I will outline one of my personal beliefs on what Genesis tells, giving sources where I may. Agree, disagree, whatever you want, just don't flame. If you disagree or add a point, try to find a source (religous, scientific, philosophical) so we aren't just poorly parroting the arguments of others that we only half remember at each other.
Post your own personal belief system you have developed.
I'll occassionaly add sources as I find them. Gathering sources is a long job though, so I'll post what I have so far.
Note that I cannot prove that there
is a God, or that my personal religous beliefs are true, or other such basic points. Therefore, I assume them as axioms, the same way mathematical proofs are based on unprovable axioms. Disregard what you will.
Feel free to find logic flaws in my postulates or workings. For bonus points find the name of the logical fallacy. (Ad Hominid, etc.)
Overall Hypothesis: God, an immortal ET of great spiritual power, honed the evolution of the Earth through a similar process that we evolve bots in DB, or control the planet in SimEarth. That is, a largely macromanagemental level. When the physical form of man had evolved to the desired form He granted them sentience (the gift of a reasoning soul) through the fruit of the tree of good and evil, similar to how the monolith affected the homonids at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Limitations: Does not address the reported 'immortal' nature of Adam prior to 'the fall'.
Postulate: God is an ET.
Source(s): Dictionary.com says an ET is something "Originating, located, or occurring outside Earth".
Reasoning: Genesis states that God created the Earth. What 'created' means is open to interpretation, but a being cannot 'create' a place it itself was created on. Therefore, if we assume that there is indeed a Creator, He could not have been created on Earth. If he always was as he is now, then he never was created anyway, so there is no place of His creation, therefore God could not have come to exist on Earth. Therefore, by definition, if God exists He must be an ET.
This seems a rather obvious point to make. By making it, I am attempting to shift the rather egocentric view that the Earth is somehow the center of the universe (if not literally than figuratively).
That is, it is extremely arrogant of us to think that God has the time or desire to individually design every organism. See the last postulate below.
Postulate: Man's physical form existed prior to Adam.
Source(s): Any basic biological textbook.
The widely held belief that Adam was roughly 6000 B.C.
Fossil Record.
Postulate: The state of Adam before the fall represented a state of non-sentience, similar to what modern Chimpanzee's possess.
Sources:
Reasoning: This is harder to prove outright. One must read between the lines.
First off, higher apes can be taught basic language skills. These language skills present a state of mind likely no more advanced than a Down syndrome person or a young child.
Neither young children nor retarded people are generally considered accountable for their actions (religously anyway). Why is this? We may say it is because they lack what we define ourselves as possessing. A reasoning soul, sentience, agency, whatever you want to call it.
Thus you see I group apes, young children, and the retarded in that category I call 'non-sentient'. Note that I am not insulting the intelligence of young children or retarded people, but praising the intelligence of the great apes, which has unfortunately been underestimated over the years.
Now, the truly telling sign of the non-sentience of man prior to the fall can be seen in God's reaction to Adam deciding he was naked. Most ape researchers have noticed deceptive behavior in their subjects (ie: lying). Children also often lie. Both do so transparently. Researchers and parents alike aren't fooled by their charges' deceptions, but often play along to teach a lesson or show a point.
When God discovers that Adam has hidden himself, He does not seem angry. He asks "have you eaten from the tree I told you not to?" He obviously knows the answer (he's God afterall, and Adam probably wasn't very good at lying), so this is like a mother asking a child with chocolate all over his face "did you eat the candy bars you weren't supposed to?" The mom already knows the answer. She wants the kid to learn to fess up.
God's reaction to Adam seems much more similar to the relationship between researcher and ape, or parent and small child, than to the relationship between capable reasoning beings.
Postulate: Adam's 'fall' was predesigned, not an accident. God used this as the delivery system for sentience to man.
Sources: LDS doctrine:
Plan of SalvationAnother link to Plan of Salvation that tells the importance of the fallReasoning: I am LDS, so I accept the basic idea of the plan of salvation. Therefore, I accept the idea of the fall as a predesigned step in the progression of children that God crafted in spirit first.
In the same way that it is now hypothesized that AI comparable to our own cannot be developed by a program that has not lived in the world, so did our growth into sentient life demand a physical body like what God has.
The fruit of the tree of good and evil, wether actual fruit or in some way figurative, was like the monolith from 2001. Except, in 2001 the advent of sentience resulted in weapons of war. In the bible, the advent of sentience resulted in the idea of morality, of agency.
Postulate: God was a mutater (like what schvarz likes to do) who groomed life on earth over a long period of time (at least several million years. Probably more).
Reasoning: There once existed many subspecies of homonids, many existing contemporaneously. There now is only one.
It may be argued that God 'weeded' out the undesirable strains as he attempted to groom a physical being he found aesthetically pleasing and similar in form to his own.
The case against intelligent design is strong. It seems much more probable that God (if you assume there is such a person) simply directed the process of evolution over time. This does not negate the idea that God created us. If one of us mutates a new strain of bot we claim ownership of it. We were responsible for the conditions through which this new bot came to be.
That's it. :bigginangel: :devil:
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