Science, Religion:
K re "Antitheory," "YHWH," "Plato," "Paul," and "Cain"

Obviously evolution exists, my common answer to anyone that says it doesn't is, it has to, or else you can't explain why I'm so much more advanced than you. It is after all, adaptation over an extended period of time. And since we can see adaptation in everyday things (plants and animals adapt to their surroundings in a life time) evolution is the next logical step. The simplest organism (the virus) evolves before our very eyes. This is why a cold and flu vaccine is only good for one year; the peaky thing evolves to another state so that antibodies produced by an immune system are no longer capable of detecting it. An old saying is "Adapt or Die" and by adapting to its surroundings over an extended period of time creatures evolve.

However, you don't go back far enough. It's fine to say that evolution is a theory, but it fails the farther back in time you go. It's plausible that from a cosmic accident an amoeba started its life from a jolt of electricity hundreds of billions of years ago, and eventually evolved into the thinking and reasoning beings that dominate the planet today. It's a great theory but not very probable. It has never been able to be duplicated in a laboratory, and as the old saying goes once is an accident, twice isn't (so much for life on other planets). Anyway, I ramble. If there is no creator, no supreme being, where did the universe come from? We know some things from physics; first matter cannot be created or destroyed, it can be converted into energy though. Second, we know the universe is expanding, so if it's getting larger, at one point it had to be infinitively small. The current theory is that at one point the entire universe was the size of the head of a pin, then something happened, and it exploded (aka the Big Bang). But where did this small bundle of energy come from? This is where all theories but Creationism fail. Something had to defy the laws of physics and create this energy source. Of course the next logical question is: Where did this creator come from? I don't have an answer for that, but I welcome any theories.

I'll end my dissertation on this topic with a quote, from Anselm, saint of the Roman Catholic Church: "If one can think of the concept of God, then God exists in the Mind alone. Since the concept of God is in the mind alone it can be said then, to exist in reality also, which is greater. That, which is in reality is greater than what is in our mind. Henceforth, to have a thought of God in our mind alone is a negation to his existence as defined. Therefore, God is both in reality and in our mind." Then I'll add an addendum to this stating that it may not be the god he thinks it is.

Wow, that was long, and hopefully not too convoluted, and tangent prone. Now I'll move onto the second topic your, idea of the fall of man according to the Bible. From what I digested from this is that you believe that this story portrays God to be a liar, or at least not the good and wholesome god that is worshipped by the millions of Christians around the world. But this story fits with the god that is portrayed throughout the Old Testament of the Bible. This is a god that identifies himself to Moses as a "Vain and Jealous God" this is a god that lets one of his faithful (Joseph) be sold into slavery, this is a god that destroys almost the entire population of the planet, this is a god that razes to cities (Sodom and Gomorrah) to the ground, this is a god that told a father to sacrifice his son (and the man barely flinches at this request), this is a god that created humans with instincts then gives them rules that go against them, this is a god that not only lets his "only begotten son" be tortured and crucified (an excruciating death by all accounts) but actually preordains it. This is not a nice a lovey-dovey god. This is tribal deity that through very manipulative actions became one of the most worshipped gods on this planet. (On a side note, I find it very odd that Christians, Jews, and Muslims deny the existence of other gods, when the first commandment is "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." When they explained this to me in catechism, they explained it as a figurative (don't put money, or alcohol, above god), which is the ONLY figurative interpretation Lutherans have of the entire Bible.)

Back to topic. God, Jehovah, Yahweh, whatever you would like to call him, has never been a friendly god. As stated above, He pretty much killed his own son. This idea of a loving and caring god is all since Jesus. Now Jesus as an aspect of God is loving and caring, but that's a different rant. So in closing, the expelling of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden because they could potentially challenge God actually fits with the God of the Old Testament. A God competing with other gods to forge a niche in the world would not want any more rivals. Unfortunately this god does not fit with the perception that most people have of God. I was going to discuss your Cain and Abel piece, but it would be regurgitating the above information.

Some minor points in closing.

Thank you for refreshing my memory on Plato's Republic, I'll have to dig my copy from college out and give it a re-read.

I like your theory of Paul-Saul, it's an interesting perspective that I hadn't heard, I'm still weighing it. Your idea actually makes me want to go re-read the Bible (bastard!)

I'd like to see your take on Cain being "marked, so that others would know his crime." Who are these others? Where did they come from?

Thank you for giving me another perspective to view the world from, hopefully I have returned the favor.

—K
June 2003

JoT

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