Member-only story
The Story of Adam and Eve Doesn’t Say Anything about Skills and Capacities
Instead of assigning values of good and bad to people, we could measure their abilities and help them shore up their deficits.
I’m not a Christian. I didn’t grow up in a Christian family. I haven’t read the Bible cover to cover. I’ve read a few books in the Old Testament, and I know something about them, but I don’t cite them chapter and verse. When I read the story of Adam and Eve, I was too young to really understand what was going on. But I never forgot the plot.
What I remember most is the part about Eve talking to a snake. The conversation had turned to the fruit on the trees in the Garden of Eden, and how Eve should not eat the fruit on the trees. The snake said it was cool and that everything would be OK. If you’re hungry then eat, right?
The fruit was good, but God was angry. Then God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. I don’t recall exactly why they were banished from the Garden, I just know that the punishment was pretty harsh.
I also know that Eve had no prior training for that situation. She had no warning. She didn’t have to skills or the capacity to resist the temptations offered by the snake.
The story of Adam and Eve is consistent with a common, transactional theme of humanity. If you do wrong, you will be punished. If you do right, you will be OK, and maybe even rewarded.
There is often never any discussion about skills and capacities. The entire conversation about good and evil is not about capacities and skills. It’s about motivation. The story of good and evil assumes that motivation is all that one needs to consider when correcting unwanted behavior.
If you punish someone enough, the recipient of the punishment will change his behavior to conform to the demands, wishes and desires of the person meting out the punishment. This concept is so important in human culture that complex rituals have been built around it to ensure that punishment is assigned fairly and delivered with maximum impact to the people who live nearby.
The stories we read in the news tell us of the crime and the punishment as a warning not…
