To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16, New International Version)
Eve is curious, independent. She eats from the tree of knowledge. The teacher won’t share his apples of higher learning, so she shows initiative. And she is punished.
The question of whether to-eat or not-to-eat from the tree of knowledge constituted the very first IQ test. Eve passes with flying colors. The Bible god takes a look at her score and decides, This won’t do, the clever broad is bound to give the rat-pack grief. And they won’t be able to do it myyyy wayyyy!!
So all women are punished by being made to suffer while giving birth.
Childbirth is painful because, funny thing, if a woman’s hips were sufficiently wide, she couldn’t walk well. Physiologically, the design would be more Yugo than Cadillac.
Take a look at elite female sprinters. Many if not most of these women tend to have narrower hips. Not “best-for-birthin’” kind. Wide hips slow you down. In terms of economy of motion and speed, keep them narrow.
And yet, among females, there was an evolutionary move away from narrow hips. Away from more guy-like hips. Why? Something more important was at stake.
What is that? Women have wider hips (and suffer during childbirth) to bear very large-brained children with an appetite for learning.
To then saddle a woman and all human-kind with the edict “don’t eat from the tree of knowledge” is an incredible irony.
In the biblical story of Genesis, intelligence is sacrificed at the altar of a blatantly patriarchal mythology.
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Tags: Bible, Sunday Un-Sermon
August 8th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
You might enjoy the photo from Rene Maltete that I posted at Hen’s Teeth.