A question about childbirth and God?

Question

Several of you just responded that because of Eve eating the forbidden fruit, there is now pain in childbirth. A few questions, please.

How was childbirth "originally designed" to be pain free? Were babies born at 1 pound (which would still be pretty painful)? Did women have no nerve endings in the abdominal region? What about other hundreds of thousands of species that clearly experience pain in childbirth? Were humans the only species NOT to have pain in childbirth or were all female creatures painfree in childbirth and god redesigned them after Eve ate the fruit?

Thank you for your responses. I look forward to reading them.

Yes Squirrel. I have a very special place for that book. I would loan it out or give it as a gift to certain students. And I totally agree with his interp.

Happy you've read that!

Answer 1

Very GOOD question.

And my honest, truthful, answer with absolutely NO "Christian double-talk" is...

I don't know. I really just don't know. I'll have to think about it, and get back to you. In the meantime, have a star, because this really is an excellent question.

Answer 2

Well, I'll chime in, even though you pretty much know the view point I take...The creation stories are myth, trying to understand the origin of things. So, the story of Adam and Eve is a story in answer to the question, why do women experience pain in childbirth. Of course the ancient world view was because at some point humans were disobedient. To them, that's what made sense. If you did wrong you were punished. I like the creation stories and early stories of Genesis because you can see how they came from the oral tradition and were passed down through the ages.

Answer 3

Pain in childbirth is a legacy of the imperfection of evolution, not the insane cruelty of a god.

Our brains became huge at the same time our hips were evolving to upright walk. The female hips have widened to the point of interfering with locomotion, and infants are born with the skull still partially disassembled, but still labor is painful, risky, and often fatal before modern medicine.

If we were intelligently designed, the birth canal could have been moved, or the hips redesigned, or a combination of the two. But we weren't intelligently designed. We inherited a system that worked well for animals that do not walk upright, and evolution will only modify what it has to work with, one step at a time. There are no complete redesigns in evolution.

To quote the book title, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.

Answer 4

I agree with Sips with a Fist, cranial size at birth has the most to do with why pain is felt, because human infants have one of the largest craniums, in relation to body size, at birth. The process of the cervix opening to accommodate the head is what predominantly causes the pain in addition to the uterine contractions. Any woman who has had a PAP smear knows what I mean, the cervix is very sensitive and it is reasonable to think that it forming a 10 cm opening from an opening smaller than a the head of a pen would be quite painful.

Answer 5

You can thank the women's movement for that one. Women's liberation freed women from being a stay-at-home mom. Organizations like WOW, etc, forced women into the work place, and the women bought into it. Work if you want, stay at home if you want. In all honesty, I think you should have the right to decide for yourself, and not feel obligated by all the other women around the world trying to put "peer pressure" on you. Understand, I honestly believe that a woman can do just as good a job as a man, depending on the job and the woman's qualifications, and sometimes even a better job (again, depending on the job and the woman's qualifications), but if a woman chooses a career over being a mother (being a mother is the HARDEST job, if you ask me, but also the most rewarding), but if a woman chooses a career over being a stay-at-home mom, that's her choice, and she can't blame anybody else for her choices. That IS an excellent question, by the way, and my answer is not intended to be patronizing, so if it DOES come across like that, my apologies in advance.

Answer 6

It is interesting that as humans became more upright (physically) they had more and more difficulty giving birth. It was a painful exchange that, also, increased the chances of dying during childbirth.
It may have increased the need for humans being tribal and having other females help with the birth.

The "fall" seems to be associated with the development of consciousness as well. The pain was already there but as humans became more aware, that awareness included pain.

Personally I am of the growing opinion that awareness (the "fall") came with the acquisition of language (possibly written language).

ADD: Many anthropologists believe that women developed written language then shared it with men (much the way the female chimps developed hunting with spears and tried to share it with the males).

Answer 7

It's a possibility it could have been , the garden was suppose to be perfect and so were Adam and Eve, painless child birth may have been too, the children would have been normal health babies, after all God also walked the gardens, and everything in Eden were suppose to be perfect,but because of the Devil, Eve was lied to by the devil, and deceived, and when Eve offered Adam the fruit also, Adam knowing better ,he being the head over his wife,he betrayed God, he sinned, lost his faith in Gods word..and the covenant with God was broken, so God had to cast them out of the garden...and everything changed for us..God cursed them....they would have to work and take care of themselves, hunt their own food, build their own houses.....but also by betraying God, Adam turned his authority he was given by God,over the world, the animals, the universe and the heaven up to the 3rd heaven where God was God was the keeper of Heaven, so now the devil is the king of the air and God of the earth...Adam unleashed th devil on the earth when he disobeyed God, and until Jesus was born..(.God in the flesh)we had no way to be saved from him...but Jesus took care of that when he shed his blood for us, to save us, and anyone with the blood covering them..is a child of the king..the ones that don't except Jesus will follow the Devil to hell and burn for all eternity

the nerve endings for pleasure were also built into the body, as were the nerve ending for pain or we could cut off our hand and their would be no pain, pain is a built in warning of somethings dangerous, wrong or discomfort , or that something is not safe ,it's our protection to keep us safe.

Answer 8

I could speculate but the bible doesn't cover this topic so I don't have a clue. Maybe God intended to keep adding to his creation using the original methods...or perhaps children weren't part of the original design...after all, he didn't command Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of life (that would have given them eternal life)...perhaps before they chose the other path, they (and the animals) were just supposed to live forever as is...just adam and eve and the animals...no killing, no death, no birth.

Answer 9

The Genesis account seems to show that “difficult” childbearing is a direct result of Eve sinning. After her rebellion against him, God told Eve: “I shall greatly increase the pain of your pregnancy; in birth pangs you will bring forth children.” Genesis 3:16.

Pain is not inherently bad. It can and does protect us. If we did not feel pain, we could keep our hand on a hot stove and damage or destroy the tissue, yes? Pain often serves as an alarm of sorts, then.

It would be no different with childbirth. Pain would trigger the onset of labor, alerting the woman to what is coming. Seems then that women would feel pain but certainly not to the degree they do now.

Hannah J Paul

Answer 10

Well, if I read the Bible correctly, when the whole fruit incident occurred, Eve had not given birth yet at that point. And really, how is anybody to know?