Why would someone with Asperger’s Syndrome uncover the Great Mystery of the Universe? Inquisitive minds want to know. It is a question requiring an answer. It made me come up with the following explanation. Most of our thinking happens intuitively. Intuition works fast. You can call it fast thinking.1 When our intuition is inadequate, our reason comes into action. It is called slow thinking. If your intuition does the right thing, there is no reason to consider all your options. Evolution made this happen. It is easy to understand why. It saves a lot of time and energy. And species that deliberated all the possibilities when a hungry pride of predators was coming in their direction didn’t survive and died out.
Great chess players don’t consider all the options, either. Based on past training and experience, their intuition presents a few options that their reason consciously evaluates. They thereby ignore billions of options, and nearly all of them are not worth considering. That’s what makes them such great chess players. Our brains have limited processing capabilities. Clogging a brain with countless useless options downgrades its performance. That’s also why we train for our jobs. However, that makes chess players ignore the best options. Computers don’t have intuition but are fast enough to consider so many options that they can find better moves than chess players can think of. Computers now beat the best human chess players.
But what if intuition fails you more often than most people? In that case, you consider options other people don’t think of. Others may call you crazy or insane. Indeed, most options you consider may not be worth considering, but you don’t know that until you have found that out yourself. If that applies to you, then you may be autistic like me. If the condition is sufficiently mild, you can still lead an ordinary life like everyone else, with a job and a spouse. Still, you need significant experimentation and reasoning to achieve what comes naturally to most people.
Let’s explain that using an example. Yuor brian autmotaically corercts speillng erorrs. You were probably able to read the previous sentence without any effort. Otherwise, you must solve the puzzle by trying different words in various orders to see if they make sense. In that case, you consider several possible meanings, and perhaps you find something no one else has found. And if there is a hidden meaning, you might only find it in this way.
Many people think of autistic people as weirdos cracking riddles no one else can. Fixing broken mirrors requires patience, dedication, imagination, and determination. Perhaps Newton and Einstein were autistic. They may have appeared geniuses simply because they tried out ideas others didn’t think of. In this way, they may have discovered things other people couldn’t. Autistic people can keep working on their eccentric projects despite constant rejection. And sometimes, they are on the right track. And for the ladies who go after the wrong guys, men with Asperger’s Syndrome are usually faithful. But who wants a weirdo if you can get a drunk who cheats on you?
If you must figure out social rules by trying out actions and evaluating other people’s responses, you’re in for a lot of trouble. Most people make sense of the world intuitively, but if you are autistic, reality appears like a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle or a shattered mirror. You must fit the pieces together somehow. And you can only do so by applying logic to evidence. That takes a lot of time and effort, and the pieces hardly ever fit perfectly. What you get in the end is something similar to what other people think of as reality. But if you work like that, you might discover patterns others don’t notice.
Autism, nevertheless, survived the evolutionary rat race. How could this have happened? As they say, good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. Perhaps you arrive at a better judgement by making errors. In that case, autism can be an advantage. Computers find chess moves people don’t think of. And who can find the answers when intuition fails? These situations require trying out ideas other people don’t think of and, quite possibly, ignorance concerning social conventions to pursue these ideas. And if the survival of the group depends on finding these answers, groups without autists get killed and die out. Life is a bitch. If reality is like a 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle, and the truth is something no one believes, you can get there by puzzling and ignoring negative responses if you are on the right track. And the truth is out there, somewhere.
Latest revision: 18 January 2025
1. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Daniel Kahneman (2011). Penguin Books.
Imagine that Jesus’ mother had put a small gold coin weighing 3 grammes in Jesus’ retirement account at 4% interest just after he was born in the year 1 AD. Jesus never retired but he promised to return. Suppose now that the account was kept for this eventuality. Imagine now that the end is near, and that Jesus is about to return. How much gold would there be in the account in 2018?
It is an amount of gold weighing 11 million times the mass of the Earth. The yearly interest would be a gold nugget weighing 440,000 times the mass of the Earth. There is a small problem, a fly in the ointment so to say. It would be impossible to pay out Jesus because there simply isn’t enough gold.
It might seem that the bank had to close long ago because of a lack of gold, but that isn’t true. As long as Jesus doesn’t show up it can remain open, at least if the borrowers are allowed to borrow more to pay for the interest. If the economy grows 4% it may not be such a big deal. The interest can be created out of thin air by making new loans that allow borrowers to pay for the interest. And if Jesus doesn’t claim his gold when he returns and accepts bank credit, everything will be fine.
There is a limited amount of gold while compound interest is infinite. As long as bankers can create money out of thin air to pay for the interest and people accept bank deposits for payment, everything is fine. Problems only arise when people demand real gold. A bank can go bankrupt when depositors want to take out their deposits in gold.
Central banks
Perhaps Jesus’ retirement account isn’t such a big problem after all. Our money isn’t gold but currencies central banks can print. Assume now that Jesus’ mother had put one euro in the account instead. One euro at 4% interest makes 22,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 euro after 2017 years. That may seem an intimidating figure, but the European Central Bank can take 22 pieces of paper and print 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 euro on each of them. And there you are. Something like this happened during the financial crisis of 2008. This is called quantitative easing. You may have heard that word before.
Central banks can print new dollars and euros to cope with a shortfall. In fact, this is what central banks often do. There is always a shortfall because of interest because most money is debt and interest on this debt needs to be paid. To make up for the shortfall, there are two options. First, people can borrow more. Second, central banks can print new currency. Both things can happen at the same time. Central bank decisions about interest rates are also about dealing with the shortfall caused by interest charges.
When central banks lower interest rates, people can borrow more because interest rates are lower. Central banks lower interest rates when people are borrowing less than is needed to cope with the shortfall. If central banks raise interest rates, people can borrow less because interest rates are higher. Central banks raise interest rates when people are borrowing more than is needed to cope with the shortfall and the extra money makes people want to buy more stuff than can be made. And if people don’t borrow at all, this is a crisis, and central banks may print more currency to cope with the shortfall.
Interest on capital versus economic growth
There is a problem central banks can’t fix by printing more currency. Interest is more than just interest on money. Interest is any return on investment. Throughout history returns on investments were mostly higher than the rate of economic growth. Most of these returns have been reinvested so a growing share of total income was for investors. This can’t go on forever because who is going to buy the stuff corporations make in order to keep these investments profitable? A simple example can illuminate that.
Interest income (red) versus total income with interest income growing faster than total income
The graph above shows how total income and interest income (in red) develop with an economic growth rate of 2% and an interest rate of 5% when interest income starts out as 10% of total income and all interest income is reinvested. After 25 years the economic pie has grown faster than interest income and wages have risen. At some point interest income starts to rise faster than total income, and wages go down. After 80 years there’s nothing left for wages. This graph explains a lot about what is going on in reality.
In the short run it was possible to prop up business profits and interest rates by letting people go further into debt to buy more stuff. In the long run, the growth rate of capital income cannot exceed the rate of economic growth. Interest rates depend on the returns on capital so this can explain why interest rates went down in recent years. In the past interest rates below zero weren’t possible but from time to time there were economic crises and wars that destroyed a lot of capital. This created new room for growth.
Wealth inequality and income inequality
When interest rates go down, the value of investments tend to rise. If savings yield little this benefits the wealthy as most people have their money in savings while the wealthy own most investments. But it is important to know the cause otherwise you might think that interest rates should rise. The graph above shows that wealth inequality causes interest rates to go lower, hence redistributing income, for example via higher wages or taxes on the wealthy, can bring higher interest rates.
There is a difference between wealth inequality and income inequality. Your labour income and the returns on your investments are your income. If you are rich but make no money on your investments, your wealth doesn’t contribute to your income. In reality wealthy people make better returns on their investments than others because they have better information and can take more risk. Still, the graph shows that income and wealth inequality can’t increase indefinitely, and that returns on investments can’t exceed the reate of economic growth in the long run, hence interest rates need to go lower.
Most people pay more interest than they receive. The interest paid on mortgages and loans is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Interest is hidden in rents, in taxes because governments pay interest on their debts, and the price of every product and service because investments have to be made to make these products and services. German research has shown that 80% of the people pay more in interest than they receive, while only the top 10% of richest people receive more in interest than they pay. Lower interest rates benefit most people despite some side-effects that work in the opposite direction.
Economic cycles
Humans are herd animals. They buy stuff and even go into debt to buy stuff when others are going into debt to buy stuff too. Suddenly they may realise that they have bought too much or have gone too deeply into debt, and all at the same time. One day they may be borrowing money, queueing up before the shops, and bidding up prices. The next day, they may decide to pay off their debts, leaving the shop owners with unsold inventories they have to get rid of at fire sale prices. So prices may go up when people are in a buying frenzy and may go down when sales dry up.
When there is a buying frenzy business owners are optimistic and do a lot of investments, and often they go into debt to make those investments. But if suddenly customers disappear, they may be stuck with unsold inventory and debts they cannot repay. Businesses may then have to fire people. Those people are then left without income, and cannot repay their debts too, so sales will go down further. If their debts are not repaid, banks could get into trouble. In most cases the economy will recover. In the worst case banks go bankrupt, money disappears, the economy collapses, and an economic depression takes off.
Interest can make things worse. Assume that you have a business and expect to make a return of 8%. You have € 100,000 yourself and you borrow € 200,000 at 6%. You expect to make 8% so borrowing money at 6% seems a good idea. If you only invest your own € 100,000 you can make € 8,000, but if you borrow an additional € 200,000 you can make € 12,000 (8% of € 300,000 minus 6% of € 200,000, which is € 24,000 minus € 12,000). The balance sheet of your business might look like this:
debit
credit
inventory
€ 250,000
loan 6%
€ 200,000
cash, bank deposits
€ 50,000
owner’s equity
€ 100,000
total
€ 300,000
total
€ 300,000
If sales disappoint and you only make a return of 2% on your invested capital of € 300,000, which is € 6,000, you make a loss because you pay € 12,000 in interest charges. You may have to fire workers. Businesses can go bankrupt because they have borrowed too much and have to pay interest, even when they are profitable overall. Sales often disappoint when the economy fares poorly. This means that more businesses face the same difficulties and make losses because of interest payments. They may have to fire workers and these workers lose their income. This can worsen the slump.
Interest, economic depressions and war
Silvio Gesell discovered that interest rates can’t go below a certain minimum because lending would then stop. Money would go on strike as he put it. Why is that? Low yields make investing and lending money unattractive because of the risks involved. Debtors may not repay and banks may go bankrupt. Depositors then prefer to take their money out of the bank and keep it with themselves.
This can cause economic crises and depressions. Silvio Gesell lived around 1900. Interest rates below zero weren’t possible because of the gold standard. Depositors could go to the bank and withdraw their deposits in gold so that they didn’t have to accept negative interest rates. From time to time there were bank runs, economic crises and wars that destroyed a lot of capital. And this created new room for growth.
There may be a relationship between interest, economic depressions and war. In 1910 the amount of capital income (the red circle in the graph) relative to total income (the two circles together) was close to what it was in 2010. This could have led to an economic depression but then came World War I. The war destroyed a lot of capital so that there was new room for capital growth and interest rates could remain positive.
A few decades later the Great Depression arrived. If interest rates could have gone below zero in the 1930s, the Great Depression might not have happened, Adolf Hitler would not have risen to power and World War II would not have occurred. The currency of Wörgl demonstrates that negative interest rates could have ended the depression. After World War II interest rates never came near zero again. Governments and central banks printed more money. This caused inflation, which eroded trust in money.
People feared that inflation would make their money worth less so interest rates rose. In the 1970s the link between money and gold was abandoned because there was a lot more money than there was gold to back it. In the 1980s governments and central banks started policies to bring down inflation and to promote trust in money. As of 1983 interest rates went down gradually as a consequence of a renewed trust in money and central banks. Debt levels rose and interest rates went near zero.
Promoting inflation might not be a good idea. The end result is unpredictable. The best one can hope for is a poor performing economy and a lot of inflation like in the 1970s. But if interest rates rise because lenders lose their trust in money and debts, people may not be able to repay their debts, and the financial system might get into serious trouble. This can cause another great depression or another great war. But if the alternative is negative interest rates, stability and prosperity, then why not opt for that?
Featured image: Of Usury, from Brant’s Stultifera Navis (the Ship of Fools). Albrecht Dürer (1494). Public domain.
In the middle of the Great Depression, the Austrian town of Wörgl was in deep trouble and prepared to try anything. Of its population of 4,500, 1,500 people were without a job, and 200 families were penniless. Mayor Michael Unterguggenberger had a list of projects he wanted to accomplish, but there was not enough money to carry them out. These projects included paving roads, erecting streetlights, extending water distribution across the whole town, and planting trees along the streets.1 2
Rather than spending the remaining 32,000 Austrian Schilling in the town’s coffers to start these projects, he deposited them in a local savings bank as a guarantee to back the issue of a currency known as stamp scrip. A crucial feature of this money was the holding fee. The Wörgl money required a monthly stamp on the circulating notes to keep them valid, amounting to 1% of the note’s value.1 2 An Argentine businessman named Silvio Gesell had come up with this idea in his book The Natural Economic Order.
Nobody wanted to pay for the monthly stamps, so everyone spent the notes they received. The 32,000 schilling deposit allowed anyone to exchange scrip for 98 per cent of its value in schillings. Hardly anyone did this because the scrip was worth one Austrian schilling after buying a new stamp. But people did not keep more scrip than they needed. Only 5,000 schillings circulated. The stamp fees financed a soup kitchen that fed 220 families.1 2
The municipality carried out the intended works, including new houses, a reservoir, a ski jump and a bridge. The key to this success was the fast circulation of the scrip money within the local economy, fourteen times higher than the schilling. It increased trade and employment. Unemployment in Wörgl dropped 25% while it rose in the rest of Austria. Six neighbouring villages copied the idea successfully. The French Prime Minister, Édouard Daladier, visited the town to witness the ‘miracle of Wörgl’ himself.1 2
In January 1933, the neighbouring city of Kitzbühel copied the idea. In June 1933, Mayor Unterguggenberger addressed a meeting with representatives from 170 Austrian towns and villages. Two hundred Austrian townships were interested in introducing scrip money. At this point, the central bank decided to ban scrip money.1 2
Since then, several communities have issued local scrip currencies. None of them was as successful as the currency of Wörgl. The reasons probably are:
There was no economic depression, and the economy could support interest, so introducing scrip money had little effect.
If scrip money is not widely accepted, people will exchange it for regular currency if they can’t use it.
In Wörgl, the payment of taxes in arrears generated additional revenues for the town council, which the town council spent on public projects. Once the townspeople had paid their taxes, they would have run out of spending options and might have exchanged their scrip for schillings to avoid paying for the stamps. That never happened because the central bank halted the project.
There are, however, a few issues to consider. The economy of Wörgl did well without issuing debt because the money kept circulating. A negative interest rate induces people to spend the money they have, so no new money has to be borrowed into existence to stimulate the economy. A holding fee makes negative interest rates possible as you do not have to pay it when lending money. For instance, lending out money at an interest rate of -2% is more attractive than paying 12% for the stamps. If we can uncover the conditions for it to work, remove its flaws, and plan for the consequences, we can have a usury-free financial system.
Natural Money
Introducing negative interest rates in the global financial system may have great benefits. The website Naturalmoney.org features an in-depth research of the feasibility and consequences of negative interest rates.
Ancient Egypt had a similar type of money for more than 1,000 years. There is an account in the Bible that may explain how this money came into existence.
Featured image: Wörgl bank note with stamps. Public Domain.
1. The Future Of Money. Bernard Lietaer (2002). Cornerstone / Cornerstone Ras. 2. A Strategy for a Convertible Currency. Bernard A. Lietaer, ICIS Forum, Vol. 20, No.3, 1990. [link]
On 15 July 2011, two television towers in the Netherlands caught fire. One collapsed spectacularly. There had never been a fire in a television tower in the Netherlands. These television towers had been there for over fifty years. And there were only twenty-four of them. A few people speculated about these incidents having a common cause.1 The towers are in different areas, making a common cause unlikely unless there is intent. After all, what is the chance of two aeroplanes crashing into both towers of the World Trade Center in New York on the same day? Only there was no evidence suggesting intent or a common cause. That makes it very mysterious.
Consider this coincidence from Bermuda, which is near the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. In 1975, a 17-year-old boy had a deadly accident while riding his moped. He died exactly a year after his 17-year-old brother died in an accident while riding the same moped in the same intersection and collided with the same taxi with the same driver, carrying the same passenger. Repeating patterns may have contributed to the incident. Perhaps it was a dangerous point where accidents frequently occurred. The passenger may have visited Bermuda once a year and taken a taxi from the airport to the same destination each time.
In 1992, I was bicycling in Groningen, where I lived at the time. On the way, a car door suddenly opened just before me. I could barely avoid a collision. About ten minutes later, on the same trip, it happened again with another car on another road. Never before or after this trip had a car door opened in front of me, even though I had made bicycle trips nearly every day for several decades. It is odd. But what are the odds?
Those incidents might be random events. Many things happen all the time, so bizarre accidents occur by chance. It doesn’t require a Supreme Puppet Master to make them happen. It may be hard to calculate the probability of an event like two television towers catching fire in one country in one day, but it is very low. Only, the number of possible strange incidents is very high.
But how low and how high? That matters tremendously. If there are a million possible events, and the chance of one happening on any given day is one in a million, we should not be surprised when one does. On average, an event like that should happen every day. If it is one in a trillion, and such an event occurs quite frequently, we are on to something, because, on average, it should happen once every million days.
The number of possible strange coincidences is infinite, so it shouldn’t surprise us that simple coincidences, such as a car door opening in front of me twice on a single bicycle trip, happen from time to time. It is, however, odd that it happened twice on one trip and never on any other. Coincidences come in different types. The more intricate a coincidence is, the less likely it is to occur. Indeed, some complicated coincidences are far less likely to occur than two car doors opening on one bicycle trip.
The following falls in the latter category. Once, I entered a do-it-yourself store. There was a couch near the entrance. The price tag of € 389 caught my attention. As a student, I lived in dormitory 389 on the campus. Price tags often end with a nine, so there was nothing suspicious about it, I concluded. Strange things had happened, so I tried to convince myself that it was not unusual. I realised it would be far more curious to find a price tag of € 401, as I had also lived in building 401, and price tags rarely end in a 1.
A few seconds later, I ran into a pile of bags of potting soil. These bags had a conspicuous lettering ’40l’, indicating they contained 40 litres of potting soil. That was close enough to 401 to be intriguing. There were no other types of bags on the spot. Potting soil is available in 10, 20, 25, 40, and 50-litre sizes. Sacks of 40 litres also come with markings such as ’40L’ and ’40 litres’. Hence, the ’40l’ was indeed remarkable.
Two years later, I returned to the same store. These bags of potting soil, marked ’40l’, stood conspicuously stacked near the entrance, reminding me of the previous incident. There was no couch, and I did not see a € 389 price tag there. I contemplated this while fetching the item I planned to buy. Its price tag was €3.89, and I had gone to the store to purchase that one item.
That is far less likely to happen than two car doors opening before me on the same bicycle trip. The events interacted with my thoughts, and the sequel made it even more improbable. The car doors opening could be a coincidence, but the do-it-yourself store incident should boggle the mind, provided one is allowed to think. In one of those dormitories, I met a most peculiar Lady. Since then, a series of noteworthy coincidences have transpired, reminding me of that. This coincidence thus also fits into this scheme, further heightening its peculiarity.
To make the coincidence happen, the bags of potting soil had to be in place, so I would run into them just after thinking of 401. And later, I had to go there to buy an item for € 3.89. And it goes much further than that. The scheme encompasses the item having a price tag of € 3.89, and my having lived in dormitories 389 and 401. That is most peculiar indeed. So much can go wrong. Imagine the bags’ content being 50 litres, the lettering being different, or me visiting another do-it-yourself store or buying another item the second time, and the scheme would fall apart. Perhaps it is a mere coincidence, but it is less likely than two car doors opening in front of me during the same bicycle trip.
On the evening of 11 October 2025, my wife and I watched episode ‘Demon 79’ of the Netflix series Black Mirror. The story played in Great Britain in 1979. It turned out that the murder of two people by a psychotic shoe saleswoman, following orders of a demon disguised as Boney M band member Bobby Farrell, proved insufficient to ward off the apocalypse. The apocalypse proved to be a nuclear war. After watching it, I went to bed. The next morning, I first read the news headlines on the teletext page 101 of the Dutch public television, and found out that two people had died at age 79, actress Diane Keaton and singer Joost Nuissl. So, two people died, thus not enough to ward off nuclear war. Two days later, on 14 October 2025, a NATO exercise named Steadfast Noon began. It included dropping fake atomic bombs above the area where I live. ‘You can sleep peacefully,’ a NATO spokesman added.
Latest revision: 14 October 2025
Featured image: Number 381 dormitory. University Of Twente (2013). [copyright info]
1. Onderzoek: Hoe konden twee zendmasten vandaag in brand vliegen? Algemeen Dagblad (15-07-2011). [link]
In archaeological excavations, female figurines have turned up. They could depict mother goddesses. The most famous example is the Venus of Willendorf, dating back to around 23,000 BC. In ancient cultures, mother goddesses represented fertility. The ability of women to produce offspring could have been the essence of Mother Goddess worship. Women give birth, and early humans may not have understood that men were the fathers. They may have thought men had no reproductive use and existed to please the women. Consequently, the Mother Goddess can give birth as a virgin, which is the miracle of the Mother Goddess. One of the best-known Mother Goddesses was Isis.
Women can be sure that their children are their own, but men can’t. When the fathers of children are unknown, families are often matrilineal, meaning that family lines run through mothers. The goddess worship may have disappeared because men desired to control women and their sexuality. The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture may have played a crucial role in this development.
Hunter-gatherers were wanderers. They had fewer territorial conflicts. Population density was low, and they had no property, so it was easier to move on if a stronger group invaded a band’s territory.1 That changed with the advent of agriculture. Farmers had to defend their property and families against thieves and invaders. It became a matter of life and death, so warfare became more common and deadly. Giving up territory would mean starvation. Men are willing to protect women and children they consider their own. And they can walk out when they doubt their fatherhood. That gave them a position of power, allowing patriarchy to emerge.
Male dominance is almost universal among humans, with only a few exceptions, so it is something more than merely a cultural phenomenon. Our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, live in groups led by males, while the bonobos live in groups dominated by females. And so, it may be a natural inclination of humans.1When women and men have an equal status, women may more often boss men, but there is something in human nature that favours men as clan leaders. As humans are programmable and have varying cultures, they can overcome their natural inclinations and choose female leaders, or make female leadership the standard in their societies, and invent myths to justify the arrangement, such as stories about the Mother Goddess creating the man as a companion for the woman.
As we have no written records, we know little about the lives of hunter-gatherers, their leaders and their family structures. Still, we do know that there must have been an enormous cultural diversity, as they lived in small groups that had little or no contact with each other. The lifestyle of hunter-gatherers was more favourable for female leadership and matrilineal families than farmer communities, so that female leadership and matrilineal families likely were more common before the Agricultural Revolution. Relatively peaceful conditions and a belief that men have no reproductive role, thus only exist to please women, could easily produce female-centred societies.
In her book, When God Was a Woman, historian Merlin Stone claims that goddess worship was the earliest religion in the Near and Middle East. The Creator was a woman before men rewrote history. Stone bases her claim on the discovery of female figurines in archaeological finds. In a 7,000-year-old settlement in Turkey, where archaeologists also found these figurines, families were matrilineal.2
The Garden of Eden features in an ancient Mesopotamian myth, the Epic of Gilgamesh. The garden was near the rivers Tigris and the Euphrates. The Jews lived in exile in Babylon when their priests compiled their holy scriptures. The first chapters of Genesis take place in Mesopotamia. Jewish scribes tailored Mesopotamian myths to their needs and incorporated them into the Jewish Bible.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods created a man from clay, much like in Genesis. In another creation myth, a goddess gave birth to humanity. There probably were other creation accounts as well. Eve was Adam’s mother in the original tale. It makes more sense than Eve coming from Adam’s rib. She is the Mother of All the Living (Genesis 3:20), and we are the woman’s offspring (seed) (Genesis 3:15). Elsewhere in the Bible, a child is the father’s offspring, which is a noteworthy difference. It implies that we come from women and that men have no reproductive role. That perspective sheds a new light on what Eve said about giving birth to Cain (Genesis 4:1),
Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, ‘With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.’
It wasn’t making love to Adam that made Eve give birth, but the help of the Lord. That is noteworthy because we are the woman’s offspring (seed). Perhaps Eve didn’t need Adam to have a child. There is another explanation. Long before the Jews went into exile in Babylon and picked up the story about the Garden of Eden, Asherah was the wife of El. They together were the supreme gods of the Canaanite divine council.3 Perhaps they, together, not only brought forth lesser deities like Yahweh, but also humanity, starting with Cain and Abel, so that Asherah was the Mother of All the Living.4 Later on, the Jews grew particularly attached to Yahweh, so Yahweh became their supreme deity, replacing El.
Asherah then became Yahweh’s wife. When the Jews were in exile in Babylon, they drew on local myths to rewrite their creation account. They took a story in which the first woman gave birth to the first man, and may have turned the goddess Asherah into the woman Eve. And so, Adam came somewhat late for the first man. Asherah then went out of the window, as the Jews became monotheists. That is speculation in the realm of biblical scholars, and few have dared to delve into this particular matter, for there is too little information to draw such a conclusion. However, it is plausible and explains this peculiarity quite neatly, which is a quality that the truth also possesses.
In the original Mesopotamian tale, Eve gave birth to Adam without prior sexual intercourse. The miracle of the Mother Goddess is the virgin birth. Jesus supposedly was born of a virgin. As God supposedly was Jesus’ Father, he couldn’t have had a human father. That is the reason we know about. However, it was also an allusion to Adam’s birth. Jesus was God’s son because he was Adam reincarnate, the son of Eve, who was God. In scriptural religions, inventing a new story is preferable to contradicting an existing one, as that would imply that the scriptures are corrupt. And you can’t have that, most notably when Paul was around. The virgin birth was a necessity if God was to become Jesus’ father, but it also reflected God being Jesus’ mother, as God’s name was also Mary. It miraculously solved two problems, making early Christians agree on this compromise.
The Bible claims that God created a man from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7) to work in the garden (Genesis 2:15) and made a woman as a companion for the man (Genesis 2:18). This is a result of merging with another creation myth. Mesopotamia had several creation myths, including one where the gods fashioned a man from clay to do the work. Also, the Bible has two. In Genesis 1, God creates all that is, and then in Genesis 2, God repeats some of that work. There has been some patching around here and there to glue these two stories.
In the original story of Eve and Adam, the purpose of the man was to be a mate for the woman. A reason to think so is that Genesis mentions the woman’s desire for her husband rather than the man’s desire for his wife (Genesis 3:16). If you live in a modern society that has undergone several waves of feminism, you may not realise how odd noting a woman’s desire for a man truly is. The Bible is a product of a patriarchal society. In a patriarchal society, a woman is often a man’s possession, and her desires are of no consequence. The original tale thus had a woman’s perspective. Eve was the leading character. She discussed eating the fruit with the serpent and made Adam eat from it (Genesis 3:1-6). And it was Eve who commented on the birth of Cain, not Adam (Genesis 4:1).
Also noteworthy is that a man left his father and mother to be with his wife (Genesis 2:24). This was how life was in Eden. In patrilineal societies, family groups centre around fathers, while matrilineal societies centre around mothers. Women join their husbands’ families in patrilineal societies. The man leaving his father and mother thus suggests that family groups in Eden were matrilineal. Experts still debate whether hunter-gatherers lived in patrilineal or matrilineal groups. The limited interest of men in childcare suggests that matrilineal groups could have been the standard as long as there were no compelling reasons to do otherwise. These reasons emerged with the advent of agriculture. The title Mother of All the Living may also refer to the Mother Goddess.5 Ashera was the Mother Goddess in Canaan, and one of the deities of the Jews before they became monotheists. Eve also resembles Namma, the primordial mother in the story of Enki and Ninmah.
The Fall is about the curse of knowledge. More knowledge doesn’t make your life better. Knowledge of agriculture allowed the switch from hunting and gathering to agriculture, and condemned humankind to a life of toil. The life of hunter-gatherers was more agreeable than the plight of farmers who came later on. They had a more varied diet, worked fewer hours, and spent their time doing more exciting things. Additionally, they were less likely to face starvation, disease, and warfare. The Agricultural Revolution did increase the total amount of available food. However, all this extra food didn’t result in a better diet or life, but only in more people, including elites such as kings and priests, who ate the extra food. The peasants worked harder than the foragers before them and got a poorer life in return.1
And so, there is a profound wisdom hidden in the Bible. The Garden of Eden provided for everything. It was the natural state of humans. Eve and Adam were nude (Genesis 2:25), like hunter-gatherers in the jungle today. Eve and Adam might have been vegetarians in Paradise, as God told Adam that he was free to eat from any tree in the garden, except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It doesn’t mention hunting or eating animals, implying animals were not on their menu. That is noteworthy as hunter-gathering included hunting. After the Fall, working the land became a life of toil (Genesis 3:17-19), the curse of the Agricultural Revolution. The original tale was also about the downfall of women. Women had to obey their husbands from then on (Genesis 3:16).
In ancient cultures, people venerated snakes for their wisdom and knowledge, so consulting a snake for advice was not unusual. The tree of knowledge relates to the sacred tree, which may explain why it was forbidden to eat from it. Eve’s deed may reflect the role of women in starting the Agricultural Revolution. Farmers must protect their crops from thieves. Otherwise, they face starvation. That condemned men to a life of warfare. And so, Cain, a crop planter, murdered Abel, a cattle herder. Perhaps Cain had only meagre offerings to God because Abel’s animals ate from his crops.
The Abrahamic religions disagree with our Creator being a woman. The Jewish deity Yahweh and the Arabian deity Allah were male, even though many people now think God has no gender. Yahweh and Allah had wives and children before monotheism took over. Allah was at first the supreme deity of Mecca. Later, the owner of the universe appropriated this title. To address the confusion this act generated, the Quran stresses that God has no partner or children. Unlike Christians, Jews and Muslims don’t see God as a Father. But Christians are born of God, a most remarkable wording indeed.
The Quran extensively mentions the creation of Adam but says little about the origin of Eve. The Quran doesn’t claim that Eve came from Adam’s rib but that men and women come from one soul (Quran 4:1, 7:189). It relates to Genesis 1:27, in which God created males and females in His image, so that the soul could be God. The Quran further claims that God created Jesus like Adam from dust (Quran 3:59). The Quran also corroborates the virgin birth story of Jesus (Quran 3:47, 66:12). Christians understand the virgin birth story in the context of God being Jesus’ Father, so that he can’t have a human father. However, the Quran makes it clear that God is not Jesus’ Father. And so, being created from dust could refer to birth from a virgin, so Eve could have been Adam’s mother.
The account of the Fall in the Quran differs from the one in Genesis in some noteworthy aspects. The Quran features no serpent, and Eve didn’t make Adam eat from the tree. The Quran holds both Eve and Adam responsible for the Fall (Quran 7:19-23). Another fragment only blames Adam,
But Satan whispered to him, saying, ‘O Adam! Shall I show you the Tree of Immortality and a kingdom that does not fade away?’ So they both [Eve and Adam]] ate from the tree and then their nakedness was exposed to them, prompting them to cover themselves with leaves from Paradise. So Adam disobeyed his Lord, and so he lost his way.
(Quran 20:120-121)
The historical context of the original story, the curse of the Agricultural Revolution, and the role of women in it have been lost in the Quran. The first Christians believed that Eve was God, the Mother of all the Living, who gave birth to Adam, that Mary Magdalene was Eve, and Jesus was Adam. So Adam and, therefore, Jesus were the Son of God. Humanity descends from Eve, so we are God’s children (John 1:13), but also Jesus’ children.
Tribespeople feel a connection to each other because they believe they share common ancestors. The stories about these common ancestors are myths, such as the tale about Eve and Adam. Eve and Adam came alive again as Mary Magdalene and Jesus. The myth of Eve and Adam can turn humanity into a single tribe. It is the reason why Christians wait for Jesus’ return. And so, Paul may have realised that the good news of Jesus concerns humankind rather than just the Jews.
Latest revision: 28 August 2025
Featured image: Eve in the Garden of Eden. Henri Rousseau (1906-1910). Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons.
Other images: Venus of Willendorf. Don Hitchcock (2008). Wikimedia Commons.
1. A Brief History Of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvil Secker. 2. Ancient ‘female-centered’ society thrived 9,000 years ago in proto-city in Turkey. Kristina Killgrove (2025). Livescience. 3. Daniel O. McClellan, Deity and Divine Agency in the Hebrew Bible: Cognitive Perspectives (PhD diss., University of Exeter, 2020) 327 4. Eve as a goddess/consort of Yahweh? r/AskBibleScholars (2024). [link] 5. Asherah – Wikipedia [link]: Some scholars have found an early link between Asherah and Eve, based upon the coincidence of their common title as “the mother of all living” in Genesis 3:20 through the identification with the Hurrian mother goddess Hebat. Asherah was also given the title Chawat, from which the name Hawwah in Aramaic and the biblical name Eve are derived.
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