-24. After eating the
forbidden fruit the only way to immortality was to "eat of the tree of
life." And to keep Adam from the "tree of life," of which he might
"eat and live forever," God drove him out of the garden and placed the
cherubim over it with a "flaming sword which turned every way, to keep
the way of the tree of life." According to this story, man is not
immortal at all, and the only way to attain it is to get by the
cherubim, or scale the walls of the garden of Eden and get to that tree.

I was now ready to determine for myself that this whole story of the
Garden of Eden was a myth, legend, or some oriental allegory, the true
purport and meaning of which is now wholly unknown; beyond the
reasonable conjecture that it originated with some very ancient
oriental philosopher, in the childhood of the human race, and is an
allegorical portrayal of his attempt to solve the problem of the origin
of evil, of suffering and death in the human race.

THE FLOOD

But I pursued my course of reasoning and investigation further. I
approached the period of the flood. The infinite and omniscient God is
revealed as disappointed with this creature that He had made "in his
own image and likeness." He gets angry with him for his perversity,
declares He is sorry He made him, and resolves to destroy the whole
race, except one family whom He proposes to preserve for seed for a new
start; together with every beast, fowl and creeping thing of the earth,
except one pair of each for seed. Think of an infinite and omniscient
God, who knew all things from the beginning, all that man would ever
do, before He created him, now looking down from heaven on his work,
confessing it to be a stupendous failure, getting angry and repenting
that He had made man or beast; and now resolving to take vengeance by
drowning the whole outfit! If man was so perverse that he needed to be
destroyed, why wreak vengeance also on the animal creation that had not
sinned? And if the animal creation must be included in the universal
destruction, why do it by a process thru which all marine life
naturally escaped, while all terrestrial life was destroyed? Then why
save any seed of such perverse stock? Was not God acquainted with the
laws of heredity that had worked so perfectly in transmitting the sin
of Adam down thru all the generations thus far; and did He not know the
same thing would continue in the "seed of the race" after the flood?
If He reall