Was Barbara Eden from Eden? And if so, why won't she take her clothes off? A short disquisition on Adam, Eve and The Fall - Part 3: Ain't our God an Awesome God?

This is part three:  the coup de monkey or naif so to speak.  This is an updated and arguably degraded version that replaced one that was briefly up on 2/27.  I like this one better so I took that one down.  If you happened to be one of the five people who read the old one keep your yap shut and no I will not pay you to do so.  Part one is here.  Part two is here.  I've been forced against my better judgement to make a part four.

It is very difficult to understand why God would put either upjumped killer chimps or perfect little naifs who would get mugged at a nun convention into His Eden. Because unless I'm reading this wrong, the upjumped Chimps came to Eden with serious sin issues - or more accurately, with issues that when they were upjumped, became sin.  And all that it would have meant if Satan slithered up to them was that Mrs. Bonzo was going to get a new snakeskin ensemble to wear to the Komodo barbecue.  Which of course would have to be held outside of Eden because presumably they would have been bunged out on their ears after setting the single day sin record on their very first day.  On the other hand, God locked His sweet little Naifs in a perfect world and then through the Dr. Evil Patented Villain Introduction Portal slipped in the most evil, poisonous, deadly and brilliant serpent in the Universe and sat back to watch 'Bible Magic' being made. Yet God says that 'sin' entered the world through 'us', rather than through the Dr. Evil portal. Hmm.

Watch out Naifs, I'm comin' to git ya!

Perhaps it's time to turn the spotlight on the protagonist and try to catalog what we've learned about God from the "Eden Incident".

1. God made everything - whether in a snake handler's whoosh or Darwinian dawdle, it's all God's - he owns this sucker lock, stock and barrel.
2. God got the Adam that he wanted with all the bells, whistles and implied warranty, either directly or by upjumping the right monkey at the right time.  If he had wanted a different Adam, he would have gotten that one.
3. God didn't make Eve until Adam became unhappy which either means God didn't adequately plan ahead (imperfection alert!) or that God built a 'perfect' Eden that was designed to make Adam 'perfectly' unhappy and therefore to cause him to bitch (perfectly now) to God about it.
4. God deliberately put temptation into the Garden and called it out so that it was visible and attractive.  After all he could have said "don't put your face in this particular Alligator's mouth" or "don't dig a hole over there 200 feet deep", instead he showcased the temptation. He made it easy and accessible.
5. Having done so, God decided to push things along by bunging Satan into the garden to (as Paul Newman might have said) 'work the sting'.
6. Crucially, God didn't seem to have educated Adam and Eve on His perfection or majesty or on the risks of sin or on how to avoid temptation or what in fact the nasty serpent who kept coming around actually was after.  Clearly, at this point in history "Father" God was either a crappy Dad (imperfection alert) or cynical beyond belief.
7. God built a brittle universe where one human committing one sin completely transforms the reality that God made for us.  No fail safes, no breaker mechanisms, no back ups, no firewalls.  God built  a 'perfect' universe with a perfect lack of resilience.  And then set out to orchestrate it so that the catastrophic boundary event would occur.
8. Just like He planned all along.

Now if you were Walter P. Godwin of 777 Holy Roller Lane and you put a couple of naive kids (or older monkeys, either way) into a walled garden that had a tree in the middle with beautiful poisonous fruit that you called out and warned the kids not to taste but didn't explain why.  And then you inserted a brilliantly persuasive authority figure-cum-serpent who you knew hated you and therefore your kids.  And you knew he would seek to persuade your naive kids to disobey you and you knew that if they did they would die.  If you did and knew all this then how in heaven's (or hell's, heaven or hell being functionally equivalent here because their bosses are evidently on the same "Get the Naifs or monkeys" team) name can you say you 'loved' them or in fact 'love' us, their progeny?  With all due respect a parent that would pull the Eden gag on his kids sounds more like a reality show host on the 'Snuff' network than the perfect God.  Someone who enjoys pulling the wings - well let me tell you a story:

When I was a boy living in Singapore we used to capture these huge ant-like bugs (well huge for ants - about one centimeter).  They had huge jaws and we called them "Lion ants".  We would pull off their antennae and put them in a little bowl and have our own mini gladiatorial games. One on ones, melees, sometimes we would put "Christians" (usually earthworms or slugs - there is no editorial opinion embedded in that choice) in for extra pathos.  They would tear each other apart.  It was great fun for half an hour or so.  Then we would get bored or some of the more sensitive kids would accuse us of being 'cruel'.  None of them ever thought to ask the classic "What Would Jesus Do" question - I'm not sure those little wrist bands had been invented yet - but if they did I think I would have to say that Jesus would - no - is doing to us what we were doing to the little ants and slugs. After all, that's what he did to the first humans.  Only He apparently never gets bored with all the mayhem, slaughter and pain.  Or feels any remorse whatsoever.

So the question isn't why God enjoys creating us and screwing with us while saying He loves us, after all that's essentially what we did to the 'Lion' ants in Singapore and I think we all understand that motivation.  The real question is why God would meticulously orchestrate this entire scenario (which if it included upjumped chimps would have taken billions of years) only to pin the entire binge on us?  Why the desperate need for us to believe that all of this that has been created by the 'perfect' God is now blown to Hell because we fucked up?  Deniability? He doesn't want us to bitch at Him?  The sheer misogynistic (misanthropic? mishominidic?) fun of it all? God only knows because I sure as hell don't.

So ain't our God an awesome God?

Epilogue or disclaimer or whatever

Incidentally, none of this changes my belief that God exists and is actively involved - well screwing really - with our lives, it's just that I don't think He's the swell guy that all of his various sales agencies here on earth make him out to be.  I'm not one of those childish atheists like Dawkins or  Harris with their stupid T shirts and their even stupider entourages of sophomores and the perennially sophomoric.  Atheists bore me because they never get past their first searing and ever so shallow insights.  They just get louder and cruder and more boring.  More later on the positives of the Ole Fall.  I hope.  Because you never know when a guy like me might be smote (smited?).  Although I'm pretty certain that I'm not worth the effort.

So piss off Dickie, I'm not on your side.