The General Religion, Mythology, and Theology Thread

Adam and Eve suppoedly had hundreds of children. The benefit of near-immortality.

According to Jewish tradition, Adam had 33 sons and 23 daughters with Eve. Adding in the Long-Lived nature of early Biblical humans, the population of humanity around Adam's death could have been in the tens of thousands at least.

The Bible also doesn't say how old Cain and Abel were when Cain killed Abel. And considering they were also fairly Long-Lived, being the firstborn of Adam and Eve, it's entirely possible that there were a lot more humans around when the murder took place.

Another question to consider would be where and what the Land of Nod is. You know, the place where Cain knew his wife. According to some interpretations, it was something of an Evil Counterpart to Eden — Nod was a place that symbolized the condition of all who forsake God.

Edited by M84 on Apr 15th 2019 at 9:53:19 PM

>there's very few stories in the Bible that go happily and without misery and violence

One could point out that there are few stories period that go happily without misery and violence. Conflict is a core part almost all stories.

IMHO, regarding those early stories as anything other than allegory is pretty much missing the point.

Tell that to the Bible literalists.

Notably, the Catholic Church did tell them that in the Renaissance.

It didn't go over well.

They tell that today and people still don't listen.

Took me years to convince my mom that yes, the Church does accept the theories of the Big Bang and Evolutions as corrects, hell, one of the guys who came up with the former was a bloody priest!

Not to mention the whole "Church believes the world is flat" nonsense.

The trouble with even allegory, when elevated to being part of the greatest most important book of all time, is that Unfortunate Implications can abound and people can infer a Family-Unfriendly Aesop and run with it. Allegories can be used to "demonstrate" any point at all.

In this specific instance, I see a blatant case of favouritism, with no good reason given to God's choice. It is followed by God standing by and letting the transgression happen, then showing up immediately after fully aware of everything, to give Cain an exile with a safe-conduit. Which, while being some mercy, is neither infinite nor warranted, seeing as he later kills people on the spot for far less than first degree murder.

Wait, what!?

That's news for me.

People take different things from allegory and mythology this is true. I personally don't think there's ever a Cain or an Abel because of what science has said while still believing in a literal Creator deity. However, I think this is a strange series of judgements you're making that seem designed to put the worst spin on whatever he does. "Favoritism" in terms of what sacrifices you want made to you is a bizarre thing to come down on as choosing what your favorite ice cream is, only to have someone murdered over it is not on the guy who chooses the favorite ice cream. Next, you're blaming God for not intervening and then for not being more ruthless. Except also blaming him for not being more merciful too.

I'm not saying the story doesn't have Unfortunate Implications but thre's a lot of contradiction there.

Asking for consistency is contradictory? What would you rather have from an authority figure, randomly distributed punishment and reward, being at the constant mercy of their whim and mood, or clear rules that they commit to and which let you know where you stand? Would you like to be told what pleases or displeases them in advance, or would you rather be told the preferences after the fact? Do you know what kind of leader follows the latter method for doling out reward and approval?

Yes, actually. You are ascribing motives and methodology to fit your theory rather than the theory to fit motives and methodology. Even if you assume the Old Testament God is 100% as described, you also notably are ignoring the fact that the God changes his opinion fairly regularly. Humans are capable of arguing and challenging God in the Old Testament—not to mention winning.

He is not described as an unchanging monolith of 100% same beliefs.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 16th 2019 at 6:59:24 AM

I've seen theologians suggest the reason Jesus was born is God attempting to understand the human condition.

The god who claims, and is claimed, to be all knowing, perfect, and complete, demonstrably changes behaviour patterns and opinions, which implies he is sometimes wrong about things. Now that is a contradiction. It becomes horrifying when he gives himself the authority to dole out absolute judgment, harsh, collective, indiscriminate punishment in the world, and eternal, personal punishment in the afterlife.

Edited by Oruka on Apr 16th 2019 at 7:21:36 AM

There's a really persistent myth that that the Catholic Church perpetuated the belief that the Earth was flat and persecuted people who said otherwise.

It's partly why people still buy into the whole "Columbus proved that the world was round" bulslshit - he wouldn't have to prove that, as everyone already knew that to be the case, including the Church.

From what I recall, it's partly people mixing stuff up with the Church's opposition to heliocentrism (though that's also a bit more complex than it's often made out to be) and plain old anti-Catholic propaganda aimed at making the Church look more backwards than it actually was.

It’s especially ironic considering that it was the Nordics who believed that the world was flat.

Ever since the times of Saint Augustine and the Late Roman Empire the Church was already arguing against literalism in the Bible and in favour of conciling the knowledge of the classical world with the Christian cosmology.

Not to mention that it ignores the fact that the monks were learned in the liberal arts.

Columbus's problem was that he was arguing that the Earth was smaller than it was so trying to do the trip to Asia would be survivable if I'm not mistaken.

Yep. He was well aware the Earth was (at least sorta) spherical. As were the people he was pitching the idea of his trip to. He just thought it was a much smaller sphere than it actually was, thus he didn't expect there to be another landmass.

IIRC, Columbus' was possibly the biggest stroke of good luck^note For him, obviously, not the natives in human history: by the time he got to the New World, his crew was on the verge of mutiny.

Columbus actually was aware that there was a landmass where he was headed to (by examining driftwood from North America). His mistake was interpreting his findings. He assumed that the only landmass across the ocean was Asia, and that therefore the Earth must have been smaller than the Greeks previously estimated. However, the truth was that the Greeks were basically right, and that said landmass was actually a landmass previously undiscovered by his people.

Which is kinda weird if you remember that someone else already discovered land further west some centuries earlier.

Yeah it kinda is weird.

Yeah like I said, he misjudged the equator. Based on the measurements of the equator he was working with, that driftwood could have conceivably come from Asia (but of course it didn't). Why he ignored everyone previously who played Grand Central Station (to paraphrase Gaiman) with the Americas is beyond me though.

Inca Garcilaso de la Vega does record that there was a Proto-navegant from the Canarias or the Azores (I can’t remember well at the moment) who was the direct justification for Columbus to do his trip, as he claimed that there had been land to the west, probably Brazil.

Mind you, it was still a mistake in considering South East Asia an even bigger archipielago than what it actually is.

Edited by raziel365 on Apr 16th 2019 at 10:19:19 AM

Thing is, the whole "Columbus wanted to prove the world is round" myth completely falls apart when you consider that the people who pushed for it had to simultaneously be bying into the myth that the Catholic Church was enforcing Flat Eartherism on people.

Now remember whom Columbus asked to finance his expedition: The Catholic Monarchs, probably the most zealous Catholic rulers around at the time.

So not only did Columbus allegedly want to go directly against the Catholic Church, he was financed by ardent arch-Catholics to do so?

The whole thing really boggles the mind.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 16th 2019 at 7:15:31 PM