GENE RODDENBERRY &
THE GENESIS STORY!

March 2006's thought from my Agnostic
calendar is: "We must question the story
logic of having an all-knowing, all power-
ful God, who creates faulty Humans, and
then blames them for his own mistakes."
Gene Roddenberry. Contributed by Larry
Reyka.

The point at issue here is whether the literature
of Genesis "coheres" as a story - we are not
discussing if it is 'true' but merely if it hangs
together as a story.
The teaching point of Genesis is that God created
all things and that the Creation is good....really,
really good.....the earth, food, drink, sex are all
really good, people are wonderful creatures with
amazing talents. And God said it was all good
back there in the Genesis story long before the pagan
philosophers of ancient Greece came and distorted
our thinking on these things. Creation is something
to be celebrated.

But something happened to change this idyllic
situation and the Genesis story attempts to
explain what that was and why the world we see,
is the way it is.
If you think the Genesis account is a quaint tale
about a couple, a talking snake and an apple you
have missed the point of this story. When God
commands Adam & Eve not to eat of the tree of
the knowledge of good & evil we are confronted
with the question "will they [and do we] seek to
self determine what is good and what is evil -
or will they allow God to be God? Do they
want God to be God? The notion that we
could be like God is floated and doubt in his
goodness introduced. Last month we discussed
"certainty and doubt" with Voltaire and concluded
that it is absurd for humans to claim certainty -
because that would require having the perspective
of God. And yet we do claim to have this ability
and the certainty which comes with it, as absurd
as it is.

They make choices which fracture their relation-
ship with God, each other and with Creation. Setting
the story in the idyll of the Garden of Eden indicates
that they were not set up to fail. But we should also
see that this is not just their story, it is my story too
...I have made the same choices in life. This is my
narrative written there - and it is your narrative too.
We broke faith with God when we decided he was
irrelevant and that we could replace him. Isn't that
the Genesis story?

God is no more 'blameworthy' for evil than one could
say that the murder of Abel by his brother Cain was
the fault of brotherhood - which is what they were
actually created for. We were not set up to fail, but
we do. Genesis describes "the Cain in me" and our
breaking of faith with each other. It seems to me that
the story of Genesis does "cohere" but more than that
it holds up a mirror to us, and it describes the common
human experience. I have murdered people in my heart,
I have taken satisfaction in the misfortune of others,
I have wished evil was a little darker than it already is.
The Genesis story logic holds up a mirror to my soul
and reveals a face I don't show anyone else - that's why
I don't just believe it "coheres" but that it has the
'ring of truth' about it!

Next month we are invited by Einstein to consider
God's interaction with evil - because he does have
a plan to confront it and to restore his Creation....
how else could a God of love respond? In Genesis
there is a promise about a "seed" - a future hope born
of mankind. More anon.

tagline. Calendar of Doom.