Christianity - A Journey from Facts to Fiction — Page 21
Sin and Atonement 21 Human Suffering Continues Having read the Biblical account of how Adam and Eve were punished, one cannot help wondering if the pains and throes of labour were unknown to women until the beginning of the era of Adam and Eve. A scientist will be hard to come by who believes in such fantasies. Again, we have plenty of irrefutable evidence that long before Adam and Eve man had occupied all the conti- nents of the world, even remote Pacific Islands, and had always laboured hard to survive. Therefore, to say that Adam and Eve were the first to commit a sin and because of that, painful child- birth was ordained as punishment is totally proven wrong by the study of life. Even animals, who are much lower in the order of life, give birth in pain. If one watches a cow giving birth to a calf, her suffering seems similar to the pain of a human female. Many such animals, we know, inhabited the earth millions and millions of years before Adam and Eve. To earn one’s livelihood with labour is common to man, but not distinctive at all. Women also labour for their earnings and livelihood. Before that, every species of life earns its livelihood through labour. This fact is the key motivator in the evolution of life. The struggle for existence is perhaps the very first distinctive mark of life which separates it from the world of the inanimate. It is a natural phenomenon, with nothing whatsoever to do with sin. Again, if this be the punishment prescribed as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin, then one wonders what would happen after Atonement. If Jesus Christ as had atoned for the sins of sinful human beings, was the punishment prescribed for the Sin of