"The trouble with being an activist is you end up like Eve and you get kicked out of the Garden of Eden. You know, Eve was the first person who thought for herself.
And she still gets a bad rap. I named my daughter after her."
[Susan Sarandon]
I obviously don't understand this whole Creationism thing.
Coming up in a Catholic school, I was taught the "creation story": Adam, Eve, God, the snake, the apple, Cain, Abel, etc etc. We never spent a lot of time on it, but it was certainly covered once or twice. However, like much of the dogma hammered into our impressionable minds, the whole point of the story was largely lost on us. We were usually told the stories, and left to figure out the supposed point ourselves.
You see, as it was explained to me, it went pretty much like this:
Adam and Eve are standing around. Tree of Life/Knowledge nearby with lovely apples (or pomegranites or whatever). God says, "hey, don't eat the fruit, and I'll be back in a jiffy." God buggers off. Snake shows up and goes, "say, you guys should have some apples." "Why, what do the apples do?" "Well, they are the fruit of knowledge. If you eat them, you'd know everything god does. You'd be gods too." "Cool, sounds good." Munch munch.
Next thing couples are having sex, women are punished by having menstrual cycles, and I'm not sure what man's punishment is, I mean, sure no multiple orgasms, but we can still pee standing up. And everyone has to be born with this original sin on their head, made to beg forgiveness through baptism for what some couple did a few thousand years back.
I think we got the shaft on this one.
I mean, it's not like I could point it out in a Catholic grade school, but on hearing this story I thought, "I'm siding with the snake."
(Oh, I'm going to hell for that one! Somewhere far far away, some Catholic somewhere is about to read this and pray for my soul. Hahahahaha! But back to me and the snake...)
See, here's how I basically saw it, after it was explained to me:
Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God creates Man, in his own image, but imperfect. He must have meant to make him imperfect, because he himself was perfect and couldn't have simply cooked up a bad batch - not possible. So obviously he meant us to be fuck-ups. Being omniscient, he knew we'd be fuck-ups. He made us to be. Then he sticks the new couple of fresh fuck-ups in front of the Tree of Life, which he knows they will be tempted to eat from, hell, he knows they will eat from, because he knows everything, and goes somewhere that he can't see them (wherever omnipotent, omnipresent gods go in order to turn their back on their doomed followers) to provide them the opportunity to prepetrate the grand fuck-up. Where exactly that is that he went I don't know, because if he is omnipresent, no such place exists, but in some bizarre chicken-egg scenario let's assume Mr Perfect created one. So he runs off to turn his back on his favorite project. Mr Snake comes along with a tempting, and reasonable-sounding offer. Why should god be the only one who knows everything? Selfish bastard wants to keep it to himself! Why can't you have the knowledge? Sounds like a pretty good, so they dig in. God comes back in time to give them a good chewing out and puts the smack-down on their descendants right to this day.
I'm thinking, what a terrible tale! What's the point of that? Here's one for you: I grab something the cat is not supposed to eat but I know that a cat would love. I grab the cat and cram it into his mouth. Then I pull the tab on a big ole can of whoop-ass and put the cat in a world of hurt for eating this stuff. And the cat's reaction should be to (a) beg my forgiveness for having chowed down on it, and (b) to love, fear, and respect me. The fear part I can see. That part makes sense. He should definitely fear me. I'm a sadistic prick who is far bigger and stronger than he, and I behave in erratic ways he doesn't understand. But where the love, respect, and begging for forgiveness part is supposed to come from, I'm not quite sure.
Now in spite of all the glaring inconsistencies, I suppose the point of the whole thing is that we were arrogant to take the fruit. It was disobedient of us to be so ambitious as to think we were able to be gods, and that one part does make some sense. Mankind's biggest failing is in his arrogance. We think ourselves outside of the rest of the world, above it somehow. We act like we are watching this wonderful play being presented for us and don't realize we're actors too. We are not above nature. We are not outside it. This "control" we think we have over the world is just an arrogant work of bad fiction. Tell me who's in charge the next time a tornado hits your trailer park. And long after we've wiped ourselves off this planet, be it through man-made plague, global warfare, nuclear holocaust, or burning a hole in the ozone with our reckless pollution, life will go on without us. It doesn't need us. The owls and the mice would be much happier without us coming along to mess up their little ecosystem, and the see-saw pendulum of Mother Nature is going to swing back and clock us in the head any time now (pardon the multiple puns).
But that we were baited into this whole situation by Mr Perfect (or Perfectly Sadistic)... well that's just wrong. I'm supposed to be repentent for this?
Now I must have this story wrong somewhere, because to my thinking, we should be shedding on the couch, stratching up god's furniture, and shitting in his shoes in retaliation for the way he treats us.
Hmmm....
Of course, if god did create this planet, considering how we're treating it, I guess we are shedding on the couch, scratching up his furniture and shitting in his shoes now aren't we?
Coming up in a Catholic school, I was taught the "creation story": Adam, Eve, God, the snake, the apple, Cain, Abel, etc etc. We never spent a lot of time on it, but it was certainly covered once or twice. However, like much of the dogma hammered into our impressionable minds, the whole point of the story was largely lost on us. We were usually told the stories, and left to figure out the supposed point ourselves.
You see, as it was explained to me, it went pretty much like this:
Adam and Eve are standing around. Tree of Life/Knowledge nearby with lovely apples (or pomegranites or whatever). God says, "hey, don't eat the fruit, and I'll be back in a jiffy." God buggers off. Snake shows up and goes, "say, you guys should have some apples." "Why, what do the apples do?" "Well, they are the fruit of knowledge. If you eat them, you'd know everything god does. You'd be gods too." "Cool, sounds good." Munch munch.
Next thing couples are having sex, women are punished by having menstrual cycles, and I'm not sure what man's punishment is, I mean, sure no multiple orgasms, but we can still pee standing up. And everyone has to be born with this original sin on their head, made to beg forgiveness through baptism for what some couple did a few thousand years back.
I think we got the shaft on this one.
I mean, it's not like I could point it out in a Catholic grade school, but on hearing this story I thought, "I'm siding with the snake."
(Oh, I'm going to hell for that one! Somewhere far far away, some Catholic somewhere is about to read this and pray for my soul. Hahahahaha! But back to me and the snake...)
See, here's how I basically saw it, after it was explained to me:
Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God creates Man, in his own image, but imperfect. He must have meant to make him imperfect, because he himself was perfect and couldn't have simply cooked up a bad batch - not possible. So obviously he meant us to be fuck-ups. Being omniscient, he knew we'd be fuck-ups. He made us to be. Then he sticks the new couple of fresh fuck-ups in front of the Tree of Life, which he knows they will be tempted to eat from, hell, he knows they will eat from, because he knows everything, and goes somewhere that he can't see them (wherever omnipotent, omnipresent gods go in order to turn their back on their doomed followers) to provide them the opportunity to prepetrate the grand fuck-up. Where exactly that is that he went I don't know, because if he is omnipresent, no such place exists, but in some bizarre chicken-egg scenario let's assume Mr Perfect created one. So he runs off to turn his back on his favorite project. Mr Snake comes along with a tempting, and reasonable-sounding offer. Why should god be the only one who knows everything? Selfish bastard wants to keep it to himself! Why can't you have the knowledge? Sounds like a pretty good, so they dig in. God comes back in time to give them a good chewing out and puts the smack-down on their descendants right to this day.
I'm thinking, what a terrible tale! What's the point of that? Here's one for you: I grab something the cat is not supposed to eat but I know that a cat would love. I grab the cat and cram it into his mouth. Then I pull the tab on a big ole can of whoop-ass and put the cat in a world of hurt for eating this stuff. And the cat's reaction should be to (a) beg my forgiveness for having chowed down on it, and (b) to love, fear, and respect me. The fear part I can see. That part makes sense. He should definitely fear me. I'm a sadistic prick who is far bigger and stronger than he, and I behave in erratic ways he doesn't understand. But where the love, respect, and begging for forgiveness part is supposed to come from, I'm not quite sure.
Now in spite of all the glaring inconsistencies, I suppose the point of the whole thing is that we were arrogant to take the fruit. It was disobedient of us to be so ambitious as to think we were able to be gods, and that one part does make some sense. Mankind's biggest failing is in his arrogance. We think ourselves outside of the rest of the world, above it somehow. We act like we are watching this wonderful play being presented for us and don't realize we're actors too. We are not above nature. We are not outside it. This "control" we think we have over the world is just an arrogant work of bad fiction. Tell me who's in charge the next time a tornado hits your trailer park. And long after we've wiped ourselves off this planet, be it through man-made plague, global warfare, nuclear holocaust, or burning a hole in the ozone with our reckless pollution, life will go on without us. It doesn't need us. The owls and the mice would be much happier without us coming along to mess up their little ecosystem, and the see-saw pendulum of Mother Nature is going to swing back and clock us in the head any time now (pardon the multiple puns).
But that we were baited into this whole situation by Mr Perfect (or Perfectly Sadistic)... well that's just wrong. I'm supposed to be repentent for this?
Now I must have this story wrong somewhere, because to my thinking, we should be shedding on the couch, stratching up god's furniture, and shitting in his shoes in retaliation for the way he treats us.
Hmmm....
Of course, if god did create this planet, considering how we're treating it, I guess we are shedding on the couch, scratching up his furniture and shitting in his shoes now aren't we?
