The Beast and the Light in the Garden of Eden

Making Sense of Genesis and Animal Suffering

By: Howard Siegel

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 4 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Genesis provides the foundation for understanding human suffering. The story of Original Sin and the Fall of mankind sets the stage for everything that follows. But what kind of a God would punish and curse the children of future generations of for wanting to become Homo sapien... man the wise? We are told that Eve's curiosity and disobedience are reasons enough for our predicament and encouraged to move on to get to the reward of the "good news." Most of us do exactly that treating Genesis like a preface to a book that can be glossed over to get to the meat of the story. But in so doing, we gloss over the problem that Jewish and Christain apologists have left virtually untouched for 2500 years. What did God's animals have to do with Eve's disobedience? Why were they sentenced to the eternal cycle of birth, suffering, and death? What was the justification for changing the world from a Garden of Eden into one that is "red in tooth and claw?" Or is the answer to this seemingly unanswerable riddle found in a re-reading of Genesis to see if the Garden of Eden was really a killing field as originally created by God? Were lions laying down with lambs or could they have been feasting on them? The Beast and the Light in the Garden of Eden tackles the theodicy problem -- the defense of God's goodness and omnipotence in view of the existence of evil -- from the both the classical approach and a fresh common sense and scientific perspective. Genesis is seen as a story about us and our responsibility for the predicament of the cycle of life, suffering, and death. It is the story about our choices and where they led us. But that isn’t the only story. There are many glimpses into the mind of the Creator and into His choices. Glimpses that we have been led to believe we should simply accept and avoid dwelling on. The Beast and the Light in the Garden of Eden dwells and comes to a shocking and perhaps unavoidable conclusion. Author Gail Eisntz observes in her Foreword, "Siegel’s philosophical conclusion is that, as humans, we are all witnesses; as humans, we do not get a free pass on the suffering of others, nor do we have the luxury of saying “I don’t want to think about it.” As an elder shared in a special letter to Siegel in the book’s final chapter, “We must do what we can while on earth to alleviate suffering, if we are to be at peace with ourselves.” In his well-constructed analysis of transgressions in the Garden of Eden, Siegel quite literally provides food for thought and makes us all contemplate what we can do to stop suffering and help heal our world."