Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

apple-2

2023-11-01 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
apple-2
Votey panel for apple-2
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic depicts Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, standing naked among lush greenery. One of them delivers a skeptical rant about the Genesis creation story: "I mean the whole thing is crazy. A lady made from a rib? Tricked by a talking snake into eating magic fruit and then she knows stuff? How does this explain anything? Wouldn't there be inbreeding problems?"

The caption below reads: "Shortly after Eve ate the apple she became a skeptical materialist."

The joke hinges on a clever paradox: the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is traditionally understood to have given humanity awareness and understanding. The comic takes this premise to its logical extreme -- if eating the fruit grants knowledge, then the very first thing Eve would gain is enough scientific literacy to recognize that her own origin story makes no sense. She immediately begins poking holes in the narrative she is literally living inside of, questioning the biological implausibility of being made from a rib, the absurdity of a talking snake, and the genetic impossibility of populating an entire species from just two individuals.

The humor lies in the self-defeating nature of the Biblical narrative when taken literally: the fruit that is supposed to be humanity's downfall is also what would give someone the critical thinking skills to reject the story in the first place. The term "skeptical materialist" -- someone who only believes in what can be physically observed and tested -- is the punch of the caption, suggesting that the very first consequence of gaining knowledge was to become an atheist. It's a compact philosophical joke about how knowledge and faith are often positioned as fundamentally at odds with each other.

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