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What Adam and Prometheus tell us about human nature

As a wise friend once said, “all animals want to do is eat, sleep, sh*t, and f*ck.” So, what differentiates man from beast if not the painful realization of his own vulnerability? What separates us from the animals if not our ability to contemplate the righteousness (or wickedness) of our own behavior? What makes a human animal a person if not the awareness of one’s own mortality?

We are self-conscious beings.

That was the significance of the myth of Adam and Eve after all. In the ancient Babylonian tale, the First Man and Woman lived in the Garden of Eden where they had neither toil nor desire. They had no anxiety and no shame, for they “did not know that they were naked.” They had no psychological conflict within themselves and no spiritual conflict with their Maker.

The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, by Benjamin West, 1791

Fiat Homo // Let there be man

When Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree, “their eyes were opened” and the first evidence of their knowledge of good and …