Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[Immanuel Can]

No idea what you're on about. The current theory is that sex appeared about 1.5 billion years ago, in single-celled organisms....Before that there was only asexual reproduction.

Think harder, I guess. At some point, there had to be a first fully-human pair. You can set that bar anyplace, and it's the case: at post-Neanderthals, or earlier. There's no question that, at that point, and by that stage, reproduction among humans was by sex, not mitosis. So there had to be a first mating pair of what we now call 'modern' humans, in the biological sense. There's no other way it could be, whether you believe in Evolutionism or something else. And that will remain true no matter how many stages we imagine there were before post-Neanderthals.

Anybody who says it was otherwise, that 'modern' humans had a way of reproducing that does not imply an original mating pair owes us an explanation of what that "otherwise" would be. How would that story go? If they have one, it would be worth our seeing it.

If they don't have one...well, then we know they were bluffing all along.

Sorry I thought by evolution you meant evolution, not human evolution.

There's nothing important involved in any story but the human one.

Wherever you draw the line, the offspring was the first fully-human, not the parents. Sexual reproduction and some mutation combined.[/quote] Well, for the story to continue, the offspring would have to reproduce sexually, no? So now we're off to the races.

If it was "sexual reproduction," then at some stage, there was an original mating pair -- either before or after what you call "the offspring," and certainly afterward. But Dube says that can't be true. If the account you offer above were true, it would have to be true.

I agree.

[Dubious]

So the human race appeared magically on earth...and NOTHING did it! Nothing is true. Wow.

The human race appearing magically on earth is the Adam & Eve story...

Hey, I'm open to your alternate story. I just can't see what it would be. And you, apparently, can't tell us.

Spell it out, if you can: how would it go?

Let's start with the protozoa in the primordial slime...how does it become a human being without implicating any stage at which sexual reproduction is involved? Tell the story.

Where did I say sexual reproduction is not involved. I stated the opposite and indicated as what point it began since evolution already existed prior to that. So again, show me where!

Evolution didn't start with humans. That's a bible story replete with a ready-made pair to populate the world.

[Atla]

There's nothing important involved in any story but the human one.

That's.. such a dumb thing to say imo.

Well, for the story to continue, the offspring would have to reproduce sexually, no? So now we're off to the races.

If it was "sexual reproduction," then at some stage, there was an original mating pair -- either before or after what you call "the offspring," and certainly afterward. But Dube says that can't be true. If the account you offer above were true, it would have to be true.

I agree.

Don't know what Dube said and don't know what you're talking about either. We drew the line somewhere, at one or more mutations that were needed for an organism to be considered fully-human. Then one was born with these mutations and that was the first fully-human. Then this one had offspring too and these new genes spread and created more fully-humans, eventually everyone had them.

[Immanuel Can]

The human race appearing magically on earth is the Adam & Eve story...

Hey, I'm open to your alternate story. I just can't see what it would be. And you, apparently, can't tell us.

Spell it out, if you can: how would it go?

Let's start with the protozoa in the primordial slime...how does it become a human being without implicating any stage at which sexual reproduction is involved? Tell the story.

Where did I say sexual reproduction is not involved.

You said there was no "first mating pair." Now you have to admit there had to be. It makes me wonder why you said it.

[Immanuel Can]

There's nothing important involved in any story but the human one.

That's.. such a dumb thing to say imo.

Why? No matter how much "evolution" one imagines taking place before the arrival of humans, it wouldn't impact the Biblical narrative even a bit.

Don't know what Dube said and don't know what you're talking about either.

That's fine. It's Dube's problem, not yours.

[Dubious]

You understand nothing and accept nothing except what's contained in that cow patch of absurdities called the bible. Since you believe it to be inviolable and bullet-proof why look further! If you truly wanted to know, you have as much access to information as anyone else.

You fail to understand: Immanuel Can has had established in him, and has worked to establish in himself, a doctrine and an interpretation of that doctrine which leaves him no alternative but the Bible realism that he relies on. It is funny (actually it is hilarious) that he turns to the Original Mating Pair story. You must understand: He really believes this is the necessary way to hold to the coherence of the picture!

You are asking him (actually you are demanding) that he turn against one of those *pillars* that uphold his entire grounding within a literal Christian interpretation and Bible literalism. And you fail to recognize that he cannot do this!

You are asking him to subvert the foundations of the truth that he has lived in and through for half a century.

So in this sense (it seems clear) to embrace the impossible is a survival tactic, is it not? Because just one confession that just one story is not *true* in a literalist sense will lead, dangerously, to the collapse of an entire Literalist Monument. That is simply too much to ask for.

Thank you, oh superior one, for your succinct exegesis in describing in near biographical terms the prevailing conditions rampant in the brains of an idiot. Is there also an autobiography that goes with it?

[Immanuel Can]

It is funny (actually it is hilarious) that he turns to the Original Mating Pair story.

Oh, goody! There's another person who thinks he has an alternate story. Wonderful. Join the party, Alexis: tell us what story of human origins doesn't involve any original mating pair.

[Dubious]

Hey, I'm open to your alternate story. I just can't see what it would be. And you, apparently, can't tell us.

Spell it out, if you can: how would it go?

Let's start with the protozoa in the primordial slime...how does it become a human being without implicating any stage at which sexual reproduction is involved? Tell the story.

Where did I say sexual reproduction is not involved.

You said there was no "first mating pair." Now you have to admit there had to be. It makes me wonder why you said it.

If you insist on a first mating pair then it would have been the first time one eukaryotic cell transferred its DNA to another. Sorry, can't say what their names were since it preceded my existence by a billion years give or take. We humans have been carrying on that tradition ever since once that paradigm was established even though we didn't exist at the time. For the sake of simplicity let's call them Adam and Eve, though I have no idea which was Adam and which was Eve in this exchange!

[Belinda]

So the human race appeared magically on earth...and NOTHING did it! Nothing is true. Wow.

The human race appearing magically on earth is the Adam & Eve story...

Hey, I'm open to your alternate story. I just can't see what it would be. And you, apparently, can't tell us.

Spell it out, if you can: how would it go?

Let's start with the protozoa in the primordial slime...how does it become a human being without implicating any stage at which sexual reproduction is involved? Tell the story.

alternative

[Atla]

Why? No matter how much "evolution" one imagines taking place before the arrival of humans, it wouldn't impact the Biblical narrative even a bit.

[Belinda]

Unfortunately, when Immanuel jumps back into his own Evangelical fervor, and presents to the Forum his topical and superficial interpretation of Scripture, it throws the entire forum into a hissyfit. Simply put, no one today, except one with a fanatical mind that is capable of forcing itself to *see* and believe what cannot be believed and what is impossible to believe, can agree that the Adam & Eve story is actual history.

But here is the oddest of all odd things: Immanuel who is capable of clear-headed exposition on many topical themes, who shows he has a rationally-oriented mind and a large degree of background on many contemporary topics (and forgive me here Immanuel), when he waxes fanatical he transforms himself into a fanatical religious zealot when he tries to convince others that his Bible realism should be taken seriously, and naturally (and rightly) this provokes the Standard Reactions. Dubious jumps back in and repeats all over again what has been said a hundred times already. In this Dubious shows where his *delight* is found: going round and round in circles in an epic battle against Bible Realism.

Let’s face it: on the whole this type of Bible-grounded Evangelism is an American thing. I think this is a solid fact. Over the least 40-50 years an entire zealous American Evangelical establishment has evangelized the entire world with this particular literalist interpretation of the Bible and especially Bible prophecy.

A few things must be said here. One is that if we are not aware of what the religious Right is thinking and *seeing*, and if one is not aware that the religious Zionist Right (I mean the Jewish and Israeli radicals who have gained substantial control over the Israeli state) are not attempting to direct events in specific ways, if one remains outside of this comprehension one cannot, in my view, understand at all well what is going on today. I will certainly bring into this the election of Donald Trump and make reference to the extreme zealotry of many now forming his cabinet.

So here is the thing I really want to bring to your attention though I suppose it will be misinterpreted. We have to see and we have to accept that according to a predominant perceptual stance that is held in the minds and in the psychic structure of powerful figures, that we are (and I will resort to their symbols and their terms) in a time of the advent of the Anti-Christ. I do not actually have to *believe in* an Anti-Christ as a real figure who appears on the world-stage, I only need refer to what they are thinking, imagining, longing for and importantly constructing as they project deeply symbolic material onto the world and the world’s events.

To the degree that one is *captured* by Christian symbols and interprets them through Bible realism, is the degree to which one deviates from the *real meaning* within the symbols. I know, that is a weird thing to say. Traditional Christianity, taken at the level of symbolism, has many sound elements because what is connoted by the general Christian picture is sound because the metaphysics described in the symbols are sound. And it is when one can see and understand intellectually what the metaphysical ideas actually are (and why they are important) that one can sift out in other traditions and religious stories what is also metaphysically valid as well as *true*. The principles are metaphysical principles and they are apprehended on the intellectual plane. Belinda says it is about *love* but that is a mushy picture. It is (IMO) actually about a very concrete and very serious set of intellectual precepts that are at the base of (permit me) *genuine metaphysics*.

Immanuel, as a true Evangelical zealot! must always bust forth and declare from time to time: “You are all going to Hell unless you bend a knee before Jesus and declare your allegiance!” Similarly, today, and appearing on TV and even interwoven in the rehearsals around the installation of the new President, is all this fervent religious-Christian Evangelical content. They are trying to *awaken* the nation, and possibly the world, to the need to return to Christian religious roots, but they are definitely unaware that on the level of metaphysical principles what they hope for (a neoconservative, market-grounded, tech administered, AI infused, militarism and neo-Imperialism infused national ideology, might have some initial successes, but in the end it will bring the nation, and then the world, toward that disaster which all feel is imminent.

What I have taken away from these conversation — and specifically I refer to Big Mike who began this and a series of threads with very specific intentions in mind and attempting to bring out extremely specific views that he attempts to *sell* — is just how utterly confused (and here please forgive me!) all of you really are. You-plural always end up as gibbering incoherent idiots, bickering over what is utterly inane.

No matter what, you cannot seem to arrive at any level of clarity. So all that you have is some tendentious position that you have carved out for yourself, to which you are zealously wedded, but which is absolutely idiosyncratic just to you! No one agrees with you. You are *lone voices* crying in a wilderness of subjective impression. In this sense there is no *metaphysical understanding* and because there is no metaphysical agreement possible, all the ideas are just jumbles underpinned by unsettled and overheated emotions.

Love is not "mushy".It's jolly hard work. See Paul writing to the Corinthians for the degree to which love is onerous, both emotionally and intellectually.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Thank you, oh superior one, for your succinct exegesis in describing in near biographical terms the prevailing conditions rampant in the brains of an idiot. Is there also an autobiography that goes with it?

Blessing to you, wormish one!

An autograph can be provided. Generally, after appropriate monetary contributions.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It is funny (actually it is hilarious) that he turns to the Original Mating Pair story.

Oh, goody! There's another person who thinks he has an alternate story. Wonderful. Join the party, Alexis: tell us what story of human origins doesn't involve any original mating pair.

If I grant you an Original Mating Pair will you come back with a Satanic Snake gambit?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Love is not "mushy".It's jolly hard work. See Paul writing to the Corinthians for the degree to which love is onerous, both emotionally and intellectually.

When one gets to the very core of what Christianity actually was, and is less of now (except perhaps to a degree in traditional Catholicism), one finds a very demanding set of principles that are part of an full ethical and ideological program.

You are about as “Christian” in this rigorous sense as a plate of french toast.

However, you are definitely a Post-Christian and, just prior to your advent (a product of Postwar Left-Progressive radicalism)(of a “light” variety) there were men in England (very well prepared, extremely decent, and very intelligent), of a rigorous frame of mind who could still be said to be “practicing Christians”.

The problem (in my own view) is that before love (either philia or agape) to manifest — to be possible — whole sets of requisites must be established. And that is where the “rigorousness” enters in.

The use of the term “love” today is largely devoid of any real power and meaning.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Why? No matter how much "evolution" one imagines taking place before the arrival of humans, it wouldn't impact the Biblical narrative even a bit.

I can try to work with this one so I will give it a shot:

I grant tons and tons of typically understood evolution up until that first Mating Pair.

The Mating Pair is there. Now what?