From: RFaussette@aol.com
Date: Wed Apr 30 2003 - 12:25:36 EDT
In a message dated 4/29/03 9:58:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
jeisele@starpower.net writes:
> The story of Adam and Eve is nonsense. Adam and
> Eve were harshly punished for action they took before
> they had knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve is
> far better explained as primitive myth trying to
> explain human death. Maybe I'll say more later...
>
> Jim
>
>
I've done a Darwinian interpretation of Adam and Eve. It suggests that some
of the issues that scientists discuss regarding human behavior such as pure
altruism and ontological anxiety are directly addressed in the Adam and Eve
story. Not only is the Adam and Eve story perfectly constructed to answer
such questions but it is the basis for everything else that follows in the
OT. Remarks attributed to Jesus in the gnostic gospel of thomas corroborate
the Adam and Eve story and my interpretation perfectly.
The suggestion that an atheist can discard the Bible because he/she has
determined there is no God (no such dermination may be empirically possible
- either way), is ridiculous. A scientific understanding of the Bible makes
the world suddenly intelligible because of the paradigm shift the scientific
understanding provides. Jim is not displaying this understanding but the more
primitive rejection of religion that appears when people decide religion
can't get them what they want which is eternal life. That's a matter of a
lack of faith and understanding, not a matter of science.
The key to understanding Jesus is giving up everything you previously wanted
for what God wants, but you can't know what that is unless you delve a little
more deeply into religion than Jim has. What God wants is all of you. Until
you give Him all of you, the question of eternal life will plague you. It is
a sign of spiritual immaturity, not a sign of honesty and integrity, but a
misanthropic reaction to a perceived personal deprivation. While you
experience it, you are not "with God."
Adam and Eve explain the nature and appropriate goal of human life which is
life long learning with the goal of determining God's (nature's) will and
conforming to it.
I learned never to argue the metaphysical since reading Wittgentstein. At a
lecture, a student asked him if there was a heaven. Wittgenstein told the
student to sit down. The student asked again. Wittgenstein this time told the
student it was a matter of faith, not science and as a scientist he could not
answer it. Since then, I have contented myself by looking for the science in
the Bible which is what I can do. I leave the faith to grow on its own. I
have found the science in the Bible and correspond with Kevin MacDonald the
evolutionary psychologist who has also found the science in the Bible. It's
absolutely amazing to see how perfectly the "myths" were constructed and how
they answer ''modern" questions. That has strengthened my faith in the
CHRISTian life.
I often comment, that I don't need to believe in God, as long as I willingly
bear the cross of Jesus Christ. He was perfect and maybe is perfect. Which it
is I cannot empirically say, but he was perfect for sure and I have found no
one more worthy to emulate in all of history, religious and secular, no one
who addresses the fundamental questions of the human condition more directly
and definitively than Him, regardless of what I can prove or what I cannot
prove. I place all my faith, such as it is, in Him.
If you want the paper with the Darwinian intrepretation of Adam and Eve, ask.
I'll send it.
rich
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