It would require Adam and Eve to be non-modern humans, transformed into them. They’d have to be something with a significantly smaller skull size. Australopithecus?
So a hunter/gatherer, like an Inuit, is not human? I believe you need to tweak your definitions to be less insulting.
Um, no. Takes a lot more than some half-assed Biblical “explanation” to blow the minds of anyone here. Perhaps you should concentrate on blowing the minds of home-schooled pre-teens. :rolleyes:
No, because it is no coincidence at all. Y’see, the author of that bit of the Bible took something he knew to be true, that childbirth is painful, and imagined some theological explanation, a just-so story, to explain it. These were simple people and an understanding of evolution and its mechanisms was thousands of years in the future, so I give them a break. A modern fellow like you already knows more than Moses, Plato, or Archimedes, and can learn more than that, and can come to the conclusion that, if we were “designed,” whoever did it did a lousy job and there are still kinks to work out.
Back to the OP. I’m about as atheist as a member of my church in good standing can be (it’s complicated). My oldest spent last week chaperoning a bunch of high schoolers on a mission trip to [del]the Red Cloud Agency[/del] [del]Wounded Knee[/del] (it’s the 21st century, not the 19th, right?) the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I am proud of her and after she described the trip I told her I had been thinking about her one-time consideration of the ministry (studying on Seminary Ridge, no less–I can’t get out of the 19th) and that I felt she might look into heeding the Call. I see no cognitive dissonance in that and resent the OP’s insistence on a black and white world.
(Post shortened)
I’m no mammalogist, but doesn’t live birth hurt period? I mean I’ve been present when both my children were born, and the woman that used to be my wife was in fantastic pain, I freely admit. But I’ve also seen some house pets deliver, and there seemed to be a good bit of discomfort involved there as well. I’m just not sure that’s on Eve. Also, and probably not entirely relevant to the topic at hand, I’m willing to bet laying eggs also feels lousy.
Regarding the OP, I have no issue with the moderately religious. They’re the least likely to impose their beliefs upon me, and I appreciate that. The religiously moderate, on the other hand, can go to hell. Pick a side, freaks!* 
*Apologies if someone already said something similar. It’s a long thread.
Reminds me of what Walt Kelly said about Pogo: he isn’t for the extreme right, or the extreme left, but the extreme middle.
My understanding is that it’s not nearly so bad as it is with humans. (most) human women are screaming in pain. The baby literally does not fit through the pelvis, his head is smushed together along that seam in order to get him to fit through.The pelvis is put under enormous strain. And bone strain is one of the most painful things you can experience. They say if you really have to stop an intruder immediately, shoot him in the pelvis and he’ll be screaming on the floor in pain
Did I say that?
What the hell is wrong with the people here? Why are so many posters incapable of reading comprehension?
OK, but did you get the part where the story they made up parallels human evolution. That is, childbirth is painful because we’re the thinking animal of this planet, i.e. we ate from “the tree of knowledge”? That’s way too on-the-money to be a random coincidence. At the very least one would have to admit that it’s possible that the ancient writers noticed the human-childbirth-is-exceptionally-painful phenomenon and connected it loosely with our unique nature.
If you want to maintain a dismissal of religion that’s fine, but at least GET what I actually wrote
Why yes, you did:
The problem is more with writing comprehension.
I do “get” what you wrote. It’s not exactly deep. It’s just a poorly thought out apologetic wrapped up in a pseudo-scientific just-so story. It’s nonsense, and as I explained, it’s hardly a coincidence. The writer of Genesis imagined a back story to explain a scientific fact. I gave him a bye because he had no choice but to be ignorant. You are ignorant because you want to be. Believe what you want, but don’t come in here expecting to blow our minds.
Well, yes, you did. Most of us got what you meant, but, yeah, you really did phrase it that way.
I don’t think it works. I think, instead, the point of the knowledge of good and evil is the awareness that, when lions kill, they do it without malice, but humans kill with malice. We know what we’re doing is wrong…and we do it anyway. We’re the only animal that wears clothes, because (at least the reasoning went in ancient days) we’re the only animal that knows that nudity is wrong.
The authors of Genesis noted that childbirth is painful, and wrote that up as Eve’s punishment, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t connecting the dots between human intelligence, cranial size, and birth pangs. For one thing, they didn’t know that the brain was the “thinking organ.”
Well…you could be a little more careful in construction. I agree that it’s pettifogging pedantry to parse sentences exactly when your intention was clear, but, well, really, you wrote it kind of poorly.
The SDMB grammar police are harsh!
So?
I mean, we’re the only animals that think and the only animals that have extremely painful childbirth and the ancients guessed correctly that the two were related. Their answer is lucky at best.
At worst you’re making this up completely, since your version completely ignores the OTHER half of why childbirth is painful (we stand upright <citation needed>, so can’t have wide enough hips for baby heads.)
All those bad things happened because of their disobedience, so your explanation doesn’t even work. Why do we have to work? Why are we afraid of snakes? Why is childbirth painful? Why do we die? All our fault, don’t blame God.
Not really a big deal in Judaism, but it leads to all the salvation crap in Christianity.
BTW, a lot of hunter gatherers didn’t work that hard, much less hard than early farmers. And they were healthier too, with better diets. So don’t knock them.
I had seven children, had no pain with any to speak of. most were born getting off the elevator, or in the labor room. My husband hadn’t even parked the car. My third child the nurse had my husband hold my legs crossed while she push the head back, I grabbed a hold of the bed bars and kicked them both across the room. I was always very physically active and that is why i had no problems and the Native Americans had their children working in the fields. So apparently the curse didn’t work on a lot of women.
My wife took the appropriate drugs and had a c-section, because who needs to push a big cranium through there if bigger craniums have come up with an alternative?
Part of me objects to being accused of pettifoggery, but the rest of me likes it just fine and is rolling the word around my brain because it feels good.
I wanted to verify that EdwinAmi misspoke accidentally and isn’t a particularly heinous breed of racist. It’s also for the lurkers in the Peanut Gallery. Fighting ignorance requires us to express our thoughts clearly so even a person with limited English skills can understand exactly what we mean.
(looking at my 22,761 posts and finding maybe a half dozen that meet that standard)
Do as I say, not as I do.
It is a pretty kind of word, innit?
Grin! Believe me, I’m in your camp all the way! I treasure precisely formulated posts, which communicate formally and as close to exactly as possible. I also admire effective use of connotations and inferences: I respect people who can write “between the lines.” And…I fall short of these ideals myself, any number of times.
(I have, upon more than one occasion, walked into a paragraph on the “pro” side of a debate, and, by the end of it, was arguing the “con” side with copious verbosity, having completely lost my way somewhere in the grammar-thickets in between!)
More than once in college I stopped three minutes into answering a question and asked, “What was the question again,” yet people said, “Keep going. You’re sounding great.” I come from a family of lawyers and might have missed my calling, but I’d probably argue myself out of my original position in front of the jury and my client would fry. When I do that here I just get accused of inconsistency.
doesn’t that just add to the comparison to human evolution?
Sure. But it doesn’t make it any less of a coincidence. The Book of Genesis doesn’t mention anything about “The stooped became straight.” You might as well try to argue that Esau, the hairy man, was an Australopithecus, but Jacob, the man without obvious body hair, was Cro Magnon.
You can find these things if you look for them, but they don’t really signify anything.
(I take the Bible as the story of God’s accommodation to agriculture. At first, Cain’s offering of grain is rejected by God, and God curses Adam to eat bread in the sweat of his brow. But by Jesus’ time, God provides the miracle of the loaves of bread, and Jesus even transubstantiates into bread for the spiritual nourishment of his followers. God originally hated bread…but came to accept it over time. This is all right there in the Bible…and really, quite meaningless.)
Throw in something about unleavened bread for Passover and it’s GOLD!
I think the answer to this is that one is taking the word or words of another human and because that human said God said or did something is just the human speaking it’s own mind. No one can prove a God said or did anything, so one can say it is the work and words of another human.
If one looks back 5,000 years ago( or so) if humans were getting better, then they there would have been no need for the 10 commandments. Apparently people are no better now than they were, nor any worse. Human nature is what it is, and if an all knowing God created humans with these faults it is not the fault of humans but the maker!