I appreciate the sentiment behind this sort of thinking more now than I did even a year ago. I’ve had some really interesting conversations with essentially agnostic Christians and Jews who view their own scriptures in a very similar way.
That said, I still can’t help but to think of this:
So, I just want to get this straight and make sure I’m not misrepresenting your beliefs or anything. Here’s what I’ve surmised from your posts so far:
Billions of years ago, God existed on his own, basking in the glory of his own perfection. We’re not entirely sure where he came from: maybe another universe, maybe he was just always there, chilling. But he was somehow just completely perfect by default.
Then, one day, he decided he wanted to have a “relationship” with some tiny, insignificant, little organisms on a small rock orbiting a relatively unimpressive star in a backwater corner of one particular galaxy.
So, he sets conditions up on this speck of a planet perfectly to allow for life to grow and evolve under the pressures of natural selection. This means that countless wonderful and obscure life forms would live and die, only for their respective species to pointlessly go extinct under the pressures of their environments. Only the most suitable 2% will survive.
This goes on for quite some time as God watches quietly and uninvolved, until eventually, many billions of years later, Homo sapiens emerge from this sequence, perfect, bringing his plan into fruition.
Again, God remains uninvolved for quite some time, watching as Homo sapiens develop all sorts of primitive beliefs and practices in an attempt to understand the world around them. At some point in this process, the Adam and Eve “metaphor” represents Homo sapiens’ ignorance and diversion from God’s original plan and their own original perfection.
Fast forward to the Bronze Age and God starts “inspiring” random Middle Eastern guys to write on his behalf, but he’s not too concerned with the accuracy of what they write because it is never meant to be literal anyhow. He will condone and watch over countless acts of war, genocide, animal sacrifice, stonings, executions, and other obscene forms of violence committed in his name, never once coming out clearly against any of it.
Then, about 2,000 years ago, he decides that he’s had enough of all of the bloodshed and sacrifice, so he’ impregnates a teenager with his son, who is really himself, so that he could kill himself in order to have a relationship with homo sapiens that he initially desired.
But he didn’t want to make the path to a relationship with him clear, so he obscured it in all sorts of mystery, allegory, and confusion, causing for the emergence of countless schisms and sects all claiming to be “the one true way.”
Then, to make things even more confusing, he still allowed for all other sorts of “paths” and “religions” to exist that had nothing to do with his son/self suicide ritual, and would be really upset if you happened to believe in one of those other “ways.”
So, he decided to make our chances at salvation to be contingent mostly on where and to whom we are born.
If we happen to pick the right way, God will let us into his club free of charge. If we happen to choose the wrong way, he’ll hold us to account for the very nature that he created us with the propensity towards to begin with.
Sound about right?
Topic: Khutbah on Adam & Eve