Evolution is just another myth of another culture, though. The only difference is that evolution is a more modern myth. We'll never know for sure how morality and ethics came about because they weren't documented as they occurred.
We wouldn't know had they been "documented" either. Written accounts, especially in the past, are not exactly trustworthy.
Were the Egyptians proven to be the first society to have ethics or morals?
Yes, although I don't believe it for itself. I simply believe in the Bible and original sin is one of the subjects in the Bible. To explain why I believe in original sin I need to explain why I believe in Christianity and that is going to take a little bit of writing. I adopted Protestant Christianity as my religion because I found the existence of the universe and the way it functions to be sufficient proof of the existence of a deity and the Bible properly explained all of my questions.
Here's why I find the universe itself to be sufficient proof of a deity:
All events take place as a reaction to previous events that have taken place. A simple example would be child-birth. A child cannot crawl on the carpet until it has been born. It cannot be born spontaneously, it must first be conceived. A husband and wife must each first be conceived, born, and grown to be able to conceive their own child. Eventually, actions and reactions are traced so far back into time that one of two events occur. Either the chain continues into infinity or the universe begins at some point in the past. I'll address the former first.
If the world has existed forever, then an infinite number of events can occur with an infinite amount of variation. It stands to reason that if infinite kinds of events occur an infinite amount of times, then the event that causes the end of the universe has to have already occurred.
This is a common logic error : infinity of different things doesn't necessarily mean everything. For example, we are fairly sure that the decimals of Pi contain all possible information ("everything"), but the decimals of Pi where you replace all the "9" with "0" are equally infinite and without cycles, yet do not contain all possible information.
Imagine as if the world has existed forever. Every event that has taken place within our recorded history has already taken place in the exact same place and manner that we have observed.
For the same reason, this is not true either.
It's not far-fetched at all to say that the universe must have already destroyed itself if the universe is infinite in time-span.
Therefore, no.
Now I'll address the latter. A beginning to the universe necessitates one of two things. Either it spontaneously began to exist or some action was made by an entity to create the world despite no previously existing events to make that action a reaction. The spontaneous generation of the universe stands contrary to reason because we know that nothing is nothing. Something cannot come out of nothing. The Bible stresses the timelessness of God's existence and how he is infinite and good in all ways. He is not restricted by time or space. The debate discussing how God himself came about is pointless in nature because a finite existence implies an infinite creator. Finite existence necessitates an entity that can begin the chain of events on its own without outer influence. Christians call that entity God.
The question of "what did exist before" is non-sensical because time started as energy and mass appeared. The world that we observe exists, with its rules that we start to understand. The question of "why does it exist" is only relevant to the human psyche, just like a child will ask why did the cat got run over. It is unsatisfying for us to not know the motives behind something even when there are none, because everything we do ourselves is based around motives, and that's the only kind of reasoning we actually understand. It's only natural we try to coerce everything that we observe into that specific way of thinking.
Infinite existence implies nothingness. Finite existence implies design.
The only kind of design we know is human. Atoms do not design the molecules they are part of. Hydrogen and Oxygen can assemble and become water, but that is no proof someone specifically designed both to fill that role.
Here's why I find the way the universe functions to be sufficient proof of a deity:
Information regarding how our world functions is acquired through scientific study. Science is essentially accumulation of measurements regarding changes in an environment and using those numerical measurements in mathematics to find patterns. Science is just applied mathematics. Mathematics is just logic with numerical representation of data. Logic is... Well, something. We are able to use our reason and logic to discover details about how the universe functions but we are unable to find why the universe functions based upon rational principles.
Because that question is nonsensical. Everything we observe can be described by scientific literature, including processes, structures and other things. But all this doesn't require willpower. Would you ask
why is the isotope of Iron with 26 protons the element with the highest nuclear binding energy ? Nobody knows and nobody cares, because there is no answer.
Why does the world make sense? Weird question. Very simply worded. Not a trick question. Not complicated.
It
is a trick question, because it makes the assumption the world has to make sense. And in effect, to be understood and accepted by humans, it should make sense.
But there's no good answer. There's no observable force that we can observe that makes the universe function on laws of reason and logic. I couldn't find a good answer, but I got a decent one:
"Reason can't exist in a world that exists for no reason."
Finite existence implies design. Design implies purpose. Purpose implies reason.
This is purely play on words. You are using the word "reason" both the in the sense of "logic reasoning" and of "motive" selectively. If I rewrite this sentence properly, it goes like
"Logical reasoning can't exist in a world that has no motive behind its existence"
Which is obviously not true.
We are finite. We are designed. We were made with a purpose. Our rational capabilities necessitate these qualities of our existence.
Who is the designer, then? Some don't call Him anything. I call Him Lord, God and Savior.[/font][/size][/color]
The notion that something can be without motive is difficult to accept for us, stupid primates. That the entire world has no purpose is cruel to us. But it is only so because we make decisions and take action based on our emotions and motives and assume that everything works the same, not because it is inherently depressing.
