#genesis myth

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“Either a story conceived almost 2000 years ago is made up, or every credible scientist in the last 150 years is incompetent.“

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“The Genesis story is just one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders...

It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants.”

-- Richard Dawkins

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“The problem isn’t that they ate the fruit, it’s that they disobeyed God.” How would they know that disobeying your god is “wrong” without the knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil?

“They didn’t know that eating the fruit was wrong, but they knew deviating from the instructions would be unacceptable.” And how would they know that god-acceptance is a good thing, and god non-acceptance is a bad thing without the knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong?

“Well, they should have just obeyed God.” Same problem - how do they know that obeying your god is “right” and not obeying your god is “wrong” without that knowledge?

“Because they should have listened to God and not the serpent.” You’re really not getting this. How would they know that listening to your god and ignoring the snake is the “right” thing to do? And why did this god warn them about the fruit, but not about the snake?

“Be... because it’s written on everyone’s hearts.” So you’re actually trying to say that people are born with the knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil “on their hearts.” So obtaining it from the fruit was redundant. And tormenting them merely an act of capricious abuse.

Furthermore, they were (supposedly) the first people ever in the world. Nobody had any experience with anything. How would they even comprehend “lest ye die” as consequences, when nobody had ever died, ever? And didn’t even happen (i.e. was a lie). Without the knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil, how would they know that paying attention to this heart-writing was the right thing to do?

The mental gymnastics to try and salvage this stupid fable about their omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient god’s omni-incompetence are Olympic-grade.

Spoiler alert: the bible makes no sense. And we’re only up to page three.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“I am baffled by the way sophisticated theologians who know Adam and Eve never existed still keep talking about it.”

-- Richard Dawkins

But the theologians also know that the believers don’t know. And why would they start telling the truth now? It’s not that baffling when you remember that “theologian” is a career and a business, despite ultimately being comparable to having a doctorate in My Little Pony.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Despite the fact the Old Testament is still published as a good two-thirds of the Xtian bible, Xtians love to insist that very much of it “no longer applies” or is “a metaphor.” Especially the bits that are gross and immoral, and the bits that have been refuted by science.

And, they certainly have a point. We know, for example, that the Genesis creation story is nonsense, the Flood never happened, the Israelites were never enslaved to the Egyptians, and thus there was no Passover and no Exodus.

The problem is that the New Testament requires that the Old Testament be true. It needs to be true in order to establish the prophecies that Jesus supposedly fulfils - but doesn’t. (Although, to be fair, Jesus also supposedly fulfils a number of “prophecies” that don’t even exist, or aren’t prophecies at all.) And provide the Original Sin justification for him being a blood-magic scapegoat. If Genesis isn’t true, then Jesus serves no purpose.

But it also needs to be true because Jesus and co. think that it’s true. Jesus is certain that Noah and Abraham and Moses existed, the creation happened, the flood happened. There’s even a genealogy tracing Jesus all the way back to Adam.

If the Old Testament stories aren’t literally true, then Jesus, the son of god, god “made manifest in the flesh”, “the Word made flesh”, “lord of the sabbath”... got it all wrong.

Unless he didn’t. Unless Jesus lives in the same fictional universe as the Old Testament metaphors, rather than the real-world universe where none of these thing happened.

No matter how you carve it up, the bible is wrong, metaphorical, self-canceling or unreliable. In some cases, several of these all at once.

When Xtians try to rescue their religion by discarding the Old Testament, they bring the entire house of cards down themselves, faster and more thoroughly than any atheist.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Believers: The universe is too complex to not be created! Also Believers: Here’s an absurd, contradictory fairytale of literal magic that explains this complexity perfectly.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

A story that satirises itself.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Scientists watch single-cell algae evolve into multicellular life

One of the most important leaps in evolution has been observed in a laboratory, offering a hint of how complicated life began.

Scientists have watched a single-celled organism evolve into a multi-celled one in a laboratory, recreating one of the most important leaps in evolutionary history.

Humans are made up of trillions of different types of cells, but it is unclear how and when life evolved from being a single self-replicating cell to a multi-cellular organism.

Now, in a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of scientists from the University of Montana have identified a way in which that evolution may have taken place.