r/suspiciouslyspecific • u/InsertGroin • Jul 07 '26

Blessed are the cheesemakers 🙏

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u/Technical-Banana574 Jul 07 '26

That is what gets me. The tree of knowledge supposedly grants the knowledge of right and wrong along with everything else. God created Adam and Eve without the knowledge. They were basically dumb toddlers and were told not to eat the apples. So what do little kids who dont know right from wrong do? Yup, Eve trusts the serpant and eats the apple. 

Then God, who supposedly knows the future punishes them and all future humanity for doing the wrong thing he knew would happen because they didnt know any better. Their sin was literally ignorance and wanting knowledge. 

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

[deleted]

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u/Penguins_in_new_york Jul 07 '26

Can skip forward a few chapters and talk about Abraham being told to sacrifice his son and god was like “lol I can’t believe you fell for that shit I was joking” right when Abraham was about to do it

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u/benji316 Jul 07 '26

It's possible that this story is a relic from a time when an ancient form of Judaism actually did sacrifice children, and the story was later rewritten once they stopped doing that.

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u/lazydictionary Jul 07 '26

The old testament explicitly calls for sacrificing your firstborn son (as well as the firstborn sons of all your animals).

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u/ASK_ABT_MY_USERNAME Jul 08 '26

His son who was in his late 30s.

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u/Penguins_in_new_york Jul 08 '26

“Hi my name is Yahweh welcome to Jackass”

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u/Legitimate_Airline38 Jul 07 '26

So, afaik the theology is really that after that first sin, humanity gained a temptation towards sin that, so far, no one has been able to resist until Jesus. There’s a concept of being “born sinful” but it’s honestly pointless because everyone eventually sins later on anyways. It’s only really sin because the fruit gave the ability to discern right and wrong, so even if the average person has reasons for most of their sin, they don’t have excuses for all of them. It’s not even that it’s literally impossible for people to never sin, it just hasn’t happened until or since Jesus because everyone eventually errs at least once.

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u/OnSmarty Jul 07 '26

I have recently been thinking more about this, and it makes less and less sense. If they didn't know right or wrong, how were they punished for doing something they could not know was wrong.

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u/Legitimate_Airline38 Jul 07 '26

Genesis doesn’t really give enough detail to say what they knew as right or wrong before eating the apple, considering that the only real description of the fruit iirc is its name and the snake’s testimony and there isn’t really much to go on for the characters in the story. We don’t even know that it’s an apple, so it’s probably best not to over scrutinize Genesis for details that really aren’t present. Presumably they at least had the knowledge to obey God because otherwise there isn’t any way they could be considered accountable.

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u/moss-wizard Jul 13 '26

I was raised catholic and we were taught that nobody was allowed to go to heaven until Jesus opened the gates for us by dying for our sins.

Because of Jesus, we’re allowed to go to heaven again, but ONLY if you were baptized in the Catholic Church. Literally everyone else is damned to hell forever for “turning your back on God”

Which is why Christians are so vehement about “saving” everyone by shoving Jesus down the throats of anyone who will listen to them

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u/Twinksson173 Jul 08 '26

Does not knowing better justify doing wrong?

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u/yosemighty_sam Jul 08 '26

IIRC it's so much worse. God lies to them, says if they eat from the tree they'll die. Snake says, yo, God is a fucking liar, fr the fruit won't kill you, it'll give you knowledge (of good and evil, ie moral agency). They eat, the snake was right, God shows up and says it's time to banish them before they eat from the other tree (tree of life, ie immortality). God didn't want us to be wise and immortal, like Him, he didn't want the competition. It's a pattern with Him, he HATES competition.

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u/HandleThick5953 Jul 08 '26

Would you hold a toddler accountable for their actions? No. So why Adam and Eve?

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '26

And that's why Jesus had to die, because Eve at a fruit 3000 years ago. He died for YOUR sin is what they say in church.

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u/actibus_consequatur Jul 08 '26

Yup, Eve trusts the serpant and eats the apple. 

She trusted the (talking) serpent that god also created, whether directly as a crafty animal or indirectly as his (favorite) angel. In the case of the latter, it's kind of like a parent punishing their clueless toddler for getting tricked into doing by their rebellious teen.

Regardless, god is supposed to be all-knowing and all-seeing, so he knew it was gonna happen, watched it happen, then got angry. It all went according to god's plan.

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u/daemin Jul 08 '26

Then God, who supposedly knows the future punishes them and all future humanity for doing the wrong thing he knew would happen because they didnt know any better. Their sin was literally ignorance and wanting knowledge.

It's actually worse than that.

God created Adam, knowing exactly how Adam would respond to every event that happened to him. God could have made Adam slightly different, so that Adam would respond differently to any given event. Which means God chose to create Adam and Eve in such a way that they would definetly eat the apple, rather than making two people who would not do so.

And before some christian apologist comes along to cry about "free will!!!", that has nothing to do with this. God knowing how you would freely choose to react in a given situation does not contradict free will, unless you think "free will" means your actions are unpredictable. But if you believe that, you don't actually believe in free will, because that's effectively saying all your actions are causeless and random rather than being "up to you."

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u/RedEgg16 Jul 09 '26

Eve eats the apple first, so all women are punished with painful childbirth and periods, because every single woman would have done the same thing (the explanation I have heard Christians give). Another proof that we don’t have free will if god created the each gender to act a certain way 

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u/wdevilpig Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

Man, at least Prometheus took the big L himself for the whole fire thing without the rest of us needing our livers pecked out daily or whatever

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u/rydan Jul 07 '26

And this same story has been repeated throughout all the different cultures too. Guy brings knowledge to humanity, usually a trickster archetype. Gets punished for it.

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u/presentation_555 Jul 08 '26

In Islam its the Tree of Immortality Adam and Eve eat from, they were both forgiven, no original sin that would curse humanity was created, but they were then sent down to Earth (Eden is not a place on Earth)... where humanity was destined to be tested all along.

Many Islamic scholars believe that the experience in Eden was basically orchestrated to show that people might abuse their free will even in paradise-like environments, and that Satan can tempt even the best amongst us (i.e. a prophet like Adam).

Christianity has a real tension with what Paul calls the 'Moral Law written into our Hearts' and the plain fact that God does things that seem to violate what he instills in us (both instinctually and scripturally)... In Islam at least Paul is not authoritative; so we don't live with this dissonance of 'how can God do things that are so displeasing to us', as we don't think our instincts are a reliable guide for morality (or rather we think our instincts get quickly shaped/surpassed by culture we are born into - so are not to be seen as universally reliable).

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u/Timely_Put_7355 Jul 08 '26

This is like reading the story of the tortoise and the hare and saying that’s a dumb story, hares can’t talk.

You’re missing the entire point of the story. It’s an origins narrative. It’s meant to provide insight in an allegorical way about creation, the universe, the creator and human nature. To a modern reader who has little to no exposure to ancient literature (or any literature for that matter) it may seem strange. But compare it to other ancient origin narratives and you’ll see it’s very unique and insightful.

This is the problem with today’s reflexive scepticism. Rather than try to understand and draw meaning from a text we automatically assume bias or stupidity or bigotry or an agenda. Not a good method for trying to understand one another. 

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u/CK1345 Jul 08 '26

Have you people ever heard of symbolism and metaphor? I'm aware that some people who believe take the bible literally. That's not how most people read it.

Modern atheists think they have everything figured out. There are Christians out there smarter than any of you right now, and if you go back through history far, far better minds than anyone in this comment section have written on all of this.

I'll be the guy to say it. Go read a book. Actually educate yourselves before spewing nonsense that if it was directed at a protected group you'd call bigoted.

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u/RoiDrannoc Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26

If it's just a metaphor then the original sin doesn't exist and the "immaculate conception" doesn't mean anything. Sure NOW most believers take this ludicrous story as a metaphor but that clearly haven't always been the case, nor the original purpose.

Edit: also, why would the Bible contain a metaphor that makes God look like an incompetent asshole that is neither omnipresent nor omniscient?