Bruce, you are somthin else man. Somthin I can only aspire to be. Either you or NBN...

but don't you think the Adam/Eve story was a little, um, harsh on womankind? If I recall that story pretty much dumps the load of woe and evil right in the woman's pretty lap, no?

I don't really think so. The snake tempted Eve, and she liked the idea, and she brought it to Adam and he liked the idea too. There's no implied malice in Eve's bringing something she saw as good to share with Adam, and he's just as responsible for listening to her as she is for listening to the snake and bears similar consequences. Women get pain in childbirth and I think men get snakebites? (Which is also sort of the snake's punishment, to be hated and killed by man.)

Now, the whole Lilith story, on the other hand, is pretty misogynistic in my opinion--I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure she was rejected because she was too uppity, and Eve was created to be more docile. But I think that story may be mostly apocryphal, come to think of it.

It's all apocryphal if you go back far enough. The decision to classify "this" as canon and "that" as not was just a big committee meeting. They left out some good stuff because it didnt' fit the political model they wanted to build.

I had originally wrote this big old long reply, with scriptural references and everything, then lost it, but basically, what clodfobble said!!

If you read the text, God BLAMES the serpent for deceiving the woman in the first place, then punished both Adam and Eve, showing the first recorded "every action has a consequence" theme.