Liquid water, though essential to life, is amazingly rare, present in abundance only on earth. Interesting that this article points to someone who understood the properties of water better than just about anyone, Blaise Pascal, inventor of the barometer, the hydraulic press and the syringe.

GrahamY
I wouldn't so much say Tony is acting like a troll. That would imply insincerity. It's more likely that people of widely different viewpoints sometimes sound to each other like hyperbole. 

With regard to a metaphorical approach to interpreting the Scriptures, I was attempting to show how the Salvos were getting themselves into a little trouble when reading a 'spiritual' interpretation into a passage when it wasn't really called for.

Similarly, I think you're a bit off track in suggesting that St Paul or anyone in Paul's day took a metaphorical approach to the six days of creation. The attempt to blend evolutionary theory and divine creation is quite a recent phenomenon. The great theologians such as Calvin and Luther read and accepted the six days quite literally. You could say the same for the great scientists such as Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal.

Pericles,
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've interpreted your answer to Rosner's question as such: "To what end is my sense of justice and my yearning for transcendence, and so on, in purely evolutionary terms?" You say to no end, as evolution has no goal or purpose. Therefore we are mistaken to think such feelings serve any purpose.

Tony,
Eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is demonstrative of man cutting ties with God and severing the relationship. Adam was effectively declaring that he preferred to independently choose his own paths and morality ahead of his beneficent creator. It was not a minor mistake. 

Certainly, written eye witness accounts are not the only source of knowledge but they they are usually our most reliable access to historic details.

I've always regarded the forbidden fruit thing as the first instance of God-the-bully, demanding blind obedience without explanation, and suggesting that ignorance is preferable to knowledge. Why was the tree there in the first place if God really didn't want the fruit to be eaten? What if Adam and Eve had done as instructed, seen out their days in the garden - oops, no Bible, no Judaeism, no Christianity, no Islam. So did they actually do the right thing after all?

It is quite common in fairy tales or in child's games for there to be a forbidden place or a forbidden act which one will receive a dire punishment for violating. Of course there is generally a magical antidote to the curse. The forbidden room in Bluebeard's castle is kin to, "Step on a crack. Break your mother's back." as a child may say when walking on a footpath. Forbidding Adam and Eve to eat of the Tree of Knowledge is simply a standard fairy tale scenario.

However, learned theologians take that fairy tale legend seriously so the Christian version of the antidote to the fairy tale in the Jewish Bible is simply to accept the Christian mumbojumbo and believe on (I don't know why they prefer that preposition to in.) Jesus and be saved.

Fairy tales can be pleasant diversions for children or even adults. However, belief by adults curdles the brain.

Dan, there is a long tradition in the Christian and Jewish faiths of regarding creation as an allegory. Wikipedia has some interesting information on this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegorical_interpretations_of_Genesis.

The ancients were not so stupid as to believe that the myths of their religions were facts. No intelligent Roman or Greek would have seen the stories about their various gods as being anything but allegories, no matter what the populace may have believed.

If you have read Milton's Paradise Lost you will also know that even a 17th Century Calvinist saw the whole thing metaphorically and had no problem writing his own version. Indeed Milton seems to see the Garden of Eden event as a benefit to mankind.

St Augustine also has a metaphorical view.

I'd imagine that those living closest to those times when these parts of the bible were written would also have had a more literary view of what they were saying as they'd have a knowledge of how they were written, and context.

>>So Tony, when your literalist version of the words is shown to lead to much the same conclusion as my symbolic version you decide to interpret the text non-literally. And then you compound it by interpreting a part of the bible that Jews of Paul's day, as well as Jews and Christians of our own, generally understand as metaphorical in an offensive way.<<

My sincere apologies. I did not realise that my summation of Genesis 3:1-6 would be regarded as inaccurate and offensive. Whichever way you interpret it my point about original sin meaning that we die remains the same. Let me rephrase:

>>If you want to take your literalist view of the words, then we all die, and some are more deserving of that death than others.<<

Well obviously we all die: we're human: homo sapiens sapiens. Within the phylum chordata and - as far as I know - all known chordates cark it eventually. We all are aware of our own mortality and most people begrudgingly accept it. But as for this idea that some people deserve death more than others: harsh, dude. If someone was to say to you 'I don't think you should be killed because the 5th commandment is very clear on that subject but I still think you deserve to walk under a falling piano tomorrow because you've been fornicating and you know what St. Paul says about that' would you regard that as a kind Christian sentiment?

>>You still can't deal with that outside of Paul's theology of original sin, and death being a factor in the world being a consequence of that sin.<<

People don't die because of original sin. They die for more reasons than I can think of but I don't think you'll ever find a death certificate with 'original sin' listed as the cause of death.

TBC

>>you essentially agree with my interpretation of the passage.<<

That people expire because of Genesis 3:1-6? And that homosexuals, fornicators, people who are disobedient to their parents, liars and even debaters along with many others deserve to die if they don't seek redemption through Christ? No I don't agree with that. And furthermore: harsh, dude. Did you know that kindness is one of the seven heavenly virtues?

>>You're behaving like a troll, which seems to be typical of many militant atheists who seem to have picked on Christianity as a scape goat for their own inadequacies.<<

It's a good thing I'm a pantheist: I'd hate to have feel so inadequate that I had to resort to personal attacks against people I disagree with.

>>Liquid water, though essential to life, is amazingly rare, present in abundance only on earth.<<

Maybe: a lot of scientists think there might be an abundance of liquid water on Europa - one of Jupiter's moons. If it is there it's beneath a thick layer of ice so we probably won't find out what's down there in my lifetime but the volume of liquid water could be as much as twice as the volume of Earth's oceans. Check it out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_(moon)

>>The ancients were not so stupid as to believe that the myths of their religions were facts. No intelligent Roman or Greek would have seen the stories about their various gods as being anything but allegories, no matter what the populace may have believed.<<

Just because somebody interprets a religious myth as fact rather than allegory it does not mean they are stupid. They just read the text differently to you which doesn't say anything about their intelligence level.

Cheers,

Tony