Let me tell you a story as old as time. The story of Adam and Eve. It starts with a God who wanted more. God had just created the heavens and the earth. He had the angels by his side but they had no will of their own And so the autonomy to love or reject him was never theirs. All but for one. The once called bringer of light. Lucifer Morningstar. Lucifer was the fairest and most intelligent of all the angels.

He was the closest thing to God's image and in his likeness, Lucifer felt restless. He began to question and doubt God. He doubted the hierarchy imposed upon him. He felt God was arrogant. In his frustration, Lucifer built a throne that stood even above God's and declared mutiny. A war ensued. God being all powerful came out the victor and banished Lucifer from the heavens and exiled him to earth. Once again, God was alone with his power.

Perhaps from loneliness, perhaps from curiosity, perhaps from a desire to share love, God began to work on his greatest project yet, a being that would mirror himself, the human. Two humans specifically, Adam and Eve. They were placed inside a paradise built for them on earth, the Garden Of Eden. In the garden, God placed the tree that bade fruit that would grant anyone who ate it powers bestowed only to a God to tell good from evil, left from right, to live righteously or to sin.

He named this the tree of knowledge. God told Adam and Eve they could eat whatever they wanted in the garden but never the fruit from the tree of knowledge. And if they disobeyed him, it would be punishable by death. The basic way the story of Eden is told is that Eve was tempted by Lucifer in the form of a serpent to eat a fruit from the tree of knowledge. Convinced, she bit the fruit, she passed it to Adam and he did the same.

Suddenly, ultimate knowledge filled their minds and they realized they were naked and felt shame. God discovered this betrayal and felt anger. He exiled Adam and Eve and cursed them with the life of a mortal. They would work, they would bear children, and they would die. The fate of a human. Now look deeper. In the story, the serpent tempted me by telling me I would gain ultimate knowledge and that God would spare me.

Both were true. This wasn't some great deception, meaning that Satan, in the likeliness of God, perhaps understood his intentions. In fact, the only lie uttered in the Garden Of Eden was by God, who did not end up condemning Adam and Eve to death. This could be seen as an act of mercy, but the sheer fact that the tree existed and that humans were initially cut off from this knowledge. May imply some part of God was afraid that if humans were granted the gift of perception, they Like Lucifer.

Would have the power to reject him too. The fact that there stood a beautiful tree that could Grant this knowledge in the first place. Implies that a small part of God, supposedly all knowing Perhaps wanted and intended The humans to bite too. In the Bible, Satan was an exiled angel of free will. Humans are exiled descendants of Adam and Eve also with free will. Not only have we shared a similar fate to the devil, were also both constructed in the image of our creator.

Meaning our behaviors, in some shape or form, imperfectly echo his. We could assume that this kind of God has his dead doubts. But as the most powerful being in the universe. He has no one above him to turn to with questions and no one to doubt but himself, an incredibly lonely and isolating existence. We must only assume that the common thread between God, Lucifer, and us is the desire for more, an eternal curiosity, a desire perhaps birthed from a seed of loneliness.

If not, why would we exist in the first place? The constantly looping bittersweet irony is whether gifted by some omnipotent god or simply a byproduct of billions of years of evolution. Here we stand in 2023 as creatures with free will. The only creatures that understand and define good from bad. Creatures with the potential of a god. And what do we do with that free will, my friends? We willingly walk to the edge of a cliff.

In the name of progress, we jump off the precipice. The empires we build ravage the earth. The natural order of things are necessary to survive. Any systems which do not honor homeostasis eventually perish. Our free will overrides our own biological instinct. We can take more than we eat. We can kill more than we need. We can willingly create weapons with the potential to burn everything we've built to the ground.

We willingly decide to bow at the altar of greed, the most insidious and destructive of all politicians, unbloated dictators who claim domain and dominion over an open and free land. We willingly elect the corrupted when the decision was always ours to build something better. We willingly create an imposed separation because of beliefs that we are force fed through our phones and television sets. We always had the will to reject these things, but we adhere to them as though they were the laws of physics.

War, famine, pestilence, greed, these aren't things imposed upon us by an all powerful god or by his demonic adversary. They are here because of us, not because of free will, but because of our inability to use it. We must be motivated to be better, not out of fear of punishment of an eternal damnation, but because the choice exists, because we love ourselves, because we have the power to absolve ourselves of so much unnecessary suffering.

Take a second to be in this very moment. In this moment, how much suffering is happening all over the planet right now? How many people are dying of illnesses that could have easily been cured, but aren't because of the selfishness and greediness of humanity? How many people break their backs and reject their own passions to simply afford bills and food? How many of us crave distraction from existence?

How many of us numb that pain in whatever way necessary? How many children are being abused? How many people sleep cold and hungry on the streets? How many of us become cogs inside a machine that is destroying itself? How many soldiers have been forced to fight in meaningless wars? How many humans have killed for ideals they don't believe in or understand? Understand? How many people have died for the greed of another man?

And how much of this was avoidable? As written in the Bible, Satan was not condemned to hell. Satan was condemned to earth. He lives there amongst other creatures with free will, who always had the choice and still chose their own undoing. Ladies and gentlemen, this is our self made hell. The bittersweet irony is this is a creation of our own design. I'll leave you with this. Consider what you've done here today.

You have worked together as individuals collaborating to form a giant neural network, a hive mind capable of achieving incredible things. We have lent on each other's strengths to solve puzzles and decipher riddles, and we've done so to win money. Imagine applying that same spirit and determination to creating the closest thing we have to paradise here on Earth. By using the power of collaboration, we can work together to even the playing field for everybody.

Our dystopias can become utopias. Our jahanams can become jannah. Our hells can become heaven right here on earth. And this sentiment applies to atheists, agnostics, and believers alike. Myself, I'm an agnostic who believes. I believe in us. We must do better because we can choose to. We must be better simply because the option exists. Thank you.