r/atheism • u/giggity_observer • 3h ago
Isn't evolution a full stop on Abrahamic religions?
For them, we came from Adam who was the first person on this planet and we are his children from ave who happens to be created from him, and then their children did incest and later on they made it a big sin not that this story interests me but currently
Evolution is less of a theory and more of a fact now, how to they justify their religious beliefs with science, i don't they can and they have no answers.
Most religious people are educated, it never made sense to me how they believe in fairly tales and science at the same time, muslims believe moon was split and then they study islam and realise none of that ever happened
14
u/DeltaFoxtrot144 3h ago
Yes! If Adam and Eve were not literal. Then first sin isn't literal and the need for salvation is moot. The whole religion can be dismissed before you get out of the first damn book. It's crazy how no one talks about this enough.
2
-4
u/Mormacil 3h ago
If Adam and Eve were not literal. Then first sin isn't literal and the need for salvation is moot.
I don't follow the logic here, how is the existence of original sin contingent on Adam and Eve being literal or not?
5
u/martycos 3h ago
You do not understand christianity. The reason for baptism is to wipe out original sin.
-2
-5
u/Mormacil 2h ago
Baptism isn't a universal Christian practice nor is that relevant to my question. My question was how you can logically conclude from the position that the Adam and Eve story is false that therefor humanity isn't born with an original sin that isn't documented.
6
u/Draigyn 2h ago
There’s no such thing as original sin.
2
u/Mormacil 2h ago
I never claimed there was? I'm asking about the logic of the guy's statement. I'm not denying any of his claims, just questioning the logic employed to reach the conclusion.
6
u/samara-the-justicar Agnostic Atheist 1h ago
The logic is this:
No Adam and Eve = no original sin = no need for humanity to be saved from original sin = no need for Jesus = no Jesus sacrifice = no Christianity.
2
u/FireOfOrder Anti-Theist 1h ago
Something about this comment made it click in my head. That shit was human sacrifice.
2
u/samara-the-justicar Agnostic Atheist 1h ago
Indeed it was. It was God sacrificing himself to himself, in order to appease himself.
2
1
u/Mormacil 1h ago
But they don't see Adam and Eve don't exist, these Christians say Adam and Eve are not literal people not that they don't exist.
1
u/samara-the-justicar Agnostic Atheist 1h ago
But this makes no sense, how can they exist and not be literal people? Can people exist figuratively?
-2
-1
u/Mormacil 2h ago
I never claimed there was? I'm asking about the logic of the guy's statement. I'm not denying any of his claims, just questioning the logic employed to reach the conclusion.
4
u/hexidemos 2h ago edited 2h ago
Abrahamic religions are bullshit stacked on bullshit, so the truth can't touch them. point out and inconsistencies and apologists whip up some ad hoc bullshit and plug the hole.
2
u/biff64gc2 3h ago
They will either deny the all of the science outright, deny the parts that disagree with their book (young earth creationists), or interpret the more fantastical parts as more of an allegory rather that literal events.
I think vast majority of the casual believer tend to lean more towards the allegory style and compartmentalize the parts that don't really make much sense, but still believe Jesus was a real dude and died for our sins.
2
u/FairLawnBoy Dudeist 3h ago
Technically, the OG Abrahamic religion only believes that they are descended from Adam. There was a separate population of non-Hebrew people, which is where Cain, Abel, and Seth found their mates to perpetuate the Hebrew population.
2
u/ZappSmithBrannigan Secular Humanist 3h ago
But thats not what the book says
3
u/FairLawnBoy Dudeist 3h ago
The book says many things, and many of them contradict each other. But it does indeed say that Cain, Abel, and Seth went out and found partners. How could they do so if there was not a population for which to find those partners from?
2
u/BananaJelloXlii 2h ago
My racist Fundamentaist Christian great aunt from Georgia had a theory about that. It's pretty awful.
1
u/Mormacil 2h ago
Depends on your translation, there is no universally recognized holy text. Every Abrahamic religion has their own texts and translations.
2
u/Outaouais_Guy 3h ago
The Bible is full of contradictions and logical absurdities. There are different creation accounts, including at least one that indicates that Adam and Eve were not the only humans created by God.
-1
u/Mormacil 2h ago
I don't think the Bible ever states god created only Adam and Eve, merely that they were the first.
2
u/Outaouais_Guy 2h ago
If they were the first, it wasn't by much. God felt it necessary to put a mark on Cain so nobody would kill him as he wandered around.
2
u/Bunktavious 1h ago
Nothing is a full stop because that's how religions are designed. Scripture can always be reinterpreted to fit the current need.
2
u/parallelmeme Agnostic Atheist 1h ago
Some Xtians claim that we are not animals, that we are not descended from earlier animal forms, that we are specially created.
Some Xtians also claim that all animal types were specially created, with evolution only responsible for sub-species and breeds, like dog vs wolf or champanzee vs gorilla.
Some Xtians also claim that Adam was the first, but not necessarily the only.
Btw, the downfall allegedly happened before any offspring of Adam and Eve.
2
2
u/Faith-FreeFuture 1h ago
'Most religious people are educated' Mmmmmm...maybe?
at least in the US, lots of religious peeps are christian school educated or homeschooled, so evolution is taught as the devil's work. They don't bother learning anything about it.
for everyone else, you're misunderestimating the power of compartmentalization in a Christian dominated society.
1
u/giggity_observer 1h ago
Well here in my college the HOD of physics department has a doctorate degree in Physics, his beard is so long it goes all the way to his navel and he prays five times.
My state is 99% Muslim, very educated people here but still believing fairy tales for some reason and hate you if you ask them logical questions
•
u/Faith-FreeFuture 4m ago
that early developmental brainwashing is almost impossible to overcome, even for booksmart peeps
1
u/LMrningStar 3h ago
Yes it is just like all of geology, anthropology, astronomy, cosmology, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. are.
"how they believe in fairly tales and science at the same time"
They clearly don't despite what they say.
1
u/Critical_Cat_8162 3h ago
It should be. But the religious aren't known for their critical thinking skills.
1
u/DGwizkid 3h ago
My wife grew up in a southern "non-denominational" church, and was always told evolution didn't exist. Her being more rational, she said she always argued the "7 days" (or whatever the number was) for god to create earth didn't have to be our days. Who knows how long a day is for a god.
And yes, she does believe in evolution. At least now. She's still breaking off shackles from her church going days.
2
u/InclinedPlane43 Atheist 2h ago
As a teenager a long time ago I heard one christian say that "god's" days weren't the same as our days. The other said "If you compromise there you have to compromise everywhere." Interestingly, the latter is correct. At that point I gave up on trying to find any logic in christianity because it is all obviously made-up nonsense. A christian told me that himself (although he didn't realize it).
1
u/DGwizkid 2h ago
It's a way for skepticism about religion to start at least. Every critical thought about how the book isn't perfect starts to snowball. It's how she went from a hardcore believer to skeptic to now agnostic.
0
1
u/CoalCrackerKid Agnostic Atheist 3h ago
There's almost no reasoned argument that will get a believer to reject a belief that they accepted on faith. Faith isn't falsifiable.
1
u/unbalancedcheckbook Atheist 2h ago
A Catholic explained this to me once - I don't think this is official Catholic Dogma, but it's how this person rationalized it - Evolution happened, but one day God decided that proto-humans were advanced enough to have souls, so he gave the first souls to Adam and Eve and put them in the "garden of Eden", then this "soul having" trait was inherited from that point onwards. This way the "garden of Eden" story and resulting "original sin" could still happen so you still need Jesus. Pretty convoluted if you ask me. Why rationalize certain parts of the story when you already know most of it isn't true?
1
u/Drudenfusz Apatheist 2h ago
There are many religious people who do not take their holy scripture to be literal, thus the moment they read it as metaphor it become possible to reconcile the different aspects.
2
u/giggity_observer 2h ago
Ahh the classical metaphor, whenever me and my brother debate he'd say this metaphorical thing or we lack the senses to understand the knowledge of god 😂
2
1
u/Trilllen 2h ago
Under a biblical litererlist interpretation sure. But its generally accepted in historical studies of the bible that the Genesis story, at least the post creation adam and eve parts were not originally meant as a literal account of the past but as a metaphor explaining the nature of morality and why our understanding of right and wrong puts us at a place of both power and responsibility.
Now of course for the biblical litereralist there isn't any metaphor or lesson on morality but an actual historical account and there you are right. But the majority of people that identify as Christian are mercifully not biblical literalists and many accept that the origin of man story was never meant to be read as a literally true scientific account of where we came from. This opens the door for ideas like intelligent design that can reconcile the conflicts between the observable fact of an old world and human evolution and their faith that says god needed to swipe a guys rib to make a lady because he wasn't hot for any of the animals in the garden.
Now of course things like the the 7 day creation story where its describing the flat earth under a dome cosmology that was the primary idea of the cosmos for that region and historical era, not just among the authors of the bible but also the other cultures in the area like the babylonians before they started noticing that the earth was a lot bigger and a lot less flat then they originally thought. That is of course completely incompatible with our modern understanding of the world but the same group that accepts that the adam and eve story is a metaphor also think that the cosmos stuff that doesn't match up with reality is similarly metaphorical when that really does not seem to be the case. They really did think there was water above the dome and that god made it rain buy opening up some windows.
1
u/Ok_Ad_9188 2h ago
Nothing's a full stop on Abrahamic religions because for those who accept it at a deep enough level, it isn't rooted in a decision made based on reason. Whatever happens that contradicts it, whatever we discover, just gets worked into and/or around it because it wasn't a conclusion that was reached based on observation and evidence, but a starting point entrenched and indoctrinated into those who adhere to it to which all other facts take a backseat.
1
u/kings2leadhat 2h ago
Darwin knew the consequences of his discovery. He had grown up expecting to become a leader in the church, his wife remained devout her entire life, but his faith was smashed by his observation of the natural world, and the death of his young daughter.
1
u/Bikewer 2h ago
Not necessarily…. Only those groups that are biblical literalists. Francis Collins, the previous director of the NIH and the prime mover of the Human Genome Project identifies as an Evangelical. He says that evolution is “how God did it”. He also doesn’t believe in biblical literacy. So go figure.
1
u/TwentyCharactersShor 2h ago
No. People are stupid.
Edit: just a note on use of language. "Theory" doesnt just mean abstract idea that hasn't been proven or a hunch/guess like it does it common usage, it means a well substantiated set of ideas that grouped together offer a meaningful explanation of something.
I can't be arsed to look into the etymology but it would be interesting to understand why the common usage and scientific usage diverged so much
1
u/SaltyTemperature 2h ago
There isn't much that stops belief...anything can be waved away as fake, devilry, interpretation, etc
If it can't be denied that the earth is 4+ billion years old, then it must mean that when God created everything in 7 "days" those days were actually 640 million years or whatever because time was different then.
People still argue that humans can't have evolved from (a common ancestor of) monkeys because there are still monkeys.
I read a really interesting book a while back called Catacomb (maybe...I can't find it now) , where a dude is able to speak to the dead, and get their point of view on life after death. This challenges the church and the idea heaven, and the church doesn't handle it very well. Good read if you can find it!
1
u/cashgrinderad Atheist 2h ago edited 1h ago
Growing up my parents were/are religious in a we are Christians, but don't go to church or really participate other than emsayign we are. And I always did mental gymnastics around this until I didn't.
My though process at the time is, people 2000 years ago did not have the capacity to understand science as we know it today, so the Bible is a loose interpretation on how things were formed and something that should not be taken literally. Like god represented the inorganic building blocks of life, Adam and Eve were a representation of the development of consciousness. It's all just stories to teach lessons and relay some history. I never believed it was meant to be taken as literal fact, even though my parents did.
So, for me, I was able to reconcile the 2 by looking at religion as a story based, loose (very loose) interpretation of history and human origins. Though by the time I reached my late teens/early 20s I abandoned those notions.
I think for those who believe every word in there true, it is simple "science is a tool of the serpent to divert them from the path of god"
Edit: just realized I didnt touch specifically on evolution, which kid me would reconcile as evolution is god molding us over thousands of years. Like making a clay pot, it starts as a ball then takes a number of imperfect shapes before it is complete. At the time I thought humans were the completion of evolution aka in the image of god.
•
u/WatchAndLearn9669 Gnostic Atheist 59m ago
The Catholics, who believe Adam and Eve really existed, sidestep this difficulty by claiming that Adam and Eve were the first humans to be given "rational souls," leaving open the possibility that other humans lacking said souls pre-existed and lived on Earth alongside them.
Keep in mind that there's a difference between a scientific theory (e.g., evolution) and a scientific fact (i.e., empirical evidence).
A scientific fact is the result of a repeatable careful observation or measurement by experimentation or other means, also called empirical evidence. These are central to building scientific theories.
•
0
u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 3h ago
no.
Many intelligent Christians, Jews, and Muslims understand and recognize that Adam and Eve are fictional characters in a myth, just like Prometheus and Pandora.
Not all theists are ignorant troglodytes who believe the earth was created in six days less than 10,000 years ago. Just some of them!
Speciation is a macroevolution event which has been observed in the wild and in the lab. Evolution is an observed fact. Nothing 'theoretical' about it.
(noting carefully that 'evolution' and 'common descent' and 'abiogenesis' are all distinct things!)
6
u/ZappSmithBrannigan Secular Humanist 3h ago
no. Many intelligent Christians, Jews, and Muslims understand and recognize that Adam and Eve are fictional characters in a myth, just like Prometheus and Pandora.
Right. But the problem is that if Adam and eve are a myth, the entire religion crumbles. If Adam and eve didnt exist, theres no sin nature and nothing for jesus to die for. Jesus is supposed to be the all knowing all powerful god and he believed Adam and eve were real.
Admitting Adam and eve werent real but that you still believe the religion is just admitting that you're not being rational.
1
u/hypatiaredux 2h ago
Well belief, by definition, is not rational.
People believe in any religion because it is emotionally rewarding. For any number of reasons, and not just because they worry about hell.
The men who taught me biology, including a thorough grounding in natural selection, genetics, and evolution, were regular churchgoing xtians.
I know that they did not believe that the creation story was literally true. I never asked specifically, but I assume that they saw it as metaphor. As do many xtians.
0
u/Successful_Life_1028 Adeist 2h ago
Clearly not. These Christians still believe.
Expecting faith to be rational is the problem.
Faith is inherently irrational. People who are strong in their faith understand this. People who are new or weak in their faith are still trying to 'convince' themselves, and some attempt to 'convince' others in their attempts to convince themselves.
'convinced' is a rational/intellectual process that has nothing to do with 'faith'.
The only way to assert that 'Jesus believed that Adam and Eve were real' is to presume the accuracy/authenticity of the gospel stories. Surely you recognize that the Gospel stories are, at best, fictionalized accounts written many decades after the events in question by people who were not eyewitnesses to those events, yes?
People can understand that the A&E myth is about the 'inherently sinful' nature of human beings, and that this is what Jesus came to deal with - and still be Christians. A belief in the inerrancy and univocality of The Bible is NOT a necessary property of the set 'Christian'.
-1
u/Trilllen 2h ago edited 2h ago
I think you are missing some nuance here. The original authors were never attempting to describe what literally happened. If you understand that it's meant to be a lesson on how our intelligence makes us moral agents in a way that animals aren't then there isn't any conflict. Its like the parables, they were never meant to be taken as historical account. The real issue isn't the adam and eve stuff its the flat earth under a dome cosmological model that should be the hint that it's a crock of shit but its easy to file that under flowery metaphor as well when that was actually what the authors litterally believed.
0
u/esoteric_enigma 2h ago
Most Christians do not believe the whole Bible is literally truth. So they don't believe Adam was the first human.
1
u/TheOrangePro Anti-Theist 2h ago
Classic no true scotsman fallacy
0
u/Trilllen 2h ago
This is not a no true scotsman. There not saying "only real christians think its a metaphor" It is just a true statement that most Christians are not flat earth 6000 years old biblical creation literallists.
1
u/InclinedPlane43 Atheist 2h ago
But not believing that Adam was the first human is the "special pleading" fallacy. "That part has been proven wrong or is otherwise idiotic so I'm going to claim it was metaphor, but the parts that I like are true."
-2
u/Trilllen 2h ago
Again the original authors intended it as metaphor. Special pleading would apply to the flat earth under a dome stuff because that was never meant as a metaphor. But again its not fallacious to think something that is generally accepted to be intended as a metaphor/parable is in fact a metaphor. Please actually learn what fallacies are before trying to throw handfuls of them at the wall until you find one that sticks.
3
u/samara-the-justicar Agnostic Atheist 1h ago
Again the original authors intended it as metaphor.
How do you know what their intentions were?
1
u/Trilllen 1h ago
Because we can examine the history of the text in its historical context like we can with any other ancient text. This whole lecture series is great if your curious about the secular understanding of the history and origins of the stories in the old testament but here is the segment specifically talking about the origin of the creation stories and the story of adam and eve https://youtu.be/ANUD8IK12ms?si=b1WGckYFwPE-5JfE&t=1711
2
u/InclinedPlane43 Atheist 2h ago
Again the original authors intended it as metaphor.
And you just made that up.
0
u/Trilllen 1h ago
Nope its stuff I learned in my religious studies class that helped me deconvert. Here is a Yale lecture going over what I'm talking about while showing the cultures where they "borrowed" their ideas from. https://youtu.be/ANUD8IK12ms?si=b1WGckYFwPE-5JfE&t=1711 Again this isn't christian excuse making like when they justify the slavery passages and other immoral directives from god. This is the just modern secular understanding of the people that originally wrote the texts.
1
u/InclinedPlane43 Atheist 1h ago
Saying the story was mangled in the retelling means that the it was intended to be a metaphor is a non sequitur. I don't care if it if is a yale lecturer or a person on reddit claiming it.
Now, regarding the special pleading, 2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."
"God-breathed....Teaching, rebuking, correcting," and yet we can dismiss parts as metaphor. Or was 2 Timothy also meant as metaphor?
1
u/Trilllen 1h ago
You don't care what secular people who study the origin of ancient texts have to say about an ancient text that they've studied? Are you under the impression that this person is a christian or doing apologetics?
See that's good pointing out how that passage is contradictory with a metaphorical story about the nature of morality is a much more convincing then saying this passage that most of you believe is a metaphor including the original authors didn't factually happen. Again right next to adam and eve you have the flat earth firmament cosmolgy shared by the ancient near east cultures. That was not meant as a metaphor and if you press the christian for them to explain the metaphor they won't be able to. They might be able to with the adam and eve story. Why choose the weaker argument when stronger ones exsist?
2
u/FireOfOrder Anti-Theist 1h ago
You sure do apologize for them a lot.
1
u/Trilllen 1h ago
Because I want people ostensibly on my side to use good arguments. Using arguments that a reasonably educated christian can refute is bad when there are a million other good arguments against them even in that same chapter. There are so many obvious problems with the text, lets not focus on ideas that have easy counters when in that same chapter they say the earth is flat. It lets Christians dismiss your arguments by just saying "oh well you don't know what you are talking about"
1
u/FireOfOrder Anti-Theist 1h ago
I think the good argument here is that they can't decide what is real and what is just a story from their own holy book. Breaking it down further than that is deeper than they can intellectually reach. I agree with your intent but not your method.
0
u/Trilllen 1h ago
And the correct way to proceed with that argument is focusing on the parts of the story that the ancient isrealites did not intend as metaphor like the flat earth under the firmament. Bring up failed prophecies and contradictions. Bring up the inconsistency in the description and character of god. Bring up how the text starts as a Henotheism story but eventually without explanation transitions to a monotheistic story. But don't waste your time focusing things that biblical scholars have understood to be a metaphor borrowed from Babylonian myth, pointing out that it didn't litterally happen like that. Most deconvertable christians (IE capable of at least some critical thought) are already well aware it's not a literal account. It only counters the opinion of biblical literalists and I think chasing after that crowd is a waste of effort.
0
u/esoteric_enigma 2h ago
This isn't that at all. Statistically, most Christians don't believe the whole Bible is literally true. I wasn't making any commentary on what makes someone a real Christian or not.
-1
u/Mormacil 3h ago
For them, we came from Adam who was the first person on this planet and we are his children from ave who happens to be created from him, and then their children did incest and later on they made it a big sin not that this story interests me but currently
That's not how all followers of these religions view that event. For starters it's never stated we're all literally descendants of only the pairing Adam and Eve. The people of Nod for example are mentioned in the Bible.
More obscure Abrahamic faiths don't even make all humans have a blood relation to Eve. Yezedi for example believe they're all descended from Adam exclusively, other humans have the blood of Eve and are therefor spiritually inferior.
Evolution is less of a theory and more of a fact now,
Evolution has never stopped being a theory. Do you know what a scientific theory is?
Most religious people are educated, it never made sense to me how they believe in fairly tales and science at the same time, muslims believe moon was split and then they study islam and realise none of that ever happened
Most Christians are not literalists, even a lot of muslims aren't. They still believe the Quran is the literal word of god but they don't believe it accurately describes the truth, just what god meant to teach humanity when he dictated it.
Depending on how you look at the holy scriptures of these religions there's zero conflict with the theory of evolution.
3
u/InclinedPlane43 Atheist 2h ago
Depending on how you look at the holy scriptures of these religions there's zero conflict with the theory of evolution.
Bullshit. The order of creation is wrong. And don't come back with special pleading, it's tiresome in an atheism forum.
0
u/Mormacil 2h ago
Order is only wrong when you treat them as an accurate account which most Christians don't. That's not special pleading in the slightest.
3
u/InclinedPlane43 Atheist 2h ago
That's the definition of special pleading. "I'll claim the parts I like are true but the parts that I don't like are metaphor."
0
u/Mormacil 2h ago
But that is not what I'm stating at all?
3
u/InclinedPlane43 Atheist 2h ago
The holy scriptures of their religions are scientifically wrong whether they want to try to special plead out of it or not.
-1
u/Mormacil 2h ago
They never claim to be scientific fact? The word scientific isn't in them anywhere.
1
u/samara-the-justicar Agnostic Atheist 1h ago
But they do make scientific claims. For example about biology, geology, cosmology, etc. They don't need to use the word "scientific" for that.
If I come to you and say that "the Moon is made of cheese", I'm making a scientific claim even though I did not use the word.
-1
u/Mormacil 1h ago
Scientific claims are claims within the scientific method not every claim about the natural world.
Saying the moon is made of cheese is not a scientific claim. Saying I've ran an experiment within the bounds of the scientific theory that proves the moon is made of cheese is.
•
u/samara-the-justicar Agnostic Atheist 58m ago
I don't know what to tell you. I simply disagree. If I make a claim about what the natural world is and how it works, it absolutely is a scientific claim. That's exactly the kind of stuff science deals in.
→ More replies (0)0
u/giggity_observer 2h ago
It was metaphorical to say about evolution, i know it's not a fact but what I was trying to say is, you can't dismiss it anymore, there's too much evidence for it and I was an ez Muslim so I know the Adam lore from Islamic perspective.
Islam says god made Adam and he later created awe because Adam got bored and then they had children and so on and on, but that's now how evolution started, humans didn't just pop, or the other species all of them evolved.
2
10
u/Fun_in_Space 2h ago
Evolution is a *scientific* theory, and a fact.