Garden of Eden found?

[Cloral]

In many ways, it seems like the creation story and man's fall could be metaphors and fables based on an oral history of a thriving land full of bounty that quickly turned to sand.

It seems like most of the bible stories are like this. Noah's great flood appears to be based on the flooding of the Black Sea, for instance.

[Archibaldo]

Like The Shroud Of Turin, The Ark that was supposedly found on the mountain top in Turkey, numerous sightings of the Ark Of The Covenant, and the burial box of James..all were shown to be not what the discoverers argued.

Every one knows that Indiana Jones found the Ark of the Covenant and it's stashed in Area 51.

[rock_nog]

Oh come on, the Shroud of Turin's obviously real. Ignore the fact that carbon-14 dating demonstrated that it can't possibly be 2,000 years old - because we all know that nuclear physics is a complete joke and doesn't work in the real world. Also, um, ignore the fact that at the time of its "discovery," churches were always inventing artifacts and claiming they had connections to saints and biblical figures.

[AtmaWeapon]

Interesting discovery..it seems odd that creationists seem to go out of their way to talk of needing faith to believe but trumpet any "scientific" discovery that proves their argument.

I kind of hope that this comment wasn't directed at the discovery in this thread. The article's theory does much more to support a scientific origin of man than a creationist viewpoint. If we decide this is the Garden of Eden, then we have another chapter of the Bible that gets some important historical facts right. The problem is proving the whole "angel with a flaming sword" and "creation of man from dust" parts; I sincerely doubt evidence to support these parts of Genesis.

Also I don't think it's so odd. Faith in something means you believe it without proof; having proof makes it a lot easier to believe. It's not like having concrete proof of God's existence would make people disappointed and move to another religion. People seek scientific proof of Biblical events in the hopes of moving religion from a faith-based belief system to a fact-based belief system. I doubt this will ever be successful because God's made it pretty clear He wants it to remain faith-based and omnipotent beings are kind of good at getting what they want.

[rock_nog]

You know, I find the whole faith thing kind of strange. By which I mean I think it's more of a modern creation. The ancient people who wrote these books, they didn't really have faith. They knew God was real. They could see evidence of his work everywhere. Of course, this was due to their limited understanding of science and the like, but the point is, every lightning storm was proof positive that God was up there.

I just think if we were to talk to one of these people about faith, they'd be incredibly confused. "What do you mean, faith? We have proof God is real. That's absurd. Do you have faith that the sky is blue?" The only real questions, I think, would be "What is his message?" and "Should I follow him?"