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OMY1's avatar

Very good article Cauf. As a teenager I first read Kafka's "Trial" and then "Metamorphosis." Only now as an aging adult do I get them both. I think Kafka was an absurdist a la Albert Camus, given his views on the pointlessness of encapsulated political systems. Thanks for a refreshing essay referencing Kafka's ideas.

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Cauf Skiviers's avatar

Great point, OMY1! I’d add Borges to those three. The funny part is, unfortunately, they become less absurd with each passing year...

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Stephanie S's avatar

Great article- loved the Grete analogy .

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Elena Freshman Schumann's avatar

Humans did NOT come from monkeys. About three million years ago there was a primate neither man nor monkey nor ape. The descents of that creature developed into three classes, man, ape and monkey. Evolution, I know bible thumpers hate it. But it sounds a lot more realistic to me than a man developing spontaniously out of sand and woman developing spontaniously from the man's rib. Oh then some how other animals just pooped, I mean popped out of nowhere. Then there was a great flood and there was only two of everything left. This not gentically possibly if there are only two of any species left it will die because there is no genetic diversity. By the way where do the dinasours fit into this??? We found their bones, they existed at one time, how did they just disappear???? Maybe they turned into birds, actually some of them did, the rest just died. Or maybe aliens from another planet left genetic material on earth which eventually developed into animals and then man. Maybe. That is a better explanation to me than a human spontaneously sprouting out of sand and another human spontaneously sprouting our of the first humans rib, because the first human was lonely and needed company . . . and so on.

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Cauf Skiviers's avatar

Hi Elena, while I mostly agree with you—that's why I used 'monkey' as a placeholder for "ape-like creature millions of years ago"—I'd like to note two points: first, evolution does not rule out one (or many) act(s) of creation and extinction; and second, and most importantly, evolution does not explain the origins of life. So, the issue of a living creature 'spontaneously emerging from sand' would still persist, no?

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Elena Freshman Schumann's avatar

While the Adam and Eve story of the origin of life is ridiculous and not in accordance with modern scientific thought, the exact origin of "life" is still a mystery. However, there are natural occurring conditions on which life could arise as proposed by scientists. Electricity is of course real. Matter is real. A certain combination of electricity and matter will create life. Believe it or not, Mary Shelly, the author of Frankenstein was on the right track when she wrote about electricity properly placed bringing the "creature" who was made of dead body parts ALIVE. The life created by the combination of electrisity and matter would have been an extremely simple form of life. But the thing about "life" is that it is constantly evolving. Once cell replicates itself into two celes, two cells become 4 cells ect. Life gets more and more complex as time goes on. We humans are STILL EVOLVING AND OUR EVOLUTION WILL CONTINUE AS LONG AS OUR SPECIES CONTINUES. Since evolution takes many human life times, it is hard for us to understanding the concept because no one person (so far) could ever live long enough to see it completely through.

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john's avatar

Lemme guess... (((schuman)))...?

So nothing works on itself long enough to become something, and then goes from simple to highly complex systems? Wanna talk about absurd!

Life is by design, and if design, then designer. Period. The Christian Bible gives us an outline of such, and while very simplistic as we could ever understand the technicalities, has been shown time and again to be accurate in timing and succession, as well as scientifically accurate as far as it goes and historically verified also. Nothing never has, nor ever will, become something and go from chaos to order. Period.

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Elena Freshman Schumann's avatar

You state "Life is by design", and if design, then designer. For your argument to succeed you would have to assume that your initial statement: Life is by design is true, yet you provide no explanation or evidence why the initial statement "Life is by design" is true so your argument does not follow principals of logical argument. You have to prove all your statements, if the initial statement is false, then everything that follows from it is FALSE.

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