joeldatroll

The story of Adam and Eve in the Bible is a metaphor that explains the reason why evolution started in the first living organisms that existed on earth. Why would anyone do anything to give up such a blissful and euphoric life, like the one lived by Adam and Eve? They could have lived happily in their garden utopia for all eternity. A perfect life. Not having to worry about competition, sin, and knowing no evil. This life was lacking. They probably had questions, doubts, and a lack of understanding of their world around them. They wanted more. They wanted knowledge. They were able to satisfy their hunger for knowledge but it came at a price. By eating the forbidden fruit after being influenced by the devil, they went against God’s specific orders and they were punished for it. They could no longer live in the perfect world given to them by God. Evil and sin were now a part of their lives.

The question "why did evolution start" is just as perplexing as to why Adam and Eve were willing to sacrifice their paradise for a bite of knowlege. The first living organisms on Earth were single celled. Single celled organisms like bacteria, at least today, are far more enduring than any other organism in terms of what types of environments they inhabit. Bacteria can survive almost anywhere on the planet. So why would such an enduring and fit organism need to evolve? They weren’t content with living alongside each other in peace, reproducing only to die soon after. They wanted more power. Power over each other. The ability to survive "better" than the next guy. This hunger for power started the (apparently) endless process of evolution, which has spiraled out of control to create its most intelligent, mentally aware, and backwards product yet: the human being.

Adam and Eve’s desire to eat the apple was a product of the devil’s influence. Based on this theory that the story of Adam and Eve is a metaphor for why the life process started on earth, you can compare Satan's influence on Adam and Eve to the desire for power in every living organism. Religion, or in this case Christianity, is based around living life God's way and renouncing Satan and all of his ways. Since Satan represents the desire for power in each of us, we are effectively extinguishing our natural desire to have more power over each other by living by God's word. What fuels evolution? Power.

The purpose of religion is to stop evolution. To end the process before it is actually complete. It provides a shortcut by giving the illusion of perfect and fully evolved beings without having to do all the work.

TheCleric

I like it, very well said.

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Cassius

Except that we didn't evolve from bacteria. Bacteria evolve into other forms of bacteria, which is why there are billions of species of bacteria today. The single-celled organisms we evolved from were protein sequences containing the first strands of RNA. These protein sequences were nowhere near as resilient as bacteria (especially modern-day bacteria... ancient bacteria are not quite as invulnerable as you describe either), and evolution was a natural improvement mechanism.

Evolution is a process by which nature seeks survival, not power. It is easy to come to fallacious conclusions when you draw those conclusions on a basic lack of understanding of scientific principles, so I don't blame you for not understanding the basis of evolution. Nevertheless, you believe that the purpose of religion is to stop evolution, and you believe that evolution is the desire for power. Isn't it more likely that the indirect purpose of religion is to grant people power over others? "Do as I say, or I... I mean GOD will send you to hell!"

One of the things that's often overlooked in the Adam and Eve story, is that there is no reference for how much time passes in the story. God created mankind, God made mankind immortal, God placed mankind in a utopical garden, God gives mankind companions such as animals and opposite genders, God sets only one rule for mankind to live by (you can do anything you want as long as you don't eat the fruit of this one tree), then God waits for mankind to break it.

It's so easy to think that Adam and Eve, being human, were so lustful for power that they couldn't help but disobey. But how much time passed before they disobeyed? A year? A decade? A million years? They were immortal, remember.

It could be that they lived there in their paradise, never tempted at all to break God's one and only rule, for millions of years, before finally Satan convinced them to break the rule. Since that is the only thing that could end the story, breaking the one and only rule (for if they never broke it the story would go on forever, them being immortal and all), it was bound to happen eventually, don't you think? Satan had an awful lot of time to convince them of the merits of eating that fruit.

Personally, I find dubious any God who would create an intelligent, sentient species, model it after Himself, make it immortal, place it in a paradise surrounded by everything it could ever need, place the one thing that was forbidden to them right there in the garden with them, tell them that's the absolute ONLY thing they're not allowed to do, wait who knows how long for them to break the only rule, then when they finally do jump out of the bushes and say, "Gotcha!"

sideoftheroad

Religion isn't a thing, it's not like it's all head by a single guy who is in control and has a motive. It's just a collection of general ideas and customs.

And why does religion mean not having to do work?! It seems that religion makes a hell of a lot MORE work in simply living than if it wasn't present at all. Basically every religion creates a conflict to the worshipper, because they are adding more and more laws and commands than a person would choose to want if given the choice before they felt obligated. Think of every person that's masturbated or drank or ate a certain thing or had sex or thought 'ill thoughts' and etcetera which was against their religion - that's a lot more stress than you need!

In fact, religion is seen as something stagnant which keeps things from moving forward, but think of the technology and arts and literature and philosophy and exploration which occured only through the means of an organized religion fueling it. Think we'd be the way we were if the church didn't sail Columbus or funded beautiful works of art? Yeah there were many stupid sacrifices in between, but hey, the present is a lot better than it was back then and therefore we ARE evolving. There is a lot of conflict in the Middle East due to religion, but it's merely a bump.

Cassius

He meant that the religious idea of being perfect through divine revelation (being Christ-like for most of you) bypasses all the work that the process of evolution uses to try to achieve that same goal.

But I'll say again, evolution's goal is survival, not perfection.

Higher Logic

The goal of Christianity, and any religion for that matter, is to serve the many needs humans have. One of our primary needs is the ability to deal with mortality. People look to religion for answers, while religious rituals offer comfort. Another need of ours is to be healthy, eat well, and good weather, and before science people turned to religion for the answer. We are a very social species, and religion offers a fellowship and the fulfillment of being part of a group. Concisely, religion provides for the needy.

When it comes to our artistic sides, religion has provided forms of expression ranging from dances, art, music, and buildings. Religion provides answers to the most basic questions: who we are, where we come from, where we are going. People look to the stars at night and wonder about the cosmos, religion replies back with an answer. Religion breaks up the chaos, it allows for organization.

There are many theories as to why the need for religion, but one of my favorites is from Freud who believed that religion—or the belief in God or gods—stems from an adult’s projection of powerful and long-lasting childhood experiences with his or her parents. These experiences, of fear and security, are the basis for the adult’s attempts to deal with the anxieties of a complicated present and an unknown future. Freud calls this the Oedipus complex. It is the childhood desire to sleep with the mother, and kill the father. There is a formative stage in everyone’s psychosexual development, when the child transfers his love object from the breast (the oral phase) to the mother. At this time, the child desires the mother and resents the father. These primal desires are quickly repressed. Individuals who do not progress properly into the genital phase will still be playing out the psychodrama of the Oedipus complex in various displaced, abnormal, or exaggerated ways. In essence, there is no such thing as a “modern” religion; all religions must partake of the same infantile and primitive roots that are universal factors of the human condition.

Every religion follows the same patterns, always allowing for an original sin. In Christianity, the original sin was against God the Father. If Christ redeemed mankind from the burden of original sin by the sacrifice of his own life, we are driven to conclude that the sin was a murder. The law of talion, which is deeply rooted in human feelings, states that a murder can only be expiated by the sacrifice of another life: self-sacrifice points back to bloodguilt. If this sacrifice of la life brought atonement with God the Father, the crime to be expiated can only have been murder of the Father. In the Bible, men were acknowledging the guilty primal deed, since they found atonement for it with the sacrifice of “the Son.” Atonement with the father was all the more complete; since the sacrifice was accompanied by a renunciation of the women on whose account, the rebellion against the father was started. At this moment, the inexorable psychological law of ambivalence steps in. The very deed in which the son offered the greatest possible atonement to the father brought him at the same time to the attainment of his wishes against the father. He himself became God, in place of the father. A son-religion is now replaced with a father-religion. As a sign of this substitution, the ancient “totem meal” (if you are not familiar with Totemism look it up) was revived in the form of communion, in which the company of brothers ate the flesh and drank the blood of the Son thus identifying themselves with him. The totem meal can be traced to animal sacrifice, theanthropic human sacrifice, and the Eucharist. In each of these rituals, the effect of the crime by which men were so deeply weighed down is recognized. The Christian communion is essentially a fresh elimination of the Father, a repetition of the guilty deed.

Linguistically speaking, the term religion means “to join again” or “to reconnect.” The term suggests a joining of our natural world with the sacred world.

Moreover, as for the makeup of a religion, it has to do with economics. A study of all the religions has shown that the economy directly relates to what a religion is going to be like. Its political control as well, it provides “everyone else” with the idea that there will be people “higher up” than you (in terms of authority), and that there is certain order that should be followed, as well as rules that should be obeyed.

Speaking of science and religion, we wouldn’t even have science today without religion. Science evolved from religion, just as religion evolved from magic. Magic provides humans with control. It provides us with power and choice over our lives. Magic relies on rituals, if you do a ritual right, and nothing happens, then reason would tell us that “hey, I did the ritual right, perhaps there is a spirit that controls this aspect of the natural world.” This conclusion allows for religion, more control over our natural world. As time moved on, people needed more control over their lives, and science enters “stage right” to fulfill the needs of our desires, doubts, and questions.

Science is nothing more than pop-religion. It consists of the key components of a religion: a doctrine, rituals, and myths. In terms of science, science books are the doctrines we follow, the scientific method is our ritual we follow, and theories are nothing more than myths. We use science to answer questions about the Cosmos and ourselves. We use science as a means of control, to provide peace and understanding in an otherwise chaotic world.

Wow, that was kind of long…enjoy!

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JTP

I buy that ^.

I tend to think such social controls are very needed and slow to change, helping to ensure the continuity of our social evolution. Without such controls I believe chaos would lead to the degration or collapse of society. I also think such social controls need to be contested actively by other social controls for a society to flourish. I can think of many societies today that are directed strictly by a single social control and whose society is plagued by turmoil and stagnent culture. The most successful societies in history have always boasted several firmly entrenched "pillars" that provide stability. That stability allows a society to evolve, without it all is chaos.

My opinion of course.