He could have declined to create the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but he did so, fully realizing the consequences. He wanted to play a game, to see if he could get lesser beings to worship him without forcing them to do so.

The trouble here is, of course, that you fail to see that in so doing, God is creating something so much grander, more beautiful, and more glorious than before. You cannot have ultimate redemption or ultimate consummation unless there is a fall from the original state of creation.
TBG

So you concede that God's plan--as far as we know--was to engineer the fall of his own creation only to see it ultimately redeemed. Much like how a novelist creates turmoil for his characters only to see them overcome their obstacles in the climax, and then benefit from the denouement.

Yet, if that were the case, He would not have acted surprised that Eve and Adam ate fruit from the tree, nor would he have felt the need to question them about it. He created the serpent, knew that the serpent would be instrumental in His grand design; in fact, one could argue that the serpent was ultimately enacting God's will. Why then did God seem surprised by the serpent's actions? Why did he feel the need to curse the serpent, rather than pat the serpent on the back and say, "thanks for taking one for the team?" He knew. So why the act? Why put on a show?

I'm sure biblical scholars have argued these points ad nauseum, but to the average athiest, they seem to raise irreconcilable contradictions about the nature of this God, who constructs an elaborate scenario of redemption for his creations, knows exactly how it will play out, yet then acts like he had no part in it until the very end.

Yet, if that were the case, He would not have acted surprised that Eve and Adam ate fruit from the tree, nor would he have felt the need to question them about it.

Have you ever seen a parent catch their child a few minutes after they've been in the cookie jar? The parent knows what happened, yet pretends to be surprised and asks questions to try and train the child to be truthful and own up the fault. That's exactly the kind of attitude that God is taking with Adam and Eve.

Why then did God seem surprised by the serpent's actions?

He doesn't.

Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."

The LORD God said to the serpent,

"Because you have done this,
cursed are you above all livestock
and above all beasts of the field;
on your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel."

What God is doing here is to set up the central conflict of the Christian metanarrative: the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. This battle, of course, was decided at Easter when Christ rose, conquering sin, death, and the devil, and delivering the seed of the woman from sin. You are ignoring the context and thereby missing the point.

TBG

Oh yeah let's see what my brain can produce at one in the morning! With no further ado...

1. How does a "just be true to yourself" ethic apply, not just to yourself personally, but other people, given the world's diversity and the fact that different sorts of people have different priorities?

I'm only concerned with myself. To each his own. I just thought I'd share my ideas to show people that you CAN be happy if you're not a Christian.

2. Would a "just be true to yourself"/"be happy" ethic help build a society from the ground up? Or must one steal from other worldviews to do that?

Obviously it works best for everyone to find their own happiness in the context of a free society.

3. Why blame the Bible for you believing something it doesn't say?

It DOES say that you will go to hell if you don’t accept Christ. I don’t believe in that anymore—I’m just saying, yes, the Bible says that.

4. What proof would you expect to show you God does exist and is exactly like the God portrayed in the Bible?

I suppose I’d need some kind of spiritual awakening or a miracle.

5. From where did the notion come from that the main reason to Do Good Things, or say you're sorry to God, or anything else, was to Get Out of Hell Free? One parallel: it would be like me saying to my wife, "Whew, thank goodness we are married; now there's no chance of me contracting certain diseases I could catch if I did wrong things with other people." Yes, that's a benefit of monogamy and marriage, but is it the main reason why I love her? No! I love her because she's incredible!

I don’t see that as a parallel. An eternity of torture isn’t comparable to getting a sexually transmitted disease. It’s great that some people can be happy following God, but I wasn’t, so the only reason for me to continue would be to get out of hell. I realize that the Bible doesn’t say it’s the main reason, but it IS a reason, and a pretty good one.

Finally, my remark about being sheltered related more to being sheltered from the consequences of a mere "just be true to yourself"/"be happy" belief system. You only have the freedom to do that in a nation with (mostly) good laws and benefits, thanks to men and women who believed in Christian ideas of freedom, morals, even economics and government.

I’m just going to say that life is not fair. Not everyone has complete equality and everyone has different circumstances. I admit that I have got the high end of the stick concerning where I live, my parents, good family, home, nation, etc. But I’ve had experiences where people have been horrible to me even in a Christian environment. Did it change what I believe? No. Do I think I’d still believe this even if I lived in another country? Yes. In fact, I might believe it even more so. It was the bad experiences and the times when I felt alone and mistreated that I came to discover myself the best.

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. ~e.e. cummings

1. What do (either of) you think "praising God for eternity" means?

I would see praise not just as music and singing, but seen through loving acts. I always pictured heaven to be a perfect society where everyone demonstrated complete unselfishness and honesty. The whole world would be one big family where you can trust anyone you meet and everyone loves and understands each other perfectly. So we’d praise God by our actions and by the way we live and treat others. Everyone had individual talents and we could spend eternity building on these talents in order to advance the world to a place of perpetual beauty.

2. How do you define "praise"? What action(s) do you think this entails?

I see praise as words, music, and any individual expression done for God or someone else possibly.

3. If you ever asked your parents or Spiritual Leaders or whatever what that meant, what did they tell you? And: was it consistent with the Bible?

I’ve never asked them

4. Again, assuming the view from inside: if it's true that God is the highest, most incredible, most loving, most infinite and supreme Being ever in the universe, why would it not make sense to experience more of Him? I realize I'm asking this of non-Christians to whom the very notion of valuing a God outside yourself seems repugnant. But I'm asking not for personal agreement, but theoretical consideration.

Possibly yes, but I say that with hesitation. I'm still iffy on this one.

MD wrote:I'm generally a good person.

You aren't. You haven't met the standard that God sets, which is absolute total perfection. Short of that, the only way to God is through Christ.

I think I’m a good person and that’s all that matters to me.

I enjoy being a good person.

Gee, is that a morally good reason to be good? "Doing good things feels nice, so I do it." Maybe you should want to be a person who enjoys virtue, but you shouldn't be thinking about yourself at all when you do good. The idea ought to be that you are performing good acts for the sake of others, otherwise, the acts are really self-centered.

I do it for myself and others. If it was just for myself I wouldn’t enjoy it so much. And why shouldn’t I be thinking about myself when I do good acts? Again, this is why I was miserable and I was a “Christian.” I was commanded to be good but to take no pleasure in it and give all the credit to God for redeeming me—but I was the one who had redeemed myself! I was the one who made myself into a better person. Giving the credit to God for this was a lie. God didn’t make me into who I am today…I did.

MD, you have indicated that you acknowledge that some things are frowned upon in society that would be perfectly fine to the person doing said deeds. Here is my question. If you did disagree with how someone acted in those cases, would you just let that person go about his/her way, or would you try to stop that person if it would benefit someone else? If Mother-Music got the point where she would punch someone in the face and you saw that happen, whose happiness would be more important? Mother-Musics? or the persons? If you try to intervene, you would consider the person's happiness over MM's. If you do you nothing, you would consider MM's over the person's. I know you will say that society would say that punching someone is bad, because you already have done that. But even you must see that America's laws are actually based on Judeo-Christian principals. In your philosophy, completely independent of culture, society, or already established laws, how would you respond to this type of situation? Don't piggy-back on what's already been established. These questions are hopefully to help you see where that line of thinking goes.

Let me get this straight…we are in a society where ANARCHY reigns, and I watch someone punch someone else in the face. How do I respond?
Well, I personally dislike violence, so I’d try to stop it and help the victim. Does that answer your question?

A real problem that people tend to find with Christianity as MD has discovered is trying to live it as a religion. I'll say this plain and simple: IT DOES NOT WORK. And you will find so many people who do this. They come to church, sing a few songs, listen to a message, and even on
occasion do a few good deeds in the community (such as donating to African aid). But just as several of us have pointed out, if you try to be a Christian, you will fail. You simply can't do it on your own. You will feel miserable. You will feel insufficient. And you will feel if you continue to live that way, you will feel like a failure. So, MD, what you have experienced with Christianity as you have described is exactly what one should expect. It met with utter failure.

I enjoyed living Christianity like a religion. I like going to church, I like the Christian friends that I have. I enjoy reading the Bible. I liked praying for people. I like being a loving person and doing volunteer work. I like some Christian worship songs. The reason I felt like a failure was not because I did not like acting like a Christian. It was because I didn’t believe in it anymore.

So you concede that God's plan--as far as we know--was to engineer the fall of his own creation only to see it ultimately redeemed. Much like how a novelist creates turmoil for his characters only to see them overcome their obstacles in the climax, and then benefit from the denouement.

C.S. Lewis again covers this in Problem of Pain. If there was ever a world without a potential for suffering, it would be a world without freewill. If the Tree was not in the garden, Man would not have a choice whether they wanted to worship God or whether they wanted to fall into sin. So, we may come to the conclusion that no tree = no freewill.

God is not trying to devise Man's downfall, nor is he trying to create an endless circle of redemption. He is only trying to create a universe in which we have a choice. After all, if there is no freewill (which essentially = no tree), is there any point in living? As I have said, we had a choice and we messed it all up.

God is not trying to devise Man's downfall, nor is he trying to create an endless circle of redemption. He is only trying to create a universe in which we have a choice. After all, if there is no freewill (which essentially = no tree), is there any point in living? As I have said, we had a choice and we messed it all up.

So, let me see if I can get this straight...

1. The Garden of Eden was perfect (except for the tree), and Adam and Eve were also perfect, because they had no knowledge of good and evil, i.e. they had no free will.

2. God gave Adam and Eve the choice to either know good and evil or not know it, i.e. God gave them the choice to either have free will or not have free will.

3. Adam and Eve chose to have free will, and this resulted in their downfall.

4. This is what God wanted, because otherwise Adam and Eve would have no point in living.

So it wasn't Adam and Eve who chose to have free will. It was GOD who gave them free will, simply by giving them the choice to have free will in the first place! Now it may be that a world with free will is better than a world without one, but to say that Adam and Eve "messed it all up" would be undeserved blaming.

Tesseract, in what sense were Adam and Eve not responsible for their actions? I'm not one who buys into "free will defense"-type arguments, but I'm curious as to how, if one chooses the most subjectively attractive option in a given scenario, one is not responsible.

If I act upon my desire to go and stop studying and procrastinate on all my work, then regardless of how I came to have that desire, I am still responsible, it seems.

TBG

So it wasn't Adam and Eve who chose to have free will. It was GOD who gave them free will, simply by giving them the choice to have free will in the first place! Now it may be that a world with free will is better than a world without one, but to say that Adam and Eve "messed it all up" would be undeserved blaming.

Hmm, you have misunderstood me.

Adam & Eve had freewill even before the fall of Man. It was from their own freewill that they chose to eat from the tree. Adam & Eve had all the freewill that we have now in the garden, which is why the Fall was possible in the first place. Just because they did not have the knowledge of Good & Evil doesn't mean that they did not have freewill.

They chose to inquire about this knowledge because of Satan's temptation, and therefore exercised the freewill which they had. It was not God's temptation, it was Satan's. Man chose to act on that temptation on their own freewill, and so the Fall followed.

I don't see how you can possibly blame this on God, though you may have misunderstood me. Unless, of course, you mean to say that God should not have given freewill to Man in the garden. With that statement I would then ask what meaning to life we would have without freewill.

Responses to Dr. Elwin Ransom

It's both easier and more difficult to understand than people think! And it's been only recently that I've read and learned some simple rules to reading Scripture as it was meant to be read — the same way we try to read posts here: keeping in mind the original audience, and what kind of writing the author is giving us (history? letter? poetry? metaphor?). The scholars call this hermeneutics. I just like to call it right reading.

Of course. But that's a lot to keep track of, and unless it is read in the original language, subtle mistranslations become magnified when the meaning of a verse can be critically changed with even one different word. It's hard.

I wonder, though, if you meant to imply by saying "you're bluffing" that I meant it on purpose? Sorry, I'm not that nefarious. ... Of course I could just say, "Um, yeah! Totally meant to do that! Testing you!" But nope.

Sorry, I probably chose my words incorrectly there. I was just wondering why you would back up your assumption with "go back and check for yourself" when you hadn't even made sure first.

Regardless, Jesus' mention of "death" there is still defined elsewhere in Scripture, not by a modern "death means the soul and body die" definition, but dying-forever-in-suffering-Hell death. He Himself defined death apart from God as eternal, conscious suffering. Does that help?

Yes, that makes more sense.

Nooo ... I'm not sure where you could have gotten that from what I wrote. But Scripture describes the nature of a Christian's resurrected body as physical, re-made, similar to the old body, and still physical. If Christians believe God created the universe out of nothing, it's no stretch at all to repeat what Scripture says: that He will resurrect people in new bodies, but which are clearly the same people, the same DNA, but free of sin and the results of sin, like physical problems. If it comes to whether the actual molecules are the same, that's a moot point: if that qualifies "sameness," none of us are the "same" person as we were years ago. Our bodies have lost some skin cells, grown new ones, etc.; the same with hair and fingernails. Does that help?

I read Randy Alcorn's blog post that you linked to on the subject. Although the post brings for the argument pretty well that spiritually resurrected bodies will have flesh and bone and DNA, the assertion stills ignores the mentally disabled. For example, somebody with severe autism or down syndrome will have developed a personality on earth with their disability. Will they be eternally cursed with their defect that is built into their DNA while they are in heaven? And if God changed their DNA, they would be a fundamentally different person.

Nah. Some of them look hardly human. Saying people get "new bodies" doesn't automatically mean they'll look completely different — want further references on this, Tesseract?

Yes, please.

If you mean "it makes no sense even within the Christian paradigm," why not?

Because there seems to be a very gray line separating what defects God would fix on a person's body and what defects God would have the person keep forever. People such as Nick Vujicic (a famous Christian evangelist with no arms or legs) that were born with phsycial defects might have limbs restored, but what about somebody who was obese, due to poor eating habits, or lost a few fingers from being careless with power tools? In the Gospels, Jesus cured many sick people and heals many lame people, but never seems to heal anybody who brought about their own physical demise. Would people like this be forced to have a few dumb decisions affect their bodies for an eternity?

It may be possible to avoid individual sins, but according to Christianity, we cannot avoid sin as a whole. Because we have original sin, it is inevitable that we will commit a crime against God at some point.

Yup. And again, the Bible assumes as axiomatic that God exists, has a certain nature, and deserves to be recognized as Creator and Sovereign of the universe. If this were not true, it would be "unfair" indeed to say that what we do offends him and that needs to be fixed. But, the Christians says, it is true, that this is the way the world works.

I'm skipping the Adam and Eve part, because you've skipped over my point about that. Originally you tried to fault God for creating people with a sin nature. But you've missed the point that they freely chose to rebel against Him, failing to pass even the most reasonable test He set up.

I still don't see how Adam and Eve couldn't have passed the test, though, if they didn't have a sinful nature. Eve was already committing sins (such as disobeying God) by choosing to eat the apple in the first place.

Tesseract, this is why I wish I could invite you to lunch, or at least hang out over Skype or something and talk about Life, the Universe, and Everything. I should have said this earlier: but I am sorry you were force-fed. Even if your parents meant the best by it, please recognize that Scripture never encourages force-feeding faith. A person must see for him- or herself Who God is, and who they are by comparison, and want to get rid of the sin and have more of God. Even presentations of Christianity that include it's-all-about-grace statements can fall into making it really about laws and believe-it-or-else. I'd love to hear more of your story, either here or in other ways.

[typing up story now...I'll add it to the post in a bit.]

There are. Which makes Him even more amazing a Savior, at least if you believe that sort of thing, eh wot?

It seems that God would have purposely set up existence to be bad by default, so that he looks better. "Hi, I'm God. I created you and the earth that you live on. Some other things I created resulted in the earth being full of suffering, and if you are corrupted by the evils of the earth, an eternity of suffering awaits you after your death! But wait - just say that you believe in me and I'll set you up with a plan to come hang out with me in an eternal paradise! Aren't I the most awesome God ever? "

But this assumes God didn't have a deeper-level plan: to show people His kindness and mercy in ways they never would have known, had they not freely chosen to sin. ... Whew, that gets into tough territory though, Tesseract. Want to wait on that until we sort through the what-is-the-resurrection-really-about stuff, perhaps?

Sure.

FoodforThought wrote
I would then ask what meaning to life we would have without freewill.

There would be no meaning of life because we couldn't decide to accept Jesus into our hearts. Freewill gives us a choice, and you choose to accept Christ or not.

Just because they did not have the knowledge of Good & Evil doesn't mean that they did not have freewill.

This is what I do not agree with. The knowledge of Good & Evil is free will. Without knowing what is right and wrong, Adam and Eve would have nothing by which to weigh the advantages or disadvantages of a choice. They would have to rely on instinct alone.

They had a choice between ignoring the serpent and obeying God (the good option) and doing what the serpent said and disobeying God (the evil option). So either Eve was really stupid and easily persuaded or she already had the knowledge of evil and exercised it. I would think that Eve already had evil, but since that makes no sense from your perspective, let's assume that she was just stupid.

I don't see how you can possibly blame this on God, though you may have misunderstood me.

God allowed somebody who is incompetent to be tempted by the cleverest of his creations. (The serpent was the most cunning of all the creatures in his garden.) That's sort of like telling a young child that they can't have any ice cream and throwing them in front of several bins of ice cream with a very clever person standing next to the bins talking about how delicious the ice cream is.

Terresact, you and several others are missing a key component to the whole 'why did God allow original sin'? issue. I understand your line of thinking in discussing about telling a kid you can't have ice cream then throws it in front of their face. But we also have to understand we have a villain in this grand story. At some point between creation and the Fall, the greatest angel fell and became Satan. In a story context, Satan is the ultimate arch-nemesis. Not God's equal, but his nemesis. And since Satan can't do anything to God directly (he already tried and failed miserably), his next best option was to destroy God's most prized creation: man.

And whether you believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior or not, every one of us has been caught up in this war between God and Satan. Satan seeks to prevent you from getting any closer to God, and God prefers to work through man. He could easily do it on his own, but God chooses to use us to carry out the battle. Not as pawns or soldiers, while he sits up in heaven like a general on a hill, but acting directly in the battle along side us and through us.

It's a day-in, day-out battle. But one thing we learn from Job, one of the purposes God has for allowing us to sin and act on our own is for ultimately showing Satan 'I told you so'. It is by far not the only reason but one of them.

But going back to the original sin, there are two other important things that need to be noticed. The first thing is why were Adam and Eve by that tree to begin with? We tend to imagine this small garden, but I'll bet that it was pretty huge. I'm thinking the size of a country big, not someone's back yard. They knew exactly where that tree was. And it wasn't necessarily like the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was right next to the Tree of Life, even though both were in the middle of the Garden. I don't picture the serpent going to Eve at just any tree. I picture him doing it right at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. So why would Adam and Eve be hanging out there? Something to think about.

The other thing is what was Adam doing? It says right there that Adam was with Eve when she took the fruit. He was standing there doing nothing. And there is a Proverb that says "All it takes for evil to triumph is for men to do nothing." Saw that happens there at the beginning. So before we start accusing God of doing things, let's be sure we are really getting the full picture. That hasn't been happening here on this forum yet.

Terresact, you and several others are missing a key component to the whole 'why did God allow original sin'? issue. I understand your line of thinking in discussing about telling a kid you can't have ice cream then throws it in front of their face. But we also have to understand we have a villain in this grand story.

I'm going to echo a bit of what Fencer For Jesus is saying, and it will also be in a somewhat literary sense rather than a pure rational sense, I suppose.

In Tolkien's Silmarillion, the grand deity behind all of the creation of the world is Iluvatar. He conducts the music which He and the Ainur used to sing the world into existence. The Ainur are essentially Iluvatar's helpers, and they have freewill to do as they please. As they begin to sing the music that will create Middle Earth, it is a beautiful and harmonious melody. Though in the back of the chorus of the Ainur, a sinister plot is beginning to unfold.

Melkor, one of the greatest of the Ainur, begins to corrupt the Music. He sings destruction of the other Ainur's work. As the song comes to a close, Iluvatar notices the disturbance of the music. Afterwards, he speaks to the Ainur.

Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: 'Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.'

This is perhaps the most beautiful piece of literature that I have ever read.

While I was reading this, I was not thinking, "But hey! You can't do that Iluvatar! What of all the sufferings of the peoples of Middle Earth!?" Perhaps this is just because I was far too engrossed in the story, but I think that it was because I was part of the Bigger Picture. I knew that things would end in the good, I knew that things would work towards Iluvatar's theme, no matter what hatred was sown into the song. I knew that even though there was evil in Iluvatar's song, it would be used for Iluvatar's glory, and for the betterment of all of his creation.

This is love, and this is freewill. Most of all, this is beauty. It is the beauty of a God who is truly benevolent towards his creation. Could Iluvatar have silenced Melkor in the singing of the Music? He most certainly could have. And yet, if he didn't, we would have lost all of the beauty that would spring forth from this evil because of Iluvatar's love and benevolence, which would not become clear to the peoples of Middle Earth for a while.

Bilbo and his adventures would have never come forth, Frodo and the War of the Ring would have never happened. Great adventure and merriment could never have been held so dear to their hearts. The world of Middle Earth would have lost its splendor and beauty. We can look at this world so fondly because we have the Bigger Picture.

Christians, I like to believe, have a glance into the lens of God. We can see some of the Bigger Picture which God has laid out.

The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, Howard Shore's grand music... most of what I hold dear to my heart! None of this would be possible if it was not for God's allowance of Satan working his foul voice into the Music.

Do I mean to say that this is a world of pure merriment and enjoyment? Certainly not. I do not mean to say anything of the sort. What I mean to say is that the joyful times that we experience in this life is a reflection of what "Iluvatar" has in store for us, and what he has planned. The evil that is apparent in this world is a reminder that Iluvatar's plan is not yet complete. Perhaps some reasons may never become clear in our lifetime. That is only because we are not a reader or observer of the Bigger Picture, we are in the picture ourselves.

I do not expect everyone or anyone to agree with me, because this is most likely just a purely personal view on the problem of evil. Either way, I hope that others have somehow found this helpful or at least enjoyable to read.

^^ I think it's a good point.

It's amazing how people don't even notice good until they see evil, too. You can't enjoy light until you have seen darkness. You can't fully enjoy joy until you have seen sorrow. If there was no such thing as sorrow, no such thing as darkness, light and happiness would be all there was. And it would not be good to us. It would all just be normal, everyday to us while here on earth. It would not seem like a gift, because we wouldn't know there was such a thing as life without it.

~Riella

[...] Slaves, [not a racial slavery; the Greek means "bondservant," a more-intense version of today's contracted employee] obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

The Greek word may have originally meant that, but the slavery of the time was absolutely not contracted bondage; it was full blown classical slavery- owned completely, no rights, bought and sold at auction like cattle, could be executed at the whim of a master.

(At least in the first century at the time of Paul; later on they developed more rights, and the institution itself gradually declined during the latter days of the Empire.)

That most of the time this didn't happen, at least to urban slaves- for one thing they were too valuable- doesn't change the nature of the institution.

Unless you count theoretical physics, which goes more and more toward philosophy by the decade.

Yes, but in a naturalistic way . Many theists were quite happy to hear about the Big Bang; it certainly seem to confirm "fiat lux!". Since then physics has gone on to explore inflation and multiverses, though some physicists do agree that that multiverses, at least, have gone beyond the bounds of physics.

Which again, doesn't exclude Christian or other religious beliefs. I recently read a great but difficult book called "Universe or Multiverse" (the way I read such books, skipping all the equations ) ed. Bernard Carr, with some of the latest by the greatest, edging from physics to philosophy. One particular quote that sticks in my mind was "as an evangelical Christian, I believe that Christ died to redeem humanity; as a cosmologist I subscribe to the many-world interpretation of quantum physics". Another article was by a Jesuit. It's notable that theoretical physicists tend to be the most believing in God/Spirit of all scientists (which is still not very).

Are you referring to miracle claims here?

Miracle and Creationist/ID, yes.

You've missed my point entirely---the question is that of why we enjoy it. Why do we find pleasure in the skillfully-worded sonnet, the complex fugue, or the beautiful painting? What possible survival value do I get from listening to Bach, reading Herbert, or going to the Pre-Raphaelite exhibit? Why does the creation of such things even have survival value?

Well, you could ask a black kite

http://scienceblogs.com/lifelines/2011/ ... rations.ph

To elaborate on what I said earlier, you have to look at how music/art/literature (and morality, which is how this started) in their earliest forms might have had survival value in small groups of hunter-gatherers on the savannahs of East Africa- that's one question, the question of origins.

Why do we appreciate them now? Because this big sack of gray jelly on top of our spinal cord has evolved to become an incredibly flexible mechanism (by biological standards) to help us succeed in both the physical and social encounters we face.

The sheer flexibility enables us to develop more and more extravagant examples of symbol-processing derived from our basic rational/emotional needs.

For example, how much art and poetry is about love? The next biggest category is about war/conflict. After that, probably praise (Ugg-Ugg, you are the mightiest of hunters and warriors! No-one can surpass you! Especially your generosity in handing out meat to your friends...). Later on, when we have time to relax and look around, we start to get more Nature poetry- Romantics are a reaction to development.

I should add, this flexibility can work against our survival intincts- as when we focus sexual energy on pixels on a screen instead of a healthy living mate. That's the amazing thing about human beings-we are the end product of a process which has allowed us to break free from the tyranny of our genes-
Something missed by people who misinterpret Dawkin's "selfish genes" to mean "selfish people".