Biblical Fatal Flaws: How can anyone take the Adam & Eve story seriously?

Started by OrangeDon, April 08, 2021, 09:30:30 AM

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OrangeDon

I cannot grasp, to this day, how believers in something like the Bible can so easily dismiss the glaring, painful gaps in logic and reasonableness when they encounter them in the Bible.  Genesis is rife with so many Fatal Flaws in logic and scientific fact, that by the end of that book alone, it leaves any thinking person with the conclusion that the Bible is simply false.  You are prefaced with a God that is supposed to be all-knowing and all-time.  And also all-powerful -- since he created the universe and everything in it.  He has a Grand Master Plan for the Earth and mankind.  Great.

So, let's look at JUST the Adam and Eve story, and use some of the Bible's own words.  And let's start with a question about the premise of Adam and Eve, and the setting of the story.

How does this all-knowing, universe-creating God of All Time create a MAN, and then later, he creates a woman because he doesn't notice until later that the man is lonely and needs a breeding companion?  All all-knowing God would have known that from the very start!  They would have been created together at the same time as part of the pan to populate the earth with more humans.  As god is all time, and knows everything (including the future) - how is this missed?  Eve could NOT have been an afterthought for an all-knowing God...  but she was an afterthought, something he decides to make later.  Genesis states very clearly that God creates Adam, he assigns him several duties, including naming all the animals, THEN notices something is wrong...

GEN 2:18  And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

WHAT? You did something and it’s NOT GOOD, and it NEEDS CORRECTION?? So you provide him with EVE - made from a rib out of his chest??  AFTER THE FACT??
The whole story comes to a Hard Stop at this Epic Fail in logic and premise.  And it's not from hypothesis, it's from the Bible's own words at that verse!

Honestly, we all know that the Bible is rampant with Fatal Flaw errors like this one.  Hundreds of them.  But there are serious flaws in Genesis alone (another one is the obvious error in the Great Flood's premise, but that's another topic for later).  I just find it astonishing that we have come this far as a species, and so many adults, some even educated adults, still buy-into this Bronze-age cultist nonsense.  It's a sad statement about our race and the needs some of us still have for this ancient, superstitious garbage - and what's worse, is that parents actually force feed it into their kids, often using the brutal, mental terrorism of fear tactics and threats of eternal suffering with the devil, being tortured forever if you don't stay in line, etc, starting at VERY young ages. With so many glaring errors like these, I see why followers of the Bible have to rely on terrible threats to keep people hitched to their wagon!


Mr.Obvious

Hi Don,

Care to make an introductionary thread first and tell us a bit about yourself? It's customary.

Welcome to the forums. Bible is dumb indeed, though I'll admit I haven't read your post en full yet.
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

GSOgymrat

The following is an example of how sacred texts work:

I have a friend of Scandinavian descent, although he is Canadian. He married a Canadian woman, also of Scandinavian descent. They decided to get married in Sweden, as a tribute to their joint ancestry. They were both at least nominally Christian, so they were married in a ceremony reflecting that. During their exchange of vows, the bride and groom held a lit candle aloft between them. I spent a long time thinking about the significance of that ritual.

There is an ancient conceit in the book of Genesis (2:21â€"22) that Eve was taken out of Adamâ€"created from his rib. Woman from man: this presents something of a mystery, reversing, as it does, the normative biological sequence, where males emerge from females at birth. It also gave rise to a line of mythological speculation, attempting to account for the strangeness of this creative act, predicated on the supposition that Adam, the original man produced by God, was hermaphroditicâ€"half masculine and half feminineâ€"and only later separated into the two sexes. This implies not only the partition of a divinely produced unity, but the incompleteness of man and woman until each is brought together with the other.2 The fact that the candle is held jointly indicates the binding of the two celebrants. The fact that the candle is held aloft, lit, implies that something higherâ€"something superordinateâ€"is representing or performing the union. Light, light in the heavens, light in the darkness, illumination, enlightenment. Prior to the invention of modern electric lights, candles were often used for this purpose. Evergreens, the standard choice for Christmas trees, represent life unending, as they do not “die” annually in the same manner as their deciduous counterparts. Such trees therefore symbolize the Tree of Life, which serves as the very foundation of the cosmos.3 So, we illuminate the Tree of Life, at or near December 21, the darkest time of year, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.4 That is why Christmas is located where it is on the calendar; the reappearance of the light is associated with the birth of the Universal Saviorâ€"signifying the eternal reemergence of light in the Stygian blackness.


Peterson, Jordan B.. Beyond Order (pp. 272-273). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Notice how Peterson takes something that he admits makes no rational sense, female emerging from male, and explains this away by making the leap that Adam must have been hermaphroditic. He then ties it to other metaphors: "Light, held aloft, lit, implies that something higherâ€"something superordinate... light in the heavens, light in the darkness, illumination, enlightenment. ...  Christmas trees, represent life unending... therefore symbolize the Tree of Life, which serves as the very foundation of the cosmos." Peterson weaves all these very loosely related symbols together to make his point: Men and women are spiritually and psychologically incomplete and marriage is a union between a man and a woman, created by God, to make people whole.

The reason he fills his narrative with all these symbols is that it is effective. He's speaking an emotional language, a language of metaphors, that people respond to. The Bible is the best-selling book in the world because it's full of stories and symbolism. The most successful religious leaders know how to manipulate the content of sacred texts to create the message they want to convey, pretty much any message. Analyze the message and typically it falls apart but most people don't analyze, in fact they often resist analysis, because the message feels meaningful. I would love to completely ignore the Bible, I have no use for it, but in American culture, this is the primary source of many people's myth-making and so it's a language one has to at least be somewhat familiar with in order to understand people.

SGOS

I am convinced that man is not rational or logical.  He has the capacity to learn these concepts, but they are not default states, and few humans are interested in learning how to think and understand through reason.  Evolution and basic survival, as defined as "not dying," do not require logic.  They depend on eating, sex, and running away from tigers.  As a society, all we need to progress are just a few "thinkers" to parse out solutions to problems and put the solutions together in a way that moves the society forward.  Because we have this thoughtful minority, every human takes the credit for knowing about DNA or gun powder, even though few actually help us to get there.  Most are still operating at the phase of eating, having sex, and running from tigers, while we all take undeserved credit for being smarter than the lower primates.

So here's a book of mythology, the Bible glorified by ancient power mongers who claimed to know truths.  Much of the book makes no sense at all, and should not have, even to the ancients who wrote it, but we are taught, much like the family pet to respond in certain ways when given a treat or hit with a stick if we don't do it "right."  That is how Christians were trained to read the Bible. A simple carrot and stick teaching method.

Society advances because of a very few critical thinkers that carry the rest of society along, and many of these thinkers have been burned at the stake for their efforts.

aitm

Quote from: SGOS on April 09, 2021, 06:04:19 AM
As a society, all we need to progress are just a few "thinkers" to parse out solutions to problems and put the solutions together in a way that moves the society forward.

True enough, and a position I have long held. Humans aren’t as smart as we think we are. We are “monkey see, monkey do” but we are not “monkey think”. Only a few of us can invent, only a few of us can really think, the rest simply watch what happens and repeat the actions and they think they are smart.
I have often wondered how long humans existed before someone made the first straw basket. It most certainly was not a dozen at the same time. Go back 100,000 years and pluck those first “genius’s” out of the clan, we would still be using clubs.
A humans desire to live is exceeded only by their willingness to die for another. Even god cannot equal this magnificent sacrifice. No god has the right to judge them.-first tenant of the Panotheust

Cassia

Quote from: aitm on April 09, 2021, 07:56:01 AM
True enough, and a position I have long held. Humans aren’t as smart as we think we are. We are “monkey see, monkey do” but we are not “monkey think”. Only a few of us can invent, only a few of us can really think, the rest simply watch what happens and repeat the actions and they think they are smart.
I have often wondered how long humans existed before someone made the first straw basket. It most certainly was not a dozen at the same time. Go back 100,000 years and pluck those first “genius’s” out of the clan, we would still be using clubs.
Yep, the population distribution for 'high thought' is a bell curve and the difference between the median and the edge of the curve is enormous. It would be interesting to have been able to track the shape of that curve over the centuries because at certain times great thinkers have been persecuted.

Blackleaf

Quote from: aitm on April 09, 2021, 07:56:01 AM
True enough, and a position I have long held. Humans aren’t as smart as we think we are. We are “monkey see, monkey do” but we are not “monkey think”. Only a few of us can invent, only a few of us can really think, the rest simply watch what happens and repeat the actions and they think they are smart.
I have often wondered how long humans existed before someone made the first straw basket. It most certainly was not a dozen at the same time. Go back 100,000 years and pluck those first “genius’s” out of the clan, we would still be using clubs.

I saw a video on YouTube. Some people would throw food at these monkeys on the beach. At first, the monkeys would pick each piece of food out of the sand individually, but there was one monkey that was observed to be particularly intelligent in her group. She'd scoop a handful of food and sand, then dip her hands in the water to separate the food from the sand, saving her time and effort. Some of the other monkeys saw this and started imitating her.  Even after she died, they continued to use her strategy.
"Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound."
--Fulke Greville--

Mike Cl

That reminds me of the 100th monkey hypothesis.
https://stillnessinthestorm.com/2015/10/the-human-hundredth-monkey-effec/

“The new behavior pattern spread to most, but not all, of the monkeys. Older monkeys, in particular, remained steadfast in their established behavior patterns and resisted change. When the new behavior pattern suddenly appeared among monkey troupes on other islands, only a few monkeys on those islands picked up on the new idea. The ones most receptive to new ideas started imitating the new behavior and demonstrating it to the impressionable younger ones. Thus, they too began their own path towards their eventual hundredth monkey effect.”

First the effect was not a complete and total paradigm shift within the monkey population. At best, all that occurred was a transition of awareness; the newer monkeys learned about the washing method, but did not automatically begin washing the potatoes.

Second, the transmission occurred after a sufficient number of monkeys in the host population expressed the washing behavior. It was then that “only a few monkeys on those [new] islands” began washing the potatoes. In other words, it wasn’t enough to simply be aware of this new way, it had to be accepted and expressed in order to ‘build up’ in the host population, which eventually experienced a pandemic awareness of the better way.

Finally, the newly affected monkeys on the surrounding islands “began their own path towards their eventual hundredth monkey effect,” in other words, that the affected population had a time delay between transmission and the majority of monkeys displaying the washing behavior.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

Gawdzilla Sama

Noah's Fark is my fav. This story reinforces the incest memes in the Babble. It ignores physics, thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, basic biology, etc. etc. etc. Got me thrown out of Sunday School when I was seven. First and last visit. I was highly impressed that Mom yelled at me and my brother to go church while not even getting out of bed herself. I guess the Y-donor wanted some holy nookie.
We 'new atheists' have a reputation for being militant, but make no mistake  we didn't start this war. If you want to place blame put it on the the religious zealots who have been poisoning the minds of the  young for a long long time."
PZ Myers

SGOS

I often wondered why my parents were so adamant that I go off to Sunday school, while they stayed a home.

Mr.Obvious

Quote from: SGOS on April 09, 2021, 02:00:31 PM
I often wondered why my parents were so adamant that I go off to Sunday school, while they stayed a home.

Probably same reason why my brother, sister and I went to scouts on Sunday mornings, indeed.
"If we have to go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, requesting 69.

Atheist Mantis does not pray.

Mike Cl

Genesis 1 and 2 are two different creation stories.  It is entertaining to read christians try to explain away the contradictions of those two stories.  And it is fun trying to get a christian to explain who the 'us' and 'our' are in these two verses: 
Genesis 26- Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27- So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

According to the above there is more than one god, humans were created with a committee, adam and eve were created at the same time--fun to watch christians choke on those two verses. 
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?<br />Then he is not omnipotent,<br />Is he able but not willing?<br />Then whence cometh evil?<br />Is he neither able or willing?<br />Then why call him god?

Unbeliever

When people want to preach at me I usually ask them if they've read the whole Bible. If they claim they have I ask them if they still believe it to be the "Word of God," and they usually claim they do. After that I know there is no good reason to continue the duscussion. So I just say I don't believe in human sacrifice.
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

drunkenshoe

Why do you think that any kind of religious scripture needs to be logical for people to believe in them in the first place?
"science is not about building a body of known 'facts'. ıt is a method for asking awkward questions and subjecting them to a reality-check, thus avoiding the human tendency to believe whatever makes us feel good." - tp

SGOS

Logic may be too boring for religious people who center their lives around miracles, people coming back to life, and being protected by magical powers from above.