Adam & Eve - The first cavemen

[frogger6]

I've been discussing cavemen with my religious friends lately and asking them what they thought about the church's change in philosophy. When I was still in church, they would deny that cavemen existed at all. The whole thing was a giant hoax involving atheist scientists mising together ape and human bones to disprove the bible.
Nowadays it seems they accept the idea of cavemen, but say that they were decendants of noah.
When asked their stance, most either quoted random bible passages saying god created EVERYTHING, or talked about how there must be a god because of how complex atoms are.
One quoted passages including the term "womb" and asked how the bible knew about a womb when science didnt discover it until the 19th century. (whaaaaat?).
Another suggested that perhaps adam and eve were in fact cavemen.
To which of course I had to respond: Adam and eve were created in god's own image. -Would that make god a caveman?

What I continue to find striking though is many of my christian friends have no issue saying they dont follow the bible, but still believe in God. ..completely putting aside the idea that the bible is supposed to BE gods word.
They say 'I believe in science and the big bang theory, but maybe GOD created the big bang.'

One other thing I found interesting, and i shared this with my religious friends is this statement made by a christian scientist:

"For Christianity to remain intellectually credible and culturally relevant, it must be willing to revise -- and thereby enrich -- its formulation of classic doctrines if the secure findings of science call for revision." - John Collins, a Christian scientist and professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, Mo

[Napoléon]

asked how the bible knew about a womb when science didnt discover it until the 19th century. (whaaaaat?).

[Minimalist]

The Christian church, in its attitude toward science, shows the mind of a more or less enlightened man of the Thirteenth Century. It no longer believes that the earth is flat, but it is still convinced that prayer can cure after medicine fails.



-- H.L. Mencken

[Brian37]

First bloodline motifs are not new to modern monotheism. The meme of "first people" is in prior polytheism as well. The best a theist might argue, not that evolution hasn't destroyed this myth, but the best they could argue is "you have all these independent stories so there has to be something to it".

No in the reality of evolution there are no "first couple" but transitional changes that produce many in that group. Just like their is no "first cloud" that leads other clouds to become part of the hurricane. The climate produces many clouds at the same time that manifest into a hurricane.

There was no "first strand of DNA", in biological evolution, there was period of climate that produced many strands of DNA at the same time. Just like a hurricane wont drop raindrops in sequence but many will form at random times and or drop at the same time.

I've made jokes in the past I thought were "original" but the truth is that someone totally disconnected from me whom I have never met, could quite easly come up with a similar motif.

While it may be nice that your theist friends accept human evolution, there never was an adam and eve in the biblical sense, not to mention it is a spinnof of the Jewish tradition that has Lilith, not Eve being the "first woman".

The motif of "firsts" exists in humanity as a mere psychological sense of self importance. In a real biological sense,s stripped of myth, our sense of self importance is important otherwise we would not evolve at all. So the Adam and Eve and all "first people" motifs prior are merely a comic book reflection of our own selfish narcisssim. Evolution in reality doesn't give a shit about "firsts", it's only goal is reproduction.

[Darkstar]

Nowadays it seems they accept the idea of cavemen, but say that they were decendants of noah.

But...Noah had language, culture, boat-building skills, and evidently epic animal handling abilities. Why is is that the first recorded cultures developed independently, and in a much simpler form than Noah's, long after his death? Why is it that they arose in different areas of the globe, and initially had no language? How does Judaism have an origin if it developed before recorded history? That really never made any sense to me...

[Minimalist]

Of course there are several versions of the flood myth in Sumerian/Babylonian (Ziusudra, Atrahasis, Gilgamesh) texts plus the Eridu Genesis which predates the jewish bullshit story by at least a thousand, and probably closer to 1,500 years.

The earliest record of the Sumerian creation myth and flood myth is found on a single fragmentary tablet excavated in Nippur, sometimes called the Eridu Genesis. It is written in the Sumerian language and datable by its script to 2150 BC,[1] during the first Babylonian dynasty, where the language of writing and administration was still Sumerian. Other Sumerian creation myths from around this date are called the Barton Cylinder, the Debate between sheep and grain and the Debate between Winter and Summer, also found at Nippur.

Where the tablet picks up, the gods An, Enlil, Enki and Ninhursanga create the black-headed people and create comfortable conditions for the animals to live and procreate. Then kingship descends from heaven and the first cities are founded: Eridu, Bad-tibira, Larsa, Sippar, and Shuruppak.

After a missing section in the tablet, we learn that the gods have decided not to save mankind from an impending flood. Zi-ud-sura, the king and gudug priest, learns of this. In the later Akkadian version, Ea, or Enki in Sumerian, the god of the waters, warns the hero (Atra-hasis in this case) and gives him instructions for the ark. This is missing in the Sumerian fragment, but a mention of Enki taking counsel with himself suggests that this is Enki's role in the Sumerian version as well.

When the tablet resumes it is describing the flood. A terrible storm rocks the huge boat for seven days and seven nights, then Utu (the Sun god) appears and Zi-ud-sura creates an opening in the boat, prostrates himself, and sacrifices oxen and sheep.

After another break the text resumes: the flood is apparently over, the animals disembark and Zi-ud-sura prostrates himself before An (sky-god) and Enlil (chief of the gods), who give him eternal life and take him to dwell in Dilmun for "preserving the animals and the seed of mankind". The remainder of the poem is lost.

Naturally the jesus freaks shit bricks whenever someone suggests their fucking hebrews were not FIRST but, who cares what they think.