According to Jewish legend contained in Genesis 2-3, roughly 6,000 years ago in a garden called Eden the deity Yahweh created a male human from dirt and breathed life into him. The man was lonely and wanted a partner. Yahweh parades all the animals before him to see if any is a suitable helper. Adam is disappointed with all of them and Yahweh sees this so he causes Adam to go into a deep sleep and removes one of his ribs. After the surgery Yahweh magically fashions a Woman. Finally, Adam has his “helper”.

Things are good for a while until a talking serpent enticed our oldest ancestors to eat fruit from a forbidden tree called, “the tree of knowledge of good and evil”. This causes Adam, Eve and consequently all of us into a perpetual state of inherent sinfulness. Yahweh is so upset about the ordeal that he kicks them both out of the garden and places flaming swords to guard it lest they return and eat and live forever.

There has long been a movement among conservative biblical scholars towards a purely metaphysical interpretation of this as a result of pressure from the scientific community. Historically the church has gazed at Genesis through a literal lens. Adam lived to be over a thousand years old, the earth was created about 6,000 years ago, man is made from dust in a perfect state, the fall of man results in the fall of all creation. These myths have been accepted as historical facts by conservative biblical “scholars” for thousands of years.

As humanity’s knowledge grows we learn that the earth is much older than was previously thought, instead of 6,000 years think 4.5 billion. That’s 4,500,000,000 vs 6,000 (a difference of 449,994,000), talk about missing the mark. Ancient human remains are found that predate “Adam and Eve” by nearly 200,000 years. The theory of evolution debunks traditional creationism.

Atheist activists such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Christopher Hitchens continue to raise the public consciousness to the moral discrepancies of scriptures.

Richard Dawkins claims in his book The God Delusion that, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

For the biblically literate these accusations are extremely difficult if not impossible to defend against.

A dumbstruck liturgy regurgitates age old and long defeated pat answers that temporarily satisfy increasingly educated and consequently shrinking congregations. One wonders how long the man behind the curtain can maintain his pompous image.

Is theology based on a literal interpretation of scripture scientifically or morally defendable? Was it ever? What do you think?