Striking the Root - Applegate

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil for every one who is striking the root.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Applegate (Damn Yankees, The Simpsons) refers to the story of Adam and Eve, The Serpent, and The Unwieldy Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (henceforth, "the apple"), and God. Applegate is the root of the Christian religion. It is why you need Salvation. If Applegate didn't happen the way Christians say it did, then you don't need Jesus Christ.

Applegate is at the beginning of Genesis, part of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or Old Testament. There is no evidence whatsoever that this story is real, but it is derived from earlier Babylonian and Sumerian traditions. When modern Jews read this exact same story, they don't see what Christians see. Why not? Because Christians need to heap their interpretation on top of it.

Christians consider that sin is any action contrary to God's Will (Commandments), essentially disobedience not immorality. Now knowing this, Christianity is reduced to a totally immoral faith. God commanded not to eat the apple, therefore eating it is sin, in this case the Original Sin that causes The Fall of Man (Applegate). You are to obey God's Will and if you defy Him, God's Will becomes for you to die, so just try to defy Him then.

Eve was the last creation and had not witnessed, and did not know, much of anything. Almost as much can be said of man. God created fish, birds, and livestock (Gen 1:20-25) before man and woman (Gen 1:26). The second chapter goes into more detail of the creation of man (Gen 2:7) and later woman (Gen 2:21).

God Commands Adam not to eat the apple or he will surely die (Gen 2:16-17). Does this mean the apple is poison, or is death a punishment, or is there some other explanation? God certainly offers nothing here. If merely knowing Good and Evil made one die, then God would have to be dead.

We find out later, that it is not eating the apple that directly causes death, as in poison or a switch, rather, it is not also eating The Fruit of the Tree of Life, henceforth "the orange" (Gen 3:22). If man could eat the orange, regardless of the fact that he had eaten the apple, he would not die.

Adam and Eve may not have known anything at all. That doesn't mean they were stupid, but definitely they were ignorant and infant-like, hardly blameworthy. They had just been created. Could they have any idea what any of this means? Ignorance may not be an excuse, but without the fruit of knowledge, ignorance is the state of affairs. God knew that they could not understand and he made no effort to explain or appeal to them to gain their trust.

Why should he? I get this a lot. Presumably because this is his creation, and he should care about it. If he didn't care, why even bother to kill them? What difference does it make to God?

What is the purpose of the apple tree? It seems to be there only to serve the purpose of the Fall of Man. God does not eat from it. No one else is mentioned. You can learn more by looking at the origins of the tradition of course, but that just makes the Christian view that much harder to believe.

Putting the apple tree in the garden for no apparent reason is exactly the same as leaving your child alone with a loaded gun with the safety off.

Then there is the theoretical eternity that the apple tree would be there to tempt them. Sure, they broke down almost immediately, but if they hadn't how long could they really last?

Eve had not yet been created (Gen 2:21) when God told Adam not to eat the apple (Gen 2:16). Nevertheless somehow she knew what God said (Gen 3:2).

The Serpent says you will not surely die, and you will be like God (Gen 3:5). Both of these things happen to be true, as confirmed by God himself (Gen 3:22).

The command against eating the apple was essentially arbitrary, since we know that eating them is harmless, in fact desirable for gaining wisdom, let alone staving off hunger. At best, the apples belonged to God, as his property, so taking them might be considered stealing. Unfortunately no explanation is given whatsoever. Blind obedience is expected.

Applegate seems to be a case of fraud, with the Serpent being guilty of lying, although technically the Serpent told the truth, and presumably having something to be gained, although this is not stated. What did the Serpent have to gain from this statement, besides an honest sharing of knowledge? Maybe the Serpent also wanted to know if eating the apple would cause you to die, but was smart enough to get someone else to try it first.

And Adam and Eve are the victims of fraud, having everything to lose, and tricked into presumably stealing the apple. And the penalty for stealing is absurdly harsh.

You can say that the knowledge they gained could not be removed but this would be false. Aside from leaving God impotent, there are a few ways of making people forget things.

Adam and Eve implicitly trusted God when he told Adam not to eat the apple. They did not know the truth of the matter. How could they? When the Serpent told them a different story, this reduced their certainty of what God said and their trust in God. God loses credibility through his own actions for lying and not being forthcoming. God made no effort whatsoever to build trust in any way and even today expects absolute faith.

This is the essence of the breaking of trust. It is not temptation. I can offer you my absolute faith, and I can feel remorse when it is misplaced, but you can't demand it from me. You must earn it. God fails to do that. Even God put his faith in Adam and Eve, and it was his fault for doing so, so it's clear he doesn't understand this lesson from either point of view.

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So Eve eats the apple and gives some to Adam, and of course, Adam and Eve didn't die. This story fosters the hatred of women even today, and even amongst Jews with their Lilith. This is arrogant presumption. Adam took the fruit, he was just as gullible as the woman. Nowhere does it say The Serpent tried to tempt Adam and failed.

God was walking in the garden (Gen 3:8), which to Christians implies he was wearing his Jesus Skin complete with holes, but this does not mean he was not omniscient while Applegate was taking place. Maybe God was never omniscient?

Omniscience contradicts Free Will. If someone knows the future before it happens, then it is necessary that you make specific choices and there is no possibility that you could choose otherwise. There is no possibility Adam and Eve could choose not to eat the apple.

Nonetheless, throwing off his omniscience is either ignorant: He didn't know what would happen, which is extremely unlikely; irresponsible: He didn't care if man is destroyed, which is plausible, especially if you like to ask "Why should He?"; or intentional: He wanted it to turn out this way, which is the most likely explanation.

Gen 3:10-11 then goes on to demonstrate total unawareness of the fact of the existence of cultures and societies that have no problems with nudity and sexuality, and the fact that these concepts are unrelated to Good and Evil. This fosters the continued intolerance of sexuality in Christian hypocrites.

God punishes the Serpent by taking away its legs. Why? If the Serpent is guilty, then Adam and Eve aren't. Technically, God gave no commands to the Serpent, so it is impossible for the Serpent to sin. Nowhere in Genesis is The Serpent equated with any higher being, like say Satan or someone, and this is clear from God's penalty to the Serpent alone (3:14). How could God be unaware the serpent was controlled by an angel, especially when he still had the power to punish the serpent?

God says to someone(?) that man has become like one of us(?) (whoever they are) and for some reason (again, not given) must not be allowed to live forever (Gen 3:22). This clearly stamps death as the Will of God. If you believe death is an inevitable result of sin, this verse contradicts your view.

God banishes man and woman (Gen 3:23), which is undeniably an expression of punishment, and places guards around the orange tree (Gen 3:24) to prevent them from eating the oranges and living forever.

If God is unable to change His Will, He does not have Free Will. In fact the whole concept of Christ's Salvation was made up because God refuses to change his mind and simply forgive as humans can and do, while there are plenty of cases throughout the Bible when God changes his mind. (See especially Jer 18:7-10, Matt 15:22-28/Mark 7:25-30.)

Simple forgiveness is actually beyond the comprehension of Christians who believe in ridiculously confusing overcomplicated nonsense instead. It is actually complicated for a reason, to make it difficult for less-than-average folk to realise it's just stupidity and just accept it outright.

Eating the apple is not just a poison to man, but to the whole earth (Gen 3:17), and some interpret this to apply to the whole universe. Reading the scripture clearly shows God exercise His Will to curse (whatever that means) the ground, as it was when he put guards around the orange tree.

This makes it necessary to destroy the whole earth and heaven too, and create a new heaven and earth. How wonderful it is to be totally psychotic. We also need new physical bodies for our spirits, even though it is the spirit that chooses sin. The body is just an instrument! After a drunk driver kills someone and wrecks his car, you must give him a new car. All is forgiven.

All of this proves that God is imperfect, because he made The Serpent imperfect, and He made man imperfect, and He ruined all of his own creation by himself almost immediately. Or it proves that this was all intentional, which isn't supported by Scripture.

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Eventualy Adam and Eve do die, but it was clearly because of God's Will (Gen 3:22) to prevent them from eating oranges. But even though they eventually die, Christians needed to come up with an explanation why they didn't die "in the day they eat of it," immediately.

This is when death becomes confounded. Confusion is the key to brainwashing, and you can always tell when someone is brainwashed because they claim to fully understand both Death and the Trinity even though these concepts are intentionally confounded for the purpose of brainwashing.

That is where we get not only First Death and Second Death, but the unnamed default Zeroeth Death, separation from God, none of which are kin to real death.

The First Death is proposed to be physical death, but you go to Sheol, likened to Sleep, the original Jewish version of Hell or Hades, because after all this is the Jewish Bible. You must be careful, because this is of course not real death, which is simple physical death without anything after it.

Then there's the Second Death, being tossed into the Lake of Fire, Gehenna, (Christian Hell) after the final judgment. It doesn't say second death in scripture until it gets obviously tacked on at the very end in Revelation, but people will believe anything they want to be true. They really want Hellfire to be true, because they're sadistic psychopaths.

And what is proposed to be the death that occurs immediately when they ate the apple? Why "separation from God" of course. That is the definitive death for Christians. So I am dead and all non-believers are dead, and of course, Christians who do not fully understand that they face the Lake of Fire are dead too, and bound for Gehenna. Only the truly brainwashed Christians who think they understand Death are Alive. Nevermind it says nothing about this in scripture.

The problem with this is with so many versions of death, it can be difficult to keep it clear which version you mean. So Christians constantly switch definitions as it suits them regardless of whether it is consistent or makes sense. This kind of evasiveness demonstrates the weakness of their position.

The Second part of Striking the Root will strike Salvation, the Meat of Christianity.

Very interesting, I'm looking forward to reading more of this.

And at first I thought you were referring to Christina Applegate, so I didn't understand why it was in the Faith forum.

Adam lied. He was scared to be alone. Lillith had already dumped him and taken up shacking up with God. (which was good, actually - she scared the be-jeebus out of Adam!)

So he told Eve that they were not supposed to TOUCH the tree OR eat the fruit.

God only told ADAM not to eat. Not Eve. Eve became the mother of all living right after that, remember? Adam was cursed, and Eve received a punishment, too...but then she is called the mother of all living. Obviously only Adam died that death God had warned him of.

She knew a lot more than you give her credit for...she DID have common sense...and NO fear.

And now she has even more than that...and she eats fruit EVERY day! And still NO fear!

Excellent post! Thanks for the read.


Vlad