Beginning of Life
 

This is something I would like to see everyones thoughts/opinions on.

How do you think humans came to be?

Do you believe in Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden theory?

Or do you prefer Charles Darwin's evolution theory?

Do you think it could have been a little bit of both? Kind of like there is/was a Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve did their thing but they weren't fully capable or evolved as a modern human being is today, so they evolved too?

Or if you have any other theories, thoughts or beliefs take a shot.

To be frank, believing literally in the Genesis story is simply ludicrous in this day and age. However, I do believe in the ultimate truth behind the Genesis myth, that God, or whatever you choose to call it, is behind creation and flowing throughout creation. Technically speaking, I believe in evolution.

I don't "believe" in theories.
I accept them as provisional explanations from the best available evidence.
I think they are the best explanation of things until newer and better ones appear.

I look to science for theories about this.
Looks like the current one is evolution.

We're one of the animals.
Nothing different or special about us or how we came to be.

What ART said~

I think Humans are the inevitable result of a living Earth (Gaia). Darwins evolutionary theory, has an effect, but the intertwined nature of life is the force that guides each species to its current incarnation. Genesis....although an interesting myth, is to me so very unlikely, it borders on impossible.

I can toss out some good ones.

QM many-universes anthropological:
Mankind came to be because it was possble, and in those universes in which Mankind did not come to be the question "how did Mankind come to be" was never asked.

That arguement works for lots of varients, including "extremely large non-uniform universe" and "repeating universe" models.

You can look at that arguement in a fluffy bunny mystical way by saying "intelligence appeared because the universe needed something to look at itself with."

In the less metaphysical, evolutionary arguements are the most solid. At the least, they provide an explanation on how humans came to be without requring strange mojo like aliens or dieties or many universe theories.

Why do you ask the question, optic?

Evolution.

My friends/girlfriend always talk about things that no one talks about. And this was one of our recent topics of deabte, so I was wanting to see what a vast majority of different people have to say about this topic.

And yes I know this a common thing to talk about so I thought it would be an easy topic for most everyone to pop in their own two cents. If that makes sense. :-P

Quantum evolution is where ill place my bet.

I believe the more interesting answers come not from the question "how?" but from "why?". Because while many agree as to how we got here, usually some form of godhead/intellegence or pure chance/nature, i find many people have their own versions of why we are here.

The garden of Eden, to take the story literally is such a joke, a weakness. Try to reguard it as metaphorical and see what kind of meaning you can get.

The evidence for evolution is obvious and we are one of the animals, BUT, we are different. We have the ability to create, who would say that this doesn't seperate us? make us 'special'?

obviously we would consider things that we do as special. we may have differences that mark us as unique - but so does every animal species.

I have a view of creation/evolution similar to that of SecretMethod. Clearly, the Genesis myth is a giant metaphor to explain to people the concept of what happened.

To deny evolution as a whole is just crazy, since even as human beings, we are still evolving.

I agree with ART insofar as I think that for the scientific origins of humans, we should look to science, and science tells us that we came to be through evolution. Being a Christian, I of course also believe that God is behind the whole thing.

I don't think that a blend of a literal interpretation of Genesis and evolution works at all. It's clear from scripture that Adam and Eve are supposed to be exemplars of the human race; that is, that they, if anything, were more human than we are.

Ghostsdaddy suggest that "even as human beings, we are still evolving". I'm not sure that this is the case; I'm not a scientist by any means, but given that evolution works through death rates, and we have a habit of saving the lives of the weak and infirm (at least long enough for them to reproduce), it would seem to be an open question whether or not we're still evolving.

A couple people have suggested that we are just animals with a few quirks. The question probably deserves its own thread, but my two cents is this. I'm certainly a materialist about human persons -- there is no part of us that is not material. but we seem to be quite different from animals; it's not that we are better builders or inventors or whatever. It seems that we are qualitatively different from animals. As Nietzsche writes, "We are not thinking frogs."

we exist merely to exist, there is no deeper reason. why is the sky blue? why does the dog bark? why do we exist? all the same question. at least as far as the inner human soul goes, it's the same question. although, i don't know about the word soul, it has too much connotation associated with it. conciousness is probably better suited, however, that has a lot of physical connotation with it as well. the soul / conciousness i speak of trancends physical reality and exists beyond it. don't get me wrong, it does exist in physical reality, but i think it exists in infinately many more realities, dimensions, planes, etc as well.

okay, so why has part of your vast conciousness decided to take part in physical reality at this time? for its own personal development, of course! i believe each conciousness goes through many personal trials, tests, experiences in order to expand and learn. not just in this reality, but many more as well. i think we exist in all these realities simultaneosly.. which is also misleading, because i think all time exists at the same instant. even that doesn't sound right because an instant is impossible to define. what it comes down to that our true nature is very difficult to define in merely physical terms because it is not a merely physical existence.

well, i've rambled enough... you get a general idea of what my personal beleifs on existance are. if i had to classify myself in a certain religion i would say i'm a buddhist, as i tend to agree with most buddhist beliefs and ideas.

Brady's First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?"

puncuated equilibrium!

I have to agree here and add that I believe created evolution is possible if you think of all the 'energy' that exists is the universe. Everything from the smallest atom to the largest suns in the universe are made up of energy and this energy follows a pattern to hold to it's purpose. This energy can also transform itself if the current form is not working well or becomes obsolete.

Following this line of thought, you must ask yourself- who taught the energy how to 'think'? Why does it 'think'? The best answer I have come up with is some type of creative force or greater energy from which all other energy comes.

Just my 2 cents worth of granola philosphy...

This is a question I've grappled with myself for a long time. Evolutionary theory certainly appeals to me rationally, and I accept that it is one of the mechanisms that facilitated the emergence of one species from another, culminating in H. sapiens. At the same time, when I consider how all the individual parts of the universe - and particularly earth's biosphere - interact to form a highly complex, intricate, self-sustaining, and self-modifying system, I can't help concluding that the entire process from big bang to the ascendency of Man has more likely been intentionally driven rather than the result of random chance.

Scientists (i.e., adherents to the religion of scientism, which includes nearly everyone reading this) are fond of dismissing the notion of a supreme being by patly stating that there is no scientific evidence for the existence of such a being. It never occurs to them to look at the other side of that coin: that there is no proof that such a being does not exist either. I don't think that evolution and the existence of an intelligent creative force are mutually exclusive. One need only look at the human genome to see that it is not only very elegantly coded but that it is coded in the only possible way it could've been in order to function correctly. (See Douglas R. Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas) It just doesn't strike me as probable that 15 billion years of random events brought it about.

In short, life is the result of evolution directed by an intelligent agent of unknown properties.

Exactly! Now if only I could learn to say as much in so few words....

Splendid. That's a very powerful and elegant summary of how evolution works. Those genomes which make organisms that aren't very good at existing, stop existing, because there is no organism to carry and reproduce them.

However, to say 'only possible way' is misleadingly ambiguous. If this were true, we would be the only species on Earth and everyone would be a clone. Clearly this isn't the case, but I'm really just being pedantic.

The story of the Garden of Eden may well be true. To believe it, we would have to throw all reasoning out of the window and replace it with the argument from authority (It's true, because I say so, and what I say goes, because I say so and what I say goes....) Admittedly all forms of reasoning are necessarily incomplete/circular, but if we're just going to stop reasoning, we may as well make up any old story to explain things, leaving evolution equally as valid as creation. Or we could sit here going "bululbulblubulbulbblubblub" with our fingers in our lips (try it, it's fun!)

However, I'm happy to work with inductive and deductive reasoning for the moment. Consequently, I go for Evolution.

Just a quick note. Please do not call Creationism a theory. Whether or not it's true, it does not fit any of the criteria for a theory. See definitions HERE

There is no such thing as the "Theory of The Garden of Eden" or "Creation Theory", no matter what the Biology textbooks tell you. Think of it like this:

-You don't believe in Creation just because you read it in the Bible do you?

-I'm not that stupid. It's just as valid a theory as evolution. Look, it says here...

Agreed. The book I cited does a much better job of illustrating what I was getting at. The mapping of genes to certain chemicals is anything but arbitrary.

I figure that a whole lot of unlikely events put us in the one place in our solar system that could allow life to evolve, and humans are the lucky ones who ended up as the dominant species. Some sort of higher power might have had something to do with it a really long time ago, but that's out of the picture now. Everything can be explained rationally without needing to create a god to make ourselves feel special and delude ourselves into thinking that we were chosen to be in our place at the top of the ladder.

I suspect it will be a long time before science will be able to rationally explain everything away. By then, we may have such a dismal mechanistic view of ourselves and the universe that we'll wish we hadn't asked. In the meantime, philosophy exists to fill in the gaps.

i think that in the begining humans balanced the extremely complicated equation that is our plant and everything was perfect untill we started manipulating our environment see in the words of homer we are a lot like "Beer the cause of and solution to all of lifes problems"

we are both perfection and the end of existance

God doesent exist we just feel insignificant and don't want to solve our own problems it is something that is inherent in every person we want someone to come and make it all better so we created them to instill hope and controle of the masses

Actually, it's quite simple to logically prove something that we are willing to believe in the first place.

The Genesis account of life is inherently flawed. God's original purpose was for humans to live forever on earth. Eve screwed this up for all of us. This proves that God can't do anything He wants...apparently there ARE some things beyond His control. If He is all powerful, why didn't He just fix things? Even if he has to prove something to all of us here on earth, why can't we still get back to His original purpose?

It seems to me that God went to Plan B...have humans die and take them to Heaven....or whatever your particular religion teaches. Nevertheless, the Bible is quite clear--God had a plan and he had to bail.