Adam & Eve story describes the Birth process

Religion and Secularism
1

I look for Rational down-to-earth explanations for religious ideas

We can all easily figure out the “earth is 5,000 years old” stuff - ancient people had little knowledge of the world and if you lived back then 5,000 years would sound like a lot
Primitive people living under Kings/Dictators made God using them as a template - He sits on a THRONE in the Heavens, Heaven is his KINGDOM. To get in, one must assure him of our loyalty and obedience. He demands that you be loyal to him and him only or else!
Think Putin and you get the idea - imagine that - in the 21st century the top God is Putin!
But these are the ideas of primitive people living in much different times, can’t blame them for such ideas
But the fact that such ideas are being blindly followed by even the best of minds of the 21st century shows the incredible brainwashing power of religion

So to get to the Topic Subject - is there a rational view of Heaven? And what’s up with Adam & Eve?
To me it is clear that this is about Nostalgia, a yearning for the happy days that we lost
Quite a lot of people look back to their youth and recall it as those “simple, happy days when everything was perfect”
And yes it was! We were Kids then! I don’t know about the rest of you, but my childhood was wonderful! We were not rich but kids don’t care much about money - I had loving parents, loving siblings and coming from an Indian family lots of uncles and aunts and cousins
We were fed, sheltered, protected and cared for - the troubles of life kept away from us
I know that my mothers life was not pleasant but she made sure that we never felt any of it
We ate, studied a bit and played - food and drink ready whenever we wanted
Mom and Dad ever-ready to comfort us when we felt down, shield us from the big, bad real world - we lived in a bubble!

And it is this Nostalgia for the days gone past that religion exploits - this idea is so powerful that even Buddhists believe in it - the so-called “Atheist Religion”
A magic Sugar Daddy is waiting for us - after we get down on our knees, cry a few croc tears of remorse, he will nicely forgive us and then it is easy living for eternity!
We will be fed, sheltered, protected and cared for and of course kept away from the big, bad real world! No more worries about climate change, covid19, drugs, wars, the Putins of the world, job losses(something my father faced but here again we were protected from its effects), health issues, natural disasters and so much more!
We get to be helpless children again, but this time forever! We get back to living in a bubble!

How about that brainwashing power of religion? This concept of Heaven even got to Buddhists!

So we get to the story of Adam & Eve - here clearly we can see that Adam is in the womb or describing life as a child - he is naked, pure, innocent, fed, sheltered, protected & cared for. He does not have a care in the world! He lives in a nice bubble
Eve represents either the Mother or the Lover
The Apple represents Life
Once he eats it, he begins life, he is kicked out of this warm and caring womb into a cold, hard world!
Of course as a child he is still in another womb, someone still feeds, protects, shelters and cares for him and of course keeps him away from the big, bad real world!
But as he grows up, he feels ashamed of his nakedness and learns to cover himself up
He grows up, he is pure no more! He has “fallen”

2

No, it doesn’t. It represents the birth of a large brain and intelligence.
The tree is the tree of knowledge and the ability to acquire knowledge of the world and ability to manipulate the environment (planning, tool-making).

This is what removed humans from innocence and paradise and is the allegory of Adam and Eve being banned from a pure Natural state.

Today"s AGW is the terminal result of man’s extraordinary intelligence and just 3 centuries of the Industrial Revolution. We are in the middle of a man-made extinction event. Very Holy.

Not only did we remove ourselves from paradise, but we also set out to destroy it with the 10 mortal sins.

As an atheist, this is my interpretation of the biblical allegories.
God had nothing to do with any of it.

This extraordinary event is recorded in science as a rare beneficial mutation of an ancestral chromosome that fused 2 ancestral chromosomes into one single much larger chromosome, containing the growth instruction for a larger brain and the resulting capacity for abstract thought.

See : Chromosome fusion

The result was the split of the human species from our common hominid ancestor and brought us down from the trees to the caves.

Even as we share 98 % DNA with other great apes, humans are the only hominid with 23 pr chromosomes, causing an evolutionary leap, whereas all other great apes retained their 24 pr of chromosomes and followed a more leisurely evolutionary process as can be seen in today’s great apes.

3

This idea that somehow something else is good and what we have now is bad is getting old and tiring. “We are in the middle of a man-made extinction event” we have heard this before and i have to say such doomsday talk is better left to Theists and their “better convert before it all ends or else!” threats

What is this “natural state”??? Our intelligence removed us from being innocent and living in paradise? What?
When it comes to intelligence we are far removed from the rest of the life forms on this planet
Are you saying that is what we should be like? Dogs for example? Pure and innocent and somehow you think such a life is paradise?

4

This is what our intelligence has done to the natural world (paradise).
image image
image image

The ocean that gave life to Earth to begin with. Do you call this living in harmony with nature?

5

There is no “should” in DNA. The environment puts pressure on survival, but nothing decides what should survive. We set goals. We say, if we want X, do Y.

Personally, I don’t want to go backwards. Civilization is my preference. But we could be doing it better.

6

The pictures you show are not living in harmony with nature, especially when our oceanic intellectual equivalent is forced to swallow plastic as it attempts to snag food. It’s a recipe for death and destruction of every species on earth, including our own.

7

No it does not. Even Native Americans will tell you water is life. Without water, we all die and it’s not looking too good when humans pollute everything on the face of the planet, including and especially water. Water is life.

No we are not. We are genetically related by varying degrees of DNA. We are 98% genetically related to Bonobos and other chimps, but we shouldn’t be more like any other species of the planet, but we could be a better species. We need to care for the earth and other animals on the planet, but humans are the worst animal on earth, despite being related to all life on earth to varying degrees.

8

You may be underestimating the evolved practical intelligence in various species. There are many species that far exceed humans in sensory abilities and interpretation of various atmospheric conditions that humans are completely ignorant of. After all, it is “applied intelligent behavior” that counts.
Polluting the environment is not “applied intelligent behavior”!

I agree, and It really doesn’t have much to do with intelligence per se, as the fact that we are polluters. We are the only species able to make unnatural stuff that will kill you and is not biodegradable over thousands of years.

One example of non-natural human waste product harmful to coastal ocean life is industrial and agricultural waste run-offs.

The world’s coastal ecosystems are under stress. The numbers tell the story: Over 50 percent of the global population resides within 100 kilometers of a coastline, a thin ribbon of land that includes three-fourths of the megacities with more than 10 million residents. Farms and factories needed to sustain all those people release fertilizers and toxic chemicals into our rivers, streams, and estuaries.

Degraded water quality is the most obvious result, but the onslaught of nutrients has a more insidious effect. Fertilizer runoff causes coastal algae to proliferate; the algae take most of the oxygen in the water, causing fish to die and disrupting the food chain for humans and other organisms. As coastal populations keep increasing, the stresses are increasing with them.

https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-increasing-problem-of-nutrient-runoff-on-the-coast#

When we speak of a dynamic but balanced ecosystem we mean that all organisms somehow contribute to the health of the ecosystem and natural selection has produced only organisms that when they die they are recycled back into the natural resource pool that feeds all life in the food chain.

Some harmful waste products are naturally removed from the ecosphere and sequestered in the earth. One such waste product is oil.

Humans have broken this natural recycling and sequestration of beneficial and harmful resources and during the past 300 years, humans have released billions of years worth of sequestered oil back into the atmosphere.

And we are beginning to feel Nature’s response to our unnatural behavioral patterns.
Are we intelligent enough to pay attention?

One of the harmful expectations Scripture tends to foster is the instant correction by an all-powerful agency that can make things happen by just wishing it and will take care of His favorite creation, man. “God will provide”.

Of course that is an utterly false assumption! In fact, the reverse is true. Beware God’s wrath!

But most people ignore the warnings about God’s Wrath. As per our representatives of God (the clergy) , a couple of Hail Marys will appease God’s wrath, regardless of the sin.

Pollution? Not to worry. Let’s all pray to God to make things right again and I trust He will respond immediately, any day now!

I guarantee it!

p.s. send all donations to; mysavior@Godmail.com… :innocent:

On second thought I don’t want to be responsible for your sins.
I keep plenty busy trying to minimize my own impact on the ecosystem.

9

Nobody is saying we should not be concerned about pollution or trashing the planet
But to say 2,000 years ago they made up a story about trashing the planet makes zero sense
What did Adam do? Trash Heaven? And so he was kicked out? So he could then trash earth?
And so Heaven would be for people who are environmentally conscious? Like Native Americans? And is that what these religions preach?
Getting to heaven has nothing to do with morals or values (the amazing silence of the moral, the educated is sickening) but religion - belief - “if you believe in X, you are rewarded. if not, you get hell!”
Like saying “support this Dictator he will reward you, if not you get tortured!”
I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that these Dictator-style religions are the top ones in the 21st century

All I am seeing is a person growing up
As children we are pure, innocent - naked when born and in our early years. We trust everyone - little kids have been lured into vans by pedophiles and found dead later
Adam grew up - he ate the apple - and now he viewed his & eve’s nakedness with new eyes - let’s call them dirty thoughts. He wanted to cover himself up
He is an Adult now - he must leave the nest(Heaven) make his own way in the world
That is true of not only us, but all living creatures on this earth

Where religions like Christianity & Islam cheat their followers is by telling them that they can go back to their childhood and this time stay there permanently! Helpless children will be kept in comfort by this Nanny God! They can go back to being pure & innocent
Amazing that such ideas should not work against intelligent, educated people but amazingly they do! Even the best of minds fall for these promises

10

mriana:
“No it does not. Even Native Americans will tell you water is life”
Not sure if you read my original post - I was talking about the Adam & Eve Story where Adam eats the apple - I am saying it stands for life or growth as an adult. Eve is either the Mother or the Lover
Immediately after eating the Apple Adam is thrown out of the womb, childhood - he faces a cold, hard world. He is innocent no more
The story is talking about life - being born, becoming an Adult

" [quote=“vanamali, post:3, topic:9795”]
When it comes to intelligence we are far removed from the rest of the life forms on this planet
[/quote]
No we are not"

That’s a bit PC of you but the closest a Chimp or an Octopus or a Crow has come is at a 5 year-old’s intelligence level. We are unique on this planet as far as intelligence goes

11

It is my contention that Christians and Muslims made God in the image of the Master of the past - the King/Dictator - and we see the language they use is a slave language - get down on our knees, beg for his mercy and hope he saves us

In a huge universe we are not even a pebble - there are trillions of planets like ours, trillions of stars and billions of galaxies in this one universe alone & there may be trillions of universes!

To think that some magic man is looking down on us and getting angry at what we have done to this planet is just, sorry, nuts! We are not that important!

FYI - every species if left to their own devices would have done the same - you think animals are concerned about keeping a clean planet? of course not - If an animal or plant had the power to kill and consume everything around it it would gladly do so - what is stopping them is that animals and plants do not have such power. We do

What is happening is not rocket science - if we cut down all trees, pollute the planet, greenhouse gases will increase and we get fried to death. No magic man’s intervention is required - we did this to ourselves

But I fear we are getting away from my original post’s point - that these religions stories are not to be taken so literally. Primitive people making up stories of Gods and magic lands trying to tell stories, that’s all

12

[quote=“vanamali, post:9, topic:9795, full:true”]
Nobody is saying we should not be concerned about pollution or trashing the planet.

Oh yes, there are plenty of people that see the earth as an infinite resource. And the fact is that the earth has dealt with disasters much greater than mankind. When we speak of extinction events we are not talking about the earth itself. We are talking about every living on it.
As George Carlin said: “the earth isn’t going anywhere, man is. Pack your bags folks” .

That was a parody on the biblical story of being banned from paradise.

But to say 2,000 years ago they made up a story about trashing the planet makes zero sense
What did Adam do? Trash Heaven? And so he was kicked out? So he could then trash earth?
And so Heaven would be for people who are environmentally conscious? Like Native Americans? And is that what these religions preach?

In effect, yes. The point is that when you acquire knowledge, you acquire knowledge of right and wrong and you become responsible for your own actions.

If you behave badly, you will be punished. This is also about the mythological gods of natural resources who would punish mankind with thunder and lightning and fires, or droughts that would leave people starving, or great floods , or volcanic eruptions. All these natural phenomena were caused by the Gods to show their pleasure or displeasure with man’s disobedience.
This marked the beginning of morality and the codification of sins and virtues.

This form of abstract thought does not exist in the natural world and is a direct result of acquiring the ability for knowledge, including knowledge of good and evil.

Getting to heaven has nothing to do with morals or values (the amazing silence of the moral, the educated is sickening) but religion - belief - “if you believe in X, you are rewarded. if not, you get hell!”

And that is an accurate analogy for making you behave within certain natural god granted laws or you pay the price. Do you enjoy today’s 100+ degree weather? Feels like hell to me.

Like saying “support this Dictator he will reward you, if not you get tortured!”
I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that these Dictator-style religions are the top ones in the 21st century

Nor can I, but it exists and in some cases, it works. Most great social and economic infrastructure works were accomplished on the backs of slaves on promise of “eternal life”
Note Michelle Obama’s musing that she was going to reside in a palace (the White House) that was built by slaves, some three hundred years later.

All I am seeing is a person growing up
As children we are pure, innocent - naked when born and in our early years. We trust everyone - little kids have been lured into vans by pedophiles and found dead later

But all that stems from “knowledge of good and evil”, where knowledge means practical experience. And the husband “knew” his wife.

Adam grew up - he ate the apple - and now he viewed his & eve’s nakedness with new eyes - let’s call them dirty thoughts. He wanted to cover himself up
He is an Adult now - he must leave the nest(Heaven) make his own way in the world
That is true of not only us, but all living creatures on this earth

That’s incorrect. Adam and Eve were punished for disobedience to the law that forbade partaking of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. There is no such command in the natural world where animals have no knowledge of good and evil.
There is only survival.

Where religions like Christianity & Islam cheat their followers is by telling them that they can go back to their childhood and this time stay there permanently! Helpless children will be kept in comfort by this Nanny God! They can go back to being pure & innocent

I see that more as a reminder to live by the moral laws as presented in scripture.

Amazing that such ideas should not work against intelligent, educated people but amazingly they do! Even the best of minds fall for these promises

Well, it is mostly the “uninformed masses” that believe in the con if it is presented as “the Gospel”, so it must be true.

13

You seem stuck up on this climate change disaster and I just don’t get what an ancient story about the birth process has anything to do with current problems. Does the story of Cinderella remind you of Roe vs Wade or something?
At one time some guy wrote a book about how the world was going to run out of food, too many people - well, we avoided that did we not? Now you don’t even worry about it
Climate change worry is current & you are just wrapping an ancient story with your current mindset - it makes no sense
The story of Adam & Eve has nothing to do with what we are doing today but everything to do with a child growing up and facing the world

“I see that more as a reminder to live by the moral laws as presented in scripture” I am just tired of people living in the past - some guy writes something down thousands of years ago and to see TODAY’s bright and educated blindly following those primitive ideas is very frustrating
We have moved forward in every other aspect of our society, but when it comes to religion we keep blindly reading primitive ideas from old books

Are we supposed to continue to have slavery? Mistreat women? Are these the morals in the scripture that we need to follow? And pray tell me where it says to take care of the environment? In fact it tells us that the earth is for us to do whatever we please!

And pray tell me what happens to those who live by the scripture? Heaven is only for those who follow Jesus, remember? it is like a Putin rewarding those who support him, nothing to do with morals or values. These are Master/Slave religions - God made in the image of the Master of the past - the King/Dictator - get down on our knees, support the master & only this master & be rewarded - nothing complicated
Primitive simple ideas of God from primitive simple people

14

This sentence doesn’t even make sense. “Has nothing to do with what we are doing today but is about a child growing up in the world today?”

Or was that yesterday?

The parable of expulsion from Paradise has to do with man acquiring Free Will and thereby divorcing mankind from the natural world.

Eve and the forbidden fruit

The Old Testament tells of Adam and Eve, our progenitors. They lived in paradise in total innocence until the serpent (the devil) enticed them to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge . As punishment for their disobedience, God banished them from Paradise.

You’ll need to look a little deeper into scripture if you want to understand its parables and analogies.

AGW today is but one of the proofs of this prophecy. This was an instance of deep insight.

Please note that I am a hard atheist who does not believe in the existence of a God but in the logical mathematical essence of spacetime fabric.
But that does not mean that the bible is completely devoid of wisdom .

15

Interesting thesis there. We can observe animals destroying their environment, but I’m not sure it’s the lack of power that stops those who haven’t done so. Watch a pride of lions, they could go kill a bunch of animals and leave the carcasses lying there, but instead they lie around in the sun, licking each other.

Humans spent more time in leisure at various times in history too. Of course they were susceptible to drought or disease, so maybe they should have been thinking ahead, but it was a good life for a while.

There are myriad interpretations of Adam & Eve. Write4U’s is one of the best IMO. here are a couple of my favorite alternatives.

http://milepost100.com/AY_Lent1.html

16

I fully agree but i would add, acquisition of consciousness, and ability to abstract reasoning

1 Like
17

So you’re saying that because a chimp’s intelligence is not much more than a 5 year old’s they aren’t our cousins? They are 98% genetically similar to us. I hardly consider that PC, whatever that means. Privilege Character? Well, I am an only child, so it that is what PC means… Pastor Child? My grandfather and Great uncle were ministers… so I guess that makes me a PC, even though I don’t believe any of it. Whatever it means, we are hardly unique intelligence wise. Have you ever worked in retail? Humans are not as smart as they give themselves credit for and when they go apesh** … well, they really do show they are apes.

Yeah, I could come up with better stories than that concerning becoming an adult. One with less BS.

18

These parables are “timeless truths” and have nothing to do with then and now.

You correctly described that intelligence and knowledge sets man apart from the natural world and other animal life, but then you completely ignore that fact and talk about children growing up in a cruel world and that other animals and plants do not have the intellectual powers to cope with life’s stresses. That’s all irrelevant .

Young animals grow up in a cruel world also and do just fine . Evolution and natural selection takes care of developing survival skills. There is not a single difference in that respect.

What made the difference is indeed the mutation of a more complex brain and the emerging ability to manipulate our environment, which resulted in man leaving the forest and exploring the outside (unknown) world.

But your original statement is correct. Man’s superior intelligence and tool making abilities eventually resulted in the industrial revolution and the rape of the earth’s natural resources. And here we are

The moral message was then and is now that man is no longer obeying the simple laws of nature that demand the practice of “waste not, want not” and maintaining affinity with nature and its inevitable processes.

Why is the insect so incredibly successful ? Adaptation to nature and imitating natural patterns to become invisible.
imageimage

as compared to man
image image

As Hellstrom prophesied; The insect is ultimately better equipped to survive than man. It has for billions of years and withstood every disaster the earth has experienced in its 3.5 billion year existence.

Look what man has done in just 300 years of industry.

19

Ask what would happen to the earth if all humans died?
What would happen if all insects died?

Stop bugging the bugs: the world as we know it would fall apart without them

Published: August 13, 2015 12.57am EDT

Just under one million insect species have been identified on the planet. Global insect species diversity makes up more than half of all other species diversity on earth. Estimates of actual species richness range from a realistic four to six million to an extravagant 80 million species. But insects are continuously evolving, so we will never really know.

Insects are characterised by having three pairs of legs, two pairs of wings – which are sometimes reduced or absent – and three body segments: the head, thorax and abdomen. And they change their appearance during development in a process known as metamorphosis.

If all the insects on the planet were put together they would weigh more than humans put together. It is estimated that total insect biomass is 300 times greater than total human biomass. Ants and termites alone are estimated to weigh more than humans. These are estimates – insect biomass measures can be contentious because solid data are scarce.

There are many things that humans take for granted that would be affected if there were no insects.

So who is the more successful organism on earth in regard to survival?

20

“So you’re saying that because a chimp’s intelligence is not much more than a 5 year old’s they aren’t our cousins?” huh? This has nothing to do with our relatives - if we go back far in time we may all have one ancestor that came out of the ocean. This is about intelligence & how far ahead human beings are when compared to every other life form on this planet

“I could come up with better stories than that concerning becoming an adult. One with less BS.” please do - I thought this forum or any other public forum was about sharing ideas - you obviously do not like what I posted but that is fine, you are entitled to your opinion
Calling it BS shows your bias, though. I assume you are a Christian?