Tag: religion

In the Trail of the Forbidden Fruit: Part I – The Apple

In the Trail of the Forbidden Fruit: Part I – The Apple

Feeling a bit snacky late last night, I found myself in the kitchen. Once lingering inside still unsure about whether to go for some crackers or a chunky cookie, my eyes fell on the singled out apple on the counter that tempted me with its perfectly smooth, polished crimson skin promising to quench my thirst while filling in the tiny void in my stomach about to be reborn as hunger. After the first bite, I felt so good as if I was in heaven… or… wait… now the confusion started settling in… wasn’t it the apple… the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil in paradise?… didn’t a bite out of an apple put in motion the events that led to Adam and Eve to be cast off the garden of Eden? 

How could this marvelous fruit be the cause of the first sin, especially when it’s never been stated explicitly to be the culprit in the holy books or the ancient writings? I decided to dig in some more… both to the subject and the half-bitten apple in my hand… It was time to consult the holy texts, starting with the Genesis.

And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.

Genesis 1:29

Seeds? Guess what! Apples have seeds! Fruit with seeds are safe! The answer seemed to be clear… the forbidden fruit couldn’t be the apple… Perhaps the moment when Eve was tempted into taking a bite off the forbidden fruit by the talking snake needs to be explored a bit more.

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.”

Quote from King James Bible
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

Still no direct mention of the apple here, but a fruit that can kill you by contact should hardly be even considered an apple. Perhaps, it’s some kind of poisonous fruit with no seeds within, but we’ll explore other options in another post. Wondering why the belief that apples were the cause of the original sin was so widespread, I dug in some more, and I could see the confusion and why it was to blame. Here’s a very condensed version of why:

  • Malus is the Latin name for both apple and evil… It is very well known today that the first impression is crucial and image is everything, so you wouldn’t expect your child whom you named “Devil” or “Hellby” to be accepted with open arms amongst others and live in peace even in today’s evolved society. This was misfortunate on behalf of the apple as in fact, “malus” was the generic name for any kind of foreign fruit except berries, and nations across the world named all the strange fruits in their language in relation to that fact… e.g: tomatoes: love apples or golden apples, potatoes: earth apples, oranges: Chinese apples, datura: thorn apples…
  • Although the homeland of the apple is scientifically proven to be Kazakhstan (hence the former name of its former capital city Alma-ata meaning father of apples), it is mostly agreed that the apple traveled through to the west from Syria and ancient Persia via the Silk road in reverse. Zoroastrianism, which was the religion of the pre-Islamic Persians, had a belief system based on dualistic cosmology of good and evil… a belief system that favoured the balance of opposites. Apples, having both sugar and sour taste perfectly represented this harmony through balance. Sounds just like the alleged fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, doesn’t it? Perhaps, this chunk of the belief had travelled with the apple to the new lands.
  • After the widespread of apples in Western lands,  ancient artists often used it as a model in their works of divine art depicting deities and events of significance. The ancient Greek goddess Aphrodite, the Norse deity of fertility Idunn, and many other gods and goddesses were often painted holding, hurling or just looking at apples, which was basically why it was considered as the fruit originating from the heavens. Moreover, mythology frequently suggests apples to be closely linked with deities in stories like the apple of discord which started the war of Troy and the twelve labours of Hercules in which he had to retrieve golden apples from the garden of Hesperides as one of the tasks. So, seeing apples in divine art and reading or listening about them in mythology is more than enough to place them in paradise.
Golden Apple of Discord by Jacob Jordaens (and just look how the angel at the back looks terrified by the sight of the apple!)
  • Apples were often linked with immortality in mythology like the golden apples of Hesperides (or apples of immortality) that Hercules was tasked to retrieve and that Idunn in Norse mythology was the keeper of magic apples of immortality. Immortality is the one thing that separates man from god. Unlike gods, mankind can’t live forever. Well, ok, but Eve didn’t achieve immortality after eating the apple, so how does this work?… Remember it was the fruit of the tree of knowledge that was forbidden to touch or eat, and with apples symbolizing immortality, can it be something in the lines of what Dalai Lama once said: “Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.“
  • Let’s leave mythology behind and fast forward to the time when Christianity was flourishing among the Celts and Romans in eternal conflict. Originating from Dionysus paganism, the Roman Catholics loathed the Druid faith influenced Celts. Just as grapes and wine were favoured by the Roman Catholics; apples and cider were the favourites of the Celts. The conflict started rising even more when Celts started calling the Catholic grape “corrupt”, while the Romans spread the belief that apples were “hellish”. The battle of throwing dirt on each other was clearly won by the Roman Catholics, as stories about how evil the apple was, linking it to the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Eden and from that moment on, it spread like wildfire. These stories became beliefs in short time. For instance, to prove that the apple was the devil’s fruit, one could slice the apple vertically to witness Eve’s vagina embedded in the core, or when sliced horizontally the apple core revealed a pentagram; the symbol for the devil, engraved in its centre.
From Left to Right: Eve’s Vagina and the devil’s pentagram

Ancient stories about apples being the forbidden fruit and symbolizing evil, immortality, and knowledge have seeped into our souls as it continued inspiring more modern beliefs, art, literature and culture not very different from the ancient versions. From Snow White munching on a poisonous apple… all the way to Apple Inc. adopting a half-bitten apple as its logo symbolizing a bite (or a byte) taken out of knowledge… At least, the apple isn’t as sinful as it used to be… So, go now, get an apple and bite into it. You’ve earned it!

For “In the Trail of the Forbidden Fruit: Part II”, I am planning on featuring the tomato!

Further reading and references for this article:

  • “In the Devil’s Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food” by Stewart Lee Allen.
  • “Apple: A Global History” by Erika Janik
  • “Paradise Lost” by John Milton

On Science, Religion, Lucky Numbers, and our Need to Link Every Unassociated Thing

On Science, Religion, Lucky Numbers, and our Need to Link Every Unassociated Thing

It’s in human nature to subconsciously beat our brains out to make weird connections between unfamiliar people, things and unrelated events before trying to come up with a logical explanation to prove what our minds had falsely linked long before. We all do this as a means of gaining familiarity towards the unknown, as once we make connections that could allegedly explain the scary, the uncertain unknown in any way, our fear becomes beatable, bearable, predictable and later, even prone to manipulation for some to rule others.

When science was nonexistent or still taking its baby steps, we considered lightnings and thunderbolts to be the doings of an angry god punishing us and when we reacted in any meaningless way out of fear and sheer panic, we believed our actions were to take credit in stopping a meteorological event which would have ceased by doing nothing anyway. Soon after, we began performing meaningless rituals, like prayers, dancing and even appointed the first lightning banishers as shamans or wise men to protect our wellbeing in the times of danger. Centuries passed, and science gradually evolved to explain the mysteries of our world, but we still haven’t changed at our core. Most of us still believe a lucky shirt worn on a day expected to turn out bad would help us into changing it for the better. How else could the link between a piece of manmade fabric and a successful job interview be explained other than the shirt being a lucky shirt! The truth simply lies on ‘believing’ being the key that turns the bad day into a good one, but we also need a reference point to do so… to boost our self confidence… to feel smart… to have power upon others… And that’s where the shirt comes in and our logic goes out.

On second thought, don’t wear your lucky shirt to a job interview if it looks like this!

It’s not just lucky objects that dictate our actions in such ways. Sometimes, it’s lucky numbers that decide our fate from picking out a wedding day to jotting them down as the next hopefully winning powerball (lottery) number. How some numbers come to be lucky for us isn’t a mystery either; it has the same working principle as the lucky shirt. When we come across a formerly insignificant figure, and something good happens, the incoherent connection is already up and running in our minds. It’s no wonder that almost nobody’s lucky number is 0 as we don’t see it around much! There are no days in a month starting with a zero, nor there are house numbers we run into in our daily lives, etc. with just a plain old zero. The number ‘0’ is still lucky on its own account, as it’s not labeled as an ‘unlucky’ numeral like the unfortunate ’13’, where our malfunctioning reasoning skills took over once more! The clerical error of an early translator resulted in the omittance of the thirteenth line (law) in the Code of Hammurabi, was one of the incidents tagging the figure as ‘bad’, or ‘unlucky’. And, when two different dinner parties in ancient lore, included a thirteenth guest, the unjust link between the number and it being bad solidified: Judas betrayed Jesus after showing up as the thirteenth guest in the Last Supper and the appearance of Loki (he was evil) in Valhalla as the thirteenth entity at a dinner party, sealed the fate of the number 13. It is surprising how ancient lore still has a tight grip on our reasoning skills centuries later.

Sometimes one more is too much!

Speaking of lore, just think how religion evolved from worshipping multiple, more vicious gods derived from nature to its current form of believing in a single, invisible higher power! It’s just that our brains are wired to create links where there are none when we encounter things we can’t explain. One of the mysteries we would never be able to solve, which is what happens when we die is also explained by the concepts of heaven and hell. Do good deeds in life, and you’ll drink wine from the rivers of a breathtaking garden, do bad deeds and you’ll burn for eternity with no cable TV. Wait! Cable TV? There can’t be that in hell, or at least not according to the holy books. Heaven and hell were depicted centuries ago and their appearance seem to have not changed at all, even today. Not one bit. Why? Because the lore says so! And, this happens in the modern world where a five-year-old non-fiction book is deemed as outdated! For me, there’s no life after death, but death after life has been proven. However, it feels good, even for me, to fantasize about an immortal life in a beautiful garden upon retirement from life.

My heaven would be less wild animals, more books and a working wi-fi

Lastly, we love our built-in crooked reasoning so much that we started teaching our ‘linking the unrelated’ method to animals, such as monkeys pushing buttons to get food. Poor primates must be thinking hard to figure out the link between a magic button and a bunch of bananas! Or are they?

For the majority of us, most things we encounter in life are still mysteries. Let them be, unless we can explain the unknown by science.

Longing for Belonging: Why we feel the need to Connect

Longing for Belonging: Why we feel the need to Connect

As soon as we are born, we are unconsciously forced to belong to various groups, concepts, people, places or ideas! It only gets worse as we grow up.

It all starts with gender grouping; the blues versus the pinks. Parents decorate their rooms and buy them tiny toddler clothes matching the relevant color code even before the baby is born. The first toys are distinguishing, too; dolls for girls and die-cast cars, squirt guns or soldiers for boys. No wonder neither gender can truly understand the other later in adulthood as they were never let free enough to share a common experience in earlier play times. Just observe the animal world closest to us! Can you figure out the gender of a nearby stray cat or a dog just by watching them play? Both sexes of both animals seem to be enjoying whether they are playing with a ball of yarn or fetching a thrown stick. Shouldn’t we have chosen different toys for our dear pets of opposite genders?

Image Credit: Smithsonian Magazine

When a baby reaches the age of perception, they are told to behave in certain ways in accordance with the set of unspoken norms of the first group they were forced into. Boys are strong! Boys don’t cry! Girls are princesses! Girls must be pretty! Later, the very same gender group also makes an attempt to choose the child’s future profession. Boys are encouraged to be soldiers, constructors and engineers while girls are chased into professions mostly involving interior design, healthcare and culinary arts. Luckily, more and more occupations are becoming gender-less now, such as teachers, doctors, lawyers, artists and scientists. Perhaps because education, fighting for rights, arts and science are far more vital to fit into one sex… or a group..

Other initial forced groupings include religion and national identity, which solely depends on the geography we are born into…

All contemporary religions promote one God, yet we have numerous religions constantly at cold war with each other! It’s like living on the same old planet, but believing that we live in the multi verse of a distant star. Sadly, the distance among our beliefs is far more than any distant planet we might one day travel to. Again in our nearby surroundings, we don’t observe an organised army of mice (whose DNA is 98% similar to human DNA) marching to destroy a group of chimpanzees (whose DNA is 99% similar to human DNA) just because they want to make them accept that cheese is better than bananas!

We live on one planet, where we share common resources like the air, the seas and oceans and forests, yet there are over 200 countries ready to go to war with each other if a severe conflict takes place, willing to contaminate or even destroy the shared necessities of a better shared future. Militaristic tendencies, diplomatic shenanigans and narcissistic leaders are directing our planet into a gradual demise, but we won’t even care if the group we belong to, is victorious in the end. Most works of science fiction tells us stories about an alien invasion of Earth. Why are we assuming the aliens are so violent, land grabbing fanatics and resource hunters like us? Just like the rat-chimpanzee example previously mentioned, mice won’t form armies to claim land and resources from chimpanzees. They will coexist provided they aren’t each other’s natural prey and predator. On a small note; we share half (about 50%) of our DNA with bananas and we will probably share less with aliens from distant corners of our galaxy, yet we still assume they will visit Earth to conquer it!

The urge to belong into a group or groups never stops and this time it becomes willingly.

We support foreign sports teams across the globe, we vote for a political party even if we don’t agree to most of its projects. We establish fan clubs for certain celebrities, we become activists or pacifists, flat-earthers, heavy metal groupies, Cthulhu worshipers, hard core gamers, conspiracy theorists and more… We were forced into certain groups after we were born and perhaps later in life, we are just trying to expand our options to connect with others. Otherwise, how can a Muslim woman born in the Middle East connect with a Christian man living across the globe?

The lengths we go, just to connect!!!

Vampire Philosophy: Thought Shard no:411, On God and Religion…

Vampire Philosophy: Thought Shard no:411, On God and Religion…

Throughout history, philosophers have been tackling problems relating to a variety of subjects like existence, society, political theory, ethics, values, art, epistemology etc. As most of philosophy is directly questioning aspects of human life and its relations to other matters like the ones mentioned earlier, it can be objective only up to a degree as we are all human after all. What we lack is total objectivity, which can only be possible by viewing these matters from a completely different perspective; a non-human one. This series of texts (recordings) attempts to question us from a unique perspective with a vampiric touch to all matters that matter to us…

Here goes…

vampires2

“Greetings Human!

The crystal shard you’ve just found is one of the many thought shards belonging to the Strigoi; the vampires as you commonly name us and its purpose is to transfer our philosophy to you when you have evolved enough to understand it. The crystal thought shards were recorded hundreds of years ago and possess the capacity of adapting to your current understanding by accumulating data from its surroundings as time passes and updating themselves in a lexical and intellectual manner to make a smooth transfer of our philosophy, making it a version you may comprehend if you have an open mind. I am Adonis Loscemus of Cumae. This is thought shard number 411, recorded in 1158 AD, based on our perception of God and religion.

Mankind, or better known and labelled as “Sophisticated cattle”, by our kind – Strigoi, has a concrete belief the whole universe was created by God. One god for everything! A single entity capable of creating all life itself; from lichens, flora and animals, to even us vampires as well as all the way to beings of other galactic realms. The belief in favor of existence of one god is irrelevant at this point. As you might have guessed, the human race is just cattle to feed upon for most Strigoi. The question I want to pose is, if there’s God for you, is it the same one as your cattle’s? Do our sophisticated cattle believe their cattle have a god of their own? Like…

The sheep god?
The cow king?
The Parthenon of calves?

Or are your cattle atheists?
Can creations that do not have the capacity of sparking a belief in their minds be held responsible and labelled as heretics?

As for us, Strigoi deists believe that “mankind” was created by the one and only God to feed the Strigoi, but that’s surely not what the humankind believes; to be created just to be consumed by a superior race can’t be the God’s great plan. But, humans have no trouble believing that sheep exist solely for that reason.

You see yourselves as God’s children and pray and worship God on a regular basis, yet as the biological offspring of your mundane parents, you never think of praying and worshiping them. Just a bit of love, following their teachings and being a good person is more than enough. Are you showing off to be in the good books of God? And if God sees everything, don’t you think your true intentions are not as honest?

You build houses of God for a display of your religion’s power. Yet, isn’t the whole world, and the nature surrounding it, God’s house? Not to mention you believe in one God but multiple religions… all fighting for different versions of the same glorified outcome.

You shall not kill… unless it’s in the name of God…
Then, starting wars and taking lives that God forbade, suddenly becomes a cleansing.

The notion of God exists for us Strigoi too, but it’s far away from what you perceive now. You lack the commonsense of seeing everything on a greater scale. If God is the creator of the whole universe, why downscale and limit the divine just to Earth.

The next thought shard can be found in the Lascaux cave inside the borders of modern France.

The end of transfer…”

vampire-philosophy