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Tag: Garden of Eden

Where Is The Garden of Eden?

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adam eve cast out of garden of eden

A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. (Genesis 2:10-14 NRSV)

What do we know about the Garden of Eden — a garden created by God, originally inhabited by Adam and Eve? Not much. According to Genesis 2:10-14, a river flowed out of Eden and divided into four tributaries: the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. The latter two are well known today, the Pishon and Gihon, however, no longer exist, or never did exist. Travel the lengths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and one thing is certain: you will not find the Garden of Eden. Whether it existed in the past is unknown, but today the Garden of Eden is no longer found, no matter where you go. The only evidence for the existence of the Garden of Eden is what is recorded in the Bible. That’s it. You would think if God wanted to make himself known to humans, he would have turned the Garden into a theme park, charging people admission to see the angel with a flaming sword at the entrnce of the Garden, the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the waterways in and around Eden. Imagine paddling a canoe down the river that runs through Eden. Cool, right? All one would have to do to find the Garden of Eden is to traverse the length of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Since these rivers flow out of Eden, it stands to reason we would find the Garden if we looked. Yet, humans did look, and no Garden was found.

Ask Evangelicals where you can find the Garden of Eden, and you will get a lot of explanations, none of which are satisfactory. It seems to me that the story about the Garden of Eden is just that — a story. We can search every inch of the area where the Garden of Eden supposedly lies and not find one shred of evidence for its existence. Just because a book tells us about the existence of the Garden of Eden does not mean it really exists. The Harry Potter books say Hogwarts is a real place, yet we know it is a myth. How is the Garden of Eden any different?

I heard one Christian “prove” the existence of Eden by saying that only Christians can “see” the Garden of Eden; that the Garden is invisible to unbelievers. His evidence for this claim? Nothing other than personal opinion.

Do you have evidence for the existence of Eden apart from Bible prooftexts? Please share it in the comment section.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Why Did God Create the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?

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woman touching a red apple
Photo by Los Muertos Crew on Pexels.com

As a devout Evangelical Christian for almost fifty years, I never doubted or questioned the Bible. How could I? The Bible was God’s Word — inspired, inerrant, and infallible. To question the Bible was to question God himself. Certainly, I came across passages of Scripture that didn’t make sense to me or seemed to contradict other passages of Scripture, but I never doubted the teachings of the Bible. I believed God would make these verses clear to me in time, and if he didn’t, I would still trust him, believing, by faith, that all things would be made known, if not on Earth, in Heaven.

As an Evangelical-preacher-turned-atheist, I am free to read and question the Bible at will. No more faithing-it or trusting that God would make all things known to me. As a result, the Bible reads very differently for me than it did when I was a hellfire-and-brimstone, old-fashioned, sin-hating, Holy Ghost-filled Baptist preacher.

In Genesis 2, we find God giving a command to Adam and Eve:

And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Genesis 3 adds:

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; 

….

And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

God planted a tree in the Garden of Eden whose fruit would give a person the knowledge of good and evil if he ate the proverbial apple. Strangely, Eve knew that eating the fruit would make her wise. How did she know this? There was another tree in the garden, the Tree of Life. Eating from this tree would give the eater eternal life.

God told Mr. and Mrs. Adam that the day they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would die. This did not stop the first humans from plucking a shiny red apple from the tree. Both Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Did they immediately die? No, they lived for hundreds of years afterward. God lied to them when he said, “For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

Further, who was the LORD talking to when he said, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.” While we cannot be certain who the LORD was speaking to, it is likely some sort of heavenly beings or gods. The LORD feared Adam and Eve would become eternal gods if they gained access to the Tree of Life, so he placed Cherubims and a flaming sword at the entrance of the Garden of Eden, forever barring humans access to the Tree of Life.

If God is sovereign and knows the end from the beginning, he knew beforehand everything Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (who is never called the Devil or Satan) would do. Why create the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Why tempt Adam and Eve when you knew they would fail? According to Evangelicals, everything bad, sinful, and evil flows from the moment Adam and Eve ate the apple. Wouldn’t it have been better to put the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the equivalent of Fort Knox, safe and secure from human access? Instead, God put fresh-baked cookies on the kitchen counter, thinking they would be safe from children seeing and eating them. As any grandparent knows, cookies are kryptonite for children (and adults too). Want to keep your grandkids out of the cookies? Put them away where they can’t find them. Why didn’t God do the same for Adam and Eve and the whole human race?

These are the sorts of issues you must wrestle with if you are a Bible literalist. If, on the other hand, you think Genesis 1-3 is a fictional story, poetry, or metaphors, the aforementioned story makes perfect sense as the author attempts to explain why the world is the way it is. It is literalists who are forced to come up with all sorts of insane interpretations to justify their reading of the text.

Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

Songs of Sacrilege: Origin of Species by Chris Smither

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chris smither

This is the two hundredth and eleventh installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.

Today’s Song of Sacrilege is Origin of Species by Chris Smither.

Video Link

Lyrics

Well, Eve told Adam
Snakes? I’ve had ’em!
Let’s get outta here!
Go raise this family someplace outta town

They left the garden just in time
With the landlord cussin’ right behind
They headed East
And they finally settled down

One thing led to another:
A bunch of sons
One killed his brother
And they kicked him out with nothin’ but his clothes

And the human race survived
‘Cause all those brothers found wives
But where they came from
Ain’t nobody knows

(guitar riff)

Then came the flood
Go figure…
Just like New Orleans only bigger
No one who couldn’t swim would make it through

The lucky ones were on a boat
Think “circus”
And then make it float
I hope nobody pulls the plug on you!

How they fed that crowd is a mystery
It ain’t down in the history
But it’s a cinch they didn’t
Live on cakes and jam

Lions don’t eat cabbage
And in spite of that old adage
I ain’t never seen one
Lie down with a lamb

(long guitar riff)

Well, Charlie Darwin looked so far
Into the way things are
He caught a glimpse of God’s
Unfolding plan

God said: “I’ll make some DNA”
They can use it any way they want
From paramecium
Right up to man.”

“They’ll have sex
And mixed up sections of their code
They’ll have mutations…
The whole thing works like clockwork over time.”

“I’ll just sit back in the shade
While everyone gets laid
That’s what I call
Intelligent design.”

Yeah, you and your cat named Felix
Both wrapped up in that double helix
Is what we call
Intelligent design

Sacrilegious Humor: The Simpsons — In the Garden of Eden

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homer simpson

This is the thirty-sixth installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.

Today’s bit is a clip from The Simpsons, featuring In the Garden of Eden (In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida) by Iron Butterfly.

Warning, many of the comedy bits in this series will contain profanity. You have been warned.

Video Link