Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
- 81
"Preference" is not relevant.
So what if our distant ancestors were ape-like animals. That's a LONG time ago. People insist that they're some amazing, divine creation. Fine. Prove it. Prove that you can be better. Thus far, humans don't seem to be trying too hard. I saw a clip of Schindler's List just a few hours ago. It's heart-wrenching stuff. Humans are capable of inexplicable horrors. Others are capable of finally coming to their senses and doing what they can to right the wrongs. Or on the other end of the spectrum of severity, there are parents fighting at Chuck E. Cheese's, like a bunch of chimps fighting over good spots in a fig tree. Replace the yelling with chimp-like screams, and our behavior doesn't look at all dissimilar to theirs.
Some "perfect" creations we are. If you go for the whole Adam and Eve thing, with the apple, evidently we were created with the capacity for disobedience, and the capacity to lie. And this was done so in the presence of a God who punishes without possibility of forgiveness - until you die. Original sin....yeah, load of BS there. Punish the son for the sins of the father, that sort of thing. So let's say Adam and Eve were around 6000 years ago. 6000 years later, and God's "original sin" punishment still stands. I'm sure glad our justice system doesn't mete out judgments like that. Otherwise most of the population would be in prison for the crimes of their distant ancestors.
And our legal system prohibits torture. Why, I don't know. The Christian deity has a place specially designed to be a place of torture. Eternal torture. All for making a wrong decision about some trite little detail: The nature of the Universe and existence itself, within one tiny human lifespan.
Also, on the subject of us being "different" than animals:
We eat like animals. We sleep like animals. We have sex like animals. We form pair-bonds like animals. We share genes with animals (and our DNA even has virus DNA in it. Did God mix up the code?). And we die like animals.
But we're not animals.
And indeed, religion has always been a gap-filler.
Lightning was once the work of gods. So was the motion of the Sun. Rain, earthquakes, tornadoes, sickness - all things once done by gods or spirits. Science continues to make discoveries about the world around us, shining a piercing light into the dark ignorance of religion. Zeus has been dethroned. Ra is unemployed. Spirits of the sky no longer need to make it rain, for condensation in clouds does it. Tectonic plate motion causes earthquakes, and tornadoes are simple random eddies forming in certain storm systems. Illnesses, no longer caused be demonic possession or bad blood, can now be traced to microorganisms or genetic anomalies.
Gods are left picking up the scraps, hanging out in the pieces of remaining darkness, always careful to step just outside the light of scientific progress.
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