March 22, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

In our popular imagination, the Garden of Eden was a paradise but Genesis 2:15 says that God put Adam there to “dress it and to keep it.” Adam was the gardener, not some guy lounging around in paradise. A single act of disobedience, eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, earned Adam and his companion Eve a one-way ticket out of the Garden and into a world of hard work and conflict. Eve was punished even more harshly because she was to  endure “sorrow” in childbirth and be subject to her husband. In Chapter 4 of Genesis, Cain, one of the children of Adam and Eve, gets jealous of his brother Abel and kills him. This week I want to explore conflict and the ways that various cultures have tried to explain the origins of conflict.

Ancient philosophers and religious traditions were especially focused on origins. An origin lent authority and authenticity. The Greek philosopher Aristotle based his philosophical study on first causes. He was convinced that knowing a first cause would enable him to understand why things are the way they are. This focus on origin would lead Greek philosophers like Zeno (circa 390 B.C.E. to 320 B.C.E.) to a number of paradoxes that made it difficult or impossible to understand movement (Source). The one I am familiar with is the race between Achilles and a tortoise who is given a head start. If distances were infinitely divisible, Zeno argued that Achilles could not catch up to the tortoise. Many of these paradoxes were resolved by the invention of calculus almost two millennium later.

Greek mythology also contains an origin story for conflict that results from a single act, the opening of Pandora’s box. In the Bible account, Eve committed that first act. She was the dupe of the serpent who also sold used cars. In the Greek account, Pandora was the first woman created by the gods as a punishment for mankind (Source). Nope, I’m not making this stuff up. Pandora’s affliction was curiosity and yes, she passed down that disease to Galileo, Newton and Einstein. Poor lads. Anyway, Pandora opened up the box, or urn, and out came all the evils that afflict the world.

In the western tradition, women are the scapegoats for male philosophers and religious leaders who cannot admit that men are not inherently docile creatures. Freudian analysis continued that tradition, explaining that schizophrenogenic mothering  caused the violent havoc of schizophrenia. In his book Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky notes that this was still the dominant explanation for schizophrenia until the 1970s.

Helen of Troy was the primary cause of the Trojan War (1194 B.C.E. – 1184 B.C.E.) between the Greeks and Trojans, the ancestors of modern day Turks. Surely, it must have been a woman who caused Israel and the U.S. to cut off negotiations with Iran and attack the country three weeks ago. The Trump administration has given more than a dozen different explanations for why they started the war (Source). Trump has always blamed women for his troubles, so he might as well continue the tradition.

In Norse myth, it is a half-giant, half-god called Loki who ushers in conflict both here in the world and in the universe. In ancient Persia, now Iran, the prophet Zoroaster led a religious movement that emphasized belief in one God, Ahura Mazda. He taught that conflict was the result of an epic battle between good and evil, between Ahura Mazda and Ahriman (Source). The Bible contained no reference to a battle between good and evil until Judaic and Christian religious leaders reinterpreted a passage in the Book of Isaiah to tell the story of a rebellion of angels. In the 5^th century A.D., the patriarch Augustine wove several Biblical passages into a story of a cosmic battle between good and evil, between God and Satan (Source below).

Revelation 12:09 refers to Satan as a deceiver, similar to the Nordic myth of Loki. Deceit is the second axis I want to explore this week. According to the Biblical account, mankind’s downfall was the result of the serpent’s deceit. Pandora’s opening of the box came about through self-deceit, that she could ignore warnings from her brother about what might be inside the box. Yet we are social creatures who rely on others to satisfy our wants and needs. To accomplish that, deceit is a useful tool.

Elena Hoicka, a professor at Bristol University led a study which found that some infants at ten months engage in deceptive practices like pretending not to hear or exaggerating. By the time we reach the age of three we are frequent deceivers (Source). Growing up Catholic and having to regularly confess my sins, I could confess to lying to my parents even if I could not remember lying to my parents. No, I didn’t hit my brother. I certainly did not steal my sister’s candy. Of course my homework was done so I could go out to play basketball. I didn’t hear that dinner was ready or I would have stopped playing baseball. No, I didn’t drink the last of the milk and forget to write it down on the grocery list.

Politicians elevate deception to an art. In the 2016 Republican debates, candidates with years of  experience in public life were astounded at the baldfaced lies that Trump told. Trump had made hundreds and thousands of deals and was worth many billions and blah, blah, blah. He was a frequent liar but an inartful liar. He lied about things that were easily checked. In politics, lying is an art, damn it! The Apprentice was a game show. Some voters thought it was Trump’s real resume. Lincoln didn’t get it. Politicians only need to fool some of the people a lot of the time.

Our most frequent act of deception is self-deception. On little evidence, President Bush and his staff convinced themselves that Iraq did have weapons of destruction. They then smothered any evidence contradicting that belief in presenting their case to the American public and the world. Such a commitment of force and resources requires more evidence than mere suggestions of a threat.

At the end of the 12-day war with Iran in June 2025,  President Trump announced that Iran’s nuclear facilities had been obliterated (Source). In a June 25^th press release, the White House maintained that the word “obliterate” was the proper term (Source). Deception or self-deception  or both? Yet, eight months later, Iran was supposedly two to four weeks away from deploying a nuclear weapon (Source video). Is there some other interpretation of the word obliterate?

Israeli and U.S. intelligence have two separate criteria for what constitutes a nuclear weapon. Israel’s Mossad classifies any crude nuclear device that Iran might produce as a nuclear weapon. U.S. intelligence has a stricter definition. It must be a deliverable nuclear device (Source). President Trump will not state that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu is deciding U.S. military strategy in the Middle East because that makes him look weak. Netanyahu is a skillful politician who  wanted U.S. involvement to maintain military dominance in the Middle East. Trump is both inexperienced and very much influenced by the billionaire donors of the Israeli lobby like Miriam Adelson, who donated more than a $100 million to his 2024 campaign (Source).

We engage in deceit as a tool to resolve or avoid conflict. I wanted to play basketball while it was still daylight, so I lied about the homework. I could always sneak upstairs and do my homework after it got dark. No harm, no foul. Even as the stakes are raised, we use those same justifications as adults. Why not? That kind of thinking has worked for us in the past and we are practiced masters of self-deception.

Pandora’s brother had warned Pandora that the box, a gift from Zeus, was dangerous because Zeus was not to be trusted. She was different, of course. Zeus wouldn’t do that to her. When Helen fell in love with Paris and followed him to Troy, she didn’t think her husband, King Menelaus, would actually start a war to get her back.

President Trump has fired any advisors who didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear. The war on Iran would be over in a few days, just like the downfall of Venezuela’s Maduro. Sometimes, our deceit invites an escalation of conflict. How to deceive the American public leading up to a midterm election? If only politicians put as much care into governing as they do in covering up their deceit. I hope to see you next week and I am not lying about that.

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Photo by Chris Sabor on Unsplash

Coogan, M. D. (Ed.). (2018). The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha (5th ed.). Oxford University Press. (See commentary on Isaiah 14:4–21.) The reference to the King of Babylon as the “light-bearer” was reinterpreted to mean Satan. The serpent in the Garden of Eden became Satan after a reference in Revelation 12.