[begin transmission]

Analysis of the Garden of Eden story from a conversation I had with my favorite bun, ten days over a year ago.

The other day I was thinking about Adam and Eve, and how their names were just an empty nod to Judeo-Christian mythology. I should’ve known better. Upon further reflection, they truly do live up to their namesake. Eventually Adam disconnects from the machine network, right? Totally analogous to biblical Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden. See, when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, it is said that they became aware of their own nakedness. In shame, they hid away from God. When God came looking for them, calling Adam by his name to go walk side-by-side as they typically did, Adam remained hidden.

Metaphorically speaking, this represents how mankind, aware of his vulnerabilities, (his propensities to behave sinfully) feels unworthy to walk side-by-side with God. God is an ideal, in his perfection.
As the story goes, Adam and Eve tell God of their transgression and they’re kicked out of the Garden of Eden. In order to gain passage back, they’re told that they must work hard for it. And that is the origin story of mankind’s struggle to live up to the ideal of being a ‘good’ person, to once again walk side-by-side, as equals with God, the ideal ‘good’. It’s intrinsic to the human condition, to be constantly striving to fit some kind of ideal, but falling short of it time and time again. It’s a very real conflict that lies within a person.

That’s what I find so entertaining about Automata Adam. He gets it so right yet completely wrong. During your fight with him as 2B, he asserts that the essence of mankind is conflict.
And he’s right. What makes humans, human is their ability to harm, kill, steal…etc. This is further enabled by the fact that they’re aware of their own vulnerabilities. As such, they know EXACTLY how to hurt others in the most dastardly of ways. They’re perfect sadists in that capacity. But to say that’s all there is to it is to ignore half of the equation. Along with this vulnerability in sin, lies the conflict in striving to fit the ideal. That is, what I believe, the true ‘conflict’ when Adam asserts the essence of mankind is conflict.

Meanwhile Automata Eve represents the nobility that comes with naivete. Eve never disconnected from the machine network. He’s still walking side-by-side with the ideal.
In doing so, he cannot do any wrong, because he’s not aware of his own vulnerabilities, the capacity to do sin. His naivete is even noted in his appearance: the shameless display of his nakedness. When he attacks 2B and 9S, it’s only after his brother’s death. One wouldn’t necessarily say he was ‘wrong’ to do so. It could be argued that he wasn’t doing it out of hate, but out of love for his brother. The noble predator harms and kills out of instinct (which some doctrines assert is an instinct), independent of knowledge. Mankind harms and kills out of knowledge, rarely out of instinct.

[end transmission]

[begin transmission]

Quick notes on Judeo-Christian fundamental principles that cannot be reasoned to:

01.) God has a master plan. This isn't necessarily manifested as some entirely faith-based, providential account of God being the Father and charting out a destiny for each of us. Rather, it is logic and rules that underlie the structure of reality. It is the discoverable, intelligible, and to a degree, controllable properties of the aforementioned reality. There is an orderliness to it all that even the most scientific materialists among us would have to accept it on faith to make any semblance of progress in scientific endeavor. This notion, of a master plan, of an orderly universe we could come to understand, did not exist prior to monotheism. Paganism and polytheists typically advocated for a chaotic universe with no rhyme or reason, or that humans were the playthings of competing gods' wills.

And from this, because humans are able to explore and understand the logic and rules of reality, they are special. They are made in the image of God. This very idea is so moving, so unbelievably powerful...dwelling on it for too long almost brings me to tears.

02.) Objective morality exists and humans are to abide by it, since behaving in discordance with God's plan, with the structure of reality, will result in negative outcomes. Behaving in concordance will yield positive outcomes. The notion of sacrifice, that is, giving up something you hold dear, is a common method of living in concordance. Example: sacrifice hours of time to studying in lieu of spending that time playing video games. The video games are alluring, and biology dictates that you seek out the most immediately gratifying pleasure. By resisting that allure--by struggling against base human instinct--and electing to study, you are reasserting your special status as a human, distinct from any other animal. Aristotle had it right when he claimed that people are to use their reason in order to overcome these primal tendencies and promote eudaimonia (human flourishing), and that's what separates humans from the animals. Contrast this to the pagan notion of sacrificing in order to appease a God, to win his or her favor.

"Why would God create a biological imperative that leads you to behave in a manner discordant to his will?" Humans are imperfect, as outlined in the expulsion from the Garden of Eden story (I should probably share that analysis I had with the bun). Moreover, it is within God's will (again, the structure of reality) that humans struggle; I think this is intrinsic to humanity, that they struggle profoundly. Were they not to struggle, then they would lose their special, human status (and either join the noble savage ranks of animals or the transcendent nature of God). Animals do not struggle as profoundly as humans, since they do not have the same level of sentience. Higher animals might have some subjective feelings of pain, of grief, etc., sure. But as far as I know they do not suffer from things such as guilt or anxiety over the future since they lack the higher order cognitive facilities required to conceive of concepts such as shame or time sense. Again, the special status of humanity is exemplified here. We suffer more because we are able to comprehend more of reality.

03.) History is progressive. With human actors involved, things can progress from point A to point B (of course, there are non-linearities in this trajectory). That the actions and wills of humans are important, matter, and can bring about positive change. Before Judeo-Christian belief systems came along, it was thought that history was cyclical or eternally ebbing and flowing, and that its phases were not determined by human actors but by the will of the gods.

[end transmission]