...did you write the article or something? (if not, why defend it like this?)

> In such a time the distinction beyond that simply didn't exist.

It does now. We're reading the myth now.

Thank you so much for your reply.

I can't really accept either point, but I don't think we actually disagree all that much. Let's say that we are looking at the same scene but from two different angles. Let me try and explain in a different way why, to me, while your answer addresses many great questions, it doesn't address mine.

Suppose I do just want to make other people happy. I just want to help end suffering for other people. As you say on page 20, "a primary value is an arbitrary choice". I understand that a researcher like you is interested in how that came to be. However, that genealogy is not "my" reason for my motivation. It is a cause not a reason. A value is considered by me as the ultimate goal. I don't look for justifications for the value; for other facts that, by virtue of being true, make my goal become valid. I don't care.

I understand what you're doing. For the last 160-odd years people have been given the message that their essence is to survive and out-compete. You are following others who explain that their thinking is an incorrect understanding of evolution. Of course, an "is" does not follow from an "ought". The fact that their understanding might lead to a destruction of our civilization, does not make their thinking wrong. You just show that, in fact, the more desirable interpretation is the correct one.

It's good that you're countering the "be-selfish" brainwashing (if you will), but is it necessary? You are what you are. You will always do what you want to do. The question is only how should we structure our society around that, so that we are all most likely to succeed at our own goals. How do we not step on each other toes? Not because it is bad to step on the toes of other people but (a) many of us don't want to and (b) it will get all our toes burned up if we do.

“Christianity is the correct mythology”

Oh, yeah. I can see why it is funny.

Mythology is the archeology of psychology.

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Hi. Your reply is a factual argument about how best to implement my own preference.

Value. I don't want to suffer. Fact. Letting others suffer increases the chances that they will make you suffer. Plan. Decrease their suffering.

I called it a value here. But it is a preference. There is no argument here that I "should" hold to that preference. There is just the description that I do. I could just as easily be a masochist. I know that I have Neural modules that implement Motivational Salience but that is just a fancy way of saying that I do what I want to do.

Again, moral skepticism does not imply that I prefer only survival or my own pleasure (though advertisers have an interest in my thinking that.) I could just prefer helping other people. I get a real buzz when I prevent suffering. Is that a "value"?

>True but consciously even without a brain just like other animals without it we’ll still commit evil.

Animals without brains don't exist.

Humans can't exist without a brain, our bodily functions would not function. You are completely and utterly missing the point.

In a universe with just photons, there is no evil. There is nothing that can act evil and there is nothing that could be the victim of evil. Light particles don't care if you torture it, it is not possible to torture light particles or otherwise make them suffer. THAT is the point.

So if God exists, God demands brains to be capable of worshipping God, and thus God is evil. Because God made a universe where evil can exist at all. God made a universe where suffering is possible.

We're talking about deities, its all unrealistic. The point being that in universes where atoms cannot form at all, and thus stars don't make heavier elements than hydrogen, there is no evil there. So if God made only such universes, God could be good AND all-powerful.

I responded directly to the content of your comment. You are trying to apply something to one side of the conversation while ignoring what would happen if it were applied to both sides equally.

This convo is going nowhere, but only because you are stopping it.

If I've come across as hostile at any point, I apologize. It was not my intention. It can be hard to communicate tone in text.

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I want the cheese railgun, god damn it

> See how that works?

How you avoided the content of my comment? Yes, I do see how that works. One might think discussions in a philosophy subreddit might be above this, but one would be regularly disappointed.

EDIT: yet another pseudo-philosopher can't substantiate their claims so drops some snark and blocks the user so they can't reply. Maybe if mods did something about this this subreddit would become smarter over time.

> I responded directly to the content of your comment.

No, you did not.

> You are trying to apply something to one side of the conversation while ignoring what would happen if it were applied to both sides equally.

No, this is your imagination.

> This convo is going nowhere, but only because you are stopping it.

Says the person who blocked me so I can't reply to his comment.

That’s just a non realistic scenario

True but consciously even without a brain just like other animals without it we’ll still commit evil.

Is killing evil? Is killing animals and human evil for food ?

Even if we weren’t wired without a brain, we’ll be wired with something else. It may sound like a white and black fallacy but it’s not bc you are talking hypothetically

I strongly disagree with the idea that it's a modern concept, but I'll check out your articles.

The shells cook as the cheese launches.

I think Jesus was probably a real person who preached and did good things. I think stories got added under his name. I don't believe he was resurrected and believe that was created to give the story real power. I say it jokingly but I really do mean it when I say I am a Jesus loving atheist. I would love to get a copy of the Jefferson Bible when I get some extra money.

I am in no way arguing by the way that Paul thought it was not true. Just that the question does not occur to him.

I think several things are going on here.

1. I do believe the split is the product of our culture, of a scientific process being hypertrophied into an epistemological worldview thus 'literalising' the world into the true and the subjective, through postmodernity when the scientism of modernity that brought this about has been dropped by most people and we are left with absurd debates such as "I feel like a woman on the inside vs you're a man because of your body", or "a fetus is a life objectively" vs "it counts as a life based on my choice".

2. We also have forms of knowledge from science itself (e.g. evolution, archaeology etc) that cause us to actually have to ask questions about what kinds of text we are dealing with directly, so as you pointed out, Paul wrote to people who took the Torah as authoritative so was just not interested in arguing about creation or Eden as symbolic or literal and did not have to, no one would question his taking it symbolically because they accept it as true. The poet T. S. Eliot said about poetry that "the surface reading of a poem is like meat thrown to a guard dog by a burglar" in other words, the distraction that allows the real work to be done. This is in some sense true of just taking a text as 'literal', it allows a door into its meanings without you having to first deal with this question of is it true and then ok what kind of truth is it, is it literal, is it arbitrary and subjective, etc etc.

If you're really bored or that way inclined I did write an essay series on this:

https://medium.com/atlas-writes/the-meaning-crisis-and-language-bf7200daf682

https://medium.com/atlas-writes/the-meaning-crisis-and-language-ii-do-we-need-to-believe-myth-and-metaphor-in-order-to-6544c07f826d

https://medium.com/atlas-writes/the-meaning-crisis-and-language-iii-myth-faith-ethics-and-aesthetics-c25b2b626076

PoE: There is an extraordinary amount of evil and suffering in the world. How can that fact be reconciled with the existence of a benevolent, omnipotent deity?

OP: We don’t know the reason there is evil, but we can assume it is necessary. You must prove it isn’t necessary or I’m right.

See how that works?

Evil has nothing to do with laws or religion, if there are no brains there is no suffering and no one imposing suffering on others. Not even an ant being burnt by a little kid with a magnifying glass.

They didn't distinguish between material and mythical back then. However, they did have parables which were understood to be fictive morality tales and the origin story was not to be understood simply as a parable, but a depiction of the cosmology of a bronze age people. Biblical and traditional theism involves an active god in world events, not simply a detached symbolic god and parables. Josephus referred to various events in Genesis as real and authentic in his histories of the Jews, for instance.

> As in, his argument hinges on symbolism not "I can prove it, travel to so and so and you'll see where it was".

But doesn't that simply presuppose its truth, rather than disregard its truth? They all took the Torah as authoritative, so Paul didn't see the need to back up his claim that Adam and Eve were real people and their lives happened as described.

> 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

Are you suggesting that the distinction is a product of our culture? I don't think that's right. The idea that a story can say something false isn't a novel concept. The Bible itself talks about people not believing in it.

> 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.

It is certainly true that Paul believed Old Testament stories had hidden messages for Christians, but as you say, that isn't the same as believing they didn't happen. The literal meaning is important if you want to take the text as authoritative, because you can read meanings into whatever you want, as Paul himself demonstrated.