Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

Within the continuity of creation re evolution, there is no such thing as an original human mating pair that specifically stands out as a confirming event.

Tell the story. Let's see how it goes.

So you have no original mating pair. You have, instead, something like a herd of chimpanzees who all at once, by pure chance, happen to develop exactly the same adaptive mutations? Carry on with that story, and let's see how it unfolds.

Even the term "original mating pair" in context, denotes a separate supernatural event distinct from any biological process.

Try telling your evolutionary story without one. Go ahead, let's hear it.

[iambiguous]

We can't even definitively -- ontologically? -- prove that what we think evil is we freely opted to believe of our own volition.

It's even worse. So far as I can tell, you can't even find the reasons you believe "evil" is a thing.

What I believe is that...
1] when human beings interact their wants and needs often come into conflict
2] as a result of this, within any particular human community, there are going to be "rules of behavior" that reward some behaviors and punish others
3] these rules will revolve around one or another historical and cultural combination of right makes might, might makes right and democracy and the rule of law
4] going back to the pre-Socratics in the West and their equivalent in the East, philosophy was invented...out of which came Ethics
5] ethicists "thought up" different ways to approach conflicting human behaviors. One of which was to make a "philosophical" distinction between Good and Evil
6] and then [of course] the role that God and religion play in all of it down through the ages and across the globe

Now, bring all of this down to Earth in regard to a particular set of circumstances, and we can discuss our own respective moral philosophers.

But it's essential to your charge that maybe we should consider God guilty of allowing some of it.

You can't accuse God of what you don't actually think is wrong. You can't accuse anybody of something that's not actually wrong.

Again, once one brings God into it and reconciles His alleged omniscience with the free will of mere mortals, how can one not accuse Him of what unfolds among mere mortals if at the same time one alleges Him to be omnipotent as well. Even the Devil Himself is powerless to prevail over God's will.

Okay, let's presume there is no Christian God. How then would an individual go about pinning down objectively which behaviors are inherently/necessarily Good or Evil?

EXACTLY!

Indeed! Exactly!!

Now you've got the problem: an Atheist denies HIMSELF any entitlement to allege that God (or anybody else) permits "evil," since the Atheist has no means of "pinning down" what would be "necessarily good or evil." You've got it.

But what's the fix for that?

Again, go back to the points I noted above. An atheist and a Christian choosing to interact with other human beings has got to come up with some word to make a distinction between behaviors he or she approves of and behaviors he or she does not approve of. Good and evil are among the word-sounds that English speaking people invented.

The rest is history. With or without the Christian God.

The Atheist, if he has no fix for it, has to realize that he has nothing coherent to say about good or evil.

Again, this Capital Letter Atheist that all others are expected to grasp in exactly the same manner that you do.

Thus, in regard to the Christian God creating a human body that brings about enormous pain and suffering for millions and millions of truly innocent children down through the ages...

I'm just pointing out that any number of men and women in noting the diseases above that can afflict children, will use words like "horrific" or "ghastly" or "terrible".

Sure. But you have to say, as an Atheist, they do so with no justification. They just fail to understand that their feelings are unrelated to objective moral facts: they think that the diseases are "horrific," or "ghastly" or "terrible," but they're just wrong. What they are is neutral, morally speaking, you have to say.

No, they call them that because human beings are born with the capacity to feel those things about the suffering of children. The words themselves might encompass any number of sounds when spoken.

It's just that, unlike the atheists, many Christians do have a "reason" to explain away that suffering: God's mysterious ways. Moral nihilists interacting in a community with others can still believe that harming children should be punished. They just can't point to God as the final arbiter.

They can't note that even those who get away with harming children on this side of the grave will eventually face God's verdict on Judgment Day.

Not only that, but in a No God world, certain mere mortals might even in engage in behaviors that bring pain and suffering to children. And they rationalize it given their assumption that in a No God world their own selfish wants and needs becomes their moral philosophy.

[uwot]

So you have no original mating pair.

It doesn't take a pair. If every human is the descendant of a single mating pair, who or what did their own children mate with?

You have, instead, something like a herd of chimpanzees who all at once, by pure chance, happen to develop exactly the same adaptive mutations?

Adaptation only has to occur in a single individual. If it is an advantageous adaptation, the descendants who display it are likely to prosper.

[Dubious]

Within the continuity of creation re evolution, there is no such thing as an original human mating pair that specifically stands out as a confirming event.

Tell the story. Let's see how it goes.

So you have no original mating pair. You have, instead, something like a herd of chimpanzees who all at once, by pure chance, happen to develop exactly the same adaptive mutations? Carry on with that story, and let's see how it unfolds.

Even the term "original mating pair" in context, denotes a separate supernatural event distinct from any biological process.

Try telling your evolutionary story without one. Go ahead, let's hear it.

That's your description, not mine but I can understand why a brain like yours could conceive of such a scenario. A mind like yours requires a simple solution being told from the start that Adam and Eve are the first mating pair; not least, because if they didn't exist Jesus wouldn't have to be crucified to make up for all that original sin which they started, and we subsequently improved on. Well, that kind of scenario wouldn't be acceptable at all to a bible brainwashed mind like yours; so obviously there had to be an original mating pair...and we even know their names because the bible told us so.

[Dontaskme]

You are talking to yourself again aren't you IC?

If you say something interesting, maybe I'll talk to you.

Maybe not, if you don't.

This other you you are responding to lives inside you, it doesn't exist anywhere outside your own you. You can ignore you anytime you like, or you can communicate with you, it will always be you making the choice, you have free will to either commuincate with the other you of your own creation or to ignore the you of your own creation...either way, it's all you.

God is you too. Or you could say You is God..what's the difference, it's all the same one you. The same one knowing, the same one experience.


No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. We know that we live in him and he in us. I really do not know why you struggle with this simple understanding. Why make the simple complicated when you do not have to.

You have no original face, think about it, you cannot see your own face, you need to reflect it back on yourself by being totally open and transparent. To know you are the image of yourself, the image of the imageless, of your own creation.

You can resist the voice of the other you inside your head all you like, but the penny will drop for you eventually. Resistence is futile.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Twilight: [Middle English twilighte : Old English twi-, two, half; see dwo- in Indo-European roots + Old English līht, light; see light.

dwo- I. Variant form *duwo.
1. a. two from Old English twā̆, two (nominative feminine and neuter); b. twain; twayblade from Old English twēgen, two (nominative and accusative masculine). Both a and b from Germanic *twa, two.]
_______________________________________________________________________________

Your mind rides without bifurcation on a mono rail of linear time toward one goal only starting with an Adam and Eve event concluding in some kind of teleological apotheosis named the Last Judgement. For that purpose, an original mating pair concept demands credence which marks a beginning and encloses an ending.

This is an interesting statement that can be examined.

In traditional Christian thought the error of the first man (and woman), Adam/Eve, is corrected and repaired with the intervention of God/Jesus. In my own view there is no other way to be able to grasp the story, and the metaphysics into which it fits, unless one resolves to go back to and examine in depth the former metaphysical system which gave birth to the conception. The way the Earth and the Cosmos was understood at that former time is really the basis for our perceptual system. And in fact that system or the effects of that system still operate in us. Our language is riddled with evidences of it and I suggest that all *meaning* that you or I am anyone could refer to shows itself with links and traces that tie back to the former metaphysics.

The modern conception -- of life, of the world, of being, of ourselves and of the self -- is in itself a sort of monorail. One has to be trained in it which also implies dis-training and untraining in the other, former viewstructure, in order to adopt it entirely and also authentically. It seems pretty obvious that certain modern minds -- I will mention A. Huxley and C.G. Jung though there are a hundred -- were forced to confront the problem of the monorail-like nature of the compelling and rather totalizing modern view. So what did they do? It seems to me that they re-approached the same *material* if I can refer to it in that way, and plumbed it from within their extremely modern position or orientation. It is pretty obvious that there was an entire movement in this direction and I should also have mentioned D.H Lawrence.

I think it is fair to say that, in one way or another, to one degree or another, they all responded to The Prophecies of Nietzsche, and that Nietzsche completely embodied the dislocation produced in the contrast between the two metaphysical system. To the degree that one has no choice but to see the world (literally the cosmos) in modern terms is the degree to which one can no longer *see* God which really means something more in fact. It seems to mean to be 'cut off' from vast ranges of what I refer to as *meaning* and also *value* that can only ever be approached from a position within the self. That is, as one sits within one's self and discovers and lives though its relations not with the *outer world* (which we only see with modern eyes) but in and through the *inner world*. In my own case that is why I often refer to Gloucester's "I stumbled when I saw" and also Blake:

This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.

The proposition is, therefore, that there is some other way to see, and then perhaps something we are cut off from and can therefore recover. But what? And for what? Why?

I would not so much try to propose that simply by noting all of this that that in itself amounts to the resolution of the problem, but rather that the problem must be better seen. And what is that problem? It revolves around being 'cut off'. However, I am aware that the hardened *atheist*, if I can refer to him in that way, scoffs at all that I have said here as 'sophistic apologetics'.

But what is curious, from where I stand, is that no matter how one looks at the problem (of existing in the shadow of one metaphysics and in the dawn of another entire view that has not yet come into focus -- the dawn as Nietzsche described it) is that even those who tried to explore another way into a more holistic world, inside and outside, have seemed still to have *failed*. And I say that because, still, the ship of being founders.

So with that said I have to give some recognition to what Nick here has often spoken of. It is the mystery of the inner relationship.

In any case this is how I resolve some of these issues. The other *trick* and *manoeuvre* as it were that I employ is to stand fully away from The Elements of Story and to see, simply, that no story is ever the story's meaning. The *meaning* stands independent and mysteriously separate from the story-line.

... starting with an Adam and Eve event concluding in some kind of teleological apotheosis named the Last Judgement...

This entire view is that which is drawn in the conception of The Great Chain of Being. Man as the integral agent that 'resolves' the problem of the imperfection of the world. It is not surprising that Jung would veer away from the rigidity of one very conventional viewstructure and seek, and find, value in heretical alchemy. What he did was to involve himself with a peculiar god: Hermes. But to say this means that those 'former gods' did not, as Jung noticed, vanish but that they *went underground*. It requires a special *god of sight* if I may put it that way to *see* newly and again.

In case it is not obvious this thread, and having this conversation at this point, has been axial in my own case. Obviously, I see myself as a bridge between two radically opposed epistemes.

And a great deal of emphasis, in Catholic thought which is essentially the basis of Christian thought, on both Jesus and Maria. The Jesus figure and the Maria figure take on an emblematic role. Protestantism cannot bear with the notion of a sacred woman, the mother of the Savior, and tends to denigrate her. That has had many ramifications and not all of them positive.

In the 'modern mind', which seems to be the case for many who write here, when the story-line is challenged and punctured, that modern mind sees the meaning & value in it drain out slowly until, eventually, there is nothing there. I think that is what some of the religiously-minded, and also the reactionaries, call Nihilism. It says "these things are not real things" so therefore they are false things. And an entire world of meaning goes up in smoke. But to push the former metaphor: it goes underground and will pop out again, as it always does and must.

So it seems to me just as coherent to notice that the mind who does undermine the story-line, and does as seems to be the case do away with it and, as a result, all the value and meaning in it, does make a mistake. Why? Because that mind is still operating on what corresponds to a monorail of linear thinking, or thinking that can only run on one particular rail.

[Immanuel Can]

We can't even definitively -- ontologically? -- prove that what we think evil is we freely opted to believe of our own volition.

It's even worse. So far as I can tell, you can't even find the reasons you believe "evil" is a thing.

What I believe is that...
1] when human beings interact their wants and needs often come into conflict
2] as a result of this, within any particular human community, there are going to be "rules of behavior" that reward some behaviors and punish others
3] these rules will revolve around one or another historical and cultural combination of right makes might, might makes right and democracy and the rule of law
4] going back to the pre-Socratics in the West and their equivalent in the East, philosophy was invented...out of which came Ethics
5] ethicists "thought up" different ways to approach conflicting human behaviors. One of which was to make a "philosophical" distinction between Good and Evil
6] and then [of course] the role that God and religion play in all of it down through the ages and across the globe

Now, bring all of this down to Earth in regard to a particular set of circumstances, and we can discuss our own respective moral philosophers.

Well, the difficulty I'm having in understanding your view is not that I think you're not a moral person, or that you don't believe in good and evil, or that you don't know ethicists we can talk about. All of that, I take as obvious. I would assume you're a conventionally "decent" person, in other words.

My problem is that I see no rational warrant for an Atheist to say that "evil" exists as anything at all. For it may be that human beings have invented mountains of whimsy around ideas like "good" and "evil," but there is really nothing more than unicorns and pixies underneath all that. The fact that somebody has chosen to believe in "evil" does not show that "evil" is a real thing. It just shows that humans can believe odd and untrue things.

And it may be that there are even social conventions that have been formed around such illusions. So even if we say, "Well, evil isn't ontologically real, but it is a sort of phenomenological or sociological belief," that doesn't help at all. For it leaves us uncertain that the sociological phenomenon itself refers to anything that is real. And when we consider that societies have formed their "ethical" beliefs in contradictory and mutually-opposite ways, we can no longer turn to social phenomenology to provide us with any reason to think that "good" and "evil" have reality of their own.

So I'm still waiting to see how, from an Atheistic perspective, anybody can rationalize using the word "evil." We need to be able to show that the word refers to some objective reality. But what objective reality would that be?

...once one brings God into it

Let's not do that yet. It asks you to concede too much -- more than you're willing, I think.

...and reconciles His alleged omniscience with the free will of mere mortals,

That's an important question, but only for a Theist.

But you don't believe He exists, so I can't ask you to make that assumption. And the problem of evil obviously can't even appear for you unless you have a solid conception of what "evil" is, one you and I can share and then impute to omnipotence. So we have to solve the mystery of what "evil" is, first.

An atheist and a Christian choosing to interact with other human beings has got to come up with some word to make a distinction between behaviors he or she approves of and behaviors he or she does not approve of.

That's not going to be a good answer, obviously. It requires you to accept an equivalence between "evil" and "what you and I approve." But when and how did you and I become the moral arbiters of the universe? When did my "approval" become so important to the indifferent cosmos? That seems kind of wildly implausible, doesn't it?

Now, if you were to say that your approval and my approval of particular things may end up being intuitively reflective of some objective "evil" out there, I must concede that's possible. But since Atheism has no grounds for any conception of "evil," how can I ask you to have so much faith in my "approval" or even your own as simply to blithely assume it MUST reflect some objective "evil"? It might, it might not. And of course, both you and I are capable of having incorrect intuitions, and of "approving" things that maybe we shouldn't.

Whatever the case is, it surely would have to be demonstrated with reference to an objective conception of "evil."

Look, here's the bottom line, iam. I'm going to make it as simple as I can.

You want to talk about why an ominpotent and benevolent God would allow evil.

But "evil," you say, is a social or historical construct. And constructs are merely arbitrary, unless they refer to something objective, and when they don't, they are not just constructs but illusions as well.

So the upshot is that you are telling me God is wrong for allowing illusions. I just don't see how that can be a serious charge. It's perfectly obvious to me that in order to have a charge against God, you're going to have to accuse him of something objectively bad.

And I do believe in objective badness, or objective evil, because I also believe in God, of course; so I want to take your charge seriously. But I'm not getting how I'm supposed to make my case to somebody who doesn't believe there is any such thing as objective evil...or who, as you have, bounces back and forth between declaring that evil is not objective but then regards "approvals" or "social agreements" or "historical ethics" as proving that evil is objective, and treats children's suffering AS IF it's verifiably evil.

It seems to me you're playing both sides of the street. Evil IS NOT objective for your own purposes, but IS objective when you want to accuse God. How does that work?

So I come down to this simple question: is there an objective "evil" with which you can charge God?

[Immanuel Can]

Within the continuity of creation re evolution, there is no such thing as an original human mating pair that specifically stands out as a confirming event.

Tell the story. Let's see how it goes.

So you have no original mating pair. You have, instead, something like a herd of chimpanzees who all at once, by pure chance, happen to develop exactly the same adaptive mutations? Carry on with that story, and let's see how it unfolds.

Even the term "original mating pair" in context, denotes a separate supernatural event distinct from any biological process.

Try telling your evolutionary story without one. Go ahead, let's hear it.

That's your description, not mine

No, it has to be yours. Because there are only two possibilities: a mating pair, or there was none such. And if there was no original mating pair (for any particular stage of evolution you may choose to talk about -- and actually for each and all of them, logically), then what is the alternate theory of evolution there?

Was it that the group of Piltowns made the giant leap to Pekings spontaneously one morning, when they all woke up? What mechanism performed that kind of miracle? Was it that aliens suddenly came down and trimmed all their tails?

There's got to be some alternate theory: but what is even plausible?

That's the question.

[Immanuel Can]

You are talking to yourself again aren't you IC?

If you say something interesting, maybe I'll talk to you.

Maybe not, if you don't.

This other you you ...Resistence is futile.

Nope. That wasn't interesting.

[Nick_A]

Twilight: [Middle English twilighte : Old English twi-, two, half; see dwo- in Indo-European roots + Old English līht, light; see light.

dwo- I. Variant form *duwo.
1. a. two from Old English twā̆, two (nominative feminine and neuter); b. twain; twayblade from Old English twēgen, two (nominative and accusative masculine). Both a and b from Germanic *twa, two.]
_______________________________________________________________________________

Your mind rides without bifurcation on a mono rail of linear time toward one goal only starting with an Adam and Eve event concluding in some kind of teleological apotheosis named the Last Judgement. For that purpose, an original mating pair concept demands credence which marks a beginning and encloses an ending.

This is an interesting statement that can be examined.

In traditional Christian thought the error of the first man (and woman), Adam/Eve, is corrected and repaired with the intervention of God/Jesus. In my own view there is no other way to be able to grasp the story, and the metaphysics into which it fits, unless one resolves to go back to and examine in depth the former metaphysical system which gave birth to the conception. The way the Earth and the Cosmos was understood at that former time is really the basis for our perceptual system. And in fact that system or the effects of that system still operate in us. Our language is riddled with evidences of it and I suggest that all *meaning* that you or I am anyone could refer to shows itself with links and traces that tie back to the former metaphysics.

The modern conception -- of life, of the world, of being, of ourselves and of the self -- is in itself a sort of monorail. One has to be trained in it which also implies dis-training and untraining in the other, former viewstructure, in order to adopt it entirely and also authentically. It seems pretty obvious that certain modern minds -- I will mention A. Huxley and C.G. Jung though there are a hundred -- were forced to confront the problem of the monorail-like nature of the compelling and rather totalizing modern view. So what did they do? It seems to me that they re-approached the same *material* if I can refer to it in that way, and plumbed it from within their extremely modern position or orientation. It is pretty obvious that there was an entire movement in this direction and I should also have mentioned D.H Lawrence.

I think it is fair to say that, in one way or another, to one degree or another, they all responded to The Prophecies of Nietzsche, and that Nietzsche completely embodied the dislocation produced in the contrast between the two metaphysical system. To the degree that one has no choice but to see the world (literally the cosmos) in modern terms is the degree to which one can no longer *see* God which really means something more in fact. It seems to mean to be 'cut off' from vast ranges of what I refer to as *meaning* and also *value* that can only ever be approached from a position within the self. That is, as one sits within one's self and discovers and lives though its relations not with the *outer world* (which we only see with modern eyes) but in and through the *inner world*. In my own case that is why I often refer to Gloucester's "I stumbled when I saw" and also Blake:

This life's dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.

The proposition is, therefore, that there is some other way to see, and then perhaps something we are cut off from and can therefore recover. But what? And for what? Why?

I would not so much try to propose that simply by noting all of this that that in itself amounts to the resolution of the problem, but rather that the problem must be better seen. And what is that problem? It revolves around being 'cut off'. However, I am aware that the hardened *atheist*, if I can refer to him in that way, scoffs at all that I have said here as 'sophistic apologetics'.

But what is curious, from where I stand, is that no matter how one looks at the problem (of existing in the shadow of one metaphysics and in the dawn of another entire view that has not yet come into focus -- the dawn as Nietzsche described it) is that even those who tried to explore another way into a more holistic world, inside and outside, have seemed still to have *failed*. And I say that because, still, the ship of being founders.

So with that said I have to give some recognition to what Nick here has often spoken of. It is the mystery of the inner relationship.

In any case this is how I resolve some of these issues. The other *trick* and *manoeuvre* as it were that I employ is to stand fully away from The Elements of Story and to see, simply, that no story is ever the story's meaning. The *meaning* stands independent and mysteriously separate from the story-line.

... starting with an Adam and Eve event concluding in some kind of teleological apotheosis named the Last Judgement...

This entire view is that which is drawn in the conception of The Great Chain of Being. Man as the integral agent that 'resolves' the problem of the imperfection of the world. It is not surprising that Jung would veer away from the rigidity of one very conventional viewstructure and seek, and find, value in heretical alchemy. What he did was to involve himself with a peculiar god: Hermes. But to say this means that those 'former gods' did not, as Jung noticed, vanish but that they *went underground*. It requires a special *god of sight* if I may put it that way to *see* newly and again.

In case it is not obvious this thread, and having this conversation at this point, has been axial in my own case. Obviously, I see myself as a bridge between two radically opposed epistemes.

And a great deal of emphasis, in Catholic thought which is essentially the basis of Christian thought, on both Jesus and Maria. The Jesus figure and the Maria figure take on an emblematic role. Protestantism cannot bear with the notion of a sacred woman, the mother of the Savior, and tends to denigrate her. That has had many ramifications and not all of them positive.

In the 'modern mind', which seems to be the case for many who write here, when the story-line is challenged and punctured, that modern mind sees the meaning & value in it drain out slowly until, eventually, there is nothing there. I think that is what some of the religiously-minded, and also the reactionaries, call Nihilism. It says "these things are not real things" so therefore they are false things. And an entire world of meaning goes up in smoke. But to push the former metaphor: it goes underground and will pop out again, as it always does and must.

So it seems to me just as coherent to notice that the mind who does undermine the story-line, and does as seems to be the case do away with it and, as a result, all the value and meaning in it, does make a mistake. Why? Because that mind is still operating on what corresponds to a monorail of linear thinking, or thinking that can only run on one particular rail.

The proposition is, therefore, that there is some other way to see, and then perhaps something we are cut off from and can therefore recover. But what? And for what? Why?

The ancient symbol of the cross explains it. The horizontal line of the cross represents the line of knowledge or this monorail you referred to. The vertical line intersecting the horizontal line creating the cross represents the line of being or the distance from our source you referred to. Their point of intersection defines our understanding.

This new way to see goes beyond what we know but includes the perspective a person puts it in. Facts within objective values defines understanding. In modern times most have forgotten about the vertical line defining our being. If our being doesn't change we remain the same and the cycles of nature continue as in the cycle of war and peace regardless of what we factually know.

[Dubious]

Tell the story. Let's see how it goes.

So you have no original mating pair. You have, instead, something like a herd of chimpanzees who all at once, by pure chance, happen to develop exactly the same adaptive mutations? Carry on with that story, and let's see how it unfolds.


Try telling your evolutionary story without one. Go ahead, let's hear it.

That's your description, not mine

No, it has to be yours.

Your interpretation has nothing to do with what I wrote. But then, I don't know for how many years, you've been a mutilator of other people's posts and accused accordingly by almost everyone who ever responded to you. This is merely a continuation.

You're so supremely transparent! Of course you would insist as theist there had to be an original mating couple because without that primary event Adam/Eve wouldn't exist. If that were so, the whole Jesus episode by extension and the reasons for his sacrifice wouldn't need to have happened either which, in turn, annuls any puerile last judgement event.

It's no wonder you're so set against science to prove your myth. As in every story, repeal the beginning and the ending doesn't happen either.

Wouldn't that be a kick in the head!

BTW, Piltdown has long been proven as forgery. You really haven't been keeping up ever since you made the bible your one and only truth book.

[promethean75]

Clearly man suddenly and instantly materialised out of nothing in his present form and hasn't changed in six million years (the age of the erf), and the fossil record is a trick played by communists.

[Immanuel Can]

That's your description, not mine

No, it has to be yours.

Your interpretation has nothing to do with what I wrote.

No, but it has to do with what you have to believe, if you believe in "the ascent of man." You have no choice but to believe either in an original mating pair, or in some other alternative you are afraid even to suggest.

Pretty funny, actually.

BTW, Piltdown has long been proven as forgery.

Oh yes, I know. But it's not my theory, so I have no reason to blush. It's the "ascent of man" people who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar repeatedly -- and yet, funnily enough, have refused to retract and admit their frauds.

And the "ascent of man" people want us to believe that's "science"?

Too, too funny.

[Dubious]

No, it has to be yours.

Your interpretation has nothing to do with what I wrote.

No, but it has to do with what you have to believe, if you believe in "the ascent of man." You have no choice but to believe either in an original mating pair, or in some other alternative you are afraid even to suggest.

Pretty funny, actually.

BTW, Piltdown has long been proven as forgery.

Oh yes, I know. But it's not my theory, so I have no reason to blush. It's the "ascent of man" people who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar repeatedly -- and yet, funnily enough, have refused to retract and admit their frauds.

And the "ascent of man" people want us to believe that's "science"?

Too, too funny.

...while the original copulating couple is a fact...nicht wahr!

What's really funny, pathetic actually, are your stupidly weird replies which make no sense on any level. Of what would I be afraid to suggest? It's as if you have no idea what to say anymore! How does one respond to what comes across as pure distortion and gobbledygook! You responses prove you cannot properly philosophize on the mysteries of belief without creating a silly farce as here rendered.

Briefly, I give credence to the science which has proven itself in innumerable times and ways while you still retain a medieval believe in the bible incorporating as well an old decayed worn out trope by theists that atheists are not and can not be as moral not having received the moral sanction of what is historically presumed to be sacred scripture...which are as man-made as any written novel.

As mentioned many times, if you had been born in those times your sick fanaticism would have served the Inquisition extremely well making certain no reality will ever infringe biblical truth.

[Immanuel Can]

...what would I be afraid to suggest?

You're going to have to tell me. I have no idea what you're ashamed of.

Or maybe, you just have no theory of human "ascent" at all, and just realized it. That's also possible.

For whatever reason, you're steamed and can't come up with anything.