Something's Wrong..<.<

Did anybody read the explanation of Genesis there?

Well, why not jump in and simply repeat what has been written before, repeat what has been written before, repeat what has been written before, wave of the future, wave of the future, wave of the future.....
Huh?
What?
Oh.... Okay....
I can't speak for what is called the new testament... It's relationship to man is unclear to me...
Nevertheless and notwithstanding, what is called the old testament by some and the Torah by some of us others, is a writing that does, indeed, beg for explanation.
And therein lies the problem.

The religious fundamentalist literalists jump up upon their Mighty Soapbox and loudly proclaim "THIS IS THE WORD OF G-D! IT MEANS EXACTLY WHAT IS SAYS (unless, of course, it has to mean something else because I don't agree with what it says) AND THOU SHALT NOT DARE TO QUESTION THE LITERAL WORD OF G-D!!!!!!! EH, MAN?"

Then the secular fundamentalist literalists jump up upon their Mighty Soapbox and loudly proclaim "THIS IS ALL BS, BECAUSE G-D IS JUST AN INVENTED, NASTY, OBNOXIOUS, UBERMAN AND THE BIBLE IS JUST A COLLECTION OF STUPID STORIES (unless, of course, they make sense, and help me live my secular ego centered life in a world whether other secular ego centered creatures would happily carve me up and eat me unless there were some sort of wierd restrictions to prevent them from doing so) THAT REALLY TICK ME OFF BECAUSE THEY ARE STUPID EXPLANATIONS FOR CAVE DWELLERS!!!! EH, WOT?"

And then, there are some folks who go "Huh? What does this mean? What is the significance of these writings? What good are they? What purpose do they serve in my world?"
In my world, we call these kinds of people Torah scholars. And they attempt to delve into what the Torah really means.

This is the common courtesy that one might give any writings thousands of years old that purport to explain the origins of man and the universe.
This is the courtesy given to Homer and Plato and Rumi and Shakespeare....
What is this saying? What does it mean?
This is the courtesy given to physics textbooks and anthopological treatises.
What are they saying? What does it mean?

The angry and the uneducated will tell you that it means NOTHING or THIS is what it means.....

Those who are interested, study the words of those who have studied the bible for thousands of years.

Then, a person can make their own capable analysis of what is purportedly the most widely disseminated piece of writing on this planet.

Im guessing you didnt read the explanation, read it (the links on the previous page). I am neither of the things you mentioned, and the explanation given is a damn good one unlike any you have heard before.

Actually I did read it.
Nice article.
The Hunter/Gather or Herder vs. Agriculture origins of the bible has been around for awhile.
I believe there was a fairly popular book written on this around ten years ago (or so - maybe I did not hear about it until ten years ago). (Edit - As I recall now, it was around 1980 that this thesis was posited.) I find the argument specious because it takes snippets of the bible and disregards the rest as irrelevant.
One can choose to believe that the bible, the Torah, is merely a random collection of allegories and fables designed to explain the unexplicable by primitives whose origins are lost in the mists of time. That is a valid choice and I did sarcastically refer to it by the label "secular fundamentalist literalists."
I simply do not believe that this is an "informed" or educated choice.
The author of your piece tries to place Cain and Abel as an explanation of how we need to change our behavior.

If we can't run the world, then who? (whom?) G-d?
I think not.
What is slightly more useful to me is how the Torah captured the archetype of murder; sibling rivalry; power; hatred and denial of responsibility for our actions, in just a few short words.
The Torah says this is how mankind is. This is how we react. This is how we behave. These are our morals when left to our own devices and inventions. We "naturally" will always deny responsiblity for our own actions and for the welfare of our own species.
This is what we do.
And the Torah suggests a remedy to this inherently self-destructive behavior.
The Torah suggests G-d's remedies to mankind's problems.

Here you have fallen into a popular trap, assuming that the "natural" way for us to act is in a greedy, self-interested fashion and that it takes a book to make us otherwise. But when you look real hard, you'll see that those who follow the ways lined out in the bible are doing so with a promise that if they do, they will be rewarded. I find those that see no reward but act responsibly anyway to be far more respectable folks.

Interesting.
Could you give me some examples of such people?

I agree, binnyboy. Virtue is its own reward and evil is its own punishment. No need for external rewards and punishments. The good man enjoys the bliss of good intentions and deeds; the evil man suffers the bile of evil intentions and deeds.
And I will not impose my standards of what is good and evil. That is up to the "good" and "evil" person.

Examples:

A girl I know, me, thomas jefferson, I'll post more later maybe gotta go.

Yes, I disagree very much with the notion that Religion is needed for people to act responsibly. The realm of ethics does not need religion. Empathy and rational thoughts are the trademark of the human species and these are what lead to moral reasoning, with the addition of emotions and social values to make it more motivating.

also, anyone that outright calls themself amoral (and I've seen a couple on tv) is a prime candidate for a positive attitude toward others that is totally unjustified (and particularly unjustified in rewards to oneself).

Ray and binnyboy, that sounds to me like maturity. Being an ethical being is an accomplishment. Being a moralist is just a conditon.

I would agree with Binnyboy fully. It is foolish to think that man in his natural state is greedy, or short sighted, or destructive. It is the way we live which causes us to be like we are.

This is the why of religion. We only need salvationistic religion of course, if humans are instictively destructive, which they are not. We only need it if humans are instinctively greedy, which they are not.

We only need salvationistic religions if we are the culmination of everything, which of course we are not. Of course the world, the universe, was not made for humans, just like it wasnt made for gorillas, and it was not made for Jelly Fish, and it was not made for trilobytes.

In tribal cultures (as written and examined by Daniel Quinn in his books) which are untouched by our "taker" culture, there is not crime, there is not greed, there is not destructiveness, and it is sustainable.

Only by living in culture where we believe that we were made to rule the world, to conquer it, and bring it order (which is ironic because we are the ones who are unorderly) can we be greedy, or short-sighted or destructive.

DvK

Etruscia, amen.

I think I've made a misleading post. When I said,

, I meant to have emphasis on the 'don't need a book' part, not the 'self-interested' part. I actually do think we are typically self-centered. I just wanted to point out that the followers of the bible have not changed that. They are following a very self-centered life. It may seem to them that they act the way they do by choice, but they always have that reassuring thought in the back of their head... I'm doing this right, because god says so. And I'm gonna do right as much as I can because I want to kiss his butt. And if I kiss his butt just right, I get blessed into heaven and moreover, I get blessings IN heaven based on how good I was. This thought is where they have their problem. Some think their goodness comes from within. This is of course mistaken because it comes from the reassurance they get from god. Others think they get their goodness from god. But this is clearly mistaken, because they just made god up. So it must come from the reassurance, again. One can always question the intentions of the responsible christian. It is the responsible atheist or humanist who has gone against his nature for no reason than that he has learned to do so. He has no promises of great rewards for his actions. Only his actions can be unquestionably called benevolent (though Siggy Freud would not go this far, but I think he was wrong, so I'll digress on that). The theist could always be called (and I think often, in his heart of hearts, is, self-serving.

So that's my objection. I think we actually are by nature self-serving, but that we have developed tools that have been encouraged by evolution like empathy and generosity. Furthermore, the symptoms of these tools are the actions related to them, like not stealing when nobody knows, etc. But in finding a theist and an atheist who acts the same way, the atheist will always have the benefit of the doubt over the theist, because he is acting in a selfless fashion against his nature for no good reason other than these learned behaviors like empathy and generosity. But I'm sure there are problems in this line of thought. A2K is really helping me to hone my beliefs if for no other reason than that I just type out a variety of thoughts that cross my mind and the good ones are the ones I remember. I don't think I could bear to do that at home with nobody reading

binnyboy, I think that's the function of A2K for many of us. I know it is for me. I agree with your thinking considerably. To me, we are all self-centered, but some of us please ourselves more by hurting others, and some of us please ourselves more by helping others. I do believe that after all our evolutionary conditioning, i.e., the survival value of cooperation (more important than competition), we have developed the ability to actually enjoy empathic compassion for others. That's why I said earlier that virtue is its own reward. I am a non-theistic humanist who sees no need for a God or His biblical injunctions.

I can't tell you how good it feels to talk to people that don't just hear what I have to say and think I am a horrible person. I wish all the people in this forum lived in the same town. I'd move there.

I disagree with the self-centered part. As humans develop, psychologically, we think of ethics in the objective. When we are little, we might not have developed a sense of this, but a sign of maturity is to develop this moral stage whether it gives us pleasure or not. This is the beauty of people.

Humans are not simple to describe.

I don't know...

I think the religious think of god as the only objective. For them, therefore, ethics are a haphazard development and only chance has made the ethical standards of the various religions what they are. Just a guy or two conjecturing on what some imaginary god might think is the basis of the individual ethical standards that make up the belief set. Some make sense to lots of people so they catch on. But slavery made a lot of sense to a lot of people too. So I don't put a lot of stock in what makes sense to lots of people just because it makes sense to lots of people. So I don't put a lot of stock in the ethical developments of religion.

Now, you say we (the rest of us) think of ethics in the objective, you may be right. But think of this interpretation of ethics that I just made up:

ethics. The pursuit of what's best.

So to say that we think of ethics in the objective is to state the obvious if we use this definition of ethics. If you do not pursue what is best, there is no ordering principle to your actions, and you are absurd. It only remains to determine what is best. And this is where the really big question is. Truly, I don't believe in an ordering principle. I believe in absurdity. I don't value life over non-life. I am absurd. But as I am absurd, I cannot make further sense of anything. So I have resorted to the pursuit of knowledge (as best as I can considering that I actually think it is a pathetic quest) as an alternative to the withdrawal into nothingness that would surely result from dwelling on my conclusion of absurdity. I seek knowledge to verify whether I am logical in concluding that absurdity is the nature of reality. But it remains for me to question everybody else's conclusion of what's best. As I believe in absurdity over an ordering principle, it should be obvious that I think all judgments of value such as "this is good" or "that is how it should be" will be equally absurd and will have no origins. In other words, there will not be any line of reasoning that will result logically in value judgments like "this is good" or "that is how it should be".

binnyboy, I often wish that some of the people in these forums were my neighbors.

I too make a distinction between conventional morality (frozen ethics) and dynamic ethics. The former are mere "ordering principles" needed by all societies for purposes of social control. The latter is what we actually do in "the pursuit of what's best." Sometimes we even have to violate our society's moral code in order to do what's best. Ultimately, life and Reality are absurd, not in the sense of ridiculous but in the sense of "empty" of objective and absolute meaning. We create our meaningful world and should take credit for it instead of "objectifying" those meanings as somehow "given" (by God or Nature).

The bible is a fictional book. Do not take any of it's stories as real. Stick with science that can be backed with proof.