When young, such concepts are biblical fairytales, which we grow out of with age… along with our childhood and believing in Santa and the Tooth Fairy.
Why can’t we believe without believing the impossible biblical sentiments? A test of faith, perhaps, of loyalty?
Matthew 6:22 is a fitting analogy for my East/West mindset, as it is in-keeping with an Ignostic outlook on any Spiritual practice.
Perhaps we were all Ignostic, before the creation of religion and Polytheism and such? so just prior to us looking outside of ourselves for guidance, on all aspects of our lives.
Unfortunately disbelief does not constitute fact. When talking about things that can exist in the external world, things can indeed exist regardless of whether one believes it or not.
What part of the world was that? and why serpent worship? were these poisonous ones by any chance…? to kill thine enemy with a snake bite or toss them into a pit full of snakes and so into an agonising death…
…or coexist in a harmonious union? One dominating over the other, has proved not to lead to the furtherment of humankind, but hinder it by the struggle of power and wills.
Even if it is, you might remember that physicians use the snake as a part of their symbol and the bible shows that when the serpent bites, he give life and not death.
I think the serpent is revered world wide due to it sheading it’s skin and being reborn the way many want to be in heaven after their death.
To your last.
Cooperation is good, but if we do not compete for the best and fittest who have the best ideas, we will go extinct.
We are a hierarchical species and must have leadership. It is in our nature to want to be the fittest or to follow the fittest.
Our DNA has and it is what hold our natures and instincts, so I would call that finding speculative.
It is a reasonable assumption but I don’t see how it could ever be proven.
Remember that we began as a shrew with a tiny brain. To think that a large brained animal would think and have the same instincts and nature as a shrew is quite the stretch. shrew, for instance, would always fear fire while a larger brain would learn to harness it. Shrews are also solitary while we are now tribal.
The more I think of unchanged nature, the closer I get to rejecting it. Best to say IDK.
I’m not a fan of that particular beast… I never trust snakes, of the human or reptilian kind.
Funny how in Catholicism the serpent is portrayed as evil, so maybe indicating that the old ways are not always the best ways for current times.
Well… to follow the most capable and knowledgeable, but are such types also the fittest? I’ve met quite a few ‘leaders’ and was not at all impressed, but that’s the non-filtering mechanism of nepotism for you.
Science denial is not my position and both religions and science now have God’s of the Gaps.
Science has a hell of a better track record of being right on things and using the reason and logic that you bible tells you to use.
Science has proven some of religions views, like us all being born sinners, do evil in secular terms, but to believe that there are real talking serpents and donkeys is to not use reason or logic at all.
If you think god gave you a brain and a moral sense, don’t waste it on a genocidal satanic god.
Good insight again, except you are a touch shy on the serpent.
And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.
Numbers 21:8
Matthew 10:16 Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
Genesis 3 ;3 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.