2. We get three score year and ten to get it right and burn FOREVER if we don’t. Equitable?

3. I usually direct believers to a children’s burn ward, such as I have myself visited.

‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ ‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’ ‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. - Douglas Adams

Did some pondering this morning. According to the second chapter of Genesis*, God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and with them placed a tree whose fruit carried the knowledge of Good and Evil, instructing the first humans not to eat that fruit.

Then along comes the serpent, who persuades Eve to disobey God and sample the Forbidden Fruit. And she in turn persuades Adam to do the same.

But this is what occurred to me this morning: as the Bible makes clear, Adam and Eve are totally innocent. They have no knowledge of good and evil. When the snake makes his pitch, Eve is utterly defenseless. God has placed Evil in the Garden, but neither Adam nor Eve have any way to recognize it. When the serpent tells Eve to break God’s rule, she has no way of knowing that’s a bad thing. She has no concept of “bad”.

(We might argue that common sense should be enough to guide her, but common sense depends on recognizing that one path is better than another. But is that possible without the subtle shadings provided by the knowledge of good and evil?)

So, with nothing to warn her, Eve takes a bite of the fruit.

Which is a time release capsule? She doesn’t IMMEDIATELY gain the knowledge of good and evil? Because if she did, she would know at once that the serpent was evil, and that he had tricked her. And surely, with that new awareness she would not have talked Adam into tasting the fruit.

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* But not the first.