By Dr. Dencio S. Acop
The Book of Genesis tells us about two trees in the Garden of Eden. One is the Tree of Life and the other is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The first tree is literally the tree of life. It is the life-giving tree whose fruit sustains eternal life. Humanity’s existence depends on it. Most importantly, humanity’s survival depends on God, the source of the tree. Adam and Eve, therefore, were not just allowed but instructed by the Creator to eat only from this tree. But not from the other tree. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is for God only. And it isn’t meant to be unreasonably unfair to man. Like so many things in creation, there is an order to everything. Man doesn’t have the intelligibility or absorptive capacity to fully understand what God does. The second tree has the potential to put a virus into God’s creation. Thus, Adam and Eve’s disobedience led to sin and death. And their expulsion from Eden as sin has no place in Heaven. By their own volition, Adam and Eve forced their own removal from the abode of eternal bliss into temporal earthly existence. But let us also be fair to the duo. The Devil, disguised as a serpent, tempted Eve. While the duo was repentant, it was too late. Still, the couple was fortunate for the nature of God is good. Instead of being definitively cast into Hell where there is eternal damnation, God created the Earth where He sent them instead. Not giving up on man, God soon revealed Himself gradually – appearing to Abraham, sending prophets, and finally sending even His Only Begotten Son to redeem the sinful world.
Fast forward to 2025 and what do the Trees of Life and Knowledge of Good and Evil tell us today? While God has gifted man with infinite wisdom, I think this wisdom includes the capacity to understand man’s limits and surrender to God those beyond such limits. Man is, after all, endowed not only with cognition and skills but most importantly – a heart. The journey of man has led him to his all-around development through the ages. After two world wars, man finally came to his senses and vowed never to ignite another global war again. Thus, the United Nations was born. Human rights were enshrined. The hope was that by collectively trying to eradicate or minimize man’s woes like poverty, illiteracy, inequality, injustice, and the like, all of humanity would agree that only the ways of peace could bring about man’s happiness on earth. For a few decades, the world was relatively at peace. Many formerly enslaved nations were emancipated by their colonial masters. Development took off for many of these countries. The global moral order indeed worked. Democracies flourished. They did because the majority of peoples had good moral values. And for as long as such was the case, peoples were also able to elect into public office good political leaders. The social contract that works between the leader and the led is effectively that which is founded on honesty and the truth. This is the closest that man could get in terms of attaining the greatest good for the greatest number.
Having said that, I think there are two realities of life today that are antithetical to the two trees from Genesis. They are the nuclear weapon and the internet. These two scientific and technological developments are already paving the way toward the destruction of the world through first relativizing good and evil. Let us discuss the first. The nuclear bomb is the antithesis to the Tree of Life because a large-scale nuclear war could end the world. Massive nuclear explosions would impact everything from human populations and infrastructure to the environment and global climate. The immediate effects of nuclear war will be massive deaths and injuries, blast and heat effects, firestorms, and infrastructure collapse. Long-term effects will be nuclear winters, climate disruption and famine, increased radiation, ecological collapse, and long-term ocean impacts. A nuclear war will cause unprecedented societal and economic breakdowns such as humanitarian crises, economic collapse, lack of medical care, and total breakdown of social order.
On the other hand, the internet is proving to be antithetical to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. While the internet has offered numerous benefits, it has also presented adverse consequences, including addiction, negative effects on cognitive development, information overload, disruptions to privacy boundaries, and harm to social relationships. Other negative impacts are worse. They include worsening cybercrime, cyberbullying and harassment, exposure to inappropriate content, and the spread of misinformation and disinformation. These negatives can also be aggravated by the misuse of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Since cyberspace has a global reach, legal infrastructure to regulate it is limited. Also, the fact that almost every human has access to the internet smartphone makes it almost impossible to control individual vulnerability to dark online influencers. On a massive scale, criminal syndicates have flourished making cybersecurity an industry priority. Even politics are now vulnerable to election tampering and voter disinformation due to the named weaknesses as well as the attractive material gains to be had. But the greatest evil done through the internet is confusing people making lies appear to be the truth – evil appear to be good — to attain some worldly material gain.
The consequences and symptoms of the two global realities are now actively present. The present-day realities of the Trees of Life and Knowledge of Good and Evil are finally converging. While domestic religious zeal in the United States, for instance, has put Donald Trump in charge to protect the faith and supposedly make America great again, Trump’s bombing of Iran could also lead the world down the path to global nuclear war. The precise targeting of three of Iran’s nuclear program facilities already focuses the security issue to that of nuclear confrontation. Iran is the leader of Islamic countries in the Middle East radically opposed to the Jewish state of Israel for decades. Its allies in the region include Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. On the other hand, several Arab League nations are allied with Israel. They include the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan. While Israel and the US possess nuclear weapons, so do China, Russia, and North Korea which support Iran. But because of Vladimir Putin’s conditional friendship with Donald Trump over Ukraine, Putin appears non-committal in expressing support for either party. The irony in the world today is that while the post-WWII US once led the world through a moral order – inspired Cold War holding back against the atheistic USSR, it is now the US – eager to prove itself as the greatest — that has provoked adversaries along the path of global destruction. How more prophetic could that be?
