The "problem" of evil

Quote: Nareed

To begin with, given our knowledge of vary basic biology and evolution, there couldn't have been an Adam and Eve, nor a safe way for two humans to exist in a state other than sheer savagery with nature. Therefore the very foundation of Christianity, the infamous Fall from grace or whatever you call it, is 100% unsupported by facts or evidence, and in fact is contradicted by tons of facts and evidence, such as all of paleoanthropology.

No fall means no original sin No original sin, means no reason for Jesus to die and resurrect to atone for it.

That's just for starters. But for me that alone would be enough.

Okay good questions for me to think about here and I want to make sure I have them. While it is scientifically clear is that every human being can trace their ancestors back to one individual mother and one individual father but there are still big questions here, I again just want to make sure I have them correct. Did they or could they ever have met? Were they as far back as we go or could there be a further couple that we have not discovered as of yet? How did the early humans live, was it sheer savagery or cooperation with nature? Or did it change from one to the other? Was there some place that would have been sheltered or protected and easy to grow things as described poetically as the Garden of Eden? I think I would like a better answer to how Adam and Even and their children, if they were the first humans were able to populate the world. And finally the age old question, did Adam and Even have belly buttons?

Quote: FrGamble

While it is scientifically clear is that every human being can trace their ancestors back to one individual mother and one individual father but there are still big questions here, I again just want to make sure I have them correct.

To begin with, that's wrong.

There is one earliest common ancestor identified. That does not mean everyone is descended from that person, only that she's the oldest ancestor from whose population group many humans descended from, and there may be other groups like that we've not found.

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How did the early humans live, was it sheer savagery or cooperation with nature?

You can look at how modern savannah apes live, and you'd be close. Humans would use, and make, more tools, and perhaps have employed fire as well. Otherwise it would be pretty close. I don't think our earliest ancestors even hunted bigger game, until they developed spears. So mostly they'd gather food and hunt small game when they could, all the while fending off predators and scavengers.

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Was there some place that would have been sheltered or protected and easy to grow things as described poetically as the Garden of Eden?

Not a chance in hell of that.

Quote: FrGamble

My advice would be to think long and hard

My advice to you is to mind your own
fricking business, you ego centered
self appointed dictator. You have no
moral authority over me or anybody
here. Outside of your brainwashed
church, you have no authority of any kind.

I lead my life as I see fit and screw anybody
who doesn't like it. I'm hurting no one,
depriving nobody of anything. Your
continual judgement of those different from
you is disgusting to me. I bet you go tsk tsk
tsk and shake your head a lot, don't you.

Quote:

No fall means no original sin No original sin, means no reason for Jesus to die and resurrect to atone for it.
That's just for starters. But for me that alone would be enough.

It's certainly enough for me, it's why
I started the Original Sin thread last
year. You need look no further into
a religion when the very bedrock
it's built on is a total fallacy. No sin
to be saved from, move on, nothing
to see here.

When you present this to Christians it
often baffles them to the point of
stuttering. It's very funny, try it sometime.

"You can look at how modern savannah apes live, and you'd be close. Humans would use, and make, more tools, and perhaps have employed fire as well. Otherwise it would be pretty close. I don't think our earliest ancestors even hunted bigger game, until they developed spears. So mostly they'd gather food and hunt small game when they could, all the while fending off predators and scavengers."

As they're now finding out, humans have nothing
to do with god and everything to do with DNA
mutations. Even the differences in the races
and skin color is random gene and DNA mutations
over hundreds of thousands of years. There were
at least 5-6 different kinds of 'humans' as we slowly
made our way up the mutation trail from apes.

Once again the god myth is left in the cold to wither
away and die.

New France attack-- it's either religion or insanity.

Both rely on imaginary motivations. One is a sickness, and the other is willful ignorance.

I'm guessing already it's one or the other.

Quote: Evenbob

My advice to you is to mind your own
fricking business, you ego centered
self appointed dictator.

Why is it when you give advice to me I don't consider you a dictator. Based on the bad advice you give I just think of you as misguided friend who is trying to help and doesn't realize he is wrong. Maybe you could think of me the same way?

Quote:

I lead my life as I see fit and screw anybody
who doesn't like it. I'm hurting no one,
depriving nobody of anything. Your
continual judgement of those different from
you is disgusting to me. I bet you go tsk tsk
tsk and shake your head a lot, don't you.

No, but I do cry a lot.

The definition of a moral life is not just one where you hurt no one or deprive nobody of anything. This is the definition of an life of neutral nothingness. A moral life would be one that serves and gives rather than hurts and deprives. You should be striving for this type of life rather than the constant unhappiness of selfish indifference to the world around you.

Quote: FrGamble

Was there some place that would have been sheltered or protected and easy to grow things as described poetically as the Garden of Eden?

Let's elaborate on this:

All life requires two things: energy and nutrients.

By energy, this means chemical energy, or rather the energy produced in chemical reactions. Plants, and some bacteria, use solar energy, ambient carbon dioxide, ambient water and nitrogen compounds to produce the compounds they need to obtain chemical energy. Animals get their energy and nutrients from either plants, or from animals that eat plants.

What all this means is that any ecosystem will have plants, herbivores, predators and scavengers.

Predators aren't all that particular about what they hunt and eat. Typically they hunt whatever is easiest at the time they need to eat. Something they can reach, outrun, outmaneuver and outfight.

Humans aren't very fast, very agile or very strong. We also lack sharp claws or teeth, or even something hard we can hit back with (like the hooves of many ruminants). We can climb trees, but not very well. We lack any ability to hide or mask our presence. In short, we're easy prey.

So an ecosystem in the savannah, where humans evolved, containing two people only and enough produce, fruit and prey easy enough to catch and kill with bare hands, but no dangerous predators, would be unlikely in the extreme.

Quote: FrGamble

Okay good questions for me to think about here and I want to make sure I have them. While it is scientifically clear is that every human being can trace their ancestors back to one individual mother and one individual father but there are still big questions here, I again just want to make sure I have them correct. Did they or could they ever have met? Were they as far back as we go or could there be a further couple that we have not discovered as of yet? How did the early humans live, was it sheer savagery or cooperation with nature? Or did it change from one to the other? Was there some place that would have been sheltered or protected and easy to grow things as described poetically as the Garden of Eden? I think I would like a better answer to how Adam and Even and their children, if they were the first humans were able to populate the world. And finally the age old question, did Adam and Even have belly buttons?

The common ancestors, Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam probably did not live at the same time, and probably not in the same region.

Quote: FrGamble

You should be striving for this type of life rather than the constant unhappiness of selfish indifference to the world around you.

Where in seminary did they teach you that
you're god. I thought you were a worshiper
of a god, not a god himself.

Imagine a self centered egotist like yourself,
full of pride and self righteous hubris, imagine
yourself unleashed on a native culture with
no constraints, nothing to hold you back from
molding the poor people into whatever twisted
shape you wanted. If you can imagine that, you'll
realize why the world eventually stopped the Church
from being the monster it was. And why it's the
pipsqueak of a nothing it is today, a church that
can't even get it's people to go to mass or confession
anymore, and went broke from paying off the
victims of it's out of control clergy.