Why does the story of Adam and Eve still resonate in our cultural consciousness, given that anyone with a smattering of science can demolish the idea that life began the way Genesis describes? Evolution can be seen occurring in the fruit fly in school lab dishes. GPs refuse to prescribe antibiotics because over-prescribing means bacteria will evolve to become resistant.
However, the Bible’s Book of Genesis is a spiritual starting point for the 46-66% of American citizens and the 17% of British people who believe the world is less than 10,000 years old. For Roman Catholics – who, since 1950, have had no argument with Darwinian evolution, and for Anglicans – who, 126 years after his death, apologized to Darwin for not believing in him, is a parable about nature intrinsically sinful of humanity.
In its philosophical form, the biblical fall of man becomes creationism, a specter that continues to haunt a small number of innocent schoolchildren in the UK and US, including those unfortunate enough to find themselves in the industry. fundamentalist Accelerated Christian Education (ACE). . Rumors of creationists seizing power and influence in secular institutions like the White House continue to plague political commentary at election time.
To skeptics, creationism, with its talking snakes, angels, and tyrant god, belongs with Hogwarts, tarot cards, and astral projections, in the world of esotericism. The intellectual tide turned decidedly against him in 1859, with Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. In the years that followed, this tide has reached tsunami proportions, largely thanks to neo-Darwinian gurus of popular science such as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay-Gould. . Any bubble of hope for biblical literalism that occasionally rises in the primordial soup of our educational system immediately bursts. For example, in 2012, legislation was introduced in the UK to force all free schools to teach evolution through natural selection.
The reason Adam and Eve have never left is that they are more than interesting ghosts of a bygone, primitive age, when the closest things to paleontology were Homeric sea monsters and the dragon of Saint George. The Fall of Man is firmly entrenched in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic holy books, and indeed in our broader cultural consciousness, because as a story it has the magic dust of genius. A comparison with other creation myths, ancient and modern, supports this:
• The Lakota North American Indian tribe believed that the cosmos began when Inktomi, the spider, caused trouble between the sun god and his moon wife.
• For the African Bakuba, a gastroenteritis attack caused the white giant Mbombo to vomit up the firmament, the first man and woman, some animals and a whole variety of vegetation.
• The Egyptians thought that the god Atum’s own pleasure resulted in moisture (semen) and air (breath).
• And Ron Hubbard of Scientology decreed that life began when the alien Xenu brought billions of people to earth in a spaceship long ago and placed them around volcanoes.
These creation accounts lack the psychological and moral depth of the Jewish/Muslim/Christian Adam and Eve, in which we recognize in ourselves the foolishness, ennui, and fallibility of the eponymous protagonists. Who can fail to be moved by Adam’s loyalty, or horrified by the serpent’s plausibility? There are many layers and possible interpretations to the Genesis story: one could say, for example, that the real villain of the piece is God, so swelled with pride that he cannot forgive his pair of lovers in paradise when, predictably, curiosity seizes him. best of them and eat the forbidden fruit. It would be hard to find a clearer case of entrapment! This is a calculating God: by condemning not only them, but all of his progeny, to hard work, sin, and death, he unleashes a gripping series about himself, for generations of fans to follow.
A splendid allegory of human frailty, curiosity, and our natural propensity to overstep the limits imposed on us by human and natural laws, the story of Adam and Eve remains in our cultural repertoire, not because it is scientific fact, but because, in the simple and digestible format of a parable, it is the imperfect magnificence of humanity in miniature.