At some point in history, human beings did not exist. And then, all of a sudden, from out of the various forms of life that had preceded him, he did. For the Christian, this was an act of god, while for the biologist, it was an act of nature. Yet in either case, it was the moment that history culled together the ingredients that, until that point, had never been mashed together in so unique a composite of clay and consciousness as it had in what would come to be called the dawn of "man."
Unlike anything that had come before, man would emerge as much of a monster to some species, including his own, as a monarch to others; as much as a host of angels and an army of demons; as much as a lone deity with a divine intelligence, as the demonic ignorance of the devil himself.
If man indeed evolved from a common ancestor, the first offspring was no doubt considered to be, not a more intelligent, more evolved, more enlightened being, blessed with a divine soul and grasp of reality, but as much an abominable aberration of nature as Frankenstein's monster.
The modern human, when first born into this world, was no doubt seen by all others with all of the fear and contempt that Christians see atheists and homosexuals, and that Native Americans and Africans would eventually come to see Europeans, after the latter had out Heroded "Herod the Great," in their wholesale massacre of the innocent former; and had done so while promising those they massacred, the same "God" the serpent had used to destroy Eden with promises to Adam & Eve.
Christians came to the new world promising Christ to all those they felt it was their duty to crucify in the name of their holy God. And they forgave themselves their evils by preaching forgiveness to those who's Eden they stole and who, through the brutality of a biblically justified slavery, were turned into unwilling accomplices in its destruction.
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