God's First Lie

[nester-san]

Kevin T. Rice

The God of the Bible has never been straight with humanity. One of the first things that God told mankind was a lie, and this set the stage for all manner of lies that would follow, from Eden to the present.

If we are to believe Genesis, one of the first statements God made to Adam was a blatant, barefaced, outright LIE! This ought to be more problematic to the fundamentalists who demand we believe this pap than the problems that evolution poses to pseudo-scientific creationism. But this fact goes largely ignored by Christians who believe this Book of Myths.

"And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, 'Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'" - Genesis 2:16-17

God was not telling the truth when he said that. He told Adam what he could do - eat from any tree BUT that forbidden tree.

He told Adam what he could NOT do - eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

He told Adam what the consequence would be if he chose to eat the forbidden fruit. Adam would DIE! And he would die THAT DAY!

It sounds like God is warning Adam not to eat the poison fruit. It has the tone of a father saying to his child, "Don't cross the street without looking both ways." It sounds a little less like a threat and a little more like a concerned warning, and God says no more about it.

When Adam ate the forbidden fruit, though, he did NOT die that day. He went on to live to the ripe old age of 930. It does no good to claim that God meant Adam would die spiritually. He did not say that. If that was what He meant, why wouldn't He have said that? To deceive man, perhaps? But it is absurd to speculate about "spiritual death". Not only is "spiritual death" a meaningless phrase, and not only did God not say that He meant spiritual death, but the phrase itself does not appear anywhere in the Bible! I challenge any Christian to prove that spiritual death is what God was speaking of. I challenge any Christian to prove that God did not lie. (Citing Hebrew 6:18 won't do it, though. If God can lie, He can have Paul say that He doesn't, or do you believe someone you suspect of lying if he merely says, "I don't lie"?)

So when God said that Adam would die that day, He was either mistaken or lying. Since God created both Adam and the tree, He KNEW what would and would not happen. He knew Adam would not die that day. So why did He lie? What motive would God POSSIBLY have for lying to mankind?

To answer that question, we must look at what He was forbidding mankind from having - knowledge of good and evil. What does that encompass?

Arguably everything. Certainly all moral knowledge, and this is very significant. Christians have maintained for thousands of years that God had TESTED Adam, and that Adam failed this test. They argue that this was a test of morality - would Adam obey God or would he sin?

I have two objections to this interpretation:

1) God was imposing a test of morality on Adam without allowing him the necessary knowledge that would enable him to pass this test. How can anyone reasonably expect someone to pass a test of morality if he is not allowed access to the moral knowledge of good and evil.

2) God, who is supposedly omniscient, needed to TEST Adam to make sure he was moral enough for eternal life.

Why did God need to test Adam? Surely He knew the results beforehand! Why bother with the test? More importantly, there is one additional problem - God, who created Adam, with all Adam's flaws and weaknesses (which he undeniably had or he would not have failed the test), ALSO set up the conditions of the test, KNOWING Adam would fail under those conditions. This is the very definition of a SETUP! He SET ADAM UP for failure! All the earmarks of a setup are present:

1. God creates Adam, fully aware of Adam's flaws and weaknesses, having put them in.

2. God sets up a "test" of "morality", with full foreknowledge of the man's failure.

3. God does not allow Adam to have the necessary knowledge to pass the kind of test God is giving him

AND WORST OF ALL -

4. God allows a tempter into the Garden to make CERTAIN that mankind would fail this test that he was already set up to fail.

[nester-san]

There is no excuse for God to have done this. And there is no excuse for God to condemn all humanity to death for the sins of two people millenia ago. It has been argued that, "Anyone of us would fail that test. Anyone of us would eat the apple." This may well be true. If so, it is because God deliberately created humanity with that flaw, with that tendency, and therefore none of us are responsible for it. The responsibility belongs to God for creating us within that character flaw, in the same way that if a scientist created an evil robot that went berserk and slaughtered a few dozen people, the responsibilty and the blame would belong to the scientist, not the crazy robot.

Oh, yes, I know. "Free Will". The free will argument is very curious. Adam did not have free will. Free choices are informed choices, and God was withholding information from him - the necessary knowledge of good and evil. Furthermore, God had stooped to death threats to make SURE that Adam would not get the information he needed. Adam's will was not free. It was uninformed, and it was tempted, by Eve if not by the serpent.

What about our wills? Would our wills be similarly free? If EVERY human being would definitely have sinned in the same way as Adam had, then what does it mean to say that we would be free to choose otherwise? If none of us could have done otherwise, then it is at least meaningless if not completely false to say that we COULD choose otherwise with our supposedly free wills.

But then it is pretty farfetched to say that of the billions of people who have lived on this planet since that fateful time, not a single one of them would be moral enough to pass that test. Frankly, I don't buy it. SOMEONE in the world would have passed. I think there are millions of people who would have been scared to death to eat a poison apple!

If no one could have passed the test, then there was no free will involved in it, and God should not have held Adam or Eve responsible for their "failure". If anyone but Adam and Eve could have passed that test, God should not punish that child of Adam for Adam's mistake. Either way, God was wrong.

It is clear now that God lied to mankind, and it is equally clear why: So that man would fail the test, and it would look like it was Adam's fault and not God's. Apparently God wanted to bring suffering and death into the world or He had no choice, and He wanted to make it look like He was not to responsible for it.

[nester-san]

These allegations would seem absurd if they did not fit the character of the God portrayed in the Bible. The God of the Bible is quite accustomed to using lies and deceit when it suits Him.

"Ah, Lord GOD! Surely You have greatly deceived this people..." - Jeremiah 4:10

"And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the LORD have deceived that prophet." - Ezekiel 14:9

"The LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets of yours." - 1st Kings 22:23

"For this cause God shall send them a strong delusion that they should believe a lie." - 2nd Thessalonians 2:11

But it doesn't stop there! God not only lies and deceives, but He has deliberately acted to make sure that humanity would never unite under one flag and co-exist peacefully, to pool its resources, to work together to better the human condition, if we are to believe the Bible.

In Genesis 11, we read the following: "Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, they found a plain in Shinar and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, 'Come let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.' They had brick for stone and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, 'Come let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.' "But the LORD God came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, 'Indeed the people are one and they have all one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing that they propose to do would be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down there and confuse their language that they may not understand one another's speech.' So the LORD God scattered them abroad from there over the face of the earth. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the earth."

This is a fascinating story, is it not? Humanity, not too long after the Flood, remained united instead of reverting back to war, murder and mayhem. People decided that learning, building, creating, doing doing something constructive for a change, would be a good idea. Why? Because they wanted to make a name for themselves and they did not wish to be scattered abroad. They wanted to maintian a sense of cultural identity that would be remembered by posterity. Is any of that so bad? What is wrong with that? And what is wrong with building a high tower? Is it any more or less moral than building a skyscraper? Why was God moved to do what He did? Why did God scatter humanity abroad and create the confusion of languages? What good purpose did it serve? To keep people from building a really high tower? Did He really fear that its top would reach the heavens?

If this really happened, then God is responsible for more than the prevention of the construction of a big building. By confusing humanit and scattering it abroad, and creating the one thing people cannot tolerate among themselves - extreme diversity, God guaranteed that mankind would forever after be at war with itself.

In the Garden of Eden, God lied to man to keep him ignorant and guarantee the rise of evil, suffering, and death of human beings. At the Tower of Babel, when people appeared to be focused on acquisition of knowledge instead of the spread of ignorance, in peace and cooperation instead of war and violence, God took quick and decisive action to stop them.

If we assume that these Biblical accounts are true, then why would we assume that God has acted any differently since then? If He really did lie and spread confusion, why would He not continue to do so?

If we believe the Bible is the Word of God, then we believe God to be the Devil. And Satan? Who knows what Satan is really like, since all we have is God's side of the story? But if the Garden of Eden story is any indication, then we know that, between God and Satan, Satan was the only one of the two who did not lie to man:

"But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will certainly not die!"

This is true. Neither Adam nor Eve died that day. God killed an innocent aninal and clothed the two alleged culprits with its skin, and so an innocent life was taken that day. But it was not Adam or Eve's.

Since so far, Satan, or the serpent has proven himself more trustworthy than God, maybe we can, for a moment, consider his theory as to God's motives for lying:

"No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know good and evil."

Isn't that what happened? They didn't even know they were naked until they ate the forbidden fruit! They didn't have any moral sense of right or wrong and they did not even know that they were naked. Imagine how horrible the prospect of an eternal existence under those conditions if Adam and Eve had NOT disobeyed!

Eating the forbidden fruit was the greatest thing that ever happened to mankind, and God has put us all under a sentence of death because of it. All because He didn't want any competition. That is why He felt so threatened by the people at the Tower of Babel. That is why He lied to humanity to keep it ignorant, and got sore at all of us because our forefathers did not want to accept that dismal lot.

Because God is "a jealous God" (Exodus 20:5).

God, if He is what the Bible says He is, is the Greatest Liar in the Universe. He is a Liar and the Father of Lies. From God's first lie until now, it has been one lie after another after another after another!

Naturally, I don't believe that God is who the Bible makes Him out to be. No one need search through the Bible to find obscure contradictions in order to disbelieve it. Sure, the Bible has dozens and dozne of those. But the best reason to reject the truth of the Bible is right in the very beginning, in Genesis 2, God's first lie to mankind. The first of many.

[easyskanka]

If God is such a bad fellow mr. nester-san, why is it that he allows people such as you to have a beautiful child, who happens to be healthy and is also the apple of your eye. Why does he allow you to be in good health and tolerate your constant negativity toward him?

God has an abundance of patience and does not wish any of us to perish. The fact that people such as yourself are given ample opportunity to show your loathing and disgust of him, just proves his point that he can't and won't be brought down to our level.

No earthly father worth his salts would put up from his offspring the things that God puts up with from us.

Despite all of this, I have to say that someone such as yourself might well be preferable in your resistance to God, rather than some of the so called ministers of God who profess to being his [God's] followers yet leave a bad taste in the mouth with their self righteous pontificating and a lack of the qualities needed to reasure and promote forgiveness. This is because you are at least wholly consistent in your behavior, so that if your views were to one day change, you would likewise be consistent in your new views. Hence the reasons why God admonishes us not to be judgemental.

Jesus is the good shepherd and his time of seperating out the sheep from the goats, wolves, leopards etc, surely must be closer at hand. To make everyone into becoming sheeps is impossible.To give your daughter the opportunity of life despite you being her father is what it is all about.

Once because of your actions she would have been condemned to death. Now through God's love of his own son,your daughter can be seperated from you and be unified with 'true' unselfish love.

[BlackCryptoKnight]

Nester-san, it is better to quote an extract from the article, and cite its source, than to post the whole long thing. That being said:

The Bible never said that God told Adam he would surely die that day if he ate the forbidden fruit. God did not lie. The death of which God spoke was not even the physical death which comes to all mortals. He spoke of spiritual death - eternal separation from God.

Sin is violation of God's law. Violation of God's law separates us from God. God is the source and sustainer of life. Separation from the source and sustainer of life means death.

It is also highly speculative to say that nobody could have been moral enough to chose not to disobey God if put in Adam and Eve's situation. No human being has the knowledge or the ability to make that judgement.

As for Satan "proving himself more trustworthy than God", well, whoever believes that has truly been deceived.

Satan too wanted to be like God, have His power, and make a name for himself. He'd do anything to accomplish that. Many people are following in the same footsteps.

[nester-san]

The Bible never said that God told Adam he would surely die that day if he ate the forbidden fruit. God did not lie. The death of which God spoke was not even the physical death which comes to all mortals. He spoke of spiritual death - eternal separation from God.

When Adam ate the forbidden fruit, though, he did NOT die that day. He went on to live to the ripe old age of 930. It does no good to claim that God meant Adam would die spiritually. He did not say that. If that was what He meant, why wouldn't He have said that? To deceive man, perhaps? But it is absurd to speculate about "spiritual death". Not only is "spiritual death" a meaningless phrase, and not only did God not say that He meant spiritual death, but the phrase itself does not appear anywhere in the Bible! I challenge any Christian to prove that spiritual death is what God was speaking of. I challenge any Christian to prove that God did not lie. (Citing Hebrew 6:18 won't do it, though. If God can lie, He can have Paul say that He doesn't, or do you believe someone you suspect of lying if he merely says, "I don't lie"?)

from the article

PS. Please note, I do not really agree with what he is saying.
What I do believe though is like Xeno says is God is not a God of pure Love, God does what he wants how he wants, whether we get hurt or not. A Perfect creation cannot impose rules on imperfect creature, who he INTENTIONALY made imperfect and then punish them, that is wrong.

[Xenocrates]

Adam died, and that was the truth of the matter. If Adam had not partook of the fruit, he would have lived forever - physically.

Even science has proven it. Geneticists have only recently discovered a gene that forces cells to die after a certain period. They just don't know how to turn it off. Thus, I wouldn't agree that it's a spiritual death. The death God referred to here is death in the true and literal sense - the physical death of a corpus. Partaking of the fruit merely turned that gene on. Nothing more.

In exchange for the knowledge of good and evil, man traded perpetual life. It's a fair trade off if you ask me, but the writer has a lowsy sense of humor though. Citing that "God lies" is as ridiculous as stating that scientists split the atom just so that they could kill some people.

But none of that matters. God was running the show the whole time. That's the only thing that matters. Period.

[Babyjay]

God did not say Adam will surely die THAT DAY, all He said was that he would surely die. At that time man ate healthier, nuts and grains were man's food, therefore being able to live for a longer time. It's only after the flood God commanded that meat could b eaten.

Personally, I believe some people read stuff out of context and then there are those who dislike christians and are athiest and God like Kevin Rice and would do anything to turn ppl away from God. Anyone that has studied theology knows that the Bible was originally in Greek and Hebrew and translated into English and other languages. Besides, the way Jesus or Arabs or Egyptians would say a phrase for example wouldn't be the same way we may say it in English, but means the same thing.

[Manu]

Um...Ditto to BabyJay's post.......:eusa_clap