Why are you (still) a Christian?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

God: The fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is fatal within 24 hours.  Do not eat it."

Satan: "The fruit will not kill within twenty-four hours, and moreover, it's brain food."

Eve: "Somebody is lying.  I'm going to run human trials, with Adam as a control group to rule out any sex-based differences."

Satan (more than twenty-four hours later): "What did you find out?"

Eve: "It's harmless brain food, just like you said."

Satan: "Is Adam okay?"

Eve: "He's fine.  He'll probably live to be more than nine hundred."

Oh, [laughs] this is rich! How you do take creative liberties with your ideological fixations! Let me fix it. 

God: If you touch or eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of what is good and what is bad you will immediately begin to die. Otherwise you will live forever to fill and subdue the earth. You see, Adam, the tree represents my rightful sovereignty as creator - to decide for you what is good and bad until you learn to do so yourselves, like the angels. I'm the Father. 

Satan as a serpent to Eve: God just doesn't want you to have the knowledge of what is good and bad. He's withholding it from you. You will not die. 

Eve: Maybe that's true. "Hey Adam, try this, it's not bad."

Adam: Nothing is bad. All of God's creation is good. What could be bad? How could God know what is bad if such a thing doesn't exist? If I take that fruit then I will be deciding for myself what is good and what is bad. If I don't take it Eve will die and I will live forever alone. Let's have it. That tastes pretty good, what is that pomegranate?  

Eve: I don't know but it looks cool - say, why are we naked? If only we could run human trials . . . but we need a control group. Some sort of messiah. A figurative bride of God. 

Adam: You mean me as a control group to rule out any sex-based differences? That wouldn't work since we and our ancestors are all in the treatment group. Besides, we were both created in God's image. Male and female. Maybe you're just jealous because I was here first and have seniority. You just want to be the boss which is why that snake tricked you. Do you think I like being the boss? I'm not the boss of everything and now I'm going to die. It's your fault. It's God's fault. 

Satan (thousands of years after Adam and Eve died): Just like I planned. Now I've got to get rid of this Messiah. He may have been the archangel, the boss of us all in heaven, but now he's a puny man on earth. Like Adam. This should be easy. They're so dumb. What can I tempt him with . . . well, I've got all of these governments. Past, present and future. If he can pull this thing off all of that will be lost - let's just offer those up to him. They've been useful to me, why wouldn't he want them?

The footnote on Genesis 2:17, in The Jerusalem Bible (1966): “This knowledge is a privilege which God reserves to himself and which man, by sinning, is to lay hands on, 3:5, 22. Hence it does not mean omniscience, which fallen man does not possess; nor is it moral discrimination, for unfallen man already had it and God could not refuse it to a rational being. It is the power of deciding for himself what is good and what is evil and of acting accordingly, a claim to complete moral independence by which man refuses to recognise his status as a created being. The first sin was an attack on God’s sovereignty, a sin of pride.”

If Adam had no knowledge of what is good and what is bad, how could he have known it was bad to disobey God? And if he was immortal prior to eating the fruit, how could he have possibly comprehended the notion of death? Adam and Eve were punished for something they couldn’t possibly have known was wrong. What a horrible story.

You’re really not very good at this sort of thing.

Boru