"The Beginning" and God's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Morality

The third chapter of the Bible brings forth the absolute worst form of morality ever to be conceived in the history of mankind. God warns Adam, who then tells Eve, that eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is forbidden, and that breaking this commandment will result in sure death. Scholars debate whether this was meant as instantaneous death, or that Adam and Eve's lives would merely be made finite as punishment for the transgression. The problem with the latter notion is that later (Gen 3:22) God explains that eating of the Tree of Life would grant eternal life to Adam and Eve. Hence we can assume that they were not endowed with eternal life from the get-go.

Therefore we have God falsely warning that he would kill Adam, and presumably Eve (although God explicitly warns Adam only), if they should eat from the TOTKOGAE. Well, Eve listens to the talking snake in the Garden and bites the fruit, leads Adam to do the same, and consequently sin against God.

God's reaction is also his creation of the worst form of morality. God inexplicably does not kill Adam nor Eve, perhaps forgetting his earlier threat, and does something infinitely more ghastly. Instead, he chooses to punish EVERY FUTURE GENERATION of the human race for the actions committed by two lone individuals, Adam and Eve.

Gen 3:16-19 "Unto the woman he said- 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said- "...cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field, in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground..."

These punishments are clearly literary devices used to explain why mankind must work to get its food and the painful experience of childbirth. But to the believer, they are simply literal consequences for Man's first sin. If they are meant as literal punishments, then we must analyze the moral implications of these punishments, which are ghastly. Here we see a god willing to transfix these curses not solely upon the transgressors who have committed the aforementioned sin, but also on countless human beings who took no part in disobeying the Genesis god. What are we to make of such a god? What are we to make of such a morality where mankind not only suffers the consequences of his own actions (later on, even this will be perverted by the invention of "scapegoating," in which Man piles upon a goat all his sins and drives the goat out into the desert to die of hunger and thirst, thereby miraculously and horrendously "cleansing" Man of his sins), but also suffers the consequences for actions he did not even commit?

Here we see the introduction of a perverse morality of which divine whim and rage forms the foundation, and not personal responsibility. Who today would say that it is right, and good (as the Genesis god so loved to say) that a person should suffer for another's actions? This, I would imagine, is the introduction of the doctrine of Original Sin, whereby every descendant of Adam and Eve are considered sinful even before they make their first consciously-chosen action.

There is no answer that could repair this broken morality.