the biblical story of evolution

[Guest guest]

This is more or less off-topic, but I think it is interesting and connects to

the recent thread on wheat, and the thread a few months ago on civilization

and original sin.

According to the Genesis, after humans evolved from, initially, inorganic

material, or the " dust (clay) of the earth, " as someone would have seen it a

few thousand years ago, they lived in a state where no food was acquired

through domestication. This was a paradise, as the pre-colonial Uganda was

to the Ugandan Price spoke to in NAPD. When humans got to thinking too much,

they discovered ideology, which gave them knowledge of good and evil. Among

evil things, domination, of women, and animals. Because of this development,

humans were thrust from this paradise, and began herding animals. While God

preferred humans to live in a paradise without domination of women or

animals, human rejected this offer. But God still preferred

cattle/sheep-herders to the new agriculturalists, because their societies

involved even more domination, in much more serious ways. Yet the

agriculturalists developed stratified societies and dominated and drove out

the cattle-herders. In other words, God preferred the sacrifice of Abel the

sheep-herder to Cain the agriculturalist, and Cain slew Abel. Then Cain (the

agriculturalists) went off to found the first city and named it after his son

Enoch (developed the first stratified societies as opposed to the egalitarian

and ranked societies of the h & g and pastoral peoples).

The parallels are interesting.

Chris

____

" What can one say of a soul, of a heart, filled with compassion? It is a

heart which burns with love for every creature: for human beings, birds, and

animals, for serpents and for demons. The thought of them and the sight of

them make the tears of the saint flow. And this immense and intense

compassion, which flows from the heart of the saints, makes them unable to

bear the sight of the smallest, most insignificant wound in any creature.

Thus they pray ceaselessly, with tears, even for animals, for enemies of the

truth, and for those who do them wrong. "

--Saint Isaac the Syrian