Traditional monotheism certainly wasn’t obvious to 99% of world cultures throughout history, as only the three Abrahamic faiths and Zoroastrians believed that way. Comfort, guidance and protection deriving from a perfectly good, wise and powerful God eluded humans in their billions by no fault of their own – the genetic hardwiring of their brains didn’t lead them inevitably to see the world as being rooted in something other than pantheism, animism, polytheism, atheism, deism or panentheism. God made a cosmos that is built on the necessity of continual cycles in destruction-creation and life-death. Without the death of stars, there would be no galaxies or life in the universe. Without biological death and life processes integrated together, the Earth’s ecosystem would not function. The orthodox Christian assertion of a “safe” environment for human (or other) life in the Garden of Eden is completely implausible given these realities. God made a dangerous universe from the beginning. There’s no evidence of a biblical Fall away from an earlier utopian origin. The Bible says that in the future God will create a New Heavens and New Earth that is systematically designed to be without sin, death and severe pain and yet many people will be there who didn’t choose Christ – babies, the mentally handicapped and perhaps the unevangelized as well. So, why would God make our current universe so harsh and baffling? And why hide or make unintelligible the various essential revelations of God from most people for most of history?

Given what I’ve said above, why would it be rational to trust that God is looking out for our welfare, here or in the afterlife? I can see goodness and wonder in nature, yet there is also a vast range in types of suffering, waste and tragedy awaiting living things on this planet. This is not because of sin. The universe has been like this since shortly after its existence was inaugurated 13.7 billion years ago. A conservative young earth creationist who wants to maintain that the cosmos began 6,000-10,000 years ago is stuck in the dilemma of explaining how the biology, physics, geology, chemistry, etc.(1) of such a recent start could match with with the radically contrasting record found in the field of natural history and all other areas of science which have been studied and verified for centuries, many times by researchers with Christian beliefs.

(1) disagreementsihavewithchristianity.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/if-physical-death-entered-the-world-because-of-sin-why-does-science-contradict-this

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The paragraphs above were copied from one of the articles on my blog site: disagreementsihavewithchristianity.wordpress.com. I'd love to hear feedback on any of the 20 articles there, if you feel like commenting in response.

Given that some kind of cosmic fall for homo sapiens from a healthy state is required for the concept of salvation, I think that Christianity should provide solid evidence that this earlier condition existed and then fell apart. Religion often makes grandiose assertions and as a former devout believer I cooperated with those ideas and social systems. Honest people must attempt to demonstrate "extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims".

The issue of radically disproportionate punishments is another major problem in the Bible. Among the worst examples of these is the super extreme consequence of banishment from intimacy with God and Edenic conditions for Adam and Eve because of one rebellion and then the automatic inheritance of it to tens of billions of people later. Beyond that we have to look at things like the Flood (whether it literally happened or not), death penalties in the Torah for non-capital crimes and everlasting hell for a finite lifetime.

I think that we have to keep in mind that Christian doctrine teaches the physical resurrection of all human bodies in the future, along a material new heavens and new earth. This means that the comment from Aquinas that material things tend toward disarray likely is not universal in the Judeo-Christian God's creative framework. Personally, I think it makes much more sense to acknowledge that all of these concepts are religious and not connected to the "real world" except by aesthetic inspiration or analogy. There is a reason that so many theologians have thought that physical death came into the world through sin - because that's what a straight-forward reading the of the Old and New Testaments reveal. Modern believers have more sophisticated interpretations that aren't as radically contradictory to science. But, it's hard to justify such a misleading biblical revelation from the ultimate mind of God. Why wouldn't God communicate more effectively and accurately?

Where does the spark of life come from? Scientists confess that they do not know.

Nonsense.

Here is why suffering exists: http://bit.ly/11EyvgO

Regarding Adam, the Bible says: “Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7) Is this statement scientifically credible?

Robert A. Freitas' work "Nanomedicine" states that the human body is made up of 41 chemical elements. These basic elements—carbon, iron, oxygen, and others—are all present in the “dust” of the earth. Thus, as Genesis states, humans truly are formed “out of dust from the ground.”

How did those lifeless building blocks come together to form a living human? To illustrate the enormity of the challenge, consider the NASA space shuttle, one of the most complex machines ever devised. This technological marvel contains a staggering 2.5 million parts. It took teams of engineers years to design and put it together. Now consider the human body. It is made up of some 7 octillion atoms, 100 trillion cells, dozens of organs, and at least 9 major organ systems. How did this biological machine of mind-boggling complexity and superb structure come to be? By blind chance or as the denouement of an ordered mind?

Moreover, what makes humans live? Where does the spark of life come from? Scientists confess that they do not know. In fact, they cannot even agree on an acceptable definition of life. To those who accept the idea of a Creator, the conclusion is obvious. The Source, of course, is God.

What of the description in Genesis that Eve was fashioned from Adam’s rib? (Genesis 2:21-23) Before dismissing the account as myth or fantasy, consider the following facts: In January 2008, scientists in California, U.S.A., produced the world’s first mature cloned human embryos from adult skin cells. In fact, using similar techniques, scientists have cloned at least 20 animals. The most famous of these, Dolly the sheep, was cloned in 1996 from the mammary gland of an adult sheep.

What will come of such experiments remains to be seen. But the point is this: If humans can use biological material from one organism to produce another one of its kind, could not the almighty Creator fashion a human from existing biological material of another human? Interestingly, surgeons routinely use the rib bone in reconstructive surgery because of its ability to regrow and replace itself.

Consider now the Jewish ancestral lists recorded in the Bible book of First Chronicles chapters 1 to 9 and in the Gospel of Luke chapter 3. These remarkably detailed genealogical records span 48 and 75 generations respectively. Luke traces the genealogy of Jesus Christ, while Chronicles records the royal and priestly ancestral lines for the nation of Israel. Both lists include the names of such well-known figures as Solomon, David, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, Noah, and finally Adam. All the names in the two lists represent real people, and Adam was the original real person on each list.

In addition, again and again the Bible presents Adam and Eve as real human beings, not as mythical characters. Here are some examples:

• “[God] made out of one man every nation of men.”—ACTS 17:26.
• “Through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, and thus . . . death ruled as king from Adam down to Moses.”—ROMANS 5:12, 14.

• “The first man Adam became a living soul.”—1 CORINTHIANS 15:45.
• “Adam was formed first, then Eve.”—1 TIMOTHY 2:13.
• “The seventh one in line from Adam, Enoch, prophesied also regarding [the wicked].”—JUDE 14.

More important, Jesus Christ, the most credible witness in the Bible, acknowledged the existence of Adam and Eve. When challenged on the subject of divorce, Jesus answered: “From the beginning of creation ‘[God] made them male and female. On this account a man will leave his father and mother, and the two will be one flesh’ . . . Therefore what God yoked together let no man put apart.” (Mark 10:6-9) Would Jesus use an allegory to establish a binding legal precedent? No! Jesus quoted Genesis as fact.

Summing up the scriptural evidence, The New Bible Dictionary concludes: “The New Testament confirms the historicity of the account given in the early chapters of Genesis.”

http://bit.ly/1b6TzxJ