: I just started reading an article in the June first Watchtower: "Who Is To Blame; You or your genes?" It struck me, i hadn't thought about this since i was young. Why does the watchtower think that Adam and Eve were white?
The Wathchtower religion was an American offshoot of Victorian Second Adventism and despite all of its blustering over the years, its leadership has typically remained an elist white man's club. In fact, the WTS was one of the LAST "Christian" religions to fully integrate in the US South.
I would like to read that June WT on "Who is to Blame, You or Your Genes?", since I doubt the society would be willing to print the observations I made on the very same subject some time ago:
"Original Sin For Dummies"
The Bible expects us to take as a given that sin (and thus misery, wickedness and death) came to all of us from one man. (Romans 5:12) Thus, according to the Bible, sin is "inherited." How do we inherit stuff? By means of genes, fellow dummies. Therefore, man's genes somehow became screwed up from the time of Adam's sin forward.
So, who actually screwed up man's genes? While Adam did the sinning, it would have to be God who altered his genes. There is no other explanation. He either did it directly, or indirectly by having Adam made with some sort of "mechanism" that would automatically screw up Adam's genes as soon as he sinned. If the latter is true, then Adam's body had a designed-in "booby trap" from the very beginning, waiting to trigger the moment Adam sinned. Since there can be no other conclusions, is was GOD who is DIRECTLY reponsible for mankind's inherited sinfullness and all its effects. God himself screwed up the genes and the screwed up genes are what gives us "inherited" sinfullness.
Of course, the standard argument Christians use is that "Adam had free will. He didn't HAVE to disobey God and therefore sin. It was his OWN FAULT." Fine and dandy, but why did hundreds of generations of children have to suffer as a result? Remember, it's the GENES, dummy, and God changed them. God could have easily waited to mess up the genes of the first couple until AFTER they had children. Then he could have messed up that couple's genes and let them die, while letting their children be perfect, and able to be tested on a par with the test Adam and Eve had to take. But he didn't do that? Why didn't he do that? Where is the righteousness and fairness in the way it was handled?
"The soul that is sinning--it itself will die. A son himself will bear nothing because of the error of the father, and a father himself will bear nothing because of the error of the son. Upon his own self the very righteousness of the righteous one will come to be, and upon his own self the very wickedness of a wicked one will come to be." - Ezekiel 18:20
This verse seems reasonable enough, except it is an OUTRIGHT LIE and what God did to Adam and Eve which was passed along to the rest of us, proves it is a lie.If God did not want us to ever disobey Him, he could have easily made us incapable of doing so. "Oh, but then we wouldn't have 'free will,'" some will say. Would you hear anyone complain if God said, "I'm gonna give you all the free will in the world, with one exception. In order to insure that you live in perfect health for ever and ever, I'm going to make you in incapable of disobeying my commands. But take heart, my commands are always perfect and just and ALWAYS in your best interests."
Do you think omeone would raise their hand and say, "But God I OBJECT! I WANT to be able to screw up and disobey your perfect and just commands which are always in my best interests, and then be made miserable, and then get sick and die and rot? I WANT the opportunity to have my wife be miserable when she's bearing children and I WANT to work by the sweat of my brow and have weeds grow all over the place." I don't think so. Anyway, if such a jerk did make such a demand, I'm sure God could have easily made an exception in that case. After all, he wants us to be HAPPY, doesn't he?
Adam and Eve were total dorks. Here they were absolutely perfect with every thing handed to them on a silver platter, and they had the most dorky little test to pass: don't eat fruit from only ONE tree. Tests to determine an eternity of blissful living don't get much simpler than that, folks. And they blew it.
But what about US? We're born with "inherited" sinful tendences and all sorts of other problems and infirmities, so what does God in his infinite mercy do to mitigate matters for us since we had NOTHING TO DO WITH OUR CONDITION? He gives us TONS of tests that are infinitely harder to pass than the ones the first two dorks had to pass! He gives us birth defects, vision problems, rotting teeth, poor hearts, livers, kidneys and general human misery.
And what's he going to do if we don't pass these tons of tests? He's going to KILL us, that's what.Why didn't God just forgive Adam and Eve or maybe give them a nasty case of diarrhea for a few weeks as punishment? The standard explanation is "oh, no, he couldn't do that! God's justice is PERFECT, and he would look like a liar if he did that?"
Want my answer to that one? If God is so smart, why did he open his yapper in the first place and state he would kill Adam and Eve if they ate a piece of fruit? Why didn't he think to himself, "You know, there is a distinct possibility that this couple could end up being a couple of dorks and eat of that fruit. Maybe I should anticipate that and use a little restraint on my punishments until they wise up." NO! He didn't think that way! He had to jump in there and announce the worst conceivable punishment possible. Then, to save face he had to screw us all up for the mess that he could have easily prevented in the first place.Why didn't God just kill Adam and Eve and be done with it? The standard explanation is, "Well then we wouldn't be here today, would we?" SO WHAT? We wouldn't know the difference that we wouldn't be here, so it wouldn't be any skin off of our backs. I had no problem with non-existence before I existed. Did you?
If God would have killed Adam and Eve and made another couple, perhaps the other couple would ave passed the tests, and everything would be just fine today. God may even have had to do this several times until he had himself a couple who wised up. If God would have shown some home movies of what happened to the couples before them, I think eventually a couple would have got a clue about what not to do. Did he do that? NO! God screwed up things for everyone, when he could have easily not done so. As a result of his own screw-up he had to wipe out the entire planet save for Noah and family and allow and personally do a whole bunch more killing over the generations.
But he came up with a plan to get himself and all of us out of the mess he got us into in the first place: he would kill his son.
But that's the subject of another story...
Farkel