Lesson 7 -- the Fall, and Death

Read from the bottom of page 16 to the top of page 18 in Founding of Christendom.

I saved this part for a separate lesson because it seems so important when thinking about history. ... the horror of death. Animals fight for life, of course, but they do not have the dread of death and annihilation that humans do.

In the third paragraph on page 17 Dr Carroll talks about some of the different philosophies and their response to the problem of death. I'm listing the different philosophies here and my own definitions:

• Materialism (that only the material universe is real -- nothing exists that you can't touch or measure in some way)
  
• Agnostic existentialism (basically, that you can have no certainty about anything -- you just find your own personal truth and live according to it)
  
• Reincarnation (life is an endless cycle -- you die and are reborn continually in different forms)
  
• Biblical version of Creation and Fall given in Genesis (Catholic Christians, by Protestants, by Jews and I think by Muslims as well).

He makes the point that only the last one gives a sufficient explanation of reality.

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