"Human history began when the inheritance of genetics and behavior which had until then provided the only way of dominating the environment was first broken through by conscious choice." J. M. Roberts The New Penguin History of The World
The first revolutionary conscious choice was recorded in the Biblical legend of Adam and Eve. In the story, God told them not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or they would die. Eve either had to trust that she should not eat of it because she was told so by God or trust her own reasoning, something she had never done before, and make a conscious choice.
She did not understand God's reasoning because he did not share it, but only his conclusion, that they would die. Eve, for the first time ever, not believing God, but the serpent and herself instead, reasoned that the tree was pretty to look at, good for food, and good for making one wise. She ate the fruit and gave some to Adam and he also ate.
Eve, leaning on her own understanding, reasons, and conclusions, made a conscious choice against what she was told by God about the tree. This made possible all rational thought and all conscious choice without which we could not now survive nor, incidentally, could we even define what is good or evil since there would have been no choice between the two.
Because of the success of our conscious choices, evolution selected that our heads grow to unusually large sizes to the point that pain in childbirth became overwhelming. The choice of gender roles based on an early sexually dimorphic state sustained the superiority of men over women through time although their differences in sizes became negligible. Also, conscious choice made the agricultural revolution possible so that people could eat by the sweat of their own faces rather than by finding what they needed in the wild like they used to in a what seemed like a garden. Isn't this exactly what God predicted would happen in the legend?
Although I don't think he would appreciate it in this context, I'll refer to Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. At this point the Cains of the world (agriculturalists) started killing the Ables of the world (hunter gatherers) for their land so they could expand their culture. The Huron Native Americans have a similar tale in their culture of two brothers fighting at the beginning of the world also between the agriculturalist and the hunter gatherers, but in their story, the hunter gatherers win. Coincidence? Anyway... I'm getting off track.
So we kept making rational choices, shaping our evolution and our fate up to the very present. Triumphantly, we now have, by our conscious choices, created global climate change, resistant strains of bacteria, and weapons of mass destruction. We continue to choose not to live a sustainable lifestyle and are slowly creeping towards our own destruction by our own rational choices. Can we really say that God's conclusion in the beginning was wrong? Surly they will die because of conscious choices, not Adam and Eve themselves but the entire species that they represent, us.
At this point, I think that God is rationally correct and that we didn't have the foresight to know his reasons back at that fateful tree. Given that our ability to reason for ourselves is what makes us fallen, it does not make sense that God would allow us to rationally choose to believe in God. Belief in God is, therefore, intentionally, strictly non-rational but not irrational just as to choose not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was also non-rational but not irrational.
Last edited by spdjeanne on 02 Jun 2007, 9:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.
02 Jun 2007, 4:24 pm
