Adam & Woman, the first humans, are innocent victims of a confidence trick.

In each leg of your argument you begin with a reference to the existence of a system of myths, and you include the story of Adam and Eve - in fact an incorrect description because if you read the first three chapters of Genesis carefully you will find that the correct description should be "Adam and Woman" - in this system of myths. You then make the statement that this alone wins the debate. You repeat much the same thing at the end of the second leg of your argument, and it seems that you assume that, because myth is involved, no other evidence is needed to show the fallacy of the proposition that this debate is founded upon. In other words, your argument must be correct because you say it is. A big assumption. Before going further into that, I must first deal with another assumption you make, which you seem to think bolsters your argument. You allege that I am biased to see the myth in the theological landscape it has within Christianity. That is an assumption that is based upon no knowledge of me whatsoever, and hardly serves to advance the strength of any argument you may have. I must however draw your attention to the content of the second leg of my argument where I explained my position as a lawyer. In fact, I have spent some 60 years operating as a lawyer in the English legal system, during which time I have been involved continuously in the examination and analysis of complicated documents, correspondence and legislation in order to arrive at a full understanding of the meaning, relevance and effect of all those things. For this to be done effectively bias had to be eschewed, and I have had virtually a lifetime working with this in mind. You have no evidence for your assumption, and I refute it entirely. In fact, if you look carefully at the proposition that leads to this debate, you will see that I specifically state that the common view of the Adam and Eve (sic) myth cannot be correct upon a proper analysis and examination of the first three chapters of Genesis. Over and beyond that, it is interesting to see that, when purporting to set out that myth in your own argument, you present it in terms which are commonly used in the Christian approach to the myth, which terms my proposition denies and which my argument asserts cannot be correct. The existence of myths is of course evidence in itself. It is clear that down the generations humans have always tried to provide for themselves a picture that will explain how they came to be in their then present state. The Adam and Eve picture is one such, which may well have been based upon earlier material but which served the purpose of its time. That in itself made the picture neither true nor false, but served a generation, and indeed perhaps many generations, who knew nothing of evolutionary theory or quantum mechanics, to say nothing of the Schrodinger's cat or Hilbert Space. Today we have a new myth, namely the Theory of Everything, which the scientists pursue with great determination. Stephen Hawking presented this myth in its most complete form. When we have that Theory, he said, we will know the mind of God. But it remains a myth, because it cannot be proved. If it is to be removed from the realm of myth it will have to be proved, and there will always remain the possibility that the perceived "Everything" is actually "Everything" minus 1. This is an extremely complicated topic. You will see that the Moderator, or whatever he or she may be called, refers to the introduction by me of an off topic set of claims. This of course relates to my reference to a Resurrection and it place in Christianity. In fact it is not off topic at all, given the way you have chosen to attack the proposition under discussion. Effectively you say the the proposition relates to myth which automatically makes it false, but you adduce no evidence to support that allegation. So you dismiss the topic on the basis of your own opinion. I accept that the Adam and Eve story can properly be described as a myth constructed for a specific purpose, and as you have seen I contend that as such it has been ineffectively examined and analysed. The so called off topic, the Resurrection, or return of a specific individual from the dead, is entirely bound up with and can only be properly explained and understood following the correct analysis and explanation of the myth. To go into this would be to develop a subject which would use up all and more of the space available for this debate, and indeed it has been and is in recent times the subject of much debate in Christian churches other than the Catholic Church. And even there.......! Nevertheless, any evidence appertaining to the possibility that an individual returned from the dead is "evidence", requires consideration and examination as evidence, and cannot be brusquely dismissed because it does not match a preconceived view of human reality. It is precisely because it opens out a different view of the reality of human existence that it appertains to and forms part of the consideration of the Adam and Eve myth. It is clear that there is a division between so called Creationists and so called Evolutionists. It is clear too, that at the end of the day both sides find it difficult to provide evidence that would prove conclusively there could only be an evolutionary world or there just had to be a created world. I use the word "world" for convenience, but really the word should be "Universe". The evidence for evolution is immensely strong, cannot be denied, and ought to be accepted without a qualm by any Creationist. It does not, however, undermine or destroy the purpose of the Adam and Eve myth, which supplies an explanation for something which generations of humans have thought needed that explanation. The Evolutionists deny that need. Many scientists say that there is no explanation as none is needed. The universe just "is", and we are its evolutionary products. The so called "off topic", a human back from the dead, is evidence that those scientists are guilty of failing in the rigour of their own pursuit, for the "Off topic" has not been regarded by them as worth examination. Too "shocking". To return to the wording of the proposition, the conventional Christian view of the Adam and Eve myth, the view that you yourself adopt as the one to be considered and as the one that proves the falsity of the proposition, cannot, as you see I assert, be supported by a proper reading of the material available. There is no magic in this assertion. It can be seen to be correct if one does nothing more than read the material and take in its significance on the page. Simply doing this must convince anyone that the standard view cannot hold, which of course is the statement set out in the proposition, and that an injustice has been done to the first humans, who of necessity under their gift of existence set the whole evolutionary process going. Read the material without any preliminary bias. In short, good Tatarize, you run the universe, and could be accused of making a complete mess of it were it not for the fact that I and all the others run the universe as well. With all of us as cooks, the broth is totally - well there are many terms, but since this is a polite group debate, let's just say messed up. It was good of you to take up the gauntlet laid down by an eighty year old man. If you look at my profile you will see me raising a bottle at the seaside at the start of a BBQ given by my family in celebration of that birthday. I raise the bottle to you too, good Tatarize, and buy you a metaphorical drink. As the Irish say, may the road rise with you. Brendan.