Christianity

[Immanuel Can]

Really, I've found there are many here who, like you, prefer that a discussion of "evil"/evil/Evil go on and on and on and on up on the intellectual skyhooks.

You're so funny.

You're the one who's trying to impress people with big words. If there are any "intellectual skyhooks," they're stuck in your waistband.

Over and over and over again we are confronted with actual flesh and blood human beings accusing each other of evil behavior.

Whoa, wait...

You say that if "people" say something is evil, we have to take them seriously, right?

But you also think that if 100% of "people" act as if Determinism is false, it proves nothing, right?

Which way do you want to argue? Are the opinions people express indicative of some truth we have to account for, or are they simply dismissible.

I'll accept either position. Just take one.

Good and evil are among the word-sounds that English speaking people invented. The rest is history. With or without the Christian God.

Honestly, I've got to say that that's one of the worst arguments I've ever heard ! It's really funny.

You may as well write, "Unicorn and pixie are among the word-sounds that English speaking people invented. The rest is history. With or without the Christian God." The pattern of argument is identical -- and obviously, identically ridiculous.

Without proof that unicorns and pixies exist, the words are just imaginings. "History" won't help the case at all. An old stupidity isn't better than a new one.

The same is true of good and evil -- they simply don't exist in an Atheistic world. They are not real properties of anything -- unless you can prove otherwise.

Go ahead.

words will be invented that revolve around rewarding some behaviors and punishing others. With or without God.

This says nothing except that human beings are totally arbitrary. They "punish" and "reward," you say; but you offer no objective basis upon which they do so, but merely as their impulses incline them, according to you. Therefore, what they do might just be a testament to gross injustice, and no more...

Unless you can prove there is such a thing as objective evil.

Certain behaviors are flat out Evil to them.

But you think they're just fooling themselves about that, obviously.

"I" don't believe mere mortals can establish definitively when any behaviors are inherently/necessarily Evil.

I agree. They cannot. But since you don't believe in God, you've got NOBODY who ever can.

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?

I see you simply avoided answering this.

I know why. You can't. It's irrational and inconsistent, and you surely know that.

[Walker]

It's worth noting it's not foxes, herbs, olive trees, or cattle that God expels from Eden. Of all created beings it is man and only man that questions God's ordered world of Eden.

You forgot the snake.

Let's hear it for The Snake In Chief, which to be clear, would be the original snake.

Evil snakes though consciousness and strikes when elements, which may not be intrinsically evil, combine to form a condition inviting the evil snake. When evil then manifests because of those conditions, it radiates and compounds geometrically, when fed by evil.

Big Evil got Brandon elected *, and as an influential element of the condition caused by his high profile (accented by hair plugs) and because of his powerful societal role, the effects of his ineffectual fecklessness began radiating outward almost immediately, capitalized upon by evil.

Anyone who voted for Brandon, by extension, could be an element of evil due to lack of caring enough to know the implications of electing him.

However, a lack of caring is not intrinsically evil.
Can’t care about everything, but one should care about the most consequential things.

[promethean75]

We have to imagine that how the snake became an almost universal symbol of evil was because man, during his animistic religious stage - believing that there was an intelligent will which created individual animals - observed of the snake that it had no legs. Then, taking into account how much it would suck if he himself had no legs, projected this concept of affliction onto the snake... believing that its condition was a result of being punished by that intelligent will so that it might live a life of humility on the ground.. as 'the lowest' of creatures or whatever.

And still today this utterly childish idea exists in the head of countless religious people.

[Alexis Jacobi]

We have to imagine that how the snake became an almost universal symbol of evil …

Actually it is in fact quite the opposite.

The Talmudists, naturally, have a more complex way of interpreting the G of E story. Essentially, what happened just had to happen. It was the way that everything got rolling. In other words it could not not have happened.

The Hebrew word נָחָשׁ (Nachash) is used to identify the serpent that appears in Genesis 3:1, in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis the serpent is portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster, who promotes as good what God had forbidden and shows particular cunning in its deception.

[promethean75]

Well no not really. This pseudo-archetype creature was not first conceived of in the minds of those who wrote the texts in the Bible. The idea had likely already existed in the heads of primitive shamans dating back even further than the pre-socratic greeks. You're not thinking rightly about how religious ideas and narratives evolve. They are all mish-mashes of ideas that are spread throughout the regions by missionaries and/or gathered through the inspection of travelling historians. There is almost nothing original to Judaism and Christianity that wasn't lifted from some other religion before it, and that religion, from the religion before it, etc. You have only a continuum of superstitious stories that are passed between cultures and regions.

[promethean75]

Oh snap I forgot all about this theory:

"The anthropologist Lynn Isbell has argued that, as primates, the serpent as a symbol of death is built into our unconscious minds because of our evolutionary history. Isbell argues that for millions of years snakes were the only significant predators of primates, and that this explains why fear of snakes is one of the most common phobias worldwide and why the symbol of the serpent is so prevalent in world mythology; the serpent is an innate image of danger and death."

So then this natural - instinctual? - attitude toward snakes was already built in before humans developed complex language and self-awareness... features that then led to their anthropomorphizing of the natural world; that it was a created product of some divine, intelligent will like themselves. So they're already afraid of these muthafuckin snakes... now add to this the only explanation they might have for this thing with no legs, creeping around in the grass and tryna bite em. It was a cursed creature. No ifs ands or buts about it.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Well no not really.

My point is that the snake symbol is often, more often, not one of evil.

Though I do not deny ‘evil’ nor the reality of what we term ‘the satanic’ (these require careful explanation), the snake in the Genesis story is an emblem of something inevitable in human consciousness. Who ever could have remained innocent and ignorant about, well, everything. So from a Hebrew perspective that ‘wily snake’ just had to appear on the scene. He was inevitable.

Had he not come along Adam & Eve would have remained trapped in that somewhat insipid world. The snake figure — as a narrative device — shares a role not unlike the trickster.

There is no one who could or can resist the appeal of knowledge. So it is absurd to propose that remaining ignorant could really have been a possible choice. It is somewhat like the command to not open Pandora’s Box.

But again how we view evil in our world today, and in ourselves, is not a vain question. But we are not (I do not think) going to get much of an answer from that story.

Unless we resorted to getting an answer from the ‘snake’ itself. Who else would know?

[Dubious]

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

No idea what you're referring to or how it relates. Another question, would anyone at this point know what you're talking about!

Fine. If you're confused, you're confused. I can explain it: I can't understand it for you.

I can also explain it. You're desperate because you don't know what to say so you come up with some stupid bullshit which has no relevance to anything discussed. This habit has long been your default method, throw in some totally unrelated piece of crap and make the other fellow responsible for it. It's simply business as usual for you.

So don't be a wimp. Explain why I should be ashamed even if you think I can't understand it! Maybe others can. Then you will have proven your point!

In short, put up or shut up!

[Dubious]

And now you are making specific, and consequential statements, about what reality is and what it is not. You now tell me and you declare and you sermonize to me and to anyone who will listen

"the fact there is no inherent meaning in existence per se, the cosmos being as thoroughly devoid of it as an empty canvas".

It wasn't my intention to sermonize and no one has to listen to anything I say; I'm not a theist and of no concern to me what anyone thinks or believes. I thought I was debating not sermonizing which, in order to avoid any such false inference, I won't be doing again. I leave you to debate with those who are coldly logical, of unquestionable honesty and never sermonize...like IC!

[Immanuel Can]

\Explain why I should be ashamed...
In short, put up or shut up!

I say the same to you, of course.

If you have a theory of how the human race could evolve without there being an original mating pair, then say it.

If you can't say it, then you've been believing an incoherent theory. That's enough to make anybody at least a little red-faced.

So let's hear it. What's your theory?

[Dubious]

You're goddamn right. And I'll tell ya sumthin else, too. I ain't about to be punished for of the sins of my moms and pops. I had nuthin to so wit dat shit.

Not quite right. It's a matter of genetics. I'll let Philip Larkin explain...

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

[Dubious]

\Explain why I should be ashamed...
In short, put up or shut up!

I say the same to you, of course.

If you have a theory of how the human race could evolve without there being an original mating pair, then say it.

If you can't say it, then you've been believing an incoherent theory. That's enough to make anybody at least a little red-faced.

So let's hear it. What's your theory?

I wasn't the one who made the accusation and no idea what you're talking about so it's up to you to explain what you meant. I'm still waiting.

Btw, evolution is not an incoherent theory and doesn't require an original mating pair while the Adam and Eve story is mandatory without which your entire Jesus story turns to bunk.

When the first Lucy ape met the first Ricky ape would that suffice as the first mating pair? Will you be happy then?

[Immanuel Can]

\Explain why I should be ashamed...
In short, put up or shut up!

I say the same to you, of course.

If you have a theory of how the human race could evolve without there being an original mating pair, then say it.

If you can't say it, then you've been believing an incoherent theory. That's enough to make anybody at least a little red-faced.

So let's hear it. What's your theory?

...no idea what you're talking about...

Yeah, you know...or should, if you really don't.

...evolution is not an incoherent theory and doesn't require an original mating pair

Give the alternate theory: how does one stage of the "ascent of man" turn into the next, with no mating pair?

But you've got nothing. You have no idea how that can happen.

[Alexis Jacobi]

If you have a theory of how the human race could evolve without there being an original mating pair, then say it.

So let's hear it. What's your theory?

Thinking this over it occurred to me that there could have been a pool of original mating pairs. Let's say a small community of one hundred persons. They would have to have been pre-homo sapiens, wouldn't they? (if one is developing theory within the scientific, anthropological model). Some former ancestors of homo sapiens who underwent some sort of evolutionary change that resulted in the new species.

I don't think that the Genesis story makes any reference to the antecedents to Adam & Eve (obviously).

It seems quite possible that within this entire group that certain changes (adaptations) occurred in various of them, even over a longish period of time, and that there was not one, specific mating pair which carried the day as it were (which is your view of what Genesis is about essentially). This seems to me more likely -- but obviously I am thinking in evolutionary-scientific terms.

Thus, those within this particular community, those who perhaps were the 'original mating community', changed or adapted in certain ways that turned out to be advantageous ('adaptive'). It might have taken a hundred thousand years for the adaptive changes to become established in that community. Who can say?

Also, the same evolution and adaptation could have occurred in other, nearby communities again over thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. And then there could have been an intermingling of the advantageous genetic material between these groups.

Yet it still does stand to reason that there must have been one pair which, in competition with some other pairs, represented the strain that *won* the adaptation battle. Though again other groups and persons within those other groups may yet still have 'entered the gene-pool' at later dates to bring in the rich treasure of their hard-won adaptations.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It wasn't my intention to sermonize and no one has to listen to anything I say

You misunderstand me. I work with the idea that *all speech is sermonic* (based on Richard Weaver's ideas about rhetoric). Everything we say intends to influence. Even if you say "I have no interest in influencing anyone" it must inevitably occur. Whatever you think, whatever you believe, must come out in what you say, in one way or another. And is you speak, you must understand that you will influence.