User:SouthWriter/sandbox/An atheist's objections

In perusing the talk pages, I ran across a European user who had turned from believing in God to being an atheist at the tender age of 15. In argument with another user (who had "accused" him of being an atheist), he confirms the accusation and gives some questions that turned him from his family's religion at such an early age. Here are the questions and my answers:

1. Why was Jesus, a criminal in the eyes of the Romans, put in a tomb instead of being burned or put in a mass grave (which was customary back then)?

'''Actually, though he was executed on trumped up charges of sedition, Jesus was executed as a Jew, and had the rights of burial rightfully his. When Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Jewish leadership, asked for the body of Jesus, it was given to him.'''

2. Why is the talking snake in the Garden of Eden literal, but Jesus' command to give away everything his followers own metaphorical?

'''Jesus was quite literal when he demanded of the "rich young ruler" to give everything away. It was not a command to everyone, but only to that one young man. Incidently, the young man was unwilling to do it and abandoned his quest to follow Jesus. Though the snake was literal, as was Jesus command, there are indeed metaphores - and similes and other figures of speech - throughout the Bible.'''

3. When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, they became mortal, imperfect and the only two persons on the face of the planet. Still they managed to procreate and many years later the Earth was filled with their apparent offspring. This would've meant massive inbreeding back then, which as we all know now greatly increases the chance of giving birth to disabled children. Why aren't we all disabled then?

'''Have you ever studied anything about genetics? The reason that inbreeding raises the chance of malformations is because a mutation found in only one parent will not be passed on to the next. The mutation has to be found in both parents to make a change in the child.

But Adam and Eve had no mutations to begin with. Mortality was their only "imperfection" physically. And that imperfection was indeed passed on to the next generation. The other mutations, though, would take hundreds of generations to build up. Even today, inbreeding does not inevitably create defects. It only greatly increases the chances of such deformities.

Now, after hundreds of generations, the mutations have had time to build up -- we all have accumulated mutations of different types. The chances of us passing these on increase if we mate with someone with genetic material drawn from the same recent ancester, that was not the case in the early days. In fact, in evolutionary terms, all people would come from a single pair as well. What makes THEM different than Adam and Eve?'''

''4. If we are all children of Adam and Eve, why do we all look different? And what race would Adam and Eve have been, since today we have Mongoloids, Caucasoids, Australoids, Negroids and Capoids!'' '''Adam and Eve were of the same "race" as you and me -- the HUMAN Race. We look "different" due to the vast amount of information in the human DNA. Recombinations of this information has produced over the course of thousands of years, the variation we see today. And the differences on an actual biological and cellular level are very small -- in the range of a tenth of a percent, in fact.

I recommend the study of, or at least the reading of some articles on, genetics. It is incredible what goes on at the molecular level.'''

''5. According to the Bible, God never had a beginning and never will have an ending, which means he's invincible and been around longer than we mortal creatures can imagine. If that's true, why did he create everything so late (according to the Bible, Earth alone exists for just ~3000 years)?'' '''A quick response would be "Why not?" Of course, the record of the Bible indicates around SIX thousand not Three thousand years.

A little longer answer would require an attempt at comprehending infinity. And that would require much more than our finite minds can accomplish. Suffice it to say that God is "outside of" time and space, and as such is not influenced by how much time we as a race have lived upon this planet. He could have created it and "walked away," but He chose instead to interact with us. The ultimate interaction was Jesus Himself -- taking the penalty for our sin upon Himself at just the right time in human history.'''


 * After posting the above answers elsewhere, a user asked me if I were a creationist "through-and-through" or whether Genesis should be taken "metaphorically." I assume he meant the first eleven chapters of Genesis, but the answer is an unashamedly - I am a creationist "through-and-through."  The science (de facto "natural" science) of the atheist attempts to explain things without God being behind everything.  The "science" they present, then, tries to explain HOW things got here via processes now in affect.  The only answer is slow wear and tear geographically and genetic differences over time.


 * The essence of the evolutionist's objections above are easily answered with a rudimentary understanding of genetics! One does not have to be a creationist to explain why our early ancestors did not immediately produce a lot of genetically flawed individuals.  Two wolves, for example, produce healthy wolves.  But two "purebred" German shepherds (looking much like their ancestors among the wolves), will have genetic deficiencies due to inbreeding.  The same thing is true with humans.  The original stock of humans did not have the genetic defects that developed over the course of human history.  It is, in fact, the very opposite of what evolution teaches -- a loss of information, and detrimental mutations, produce a weaker descendant than the original organism.  --SouthWriter 18:10, July 5, 2010 (UTC)