Dexter wrote:

DWill wrote: We have to be satisfied with an inconsistent view from those religionists, because at least it means that the Church and the moderate Protestants won't be fighting to have ID taught in schools. For consistency, look to the fundamentalists, who do understand that you really can't have it both ways.

True, it is better than the alternative for the moderates. There is still a disturbingly large percentage especially in the U.S. that continues to deny evolution.

I think it's not very common for evolution to be taught in school's still, for I grew up knowing nothing about evolution and it certainly was never introduced to me through the school system. Actually, I didn't really know what evolution was until after I read this chapter.

As an example...I attended a private bible study class a few years ago and, on the first day, the teacher of the class attempted to derisively put down the idea of evolution by saying, "Well, we know that evolution didn't happen because if it did, then we'd all be monkey's right now!" or something to that affect. Despite my lack of education on the topic, I knew that that was NOT the idea behind evolution. However, everyone else in the room agreed and laughed along with it out of ignorance. Needless to say...I immediately realized how silly it was that I was in that bible study class!

A lot of people who grow up in theistic based families are encouraged not to learn about evolution or any type of science or philosophy that could be used to argue against the bible with. I grew up in a theistic type of environment and brought a Jean-Paul Sartre book with me to church (a different church than the one in the previous example) at the time (I was maybe 14 or 15) and had at least three leaders of the church come up and discuss their "concern" with me reading a book on existentialism or any kind of philosophy that would "lead me away from God". Speaking only from personal experience, perhaps so many people in the U.S. continue to deny evolution because they're greatly discouraged by their religious organizations to explore such topics and because the school systems are afraid to appear "atheistic" if they teach it to their students. After all, this country is steeped in Christian influences. We print "In God we trust" on our cash, after all, and it becomes a major media story if anyone dares to change these religious traditions.

I wonder at what point in evolution religious beliefs were created in an attempt to explain our own existence.

I suppose it is, after all, an assumption of mine that evolution is taught in most schools today. I'm too damn old to recall whatever it was I was taught back in grade 10, but it was in Connecticut, so I'd be amazed if evolution wasn't in the curriculum. Anyone know for certain about the current situation? I'd have to revise my thinking if it turned out that the topic is avoided. But again, I can't imagine how biology could be taught with integrity with Darwin left out.

LokiMon wrote:. . . I wonder at what point in evolution religious beliefs were created in an attempt to explain our own existence.

Thanks for your comments. People have always told stories to explain the world. Only with the advent of science in the last few hundred years have we come to know and understand our physical universe to a much greater degree. Perhaps this has diminished our reliance on myth and stories.

Meanwhile, I would guess as we evolved from the hunter-gatherer stage of our existence, we came to rely on an increasingly complex social environments where religion played a stronger political role. As such our religious beliefs were formalized and institutionalized by the Church.

DWill wrote:I suppose it is, after all, an assumption of mine that evolution is taught in most schools today. I'm too damn old to recall whatever it was I was taught back in grade 10, but it was in Connecticut, so I'd be amazed if evolution wasn't in the curriculum. Anyone know for certain about the current situation? I'd have to revise my thinking if it turned out that the topic is avoided. But again, I can't imagine how biology could be taught with integrity with Darwin left out.

My son took the sciences in high school just a couple of years ago. Of course, I made a point of checking out his biology textbook. I'm pleased to say the textbook did a an exemplary job discussing evolution by natural selection. I'm not sure exactly how much was covered in the classroom. Certainly Asheville is liberal by North Carolina standards, but this remains a very religious area. Even so, I never got the feeling that evolution was being suppressed. I'm sure it does happen, but not in this particular school.

Dawkins is illustrating that the concept of a first person is incoherent. It is interesting to set this against the creationist views, in which the first man, Adam, is set against the 'new Adam' Jesus Christ, with the salvation brought by Christ understood as repairing the damage caused by Adam and Eve.

How does creationism persist? Some scientists and atheists have a rather superficial psychological appreciation of why this would be. The problem is, to paraphrase Jesus at Matthew 4:4, that man does not live by facts alone, but by every value that proceeds from cultural identity. Creationism provides a comforting sense of identity, with the story of Adam standing at the foundation of a whole moral system.

We have to understand creationism against the psychological and emotional needs that it serves. There is little point debating about facts when their beliefs are embedded in deeply attractive moral teachings and unconscious psychological frameworks.

Belonging to a community is essential to human identity. The modern urban lifestyle of rational individualism is foreign to how humans have lived for 99% of our genetic evolution. In a clan or tribe, people learn to accept authority as the basis of personal security, and consider loyalty and faith to be central virtues. Loneliness and isolation cause depression and anxiety. Belonging provides a sense of meaning and purpose. Churchgoers find that worship and praise generate positive feeling, and these feelings are grounded in an imagined personal relationship with Jesus.

If you think belonging is important, then anything that questions your sense of belonging is very low on your radar screen, and is readily ignored. From the perspective of faith, atheism appears cynical and destructive. But even in secular life, belonging remains important, and we see proxy for tribal belonging in the emotional commitment people make to communal activities such as sport.

If you think that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Saviour, meaning that “God so loved the world blerg blerg… whosoever believeth in Him shall have eternal life”, young earth creationism flows almost as a necessary consequence. This is an important point. Belief in heaven is just as absurd as opposition to evolution, and flows equally from the false belief in the first man. But far more people believe in afterlife than actively reject science. The creationists are simply drawing the logical inference from the absurd premise of the existence of heaven.

The reason for this connection between theories of creation and salvation turns on how Jesus Saves, and this turns on the creationist theory of the First Man. Saint Paul explains in Romans 5 http://niv.scripturetext.com/romans/5.htm that we shall be saved from God’s wrath through Christ. Paul explains that sin entered the world through Adam, the first man, and death reigned from the time of Adam. Consequently, if you can follow the logic, just as one sin resulted in condemnation for all, so also one righteous act (the death of Christ) resulted in justification and life for all people.

This stuff continues elsewhere in Paul, especially http://bible.cc/1_corinthians/15.htm with the lines “since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

What does all this mean? Basically, believing in Jesus sends you to heaven because Jesus cancelled Adam’s error. And logically, (by witch duck standards), Jesus cannot save unless Adam and Eve brought the fall from grace as described in Genesis.

Here we find the citadel of faith, grounded in a fantasy of the First Man. If you believe in Jesus (and in Adam), you are going to heaven. Debate with evolutionists occurs only on the outer ramparts of the castle of faith, barely seen from the high tower where questions of evidence and reason are simply and sublimely ignored.

The reason this rubbish persists is that it is ethically effective at the tribal level. Within a church/sect, fervent belief in Jesus produces mutual care. Such brotherly love is impervious to reason.
 
And creationism cannot be dismissed as the belief of isolated loonies. As Mao Tse Tung said, the fish swims in the sea. Gallup Polls consistently show that over 40% of Americans believe the world was made by God within the last ten thousand years.

Creationism is a far more serious evil than just the whackadoodle cultists who try to claim it is consistent. There is a pervasive cultural ignorance which validates human alienation from nature. And it is getting worse: Gallup polling shows that YECism has become 15% more popular since 2011, up from 40% to 46% of Americans.

Why worry about climate, population, extinction, reality, poverty, war, economics, evidence, reason or ethics if God created humans ten thousand years ago and science is just entirely wrong?

The false belief in Jesus of Nazareth is an extension of creationism. Believing untrue things is evil.

We speak of natural evils, such as earthquakes and hurricanes, extending the concept of evil beyond malevolent intent. In this way, ignorance and lack of education are social evils. Low literacy rates are an evil, although not one that the illiterate can generally be blamed for. Ignorance can be compared to the concept of a sin of omission.

Willful evasion of facts is much worse, a sin of commission. If you have access to information and you ignore, deny or suppress it without good reason, you are committing an evil sin. For creationists to campaign against scientific truth is monstrous, like witch burning.

I do not agree with the public/private distinction with its 'out of sight out of mind' implication. What a church group do in secret does have a ripple effect through the community they live in, often spreading a subtle aura of irrational stupidity and hostility. A creationist can be a nice person, but for many people who know them, just the knowledge that this person believes such farcical idiocy promotes an acceptance of crippling stupidity, an evil influence.

Private false belief can legitimise error, especially when it is aggressive. Society has a moral responsibility to teach people the truth.

Even this discussion forum is like a private group, even though it occurs in public, since the discussions here affect how people think and have broader influence than is immediately seen.

I personally believe that it is valuable for people who are committed to rational philosophy to reclaim moral concepts, such as sin and evil, which have been appropriated by mad creationists and emptied of real meaning. There are many theological concepts which could produce a powerful scientific morality if they were not corrupted by long false usage within the creationist paradigm of supernatural belief. For example, salvation, atonement, hypostasis, heaven, apocalypse, love and grace can be repurposed to fit within the scientific paradigm of natural reason.

But the debate is far from simple. True scientific knowledge about evolution easily elides into the false scientific belief that religion as such is bad and stupid. Humans are genetically hard-wired to be religious, so scientists should get used to it and work out a scientific religion. The point is that religion has to evolve and adapt, grounding itself in knowledge rather than belief. Much existing belief can be retained as allegory, as we really cannot tell from a superficial understanding whether it is junk or coding within our social DNA.

We routinely go against our hardwiring. Modern society presents an environment so different from where we evolved that our natural incentives are screwed up. For example we ruin our physical health by eating too much fat and sugar and not getting enough exercise. It seems equally plausible that we ruin our mental health by suppressing natural religious instincts, partly because those instincts are routinely embedded in a cultural idea set that is pre-scientific and which seems obsolete.

Writers such as Robert Wright and Jared Diamond have done interesting research on the evolution of religion which arguably suggests a natural religious impulse in human neural genetics.

It is superficial to assume that atheism and religion are incompatible. Pure Buddhism is atheist. You can have a sense of the numinous and ineffable and even the value of ritual, symbol and worship without leaping to the conclusion that religion postulates the existence of supernatural entities. Even Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity is not necessarily anti-religious in his observation that God is a projection of human imagination. It is more about rebasing religion on science than abolishing religion.

Locke’s tabula rasa (blank slate) ignores the whole problem of instinctive reaction, which is where an innate religious impulse seems to exist. Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality includes a discussion of reverence in a way that appears to accept a natural religious sentiment, while of course observing that this sentiment has been generally misunderstood as referencing a supernatural entity.

Most people think that religion is a positive ethical force. Are they completely wrong? Just because much religion is malignant does not mean we can jump to the conclusion that faith is a vice.

Dawkins argues that faith is intrinsically blind. I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that is neither blind nor arbitrary. Dawkins makes valid criticisms of the pervasive practice of religion, but not of its intrinsic nature. In fact, the Gospels provide extensive critique of this sort of blind faith, for example Mark 8. Perhaps religion itself contains self-corrective measures to limit such tendencies? We should watch out for straw man arguments in this context, assuming the worst is typical.

The parable of the wheat and the tares presents the idea that good and bad grow together but can ultimately be separated. Abrahamic faith references the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but it is far from simple to assert that the absurdity of this myth means that faith is inevitably in conflict with knowledge. Again, this is complex material, and crude stereotypes inevitably distort. I prefer to argue that faith has a true core that is encrusted by error.

Natural evil - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_evil - encompasses part of the evil of false belief. Atheists generally think that the concept of sin is strictly meaningless, since God does not exist. I prefer to argue that we can sin against nature. And this in fact is what the Bible argues at Revelation 11:18 where it says the wrath of God is against those who destroy the earth.

The point of this 'first man' idea in Christianity is that it is the foundation of a whole ethical system, and that is why creationism is so resistant to science. The ethical ideas within creationism are often socially important and useful, but without the magical idea that Christ repaired Adam's sin, conventional faith loses its coherence and meaning.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Society has a moral responsibility to teach people the truth.

Society cannot teach people the truth - because we don't know what the truth is. We do know what is a great lie and a deception, and we do know how easily people can be misled.

I would like to share this article transcribed from a newspaper called 'The Two Worlds' March 26th 1948.

What Has Spiritualism achieved since 1848?

Spiritualism, during a century of existence, has proved survival to millions of people in many countries. It has saved a myriad of stricken mourners from despair. It has forced innumerable scientists to admit its claims after a hostile enquiry. It has explained so-called 'miracles' by spreading a knowledge of natural law.

After saying that, I find it hard to answer the question, 'What has Spiritualism achieved since the Rochester rappings?'

It is always difficult to estimate the effect on society of a revolutionary idea. The change takes so many forms. Often, it is indefinite. Progress is seldom a move in a straight forward direction.
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Besides, it must be recognised that proof of our claims have not been confined in a 'movement'; in my view, they will never be. Over and over again, spirit guides have declared, 'There are too many organisations already. They have always failed us. We intend to permeate society with our revelations, not to build up a new body or establish a new Church'.

The result of the permeation is, indeed, remarkable.

When I was a boy, the trappings of funereal woe spread grief wherever they were seen. Horses dragging along hearses wore ugly plumes that were as black as coal. Hired mutes looked like ravens walking to the gallows. The horrors of Hell were preached from the pulpit, by Soloman Eagles who told of the wrath to come.

Anglicans sang, at burial services: 'Day of Wrath! O day of warning! Heaven and Earth in ashes burning!'

They chanted, 'Worthless are my prayers and sighing' and 'While the wicked are confounded'.

I recall, too, the abyssmal gloom of the hymn: 'When the solemn death-bell tolls, for our own departed souls, When our final doom is near.'

Even the poorest workers spent the insurance money on a funeral that would impress the neighbours. After it, they handed round ham sandwiches made from meat they had often kept for weeks to consume after what was a ceremony of which 'savages' should have been ashamed. Christianity then seemed to be based on fears of the anger of a vengeful deity.

Today, much of that has gone - and yet the only new teaching about death that has come to the world to effect the change is the teaching that has poured through humble mediums that, even today are subject to punishment intended to stop 'witchcraft' and 'vagrancy'.

Preachers at funeral services now frequently speak of the 'dead' as people present in the congregation. Death is regarded as a release and not as a prelude to punishment. Cremation is becoming more and more general, largely because Spiritualist teaching has insisted that the idea of a physical resurrection is ridiculous.

Spiritualism, too, has done much to bridge the gap between religions that not long ago were almost openly at war. People belonging to all the Christian sects except the Catholics, the Salvationists and the Plymouth Brethren have all shared our platforms. So have Buddhists, Moslems and Hindus. I have myself spoken on Spiritualism in the mosque at Woking.

The earthly reasons for our failure to organise Spiritualism into a mighty army are many. For one thing, it is almost impossible to control mediumship, most of which has started spontaneously in families outside our ranks. It would be hard, indeed, to evolve a way of placing it under management, even if we had the financial means with which to endow it.

As for our religious services, many former Christians used to ritual and a liturgy are dissatisfied with the comparative coldness of our lack of a formula. On the other hand, most Agnostics who become convinced of Survival cannot fit themselves into devotional practices. Many folk to whom we prove our cause prefer to remain inside the orthodoxies from which they cannot mentally free themselves. They object to the fact that we do not hail Jesus as 'divine'. Only in the framework of the democratic systems of Britain and the United States can Spiritualism function with any freedom. It is, indeed, in those countries where, apart fromt he healers in South America, nearly all mediums are to be found.

No, most of the results of a century of Spiritualist propaganda are hard to fasten down or to explain in words that would not need much qualification. It has been an enfranchising mission. It has swept away infinite prejudice. It has been a unifying influence, whereas most of the other ideas born in the field of religion have become barriers between nations, between classes and between sects.

But in the case of most of its adherents, fervent in their early days, what was a fervour has become merely an acceptance. That is one reason why the statement, 'There are perhaps 1,000,000 Spiritualists in Britain' can neither be proved nor controverted. People enquire, they receive proof, and then they drift back to the churches in which they spent their childhood - or else they give up religion altogether.

Our speakers, since they cannot threaten a Hell or promise a Heaven, cannot continually interest them. And, except in the home circle, mediumship loses its attraction soon after its wonders have ceased to excite.

Spiritualism, whatever the weaknesses of the bodies that proclaim it, is the only religion out of which a new world can be born. The orthodox creeds are dying because of the narrowness of their doctrines and because of the dreary reiteration of texts and hymns which no longer have a meaning.

By Hannen Swaffer 1879 - 1962

I have typed this directly from the newspaper article because I think it is so very well expressed. And I think it demonstrates that it is not just the intellect that needs to be fed....but the soul.....What does the soul feed on? Hope, I suppose. Anything which suggests that there is more to us than flesh and blood, like music, poetry, love, compassion.....feeds the Hope......long may it do so.

Penelope wrote:Society cannot teach people the truth - because we don't know what the truth is.

Hi Penelope

This is precisely where Dawkins’ book The Magic of Reality is so valuable. “Truth” is another of those elusive words, like faith and love, which have been corrupted by long usage in ways that are highly dubious. But Dawkins’ point is that we do know what truth is, because scientific evidence is reliable, and science is constantly advancing in its explanation of truth.

Science presents abundant information about truth, a term that Dawkins is happy to use in an accurate metaphysical sense, although of course with his empiricist prejudice he would deny that his discussion of truth is at all metaphysical. Consider, in The Magic of Reality, by “creating models and testing them”, science brings us “closer to the truth” (p22). And “evolution … has real evidence to demonstrate the truth of it” (p31). Any suggestion of a “truth” that is incompatible with science is wrong.

Penelope wrote: there is more to us than flesh and blood, like music, poetry, love, compassion.....feeds the Hope......long may it do so.[/i]

Yes, we also have nerves and organs. And language and culture. It is hard to show how language is ultimately material. But all that mean is that we need a more imaginative understanding of the nature of matter, encompassing the symbolic communication that we have evolved as material entities. Hope is neural.

There's no question that people feel empowered by their spiritual beliefs, even if those beliefs aren't supported by evidence. The beliefs of a Spiritualist, such as belief in an external soul, can not only be individually inspiring but a positive social force as well. I'm reading on Wikipedia that most Spiritualists in the 1800s supported causes such as the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage.

I think this is Penelope's point. Certainly many of us are drawn to the mystical sense of the universe and this is much of the appeal of religion. A strictly empirical view is seen by many as too sterile.

Many theists perceive criticism of Creationism as criticism of all religious belief and, unfortunately, this is the usual tone of the dialogue. I would suggest that it isn't Creationism, per se, that needs to be addressed as a "pervasive cultural ignorance" but ignorance itself. The sad truth about Creationism, though, is that it does actually promote ignorance and suppression. In this respect there's a world of difference between Spiritualism and Creationism. Spiritualists aren't rigidly tied to literal dogma that must reject scientific knowledge about evolution and the geologic timespan. The difference is between seeking truth and suppressing it.

I wanted to thank you for your post geo., but it won't let me, I think because I already thanked Robert, so please consider yourself thanked won't you?

There is a lot of evidence for the existence of the soul, and I grew up with a very nonchalant attitude to such, because it was in such abundance in my childhood home. The benefit was that it never scared me......I was used to rappings and things transporting themselves around. Grew up accepting it, so to speak.

What does puzzle me, is why people didn't continue to investigate such phenomena. There are books written by such luminaries as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and by Hannan Swaffer and many other books written eloquently by educated people. This piece is about Conan Doyle's and Sir Oliver Lodge's son who was killed in the first World War and he wrote a famous book called 'Raymond'. Btw, this article, to be fair, is anti spiritualism.

At the time, sceptics were wary of debunking the mediums’ claims. Today, there are counselling services for the bereaved, but during the First World War and after, comfort and consolation were hard to find in a Britain that valued stoicism and the stiff upper lip. In many cases, grief-stricken relations heard what they wanted to hear and glossed over holes in the medium’s story. A similar boom in communication with the dead came after the American Civil War. It’s said that a séance even took place in the White House itself.

In Britain, perhaps the most famous of the mediums’ dupes were the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the physicist Sir Oliver Lodge. Both were grief-stricken by the loss of their sons in the First World War. Doyle’s son Kingsley died in the flu pandemic of 1918, weakened by the wounds he had received at the Battle of the Somme. Both men were scientifically trained, but seem to have suspended their disbelief in the séance rooms they frequented.

Raymond Lodge was Sir Oliver’s youngest son. He was killed by a shell fragment in Flanders in 1915. Yet, exactly a week after his death, Raymond was apparently in touch with his grieving family through an amateur medium. Her son, too, had died, but, she claimed, he was busily chatting away to her from ‘the other side’, with good news of others who had made the journey there.

The message had come through clearly and unequivocally. ‘I have seen that boy, Sir Oliver’s son; he’s better, and has had a splendid rest, tell his people.’

Lodge seized the opportunity to make amends for having been a neglectful father, and he and his wife were soon listening eagerly to Raymond’s ‘voice’ as he described life in a happy country called ‘Summerland’. There he claimed to have been reunited with his grandfather and a brother and sister who had died before him.

‘Summerland’ seemed to be a pretty nice place. Its residents lacked for nothing. Whisky and soda flowed freely, and many of the most luxurious trappings of life were there for the asking: fine houses, fashionable clothes, glorious landscapes, excellent cigars.

Sir Oliver was soon convinced, but not before he had demanded proof from his son that he was still alive and was actually speaking to him. Raymond duly ‘revealed’ obscure details of his life that only his family could have known, his father believed. But the real clincher came a few days later, when a medium called Alfred Vout Peters told Lady Lodge:

‘You have several portraits of this boy. Before he went away you had got a good portrait of him – two – no, three. Two where he is alone, and one where he is in a group of other men. He is particular that I should tell you of this.’

The Lodges, who still held on to a few vestiges of scepticism, knew nothing of this group photograph, and reluctantly dismissed it as ‘a shot or guess on the part of Peters at something probable.’

But it did exist. The mother of one of Raymond’s fellow officers wrote to ask whether they would like a copy of a regimental photograph taken a month before his death.

While they waited for the picture to arrive, Sir Oliver questioned a medium about it and was told that the group had been photographed ‘with lines at the back of them.’ And Raymond apparently then added a curious detail: ‘someone wanted to lean on him, but he was not sure if he was taken with someone leaning on him.’

This was the picture that came four days later:
Raymond Lodge - Regimental Photograph

Raymond is sitting on the ground, the second from the right in the front row.

NRaymond Lodge - Close Upow look at this close-up of the officer behind him: his right arm does seem to be leaning on Raymond’s shoulder.

Sir Oliver was amazed. What better proof could there be that Raymond was in touch? ‘To my mind,’ he wrote, ‘the whole incident is exceptionally good as a piece of evidence. Our complete ignorance, even of the existence of the photograph, in the first place, and secondly the delayed manner in which knowledge of it normally came to us … seem to me to make it a first-class case. While, as to the amount of coincidence between the description and the actual photograph, that surely is beyond chance or guesswork.’

After his son Kingsley’s death, Conan Doyle also sought refuge in spiritualism, a subject in which he had long been interested. And he stuck to his beliefs, even after his favourite mediums, Eusepia Palladino and Margery Crandon, had been exposed as audacious fraudsters. Doyle befriended Harry Houdini, the escapologist, who, when not escaping from padlocked trunks or sealed milk churns, was desperate to contact his mother through the spirits. But Houdini, unlike Doyle, recognised the conjuring tricks used by the mediums. He became disaffected, and devoted the rest of his life to trying to persuade Doyle and other true believers of the errors of their ways.

Towards the end of his life, it became clear that Doyle’s grief had changed him. His books about Sherlock Holmes, the most rational man in fiction, were joined by others about ‘real life’ fairies, ‘psychic photographs’ and the weird rantings of ‘spirit guides’. His own was called Phineas, a talkative former resident of the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia.

Another friend, Harry Price, himself no stranger to making doubtful claims about the paranormal, offered this gently barbed obituary, on Doyle’s death and weird beliefs:

‘Among all the notable persons attracted to Spiritualism, he was perhaps the most uncritical. His extreme credulity, indeed, was the despair of his colleagues, all of whom, however, held him in the highest respect for his complete honesty. Poor, dear, lovable, credulous Doyle! He was a giant in stature with the heart of a child.’

I suppose, that because I grew up witnessing all these odd phenomena, and I 'matured' (though there are those who will disagree) with no doubt in my mind about the eternal nature of the human soul, NOT that I think all is cut and dried. NOT that I think that my loved ones are now angels in heaven, NOT that they're always even loved ones.....sometimes I think they are barely tolerated ones! Still, it does make one examine ones' life and motives to think of oneself, not as a body with a soul attached, but as an infinite soul with a temporary body. I realise that I am widely off-topic. This thread is called 'Who was the first person' - well, in my philosophy, there is no first person, birth is not the beginning of us and death is not the end of us. If naught else......it is a life enhancing way of being.

Penelope wrote:I wanted to thank you for your post geo., but it won't let me, I think because I already thanked Robert, so please consider yourself thanked won't you?

There are no restrictions on thanking people. You can thank any post you like not just one post per thread. I'm not sure why you're not able to thank Geo. Maybe you clicked "thank" already and you don't realize it, or maybe you weren't logged in. Let me know if you have that issue again. Thanks, Penny.