The Garden of Absurdity: How A Literal Reading of Adam and Eve Deceives Us
Part Two of "Beyond the Blood Myth: Taking Christ off the Cross"
What You Will Learn From Reading
This article will guide you through multiple dimensions of the Eden narrative, showing how a metaphorical understanding liberates both the text and our relationship with the divine:
The Blood Myth Foundation: How the literal Eden story creates the foundation for blood atonement theology
Contradictions in the Literal Reading: Exploring five fundamental logical problems that arise when Eden is read as literal history
The Character Problem: How literal interpretation transforms God into a character at odds with divine love and wisdom
The Evolutionary Alternative: How each contradiction dissolves when understood as a metaphor for consciousness development
Personal Implications: What this metaphorical understanding means for your spiritual journey
Liberation from Original Sin: How dismantling the literal Eden interpretation undermines the entire blood atonement doctrine
We'll examine each logical fallacy in the literal interpretation, from the impossible moral test to God's disproportionate punishment, revealing how these problems vanish when understood through the lens of evolutionary consciousness development.
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Understanding the Series: Part Two
In the first part of this series, we explored how the Genesis narrative can be understood as a sophisticated metaphor for humanity's cognitive awakening—our departure from instinctual living into the realm of moral awareness and existential contemplation. Today, we turn our attention to the logical inconsistencies that emerge when we insist on reading this profound metaphorical narrative as literal history.
This exploration isn't meant to diminish the spiritual significance of Genesis but rather to liberate it from faulty interpretations that inadvertently transform God into something more resembling a cosmic villain than a source of wisdom and love. By examining these contradictions, we can better appreciate why a metaphorical reading honors both the text and our rational minds.
A Special Message for Christians
I've spent years trying to break the spell of the blood of Christ lie that has been forced upon millions of people. As children, I know many of you felt conflicted by what you were being taught and forced to believe. I know you were initially confused and frustrated by the doctrine.
Though, after years of pressure from your church community and family, you caved in and began faking it to fit in. This started an inner war of cognitive dissonance as you pretended to believe in the ridiculous notion that we should celebrate the brutal torture and death of Christ; the greatest example of a human being, to ever live. This marked your induction into one of the most brutal cults in human history, hiding behind the guise of what should be a beautiful religion of kindness, charity and goodness. I know this happened to you, because it happened to me too. Which makes it all the more important for me to help you get out.
For any Christians reading this, I appeal to that child that still lives in you. The one that loves the truth, and loves love. Who knows deep down inside that the modern church and all their counterfeit beliefs are WRONG. I appeal to the child that kept asking questions: questions that could never be answered by any one in the church. Start asking questions again. Look for the answers you should have been given as you were being coerced into this counterfeit version of Christianity.
Lastly, please understand that I have never done any of this to ridicule you or make you feel small in any way. It has always been an attempt to liberate you from the chains of this false doctrine. I'm not an atheist or a devil-worshipper. I am a follower of Christ and his teachings. I know that the true teachings of Christ are incongruent with the modern church. The modern church is the combined abomination of all the faults Christ saw in the temple religion in his day.
Beyond the Blood Myth: Taking Christ Off the Cross
If Christianity were a house, blood atonement would be its foundation. Shake that foundation, and the entire structure of salvation through crucifixion begins to crumble.
How does this take Christ off the Cross? (As that is the mission of this series) Because the Blood of Christ doctrine NEEDS original sin in order to justify its narrative. Original Sin is a prerequisite for crucifixion and atonement of sins; otherwise, WHAT WOULD YOU NEED TO BE FORGIVEN FOR?
Luckily for us, it doesn't exist. It's not real. It never happened.. It's a total fabrication.
NOWHERE IN THE BIBLE DOES IT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT ORIGINAL SIN.
By proxy of understanding how absurd the literal interpretation of the Garden of Eden story is, we completely obliterate the lie of the original sin along with it. If we understand the original story of humanity as a metaphor for our expanded consciousness in the Garden (the actual meaning of the story)—we can see that what our church authorities have interpreted as original sin and the punishment thereof—is actually just the natural burdens and consequences of becoming aware and conscious of ourselves, as the gods are.
The motivation for this entire series rests on exposing the false narrative and doctrine of the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ is a completely fabricated ideology that was extremely unpopular during its forceful entry into the faith. Not only for its grotesque and perverse qualities, but (more importantly) for its complete lack of evidence. This installment of the series strikes at the heart of the first fallacy that props of the false doctrine and counterfeit religion: the dishonest interpretation of the original human story to assign guilt and shame to the entire human race. Which is now being used to spiritually enslave billions through the black magic blood sacrifice spell of crucifixion worship.
When Metaphor Is Mistaken for History
Imagine finding a priceless ancient text that contains profound wisdom, but discovering that someone has been reading it upside-down for centuries, transforming its insights into absurdities. This is precisely what happens when we read Genesis as literal history rather than a sophisticated macro-metaphor.
Sometimes ancient historic accounts (including Biblical ones) are just that. The literal recording and interpretation of events. Though far too often, modern people mistake esoteric teaching disguised as metaphor for this same type of historical accounting.
Take, for instance, the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel and Noah and his sons. The stories become contradictory to our rationality and logic when they are taken to be literal stories involving actual people. Though, when seen to represent groups of people, the stories start to make a lot more sense.
We could LITERALLY believe that Adam and Eve were the only two humans and that all of their kids were forced to engage in incest in order to propagate the human race. Or we could look at the meaning of their names and see that they were more likely concepts, or representations of the entire human species.
ALL OF THE SUDDEN, THE ENTIRE STORY STARTS MAKING SENSE
When ancient wisdom literature is flattened into literal history, profound metaphorical insights collapse into logical absurdities. Nowhere is this more evident than in the literal interpretation of the Garden of Eden narrative. What emerges when we take this story at face value isn't a coherent account of human origins, but rather a disturbing portrait of divine entrapment, disproportionate punishment, and cosmic manipulation.
By examining the logical inconsistencies in a literal reading, we can better understand why interpreting Genesis as evolutionary metaphor—as explored in our previous article—provides a more coherent framework that honors both the text and our rational faculties. Let's examine what happens when metaphor is mistaken for history.
Fallacy #1: Testing the Unstudied
"And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, 'You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'" (Genesis 2:16-17)
Imagine yourself in Eden, freshly formed from dust, your consciousness new and unshaped. You're basically an adult child, completely overwhelmed by both your awakening to conscious existence and the incredible beauty of the Garden. You have no perspective, presumptions or understanding of your purpose, the meaning of life or why you even exist!
Your Creator, whose mere presence fills you with awe (and terror if we consider the consistent original descriptions of God as a giant lizard-person). He points to a very special tree nested deep in the Garden. He tells you that you can never eat of its fruit or you shall surely die. So, God put a poisonous plant that can kill his children just out there within arms reach? Why would he even put it there in the first place?
The even more crucial detail in all of this is, you possess no concept of disobedience, no understanding of death, no framework for comprehending "good" or "evil." You wouldn't even know a bad thing if you did it. Remember, you have to eat of this tree to obtain the knowledge necessary to understand that eating from the tree is bad. Do you see the circular absurdity? This is an impossible moral test!
These warnings are empty words to your newborn consciousness. Without any foundation for understanding the moral implications, you're expected to eternally resist something your God has made special, important, intriguing and seductive.
Is this some kind of test for a student who doesn't even know how to study yet?
Literal Interpretation
If God's Eden strategy were a modern parenting book, it would be titled "How to Traumatize Your Children in One Easy Step." Imagine God not making the best-sellers list.
Why would an all-knowing Creator establish such a scenario? What parent places a tin full of cookies in the center of a playroom, tells their toddler "don't touch," and then leaves? The setup defies basic psychological understanding. A truly benevolent deity with even minimal insight into human nature would have either removed the tree entirely, placed it beyond reach, or properly educated these naive beings about the genuine nature of the tree and what it means to eat of it.
Creating curious beings, placing temptation directly in their path, providing zero meaningful context about consequences, then delivering catastrophic punishment for the inevitable failure reveals either incompetence or malicious intent. It's like leaving your unlocked smartphone in your toddler's reach, leaving the room, then expressing shock and outrage when they accidently transfer your life's savings to your last Uber driver.
The Counterfeit God of Sadism
This portrayal transforms God into a manipulative designer who crafts an elaborate entrapment scheme. Like a sadistic game-maker in a dystopian novel, this deity appears to deliberately engineer failure, only to feign surprise and outrage when the inevitable occurs.
Such a divinity resembles not a loving parent but a narcissistic abuser who creates impossible rules, ensures their violation, then punishes with disproportionate severity while blaming the victim. Does this portray omniscience or mere incompetence? Love or control? Wisdom or manipulation? This characterization doesn't give us the all-loving Creator but rather a celestial version of the worst and most treacherous helicopter parent imaginable—one who sets their child up to fail, then uses that failure to justify eternal control.
Metaphorical Understanding
When understood metaphorically, however, this narrative transforms into profound wisdom about the origins of consciousness. The "tree" doesn't represent an actual tree or physical temptation. It is the harbinger of evolution. It is the transcendental object of our path into history and our journey to godliness through expanded intellect and wisdom. It marks the coming moment that will transform humanity's evolutionary development into higher consciousness—causing our species to leap from instinctual living into moral awareness.
The "prohibition" symbolizes not divine restriction but the inherent challenges this awareness will bring: responsibility, awareness of our own mortality, the burden of making our own choices, and the struggle to no longer rely solely on the bounties of nature (Living relaxed lives in the Garden) but instead push forth and make our own way (getting kicked out of the garden).
The story depicts not human failure but our species' momentous transition into a new state of being—a transition both necessary and difficult, guided by divine wisdom rather than spite. Which is why it makes us "like the gods." Godliness being akin to intellect, consciousness, awareness, creativity and creation.
In this reading, the narrative becomes not a tale of disobedience but a sophisticated metaphor for the bittersweet emergence of humanity's unique consciousness—a development that brought both the burden of thinking deeper and the glory of creative potential that results from that depth.
Fallacy #2: Letting the Fox in the Henhouse
"Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made." (Genesis 3:1)
The sensations are visceral, your direct experience with all the beauty and uncertainty of the world leaves you in a sort of spell-boundedness to the overwhelming glory of being alive. Much like the feelings of a child seeing their first sunrise and set. You have no time to consider the evils of such an apparently beautiful world. You have no concept of deception or manipulation—these ideas are as foreign to you as calculus is to an infant. Your mind possesses no defense mechanisms against cunning, no prior experience with lies, no framework for understanding trickery.
Into this perfect vulnerability, your Creator deliberately introduces—or at minimum allows—the most cunning being in existence to engage with you without supervision. The serpent's words are slick, its deceptive reasoning absolutely compelling to your naive mind. You stand defenseless before a master manipulator, armed only with childlike trust and innocence, like a toddler left alone with a professional con artist looking to trade all your belongings for a shiny penny.
Literal Interpretation
Why would any loving guardian deliberately expose their inexperienced children to such a dangerous influence? What responsible parent invites a known predator to interact with their children without supervision or protection? The scenario violates every principle of care and protection we afford minors, let alone infants.
A genuinely benevolent deity would have either excluded the serpent entirely, neutralized its deceptive abilities, or equipped humans with discernment sufficient to recognize manipulation. Allowing this power imbalance, then punishing the victims, reveals either catastrophic negligence or deliberate entrapment.
Though most striking, is why this serpent (AKA, THE LITERAL DEVIL) was even allowed in the Garden in the first place. Did God overlook this? Did he miss the devil walking in through the front gates? Did he not know this serpent had slithered his way in? Did he think the kids would be alright?
OR
Is the devil more powerful than the Almighty and so able to conceal himself from God? None of this adds up any way you try to look at it. God is either incompetent and careless, or negligent and even malicious.
The Counterfeit God of Negligence
This portrayal renders God as a goofball winging it with the creation of complex conscious beings, who can't even tend to his own Garden. Though if we are to take seriously the idea of an all-powerful God, than we have to assume that God allowed this to happen, for an intended purpose. But then what purpose does this one-sided scenario truly serve? How could we have ever learned a valuable lesson from this? It is absurd on its face.
Letting the Devil have his way with newly born human beings exhibits negligence rather than protection, endangerment rather than safety. Far from displaying divine wisdom, this portrayal shows a deity with questionable judgment at best. This characterization presents not the all-wise protector but rather the epitome of a corrupt authority—one who manufactures crimes rather than preventing them, who creates conditions for failure rather than success.
Metaphorical Understanding
The metaphorical reading dissolves these contradictions. The "serpent" doesn't represent a shape-shifting demon pretending to be a snake. It is a symbol for environmental pressure. A few million years ago the snake was our natural predator. Its presence in human life applied evolutionary pressure that ultimately forced us to "Put the serpent under our heel." We conquered the snake and became the apex species probably through tool use and language. We learned how to communicate tactics and use weapons against the predators that hunted us.
In this interpretation, the snake becomes a symbol for evolutionary pressure in general.
We needed to evolve or be claimed by nature as so many species before us. We chose to evolve. To change food sources, migrate to far off places, develop tools and weapons, discover and control fire, cook our food making the nutrients more accessible, incorporate psychedelic plants that promoted sex and gave us an edge in hunting through improved eyesight. All these decisions, brought on by evolutionary pressure (like snakes as apex predators), inexorably brought us to our unique power and position as highly conscious beings.
This story doesn't represent the corruption mankind, but its BIRTH. It was our initiation into the path of the gods. A literal interpretation paints a narcissistic and malicious god, setting up his children for failure. The correct interpretation explains the unfolding of consciousness evolution, with its inevitable challenges, burdens, and growing pains.
Fallacy #3: Naked and Afraid
"And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, 'Where are you?'" (Genesis 3:8-9)
So you've just eaten the forbidden fruit. You realize your "naked" as opposed to —what, exactly? You have nothing to compare it to, unless God is wearing clothes. Even so, why would you associate your lack of clothes as something embarrassing?
Even in your naivete, its hard to believe that you think the all-knowing deity who formed the cosmos won't detect your location behind these leaves. And yet, you're right. Simply by hiding half of your bare ass behind a bush, you evade the all-powerful creator's detection!
After you decide to end this game of hide-and-seek that you CLEARLY WON against God, he begins asking you a series of very silly questions.
"Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree?"—as if these facts weren't already known to an omniscient being who created the very neurons firing in your brain.
Literal Interpretation
God playing hide-and-seek in Eden is like Superman putting on glasses and pretending he can't see through walls—a charade that makes no sense given his established powers.
Why would an omniscient deity need to search, question, or investigate? What all-knowing being loses track of their creation or requires interrogation to understand events? This portrayal creates an irreconcilable contradiction with the divine omniscience.
A truly all-knowing God would have anticipated the fall before creating Eden, would have known instantly about the future eating of the fruit, and would have perceived Adam and Eve's location without calling out. This depiction suggests either a deity with limited awareness—contradicting omniscience—or a strange charade of feigned ignorance for no apparent purpose. It's like a parent with security cameras throughout their home pretending not to know who broke the lamp—a performance that makes no logical sense and serves no constructive purpose.
The Counterfeit God of Impotence
This characterization reduces God to an incompetent detective in a mystery play, performatively investigating crimes already known to the audience. This silly game of peek-a-boo would be comical if the stakes weren't eternal damnation—a portrayal that transforms the omniscient deity into a limited being whose knowledge has inexplicable gaps, or a malevolent one, who feigns the same naivete it punishes it's children for having.
For the nakedness and it's awareness, this is another element that is absurd on it's face. What exactly is inherently embarrassing for an animal about not wearing clothes? Imagine your cat or dog hiding in the closet because it couldn't find a pair of pants that fit it. It's ridiculous.
Metaphorical Understanding
God is simply a narrative mechanic here. He forwards the important points of the story. It is meant to help show how Adam and Eve have become fearful, trying to hide from the world and from its overwhelming qualities. They hide themselves from the "consequences of their actions" and attempt to clothe their naked bodies as a means of protection from the elements, both physical and psychological.
Upon eating the fruit, humanity is subjected to wisdom beyond their comprehension. They can now contemplate the future, think about the past, have an understanding of good and evil actions. They feel the weight of all of their decisions. Furthermore they come into contact with the notion of their own mortality, vulnerability to the elements, consequences to their decisions and so much more. Something all the less conscious animals don't have a capacity for.
The nakedness isn't literal. It means that they are aware of their vulnerability. This is because the ego has been born out of this increase in awareness and consciousness. In oneness, a being has no death, because they are a part of the whole and make no distinction of the self from everything else. The concept can't exist in minds that don't have the knowledge of their subjective existence. The "I" is an internal mechanism of reflective, aware psyche. That is the only thing that ever dies. When we gained this level of consciousness we became disconnected from our automatic relationship with nature and our primal urges which directed everything we did and everything we thought.
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