The tree of knowledge of good and evil

 

March 20, 2014

  One of the readings for the first Sunday of Lent describes Eve and Adam’s eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the basis for the doctrine of original sin.

 Most people take such a story as a descriptions of an actual physical event. It is only in recent decades that we have become more aware of how symbols and metaphors function in human understanding. In some ways every statement we humans make is based on symbol and metaphor.

 Take, for example, our description of the ultimate particles that make up the atoms of our universe. Scientists describe these “particles” as either waves or packets. The very term “particles” is metaphorical. It makes us imagine something like a grain of sand. A “wave” makes us think of bodies of water whose surfaces are moved by the wind. A “packet” suggests something that you would put into the mail.

 In fact, scientists cannot reconcile the fact that this elementary particle sometimes behaves like a wave and sometimes like a particle, so they use both metaphors. They cannot avoid using metaphors to speak about what they are studying. Every scientific description is based on metaphors, and every scientific explanation is a story, a “fictional” description of what we think is happening. 

 Example: “Cholera” is a disease that used to devastate cities (for example, Memphis in 1878). It reappears in conditions where sanitation is not provided, as in refugee camps. What causes the disease of cholera?

 Scientists will talk about a “microbe,” which is a tiny living organism. All of those words, “tiny,” “living,” and “organism” are metaphors, based on experiences from our everyday lives.

 Then scientists tell a story. The microbes live in water that has been polluted by sewage. When a person drinks that water, the microbe is transferred to the blood stream of the person, and the person gets sick.

 This is a fictional construction, a story. The actual event is far more complex. The microbe can be described in far greater detail, nowadays down to the level of its genetic composition. So can human blood be described in far greater detail, and how microbes “behave” in human blood.

 Back to Adam and Eve

 The Church accepts the theory (story) that the authors of the books of Scripture were human beings who were writing under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. They were not providing scientific descriptions of events, or perhaps more accurately, they were not providing descriptions any more detailed than the everyday “scientific” theories of their time.

 The traditional story developed from that original story is enshrined in later Scripture, for example, in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Adam and Eve “sinned” (a metaphor). They “disobeyed” God (another metaphor). This use of metaphor results in a story where God is like a human parent who gives orders to a child. When the child “disobeys,” the parent punishes the child. “Satan” tempted Eve.

 Here is another way to read the story. God (the term is metaphorical, so metaphorical that Jewish custom forbade even pronouncing the Name) created humans and knew that they would be tempted to push the boundaries of any situation. The “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” is a metaphor for human thinking and theorizing.

 Applying this to our present human condition, I use two examples.

 Nuclear fission. We have learned that by “splitting” the atom we can release immense amounts of energy. That knowledge (of good and evil) can free us from the problem of providing energy, or it can destroy our world.

 Genetic engineering. We have learned that we can manipulate the genetic code that underlies all living cells. That knowledge of good and evil can provide cures for terrible diseases as well as genetic disaster for the whole human race.

 God knew when God created us that we would not be able to resist pushing the boundaries. What happens when we push the boundaries?

 We get hurt. Adam and Eve got hurt. They had to leave paradise (a metaphor). The inventor of dynamite thought that he was providing something that would end wars. The exact opposite happened.

 God did not “punish” Adam and Eve. God created unfinished creatures, who would push the boundaries, get hurt, and have the possibility of living more fully as a result.

 Admittedly this interpretation of the story is not compatible with Paul’s interpretation of it in Romans. But we can live with competing stories, just as scientists live with the competing stories about particles as waves and as packets. We can read the Adam and Eve story the way Paul read it, or we can read it as I just re-told it. My way of re-telling it seems more compatible with the kind of God that Jesus described as “the Father,” a God passionately “in love” with each human being.

 Aside: the Adam and Eve story makes no mention of “Satan” or “the devil.” It is the “serpent” who tempts them. It is only later writers, like Paul, who identify the serpent with Satan.

 Our problem is that, down through the ages, we humans have been too ready to translate our stories into descriptions of actual physical facts, “scientific” facts. We have not appreciated how stories function in  human behavior.