I'd say christianity doesn't need to be true. The whole point of having faith gets negated by the search for absolute certainty.

Try Kierkegaard and his idea of a "leap of faith".

Not christian myself but applying principles to your life and act "as if" there is a god, then your days until death will be more likely to be like heaven than hell.

I wouldn't oversimplify by just living by principles. Look at the core values of christianity and compare them to something like humanism and you will find common denominators. Some examples: unconditional love, solidarity, generosity, justice and equality, tolerance etc.

Now you could argue: wait actual christians aren't [insert life-affirming value] at all! That is because core principles and values don't seem to be internalized and applied that much, instead the focus lies on finding out if the scripture is true in a scholastic and calculated sense. Roger Bacon criticised this.

In pragmatic terms the bible doesn't need to be true for it work.

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Paul's use of Adam in the NT is about his theological relationship to Christ, not say, where the garden of Eden is located or how if you travel there you can still see an angel with a flaming sword. As in, his argument hinges on symbolism not "I can prove it, travel to so and so and you'll see where it was".

It's really hard to make this explanation short but the true/false distinction in a text is a product of a separation of language into the 'literal' and the 'metaphorical' where the literal is objectively factual and the metaphorical is subjective and arbitrary which is illustrated by you saying at the start "You can interpret the story in a way that appeals to you, but that's not the same as it being true." Clearly Paul takes the old testament stories and 'interprets' Adam's typological relationship to Christ. That doesn't mean that he is exactly making an argument for Eden or Adam as literal in that context, but I don't think at the time he was writing this split was exactly conscious, in other words to use the text symbolically did not mean it had to first be separated as non-literal, partly because other explanations (e.g. darwinism) didn't really exist.

Your point about Christ however is true, I think clearly the early church were staking something on Jesus resurrection as a literal event, and there is no avoiding that. This would be where you get to Lewis and Tolkien's discussion of a 'true myth' in terms of the meeting of history and symbolism.

I think the existence of famine, homelessness, etc are for most part political problems. The point being that solutions will require massive restructuring on a societal level. I think at the end of the day what matters when it comes to change in the world is action. 'Care' is often a precursor to said action, but not always, so I suppose it's only really relevant in a limited capacity. The only reason I mentioned it in first place is to demonstrate why there is little support available for certain workers despite the harsh and detrimental conditions.

I don't actually like charities or NGO's either. I'd also rather give my money to a homeless person on the street any day over those organisations for the very reasons you lay out.

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> the literal-materialist interpretation that 19th-20th century fundamentalists have applied to it did not exist until fairly recently.

The Hebrew Calendar is based on a literal reading of the story.

Eden is part of a symbolic worldview, and the literal-materialist interpretation that 19th-20th century fundamentalists have applied to it did not exist until fairly recently.

Read Genesis symbolically.

That’s subjective not everyone is Einstein nor capable.

For example laws have finite limit to those who wish to able and those who shall not and most would not follow and religion allows those who don’t have guidance and it prevents wars and etc.

> The burden of proof is not on the ‘legions of heathen internet trolls’, it is on those claiming a positive - ie the existence of benevolent deity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy) > > > > The burden of proof is the obligation on a party in a dispute to provide sufficient warrant for its position. > > > > Shifting the burden of proof: One way in which one would attempt to shift the burden of proof is by committing a logical fallacy known as the argument from ignorance. It occurs when either a proposition is assumed to be true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is assumed to be false because it has not yet been proven true.

It's interesting how the mind executes "logic" depending on the topic of discussion.

I wanna see spent shells and cheese

I also eat meat, but candidly I can't justify it. I think the only way you could argue it's permissible is by supposing animals aren't proper subjects of moral consideration (e.g., they don't suffer or their suffering doesn't matter, or it's consistent to treat them as means rather than ends in themselves). But that's a difficult sell, and even if we grant it, there's also the harms inflicted on people by widespread production of meat -- e.g., the environmental impact or undue consumption of resources compared to other kinds of food production.

There's plenty of room to try and doubt these considerations, but there's at least a plausible case for vegetarianism. And what's the countervailing consideration? I can't really come up with anything more serious than "I like eating meat."

> You can interpret the story in a way that appeals to you, but that's not the same as it being true. If we take the story as representing the invention of agriculture, as the article suggests, then it definitely isn't true.

The only 'truth' one can wring out of this myth is how the jewish religious elite somewhere around the time of king Hezekiah thought about the relation between humanity, human culture and nature.

Anything beyond that is just a reflection of the author's opinions projected on a text that has nothing to do with it. I don't think myths mean very much by themselves, they are just a canvas for us to paint our own pictures. It very much works like any fanfiction, in that it simplifies writing your own stories because they are supported by a canon shared between you and the people you want to communicate your ideas with.

> Simply that's its fundamental role is theological rather than literal. In such a time the distinction beyond that simply didn't exist.

Can you clarify what you mean by this? Are you saying people at the time didn't understand that something in the Bible could be false? That can't be right. The Bible itself gives commands for punishing people who don't believe it, and the New Testament complains about scoffers. 1 Corinthians 15:14 mentions the possibility that Jesus didn't rise from the dead. Paul was not suggesting that was really the case, but it shows he understood the difference between literal truth and theology.

yes, and use a macaroni cannon of course.

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Sorry to be clear about the latter part - I'm not arguing Eden was seen as "just a myth" by bible authors, I also didn't say or don't think Paul didn't believe it was a real place. Simply that's its fundamental role is theological rather than literal. In such a time the distinction beyond that simply didn't exist.

How would you make a cheese railgun? Would you wrap the cheese in magnetic foil?

I suppose if the cheese is hard enough, but I would imagine the heat of ignition would take away a fair amount of mass, structural integrity and aerodynamic value

That's a good analogy. Just like anything can be a "bullet" if it goes fast enough, so can anything be "truth" with enough mental gymnastics.

I mean, at a high enough velocity cheese could work. Cheese railguns maybe?

There is no defense for myth as truth. That's like the defense of cheese as bullets.

Logically, I say have a great day. #cheers

You can interpret the story in a way that appeals to you, but that's not the same as it being true. If we take the story as representing the invention of agriculture, as the article suggests, then it definitely isn't true. Humans were not immortal egalitarian vegetarians before the invention of agriculture. Not remotely to any of those adjectives. It's also very strange that the author suggests Paul didn't believe Eden was a real place, and though he acknowledges that Paul made several references to Adam as a person, he seems to say that Paul somehow didn't really mean it as referring to a real person? He appears in Jesus's genealogy in Luke, so the idea of him as a person was around in early Christianity. The narrative in Genesis describes real world rivers in relation to Eden. Josephus referred to Adam and Eve as real people and Eden as a real place. It seems like the author is projecting his view onto ancient people.

Me, using myth as a heuristic for understanding the world around me: lol

The universe, which does not give a fuck about myth: lol