Abel Would Have Killed Cain

ArgumentMy opening will be brief. Essentially, the morality of this story is inconclusive. .. it is not possible to conclude that either party did what was "right" to earn the favor of the Biblical God, either because 1) we cannot fathom God's will, or 2) the Christian God is not omnibenevolent (thus rendering the Biblical conception of morality to be false). Because the morality is arbitrary, God's favor is also arbitrary. What is not arbitrary is the Biblical description of human nature, and it is this nature that compels Cain to kill Abel, and would compel Abel to kill Cain had God favored Cain. Morality is InconclusiveIn Genesis 1, God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. " (Genesis 1:29) God did NOT grant animals for human consumption, yet Abel tends to flocks and sees fit to butcher "fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock" to offer to God as sacrifice. (Genesis 4:4) Cain on the other hand offers what was given to him as food (i. e. plants) as an offering to God. For some unexplained reason, God saw fit to look upon Abel the butcher with favor, even though what Abel did to his flocks also would have resulted in "[the firstborn of his flock's] blood [crying] out to [God] from the ground" (Genesis 4:10). What makes the butchering of animals different on a moral basis from the butchering of humans in the eyes of God is unexplained. What is clear though is that man was not to eat the flesh of animals, so for Abel to tend flocks with any sort of flesh-related purpose is at best morally ambiguous, at worst a Biblical contradiction. In the end, it is not possible to say why Abel was looked upon with favor. .. the decision by God is arbitrary at best, contradictory at worst. The Name of CainThe name "Cain" means "to acquire. " [1, 2] The movie Noah made a big point about this, as Cain's successor Tubal-Cain utters more than once "[God] cursed us to struggle by the sweat of our brow to survive. Damned if I don't do everything it takes to do just that. Damned if I don't take what I want. " (. http://www.moviequotesandmore.com...) A probable moral to the story is that Cain "took" from Abel God's favor by killing him, or so he thought, and that such taking is inherently sinful. However, was Cain and ONLY Cain "destined" to do this, or could Abel have done this as well? There is no reason to think that Abel was incapable of doing so. .. after all, both Adam and Eve sought to acquire knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. Thus this "sin", this act of acquisition and the desire that drives it, is ubiquitous in humanity, according to the Bible. Had God favored Cain and not Abel, there is every reason to think that Abel would have done the exact same thing Cain had done to "acquire" God's favor from the favored sibling - it is human nature, according to the Bible. ConclusionAccording to the Bible, man is sinful. According to Christ, not one of us is without sin (John 8:7). According to Genesis, sin is very closely linked to the act of acquisition. The consequences sinning were not known at the time of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel, and so upon describing two scenarios that involved the desire for acquisition (the original sin and Cain and Abel), man in both cases "falls" by sinning. It is not explained why acquiring the knowledge of good and evil and becoming "as one of us [i. e. like God], to know good and evil" (Genesis 3:22), is a sin to begin with, and it is not explained why God favored Abel over Cain. At best, moral conclusions from these stories are arbitrary, and thus, given the Biblical account of human nature, any human would have done as Cain had done in his situation, meaning thus that Abel would have killed Cain had God favored Cain. [1] . https://www.biblegateway.com...[2] . http://www.jewishworldreview.com...