Adam And Eve, Noah And The Origion Of Man

[Virgil]

For the athiests that I know who practice spiritually, they realize that states of awareness such as awe, reverence and joy are biologically based functions.

Yes, but so do Christians, Jews, and probably every religion. Unless you deny that any physical reality exists (Bishop Berkeley immaterialism, for instance), then these are natural emotions. They are not necessarily linked to spirituality. Nicolai mentions "metaphysics" and that strikes me as completely inconguent with atheism. When he combines the words spirituality and metaphysics he is implying something beyond the physical world.

As such they are a part of our evolutionary history and future. They are not to be despised but explored and developed as an integral part of what it means to live as a human being. What these people I know say is that limiting these abilities (say the experience of satori or ecstatic awe) to a single proscribed meaning and/or source (such as a god or goddess) limits our ability to learn from and make use of these abilities. By being open to the idea that we don't know where these gifts come from or what they are for, by being open to the possibility that these abilities may not come from anywhere, nor have any intrinsic for-ness, we actually do the gift more honor than the person who thinks s/he knows what it all means.

But an atheist if he were consistent would have to ommit certain solutions, spiritualism for instance, as to where these gifts come from.

One good philosopher to read in this general area is Alasdair MacIntyre. He has a book called Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues.

I have come across his name in some reading which I now don't recall. I remember looking him up once but like many things, it has failed to be caught in that web inside my brain. All I mean to say is I don't remember. I'm no expert in philosophy. Actually I'm not even a fan of philosophy for the most part.

Finally, did you know that there are atheist mystics?

There can be lots of things, but are they philosophically consistent? To me that sounds like cognitive dissonance.

Hey Mary, I think we got off on the wrong foot with each other, but as long as we avoid our politics, I think we can be friends.

[MaryLupin]

Yes, but so do Christians, Jews, and probably every religion. Unless you deny that any physical reality exists (Bishop Berkeley immaterialism, for instance), then these are natural emotions. They are not necessarily linked to spirituality. Nicolai mentions "metaphysics" and that strikes me as completely inconguent with atheism. When he combines the words spirituality and metaphysics he is implying something beyond the physical world.

Metaphysics is the philosophical discipline that studies 1) first principles (i.e. ontology) and 2) the nature of reality. Spirituality is, in essence, the pursuit of what is experienced as incorporeal in nature. (Note: just because something is experienced as incorporeal doesn't mean it is.) A mystic is someone obsessed/possessed by the pursuit of this kind of feeling/experience. Nothing in any of these definitions requires one to resort to another dimension (divine or otherwise.) Reality could be such that the material (i.e. our biology) creates the sensation of ecstatic awe (the most profoundly mystical experience of which I know). In this case a metaphysical philosopher can look for first causes without ever resorting to a world independent of physical reality.

The fact that most metaphysical philosophers have resorted to some sort of god-dimension says more for the power of culture-story than it says about the logical need of such a postulated dimension.

But an atheist if he were consistent would have to ommit certain solutions, spiritualism for instance, as to where these gifts come from.

These "gifts" may just be effects of our developing cerebral structure and patterns of organization. They might not come from anywhere, but just be an outgrowth of our biological development--an emergent property as it were.

There can be lots of things, but are they philosophically consistent? To me that sounds like cognitive dissonance.

There is a book called Ecstasy in Secular and Religious Experiences by Marghanita Laski that recounts the different experiences of spiritual ecstasy by religious and nonreligious persons. It is a very interesting book.

[Virgil]

OK, Mary, I understand what you're saying, and i can now envision a mystical atheist. However, I'm still skeptical about a metaphysical atheist. As you seem to define mysticism, it does not equate to metaphysics. Once you introduce the notion of metaphysics (a reality outside the physical world), it seems to me you have let the camel's nose in under the tent and will ultimately under philosophic (dialectic scrutiny) debate have to accept some sort of deism (even with untraditional notions) to explain metaphysical reality. Plato was certainly skeptical of the religion of his day, and yet once he was on a philosophic path of metaphysical dualism wound up with deistic interpretation of the world. I am no philosopher to perform such a debate here, nor do I have the passion. But it would be interesting.

[NikolaiI]

I cannot conceptualize how atheism could incorporate any spiritualism within its formulation of reality. Can you please explain that because as far as I can tell they are mutually exclusive. And which philosophers are "metaphysical atheist?"

It's very simple. An atheist believes that there is no God or Gods, but that does not mean there are not forces of love, friendship and...positive spiritual connections, or something like that...I think these things do exist, I just think they point to a natural law, something like gravity that is invisible, and not to the Christian God, or any other god for that matter.

Others say that atheism and pantheism are identical. That's a whole other issue, but there are those who say that they are identical.

Spiritualism and spiritual are not the same thing. M-w.com has five definitions for spiritual:

1 : of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit : INCORPOREAL <spiritual needs>
2 a : of or relating to sacred matters <spiritual songs> b : ecclesiastical rather than lay or temporal <spiritual authority> <lords spiritual>
3 : concerned with religious values
4 : related or joined in spirit <our spiritual home> <his spiritual heir>
5 a : of or relating to supernatural beings or phenomena b : of, relating to, or involving spiritualism : SPIRITUALISTIC

And only the fifth definition fully excludes atheism, if even it does. And don't forget that there are religions that are considered atheist, for instance some say Buddhism is.

I hope this helps? What do you think about it after having read this?

[PrinceMyshkin]

It's very simple. An atheist believes that there is no God or Gods, but that does not mean there are not forces of love, friendship and...positive spiritual connections, or something like that...I think these things do exist, I just think they point to a natural law, something like gravity that is invisible, and not to the Christian God, or any other god for that matter.

Others say that atheism and pantheism are identical. That's a whole other issue, but there are those who say that they are identical.

Spiritualism and spiritual are not the same thing. M-w.com has five definitions for spiritual:

1 : of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit : INCORPOREAL <spiritual needs>
2 a : of or relating to sacred matters <spiritual songs> b : ecclesiastical rather than lay or temporal <spiritual authority> <lords spiritual>
3 : concerned with religious values
4 : related or joined in spirit <our spiritual home> <his spiritual heir>
5 a : of or relating to supernatural beings or phenomena b : of, relating to, or involving spiritualism : SPIRITUALISTIC

And only the fifth definition fully excludes atheism, if even it does. And don't forget that there are religions that are considered atheist, for instance some say Buddhism is.

I hope this helps? What do you think about it after having read this?

My own atheism or what I would prefer to call "scepticism," "state of wondering," in its negative attribute is a revulsion from the very detailed, fanatically adhered-to God(s) of the various established religions. Albeit Christians often speak of the "mystery of God," it seems to me that there is more obfuscation and contradiction in their concept of THE God than there is genuine mystery.

My faith - if one would call it that - is in the possibly never to be resolved mystery of human consciousness and of the staggering complexities of the cosmos and the sub-particular world. It seems to me that in a state of wondering, awe and not-knowing, I am as close to knowing as I will ever get.

[NikolaiI]

Yes, but so do Christians, Jews, and probably every religion. Unless you deny that any physical reality exists (Bishop Berkeley immaterialism, for instance), then these are natural emotions. They are not necessarily linked to spirituality. Nicolai mentions "metaphysics" and that strikes me as completely inconguent with atheism. When he combines the words spirituality and metaphysics he is implying something beyond the physical world.


But an atheist if he were consistent would have to ommit certain solutions, spiritualism for instance, as to where these gifts come from.


I have come across his name in some reading which I now don't recall. I remember looking him up once but like many things, it has failed to be caught in that web inside my brain. All I mean to say is I don't remember. I'm no expert in philosophy. Actually I'm not even a fan of philosophy for the most part.


There can be lots of things, but are they philosophically consistent? To me that sounds like cognitive dissonance.

Hey Mary, I think we got off on the wrong foot with each other, but as long as we avoid our politics, I think we can be friends.

Well, it seems that Mary addressed these, and again, spirituality is nothing similar to spiritualism. Spiritualism is about supernatural phenomena, ghosts, or spirits, spirituality is about spiritual health, mental and emotional health and that kind of thing. I don't really like the term spiritual, myself.

I don't really know what is the difference between the physical or corperal and non-corpereal, man. I think ideas that we have in our minds are non-corpereal, I think consciousness is non-corpereal, although it is shown that consciousness is actually an illusion, and we make decisions before we think we decide them. Also consciousness is based on the physical reality of electricity in our brains, and all that...so I don't know; but I do believe in connections such as friendship and love that are non-corpereal and that is what I would describe as metaphysical or spiritual, as well as one's connection to the universe as a whole. That's also what mystical is. So I consider metaphysical to be our non-physical connection to the world. Conscioussness, love, I think these things exist and are real, I just don't think Christianity has a claim to them.

As for metaphysical atheism, I know nothing about it, though it seems I didn't make it up. Google comes up with 650,000 hits. I'd rather not read them all, or any for that matter, but I would like to continue this discussion though I don't need to be right. Walt Whitman has a poem called the "Base of all Metaphysics" where he says the base of all metaphysics is the dear love of man for his comrade, the attraction of friend to friend, etc. http://www.bartleby.com/142/42.html

One more thing about physical and non-physical, is that by the existence of the physical it creates the non-physical. Something and nothing. Also, everything in the world is connected physically, so if I wave my hand it affects everything, if that makes any sense.

[Pendragon]

I read through the last two pages with growing interest, and then realized I couldn't remember which thread I was on! I don't want to see this one locked, as it is very informative and interesting. So remember from time to time to tie your statements into the original crux of the thread. That way, we may perhaps pursue the current exchange of information without fear of an "off topic" lock down.

Mary, I think, brought up that the Catholic’s decided the Native people had souls, and their job was to convert them. This is true, but if they wouldn’t convert, they had no problem with disposing of them as heretics.

The Protestants indeed did decide that Natives had no soul. They took this from Genesis, where Cain was “marked” for killing his brother. They proclaim that mark was to make him a man of color. What they seemed to forget was that Jesus was a Jew, not a white man. This enabled them to justify slavery.

A good question would be: what race were Adam and Eve, other than human? If we all descended from the original two, different races of man appearing because of evolution, what did the original look like? People never think it through sometimes. It’s called “prejudice”.

And Mary, my great-grandfather was a full-blood member of the Cherokee Nation, and they recognize his descendents even down to me. I also have Cherokee and Afro-American blood from my mother’s side of the family. I am ashamed of none of it. It’s who I am.

God Bless

Pen

[PrinceMyshkin]

What they seemed to forget was that Jesus was a Jew, not a white man.

(Emphasis added)

Ouch!

Not that I especially care to be considered a "white man" except that in the minds of some, "white man" is surely synonymous with "man/person &c."

[Redzeppelin]

I would disagree with this. I think almost everyone would. First of all, open or not open has nothing to do with it. And as an atheist, who considers terms such as atheist, theist, to be irrelevent in the extreme, and not meaningful, to say the least - I believe in a spiritual component to reality, in fact, I am closed to the idea that there is not. There is such thing as metaphysical, and let me tell you, there are metaphysical philosopher atheists...please, don't forget to reply to this, I am curious as to what you really think.

Fine - I should have said "naturalists" instead of atheists, because Naturalism is atheistic at its base.

I am not an expert on communism, but this is politics, as is something else I will reply to a little further down the page. There are communists that believe all sorts of thing, and atheism is not a necessary component of communism. Am I correct?

Despite what individual communists believe, ideological communism is hostile towards religion.

I apologize if I am inocorectly speaking for Mary, but I wanted to reply to this. Her wording didn't imply this at all. She said a belief system - or ontology - is how we assemble information and understand the world, or systematize, and is how we understand this information, and allows us to act in the world. Logic is one such ontology, language is another. It is for everyone, not just scared children, Redzeppelin. Considering she also said "Our biology makes this a fundamental truth of being human", I think she is on the same page with you about it being impossible to reject belief systems, and you don't need to tell her this.

I will accept this interpretation - it is reasonable - but Mary's choice of qualifying language - "That is the purpose of a belief system...to systematize a complex and essentially inhuman world and make it more comfortable for those who don't like complex and essentially inhuman things" - sounds as if a critical comment is being made. If not, fine.

That would be politics, and I could find examples very quickly for you, but its not as important as some other things, and really your post has opened up about five different debates on different subjects, so the less the better. We can't argue five different debates on the same thread.

I do not care how many examples you can come up with pertaining to inappropriate Christain behavior; no institution, no belief system, no philosophical outlook is maintained by followers flawlessly - followers who never misinterpret, misbehave, and do terrible things. I accept that Christainity has some serious historical "black eyes" - but these comments conveniently ignore the good that Christianity has brought the world. Any one of us having our flaws emphasized and our good points minimized/ignored would look pretty bad.

Should I say here that I think everything you believe is wrong?

"Should"? You can say whatever you like.

It would be appropriate after the first paragraph of your post. I would say that you have never thought to question what you were taught, when in fact everything you were taught was wrong.

OK - here's where I get HIGHLY annoyed; you know nothing about my spiritual journey, about the path I have walked and the progression I have gone through in my walk as a Christian; I think it highly presumptuous to the point of arrogance to tell me what you think I have/have not done in terms of my beliefs. Stick to something you do know something about, OK?

Christianity is not sole truth, we do not measure truth by Christianity.

Fine - I do not ask non-Christians to accept my belief system as the "sole truth" - but I think it is, and I think most people who believe in some sort of religion believe their religion is the "truth" - is that news to you?

If there even is such a concept of truth - if any concept has relation to reality, then yes, truth would be the first, and the dichotomy between truth and falseness is how we structure everything - what is good and true, well there might be goodness and truth in christianity, but they are not limited to it at all - consider other religions, ontologies, maps for the world, for instance Buddhist ontology. I mean it, consider it, look it up or something. Instead, you believe in an ontology that is virtually completely wrong, one that does not hold up to critical analysis, in fact grew and developed out of millenia of psychosis (if we consider psychosis to mean, by its psychological definition, the lack of empathy).

How do you know I have not closely looked at many of the world's religions already? The correct answer would be that you DON'T. I have compared other religions - they fall short. My "ontology" is wrong in your opinion - so? The "psychosis" statement is equally apt for any religion if you're going to go that route - including Buddhism.

It is true that this last paragraph has been an almost complete imitation of things I've seen you say before - wrong, wrong, wrong. You've got it all wrong. But that is how I feel. And I hope you don't think...I don't like you, or something, because I don't know you. I never meant for this to be personal, so if you feel that everything I've said has been wrong, feel free to say it. Really, say anything you want, as long as it is interesting.

Thanks for your comments. You're free to tell me I'm wrong and that I haven't correctly explored my faith or the other faiths of the world. I'm equally free to tell you you are wrong as well.

You probably didn't realize this but my home in the US is an Indian Reservation. I have more Native kin than white, but I have both. How many books/articles etc. would you like to read about Christian atrocities with respect to Native American peoples? And that is just the northern Protestant based Christians. That first list doesn't touch what the Catholics did in Central and South America. And of course that is just the Americas. There are long lists of similar behaviors (by missionaries for example) in every single indigenous homeland they have "visited." And lest you think this is over, it isn't I am afraid.

Instead of reeling out your endless list of Christian atrocities, why don't you tell me the point of doing so? To do what? Discredit Christianity as a valid belief system? To diminish God? Why don't we bypass all the examples and get to what it is you wish to accomplish?

Let me please get this clear. Are you saying Christianity is something other than the lives of Christians? Are you saying that we must judge the value of Christianity by something other than how its adherents comport themselves in the world they share with others?

I am saying that how people choose to enact their "Christianity" may or may not accurately reflect what it is supposed to be as embodied in the life of Christ and the writings of the apostle Paul. You judge by the behavior of Christians who adhere to the teachings of Christ and the apostle Paul. Look, I don't think every priest is a child molester; I don't think every cop is a racist; I don't think every teacher is a pedophile; I don't think every politician is a "crook" - do those things exist? Yes - but I think it unfair and bordering on stereotype to take the bad and assume that the bad is all someone/thing is. Where's the balance when it comes to Christianity?

Reason, at its base, rests on shared assumptions about the nature of the shared world. Since all humans share the biological impulses/needs for comfort, food, shelter, communication, love, ecstasy, connection etc, it is the broadest possible basis for shared assumptions. A belief in God or a disbelief in a divine principle cannot possibly match this. So to base our shared assumptions (the basis for what is to be considered rational) on something that only a minority of people can share is unreasonable. Unless...unless you believe that only some people deserve inclusion.

Rationality is a human attempt to see things through a certain "lense" - the lense of human logic. Human logic is a valid and valuable thing and I'm not trying to diminish its significance; however, when we discuss God, we discuss a being who - by the very characteristics of His existence - defies human logic. Love, by the way, often defies human logic in the things we will do because of it - honorable, noble and heroic things; terrifying, silly and ridiculous things - but I don't hear you dismissing love as a valid emotion or experience. Rationality cannot be the be-all-end-all in terms of validating reality. As well, "reasonable" is a subjective term; those who practice female genital mutilation in African countries think their practice is "reasonable"; suicide bombers think their behavior is "reasonable."

Also you didn't address my last question. Going back to the text at hand...based on an all-inclusive basis of shared needs and assumptions, does a literalist reading of the Christian form of the Bible lead to a rational belief system?

If the Bible is the revelation of the character of God, then on one level, how can it point to rationality because the individual it is about defies rationality; on another level, the Bible does coherently explain much about human nature and life on earth that naturalism cannot explain - the questions about our origins, human suffering, existence, etc. From where I stand, the Bible lays out a picture of reality that makes rational sense to me. I understand that those who don't believe in God will disagree.

[NikolaiI]

The same thing applies to naturalist. To be a naturalist doesn't mean you have to disallow anything metaphysical or spiritual, you just think that it points to some kind of natural law that we do not understand yet. Like gravity. I mean, we understand gravity now but at one point we didn't. The same thing with spiritual connections between people, which I mainly consider to be love and attraction.

Yeah, I probably got carried away with that paragraph, and I apologize. I even thought about sending you a PM and apologizing there. I hope you will forgive me.

[JCamilo]

Redzeppelin:

Catholics do not speak for all Christians. I personally think that Popes present and prior have given away too much valuable ground by trying to argue rationality with the Naturalists.

I never claimed Catholics speak for all christians - I just refuted the claim that taking the genesis as an allegory is something done by non-believers by poiting that a considerable group of believers do it. If others take the Genenis literaraly (when not even the Jews do all the time), it is irrelevant.

Lewis also said that the incarnation of Christ was where myth became real; in other words, just because different mythologies exist doesn't mean that none of them can be true. Lewis posited that mythologies and pagan religions that echo Christianity and Judaic monotheism were actually imitations/reflections of the one true God; that pre-Christian pagan religions anticipated the incarnation of Christ - not that Christianity "borrowed" from them. As such, the point I'm trying to make (rather badly) is that the fact that the Biblical narrative resembles mythological narratives doesn't necessarily mean that it is one too - it could also mean that other mythological narratives are reflections of the one true story of creation and God.

Meaning, C.S.Lewis just used a cyclical argument that only is true if we assume the Bible as the truth. If not it make no sense watsoever and I can rationally show him that myths, legends, stories and oral tradition are seen to travel from one culture to another and that would explain much better why the Hebrewish Myth owns so much to the myths older than them.
The problem with using quote is that I could bring up Voltaire quoting the exactly opposite and we would have to take the authority as face vallue no matter what they say. Not a good idea.

All celestial bodies are dim reflections/imitations of the true source of light that is provided by the presence of God Himself; His presence IS the embodiment of life force - the sun need not exist when the light of God is present to nourish vegetation.

Meaning, a mythical being explains the Natural laws being not followed. That is why it is myth.

Your final sentence needs to be developed a bit more so that we can understand exactly what your two final points are.

Just means that a man can not exist without food (animals or plants) and the humans existed with both male and female at sametime. Meaning, we would have to take again the power of the Being God to make a man survive without food and exist without woman. Hence, a myth. A Cosmogonia.

Virgil:

Without going futher in the Metaphysical Atheist thing I guess one close thing to this is the writer Jorge Luis Borges. He is a Metaphysical kind of writer and skeptic that did not believed in God. Some people try to claim he is agnostic but I guess they are confuding his idea of "everything is possible" as a phylosophy of life and not an aesthetic theme.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Catholics do not speak for all Christians.

This will come as a painful surprise to many of them. And then one might wonder who does speak for all Christians? Methodists, I suppose, do not. Nor Baptists, Anabaptists, 7th Day Adventists &c.? You've never identified which sect or group you belong to, and yet at times you do sound as if you speak for the whole of Chritianity.

Your motto: "Seems, Madam? Nay, it is" appears to be your default position.

Lewis also said that the incarnation of Christ was where myth became real; in other words, just because different mythologies exist doesn't mean that none of them can be true. Lewis posited...

And therein lay the integrity of the man. There will always be those who posit, and those who embrace and cling to that which was posited as if it were the last piece of flotsam after a shipwreck.

[kiobe]

I read through the last two pages with growing interest, and then realized I couldn't remember which thread I was on! I don't want to see this one locked, as it is very informative and interesting. So remember from time to time to tie your statements into the original crux of the thread. That way, we may perhaps pursue the current exchange of information without fear of an "off topic" lock down.

Mary, I think, brought up that the Catholic’s decided the Native people had souls, and their job was to convert them. This is true, but if they wouldn’t convert, they had no problem with disposing of them as heretics.

The Protestants indeed did decide that Natives had no soul. They took this from Genesis, where Cain was “marked” for killing his brother. They proclaim that mark was to make him a man of color. What they seemed to forget was that Jesus was a Jew, not a white man. This enabled them to justify slavery.

A good question would be: what race were Adam and Eve, other than human? If we all descended from the original two, different races of man appearing because of evolution, what did the original look like? People never think it through sometimes. It’s called “prejudice”.

And Mary, my great-grandfather was a full-blood member of the Cherokee Nation, and they recognize his descendents even down to me. I also have Cherokee and Afro-American blood from my mother’s side of the family. I am ashamed of none of it. It’s who I am.

God Bless

Pen

Good point and good question.
The word adam in Hebrew means ruddy or of a red color. It doesn't seem likely that Adam and from Adam, Eve, would be of a northern Europian, or light skin color as depicted by the paintings that belong to the catholic church. God created man in His image. To bring 'race' into the question may be impossible to answer because of the inevitable conclusion, what race is God?

[Pendragon]

Good point and good question.
The word adam in Hebrew means ruddy or of a red color. It doesn't seem likely that Adam and from Adam, Eve, would be of a northern Europian, or light skin color as depicted by the paintings that belong to the catholic church. God created man in His image. To bring 'race' into the question may be impossible to answer because of the inevitable conclusion, what race is God?

Well put. And as I have pointed out, the Bible says God is a Spirit. This doesn't mean that he could not appear in any form he chose, for in Genesis, we read that God and two angels came to Abraham before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorah, and he saw the three as humans.

It has always explained why there seem to be two creations in Genesis. God simply places the already created spirits into bodies He now forms of the same material that the Earth is made of, a carbon-based system. The seeds He already planted now grow into grass and trees, and so forth. But people are certainly free to speculate as to what happened and to disagree with me. If I thought I was the only one right, I would have crossed the line of sanity. No one knows everything.

God bless.

Pen

[MaryLupin]

Instead of reeling out your endless list of Christian atrocities, why don't you tell me the point of doing so? To do what? Discredit Christianity as a valid belief system? To diminish God? Why don't we bypass all the examples and get to what it is you wish to accomplish?

You asked for examples post middle ages so I complied.