For the record this is my second post, and I have never had the opportunity to verbally relate any of what I am about to say. So please bare with me.Lazy_eye wrote:Just curious...is there anyone here who takes this passage literally? What would be an argument for doing so, and how would you answer the objections that it is unscientific...i.e. conflicts with known facts about the formation of the earth, timetable for appearance of life, etc?
It's interesting that it describes a kind of evolution-in-reverse, that is, higher beings devolving into lower ones. By that logic, humans ought to have appeared prior to chimps, no?
The basis for my theory on this subject has been pieced together from many different sources.
I don't take the passage literally, however I think it would be interesting to know the most recent past lives of the first "human beings" of a newly formed world system. But before discussing human beings it would be interesting to know the most recent past lives of the first sentient matter (single celled organisms). What world systems did those various lives occur on? Not the new one, obviously.
It has been stated that currently there are innumerable beings in the various planes of our world system. Not to mention, when a universe collapses and a world system is destroyed, all sentient beings, in all the realms of that particular world system are reborn immediately in another world system. I'm assuming our system has experienced these influxes of "foreigners"and will again in the future. There is a lot of action. But in the beginning of a system would all the realms be empty? Where does the the first sentient life come from? I believe that once the environmental conditions and the evolutionary process have reached a certain point, the first rebirth occurs. The first sentient life arrives. And it would seem that it would have to be from another world system that recently collapsed. It would seem that it would have to follow the same process it follows now. And then it would just keep going. And the number of beings would grow and grow. I believe this goes along nicely with the current scientific theories as well.
I have heard many stories about beings from the heavenly realms that die, are reborn as human beings and then completely degenerate, even to the point of eventually being reborn in the hells. So I think there is some validity to this passage. So I guess another question is, would the first "human beings" in a newly formed world system automatically be from the heavenly realms? Is that a distinct part of the natural process?
I hope I didn't go too far for my second post.