Adam and Eve: the greatest fairy tale of all

Why does the Adam and Eve story still resonate in our cultural consciousness, given that anyone with the most basic understanding of science can demolish the idea that life began in the way that Genesis describes? Evolution can be seen to occur in fruit flies on school lab dishes. GPs refuse to prescribe antibiotics because over-prescribing means that bacteria will evolve to become resistant.

Nonetheless, the Bible’s Book of Genesis is a spiritual starting point for 46-66% of American citizens and 17% of British people who believe that the world is less than 10,000 years old. For Roman Catholics, who, since 1950, have not argued with Darwinian evolution, and for Anglicans, who, 126 years after his death, apologized to Darwin for not believing in him, it is a parable about the inherently sinful nature. of humanity.

In its philosophical form, the biblical fall of man becomes creationism, a specter that continues to haunt a small number of innocent schoolchildren in the United Kingdom and the United States, such as those who were unlucky enough to find themselves in the fundamentalist sector of Accelerated Christian Education (ACE). . Rumors of creationists seizing power and influence, in secular institutions like the White House, continue to haunt political commentary around election time.

For skeptics, creationism, with its talking snakes, angels, and tyrant god, belongs to Hogwarts, tarot cards, and astral projections, in the world of esotericism. The intellectual tide turned decidedly against him in 1859, with Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859. In the following years, this tide has reached tsunami proportions, thanks in large part to neo-Darwinian popular science gurus such as Richard Dawkins. and Stephen Jay-Gould. . Any bubble of hope for biblical literalism that occasionally rises in the primordial soup of our educational system immediately bursts. For example, in 2012, UK legislation was introduced to force all free schools to teach evolution through natural selection.

The reason Adam and Eve have never left is that they are more than interesting ghosts from a bygone, primitive age, when those closest to paleontology were the Homeric sea monsters and the dragon of St. George. The Fall of Man is firmly rooted in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic holy books, and indeed in our broader cultural consciousness, because, as a story, it has the fairy dust of genius. A comparison with other creation myths, ancient and modern, supports this:

• The Lakota tribe of North American Indians believed that the cosmos began when Inktomi the spider caused trouble between the sun god and his moon wife.

• For the African Bakuba, an outbreak of gastroenteritis caused the white giant Mbombo to vomit the sky, the first man and woman, some animals and a whole range of vegetation.

• The Egyptians thought that the god Atum’s own pleasure resulted in moisture (semen) and air (breath).

• And Ron Hubbard of Scientology decreed that life began when the alien Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in a spaceship long ago and placed them around volcanoes.

These creation stories do not have the psychological and moral depth of Jewish / Muslim / Christian Adam and Eve, in which we acknowledge in ourselves the foolishness, boredom, and fallibility of the eponymous protagonists. Who can help but be moved by Adam’s loyalty or horrified by the verisimilitude of the serpent? There are many layers and possible interpretations of the Genesis story: it could be said, for example, that the true villain of the piece is God, so puffed up with pride that he cannot forgive his paradise-loving partner when, unsurprisingly, the curiosity takes hold of her. best of them and eat the forbidden fruit. A clearer case of entrapment would be hard to find! This is a calculating God – by condemning not just them, but all of their progeny, to work, sin, and death, he unleashes a gripping series about himself for later generations of fanatics.

A splendid allegory of human frailty, curiosity and our natural propensity to overcome the limits imposed on us by the authority of human and natural laws, the story of Adam and Eve remains in our cultural repertoire, not because it is a scientific fact, but because, in the simple and digestible format of a parable, it is the imperfect magnificence of humanity in miniature.