God is Weird: A Close Look at Adam and Eve

Hi BigJoel I hope you are seeing the Eddie Izzard freakout today and connecting The mysterious disappearance of the Cake is Lie! nerds to Big Misogyny's swallowing of internet atheism

Hi Sydney, I took some time to answer because I don't have any discords or groups. I offer instead the life of this woman. Her life should be like 5 movies. She fought for the Red Army in Russia, was captured by the White Army, was put on trial and she seduced her judge and married him that is like the least interesting thing she did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Skobtsova I hope this message gets to you. Best wishes to you and yours for the survival of 2020

I have also learned as an adult that the Jewish understanding of God is very VERY different in general from that with which I was raised (that Jews basically think the same way of God as Christians but also selfishly reject Jesus because idk stubbornness or something). This doesn't seem far out from what most of the Jews (all atheists, many still practicing Judaism) I know personally would think of the story. Hearing Jewish perspectives on the OT stories that I grew up with has actually given me a lot more appreciation of the breadth and depth of interpretations available, and I appreciate that a great deal.

Jenlifer Fronester

That's so interesting to me because I was raised with a pretty strict fundamentalist Christian understanding of Scripture and just dumped it all off a cliff once I reached adulthood, but my father-in-law, a raging SJW Baptist minister (a concept that still confuses me but believe me, exists), believes in a God who is learning and growing and that the God of the Old Testmament was an immature God who was still learning. I don't believe in any of it regardless because I'm a pretty settled apatheist by now ("does God exist" is such a boring question to me since the answer doesn't seem to affect anything), but this interpretation lines up with his if you take this and then add on the idea that God has been learning what the actual effects, as opposed to the intellectual structure, of good and evil are, through humanity. Like seriously this is probably my favorite video you have made so far, very well done.

Jenlifer Fronester

Supreme take! I've always wondered if God is an entity with no free will because a being that knows all would be unable to diverge from the path of least resistance. Knowing everything is tantamount to being in all places at once, assuming one knows all moments of time and space. I really like your interpretation of Eden being a space where non-moralistic beings exist without consequence. Makes me wonder what "sinful" actions look like in a sinless place. Like, could Adam and Eve break bones? Or just bone? Is this like Death Becomes Her where bodies fall apart and are reassembled with a little tape? Would every beautiful vista retain first-time beauty forever? Did they eat? You get the idea. Fun stuff to contemplate.

I'd say it does and it doesn't--the assertion that God is incapable of understanding morality in the way humans do isn't like, a generally accepted thing by jews haha

Big Joel

Not sure if this adds up as I am atheist who was raised secular , doesn't this fit a pretty Jewish understanding of God? On twitter I follow a outspoken follower of reform Judaism and I got the vibe that being able to disagree and argue with god is a big thing.

WGM

I think this reading (well, until the end) lines up well with a lot of religious people's actual views of Good and Evil; i.e. that Good and Evil are what God says they are, and we'd never be able to understand the difference without God there to inform us. If the difference is between two abstract and arbitrary categories in God's mind, of course we need to be clued in, since that's by definition unobservable, unlearnable through experience. Though it kinda makes a hash of the idea that we can't be moral actors without religion, since definitionally humanity knows morality as a consequence of this story. You seem to want to avoid engaging with the idea that the God of Genesis is omniscient, so these 'tests' (of Adam and Eve, of Abraham, of Isaac, of Lot, etc) aren't testing anything but are rather shepherding humanity down a certain path - and that's understandable, since as you mention that's not a settled question. However, I think that's kinda implicit in your reading of this story and worth mentioning (though not if it's too much trouble for this video).

Richard Jackson

Holy shit, I always jsut thought it was all about agriculture again. The women hauled seeds back from their gathering, and cultivated them, and as a result, humans were separated from the animals. That we had the plenty that was required for us to decide if we will care for others, or just ourselves. A hunter/gatherer society living on the barest edge of the knife may be required to allow its sick and injured to die, and it's possible that isn't a morally evil act, but an agricultural one may not be. That agriculture allows civilization beyond the tribal level, for good and for ill. That society gets better in some respects, but also more complicated for the people who live in it. Thanls Mrs. Savage.

Bret Dibble

I want to ask because you may be more knowledgeable. I never interpreted their banishment as punishment from God. I thought it was impossible for them to stay in the garden bc they received knowledge (self awareness). There are a lot of contradictions in genesis so maybe I’m missing something.

One thing I would love to see you expand on in the future if you revisit this topic is to delve deeper into how this directly conflicts with the typical religious concept that god is just better than us in every way and we should listen to what he tells us because he knows better than we do

Nghtfall

I get that, that makes perfect sense to me, thank you! One last note is the Wikipedia page for the last Adam, the apostle Paul and several early christian writers in Egypt and Turkey wrote about the relationship between Christianity and the creation story by framing Jesus as a successor to Adam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Adam Best wishes for many future videos and thank you for all of your work!

Oh cool. Well a few points here cause this is something I thought of a bit. First, it’s interesting that both cases wherein God suffers requires human embodiment in your examples. To me, that almost makes me feel like my argument works better. Like God WANTS to be moral, and in order to do that, he must take form in the long suffering body of Christ. This is also the response to a hypothetical person saying, “God suffers when people suffer.” Like yes, exactly, God REQUIRES humanity to suffer. That said, you’re making me want to make a footnote on this, it’s a good point.

Big Joel

I don’t know how to thread comments on Patreon. I think it was several leaps of logic on my part, but watching the video again, it could be the part where you said God can’t suffer? Around 9:00 and again around 10:30. The suffering servant is an image from Isaiah that many associate with Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, and I know thats outside the scope of your video, but the God who suffers is very important to Christian tradition. I think God can be good because he can keep his promises. That was my main objection to your analysis on further reflection. Like to Moses and to Abraham and to the people who eat his flesh and drink his blood. I don’t want to attack your video as a whole. I think the part about God’s warning rather than God’s prohibition to eat the apple is really good and made me think. The part where you interpret the story as saying God made us to be good because we have the opportunity to suffer and learn and try and fail strikes me as your main point and I think the video makes that argument well. My internet life weaves through the atheism forums of the 2000s as well and so my goal in commenting is just to give notes in that spirit, as a persnickety nerd might.

I know that it'll probably get credits between now and public release but it's such a fuckin power move to just cut the video where it does.

Jacob Geller

I’m sorry, I’m a bit confused at why you think my argument implies that God thinks he has no obligations to people? It seems like God having various obligations to ppl doesn’t really change what I say, but maybe I’m not getting it haha

Big Joel

I enjoyed your take. Have you ever read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn? I first read it at 17 and it provides an interesting take on the story of Adam and Eve as well. I’m not an atheist, I’m agnostic and the Ishmael version sat really well with me. I like your reading as a new layer of my understanding of the story.

Evan

Hi Big Joel, I love your videos and found this one to be excellent as usual. I did want to raise a wrinkle as someone who studied theology at a Catholic university. Though we bear God’s image, His speech at the end of the book of Job outlines how we are not like God “My thoughts are not your thoughts...”. So as far as that goes, I think I get where you’re going at the end of the video about God’s difference from humankind. My issue with the way your argument is worded was when you said that God does not have obligations or something to that effect. To an educated Christian this is puzzling to say because God is defined for us in many ways through his covenants he made with the Hebrew people and with the gentiles as intepreted by SS Peter & Paul. He promised Abraham he would have many children, he promised Moses his people would be free and find a home, Jesus promises that if we eat his body and drink his blood that we shall have life everlasting. The most important passage to understand God’s obligations to us, if the Augustinians taught me anything, is Jeremiah around ch 30 or thereabouts where echoing Exodus 6, he says “I will be your God and you will be my people” That’s all, just wanted to give how the ending rang to one Christian, sorry if I misinterpreted you. Once again, thank you for your thought provoking videos!

God was really like, "ate the fruit bro? time for capitalism bro"

Juliet Saxton

This was good as hell! Gonna think about it for a bit. Can't wait to send it to my friends whens it out.

Juliet Saxton

This video slaps bro

Deanna

Something about free will and God’s objective experience. I’m a Christian and I don’t take the Bible literally.

oh noooo why did i think this was about the kink company.....

Big Joel is the only Joel big enough to psychoanalyze God.

Moss