NOM

2bizE wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2017 8:49 am...The story of Adam and Eve seems to be symbolic. The earth has been around for much more than 6000 years.
I begin to question when religions started and why. I believe religion started as a way to explain the unknown; particularly death. Life after death seems to be the key concept of most religions. These were just ideas people made up and over time, they evolved and more people started to believe.
What are your thoughts?

I agree that the story of Adam & Eve (& other parables) are symbolic, not literal. Them eating the apple represents us (taking the Matrix red-pill &) becoming more aware - being able to distinguish good from evil etc. And I believe this increasing awareness process is not just once - but ongoing.

It seems that we think and communicate primarily in symbols.
The subconscious especially deals in terms of symbolic dreams etc.
Religion, may serves some needs for symbols - to communicate things when words can't really do justice - like birth, death, love, hate, joy, pain...

Another purpose of religion, especially for me, is the sense of community - a way of establishing and maintaining social support. As mentioned, other forms of herd-mentality (political, clubs etc.) can also provide social support - but they tend to be specially for certain people. Religion also has qualifiers (we all can attest to that!) - but it could also be argued that in principal, religion is more universal - "God is no respector of persons."

LaMachina wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2017 9:06 am Lol, I think we can all agree, the USC trojans are a bunch of troglodytes.

I've always been curious at to where the UCLA students get that oversized latex product they sometimes slip over the head of the Tommy Trojan statue before the big football game.