opening the can of worms

Those of a questioning bent, disenchanted with the quandaries of materialistic science, frequently turn to religion. Its representatives have lauded themselves as having the
question of evil in hand, as possessing the special abilities and knowledge, which alone address mankind’s epistemological conundrums. For 2,000 years, Christianity and the major religions have sought to account for the presence of evil. They have not succeeded in giving us any clear answer. In attempting to answer one question, they have fostered thousands of new ones. And some might argue that along with science, religion is one of the most adroit exponents of evil in the world today. And indeed, when we review the canon of Christianity, we have good reason to feel frustrated. One may well ask, what is going on in the Bible? Let us then take a brief look.

We are told by the religions that man has two natures, good and evil. One is then compelled to ask why God would instill such propensities in his own creations who are made in his image?

We read that God created man and woman. This implies that God is not man or woman “himself.” Yet, consistently, the post-diluvian religions all over the globe, constantly depicted and referred to God as male? They do this even when, in the case of Hebrew,
the name for deity is of feminine gender.

We are told that man was not originally evil. He became that way after the disobedience of Eve in the Garden. Why would God create something born in his image and then deny him some aspect of knowledge and then even banish him from paradise after
it had been received?

We must also ask why God would condemn his creations for something that was not a conscious transgression? Why the tests imposed on those who must already be innocent in nature?

Then we are told that the parents sinned, only after they fell under the influence of the evil one, Satan. So we ask, why would God allow his newly created beings to be in the proximity of this “evil one?” Who created the serpent? Nowhere in the Genesis account is there any mention, direct or indirect, of Satan’s involvement, and yet it has become common practice for the Church to portray the serpent as an emissary of Satan, or even as Satan himself. (Laurence Gardener)

If Satan could even have the ability to aspire toward supreme Godhead, and if there are hierarchies of angels, etc., then perhaps God can indeed be surpassed? What are we to make of this?

If it is true, as the Bible declares and theologians state that the “sin” involved Adam and Eve being made conscious of their “nakedness,” does this mean that God and the Serpent and the others that were around were clothed?

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all. (Thomas Paine)

Thanks to scholars, we now know that the Book of Genesis is a simulacra of earlier Sumerian, Akkadian, and Egyptian originals, in which the experiences of the dramatis personae are suggestively similar. The net result is that the Christian hegemony has no answer for the existential predicaments of man. In fact, they have made these worse. They espouse no answers or remedies that do not themselves foster the repression of
the natural instincts. Surely, after 2,000 years of such labyrinthine diversions, theological nonsense, and prevarication, it is time to hand out the “pink slip” to the representatives of religion and pay no more mind to their hyperbole..