In response to: Are you implying that death is unnatural?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/images/v24/i1/p19_noDeath.jpg
Considering how it's such an exellent device for change, how do you reconcile the fact that most people fear death? Shouldn't anticipation of death have "evolved" if evolution is fact? Perhaps only "Takers" fear death and not "Leavers"? It would be an interesting survey; I don't have that data. I don't fear death, and I'd venture to say most "born-again" Christians do not either.
50 comments
That may be true, for you. Good on ya mate.
Ok, explain why animals, who are unable to sin, die. If death is unnatural, why does every single living being die?. If Adam was cursed with distinctive features as a result of his sin(working the land), it's absurd to claim that his sin contaminated animals somehow. So, if animals die too and they have no sinned, how do you reconcile that with your thesis?.
"Shouldn't anticipation of death have "evolved" if evolution is fact?"
The fact that fear is the most basic emotion means nothing here?
"I don't fear death"
I can think of about three hundred thousand ways to test this...
Fear of death is precisely the reason for this fantasy of "Afterlife," just one portion of the incredibly elaborate fantasy known as "religious belief." You can't bear the idea of just dying and being gone forever, so you invent (or accept someone else's invention of) this great destiny for your alleged "soul" to receive when your body dies. That's the only reason so many "born-again" Christians don't fear death.
Similarly, many small children who have nightmares can be helped to stop having them by being told that something will keep the nightmares away. My late companion slept with her pet dog as a child, and her father told her that nightmares couldn't possibly get to her with a dog guarding her; she felt better and slept soundly, not knowing that this explanation was complete nonsense. And if nonsense is what helps you to face death without screaming in fear, I guess it has its uses.
If you don't fear death, then you shouldn't mind killing yourself for all of us as proof.
hmmmm?
I didn't think you would.
"Shouldn't anticipation of death have "evolved" if evolution is fact?"
No. Avoidance of death at all costs is part of what makes evolution so successful. Looking forward to, or wanting to die would tend to make species extinct fairly quickly, wouldn't you say?
"I don't fear death, and I'd venture to say most "born-again" Christians do not either."
Yeah, sure. Your entire religion is pretty much nothing more than a futile attempt at cheating death and 'living forever' with your chosen deity. If you didn't fear death you'd have no incentive to believe such things were true without evidence to support such claims.
Since God never intended there to be death, what was he going to do to keep the planet from being overrun by bunnies?
And now who fears death more? The evangelical Christians who believe their God will Rapture them away at any minuet to live with him forever in a place of eternal paradise, or the atheists who accept that once they die they will cease to exist? Hmmm....who could possible fear death of these two. Who could so possibly be afraid of dying that they desperately try to cling on to their fairy tale in the face of growing scientific evidence against it?
You don't fear death? For some reason I highly doubt this considering your belief is that after death you will continue to live on through your eternal soul with your magic guy with a beard hiding out in the "firmaments" in the sky. You don't fear death as you claim because a belief in a deity as quelled your fear. That's what religion and the belief in god is. A crutch.
"Shouldn't anticipation of death have "evolved" if evolution is fact?"
I would say that anticipation of death has evolved along with our mind. As we understood more we also understood that one day we would all die. Out of this one could say religion evolved.
But let's ignore all the facts we are faced with and go right to blaming it all on a magic floating man that won't show us he's here but expects us to have faith that he is. Meanwhile this same "perfect being" will sacrifice his own child to himself to forgive his own creation.
It would be an interesting survey; I don't have that data. I don't fear death, and I'd venture to say most "born-again" Christians do not either.
You don't have the data because it wouldn't be applicable. As for 'born agains' not fearing death, bullshit, pure and simple.
Snopster:
Very good point. If you cut off his hand, would it scurry around independantly, Evil Dead style? It couldn't decay, given that there would be no death, even on the cellular level. I wonder what other parts you could've hacked off Adam and had retain their prior usefullness?
@Septic Sceptic: Now imagine living with cancer like this. You can't treat the cancer because you can kill the cells because there's no death, neither can the cancer kill you. So you get to live all eternity in a state of constant pain and near death. And yet some how this is what God wanted. And there's no way to control population growth, and since everything would have to eat plants that means man kind is going to have a lot of competition. Man life without death sure does suck. I'm not saying that death is a good thing, but it's kind of necessary to create any sort of working ecosystem. I refuse to believe that this story is literal, because it undermines God's omniscience to think he's so stupid that he would intend for there to be a world were nothing ever dies. Surely an all knowing God would immediately understand the necessary balancing act death gives to the world.
Yea, sure. Born-again Christians not fearing death. Perhaps that's why so many of them hope that the Rapture will happen during their lifetime , such that they won't have to go through death at all. That's what I would call real cowardice: they are assured that they'll enter a happy eternal afterlife after death, and they still fear dying so much that they have to go into mental contortions in order to hope it away.
"If you read the whole Bible, blah blah blah"
If you study reality, you will see the bible is fiction.
If Adam & Eve hadn't "sinned" and introduced death into the world ... then neither Buho nor any of us would be here. After a few generations of living things reproducing without anything dying, the world would be so populated there wouldn't be a square inch of space left for any new living thing to occupy.
So, hooray for sin! It's what made our lives possible.
No, there is no biological advantage to anticipate death. Once you die, you can't pass on your genes anymore* and if you already had several kids that lived to adulthood and produced viable offspring, then what does it matter if you anticipate or fear death at the end of your life?
Osiris:
Another good observation, and you could get around Szena's disease/fall point by applying it to one of Gawd's creatures instead of cancer, like the tapeworm, or pubic lice.
Maybe that's what drove Eve to take the apple. "An eternity of undying parasites? Screw it, i'll take my chances with the fruit."
It really did go downhill for religion when they stopped burning people for thinking seriously about this kind of stuff, didn't it?
Bible-bangers are indoctrinated to fear death, because fear is one of the major hooks that their religion uses.
The fear is what is unnatural, as well as the totally fictional threats and promises concerning the afterlife.
Death cultists who fear death. Quite the paradox.
Considering how it's such an exellent device for change, how do you reconcile the fact that most people fear death?
Just that, actually. People fear change, and they fear the unknown. Nobody has ever died and come back to tell about it (I mean, in reality) so in the map of knowledge, it's off the side and written 'Here be Dragons'.
What I've never understood about death is that if the afterlife is so wonderful, and death is not to be feared, then why don't the believers accelerate the process for themselves in an attempt to get there as fast as possible?
No, most people fear death because that is what was willed by the Nightbringer before his physical form was destroyed by Khaine. Thus all species fear death, as personified in the Nightbringer, execpt the Orks, who he could not taint.
"I don't fear death, and I'd venture to say most "born-again" Christians do not either."
I can't. It's just too easy.
Frank:
I checked up nutrient cycling on Wikipedia, and I think you're right. There's no way a God could have created our world as described in Genesis, without death being part of the design from the beginning.
But then, either myself, or Wikipedia could be wrong. Any science bods out there who know for certain?
<< I checked up nutrient cycling on Wikipedia, and I think you're right. There's no way a God could have created our world as described in Genesis, without death being part of the design from the beginning.
But then, either myself, or Wikipedia could be wrong. Any science bods out there who know for certain? >>
Septic Sceptic: One word: Digestion. If the garden that provided food to the humans consisted of plant matter that could not die, then it could not be digested, and it therefore could not serve as food. So, yes, death (on the cellular level at the very least) would be essential.
We really should bundle all these arguments together and pose them to Ken Ham or Kent Hovind and watch them pull mountains of retarded speculation out of their backsides.
That's assuming Kent isn't too busy being the payment for his cellmate's last carton of cigarettes.
Snopester in Exile wrote:
"I wonder what would have happened if someone had sliced Adam in half (before that fruit incident). Would the wound just like instantly heal before the top half could fall off? Would each half grow into a whole person? Or would both halves just stay separate but "alive"." You're assuming that Pre-Fall Adam COULD be sliced in half. I'll bet that, being unable to die, Pre-Fall Adam was indestructible. Try to cut him, and you'd just break your razor blade.
Why do people interpret this book as complete, unfiltered truth?
At this rate in human gullibility, I wouldn't be surprised if in a thousand years this person's descendants were praying to Albus Dumbledore for both the Age of Magic and its messiah, Harry Potter, to return.
Idiot.
Sure it should; everyone whose ancestors passed on their genes after death would have inherited the ability to foresee it. Thus you have disproven evolution. Well done!
I don't believe God. And I do not fear my own inevitable death, provided it comes gently.
I think the old indian guy from Cowboy Bebop said it best:
"Death is always at our side, it is our constant companion. But we must never show it fear. If we show fear, it leaps at us faster than lightning. But if we do not show fear, it falls upon us peacefully, and gently guides us into infinity.."
If there was no death in the Garden of Eden, what was the point of the second tree, the tree of life? And why did god want Adam and Eve not to eat from it and said "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." (Genesis 3:22)?
Death happens to almost all organisms, so it's pretty normal, and natural too.
If you read the Bhagavad Gita, it starts out with something completely different. If you read the Poetic Edda, it also starts out with something completely different. So?
I'd say it's people's fear of death that made them invent religions in the first place.
I don't fear death, or rather the after death. I do NOT want to die soon, I want to live to a ripe old age and fill my life with pleasant things.
If you read the whole Bible, it starts out with no death, is plunged into death
image
"Considering how it's such an exellent device for change, how do you reconcile the fact that most people fear death? Shouldn't anticipation of death have "evolved" if evolution is fact? "
Oh, Christ and all his holy paper clips.
Death IS a device for selection, yes. The 'change' produced by natural selection, though, is to the gene pool. The individual gains no benefit from a change in the frequency of specific genes in the next generation of the gene pool, especially if he's not around anymore to enjoy the changes. So there's no evolutionary drive for an individual to welcome death for the sake of death. Sacrifice for offspring or for the herd, yes, but not just 'hey, I'm the slowest, I guess the tigers get me. okay, then.'
And what if there were? If there was a 'welcome death' gene, or set of genes, the individuals who lucked upon those genetics would be LESS likely to live long enough to reproduce. Natural selection would select AGAINST those genes. The individuals that tend to try their hardest to avoid death are the ones whose offspring will dominate the population.
If you read the whole Bible, it starts out with no death
Bullshit. Adam and Eve were mortal from the get-go. If not, what the hell was the point of God not wanting them to eat from the tree of life? And what was the point of that, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, even being there in the first damn place? The more I read of the Bible, the more I think parts of it were never meant to be taken literally. The only way Genesis makes any damn sense is as a metaphor or an allegory or something.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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