BigBallinStalin wrote:Dukasaur wrote:I choose Option 5.
Cruelty, death, and murder are inherent in the design of the universe. Nothing can live without killing something else. (Vegetarian and organic-agriculture nonsense aside -- even if you grow your veggies with no pesticides, still you are condemning to death by habitat loss those animals who could have lived on that cropland if you hadn't claimed it first.) Nothing good persists -- create the greatest work of art in the universe, and almost instantly entropy sets about destroying it. Even the most innocent moss lives by secreting acid which crumbles the rock beneath it.
Either there is no God, or he is a profoundly evil and sadistic God. Humans are neither more nor less evil than his other creations. Like every other species, we live by ruthlessly stamping out our competitors, and we will die when someone more ruthless comes and stamps out us. Even if we don't, we will eventually cease to exist when increasing entropy and the expansion of the universe makes existence ultimately impossible, when even subatomic particles are too far apart to interact with each other.
The dove -- universal symbol of peace and mercy -- is one of the most vicious animals known. Male doves will peck out each other's eyes when fighting over a mate. The loser will wander the earth desolate and blind until he eventually starves to death. The female is no innocent, either. While the males are mutilating each other for her affection, she is out there busily tearing up the nests of other birds. That's our wonderful bird of peace and mercy.
The Bible is right about one thing and one thing only -- ALL IS VANITY AND VEXATION OF THE SPIRIT. That's all there is.
Original sin my fat fucking ass. The only original sin is the design of this evil universe that demands blood sacrifice at every level.
Instead of entropy, evil, and death, I tend to view some of which you described as
Creative Destruction.
Would adopting that term make you feel any better about life in general?
Its related, but a different concept. The traditional model, of parent and child, fits better. However, that requires understanding that we are likely in the preschool or early adolescent stage of development. We are able to know that we can make choices and want to make them, but cannot fully understand the complete impacts of many choices for the very long term.
Poverty, death, disease are all bad, but the constant irony, philosophical argument is that without harm, without great ill, we would not have true joy. Further, without the chance to make bad choices, we would have no chance to make any choices. Does a parent who let their son/daughter go the neighbor’s house, only to have them hit by a car chastise themselves forever? Of course! A parent who has a child who drinks and winds up either getting killed or killing someone else chastises themselves as well, if they have any sense of anything other than anger and pain?
We look only at the bad, because we, like a child, cannot see the long term future. We want to take the hugs and kisses, but not the punishments or even the bad consequences that are just the result of choice, even very, very bad choices. God does not want us to do evil, particularly great evil, any more than a parent wants their child to get run over by a car. Still, a parent will let their child out of their site, will let them go across the street at some point, because the alternative is so much worse.
If Eve had not partaken of the tree of knowledge we would be nothing more than animals. We would be animals that had some aspects of God’s appearance (and most theologians say we have aspects of God other than just appearance), but we would not be what we now consider to be “human”.
The idea of original sin is actually a relatively new “invention”. Some people don’t realize that Jews actually don’t necessarily believe in heaven, never mind original sin. (I will let the Jews in the forum explain their particular faith variations).
BigBallinStalin wrote:That reminds me of a point made by Christopher Hitchens (IIRC), who found it odd that humans suffered through a tremendous lot over 200,000 years or so, and then a messenger comes about--2000 years ago--with a completely different message from the Old Testament, and by showing the rest of the humans to the path of Totes Awesome. All humans prior to that, and the ones who haven't heard the Word, were condemned to hell, (weren't they)?
Is there where someone says, "god works in mysterious dickish ways?"
Given this management fiasco, how exactly is God not tainted with any sin?
The prior 200,000 years of humanity were not condemned to hell. Generally, its accepted that they will have the chance to hear God’s word… as will anyone who has not heard it here on Earth. (though how that happens and if it will happen is a point of disagreement in the church)
It is very significant that the tree was the tree of knowledge. When told in "fairy tale" style, particular by secular individuals, the story tends to be one of introducing sin. That is correct in a sense, but in the Bible there are 2 incidents that introduce sin.
Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel. Eve brought knowledge of sin, the sin of disobedience then being possible. Also, while it seems they got the knowledge of the ability to do wrong, the basic sin to which is referred is “carnal knowledge”, thus “they covered themselves”. Cain and Abel brought the whole other mix of sin.
Even so, Christ could not come earlier, because people had to understand the folly of prior ways. Ironically, we keep making the same mistakes. We still look to hierarchy and rules, still put up institutions above people and common decency and try to justify it as “piety”.