I am impressed that you looked it up, which is more than many others. IAAC, and the problem is not the literal piece of fruit or even the talking snake, but the literal first humans, which is impossible. The bloodline is very important that links Adam to Jesus. But if Adam was fictitious, then what does that make the rest of the story? Put another way, you can’t really believe in literal first humans and evolution, because one cancels the other out. And there is strong evidence for evolution.
If the best you’ve got for “Original Sin” is “somebody somewhere did something a long time ago, so you are guilty too”, then I’m not going to being feeling much guilt about it.
I am seeing this “I go to church mostly because of habit / social pressure” attitude, as well. And I live in the buckle of the bible belt – Nashville, TN. It may be much more pervasive than is generally assumed. At least, that’s what I’m hoping!
I don’t know what the Catholic Church teaches about this, but two possible resolutions immediately occur to me:
(1) There didn’t used to be human beings. Now there are. Ergo, someone had to be the first human(s).
(2) Evolution is responsible for the biological development of humans, but Adam was the first person to whom God granted a human soul.
Yeah, that’s one of the things (though not the only one) that doesn’t make sense to me or satisfy me. It makes a little more sense if you think of it as an infection, that started way back when and spread to the rest of the human race, but that doesn’t answer all my questions.
A non-believer will have a serious problem with this. There really is nothing evident that differentiates humans from other animals. We have language that has developed by writing into complex abstraction that allows us to be analytical. It is merely a feature of how we developed, not some mystical thing.
But I have been around animals and played with them. If I have some mystical “soul” thing, so do they. You tell me that my cat did not have a soul but I do, that makes me angry. This “soul” business is a complete religious artifice that has no grounding in anything but bullshit. It only serves to divide us from nature that we are part of. Humans are not “better” than other creature, just a little bit more sophisticated.
Also, to pick a nit, Adam was not the first person created in Genesis. The first two chapters are a shabby hash-up of narratives from two different sources. Man is created in chapter one, then created again in chapter two. For being the Word of God, it sure had a bad editor.
Original Sin is a BS premise in any event. So let me get this straight: ever since I was born I’ve been tainted by some terrible sin of disobedience that someone I never even met or knew about did thousands of years ago. At least Santa is supposed to give coal to kids who actually DID something bad. If Original Sin is true, then God is prejudiced.
We keep restricting scope to the ways in which Christianity is wrong. The point is, all religions are wrong in the same way, in that they encourage belief in things not in evidence. It’s just that some religions are more wrong to a greater extent about certain things than others.
Potentially relevant to this discussion: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1361333.html
Sound familiar, anyone arguing with DrDeth on this subject? There’s a lot of context here (I am constantly annoyed by the 3-paragraph rule, because it’s almost never enough to really get the gist of the articles I’ve been reading lately - rationalists tend to write in short paragraphs and long articles), and the article is worth reading, even though I don’t quite agree that the liberal left is quite so firmly hold the position Siderea associates them with.
We live in an environment in which there are a rather large number of people who accept, passingly, somewhat or very much, the basic tenets of Christianity here. As one might expect, Christianity has de facto declared that all other religions are wrong, sometimes going so far as to say that worshiping Kahanemakekakalele-of-the-Great-Thunder-Crater, or whatever, is akin to doing the work of Phil-the-Prince-of-Insufficient-Light. We work at shredding the foundations of Christian belief because they have a sort of prevalent and pervasive immediacy. Assuming that that were accomplished, the divested Christians would be hard-pressed to turn to an alternative, since they had declared everything else to be wrong/evil.
I think you’d get double-take whiplash in seeing how quickly some would run from one god delusion to another. It’s my impression that a much more holistic approach is required.
And there’s the paradox; they’re wrong factually, and yet they often contain great truth about the human condition. The prevalence of temptation is a good example, which is what both the fruit of the tree of wisdom and the jar of sprites are supposed to represent. Taken as metaphor, religious stories can be very educational. Just don’t take them literally. Sometimes I think that’s why Jesus is attributed with so many superhero qualities—to make sure we didn’t confuse him with an actual human being.
Religion is not a lack of intelligence, but lack of zeal, a fall back from the truth, but makes them happy and provides some comfort.
Religion is crystallized, frozen in time, relationship with God. It is from a instant in time to explain to the people who are seeking, or forced to seek, guidance. The relationship with God is dynamic and wonderful but damm hard, but so easy, to understand without experiencing it. But many seek this and is it very evident to those who have not achieved the goal of each human, enlightenment, but still seeking it with the confines of the world. They ask questions without the motive force of zeal and get the watered down form of the truth called religion.
Same can be said of Aesop’s fables.
I might be able to buy this explanation if so many different religions/sects didn’t make the same claim that what they are about isn’t “religion”-What they are really about is a “personal relationship with God”.
I believe that this is part of the answer, in part because it is dharma ( universal truths), so is incorporated in so many religions, so it is very prevalent.
Is there any correlation “Universal Truths” and “Things I Happen To Believe”?
Can you name some of these “Universal Truths”?
Exactly! I love Aesop’s fables. Jesus’ parables are pretty interesting too.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t attack a single instance of anything.
Praise Aesop! Hallowed be his name.
Does he have a kid, male preferrably?