Good & Bad in the context of Adam’s Fall

In my PHIL101 class, our first reading is Plato’s “Meno”. The initial dialogue in Meno is about how to define what virtue is (or is not) – a difficult problem. An initial definition given by Meno for discussion:

Virtue: the desire of beauty and the power to attain it

Socrates, the other participant in the dialogue, brings up a good question that I’ve considered a few times before:

(S): “Does anyone wish to be miserable?”

This brings up a paradox. Some men think something that is, for the moment, considered ‘objectively’ as “bad” (e.g., would make them miserable) as something that is “good” (something that would make them happy). Essentially, some men desire things that they think will please, but in fact would cause pain.

There are then three categories of people according to Socrates/Meno:

1. Those who know what is “good”, and desire good

2. Those who don’t know what is good, but desire good

3. Those who know what is good, but desire bad (e.g., they are aware that bad things would make them miserable.)

Socrates and Meno agree that no one wishes to be miserable, and therefore the third category of men does not exist. This leaves only two categories then: those who have an accurate ability to predict what will please them, and those who are inaccurate/misguided in this ability. Meno and Socrates determine then that it is not the desire of good things that makes a man virtuous by Meno’s given definition, but rather the second condition of it: the ability to acquire good things. While discussion of this second condition leads to a further paradox of the definition itself, that is not what I wish to discuss in this post.

Adam’s Fall

As I said before, I have thought about Socrates’s question before, but in a different context – the fall of Adam/Eve in the Genesis story. It would seem at first that Eve made a bad decision with the full knowledge of its consequences when she ate the fruit of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”.

However, if we are to take this english phrase at face value in the context of the story, it would imply that Adam and Eve had no previous conception of what “good” and “evil” are. I think the definition of “evil” could be stretched to the implied definition in the dialogue of Meno:

bad/evil: to harm, to make miserable or unhappy

Adam and Eve in fact had no concept of how to distinguish good and evil (as defined here) – using a literal interpretation of this phrase “knowledge of good and evil”, they would fall into the second category of people – those who are misguided, or otherwise unable to make judgments for themselves of what course of action would maximize their pleasure.

From this, it would seem that Adam/Eve were given a rather unfair test of whether to follow God’s or Satan’s advice.

Consider what Eve was told by God and Satan:

God: If you eat from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”, you will die.

Satan: If you eat from the tree, you will not surely die. God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

Given the choice of certain death, or possible death with the gain of knowledge, what would you choose? Well, given that Eve had no way of predicting which would please more, but obviously knowledge is something she wanted for some reason, it is apparent what choice she should make. Despite Eve’s complete lack of a frontal lobe (which is our mental predictor of pain or pleasure), there is one other thing to consider in regards to the advice given. Who should Eve have trusted more? While it is easy to say “God”, since He created her, there is still a dilemma given that most likely she had no conception of what a lie is either, and therefore likely had to trust any information given to her equally.

It is then interesting to contemplate the truth of both God and Satan’s advice – did either of them really lie?

In the absolute sense, God was truthful in this storyline – if Eve ate of the tree, it would lead to a deterministic, causal chain of events where she would be kicked out of the Garden of Eden, unable to eat from the Tree of Life that can sustain eternal life, and eventually wither away.

However, I would posit that God did not reveal the *whole* truth in this matter, and that in fact Satan was more honest: The determining factor of whether Eve would eventually live or die was dependent upon eating from the Tree of Life. God kicked them out of Eden because they ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but the knowledge of good and evil did not in and of itself kill Eve or Adam.

On the other hand, Satan told Eve what the direct effect of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil would be. Also, he was correct in that given a pluralistic universe in which the future is not determined, it is possible for Eve to not die – all it would take is for God to allow Eve to stay in Eden. This is do-able, but God made the decision to kick them out. Why? Well, that’s not explained. Is there something just horribly terrible about having the knowledge of good and evil? Something corrosive? Or was it just the fact that they disobeyed God’s order not to eat from the tree? In any of these cases, it seems a rather harsh punishment for such a minor infraction.

This interpretation of Adam’s Fall does not put God in a very flattering light as a moderate and just ruler. Undoubtedly, it is an unacceptable portrayal if you are a christian. If God is just, there must be a good alternate explanation of the situation in which Adam and Eve make the decision with the full knowledge of the potential consequences of eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

But wait one second – what category would that put Adam and Eve under? Ah, yes, – category 3, those who know good from bad, but sitll desire the bad – they in fact, desire to be miserable. This comes full circle to Socrates’s original question:

(S): “Does anyone wish to be miserable?”

Well, I would say no. I honestly don’t think anyone would disagree with the assertion that people desire to be happy. Therefore, either Adam and Eve were entirely unhuman in this aspect, and did desire misery, or they were human and there was a compounding factor such as pure stupidity (another human quality that is in abundance!). In the case of stupidity, you would think God might have some mercy?!

So, really, Adam and Eve must have not known what was coming. Fundamentally then, this was an unfair test of judgment given that Adam and Eve had none. Since God was the designer of this entire situation, I would further posit that he did not directly desire us to be happy, since he put us into the very situation in which we could not have possibly made the right choice other than by shear chance (a 50/50 shot) of choosing or not choosing to eat that apple. It would seem we are rats in a maze with poisoned cheese.

I think this leaves us with a God with one of two kinds of character:

1. Apathetic – God puts two humans into a situation in which they must use nonexistent judgmental powers to decide whether or not to follow orders. Given that we make the wrong choice, we are destined for a lot of suffering.

2. Vindictive – God puts two humans into a deterministic universe in which He already knows that they will make the wrong choice, and be destined for a lot of suffering.

Neither of these gods appeal to me. What about you?