Fair warning: This post is trolling. I am looking for people that enjoy a debate about this subject. I do not mean to offend innocents, merely to see what support others come up with.
There was an article about scientists trying to find why Spring was coming earlier recently in certain areas.
I joked with a friend that these silly scientists should have listened to what religion has known for thousands of years. The seasons are really caused by the goddess Demeter, whose daughter Persephone was taken to the underworld, and because she ate a single pomegranite seed, she’s required to go there for 6 months of the year. This depresses Demeter so much that she lets the world die while Persephone’s away.
The other person, actually joked “Doesn’t it seem ridiculous to make the entire world suffer for one woman’s fruit-related indiscretion?” There was then a momentary pause while we both realized the correlation between that story and the Garden of Eden.
So my questions are:
Do you find the stories of other religions to sound ridiculous?
Do you find Biblical stories plausible?
Would Biblical stories still be plausible if they weren’t in the Bible?
Generally speaking, people believe the religion that they were imprinted with by family, church/school, and friends while they were young, and before they had learned anything whatsoever about critical thinking. That religion becomes a functional paradigm which resides in the brain, acting as a filter through which all other ideas must pass.
It remains an effective filter unless the soul acquires a level of consciousness such that it can learn critical thinking. This happens in only about 3% of individuals, and often results in the rejection of all beliefs.
Beliefs are also commonly rejected if they must compete with considerable disagreement. Most perfessers become atheists because in a modern university environment, they would be out of lockstep with other perfessers if they believed in a Creator.
Seen through the filter of whatever belief system one’s brain is programmed with, all other beliefs, theories, or opinions appear wrong.
For example, although I gave up my Catholic beliefs about half a century ago, when exposed to the beliefs of most other religions, the Baltimore Catechism has the edge. Had I been raised a Mormon, no doubt I would find the angel Moroni a credible source of truth, instead of the invented entity I currently regard him as.
However, I do not give my childhood catechism a great edge over other teachings. Currently coming from the universal rejection of all religions, including Darwinism, I tend to measure the value of a set of religious beliefs by how much tweaking would be required to make better sense of them in the context of what we know about physics and microbiology.
On a scale where 10 represents a set of beliefs which is totally compatible with every known bit of data, my ratings are thus:
10 - Beon Theory.
9 - The original teachings of Jesus Christ as expressed in the testaments of Matthew and Mark.
8 - Classical Buddhism (emphasis on the classical, rarely practiced form).
7 - The modern Catholic Church. . Judaism.
6 - All modern Christian churches about which I know a little.
5 - The Bahai (sp) faith.
4 - Zoroastrianism, Islam, derivative sects.
2 - Hinduism
1 - Greco/Roman paganism, devil worship, etc.
0 - Atheism
Plausibility is a separate issue, and is always dependent upon the particular story. Garden of Eden: implausible. The history of Moses, highly plausible. The best measure of plausibility is whether or not Hollywood can torque a story into a money making move.
For example, have we not all watched Charlton Heston bring the Jews out of Egypt? Samson and Delilah, the beheading of John the Baptist, have been turned into profitable (popular) movies. There are plenty of successful stories about Jesus’ life, all focusing upon His death. Many successful stories deal with the early phases of Christianity.
However, the only movies I’ve seen about the Garden of Eden myth are either bad movies or B-rated comedies.
More important than the Historical Record (c.f.
Galaxy Quest) is the plausibility of a religion’s metaphysics. I.e: How effective is its explanation for the beginnings of things? (Darwinism dies falling on that particular sword.) Religions which hypothesize a Creator, or Creators imply that intelligence was behind creation. This in turn implies that the creator(s) must have good reasons for creation. However, I have yet to find any religion that has invented a reason for creation that would make a credible soap opera plot.
