During the star show at the planetarium in the Dayton Museum of Natural History a segment discussed how Man separated himself from the animals by asking the question "Why?" This was the beginning of the thinking human being. From Man himself being an animal with an apelike body, he ascended to greater learning and understanding when he began to ask "Why," Every two and three year old child repeats his evolutionary process when he hounds parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and friends with what becomes that exasperating "why." But this is the way of learning.

Where do we acquire knowledge? We learn from (1)our parents, relatives, friends and (2)observing the world and Nature around us. (3) We progress to churches, schools, libraries, and museums. Today another dimension has been added by using the computer. There are even games like "States" and "Trivial Pursuit" which become a learning media. All of most noble institutions are the result of Man "eating of the tree of the "Knowledge of Good and Evil." We are Adams and Eves disobeying the will of that God who wanted to keep Man in a state of perpetual bliss and innocence like man's counterparts, the animals.

God knew his perplexity. He, like every parent, wanted to throw a life-time shroud of protection around Adam. That is exactly what every parent would like to do with the loving children that have been fostered. Now think about your own feelings of protection you have had for your own children through their infancy and toddler years. How you have tried to protect them from every scrape, fall, and burn you possibly could. How you want to keep them insulated from everything undesirable as violence, cursing and swearing, and unhealthy sex. That is being a concerned parent!!

So when God told Adam not to eat of the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil," God raised the curiosity of Adam and particularly Eve. Just tell an innocent little child--don't do that, don't look in that box, don't...don't...! You can be certain that is exactly what the child will do at the first moment's opportunity. So while God was wanting to keep Man blissfully innocent, he was at the same time daring and encouraging Man to step up and meet his fate, to challenge the potential which was in him.

This was God's great enigma. While he wanted to throw a life-time shroud of blissful protection around Adam, God was faced on the other side with the parental need for Adam to face the dangers of awakening and to learn the patterns of progression toward higher functioning, reasoning, and awareness, which present great hazards along the way. It is a most dangerous event. It is the turmoil through which every parent must struggle. We are confounded in giving our children roots and yet helping them to fly!

The serpent is the agent in the story to assist Adam. Throughout ancient Greek and Egyptian mythology the serpent was the symbol of wisdom. In Genesis, the serpent is described as the most subtle and clever of the animals. The ancient symbol of the medical profession, the caduceus, is of two serpents gracefully entwined about a staff with wings on the top. Mercury , the messenger of the gods, carried the caduceus. Those traditions are still with us.

Returning to the story of Genesis, the serpent told Eve that though God told Adam that if he ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, he would surely die. But what did God mean by the word "die?" In learning , we die from the old as we pass to the new. "You will not die," said the serpent. Listening to the wisdom of the serpent, she ate of the fruit of the tree and did die---they died because they no longer lived in that state of ignorant blissful innocence. But they acquired knowledge by learning to ask "why." They began to THINK. They learned to regard nakedness as shameful. So when God saw Adam and Eve covering themselves, we know God's horror when the web of safety was removed, and the threats and bargaining that follow to stretch tight any remaining strands of innocence. God became so irate that he dumped curse upon curse upon curse at Adam. Women shall have pain in childbirth, weeds and thistles shall grow in the fields, sex and nakedness shall be evil, women shall fear snakes, man shall have to toil by the sweat of his brow for food and bread, all his food shall come from the earth, that death shall end the days of each person. All these curses explain why evil came to man. These curses were early man's science of explaining his condition and the perennial question 'WHY."

Eating of the fruit of the tree, man died from innocence, man died from being just another animal. As God said, "Man has become as one of us." In death, man arose to a new life--a kind of resurrection into wondering, curiosity, reasoning, creativity, inventiveness, and opportunity to become a Thinking Machine.

As a result of Adam and Eve, NO person became a sinner. Instead, the tale Adam and Eve set man out on the upward road to education and learning.

We are analogous to a patchwork quilt. Using the basic materials of the colorfully designed covering, filler, and backing sheet, the seamstress stitches in another beautiful design. Occasionally, errors are made, an edge doesn't quite fit, stitches are a little out of line, shorter or longer than the others. What looks like a perfectly sewn quilt still has a few secret flaws. But a few of them do not make this magnificent quilt useless or even shameful. Which is to be condemned: the entire blue ribbon quilt or the individual faulty stitches?

The Garden of Eden story is a true story about the on-going responsibilities, challenges and hazards that every parent faces. It is as true today as it was the days when nomads sat around their campfires under the stars entertaining themselves with their stories. The story is psychologically and emotionally meaningful, eloquent, and horrendously powerful.

Paul created a new meaning for the Garden of Eden story of man falling away from God and sinning to adapt it to fit the prevailing many Greek mystery religions like Dionysis' worship of the blood of the bull. This adaptation helped to appeal to the Greek populous and hence to spread his Christianity.

The myth should be a story of each person's opportunity to lift himself to new heights and to the mountain top. We should take comfort in the fact that God knows and understands our struggles for he/she too lived through that humanity. The Garden of Eden is an on-going challenge in the life of every parent who must be trying to choose wisely. It is as Kahlil Gibran tells us that these are not your children but yours to teach and help grow. Now how are we going to teach them to fly?