I admit - I haven't read the entire account - all I remember is
God: Why hast thou hidden thyself?
Adam: I hid myself because I was naked.
[Has he ever been any other way? I don't recall anyone mentioning Brooks Brothers or Saville Row in the Garden]
God: Who told the that thou wast naked?
[Who needed to mention it? It's not like this was news, was it?]
Can someone please explain this? I've never quite understood why anybody should have to feel ashamed of the way they were born. Especially to the Being who supposedly "created" him that way.
My first instinct is to say that the whole story is crap, but I suppose it deserves consideration from a Mormon point of view.
I would suggest that the underlying Mormon principle is that their morality (stuff like sex outside marriage is wrong) is supposedly innate, as a result of the fall, rather than learned (all evidence to the contrary).
This story originated in the stone age, and JS didn't change that part very much, other than adding that they were embarrassed. I bet it just seemed necessary to those stone age priests to explain why we wear clothes.
I agree it doesn't really make sense though.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2011 11:02PM by bubbleboy.
I think that Adam and Eve were unashamed until they ate of the fruit, i.e. I think that nudity was something quite wonderful and accepted without thought. God certainly didn't dislike nudity.
The big crunch came after the fruit of knowledge--when Lucifer told them to cover up. And they listened to him and covered up.
God asked, Why are you hiding yourself? So it was obvious that God had not intended for them to be ashamed of themselves.
This is again why I think the creation story is an allegory for coming of age. Children don't have a concept of nakedness being bad and except for one little part boys and girls even look the same. Once puberty hits and their body changes and they become more aware of their body and start noticing the opposite sex and noticing the opposite sex noticing them. Human females do not have physical cues to indicate when they are in estrus and can mate anytime of the year. Nudity is one of the primary signals to indicate interest in mating and one reason why a society would want to discourage nudity in public.