.

Satan told Eve that she and Adam would be on a par with God if she partook of the fruit and she went for it. If I were God, I'd be secretly proud that my children had grown up, but he didn't seem to take it that way.

the god which they just happen to be the sole mouthpieces for.

How do you know?

Are Satan and Yahweh real?

Again, how do you know?

but more as a philosophical investigation.

Kind of like the best science fiction.

And perhaps, at least on unconscious level, the people at the time understood it they way too. They were looking for meaning in a bleak and dangerous world, so their God is loving but dangerous. Sort of like an abusive relationship.

That's why I asked.

A common Judeo-Christian view is that God allowed the temptation of Eve in order to give us free will. After all, if you don't know anything but worship and obedience, what's the point of it?

It means a lot more when you choose it. The thinking is that God's ultimate creation was given choice to see which way it would go. Not so well at times, ergo the Flood. But eventually he seems to have given up on us.

in the dialectic we call reality. The Taoists call good and evil Yang and Yin, which have no meaning without the other to complete them.

I rarely mention them, though, because I don't come from that background. I am more comfortable speaking from a Christian point of view, even though I don't believe much of it. I was just brought up that way.

I've seen is a lot of Jewish thought along those lines and would like to know more. I've found a lot of ancient wisdom in Judaism that doesn't seem to reach the rest of the world.

Anyway, religion is a lot like the elephant and the blind men. Everyone has a piece of the truth, but the whole thing evades them.

I accompanied her to services at the family's Buddhist temple, and went on Buddhist meditation retreats with her. I'm not a Buddhist, but there are many things about Buddhism that resonate deeply with me. I'm not a Christian any more, either, but I love the message of forgiveness, compassion, and service to the poor and the sick that Jesus taught his disciples.

My wife is from Karatsu, Saga-ken

My wife's family is from Kumagawa in Fukushima, but she grew up in Tokyo.

incest, murder, hate, racism, death and dire warnings. Much better than Hans Christian Anderson.
I especially love the compassionate story where an old man sent bears into a town to kill all the inhabitants, even the children, because they mocked him.

incest, murder, hate, racism, death and dire warnings. Good people are killed along with the bad in natural disasters, disease, and at the hands of other people. It's just an attempt to understand reality as it is rather than as we wish it was.

to tear the children who made fun of him to pieces. God did that.

All he did was curse them. God did the tearing apart of the children using the bears as his pawns.

In this setting, as Elisha approached Bethel, no less than 42 “little children” came “out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head” (verse 23).

Elisha “turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord.” Then “there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them” (verse 24).

Why is God indulging such a ridiculous temper tantrum from his prophet? You'd think a man of God ought to be able to deal with taunting from little children, without demanding that God kill them for it.

Animals experience the emotions of love and hate, but they don't seem to have a concept of good and evil. Or do they?

related to survival: fear causes a fight or flight response. The fight response might look like anger or hate to us, but I think it is much more impersonal than that. As for love, it sure looks like love, so I won't speculate.

Dogs definitely seem to feel love, as all dog owners can attest. But sometimes a dog takes a dislike to another dog even without any obvious initial threat. They just start acting aggressive towards one another every time they see the other. Sometimes the other dog doesn't respond aggressively, it just seems to wonder why the other dog hates it.

Also, I think in humans, hate is usually based on fear. If someone makes us fearful enough, we start to hate them.

They see relationships in terms of hierarchy, and their place in that hierarchy. When two dogs are competing for ascendancy, they will have a very uneasy, and sometimes violent, relationship. If one of the dogs submits to the other, peace is restored (unless one walks too close to the other when he's eating!).

Good is what the pack and its leader says is good. Evil is what they say is evil. Certain things are always evil - like unlimited killing within the pack, because no pack could survive that. Other things may vary, like how you react to other packs.

have pointed out, we are far more murderous than any pack animal. If an animal in a pack submits to another by lying down with the neck exposed, it is virtually impossible for the other animal to kill them. Humans do not have that hard-wired into their brain.

They will tear each other apart and never accept surrender.

Very complex social interactions compared to dogs and wolves. Just like us.

that form social groups are very difficult to describe, really. Social animals, like chimps and humans, are related to the pack animals, but are more intelligent, generally, and so relate to each other in more complicated ways. The two types of organization are, however, related in many ways, as well.

Last edited Tue Sep 18, 2018, 10:25 AM - Edit history (1)

that of a pack of wolves.

Some excerpts from the article at the link below:

Family relationships are vital to chimpanzees. They live in extended family groups of as many as 20-120 individuals. They have a fission-fusion social organization in that they break off into smaller interchangeable groups and periodically come together. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle of early human communities is thought to resemble that of chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees acknowledge and respect a hierarchy within their groups. Dominance relationships are influenced by alliances, and coalitions are formed by males—chimpanzee politics.

Mothers and sons typically have lifelong bonds, as do other individuals within an extended social group. Upon reaching sexual maturity, females migrate to neighboring communities while males stay in their natal group. Sometimes females will migrate to mate but return to their natal group. Because chimpanzees have babies only once every five or six years, mothers are able to nurture and teach their children intimately. Babies are not weaned until they are about five years old, and remain close to their mothers for the first decade of their lives.

http://www.releasechimps.org/chimpanzees/chimpanzee-society

but more intelligent animals definitely have preferences both ways.

I think you are making a couple of claims:

1. Human subjective experience is categorically different than (all?) other animals.
2. Other animals are “hard wired” and do not have subjective experiences of emotions.

Is my understanding correct?

I would agree with #1 except I wouldn't say "all" because I believe the great apes may also experience emotions that are closer to ours than other animals. I would disagree with #2. Insects, for example, are totally hard-wired with, I would posit, no emotions and no learning behavior(or extremely rudimentary learning behavior). I think all mammals, and probably birds and perhaps even reptiles, probably have some form of emotion, although without the self-consciousness that distinguishes our experience of emotion. We are aware of emotions such as love, hate, sadness as we are having them. I doubt that any but the great apes share that distinction.

You’ve clarified that you don’t believe (2). As far as (1) goes, more and more other animals are passing theory of mind tests that are generally considered to be good evidence of subjective conscious experience. It ain’t just apes.

or is that your interpretation of what their motivation must be?

Last edited Fri Sep 14, 2018, 03:23 PM - Edit history (1)

There is a large and growing body of literature on this.

If by basic emotions you mean fear and avoidance, we agree.

Last edited Fri Sep 14, 2018, 04:21 PM - Edit history (1)

I put the word "seem" solely for your benefit. I think the research actually proves it, but I thought if I said that, you'd argue it.

Go review the research and get back to us when you've come up to speed. The research literature also defines the basic emotions. It's interesting research, but I am not competent enough to explain it to you.

And from my limited understanding, the basic emotions relate mainly to more instinctive behavior.

Anger is understandable on a purely physical level.
Fear the same. Fear of the dark.
Surprise the same. The surprise of a prey animal upon seeing a predator.
Happiness and sadness are things that we can infer upon observing a non-verbal animal. Is a dog happy that he is being groomed, or is it simply a reaction to a physically pleasurable act?

Your example of a dog being groomed is a strange one for any one familiar with dogs. Dogs all react differently to being groomed. On the other hand, dogs all act the same when they see their owner, and it could not possibly be physical pleasure.

Do tell. There is a good deal of it, actually. You will not find it at religiousnews.com, though. If that's where you do your research, you are not gaining much knowledge.

nomadic tribes. There was no Adam nor Eve. No Satan. No Yahweh. They're all just characters in a campfire story.

The story tellers weren't there. Not one of them. It's a decent story about origins, but that's all.

Mythology.

As Hawking and DeGrasse-Tyson say,

Existence or lack of spiritual beings is irrelevant to evolution.