Within Reason - #76 Jonathan Pageau - Deconstructing the Fall of Adam and Eve

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Jonathan Pageau is a French-Canadian icon carver, YouTuber and public speaker on symbolism, religion and the Orthodox faith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, everyone. I just started a substack. So if you're interested in reading my writings, then you can do that right now. There's already stuff to read at Alex O'Connor.com. Also, I'm a bit sniffly because I've got allergies. So we'll see. Maybe I'll mention that to the audience as well. So if I start sneezing, I won't take it personal. Don't worry. Ha, yeah, great. Okay, we're recording on this end. I'm recording down here. I'm going to hit record on the camera. That's all done. It'll give me a good reason to say, God bless you, and then you'll have to take it. I was just I was just thinking that yeah it's it's a shame really um it's a shame exactly yeah no

you know you ever want to ask why that is I can tell you if you want to know why why people say bless you like why and you know I I did I did a few videos on superstitions I you know I find superstitions really really interesting and so I think that that's an interesting very interesting superstition and and it's it's worth thinking about well tell me about it what's the Well, I mean, I thought people said blessed to you because it was like the flu or something. No, it had to do with the fact that you accidentally, you accidentally lose air. You lose spirit. That's what it is, like just on the face of it.

It's like it's superstition about the analogical relationship between soul, spirit, and breath, right? That's there in Genesis 1 already. And so when someone sneezes, then you say, bless you like you have to fill that gap up with spirit like to reload reload the yeah and it sounds i mean obviously at the at the at the at the outset when you see it you're like well that's just ridiculous right that's nonsense but then there's another level which has to do with the question of what of accident of accident right which is the idea that a sneeze is something that is non deliberate on your part and because it's non deliberate it's it's akin to

things that are that bring you away for meaning. And that's why you have to in some way say something like bless you. That's why we, that's why we hide like accidental like air is is very embarrassing. That's why we hide our farts. We hide our burps because they, they manifest a lack of alignment on your part if you do that in public. It means you're not aligned. And so I have to realign you towards meaning. So that's the second level. Obviously, all these are related. But most superstitions have, like, different levels if you see them in the right way. Like, they're not completely ridiculous. But you mean, like, you think this is like the origin of why people say bless you?

Because the truism, the sort of factoid, is that it's something to do with like, you know, when the plague was striking people dead, when somebody sneezed, it's a sort of way of saying, I hope you're not going to die. That's part of it because, you know, it all of that is also related to death. Like coughing because it's accidental noise making, accidental like expressions of non-meaning, you could say, is related to disease. And you would say burping is the same. Like if you burp a lot, it means that you're actually not well. And it's the same with flatulence. Like if you have massive flatulence, it means that you're not well. And so there's a sense in which all of these are connected in terms of human experience.

But usually when something like that happens at a certain time and then it's preserved over generation, It means there's something else going on. It can't just be an accidental thing about the plague. It has to have something more, or else why does it, why is it so sticky? And so that's why I'm interested in superstitions is to see, like, why certain superstitions are so sticky rather other, rather than others that aren't. And I think that that, you know, I think that sometimes it can be accidental to a certain point, but when you've got superstitions that have lasted for like thousand years,

then it seems like there's something sticky about them that's worth investigating. And so it's worth looking at like, I've never heard that before. No, yeah, I, I, well, I've not heard that interpretation of sneezing at any rate. I mean, that it's, well, you have to see it like in other places where there is accidental, let's say accidental things, like when you, you have, like I said, you know, the idea of accidental noise making, you know, when you can analyze, if you see sneezing and burping and farting together and you see like all these things that you make accidental air and how that accidental air is is is embarrassing or dangerous and the thing about it sneezes is that it's very hard to

contain even like it's it's the hardest one like if you sneeze like you know if it catches you it's difficult to stop and so it requires an it requires an acknowledgement in some ways and an adjustment but it's that it's this is the thing about a lot of that type of behavior, it can help us understand a lot of laws in the Old Testament. They're kind of more like tuning forks. There's something like, you know, if you discipline yourself regarding certain things, then you create patterns of discipline based that applied themselves to others, right? That's why you tell a child, you know, it's like, look them in the eye, shake their hand,

you know, have a firm grip, you know, pay attention when someone's greeting you. And you're thinking, okay, what that's, you know, on the outside, it looks like, that's ridiculous or why does it a big deal why does it matter but it's because you're training someone in a pattern of being that should have consequences on others where it's like if you if you pay attention to a greeting and you look the person in the eye and you remember their name and you shake their hand then it means that you're going to attend to people in a different way it's like it's it's it's basically a training mechanism you know it's funny I was just reading um Blaise Pascal yesterday

and in his Ponce he has a bit about sneezing And I just had to look at it again. He says that sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul just as much as the sexual act. He sort of compares it to the sexual act. But he's talking about, he's giving it as a sort of counter example to the point he's making where because it's involuntary, it's not sort of a sign of man's weakness in the same way that succumbing to something like the sexual acts does, even though he says sneezing does consume the soul just as much as other acts as he puts it. I must say, I mean, this is interesting. I hope people find it interesting too, but I must say that it's got like, so I think you might have seen that I recently spoke to Jordan Peterson, our mutual friend, our friend Jordan. And one of the things that happened in that conversation was we were talking about Adam and Eve, which is what we're going to do today. And he sort of started saying that, well, you know, the serpent represents the well integrated woman in the family because, you know, a A woman who is well integrated will have a child. They bring in the thing that's sort of new to the relationship and the serpent brings in something new.

And he was doing this sort of analogical reading. And I thought to myself, you know, like, fine, sure, you can read that and you can have those thoughts. But as I asked him, I thought, would any other person who hadn't heard your interpretation there read the story and come to the same conclusion that that was kind of what it's about? In other words, it does feel a lot like when we're sort of theologizing, when we're theologizing things like sneezing or when we're giving a sort of interpretive account of biblical stories, I'm suspicious of this liberal approach to just sort of saying, well, you know, like sneezing is like releasing a part of the soul because spirit is breath and you're sort of letting it go. It's kind of interesting and cool. But, I mean, like, how can we sort of prevent against the risk of this becoming a little bit too far-fetched and liberal when we're talking about this kind of stuff? Well, to use, I mean, to use the example of sneezing, for example, the, like, the analogy between spirit and breath is thousands and thousands of years old. And it's pretty universal. Yeah.

It's in every culture. You know, and we have different, uh, it's actually our. our reality, which is a kind of aberration on that analogy, because we're very much reductionists, then we've lost that just natural sense of the relationship between air, spirit, and breath. Like we've made spirit or soul into something that is, you know, so completely abstracted that we struggle to see the analogies that the ancients used to make between these levels. and so I think that it's actually quite once you start to go back into those structures and you can see that that there are these deep analogies that are there

and like I said in Genesis 1 and that are there all through scripture that are there in every myth and every culture then it's not silly to apply them to to something that has to do with meaning and that has to do with breath and has to do with a blessing right because you know if I said a blessing from heaven from you, then you wouldn't squint. You would say, like, well, that's normal to say that. But you always remember that heaven is the place of air, right? Heaven is the place where there's air. And so the analogy is a very natural one.

But I agree that the difficulty about behavior like that is that what I'm doing is I'm not theologizing. I'm actually trying to help or trying to peer into the reason why we remember things like that and why we continue to use them. that's more, that's more, that's a better way of understanding what it is than I'm trying to do, um, because we do that. And so it's like, why? And I think one of the, one of the, the things that you see in a lot of reductionist thinking is that we try to just say, oh, that's, that's just superstition. That's just a superstition. Well, it's like, well,

superstitions need to have reasons why they're sticky, why they continue to perpetuate themselves. Like, You can't just swipe it off with a hand and say, what's just superstition. Even if people who do it don't know why they do it, it doesn't matter. Just like people don't know why they do a lot of things, you know, and it doesn't matter if they know it or don't know it. That's irrelevant to whether or not those, you know, you can peer into the reason why it remains and why it's sticky. And so it's the same with the question of the Genesis story.

So you can use different words. Obviously, to say something like, the serpent is. the integration of the female, is a better way to say it exactly than the way you say it, is to say something like, the serpent is the integration of the stranger. That's a better way of saying it. And that the serpent represents that which is strange in the story. The serpent is the element of strangeness in the story. And the problem is whether or not we can integrate that strangeness. And the reason why Jordan says that it's related to Eve is because Eve is presented as Adam's opponent in the text.

One of the ways of translating the word is that she's his opponent. And so what kind of opponent is she going to be? Is she going to be partner? Let's find it. When he says he made her as a helper, that word that we said, it's helper, something like someone opposing him. It doesn't have to be opponent in the sense of a negative sense, but it's like someone who is facing him, right?

Someone who opposes him. And so the question is, what is that opposition going to be? Is the opposition going to be one of help and collaboration, or is that opposition going to be one of opposition and fragmentation? And ultimately in the story, what happens is because the woman listens to the serpent too much, she listens to that, which is strange too much, therefore it leads the couple in separation. It leads them to be opposed to each other, to hide themselves from each other, and then to blame each other.

And so it's like you can see that structure happening in the story. It's one of the things that is happening in the story. So opponent, I'm interested in this word. I've just looked it up in, in, while looking up on on Strongs, you know, the sort of the Hebrew, the usage of the text across the usage of the word across the Hebrew Bible. And I'm, I'm seeing it mostly translated as help, helper, a word like help for the Lord. He is our help and our shield in the Psalms. I'm not seeing where this opponent thing is coming from. I've never heard of that either, the idea of Eva's, is opponent to Adam. Well, you have to see it in a broadest sense. You can see it as that which is not Adam, if you prefer it that way. That's someone who is outside of him. Maybe that's a good way of understanding. Yeah, I want to talk about, about Jen.

By the way, maybe we should. But even the helper thing, like, it's a helper thing is very, very important to understand because the idea of establishing someone as a helper, there are many stories in the Bible that are about that, and they're about the man. in which that which is established as a helper becomes an opponent. And so all of that feeds like Aaron, Moses and Aaron, and then ultimately you go all the way to Christ and Peter, which Christ establishes Peter as his helper.

And then he says, get behind me, Satan. Get behind the opponent, like right away in the way that he sets up the relationship with him. He's like, I know how this works, folks. And so he sets him up as his helper, and then he says he's Satan right at the outset. And so you can see that this pattern. of like relating the opponent and the helper and the opponent is there all through the text. That's, by the way, how you make sure that you're not just saying whatever you want to say

because the text is presented to us as a coherent library of text that are related to each other and that interpret each other. And that's the best way to do it, is to use the text to interpret the text so that you have the least possible way of slipping out of what the meaning is. Well, we can take a look at the Genesis story and I think the reason why we decided to set up this podcast, we've spoken before, but when talking to Jordan Peterson, we had this little interlude, he and I, about Genesis and about my sort of atheist interpretation of the story which sort of champions the serpent in the garden and condemns the lying, cheating.

evil God that fools Adam and Eve. And you very kindly sent me an email because Jordan said in the podcast, you know, I should ask Jonathan Pajot about that because I think he'd have something to say. And let's find out if you do. I think the best thing we can do here is sort of walk through this story. I want to walk through some of the objections that I have with Genesis. Bearing in mind that I've done this before in a response to Ken Ham, the biblical fundamentalist and founder of the Creationist Museum who believes Genesis is a literal account. So I've made these criticisms to Ken Ham. So people might sort of think this is trodden soil, but bear in mind that raising objections about the serpent in the garden to someone who thinks it's a literal

story is a very different thing to raising those objections to somebody who sees it with a touch more allegory and metaphor. So hopefully people will find this interesting. But the main, I guess, to sort of start with a summary of what the problems are, without getting you to respond to these straight away, we'll just sort of lay some of the thoughts out, like plant some flags and flags, as they say. Everybody is familiar with the story of Adam and Eve. They're created in the Garden of Eden, and there is a particular tree in the Garden of Eden called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that God tells them not to eat of. He says, you can eat of any tree, but if you eat of that particular tree, then in the day that you eat of it, you will die. Whatever that

means. Now, hold on, I can feel one coming. going to sneeze could feel a sneeze maybe maybe it was just the spirit leaving me yeah yeah exactly you have to be careful because I'm going to have to say bless you and talk smack about God

what are you going to do yeah yeah yeah I'm I'm more than blessed enough Jonathan you can save it for those who really need it so they decide they decide to

sort of honour God's command, for whatever reason. It's not really obviously established that God is the moral author of the universe. He just created the universe, but for whatever reason, they just sort of know that God is the person to follow. And then we're introduced to this character called the serpent. And interestingly, the serpent is traditionally identified as Satan or the devil, but the text never does that. We just know that it's a serpent. And the text describes the serpent as more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord has made. Crafty or subtle or shrewd. And the serpent goes to Eve and says, look, did God tell you not to eat of that tree? And Eve says, yeah, he told me

not to eat of that tree because in the day I eat of it, I'll die. And the serpent says, well, that's not going to happen. You're not going to die in the day that you eat of the tree. It's just that if you eat of that tree, God knows you'll become like him, knowing good and evil. And he doesn't want that. So Eve looks at the fruit. And interestingly, the text says that she saw that it was good for food and pleasing to the eye, which is unclear if that's sort of Eve's opinion or whether she actually sees it is in fact good for food and pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom. She took someone ate it. She gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then both of their eyes were opened and they realized they were naked. And so basically we've got this

this classic disobeying of God's command. And the question is, what happens? Do they die in the day thereof? Well, on a sort of surface level reading, no, they don't. Adam lives to be like 900 years old or something. What does happen? God tells us himself. He says, now the man has become like us, knowing good and evil. And he banishes them from the Garden of Eden, says they must not be allowed to reach out their hand and eat from the tree of life, lest they inherit eternal life. Implying there's another tree, the tree of life, that they could just as easily pick and eat from, would give them eternal life, but God somehow doesn't want that for them, and so banishes them from the Garden of Eden. Not before, however, punishing them. He punishes the serpent by forcing him

to crawl on his belly for the rest of, you know, for generations to come. Interestingly, implying that the kind of serpent that was in the garden before the fool had legs, which is a kind of interesting thing to think about. He punishes Adam, or wings, indeed, something like a dragon. He punishes Adam by forcing him to have to work, have to toil for his life. So now man has to work and and sort of work the land in order to eat and survive. And he punishes Eve by greatly increasing her pain in childbirth. But interestingly, he also does this for their descendants, which means that according to this Genesis account, the reason why today women experience extreme pain in childbirth is because of the punishment inflicted upon a woman thousands of years

go for committing this crime. I know you've already got a lot to say, but we'll raise some of these objections and see where you want to start. So here are some of the objections. The first thing is to say that it seems like if the serpent is lying and is evil and is the devil, then Eve is somehow deceived here. She's deceived by a half-truth. She's fooled into eating the fruit. And when she does so, not only is she punished for something which she was fooled into doing, but now her descendants are also punished for a crime that they did not commit, but rather one of their ancestors committed and arguably didn't do so knowingly. Not only that, but because she's eaten off the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, this implies that before she ate of the tree, she didn't have a knowledge

of good and evil. So if she's being punished for doing something evil and bad, then it seems incongruous that she would be punished for doing something evil and bad before she had a knowledge of what was evil and bad, because she hadn't eaten at the fruit yet. So again, it seems unfair to punish her for doing something that she can't have known was bad. The third question I would raise is why the serpent is there in the first place. If the serpent is this evil creature that's sort of crawling around Eden, why is the serpent in paradise in the first place? Why would God place in there? Why would God allow the serpent to be there? Fourthly, it's unclear what exactly is inaugurated by this event. We're told that original sin enters

the world in this event. However, there must have already been something like a proneness to sinning with Adam and Eve because at the very first opportunity they were given, they fell for it. And it can't be that sin entered the world through sin. That doesn't make any sense. You have to sin to bring it about. So there was already sin and already a propensity to sin. There was already evil because the serpent's in the garden. And it's implied that there was already suffering in the Garden of Eden because God punishes Eve by greatly increasing her pains in childbirth. So it's unclear to me when they eat of the tree, what exactly it is that enters the world? Maybe mortality, you know, we can talk about that. So there's sort of a moral objection here that there's this crime that's

committed unknowingly, without a knowledge of good and evil, fooled into doing so by the serpent, and then descendants are punished for the crime that they didn't commit. The other sort of side of this objection is to say, this is all assuming that actually, yeah, the serpent is evil and did tempt Eve. said to Jordan Peterson, there are some interpretations of the story that take the side of the serpent. They say that God doesn't want them to know good and evil. He's a jealous God. He's a self-admittedly jealous God. And the serpent is the one who comes along and says, you know God's lying to you, right? He just doesn't want you to be like him. And when they eat of the tree, they find that they have become like him, and the serpent was completely right. Everything the serpent said came true. They did become like

God knowing good and evil. And then God proactively banishes them. It's not some like natural result of their of their sin, that they have to sort of fall away from the Garden of Eden, you know, it's, it's like God proactively saying, you're not allowed in here anymore. And you could just reach out your hand and eat from the tree of life, but I'm not going to let you. I don't want you to. And so he guards the gates of Eden with a cherubim with a flaming sword. So my, my question to you, Jonathan, is what the hell is going on here? What the hell is going on? So, all right, so let me, let me establish a few things, hopefully that will be, hopefully you'll admit into the conversation.

Sure. One is the possibility of admitting, the possibility of admitting other biblical texts into the argument, right? So it's like, I'm going to try to argue from the biblical text because the way that I see it is in some ways these stories, they're not just answers, they're, they're puzzles, they present a problem. And then much of the future in some ways is there to answer the problem. And so it's as if you send out a question in the world, right? It's like Leonardo da Vinci who says, oh, it wouldn't be great if human beings could fly, but human beings can't fly. And so

he sets up a problem. And then that problem works itself out over the centuries, and at some point someone finds a solution to the problem. So I think that that is the best way to kind of understand these text is that the problem of the gap between our mortality and our aspirations is one that has to be explained because we have a gap between our mortality and our aspirations. We have a sense that there is a scandal to death. There's something about it which is unacceptable. And that that representation, you know, finds its reflection in many other types of stories and many other cultures that there is this gap. And so that's the best way to understand what the fall is. The fall from a human experience is the gap between what St. Paul says, like what it is that I want to do

and what it is that I do. Why is there a gap between those two? How the hell is that possible? Right. Do animals have a, like do basic animals have a gap between what they want to do and what they do? Like, do ants have a gap? Do they have a fantasy of what they think they should be doing, but then do something different? It's a very odd thing that humans have in them. And that problem, right, which you could call sinning, right, which is that we sinned because we see what we should do, and then we don't do it, has to be explained, or it has to be embodied in something. Like, so it's embodied in story, it's embodied in sacrifice, right? The sacrificial system in part, not all completely, but is there to help us live in that gap and to mitigate the gap

between that difference. And so this is, ultimately, this is the best way to at least look at the text in Genesis. It's establishing that gap. And that gap can be understood as death. And the reason why it's understood is death is because that's what death is. Death is when things no longer come together towards their purpose. Like, what's the difference between a live animal and a dead animal? They're the same amount of matter. You can put them on a scale. They're the same amount of cells.

There's one animal that is moving in cohesion towards purpose, and there's one animal that it no longer does that, and his body is no longer aligned towards the purpose. And that's what the text is dealing with, the relationship between the gap between purpose and reality and how that finds its reflection in death, in the different levels of death, okay? Sure, I mean, my listeners might take issue with the word purpose there,

and I mean, you'll probably think that there is an ordained purpose for things, but I don't think you have to to understand what you're saying. You don't need to the purpose at the table. You don't understand what I'm saying. Like, animals are auto poetic, and a rock is not auto poetic, right? An animal acts. There are things that they do sort of, that they do sort of move towards, Like in the way that a table has the purpose of holding things up, regardless of where it gets

that, there's sort of a, you could take all the parts of a table, and if they were no longer working together to hold things up, it just wouldn't be a live table anymore, you know. And that's especially true for living beings, because living beings fight entropy in ways that normal things don't. There's a weird thing that living beings actually do act to preserve themselves, act towards purposes. They gather, they gather their being together towards, towards, for reasons, whatever reason that is, even if, you know, we could talk about what is the best reason at a second level, but at the first level, we see that and that, and that, but that, what that

requires is, is the gathering of multiplicity into one. That's what, that's what it is. It's like, you know, you have a bunch of stuff, and then that stuff is aligned, and now it's moving towards a purpose. That's what's described in Genesis when God gathers dust together, and then blows spirit into it. Because dust is a bunch of things that have no relations with each other. That's what dust is. It's like a bunch of stuff that it doesn't have a commonality.

So you gather it together. You put a reason in it. You put something invisible that can't be accounted for with the stuff. And then you have a living being. And death is when that stops or when that goes away or when you act against it. So it's like sin and death are related

to each other because they are the manner in which we don't align ourselves with purposes and we can experience that gap, right, between purpose and the things that's happening. Sure. Okay, so this is an idea of what death is. Well, it's important to understand what death is because when we don't understand what death is, you know, we look at the text and we say, oh, they didn't die. It's like, what does it mean to die?

You know, it's not, we don't have good definitions for things. And so that is what I, the first thing that's important to kind of understand. understand, right? And so let's start with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right? I really think that the best way to interpret the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and my brother is the one who started advocating for that, is to say the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. And the reason why it's better to say good and bad is because evil is, in our thinking, is now so limited to morality that it's almost, It's impossible. It's impossible to think about it properly in terms of what it is, especially in

terms of death and in terms of what it is. But if you understand the knowledge between good and bad, then you have a different understanding, which is when something is bad is when something is not aligned with his purpose. That's how you know something is bad. So if you have a bad table, it's because it's not a good table. It's not arriving to the purpose of what a table exists for. you know any and and the thing about the knowledge of good and bad is that it's necessary for the existence of multiplicity you need good and bad for multiplicity to exist there's no there's no way around it because you can you can use bad as the distance between beings you can say a chair is a bad car and that's completely fine because the purpose of the chair the reason for the chair is not the

car so you can understand that bad is a necessary component of being it's actually inevitable in multiplicity and there's like it's important to know good and bad you know because if you to know good and bad is to be able to differentiate things quite simply you get you're able to know that if i'm if i'm hungry i don't i don't like i don't grab a parrot and then try to scoop the the the the soup out of my bowl right that's just not that's just not how you do do it. You have to do things with purpose and use things that have the purpose in order for them to reach that purpose. And so you have this tree, which is the knowledge of good and bad. And then behind it or somewhere else, or behind it or above it or however you want to

think about it, you have the tree of life, which gives fullness of life, right? The eternal life is a complicated one because we always think about it in terms of time, but let's just call it fullness of life, like the fullness of being, something like that. It's in the church fathers, they interpret that as that the, especially Saneph from the Syrian, that the mountain of paradise has a structure of a temple. And so you have the highest place, which is the place of the revelation of God, which is the tree of life, and then you have a kind of veil, which is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And then you have levels like that. So you need the knowledge of good and evil to reach the highest level. and the text, what it implies is that they're not to eat the knowledge of good and evil. But it's really weird because from the point of view of someone looking at it in the future, it's like, well, God obviously wants us to have the knowledge of good and evil because there are many examples in the Bible where that happened. For example, Solomon asks God exactly for that. God says, ask anything.

Ask anything of me and I will give it to you. And then he asks for the knowledge of good and evil. And then God says, yes, that's exactly what you should have asked. for, and he gives it to him. Then there are many examples where it says that that knowledge of good and evil is good. So then you, like, again, if you understand the story as a puzzle, it's like, okay, so then why? Why is it that God doesn't want them to eat the knowledge of the fruit of the knowledge

of good and evil? Because obviously, God wants that. You know, and then you'll see, like, even in later in, you could probably, I can't think of them now, but probably even in Genesis, you can find places where the person, you know, uses the knowledge of good and evil. Like a good example of someone who uses the knowledge of good and bad in the best way,

like it really in a way that's similar to, in Genesis is Joseph. Joseph, when he's in prison, he judges between the two servants of the Pharaoh, and he judges the one that will go up towards the Pharaoh, and he judges the one that will get his heads cut off. And when he's doing that, he's actually demonstrating

exactly the knife of knowledge of good and bad that is, related to in Genesis. So that's what I mean. It's like you always have to understand that, how can I say this? Like you have to, if you isolate the story

and you just see it for its own sake, then you're not going to get with the meaning it. So the serpent is there, right? The serpent is shrewd. The serpent is crafty. You know, the best way to understand the serpent is something like difference

or something like the strange, something of the thing that doesn't fit, right? thing that, and so in the text, here's a simple thing to understand that. In the text, in the text, here's, here's a simple thing to understand that, right? In the text, God tells Adam to name the animals, right? So you have an order, right? Adam is the one speaking, and the animals are the one receiving the identity from Adam, right? So he's giving them purpose and meaning and identity from above, right? And so now you have this animal that's speaking.

Like, why is the animal speaking? God said that Adam should be speaking, and the animals should be receiving their identity from Adam. But now you have this weird creature that is coming from this below, like the animal part, and is now speaking into Eve. And Eve is listening to that, right? So that's a way you can understand what I mean by. It's the strange.

It's in some ways, it's a revolutionary action. It's that which is above trying to speak into that which is, That which is below, trying to speak into that which is above, something akin to death, something akin to that which is not cohesive is trying to speak into that which is together, right? So it's a, it's poison. And where do you think this comes from? I mean, this is maybe a good question to sort of interject here. Why is the serpent in the garden? I mean, for a biblical literalist, that's going to be a difficult question.

why did God create a serpent? But on this sort of allegorical account, what does this mean? We're sort of giving an account of the creation of the world and of mankind by a loving God who sort of creates human beings with a particular intention for them in mind, but also creates this serpent that's sort of slithering around and trying to sort of knock them off course. Why is that there in the first place? So this serpent is. The four, in order for something to exist, just like good and bad, you need an aspect of strangeness. You need something which is the limit of being, right? Or the limit of influence.

Maybe it's a good way to understand it. So Adam names the animals. God says, name the animal. He's naming the animals. There are some things which escape his naming because he's not God. And so the serpent is a natural aspect of the world. Like you you encounter that all the time, right? You encounter strangeness. You encounter things that are not properly named, that don't have proper identity. And those, those, can I say this? And the reason, and what you want to be able to do is to name that.

And you want to be careful that it doesn't take over you. because the aspect of the strange that which is not doesn't fit and that that you know it it's bigger than you right it can eat you it can swallow you up because it's not because it's it's outside you could say it's something like an image of chaos right so okay so let's let's let's let's just i guess i'm not understanding here here let's start from again let's start from the beginning god creates heaven and earth. He creates order and chaos. He creates name, essence, purpose, identity, and then potentiality and darkness and chaos, right? And then in the scripture account, he repeats that over and over. He does that. He keeps doing that. So he creates something below, which is akin to

variation. And then he creates something above, which is akin to order. And he keeps doing that as he moves towards man. So he creates heaven and earth, right? Then he creates, you know, interesting enough. He creates the grass and he creates stars, right? And then he creates birds and he creates fish. Then he creates... Why do you...

He creates tame animals and wild animals. Like, what kind of categorization is that for a biologist? That's a silly categorization. Like, why would you create... Same animals and wild animals. He's creating order of chaos, right? But what about like, you know, the... You said the grass and...

the stars or the birds and the fish. Why is it that the birds are sort of order and the fish are chaos? You know what I mean? Because the birds are in the light and the fish are in the darkness. You have to, you really have to break your, if you want to under, if your purpose is to understand this story, like you have to break out of your your reduction in this frame. Like, you just have to break out of it. You have to place yourself in the world as a being that experiences reality and is it and has a has an order of being right so light comes from above right patterns come from above the the stars in the sky move in a regular fashion the things at the bottom here move in an irregular fashion there's some pattern to it but it's not a clear pattern

it's not it's not it's not a clockwork like pattern and sure and and and the birds the birds sing i know i know you think that might sound stupid, but the birds, they make patterns akin to the heavens, and they also live in the heavens. And therefore, they are akin to spiritual beings, like in terms of the experience of things that provide patterns from above and then things that are kind of hidden in the darkness below. Right. And so the way that the categories of being that are described are always related to the relationship between meaning and chaos. Like I said, That's why the categories of mammals is like tame animals, wild animals, and creepy crawlers underground. Those are the three categories of animals.

That's not a biologist's description. So then that structure, like the structure of order and chaos, and that's a joined order in the human, because the human, God takes the dust and then puts air inside. It's the first time in the whole text where he actually puts heaven in earth. Until then, it's like this weird relationship of duality between order and chaos that kind of move closer and closer and here the top and the bottom come together. Yeah, exactly. And they come together in man and he gathers the earth together and he blows air into it.

And now you have a living being. And so then that structure gets repeated again in the text constantly. Then in the garden is the same structure. you have a tree and you have a serpent. A tree is an image of order, like an image of structure. It's a fractal, right? It's a fractal structure. And then you have a snake.

And a snake is an image of change. It's an image of changes its skin. It's like it can be in two places at the same time. It's shifty. It's shrewd. It's an image of chaos. Like the idea that a snake is the image of chaos. I hope you can see that this is something that is pretty universal.

Like in every culture, this kind of giant sea serpent, this Leviathan type, slithering thing that that kind of moves and shifts and and is coils itself and is an image of a chaotic or strangeness of being you know and so that's what's there in the garden the garden is just a microcosm of what was being said from the beginning it just repeats the structure and so in the garden you have the same structure as the beginning of genesis of heaven and earth coming together so now you have this relationship between the tree this tree which is structure and the snake which is chaos. And what God says is don't take that which is above for yourself. Like, don't take it with your own will. You can't, do not eat of it. And what's implied, and I know this will sound

annoying because it's implied only if you understand, if you see the whole text together, like the whole Bible is speaking to each other. What's implied is that God will give them the fruit later. Right. Okay. The third father, they say that God had planned to give them the truth. And the rabbis say if they had only waited until Sabbath, like they would have, they would have received the fruit. It was only that they should not take it in willful prayer. In self-causation, right? That's the problem. The whole, a lot of the text is about causation. You know, it's like God causes Adam. Adam causes the animals to some extent because he names them. So his role is to receive his name from above. But now it's like, no, I'm going to take a name for myself. But I'm going to take, I'm

going to take this thing from heaven that's above me think about the tree going up into the heavens the apple is above i'm going to grab it above and i'm going to bring it down to me you know and then i'll be like god i'm going to make myself like god uh and that's that's the problem in the story you know and the like i said many of the traditions say because the tradition is is even in the text it's hilarious because you know the serpent says eat the fruit and you'll be like god this the text already says they're like God. The text says they're created in the image of God. And so what is he actually doing? It's a nice trick. He's like, if you eat the fruit, you'll be like God. And it's like, well, they were already like God. And maybe they... Yeah, but something does change,

though, right? Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so something does change, right? Like, their eyes are opened, they realize that they're naked. I'm interested in significance of that as well. Yeah, that's right. The sort of the nakedness, the sort of the introduction of shame, it seems, into their consciousness. They notice that they're different. That's the best way to understand it. They realize that they have to hide themselves from each other. And so now, before they were together, they were one. It was a good way to understand it.

They were one in love. Like, I know it sounds sappy to say that, but they were united with God to the extent that's possible. They were united with each other to the extent that's possible. They were united with each other to the extent that that's possible while remaining separate. So it's like multiplicity and unity was balanced. And so now they eat the fruit of good and bad. And now they fall into bad. So now they start to see that they're different from the other as an opponent.

And so they hide themselves. They keep secrets now from each other. And then they hide themselves from God. They keep secrets from God. And so that's death. They already started dying. As soon as they ate the fruit, they started dying because they started to move into separation from unity. They move from a body into multiplicity.

So think about like anything, like a sports team or a company, you know, that has multiplicity towards unity. Like where all these people were kind of a team and are working together toward the purpose. And so because that, we have this nice dance aspect to what we're doing. But then if we fall into suspicion, then now I see my team member as my enemy. So now I hide things from them. Now I blame them. And now we're blaming each other. And we've forgotten, like even the reason why we're together towards this purpose.

And that spells death. That's death. That means that now you won't accomplish the purpose of what you're doing. So talk to me about the fairness of this, because when God comes back to them and they're hiding because they're naked. God says, well, who told you you were naked? You know, did, did you do what I told you not to do? And Adam says, oh, it was Eve. She made me do it. And God goes to Eve and Eve says, oh, it was the serpent. The serpent deceived me. And then God says to the serpent, because you have done this and then punishes the serpent, as if sort of accepting Eve's charge that it was the serpent who did

this, Eve's charges that the serpent deceived her. And it seems on this reading that that's what's actually happen, if indeed the serpent is the evil one, the chaotic one, who's sort of bringing in something that shouldn't be there. It's not like the serpent says, tell what Eve, you know, do this, do this super evil thing, do this bad thing, be a bit naughty. The serpent deceives her by saying, this is the thing you should do. You know, this is, this is what you want. This is what you desire. You want to be like God. You could be like God. Exactly. And so, and so again, I sort of understand that as a, as a modern person sort of writing and essentially fiction, account of the sort of mythological origins of the way we think about the world, this sort of

warning of like wanting to be like God seeming like a good thing until you get it. Like yeah, like interesting, nice moral point and all. But when you're looking at this story as a sort of more fleshed out narrative, for Eve to be deceived into doing this and then be suffering what seems to be like a positively inflicted punishment as a result. And also, if this is some broad story about the way that sort of sin, sort of enters the world and what it is to be connected to God or separated from God or like to be mortal or not to be mortal. It seems so strange that the punishment that God instills is something so

sort of specific and physical. Like, oh, you're going to scream a bunch in childbirth now. Well, the punishment is perfect for what it is that I'm trying to explain to you. It's not even a punishment. It is, God doesn't say I'm going to punish you. God just says. This is what's going to happen. He says, now that you've eaten the truth. I will make your pains and childbearing very severe. Yeah. With painful labor, you'll give birth to your children.

Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. It seems like God is sort of ordaining this system. Now man will rule over you. So the way to understand, especially the way to understand curses and blessings in the scripture, is there are two aspects of it, right? One aspect is God is making it so, but God is also making it so because that's actually the nature of the world. It's like this is that God, the world has a certain structure and a certain function. And if you do certain things, then certain things happen.

It's like I could say, I could say, for example, to you, I could say, if you start taking heroin, this is what's going to happen. And then you start taking heroin and I say, well, I told you that's what's going to happen. now it's going to happen and then you have the consequences of your actions but if it was if it was something like okay i told you not to take heroin Alex and now that you have taken heroin i'm going to greatly increase your pains i'm going to make things difficult for you i'm going to lock you in a room and send you to rehab there's a set okay rehab's a good example there because like if i lock you in a room to sort of make you go cold turkey and and give a heroin there's a sense in which i could say look what i was basically saying is that if you take heroin this is what's going to

happened to you, and that's kind of true, but it's still true that I'm the one who's doing that. Maybe it's for their own good. Maybe it's what they need, maybe it's what they deserve, like, who knows? But it doesn't seem like it's just some, like, natural result of eating this fruit that Adam and Eve sort of, you know, suddenly find themselves falling away from the Garden of Eden. It's like God finds them, says, hold on, what have you done, and then banishes them? Let's look at the curses together. Let's look at the three curses, because they're actually just, they're just repetitions of each other. Each curse is actually has the same structure, and one is applied to the serpent,

one is applied to man, and one is applied to woman and what is applied to man, but it has the same structure, and it's a structure of death. It's a structure of revolution, and it's a structure of the process of death, you could say, the problem of death.

Okay, so he starts with, actually, the first thing, the first thing to understand is the end of it. The end of it is the key, because the end says, curses the ground, he said, sorry, the end is, from sweat,

from dust you have come, and to dust you have returned. You will return. That's it. He's saying, remember that dust thing. Remember the elements that have nothing to do with each other, that aren't connected in unity. That's where you come from. Now you're going to return to that disunity. You're going to break apart into multiplicity that is not related to each other. Okay. And so the first thing he says is to the serpent. He says, right, you are going to be on the ground and you're going to eat. dust. So obviously it's related to the dust that is in the end of the curse, right? He's saying there's a connection between the two. He's saying, so he's saying now you are going to only eat

that which has no identity with each other. You are only, the only thing that you will feed on are things that are not connected to each other. You will now be only, say, chaos that serves chaos. instead of the way that chaos in the in the in the in the in the in the in the genesis structure chaos is somehow is the potential for being right it's basically that out of which being comes and so now he's saying no you are going to only be chaos you are going to eat chaos and and you're going to say it's a be the identity of chaos is a good way to say and then what you're going to do is you're going to continue this revolutionary trope you're going to bite at the heel of man and now because of that

man has to impose order on you. He's going to crush your head. Now you've got the beginning of civilization right there. It's like now order becomes something like a form of tyranny or a form of imposition of a force on chaos. And so that's the beginning of that, right? It's like right there in that image you see the beginning of what we later call civilization.

And so the serpent comes and bites at the heel. the man has to crush it. What's the next one? The next one is, oh, Eve, you are the agent of multiplicity, right? That's what Drerne was trying to bring about. You are the agent of multiplicity of Adam. You are that which multiplies Adam, but now you will do it in suffering. Now the production of multiplicity will not be towards unity, will not be towards cohesion.

It will be towards pain. It will be towards suffering. It will move multiplicity into suffering. And then the same structure is going to happen. You're going to desire for your husband, and he's going to crush you. That's what's coming, right? It's like you will have that movement towards a revolutionary movement or that movement of desire to get what your husband has, and he will rule over you.

And then the third one is the same thing, the same structure. He says, now the ground is curse. It's going to produce opposition. It's going to produce thorns that are going to oppose to you. and you're going to have to work and you're going to have to impose your will on the earth in order for it to produce fruit to you. And then all of that,

so basically it's like order is going to increase because you're going to have to impose it on chaos. Before that, the sense is that order is naming, order is inviting, order is, right, God calls the earth and says, bring forth, and then God is naming things. And so order is this beautiful, almost like dance of meaning where there's a balance that God just gives the identities

and people recognize them and participate in them. Now it's like, no, no, no. Now order is going to be forced. Now order is going to be imposed from above. And that's the consequence of death. Is that, is that. And so whether you like it or not, like whether you think, okay, it's unfair, it sucks or whatever, like that's our experience. That's our experience of the world. Our experience of the world is that when chaos increases, we're in danger of fragmenting into dust. So you're in a company. And now people are starting to act against each other. They're starting to pull the blanket. They're starting to be corrupt. They're starting to steal money. And therefore, the danger is the company is going to split into dust. It's going to stop existing.

So what do we do? We make rules. And then we impose them. We find ways of ejecting people. We figure out how to fire people. We have processes to reprimand things that go against the purpose of the company. So that's what's being set up here. That sounds a little bit like punishment, reprimanding. I know you're sort of speaking analogically there, but I mean, for example, the pain in child. That's the word you live in, Alex. Yeah, so this is why I understand, I totally understand why somebody who lives in this world would write the Genesis account, right? I totally get why somebody who finds himself in a world of misaligned desires and suffering and childbirth and all this kind of stuff, pain in childbirth, I mean, would write this account that tries to encompass this

sort of deep psychological feeling that we have about our unfittedness to the world and our desire that the world be a way that it isn't and that there's sort of our sort of upset about our knowledge of our own mortality. I mean, I could say the thing that makes human being special is that they know they're going to die in a way that a cat probably doesn't know it's going to die. Who knows? I'm not a biologist, but whatever, let's say that's the case. I could say, okay, so the Genesis account, because we find ourselves in a world where we're the only creatures who know we're going to die, speaking really crudely here, I write this story, because obviously the story sort of comes up out of, you know, this tradition of thinking

which will encompass, you know, a depth of thought that it's impossible for a single person to author. But you'll see what I'm saying, that the story emerges that, well, this knowledge of good and evil, the thing that enters the world is mortality. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that I'm trying to tell the story of how humans came to be the only ones that knew they were going to die. And once we learned that we were going to die, we suddenly became a lot more scared and a lot more, you know, like our nakedness because we recognize that we were sort of exposed to the elements. And now we're going to have to fight with each other and toil with each other. And we're going to have

to sort of, you know, get property rights and all of this kind of stuff. Because if we don't, we're going to die. And it's this knowledge of death entering the world that totally ruined things for us. And that's what's trying to be encompassed in the Genesis story. Like I could sort of come up with a story like this. And it would actually make sense. Because like you just said a moment ago, I could say, look, man, this is just the world you live in. And this is a narrative attempt to capture that. The problem in the Christian tradition for me is that Genesis can't just be an attempt to sort of describe, hey, the world as you find it and offer a sort of a narrative account of our psychological feelings towards the world. It has to also say that this character,

this Lord God, is the intentional creator of this system. He had reasons to make things the way that they are. You know, the fact that a knowledge of good and evil will lead to increased pain in childbirth, for example, seems something contingent, right? When you are God, when you're the creator of the universe, it seems like it didn't have to be that way. And so, you know, when you say, well, that's just the world you're in, I agree, but I'm not the one who believes that there's a God who sort of ordained that things be that way. You see what I'm saying? I mean, I kind of see what you're saying, but not really in the sense that, in the sense that first off, first off, the text is, how can I say it? The text is a description of what happened. It's not a,

It's not just someone who sat around and made up, you know, this story. I don't think anybody made up this story. It's not a scientific description. It's not a, it's not in any ways the type of description that modern people like. But it is a description of a, of it is, I think it is a description of an event. It's not an event in the, in the banal sense, because it's in some ways a meta event, but it is, it is a description of something that, that happened. And.

How can I say this? It's like there is no other way for the world to exist besides the relationship between unity and multiplicity. Because it is the very core of how identities function. And so identities, the one of the identity, is made up of the multiple of its part. and that's actually the very the very source of how how something exists and so to to give a story that gives really it's giving a metaphysics is giving a manner in which the world exists right the relationship

between between unity and name and meaning and spirit all of these things and the relationship between multiplicity and death and chaos variation change that's what we're what the story is talking about. And so it isn't an arbitrary god that just arbitrary to decide the world functions that way. There is no other world you can conceive of besides the world that is being described in Genesis. I'd like to hear of another world that is not made up of the joining of unity and multiplicity in which if multiplicity is given free reign, then it will annull the unity. and will lead to...

What's wrong with... Sorry to interrupt, but... Breakdown of identity. So tell me, help me understand this, what's wrong with the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, trees that they're eating of, maybe even still the tree of knowledge of good and evil that they can't eat from that. If they eat of it, you know, everything's going to go wrong. But there's no serpent. Now, you say that there needs to be this element of...

of the chaotic and the strange is sort of the boundary of I can't remember exactly how you described it before but but just sort of crudely here like help me understand and maybe you'll feel like you're repeating yourself here and sorry if you do but this this this picture of the Garden of Eden I'm sort of imagining I'm doing my big Renaissance painting and I've got Adam and I've got Eve and I've got the grass and the trees and God's there somewhere and there's just no serpent and the serpent just never gets introduced it's never created and everyone lives happily ever after you know what's what's what's what's I get maybe that's not the world we find ourselves in, but why can it not be the world itself in? Not just that it's not the world that we find ourselves in, why would that be impossible? It's not just that it's not the world that we find ourselves in in a kind of banal mythological way. It's not the world we find ourselves in, in the sense that when we analyze the manner in which the world functions, we come to the, we come to a conclusion abstractly that says,

similar to the problem of the Garden of Eden, which is that, like I said, I live in a world where I notice that things move away from their good into a breakdown, and that causes pain, and it causes suffering. And in some way, it is the definition of suffering, right? The definition of suffering is when you are now being caused by the outside and no longer caused by the purpose that you have, right? to suffer something is to basically give up causality to externalities. And so it's like that's actually how the, that's like, that's like, that's how the world works.

And so, that's why I struggle to, to fantasize about a world where that's not the world, like of a world where things don't. So a good example, like a simple, how can I say it's like a simple example, to understand this is to understand that things change, right? So in order for things to change, this structure has to be part of it. Like, you can't avoid it.

In order for things to be able to change, you need there to be externalities which can affect the unity, right? So the unity will adjust itself to externalities, right? The unity will, and at some point, the externalities are so big, that then you basically, it takes it over, right?

So it's like, I'm, uh, try, let me, let me, so let's say you do something a certain way, right, you're, I don't know, you make food a certain way and you have a certain process that you use to make food and then all of a sudden you realize, oh, if I, you know, it's like it takes me three hours to make food. And so that's a problem. It's like, it's a puzzle. And so now I change the way that I make food in order to, right, to, to, to, and so, but then you can imagine externalities that are so big, like an earthquake, and

now I can't make food anymore. And so it's like, that's, that's what, that's the, that's the world that the Genesis story is describing and, and the reality of, of chaos to order that the world, that it's describing. And so I don't see, I don't see how we could live in another world. I don't know, maybe, if they live happily ever after, then, okay, here's, here's a good way to talk about it. So you have a story about Adam and Eve. Let's do it this way. You have a story about Adam and Eve. They're in the garden. They get the fruit and now they don't eat it or whatever

and they listen to God and now they live happily ever after. And then, you know what? I'm not going to tell that story. Who am I going to tell it to? Nobody cares. Nobody cares about that story because it's a lie. It's not true. So I'm not going to tell it. Nobody's going to remember it and everybody will forget. There's a difference between what did happen and what could have happened. I mean, of course, you say that story is uninteresting because it's a lie, but had it happened, it wouldn't be a lie, right? You'd be telling the story of what actually happened. I mean, like, I was going to ask, actually, do you think it was possible that Eve could have just said, no, thanks, serpent. And, you know, I think you're lying to me. Off you go. Because the serpent basically convinces Eve that God was lying. So Eve is capable at looking at what someone's saying and saying, I think that's a lie. So in theory, she could have said to the serpent, I think you're lying and obeyed God. And as you said, it's implied that God is going to give them this fruit at some point anyway. So at some point, they then get this knowledge of good and evil. You get this sort of knowledge of the chaos and the disintegrated and the integrated.

This still all happens. It's just that now it's done in this sort of Edenic paradise without the need for all of this horrible mortality, you know, death entering the world kind of stuff. Right? That seems like at least that could have possibly happened. If it couldn't, then Eve had something that she had to do, in which case it's even sort of worse. Because maybe I'm more of a, like, I'm just more of a, like, I'm just more of a realist in the sense that I know that that's not the world that I live in. And so, and so I. But could Eve have turned down the serpent?

Well, she didn't. I don't know what that would even mean. Like, what would it mean? So, okay, so actually, let's, let's look at it. This is a great, this is actually a great, great segue into what's the solution to this story. So think of it as a puzzle. Think of it as this massive puzzle at the beginning. Okay, it's like, okay, how do we deal with this problem?

How do we deal with the problem of the gap between the way we are and the notion that we see some purposes that we want to aim towards, right? And so then the rest of the Bible in some ways is an attempt it's showing you what solutions have what consequences. Sure. But just before we talk about the solutions to the problem, I'm really, I'm a bit confused by what you're saying there. You know, you say, well, maybe I'm just more of a realist. It's like if I was saying, if I was speaking to a historian about George Washington and I said, you know, could George Washington have. refused the presidency. And the historian goes, well, he didn't do that. And I go, no, I know he

didn't. But like, if he'd have said no, what do you think would have happened? And the historian sort of goes like, I don't understand your question. And I'm like, well, what? All I'm asking is, I mean, what, do you think it was impossible for George Washington to turn down the presidency? And they sort of go, I just live in the real world, man. That's not what happened. He did accept the presidency. And I'm like, well, yeah, but it seems to me like he could have not done that. And I'm just interested in what would have happened if that were the case. So I understand that we live in a world where Eve listened to the serpent, but could Eve have refused the serpent? Let's say that.

So Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve don't eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. They wait until God gives it to them. And then they become like gods. And then they remain in the Garden of Eden and they rule over creation with love. And that's what would have happened. But that's not what happened. But like. I guess not what happened.

So it seems, so it seems, because I understand you're saying that that didn't happen, but because that could have happened, and that sounds a lot like this, suspiciously like this happily ever after scenario. That's what we're called to. That result is what we're actually called to. Okay, so in the end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, that's what's described there. The last image in the book of Revelation is exactly what you said. it's a description of the integration of all things into paradise and so you have a you have a beautiful

image of orderly procession of of reality where you have the son of man that is above the the city right think about it as that which man is aiming towards if you if you struggle with that image of the son of man that which man is aiming towards is above the city and it provides light to the city, and now all the kings of the earth, they come, and they offer their crowns up to the son of man, and all of human activity is made beautiful and glorious, and all the science, all the activities, all the technology, all the architectures made beautiful and glorious and full of life and life. And so that's the final answer to the puzzle. So it's like, that's actually what was the purpose. So it does happen. Now it happens eschatologically, but it that's exactly,

could have, I mean, for example, it could have avoided all this pain. Yeah, God, God creates the Garden of Eden. And even if for some reason the serpent needs to be in there, like, okay, put the, you know, put the serpent, you know, a thousand miles away so that by the time it finally, you know, walks its way across the garden and finds Adam and Eve, they've already been given, it's already the Sabbath, they've already been given the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and there's nothing they can do, right? It just seems, it seems totally strange to me, like I say, this is, this is what I was getting at earlier when I say that if you just say, this is the way the world is, and I'm offering a mythological. account of the world. Fine, yeah, the serpent convinces Adam and Eve, that's what happened. But if you believe as a Christian that God sort of designs this world, God creates this world, and maybe he's limited in some respect as to what he can do by the laws of necessity, maybe being itself requires order and chaos, so you need the chaos, right? It doesn't seem obvious to me that it needed to be such

that this sort of horrible series of events is inaugurated by Adam and Eve. In fact, it seems like it could have been relatively easily avoided had the snake just been, you know, just put a wall between the snake and Adam and Eve. Or, you know, like, like, anything, even God could just warn them. God could say, oh, by the way, there's this serpent in the garden. You should watch out for him. You know, he's a crafty one. It just seems to me like a very strange thing to just say either, well, it had to be that way

or, well, it just was that way and there's sort of nothing more interesting to ask about. I guess what I'm raising now as a moral objection, which is what I usually do with the Garden of Eden. But like, why on earth would God sort of permit that or allow that or create that? You know what I mean? And this is why, by the way,

I was so interested in this interpretation of Genesis that sees the serpent as the hero. Because, you know, I mentioned this to Jordan Peterson, this apocryphal gospel, the testimony of truth. And any time I bring up the apocryphal gospel, a lot of Christians get angry at me because they seem to think that I'm somehow endorsing it or thinking that this is the true account. I don't even believe that the canonical accounts, the canonical gospels are a true account. So it would be very strange if I believe the apocryphal ones.

But I found it interesting that early Christians, some early Christians did believe this testimony of truth. It reads the story of Genesis and says, what kind of God is this? This jealous God who lies to Adam and Eve about what's going to happen to them. And it identifies the serpent, not with Satan, but with Christ. And says that what's happening here is you've got the, and in the Gnostic theology, the, the, the material world is created by this sort of evil or incompetent demiurge. So you've got this material world, and it's got its grass and it's trees and it's, you know, it's sort of evil, whatever. And human beings are sort of made out of the dust. They're made out of the evil stuff. You know, the really good stuff is spirit. The really good stuff is like soul and spirit and morality and that kind of stuff. And so these, these humans are there, but they don't have. this knowledge of good and evil, which is what life's really about, man. And so the serpent sort of sneaks into this garden. And because God is the creator God, for the serpent to even be there in the first place, the serpent must have some kind of like power. It must have some

kind of intelligence. It must have some kind of like, you know, awesome ability to put itself in there in the same way that like, you know, Athena disguises herself as a slave to, to appear to Odysseus or whatever it is that, you know, happens in the Odyssey. These gods sort of, sort of, these more intelligent gods sort of sneaking the way around the evil and getting their message into the world. So this Gnostic Gospel thinks that it's Jesus, who takes the form of the snake, goes up to Eve and says, listen, like, you've been told all this, all this stuff, but no, no, if you want to be like God, if you want the knowledge of good and evil, if you want to be,

like what you're supposed to be, which is spiritual, knowledgeable beings, then you should eat of the fruit, and then God just gets really angry and banishes them. Like, that to me, given what I've just said about the fact that God, God didn't need to do this. He didn't need to condemn Adam and Eve in this way. Like, look, I'm not saying that's a true account of Genesis, but I'm saying it seems to make as much sense to me as the other one, you know? I hope that's not what we're saying. So let's unpack that.

Let's unpack. It's not that hard to unpack. So. But by the way, just before you do, it's important to say that that word you mentioned earlier and emphasise this word shrewd or or subtle or crafty, which the serpent is introduced as the serpent is more crafty or shrewd. If you look at the Hebrew word, Arum, and you look at how it's used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible,

all throughout Proverbs and Psalms, the same word is translated as sensible or prudent. And so there's a reading of this text which says that the serpent is more sensible than any of the other beasts that God has created. And it's this sensible serpent who tells Adam and Eve the truth. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, it is in some ways you can say that in this case, the way the serpent is described,

there is something maybe the being in the animal that is the closest to man, right? So St. John Christosum says that. It says something like the serpent was like a dog in the garden. Like he was the closest being to man. He was the one that is the most akin to man. And so that is why, in some ways, it would be the being that would more easily influence from below, you know, the human. So if you take the Gnostic Gospels as an example, you know, you have this problem, like again, which is the idea that the source of the world is evil. is a big problem.

Like, that's a huge metaphysical problem if you take that on. If you take on the fact that the very origin of reality is bad. Of the material world, that is. Yeah, all of created reality is bad. Down the line from that are very dark things, you know. And, you know, and the Gnostics embrace those very dark things, too. you know, they, you end up with this idea that you have to escape the world, right? You constantly just have to escape it.

You don't have to, you're not supposed to like live life. You have to escape, escape this reality. And then what that will lead to is something like caste system. Like a cast system is a good example of the consequences of Gnosticism on the world, which is that you identify a hierarchy and then you identify all that which is, low in the hierarchy is bad and all that which is above in the hierarchy as good because it's the closest to heaven it's the one that that gives order to all the lower the lower aspects and that but the lower you get the more evil you are and then you so then you end up with these very dark

dark implications of what of what gnostic type thinking does like this idea that my that the world is Maya that it's an illusion that we have to escape that leads to things like cast systems like There are other examples of what it can lead to, not just that one, can lead to other things. It can lead to, for example, in the gospel of Thomas, where at the end, you know, Christ tells Mary Magdalene that in order for her to be safe, she has to become like a man, because the man is better because he's, you know, he's above and the woman is below, and therefore the woman has to become like a man in order to get closer to heaven. Yeah. But that's the world that is described in Genesis. Like, it's God, when God prays. a lot to say. All things are good. And that's a different, it's a whole different cosmology.

And everything about it is different once you start with that premise of, of the evil Demiurge creator. I agree with that, that it's definitely significant. But the idea that, well, so if the serpent comes and tells, if the serpent comes and tells Adam and Eve a better solution, where does that come from? Like, where does the better solution come from? If the origin of the world is of the or the created world is evil, you know, where, how can I say this? It's like, it's always about accounting for the gap between, it's always about accounting for the gap between the sin and the purpose, right? And so you have something from below, the serpent that comes and then proposes a solution to you. And so that solution will be a

revolutionary solution. So we could actually think about, like, there are two forms of mythology in the world like in terms of there are more but we could just for for this purpose we could say that there are two types of mythology there are one which establishes an orderly procession of being from above down below and that this is there's a there's an orderly procession and that things you know fall down for their identities and that they all function together then you have a revolutionary trope you have the idea that that which is below has to come up and take that which is above and you can see like if you compare the cosmogony, the theogony, Hesiod's Theogony, to the creation narrative in Scripture,

you can actually see the difference between the two, where God creates the world with name, with order, with invitation, and the world processes orderly down from this heavenly influence. And then you have another one, which is basically castrate my father, you know, and then having to devour my children, and this revolutionary process of, of trying to get from above. Like, heaven is a tyrant. Heaven is evil. That which comes all the order, all the processes, all the patterns,

they are forms of oppression. And I have to free myself from that oppression. And so I go up and I take the fire from the gods. I castrate my father. I do all these things that are there to take power on myself. And those two have two, those two structures, like of storytelling or of understanding the world, they have they have uh they have consequences so if you see one in a certain way and you see

one in the other way they have they have different they have different worlds that they that they create and that they make happen yeah i feel i feel obliged to uh offer a sort of limp defense of the gnostic theology not because i am myself a gnostic but because i think it's it's perhaps a little unfair the treatment that you're giving to it i mean i understand what you mean and jordan peterson said the same thing to me. He said, well, he sort of alluded to it by saying the problem with narcissism is it condemns the material world, and that's a problem. And we didn't really, I didn't want to go down that rabbit hole at the time. But what you just said there, you identify two things. You said, here are two examples of what it can lead to, believing this is

the idea that the material world is somehow either evil or bad or incompetently or incompletently or incompletely produced. The problem with that is that leads to something like a caste system, and the problem with that is it leads to things like in the Gospel of Thomas, you know, man over the woman. I would say the opposite is true. I would say that the idea that what you are most fundamentally is a spiritual being who's sort of trapped in this physical condition and you need to escape. For someone who believes that, if you look at sort of different human beings being treated differently based on their physical characteristics, the Gnostics would say, well, of course they're sort of battling it out over skin color because they're sort

of constrained by the material world. They think that those kinds of things matter. If only they understood that the truth of the world is in the things that you know and your spiritual being and got nothing to do with your physical characteristics, they'd abandon this whole caste system altogether. In other words, I mean, think about the racist myth that was peddled that I think it's something to do with different races being different descendants of Adam and Eve, the idea that you know, that non-white people are the descendants of Kane, the idea that like sort of this is where we get our racial divisions and because of their sort of origins, we're all sort of separate. And like people, you know, American evangelicals used this physicalist

delineation of races as a sort of theological way to justify racism. Now, I don't think that's theoretically literate. I don't think that that's appropriate. But what I'm saying is it can clearly be done whether you're a Gnostic or not. And argue, to me, the Gnostic who says the thing that matters is that you are a spiritual being constrained in a physical creature is far more akin to the idea that actually all people are sort of spiritual beings made in the image of the true God, that is Jesus, and all of this physical characteristic stuff is hogwash. Yeah. Versus the Orthodox Christian who says, no, no, you are a physical creature. Those physical characteristics are part of who you are. The other example

that you gave was sort of the gospel of Thomas and making Mary Magdalene into a man, which is one of the most bizarre parts of the Gnostic Gospels. But the objection that this is a sort of ordering of the man above the woman, I mean, I won't need to point you to the myriad examples in the letters of Paul that do exactly the same thing, making man sort of over the woman, telling women not to speak in church, saying it's disgraceful them to ask questions and they should go home and ask their husbands. In other words, like everything you just said about the sort of Gnostic tradition, well, look what it leads to. I'm like, not only can it lead to that in the Orthodox Christian tradition, but it has done as well. And so it doesn't

seem obvious to me that that's a good reason to reject Gnosticism. And even if it were, even if it were that this led to some moral problems, that wouldn't be to say that it's untrue. And as well as that, it wouldn't make it a worse account specifically of this Genesis story, of the Genesis story that you've got the sort of creator of the material world seemingly inexplicably introducing this serpent and the serpent is the one who's who like you said before unlike all the other beasts there's something special about the serpent the serpent can speak the serpent has this thing has this sort of you know godlike propensity for sort of language and understanding and probably knowledge of good and evil as well which which again for the Gnostics would say yeah that's because

it was a divine being who was also in the Garden of Eden the true good divine being that was trying to sort of bring this wisdom to Adam and Eve. So again, I want to emphasize that I'm not saying that this is true or even the best account of Genesis, but I don't think it should just be sort of, you know, hand-waved away as so many often do. I'm not saying you're doing that there, but a lot of people do. Yeah, no, I definitely don't want, I take it very seriously. And, okay, so let me go a little ways along with you to show you that I take it very seriously, which is there's a real, I can understand why people would say something like that the serpent, is Christ, you know, it's not even from the gospel themselves, there is some things in there

that can make you understand that if you can see with the structure of the story, because Jesus actually finds himself in that very position. So the text in the gospel is alludes to the fact that Jesus eats the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and that because of that, he knows good and evil. And that's what happens on the cross. On the cross, he has a good thief and a bad thief and he judges between them. He says, he says, you're the good thief, leaving the bad thief to defend for himself. And so in the crucifixion story, there is an intuition that Christ eats the fruit and knows good and evil. And because of that, enters into the holy place, right, rips the veil, goes into the holy place, and then eats the tree of life.

Right? So like I told you, like, it's important to understand that the paradise as a temple structure, right, where you have these levels. And so there's a level beyond it, which is the Holy of Holy is the place where God reveals himself. And Christ plays out that story. And so the difference again, like, for example, in the gospel, the difference is that Christ does that in an opposite way to Adam. You know, when Christ goes into the garden, right? So just before Christ is crucified, he goes. into the garden. He goes into the Garden of Gitsmena. And then he says to God, I don't want to eat this. I don't want to drink this cup. I don't want it. Like if you can take it away from me, take it away. And so the difference between him and Adam and Eve is that God says, if you eat this fruit, you will die. And Jesus says, yes. He says, okay, I will eat the fruit and I will die. And I will

no good and evil. And so there's a sense in which the crucifixion is in many ways a way to answer the problem that is set up in Genesis, which is the problem of identity, the problem of inside and outside, the problem of purpose and breakdown. And the way in which Christ seems to answer it is that instead of blaming others, you take the blame on yourself. Because that's what happens in the garden, right? In the garden, Adam blames Eve. Eve blames the serpent. And that brings about the fall. It's not just the eating of the fruit. There are many of the fathers that say that God gives Adam and Eve way a way out at every part of the story. He said, if they had taken the blame for eating the fruit, they would have gotten a way out, like, et cetera, et cetera. But they just

keep doubling down into their division and they break down into chaos. And then Jesus flips it. Jesus says, okay, I'm willing to die. I'm willing. And then I'm I will eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil out of obedience, not out of pride, not out of like self-taking. And what that will do is it will transform the very basis of the world. It will transform reality. It will create a body, right, that is cohesive and held together in love instead of a body that is divided and broken, broken, and fighting amongst each other.

And so the relationship between Christ being crucified, eating the fruit, willing being willing to die, taking the blame is reversing that which happens in the garden. And what it does is it creates a body, a body of people that are together in love. Now, obviously, you know that that's not always what happens, like in the church, there are obviously all kinds of sad reversions. But that's the way in which Jesus is akin to what happens in the garden. Like, there's a relationship between the two. And so it's not, it's understandable that Gnostics would have read or heard the gospel stories or known the gospel stories and would have come to similar conclusions.

But I think they're missing, they're missing the die part, which is God was telling the truth. If you eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die. But when Adam eats the fruit, he refuses to die. He blames, like he refuses to take death on himself. He starts, he right away, he blames. he blames Eve and he blames a serpent and he blames everybody and he's basically trying to cast off the consequence of the of the eating of the fruit and so ultimately that's the that's the the solution and and in some ways it does become the solution that

we all live in right it's like we we understand self-sacrifice as the manner in which we hold things together. As Christians, most of us, we understand it either explicitly or implicitly. We understand that if I want my family to hold together, I have to give of myself, right? I have to sacrifice my whims and my little desires for the greater good. And when I do that, then I form a body, then I participate in the formation of a true body. I have no doubt that the crucifixion of Jesus is intended as and understood as a response and solution to the problem of original sin, of the fool of Adam and Eve, this kind of stuff. The objection that I think most people have is that, especially given the seriousness of what Jesus went through,

if the thing that it's a solution for is this mysterious and seemingly unnecessary problem, it sort of makes the whole thing a bit grotesque because like the fact that God says like we have to banish Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden in case they reach out their hand and eat from the tree of life what does Jesus do? He comes to restore human beings to life

he gives them the ability to inherit eternal life and there's this implication in Genesis that had God not banished them from the Garden of Eden they could have gone and eat from the tree of eternal life and God in it that way. But no, God proactively banishes them, going as far as to guard the gates with a cherubim with a flaming sword to prevent them from, you know, eating from the tree of eternal life,

to then, you know, however long later, solved the problem through Jesus' sacrifice. So mythologically, right, the eating of the tree of life in the bad is called, it's called hell. right that's what hell is so hell is when you you you become obsessed or you break down and that breakdown becomes permanent right and so the idea that god does not want them to eat the tree of life in a state where they're ashamed and naked and blaming each other is a good thing and death now like the the death part right because

becomes a way out, like a way, it's like a, you could say to some extent that in some ways death is a blessing in some ways because what it does is it makes it possible for you to change because you feel that like you, you know, you, every time you sin, right, so now every time you sin and you misalign your point, you suffer. And now in suffering, you have an opportunity. Every sin is an opportunity. And that's what's amazing about our situation, is that every time I lie, and I suffer the consequence of my lie, it's an opportunity to readjust my aim. Every time I do something horrible

and I live with the consequences of that, it's an opportunity to change. But if I were to freeze that, if I were to freeze you in your sin, frees you in your desire, then that's hell. And people fall in them. Some people sometimes lose the capacity

through just persistent, persistent sinning. Like they lose or almost lose the capacity for repentance. And then it's a sad thing to watch someone who is obsessed. Like, you know, you've seen it. It's like a fiend or someone who's on drugs is the easiest way to see it. Like someone who comes completely taken up by a passion that they're lost. Like they're just basically living nonstop in this cycle of desire and consumption. Like you wouldn't want to freeze that.

Man, that's bad. And so death becomes actually a way out in this case. I'm interested in this idea that the afterlife doesn't really feature in the Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament. It's only really with the New Testament in Jesus that you get talk of the afterlife, both heaven and hell. And Jesus is often criticized as sort of introducing the concept of hell that isn't present in the Old Testament. And what you're saying there, it sounds like there's an interesting thought that, I mean, I hadn't considered this before, the idea that the tree of life, is something like eternality. It's something like, you know, being, like not perishing, not turning back to dust.

That's what the tree of life gives you. And if you are in a state of sin, if you are in a state of evil, then by eating the tree of life there and then you get sort of this eternal evil, which is hell, right? And so God had intended for them to stay pure, stay good, eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil when it was time and when they were given it. And then if they eat from the tree of life, you know, then really everyone lives happily ever after. But because they're in this state of having eaten and being sort of sinful or whatever, if they eat from the tree of life, they're going to hell because they'll have eternal life as sinful beings. And so God banishes them, doesn't allow that to happen.

And so there's no afterlife at all. There's no heaven. There's no hell. It's like humans just die. Jesus comes along and says, you were intended for eternal life with God. So I'm going to resurrect that ability for you. The problem is that I'm going to do that through a sacrifice, which if you don't accept, now that eternal life is back on the table, you're in a sinful state and you're going to have to go to hell.

But I'm bringing back this eternal life. It's now your choice whether you want the good version or the bad version. That's an interesting thought that might sort of, you know, explain a little bit why heaven and hell only really seem to crop up in the New Testament. Because it's Jesus sort of reopens that door to Eden. You know, he sort of bursts through the, burst past the cherub and, and says, well, here's, here's the fruit again. Now, now you get another chance. Now you can eat from the, from the eternal tree. But if you do so, you better be careful what state you're in when you do, you know. I'd find that quite an interesting thought. But I don't, I don't think that's quite what you were getting at. It's just that thought sort of crossed my mind while you were talking. Yeah, well, I think it's also because you have an interesting way, like, and it's okay, it's fine. You know, you have an interesting way of, you know, making the story arbitrary and then following the conclusion of the story. And so it's like you don't see, let's say, how the story is a description of reality. And then you kind of play along and then you see the consequences and then you just kind of play it out.

And so what I'm advocating for is that the stories in the scripture are actual descriptions of the world. Like they are our experience of reality. you live in that in that world and they're not arbitrary they can be you can see that the structure that it describes that if you do certain things there are certain consequences and if you do other things there are consequences if you trust certain things there are consequences and if you trust other things there are consequences and those are completely predictable right you can predict that if someone trusts something there will be positives and negatives downstream and depending on what it is that you trust then those those things can play them

themselves out and that the stories in the scripture, they are accounts of that reality. And so the idea that, right, so the idea that, you know, the way that you presented, like, especially, I think you've talked to evangelicals too much. Like, you know, when you say something like, well, if you accept that sacrifice, then you go to heaven. And if you don't accept that sacrifice, you go to hell. That's not the world that I, that I live in. You know, I'm an Orthodox Christian. just not the world that we exist in, you know, the manner in which it's described in the Orthodox tradition is as a description of that which is real. And so the, for example, like St. Max with the confessor, who is my favorite saint and, you know, he's a doctor in the

church, he says that all of creation, the purpose of all creation is to become God. That's actually why it was created. It's all that is created is there to be united. with God, and that is the telos of all beings. And we are all called to follow that telos to the extent that we can. We're all called to enter into that reality to the extent that we can. Having said that, there are realities to certain things that we do that are just part of how the world function. So if you, it's like if you hate your origin, then that has consequences.

Because if you hate your origins, you will end up hating all that is downstream from your origins. And then you will live in a world of perpetual contempt and hate. And that's a bad place to be. That's a place that is self-destructive. And so the descriptions of eternal torment, they are, in some ways, they are taking the real consequences of things and then expanding them in the extreme to fullness so that you can see them. So if you live this way, this is what it's going to do. And you have glimpses of it in life where you see it. You don't see the extreme version.

The extreme version is gory and, you know, like it's fire and whatever, brimstone and being poked in certain places in your body because of whatever. But those images are there to help you understand the consequence of certain actions and certain ways of being. Like, they lead to that. Obviously, if you are not careful and you don't try to understand the means. meaning of the stories, then it all looks like the silly thing that is just, you know, it's like, okay, so now, like, what is it? I mean, the way that it's presented, so Jesus, you know, you're supposed to, this is the right, the substitutionary atonement, whatever, like, you're supposed to die. Now, God sends Jesus. Jesus dies in your place, and you have to kind of believe that.

And if you believe that, then when you die, you go to heaven. And if you don't believe that, then you die, you go to hell. I mean, that's, that's pretty superficial. Like, that's not much you know and and I think that you know it's okay some people will hopefully people who leave it at that it will nonetheless create in them the right patterns of being for them to be the best types of people that they can be you know hopefully it's enough you know that's a great thing about religious stories is that they're not they we don't need all of us to understand them at the at the most subtle level you can have a very basic uneducated understanding and that it still means that you're going to try to be nice and love your neighbor and be good to people around you,

even though you don't necessarily have the subtle understanding of Dante or some of some great theologian. And anyway, I mean, and it's, people think like, okay, so now Jonathan is just myth a lot. You know, he doesn't want to believe in the literal descriptions or whatever, but it's not like this is, all of these things are describing realities. They're not just metaphors are not just allegories. They're describing real things. They're describing them in the best way possible because they're describing things that are in some ways processes of being. So you have to describe them through analogy. There's no other way, but they're describing them in the best possible way. And like Dante, for example, if you read the comedian, Dante at some point,

he like makes fun of people who at some point, Beatrice warns him. And she says, he's like, you know, when you're going up to heavenly spheres, Dante, the saints don't actually. live in the spheres, okay? They don't live in the planets. This is a condescending language to help you understanding what is most lofty in being. And so we have this hierarchy of planets, this hierarchy of beings, and saints live there according to their virtues. They don't actually live there physically, like we're not Mormons. There are two questions that spring to mind. I mean, what you just said began with saying that I sort of make the stories arbitrary and follow them to their conclusion. It seems to me like you're quite unwilling

to sort of consider possible alternate histories. I mean, I understand that there are certain things which you think would be fixed and unchangeable. Presumably, you know, if I ask you, well, what if God just didn't exist? You could say, well, God has to exist. That doesn't make sense as a question. I'd understand that.

But saying, like, me considering these possibilities of, what if Adam and Eve just said no to the serpent? And what if God made them of such a psychological constitution that they were more prone to doing that? Or what if God designed things such that they were more attuned to that? Or what if God just warned them about the serpent? You know, is there some reason? The fact that God doesn't say there's this lying serpent that's going to come and try and fool you,

given that he probably knows that's going to happen, seems a little bit sort of malicious, sort of malice by omission. And when I was sort of asking those kinds of questions, you seem pretty intent on saying, but this is just the way that it is. This is just how it happened. but there seems to me there seems to be no reason to not be able to just to just ask the question like but what if it didn't happen that way you know like what if it just happened another way and why couldn't it have happened another way and if there's a god who sort of ordains this and oversees this why didn't it happen another way you know what I mean and so you could say if you if that's helpful to you that's helpful to you that there are people at least according to orth our tradition that do live that way that do that are capable of living that way. So example, in the tradition, we say that Mary didn't eat the fruit and didn't sin and therefore lived in paradise, or was paradise, that's how we describe her,

as paradise herself. And so that is possible. And then you could ask yourself, for example, like, when the Bible describes a just person in scripture, what it is that they're, like, to what level are they describing someone who has access to the garden, let's say. There's a description in the book of Ezekiel where Ezekiel describes a king and says that he was in the garden and that he fell. And so it is probably then possible. And if you read the saints, like there's a great text called The Hymns on Paradise by San Defer from the series. And St. Ephraim seems to suggest that there are people that live in paradise now, that it is possible to live in paradise. It's just very difficult because we have these, because we have

because we are made in the image of God, then the temptation to self-name and to be proudful, to be full of pride is possible. And so that's the only thing I could answer to that, you know, but like in terms of like a cosmic story of trying to imagine a story in which that didn't happen. I mean, I can understand how it's kind of interesting and a speculative level, but it's very uninteresting on an existential level because the purpose of understanding these stories is to know how to live and to know how to be. It's not just it's not just that it's interesting. It's that it sort of serves as an objection to say that there's a problem with this story.

that it did happen this way, that it could have happened in a way that didn't involve the fool, they didn't involve the suffering, they didn't involve the veil of tears and all this kind of stuff. But do you understand what that means in your life, which means that what you're suggesting is that the world should be different than what it is. There's a problem with the fact that I suffer and that I'm going to die and that I have to watch other people suffer, that I might and that I'll die in pain, probably, possibly, you know, that maybe you'll die in a car accident and you'll have to watch the person next to bleed out. Like, all of these things are... I think I'm more, I think I'm more putting my finger on, on not just that there's a problem with that, but there's a problem

that the fact that that obtains seemed like it didn't have to be the case, according to the story. Like, I understand what you're saying there. Like, that's interesting to be like, ah, but, you know, aren't you doing something interesting there, Alex? Because, because you seem to be implying that there's a problem with the way that the world is. It's a problem with sinning. There's a problem with this kind of stuff and sure, but that's not quite what I'm saying. I think what I'm saying is that the problem is not, you know, sin and death. The problem is that sin and death entered the world in a way that seemingly, in my reading of the story, could have been avoided. And like I said, when you do that, you make it into something that's not a

description of reality, because you live in a world of sin and death. And you have to, you have to find But I'm saying I didn't have to, right? But you do. I mean, you don't have to live in a world of sin and death. But the problem is that, like, again, this is what I was saying earlier about the whole George Washington thing. It's like, yeah, but you do live in that world. I know, but the very objection that I'm making is that we could have been in a world where that wasn't the case. Well, how about this?

And that is, and that is not my fault, right? I can, I'm going to do something that I've never done in the entirety of my YouTube presence is I'm going to do an altar call for you. right now, Alex. It's like, you can actually live in paradise. And I'm not saying I do, but it is possible to live in paradise. I know what you mean. And I think people will, listening to this, the Christian listeners will go, ah, see, yeah. No, no, no. But it's clever, but, but I think it is slightly missing what I'm saying. I'm not saying the problem is that I'm not living in paradise. What I'm saying is that my propensity to not do so, the fact that I live in a world that entices me to not do so, the fact that I've inherited a human nature that makes

me not want to do so, all of that entered the world in accordance to Genesis in a way that could have been avoided, but wasn't by someone else that had nothing to do with me that I'm now suffering as a result of, you know, like that, that's the problem. The problem is not just, you know, I'm a sinner and there's a way the world should be that I want it to be and that it isn't. But the fact that it is that way and not the other way is something that could have so easily been avoided. And maybe that's my sort of condemnation of what Adam and Eve did. Maybe that's me saying, oh, what they did was so bad and stupid and they should have not done that. But the sort of higher order problem is that I do it. I do that. But I'm told what Adam and Eve does,

I do that. The reason I do that is because I've inherited it from Adam and Eve, that if they hadn't done that, then I wouldn't be doing this all the time. Yeah. But maybe that's a misunderstanding of the story. And also, like, it's interesting, even in the Orthodox, in the Orthodox tradition, we don't believe in original sin in the same way that Catholics and Protestants believe that. Yeah, sure. Because the idea we don't believe that sin is transmitted, like, genetically or whatever that is, like this weird transmission.

Like, what the sin brought into the world is death, and we live in a world of death. And now, because of death, then we do have a propensity to sin, because we we feel that desire right you feel that that danger and now because of that danger you want to grab you want to take you want to you want to you want to act in against others because you're will you want to protect yourself at all cost and so you're willing to lie you're willing to cheat you're willing to kill you're willing to do all the things that we do to protect ourselves like adam and eve put on the garments and so that's so that's so that's something that we do all the time. Like, we're constantly repeating the gesture of Adam and Eve

in the garden. You know, and, but we don't, in some ways, the news, like, let's say the, the good news is that we don't have to. Like, there is a way out. It's not an easy one, but there is a way out of that. And that's why, that's why, like, I went so much at you saying it could have been different. Like, it may be, we could have told the story in another way, but we need to tell the story in a way that it counts for... the world, the way it is, right, and our experience in it, which is this experience of the gap and the experience of suffering and pain and sin, the sin in the sense of knowing that I don't do the things that I want to do and constantly feeling that, you know, in myself, that gap.

Yeah. I guess, you know, to wrap up here, I'm interested in what people will make of this because maybe I'm missing something important, but it seems a lot to me, like, sort of, sort of, the objection I'm making is, is the way that God has, has, has brought this about, right? Like, if, if a parent were to, were to smoke and drink alcohol while they're pregnant and give birth to a child, and the child sort of says, oh, what, you know, why is, why is it like this?

This, this kind of sucks, you know? And, and the parents kind of like, well, that's just what happened. And they're like, yeah, but what I'm asking you is why, why did you do this to me? Like, why did you make it such that this is how I am? And they're just like, but this is how you are. And they're like, yeah, but I've got a, I've kind of got a big problem with that. And they say, oh, well, that's, that's great.

If you've got a problem, you know, there's a way that the world should be. There's this person you want to be. And there's the person you are. And guess what, son, every single day you have a choice to better yourself and make. And hold on a second. Like, that's really nice. And I get what you're saying, but you're missing the objection I'm making, which is, why did you make this problem in the first place, right?

And so, like, with God, he creates the world in such. a way that there is the serpent who falls Adam and Eve, all of this kind of stuff, sin enters the world. And now I'm left in a position of saying, yeah, there's a way that the world is that I prefer it was not. So I nearly said should there, which would have been a whole mind-filled in its own. But, like, as interesting as that may be, the objection that I'm making, I'm not objecting that the world isn't how I want it to be. I'm objecting that according to Genesis, it's not the way I want it to be through no fault of my own. You know what I mean? But that's also true, isn't it?

Like, isn't it true that the world, you know, you're born with the disease? I think that, I think that's true. That's like, again, that's like the parent, that's like the parent saying to the disabled child, yeah, but you just, you just are, that's true, isn't it? You are disabled. And I think it's like, yeah, that is true. But what I'm saying is that I shouldn't be, you know, you've made me this way in a way that I don't think is morally justifiable.

So, all right, so I understand what you're saying. So, so now you have a problem, right? Okay. So you have this problem, which is that God as the source of all good and of all being, you know, creates the world in a certain way. Things go a certain way. And there's this annoyance because we get, we have the sense that that's not how it should be. That maybe could have been different. Okay. Now, you have a problem, which is that you still have to account for the gap. You still have, so if you want to judge God, or say, therefore, I don't believe God exists because I have in me this sense that there's something unfair about how things are. And therefore, I say, well, then it can't be. Like, the world can't be this way. Like, it shouldn't be this way.

And so I don't want to believe in God. You still have the problem, which is that how do you account for the gap? Like, why do you even experience that gap? Why do you have in you the vision of a. good that God did not submit to or that or that or that the transcended the origin of all things did not manifest in the way that I think should be manifested. Of course I don't know. I mean, this is where I would say, for example, the Gnostic answer to that is that, well,

because Alex, you're completely right that the God who created you in this way with the garden and the serpent and all that kind of stuff is an either evil or incompetent God. That's why you've got this problem. But the reason you still have that desire for the world to be better is because is the true part of yourself, the spiritual self and non-material self, which is embodied by the serpent in the story, is, you know, still a part of your nature. And so it's that sort of spiritually true part of yourself fighting against the material prison that you find yourself in. Again, not endorsing that's the case, but there's one answer. You'll have to do is

posit a higher god, right? So you would have to posit some pleeroma that is beyond duality and that wouldn't abase itself to the creation of this dirty kind of dead, dead stuff. Or wouldn't be responsible for its creation, you know? Yeah. And so, I mean, how can I say? So in the Gnostic tradition, that's what Jesus is. Yeah. And so he is, but why, so he is the manifestation of this higher God.

Or like the only real God, you know, the creator of the material world isn't, I think I think calling it God or a God is maybe a little bit misleading. It's sort of like a divine creative being, but God is the true sort of spiritual self, which is Jesus, you know. Yeah, who's there to free us from this material prison. Yeah. Well, I mean, I hate to say it, but it's like then say goodbye to science. Say goodbye to all the things that have made, I mean, that in,

that it seems, at least in your case, that have been part of your path even to questioning the existence of God, because all of these things are downstream from the fact that the world is ordered and that the world has, can be patterned in a manner that can be, that it is ordered and predicted. And so if the world is just like this dirty shell of evil, then even human inquisitiveness into that world is, useless and pointless and pointless and stupid and we should all we should do is

basically kill ourselves or maybe maybe starve ourselves that would be the best way to do it so you basically refuse to engage with this world of death until you with it until your body withers and your spirit escapes or maybe there's another way you know some of the Gnostic seemed also to have said well because this world doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter what I do, right? I could do whatever. There's no more moral order. There's no more, all of moral order disappears because basically this is just a bunch of crap.

I can do whatever I want with it. And my real spirit is up there in the heavens. And that's what I need to really, you know, remember. And so downstream from that worldview are a lot of dark things. I think, yeah, I mean, there's so much more to discuss. I'm conscious of time, and so perhaps this is sort of fuel for a further discussion. I mean, the science thing. I think that the world can still be ordered and organized, even if it's evil, even if it's

the product of a malicious deity. I suppose I don't identify the chaotic with evil in the same way you do, and maybe that's the sticking point. Maybe is the sort of... Well, I don't, actually, I don't associate chaotic with evil. This is not moral evil, that I'm very careful about that. That would be the more Gnostic way of thinking. but um right yeah right of course yeah but i i i mean i i appreciate i just want to say like

you know i i made a video about about you and jordan peterson and before you finish i just want to say that i i i really appreciate the way that you come up come at this and i i think that of all the kind of skeptic types that we see in in the internet world i see that you are you have shown yourself to be the most honest like in terms of trying to figure out at least what the person is saying before going at it. And I've seen you go hard at people. Like, I mean, I've seen you go really hard at people. And so, but I think, I think you're doing it at least it seems like you're doing it

out of a place of look. This is like, take it serious. I take what, I take what you're saying seriously. And I'm going to play out your own story and see how you react to it. And I, and I just want to acknowledge that. Well, thank you. I think, I think it's, it's tricky. You know, running a podcast has been an interesting experience because I'll have people

on. I got some criticism that I wasn't sort of pushing back enough. But I have to say it's a different feeling. You know, if somebody, if we were on someone else's platform right now having a debate about Genesis, I could have been a lot more forthright. I could have interrupted you and said, no, look, look, I'm sorry, Jonathan. You're not understanding what I'm saying. What about this?

Come on, think about this. But you didn't consider this, did you? Ah, oh, yeah, that, oh, great point. That totally explains that, you know, that sort of energy. And it sort of feels more appropriate to do it because you've signed up to sort of bring your A game to like a debate and discuss. whereas on a podcast, it's like, look, you're my guest, you know, I've welcomed you onto my show. You've given up your time to have a conversation with me. And so I was a lot

more sort of, sort of calm and receptive. What I'm trying to do is, you know, take that sort of that chaotic and that, that, that order and merge it together into an interview style, which is at once, you know, fierce enough in its pushback, but also retains that energy of welcoming. I I never want someone to leave the podcast thinking, gosh, that was a bit hairy. I didn't feel very welcome there. I felt like I was just being sort of being shouted at. And so I'm still trying to work it out. So for people listening, I'm still trying to, trying to, you know, get that together.

But I think it does manifest sometimes in, at the very least, on the podcast environment, trying to just listen to what the other person is bloody well saying. You know what I mean? It's like famously they say that people don't so much listen as they just sort of wait for their turn to talk, which is just a it's the greatest sin of good conversation so I try my best

and I appreciate you saying so it means a lot that you would say that but I hope the people listening also recognize that this is a this is a it's a craft

that I'm still trying to trying to learn I was going to say you know try to perfect but I'm still trying to learn it more than anything so yeah it means a lot and it's motivating

and hopefully we can continue to embody that in future discussions perhaps with you again on the areas that we didn't quite get to cover this time. But yeah, I think we've left that at a point where I'll be interested to see what people say. I think we'll have to sort of gauge the conversation, gauge what people are saying underneath and see if we've done a good enough job trying to sort of raise our objections at each other.

And I hope you feel like it's been worth your time. Jonathan Bajal, thanks for coming on. Thanks. Oh, it's been great. I enjoy it, definitely. Thank you.