I'm "whining" because I DO believe that not everyone will spend eternity in heaven, and despite others' mockery of my religion, I genuinely still want them to see the light and be with me there. Now is that childish, or is that grown up?
First, it's childish to expect everyone to be scared of your invisible boogeyman and his threats of eternal damnation. I'm no more worried that I am pissing off your god than I am that I am pissing off Allah, Apollo, Zeus, Odin or Thor. When you finally understand why you aren't scared of those other gods, maybe you'll get an inkling of why we react this way.
Second, it's childish to embrace such nonsense without evidence, and your emotions do not count as evidence. If you want to be taken seriously, then make serious claims, and back it up with serious data. Pointing to your holy book and pleading that the "good" being depicted inside has a plan to torture me forever is, shall we say, less than convincing.
So, you are a Roman Catholic henotheist? Given that the RC conception of god is unary(at least by their own definition, the illogical nature of the trinity aside), this renders your self-identification just as muddled as the rest of your post. Did you really waste the last five years on crap like this?
To know where a lot of western civilization ideas come from?
No need to go to the source, since it was extensively quoted in the very ideas you mention.
To compare and challenge what a lot of "christian" preachers and politicians claim that it says?
Why did you put christian in quotes? And who cares what they say? I don't need to read the Qur'an to reject fatwas. I don't need to read the bible to reject the latest junk from the 700 Club or Rick Santorum.
A lot of the junk conservative politicians tell "christian" masses in the US would go nowhere if those same masses had good understanding of the Bible.
Like what?
There's lot of interesting stuff in there. In the book of Samuel, you can find a passage where a nation which had laws, judges and teachers (and a God), gets tired of it and wants something more fun; they go like "oh the nations around us have powerful kings, it would be so cool to have one", and they get told "look, if you get a king, he will take your sons and daughters as servants for himself, he will send them to fight useless wars, etc..." And the nation tells the prophet "whatever, we want a king". A few pages later things get awry for them.
I think your succinct distillation is far superior to the original.
There's lot of stuff like that, politics, ideology, morality, economics... And just like the above example, a lot of stuff to confront "manifest destiny" "it's God will that we rule by the sword" politics.
Dude, have you not read it? There is PLENTY in there to support those politics. Do you not remember the bit in the beginning, for example, where that loving god sent his chosen people on a rape, pillage and murder rampage through the "promised land?"
But, then, I suppose that the fact that I knew that supports your view, doesn't it? I would say that there is one good reason to read the bible: to be able to expose it for the steaming pile of evil it really is.
Been there, done that, done with that. Read the bible cover to cover, can still outquote most of my "devout" family and friends, still a pile of nonsense.
Sure, a lot of the Bible is a historical record of the Jewish and Christian people living in the Middle East for a period of a few thousand years, and not every law in Leviticus applies to us today.
Shall I keep going? This is your bible, not mine. This is codified barbarism. It is institutionalized hatred and murder. This is the foundation stone that the rest of your religion is built directly upon. The god in those books is a bloodthirsty monster. The New Testament builds on that, adding infinite punishments for those who don't believe. It's all infantile prattling, and I have a hard time taking anyone who finds deep meaning in it seriously. Grow up, and quit your whining. If you are right, you will be even more exalted in your childish "heaven" due to our criticism while we burn forever, so what are you whining about anyway?
That's the Old Testement. Chrisitianity is based of the New Testament.
It's based on both, and if you are in the least bit cognizant of the general theology and history of Christianity, then you know that you are lying through your teeth.
The point is for you know the difference between the Old and New Testaments and which ones various groups follow. For example, your point may have made sense if this were an article about religion. But since it was an article about Christianity specifically, you just showed your ignorance. You don't have to believe the story I just quoted above, but you should understand that Christianity is not about what you seem to think it is. It's called the NEW Testament for a reason.
Oh, so your group pulled the OT out of your bibles? You ignore all of the supposed "prophesies" in the OT which point to your supposed "savior?" There is no reference to a list of commandments in your church? How come I think you are still lying through your teeth?
(Of course, I'm talking about true Christians here, not the negative stereotype you've formed in your head from that one TV preacher you saw on Sunday morning saw after an all night bender, or the horrible stories you heard the news. I'm talking about people like Tim Tebow's parents who give their lives to serve others.)
The whole bit is just stupid, but this part stuck out like a sore thumb. First, No True Scotsman. Second, I love how you put forward Tebow's parents, who, if I am not mistaken, spent their time trying to convert one type of Christian to another. Bravo.
Sure there's a lot of crazy people in the world, but the Christians I've seen going to other countries have gone there to help people.
You know what I find interesting? When asking for donations in public, the local missionaries just talk about building houses, supplying clean water, etc. But when they are raising money in their church, the talk always turns to the number of people who have converted due to their help. I wonder which one is the primary motivation?
I've never been approached by Christians pushing religion, but I encounter anti-thiests pushing bigotry and anti-religion on a weekly basis on the internet (between facebook and this/other sites).
If you are from the USA, you are heavily sheltered. They come to my house. They bother my children in public. They infest the local schools. If you haven't had SOMEONE pushing Christianity on you, then you are either a Christian who is already in the club, or you are part of a vanishingly small group of people.
But these changes will not transfer into the descendants of the guy who was changed still in the womb unless they're exposed to precisely the same factors and change in the same way. It's not a "lasting" change like a genetic one.
No, that's the point of epigenetics. It is heritable, usually via chemical changes in the mother during development or even the behavior of the mother(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics). A good example is the tadpole state of certain frogs. They will develop different body forms when certain predators are present. These changes can be passed onto the offspring of the adult frogs.
Let's start with the humans brutalized by those who hold those beliefs. That's a good start.
Who's going to decide which belief system is the "better" belief system that everyone else should use? Most religions already claim to be for "good".
Let's start by not letting religious zealots destroy human lives.
People ought to be free to decide whether they want to live in a conservative / traditional culture where people wear clothes, or live in some hedonistic hippie commune, and have all kinds of options available to them.
Sure, and who is arguing about that? Who is being destroyed by consenting adults doing whatever the hell they want to?
Now I'm not going to defend the ugly examples you bring out, but I'm pretty sure you can find something ugly about all religions and societies. The important thing is that you have some means of choice and escape if you're trapped in one you don't happen to agree with. That's where the diversity comes in.
Tell it to the Dominionists in the US who want to rule the country for Christ. Tell it to the imams in Iran who rule it for Allah. Tell it to the Catholics, and the Eastern Orthodox, and the Mormons, and every other cult that fancies itself the chosen group and wishes to install itself as supreme arbiter.
Trying to get everyone to believe in the one "right" set of beliefs is pretty much exactly what's been happening all along, with all the religious wars and whatnot. So no, beliefs should not matter.
Actions matter. If you act against your society, they will react against you according to whatever their code is. And vice versa. There is no justice but social justice. Social justice is what gets enacted upon.
Hey, you are right. I don't care about what people believe privately. Makes no damned difference to me one way or another. But that's not what I am talking about. Do you think that those examples I gave happened in a vacuum? Do you think that the twisted religious beliefs that they held did not contribute to the crimes they committed? If so, you are hopelessly naive.
I'll leave you to study the specifics, but the essence is that the Enlightenment broke the power of the various churches over everyday life in the West. Democracy supplanted monarchies and theocracies. Reason rather than revelation began to be exalted. As the power of the churches waned, they could no dictate that their provincial teachings be enforced by law. The idea of the separation of church and state flourished, and as a more secular form of ethics began to permeate the culture, the various Christian churches had to adapt to the changing zeitgeist. They had to abandon their support for the more outrageous beliefs(burning witches, executing heretics, waging war for holy ground, support for slavery, the suppression of womens' rights, etc). Their power to dominate was largely broken. When and if this happens with the Islamic cultures, they will also become more civilized.
As for your silly little dilemma, where would I even start. Sure, he could be a bad man. He could also be crazy. He could be non-existent(his words entirely fabricated). He could be a conglomeration of several historical figures. And he is in no way unique. You can make the same argument for every Messianic fool who has raised his head to proclaim himself a god. He imparted no amazing objective knowledge. He answers the prayers of his followers just as much as every other god(that is, indistinguishable from random chance). The best you can take away from the whole wretched religion is a nice formulation of the Ethic of Reciprocity. That's not much of an argument to support the monstrous ideas of heaven and hell.
You have apparently missed my point. I am not saying that secularized society is perfect(although I would point out that your examples were mostly carried out by Christians). I am saying that it matters a lot what you believe, and pointed out some very bad consequences from bad beliefs. And it wasn't science which drove those examples anyway. I would point to Southern US racism and anti-Semitism(both of which had strong Christian influences as components) as the driving force in two of them, while the third is a mixed group(with some of those experiments even being regarded as benign).
It's easy to lay the evils of humanity at the doorstep of organized religion, but I think people manage cruelty just as well without it.
No, all the evils(and goods, for that matter) of humanity can only be laid at one doorstep: the humans who performed those acts. Religion is just a particularly cruel and stupid meme which lubricates the practice of division, corruption and human torment, while attempting to co-opt the legitimately good impulses of human nature for it's own selfish ends.
Rationalization and denial are as thoroughly ingrained in secular thinking.
What a ludicrous statement.You would have to be completely ignorant of the history of religion to make such a foolish argument.
In the absence of religion, science becomes god and the same problems persist.
If you think that "science becomes god" for a secularist, then you either have no notion of what science is or no notion of what a god is. You obviously don't have the ability to differentiate the practice of science from the driving philosophy of scientists.
I pointed this at all of the Abrahamic religions, Christianity included. I deliberately chose monstrous acts from the various traditions. As you note, Christianity is certainly more civilized at this point than some of its relatives, thanks to a sound neutering brought about by the Enlightenment. Once it's stripped of its irrational mythology and the whole system of redemption and damnation, it might be worth keeping around.
And this is one of the most insidious things about your fucking religions. They can actually convince otherwise decent people that monstrous acts of evil are morally acceptable because their deity has decreed it to be so. Why don't you celebrate that sort of diseased thinking by watching a woman get buried to her neck and then stoned to death? Because THAT is the fruit of your belief.
The Old Testament which has been superseded by the New. There's basically two laws you have to follow these days:
1) Love God
2) Love Other People As Much As Yourself.
Everything else is details.
First, unless you think like the Gnostics that that OT Yahweh character is an evil god, whereas that Jesus fella is ok, then you still believe that your supreme creator being who is the very definition of good ordered the most despicable of acts against both his followers and their neighbors\victims. And I've seen too much reliance on the Ten Commandments to think that this attempt at dismissing the OT is anything more than a blatant attempt to whitewash this sordid mythology.
Secondly, that Jesus character went beyond the shit his old man was dishing out and promised to punish people with infinite torture. That knocks his "sadistic fuck" factor straight past his pop.
Religion is kinda like an operating system... it doesn't really matter which one you run. Some are more susceptible to viruses and botnets than others, some interoperate better other operating systems. But generally it's great that there's some diversity.
The next time a woman is stoned to death for adultery, a child is driven to suicide for being gay, a man is murdered for "sorcery" or a family is destroyed for being apostates, I'll be sure to cheerfully remind every involved that it doesn't matter what you believe, and that we should value this diversity.
What a load of stupid nonsense. Saying that humans are flawed is implying that they are measured by some superlative standard, which is complete bullshit in this context. Humans act exactly like one would expect humans to act. Science offers us the only possibility for improving upon the human condition and certainly has proven itself far more capable in this regard than any of the wretched excuses for a worldview that religion has vomited up. But that whole business of fall and redemption is just a control mechanism which is good at keeping sheep sedated.
if they didn't ever exist, where did all of humanity come from? At some point, there existed a mother and father with a child that would be considered by most as "human" of some sort
Speciation is not a discrete event. If you start tracing humans back, you will never have a child which differed in species from its parents. Instead, you will have a gradual accumulation of differences which, if sampled over larger units of time, will take the form of new species. The evolution of a species occurs in a population, not on an individual level(though individuals are the ones contributing unique genes to the population at large).
First, go learn some biology. Marrying sisters or cousin does NOT introduce more and more defects. It simply increases the likelihood of getting a pair of recessive genes.
Second, without some proof that your outlandish claims of longevity have any merit, your myth is still DOA. There is absolutely no evidence that life spans were any longer than they are now. It's no more plausible than the shenanigans that the rest of the gods we've dreamed up have gotten to.
And, no, it's not at all likely that we all came from one initial set of parents. Again, some basic research would help you here. Hell, even a few hours of wikipedia searching could help you.
Finally, I HAVE read your bible. It's one of the reasons I find your religion to be a bad joke.
Adult stem cell research benefited from previously performed embryonic stem cell research. It did not arise on its own. Frankly, I'd ok the destruction of any number of embryos if it meant large medical gains for existing human beings.
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I'm "whining" because I DO believe that not everyone will spend eternity in heaven, and despite others' mockery of my religion, I genuinely still want them to see the light and be with me there. Now is that childish, or is that grown up?
First, it's childish to expect everyone to be scared of your invisible boogeyman and his threats of eternal damnation. I'm no more worried that I am pissing off your god than I am that I am pissing off Allah, Apollo, Zeus, Odin or Thor. When you finally understand why you aren't scared of those other gods, maybe you'll get an inkling of why we react this way.
Second, it's childish to embrace such nonsense without evidence, and your emotions do not count as evidence. If you want to be taken seriously, then make serious claims, and back it up with serious data. Pointing to your holy book and pleading that the "good" being depicted inside has a plan to torture me forever is, shall we say, less than convincing.
So, you are a Roman Catholic henotheist? Given that the RC conception of god is unary(at least by their own definition, the illogical nature of the trinity aside), this renders your self-identification just as muddled as the rest of your post. Did you really waste the last five years on crap like this?
To know where a lot of western civilization ideas come from?
No need to go to the source, since it was extensively quoted in the very ideas you mention.
To compare and challenge what a lot of "christian" preachers and politicians claim that it says?
Why did you put christian in quotes? And who cares what they say? I don't need to read the Qur'an to reject fatwas. I don't need to read the bible to reject the latest junk from the 700 Club or Rick Santorum.
A lot of the junk conservative politicians tell "christian" masses in the US would go nowhere if those same masses had good understanding of the Bible.
Like what?
There's lot of interesting stuff in there. In the book of Samuel, you can find a passage where a nation which had laws, judges and teachers (and a God), gets tired of it and wants something more fun; they go like "oh the nations around us have powerful kings, it would be so cool to have one", and they get told "look, if you get a king, he will take your sons and daughters as servants for himself, he will send them to fight useless wars, etc..." And the nation tells the prophet "whatever, we want a king". A few pages later things get awry for them.
I think your succinct distillation is far superior to the original.
There's lot of stuff like that, politics, ideology, morality, economics... And just like the above example, a lot of stuff to confront "manifest destiny" "it's God will that we rule by the sword" politics.
Dude, have you not read it? There is PLENTY in there to support those politics. Do you not remember the bit in the beginning, for example, where that loving god sent his chosen people on a rape, pillage and murder rampage through the "promised land?"
But, then, I suppose that the fact that I knew that supports your view, doesn't it? I would say that there is one good reason to read the bible: to be able to expose it for the steaming pile of evil it really is.
Sure, a lot of the Bible is a historical record of the Jewish and Christian people living in the Middle East for a period of a few thousand years, and not every law in Leviticus applies to us today.
Which laws still apply?
If my daughter is raped, do I still sell her to her rapist?
If my kid is rebellious, do I still get to kill him?
If I wife doesn't bleed like a virgin on our wedding night, do I still get to kill her?
If my kid turns out gay, and I catch him with his boyfriend, am I still obligated to kill both of them?
Shall I keep going? This is your bible, not mine. This is codified barbarism. It is institutionalized hatred and murder. This is the foundation stone that the rest of your religion is built directly upon. The god in those books is a bloodthirsty monster. The New Testament builds on that, adding infinite punishments for those who don't believe. It's all infantile prattling, and I have a hard time taking anyone who finds deep meaning in it seriously. Grow up, and quit your whining. If you are right, you will be even more exalted in your childish "heaven" due to our criticism while we burn forever, so what are you whining about anyway?
I couldn't have put it better if I tried. Bravo!
That's the Old Testement. Chrisitianity is based of the New Testament.
It's based on both, and if you are in the least bit cognizant of the general theology and history of Christianity, then you know that you are lying through your teeth.
The point is for you know the difference between the Old and New Testaments and which ones various groups follow. For example, your point may have made sense if this were an article about religion. But since it was an article about Christianity specifically, you just showed your ignorance. You don't have to believe the story I just quoted above, but you should understand that Christianity is not about what you seem to think it is. It's called the NEW Testament for a reason.
Oh, so your group pulled the OT out of your bibles? You ignore all of the supposed "prophesies" in the OT which point to your supposed "savior?" There is no reference to a list of commandments in your church? How come I think you are still lying through your teeth?
(Of course, I'm talking about true Christians here, not the negative stereotype you've formed in your head from that one TV preacher you saw on Sunday morning saw after an all night bender, or the horrible stories you heard the news. I'm talking about people like Tim Tebow's parents who give their lives to serve others.)
The whole bit is just stupid, but this part stuck out like a sore thumb. First, No True Scotsman. Second, I love how you put forward Tebow's parents, who, if I am not mistaken, spent their time trying to convert one type of Christian to another. Bravo.
Aside from getting cultural references, which are often obvious from context, what compelling reason would one have for reading the bible?
Sure there's a lot of crazy people in the world, but the Christians I've seen going to other countries have gone there to help people.
You know what I find interesting? When asking for donations in public, the local missionaries just talk about building houses, supplying clean water, etc. But when they are raising money in their church, the talk always turns to the number of people who have converted due to their help. I wonder which one is the primary motivation?
I've never been approached by Christians pushing religion, but I encounter anti-thiests pushing bigotry and anti-religion on a weekly basis on the internet (between facebook and this/other sites).
If you are from the USA, you are heavily sheltered. They come to my house. They bother my children in public. They infest the local schools. If you haven't had SOMEONE pushing Christianity on you, then you are either a Christian who is already in the club, or you are part of a vanishingly small group of people.
But these changes will not transfer into the descendants of the guy who was changed still in the womb unless they're exposed to precisely the same factors and change in the same way. It's not a "lasting" change like a genetic one.
No, that's the point of epigenetics. It is heritable, usually via chemical changes in the mother during development or even the behavior of the mother(see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics). A good example is the tadpole state of certain frogs. They will develop different body forms when certain predators are present. These changes can be passed onto the offspring of the adult frogs.
Matters to whom? Other people?
Let's start with the humans brutalized by those who hold those beliefs. That's a good start.
Who's going to decide which belief system is the "better" belief system that everyone else should use? Most religions already claim to be for "good".
Let's start by not letting religious zealots destroy human lives.
People ought to be free to decide whether they want to live in a conservative / traditional culture where people wear clothes, or live in some hedonistic hippie commune, and have all kinds of options available to them.
Sure, and who is arguing about that? Who is being destroyed by consenting adults doing whatever the hell they want to?
Now I'm not going to defend the ugly examples you bring out, but I'm pretty sure you can find something ugly about all religions and societies. The important thing is that you have some means of choice and escape if you're trapped in one you don't happen to agree with. That's where the diversity comes in.
Tell it to the Dominionists in the US who want to rule the country for Christ. Tell it to the imams in Iran who rule it for Allah. Tell it to the Catholics, and the Eastern Orthodox, and the Mormons, and every other cult that fancies itself the chosen group and wishes to install itself as supreme arbiter.
Trying to get everyone to believe in the one "right" set of beliefs is pretty much exactly what's been happening all along, with all the religious wars and whatnot. So no, beliefs should not matter.
Actions matter. If you act against your society, they will react against you according to whatever their code is. And vice versa. There is no justice but social justice. Social justice is what gets enacted upon.
Hey, you are right. I don't care about what people believe privately. Makes no damned difference to me one way or another. But that's not what I am talking about. Do you think that those examples I gave happened in a vacuum? Do you think that the twisted religious beliefs that they held did not contribute to the crimes they committed? If so, you are hopelessly naive.
I'll leave you to study the specifics, but the essence is that the Enlightenment broke the power of the various churches over everyday life in the West. Democracy supplanted monarchies and theocracies. Reason rather than revelation began to be exalted. As the power of the churches waned, they could no dictate that their provincial teachings be enforced by law. The idea of the separation of church and state flourished, and as a more secular form of ethics began to permeate the culture, the various Christian churches had to adapt to the changing zeitgeist. They had to abandon their support for the more outrageous beliefs(burning witches, executing heretics, waging war for holy ground, support for slavery, the suppression of womens' rights, etc). Their power to dominate was largely broken. When and if this happens with the Islamic cultures, they will also become more civilized.
As for your silly little dilemma, where would I even start. Sure, he could be a bad man. He could also be crazy. He could be non-existent(his words entirely fabricated). He could be a conglomeration of several historical figures. And he is in no way unique. You can make the same argument for every Messianic fool who has raised his head to proclaim himself a god. He imparted no amazing objective knowledge. He answers the prayers of his followers just as much as every other god(that is, indistinguishable from random chance). The best you can take away from the whole wretched religion is a nice formulation of the Ethic of Reciprocity. That's not much of an argument to support the monstrous ideas of heaven and hell.
You have apparently missed my point. I am not saying that secularized society is perfect(although I would point out that your examples were mostly carried out by Christians). I am saying that it matters a lot what you believe, and pointed out some very bad consequences from bad beliefs. And it wasn't science which drove those examples anyway. I would point to Southern US racism and anti-Semitism(both of which had strong Christian influences as components) as the driving force in two of them, while the third is a mixed group(with some of those experiments even being regarded as benign).
It's easy to lay the evils of humanity at the doorstep of organized religion, but I think people manage cruelty just as well without it.
No, all the evils(and goods, for that matter) of humanity can only be laid at one doorstep: the humans who performed those acts. Religion is just a particularly cruel and stupid meme which lubricates the practice of division, corruption and human torment, while attempting to co-opt the legitimately good impulses of human nature for it's own selfish ends.
Rationalization and denial are as thoroughly ingrained in secular thinking.
What a ludicrous statement.You would have to be completely ignorant of the history of religion to make such a foolish argument.
In the absence of religion, science becomes god and the same problems persist.
If you think that "science becomes god" for a secularist, then you either have no notion of what science is or no notion of what a god is. You obviously don't have the ability to differentiate the practice of science from the driving philosophy of scientists.
Religion is kinda like an operating system... it doesn't really matter which one you run.
My point is that it very much DOES matter what you believe.
I pointed this at all of the Abrahamic religions, Christianity included. I deliberately chose monstrous acts from the various traditions. As you note, Christianity is certainly more civilized at this point than some of its relatives, thanks to a sound neutering brought about by the Enlightenment. Once it's stripped of its irrational mythology and the whole system of redemption and damnation, it might be worth keeping around.
And this is one of the most insidious things about your fucking religions. They can actually convince otherwise decent people that monstrous acts of evil are morally acceptable because their deity has decreed it to be so. Why don't you celebrate that sort of diseased thinking by watching a woman get buried to her neck and then stoned to death? Because THAT is the fruit of your belief.
That has to be one of the dumbest things I've ever read. Thanks for making the world a little more stupid.
You're a bit out of date.
The Old Testament which has been superseded by the New. There's basically two laws you have to follow these days: 1) Love God 2) Love Other People As Much As Yourself.
Everything else is details.
First, unless you think like the Gnostics that that OT Yahweh character is an evil god, whereas that Jesus fella is ok, then you still believe that your supreme creator being who is the very definition of good ordered the most despicable of acts against both his followers and their neighbors\victims. And I've seen too much reliance on the Ten Commandments to think that this attempt at dismissing the OT is anything more than a blatant attempt to whitewash this sordid mythology.
Secondly, that Jesus character went beyond the shit his old man was dishing out and promised to punish people with infinite torture. That knocks his "sadistic fuck" factor straight past his pop.
Religion is kinda like an operating system... it doesn't really matter which one you run. Some are more susceptible to viruses and botnets than others, some interoperate better other operating systems. But generally it's great that there's some diversity.
The next time a woman is stoned to death for adultery, a child is driven to suicide for being gay, a man is murdered for "sorcery" or a family is destroyed for being apostates, I'll be sure to cheerfully remind every involved that it doesn't matter what you believe, and that we should value this diversity.
What a load of stupid nonsense. Saying that humans are flawed is implying that they are measured by some superlative standard, which is complete bullshit in this context. Humans act exactly like one would expect humans to act. Science offers us the only possibility for improving upon the human condition and certainly has proven itself far more capable in this regard than any of the wretched excuses for a worldview that religion has vomited up. But that whole business of fall and redemption is just a control mechanism which is good at keeping sheep sedated.
if they didn't ever exist, where did all of humanity come from? At some point, there existed a mother and father with a child that would be considered by most as "human" of some sort
Speciation is not a discrete event. If you start tracing humans back, you will never have a child which differed in species from its parents. Instead, you will have a gradual accumulation of differences which, if sampled over larger units of time, will take the form of new species. The evolution of a species occurs in a population, not on an individual level(though individuals are the ones contributing unique genes to the population at large).
First, go learn some biology. Marrying sisters or cousin does NOT introduce more and more defects. It simply increases the likelihood of getting a pair of recessive genes.
Second, without some proof that your outlandish claims of longevity have any merit, your myth is still DOA. There is absolutely no evidence that life spans were any longer than they are now. It's no more plausible than the shenanigans that the rest of the gods we've dreamed up have gotten to.
And, no, it's not at all likely that we all came from one initial set of parents. Again, some basic research would help you here. Hell, even a few hours of wikipedia searching could help you.
Finally, I HAVE read your bible. It's one of the reasons I find your religion to be a bad joke.
Adult stem cell research benefited from previously performed embryonic stem cell research. It did not arise on its own. Frankly, I'd ok the destruction of any number of embryos if it meant large medical gains for existing human beings.