Dan George sent this to me the other day, and we got together to talk about it. I decided to type it all up and post it, because I think more and more we’re all running into these kinds of ideas as we’re talking to people. Just to be clear, the point of this is to illustrate how we might think through a discussion with someone, face-to-face. Personally, I would not get on a comment thread on the web and post this in reply to the writer. I think it is (probably) never helpful to get into these endless online discussions, where anonymity fuels the worst kinds of exchanges, and very little real dialogue happens. It doesn’t seem like the kind of forum where the Holy Spirit usually works.
But we should be prepared to answer this kind of reasoning, since it is becoming more and more common. Also, this is very incomplete. I don’t get to the gospel here, which I would be getting to in a real discussion. All I’m doing here is thinking about how to answer the objections being made. Here’s the original post. It’s a reply posted in the comment section of a news article about Christians working to stop human trafficking.
“You REALLY do buy into the whole garden of eden story, don’t you? This alone is shocking enough, but you also seem to be taking great liberties with the story and imposing your own convenient interpretation to justify god’s actions. You talk about a conscience as if it is something bestowed on people, yet we know that children have to develop a conscience. They do this by experimentation with their actions to see what kind of result they will have returned. This is science and I suspect it’s a little out of your paradigm. If I step into your view then, I should assume that Adam and Eve were created with a fully developed conscience, given to them by god, with absolutely no experience of right and wrong or the reward/consequence system that the brain chemistry operates on by every other living creature on this planet. Then you have to ask yourself, why did god put the tree there to begin with, if not to test them? It seems that if so much were riding on this 1 choice to eat a fruit or not to (i.e., endless generations of suffering, disease, toil, violence…), then they must KNOW that these were the consequences of their actions. Otherwise, again, they were not fully prepared for the consequences of said action and could not exercise an act of conscience. So do you believe that Eve and Adam knew this would be the result of their action? If not, we are back to what I call the innocence of the child mind. If they did know that taking a bite of fruit would cause such suffering, why would they not do everything in their capability to avoid this tree? In fact, why wouldn’t they try to destroy it? To do otherwise or even knowingly eat the fruit would mean they must truly be corrupt before eating. I mean, I don’t want to be the destroyer of your comfort zone. Personally, I find these back-and-forths beneath a respectable level of human discourse. But, if you find yourself in a sinking boat because there’s holes all through it, and you’re rushing around ripping off your own clothes to fill the holes… Maybe stop blaming the water and realize that the boat is the problem. A) you can most likely swim on your own, or B) one of us will be along to help you out.”
To begin to discuss this, I’ve broken the post down into section to identify the eight assertions being made. Here’s how I would restate them:
- It is shocking that someone would believe the Garden of Eden story.
- As a bible believing Christian, you take liberties with the story and distort its true meaning in order to justify a (presumably) unjust God in the story.
- Science has proven that conscience is not innate, but is developed by learning which actions produce which results.
- In the Christian view Adam and Eve were created with a conscious, but no experience of reward and consequence. This is impossible.
- Which begs this question: why did God put the tree in the garden anyway?
- This makes God out to be unreasonable, since he punishes Adam and Eve for something they could not have known the consequences of. (see #3)
- The fact that they didn’t try to destroy the tree, but ate from it, means they must have been corrupt before they ate.
- This discussion is beneath human dignity, and your conceptual boat is sinking and full of holes.
Now we can start to think through what is being said, point by point. Here’s the original post, broken down into sections, with my restatement underneath, and then my reply.
1. “You REALLY do buy into the whole garden of eden story, don’t you? This alone is shocking enough,”
Restatement: It is shocking that someone would believe the Garden of Eden story.
Reply: This is not really an argument. It’s really more of an insult designed to put someone off their balance, and make them feel dumb. You might ask, “Why is it shocking? Is it shocking to you that this universe is made by a creator? Or is it the garden part of the story?” If someone accepts that the world was made by a Creator, I see nothing inherently shocking about the first two chapters of Genesis. And then you might ask something like, ”Do you have a better explanation for the universe, one that accounts for all of the matter, life, good, evil, logic, art, love, etc in the world?”
2. “but you also seem to be taking great liberties with the story and imposing your own convenient interpretation to justify god’s actions.”
Restatement: As a bible believing Christian, you take liberties with the story and distort its true meaning in order to justify a (presumably) unjust God in the story.
Reply: This statement may be true, but it needs to be proven. How exactly am I taking liberties with the story and distorting its true meaning? The writer does not prove this point, he just states it and moves on. If this were a face-to-face conversation, right here would be a great opportunity to get out a bible and go over Genesis 1 and 2 verse by verse. Also, at this point, the writer makes an odd switch from saying it’s shocking to believe the Genesis account to discussing it as if he believes it and knows the true interpretation. Which is it? Did he take the time to read and understand deeply this story that no intelligent person would believe? If so, then I guess we can talk, because the conversation reduces down to Biblical interpretation: who’s account of the story is more supported by the actual words of the text? Another great opportunity to get out our Bibles and go through it.
3. “You talk about a conscience as if it is something bestowed on people, yet we know that children have to develop a conscience. They do this by experimentation with their actions to see what kind of result they will have returned. This is science and I suspect it’s a little out of your paradigm.”
Restatement: Science has proven that conscience is not innate, but is developed by learning which actions produce which results.
Reply: Does the writer have research to back this up? I am not familiar with the science of the conscience, but it is true that Psychology is not a “hard” science like chemistry, and so we’re constantly working with observation and interpretation. But is there actually a consensus in the scientific community about how the conscience is formed? Or even about what the conscience is? And even if there is, does that actually apply to the Genesis story? Not really, as we’ll see…
4. “If I step into your view then, I should assume that Adam and Eve were created with a fully developed conscience, given to them by god, with absolutely no experience of right and wrong or the reward/consequence system that the brain chemistry operates on by every other living creature on this planet.”
Restatement: In the Christian view Adam and Eve were created with a conscious, but no experience of reward and consequence. This is impossible.
Reply: The Genesis account doesn’t address whether or not Adam and Eve had a “conscience” as the writer is describing it. We know that what they had were working, mature minds which could understand the communication of their Creator, and could reason and decide things. In other words, they were fully functioning adults, even though they didn’t have, say, 30 years of life experience to draw on. But let’s not forget: if we take the story to be true, they also had experiences to draw on which we have no concept of. They awoke to some kind of immediate, conscious knowledge of being made by a good Creator. Somehow, they knew Him and He spoke with them. They experienced Him putting them in a garden stocked with good things for them to eat and do, and with a mandate and the ability to rule all and order it for their own good and the glory of the creator. Do any of us have any idea what it is like to experience this? Do any of us know what kind of obligation it creates (morally, intellectually) within someone when they have gone through this kind of experience, in fact, when it is their ongoing experience, day by day? So we shouldn’t assume we fully understand what life was like in the Garden. And it is no argument against the truth of this story, or any part of the Bible, to create artificial problems and then knock them down. Adam and Eve had no experience of eating the fruit, but they had the capacity to understand God’s prohibition of it, and the stated penalty: “You will surely die” (whatever else that meant to them, they knew that, at least, it meant something like: “you will cease to enjoy all these benefits”). They did not need to know anything else to be morally accountable. And besides, is the prospect of hurting someone else always a perfect deterrent to keep us from sinning?
5. “Then you have to ask yourself, why did god put the tree there to begin with, if not to test them?”
Restatement: Which begs this question: why did God put the tree in the garden anyway?
Reply: This may be an interesting discussion topic, but it is not really part of the writer’s flow of thought. It’s more of another way to put someone off balance. You might say, “we can discuss that later, but let’s get back to the topic at hand.”
6. “It seems that if so much were riding on this 1 choice to eat a fruit or not to (i.e., endless generations of suffering, disease, toil, violence…), then they must KNOW that these were the consequences of their actions. Otherwise, again, they were not fully prepared for the consequences of said action and could not exercise an act of conscience. So do you believe that Eve and Adam knew this would be the result of their action? If not, we are back to what I call the innocence of the child mind. ”
Restatement: This makes God out to be unreasonable, since he punishes Adam and Eve for something they could not have known the consequences of. (see #3)
Reply: See the answer for number 4.
7. “If they did know that taking a bite of fruit would cause such suffering, why would they not do everything in their capability to avoid this tree? In fact, why wouldn’t they try to destroy it? To do otherwise or even knowingly eat the fruit would mean they must truly be corrupt before eating.”
Restatement: The fact that they didn’t try to destroy the tree, but ate from it, means they must have been corrupt before they ate.
Reply: This is interesting reasoning. Not sure why we would assume their ability or desire to destroy the tree. I think we assume too much if we presume to know what they would or wouldn’t have done and then draw conclusions from that. In fact, what they seem to have decided was to stay far away from the tree, as evidenced by Eve saying they weren’t even allowed to touch the tree. But then, Eve must have done some sort of sinning in her heart to actually take the first bite, right?
8. “I mean, I don’t want to be the destroyer of your comfort zone. Personally, I find these back-and-forths beneath a respectable level of human discourse. But, if you find yourself in a sinking boat because there’s holes all through it, and you’re rushing around ripping off your own clothes to fill the holes… Maybe stop blaming the water and realize that the boat is the problem. A) you can most likely swim on your own, or B) one of us will be along to help you out.”
Restatement: This discussion is beneath human dignity, and your conceptual boat is sinking and full of holes.
Reply: Since nothing has actually been reasoned through, this way of ending is more about posting a triumphant ending and heaping scorn on the bible believer than actually making any claim. But if someone said this to me at the end of a conversation like this, I might ask, “Now, if you don’t believe we were created, could you tell me where you come up with your idea of human dignity?” That could be an interesting discussion.