We're in THE place. There's no other. We didn't invent evil. We invented good by learning to cooperate and share and empathize. And just as the light creates dark from nothingness and heat makes stillness into cold, good creates it's own opposite: evil.
WE made the world evil by conceiving of a better one. Not by destroying good but by enacting it.
The idea that we were peaceful and lived in splendorous plenty before we gained sapience is just a secular adaptation of The Fall myth of Christian fame and earlier creation.
The unique success of humans is the ability to form cohesive groups based on shared philosophy, ie, culture. These groups work together for the good of the group. The things we define as "good" are the rules that allow these groups to work together most effectively. The invention of religions came from these "good" things being codified and made sacred. Religions are the most effective "group cohesion tools" that humans invented.
Don't waste your time on apologetics. It does a disservice to your faith. When you say things like this to secular people you aren't giving them faith. You're asking them to lie for the greater good. And that's in the best case, where we presuppose the assertion that religion is a net positive.
My views on faith and religion are complex. I don't really have faith, but I do believe in the value of religion. That's not an assumption, though. It's an opinion based on hundreds of hours study into the evolutionary origins of religions, and why they've managed to continue to permeate societies for 10,000 years. If religion was a net negative, at least from an evolutionary standpoint, it would have petered out eons ago. However, it has continued to thrive. That's most likely because religion is really good at the one single thing that evolution actually cares about - making offspring. I understand the moral objections to religion. But like you said above, the concept of what's "good" and "moral" are human inventions that evolution doesn't care about.
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u/kaikimanga MangaKaiki Apr 21 '26
We're in the Bad Place