My name is Ehsan Butt, live in Canada and have studied and researched in human history, islamics studies and also PhD in engineering science from University of London U.K., taught science & engineering courses at post graduate levels, industrial consultant in Canada, published scientific research in international journals and on historical, islamic studies especially philological based literary interpretation of the Quran. Currently involved in a non-profit organization Advancing Rational Faith Academy https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/109461126623727339025/+Arfaglobal/about/p/pub
Reuniting children of Adam & Eve on their common love for inquiry into truths. The critically important today is digging out what is missing from our understanding about Islam for a new global re-enlightenment and reformation
We see much of our thought in line with the early American Liberation movement thoughts of Thomas Paine (died 1809)
Rationality Leads to Natural Human Faith
Rational, Instinctive, Common and Natural Religion of Mankind Everyone of Us Inherits
A Writing by Reverend Thomas Paine, Socrates of the Modern Times and The Most Valuable Englishman Ever Lived
About the Question:
What can be the Religion or metaphysical conceptions of Adam & Eve
I had a rather rough writing posting I am afraid:
Public Falsification of Scientific Evidences in Western Education to Promote Polytheism https://plus.google.com/104374008744978432366/posts/HxeC8SPWuPw
like to see how it resonates among the members here and generate some feedback to refine it?
My name is Ehsan Butt, live in Canada and have studied and researched in human history, islamics studies and also PhD in engineering science from University of London U.K., taught science & engineering courses at post graduate levels, industrial consultant in Canada, published scientific research in international journals and on historical, islamic studies especially philological based literary interpretation of the Quran. Currently involved in a non-profit organization Advancing Rational Faith Academy
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/109461126623727339025/+Arfaglobal/about/p/pub
Reuniting children of Adam & Eve on their common love for inquiry into truths. The critically important today is digging out what is missing from our understanding about Islam for a new global re-enlightenment and reformation
We see much of our thought in line with the early American Liberation movement thoughts of Thomas Paine (died 1809)
Rationality Leads to Natural Human Faith
Rational, Instinctive, Common and Natural Religion of Mankind Everyone of Us Inherits
A Writing by Reverend Thomas Paine, Socrates of the Modern Times and The Most Valuable Englishman Ever Lived
http://www.arfaglobal.com/2011/11/rationality-leads-to-natural-human-faith.html
About the Question:
What can be the Religion or metaphysical conceptions of Adam & Eve
I had a rather rough writing posting I am afraid:
Public Falsification of Scientific Evidences in Western Education to Promote Polytheism
https://plus.google.com/104374008744978432366/posts/HxeC8SPWuPw
like to see how it resonates among the members here and generate some feedback to refine it?
P
Welcome, Ehsan, but, be forewarned, I doubt you will get very far with the members of CFI. Even the theists here are going to look at your claims skeptically. The atheists will probably reject them outright. But go ahead, give it your best shot. Explain your position but don't be surprised at any negative responses. You will have to support your claims with objective evidence and/or really good and rational arguments. Are you equal to the task?
Lois
@Eshan,
Perhaps we should begin with establishing who Adam and Eve were.
One might say they were the first homo sapiens, evolved from a hominid ancestor and who were bipedal, allowing them to travel and explore the world outside the narrow confinement of their original forest habitat. The biblical metaphor for this is “expulsion from paradise”
The biblical conclusion that Adam and Eve acquired a sense of sexual shame is wholly false. Today there are tribes of HUMANS which do not cover themselves, except for protection, but certainly not from sexual morality and shame. But a failed hunt causing hunger was a cause for shame.
It has been demonstrated that the hominid ancestors already had a concept of an “unseen” enemy, which made thunder, lightning, rain, clouds, and all other natural but unobservable causalities. The oldest gods where related to weather phenomena.
Anyone professing that Adam and Eve were anywhere near as smart as people today, is mistaken. The biblical tale of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge is a metaphor for “becoming intelligent”, but that does not mean they had any more sophisticated concepts of natural laws than their ancestors. The discovery of natural laws leads us further away from the assumption of intelligent gods. And yet it is natural laws which are credited to a god, even today, in spite of the facts which show that a god is unnecessary for the evolution of the universe…
Even today we are discovering new aspects and functions of the infinite potential of the universe. An example is the story of Newton observing an apple fall from a tree and “wondering” why it always falls downward and not in some other direction. But even that spark of enlightenment was superceded by Einstein’s GR. A perfect example of evolving knowledge about our universe.
But Adam and Eve lived lived in a world full of mysteries and ascribed ALL natural phenomena to “invisible beings” , but that is far removed from having a concept of metaphysics, such as "virtual particles, wave functions, electromagnetism, etc.
IMO, rationality eventually leads to the rejection of an unknowable, supernatural, intelligent, motivated, and emotional living entity.
for all humanity grown out of a small single group living together , like survivors of Noah’s Arc
NATURE ,
Genetic Adam and Eve did not live too far apart in time
Studies re-date ‘Y-chromosome Adam’ and ‘mitochondrial Eve’. http://www.nature.com/news/genetic-adam-and-eve-did-not-live-too-far-apart-in-time-1.13478
For first humans to be mental , brain capability wise, either like us or better e.g see the earliest development of alphabets, and cave paintings etc
“archaeological evidence of abstract or depictional images indicates modern human behavior. The Blombos Cave engravings are intentional images. In the light of this evidence, it seems, at least in southern Africa, Homo sapiens was behaviorally modern about 77,000 years ago”
Emergence of modern human behavior: Middle stone age engravings from South Africa
Henshilwood, Chistopher S;d’Errico, Francesco;Yates, Royden;Jacobs, Zenobia;et al
Science; Feb 15, 2002; 295, 5558; ProQuest, pg. 1278
"Clothing use is an important modern behavior that contributed to the successful expansion of humans into higher latitudes and cold climates. Previous research suggests that clothing use originated anywhere between 40,000 and 3 Ma,…we use a Bayesian coalescent modeling approach to estimate that clothing lice diverged from head louse ancestors at least by 83,000 and possibly as early as 170,000 years ago. Our analysis suggests that the use of clothing likely originated with anatomically modern humans in Africa and reinforces
a broad trend of modern human developments in Africa during the Middle to Late Pleistocene. "
Origin of Clothing Lice Indicates Early Clothing Use by Anatomically Modern Humans in Africa
Melissa A. Toups, ,1,2 Andrew Kitchen, ,3,4 Jessica E. Light,5,6 and David L. Reed*,6
1Department of Biology, Indiana University
2Department of Biology, University of Florida
3Department of Biology, The Pennsylvania State University
4Department of Anthropology, University of Florida
5Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences, A&M University
6Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida
These authors contributed equally to this manuscript.
*Corresponding author: E-mail: dlreed@ufl.edu.
Associate editor: Barbara Holland
@Ehsan,
Thank you for that information describing the gradual civilization of Homo Sapiens.
However, as I understand it, even our precursor may have had “invisible enemies” (gods).
This can be obesrved today in chimpanzees, our close but less advanced cousins. I watched a TV program (I believe Nature or National Graphics) of a group of researchers studying the social behavior of a chimp family
During a heavy monsoon, all members sought shelter and huddled together, clinging to each other when the thunder, lightning, and rain pummeled them mercilessly. At one point the troup’s Alpha male jumped out into the open and started running around beating the bushes. He then picked up a stick and became more aggresive swinging the stick, beating the ground and bushes and raising the stick upward to threaten the “invisible enemy” which was making his family and himself so miserable. His actions were clearly designed to scare the unseen (unknowable) enemy.
Thus the idea of an invisible force in the sky was already present before homo sapiens appeared. It is entirely logical to assume that as homo sapiens evolved the “invisible enemy” became an object of worship, to be appeased by offerings, sometimes the sacrifice of a living individual to appease the god’s anger. Some of the the cave paintings I have seen, describe creatures descending from the sky accompanied by facsimilies of rain, lightning.
To Sci-Fi afficionados, these creatures are aliens landing on earth, a concept just as irrational as the concept of gods in the sky.
IMO, the concept of an invisible being who may punish with rain, thunder and lightning when angry and bestows blessings (sunshine and warmth when pleased has been with us for so long that belief in a supernatural being it is almost hardwired (flight or fight) in our brains.
The increasing ability for abstract thought was causal to adopting religion and worship as a means to curry favor from the gods. Of course science is discovering the actual “natural” causes behind these previously unexplainable phenomena. But the concept of a prime mover has persisted and is expressed in the myriad of religions, each worshipping a slightly different version of god(s), depending on environmental conditions.
I am a layman, but such an evolutionary path to religion seems entirely logical to me.
@Ehsan,
Thank you for that information describing the gradual civilization of Homo Sapiens.
.
There is nothing on the subject of "gradual civilization". This is a separate topic. I am not interested in that right now. Also I am not interested in repeating things that are already in the related professional literature and the status of current human knowledge position is regularly being updated by related publications with discussions and references to check for further info if needed. Almost everything remains under detailed investigation by full time researches by someone if not multiple knowledgeable people worldwide and we must not take things independently without first looking at their conclusions. Any discussion without looking first the works already done is like reinvention of lots of wheels and seems a waste of time.
@Ehsan,
Thank you for that information describing the gradual civilization of Homo Sapiens.
.
There is nothing on the subject of "gradual civilization". This is a separate topic. I am not interested in that right now. Also I am not interested in repeating things that are already in the related professional literature and the status of current human knowledge position is regularly being updated by related publications with discussions and references to check for further info if needed. Almost everything remains under detailed investigation by full time researches by someone if not multiple knowledgeable people worldwide and we must not take things independently without first looking at their conclusions. Any discussion without looking first the works already done is like reinvention of lots of wheels and seems a waste of time.
If the gradual civilization of homo sapiens is not of interest , then why cite all the facts showing the gradual civilization of mankind?
Apparently you are well versed in the OP "question". What is your conclusion so that I can critique it from my atheist viewpoint? The question you raised is about the metaphysical concepts of Adam and Eve (the first homo sapiens), which I tried to explain from the facts you provided.
This may be of interest
Pinnacle Point a small promontory immediately south of Mossel Bay, a town on the southern coast of South Africa. Excavations since the year 2000 of a series of caves at Pinnacle Point have revealed occupation by Middle Stone Age people between 170,000 and 40,000 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Point
and
Primitive humans who inhabited the coast of South Africa 165,000 years ago and lived on a diet rich in shellfish could be the original ancestors of everyone alive today, a study suggests.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/first-humans-lived-at-southern-tip-of-africa-397161.html
Moreover, the OP question is ambiguous to begin with.
a) are you asking what Adam and Eve believed, or, b) are you asking what modern humans believe about the metaphorical concepts of Adam and Eve, based on the facts you provided?
As a modern human my interpretation of the analogy of Adam and Eve eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge is that at a certain point in the evolution of hominids, a mutation in the hominid DNA was responsible for the development of a larger brain, allowing for a more sophisticated self-awareness.
All great apes apart from man have 24 pairs of chromosomes. There is therefore a hypothesis that the common ancestor of all great apes had 24 pairs of chromosomes and that the fusion of two of the ancestor's chromosomes created chromosome 2 in humans. The evidence for this hypothesis is very strong.
http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm
But the biblical statement "and they knew shame" is incorrect, IMO. The feelings of shame, guilt, and submission can be observed today in several species of hominids (as well as some other species of mammals) who did not evolve a larger brain.
Moreover, the field of Metaphysics belongs in the area of Science, not in in the area of "Supernatural Mysticism".
So what was your question? Please clarify.