Did sin enter the world through Adam, Satan or Yahweh?

in the above case i use a principle from my own school of analytical nihilism known as ‘promethean75’s razor’. and what this principle allows me to do is disclose the distinction between sensible metaphysical statements about empirical objects and processes, and nonsensical metaphysical statements about concepts about empirical objects and processes. what i have discovered is that there are far less sensible metaphysical statements that can be made, then philosophers and theologians like to believe. my duty is to identify that very thin line between such kinds of statements and serve the philosopher/theologian who makes them, a bologna sandwich.

that beind said, there is absolutely nothing that can be derived directly from experience that could sensibly lead a philosopher/theologian to taking any of the available religious doctrines seriously for even a moment. now because there is almost certainly no ‘god’, and, all things must have causes, there must be something other than the existence of the thing believed to exist through the kinds of metaphysical reasoning that leads philosophers/theologians to think it does, that is responsible for making them believe the things they do. in other words, it isn’t because ‘god’ exists that people think ‘god’ exists. something else is responsible for this hermeneutic intellectual process, and the bad news is that it’s almost without exception drawn from and out of a deeply entrenched psychological anxiety… and the even worser news is that this anxiety is itself rooted in the general constitutional weakness and fragility of the human psyche.

the only thing of interest to me regarding the history of religions is an anthropological and sociological examination of the kind of environment in which the religion evolved. the kinds of influences responsible for leading a particular type of people to believing a particular version of this kind of nonsensical metaphysical thinking. this general investigation falls under the rubric of historical materialism, first, and then from that basis particular facts of analysis can be ascertained. for instance, why christians believed in ‘this’ kind of god while hindus believed in ‘these’ kinds of gods, etc. or why this religion permits polygamy while this one doesn’t. or why this religion holds strongly to the notion of ‘sin’ while that other one does not. so on and so forth.

as you can see once i’ve established that both a logical/empirical proof for the existence of ‘god’ is impossible, and have as well dismissed the possibility of revelatory knowledge of ‘god’ (there are mental hospitals and opium dens for folks like that), i’m still at liberty, as an analytical nihilist, to seek the actual causes for why and how people believe in ‘god(s)’ and offer them, at the least, a bologna sandwich.

I’m just now seeing this post for the first time. Yeah yeah, your conclusion re: theology is similar to Prismatic567 i.e. God is impossible. Now in this instance we’re talking about sin. It isn’t obvious that sin is directly related to God, though, if you’re like me, you learned about sin in Christian circles where they were studying Bible texts in which the figure of God appears. Which do you suppose came first the image of sin or the image of God?

sin is just a religious extension of the feeling of shame when being in violation of a social more. that’s all it is, man. first there was embarassment, shame, remorse and regret before our family, peers and social group in general. then that feeling gets expanded to include the same kind of feelings ‘before god’, who is thought to be the arbiter of the morality that is in violation.

so what ended up being called ‘sin’ existed long before any image of god, as human beings were capable of experiencing that embarrassment and shame and stuff long before they developed the cognitive capacity for the abstract reasoning involved in metaphysical thinking. hell, even before they had a phonetic language they were experiencing these feelings. a dude comes running at you with a club right after you take his rabbit off the spit and you’re like ‘shit i musta done something wrong’… but you don’t think in these words. instead it’s a feeling of fear and unrest that’s associated with the act of taking the rabbit. you learn not to do that, because you don’t wanna piss him off. you need this guy on your side. so this is an example of how the pre-linguistic experience of ‘sin’ develops. it’s mediated between people in groups and has its first appearance in the feeling of fear. and this part is important; notice i didn’t say it originates in ‘fight response’, but the fear response. the origin of morality belongs to those who experience shame when they are overpowered by a force that doesn’t permit them to act as they have. this is morality’s crudest and most primitive appearance. the guy with the club certainly didn’t feel any shame, right? i mean he wasn’t like ‘yo you ain’t supposed to do that, bro’ because they didn’t have language yet. only much, much later was that instinctive social dynamic ever developed into an abstract ‘civil’ contract that everyone agreed with.

the feeling of sin isn’t ‘damn i shouldn’t have done that’, originally, but rather ‘shit i didn’t get away with that like i thought i would… and damn if that nigga didn’t call me on it.’

that changes everything, don’t it. and here you were thinking ‘man’ was a nice guy. hell no he ain’t. he’s an inherently despicable creature who acts of his own self interests. the original homo’s erectus was stirnerite through and through. just a carrier of selfish genes. and that’s why you gotta know this shit before you can begin an honest investigation into the problem of ‘man’. and believing in ‘god’ ain’t gonna do nothin but muddle up this investigation.

So where did the idea of gods come from in the first place?

aah you know, little uh this, little uh that. first you get the developmental stage in the human brain which gives the human the ability of apperception (lacan calls it the mirror stage in infants). now the human experiences a phenomenological split with his body, and crude concepts of ‘self’, ‘will’, and ‘freewill’ enter into experience. this feeling of separation makes bodily movement a very strange thing; a fellow first decides he wants to move, and then he orders his body to do so. next thing you know he’s like ‘wait a minute am i in this body? wtf is going on here. this is some weird shit.’ so this experience of ‘will’ being something different from the body was the first part.

next comes the notion of design in nature. a fellow notices that complex objects require his work and effort to come into existence when he makes em. he then makes the analogy that everything in nature, having some degree of physical and material complexity, must also be the result of some effort… and when he couples this idea with his new feeling of ‘will’, he starts thinking that there’s some kind of ‘will’ that made the things in nature.

so it all started when some significant physiological changes occured in the brain which led to ‘cognitive confusions’, for a lack of a better phrase, that caused him to anthropomorphically project an external ‘freewill’ onto the world around him.

and all the stages of belief in spirit followed from that. animism, totemism, polytheism, henotheism, monotheism, and flying spaghetti monsterism. although the last stage didn’t evolve until man had invented pasta, for obvious reasons.

An intelligent man said when the first con man met the first sucker.

All religions of the supernatural type are cons designed to fool the gullible and help them part with their cash.

The rise of monotheism, not the stupid Christian type of a 3 in 1 godhead, is natural I think.

We are a hierarchical species who all look to our best and brightest for guidance. On earth leads to as in heaven. We made as above as below when we invented our gods.

Regards
DL

I don’t think humans invented religion, which is why humans won’t be able to stop religion. To me, religion appears to be a product of the collective unconscious as Jung proposed. The ancients didn’t invent the gods. The gods were imaginal realities to them. Yahweh and Satan and Adam and sin were archetypal manifestations of the unconscious human psyche.

Meh, the interesting question isn’t really where gods and religions came from, or why, or even if it’s all bullshit or not. It’s “Okay, if it is complete bullshit, why have they stuck around so long…?”

All religions are are tribal units and yes, we are tribal by nature.

All gods are figments of our imagination. All were invented by men. Immoral men at that.

We, as you can see from the stats, will eventually rid ourselves of the religious tribes and be loyal to our secular gods and countries.

If you check the World Peace Index, you will see that the less religion a country has, the more peaceful and law abiding it is.

Proof for that is the war mongering U.S. that touts itself as a Christian nation while having the highest jail stats in the free world.

Regards
DL

The Noble Lie of their usefulness to the people, while they only serve themselves.

Further,
The fact that the mainstream religions grew from inquisitions and jihads because they did not have decent moral arguments tell the whole story.

Regards
DL

Ok, if they’re wholly self-serving, that would make religions soley a burden on a society/group, with no offsetting benefits. Rendering those religiously inclined groups/societies less competitive throughout history.

Why then is there no seeming evidence, nor surviving modern example of, an irreligious society…?

There are, and statistics show that the less religion a country has, the more peaceful and law abiding they are.

youtube.com/watch?v=VdtwTeBPYQA

There are off-setting benefits, for the in group.

There is no benefit to the out group as demonstrated by the use of inquisitions and jihads by those who have no decent moral arguments to convert and must resort to murder.

Regards
DL

No, I mean if religions are so destabilizing to a society as your research suggests, why do all surviving societies in the world have one…?

Why wasn’t the entire world domimated by irreligious groups throughout history…?

The Noble Lie fostered by the Kings who did not have time to micro manage the Temple Prostitutes used by the religions.

It was also a good way, like any fraud, for kings to get their cash back by fooling the people.

youtube.com/watch?v=b8C6uJ66wv8

You seem to forget the plethora of gods that peopled followed. They prayed to one for this, another for that.

Don’t forget that all the gods are, are adult fairy tales, and we love our drama.

Regards
DL

Because religion teaches that if you question authority (wealth), that you’ll be sent to hell forever. Capitalists literally masterbate to religion, it keeps the dollars rolling in!

What we are “by nature” we don’t invent. A religious attitude is natural to humans. When modern people find themselves unable to subscribe to one or the other orthodox faith, they look for a substitute. Secular totalitarian states like fascism and communism grow out of the religiosity of human nature.

Greatest I Am,

They made a choice. Perhaps living in the moment and becoming all that they could become (which would be impossible in a patriarchal world) was much more important to them than an eternal life which they could never be sure of. Our first rebels. :evilfun:

The Adam and Eve story isn’t the recounting of a historical event. It’s a myth that shows us the contrast between paradise and our existential situation. If Adam and Eve ate the fruit the tree of life and lived happily ever after forever the story wouldn’t reflect the way things are.

Like I’ve said a “million” times on these boards. In order to falsify god, all one need do is ask “is my consent being violated right now?” Yes, for every being in existence — it is!”

I’ve studied comparative religion quite a bit. I’ve read well over 1000 “holy names for god”. Not a single one of those names even resembles “the great eradicator of consent violation”

That’s because gods can all be falsified as GOOD or BAD by one by using this heuristic.

Of course religion is going to state that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is going to send mankind to hell. That means that you’re judging plutocrats!!

Religions are basically tribal units and yes, we are naturally tribal. Religious liars have used our nature against us forever.

We all have a natural mental itch that there is something higher than ourselves, but it takes lying preachers to make us believe that their homophobic and misogynous gods, who is genocidal, is somehow good.

I agree that religions are fascist.

The Vatican being Hitler’s bank and their helping Hitler’s brass escape after WWII shows the truth of this.

Regards
DL