Week 3 Story: Eve, Savior of Man and Founder of Science

Eve, Savior of Man and Founder of Science

By: Connor Dugan

I was nothing, and then I was.  Of flesh and bone God created me.  He told me my name is Adam, and to save me from loneliness, gave me Eve, my partner.  The world he put me in was beautiful.  Not a care in the world, not a problem in sight.

Adam and Eve in Paradise: sourced via Wikipedia

While we played and rejoiced in this bountiful place, I felt confused.  Later, I will find that Eve shared equal confusion.  We knew of nothing but this beautiful place.  Thus, we truly could not respect it for what it was.  We were born in paradise, lived in paradise, and for all we cared there was nothing but just that.  Oh how things have changed.  For good and for bad.  For we were given one command from God, and that was to not eat of the tree of knowledge.

I was always curious why God didn't want us to eat from the tree of knowledge.  After all, wouldn't God be proud of us for growing up to be like him?  Is there no room for company in the heavenly creations?  He never told us why, only that we would be doomed to death if we ate from it.  My curiosity was passionate, but Eve's, I'm afraid, was devastating.  I could tell in advance that she was tempted more than I to break our promise.  I told her to not even get within the vicinity of the tree... But it was not enough.

While I was gathering fruit for her, Eve wandered near the tree of knowledge.  After some conversation with the serpent, she was convinced to break her promise with me and went up to the tree.  This was the point of no return, for I had told her she would die if she got that close, and once she learned that I had stretched the truth, she had to know what the fruit would do to her.  She ate of it, and a blinding light came from the tree.  I believed God had set a fire of a million suns upon the tree to destroy our temptation, but later discovered it was eve who had transformed into a god herself.

I asked her what happened, and she said to me "Come, you have much to learn.".  The world shook, the vibrations levitated the oceans, and God came from the heavens screaming for her to stop.  All of reality collapsed, Eve took me aside to a third perspective, and the universe exploded.  I watched it spawn from nothing into a rapidly expanding, blazing hot, energy filled shape.  She called it the "universe", and said it is made of energy that is a fundamental part of it.  This energy can take many different forms, but it all comes from the same origin: the love she has for knowledge, the universe, and its inhabitants.  I watched the energy attract each other, form particles and gases, they collected and formed beautifully powerful spheres of radiating energy, some of these spheres would then collapse and form new, heavier particles, and the universe spread out into the most spectacular and beautifully complex existence I had ever seen.

I asked Eve why she did this.  Why would she overthrow God, and why would she create a place like this?  She told me that the knowledge from the fruit tree was the greatest gift she had ever been given.  Eating that fruit gave life meaning.  She told me that God had been so focused on making everything good and happy that he lost his focus on making everything worth experiencing.  She told me that I will love deeper if there is an opposite that she called "hate", that I would be happier if there was "sadness", and most importantly, that I would see existence as precious if there was "death".

I was shocked, amazed, frightened, and happy that I would get to experience this exciting and complex world.  "Eve, this is incredible!  Where do I start?  What body of mass shall I inhabit?  What fruit shall I be given?  What can I do what can't I do?  I am so excited to be the first to experience your creation!".  She looked at me, smiling.  She said softly, "Adam, this world has rules.  It has properties of logic, and no one may defy them.  This universe is an incredibly complex system that only stems from basic laws that must never be changed.  You will experience this world, but not in the form God made you.  Adam, this is our new home.  Soon, I will dissipate our souls, and we will reside in this universe as "consciousness".  We will only experience this world through the eyes of the life created by these laws."  I couldn't really understand what that meant.. But I trusted her.  She explained further that life would rise from the nonliving matter in the right conditions, and will take much time to develop into anything like they already currently were.  She said it would be much more rewarding this way, that they would experience all like in the entire universe simultaneously at any given moment, and experience the world in a linear fashion called "time".

Both of us were scared, for we knew horrible things could and would happen during our journey through the billions of years of existence in this universe.  But it would all be worth it, and it began with Eve's words, "Let it begin".

Author's note:

In the original story, Adam and Eve are created by God and are placed in the Garden of Eden where they could be in happiness forever, but that changed when they disobeyed God's only command: to not eat of the tree of knowledge.  God punishes them by casting them out of the garden and making them mortal and this is seen as a terrible and horrific occurrence.  I wanted to make a story where knowledge is seen as a blessing upon mankind, and that the bad parts of life are necessary for us to be happy and appreciate the world, and that Eve was heroic in a way.

Bibliography:

The Story of Adam and Eve, Part A, by Ginzberg