On Friday during yet another discussion on religion, someone said something which made me get up and read a bit in the Bible.
This guy sounds intelligent, balanced and pretty calm and happy in his own beliefs, but his statement once again highlighted to me the extraordinary mental processes religious people have to perform in order to stay religious.
He said 2 things: "Because of man's sin, death came into the world", and "that's also assuming that people existed before adam and eve, but that's a complete different debate" So, I had a read in Genesis 4, just to refresh my mind. As expected, according to the Bible, there were other people around at the time of the Adam and Eve story. Adam's sons had to marry someone in order to continue the line after all. Or did Christians imagine they just wished their children into existence.
The point of all this? It is pretty obvious to me that the Adam and Eve story is nothing more than the historical story of the beginnings of the Jewish tribe. In fact, the whole Old Testament is nothing more than the history, legend, and fables of a fledgling nation, trying to make their mark in a hostile and mostly barren world.
Why then, does teachers and the whole organised religious structure to this day teach our children the nonsense of Adam and Eve? Why is a whole religion based on the flawed and exaggerated story of one tribe?
How can intelligent adults teach their children that Adam and Eve were the first people and their "sin" is the reason for all the world's problems?
Blame the Romans I say. At the right time in history they adopted Christianity as the state religion, and the rest is history.
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