Is child birth pain really a curse from God?

[OnceConvinced]

Gen 3:16 To the woman he said,
“I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

I had always believed as a Christian that pain when giving birth was a curse from God and that God must have done something to the woman's body to make it so difficult.

But now that I am more enlightened and don't just believe what the bible says (with blind faith), I now question some things. These questions I now bring here for debate.

1) How is it fair that every woman from Eve on should have to suffer for Eve's sins? Wasn't being thrown out of the Garden of Eden enough?

2) Why was it only Eve that was cursed? Adam should have been made to take responsibility for his own actions, thus some kind of similar curse should have been imposed on him to make it fair.

3) But it wasn't just human women that were cursed either, so it seems. Even female animals were given the curse. Weren't they? Or were they already created to suffer at child birth? If so then wasn't Eve originally created the same way? Thus the curse was irrelevent?

4) Why would God curse women in this way and then immediately after command them to "go forth and multiply?" And why claim that child birth is a blessing? Doesn't God contradict himself here?

[r~]

The size and complexity of the brain in relation to the size of the rest of the body does have a correlation to the maximum potential intelligence of a being.

Exactly. The preponderance of evidence shows that, as a species, our (overall) intelligence grew with the size and (specific) complexity of our brain. This growth of head size greatly outpaced the growth of the birth canal. This not only leads to pain but also to tearing of vaginal tissues; it also leads to the highest mortality rate (due to delivery complications) of natural birth than in any other species.

ItS
Peace
r~

He did not say anything to them without using a parable.

[Beto]

The size and complexity of the brain in relation to the size of the rest of the body does have a correlation to the maximum potential intelligence of a being.

Exactly. The preponderance of evidence shows that, as a species, our (overall) intelligence grew with the size and (specific) complexity of our brain. This growth of head size greatly outpaced the growth of the birth canal. This not only leads to pain but also to tearing of vaginal tissues; it also leads to the highest mortality rate (due to delivery complications) of natural birth than in any other species.

ItS
Peace
r~

He did not say anything to them without using a parable.

You said "Knowledge requires intelligence that requires a large brain in humans." But you didn't address what I said about hydrocephaly.

From wiki:
"One interesting case involving a person with past hydrocephalus was a 44-year old French man, whose brain had been reduced to little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue, due to the buildup of fluid in his skull. The man, who had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away fluid (which was removed when he was 14), went to a hospital after he had been experiencing mild weakness in his left leg.

In July of 2007, Fox News quoted Dr. Lionel Feuillet of Hopital de la Timone in Marseille as saying: "The images were most unusual... the brain was virtually absent."[5] When doctors learned of the man's medical history, they did a computed tomography (CT) scan and another type of scan called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and were astonished to see "massive enlargement" of the lateral ventricles in the skull. Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100 but not considered mentally retarded or disabled, either.

Remarkably, the man was a married father of two children, and worked as a civil servant, leading a normal life, despite having little brain tissue. "What I find amazing to this day is how the brain can deal with something which you think should not be compatible with life," commented Dr. Max Muenke, a pediatric brain defect specialist at the National Human Genome Research Institute. "If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side."

I think this proves your reasoning is flawed.

[r~]

You said "Knowledge requires intelligence that requires a large brain in humans." But you didn't address what I said about hydrocephaly.

Intelligence is a combination of size and complexity. Evidently our Creator was not "intelligent" enough to design a smaller but equally intelligent brain in humans.

But I still don't think the "curse" was out of meanness.

ItS
Peace
r~

[Beto]

You said "Knowledge requires intelligence that requires a large brain in humans." But you didn't address what I said about hydrocephaly.

Intelligence is a combination of size and complexity. Evidently our Creator was not "intelligent" enough to design a smaller but equally intelligent brain in humans.

It could be a matter of having enough braincells to "burn" throughout our lives. Perhaps a tiny brain would suffice if we didn't have so much... "fun" with it.

[OnceConvinced]

Well it appears there is controversy over brain size = intelligence. Studies seem to disagree with each other it seems.

But the size of the brain becomes a moot point anyway as the size of the head is judged by the cranial capacity, rather than the brain size. And that has nothing to do with intelligence.