one assumes that what Adam and Eve did was the only reasonable path for all human beings this mean that it was an inevitable choice determined by human nature, therefore the first human beings couldn’t have been blamed for it. 

In lack of a real choice between good and evil Adam and Eve would have disobeyed God as a result of their human nature, and that would mean that human nature is disobedient by definition. It is obvious that blind obedience isn’t in human nature and as the story of Adam and Eve shows, it wasn’t in that nature before the Fall either. The question is to know if Adam and Eve had a real choice between obeying and disobeying God, or if disobedience was the only choice given human nature as it was created by God. Was human nature different before the Fall than after the Fall? What basis do we have to infer that human nature was different before the Fall, than it is today? We don’t have any foundation for such a judgement. Being Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God, we can infer that human nature would have always been inclined towards rejection of blind disobedience. 

In my opinion, Adam and Eve didn’t have a real choice to obey or disobey God. Because of their nature inclined toward disobedience and scientific curiosity and due to their inability to separate what was good from what was evil, Adam and Eve didn’t have a real freedom to select another alternative than the one they did. They wouldn’t have understood the concept of death and they went for knowledge as their prime choice. That would have been the most suitable alternative because only through knowledge one can find solutions to any problem. 

Between trust in authority and personal research of truth it seemed to Adam and Eve that the latter was more desirable. This wasn’t a choice made in full consciousness but the intuition of what they had to do in order to realise the potential set by God in them. Adam and Eve would have chosen what they considered to be good for them and wouldn’t have known what was good for God. They reckoned that God would understand their desire to be like Him. Why would God ask us to trust Him blindly rather than to know Him? In my opinion and contrary to what the book of Genesis states, God didn’t want our blind obedience to Him but He wants us to choose the good following the knowledge of good and evil.

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At the same time, the knowledge of good and evil didn’t come after Adam and Eve ate of the tree but it is the result of a long historical development. Every one of us can choose the good over the evil and overall is what human societies do. In human history we can see a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil and after a long experience with confrontations and disasters humankind have chosen to strive for peace and cooperation rather than for wars and destruction. 

Was the command given by God to Adam and Eve good for humankind? Living forever in ignorance couldn’t have been a good thing for the human beings. The story of Adam and Eve which is only a fable is the narrative of failing authority against scientific curiosity and that was and still is the underlying dispute within human civilization. 

In the legend from the book of Genesis chapter 2 God had tempted mankind into disobedience when He placed the tree in the Garden. They follow the temptation and disobeyed Him but this was the only way in which they could have gained free will. Only by knowing the difference between good and evil could mankind have reached a certain level of intellectual maturity and gained access to free will. 

Free will presupposes also the ability to choose between good and evil in a certain situation. Humankind couldn’t have known if obeying God was good or evil, they didn’t exercise their free will when choosing what the serpent had proposed to them. Their curiosity was the only criterion when humankind had chosen to listen to the serpent. Again, we find in the book of Genesis a reversed order of things. First comes free will and after that comes the knowledge of good and evil. The right order is first the knowledge of good and evil and only after that, the free will. 

According to Genesis chapter 2, God had asked humankind for unconditional obedience which replaced the personal discernment of every one of them. Man and woman didn’t have the right to listen to their own desires, to their own choices, but they were limited by God in the free manifestation of their will. A choice followed by a punishment it isn’t a free choice. 

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Without the knowledge of good and evil man and woman were not in a situation to appreciate or to discern the value of obedience to God and they wouldn’t have known anything about the war which would have happened in the heavens. They were like children, without responsibility, unable to discern good and evil, and they weren’t fit to stand judgement or to be punished for anything. A person without discernment, not knowing the value of good and evil, cannot be punished and will not be punished for his or her behaviour. 

God asking man and woman to obey unconditionally, without having the capacity to discern between good and evil, is a very strange thing. If a father knows that his son is immature and unable to discern this, he will not set a sort of trap in his way, a danger which, in his innocence, out of curiosity, his son could reach. God, according to the book of Genesis, didn’t follow this rule. He planted, in the Garden of Eden, a tree, which was dangerous for His children and which could be reached by them, out of curiosity. God created living beings endowed with curiosity but would have blamed those beings for that curiosity. 

Scientific curiosity of men and women makes human society what it is today, a developed technological world, so curiosity cannot be that bad. Referring to the Fall of humankind, the story from the book of Genesis chapter 2 tells us that the only thing which separates us from God is the knowledge of good and evil. When we have this knowledge, we are like God. (Genesis 3; 22) The only thing to which we still do not have access is the tree of life. The Bible tells us that through knowledge, man can be like God, therefore evolution of scientific knowledge following a long progress will propel man into a similar situation to that of God. The book of Genesis chapter 2 says that God is what He is, because He is more knowledgeable than us, because He knows the reality more deeply than us, and can better discern between good and evil. Nevertheless, we now are like God in an essential way because we know good and evil, according to the book of Genesis. 

God told Adam that eating from the tree of good and evil would attract death for the wrongdoer. Any threat was without significance for someone in the situation of man and woman in the Garden of Eden. They didn’t know what good and evil was and consequently, didn’t know if death was something good or something evil.  

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Man and woman didn’t have any experience with the death of others and they couldn’t have had the ability to understand what death could have been. They were not afraid of death, because for someone who doesn’t understand life properly, the understanding of death would be even more difficult. 

For the first human beings, the balance oscillated between the desire to progress by knowledge and the threat of death. Before their Fall none would have died in the created world, according to many commentators, and the thought of death couldn’t have provoked Adam and Eve in any way. If death meant anything for Adam and Eve this has to be interpreted as death being a tangible presence in the world before the Fall. Another contradiction in the book of Genesis is between the threat of death addressed to Adam by God and the idyllic world depicted by the texts in which animal death wouldn’t have been present. 

Nevertheless, fear of death never stopped human beings from taking risks in their enterprises for knowledge and progress during the entirety of human history. 

All human progress was and is possible only through knowledge. What kind of being did God want to develop from the man He created from dust? Did God want to realise a passive, undeveloped human being or an intellectually evolved person, able to understand Him? Christianity tells us that the sense of eternal life is the knowledge of God, but the knowledge of God is precisely the knowledge of good as opposed to evil. 

Good and evil could be known from two different perspectives, God’s perspective and humankind’s point of view. It is not always the same thing. Is it sure that what God wants for humankind is exactly what human beings also expect from their future? The assumption in Genesis chapter 2 is that not all that is good for humankind’s progress is also good for God. The serpent had another understanding. Man and woman had to know good and evil in order to be like God. Was Satan condemned by God because he also wanted to know good and evil? We cannot know that with precision because we don’t really know why Satan would have revolted against God. The much-used motive of Satan’s pride for his revolt is too general to give us any concrete reason why the fallen angel would have rebelled against God. This of course is the study of a legend, not of certain real facts. 

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The good thing can be qualified as more valuable only in comparison and in opposition to the evil thing, and without knowing anything about evil none can know why something good deserves this name. To define the goodness of something, that something must be differentiated from evil by some characteristics. The knowledge of God is in fact the knowledge of good and evil, and nobody can really appreciate the goodness of God if he or she doesn’t compare it with the malice of the evil. The lack of knowledge of good and evil could have been a serious motive for a revolt in the “heavens” because not knowing evil, some angels couldn’t have appreciated God’s goodness. At the same time, one can expect that the love of the created beings for God surpasses the lack of knowledge of good and evil, but the alleged revolt in the “heavens” contradicts this expectation. 

Why would God have condemned the knowledge of good and evil? The whole idea of the religion is the moral ability to choose, with the help of God, between good and evil. What merits has anyone who follows the good, only because he or she doesn’t know about evil or he or she is determined by someone else to act like that? One third of the angels in heaven followed the good until they encountered evil, then they went after evil. At the same time, two thirds of the angels followed the good even when they encountered evil and their choice was an informed one. At the same time, Satan left traces of doubt in their minds and this process would have triggered God’s entire plan of the creation and salvation of humankind. 

Man and woman hadn’t been tested in the book of Genesis for their inclination toward good or evil but for their attitude toward ignorance and knowledge. The story of creation from Genesis chapter 2 is irrational and meaningless because it asserts that humankind could have known God without the knowledge of good and evil. Without knowing Him it would have been impossible to establish a perfect relationship with Him. 

The suspicion engendered by human knowledge was present all the time, in the history of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The book of Genesis promotes the idea that knowledge separates us from God. This principle looks clear to me because after human beings ate from the tree of knowledge even God admitted that humankind had become like Him, knowing good and evil.

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Choosing between two possibilities offered by God wasn’t a sin but exercising of the right to choose. Human beings could have obeyed God and lived eternally in ignorance or they could have disobeyed Him, become knowledgeable, but be confronted with death. God would have given human beings a choice between eternal life and death but neither of these choices would have been an offence against Him. 

God would have asked man not to eat from the tree of knowledge not because eating was an offence to Him, but because knowing good and evil was incompatible with eternal life. 

“22 Then the Lord God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’—” (Genesis 3; 22 NRSV)

 Human beings at the time wouldn’t have done anything other than eat from the tree of knowledge and that was enough to consider them inapt for eternal life. This is also a contradiction because in the context of the N.T. the knowledge of good and evil isn’t an obstacle to eternal life any more, if someone chooses the good and rejects the evil. Adam and Eve were condemned before having the chance to choose the good and turn down evil, after knowing them. This condemnation is in contradiction with morality. 

What did Adam and Eve do wrong? There are two possible answers which give two theologies. First, they disobeyed God and that is their guilt, no matter what the object of God’s command for them would have been. Disobedience per se was wrong and would have been punished with the interdiction of eternal life. Second, disobedience per se wasn’t important because it didn’t in any way affect God, but determined only humankind’s fate. God would have offered a choice to Adam and Eve and choosing either way wasn’t guilt, no matter in what direction the choice would have gone. The problem wasn’t disobedience because both choices would have been open to humankind; the issue was the knowledge of good and evil which would have given humankind the possibility to be like God. 

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God’s command not to eat from the tree of knowledge was only advice, not an absolute interdiction, because the first human beings wouldn’t have been prepared to face the responsibility of obeying an order which would have determined their lives. 

If one knows the good and the evil he or she has to show clearly his or her preference for the good before being allowed to live eternally. Adam and Eve would have needed their entire life in order to express unequivocally their choice for the good. In my opinion, the second theology is what is contained in the book of Genesis chapter 2. 

The first theology which is propagated by the official doctrines of the Christian denominations, isn’t the right one and demonises all human beings for alleged sins committed by the mythological personages Adam and Eve. All human beings can live eternally if they choose the good rather than the evil, no matter if they believe in the existence of Adam and Eve or not. 

God would have ordered man not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and told him the consequences that act would have entailed. At the same time, Adam and Eve’s disobedience didn’t produce the effects anticipated by God therefore the entire story is in doubt. Adam and Eve didn’t die because they ate from the tree of knowledge but because they couldn’t have reached the tree of life, and they didn’t have the time and occasion to prove their commitment toward the good. 

Disobedience to God wasn’t a sin but a legitimate alternative generated by Him. Two different ways toward God were opened to humankind – a short one through obedience and a more complicated but much more fulfilling path through personal experience and acquiring of knowledge. Both ways were equally legitimised by God and none of them was sinful. Nevertheless, whoever wants to go on his or her own in life cannot have eternal life unless he or she is faithful to God’s values. This commitment is based on a voluntary attachment to certain moral values and not on a blind submission to authority. The faithful people know well the difference between good and evil and they choose the good over the evil in complete consciousness. 

What would Adam and Eve have had to regret? Did they have to regret that they chose the evil against the good? They didn’t make such a choice hence they didn’t need to regret it. 

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    Did Adam and Eve need to display remorse because they chose the path of knowledge against the avenue of blind obedience and ignorance? They didn’t need to express such remorse because without the knowledge of good and evil human beings wouldn’t be the developed conscious beings that they are today. Repentance for choosing knowledge against ignorance doesn’t make any sense, hence Adam and Eve wouldn’t have needed to repent for their choice regarding the tree of knowledge. Only repentance for choosing evil over good makes sense. 

God did not abandon humankind after their disobedience but only tried to stop man and woman reaching the tree of life. The first human beings weren’t ready to eat from the tree of life but they also weren’t prepared to not eat from the tree of knowledge. 

Only when humankind knows everything that God knows and when we are eternal beings, we will be like Him. Eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge wasn’t enough for humankind to be like God in spite of what the book of Genesis states. Being like God necessarily means knowledge of eternal life. Eating only from the tree of knowledge of good and evil but not from the tree of life isn’t enough to become like God, because one of His essential characteristics is eternity. 

How did God know that man ate from the tree? He did not find that directly but indirectly through a logical deduction. The human beings became aware that they were naked. They realised suddenly that being naked is something wrong in God’s eyes. Did God create human beings naked or wearing clothes? How did the first human beings know that there was another possibility beside nakedness if they were created naked? What was wrong with nakedness? If it was wrong why did God accepted nakedness from the beginning? Was human nakedness something shameful? What is the logic of people becoming shameful of their nakedness? If being naked was something shameful the conclusion would be that God created a shameful thing, namely human nakedness, and until the Fall man and woman were in a shameful situation but without knowing it. This is the conclusion proposed by the book of Genesis; it is implicit in its texts. In a Garden where man and his wife were alone, nakedness shouldn’t have been a problem, hence their shame is nonsensical. Only when human beings multiplied on Earth would nakedness in public have been a problem, being contrary to social norms. 

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This story is a cultural understanding coming from the period of time when wearing clothes was the norm and nakedness was considered to be shameful. If the story was true, how can the nakedness of many African tribes be explained? Are they not ashamed to be naked in the same way Adam and Eve would have been ashamed in the Garden of Eden? Aren’t those Africans also the offspring of Adam and Eve? Didn’t the Africans also open their eyes as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s disobedience? The story contained by the book of Genesis is only a fairy tale. All the details of the story regarding Adam and Eve are inconsistent from a rational point of view. 

The story is a mythological explanation of how people started to wear clothes at a certain moment in their history. If nakedness was shameful God would have clothed man from the moment of his creation. God didn’t take it to be shameful and without the imaginary Fall of humankind they would have been naked for eternity. Not knowing the good and the evil and being naked for eternity is the image of a primitive or tribal human being. 

In the perspective of the book of Genesis nakedness was shameful only if one had known that it was shameful, but this is a moral relativism which is not expected from God. Why was humankind unhappy with their nakedness? The book of Genesis says that they opened their eyes after their Fall. This is a very strange statement and presumes that until the Fall they had their eyes closed morally, but that is a contradiction to their alleged state of moral purity before the Fall. To be in a bad situation without realising it isn’t proof of a high morality. If the human beings had their moral eyes closed, as the book of Genesis sets forth, they couldn’t have been responsible for their response to Satan’s temptation, hence they shouldn’t have been punished. With their moral eyes closed they wouldn’t have properly recognised the reality which they had to face. 

For unknown reasons the crafty serpent didn’t think that tempting humankind to eat first from the tree of life would have created much bigger problems for God than eating first from the tree of knowledge. As a matter of fact, Satan wasn’t a very good strategist. Eating from the tree of life first would have given man and woman an indefinite time to accede to the tree of knowledge. Access to the tree of life was free from the beginning and was blocked only after the Fall. 

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   In the real world, the serpent if it were the craftiest of all animals would have tempted Eve to eat first from the tree of life and only after that it would have pointed toward the tree of knowledge of good and evil. At the same time, the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis don’t describe the real world but only a legendary one. 

The creation story from Genesis chapter 2 starts from the human condition. The narrative points to the fact that man and woman were not eternal but they should have eaten from the tree of life in order to live forever. The book of Genesis chapter 2 presents two heroes, Adam and Eve. They have been very courageous and the increase of their knowledge was very important for them, even more than their lives. They were willing to take great risks in order to acquire knowledge and nothing could be more dignifying than that. 

Knowledge of good and evil and all kinds of other knowledge are inseparable. In the history of Christianity many scientists had to sacrifice their lives in their search for knowledge. Allegorically everything started when Adam and Eve accepted death as the price for their thirst for knowledge. Unfortunately, the Church through its representatives didn’t take that story only as an allegory but rather as an historical fact which would sometimes have justified its hostile attitude toward scientific knowledge. After all, God punished the research for knowledge of good and evil, according to the book of Genesis, therefore His religious representatives would have been entitled to do the same thing, chastising any inquest for scientific knowledge. 

What interest would the serpent have had to open human eyes? Did he want to start a revolution of knowledge? Was the serpent the precursor of modern scientists? The history of the sciences at its beginnings was a struggle between religious authority and honest research for knowledge. Those authorities were many times against the human pursuit for knowledge unhindered by imposition of authoritative rules. 

What general conclusion, with moral consequences, can be extracted from the text of Genesis chapter 2? God had wanted to hide some information from man, because knowledge could have awakened humankind, causing them to ask uncomfortable questions. The alternative to knowledge would have been blind obedience to God. 

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   In the logic of Genesis chapter 2 the knowledge of good and evil was a barrier set by God in His interest, not for humankind’s benefit, because it wouldn’t have been any advantage for humankind to not know the difference between good and evil. 

Through this barrier, God protected Himself from human beings who were His potential rival. Without the knowledge of good and evil Adam would have remained an uneducated man used only for the work in the Garden of Eden, and Eve would also have lacked education. There isn’t any indication in the book of Genesis chapter 2 that Adam was treated as the child of God, he was established only to till the ground in the Garden. This isn’t what happened in the real world, this is what the story of Adam and Eve’s Fall depicts would have happened. 

Does the story of humankind’s Fall make any metaphoric sense? God created a man and a woman, who could have become His potential rivals, in the case that they wouldn’t have submitted totally to Him. At a certain moment in time they didn’t obey God and were considered a potential threat for Him if they were to become able to live forever. These creatures could have threatened the privileged position of God as the only one who knows the good and the evil and for this reason they were driven out from the Garden of Eden. This legend speaks about humankind confronting God and being punished for that. Of course, such a situation would have been highly improbable in the real world because God isn’t a man to envy humankind, even if He had been portrayed as a man by the book of Genesis chapter 2. 

There is a stark contradiction between the dogma of God knowing the future and God’s love for humankind which is a fundamental teaching in Christianity. God knows the future, He knows everything beforehand, and He would have known the unavoidability of the Fall of humankind before that happening. God not only knew previously the possibility of the Fall but He also knew in advance that humankind wasn’t prepared to pass the test, therefore He was aware of the unavoidability of humankind’s failure. Adam and Eve were doomed to fail from the moment of their creation because their nature would have been stronger than their immature minds. In this situation, an eternal punishment for so many human beings contradicts drastically the principle of God generously loving the entirety of humankind. 

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Adam and Eve’s immaturity is demonstrated by the motivation of their decision: 

"It was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.” (Genesis 3; 6 NRSV) 

They didn’t take into consideration any negative consequences of their choice. They didn’t have any arguments against God’s command not to eat from the tree. They didn’t analyse and balance the positive with the negative side of their choice. The most serious of the arguments was “that the tree was to be desired to make one wise”. Nevertheless, the desire for wisdom couldn’t have been other than good and the first human beings left everything aside for it. 

The woman was struck by the appearances of the fruit in the first place in the same way children are impressed by what they see. In the second place, she sensed her need for wisdom. Paradoxically, even if they hadn’t been wise, intuitively they made a wise choice. Human beings wanted to complete their personalities and to become whole persons. 

The first human beings didn’t live in an important city but in a garden. They were the creation of God with no preparation for life whatsoever, without the knowledge of good and evil and with no wisdom. Why did God create human beings knowing that they would fall from grace and that they would suffer and die, and most importantly that the majority of them would be tortured in hell forever, if He really is love? The lack of a reasonable answer to this question dissolves completely any value or credibility of the story regarding Adam and Eve because such an attitude cannot be characterised as love. Love for few and hatred for many gives an unbalanced equation of God’s dealings with humankind because hatred is much more extended than love. 

God is presented by the Judeo-Christian tradition as bearing a huge responsibility for the creation of an environment for pain and tragedy on our planet. Knowing the future, God would have known also that the man and woman created by Him would not have been prepared to resist the devil’s temptation, but in spite of that He planted the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. 

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Why were the first human beings unprepared to resist the temptation? Mankind did not have free will or discernment before knowing good and evil and their eyes were opened morally only after they had eaten from the tree of knowledge. It is absurd to maintain that humankind would have been alive from a spiritual point of view before the Fall and that they would have died spiritually after it. What kind of spiritual life previous to the Fall would have been that in which their eyes were closed morally? Being closed morally, their eyes would have been closed spiritually also because spiritual life without moral consciousness is an antagonism. 

Who was responsible for the creation of the serpent? God created the serpent together with all other animals knowing that the serpent would become the vehicle of the devil. With huge power comes a big responsibility also. Knowing that the serpent would be used by Satan, God could have taken measures to avoid that situation but He didn’t. God would have created the serpent as an instrument to be used by Satan, and no other purposes for its creation can be envisaged unless he had been a part of an ecosystem, but before the Fall there wouldn’t have been an ecosystem on Earth, according to the book of Genesis. 

God would have created all necessary conditions for the Fall. He created Satan, the Garden of Eden, the serpent and the tree of knowledge. All ingredients were carefully set in place waiting for humankind to fail. 

By creating the serpent God would have empowered Satan with what he needed to follow his strategy. In law, someone who provides the means for the action to the author of an illegal action is an accomplice. God would have been an accomplice to the deceit of humankind according to what the book of Genesis implies. This doesn’t mean that God would have proceeded in that manner in the real world; it only means that the story of Adam and Eve leads to absurd logical consequences and this is another reason for which it cannot be real. God couldn’t have deliberately generated all the conditions for humankind’s Fall because He would have protected His creation, therefore the entire story of Adam and Eve is a myth without a rational base. 

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Man and woman were threatened with death, but the death didn’t come on the day of their Fall, as God said. The serpent promised to Eve that she and Adam would not die in the day they ate from the tree of knowledge, as God said, and he was truthful with that information. After eating from that tree Adam and Eve didn’t die straight away, as the book of Genesis declares that God said: 

“… 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die’.” (Genesis 2; 17 NRSV) 

The text presents God addressing to man a threat which didn’t materialise. At the same time, the serpent was truthful when offering a guarantee for humankind’s lives following the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Adam and Eve didn’t die on the day of their disobedience, hence the serpent was right and God was wrong. They didn’t die either physically or spiritually. If Adam and Eve had died on the day they ate from the tree of knowledge, much drama would have been spared to humankind. If God had kept His promise as He should, that would have prevented billions of human beings going to hell and suffering for eternity, but He broke His promise with tragic consequences. 

God could have created another man and another woman who had a new chance to obey Him but He preferred to keep Adam and Eve alive and to allow them to give birth to countless candidates for eternal hell. Why would He have done that? Probably, because any human being that God created in the same conditions would have disobeyed Him. In this context, any replacement of Adam and Eve with other human beings would have given the same result. If God was sure that any created human being would have disobeyed Him before knowing the difference between good and evil, why would He have asked blind obedience of humankind? Blind obedience without the discernment between good and evil doesn’t bear any moral value. The story of the book of Genesis doesn’t make sense and the reality of humankind’s origin is very different from what the Bible says. 

In the real world, God would have allowed human beings to know the difference between good and evil before asking them to make any choice. 

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   As a matter of fact, God does exactly that and He doesn’t condemn anyone for unbelief in the story of Adam and Eve but He judges how everyone chooses between the good and the evil, after he or she becomes able to make the distinction between these two. 

It is true that the book of Genesis says that Abel was a righteous man even if his human parents, Adam and Eve, were sinful. The difference between Adam and Eve and Abel is that the latter knew the difference between good and evil, and his parents didn’t understand that distinction. If one knows the difference between good and evil he or she can choose the good not the evil conscientiously, but the lack of this knowledge prevents a true choice. 

This is the only reasonable conclusion. This conclusion strengthens the opinion that Adam and Eve’s disobedience would have been inescapable within the logic of the biblical narratives. 

The serpent also spoke the truth when asserting that: 

‘4 But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; 5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,* knowing good and evil.’ (Genesis 3; 4-5 NRSV) 

 The serpent was right and after eating from the tree of knowledge Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened:  

“7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.” (Genesis 3; 7 NRSV) 

Did Adam and Eve die spiritually even if they didn’t die materially on the day they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Spiritual death would mean the end of spiritual life. Adam and Eve didn’t have any spiritual life before their Fall if their eyes were closed morally because they didn’t know the difference between good and evil. Their spiritual side was the breath of life received from God but not only for them but animals also. God didn’t retract the breath of life from them on the day they sinned. Even after their disobedience God didn’t abandon them and Abel and Cain made offerings to God. People making sacrifices to God would have been proof that they weren’t spiritually dead.

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 If by spiritual life one would understand the presence of God in their lives, such presence continued after their Fall. For example, God had a dialogue with Cain after Adam and Eve’s Fall meaning that His presence among humankind wasn’t retracted after the disobedience of the first human beings. 

At the same time God said that His Spirit will not dwell forever in man and that people will live only 120 years. Nevertheless, for 120 years God’s Spirit was dwelling in the human beings therefore people weren’t spiritually dead. Before this declaration was made, the Spirit of God was present in humankind for a long period of time, meaning that He didn’t leave human beings after their Fall therefore they didn’t die, neither physically nor spiritually, on the day they ate from the tree of knowledge.  

“3 Then the Lord said, ‘My spirit shall not abide* in mortals for ever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred and twenty years.’ (Genesis 6; 3 NRSV) 

If humankind had an authentic spiritual life before the Fall, experiencing God’s love, that would have been a strong motivation not to disobey Him, but they were disobedient and this is a clear basis from which the quality of their spiritual life can be deemed. 

What was man’s punishment for his disobedience? From the Garden of Eden, man was removed, in order to till the ground outside of it. In the Garden of Eden man was settled in order to till the ground, meaning to prepare it for the raising of crops, by ploughing or harrowing. It is hard to imagine and it is in contradiction with Genesis chapter 1, a situation according to which in the Garden there wouldn’t have been weeds, and they would have appeared on Earth only after the Fall. If the weeds had appeared only after mankind’s Fall, Genesis chapter 1 is wrong in affirming that all plants were created on day three. 

After the Fall man changed the place of work but not the nature of his activity. From tilling of the ground in the Garden, man had to toil the same ground outside of it, but there wasn’t any important difference, between the two kinds of work. Any ground was always filled with weeds and the river from the Garden watered the inside but also the outside of it.

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 If there hadn’t been any significant difference in the nature of man’s activity after the Fall what was his punishment in connection with his lifestyle? As a matter of fact, man hadn’t really been punished for his disobedience with the change of his lifestyle because this change referred only to the place of his activity, not to its characteristics. 

What was different in the Garden of Eden than outside? According to Genesis chapter 1 the entire earth was the same with no notable differences between the areas situated on similar geographical coordinates. Edible fruit trees were everywhere, not only in the Garden, and the ground had a similar consistency all over the world. The story of the removal from the Garden of Eden is a fable with no reasonable consequences. 

Fertile ground was all over the world, not only in the Garden of Eden. The allegation from Genesis chapter 1 that after mankind’s Fall God transformed all ground to be infertile cannot be right. The argument that such a thing didn’t happen is that many places on Earth in the past were endowed with very fertile ground, for example the valley of the Nile. Moreover, the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates did not disappear after mankind’s Fall and their valleys remained a fertile ground until today. What would have disappeared was the Garden of Eden, or rather it wouldn’t have been there at all. 

The place of the Garden of Eden is the area where past civilizations had developed and those areas have been inhabited by humankind from ancient times to the present. God would have driven humankind out from the Garden after their Fall but they weren’t exiled in the middle of a desert and Abel became a sheep keeper and Cain a farmer. For this reason it is reasonable to consider that Adam and Eve together with their offspring would have lived next to the Garden of Eden on the banks of the river which flowed out of Eden to water the Garden. In that area, the quality of the ground would have been similar to the one from the Garden. Even if the first 11 chapters from the book of Genesis give as little detail as they can, the texts abound in contradictions. 

What caused the temptation of the woman? It was the serpent. The serpent wanted to give knowledge to man and woman in spite of God’s intention to keep man and woman in ignorance. Which is better, knowledge or ignorance? This is a fundamental question approached intuitively, not explicitly, by the Bible.

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 The solution of the book of Genesis is that ignorance is bliss. To me this is a false solution because knowledge increases the quality of human life but ignorance is the cause of all evil. Knowledge is always better than ignorance if someone wants to confront realistically daily problems. The book of Genesis doesn’t explain in a meaningful way the Fall of humankind. The entire story is contradictory and absurd. 

Was the ignorance a way to preserve a kind of natural innocence of humankind and was knowledge of good and evil a way of losing innocence? For how long would God have wanted to keep man apart from the knowledge of good and evil? Was it forever? Man and woman living happily in ignorance, tilling the ground in the Garden of Eden but ignoring the vast reality of the universe, is an idyllic situation but not necessarily a meaningful one. 

The knowledge of evil doesn’t mean the option for evil or the support of it. This observation is contrary to the philosophy of Genesis chapter 2 in which the pursuit of knowledge of good and evil is considered to be the root of all evil on Earth. In point of fact, good and evil have interfered from the beginning of God’s creation in an intricate dialectic and the only way to avoid evil is to know about its damaging effects. The existence of carnivorous animals together with herbivores from the beginning of creation is an example of how good and evil work together in the creation. Their concerting actions generate an equilibrated natural environment, in other words an ecosystem. 

What would Satan’s fate have been if woman and man had resisted his temptation? Would he have given up with his temptations immediately after the refusal? Probably, Satan wouldn’t have given up the temptation of humankind and some of Adam and Eve’s offspring, not knowing the difference between good and evil, would have fallen unavoidably sooner or later into his traps. 

The work of the devil didn’t start with humankind. A perception of a certain imperfection of God’s love drove one third of the angels to distance themselves from Him. How can anyone revolt against a perfect love? The value of love as a principle is in question. According to the Bible this revolt wouldn’t have been an accident or an isolated event because one third of all angels in heaven followed Satan and rebelled against God’s authority.  

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    The situation was recorded by the Bible but not the motives of the separation in details. The entire story is very strange and presents an unlikely situation. 

I always wondered what arguments Satan would have used, in his debate with God. How could Satan have persuaded one third of the angels to turn against God? The angels of the sky were created by God, they knew God through a direct experience with Him, they felt His love for them but despite all this they were persuaded by Satan to follow him. This is the core of the understanding of the Bible, the fight between good and evil. To explain everything through Satan’s pride is much too simplistic. Could Satan’s pride infringe on God’s love in the minds of a third of all angels? The explanation of how this would have happened in reality is a huge problem. 

What arguments can anyone use to convince someone else, who experienced the goodness and beauty of God, to change that for something else? God is love, according to the texts of the Bible, and who would trade love for hatred, and most importantly on what grounds? This situation questions the relationship between God and His creation. This alleged inability of God to retain the love of a part of His created angels contradicts the biblical assertion that He is love. The story of Satan’s fall from the sky is very blurred in the Bible. 

Without witnesses of the debate between God and Satan we don’t really know the object of the controversy, but we can speculate on the basis of the presumption that God represents good and Satan represents evil. If this presumption is too simplistic and good and evil aren’t so clearly separated one can modify the presumption and draw other conclusions. One thing is undisputable and this is that good and evil influence each other and each evil action generates a reaction which sometimes may also look evil. 

What arguments did Satan use to convince the angels that he was right? How could Satan be so persuasive with the angels who saw God directly and experienced His perfect love? God’s love was not enough for the angels? Did they want something other than love, for example knowledge? Is love not the supreme value of the Kingdom of God? Was this love not plain enough for the fallen angels? God’s love for them didn’t mean happiness for all angels? This is inconceivable by any standards. For a fallen angel to renounce God’s grace and to be convinced by some illusory promises made by Satan to follow him in his revolt is something improbable. 

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If the story of the fallen angels was real there would be some secret elements about which the Bible says nothing. Maybe God’s love wasn’t that visible or was understood by the angels as constraint. Is the story about Satan’s revolt a narrative of how love can fail when used as supreme argument in cosmic administration? An important number of angels had chosen knowledge of good and evil against God’s love, obtaining in this way a feeling of freedom, a real or a false one. 

Following Satan’s revolt God considered necessary a demonstration for the loyal angels, He wanted to show that He is good and the devil is bad. Even if Satan did not attract all angels on his side he sowed doubt in all angels’ minds, both loyal and rebelled. Nevertheless, no new demonstration of God’s love could have been made if man and woman hadn’t fallen from grace. If Adam and Eve hadn’t fallen Jesus wouldn’t have come to Earth and He wouldn’t have died on the cross, and the project of salvation couldn’t have happened. In other words, Adam and Eve’s Fall has been a necessary element for God’s plan to demonstrate once more His love to the angels. God wanted to definitively conquer the loyal angels whose minds had been corrupted by doubt following Satan’s revolt, and to this end He needed the Cross. 

God is love, says the cross of Calvary, even if the fallen angels won’t agree to that. For them God represented an authority from which they tried to escape. At the same time they entered under Satan’s authority which is not at all desirable, as I see it. 

Either God didn’t forecast Satan’s revolt or He was aware of it but He accepted it. Being Omniscient, God would have anticipated the consequences of the creation of Satan but He also could have used him for His ends. If He created the devil regardless of his future revolt God is responsible also for the existence of the evil in the world. Either God is Omniscient and He knew about Satan’s revolt or this rebellion came as a surprise and He isn’t Omniscient. 

The Omniscient God who knows the future and is above His creation couldn’t have been challenged by one of His created beings. Knowing the future and creating Satan who determined in the end the death of Christ on the cross, is an inconsistency which shadows the biblical narratives. If God knows the future He allowed that future to happen for unknown reasons but with visible effects. What could God have achieved through Satan’s revolt? A demonstration of His might. 

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This is another contradiction between the two stories of the creation. In Genesis chapter 1 we are informed that God’s entire creation was very good but in Genesis chapter 2 we can see that the serpent, part of God’s creation, was evil. The serpent wasn’t very good from the beginning of the creation because unlike other animals he could serve as an instrument for evil. Satan, as a revolted angel, wasn’t very good either because in him was found the seed of evil. They both had been created before God declaring His creation to be very good, according to the book of Genesis. 

Regardless of when Satan had revolted the roots of his opposition had to be imbedded in God’s creation. It is wrong to lay all responsibility for evil on Satan’s shoulder. The devil was only a created being, he was not responsible for the way in which he was created. Satan needed reasons for his revolt and without arguments he couldn’t have convinced so many angels about his cause. Even if Satan misinterpreted certain facts or elements of God’s authority he needed a number of coherent arguments in order to be credible. What were those arguments? The Bible doesn’t say anything about what had happened in heaven when Satan revolted against God but we can guess that it was a battle between authority and the pursuit of knowledge. 

In Genesis chapter 1 God rested immediately after the creation of mankind, on day seven, and He wouldn’t have done that if a revolt was troubling the horizon. The satanic revolt in heaven would have happened either during the six days of creation or immediately after the sixth day of creation, but before the temptation of humankind by the serpent. It could have happened on the seventh day during God’s rest. Nevertheless, all elements of evil would have existed before the end of the sequence of the six days of creation. 

When Satan would have revolted against God is a question to which commentators try to find an answer. Robert L. Odom cites Ellen G. White with a text which refers to this aspect: 

“Satan was once an honoured angel in heaven, next to Christ. . . . But when God said to His Son, “Let us make man in our image,” Satan was jealous of Jesus. He wished to be consulted concerning the formation of man, and because he was not, he was filled with envy, jealousy, and hatred. He desired to receive the highest honors in heaven next to God. Until this time all heaven had been in order, har­mony, and perfect subjection to the government of God.—Early Writings, p. 145.”[3]

 

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The narratives of the creation of humankind are also marred by contradictions between Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2. When was man created? Two biblical texts dispute among them the moment of creation of humankind. In Genesis chapter 1, humankind was created after the creation of animals but in Genesis chapter 2, man was created before the creation of animals and woman after their creation. These are the biblical texts:

 Genesis 1:

“26 Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind* in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth,* and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ 27 So God created humankind* in his image, in the image of God he created them;* male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1; 26-27 NRSV)

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Genesis 2:

“In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when … 7then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground,* and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2; 4-7 abbreviated NRSV)

In Genesis chapter 2, man had been formed on Earth in the beginning of creation but in Genesis chapter 1 he was created together with woman at the end, on day six. Even if the creation story in Genesis chapter 2 isn’t divided in sequences or days of creation one can suppose that the entire story took some time and wouldn’t have been consumed in only one day, if by day one should understand a 24-hour day. If we consider the huge number of animal species existing on Earth, naming them by man would have taken more than a 24-hour day. There are radical differences between Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 2 about when the man was created and where he had to live immediately after his creation.

Even if in Genesis chapter 2 the man created by God was established in the Garden of Eden immediately after his creation, in Genesis chapter 1 humankind had dominion over “the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth”. How could humankind exercise dominion over the whole earth if they were destined to dwell in the Garden of Eden? The two stories contradict each other. Humankind was destined in Genesis chapter 1 to live on the entire earth but in Genesis chapter 2 to live in the Garden of Eden.

The special dwelling for humankind on Earth, the paradise, would have been the Garden of Eden, and living there forever would have been their initial fate. But if they followed that happy destiny they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to exercise dominion over the entire earth. In other words, disobedience to God about the tree of knowledge would have been a necessary condition for humankind to be able to exercise dominion over the fauna of the entire earth because obedience would have meant an eternal life in the earthly paradise. If disobedience to God was the condition to respect His command in connection with dominion over the animals, the messages of the narratives of creation from the book of Genesis are inconsistent.

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In Genesis chapter 1, humankind had to fill the earth as a task given by God but in Genesis chapter 2 the life outside the Garden of Eden was a punishment and not a blessing. God blessed human beings, sending them to multiply and to fill the entire earth in chapter 1, and He cursed them, sending them to live on the entire surface of the earth when they had been thrown out from the Garden of Eden, in chapter 2. This is a discrepancy which devalues both stories of creation from the book of Genesis.

In Genesis chapter 1, human beings had to eat “every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit” and all these plants were found uncultivated by man in nature but in Genesis chapter 3 human beings would have fed from agriculture in very heavy conditions. 

“17 And to the man* he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it”, cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;

18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.” (Genesis 3; 17-18 NRSV)

In what way would the curse of God have changed His initial indications? Do we have to understand that after the curse man couldn’t have eaten uncultivated plants or fruits, but only cultivated plants? Why bother cultivating the land in the epoch when there were only two people on the earth and so many uncultivated vegetation good for food was available? According to Genesis chapter 1 the fruit trees had been created on the entire surface of the earth. God’s curse from Genesis chapter 2 is based on the assumption that fruit trees would have been created only in the Garden of Eden, but this presupposition is categorically denied by Genesis chapter 1 in which fruits were available on the entire earth.

If plants for eating grew everywhere uncultivated, Adam didn’t need to cultivate plants for his family and the commandment from Genesis 3 is absurd unless all uncultivated plants would have been rendered unfit for human consumption, for example if they would have become poisonous, but the latter proposition is absurd.

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None had established and none had enforced the prohibition of eating those uncultivated plants, according to the book of Genesis. Such prohibition was organised only in connection with the tree of life. The curse regarding human nutrition after the Fall seems to be nonsensical as far as the fruit trees and other nutritious vegetables would have existed not only in the Garden of Eden but on the entire surface of the earth.

In Genesis chapter 1 all uncultivated plants good for food would have been created on the entire surface of the earth, therefore once Adam and Eve were thrown out from the Garden of Eden they didn’t need to change their feeding habits. They could have found in nature outside the Garden the same food as consumed by them in the Garden. From the beginning, God had given to humankind as food “every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit.” Taking this into consideration, after the exit from the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve could have returned to this food which was plentiful on Earth without the need to cultivate the ground. 

“11 Then God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.’ And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.” (Genesis 1; 11-13 NRSV)

 In these verses the entire earth had to put forth vegetation but in the following ones God would have determined the apparition of plants only in the Garden of Eden:

“8 And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 Out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Genesis 2; 8-9 NRSV)

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The cultivation of plants for food is seen in Genesis 3 as a curse but in Genesis 2 man was placed in the Garden of Eden to do just that, to till the ground, before the Fall. In other words, before and after the Fall Adam had the same occupation. What sense would a curse which didn’t change anything have had? In the Garden man had to eat fruits but in Genesis chapter 1 he had to eat all plants. If one considers that fruits were not a limitation and man could have eaten plants in the Garden also, tilling the ground was an identical occupation both inside and outside of the Garden.

What was the object of the curse? Was all the land in the Garden fertile but all the land outside the Garden infertile? It is hard to accept such an unrealistic assertion. The valleys of Tigris and of Euphrates were doubtlessly very fertile and a “paradise” for their inhabitants, but it wasn’t the only such earthly “paradise” because the valleys of the Nile and of other rivers were also “paradises” for human beings. In the valley of the Nile, the land being fertile, God’s curse of the earth never was realised. In many places on the earth human beings would have managed to avoid the effects of God’s alleged curse of the ground and they could use the ground in a productive way.

Moreover, thorns and thistle would have existed after the creation of plants on many areas of the earth before Adam and Eve’s Fall, but that couldn’t prevent humankind from obtaining good agricultural productions. When were thorns and thistle created if not on the third day of the creation? Are we allowed to infer that thorns and thistles evolved from other species of plants when surveying the perspectives of creationism? The book of Genesis indicates only the third day for the creation of plants.

The literal creationism is inconsistent with its own opinions. Either God created all species of plants or the species evolved from one to another. Plants with thorns and plants without thorns are usually different species of plants. To guess that God would have created plants with thorns and thistle after the third day, meaning after Adam and Eve’s Fall, is contrary to the texts of the book of Genesis chapter 1 hence the book of Genesis contradicts its own statements.

Adam and Eve’s sins didn’t happen within the first six days of the creation, but sometime after that because everything was very good at the end of the creation. Nevertheless, if Satan’s revolt in “heavens” already happened in the creation because “heavens” were a part of the created world, God’s creation wasn’t as good as the Bible says.

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Again, there are two different stories, in one of them God had asked human beings from the moment of their creation to fill the earth and in the other one filling the earth was not a blessing but a collateral consequence of the human Fall. In order to fill the earth the first human beings had to leave the Garden of Eden. 

“16 To the woman he said, ‘I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’ (Genesis 3; 16 NRSV)

 Filling the earth would have been impossible if Adam and Eve obeyed God and would have remained forever in the Garden of Eden. Genesis chapter 1 and 2 gives each of them another purpose for the creation of humankind. The former sees humankind as multiplying and occupying the entire earth but the latter understands humankind as destined to live forever in the Garden of Eden. Living in the Garden was something beneficial as opposed to quitting the Garden which was a punishment, but this penalty was the only chance to fulfil the human fate established in Genesis chapter 1.

If God initially had established man in the Garden of Eden, which was delimited from the rest of the earth, why did He give to mankind as food, according to Genesis chapter 1, every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, an area much more extended than the Garden of Eden? It is not a rational proposition. Either God had established human beings in the Garden of Eden according to Genesis chapter 2 from the beginning, or He had given them dominion over the whole earth and as food all the plants on the planet, as Genesis chapter 1 says. The two versions contradict each other.

The Garden of Eden would have been created before Adam and Eve’s Fall, according to Genesis chapter 2, even if the entire earth was similar to the Garden of Eden, peaceful and inhabited only by herbivores, according to Genesis chapter 1. Being without sin the entire earth would have been a paradise filled with fruit trees and other plants. Why build a Garden in a place like a garden? There wouldn’t have been any need for the Garden of Eden if the nature on Earth was created as Genesis chapter 1 sets forth.

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 This is a clear discrepancy between Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2. In Genesis chapter 1 the entire earth would have been a Garden of Eden but in Genesis chapter 2 only a limited area of the surface of the earth would have been reserved for the Garden.

In the first story of creation the entire earth would have been destined as a dwelling place for humankind from the beginning of creation, and they had to multiply and to fill the entire earth, and that would have been a blessing. In the second story of creation, multiplying and filling the earth by humankind would have been the effect of a curse and would have happened in a hostile world.

If humankind initially would have been destined to live only in the Garden why did God create fruit trees all over the earth before the Fall? The impression generated by Genesis chapter 2 is that man and woman were created to live in the Garden of Eden forever and only after the Fall they had to leave the earthly paradise and dwell in other places on Earth. Only if God had known previous to their creation that humankind would be disobedient would He have created plants all over the earth to be used by human beings after their Fall.

A much more realistic explanation is the one given by science in which the apparition of life happened on the entire surface of the earth when the right conditions were in place. The biological forms of life have evolved and they have started to occupy the marine environment, the dry land, and air. The story of the Garden of Eden is the reflection of human understanding in the most incipient phase of human civilization, having nothing to do with reality.

It is not debatable if Adam and Eve would have had the ability to have children before the Fall, but the question is whether we have any arguments to maintain that they would have had children or not. It is worth quoting the following opinion:

“So I think there is a pretty solid line of evidence that Adam and Eve did have children before the Fall, even if Cain and Abel (or Cain and a twin sister) were the only ones.”[1]

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In my view, Adam and Eve aren’t real personages but only mythological ones, therefore the problem related to their children is only a hypothetical issue. At the same time the book of Genesis doesn’t state if Adam and Eve would have had children before the Fall, even if this information is important from the point of view of their attitude toward God. If the children of Adam and Eve were real, would they have disobeyed God and eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil or not? The question is important being that all human beings have their individual personality. For example, Abel was a positive character from the point of view of his attitude to God. Would he also have disobeyed God by eating from the tree of knowledge if he had been in the situation to choose? If he had disobeyed God he couldn’t have been considered a righteous man as allegedly he was deemed to be. The point is that the book of Genesis tells us that even if Adam and Eve had disobeyed God, their child Abel was a righteous person.

It is undisputable that being depicted as standard human beings by the Bible, Adam and Eve could have had children before the Fall, but the book of Genesis doesn’t say anything about children before the Fall. This brings one to the conclusion that Adam and Eve’s temptation happened immediately after their creation.

The existence of children and at the same time living in the Garden of Eden forever is a contradiction given the limited space of the Garden and the multiplication of the human races. Sooner or later human beings would have needed to leave the paradise and to live on the entire earth. If mankind, being obedient to God, had multiplied only in the Garden of Eden, at a certain point the Garden would have become overcrowded. That could have been a very strange situation; the Garden being overcrowded but the rest of the earth being unpopulated with human beings. No feasible solution to this conundrum appears. Living outside the Garden was a punishment and living inside the Garden forever would have been impossible for so many human beings.

Humankind was asked by God to be fruitful and multiply therefore failing or not, due to an important increase in population after a certain period of time, human beings would have left the Garden of Eden and would have lived on the entire earth. 

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    Without being driven by God outside the Garden, human beings would have left it anyway, the place being too small for the entire human population developing in time. This is a detail which is important if one wants to see the inconsistency of the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter 1, in which humankind had to multiply and had dominion over the entire earth, doesn’t correspond to the Garden of Eden if human beings had multiplied according to their nature. The presumption that Adam and Eve wouldn’t have multiplied if they had been obedient to God and would have abided in the Garden of Eden eternally without offspring, is irrational and is contradicted even by the Bible.

“24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Genesis 2; 24 NRSV)

 In Genesis chapter 1 human multiplication was a blessing but in Genesis chapter 2, multiplication inevitably equated with a punishment because in the end it would have led to the leaving of the Garden of Eden by many human beings.

Another difference between Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 is that the woman in chapter 2 is the reflection of man, but in chapter 1 she is the reflection of God. If woman had been made from the beginning in the image of God as Genesis chapter 1 says, she is not the reflexion of man but of Him. If woman was taken from man’s rib she is just a helper of man and she was created mainly for him. In point of fact, both man and woman are helpers for each other and the concept of woman being more a helper for man than man a helper for woman, is absurd. This also is a very important inconsistency which generated incredible inequalities in human history.

According to Genesis chapter 2, all animals were made in pairs but only man was created alone. This is very strange. God knew what kind of helper each animal needed and created them accordingly, but He wouldn’t have known what kind of helper man needed. God would have tried to find a helper for man only after He created him. He wouldn’t have known initially that man also would have needed his pair. God would have created man alone and after that He would have tried to find a helper for him within the ranks of animals. That is the message given by Genesis chapter 2 but not by Genesis chapter 1. 

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    This is of course a legend, because God cannot be as ignorant as chapter 2 says. Genesis chapter 2 tried to explain and to justify why man and woman were unequal in ancient societies. The status of women makes an important difference between Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2.

Remarkably, Genesis chapter 5 uses the same formula used by God when He created mankind in chapter 1: “he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image”. This formula opens the way for a new understanding of the book of Genesis chapter 1. God is not the majestic Being, aloof from His creation, He is the father of mankind in a similar way to that in which Adam was the father of Seth. 

“3 When Adam had lived for one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. 4 The days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years; and he had other sons and daughters.” (Genesis 5; 3-4 NRSV)

God is Adam’s extra-terrestrial Father and Adam is Seth’s terrestrial father, both sons bearing the likeness and therefore the image of their parents. Probably God was seen by the author of Genesis chapter 1 as a celestial-like human being who created all that is. This is the real innovation brought about by the book of Genesis chapter 1; man is not created by strange deities as other religions would maintain, man is created by another man, but a different man, an All-powerful and creative Man.

Apostle Paul set forth in one of his epistles:

“7 For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection* of God; but woman is the reflection* of man.” (1 Corinthians 11; 7 NRSV)

Apostle Paul was incorrect both in relation to Genesis chapter 2 and in connection to Genesis chapter 1. Genesis chapter 1 declares plainly that woman was made in the image and likeness of God together with man. Apparently Genesis chapter 2 opens the door for a different understanding but the image of God or His likeness would have been out of limits for human beings in chapter 2.

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    Humankind was punished for wanting to be like God, meaning in His likeness or after His image by knowing the good and the evil as He does. Only when human beings ate from the tree of knowledge, contrary to God’s command, did they become like Him, therefore it wasn’t His will that humankind be like Him:

“22 Then the LORD God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’— 23 therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.” (Genesis 3; 22-23 NRSV)

In Genesis chapter 2 the pursuit of the likeness of God was considered a sin. It doesn’t make any rational sense to prohibit knowledge which is in the nature of things and which is good for humankind. If human beings were really made in the image of God in Genesis chapter 1 why were they prohibited to be like Him by knowing good and evil in Genesis chapter 2? To me this is a very important contradiction and an essential difference in theology between Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2.

If human beings were the reflection of God before their Fall as stated in Genesis chapter 1 they didn’t need the knowledge of good and evil in order to be like Him, as Genesis chapter 2 declares, they would have had the knowledge of good and evil from the beginning. It was impossible to be, at the same time, in God’s likeness as Genesis chapter 1 pretends but not knowing the difference between good and evil, according to chapter 2. God knows the difference between good and evil and this moral knowledge is decisive for someone who is said to be like Him. If human beings really were in the likeness of God before the Fall they would have known the difference between good and evil and they would have been able to choose easily the good against the evil.

At the same time, even after the Fall humankind wasn’t like God but they were sinful, unlike Him in spite that they had eaten from the tree of good and evil, and that is contrary to what Genesis chapter 2 says. They still didn’t become like Him because they became sinful. This was a predicament impossible to be avoided by the first human beings.

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     To become like God, knowing good and evil but being sinful, or remaining obedient to Him but not being like Him in lack of the knowledge of good and evil.

In Genesis chapter 2 God didn’t want human beings to be like Him, knowing good and evil. This is another contradiction between Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2. If God wanted a real likeness between Him and humankind He wouldn’t have prevented human beings eating from the tree of knowledge and knowing the difference between good and evil. In the lack of this knowledge human beings couldn’t have been in the likeness of God therefore the book of Genesis chapter 1 is wrong in saying that He created humankind like Him. According to Genesis chapter 2, God didn’t create humankind in His likeness, it became like Him only by disobeying Him. There is a huge difference in the way in which Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 understand the likeness of God.

In Genesis chapter 2, each animal was formed from the ground and man also was created from the dust of the ground. What is the difference between creation from the dust of the earth and out of the ground, the manner in which man would have been created and animals were created? There is not such difference. Man got the breath of life from God but obviously the animals also had to get the breath of life directly from Him. The omission of the expression breath of life for animals doesn’t bring anything extra to the creation of man. Without breath of life animals would have remained only ground.

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