Remember the gist of that Biblical story of the Garden, that “Tree-of-the-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil” tale? Essentially, God allows Adam and Eve to eat from all the plants in the garden paradise save one, the tree in the center. Their reaction? Well, they were human, so if you belong to the species, you know what they did because you have probably done something similar—even a small something like going 37 mph in a 35 mph zone or crossing a street mid-block as a jaywalker. If you remember, the serpent says to Eve, “For God knows that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” * They do the human thing, of course; they choose to eat the fruit. Hey! It was there for the taking, and the Big Guy didn’t seem to be around, just as the police weren’t around when you exceeded the speed limit or crossed the street as a jaywalker. Their action turned their knowledge of “good” into a memory and evil into a daily occurrence, including your speeding and jaywalking.
Of course, slightly exceeding the speed limit and jaywalking don’t seem to be as significant as defying a Divine Being, but then, they seem less because of that “Original Sin.” If no one gets hurt, what’s exceeding the speed limit by two mph or jaywalking have to do with evil? Don’t we have free will and the intelligence to exercise it? Don’t we, like God, turn daily chaos into order. Look at desks lined up in a classroom, at cups in one cupboard and dishes in another, and at roofs on top and walls on sides. We did that; we established a personal garden by “creating a house” and building a kitchen; we set the rules. Aren’t we already godlike?
Many, if not all, cultures have some sort of creation story that includes an explanation for the origin of evil. And many cultures have axiomatic morals. Take the Chinese, for example. There’s nothing wrong with the practical advice of Confucius or the spiritual advice of the Buddha, nothing wrong with any moral system that advocates peace and harmony, but there’s a brutal lesson in the Bible that might serve every culture. Trying to be “like God” usually doesn’t end well. And that is what the Chinese are learning the hard way from the epidemic they initiated. The virus they altered has cast them out of their comfortable garden. Millions are once again sick, and apparently over a million have died in the latter part of 2022 from the recent outbreak of the disease they “invented” because they believed they were godlike. They just couldn’t resist eating the fruit from that one tree. The virus was there among unknown numbers of other viruses, and they had the ability in the garden labs to experiment on it. They thought no one was looking, apparently, and in their hubris—that’s the essence of the biblical “first sin” by the way—they believed they could do whatever with whatever without personal consequences. Not so, as we know from the pandemic.
Do the Chinese have an analog to that biblical creation story from which they might have learned about hubris? Not sure; I seem to remember something about Pangu dividing yin from yang and being assisted by four dragons, but not an exact parallel to humans being thrown out of paradise. But what if an analog of that Judeo-Christian story did underlie Chinese culture? Could it have prevented the deaths of millions from an evil let loose in China and spread around the world? Knowing the story of the Garden of Eden certainly hasn’t kept people in the Judeo-Christian tradition from wreaking havoc.
One can reasonably argue that altering viruses and bacteria to discover mechanisms that undo their potency and mitigate their threat is prudent. Why suffer sickness and death when there’s a path to healing and recovery? Look what we did with smallpox. But the serpent knows our weakness: We want knowledge that makes us godlike and that gives us control over everything, including our “enemies.” Westerners are right to suspect that China’s gain-of-function research was, at least in part, sanctioned by the country’s military (and possibly supported indirectly or directly by American taxpayers through an NIH grant). That the Chinese were building a biological weapon at Wuhan is not beyond the range of reasonable conjectures. Why make a somewhat deadly virus even deadlier? Again, it’s one thing to discover a cure; it’s another to make a new disease. It’s one thing to live in the Garden; it’s another to go after the one fruit, as in Genesis, “So in that day soever you shall eat of it, you shall die the death.” Yeah, the Chinese speed and jaywalk just as you do—when no one is looking.
Like the Germans of World War I who learned that shifting winds can envelope them in their own poisonous gas, the Chinese have seen their weapon turn on them—if, as I say, it’s reasonable to suspect they were manipulating a coronavirus for military purposes. That lesson Adam and Eve had to learn the hard way the Chinese are now learning the hard way, and, who knows, like the consequence of the first couple’s “sin,” the consequences of the Chinese experimentation will follow the ensuing generations of humans. There appears to be a limit to our control over the garden into which we were born—but did not create. You might be able to rearrange your kitchen dish ware, but you can’t like some topologist turn your cups into Klein bottles. There are limits imposed by the nature of the world, or should I say, by the laws of nature. Reshaping a hardened ceramic cup will destroy the cup.
There were bugs and critters and viruses and bacteria on the planet before we came along with the hubris to say, “Let’s recreate the world in our image.” In many instances we’ve done no harm, the development of a smallpox vaccine is an example; polio, too. But the story of the Garden of Eden and that first sin of hubris stays with us. We retell it in our daily lives. It’s the same lesson of the Garden that underlies the plot of Jurassic Park. If you saw the film, you might recall the character played by Jeff Goldblum noting that “nature will find a way.” A coronavirus will, like those fictional recreated dinosaurs, find a way to survive and wreak havoc on humanity. That movie and the biblical story foreshadow exactly what the Chinese did in their hubris. I can picture a lab technician in Wuhan: “I can do this because no one—that is all those people outside my special garden—knows what I am doing. It’s just a little virus, anyway. Where’s the harm?”
Unfortunately, we lack the knowledge to become omniscient and omnipotent. And we don’t create as much as we recreate. Try as we might, we just can’t account for accidents and malicious and pathological perpetrators. Did that altered virus escape by mistake or by human intention? Was there a serpent? An Eve? We might never know, but we do know that the Chinese and the rest of us have eaten the fruit of that forbidden tree, and as a result millions came to know death. For all of us the Garden isn’t as pleasant a place as it was just a few years ago. And like all the subsequent descendants of the story’s first parents, those of us who have stubbed a toe, broken a bone, or suffered an illness, can’t know what we lost. Into the unknown future, humans will think COVID-19 is as common as any cold and that it has been a human condition from the start.
But no. Just a few years ago that apple hung on the tree unpicked. Paradise was Paradise.
Of course, prior to the pandemic, we had our Garden of Weeds running back all the generations to the first “Cain and Abel.” Poisonous gas used in WWI and more recently in Japan and Syria, deadly viruses like smallpox kept “on hand” in bioweapons labs or in CDC freezers, and the ultimate weapons of mass destruction in nuclear arsenals, are the products of our pride, just as the story of Adam and Eve is a story of pride: They wanted to be “like God.” Yes, there are degrees of defiance, but all defiance is pride; from your jaywalking or speeding to the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons, all of us tell the tale of proud defiance: We can do whatever we want to do with whatever we choose. And, as history demonstrates, we’ll do it even if it means harming ourselves or future generations. The garden left to us by Adam and Eve is one filled with weeds.
Strange how our species responds to “having everything.” The paradises we live in are never enough. We seem to prefer the weeds outside a garden to the fruits inside it when just one fruit is forbidden. We prefer exile from Paradise to a life inside it. As the twenty-first century reveals, no lesson from the past seems to matter. We already know what pandemics can do, what poisonous gas can do, or what nuclear weapons can do; yet, we keep the bacteria and viruses, the sarin and mustard gas, and the bombs and their delivery systems in arsenals under the control of people out of control. In our hubris, we decide our fate.
It really doesn’t matter that we already have knowledge of good and evil. It really doesn’t matter that we already know the consequences of trying to be godlike. We already know the tale long told of a simple plucking and eating a fruit. We continuously ask, “What harm could a couple of extra miles per hour beyond the speed limit or a little jaywalking do when no one is looking?” And we ask, "If we can slightly change a virus, not in the pursuit of a vaccine, but rather in pursuit of a dubious or unethical or dangerous goal, why can't we do it? ** It's just a tiny spike or two on the surface of something so small we have to use an electron microscope to see it. If we can jaywalk with impunity when no one is looking..."
*Translations vary, of course. This is, with the exception of a couple of words I changed, the Douay version.
**Is this another example? https://apnews.com/article/science-health-biology-organ-transplants-minneapolis-1522fa40ec69e565d8c1c90e7c85deda
Of course, slightly exceeding the speed limit and jaywalking don’t seem to be as significant as defying a Divine Being, but then, they seem less because of that “Original Sin.” If no one gets hurt, what’s exceeding the speed limit by two mph or jaywalking have to do with evil? Don’t we have free will and the intelligence to exercise it? Don’t we, like God, turn daily chaos into order. Look at desks lined up in a classroom, at cups in one cupboard and dishes in another, and at roofs on top and walls on sides. We did that; we established a personal garden by “creating a house” and building a kitchen; we set the rules. Aren’t we already godlike?
Many, if not all, cultures have some sort of creation story that includes an explanation for the origin of evil. And many cultures have axiomatic morals. Take the Chinese, for example. There’s nothing wrong with the practical advice of Confucius or the spiritual advice of the Buddha, nothing wrong with any moral system that advocates peace and harmony, but there’s a brutal lesson in the Bible that might serve every culture. Trying to be “like God” usually doesn’t end well. And that is what the Chinese are learning the hard way from the epidemic they initiated. The virus they altered has cast them out of their comfortable garden. Millions are once again sick, and apparently over a million have died in the latter part of 2022 from the recent outbreak of the disease they “invented” because they believed they were godlike. They just couldn’t resist eating the fruit from that one tree. The virus was there among unknown numbers of other viruses, and they had the ability in the garden labs to experiment on it. They thought no one was looking, apparently, and in their hubris—that’s the essence of the biblical “first sin” by the way—they believed they could do whatever with whatever without personal consequences. Not so, as we know from the pandemic.
Do the Chinese have an analog to that biblical creation story from which they might have learned about hubris? Not sure; I seem to remember something about Pangu dividing yin from yang and being assisted by four dragons, but not an exact parallel to humans being thrown out of paradise. But what if an analog of that Judeo-Christian story did underlie Chinese culture? Could it have prevented the deaths of millions from an evil let loose in China and spread around the world? Knowing the story of the Garden of Eden certainly hasn’t kept people in the Judeo-Christian tradition from wreaking havoc.
One can reasonably argue that altering viruses and bacteria to discover mechanisms that undo their potency and mitigate their threat is prudent. Why suffer sickness and death when there’s a path to healing and recovery? Look what we did with smallpox. But the serpent knows our weakness: We want knowledge that makes us godlike and that gives us control over everything, including our “enemies.” Westerners are right to suspect that China’s gain-of-function research was, at least in part, sanctioned by the country’s military (and possibly supported indirectly or directly by American taxpayers through an NIH grant). That the Chinese were building a biological weapon at Wuhan is not beyond the range of reasonable conjectures. Why make a somewhat deadly virus even deadlier? Again, it’s one thing to discover a cure; it’s another to make a new disease. It’s one thing to live in the Garden; it’s another to go after the one fruit, as in Genesis, “So in that day soever you shall eat of it, you shall die the death.” Yeah, the Chinese speed and jaywalk just as you do—when no one is looking.
Like the Germans of World War I who learned that shifting winds can envelope them in their own poisonous gas, the Chinese have seen their weapon turn on them—if, as I say, it’s reasonable to suspect they were manipulating a coronavirus for military purposes. That lesson Adam and Eve had to learn the hard way the Chinese are now learning the hard way, and, who knows, like the consequence of the first couple’s “sin,” the consequences of the Chinese experimentation will follow the ensuing generations of humans. There appears to be a limit to our control over the garden into which we were born—but did not create. You might be able to rearrange your kitchen dish ware, but you can’t like some topologist turn your cups into Klein bottles. There are limits imposed by the nature of the world, or should I say, by the laws of nature. Reshaping a hardened ceramic cup will destroy the cup.
There were bugs and critters and viruses and bacteria on the planet before we came along with the hubris to say, “Let’s recreate the world in our image.” In many instances we’ve done no harm, the development of a smallpox vaccine is an example; polio, too. But the story of the Garden of Eden and that first sin of hubris stays with us. We retell it in our daily lives. It’s the same lesson of the Garden that underlies the plot of Jurassic Park. If you saw the film, you might recall the character played by Jeff Goldblum noting that “nature will find a way.” A coronavirus will, like those fictional recreated dinosaurs, find a way to survive and wreak havoc on humanity. That movie and the biblical story foreshadow exactly what the Chinese did in their hubris. I can picture a lab technician in Wuhan: “I can do this because no one—that is all those people outside my special garden—knows what I am doing. It’s just a little virus, anyway. Where’s the harm?”
Unfortunately, we lack the knowledge to become omniscient and omnipotent. And we don’t create as much as we recreate. Try as we might, we just can’t account for accidents and malicious and pathological perpetrators. Did that altered virus escape by mistake or by human intention? Was there a serpent? An Eve? We might never know, but we do know that the Chinese and the rest of us have eaten the fruit of that forbidden tree, and as a result millions came to know death. For all of us the Garden isn’t as pleasant a place as it was just a few years ago. And like all the subsequent descendants of the story’s first parents, those of us who have stubbed a toe, broken a bone, or suffered an illness, can’t know what we lost. Into the unknown future, humans will think COVID-19 is as common as any cold and that it has been a human condition from the start.
But no. Just a few years ago that apple hung on the tree unpicked. Paradise was Paradise.
Of course, prior to the pandemic, we had our Garden of Weeds running back all the generations to the first “Cain and Abel.” Poisonous gas used in WWI and more recently in Japan and Syria, deadly viruses like smallpox kept “on hand” in bioweapons labs or in CDC freezers, and the ultimate weapons of mass destruction in nuclear arsenals, are the products of our pride, just as the story of Adam and Eve is a story of pride: They wanted to be “like God.” Yes, there are degrees of defiance, but all defiance is pride; from your jaywalking or speeding to the manufacture and use of nuclear weapons, all of us tell the tale of proud defiance: We can do whatever we want to do with whatever we choose. And, as history demonstrates, we’ll do it even if it means harming ourselves or future generations. The garden left to us by Adam and Eve is one filled with weeds.
Strange how our species responds to “having everything.” The paradises we live in are never enough. We seem to prefer the weeds outside a garden to the fruits inside it when just one fruit is forbidden. We prefer exile from Paradise to a life inside it. As the twenty-first century reveals, no lesson from the past seems to matter. We already know what pandemics can do, what poisonous gas can do, or what nuclear weapons can do; yet, we keep the bacteria and viruses, the sarin and mustard gas, and the bombs and their delivery systems in arsenals under the control of people out of control. In our hubris, we decide our fate.
It really doesn’t matter that we already have knowledge of good and evil. It really doesn’t matter that we already know the consequences of trying to be godlike. We already know the tale long told of a simple plucking and eating a fruit. We continuously ask, “What harm could a couple of extra miles per hour beyond the speed limit or a little jaywalking do when no one is looking?” And we ask, "If we can slightly change a virus, not in the pursuit of a vaccine, but rather in pursuit of a dubious or unethical or dangerous goal, why can't we do it? ** It's just a tiny spike or two on the surface of something so small we have to use an electron microscope to see it. If we can jaywalk with impunity when no one is looking..."
*Translations vary, of course. This is, with the exception of a couple of words I changed, the Douay version.
**Is this another example? https://apnews.com/article/science-health-biology-organ-transplants-minneapolis-1522fa40ec69e565d8c1c90e7c85deda
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