Is God to Blame for Our Suffering?
People who blame God for suffering are therefore claiming He exists!
Many atheists do this too which is ironic as they claim He doesn't exist.
I call it the " Blame God Paradox ".God only allows us to go through tests and trials so that he can measure our faith and trust in him. He gave us free will which means God gave us the ability to our own decisions, he just wants us to make the right decision.
?? God is omniscient - He already knows what the results of His tests will be. Thus there is no reason for a test - a "tempering" if you will, like tempering steel, maybe, but that then brings into question of just why He made us "i]un[/i]tempered" so that we would require pain and suffering in order to become a finished product.
Wisdom can't just be given. You must live and learn. And God doesn't know the outcome of free will. Thus there'd be no reason to let it all play out if everything just worked according to His will because in that case He would know the outcome. But free will is a will apart from His. Until it happens, until it's part of the timeline, He doesn't know the outcome. That's why He tests.
Ex. Abraham. If God had not created that situation that caused Abraham to have to make a decision, then that decision would not have existed. God had to create the situation that then allowed Abraham in that moment to create his own choice.
Whether or not God is omniscient, if something doesn't exist and hasn't been created by a free will, then He cannot know about it.Ah, but it can...IF the giver is omnipotent. Just as He knows the outcome...IF He is omniscient. And yes, given those two things there is no (acceptable) reason to let it all play out.
But why did Abraham have to make a decision? Whatever the results of that decision were to Abraham, the man could have been created with those results already in place. Or put there later but without traumatizing a child.
Nope - either He is omniscient or He isn't. He cannot be both omniscient and ignorant at the same time. While I realize that fits well with irrational beliefs, it is, after all, irrational.Not irrational at all. If something hasn't happened or doesn't exist because it hasn't been made, then it can't be 'known'. It's not yet part of "all" in "all-knowing" until it's happened or it exists. God knows all, past and future, that has happened, but if there's not a will there, apart from His, there to create it, He doesn't "know" it.
If we're created with results already in place then we're not free. We're determined and our life is not our own. If that were the case then there'd be no point in living or existing. It would all already be determined. No sense just letting it play out if the outcome is known.You still haven't understood that 'knowing all' and 'doesn't know' is contradictory?
"God knows all, past and future, that has happened"
If omniscient he should also know what WILL happen, what can happen and what are the permutations and combinations that might occur and should occur.You're mostly right. God does know what WILL happen, but not the permutations and combinations that might occur. Only what does happen somewhere along the timeline. Only what actually exists.
That's the whole point to humans existing. Because we have our own minds and wills and behave according to our own wants. Not God's. If all worked according to God's will then there would be harmony and no evil and all that wonderful stuff, but we would not be our own selves. What we do matters. We create things, decisions and actions, that are not 'of God' that we add to this universe. His universe.
This is not a contradiction. You can't know what doesn't exist or doesn't happen. You can only know what does.Can we paraphrase? "God knows what will happen but not what will happen (the permutations and combinations that might occur)".
While statements like this sound great at first glance, and support the belief of omniscience coupled with free will, it takes very little to see that they are, in fact, diametrically opposed and that both cannot be true at the same time. Such statements are nothing more that an effort to label an obvious falsehood as "truth" in order to support a belief system that doesn't work.Let me try it another way. Let's say all that happens in the timeline of this universe is written in a book. You can read and memorize every line of the book, know it cover to cover, but doing so doesn't mean you can know what the author thought about including, but ultimately didn't.
Decisions and actions we carry out exist. They are a part of the story. Part of this universe. And they can be known. But unless they are carried out, unless they actually occur, they can't be known. You can still know all, without knowing what didn't or might have happened if things played out another way. Those things aren't in the book and can't be known. They are not part of "all".
If God does know what will happen, it is asif the story of the world is already written and we are the actors. As the actors we cannot change the script.
"This is not a contradiction. You can't know what doesn't exist or doesn't happen. You can only know what does"
If I know that you are going to drink coffee tomorrow 5pm, you have no choice but to drink the coffee. On the other hand if you have a choice and can drink tea, mine is a guess at best not knowledge or omniscience.We are not the actors. We are the writers. The whole reason there is a script is because we were there to write it. God's ability to see what we'll do tomorrow does not remove our ability to choose. Observing doesn't remove our ability to act of our own volition.
yes ... based on the reality of Local Consciousness
We are not the writers if God already saw it. He is not observing, he observed. We might be writing, but is the script god already wrote. If we can change what god wrote we have freewill but he has no omniscience and if we can't then no fee will, for we cannot even change a word but only copy verbatim. Whatever freewill the hero got, he has no choice but to shoot the villain every time you see the movie, because it is already shoot in the mind of god as is in the screen.
Your mistake is where you say "God already saw it". God is not seeing something determined already. He's looking to a future that hasn't happened yet. A future that only exists because you were there living your life making your choices.
God didn't write anything. There'd be no point to any of this if God determined everything. Our willful participation is the reason for everything. The whole reason God would need to refer to the "movie", or the tape, or the script, is because He didn't write it. We did.If he saw it, it means it is written in his mind. If he didn't see it, he is not omniscient.
"He's looking to a future that hasn't happened yet"
Means it is past to him, not future. What god saw is God's past though our future.No, not in His mind. It's not a product of His mind. It's a physical timeline tied to a physical place and physical people. There is no past/present/future where God is concerned. He exists apart from this universe so He exists apart from time and space.
But the fact remains, for God to be able to see something in the future, it has to have happened in that future. You have to be a willful participant in that future creating your own decisions and actions. Then there's something to see.Omniscience is not about a person being in past or future, omniscience is knowing everything at this instance sitting here, no running around in future and seeing. Whether exist apart or with, if he see what you are going to do tomorrow, that means your future is go's past. He saw it whether he got back to 4900bc or not, it is in his mind, all the events exactly as it will happen.
Omniscience has no such requirements. So god has simply gone to the future to see what you will do, it is not omniscience.
Say if god is omniscient, sitting in 10000bc god will know Abraham will kill his child if he is asked irrespective of whether he is asked or not. Then he doesn't have to see. If he required to go to 2000bc and ask Abraham to do it and see then he is not omniscient.
If god saw you drinking coffee in a place 'a' at restaurant 'b' on 01.10.2018, that all the events lead you to go to restaurant b at place a at that time, you have no freewill. The nature is determining each and everything you do to get you to that restaurant at that time.Omniscience means all knowing. As in God knows all that has happened or will happen along the timeline from beginning to end of the universe. This does not include what never happened.
For example, the Kennedy assassination. What would have happened if Oswald decided not to go to work that day? It can't be "known" because it never happened. Yet you can still "know" all that DID happen.
In the case of Abraham, unless the situation existed where He was put in a situation to choose whether or not to sacrifice his son, it cannot be known what he'd do. The situation has to exist in time, has to have happened, to be "knowable".Exactly, knowing everything from beginning to end, so no scope for free will. Before the beginning of the universe the whole story from the beginning to the end is known, no one change even a letter but simply follow it. The one with omniscience know that you will have coffee at place a restaurant b at 5.00 pm, at the beginning of the universe and hence you have no choice but to go to place a, restaurant b at 5.00pm and have coffee.
It can't be known to one who does not have omniscience but known to one WITH omniscience. In the hypothetical multiverse there is a universe were Oswald didn't go, soomniscience has no choice but to know it. If god didn't know what would have happened if Oswald didn't go he is NOT OMNISCIENT.
If I shoot you in the head you will be dead but I haven't nor will not shoot you. So can the outcome of me shooting you "can't be "known" because it never happened"? Of course that is ridiculous, even omniscience is not needed to know the outcome of hypothetical situations. It is because we "know" we avoid some situations. So an omniscient HAS to know "that never happened".
If I put a gun to your forehead and ask you to kneel you will kneel, I don't have to put you in that situation to know that. So if I am omniscient I should know your behaviour in every hypothetical situation.
God didn't know how Abraham would behave in that situation so he is not omniscient, there is limit to what he knows.
God also didn't know how loyal was Abraham, whether he was loyal enough to kill his son. So two things god didn't know, hence he is not omniscient. According to what you said he is merely an observer who see.What you're not getting is that this future that can be seen is not a thing that's set at the time of it's viewing. It's something that only exists because those future moments exist to be seen. But in those future moments the active parties in whatever can be seen are making willful choices. Free will is writing the book of time that's being observed. In each moment that's being observed. The ability to observe that moment beforehand does not negate that individuals freedom to choose.
No, the 'what ifs' aren't something included in the 'all' of all knowing. You can know all that happened in every moment from beginning to end, but since those 'what ifs' never actually happened, there not part of 'all'. All knowing is knowing all that can be known.
Of course, if you shoot me in the head, the immediate outcome can be known, or more accurately, can be assumed. I might not even die as some have survived shots to the head. But what can't be known is how my life would have gone from that point on if I had lived. Because you made the choice you did, you removed me from life. So anything and everything I might have had an impact on no longer exists and can't be known.
Actually, you're wrong. I would not kneel if you put a gun to my forehead. I know this because I've actually been in that situation and did not bend to the will of the gunman. I'm really stubborn like that. So even in this one example, based on past experience, you are wrong.
God didn't know how Abraham would behave in that situation because He's not Abraham. There is no limit to what He knows because God knows 'all' that happened. All that is knowable. Hypothetical situations aren't something that can be known.Omniscience doesn't mean observing as and when it happens but knowing it BEFORE it happens. If god have to wait to see, he is not omniscient.
All knowing is ALL KNOWING, there is no restrictions, no enjoiners. If you mean knowing "only that can be known (by god is your implied bracket)", then you should use sone other term NOT omniscience.
That is only because I am not omniscient. If I was I should know whether you will die and what will happen if I don't kill you, the hypothetical future.
That is beside the point, an omniscient should know all the outcome irrespective of what is chosen.
So god DIDN'T KNOW what Abraham thought. So god is not omniscient. Hypothetical can't be known to me or you, we guess and that is why we are not omniscient. An omniscient knows all. Omniscient knew Abraham was very loyal and he would kill his child, if asked. An omniscient doesn't need to ask nor observe, he knows even without asking or observing.The problem seems to be you focusing too intently on the "all" in "all knowing". Where you need to focus is on the "knowing".....
[i]knowledge - awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.[\i]
A hypothetical situation that never actually happened, you can't "know" how it would play out. God can have knowledge of every single thing that has ever actually happened, from the beginning of time to the end of time.
But if never during the entirety of that timeline did Abraham ever face a situation where he had to choose whether or not to sacrifice his son, then there's nothing that can be known about how that would have played out.On the contrary you are ignoring the "all", the "omni". So what you are saying is that your god is scient not omniscient. You also forget that knowledge means awareness of something like a range of information and a combined word of two words both are equally important.
So your god is knowing NOT ALL knowing.
But god has no knowledge of what will happen. I drop a coin, hypothetical situation, I know what will happen but god doesn't. God doesn't know what I will think. Not omniscient.
About the loyalty of Abraham, whether he is loyal enough to kill his son, god didn't know.
And according to what you say god still don't know whether Abraham would really have sacrificed his son for he has not seen Abraham killing his son. God is now, say, 99% sure not 100%. So there is a 1% god didn't know. (For all we know Abraham might have been calling god's bluff by acting.
Not omniscient. Of course you yourself say god is scient not omniscient. So why are you arguing?
I am not agree with you. God know everything. He know what is going to happen.
Yes, I agree God knows what's going to happen, because from His perspective everything already has. But without our playing an active role in that timeline, He could not know what we would have done. We actually have to exist and live out life of our own free will for Him to then know what will happen.
Since MTO is intuitive, He knows the manner in which we habitually guide our free-wills.
He directs from behind the scenes in order for people to:
1.) Learn lessons regarding Reality (Negative Karma.)
2.) Provide paths toward Reality (Positive Karma.)
It must be a blast.Yes, God can direct because He can see all time all at once. He can change the parameters and the circumstances, but he cannot do so by controlling the choices and actions of humans. Only by changing the situations they're responding to.
He cannot know unless we do it. Like in Genesis 6 where it says God "regretted" putting humans on the Earth. Once free will was introduced, they interacted with and influenced humanity, turning them "evil". God could only "regret" if He didn't anticipate the way things would play out.It would only stand to reason that since MTO created us, He loves us.
What parents do not want the best for their children?
What parent does not know his child's tendencies through observation?
What child finally says to his parent, I give up you were right! And then with self-guided will follow their parent's wisdom to find happiness?
( Don't answer those questions.
)
MTO, however, does know happiness!It stands to reason that He regretted His actions because He loves us because He regretted how things played out. What parent hasn't regretted one of their actions or decisions in parenting because of the resulting effect that choice had on their child?
God going through all of this trouble to ensure we have our own free will and minds tells me He both knows and wants for us happiness.Yes, and what parent can force his child to do ANYTHING?
Exactly. And God can't force our actions either. Or, at least, He doesn't. He may shape the situation, but it's always our choice.
Yes, under the mysterious law of Karma. This is where His fun comes into play, I would imagine. Although, sometimes he arranges very serious un-fun consequences. For instance, I fell and got a concussion. This helped me go within and deal with my spirit, beyond my brain, in order to heal
(… which was very appropriate at the time because I really needed to reinvent myself, being bored and stuck in unchosen life paths.)
Look at Hillary and her concussion. She is learning something or other, ain't she?
(A concussion is nothing to laugh at. Some football players commit suicide due to the internal physical damage of the brain and it's disrupted neural pathways. The brain is so close to one's soul. If the brain isn't working right, its hard to separate one's self from one's brain. )
Moral of the story:
Don't live in such a way that it might cause MTO to knock you down.
Atheists must believe that all accidents are just that: not mysterious prods toward new directions and increased awareness.Yes, there's something to learn, or gain, from every fall we take. Coming back from being in some way knocked down. The point of life in general is to live life with free will amongst others who have their own minds and wills. We'll hurt ourselves and each other along the way, and we'll have to learn how to recover and move on from those things. It's all about gaining wisdom. In this life there are real choices and real consequences. There are hard surfaces and sharp teeth.
"If we're created with results already in place then we're not free. We're determined and our life is not our own."
And there is the paradox. We insist that we are free but our God is omniscient; the two are polar opposites. The solution is to either accept that we are not free OR that God is not omniscient. Both go against Christian teachings and make a quandary - the most popular idea seems to be to deny that "omniscient" means knowing the future. Untrue, of course (as you point out), but it is the easy way out while maintaining the beliefs we wish.You're wrong. Free will is the answer. Not a paradox. The bible covers it rather specifically. It's a central theme to the story. If you don't understand it, then you don't properly understand the story being told.
God can see all of time all at once. If God looks to Monday next week, but you never faced a situation that made you make a specific decision, then that decision wouldn't exist on that date for God to see. God still knows all that happened on that future date, but because your decision never happened, He doesn't know what you would have done had that situation existed.
It's really pretty simple.Yes, it is simple. Either God knows what I will do Monday or He doesn't. And if you accept that Monday's decision is of my free choice, and not predestined to happen, then God doesn't know what the decision will be or what the actions taken as a result of that decision will be.
Free will or omniscience. Not both.
We can use the analogy of the Big Book of Glenda, the Good Witch in Oz. Glenda (God) has a Big Book with all the happenings of the future in it. She (He) can look in the Book and see what will happen Monday - it's right there in black and white. But. If we can do something not in the book come Monday, it means the Book was wrong. It did not know what would happen. It is not omniscient after all. Just as God is not omniscient (knows all)...IF we insist on free will. If we do not, of course He might know after all (might because we cannot determine the truth of his knowledge).
Personally, I choose to believe in free will because it makes me happy just as believing in a creature from another universe makes others happy. It's even somewhat supported by quantum mechanics, where things happen without a cause.
But that means God is not omniscient. OK - so what? Man has changed the definition, characteristics and attributes of it's gods for millenia; there is nothing to prevent us from doing the same here. We were wrong, that's all, and it isn't the first time!That's where you have it wrong. Where you said, "It's right there in black and white". God isn't actually looking in a printed book. He's looking at the actual timeline. We exist within that timeline. What we do is our own choice. What we do becomes the story. It's not written until we write it. That's what God sees. If we don't do it, there's nothing to see.
Just because God can see ahead and see what you'll do doesn't mean you didn't have a choice in that moment. If you didn't have a choice, there'd be no need for God to look to the future because He'd already know what you would do in any given situation. But He doesn't. Because you're you, and only you can be you and do the things you do.What you're saying is that He can't know the future because it isn't there. It hasn't happened and there is nothing to see. God is not omniscient, then, but the hang up is that there isn't anything to know.
But then you turn around and say that God can see ahead - that He can see the future and know what it will be. Followed by nonsense that He can see it before it happens but can't because He doesn't know what it is.
You'll have to make up your mind - either He can see (and thus know) the future or He can't. You cannot have it both ways no matter how you twist it, no matter how many times you say it is both can and can't.No, what I'm saying is He only knows the future if it's there to see. Everything along the timeline is there, but it hasn't happened for us in this moment. It's still in the future. But it's there. God can see what you'll do Tuesday. Where you're mistaken is you seem to think that because God can see now what you'll do then, that somehow that removes your choice in the matter. What you're not getting is that while God exists now, and can see that future from 'here/now', doesn't mean you didn't in that future moment have a choice in what you'd do. It hasn't happened for you yet, that moment. When it does, you'll do what God saw. Because that's what you chose to do in that moment, when that moment arrived.
Unlike us, time isn't linear to God. Time only exists as a part of this universe, and God exists apart from that. To us we exist moment to moment. We only experience time on those terms. God does not. And that is how you're thinking. Linearly. The way we humans perceive time. If God can see now what I'll do then, then I can't change what I'll do then, therefore I have no choice. That is incorrect. Because you exist linearly, when that moment arrives, you will choose what you do. What God is seeing doesn't exist now. It exists then. In that future moment.
I'm not twisting anything. These are just the facts of the matter. Stop assuming I'm just twisting things, understand that there is a clear concise logic to this, and think of it in those terms. You dismissing what I'm saying as babblings of a believer who just really wants all of this to be true I think is cutting your consideration of what I'm saying short.Ah. I will do what God saw because that's the choice made when the moment arrives.
But that in turn means that I can make no other choice; that I have no choice at all as it is predestined to happen. And once more we come upon the idea that I can choose...but the only choice is the one God saw. If He saw me have pancakes for breakfast it is not possible to choose waffles. And that is not free will regardless of how many times you claim there is a choice; while there may be a decision to be made (pancakes or waffles) I'm fooling myself in thinking waffles are a real possibility because God has already seen pancakes. The appearance, from our point of view on the linear line, is that there is a choice but there isn't.
So I'm not dismissing anything at all, just pointing out that you can't have it both ways; that I can actually choose waffles when it is not a possibility at all when the time comes. You insist it is a choice/decision, presumably because I feel like it is, but the reality is that waffles will not happen. Only pancakes.No, no, no. Not predetermined. Determined by you in that moment. God simply witnessed you making a choice in that moment. You can't make another decision in that moment because you only live each moment once and the one God saw you make is the one you actually made. But it was your choice. Your call. In that moment. Nothing forced you to choose that way. God's ability to observe what you'll do in the future does not mean you're predetermined to make that decision. It just means that you existed in that moment that God was observing and you were making your own choices in that moment.
Again, God doesn't observe time linearly. The moment God is observing is that actual future moment. Next Tuesday isn't documented today. It's documented next Tuesday when you, in that moment on that day, make a choice. God can observe that at any point. But that doesn't remove your ability to choose your actions. God's ability to observe has no impact on your ability to choose your own actions.I'll try once more. My past is immutable. As I look "back" (a prior page in God's book) and see that I had pancakes yesterday I cannot make the decision to have waffles yesterday. The future is just as immutable; God looks "forward" and sees that I will have (in His view of the whole gestalt) pancakes tomorrow. I can no more have waffles tomorrow than I can have them yesterday - pancakes is the only choice possible. The future (my view) is no more changeable than the past is. It has "already" happened in God's view.
The roadmap is drawn even before birth, and while it feels and seems that there is a choice, there is in fact no choice at all. We deceive ourselves in thinking that we can change the map at any point in time because to do so would make God's vision incorrect. He has already seen me "choose" waffles and when I, in my more limited view, get to the point of "choosing" I can do nothing but have pancakes. I cannot have had waffles yesterday because I didn't do that and likewise I can't have waffles tomorrow because I didn't do that. The language doesn't work, but the fact is that I have already had pancakes tomorrow; God sees me do that even as I think it hasn't happened yet.
So no, I reject that viewpoint. While the past is immutable and unchangeable, the future is not and I really do have a choice. I can choose waffles even though God sees me having pancakes. He does not see my future because it hasn't happened for either of us any more than I can see waffles on the plate of pancakes I'm eating.His well being and theory and even life depends on him not understanding the contradiction. What ever you say is not going to affect him.
If you were right, I'd have no problem agreeing with you. This has nothing to do with my beliefs. This is just logic and reason.
Reason and logic? it's about the contradictory terms 'freewill' and the oxymoron 'omniscience'.
I'm sorry you're having trouble understanding, but half your problem is that you're not trying to. It's not an oxymoron and it's not a contradiction.
The word 'omniscience' is an oxymoron just like the terms omnipotence or omnipresence. And all knowing contradicts free will because it means whatever anyone does is determined by circumstances.
All knowing simply means knowing all that has happened/will happen. If something never happened, you can't "know" it. And no, not a contradiction. Determinism is the direct opposite of free will, yes, but not omniscience.
All knowing means ALL knowing not not knowing something, every knowledge in the universe. So he should also know what can happen, if these were this, what should.
Omniscience is determininsmand more.
The only reason there's a future for God to see is because you exist in that future creating your own choices. Yes, you cannot change what you had yesterday. But you did indeed have a choice yesterday. God observing what you'll do tomorrow doesn't rob you of your ability to choose. It has no effect whatsoever in your choice.
OK. I begin to see your position. When God caused the Big Bang, creating our universe, the product was a 4 dimension object, including all of what we call "past", "present" and "future" (again, pardon the terminology - language does not fit). ALL causes and effects were created in the same "moment", including my decisions that were "made" (past tense) billions of years in the future. While we can experience only the 3 spatial dimensions and the infinitesimally small "present" (while remembering the past but not sensing it), God sees all 4 dimensions.
But not only is this a completely unwarranted assumption, with zero proof or even evidence, it still leaves us with the fact that if it is true, God created all causes and effects at the moment of creation. Including our decisions and choices - we are once more left with no free will to change those as they were created billions of years ago, at a moment on the linear time line when we did not exist. It leaves us seeing the choices made as our perception comes along the road of time, but without any chance of making any other choice than the one God created. So while we see the choice at the appropriate place on the time line, and think we're making it then, it isn't so; the choice was made in the instant of creation and made by God when He made all other causes, effects and events.
But it's rather a silly argument. Outside of the veracity of the people that teach God knows the future, what possible difference does it make? I maintain God cannot know what hasn't happened because, as far as we know, the points on the timeline we denote as "future" are changeable (by our free will); you maintain that the "future" is no different than the "past". That the "future" is indeed nonexistent yet, and not just because we cannot detect it but because it truly is nonexistent. That is in line with our best observations and tests rather than religious arguments because we desire specific attributes for our god, but that seems most reasonable as our concept of our gods changes every little while anyway.
I'd have to say as well that what we term cause and effect is just as imaginary in your scenario; if creation includes all of time then those things (which are very much time dependent) are not possible.<"But not only is this a completely unwarranted assumption, with zero proof or even evidence, it still leaves us with the fact that if it is true, God created all causes and effects at the moment of creation. Including our decisions and choices - "> w
Why would this be true?
Why could Causal Consciousness have not allowed, (for lack of better word,) FREE WILL within each Local Consciousness / Individual soul / self that was created …
as HE has FREE WILL? ?
which explains the idea that we were made in his "image." better word: likeness.Headly maintains that God can see all time, from creation to death of the universe. If true, then all events (including those in what we call the future) exist and are immutable and unchangeable. And if THAT is true, then we cannot have free will as the decisions were made billions of years before we existed. As were all events, and they were created by God instead of us.
It also denies the concept of cause and effect as without passage of time (all events created at the Big Bang) that cannot exist.well, maybe he could come up with a better word than "allow."
<'Why could Causal Consciousness have not allowed, (for lack of better word,) FREE WILL within each Local Consciousness / Individual soul / self that was created …"> K
PS Consider local consciousness vs omnipresent consciousness, scientifically speaking.
PSS Does God have a way to end the world, to cease what He has brought about?
I don't think so.
I believe He is at OUR mercy in this regard!
You're partly right. All of the causes of the natural world were set in motion in that instant of the big bang. The universe, the stars, this solar system and planet, were all determined in that instant to come to pass.
Just as creation explains, this is all working according to God's will. But then He created two individuals separate from all of that, and illustrated through a scenario He set them in that they, unlike anything else in all His creation, can behave contrary to His will. According to their own wants and desires.
This is why existence and this life is necessary. If it were all determined from the beginning then there would be no need to let it all play out. The only way to know what humans with free will would do is to put them in an environment and allow them to live out their lives.
Once God created Adam and Eve, from that point on all of our actions and decisions became a part of the timeline. But He had to create them to be able to see it. Just as He had to create the situation He put Abraham in to be able to see what He'd do.
Like God, we humans are creators. We create actions and decisions that are not 'of God'. We add to God's universe things that are 'of us'. Yes, each thing we do is set in time. But in each instance, in each moment, we have the freedom to choose our actions and decisions. It is us who write our own story. That's the whole point to all of this. Unless we're able to live and make our own decisions then there's no way for God to know. Because it's not His will, it's ours.The problem is we are rudderless, mostly, HVN.
where is the destiny, destination?
Is this written in the Big Bang?
OR NOT?No, not written in the Big Bang. Unlike anything else in the natural world we are compelled by our own wills and desires. We are un-natural in that way.
Only if there is no God and no soul are our actions decided at the big bang. Our actions can only be determined by the material our brains are made of. Cause and effect. None of us can be held responsible for anything we do because it's all determined by conditioning and the environment we're reacting to.
But if there is a God, and souls that are not beholden to natural/physical law, then we can act independent of it. And we are then, therefore, responsible for what we do.
In those days human sacrifices were widely practiced. Is it probable that Isaac thought it was acceptable because of his leaned environment, ... culture? It may not have been traumatizing, we don't know that.
Maybe a foreshadowing of the Lamb of God.
It was likely a polemic in opposition to the practice / as Light is to darkness. It formed a covenant with God between Abraham and his family and they became a blessing to the world because of unwavering trust and blind obedience to God's will. .... for both Isaac and Abraham?
I believe it was in the late 60's that a group of university students proclaimed:god is Dead;Long Live...God!...If you religionists truly understood that statement you would stop this unending attempt at inserting logic into religion;Logic and religion are incompatible.Together,they cause a type of dissonance that is unnamed yet instantly recognizable,which results in the slowly...back...away response.
Through out humanity's short UN-envious history,everyone with an even mildly recognizable name has attempted to prove or disprove the existence of big 'G' without success.It did however,result in a humanized caricature with gray hair,a beard...and an unhealthy interest in what we do while we're naked....and,to quote George Carlin,"He always Needs Money!" .
Take a global view and look at the suffering of the Majority of humanity... then ask yourself which of this schizophrenic gods caricatures appears to be most in tune with the world as it is?
The fire and brimstone(every sick twisted thing you can think of is...OK!) or the I love you so much I gave my son for you(and he cries when we masturbate...said the Nun).
IF God exists...our tiny human minds will never be able to comprehend it...That's why we have the word 'Ineffable'...we should use it more often rather than the absurdity of using logic to explain the behavior of an imaginary friend."When a lack of proof is proof that a thing is true...you have a serious problem.Looking for, or thinking we should be able to find some sort of physical proof of God is the fallacy. If God is as described, the creator of the causal chain, then He cannot also be a detectable link within that chain.
The error is when you allow yourself to dismiss such a large portion of the population as not as wise as you, and prone to believe nonsense. That should be an indicator that your thought process is off.To say that god can or cant do a thing destroys the god proclamation.Also,at no point have I or do I believe that I am 'wiser' than most;Wisdom is nothing more than a ghost we chase inside our heads anyway.
To claim that because such a large portion of the population believe a thing makes their claims somehow correct or true is a complete fallacy.Using pseudo logic by way of nebulous philosophical concepts is entertaining but alas...it is not proof.If you truly wish to make the point that god exists then provide some irrefutable proof that can be repeated and confirmed rather than the 'wisp of smoke' irrational personal testimony and assumptions that religionists offer up as proof.
Just because we cant at present explain a thing doesn't dial up a default of "God must have done it". Rather than point out the limited scope of my perception,how about offering some sort of empirical evidence for the existence of this god who is,at best incompetent and at worst down right evil,and you will trump the greatest minds in history...who couldn't.
One thing I have found to be consistent among religionists is to attack the speaker rather than the argument...quick disposal for the weak minded.You say there is a god?...Prove it...just keep in mind that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.Pointing out what God cannot do simply better defines Him, which leads to better understanding. And it better defines how significant free will is. If you don't understand that element of the story then you don't understand the story being told. Because it's a central element.
"If you religionists truly understood that statement you would stop this unending attempt at inserting logic into religion;Logic and religion are incompatible.Together,they cause a type of dissonance that is unnamed yet instantly recognizable,which results in the slowly...back...away response."
In this statement you're basically saying that "religionists" don't understand as well as you do that what they think and believe is illogical.
I'm not claiming a large portion of the population believing as 'proof of God'.
You keep speaking of "proof". Demanding someone supply proof. If you understand the scientific method and how proof of something is established, then you'll understand that proof cannot be obtained when you're speaking of something that lives beyond the universe. If God is the creator, He exists apart from the universe. Apart from time and space. There's no 'fingerprint' that can be seen. We can only observe and establish physical proof of something that is physical. And that only includes the matter/energy that's the result of the big bang. To demand physical proof is to not understand the thing for which you're demanding proof of."Pointing out what God cannot do simply better defines Him, which leads to better understanding."
But that is impossible to do. Even if God had deigned to describe Himself to us, we would not know if He was lying or not, and we don't have a chance at all of giving a known accurate description of what He cannot do.
We can't even give a description of some of the things that He can do! Sure there are millions of people declaring that He did this or that for them, for someone else or against someone else, but not a single claimant has ever been able to prove their claim. Only that it happened, never that a god, any god, caused it to happen.What proof do you suggest? What would proof of God look like exactly?
How is it impossible? There are records of God's interactions with humans, and those records pretty clearly describe what I'm talking about. It's a central theme to the whole story being told.There are records. All unverifiable and far more likely to be lies and ignorance than actual truth. The people that made those records, after all, did not have the knowledge base we have today and did not have the reasoning and logic tools, either.
But if you think it is possible to show what God cannot do, have at it. Just leave the "logic" at home and use actual, verifiable and repeatable tests that anyone else can do as well.Verifiable and repeatable tests are the domain of the physical world. Physical matter and energy. It would be nice to have that kind of verifiable certainty, but that's just not possible in what we're dealing with here.
But those records I spoke of, they are not lies, and can be verified as truth. I can show you in history where the events of Genesis 2-11 took place. Unlike a lot of the bible, those chapters in particular give a very specific timeline and series of events that can be matched up with historical and archaeological evidence to help clarify the story being told. Those events did happen, much like what's described.
But no, there's no leaving logic at home. Logic is applicable anywhere and everywhere. That's just a silly thing to say.OK - how do you propose to test the statements about a god for truth? Ignore the question entirely?
Your series of events, unfortunately, don't include the god that is claimed to have caused them. As far as logic; it's fine...right up to the point where it is all you have. When not even the premises can be checked or tested, when there is nothing BUT logic to work with. When trying to deduce truth it is necessary to start with truth, and that's something that isn't being done.
Or have you found Eden? You can show Adam was created by a god that breathed into him? You have proof Eve was made from the rib of Adam? All events in Genesis 2, that you claim actually happened - can you prove them?Isn't being done, huh? How do you figure that I haven't started with truth? The truth of the matter is that accepting a God-less existence was something that I just couldn't get on board with because it makes no logical sense. If you'd like more on that please refer to my "10 reasons why atheism doesn't work for me" hub.
Thank you wilderness,you've said it much more clearly than I.
To say that god cant do a thing is a direct contradiction to the claim that god is all powerful,omniscient, and perfect in every way.If god does exist(according to religious definition)he can do anything he pleases...which would put him on the evil side of the equation given the state of humanity today.
Mr noggin...You seem to believe that I don't understand the scientific method...then you turn around and ask what that would look like...?Seems like you're the one who lacks understanding.You religionists are verbally very slippery and arrogant believing you Know the mind of this god you profess and worst of all...you cherry pick what you want from the bible and any other source you can find in your childish magical thinking pursuit of getting the whole world to buy into your delusion...so I'll end this with a little something from your book:when I was a child I thought as a child and spoke as a child...when I became a man I put away childish things...paraphrased but the message is clear enough.
So...Headly...how about you do that and help prevent the next religious war so those of us who don't share your zeal can live in peace rather than bury our dead in the name of your...godBelieve me, I tried to dismiss it. There's just too much there for me to honestly/intellectually dismiss. Like you attempting to dismiss the bible. I couldn't do that. There's clearly something significant about this text that sets it apart from others. So I used the knowledge at our disposal and found the answers. I didn't do as you've done and dismiss such a large part of the human population and human history as gullible fools. I took it seriously and gave it the attention it deserves.
I'm doing what I can to educate. That goes for "religionists" as well as atheists.
Yes, God is all powerful. In the case of free will He really did create a boulder so large that even He can't move it. He made exactly what He set out to make. Individual wills. Apart from His. What He cannot do is by design. Rather than create a world of drones that all work exactly according to His will, He made a world of individuals, with their own wills.It's called "paradox". Your "boulder" is a paradox. Problem is that instead of figuring out how to end that paradox by changing the assumptions being made, the choice is to ignore it and pretend it isn't there even as it is repeated over and over again that it IS there.
Like I said before, if you were right I would agree with you. But you keep claiming there's a paradox where there is not. I can't lie to myself and accept broken logic.
Well, I find that you're not alone. A great many people can believe that a thing is both true and not true at the same time; all it takes is faith and a desire to believe. An omnipotent god created something He can't move although He can do anything. Makes perfect sense if you wish hard enough to believe both and refuse to actually examine the claim.
Are you seriously accusing me of refusing to actually examine something? That's one thing I don't think anyone has ever said about me.
What I said about God's omnipotence and time and all of that is perfectly logical. It's not a paradox. It can be hard for us humans to grasp because we're so predisposed to thinking of time in linear terms. It can be difficult, but everything I said still stands to reason.No, Headly, it only makes sense to you. An entity that can do anything but can't do something but can still do anything. It's called a paradox, whether you like it or not or agree or not.
We've talked before about what you don't want to examine and with the same results. You disregard the things that don't fit with your conclusions and that's the end of it. But you asked; one of your suppositions and claims is that there was no war until the gods made cities. http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1946752 … sible-war/
pretty well shows that not to be true, but of course it doesn't matter to you because you want it to be otherwise and won't factor it into your conclusions. You refuse to accept that people inhabited the Americas without travel from the middle east or that there were cities and farming anywhere that the gods didn't supply...even though we know it all happened. You have constructed a fine time line of occurrences that vaguely correspond to some biblical events as long as we change those occurrences to something different that what is written. While it works fine for you, it just doesn't work at all for me.It makes sense because it's logically sound. You keep keying in on "all" in "all knowing" or that God can do "anything", and you don't allow that to be qualified. The fact is, you can't "know" something that didn't happen. So you can still know "all" without knowing about what didn't happen. That means you know "all" that did happen. God set out to create a will that exists separate from His own. And He did that. He can't know what these beings will do until they do it. Once it's done, He knows. But until then He can't know what they'll do any better than you know what I'll do. You're not me, so you can't know. God isn't us, so He can't know. You're the one who holds a flawed concept of God that you insist on using to qualify the things I say. What I say is consistent with what's described. The concept you hold isn't at all consistent with what's described. So it's the concept that you hold that needs fixing, not my logic.
"it is an error, as profound as it is universal, to think that men in the food-gathering stage were given to fighting... All available facts go to show that the food-gathering stage of history must have been one of perfect peace." - WJ Perry, Archaeologist
"For the first ninety-five thousand years after the Homo sapiens Stone Age began, there is no evidence that man engaged in war on any level, let alone on a level requiring organized group violence. There is little evidence of any killing at all." - Richard Gabriel, Anthropologist
"the prevailing view is still that male dominance, along with private property and slavery, were all by-products of the agrarian revolution...despite the evidence that, on the contrary, equality between the sexes - and among all people - was the general norm in the Neolithic." -Riane Eisler, American Scholar, Cultural Historian
"There is the same lack of evidence for violent conflict throughout the simple horticultural period of history as in the hunter-gather era. Graves don't contain weapons; images of warfare or weapons are still absent from artwork; and villages and towns aren't situated in inaccessible places or surrounded by defensive walls." - Steve Taylor, The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of a New Era
Would you accuse these people of making these statements because it's what they want to believe? Of course not. That particular accusation is only reserved for believers. You can't respect and truly listen because you're too busy judging our motivations.
These are professional archaeologists and anthropologists who, despite being aware of events like what you pointed out, still made these blanket statements. This is because the evidence overwhelming says this is true. Examples like what you gave are clearly exceptions and not the rule. Otherwise these people would not have made these statements.
I'm not ignoring these things. I am taking all the evidence into consideration. And the majority of data we have says that humans before the birth of civilization were very much peaceful creatures.
Like in the second statement, Mr. Gabriel says "There is little evidence of any killing at all". He doesn't say there isn't any. Clearly there is. But the general rule says that these examples are few and far between.
So I'm not ignoring anything. I'm taking it into account. But I'm not letting a handful of examples completely pollute the overall picture."Would you accuse these people of making these statements because it's what they want to believe? Of course not."
Why not? Do you then think they are that much different than people today? That much more knowledgeable, that much more logical, had that much more experience/training on rational thought? People today do it - witness the irrational belief in a god (because how else did we get here?), astrology, magical creatures such as demons, exorcism, gods as trees, mountains, the sun, etc., a world wide flood or a zombie walking the earth...the list is endless of beliefs solely because they like them.
Now add in the power that religion imparts to the priesthood and you have a very, very good reason to exaggerate and lie. It has been that way as long as we have any records and there is zero reason to think that learning to write caused it all.
As far as little to no violence, consider the skeletons we've recovered from 10,000 BC and earlier. Are they complete? Would they show a spear in the gut? Are you making a decision because we find only a small number of remains that would show violence and therefore there wasn't any?Right; just as your negative personal feelings and distrust towards believers can cause you to reject what I'm saying, despite the experts I quoted who support what I'm saying. Your personal feelings are causing you to cling to your preferred truth based on one example. You latch onto that just as you're accusing me of. that sword cuts both ways.
I'm sorry, but I haven't seen or heard any "experts" (outside of the religious community) that claim gods once lived among us and guided us towards civilization.
You may be right, though - I do mistrust the faithful. Just as I mistrust anyone else that posts data online and doubly so for anyone that says aliens lived among us.I'm talking about violence in early humans, not the part about the gods. I'm talking about the evidence you claim I'm ignoring. I'm talking about the quotes from experts that back up what I'm saying despite knowing about the example you gave. They're not ignoring that either. They're just acknowledging that the overall evidence shows significantly that violence was not the norm.
But as far as the gods, there are multiple civilizations that claim they were a real part of their past. Male/female gods who lived among them. And all of those civilizations popped up just after that Babel event. Babel says descendants of Noah, who all lived long lives, got scattered throughout the region. Then multiple civilizations cropped up in that region all telling a very similar story about these gods....
And if you zoom back a bit you'll see that all of these cultures were in the same region of the world, and they all turned up around the Babel location. Babel was right in the middle of them all ....
Then, of course you've got a dramatic behavior change in humanity that began in that same part of the world at that same point in history. Both of these things support what I'm saying and support some of the more 'supernatural' elements of the Genesis story.
If beings like Adam and Eve were really created like described in an already populated world, this is what we should expect to see."They're just acknowledging that the overall evidence shows significantly that violence was not the norm."
Yes they are. While ignoring the fact that only violence to skeletons would ever be found, and that such violence is not the norm. Soft tissue damage is not normally found in fossilized remains, after all.
"But as far as the gods, there are multiple civilizations that claim they were a real part of their past."
Yes there are. Every civilization that has ever existed on the face of the earth (and left their thoughts behind) has claimed that. Without any evidence whatsoever to support the notion, so why pick this particular one to believe? Why not Thor, Odin, Neptune and all the rest? Why not believe that trees and mountains are gods? Because the civilization that you chose was one of the early ones to build towns and gardens? All the others didn't, after all, just "pop up" after the "babel event"; they had existed for millenia before that, and all over the world. Even in the Americas and Australia, inhabited long before babel. It's fine to insinuate that these far flung, completely separated, peoples got their religion from the scattering after babel, but it isn't true.
Yep - the culture changed at about the same time. And at differing times in other parts of the world untouched by near east cultures. Your point then? That the gods of Israel and Egypt flew over the ocean both before and after babel to "infect" the Americas but then decided they didn't like the climate there and left? Agriculture was not invented solely in the middle east; it was discovered at various times throughout the world and without contamination with people from the middle eastern areas.
If A&E were created from dust and God's breath we would expect to see instant agriculture and cities??? How in the world do you come to that conclusion? While I can certainly acknowledge that it fits in with the gods guiding people, I'm totally unable to understand why you would claim that it is supporting evidence or that it would be the expected result. The gods could just as easily provided hunting spears rather than seeds.No, not every civilization. That's the point. There are only specific civilizations in a very specific time frame and part of the world that says there were male/female human in form gods who lived among them in their ancient past.
I'm not just picking these. I'm pointing out how all of this is consistent with the Genesis story having actually happened as described. And the nordic gods (Thor and the rest) fit into that as well.
You - "All the others didn't, after all, just "pop up" after the "babel event"; they had existed for millenia before that, and all over the world. Even in the Americas and Australia, inhabited long before babel."
That is absolutely wrong.
You - "If A&E were created from dust and God's breath we would expect to see instant agriculture and cities??? How in the world do you come to that conclusion?"
Because agriculture and cities and written languages and all of that is the result of free will.I see. If you want to limit your gods to only those that have human form (the bible does not say, describing it's god only as invisible) AND want to include the nordic gods (although in a different time period) you may be right. I can't say, not having studied all the various ancient religions of the world - have you?
But to say that it reflects what is given in the bible, well, that is just false on the face of it. There is nowhere in that tome that indicates god has human form OR that it produced children with humans. On the face of it that would be pretty silly - an extra-universal creature that has DNA just like ours? Not likely, not likely at all given that the laws of that universe are so different than ours.
No, agriculture and cities are not necessarily the result of free will. It could have been forced by your ET's, it could be a necessary causal effect from something else or it could have been necessary for survival, with the forces of evolution behind it. It need not come from free will at all. Even if free will played a part ("See? This works better - lets grow our food instead of hunting") there is nothing to indicate that it was caused by free will or that free will was necessary. Your gods, after all, may have simply killed anyone that didn't agree to build a house in close proximity to other houses - instant city!What I'm trying to make clear is that if the stories of the bible are true, which includes the creation of Adam and Eve, beings who lived for centuries (which would seem god-like to mortal humans like you and I), and a whole slew of offspring who also lived long lives, then stories like what we see in the mythologies of these ancient cultures are exactly what we should expect to see. The bible calls them Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel. The Sumerians called them Enki and Inanna. The Greeks called them Apollo and Aphrodite.
For example, the bible says Cain got banished from the place his family lived and went off and built a city. The Sumerians say this god they called Enki showed up one day and established a city.
And since you don't seem to be very familiar with the timeline of the cultures, let me help.
The Sumerians came first. The first Sumerian city (the one Cain/Enki built) is called Eridu (where the tower of Babel was) was established about 5500BC. Then comes the 1656 years between Adam's creation and the flood. Then the people dispersed by the 5.9 kiloyear event (3900BC) are the ones that then spawned multiple civilizations, first in Egypt, then in the Indus Valley, then up in Greece and Rome.
And yes, there is loads of evidence that supports a psychological change that very much coincides with the emergence of free will. So you've got both, accounts of these god like beings (gods in that they lived for centuries compared to mortal humans (just as Genesis says (Gen61-3)), and you've got the change that those same verses explain got introduced into those mortal humans.
Yes, farming spread. Just as the bible says, God showed humans (before Adam) how to farm. But building cities, inventing written languages, building armies, inventing things unlike humans for thousands and thousands of years, that all happened in a very specific progression that all started, right there in Sumer, right between the Tigris and Euphrates, all right there where the stories of Genesis take place.
The timeline works out, the changes that swept over the human population of the world works out, it all lines up. If Genesis is true, if God really did create Adam and Eve, as described, in an already populated world, and their introduction introduced free will into the world as Genesis describes, then what we see in the history of humanity is exactly what we should expect to see.
These are the events that set the modern human world in motion. Which fits exactly in line with the whole story the bible is laying out. God creating a world, which happened much like what's described, created humans, then created Adam and Eve with free will, and introduced them into the world. The whole rest of the story is God dealing with the fallout of free will. That's the whole story. And it all fits historically.
That's why I believe what I believe. Because as far as I can tell, it's all very much true, and actually makes a lot of sense. More sense than any no-God scenario I've heard. So this isn't because I prefer to believe it. It's not because I'm overriding my rational mind with belief and faith. It's because it makes the most sense to me. Logically, philosophically, scientifically.As before you have many very strange concepts of what the bible says. For instance, people had free will with A&E (first people on earth), Cain and all the other people there, and long before the babylonians. There is no mention of other gods, but there IS repeated mention of the only god. There are tales that never happened (supporting that much there is untrue).
While it may make sense to you to ignore parts while accepting others, draw conclusions (no free will prior to the batch of ET's that visited) that aren't there, and pretend that agriculture, cities and the cultures that comes with them never happened without those ET's, the evidence shows otherwise. You can pretend there were no wars prior to your gods by saying there were only a few instances found, and pretending we should have found many more in the few fossil remains we have if it happened.
You can make a whole lot of conclusions, but none of them have anything to base them on IMO. Yes, man found agriculture and it found cities...but that does not point to gods irregardless of what the people then thought.
"Just as the bible says, God showed humans (before Adam) how to farm." Can you provide biblical quotations showing this?You - ""Just as the bible says, God showed humans (before Adam) how to farm." Can you provide biblical quotations showing this?"
Gen 1:29 - Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.
You - "There is no mention of other gods, but there IS repeated mention of the only god."
I have so many comments it's hard to know where to start. First, the obvious, just from that statement... Why else would there be repeated mentions of only one god? Don't you think that would be because there was thought to be other gods. Why else would they feel compelled to specify so "repeatedly"?
Second ...
"The idea that there are other “gods” who exist as real supernatural beings, albeit infinitely inferior to the only Creator and Redeemer, pervades the Bible. The Psalms fairly explode with evidence. “There is none like you among the gods, O Lord” (86:8); “For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; he is to be revered above all gods” (96:4); “Our Lord is above all gods” (135:5); “Ascribe to Yahweh, [you] gods, ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength” (29:1, my trans.); “He is exalted above all gods” (97:7); “For Yahweh is a great god, and a great king above all gods” (95:3, my trans.). And so on." - http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusiv … -many-gods
Third, and I think it's the part that bothers me the most. In the same comment where you're talking to me about reaching conclusions based on nothing and pretending and all of that, you make a statement that is patently false about a topic that you clearly know very little about as if you know without doubt that what you're saying is true. There's no mention of other gods? Not only are there numerous mentions, but it's actually a pretty big part of the story. Abraham went around trying to correct people, telling them there's only one God. Why else would he do that? It directly says that Abraham's father is from Ur, a Sumerian city, and mentions that the people of that place have their own gods that they worship. Which they did. They're called the Annunaki.
As for free will, it clearly says the humans created in Gen1 were given a set of commands that they then carried out. So well that God deemed all he made "good". Then it says Adam and Eve broke the one commandment they were given. Then it says the 'sons of God' and the 'daughters of humans' intermingled and humans then became "wicked". Wickedness in God's eyes is only possible if they're able to behave contrary to God's will. Before that, a simple mark of some kind was all that was needed to ensure Cain's safety. Only possible if free will isn't part of the equation. And there's plenty beyond that. That's just the first six chapters. It's a rather important part of the story considering the whole rest of the bible often revisits the theme that humans aren't behaving as God commands. Commandments, judgement, all of that, none of it necessary without free will.
As for evidence, there's two books that cover all the evidence quite extensively....
- 'Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World' by James DeMeo
" An early period of generally peaceful social conditions is documented in prehistory, but with a major shift towards patriarchal-authoritarian and decidedly violent social conditions across the Saharasian region after a major climate-shift from wet grassland-forest conditions towards harsh desert conditions at c.5000-4000 BC. Major epochs of cultural diffusion are also presented on maps, showing how violent patriarchal authoritarian, sex-repressive and child-abusive behaviors were carried outward from their Saharasian origins to nearly every corner of the globe." - http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia.htm# … eeUQw.dpuf
- 'The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of A New Era' by Steve Taylor
"The Fall, then, refers to a change which occurred in the psyche of certain human groups around 6,000 years ago. It was the point in history when these peoples developed a strong and sharp sense of ego. The Fall was, and is, the intensification of the human sense of "I" or individuality." - Steve Taylor
I have extensive evidence to back up everything I've said. I'm not just willy-nilly making things up. This is an honest and open search for truth. I'm not going to half-ass it and just pick something I prefer to be true. The real truth, no matter what it is, is all I'm interested in.
I'd hope by now you'd at least know and recognize that mine is not a worldview of blind faith. That it's logical and rational and heavily researched.I asked for a biblical reference to God showing humans prior to Adam how to farm and you give me a quotation of God speaking to Adam? How does that work?
It's also interesting that your quote from Saharasia says that documentation from pre-history shows that evil was carried to the four corners of the earth? Pre-historical documentation? How does that work? And how does the insinuation that the evil was carried to lands that already possessed the traits and caused those lands to become evil as well work out? Even if we assume (and I don't) that the peoples of the far east, of Australia and the Americas, of Europe and Asia all began to show the same evils at approximately the same time there is no reason to assume it traveled from any specific group.
Taylor blames the emergence of ego, 6,000 years ago, for failings, but it becomes really interesting when he professes to know and understand the psychology of the people then without a single bit of study, then or now, concerning the subject. Gross matters - the emergence of simple government or simple reasoning skills may be inferred from ruins and artifacts, but the emergence of ego? Not likely; far more reasonable to assume that, like all higher animals, the "I" was paramount for tens of thousands of years prior to that time period.So no explanation for your completely false statement? Okay.
That reference I gave you was from Genesis 1 before Adam was created. He's not speaking to Adam.
DeMeo's reference to being documented in prehistory is not talking about written documentation. It's documented as in "read" in the evidence. I strongly suggest you check these books out before you dismiss them on the one paragraph quote I provided. It's all based on archaeological information. The "documentation" he refers to doesn't mean written documents ...
"James DeMeo's Saharasia is the largest and most in-depth scholarly study on human behavior and social violence around the world which has ever been undertaken. The findings summarized in Prof. DeMeo's book cover the entire globe, from early prehistory into modern times, integrating on world-maps a full sweep of standard research data from the fields of archaeology and history, plus an in-depth cross-cultural review and mapping of data from over 1000 distinctly different human societies, from standard anthropological data bases. - http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia.htm# … vZSLg.dpuf
You say there's no reason to assume it traveled from any specific group. Actually there's very good reason. And that reason is heavily documented in that book. Again, before you dismiss everything I'm saying, if you really want to know the truth of our human history, I urge you to actually read and consider these books.
You - "Not likely; far more reasonable to assume that, like all higher animals, the "I" was paramount for tens of thousands of years prior to that time period."
More reasonable to assume? Oh no. No, no no no. Like assuming there's no mention of other gods in the bible? I think we've already covered that your assumptions are hardly the right way to go. This emergence of ego and understanding of human psychology is heavily based on DeMeo's study of behavioral characteristics.
After all the crap I've had to read about you accusing me of dismissing things for a preferred belief, you sure seem to be doing a lot of that. I'm giving you all the evidence you need. Your dismissing it, not only without consideration, but without even really looking into it. Somehow you seem to think you just intuitively know better what's true and what isn't. Very unreliable your intuition.Okay, I just read back over your latest response and I'm noticing a pattern that I want you to recognize in yourself because it's hindering our discussion. Take what you said here ...
"...but it becomes really interesting when he professes to know and understand the psychology of the people then without a single bit of study, then or now, concerning the subject."
Without a single bit of study, then or now, concerning the subject? What do you think is in the book? He actually has done quite a bit of study concerning the subject. That's why he wrote a book. He explains why and how he knows and understands the psychology of the people. Yet you, having only read this one paragraph, have deemed him to be talking about things he knows nothing about.
Then there's this ....
"...there is no reason to assume it traveled from any specific group."
Again, what do you think the book is about? The book is documenting all the reasoning behind what he's saying and what evidence he's basing those findings on. Yet here you are, saying there's "no reason to assume" when the book you clearly haven't read any more from than this one paragraph goes into great detail explaining exactly that.
You've done this same thing to me. No matter the evidence I put in front of you, you just jump to your own preferred conclusion, refusing to acknowledge anything I or either of these guys or all the experts I quoted say. All while you're accusing me of doing these exact things.
Can you see what I'm talking about?So the author studied the psychology of the people, with an eye towards ego. Without interviewing any of them, without reading any reports of anyone who did, and with only extremely minimal reports of life then. You'll pardon me if I take his word that human ego was nonexistent until that time, whereupon it suddenly bloomed, with a pound of salt.
And can you see what I'm talking about? A psychologist that cannot live with and learn from the subjects of his study isn't going to actually learn much of anything.
You will also pardon me if I take the word of another that thinks evil did not exist in the world until the people of babel carried it to them. This is ludicrous on the face of it - we already know better than to think that. Just as we already know that languages differed all over the world at that time, and were not carried from babel.Who's this "we"? This "we" that already knows better? I think we've already established there's a few things you thought you knew that you didn't. DeMeo doesn't say anything about "evil". He's talking about very specific behaviors and explains in great detail how those specific behavioral traits spread across the human world.
You're right in that nobody was able to study these ancient people directly. But you can tell quite a lot psychologically from studying behavior. Behavior gleaned from archaeological evidence. That's what the whole book is about.
But again, here you are dismissing the experts in the field, deciding to instead go with what you think is right. You haven't informed yourself on the topic, haven't considered with any depth what they're saying to make their case, you clearly have a preferred truth that you're choosing over what I'm pointing out. Despite the evidence to the contrary.
Also, this idea that languages came from Babel is a misconception. That comes from the idea that Adam/Eve were the first humans ever. That's wrong. I already explained, it says the language of this particular group that was building a tower was "confused" because they were scattered to different lands where all of these various languages were spoken.
Again you're dismissing things based only on your flawed knowledge on the subject. Out of everyone speaking on this topic that we've spoken of, you're the least qualified to make the assessments you seem so comfortable making.I'm sorry Headly, but I simply refuse to think that someone can determine whether there was a sense of ego in peoples that have left us a few crumbling foundations and little else.
Perhaps we have a different concept of what ego is and how it affects people. Personally I find most animals (as I said) to have an ego as they put their own life, wants and desires ahead of any other of the species except their late offspring and usually even then.Exactly, you "refuse". Your mind is made up. I can't do anything about that. I think we're done.
According to what you gave stated there should not be any war before civilisations, before 6400bc. But that is not the case, there is evidence fron 13000bc onwards like Jebel Sahaba and Lake Turkhana. Before 13000bc evidence is hard to come by and there is minimal war for the simple reason that due to ice age human groups were few and far few in between.
That is very wrong. The world has been fully populated since about 20000 BC. There were trade routes and substantial evidence of heavy interactions amongst humans. And though there are limited examples of violence, the overall picture says that human violence was not the norm.
Two mistakes
1) World was fully populated doesn't mean every good space was occupied but only all continents were occupied. There still was lot many space in between. During the ice ages human groups were far and in between. Human population and group density was low which started to increase after ice age and we start to hear about wars from then.
2) According to your theory there should not be any war before 4000bc outside middle east but there are multiple accounts of wars before 4000bc all over the world, multiple, not one or two.There are densely populated cultures that far predate Ubaid. Exceptionally large settlements developed in Catal Huyuk (7,500 to 5,700 BC) in Turkey and the Lepenski Vir settlement (dating back to 7,000 BC) located in the central portion of the Balkan peninsula. The Lepenski Vir culture gave way to the Vinča-Turdaș culture (5,000-4,500 BC), which at one point had populations estimated at 2,500 or more in some of the larger sites.
Yet there was no evidence of violence or social stratification at any of these sites.
Show me these accounts of war. I've got books and archaeologists and paleontologists who directly state it isn't so.1) They were not different groups ( I said group density not population density). (Lepensky Vir violence is suspected, and I think I gave you the paper supporting it earlier.
2) That will not take away the multiple evidence of war between 13000 - 6000."Given over four hundred individuals buried at these sites (MNI = 418), the episodes of violent interactions were few and without evidence of a specific temporal pattern. They probably represent sporadic episodes of interpersonal conflict that do not support the notion of endemic warfare deemed typical of the Mesolithic, or elevated levels of interpersonal/intertribal conflict at the time of contact with farming communities." - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16323188
There may have been, and probably are, examples of "interpersonal conflict" much like you would see amongst a pride of lions or in primate communities. These creatures also lack free will but sometimes get into fights. But no organized warfare.You IGNORE
1) There was violence there too (and most causes of intpersonal conflict and warfare are same, only difference is in numbers involved.) and it is difficult to differentiate between war and violence between two people as the death in a war may be only one or two and the ones preserved is even less, hence under estimated. Also One of the individuals, Lepenski Vir 62, exhibits evidence of a sharp-force trauma on the left parietal, consistent with a combat wound.
2) Adjacent site, at Schela Cladovei (7303–7545 BC ) represents a “localized and temporarily restricted” episode of warfare, which is also mentioned in the site you gave as reference
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16323188
3) Jebel Sahaba, Turkhana, Kennewick, Dniper rapids, Iron Gate gorges, Talheim, Schletz Aspam, Cucuteni, Shanidar, Natufian, (there are more including middle east)....
4) Even a single episode of warfare before 6400bc in middle east and 4000bc anywhere else disprove your theory categorically as it clearly says there can't be a warfare before. Or you will have to agree that there were many Adams.
5) Adam is simply the term for man in Hebrew and god created Man.
6) Lions and Chimpanzees do have organised warfare, so they have freewill!"it is an error, as profound as it is universal, to think that men in the food-gathering stage were given to fighting... All available facts go to show that the food-gathering stage of history must have been one of perfect peace." - WJ Perry, Archaeologist
"For the first ninety-five thousand years after the Homo sapiens Stone Age began, there is no evidence that man engaged in war on any level, let alone on a level requiring organized group violence. There is little evidence of any killing at all." - Richard Gabriel, Anthropologist
"the prevailing view is still that male dominance, along with private property and slavery, were all by-products of the agrarian revolution...despite the evidence that, on the contrary, equality between the sexes - and among all people - was the general norm in the Neolithic." -Riane Eisler, American Scholar, Cultural Historian
"There is the same lack of evidence for violent conflict throughout the simple horticultural period of history as in the hunter-gather era. Graves don't contain weapons; images of warfare or weapons are still absent from artwork; and villages and towns aren't situated in inaccessible places or surrounded by defensive walls." - Steve Taylor, The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of a New Era
I'm not ignoring anything. I'm recognizing the overall truth about humanity and how/when we changed. I'm not trying to make my own truth here. I'm looking for the truth about what makes humans who/what we are.We were not discussing about "from the beginning of humanity" but only from 15000 BP. Contrary ti the assertions you have posted above there is unequivocal evidence that we had war from that time. And Steve Taylor is no archaeologist but an 'obsolete' psychologist(You can check the criticisms I leveled against the only two authors you have read a few months before, I forgot most of it, nothing worthwhile to remember ). You are making your own truth here, you are ignoring al the evidence of war between 15000BP and 4000 BC, and misqoting archeologists who say human beings were initially, not 4000bc but 40000bc, peaceful.
I'm not sure I understand you're objection. I didn't say anything about the beginning of humanity. In fact, two of the quotes are specifically talking about the early horticultural era. While you may be able to find a limited number of examples to the contrary, the overall data shows humans throughout the hunter-gatherer stage to be egalitarian and peaceful. A trend that continued even after the transition to settled horticultural life.
How exactly am I misquoting archaeologists? And as far as Taylor is concerned, I know you're not impressed by him, but tell me what's inaccurate about his statement. That's what really matters. Despite what you think of the guy.Your quotes say during the history of humanity humans were peaceful which is irrelevant. We are only bothered whether there was any war before 5500bc and there was MANY. I myself gave you many examples and if you want I can give you more.
Neither Jebel Sahaba or Lake Turkhana were horticulturists. It doesn't even matter whether they were horticulturalists, it only matters whether they LIVED BEFORE 5500BC.
Regarding Taylor I had told you before, which I forgot since as it is useless. Do you suppose I am going to reread just to answer you?No, I don't expect you to re-read. What I do expect is for you to address the statement made and not who's saying it. Is it right or wrong? How is it wrong? The particular quote I'm referring to is this ...
"There is the same lack of evidence for violent conflict throughout the simple horticultural period of history as in the hunter-gather era. Graves don't contain weapons; images of warfare or weapons are still absent from artwork; and villages and towns aren't situated in inaccessible places or surrounded by defensive walls." - Steve Taylor
That isn't true. The quotes I gave, the first speaks of the "food gathering stage", the second speaks specifically of the agrarian revolution, and the third speaks specifically to "throughout the simple horticultural period". All three, especially the last two, are talking specifically about the timeframe in question.
What constitutes violence, and what constitutes war, is important. I'm not saying humans were incapable of violence. All animals are. But overall humans were very much peaceful toward one another. This is what changed in the prehistoric period that brought about the first civilizations. A change in human behavior recognizable to the Roman poet Ovid ...
"There broke out ... all manner of evil, and shame fled, and truth and faith. In place of these came deceits and trickery and treachery and force and the accursed love of possession ... And the land, hitherto a common possession like the light of the sun and the breezes, the careful surveyor now marked out with long boundary lines." - Ovid
The change Eisler is speaking of here ...
"the great change - a change so great, indeed, that nothing in all we know of human cultural evolution is comparable in magnitude." - Riane Eisler, American Scholar, Cultural Historian
Yes, if you first decide all I'm saying can be disproven by a handful of examples of violent deaths, then you're right. But it's not that simple. There's a distinct change when what was once a very uncommon thing became very common. And it doesn't line up right to think this just has to do with denser populations. There was something else that was different, and that difference was psychological.That I already addressed.
1)Lake Turkhana and Jebel Sahaba were hunter gatherers. All the sites I listed were wars.
2) Your theory is NOT huntergathers have war but no war before Adam was born.
" This is what changed in the prehistoric period that brought about the first civilizations. A change in human behavior recognizable to the Roman poet Ovid ..."
Ovid is not a historian.
According to you Adam brought freewill the sign of which is war. I am giving evidence of war before that time. War started before civilisations. Civilisations aggravated it. The man of 15000 is not different from 1500.
Corelation is not causation.
Second stage?
Humans settled down first in Natufian, agriculture came late.
The change from hunting to civilisation was very gradual took more than 5millenium. And before 15000there was the ice age not conducive to civilisation building.Like this article about the findings at Lake Turkhana says, "Evidence for inter-group violence among prehistoric hunter-gatherers is extremely rare," writes the team led by Marta Mirazón Lahr of Britain's Cambridge University
And ...
[i]"Proof of intentional killing is extremely rare among prehistoric hunter-gatherers, but the evidence found at Nataruk by Lake Turkana is clear-cut."
- http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/1.698422
In other words, these findings are very much out of the norm, which is exactly what I've been saying.
Also, who cares that Ovid wasn't a historian? What does that matter? Does that invalidate his observation?
Considering humans reached anatomical modernity 200,000 years ago, the emergence of civilization was anything but gradual. The evidence just plain does not support this idea you're suggesting that civilization was gradual and that it aggravated war-like behavior. If that were the case then we should see a gradual progression. We don't.No that was NOT exactly what you were saying. You said war is a sign of free will which humans got only after 5500 so any war before that time invalidate your claim.
Why are you concentrating on that war alone? Jebel Sahaba is also of the same time if not earlier. From that time onwards the evidence for war is INCREASING and it became a norm in North Mesopotamia before 6400.
Yes, because he is only describing his time period. He had no idea about the time we are discussing.
Even though anatomical humans are that early culture humans are not, which arose only 40000 years before. Then ice age was prevailing and human population was too low to make civilisations and the weather was not conducive either. Agriculture was discovered only after they have settled down which happened only by 10000. After that the progress is mostly steady and gradual.I don't have the energy or the want to go back through all of my statements that directly contradicts what it is you think I'm saying, but it's all there. I've clarified over and over again. No, I'm not saying violence was nonexistent before 5500BC, I said that it became a much more common thing and not what it was before, a rare occurrence.
"After that the progress is mostly steady and gradual."
That right there is where you're wrong. If it were as you say it was then the evidence would look quite different. Farming, for instance, started in Northern Mesopotamia around 10,000BC, like you said. It then spread from there rather steadily all throughout the world. This of course led to higher populated cultures all along the way. If it were as say then the progression into civilization should have followed the same pattern, but it didn't. While farming continued to spread as you'd expect, civilization only happened in this one region, and it spread from there in a very different way. It didn't at all follow the same trajectory it should have if what you're saying were true. But, as the evidence suggests, agriculture was not the cause of civilization. It was another factor. The behavior change I've been pointing out much more closely traces the same progression as civilization. Where it turned up, civilization soon followed. A direct link can be drawn between the two.
So, the evidence doesn't at all support what you're saying and rather specifically supports what I've been saying.You know what the problem is?
1) In that case you can't argue that war is a sign of free will.
2) Violence was common in middle east north including Anatolia by 6400bc, before Adam.
3) Rate of violence increasing is because of increased population concentrations and less government not free will. And a slight increase, if there is one doesn't signify anything. War becomes "very" common only in late Uruk.
You are again making up history based on legend. Civilisation, if it is making cities, started only by Uruk the first city. Eridu is the first city only according to Sumerian legends.So it is NOT the "one "region. By 6400, before Adam Halaf Culture was there in North. By 5500 the ENTIRE Mesopotamia had Ubaid, so if anyone was responsible, it was not certainly Adam who was born only on 5500. There was a break after PPN, that has nothing to do with advent of Adam but a collapse just like any other cultures (like Sumerian or Roman. . the elites couldn't be sustained). The problem is the only "behaviour change" you can point to is "war" but no definite war. It is as if you are saying that all wars after 5500 is behaviour change while those before is not.
If you say the commonality of war and stratification is behaviour change then it was there by 6400 in North, 1000 years before Adam.
And taking your logic, we can say disovery of computer is behaviour change, there is a change in the latter quarter of last century. And just like you anyone can say that though technology was here for some 300 years computer was discovered only in 20th, is pointing towards that by ignoring the fact that so many factors had to come together to built a computer or civilisation.See, this is the problem I have. I keep having people try to correct me and say things like, "Rate of violence increasing is because of increased population concentrations and less government not free will."
I'm sorry, but the evidence just doesn't line up. As I said before, because of the spread of farming, population density increased all over, and in those early days a lack of government was a very common thing. Especially where social stratification had not yet happened. If it were as you say then we'd see different patterns in the evidence. What you're saying just doesn't line up.
When you say violence was common in middle east north by 6400BC, what are you referring to?
I didn't say war is a sign of free will. I said it's more common amongst those with free will. There are a whole host of behaviors, well beyond war alone, that signifies it. Male dominance is another. If you're familiar with De Meo's work then you should know what I'm talking about.
Eridu is the first city because it's the first place to show signs of what constitutes a city. Uruk was much larger, as the onset of rapid urbanization happened in Uruk during that time, yes, but Eridu is classified as the first city. Not just by the Sumerians. It had a temple, and a ruling class, and a working class, and it was organized. It had laws.
Yes, technically the Ubaid started a century prior with Ubaid 0 in Oueili. But Eridu is where/when things began to change. This is where the stories of the bible are taking place. This is where the tower of Babel is located. This is where the after effect of the Babel story can be seen ...
"The archaeological record shows that Arabian Bifacial/Ubaid period came to an abrupt end in eastern Arabia and the Oman peninsula at 3800 BCE, just after the phase of lake lowering and onset of dune reactivation.[14] At this time, increased aridity led to an end in semi-desert nomadism, and there is no evidence of human presence in the area for approximately 1000 years, the so-called "Dark Millennium".[15] This might be due to the 5.9 kiloyear event at the end of the Older Peron.
The Sumerian records show the flood to have happened between the Ubaid and Uruk. And if had just affected Ur then it would not have been a stoppage in history like the King's List shows it to be. So there are two records, written by those who lived it, that place it there and then. Then came this climate change and the dispersion of the people of this region, which sparked the beginnings of all the civilizations in the region.
Like it or not, agree or not, there's just too much data here that shows this to be accurate. What they were describing in those stories happened in this region during this timeframe.Which is the evidence that doesn't line up?
War was there before, the rate increased after an increase in population density. Many times I cleared myself, that when I say population density it means group density, the number of groups that are different politically. It is not population increase but population group increase that cause increase in war. Humans have, at least from 12000, the capacity to make war, it didn't originate with any specific person.
For your theory the capacity is important not the rates.
Which is that place with farming and no social stratification? Natufian is were agriculture and stratification started. There were elites in every farming community from that time.
What is that evidence in Eridu that differentiate it from the previous ones?
There is no war in Indus region between 1900-1947 but after 1947 there were many, does that mean the Indians suddenly got free will? No one or society wakes up one day and decide there will be war, nor there is war means every one is at war on all days. War is political, it's for obtaining some objectives like food, territory women, preemptive or revenge.
Just because 3 wars in a year becomes 4 doesn't signify anything let alone freewill. There is no sudden increase of war in Eridu or South in the said year or century.
The same you are referring when you said violence became "very common" from 5500.
So how common is common?
And I am familiar with that work, a good fiction.
You can't take war as a sign for anything, if it is more common among free willed then the present day western Europeans have no free will.
And male dominance is nothing, evidence is not enough to pattern ancient societies and present societies cannot be divided into two categories as meo proposes.
So is there anything that differentiate Eridu from earlier ones?
Which are the "characters", you yourself say 'capacity of war' is nothing? Male dominance also depends on society and we cannot archelogically trace it but as far as we know, the wide variety of the present was there from atleast 10000. Meo says its from 4000 without any convincing reason.
Can you consistently define freewill just like you do for omniscience (even if it is only accepted by you)?
Eridu is classified as the first city by you and Sumerians. It is not the first, for temple, ruling class and working class doesn't make city. If that is the definition of city you use, there are many others before Eridu.
You still are not able to bring any evidence for a flood in Eridu and there is absolutely NO EVIDENCE other than in Ur. The stories are all mixed up with floods that happened in many centuries. And there is no flood "between" Ubaid and Uruk, that change was gradual happened over many centuries to be caused by flood.
And it was NOT written by people who lived at that time but by LATER GENERATIONS. And there was human presence in Eridu till the time of "tower of Babel" of Amar Sin which was built in 2400.
But let us say, instead of "all practical purpose" Eridu was fully abandoned in 3800, but it should be abandoned in 4000 if your theory is to be correct not 3800. Not only that there should be a very huge unfinished tower there at that time and there should not be any before that but not only the unfinished one is later, there were many towers were there too. And language didn't start in 3800 either.
Then 5400 is the time when Ubaid spread to North, so again Adam has no hand in it. Adam or his free will was not the cause.
Climate change and aridity is NOT flood nor was the cause of change from Ubaid just like Adam nor free will was not the cause of North adapting Ubaid.
Like it or not, you are not only reinterpreting bible, you are ignoring massive evidences and cooking up that which is not there.
You are rewriting history too.I'm going to start addressing some of your arguments a piece at a time. I don't know that I'll get through everything in one sitting. If I haven't said it before, I appreciate the challenging of these ideas and this data. That's the whole reason I discuss it in these forums. It's not often I encounter someone willing to really dig into it.
I've been reading up a bit on the Natufians since you brought them up. Fascinating stuff. But from what I've read some of your information doesn't seem to be up to date? This for example ....
" Finally, the suggestion that
differences in mortuary practices
should be viewed as reflecting social
hierarchy have recently been found to
be untenable. - http://www.columbia.edu/itc/anthropolog … /baryo.pdf
Farming, yes, that does seem to be the case with the Natufians. Though it sounds almost as if they somehow became settled first, then began to farm. Kind of backwards from the traditional concept of how that worked out. But, in the context of the bible, God shows the humans of Gen1 (before Adam/Eve) how to farm. Gobleki Tepe is a particular place of interest in this regard in both geographic location and time frame.
The evidence I'm speaking of that doesn't line up with your explanation is the spread of farming and the increased population densities as a result. You make it sound as though higher population density led to violence and social stratification. But, unlike farming, these other characteristics didn't follow as it should have if true. Farming spread rather quickly. Larger populated cultures came as a result. But the characteristics I'm most focusing in on did not. They spread as well, but the spread was a very different pattern and timeframe.
You - "War is political, it's for obtaining some objectives like food, territory women, preemptive or revenge."
Yes, you're right. But before free will there was no concept of personal possession. Like territory. There may have been territorial skirmishes like what's seen elsewhere in the natural world, but there was no concept of 'owning' land. Politics is another characteristic foreign to pre-free will humans. We're looking for evidence of a psychological change.
What happened first in the Ubaid culture is what we're looking for, basically. That's when all these characteristics began to show up. Up until then all cultures, including those with higher populations in farming communities showed to be egalitarian, including where women are concerned. Male dominated societies began with the Sumerians and spread from there.
It's not just me and the Sumerian who count Eridu as the first/oldest city ... "Eridu was long considered the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia and is still today argued to be the oldest city in the world." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu
There was at least one flood between Ubaid and Uruk ... "In one of his deep soundings he came across a deposit of clean, water-borne silt measuring eleven feet in depth. Below it were houses and pottery dating to the Ubaid Period (c. 5,000-4,000 BC) whilst the silt layer was overlain by occupation levels dating to the Uruk Period (c. 4,000-3,000 BC)." - http://davidrohl.blogspot.com/2012/03/m … f-ark.html
Actually, Eridu should have been abandoned in 3900BC according to my theory. This was when the 5.9 kiloyear event would have driven people from the land (the Babel story). As for the tower, the tower base located at Eridu has been restarted dozens of times. It's difficult to even determine which is the first/earliest layer.
Language didn't begin at Babel. It just said the people were scattered and their language confused. Considering there were different languages all around this region, Egyptian to the west, Indus Valley language to the east, akkadian to the north, then scattering these people would confuse their languages before too long.
There's a huge nonphysical void in each of us;No one really knows why or where it comes from,but it results in acting out,or seeking,and for seeking...an aware person is necessary ...You clearly have that quality,I can respect that.
But religion is a glass ceiling to the understanding of our existence.To use an old worn out phrase,look at the bigger picture,you are capable of that I'm sure.I,m not saying stop believing;I'm saying don't stop seeking.I appreciate that. I never stop seeking. In fact the glass ceiling I kept hitting was trying to find answers through just religion or just science. It's only through the combination of both that that ceiling broke.
Like what you said about this "nonphysical void" that "no one really knows why or where it comes from". We've been trying to understand ourselves through science since the beginning. Yet these questions remain. The fact is there are elements to existence that are, as you said "nonphysical". They're elements that aren't beholden to scientific inquiry. So, I broadened my gaze to account for all that falls outside of science's jurisdiction. The seek perpetually continues.And yet...you cling to one of Many religious books as being 'the one'. I feared you wouldn't get the glass ceiling thing and you didn't.Your biblical tunnel vision illustrates that point.
I don't dismiss the bible;it makes some interesting points;some of which are valid,most of which are not,I even quote from it at times.The difference is that I see it for what it is...a book...not the 'one and Only' book...just a book...and unlike 90% of the Christians I've met,I have actually Read the thing...a few times.Was the Bible inspired by god?...sure it was;So was Moby Dick...and Harry Potter...and The life and times of Peanut...Oh and Fairies are real...and you should Never play "Leapfrog" with a unicorn...that's the most important one.No, I got the glass ceiling thing. I don't just blindly accept the bible. I validated it. Confirmed it to be true. And I have researched other texts. The bible stands alone as being the one that tells a factual account.
You've clearly dismissed it as nothing more than just a book. And I don't think it's magic. I don't even think it was inspired by God, or written by God. I think it was written by people during a time when a real God interacted with them.
I have actually read it. The difference is I was able to find the right context to read it in. None of the other works of fiction, the point you were trying to make, are in the same category. This is not fiction. This is history. It's the history of the modern human race.You wrote a new bible based on what you know about history and ignored inconvenient history and then you "validated" it.
Not at all. I built a framework based on the very specific timeline given and the series of events that happened along the way, then found a series of events that match up both when and where that framework says they happened. You're giving my way too much credit to say I just made this up. This can be verified. Check my work before you tell me I'm wrong. If we're truly interested in truth here then we won't shy away from doing the work.
There is no specific timeline other than that you made up.
Your timeline(all BC)
5500 Adam along with Ubaid period was born.
His sons mated with another species with a very low longivity creating giants. Adam and his descendants were the first species that had freewill; evidence- war and stratification started with them.
4000 There was a flood in middle east that killed all Adams sons except one family and from them Uruk period was born.
Reality.
Homo sapiens were the sole species (if you discount hobits) for the last 40000yrs.
Ubaid period started around 6400bc and by 5500 it was spread over low and upper Mésopotamia.
War first started around 13000. And presumed (anthropological evidence) stratification started around 10000 with Natufians and kins and clear stratification by 3000
No giants ever in middle east, though we know that archie humans and Neanderthals were bigger. The only giant primate was gigantopithicus which is an ape, is extinct.
There was no flood in middle east nor Eridu in 4000.
Ubaid was replaced by Uruk over centuries.
http://hubpages.com/religion-philosophy … ost2766580Yes, there was a "Ubaid" settlement as far back as 6400BC. They were, of course, located along a river bank where most human settlements were established. But Eridu, the first city, the first evidence of social stratification, wasn't established until 5500BC. That change in behavior and the result of that change, like the first cities, began at Eridu.
"The Ubaid period as a whole, based upon the analysis of grave goods, was one of increasingly polarised social stratification and decreasing egalitarianism." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubaid_period
Yes, there was a flood layer discovered by Arthur Whooley that separated Ubaid artifacts from Uruk artifacts, which dates it right at 4000BC.
The entirety of the Ubaid culture was not wiped out as it spanned a fairly great distance throughout the middle east. Only the southern most cities.
Every culture from that era located in that region claim there were god-like male/female beings that lived among them. According to the bible, some lived until Abraham's lifetime. A couple outlived him. And Abraham was born roughly 2000 years after Adam was created, or roughly 3500BC. Well after the flood. Which also lines up with the timelines of Rome, Greece, Egypt and everywhere else who had written about these gods from their ancient past.
For more on the behavior change that's consistent with the introduction of free will, as well as what brought about war, please see ...
- 'Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World' by James DeMeo
- 'The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of A New Era' by Steve TaylorWrong, Eridu is not the first place with stratification, the grave good evidence start with Natufian.
The flood, as I have pointed out many times earlier and was agreed by you, was IN UR, NOT Eridu. There was no flood in Eridu or other neighbouring areas except Ur, so it was not the flood that replaced Ubaid. And an Ur flood will not eliminate Adams, especially Cane's descendants who were in Eridu.
Only Ur not even Eridu, in many places it was replaced only bu 3800.
All cultures start their creation myths with gods, but none of them was at the same time period. And we have no evidence of another species for the last 10000yrs nor evidence of giants, as I already told. And according to you yourself noone can live till Abrahams time, all were wiped out by the flood.
I already told you about both these books.
De meo especially do not say anything about behaviour change and freewill. He say it is due to desertification, acknowledging the Jebel Sahaba. Even that theory is wrong because the other old one is near Lake Turkhana. But we have even more evidence of war before 4000.
In America, where there is no Adam first evidence is from 9400 bp, Kennewick man.More evidence appears during times when we have a larger burial population. During the Early Pacific Period, 6400 to 3800 BP, 21 percent of burials showed evidence of violence (Ames & Maschner, 1999, p. 209).
The sentenlese who, scientists say, is isolated from the general population for the last 40-60000 years are one of the fiercest group of hunters who will kill anyone who get there.
Do you want any more evidence?I will respond in more detail when I have time to do so, but I did want to address this ....
You - "De meo especially do not say anything about behaviour change and freewill."
"James DeMeo's Saharasia is the largest and most in-depth scholarly study on human behavior and social violence around the world which has ever been undertaken." - http://www.orgonelab.org/saharasia.htm# … j93VN.dpuf
Yes, DeMeo attributes his findings to desertification. That is beside the point. That is a theory, or hypothesis, in an attempt to explain the evidence. The evidence, however, is what's relevant. Not his hypothesized cause.Looks like the reviwer has not read any other book.
Yes and the evidence says that we have violence, war and stratification before 6400bc.That's not a reviewer. That's the write-up about the book on the book's website.
Are you claiming you have read it? Because it's kind of hard to read and completely miss that the whole thing is about studying human behavior.I didn't read the entire rubbish, if that is what you ask.
And even he acknowledge that we gave evidence of war in 13000bc and you yourself agree it is not his inference but evidence that matters. The evidence is wars originated from 15000 bc or before. We have archeological evidence from that time in different continents. And Sentenelese who are isolated for last 40-60000yrs are war like, so there could be war even then.It doesn't appear you read any of it. Because it's not really a book you 'read'. It's more of a catalog of evidence. It explains what constitutes evidence, what it represents, and where/when each piece is from to show a detectable progression of these specific behavioral characteristics across the human population.
The Sentenelese -
"On 29 March 1970, a research party of Indian anthropologists, which included Pandit, found themselves cornered on the reef flats between North Sentinel and Constance Island. An eyewitness recorded the following from his vantage point on a boat lying off the beach:
Quite a few discarded their weapons and gestured to us to throw the fish. The women came out of the shade to watch our antics... A few men came and picked up the fish. They appeared to be gratified, but there did not seem to be much softening to their hostile attitude... They all began shouting some incomprehensible words. We shouted back and gestured to indicate that we wanted to be friends. The tension did not ease. At this moment, a strange thing happened — a woman paired off with a warrior and sat on the sand in a passionate embrace. This act was being repeated by other women, each claiming a warrior for herself, a sort of community mating, as it were. Thus did the militant group diminish. This continued for quite some time and when the tempo of this frenzied dance of desire abated, the couples retired into the shade of the jungle. However, some warriors were still on guard. We got close to the shore and threw some more fish which were immediately retrieved by a few youngsters. It was well past noon and we headed back to the ship..."
Doesn't sound very warlike to me.Quite a few discarded their weapons and gestured to us to throw the fish. The women came out of the shade to watch our antics... A few men came and picked up the fish. They appeared to be gratified, but there did not seem to be much softening to their hostile attitude... They all began shouting some incomprehensible words. We shouted back and gestured to indicate that we wanted to be friends. The tension did not ease. At this moment, a strange thing happened — a woman paired off with a warrior and sat on the sand in a passionate embrace. This act was being repeated by other women, each claiming a warrior for herself, a sort of community mating, as it were. Thus did the militant group diminish. This continued for quite some time and when the tempo of this frenzied dance of desire abated, the couples retired into the shade of the jungle. However, some warriors were still on guard. We got close to the shore and threw some more fish which were immediately retrieved by a few youngsters. It was well past noon and we headed back to the ship..."
Doesn't sound very warlike to me
Because as usual, you ignore most if it. You ignore them sending arrows and spears at anyone who get near. They didn't land only because they were hostile.
The earliest recorded mention of North Sentinel Island was made in 1771 by the British surveyor John Ritchie, who observed "a multitude of lights" from an East India Company hydrographic survey vessel, the Diligent, as it passed by the island.[2][5][7] Homfray, an administrator, travelled to the island in March 1867.[8] Toward the end of the same year's summer monsoon season, the Nineveh, an Indian merchant ship, was wrecked on a reef near the island. The 106 surviving passengers and crewmen landed on the beach in the ship's boat and fended off attacks by the Sentinelese. They were eventually found by a Royal Navy rescue party.[7]
In the spring of 1974, a National Geographic film crew came to the island, in what was one of the most unsuccessful expeditions made on the island. North Sentinel was visited by a team of anthropologists filming a documentary entitled Man in Search of Man. The team was accompanied by armed police officers and a National Geographic photographer. When the motorized boat broke through the barrier reefs, locals emerged from the jungle. The Sentinelese responded with a curtain of arrows. The boat landed at a point on the coast out of range of the arrows and the police (dressed in jackets with padded armour) landed and left gifts in the sand: a miniature plastic car, some coconuts, a live pig tied, a doll, and aluminium cookware.[14] The policemen returned to the boat and waited to see the locals' reaction to the gifts. The reaction was to launch another round of arrows, one of which struck the documentary's director in the left thigh. The man who wounded the director withdrew and laughed proudly, sitting in the shade while others speared, then buried, the pig and the doll. Afterwards, everyone left, taking with them only the coconuts and aluminium cookware
And Jarawas were pacified only recently when one of their kids were saved by a doctor.Did you miss that the arrows they were using had no tips? Arrows specifically made to warn without harm.
That is your invention.
The Sentinelese responded with a curtain of arrows. The boat landed at a point on the coast out of range of the arrows and the police (dressed in jackets with padded armour) landed and left gifts in the sand: a miniature plastic car, some coconuts, a live pig tied, a doll, and aluminium cookware.[14] The policemen returned to the boat and waited to see the locals' reaction to the gifts. The reaction was to launch another round of arrows, one of which struck the documentary's director in the left thigh . The man who wounded the director withdrew and laughed proudly , sitting in the shade while others speared, then buried, the pig and the dollJust about every article I read on the topic mentioned the arrows without heads. I didn't make that up.
Not only there is no such article, the article you quoted clearly say that "wounded".
In 1896 a boat crash victim got there only to ve killed by them.No such article? Here's a couple of those articles that don't exist ...
"However, after a few minutes, the Sentinelese would warn them off by making menacing gestures and firing arrows without arrowheads." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people
"After just a few minutes, the Sentinelese would signal with menacing gestures or "warning shots" -arrows fired with no arrowheads attached- that the visit was over." - http://www.neatorama.com/2013/07/08/The … en-Island/Then how did you missed the part that they send arrows with heads attached, that can wound?
How did you ignore that they killed anyone who got there, that Indians have abandoned all attempts at contact?
And why do you ignore that it (warning with blunt arrows) all happened only after 1990s after repeated attempts of contact and not before?
How do you ignore that after the warning shots they shot real arrows?I'm not ignoring anything. I read multiple accounts of the use of arrows with no heads. I didn't read anything about any of that.
Because God secretly wanted us to be independent of Him so he could sit back and watch His Great Reality Show.
We can stop being his actors any time we want.
But then what would He do if we all said, " Enough!" … He would welcome us back!
The truth is we have been in this play so many times, and we can stop if we so choose.
God's love is Bliss.
Maybe.
( so confusing.)
TWISI<"The future is just as immutable; God looks "forward" and sees that I will have (in His view of the whole gestalt) pancakes tomorrow. I can no more have waffles tomorrow than I can have them yesterday - pancakes is the only choice possible. The future (my view) is no more changeable than the past is. It has "already" happened in God's view.">
VS
<"God still knows all that happened on that future date, but because your decision never happened, He doesn't know what you would have done had that situation existed.
It's really pretty simple."> H
Not really.
At all.My answer
NO. We are responsible for our suffering. Because we are at this point in time separated from Causal Consciousness and that is our own doing based on free will.Does the existence of human free (self-guided) will disprove the omniscient aspect of a god or what, wilderness?
The most interesting thing about free will is its many possibilities. Consider that every probable scenario has been designed and calculated to the nth-child, so that you can experience it, as desired. If that scenario did not exist -was not created- you could not experience it entirely.
Can a potted plant taste the salt from a kiss? Can water feel your fingers combing through it? You can taste the kiss, feel the wet of water -as well as the many effects of either or both even while you experience the air, hear the birds, blink your eyelids and the beads of sweat form on your flesh from the warmth of the light from a star, some millions of miles away and ages old...
Perhaps we have, for too long, viewed Creator-creation incorrectly. Perhaps we have relied, for too long, on reason -however expressed- to explain something we should be experiencing.
Experience is all the proof you'll ever need.I haven't found Eden, but I believe it's in northern Mesopotamia, and I believe that in the right hands, what I've found can lead to finding it. I can show that beings much like Adam and Eve are described really did exist. And I can show them to play a significant role in the first formations of civilization.
I can show three specific events in particular that line up both according to the timeline down to the number of years in between, and line up location wise. Namely the city that Cain built in Gen4, the flood in Gen6-8, and the Babel story from Gen11. There's archaeological evidence for each.I'd have to point out that your belief is not proof or even evidence. Nor is "beings much like Adam and Eve existed" mean they were personally formed by a god as the bible states. Nor can you show two individuals with that name played a role at all.
No, you cannot show the worldwide (as stated) flood happened (because it did not), nor the Tower of Babel (unless you have found that tower?) Plus, the bottom line once more is that you cannot show a god did either one, let alone all the other things attributed to it. Showing an event happened does NOT prove a god was the causal force behind it. Only that it happened and that at least some of the people then (or later) decided a god caused it.Nowhere did I say that my belief was in any way proof. I said I believe Eden is in northern Mesopotamia, but that's an unconfirmed statement based on evidence.
No, you're right. As I've stated numerous times, including within this conversation, you will find no physical evidence to prove the existence of God. But what I can show is overwhelming evidence that a family of beings who lived incredibly long lives did actually exist. That doesn't prove their products of a God, but it is consistent with what's described.
Yes, the base of a tower that some archaeologists think may be the tower of Babel is right where this explanation says it should be.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu#Pos … r_of_Babel
A worldwide flood. The bible does not state this. The way it's translated it can sound that way, but common sense should tell you that considering the people who wrote this didn't know about the whole planet, it's highly unlikely they could report on the status of the whole planet. To think their explanation includes the entirety of the planet is just silly.
What I can show is that history reflects exactly what we should expect to see if the events of Genesis actually happened."Yes, the base of a tower that some archaeologists think may be the tower of Babel...". But they don't know that a foundation was the Tower intended to reach the heavens, nor is there any evidence that the people were instantly scattered to the ends of the earth. Or anything else but a foundation.
"17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die."
Sorry, but this cannot be interpreted (honestly) to indicate a local flood. It is inconceivable that the people of the time thought they had seen all the earth, or that they thought that the unexplored lands contained no life.
But can you show there was a god involved anywhere in Genesis? Or simply that following events approximated what would have been expected had at least some of the "recorded" events happened? Leave out Eden, A&E, and Noah. Leave out Cain, the talking serpent and a woman from a rib. Leave out the tree that instantly imparts knowledge and morality, that the universe took 7 days to create and that a man was created full blown from dust. Is there anything at all in what's left that requires an omnipotent, omniscient god?
(I'm sorry, but your link, on Eridu, says only that a single person speculates that the town is the site of the tower, not Babylonia. No evidence is offered, not even a fallen tower or even a foundation. If this is typical of your "evidence" that a god existed and instantly scattered mankind throughout the earth, changing languages at the same time, you need to really work on tightening your requirements.)Tower of Babel ...
"In addition to the similar biblical accounts of God’s creation, the ancient Sumerians’ detailed writings contain The Paradise Myth, The Gardener’s Mortal Sin, and Lord of Eridu’s estrangement of one language (Tower of Babel)." - http://www.allabouthistory.org/ancient-sumerians.htm
It's not just that one guy. Before you proclaim me wrong you could have maybe looked into it yourself. Rather than basing your entire conclusion on the one reference I gave you. Just search "Babel, Eridu" and you'll find plenty beyond just that one guy.
You - "nor is there any evidence that the people were instantly scattered to the ends of the earth"
You're right, that one small snippet I referred you to doesn't say anything about people being scattered. Now, does that mean that there's no evidence? This conclusion you reached with such certainty after reading that one paragraph? I would hope by now, with all the discussions we've had, that you'd give me a bit more credit than that. Here, let me refer you to another reference ...
"The 5.9 kiloyear event was one of the most intense aridification events during the Holocene Epoch. It occurred around 3900 BC (5,900 years BP), ending the Neolithic Subpluvial and probably initiating the most recent desiccation of the Sahara.
Thus, it also triggered worldwide migration to river valleys, such as from central North Africa to the Nile valley, which eventually led to the emergence of the first complex, highly organized, state-level societies in the 4th millennium BC." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.9_kiloyear_event
This caused many, like the people at Eridu/Babel, to migrate to river valleys, to the west along the Nile, to the north along the Tigris/Euphrates, to the east in the Indus Valley, and elsewhere. And of course, with some ending up along the Nile where they spoke Egyptian, the Tigris/Euphrates where they spoke Sumerian, along the Indus Valley where they had their own language, this actually did confuse their languages.
The Flood ...
I know you're an intelligent guy, so I feel almost strange having to point this out, but do you really think that when you read English translated from ancient Hebrew that says "every thing that is in the earth" that they were talking about the whole planet? I mean, really? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Ancient Hebrew even has a word that means the Earth the way you're reading it. They didn't know at the time what the whole Earth was. The word translated as "Earth" is 'artz', which also translates as "land". As in "every thing that is in the land shall die".
You're reading that from a 21st century perspective. Not how it was written. How in the world do you expect a bronze age Mesopotamian to report on the status of the whole Earth?
You - "But can you show there was a god involved anywhere in Genesis?"
I refuse to answer this again. Please see previous posts.
The point is that the events described happened as described. It matches up with the physical evidence. The text is accurate, and according to the text God was involved. So no, this isn't proof of God. It's proof that Genesis isn't just lies and made up nonsense. That this is actual history it's speaking of. That the events it describes happened as described. So, at this 2000 year span depicted in Genesis 2-11 is really true. The other part of the story is that this God was involved. Is that true too? These are very much the events that led to the emergence of modern civilization. This was indeed the beginning of modern humanity. According to the author, this was the result of their interactions with this God.
You should know this about me by now, Wilderness, don't accuse me of not providing enough references/evidence. I will INUNDATE you if you're not careful. I'm showing some serious restraint here.I didn't say you were wrong (babel); I said the link did not support your statement, and it doesn't. It lists, just as I said, one person with no evidence beyond his speculation.
If, as I was taught, the bible is the word of God I expect it to be correct. And the translations, too, as they were performed under God's eye and with His help. And yes, I think the writers meant exactly what they said (although that doesn't make it either true or even true in the mind of those writers); the entire earth. It doesn't make much sense that their God would only destroy them - far more reasonable is that He destroyed everyone. The story just doesn't carry the right weight when their murderous god only killed a handful. You talk as if the writers (Noah and/or his family) were honestly trying to report a historical fact, when that hasn't been known to happen in the history of mankind. There is always a hidden agenda or a preferred "history" to protect. Given that it is a religious tale, describing the heroism of the story teller and the wrath his god would rain upon others, an agenda is pretty plain to see.
A small part of biblical text is correct, or reasonably so, and from this you wish to extrapolate to the entire thing? Including physically impossible events? Thank you, no.
Yes, people then attributed events to acts of God and millions alive today will testify on their death bed that God performed acts for and around them, too. It doesn't make it true, it just indicates wishful thinking and willingness to accept without proof.
Inundate me? I doubt that; I've seen your thinking before and reject it. You pick and choose, ignoring other historical evidence as needed to keep the faith going.Again, I invite you to look into this (location of tower of Babel) a bit more beyond the one link I provided before you go making proclamations.
You - "If, as I was taught, the bible is the word of God I expect it to be correct. And the translations, too, as they were performed under God's eye and with His help."
Well that's your own flawed perception. Like I've said many times, if you don't truly understand the free will element of the story then you don't truly understand the story being told. God writing a book through puppeting humans flies right in the face of the central theme. God can't/doesn't control humans. The entirety of the story is God trying to inspire people to do His will, commands, threats, punishments, none of it matters. They still won't do what He wants. So how exactly do you expect Him to author a book through humans? Does that really make sense in the context of the story?
You - "It doesn't make much sense that their God would only destroy them - far more reasonable is that He destroyed everyone."
Reasonable? Again, understanding the story in the right context is key. The paragraphs preceding the flood explain exactly why it happened ...
Gen 6:1-4 - When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with[a] humans forever, for they are mortal[b]; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
The sons of God are Adam's descendants. They have free will. The daughters of humans are not and don't have free will....
Gen6:5-6 - The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.
His free will creation went rogue. He had created humans in the same image/likeness of Adam and his family. The two groups began to interbreed. This introduced free will into naturally evolved humans. Made them "wicked".
So, long story short, yes it does make sense that God would destroy only them. The contamination was still localized. The world was populated by humans, but humans who were not wicked as they did not have free will. But in this one region free will had gone haywire. Had caused God to "regret" putting humans here. Something He clearly didn't anticipate considering His regret. Didn't know it would happen until He introduced free will into the world. Then it happened. Then He had to do something about it to coarse-correct.
Yes I'm extrapolating to the whole thing. These first few chapters are what set the stage for the story to come. Once you read it in the right context, it clears up much more well beyond this portion of the bible.
Define physically impossible events. Not possible because you haven't seen it happen? Would you say it's impossible for reptiles to grow enormous in size? We've never seen it happen. We could pretty safely say it's impossible now. But clearly, at one point, it was very possible. How do you determine what is and isn't physically possible?
Please, share, what historical evidence have I ignored to "keep the faith going"? I'm interested in the truth. The real truth. I'm not going to get there if I'm making my own truth as I see fit. So, please, I want to be corrected if I'm wrong. Show me.But I didn't say God flooded the entire earth - I said that was an impossibility. I said that the writers said that, and they did. Even as they knew it didn't happen, they said it. Which points to a lack of truth in their statements, just as the tale of Eden does, along with all the other stories (living in the belly of a fish, for instance) of things that can't happen.
The tower - quite likely existed. I can certainly see ancient peoples trying to reach heaven via a tower. I just can't see a god scattering the people to the far corners and changing their language as a result of the action. While people migrated (people always do) it wasn't by the forced action from a god.Did you seriously just say, again, that the writers said God flooded the entire earth? And now you're saying that they deliberately lied about it? Am I reading that right? So people who I'm pretty sure we both agree didn't have any knowledge of the entire Earth deliberately lied about the whole Earth being flooded? Do you not see a problem with that line of reasoning?
I can see descendants of flood survivors being compelled to build a tower. So how is it I can't say whether or not a God was involved in this or that, but you can say that these people were not forced to migrate by the action from a God? The whole region was transformed into desert. It certainly wasn't the decision of these people to just pick up and move. They were forced to by an 'act of God'.
The problem with that theory is that humans started making and using tools 2.5 million years ago. Those tools didn't change, didn't adapt, for hundreds of thousands of years. Then, about 4000 BC (2,496 million years later) , they made plows and pots and the wheel and chariots sailboats and time and astronomy/astrology and mathematics and maps and civilization and the written language and on and on and on. Before that, no significant inventions. And yes, when you consider the timespan we're talking about, it was rather sudden.
Indigenous humans continue through to this day along that same tragectory. But then there's us. Starting in the Middle East about 6000 years ago, we changed drastically and splintered off and began to do our own thing.
Exactly, the dog wants. We living things want comfort, want security, want warmth, want food, want sex. And we've learned how to get all of these things by assessing the danger in doing so and carefully finding a way.
The patterns we see in human development don't support that at all. If it were as you say then we'd be able to actually see the physical catalyst that brought about each civilization. The desertification of the Sahara, for example, could maybe account for some of it, but not throughout the world like it did.Well now, there's sudden and then there's sudden. By the timeline back then it was quite sudden, but by the timeline we live in now it took interminable millenia to go from beating nearly pure copper into a bracelet to making bronze and long centuries more to find iron. In far less time than it them to go from copper and fire to iron we've found a thousand new compounds and brought the sun to earth in the form of atomic energy. It's as much a matter of the knowledge base as it is environment. Don't forget that the knowledge that was so important to providing more "inventions" was the advent of agriculture - that made cities possible which made leisure time available which led to relatively quick growth in the technology and the more we learn the more leisure time the species has.
Yep - we splintered off and went to Europe with the knowledge of agriculture and cities. Whereupon we encountered the mini ice age and were forced into either rapid development or death. Things worked and that environmental forced the Europeans to progress far beyond what their ancestors in Africa ever dreamed of.
Just as you say - all living things want comfort, sex ("there's the reason for populating the earth"), etc. ALL living things, not just humans, and they all make choices according to their ability to find or create those choices. It's called "free will", whether you want to ascribe it to God's will or not.
But we often can, just like the ice age. There was one in the northern America's, too, but the knowledge base was not there to build on it. The people were just as intelligent, had the free will, but not the base. When the Europeans showed up and showed them high tech they grabbed it and ran - in just a few hundred years the indigenous of the western hemisphere have caught up with what took Europeans more than a thousand years to develop. In spite of being nearly wiped out by the Europeans.
There is a problem, though, in seeing the catalyst. It is one thing to find it in a desert country with a large population; quite another to find it in a jungle (brazilm maybe) that we never visit and that never did have but a small population to look at. It's just a little easier to find and understand what happened in the desert of northern Africa than it is 500 miles into the jungles of south America and what we know reflects that. And, of course, it is more than just the catalyst; the population, the knowledge and the right catalyst have to come together at the same time or simple extermination is the result. The wrong catalyst apparently came to the mountains of Chile and it certainly did when the Spaniards visited Mexico.Simply using the brain to make choices is not free will. That's just a function of the brain. And it's not specific to humans. The brain determines choices, weighs options, then decides. That's how it works. But with all those brains out there determining choices, cows still manage to act like cows, monkeys continue to act like monkeys. Only humans show a dramatic change in behavior.
Free will versus determinism. Determinism says the brain works exactly like that. The only difference is the choice that is ultimately made is the only one that physically could have been made. There was no real choice. Only how the physical brain naturally reacted in that set of circumstances.
It's not just our mental capability that sets us apart. Just as we see in indigenous cultures. It's not like they haven't known adversity and struggle. Life is adversity and struggle. And they're just as mentally capable as the rest of us. They have the same brains we do.
In fact, for many indigenous cultures, those humans who went off and became advanced should have been the catalyst to bring about change in them as well because that's the only way they would have survived. But they didn't in most cases. We "civilized" humans have all but wiped indigenous cultures from the face of the Earth."Simply using the brain to make choices is not free will."
Yes it is. Plants have none (that we're aware of, anyway). The vast majority of animals do not either: there is no free will in bacteria, amoeba's and other single cell life that constitutes the majority of life on earth. Even animals with brains often have none - I can't see an earthworm having free will, but there is insufficient brain to make a decision.
The ability to choose means free will. And the larger animals virtually all have it. It's kind of interesting to hear you say that a cow is still a cow (even though behavior has changed radically through the years) while humans are not humans any more (with similar behavioral changes). How does that work? And how does our ability to predict what animals will do mean that they have none? Bear in mind the millions of people that will exclaim that "My dog will never bite anyone!" even as it chooses to bite this time. Think about the need to stay away from hippos because you never know what they so very unpredictable. Consider how some killer whales beach themselves to catch prey while others absolutely refuse to even enter shallow water.
And then think about the thousands/millions of generations necessary to instill instinct - the "instinct" for whales to leave their habitat and risk a bad death just to catch a seal or fish while their brother does not. Or how some dolphins will herd schools of fish as a group effort while others do not. This isn't "instinct"; it is learned behavior; actions they have learned from watching others do it and chose to join in the fun.Amoeba are attracted/stimlated by light. Plants are attracted to the sun. Some sort of internal stimulus for its survival is prompting the plant to grow / reach out toward light. It is a nature-driven prompt. Animals have instincts prompting them. Humans have their own selves prompting them. Some say humans are also driven by instincts, but unlike animals we can choose not to follow blindly what we do not approve of for our own happiness, (based on either need for survival or desire pleasure.) Humans have self-guided will. We all know how much FREE will we have.
Not much when it gets down to it. What does God have to do with all this?
God (APPARENTLY) stays out of the picture, strangely enough. What if the Bible was never written and no one even / ever mentioned the concept of "God?"
Why DO we constantly think about God?
… and why would ANYONE blame GOD for anything?
Mostly, God is in our imaginations!
or we see evidence of miraculous happenings which are more than coincidences … and bad things too, seem like more than coincidences sometimes.
The question is how much control over life do we have? and why don't we have MORE?Are you trying to say that no animal ever behaves outside of it's instincts? Because I would have to strongly disagree - one has only to look at domesticated animals being trained to see actions that have nothing to do with instinct. Even actions against instinctual drives; a dog, perhaps, sitting and staring at a bit of food that instinct says to grab and gobble.
They are limited by their instincts and body manifestations. I agree they do seem have a certain amount of choices. What prompts them to choose what they do?? For instance, I had a dog who loved to fold up his leash in his mouth at the end of a walk. I would drop it and he literally would fold it up and carry it the rest of the way home. He did it without fail. He really seemed:
1. to get a sense of satisfaction from this skill.
2. to know it made me happy (Are they prompted by nature to please the alpha figure?)
3. to be prompted by routine
Do any of these possibilities indicate certain amount of sense of SELF?
I do not.
Do you?
I think accidental connections occur in their brains. Humans can train animals based on animal's propensity to build strong memories and connections for behavior. Without prompts for action my dogs do nothing of their own volition or interest but act according to their instincts. They are motivated by food, walks and play. It does seem like they know when you or other animals are sad /distressed and try to comfort , assist, protect. So I don't know.On the contrary, the act of training dogs is all about manipulating programmed instinctive behavior. Showing dominance and establishing yourself as the 'alpha' member of the group being an example. There may be things that dogs wants to do that isn't allowed to do, but it's also instinct to resist that urge to protect itself.
You mean like we do for children. And the cops do for us. Right?
The ability to choose is not confirmed to be free will. The free will debate is one that has been argued since the times of ancient Greece and still continues on today. Clearly the ability to make choices doesn't close the book on the case.....
http://www.thegreatdebate.org.uk/determ … ewill.html
Choices could simply be determined by the physical/chemical happenings of a mechanistic brain. In which case it isn't free will, but rather it's choices determined by the mechanical/physical laws that dictate the behavior of the elements of the brain in the environment they are in at the time. Brain state.
In each choice you make, could you actually have chosen the other option? Or does the brain's consideration of another option only make it seem as though there was a deliberate choice made, when in actuality you could not have physically chosen differently? Was it an actual choice, or just the illusion of a choice?
Behaviors are genetically passed on. My dog, for example, has not spent a day with another dog since he left his litter. When he first became aware of pooping it kind of freaked him out. He'd run from it, then run back and sniff it, then run off again. But when he pees he's begun to hike his leg, without having seen other dogs do it. And now he scratches after going, another behavior consistent with other dogs that he started doing on his own without seeing other dogs do it. Same for sniffing around. These are instinctive behaviors. Infants instinctively hold their breath when submerged in water. It's not learned. It's inherent.
Free will would be a departure from instinctive behavior. Like becoming male-dominant when for hundreds of thousands of years before you weren't.If a dog were more self-aware he would want more and therefore exhibit more free will ... in other words have more ability / freedom to guide his actions. But, dogs do not exhibit very much free will.
Perhaps a certain amount based on the spiritual evolution of the dog. Cats on the other hand …
well what about them! They have noting BUT free-will … of course they are limited by their bodies and the size of their brains. We on the other hand have really big brains complex brains that can do SO MUCH!!!!
What is your point in all this HVN?Self-awareness is a good indicator. Freee will in the OT is described as Adam/Eve immediately realizing they were naked. Animals aren't concerned about it. Indigenous people are concerned about it. But everyone from Adam/Eve forward are "ashamed" of their nudity. This comes from an acute self-awareness, of being aware of the self in relation to the environment you're in. Animals for the most part don't exhibit this. Show them themselves in the mirror and they do not recognize the reflection as themselves.
Free will and self awareness are two separate things. Free will is simply the ability to make choices against instinct.
Yeah, I'm not saying they're one and the same. But level of awareness of self in one's surrounding environment plays heavily into free will. An awareness of self is an indicator that's consistent with free will, but not free will itself.
Free will is much more than just decisions against instinct. The choices we make and how we go about making them is played out in the brain. If what we're experiencing is simply something we're observing, but not actually in control of, then there is no free will. We are just passive observers, no more in control of our actions than a river is in charge of choosing it's path.
Given all we know about the natural world, it would seem to suggest that actual free will is impossible. Our actions would have to be determined by the elements of the brain. The brain is a physical mechanism. Machines can only act in accordance to their parts. There can't be a deliberate choice.Of course there is free will. Consciousness isn't created by the physical brain. The brain allows us to tune into consciousness.
"Freee will in the OT is described as Adam/Eve immediately realizing they were naked."
No it isn't. That was the result of instantaneously being educated, and had nothing to do with free will. Outside of choosing to eat, which happened before you hypothesize free will existed.Instantaneously educated? So you're saying that making this choice automatically imbued them with the "knowledge of good and evil"? That's one way to look at it.
Committing this "unnatural" act, this act that shouldn't be allowed over even possible, severed their connection to God and to the natural world around them. It separated them from God. Yes, they were capable of acting of their own will, but being capable of it and actually doing it are two separate things. Like knowing how and being able to cut off your leg is different than actually cutting off your leg.No, no, no. Making the choice imbued them with nothing. Not even a sense of guilt for disobeying orders as they didn't know that was wrong.
Eating the fruit of the tree gave them the knowledge of good and evil. Whereupon they knew that nakedness - allowing God's handiwork to be seen - was evil. And they covered because they also knew that not covering would be evil.
But eating the fruit - that was a purely natural act. An act of free will even though God "stacked the deck" so to speak to achieve that specific result. And here we diverge considerably as I contend that God wanted, and worked toward, that particular result. A&E had free will, yes, and either could have refused the fruit, but after God's machinations the chance of that was much like your voluntarily cutting off of your leg.
Why did He do that to His creation? How would I know, or you? We are not gods, but we can guess. He wanted more people, without the effort of making them. He is a sadist. He didn't like Eve. The snake was more powerful than God. He is not omnipotent and was unable to make people without "tempering" them with great pain and suffering. His father/cohorts/teacher/evil sister made Him do it. Or, of course, it is but a fanciful tale like the others and only fiction to please the plebes and/or cement male dominance.Allowing God's handiwork to be seen? God's handiwork isn't "seen" until the genitals are exposed?
Knowledge can't just be given.
What happened to them happened because they did something that God said not to do. This would be like something deciding to ignore gravity and just fall up. It's unnatural. They had to have the capability to break the rule before they could break it. The capability was there, actually doing the act had not yet happened. Once it did, that's when the change happened.
It doesn't say anything about nakedness being evil. It says they felt shame. Exposed.
If God had wanted that outcome then it would not have been against His will. God wanted to test them. To see if they'd break the rule they had to be in an environment where a rule existed. That's not a stacked deck. They're in a garden full of trees. He said eat of any tree except that one."Knowledge can't just be given. "
Of course it can. God is omnipotent, remember? If He can build a universe He can certainly connect a few neurons in the brain.
Let's see here. They didn't know it was wrong, and had no free will to act anyway. Therefore they are to blame for what happened. Right! If that isn't one giant piece of convoluted reasoning I certainly don't know what is.
*shrug*. All of Christianity views nudity as evil. Enough said.
"If God had wanted that outcome then it would not have been against His will."
Fine and good...IF you know what God's will is. You don't and therefore cannot speak to what He wanted. As God can see the future and arrange for it to happen as He wishes, the rest of the paragraph is just as silly. We've already gone over this and you've clearly stated that God gets whatever He wishes by changing the past until the choices we (and A&E) make are as He desires.
Stacked - yeah, they're in a garden of trees. They don't know that to not follow His orders is wrong. He provides a talking snake to tempt them. They are naive and have never heard anything but truth. It's called stacking the deck.The universe built itself. He simply willed it to. God doesn't just magically 'miracle' things into existence.
What do you mean they didn't know it was wrong? That was covered. Eat from any tree but that one. If you do this will happen. That's pretty clear. Why do you say they didn't know?
Had no free will? They did exactly what God said not to do. Not possible without free will.
You do know the authors of the bible weren't Christian, don't you?
I know what God's will was in that instant because it specifically said. His will was that they not eat from that tree.
Nope, I didn't say God changes things until we make the choices He wants. I specifically explained that. It's not the choices. Just the outcomes of the choices. He can't control the choices. Only the situation the choice is made in.
Here's a garden full of trees. Feel free to eat from any of them except that one. So a stacked deck in your opinion is a refrigerator stocked full of fresh fruit with one snickers in it.But I thought that was a keystone of belief; that nonthing can come from nothing. God had to do it, even if He pretty much left it alone after setting everything in motion to create itself, right down to the garden.
They had no knowledge of evil, and thus didn't know it was wrong. That knowledge was ONLY available from the tree.
But I thought the gods only gave free will later on - that A&E could not have had any without cities, wars, etc.
Well, the authors of the OT probably weren't (we don't know when it was written). But the people that compiled the tome, changing it as they saw fit to match their desires and preconceptions, certainly were Christians.
We went through that God's will before. All we know is what the bible says; that God said something. We don't know if His instructions were His will or not, those writers didn't know, the ones that made up the story don't know and you don't know. All you know is that someone claimed that He said not to eat.
Of course He can control what choices are available. Just as He can control what choices are made; by changing the past until the "right" choice is made. You were very clear about that.
Ever watch a kid with a bowl of candy? He might have a gunny sack full, but will take one from the bowl just because Dad said not to. And you DID forget the rest of it, too - the talking snake, the naivete, the ignorance, etc. Yeah, very much a stacked deck to get them to do exactly what God willed them to do: eat the fruit, get smart and get kicked out to start a new species.Yeah, nothing would have been created had God not instigated the laws that govern this place. Once the laws were in place it was just a matter of injecting matter into it. Because the laws created the environment they did, the matter just became the universe/planets/stars/us.
They did know it was wrong because God directly explained it to them.
No, free will came first. Then the cities and wars and all of that.
The people that compiled the bible might have been Christians, but this part of the story is translated word for word from the oldest surviving copies. Christians didn't change it to make nudity evil.
What God said was His will in that story. That's the whole crux of the story.
Like I said, God can change the circumstances the choice is made in, but the choices themselves are totally out of His control. That's the whole theme of the story. God gives commandments, threatens, He tries anything and everything to try to get people to behave as He wills, but they constantly don't. Because He's not in control of it.
Only a stacked deck because of free will. You're right about kids. You know why? Because they have free will too.
But it clearly says God didn't want them to do that. That's what's significant about what they did. They did the opposite of what God willed.Yep - the laws, energy, matter AND the blueprint of how to make earth complete with garden. Which is what I said, after all.
God explained nothing to them. Just gave orders not to eat, but without knowledge of right from wrong they had no way of knowing His orders should be obeyed. Like training a dog, it takes time to convince the dog not to do something, because it doesn't know any better.
And yet the only reference to nudity was with A&E. The main thrust of Christian beliefs here comes from a VIP in the church, a sexual deviant, that virtually wrote all their beliefs in the field. With the result that we see a huge variation all the time in what is considered "sinful" there - look back to swimsuits 100 years ago and tell me we don't.
You keep saying that you KNOW what God wanted in the tale, but have yet to produce any evidence at all of that. Just a reiteration of what He said without knowing at all what was desired. Ever tell a secret as a kid to someone you KNEW would spread it, cautioning them to be quiet because you knew what would happen and wanted it spread?
Yeah - we've been over this and over it. You keep saying He changes things until He gets His way but He doesn't change anything and can't get His way. Double talk to cover that it's all made up and you don't like the logical results so refuse to acknowledge them.
So they do. But A&E didn't - you've made it clear that that ability came with the hybridization of other gods much, much later in time.
"But it clearly says God didn't want them to do that."
Show me. Show me where God stated to an independent bystander that He didn't want them to eat. Not what He said to A&E, but where He explained His motives, plans and desires to someone else. Chapter and verse, please?Gen2:16-17 - And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Yes, laws, energy, matter, the combination of these things, matter/energy simply existing in the environment that these laws create, become the universe, become planets and people and things. Everything in the universe works exactly according to these laws. That's how we know these laws are there. Because everything conforms to them so completely that by simply observing their behavior, we're able to recognize consistencies that are consistent of all we observe.
So Eve, being also a product of the elements of this universe, should have conformed to the laws of this God as well. She shouldn't have been able to eat from that tree. This isn't training a dog. This is a new element, unlike anything else in the universe.
The practice of covering nudity is not a Christian only thing. You'll see the same variation in other cultures. In England, TV shows and newspapers have no problem with nudity. But they still wear clothing. Asian cultures do as well. And Indian. Not just where Christianity is prevalent.
There you go asking for evidence again. Have we not covered that? Besides, we're talking about a written story. And right there in that story it directly explains what God wills through His explanation to Adam/Eve about what they can eat and what they can't.
That's not double talk. It makes perfect sense. Let's use the waffles/pancake thing. If you chose waffles on a Monday morning, God could go back and change it so that you ended up living in a house three streets over instead of the one you're in, he could maybe change the time of day that you sit down to eat, but as far as any actual decisions made in whatever the situation turns out to be, are your decisions. God can control anything in the natural world, except you and me.
I thought I had made it clear that the creation of Adam and Eve is what introduced free will into the world. They, and everyone 'of Eve' from that point forward, had free will. At first, it was kept in the family. But as it explains in Gen6, eventually these free willed descendants of Adam/Eve (the other gods in the eyes of mortal humans) "found the daughters of humans beautiful and married any of them they chose". Then it says humans became "wicked". So, now mortal humans were beginning to show themselves capable of free will, because only something with free will can be "wicked".
Why does it only count if God explains what He wants to a third party? Why isn't what He directly explained to Adam and Eve enough? You keep talking about God saying one thing but meaning another. Your injecting this element into the story yourself. Just read it in the context of the story being told. Genesis 1 God directly states what He wants and everything He wants becomes that exactly. At the end of all of this He says it's all "good". Then God makes these two, gives them specific instructions, and they don't follow. The story is rather directly making everything clear. It sets up a pattern, then explains how in this one instance, something deviated from that pattern.Implicit in your post is the assumption (assumption!) that:
1. God told them the truth; that He did not lie. A rather poor assumption as it took His direct action to cause their death.
2. That God had no ulterior motive; He actually wished them not to eat, to remain childless and to never populate the earth.
3. That the story tellers somehow heard God speak (before they were born) and reported accurately what He said. Along with countless generations repeating what they heard. Or, alternatively, that Adam (the first story teller) did not "embroider" the facts to shove blame onto Eve. Of course, that means a single human being's report is the sum total of what we "know".
After assuming all that, we come to the statement that Eve, ignorant of everything in the world, "should have conformed to God's will", and without knowing the difference between right and wrong. We should assume that a newly borne "baby" knew better even though she had not eaten of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and could not know. Assigning the cause to natural events of 10 billion years prior, while still maintaining free will is absurd.
I see. It is only those indigenous cultures, living in warm climates, that have no ban on nudity. Because they have no free will. Baloney.
Back to the waffles? How quickly you've forgotten the possibility that God could cause the wife to spill all the waffle mix the night before. Or put ants in it. And thereby force the decision not to have waffles. No free will when God arranges events until we make the choice He desires.
No, you didn't indicate that A&E brought free will into the world. You said it happened millenia later when the gods mated with the animals and made a hybrid critter we now call humans. At about the time cities and wars began.
"The ability to choose is not confirmed to be free will."
Well, not if you define the term as meaning you can do something against God's will. But if you define it as being able to choose then it certainly is.
"Choices could simply be determined by the physical/chemical happenings of a mechanistic brain."
True, but then you are back to lacking free will, as everything has a cause and the only thing needed to determine the future is to know everything. That we can't do that would not mean that the future is not predetermined anyway. A conclusion I reject because I don't like it; we've already been over this hypothesis. Which in turn means that the events in the mechanical/electrical brain are not deterministic, for a reason we do not know.
Instinctive or useful? That a (male) dog lifts its leg could well mean it is a useful method of directing the stream; useful enough and simple enough that nearly every dog finds it. Same for the other things as well: dogs sniff, for instance, for the same reason we go around with open eyes. Because, for a dog, the olfactory sense is a very strong one and gives as much or more information than any other sense. Even the act of drawing air past the receptors is likely learned and not instinctive as it will absolutely produce more information than not doing it and will thus be learned very early in life.
But a baby not breathing under water probably is instinct. It has had no chance to practice or learn about this, yet it is commonly observed. Unless it is learned somehow in the womb, it would seem to be pre-programmed instinct. Useful in preventing dead babies and thus something evolution can work with.
Numbers 1 and 2 are just silly. It's an unnecessary assumption to inject into this for no reason. So, nevermind God specifically stated His will, He might have been lying. He might have been saying one thing while meaning another. Heavens.
Number 3, the storytellers most likely heard the story from Adam and Eve, considering they were around for centuries. Much like the creation account, there was no one there to witness these events, but there were people that God walked/talked with who could have recited what He described.
Eve isn't a newborn baby. You're missing the point. Eve, like everything else described in creation, is made of the same elements. Everything else, without any kind of knowledge of good/evil, did exactly as God said. Knowledge of good/evil is irrelevant. The fact is the God of the universe, whose words dictate the behavior of everything in the universe, gave them specific rules that were broken. The capability they had to break them is what's significant. This would be the equivalent of you deciding you're not going to conform to gravity and jumping straight up into the stratosphere. It shouldn't be possible.
Indigenous cultures clearly feel no shame about nudity. That is something specifically described in Genesis as being a result of what Adam/Eve did. Indigenous cultures don't have this same concern.
You've gotten all hung up on this thing I mentioned about God arranging situations. You can't seem to get your head around the fact that He does not control your decisions. Sure, He could in some way taint the pancake mix to encourage you to make another choice. That's what He'd have to do because He can't control your choice. He'd have to change things to in some way coax you into changing your choice. He'd have to do it this way because He has no control over your choice. Only you do.
Well Adam/Eve is where those 'sons of God' came from. A "hybrid" requires that there be two types. Without the offspring of Adam/Eve, there are only humans. What makes it a "hybrid" is that Adam/Eve's kin mixed with mortal/naturally evolved humans. I'm sorry you misunderstood."Numbers 1 and 2 are just silly."
Absolutely. Silly, because it kind of throws a monkey wrench into the concept, doesn't it? Much better to assume that God is what you want it to be - no knowledge or evidence necessary. Only faith. It's interesting that these are thrown out; you would never fail to question the motives and actions of a person attempting to control other people, even after a lifetime of observing their actions. But a God's (reported) observed actions (by 2 extremely naive people) are not to be questioned, because...it must fit into how faith describes the god; as loving, kind, etc. even though the evidence very much says otherwise.
Well yes, it was from A&E - there were no other people. Only the two, made from dust and breathed life into, without parents or children. Which means that one or both passed the story along, with the normal human exaggerations and changes to glorify themselves.
"Everything else, without any kind of knowledge of good/evil, did exactly as God said. "
You know this how? Because their every movement was also reported? Because you want it to be so?
"Indigenous cultures don't have this same concern."
Of course not, right? They only had their ancestors (A&E) to listen to, after all. That they existed before the first people on earth is not something we want to consider as it kind of gives the lie to the whole tale.
Oh, I understand quite well that God does not force decisions. But then, I don't find that He is omniscient and knows the future, either, or that He takes any action on earth to force His desires or plan. You do, but deny that He takes action or that there is a paradox in having a set future with having free will. You must fight that internal battle alone, and you have done so by simply ignoring the logical conclusions of the theorized actions of God.
Unfortunately, A&E kin were mortal/naturally evolved humans, just like the rest of mankind. There has only been one other species at all close to man (in terms of achievement or apparent intelligence), and those died out, albeit with some small amount of mixing of the genes. That you consider one group to be a different species just isn't borne out by the record.So, let me get this straight. You'll allow that this could be a real story. That these events really happened. That there was a real tree of knowledge and all of that. But if so, because you're so determined to make God out to be the bad guy here, you're actually suggesting that God setup this real situation only to then completely mislead the people He created?
It's not that I'm assuming God is what I want Him to be. It's that the whole situation would be wholly ridiculous and pointless to do the way you're suggesting. Why choose this backwards way of setting up a scenario and then mislead them into doing the opposite of what He told them to do? So, in your mind, God plays elaborate games? I guess.
Adam and Eve weren't the only two people. So, in your mind (a truly strange place) Adam and Eve are glorifying themselves with this story? The same story where they fail to do what God says and are then 'punished'? Hmm.
I know this how? We're reading a story. We're talking about the story in the context as it's written. The story says the natural world became what God willed it to be and then He deemed it "good", so by that we can take from the story that it all behaved as He wished.
Adam and Eve were not the ancestors of indigenous cultures. The world was fully populated by their ancestors when Adam/Eve were created.
I deny there's a paradox because there isn't one. I'm sorry you don't understand. Clearly this is something I can do nothing about.
And yes, it is borne out by the record. That's what caused this behavior change that can be seen in the record. The entirety of the story, and the impact of those events as described, are borne out by the record."But if so, because you're so determined to make God out to be the bad guy here, you're actually suggesting that God setup this real situation only to then completely mislead the people He created? "
If you read carefully, I make no such suggestion. I do question the assumption of goodness that leads to never questioning it, however. I find no evidence (and neither do you) that God always acts in a goodly manner. On the contrary, there are many reports that make Him out to be a vicious, cruel, spoiled child throwing a temper tantrum.
"Why choose this backwards way of setting up a scenario and then mislead them into doing the opposite of what He told them to do? "
Because we see it happen all the time in real life. Remember the "Don't throw me in the briar patch!"? Well, it works in real life, too.
"Adam and Eve weren't the only two people."
And yet their construction followed right behind that of the world in a plain attempt to convince us that they were the first two people from which we all came. How is it that you question this as being untrue while accepting the rest of the tale as being true? A talking snake is certainly no more impossible that two people without ancestors or evolution! And a tree that instantly imparts all knowledge of good and evil is even more so, yet never questioned.
You're reading a story. A fictional tale. Agreed, but then why try to make it true?
You're right - you will never convince me that God can change the past to force the future to His wishes but cannot change the past to force the future to His wishes. It won't happen.
If "the record" is biblical tales, yes it is. At least if scripture is twisted and interpreted to mean something other than what it says, but then that's a common practice. The meaning must be what is desired, after all, and that goes all the way back to Nicea.No, what you read to be "vicious, cruel, spoiled child" behavior is read in the wrong context. You're not getting that if read correctly, God's motivations and intentions are very clear and consistent. Most of what you read to be vicious is actually in having to deal with humans and free will.
The point I'm trying to make is that the story we're reading makes absolutely no sense in the context that you're suggesting. It's not that I never question. It's that I recognize a consistency in what's trying to be achieved here. And the goal He is working towards show Him to be a loving, caring God.
I'm not familiar with the briar patch analogy.
No, no, no. The idea that Adam/Eve were the first humans ever is a bad misconception. Genesis 1, the creation account, specifically says that humans were created male and female. In Genesis 4, even though Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel should be the only ones that exist, Cain mentions being concerned about what the 'others' will do to him once he's banished out of the land where his family lives.
The tree instantly imparting knowledge is what you think. Not what I think.
The meaning I'm pointing out is grounded in the context of what can be verified to be factual and true. Once in the correct context it becomes very clear. I'm not just reading into it what I want. I'm reaching logical conclusions based on the correct context and the impact that can be seen in the evidence as a result of the events that the story describes.
That is called a mistake or contradiction when Cain was worried about 'others' though god only created one man and woman.
There should be no other man other than Adam and Cain or humans other than those two and Eve.
You are also reading into when Man is man's (Adam's) descendants in bible but for you they suddenly become god's.
No, you are not just reading into you are filling in so that you can reach "logical conclusion"!
Exodus 34: 6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
Bible can't make a single paragraph without contradicting itself and you consistently fail to see it.
Here
Rom 9:18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
Psa 139:16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed
two among the many passages that deny free will, yet you insist there is..You cintradict your bible yet say bible is true.It is a problem isn't it? But not a new one: cherry picking and "interpreting" scripture to mean whatever we want has been going on since it was written.
The difference is I've used our modern knowledge base to first find the correct context, then interpreted informed by that. And in doing so I've found the correct context. This can be determined because this one change to the context clears up anything that seemed to contradict with traditional interpretations.
The difference is you have used our modern knowledge base to re interprete and make necessary by that and then argue it fits. You call humans what the bible calls gods.
Correction, I call gods what history calls gods. I correlate the story of the bible with actual history and am showing that these events and these stories actually happened much like what's described. And that it's these events that actually set the modern human world in motion. It's our origin story.
No, you don't. The gods in history is myth. You call god what the bible call man.
You make a new history and correlate bible by reinterpreting. After "adjusting" it is ridiculous to say they correlate.Yes, ridiculous, right? That's what I thought too. This is ridiculous. Now, tell me why. That's the tricky part. Finding a good solid reason why this belongs in the 'ridiculous' bin. We assume the gods in history is myth. But this requires multiple cultures, all speaking different languages, individually inventing gods that are very much like the ones everyone else invented independently. It's not a new history. It's all the same history. Only not it all makes more sense. All of those cultures around the Mediterranean Sea tell common stories about these male/female gods who used to live amongst them in their ancient past. This explains that.
Ridiculous is your claim, you changed both bible and history to fit and then saying it fits.
The different histories all invented god at different times, but we have a better explanation than the ridiculous, all humans think alike and are similar.
The Mesoptamian stories are similar because the source is similar. All stories including bible are modifications of Sumérien or older stories. American stories are different.
Flood stories are common only in cultures that started around rivers. We have non fllod stories from other cultures. Pirahas have no stories yet no different from any other human.
Glorifying past is a common nature of humans. We praise the chivalry of knights, think them glorious forgetting that they were bandits, murderers and rapists.The bottom line is that I have a much more consistent explanation that matches up with the evidence. I didn't change anything. Only put it in the right context, following what each source says closely. And in doing so the story you say I made up, was then compared to history and found to be consistent. Pretty unbelievable that that could be done. You're giving me way too much credit.
If the stories were from a single source there'd be much more commonality. All that's common is the type of gods. Male/female, human in form, gods are what's consistent. But each culture tells very different stories. This is more consistent with my explanation than yours.Saw something on the TV yesterday that made me think of your theory.
It seems that a new species, fairly late in time at some 50,000 years ago or a little less, has been found in Asia. And that Tibetans share some genetic structure with that one, Homo Sapiens, Homo Neanderthalis and Homo Erectus. They are a hybrid of 4 distinct species, as is most of SE Asians, but to a larger degree (which is what gives them the unique ability to live at such extreme elevations). Other recent finds indicate that Homo Erectus, thought to have gone extinct before homo sapiens reached Asia, may have survived longer than originally thought. And of course there was the Neanderthal that came out of Europe and spread to Asia - most people carry some Neanderthal genes and if it were all added up modern man has something like 30% of the neanderthal genetic structure. No one has more than 1 or 2, but it's not the same one or two percent everywhere.
Perhaps your "gods" were a group of Homo Erectus that survived longer than we though they did. Or some other species we haven't found yet. Not gods at all, just earlier versions of the "homo" family. Perhaps larger, or stronger or something that made them seem god-like. Or possibly Neanderthal made it further south than we thought.
Still no need for gods, though, and specifically no need for the one claimed to have made A&E. Just evolution in action.I think quite a bit could be determined genetically if the right people knew about this theory. I think there's enough to this theory to suggest there's potential for finding new answers and clarity.
My "gods" were only gods in the minds of the mortal humans they lived among. They weren't gods. That's why Abraham was constantly making the distinction that there's only one god.Except for the one god, the one that is never seen. That one is there and changed humanity. All the others, the ones that were touchable and seeable, were not gods at all although they were claimed to be gods. Only the undetectable one that forever hides is real.
Sure thing. I trust you see the irony here?No irony at all. Our senses developed in this physical place to detect physical things. So it makes sense that whatever is responsible for all of this being here would not be detectable by these senses, because unlike anything else, it would not be a product of this place.
That actually makes a lot of sense. That's what you should expect if you think about it.Mankind has been inventing gods for itself for thousands and thousands of years. They have ranged from trees to animals to mountains to planets to the moon and sun. All of those have fallen by the wayside as man's knowledge grew and he understood just what those things are, and they are not gods.
That leaves just the invisible ones; the ones that never speak (except to insert feelings into us, the same feelings we have without a god). Never act (except to do things nature does every day it itself). And these gods we still claim as true and real, because they were designed in such a way that they cannot be disproved.
And you don't find it...odd...to still accept the old stories of gods, after every single one was proven not to exist. Excepting the ones that can't be found. Kali, Krishna, Allah, Shiva, the unnamed Christian god, etc. The ones that never did have anything but ancient folklore instead of something that could actually be pointed to and shown. Or wait...actually none of them but the Christian god exist, do they? The hundreds of others are all false because we can't find them!
(I would add that ignorance of how we got here is insufficient reason to believe in a god. But you know that, whether you admit it or not.)First off, to 'design' a god in a way that it can't be disproved would require that they have an understanding beyond their time, considering this same god they came up with thousands of years ago still can't be disproved even now.
The Christian God is very different from the others, making Him particularly significant. Much more fleshed out than a tree or moon god. It makes sense that humans have been inventing gods throughout our history. It's common sense that there's a larger power at work here. You have to be pretty intelligent, pretty knowledgeable, and you have to do a whole lot of rationalizing, to come up with something to say there's no god required. People trying to figure out god is constant throughout human history, but there are only certain point when humans decided they were too smart to fall for the existence of gods. Ancient Greece is one time, and we live in another.
Ignorance of how we got here alone isn't sufficient reason. But beyond simply being here you've also got us humans here with all these smarts and feelings and making stuff up to fill in gaps. That has to be accounted for too. And that's where the 'it all just happened' explanation really starts to fall apart. If it all 'just happened', then why do we care?
Yes, credit for your ability to write fiction and ignore facts.
You
1) defined omniscience drastically different from dictionary, according to you each Tom Dick and Harry is omniscient.
2) Ignore that bible denies free will.
3) Ignore that god is still not sure whether Abraham would kill his son
4) Call man whom bible call gods, if it suits you.
5) Humans are genetically the same everywhere
6) No different humans were found in the middle east for the last 10000yrs from muddle east
7) No giant humans were found from middle east from 6400
8) Indigenous cultures have war and they belong to the same species and Interbreeding with indigenous cultures doesn't bring out giants.
9) Indigenous children brought up among Europeans behave just like Europeans.
10) There is war among indigenous cultures
11) War and stratification is a norm in middle east from 8000 and in America from 6400
12) There is no flood involving the whole Mesoptamia
13) Bible stories are copied from Babylonien stories.
14) Sentenelese do kill if you get there and that is why India has abandoned trying to make contact though the land technically belongs to them
15) Jarwas another tribe was till recently feared.
You changing history, ignoring genetics and reinterpreting bible to fit, I do give credit for your ability, why shouldn't I?
Each culture says a drastically different story and it is you who insists that they are same. But all middle east stories are same with slight adaptation to each culture.1) I refuse to discuss omniscience with you anymore. You have my answer, and it's consistent with the dictionary definition
2) If you're talking about what you quoted, it doesn't deny free will
3) God knows Abraham would have gone through with it because he stopped him at the last moment
4) Did you get that backwards? If not I'm not sure what you mean.
5) Are you saying humans aren't genetically the same everywhere?
6) Different how?
7) Depends on what you mean by giant. If everyone you know in your tribe averages 5 foot and you encounter someone who's 7 foot, you might refer to them as a giant
8) I've given you quote after quote from experts who support what I'm saying, that war amongst indigenous cultures is extremely rare
9) Of course. They're genetically and anatomically the same. There's no reason they shouldn't be able to integrate. Though there have been attempts made with cultures like the Aborigines to give them a more modern type of life, but their absolute disregard for personal possessions put a kink in that.
10) But it's rare and very much out of the norm
11) Haven't found data to support that
12) Flood in Mesopotamia, see above
13) It's an assumption that bible stories are copied from Sumerian texts. Another answer is that they're both describing the same events that actually happened
14) They try to avoid it and fire warning shots with arrows with no heads
15) I'm not changing history, I'm not ignoring genetics, and I'm reinterpreting the bible based on accurate context
The primary element that links their stories are these gods. The stories themselves in most cases are very different. One notable exception being the stories of the bible and the Sumerian texts, which both take place in the same location and same time. So it makes sense their stories would be similar.No, you don't define omniscience but knowledge, that too by ignoring most of what knowledge means.
You are also ignoring that omniscience is an oxymoron just like omnipresence. You 'know' what a square is, but not what a square circle is. You don't know when does parallel lines meet, neither does god. Omniscient doesn't know what it is to not know (or know every information, as per your definition)
You should stop answering because I showed your special pleading.
It does, all your counter argument was god hardened means experience hardened, another redefinition and reinterpretation. Bible specifically says god hardened but you ignore it.
No, he didn't stop him at the last moment, he stopped him when he took the knife not when he was about to stab so god is still not cent percent sure.
You say descendants of adam are 'gods' while there is another group of humans while bible call only God as god and his sons are all in heaven.
You were saying that. Indigenous people are different, the people who built Ubaid are different, there were another species of humans and there was hybrid vigour, all these were your arguments without any proof.
Who have the anatomy to live 1000 yrs.Who should be different enough for other people to perceive.
And there were no giants from Eridu graves. All belonged to the normal variation. Compare a tiger and ligor, that is the difference. And to have that difference they should be different species, which you are denying NOW.
Not at all, you quote mostly archie records.
"For example, in the 25 hunter-gatherer societies coded by Kelly (2000), “in all but a few cases one or another form of warfare occurs once every five years, or more oft en” (p. 51), and only in 7 of these societies (28 percent) is warfare infrequent or nonexistent. Some of the more peaceful hunter-gatherers, including the Mbuti, !Kung and Semang, have been profoundly aff ected by powerful neighbors with evolutionarily novel subsistence practices, including horticulture and pastoralism (Wrangham & Glowacki, 2012). Focusing on the few cases for which data are available on hunter-gatherers living with hunter-gatherer neighbors, Wrangham and Glowacki (2012) conclude that “there was a strong tendency for hostility toward members of diff erent societies, and for killing to occur principally in asymmetric interactions.”
And you are denying that they are the same after denying that you said they are different. An indigenous child brought up in Europe behave just like Europeans so whatever difference is there between indigenous and others it is culutural, nothing to do with freewill.
This merely shows that war doesn't make any difference between humans mentality.
(If they (adams sons) are genetically and anatomically the same they live only less than 100yrs not more. And humans didn't multiply as gen 5 because they already multiplied by 5500.)
Aborgines are mostly nomads who can't carry things and there are other reasons too. And if they can integrate, that means their lack of war (among some sociétés) is not due to lack of freewill and they are exactly same as any other.
And they can't be the same as per you, they SHOULD BE different for they are not the descendants of Adam.
It was common, it was rare and not the norm in 10000.
I gave you but you ignore it and you can't find doesn't mean it is not there but you don't want to.
There should be, if it is to kill Adams descendants which you were saying a few months before. And even bible say all humanity (which according to you is Adams descendants) except Noah.
The only problem is that neither the authors nor Abraham was alive during the said period to describe, it was handed over to them. Even Sumerians got it from earlier people.
Then they kill.
So you have to ignore that Jaraws, the other isolated group also is warlike.
You are reintepreting for sure, out of context.
It makes more sense as the bible was written down later, after the Sumerian stories were written, so a copy. There was no single israelite living during the said period proves that.I'm sorry your so baffled by this omniscience thing, but it's not me whose pleading here. Knowledge can only be of what happened. Not 'what ifs'. Not knowing what coulda/shoulda happened 'if' isn't something someone can be knowledgeable of.
Abraham carried his son up on the hill, brought the knife, laid him out. I think it's pretty clear. He didn't do all of that in the hopes that God would stop him. He was clearly going to go through with it.
I said mortal humans considered the descendants of Adam gods. Not that the bible calls them gods. In fact, a pretty major strand of the story being told has to do with correcting people who think there are more gods than just the one.
There's loads of documented cases of how indigenous humans are different. Do you disagree? You don't think there's a difference?
Yes, an indigenous child brought up in culture can acclimate. They are genetically the same. Have the same brains. But the fact that culture exists at all is the result of free will. The fact that there's such a different culture for them to live in, that difference is free will.
Both the Sumerian stories and the biblical stories started as oral traditions. Then were eventually written down. The ancestors that first told the stories all lived in the same region, so they all have stories that involve many of the same events.
The changes in the stories don't make any sense in the context of them being copies. The ark, for example, was described as a box shape by the Sumerians. Why would this change if it were a copy? And why would they go into such great detail about the measurements and such if they were just pulling it out of their ass?You are simply ignoring that knowledge also means information and awareness like "knowledge of future" and when you add 'omni' there is an infinite and unlimited which you purposefully ignore.
I "know" the answer of many hypothetical questions, but god doesn't. (Are you telling me that you will not be able to answer a hypothetical question if you are asked one, or you mean you can but god cannot?)
I "know" how loyal my friend is, god doesn't.
LIMITATIONS, while Omni is UNlimited. You consistently ignore the 'un'.
If he was calling a bluff, the same sequence will be there. Abraham did know god promised.
God doesn't know how loyal was Abraham, god even now don't for he stopped Abraham just when he took the knife.
You are also ignoring that you error filled bible also says that there is no freewill.
The bible call the sons of god not sons of man, so it was God's son not Adams sons that was intended.
Mortal human? The bible writers are not descendants of Adam?
The bible itself, including NT says there are many gods. In fact bible is mostly henotheistic though a very few were monotheistic.
No, there is no difference. The small differences are in color and shape not mental. An indigenous child bought up in America will think and behave just like any other American.
You don't even know what free will is, so stop writing nonsense. Culture is just how a society behaves, human behaviour in grand scale.
If free will is cultural then neither Adam nor Cain or any one has any role. Why even Chimpanzees got free will.
And Adam and his descendant were acclimatising to the culture around them.
But wait a minute, if they are genetically same they CANNOT live for a thousand years, they will die around hundred. No difference to notice to call anyone god.
Sumerians brought the stories and bible authors copied it, by the time of Abraham there were no 'Sumerians' and the bible claim same ancestorship, israelis were local Cananities.
I presume you think that oral stories do not change at all?
Stories evolve, humans are not computers to reproduce exactly. Even different authors in the bible wrote it differently, that is why the difference even in Genesis. Each humans hear stories, adapt it and write it the wsy they see it, they are NOT ROBOTS without" freewill".
Why, if we really want to discuss we should base it on Sumerian stories not the incoherent bible, Sumerian being more near to the source. The only importance of bible is its easily availability.Adam was a son of God. Luke 3 when it's speaking of Jesus being a son of God, says it's by way of his being the son of Joseph, who descended from David, who descended from Abraham, who descended from Noah, who descended from Adam. And at the end of all of that it says "son of Adam, son of God". So this whole line of descendants were considered 'sons of God'....
Luke 3:38 - the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
Yes, the bible writers were descendants of Adam. The mixing of Adam's descendants and "mortal" humans is what caused the life spans to decrease so dramatically.
Yes, it was thought there were many gods because there were beings who lived amongst mortal humans who lived for centuries. They seemed god-like. That's why there's so much effort towards trying to make people understand there's only one actual God. It was a common misconception. As you can see from this graph, the last of the long living people died around the time of Abraham ...
There are many documented accounts of indigenous humans and how different they are. For example...
"The author Edward T. Hall recalls how, when he worked on Indian reservations in the 1930s, the Indians seemed to possess and amazing quality of patience. In contrast to the Europeans, who fidgeted impatiently and become irritable, the Indians he saw waiting at trading posts and hospitals never showed any sign of irritation whatsoever, even if they had to wait for hours. As he writes:
An Indian might come into the agency in the morning and still be sitting patiently outsiee the superintendent's office in the afternoon. Nothing in his bearing or demeanour would change in the intervening hours... We whites squirmed, got up, sat down, went outside and looked toward the fields where our friends were working, yawned and stretched our legs ... The Indians simply sat there, occasionally passing a word to one another."
Free will brought about the discontentment we all know so well. Blaise Pascal once said, "“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." That's exactly right. Indigenous humans don't have those problems.
It's the first five books of the bible I focus in on mainly. The "Torah". The oldest of all the books. Yes, I imagine oral stories can change over time. But what's significant about the story the bible tells is that it manages to accurately describe a series of events that span 2000 years. And it does so by intertwining a coherent story through those events. Difficult to see this as being the result of being heavily revised along the way or just made up.Luke or any new testament author is completely irrelevant when explaining ot, unless you are stating that both authors are contemporaries.
Bible call the sons of man as sons of man and God's sons as "God's", it is not calling Adam as son of god, that was by later authors that has nothing to do with Genesis.
It was thought that there were many God's but the god's were not living "among" humans. They were living in places non assessable to humans.
The Indians were saying about gods as late as 1st CE, according to your list all the 'gods' died out two millenia before, how?
That difference Hall describe is nothing peculiar. The difference is cultural. That difference is that make indians, indians, Chinese Chinese, and Europeans europeans. For example europeans are mostly individualistic while east asians are more family oriented. That is not a profound difference. That will not make them two species.
Though you say free will brought this and that you are not able to say what you mean by 'free will'. How was the free will transmitted from generation to generation?
Yes bible managed to "accurately" copy some texts from the babylonians, so? More over that accuracy is only if we edit it to fit what we want it to fit. Rereading what is not written and say our rereadings fit the story which we read into it - hypocrisy at the best.I get what you're saying about the NT, but in this regard what it says in Luke is very much relevant because it's talking about the common thought in the Jewish community about their blood lines and ancestry at that period in history. And in that age the patriarchs of Genesis and everyone of that line was referred to as "sons of God" in that they were descendants of Adam.
My list only covers the 'gods' spoken about in the biblical texts. These same beings were spread all throughout the world and lived into different ages.
I'm not sure what you mean about my inability to explain free will. I'm describing behaviors that characterize it, I'm explaining it as the enhanced ego that had to evolve in humanity at some point along the way. This explains when that and how that happened.
See, what you don't seem to get is how far fetched what you're suggesting really is. That I'm able to just twist the words of the text in some way to make it seem as though it accurately lines up with over 2000 years of documented history when it actually doesn't. You're giving me a bit too much credit by embuing e with some fantastical level of delusion and hypocrisy making me somehow capable of fabricating a story that fits a very specific timeline of events.
But picking and reinterpreting to make an entirely new story some what along the scientific lines and then say science fits, I have to admit, extraordinary.
I presume he thinks he got some special sense which his fellow Christians including theologians who deliberately try to make science out of bible missed.Yeah, basically. But it's kind of an easy thing to miss. The idea that Adam was the first human ever is a big misconception that's caused many to overlook some things. It's not so much that I got a "special sense". I got a hunch, and I followed it. I found that in this corrected context it all read much more clearly. I then found that given this alternate interpretation, it also lines up quite nicely with what is known scientifically. It resolves all that seems to contradict.
The idea that man was the first man should really be a misconception.
Though the bible doesn't know we have Neanderthals, Hobbits.....
And it lines up so nicely, the middle east is strewn with Giant skeletons.
Only read as a mistake if read in the wrong context. It might be an inconsistency if it were a limited occurrence. But the fact is if read in the context I'm putting forth, this one change clears up all seeming "mistakes", making it much more likely to be a contextual problem, and not a mistake.
Read in the context I'm describing, the whole story, well beyond this one bit, is much more consistent and clear.
Adam and his kin don't "suddenly become gods". It becomes clear when read in the correct context that this is what's being described. Genesis 6:1-4 makes it clear that there are two distinct groups. Gen5 just explained how descendants of Adam lived for centuries. Then, in Gen6, humans are described as "mortal" and it says they only live 120 years. So, to the perspective of a "mortal" human, the descendants of Adam would seem god-like. This is consistent with stories told by cultures all throughout this region of the world. And it's consistent with the rest of the bible.
Rom 9:18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
Having mercy and "hardening" is talking about the hardships of the life they lead, not the choices they make in those situations.
Psa 139:16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed
Yes, God can see all time all at once. But if 'you' never existed there'd be nothing to see. For that future to be there it has to eventually play out, and when it does whatever 'you' did was determined by the will of 'you'.Genesis doesn't ant clarity as you imply. Genesis call humans MAN and god god. So when genesis say god's son it means god's sin not man's. It clearly says MAN began to multiply after god created him in previous chapters, otherwise it would gave written god created god instead if god created adam/man.
Not at all, it is "hardening of HEART" just like he hardened the Pharaoh mentioned in the previous verse.
It doesn't matter whether he see all at once or one by one, it was all written BEFORE any of it happened. The script is written, only the film had to be shot and is being shot as per the script. If it is written in the script that you go to Africa tomorrow and drink tea at 5.00pm, you will have to do that come tomorrow, though you are not even dreaming it today. If before my birth, before even the birth of the universe if my entire life is written then I have no choice but to follow it. My parents was a chance meeting, determined only by circumstances but god knew all the circumstances will happen like that, they were simply following the script. It is only the sudden coming of the bus that made me jump, all of which was written even before I saw or thought about the bus.
Please don't say circumstances also have free will.
To say "Babel is Babylon" is to grossly oversimplify....
"Other scholars have discussed at length a number of additional correspondences between the names of "Babylon" and "Eridu". Historical tablets state that Sargon of Akkad (ca. 2300 BC) dug up the original "Babylon" and rebuilt it near Akkad, though some scholars suspect this may in fact refer to the much later Assyrian king Sargon II." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu
It's believed that the later 'Babylon' was actually named after Eridu/Babel. Eridu is also the site where it's believed the base of the original tower of Babel is located.
Not at all irrelevant. You've got to understand, you keep looking at this as a kind of 'all or nothing' kind of thing. That if anything that even resembles violence or war can be found that that totally disproves what I'm saying. Intention and motivation behind the actions is what defines free will. There can be instances, mostly isolated cases, of behavior outside of the 'norm'. It's where/when these behaviors BECAME the norm that's most relevant.Speculation.
It totally disprove your theory. No one disputes that humans have become war like after 15000. What we have is not a "few exceptions" but systematic war, a"norn". And according to you war is the sign of free will and hence we have to conclude that they had free will or war has nothing to do with free will.
It says God created 'humans, male and female' in Genesis 1, then it says God created Adam and Eve. Then in Genesis 6 it says 'humans' began to increase in number in the land, because of the city that Cain built. When this happened the interactions between Adam/Eve/Cain's descendants (gods of mythology) and "mortal" humans.
The bible goes a long way, in fact, in stressing that there is only one God. That these other gods are false.
It's not the heart that's hardened. It's the circumstances that makes one "hard".
It was not written "before" it happened. The script and what's "shot" are not two separate things. The script being read by God at the beginning IS the finished film. And the finished film documents all the choices and actions you and I and everyone else chose of their own free will in each of those moments.It doesn't say "because of the city".
You say "god's of mythology", irrelevant. It is bible that say god's son not mythology. Bible make no distinction between humans as you imply. It clearly says god 's sons not even gods' sons.
Only a few parts in bible stress so, many other including new testaments says many gods. Bible go so far as to say yahweh is son of el.
However much you deny bible says God hardened Pharoah, and Romans do say god hardenes whomever he will not circumstances. And that is not the only quotes there are many.
It is written at the beginning of the universe when earth was not even formed so it was INDEED BEFORE.
Psa 139:16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
Eph 1:11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will,
Eph 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them
It is the script was written at the beginning of the universe while events are still being shot, happening.
The finished film is what has happened to the universe and as it still hasn't finished, ut is not finished film.
There is no free will as the script is already written and the film was shot and will be shot exactly as is written.
No. I am not ignoring the 'all'. You're overextending all to supersede the meaning of 'knowing'.
That's why He waits until the absolute last moment before He stops him. To be sure. That's why He setup the whole scenario.That is you making up. You ignore "ALL", I read it. And knowing means knowing all information, information from hypothetical too. There is NO EXCEPT.
According to you god till I drop the coin god doesn't know what will happen, so not omniscient. God doesn't know whether I will drop the coin not omniscient.
You can't simply redefine "omni", by that way we can make omnipotent and omnipresence too non oxymoron.
omniscient
adjective
1.having complete or unlimited knowledge, awareness, or understanding; perceiving all things.
You limited it, knowing ONLY THAT CAN BE KNOWN, but according to the definition there is NO LIMIT
If Abraham had guessed that god would prevent and as god prevented him when he took the knife, not when the knife is about to strike, god can't know. Even if the knife strikes god could easily heal Isaac, so god is still not certain for the knife didn't reach Isaac.
And God DIDN'T know HOW loyal was Abraham.
So not omniscient.I'm sorry, but this has everything to do with your misunderstanding of what "knowing" actually means. It doesn't include hypothetical. You can't have knowledge of something that never happened.
It does include; UNLIMITED knowledge, otherwise you are making a new definition. You are not using the definition from English but your own to suit your purpose.
If I drop a coin it falls to the ground, it's a hypothetical situation, I don't even have a coin now. If I don't know the outcome, I am NOT OMNISCIENT.
And God didn't know, don't know whether Abraham would kill his child.
God didn't know how loyal was Abraham.
Your all knowing omniscience is at least all minus two omni minus two omniscience, special pleading.
God do not know whether my child will eat the chocolate, even I can guess that he will, I am more omniscient than god.
According to you god is just "all seeing", though it should be omnivoyer, you want it call omniscience.
If I ask god whether you would die if I shoot you in the head poor fellow will have to admit that HE DOESN'T KNOW, so you have no choice but redifine omniscience to knowing what can be known. Let us redefine omnipotence and say it is doing what xan ve done, why we can redifine the whole language and make anything true.Let me try this again. Really think about what I'm saying here.
knowledge - awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.
Key phrase here is "gained by experience of a fact or situation".
A hypothetical is not a fact or a situation, and it hasn't and can't be experienced. This is what you're not getting. You're so hung up on "all" that you're completely overlooking "knowing". "Knowing" is the key here. What can and can't be known. Your hypothetical coin toss can't be known. It hasn't been experienced, it's not a fact or a situation.It is ONE OF THE meanings OF knowledge NOT OMNISCIENCE.
It is based on experience that we predict a coin or vase will fall to ground if we drop it not by dropping it.
It is based on hypothetical phenomenon that we try to predict how our friends or relatives behave and adjust ours based on that.. so god has no awareness based on experience with Abraham.
And you are IGNORING THAT omniscience means
1 : having infinite awareness, understanding, and insight
2 : possessed of universal or complete knowledge
Not ONLY knowledge based on fact.
You are also ignoring that knowledge in omniscience means information
b (1) : the fact or condition of being aware of something (2) : the range of one's information or understanding <answered to the best of my knowledge>
c : the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning : cognition
d : the fact or condition of having information or of being learned <a person of unusual knowledge>
4 a : the sum of what is known : the body of truth, information, and principles acquired by humankind
God lacks two INFORMATION here, what Abraham thinks, how he will behave, so
Not omniscient.
You are ignoring the definition of omniscience to use only one meaning of knowledge, to incorporate a special pleading in omniscience.
All knowing is to have all INFORMATION, under the sun so to speak, not merely awareness gained by experience.
(god has no awareness of Abraham's behaviour based on his experience either). That is not even the complete meaning of knowledge.
So you are using a different meaning of knowledge to redefine OMNISCIENCE than real one to prove your theory.
Add to that
And either god can't forsee what he will do, or can't change what he forsaw. So god lacks either free will or omniscience, which is which?
If he sees that he is going to have coffee tomorrow, he can change it only if he has free will, and he is not omniscient if he changes it.
If god doesn't have free will, he is not god. If he has, he is not omniscient.I'm sorry you don't understand, but I've made clear my explanation. Reject it if you wish.
I clearly understood what you are doing, ignore the meaning of omniscience, make it as "all knowing" and take only one meaning of knowledge ignoring all the others.
We call it reinterpretation or chichanery.
You also forgot that your meaning of omniscience contradicted what you earlier said, god is seeing. Here god is predicting based on "experience", so you completely removed freewill.
Now answer the questions
1) Does god know what he will do?
2) Does he have freewill?
3) Did god know Abraham was loyal enough to kill his child for god?
You are a good fiction writer and is good in twisting meanings but please understand tgat others can see through.I'm sure part of the reason you're struggling to understand is because you've convinced yourself that I'm doing something and that you "see through" what I'm doing. I'm not doing anything. I'm not twisting anything. I've consistently explained all along why God is still "all knowing". You can't "know" hypothetical situations. You can't have knowledge of something that never happened. It's really that simple. Only what happens can be 'known'.
All knowing is NOT all MINUS hypothetical knowing.
If I drop a ball what will happen. I presume neither you nor your god KNOWS the answer, but I know even though I don't even have ball with me.
A preconceived notion of God is not helpful. What is helpful is observing life and the universe very closely. Jesus came before the discoveries of modern science. They should count for somthing toward our (actual) knowledge of God!
Q. What (actual) knowledge of God?
A. Discoveries of modern science.I am unaware that science has discovered a god, or anything about one. Can you elucidate?
Modern discoveries reveal reality i.e. "God."
For instance:
"An electron is a tiny particle with a mass of 9.108 X 10-28g and a negative charge. All neutral atoms contain electrons. The electron was discovered and its properties defined during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The experiments that proved its existence were studies of the properties of matter in gas-discharge or cathode-ray tubes."
http://www.chem.wisc.edu/deptfiles/genc … /tx41.htmlGod is the dead, uncaring universe that acts in specific, predictable ways and is quite visible? Or just the mental concept we call "reality"?
God is the energy the universe runs on. The rules of the universe infer God. Love infers God. Logic infers God,
what else?But science has no indication that the universe "runs" on anything. Or maybe gravity, depending on what "runs" means, but which is not energy.
No, just the mind wanting a god infers it from natural events. Certainly love doesn't, and neither does logic. Just want.
So where does science end up with information about a god? That some people make one up out of desire and say that anything science finds infers a god doesn't show anything about a god - those people that want one is producing that "information". That's very simple logic, not like we want so it must be so.what is energy and where did it come from? its existence infers a god. a source.
what is the source of your very being… your essence, your existence?
~ that which is even beyond the electrons and protons that make up the illusion of your being.
~ the source of them.
only that source is reality.
reality = "God"How does energy infer a god? Can you provide a logical syllogism, with true premises, logically leading to that conclusion?
I don't know the sources of any of that. But my ignorance does not infer a god - just that I don't know. Nor does your ignorance, or anyone else's.
Then the human concept of "real", or maybe "truth" is god? Just a mental construct, nothing more? I might go for that, although I think I'd have to change some definitions somewhat. Of course it might be a little tough describing how a human mental construct was the source of the universe before they existed..."God" as the underlying substance of all that exists is a mental construct until this source of our own being is experienced consciously
Utilizing logical syllogism actually hampers the ability to experience the source of one's being.Ah. God is a construct until man finds him, whereupon it becomes real. Made by man, then. Still hard to understand how it made the universe before man made it.
But science is based on logic (among other things) and never, ever makes conclusions based on want or emotional needs. How then does it know about god when god cannot be found through logic? Besides, you are the one that said god is logical...God made the universe before ...
man "made" God.
Before man identified God as Creator of everything, you mean.
Actually, God MANIFESTS as everything that EXISTS, therefore: love, logic, rainbows, cats, dogs, light, dark, black, white, you, me, etc. … !No, no. As god is a construct of the human mind (you said so), He cannot have made the universe before man appeared.
Yes, I know you think God manifests as everything, but that doesn't mean it's true. You say it isn't logical, (while saying it is logical), and can't be shown (but is obvious) but is true because it (logically) has to be.
You do realize your'e contradicting yourself and talking in circles?It's understandable that you want to stick with what can be confirmed empirically. It's a good idea, where possible. But we're talking about existence. We're talking about 'why we're here', 'life'. The universe. And, unfortunately, there are elements of this existence that don't conform to verifiable practices. That's just a fact. So as unfortunate as it may be, we're going to have to delve a bit into philosophy. We're going to have to work a little harder to establish the 'truths' beyond the verifiable.
Think of the universe and all we are as being a construct created within the imagination of a God. That would make it all possible, wouldn't it? Anything's possible in the imagination. But you'd have no way of proving it. No way of verifying it. But that wouldn't make it any less true.
What Kathryn's saying is true. Observing the natural world is insight into the mind of God and how God operates. To know nature is to better know and understand God.Yep - we can't verify everything. Such as a cause for the Big Bang. But the answer isn't to make up a god that did it all, and it isn't to carefully cherry pick ancient writings to "prove" it, either.
Observing the natural world and then pretending that it's a window into a make believe god is NOT insight into anything, except maybe the workings of the human mind to demand answers when there are none.
"To know nature is to better know and understand God."
But statements like are predicated on several assumptions, assumptions that are then used to show God.
1. That there is a god
2. That the god assumed to exist made nature
3. That nature teaches accurate lessons about what the god did; that it isn't all a sham to present a false impression (people do that all the time, you know)
Given that, it just isn't possible to (truthfully) make the statement that nature gives insight into the mind of a god or how it operates. It is a major fallacy as the premise is unknown to be true, but then becomes the conclusion!
But I can ask you the same question: can you present a logical syllogism (with true premises to start with) that even begins to show a god? To show it's possible is easy; to show one is out there somewhere seems impossible (or least no one I've ever seen accomplished it). Of course, what a god IS would have to be established, but for now I'd take whatever you offer.Observing the natural world and then pretending that it's a window into a make believe god is NOT insight into anything, except maybe the workings of the human mind to demand answers when there are none.
You accept there are no answers. Others do not. We see evidence, where you refuse to see evidence.
Evidence of WHAT is the real question and no one quite understands what. Forget about the word God … what is nature evidence of?I understand that. It seems to come down to what the word "evidence" means. While I could quote Webster, I think it means something that you can show others and something far more than a mere opinion based on desire.
You don't, and that's fine for you, but when you present that opinion as factual you have to know you'll be called on it by anyone that shares a different opinion, whether with evidence or without.
Example: While you look at a tree and exclaim "See? We know that God did that! It proves there is a god because He did it!". But others will look at your "evidence" and say, "No, a seed did it". And can show a seed growing into a tree, to boot. You may be right, but no one can ever know because you can't show the god; only that you wish there to be one. The logical, physical and philosophical trail between the tree and a god isn't there, no matter how many times you say it is.The life force of a tree = N why not equate N with God?
Perhaps we should just call the God force N?
"God" has become a tainted word ... much like "ain't."
Where does life force originate? N."The life force of a tree = N"
Implicit in that statement is that there is a "life force"...but you haven't shown that or even defined it and therefore the statement is meaningless. Maybe true, maybe not, but your claim does not establish that it is.
"why not equate N with God"
Why would we? Because we want a god is insufficient.
"Where does life force originate?"
Until "life force" is defined and found, the question is meaningless. Even then the answer will probably be "I don't know", which is evidence that...I really don't know. Not that there is a god.If a tree is brown, old, has no leaves and will catch fire easily, it has lost something vital.
That something vital = life force.
For instance: An Oak tree started from an acorn lodged in the ground just so. It somehow got enough water for a number of months to enable it to sprout. The soil was fine for continued growth. Mysteriously encoded in the acorn was instructions to grow rather big and for a long time ... Which it did.
Now we look upon the oak tree and ask where did the life force and the the instructions to take root and grow grow grow come from?
Answer: N.
Maybe it is human weakness to say that N = God.
Oh well."If a tree is brown, old, has no leaves and will catch fire easily, it has lost something vital."
Sure did - the sap flowing in the capillaries. But I don't think God is tree sap.
"Mysteriously encoded in the acorn was..."
Yea, it's called DNA. But there's nothing "mysterious" about it, or where it came from (the tree that grew the acorn). And again, I don't think the "mother" tree is God.
But you want something mysterious, so devise something undefined and unfindable (because you won't define it) you call "God". That's fine...for you. Others reject your mysticism, your undefined definitions and your demand to know everything there is no know. All they boil down to at the end of the road is still "I don't know, so it was God", still without defining what "God" means except in other undefined terms.
I didn't just jump to a God, or even jump to that ancient writing. Logic led me to both.
There is a will that permeates life. Kathryn and Jacharless are referring to it as a life force. It's the will that compels living things to survive. To choose preferences. To actively take action in it's own sustaining of life. There is intention in that will. It's not just a rock rolling down a hill. It's a living organism compelled to take action. To move itself.
There is nothing in all of our scientific reasoning that even begins to explain this. It's just a given, like the laws of nature. Assumed to be there. Like in the theory of evolution. Unless there's a drive inherent in things compelling it to take action, then evolution doesn't happen. There has to be an element at play compelling things to take action to push it through the teeth of evolution. Just because something is capable of surviving doesn't mean it will unless it takes action to ensure it using those capabilities. Having legs physically capable of jumping does no good unless you actually use them to jump.
There is intention in life. It's not just matter conforming to the laws of nature. It's actual intent. Drive. It's motivated by reward, by pleasure, by hunger, by pain.
You say that you can't "truthfully" make the statement that nature gives insight into the mind of a god or how it operates because the premise is unknown to be true. There you go again, requiring that things be proven true. We just covered that's not always possible. Yet here you are still requiring it.
So that's your syllogism. Life has intent. Intent doesn't just happen. Intent is purposeful. Only a being can give something intent and purpose. Only a being can purposefully give intent."There is a will that permeates life"
Really? A bacteria has a will? I don't think so.
"Kathryn and Jacharless are referring to it as a life force."
No, Kaythryn is not. Will is not what makes a tree grow or drop seeds.
"To actively take action in it's own sustaining of life. "
Some do, some don't. Bacteria, viruses, amoeba, etc.
"It's a living organism compelled to take action. To move itself. "
The reason a rose petal closes is sun or lack therof. Not will. A completely chemical reaction.
"There is intention in life."
You're seriously talking about the "intent" of a bacteria? The pleasure and pain of a flower without nerves?
"Yet here you are still requiring it."
Yep. And here you are insisting that we accept it as true because you want it to be. Because you refuse to look at alternatives or things that don't follow along your reasoning. I'll take my method, thank you - fact is always superior to imagining.
Life has intent. (not only unproven but untrue)
Intent doesn't just happen. (unproven. An awful lot of things you attribute to a god "just happen" all the time.)
Intent is purposeful. (accepted as true, depending on meaning)
Only a being can give something intent and purpose. (being is undefined, so untrue. Is a bacteria a "being"? Replace it with "intelligence" and I'd probably agree.)
Only a being can purposefully give intent. See above.
Your "syllogism" is rife with both unproven premises and logical errors, the largest being the assumption that life has intent. You're trying to say that a god had the intent to make life, but what is said, and logically continued, is that all life has intentions, not just a god. And it isn't true.You're right, intelligence is a better word. Only 'intelligence' can give something intent and purpose.
So your argument is because not all things considered 'living' share these characteristics, then it's not true that any life has intent? You keep referring to flowers. Have you ever watched time-lapsed shots of plant life both above and below ground? They act and move like animals. Only they move a lot slower because the use growth, rather than muscles, to move. But they still seek out nutrients. And they're social in their interactions with one another.
But I'm primarily talking about animals. There is no doubt they have intent that drives them. And that intent shows there to be intention in their making. Like an engine in a car. That engine was specifically designed to propel the vehicle. There is a will specifically geared toward compelling an organism to move and to act.
Like you, here, now. There's no survival need for you to be here beating your head against a wall in these forums. Yet you're compelled. Something inside you, that isn't chemical, compels you to be here. To come back. Why? You think that's just how it happened? That's how the pieces fell into place that eventually ended up as you?You're still trying to use the word "intent" in two different forms.
One is the "intent" of a flower to open, an amoeba to engulf food or an ant to build an anthill. The other is is the intent and purpose of the god that made it all happen. And it doesn't work even though the waffling has begun to be only animals, and I expect "higher animals" to follow. It is still two very different things, perhaps expressed better with the term "intent" and "instinct". Instinct is not intent, and the intent of a dog to reproduce has zero to do with the assumed intent of a god to MAKE that dog have that intent. Heck, I wouldn't even say that the dog HAS an "intent" to reproduce; it doesn't know the results of mating!
So the bottom line is that life has no intent most of the time and most of life, and that there is no reason to think there was in intent in making the first DNA (or any that followed, either).
Yes, the chemicals "fell into place". Without viable reason to believe in a god with intent forcing them to do that, there is no reason to believe otherwise.Intent does not come from nothing. It doesn't 'just happen'. It's purposeful. It is intended to serve a purpose. To keep life motivated so that it continues on. So it doesn't just fail and die. The existence of intent in living things means there's intention in creation.
Logic is the reason to believe otherwise. Things do just fall into place and develop intent and deliberate will. That alone causes the alternative hypothesis, the 'no God' hypothesis to fail, leaving us with the existence of a God of some kind.You're still doing it. Making statements which you cannot possibly support, solely because you want them to be true.
"Intent does not come from nothing." "It doesn't 'just happen'." "It is intended to serve a purpose."
None of these have anything to support them unless you're trying to clarify what the term means. If so, I'd agree with the first and last but certainly not the second.
But the next few contradict that: "To keep life motivated so that it continues on." "So it doesn't just fail and die." So you're not tryiing to define intent; you're now defining instinct and re-naming it "intent" to set the stage for the next one: "The existence of intent in living things means there's intention in creation." which is a total failure because it does not follow at all. There is absolutely no connection, for evolution, not intent or creator is what keeps life "motivated" to reproduce (it's not motivated to reproduce; it's motivated to mate) so it doesn't fail and die.
"Things do just fall into place and develop intent and deliberate will." and that implies a god? You've lost me completely here!
Very tentatively and hesitantly, let me throw another at you - the difference between intent and instinct. It (may) have to do with our nemesis of "free will". Although I won't go on record as saying free will is necessary for intent, I do see a connection. Thoughts?How can chemical reactions create a desire to mate/reproduce (or any instinct or desire for that matter?)
You might start with pheromones. It's one answer to your question - chemicals that induce a desire to mate (ever watch a female dog in heat and what it does to the male dogs for a block around?). There are a great many chemicals that animals and plants produce that have very specific results on other animals around them. Dogs (and other animals) can scent your fear and may attack as a result. Cats have been known to "know" when death is imminent, probably by scent. Some plants carry out specific defensive actions as a result of chemicals released by other plants of the same species.
Yes, I understand it technically, but it doesn't actually explain anything.
Oh! I can't help you there - I'm not near enough biologist to understand just how such chemicals interact in our brain. I know dogs bark and I dissected a frog in high school, but that's about all.
Like I said and you agreed, not everything can be "supported". So we're just not allowed to bring any of those elements into the discussion? Even though it's obvious to everyone who's ever observed animals, and has experienced that will within our own selves, that it's a certainty. Though it can't be "supported".
Of course you can bring them in! As possibilities, not as assumptions that they are true. Where they will stay possibilities until they can be proven true, with a proof more than "maybe" or "possibly" or even "but it fits with other unproven theories!".
(If it is consistently observed in animals, then it's "proven". But it hasn't been, has it? That little "obvious" says it all; that it is a belief, an opinion, an imagined thing rather than something proven.)But, like we covered, not everything is verifiable as "truth". It can't be empirically determined. So, if I am allowed to bring these elements into the discussion, then it makes sense that I should be able to build on these things without having to then go into the whole 'this and this isn't confirmed to be true' stuff. We've covered that. We're dealing with things outside of those lines. To allow discussion, we have to allow for these un-provable possibilities and be allowed to build on them.
That's the only hope when dealing with things that can't be scientifically proven. If allowed to place them in as a placeholder we can then build on those ideas and maybe come to something that can be verified. Or at least logically realized.Well, sure. Build on them all you wish, just as if you were writing a good detective novel. Just never, ever go back to that original, unproven premise and claim it shows a god because you have imagined a logical sequence of possibilities built on a lie. I swear, Headly, that you don't seem to recognize the difference between building a possibility and showing truth. Imagine anything you wish to, just don't try and promote it as truth simply because it is semi-self consistent. And quit evading any real evidence that shows it isn't truth at all!
It may be the only way to proceed at this time, but an answer built on imagination isn't an answer at all. It's just imagination, the same as that detective novel and until such time as you can show evidence to the contrary, 100% consistent with everything known, it will remain that. Not something to call true and not something that anyone else should build a life on. Just as you say, perhaps one day it might be verifiable, but until then...well, it's going to take a lot more than logic based on unproven premises to come up with a known truth. While I do recognize that that is exactly what theologians do every day, they have yet to produce something a thinking person would call truth. For the same reason you can't - we don't know, and pretending that we do doesn't show anything at all.How many times have I told you that I'm not submitting what I'm saying as evidence of God existing? It's not me who doesn't recognize, it's you. Over and over again you try to call me on trying to prove God with this stuff, I correct you, and you try to dismiss every argument I make that can't be empirically proven and then I try to explain that not everything can be proven and that dismissing anything that can't be limits the ability to have a conversation. And then we start all over again with you continuing to misunderstand what I'm doing.
What I've done is I've taken an answer first built on imagination, that I can show across the board is 100% consistent with everything known, and match it up with actual historical events to show that this "imagined" answer is actually consistent with the evidence. The theory of evolution started out as an imagined answer as well. Then you flesh it out and look for ways to verify it. That's exactly what I've done.
It is impossible for "God" to be the cause of suffering.
Repeating:
"God" as the underlying substance of all that exists is a mental construct until this source of our own being is experienced consciously.
Utilizing logical syllogism actually hampers the ability to experience the source of one's being.True, some -many actually- have not received that memo.
The cause of existence = God.
The cause of suffering = ignorance of the essence of one's own existence.Life:
Force:
Life force
The replication ability is found in the genetic code. But, the question is where did that code come from and, more so, why did it come from. What is its purpose to begin with? Everything that does not have a purpose is eliminated -deleted- from the system, be it the internal system, ecosystem, solar system, galaxy (star system) -even go in reverse to the smallest nth. Everything with a purpose reproduces, flourishes, grows, expands, continues until it is not longer purposeful.
If N = Life, and life is the result of said Force, then it is safe to use the term creation. So, if N= Life and F = Force (which enables creation) why can N or F != God? Even better, why can't both? Change the word "God" for "creation" or "Creator". The real trouble then is defining "god" just as it is defining "life". What is life and the purpose of it?So DNA, RNA, replication of copied pairs, the specific actions of hormones, pheromones, chemical reactions which occur in humans and animals have all developed accidentally and are merely the result and product of evolution?
And evolution itself is not mysterious even though we can agree an unknown force prompted all scientifically observable / natural phenomenon?
Therefore, let us agree: N, (the unknown,) = God.As we know it's possible and does occur it is the most reasonable answer. Certainly more so than an imaginary creature in another unverse.
An "unknown force"? If you refer to mankind not knowing everything to know, yes. If you are actually proposing a new force, unknown at this time, certainly not!
Therefore, let us agree: there may or may not be any kind of god at all. We don't know. And that there is no reason to change the spelling of g r a v i t y to G o d...or any other force, energy or anything else.But "God" means so much to us!
God means love, care and protection on earth, and hope for life and consciousness in the afterlife: A design, plan and means to an end .. a peacful blissful end.
Can we live without the thought of a universal Father/Mother who made us, (and lives in us as in everything) and loves each and every single one of us? Some One Force who will save us from slipping over the edge of some dark abyss
INTO NOTHINGNESS ?!!!!!!!!
Maybe you can, but you have convinced yerself you can live with that.
~ most of the rest of us CANNOT! AND If we hope for more …
OH WELL!
Something wrong with that hope, wilderness?
Science and evolution proves God. The universe proves God. I prove God.
I am a small portion of the Vast expanse of G O D Manifesting Manifesting Manifesting.
God is art, poetry and science.
Okay, I'll step down now.
TWISII have little doubt that much of this is true. That millions of people have convinced themselves that living in reality is just too much to bear; it causes them sadness and grief and they don't want to live there.
But is that a reason to present their make believe reality as real and true, demanding that everyone else live it it with them? I think not, just as I don't see it as a reason to present their imaginings as true. Much like the snake oil salesmen that sold "cures" of nasty tasting water for diseases that were never cured, death and grief will remain with us whether one believes they will or not.
Just as the statements such as "The universe proves God", or "I prove God", do a great disservice to gullible people. Like the church that punished Galileo with a life of house arrest, hiding truth very seldom does any long term good for any but the very young.Wilderness ... that is an interesting perspective. Perhaps you need to consider archaeology. For instance, the Tel Dan Inscription which proves there was a House of David. The Pilot Stone proves there was such a procurator. Tacitus, a non Christian, writes about Pilot crucifying a man many claimed to be the Christ. Many others claimed He was as well. Way too many coincidences in the Bible. I am as much of a realist as you are but after doing the research I am more than comfortable with belief and faith. After all, science does not lie does it?
Yep. The bible makes a fair to middling historical record. At least if one ignores the impossibilities such as a world wide flood, people living inside a fish, the sun standing still, etc. and reads it as any other historical text written by the winners. Some is true, some is exaggeration and much is outright falsehood.
But as evidence of a god? Not hardly - it is no better and no worse than any other mythological reference. That a writer says a man claimed to be a god does NOT indicate that the claim is true; it says only that a claim was made. There is a whole world of difference between what people claim and what is actually true. Or we would be worshipping Zeus instead of the johnny-come-lately Jesus.
This isn't about hiding the truth. It's about discovering it. It's about the very real chance that there's a lot more to the story than what our measly senses can be shown. It's about finding the reason and the purpose of all of this.
If you believe only in what can be seen/heard/smelled/felt or in some way verified, then you're dismissing and leaving out a lot. There's a reason why we ponder these things. There's a reason we wonder. We search. The mind is capable of imagining well past the perceived. Well past anything needed in the interest of survival. There's way more to who we are than just a list of capabilities that serve the interest of survival alone. There's purpose and reason in what we do. There's a drive and a will in us to go well past what's needed simply to survive.Headley .... very well said. Sometimes the worst thing about being human is just being human. Stuck in our earthly perspective. People are always asking for proof. It is right in front.
If it is "right in front", then show it. With something more that "Because I say so".
"It's about finding the reason and the purpose of all of this. "
And if there is no "reason" or "purpose"? What then? Well, the believer will make a reason and purpose whether there was one or not.
Ponder all you wish, wonder and imagine the same. And use that as a starting point to find truth - don't just stop and declare it true. While you may have a drive, a curiosity, it isn't a reason to imagine something and declare it true without knowing if it is or not.
For your (unsubstantiated) claim that there is more than possible to learn is just not a reason to declare that you have learned the unlearnable. Imagination is a very poor substitute for knowledge. It may (and does) make an excellent starting point of the road, but it cannot be the final stop, the destination.
Example: last night I watched a special on an archaeological excavation in Colorado of a lot of Mastodon remains from some 30,000 years ago. One skeleton was surrounded by rocks, in an area where there were no other stones anywhere. It included a rib with striations that very much appeared to be from a stone knife, not predators. The imagination immediately jumps to the conclusion that the rocks were carried there to weigh the corpse down in a lake that used to be there (a common practice to protect a kill from scavengers). It fits with previous experience and observations of other skeletons and bone marks.
But it is dated to 20,000 years before man appeared on the continent. It cannot be true. Yet it surely looks true; the evidence is all right there before us.
The answer to the imagined picture of humans killing the animal, "hiding" the carcass and scraping meat from the bones? Not to say it's true, but to look further. To find those humans. To find more similar skeletons. To find the stone tools used. To find other tool-using animals of the time period.
But not to simply declare that the imagined event actually took place. You've used imagination to declare that gods roamed the earth, but have yet to show a single god. No events that have to be attributed only to a god (like the striations only attributable to stone tools). To date, only imagination is used to produce a scenario that, while it may be true, is still only imagination and thus cannot be termed "knowledge" at all.
Those archaeologists may never find the answer to the puzzle, but they refuse to make any claims of truth; they will wait for, and search for, knowledge before they do. As you should. If you're at a dead end, present your evidence, present your scenario, and let others look for evidence. But don't present it as truth because "we can't know things that are not of this world" or "we have a drive to know" and therefore imagination trumps knowledge.I did find truth. And I verified it in ways that confirms it for me, but that doesn't make for conclusive evidence for others. I tested the hypothesis.
For example, after forming the framework of the timeline and series of events, I placed it in a particular time lined up with a suspected point where one of those events happened. I then searched evidence of the region to see if other events along that timeline could have been true. Is the framework and where it's placed accurate. I did numerous tests that all proved true. Like one being the Tower of Babel incident. If my hypothesis was true and accurate, then there should have been an event much like what's described around 3900 BC in that part of the world. That's when I found the 5.9 kiloyear event. This was an event that happened right when and where I was looking that very much lined up with what's described as far as masses of humans heading out and leaving the area.
This is how I know it's true. So, what do I do with it? Sit on it? Never mention it? Or bounce it off of others, have it challenged?Nope. You bounce it off of others for a challenge. Which you have done.
The only problem is that your answers to those challenges is to pretend other evidence doesn't exist and to modify your claims from "always" to "mostly", which pretty much destroys the claim.
But either way, you have still not produced any gods. You have not produced any events attributable only to a god. Both of these are possible, but are not done, which leaves you with nothing but imagination. It takes more than imagination to be considered knowledge, and all the complaining that your imagined scenarios are "unprovable", that only imagination can show the results isn't going to help your case that you are in possession of actual truth.
Again, examples:
I mentioned the other day about a new species of "homo" found in Asia which mated with people there. Can you produce one in Mesopotamia that might have been called a god? Can you show any remains of that species, or it's works beyond anything man could produce anywhere in the world without the species? Can you provide accepted examples of things that were impossible without a god (world wide flood, perhaps, or the sun standing still for 24 hours)? Can you produce the Garden, with DNA from that particular tree that is different from any other before or since? Can you show that all life came about at one specific time? Or that all life in the area of the proposed "local" flood was destroyed and re-started from a single pair of each species? Can you even find the ark? You can't show that man outside the area had no cities before Babel, but can you even show that Babel produced the men that did exist elsewhere? We know that man throughout the world carries DNA from other species; can you show that only in that specific area did a hybrid occur, and with what other species? Or are all of these possibilities of providing actual evidence to be forever ignored because none is available (showing none of them happened)?
I think you do understand what truth requires, you just don't like the idea because you have none and thus prefer imagination. So you say things like "there are things man can never know" and "we have a drive to know" in an excuse to use nothing but imagination. You couple it with a logical sequence of historical facts and assumptions, but at the end of the road can actually prove very little of it and what you can prove is nothing that didn't happen elsewhere and elsewhen.Please stop with that. I have taken every challenge head on. I haven't pretended it didn't exist. And I haven't modified my claims.
And now you're talking about "producing" gods. Have we not covered this ad nauseum? And what exactly do you mean about producing events only attributed to a God? What would that evidence look like, exactly? We can only determine the cause if the cause is 'natural'. If the cause were "attributed to a god", then it would presumably something that doesn't happen 'naturally'. Well, there's a couple of examples that could very well fit that mold, things that we just assume aren't explained 'yet'. The origin of the universe is one. The origin of life is another. The ability life has to replicate is another. Replication, for example, was said by Richard Dawkins to be "exceedingly improbable".
But it's not like you're going to accept any of those things as "only attributed to a God". You're going to assume it's something science will suss out eventually.
And just to be clear, that tree wasn't necessarily different DNA wise from any other tree. What made that tree significant is the fact that God created a commandment that said not to eat from it. It was forbidden because God forbid it, not because it was in some way different.
But no, I'm not in the field. But what I can do is make this theory known. If those in the field are familiar with it then it can steer investigation. It's something else to look for, like DNA evidence. If they knew what to look for then it might yield more results.
There is some evidence for giants. There's one burial in particular, that's believed to be the burial site of the biblical king Og. It matches up with the dimensions given in the bible.
"Deut. 3:11 declares that his "bedstead" (translated in some texts as "sarcophagus") of iron is "nine cubits in length and four cubits in width", which is 13.5 ft by 6 ft according to the standard cubit of a man. It goes on to say that at the royal city of Rabbah of the Ammonites, his giant bedstead could still be seen as a novelty at the time the narrative was written. If the giant king's bedstead was built in proportion to his size as most beds are, he may have been between 9 to 13 feet in height.
.....
It is noteworthy that the region north of the river Jabbok, or Bashan, "the land of Rephaim", contains hundreds of megalithic stone tombs (dolmen) dating from the 5th to 3rd millennia BC. In 1918, Gustav Dalman discovered in the neighborhood of Amman Jordan (Amman is built on the ancient city of Rabbah of Ammon) a noteworthy dolmen which matched the approximate dimensions of Og's bed as described in the Bible. Such ancient rock burials are seldom seen west of the Jordan river, and the only other concentration of these megaliths are to be found in the hills of Judah in the vicinity of Hebron, where the giant sons of Anak were said to have lived (Numbers 13:33)."
Og's burial site is also described in the bible as being a kind of public viewing place. So there's also the strong possibility that the remains of any of the giants were pillaged.
I have plenty of truth. What can be seen in the evidence, what should be expected to be seen if true, is all there.
And I'm sorry there are things that can't be verified. That's not something I'm making up. That's just a fact."And what exactly do you mean about producing events only attributed to a God?"
Not "attributed" to a god (there are millions upon millions of those ranging from Katrina to finding car keys) but "attributable to a god. Something cannot happen by the laws of nature. The sun standing still. A world wide flood on a planet with insufficient water to do that. If it's "unnatural" then it must be a god, by definition. But Dawkins "improbable" doesn't count any more than the origin of life does: "improbable" is not "impossible". And according to you, if science can't "suss it out" eventually, it does not prove a god.
If the tree was not different DNA wise, that means that a god changed the fruit personally, and that means you will have to get that fruit and test it to see if it imparts "knowledge of good and evil". Good luck with that - I gave you a break in the suggestion already.
The body of Og (not just a bed; the actual skeleton) is insufficient; you will have to find a whole race of "Og's" to maintain that a different species mated with humans. That is the claim, is it not? Or you might take a look at bed sizes in this country around the time of George Washington; that are considerably different than those used today even given the difference in average size of people. Or the beds of kings/queens from millenia past, when size and grandeur was very important.
No argument that you have found truth, at least as far as we have been able to verify it. No argument at all. It's just the conclusions that you draw from that truth that are in question, and that I find so unrealistic. Some of the logic is faulty (although so very "obvious") and some of the evidence is being said to be "irrelevant" because it doesn't support the conclusion or just denies it. Some of the assumptions are flat untrue and there is always the notion that "translation" of God's word produces more truth when it says and means something different than what was written. These things all point to a lack of knowledge whether the conclusion was true or not: "We don't know" is the only acceptable answer from the data given. Just as the archaeologists don't know if that mastodon was scraped by stone tools, we don't know if gods were involved in either creation OR the life of people some thousands of years ago. We don't know if anything "unnatural" at all happened, or if it's all just one more tall tale in a history of thousands of them.What you don't seem to get is we can only prove natural through scientific means. If something happens unnaturally, there'd be no way to prove it without actually reproducing it. That's the whole problem. Unnatural happenings in the past would just be something that happened that we can't determine a cause for. And there's plenty of those. But we just assume it's something we haven't figured out yet. Not that it's unnatural. So how do you produce or prove something unnatural? You have to understand what you're asking for.
No, no, no, nothing about the tree was any different than any other tree. What made it significant is God's rule to not eat from it. Gaining the knowledge of good and evil wasn't due to eating the fruit, it was due to breaking God's rule and doing something 'unnatural'.
Ah, so now just the remains of one "giant" isn't enough? Did you not read what I quoted. There were multiple burial sites found like that, most of them in the Hebron area where the bible says giants lived....
"Such ancient rock burials are seldom seen west of the Jordan river, and the only other concentration of these megaliths are to be found in the hills of Judah in the vicinity of Hebron, where the giant sons of Anak were said to have lived (Numbers 13:33)."
Alright, this whole evidence thing is really getting out of hand. Along with my statements I have included at least half a dozen quotes from experts that say that what I'm saying is accurate. And they knew about those examples when they made those statements. When you take those handful of examples, and compare it to the overall picture, that evidence is negligible, they are very much exceptions to the rule.
If you or anyone else actually came up with something that challenged what I'm saying, I will accept it. But you thinking you have evidence when you don't, and you refusing to take the word of the experts I quote in support of what I'm saying, then that's just your mistake. Find something legitimate and then we'll talk. But please quit bringing it up like you or anyone else actually found something. You keep saying I'm ignoring it, which is full on bull shit. I had directly addressed everything brought up. Everything. I haven't ignored it. If it actually did challenge the validity of my claim then I will be happy to acknowledge it. I don't want to just continue to be wrong if I'm wrong. If I'm wrong I want to know that. I want the opportunity to correct it.I think we would find evidence of a world wide flood. We should hear from others (not proof, but evidence) of a 24 hour period when the earth did not rotate, and we should find evidence of giant tsunamis and hurricanes, worldwide at the same moment. But we don't, do we?
Yes, you found where "experts" say that what happened did indeed happen. All quite natural, but you don't stop there; you go to make conclusions and inferences from those things that do not follow and have no evidence. Just more natural occurrences that happen all the time. Like wars, stratification and agriculture.
But you didn't find a single skeleton! Just big beds, and that is hardly enough to say that giants once occupied them.
No you did not address the challenges, except to suddenly change from the only time man had war and stratification to one of the times, but the others don't count because there isn't evidence (in the rain forest of Brazil or other places that we don't have lots of data of any kind from) that it happened all the time. Things that go far to disprove your theory that such things were provided by gods, but are set aside as irrelevant. Well, they aren't irrelevant, not when only the gods could or did do such things.
That's kind of the point - no one knows if you are wrong or not. Except that you ARE wrong when you say your evidence leads to the conclusions that you came up with; in that you are most definitely wrong. At best, you might say that data is inconclusive, or that the whole thing is a "maybe" but you can't prove it, but you don't do that. You are willing to definitively state that gods mated with man and made possible the advancements that have happened throughout the world, and that just isn't there. You have produced an interesting theory that matches the known facts fairly well (if biblical scripture is changed enough) but it remains a theory, without sufficient evidence to call it true. Just like the marks on the mastodon bone.The bible doesn't even say the flood was worldwide. Hell, half the people in Genesis 5 lived beyond the year of the flood. It's ignorance to think that's what it's describing. Someone from the bronze age didn't even know there was a whole planet, much less be able to report on the status of the whole planet. If you think it says the flood was worldwide then you haven't given it very much thought.
I haven't made any conclusions or inferences that don't come directly from what's described. There's what's described, and then there's the evidence to show these things very did likely happen. No conclusions beyond that needed.
Your misunderstanding of the evidence isn't my fault. I didn't say there was no violence or war. I said it was very rare. It was uncommon. And I pointed out where and when that changed. It went from a rare occurrence to a constant. And I quoted numerous experts, not "experts", but real experts in this particular field, who said the same.
And yes, everything that happens happens naturally. I'm not looking for magic. If you're looking for magic, or something "unnatural", then that's on you. That's just a lack of understanding of what we're discussing. That's your own inference. Your own assumption.
Again, I haven't reached any conclusions. I have simply shown how the evidence matches what we should expect to see if this is what happened. That's it. It's that simple. The story describes what happened. If that really happened as described then this is what we should expect to see. And everything that should be expected is exactly that. No conclusions reached based on the evidence other than the fact that it's consistent with what's described.Well, that's kind of what I said, isn't it? You will change the meaning of the words to match your theory.
"Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”
I'm sorry, but that just cannot be read as anything but a worldwide flood that will kill all life on earth. That there will be life left, that there will be no food for Noah, that 2 animals is insufficient stock to replenish, that all plant life will die as well, and that the people of the time did not know the extent of the earth (although they certainly DID know there was land and people the other side of the Ararat Mountain Range); all is irrelevant. God is reported to have said He would flood the entire earth and kill every living thing.
But you don't like it, do you? It didn't happen and it doesn't fit with the theory, so we'll pretend that God did/t say that. Or that the reporter lied, but not the one reporting A&E or the other things that do (vaguely) support the theory. Just doesn't work for me.
Just like deciding that scripture reports that gods mated with people to give free will. Nowhere in the bible (or any other sacred writings) will you find such a wild tale - it is a conclusion you drew when you found that two tribes mixed at roughly the same time frame that cities began to appear in that one area of the earth. Again, the connection just isn't there and it doesn't work for me.
Yeah - find the magic. That's what gods do - make magic. They make universes, they create man without woman and then woman from a rib. The drown the world and stop the rotation. Magic. So find indications of it taking place. Not necessarily the magic itself (done millenia ago), but the results that only magic could produce.It has nothing to do with what I like or don't like or prefer. It has everything to do with logic and common sense. "Face of the Earth" to your 21st century ears sounds global. But the word translated as "Earth" here doesn't mean "Earth" in ancient Hebrew. They didn't have a word that meant the whole Earth. Makes sense, doesn't it? That they wouldn't have a word that means the whole planet. See, common sense. "Face of the Earth" should have been translated as "Face of the land". Ertz, the Hebrew word translated as "Earth" just means "land".
You're the one reading this in a global context. But not only do the words not match up, but the rest of the story makes it clear the flood wasn't global. The Nephilim, for example. People who it says in Gen6 existed before the flood turn up again in the book of Numbers, long after the flood. And again, as I said, half the patriarchs in Genesis 5 lived well beyond the year of the flood.
But it's easier to dismiss if you first assume this is what it's saying. I'm sorry if it's inconvenient for you, but it just makes sense to exercise common sense here like we do when talking about any other topic. Just because we're talking about the bible doesn't mean you can just stop thinking.OK. Face of the land. Meaning there will be a wall of water at the ocean's edge; a wall as high as Ararat at a minimum. Better surround the Mediterranean with that wall as well, as when the water goes through the passes in that mountain range it is headed for that sea and thence to the ocean.
Nor do I think any language has no word for the world. Earth, world, land, universe; whatever you want to call it it means everything there is (below the top of the atmosphere, as anything above was for the gods).
Yes, I know that scripture is inconsistent and can't keep up with itself. That it has outright lies and falsehoods. That it has exaggerations. A good reason to believe that what is in the book is truth, isn't it? Like the garden or the tree. Like A&E and Moses' tablets. Like giants walking the land or people living in a fish.Yes, yes, it's easy to dismiss. Just dismiss it as ridiculous. Except that it, like nothing else, has remained relevant in every human age since it's inception. The people of that time held it in high regard for a reason. It's still held in high regard for a reason. As easy as it seems to dismiss, it never seems to go away.
Human gullibility only goes so far. How's the saying go? You can full some of the people some of the time, but not all the people all the time. Things fade and go away. Pass from their relevance. But then there's this. It just doesn't go away. It's always there.
The word for 'mountain' is another one of those words. Everywhere else in the bible where it's used it's translated as 'hills'. The people who came along way later, who didn't have the information you and I have now, thought it was saying it was global, and translated it that way. They were wrong. That's all. And no, if they have no concept of the whole planet, they're not going to have a word for it.
But there's undoubtedly some substantial substance there. Once you stop trying to inject the fantastical into it. Giants, for example, most likely weren't giants like you're thinking. If your whole tribe average five and a half feet, and you run across a tribe who averages seven feet, you're going to refer to them as the 'giants'. That doesn't mean there were fifteen foot tall beings walking around. There was a group of people who's most noticeable trait was their height.
But it's hard to just dismiss based on the things you're pointing out because of the consistency that the books manage to keep. This story it's telling isn't just some story. The events it describes actually are the events that led to the emergence of modern humanity.
Don't throw out the whole thing, like the baby with the bathwater. Don't be so eager to dismiss the whole thing categorically. There's a wealth of valuable information in those books. They've stuck around all this time for a reason. Many have tried, like you, to dismiss them, yet here they are.Hinduism has been around for a lot longer that Christianity. Is Hinduism real?
Hinduism is it's own kind of thing. More of a philosophy, really. And there's no central text comparable to the bible. One of it's more prominent texts, the Rig Vida, is pretty openly metaphysical speculation. So it's kind of hard to say whether or not it's "right" or "real".
"It's still held in high regard for a reason."
So is the Iliad. And Macbeth
"It's always there." Sure is. "You can full some of the people some of the time" Enough said.
"They were wrong." Sure they were. Because it doesn't fit, isn't true. The book is wrong, but there is no reason to think that the translation is. You do realize that even if God only killed all the people Noah was aware of with a flood, it is still wrong? That there still isn't enough water?
"If your whole tribe average five and a half feet, and you run across a tribe who averages seven feet, you're going to refer to them as the 'giants'."
See that bolded word? It isn't in scripture. There is no "if" there at all. So you have no reason to change the meaning to something it was never meant to say. But in any case you haven't produced any 7' giants, either.
But you keep talking about consistency. Here's consistency for you:
A child god, rather malevolent, cruel and heartless created this universe. It controls every tiny event with an iron hand, right down to where that electron will go. It has controlled every human event, down to when you cut your fingernails. And it does so within parameters it sets itself, which parameters we call "natural law". Everything we know is consistent with this theory. There isn't a single thing that has ever happened that doesn't follow it. Unlike your theory, where reports must be changed to fit reality and truth, every event that has ever happened fits perfectly within this new concept.
So you might as well throw yours out with the bathwater, right? It doesn't always fit, but mine does.Do I really need to explain why the Illiad and MacBeth don't even remotely compare?
As far as "enough said", not by a long shot. If you think the bible staying in the zeitgeist throughout human history for thousands of years is just mass delusion then you're fooling yourself. There are fads and things that come and go. You've been alive long enough to see it over and again, I'm sure. The bible has continued to stay, age after age, through very different cultures and very different times. Under different rulers in very different circumstances. Surely you see the significance of that?
That's why I'm speaking specifically about those who translated it. Because the book itself isn't wrong. Only the way it was translated. I have gone back through the source material, word for word in the original Hebrew. It doesn't conflict. If it did I wouldn't spend all this time talking about it. That would be stupid.
And please stop saying I changed things. I haven't changed anything. I've tried to explain different things in different ways in an attempt to make it more clear, but I haven't changed anything. Word for word, I can illustrate how the first 11 chapters of Genesis can be charted through human history. That behavior change we've been discussing is just one small part of the whole picture. 2000 years covered note for note with each verse. Actually well beyond 2000 years when you include creation. Then, on top of the fact that it lines up historically, you've got two other very notable things:
1) In the context of actual history it still manages to tell a consistent story. A story that is more consistent than the traditional interpretation
2) The events it describes and lines up with historically are widely recognized to be some of the more notable events that led to modern civilization
So you've got cohesion historically, thematically, scientifically, philosophically. It makes perfect sense and relates very specifically to the central theme of the stories of the bible. That kind of consistency is no accident."If you think the bible staying in the zeitgeist throughout human history for thousands of years is just mass delusion then you're fooling yourself. "
You mean like paganism? The religions of India? Those of American Indians?
"Because the book itself isn't wrong."
Here, let me repeat: "Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.” And no, "face of the earth" does NOT reference a few thousand acres.
"So you've got cohesion historically, thematically, scientifically, philosophically."
Absolutely! Except for a world wide flood, a talking snake, a walking zombie, a man living inside a fish, etc. And except for the ideas that punishing children for sins of parents is right, that hardening a kings heart to give an excuse to murder children is right, etc. None of which is true of the god I propose; that scenario really does have complete cohesion with every single event, recorded or not. It is no accident that this completely matches all history from the big bang on; it must be correct.metaphor:
"a figure of speech in which a word or phrase, (Or stories in the Bible), is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable."Then God is a metaphor for conscience? Jesus is one for good actions and raining for 40 days and nights, killing every living thing, is a metaphor for a heavy rain making the river overrun its banks and carrying off a couple of camels?
No, Paganism, Indian religions, and the religious practices of American Indians don't even compare. Specifically the Indian and Native American religions considering they never were adopted into other cultures in any way that's even remotely comparable.
Face of the Earth also does not reference the whole world. The only way it's inaccurate is if you completely misread it. The Sumerians also confirm this flood to be real, in both timeframe and location.Then the Christian belief is more true because it had the power (and willingness to use it) than paganism did? And the willingness to kill to force others to accept it? I'd have to disagree with that concept. Christianity, with its bible, has used force and murder for millenia to force belief, but that doesn't make it true. And while Paganism did not, is a peaceful philosophy decrying force, doesn't make it untrue.
Yeah, "face of the earth" most certainly DOES reference the entire known world. All of it, not just the little valley where Noah lived, and you can tell this because of the death of "all living things". Not just the livestock of the area, but everything living. Have to wonder, though, how the Sumerians confirmed the flood when they were all killed in it...perhaps God lied when he said he would kill everyone but Noah?Yes, force was used at times, but if you think that's all that accounts for it being as prevalent as it is, you're again fooling yourself. Many have tried to force their ways on others. No other has lasted like this.
Yeah, that tsunami that happened a while back, I remember witnesses testifying that "everything" was under water, that it killed "everything". From their perspective that's what it did. Was that actually everything? Of course not.But others HAVE lasted like this, just not grown as big. Which of course is a direct result of the use of force. The religion, the people promoting it and the general social atmosphere all promoted the use of extreme force to establish and grow the belief. We see it now in Islam, with the only real difference being that the rest of the world is unlikely to permit it to spread too far. Were it not for the defensive capabilities (physical force), that religion would absolutely overtake and destroy Christianity and everything else.
Yes, the reports of that tsunami were reported that way. And everyone understood the meaning. But God did not report it before it happened; did not say he would destroy everything because everyone but Noah was evil. There is a tiny difference here.Lasted is one thing, remaining an influence that actually shapes cultures is a whole other thing. It's one thing to continue to be around, it's quite another to be a major contributor throughout every human age. There is nothing else that compares, as much as you want there to be.
From their perspective it was everyone and the whole world. It was their whole world. But the target was those who came from the interbreeding between Adam's kin and humans. The wickedness, the contamination."it's quite another to be a major contributor throughout every human age."
Yeah, we've already discussed that. All it takes is a sword and lots and lots of violence.
"From their perspective it was everyone and the whole world."
No, it certainly was NOT. You keep saying that, is if no one there knew there was anyone or anyplace the other side of the local mountains, but they DID know there was. And that that area was part of the "land" God promised to cover with water, and that the area there had animals and people on it too. Ignorant they may have been, but they DID travel, they DID trade, and they DID fight peoples from other areas.
Likewise, God's "target" was every living thing outside of Noah's family. He's really, really clear on that.We're talking about 2000 years. Just a sword and some violence doesn't accomplish 200 centuries. Don't be silly.
Yes, it was the whole world. Just like if your town were submerged underwater then "everything" that's your world, though your well aware of a world beyond your own town, but your world is under water.
The flood accomplished exactly what He wanted. He was looking to protect the chosen bloodline that He was looking to breed from the 'contamination'. So flooding the region, then landing the ark right back in that region, isolated Noah and his family. It accomplished exactly what He set out to do.
Here's the part you referred to .... Gen 6:7 - So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”
And here's the verse right before (the verse that sets up the context for the following statement) ...
Gen 6:5-6 - The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled.
He's talking about the interbreeding that verses 1-4 were talking about. That's what made Him regret putting humans on the Earth. That's the problem He was looking to solve. The contamination was only in a small region.Well, let's look at that claim that it's silly to think that violence can promote 2,000 years of forced belief.
We can start with Constantine, who forced the belief onto Rome. Followed by elimination of any "Christians" that didn't follow the party line (the gnostics and anyone else that disagreed with the official dogma). Then came the Crusades, with the home grown program to wipe out the infidel. The Inquisition, where terrorism was used to control the population, and locking away people like Galileo, who even suggested that some church teachings might be not quite true. Darwin, who refused to publish for years because he was afraid of the church reaction. So, yes, most certainly the sword can control a people for 2,000 years; it did so very effectively.
Sure: my town is the only one in the land. The one a half day's walk away doesn't exist. Sure.
Well, the "flood" accomplished what the writers wanted anyway: to scare everyone into following their edicts. We don't know what any god wanted.
No, God wasn't concerned with interbreeding with other gods, primarily because there wasn't any. And breeding with other people he encouraged, ordering His people to take female slaves from the populations He ordered them to kill.Right, different groups in different ages took it upon themselves. This same book inciting that kind of a reaction multiple times. I'm sorry, but intimidation only goes so far. We're talking about 2000 years. What other power has maintained that kind of sway, through multiple cultures, through multiple ages? And you notice it was all in the name of this one book. Different groups at different times were able to have that kind of sway over the masses, all regarding this one book. If you miss the significance of that then I don't know what else to say.
The one half day's walk is someone else's world.
Yes we do know what God wanted because the story makes it clear. Just that bit I just quoted was pretty damn clear.
There are actually quite a few commandments to the Jewish people that were very specific as to what groups to breed with and what groups not to. It's a central theme throughout the story. And Genesis 6 makes it pretty clear that God was very concerned with the interbreeding. That's what it directly says.What other culture has existed that long? You do understand that when you ask for such things, knowing that there IS no other group of people that even lasted long enough, it doesn't mean much? It's like asking for a city of people prior to the first city on earth and using the negative as proof that a god must have made that first one because there were no others prior to that.
But if you miss the significance of the continual violent battle of religious control, I don't know what else to say. Christianity has held it's power through almost indiscriminate use of the sword, just as Islam is today. It's not because a god forces belief, it's not because it's the one true book, and it's certainly not because it's the best example of morality in action; it's because forced, raw naked force, was used to promote it for centuries.
While it may be a good feeling to think you can read a God's mind, or believe what it says is true, but we both know you can do neither.
Yes, there were commandments to interbreed listed in the book. And how many were not listed? Well, we don't know, just that we have no clue how complete the tome really is. When hundreds of writings are poured over and a small portion selected based on political compromises I think it's pretty safe to assume that the whole story isn't there.That's the point, Wilderness. This one thing lasted through the rise and fall of multiple cultures. The Roman Empire. Throughout the entirety of European history. American history. It's been ever-present since before Western civilization existed. And you're right, there's nothing and no one that compares.
You're right. Continual violent battle of religious control, not because a god forces belief. It's free will. Humans are in control of their own actions. And this is what they choose to do. And this isn't specific to the bible. It's specific to humanity in general. It's a human behavior. The struggle for control and power and identity leads to this. People inflicting their will onto others.
I never claimed to be able to read God's mind. There's no need to. There's a written story. And as I said, I'm taking these conclusions from the story. It's really clear. Hard to miss. Enough of the story is there to make it clear.You are very sadly mistaken if you don't see Christianity as a culture in and of itself. It has differences within itself, as all cultures, do, but it doesn't need an outside culture to exist any more than Islam does. You might note that that religion existed long before "western civilization" did as well. As did those of India, the Americas, the European pagans and the Americas. Religion in India is still alive and had not the Christian sword found the western hemisphere there is little doubt those religions would still be active as well. It isn't hard to be one of the few left when others are simply killed off, after all!
Enough of the story of WWII is left to know there never was a holocaust, either. Don't believe all of what is in the bible; you'll end up thinking wood can burn forever without becoming ash and that zombies exist. Or that you know what an invisible, undetectable, imaginary god wanted when it performed actions that never happened.Never happened, huh? I've got mounds of evidence to show they did happen. And I know what this God wants in the same way that I know about this God. Through the stories.
I recognize Christianity as a culture. But let's really think about this. 2000 years. If each century represents roughly five generations, you've got 1000 generations where this "culture" remained, through the rise and fall of many other cultures. It continued to exist, continued to stay relevant, continued to hold influence. 1000 generations of humans, and this outlives each of them. Continues on. Rome falls and it continues.
"Don't believe all of what is in the bible"
I don't. And to that I'd say don't disbelieve all of what is in the bible. If you think 1000 generations have kept this thing going, when it's all based on total imaginary bullshit, you're fooling yourself. I think you hang onto things like talking snakes and such to convince yourself there's nothing to any of this, when in actuality I think you recognize that isn't exactly accurate. You're too intelligent to think that simply.Great! Show me the world wide flood, killing all life on "the land". Show me a burning bush that is not consumed. Show me the Tower. Show me how a zombie walks. We can start with those simple things, can't we?
OK - I thought about it. And 1,000 generations of warfare. It happens, doesn't it?
As usual, you try to claim I don't recognize history in the bible, insinuating that I should also recognize and accept the supernatural as well. Doesn't work.Not at all. I said don't disbelieve all. Don't try to dismiss it in its entirety based on a few fuzzy details. This has played a central important role in human history because it's about something important. It's about our origin.
You did not just ask me to show you a world wide flood. Seriously?
Besides, I think you're kind of missing the point about things like the burning bush. What made those events significant is that they're out of the norm. Bushes don't usually burn without being consumed. That's what made the event significant. So to ask me to show you kind of misses that.
Yes, 1000 generations of warfare does happen. Since 5500BC. It's happened from that point forward all the way to today. Before that, a very rare occurrence.Well, it's important, yes. But it's not about our origin; that happened with "Lucy" at Olduvai Gorge. Rather, it's about the origin of the most violent religion to date (it'll take Islam quite a while to catch up).
Yes. And you got the point.
No, that isn't what made the event (burning bush) significant; it's what made it impossible and thus it didn't happen. A very simple conclusion, actually.
Since long before that, too. Particularly if you don't insist that it was just one small group of people with a never ending war. And if you do, then it has never happened for more than a few years - an eye blink in our history. Even the Israeli war hasn't gone on for a century yet, let alone 5,000 years. No culture could survive that, and hasn't.No, to associate the upswing of violence particularly with Christianity is dead wrong...
"There was little evidence of institutionalized violence or professional soldiers during the Uruk period, and towns were generally unwalled. During this period Uruk became the most urbanised city in the world, surpassing for the first time 50,000 inhabitants." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer#Uruk_period
"As the Epic of Gilgamesh shows, this period was associated with increased violence. Cities became walled, and increased in size as undefended villages in southern Mesopotamia disappeared." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer#Ear … tic_Period
^ The "Early Dynastic Period" was long before Christianity ^
Where I think we keep going off the rails here is due to your bias towards rejecting what I'm saying. Despite the evidence that shows overwhelmingly in my favor, despite quote after quote I give from real experts who say what I'm saying is true, you're latching onto a handful of examples to say that disproves my whole thing. Your not engaging this with intellectual honesty, then all along the way you're trying to displace the intellectual dishonesty onto me.
Starting in Sumer violence took a large uptick. So did social stratification and so did the dissension of female influence. Things specifically addressed by the fall....
"During the Sumer civilization, women’s social “status and freedoms” decreased sharply for several reasons. - http://www.philforhumanity.com/Early_So … ation.html
You have no solid ground to dismiss what I'm proposing. So you cling to the few examples brought up by others and try to bill it as me ignoring that evidence and making my own truth. If anyone's trying to make their own truth here, it's you.No, no. I never meant that any upswing was due to Christianity - it wasn't. Personally, I don't think there was a big upswing at all - I think what you're looking at was normal when adjusted for population numbers and density. The more people, the more violence, and cramming them into cities and "city-states" exacerbates that as cities/states begin to war each other.
No, I merely intended to say that Christianity maintained it's long grip on man's imaginations through the use of violence, never that it started it.
As far as not believing things, if I say that all dogs are brown all it takes is a single white dog to disprove the concept. I and others have done that with your timeline, but your response is to then change the "all brown dogs" to "mostly brown dogs" as if the scenario is just as viable. But it isn't; the gods that you propose as necessary to man's "advancements" into cities, agriculture, war, stratification, etc. aren't necessary at all, and all it takes is a single example to prove that. A single city without the gods, a single war, a single stratified culture. Which you have been given, and without that necessity it becomes unnecessary to propose any god at all, but you continue to insist that gods and interbreeding were absolutely necessary to become modern humans with all our foibles and faults.Have you not paid any attention to any of the evidence I've put forward? Yes, there is undoubtedly an upswing in violence, and as I've tried to show multiple times, as I've tried to show through quoting experts, it doesn't line up at all with the increase of population density. Hell, just in the last post I included a quote that said that there was little evidence of violence even in the same age when its population surpassed 50000in Uruk. But you have a truth you prefer, evidence be damned.
I never said "all"!! That's you! First you make up an imagined claim on my part, then argue against it. I have acknowledged these examples of violence. Have I not? I have said over and over again that there's a particular point when violence became the norm. Not that it didn't exist at all. If you're going to try to say I'm wrong, it would at least be nice if you'd accurately represent my claims.Yes, there was an upswing in violence; we both agree. We just disagree on how much (it's hard to find violence when you can't find the remains of those killed) and why it happened. We both know that more people means more violence, and we see that, but you wish it to be from gods rather than more people.
OK - there was violence, cities, stratification and all the rest without gods. Why then do you attribute it to gods? Just because ancient people said gods walked the earth? Frankly, that isn't a reason to decide that gods walked the earth.That's not the logic I'm asking you to follow. I'm not submitting this as proof of these gods. It's just evidence that what Genesis is describing really happened. That if those events happened then this is consistent with what we should expect to see.
There's more than just this to the 'gods were real' bit. The violence, the cities, the stratification, this is all just evidence consistent with what should be expected to be seen. Then there's multiple cultures from that specific region of the world who wrote stories about these beings actually being around. Stories that directly attribute their discoveries, discoveries that we now know they actually accomplished, to these gods. So not only does the evidence match up, but we've got multiple corresponding accounts.
Again, this isn't evidence to prove these gods were real. Just evidence consistent with what we should see if they were. You're right, it doesn't prove anything. It just shows it's possible. That the correlations go beyond just the events described, but also the impact of these events. Humanity changed in a way, in both the location and the time frame, consistent with the story.But you're not following me. Yes, the evidence is that some of what scripture says happened actually happened. But not the gods - the same evidence elsewhere in the world does NOT point to gods (or any of the supernatural happenings). All cultures have had gods, but somehow this one culture that says it is right...because the same things happened that happened elsewhere without any gods.
And that it DID happen elsewhere, without gods, is proof positive that gods were not necessary. Now it becomes just another tale of gods, the same as all over the world. "The gods came to earth and helped/hurt us!" So now we have culture "A" that claims the gods developed them in general ways and culture "B" that also developed along the same general lines but without the gods' help.
The conclusion (without evidence of the supernatural) can only be that the gods are just a story, a story designed and constructed to maintain power for the top levels of the stratification and to provide excuses for war. Perhaps a different culture, maybe even a different species (like Neanderthal but not them, not in that geographical area). But not gods. And that in turn means no Tree, no Garden, no supernatural events at all; just events that ignorance attributed to gods but was nothing of the kind.How many times do I have to cover that evidence isn't going to say anything about 'supernatural'? Evidence is the domain of the 'natural' sciences. 'Super-natural' falls outside of that. Not that it doesn't exist. Only that it's not beholden to 'natural' practices.
But you're on the right track. I've gone over this with you before, but maybe now at this point in the discussion it'll be a little more clear. Let's look at this one point in history compared to others. There is commonality as far as farming cultures, living in communities and such. But where this particular span of time is very different is in the fact that you've got half a dozen individual civilizations all springing up independently, and you've got a slew of inventions, all first time occurrences in human history; the first written language, the wheel, maps, pottery, calendars, the 12/24 hour concept of time, astronomy, mathematics, and on and on and on.
These are the things that set this one period in history apart from all others. There were other cultures with high populations and interacting people and all of that, yet none of this. So what's different? Hey, I've got an idea of what it might be. The Sumerians, the ones who invented most of that stuff, they directly gave credit for all of these inventions to those gods. Say they were taught. Why would they do that? If it was actually their ancestors who came up with all of this stuff that completely changed how humans live, why not give credit where credit is due?Yes, those civilizations were the first to invent most of those things. Not all, but most.
That's expected; they were the largest group on earth. But others also developed them at a later date, and without any help from gods OR that first group. And that's the whole point; that those inventions and discoveries did not need any help from gods, did not need any supernatural events. They did it all by themselves, with only their bodies and minds to accomplish what you insist required gods to do.
So now we're left with taking the word of the Sumerians that they were too stupid to do it themselves, although others did, and that the gods came to earth and helped them. Why would we think that that's true when there is exactly zero evidence outside of their claim of gods? A claim that was repeated all over the world, still with no evidence whatsoever? A claim that has been refuted over and over and over with any god that was claimed to actually exist and interact (trees, mountains, planets as gods), leaving only the one "true" god that can never been seen, never been verified?
You will disagree, but I just can't see any reason whatsoever to think that this tale is any different than any of the others. What happened there may or may not be what is expected if the gods helped, but it is what we see when the gods do not help. The only reasonable conclusion is that there were no gods there, any more than anywhere else in the world, and that man did it all by himself just as he did everywhere else. That it happened in Sumeria at that point in time is a result of agriculture and cities (giving society free time for some individuals), not gods.But that's counter-intuitive given the information we have. Sure, it makes logical sense to think agriculture and cities gave society free time to sit around and think things up, but agriculture and highly populated cultures were not unique to Sumer. Yet these inventions and the way they completely altered how humanity lived is. The evidence doesn't at all match up with what you're assuming, which is why I continue to stubbornly reject it.
And no, it didn't happen elsewhere like you said. In fact, it spread out from Sumer. Sumer is ground zero. It all started there and spread. First to Egypt and the Indus Valley, then to Greece and Rome, then beyond. Just look at the story of human history. When Columbus "discovered" America he found indigenous native Americans still living like humans had for thousands and thousands of years. None of those inventions or changes to how they lived. The Europeans brought all of that with them.
Our entire history is one group of more dominant, more advanced humans pushing the other out of existence. It started in Sumer. It didn't happen over and over again. It just happened once. And it all started right there. And the bible tells that story. Our origin story.
If we want to truly understand our human history and where we come from, what all of those mythologies were all about, how we came to be how we are today, then we have to recognize this.Agriculture was unique to Sumer??? Don't be ridiculous - agriculture was developed independently all over the world. Sumer may (and may not) have been the first to use it, but then that's why they were also the first to develop some of the things you mention.
"When Columbus "discovered" America he found indigenous native Americans still living like humans had for thousands and thousands of years."
Well, yes, the western people were living as they had for thousands of years. The Amerindians had cities, agriculture and stratification. Even slavery and astronomy. Petrographs (early form of writing) far, far predate Sumeria. Yes, some were hunter/gatherers, but some were not - the Pueblo tribe comes to mind, as does the Aztec and Inca Indians. All without contact with descendants of Sumeria; the Bering Strait was closed millenia before Sumer ever existed. Which once more gives the lie to the gods being necessary to develop these things.
"Our entire history is one group of more dominant, more advanced humans pushing the other out of existence."
Pretty much; it's called "war", even if done quietly without violence.
"It didn't happen over and over again. It just happened once."
Of course it did...NOT. Don't even try to say that the Navaho, the Aztec, etc. were the original people that occupied the Americas, and did so for 10,000 years. Descendants of those people, yes, but American tribes warred and conquered just like all other peoples, and without Sumerian influence. Same for the peoples of the far east. And Asia, where they met and eliminated the Neanderthal. And even Europe, long before Sumeria existed - farms have been found dating to 6500 BC and I rather doubt that we have found the very first farm there.
Which all points yet again to a bible story that is pure fantasy - that A&E did not exist, the tree wasn't there, and no garden. Our origin story, as given in the bible, is total fraud; nothing but imagination run amuck in an effort to provide answers without regard to truth. As a history, taking into account that it was not written early on but passed by word of mouth, that it was written by the victors, that the writers had a definite axe to grind - taking all into account it is a reasonable history, but like all historical accounts it must be read with an eye for truth and not accepted verbatim.
And even you don't accept it that way, but find many reasons and examples where verbatim just doesn't work and wasn't true. Our only real difference is that you insist the reports of gods mating with the animals is true (and a portion of the supernatural events as well, where it suits your purpose) while I reject all of that.That's not what I said at all. I said agriculture and highly populated cultures were NOT unique to Sumer.
Yes, North America had some things. But those advancements also originated in Sumer. It started with a people known as the Olmecs. This is where the Aztecs and the Incas originated. The Olmecs came to North America before Columbus....
"Evidence for this includes cultural similarities between Indians of the Pacific nortth-west and dynastic Chinese culture (such as artwork, clothing, drums, and diet) and linguistic similarities. At the same time, there are cultural and linguistic similarities between the three patrist areas of the Americas, suggestin that the peoples are related.
...
The Olmecs built the first temples and religious centres in the region, and developed a rudimenttary kind of state, in which an elite group ruled over a mass of peasant labourers. Xu argues that the Olmecs saild to Mexico from China after the fall of the Shang Dynasty in 1122BC. He notes that around this time about 250000 people disappeared, and suggests that at least some of these travelled to America. This explains the presence of what appear to be Chinese symbols in the Olmec written record, and strong similarities in art, architecture, religion and astronomical knowledge" - Steve Taylor, The Fall
I'm just going by what the evidence tells me. There's no preferred truth here I'm trying to manufacture. The evidence tells me these stories are true and that the actual explanation for what fundamentally changed humanity starts right there with Adam and Eve.
Yeah, I guess you could call it war, except that one side is far more advanced than the other. Two groups, same species, yet one is way more advanced.
You reject it because you bought into a false truth. A "truth" that doesn't match the data. An assumption. An idea that comes from the idea of evolution. An assumption that it's all a natural progression. It makes sense. I get it. But it doesn't match the evidence. What I'm saying does.Steve Taylor based that on an article from 1975. Not only later (genetic and other) evidence prove that all Americans are descendants of Siberians, Olmec was earlier than Shang (by a minimum of 500 years) and their Lodestone predates the chinese by a millenium. The evidence of similarities in Olmec and Shang writing is totally spurious with the no decent side by side comparison, or analysis of which characters are the ones that match by the claimants Peng Chen and Xu. There is a similar claim of African origin too.
The evidence you are going by, is biased. You take only that which confirm and ignore the others.What I'm ignoring are the explanations that fail to address the question. This explanation that you and others insist on, this cause/effect thing where you're trying to determine the evolution of the human mind and human condition based on outside stimuli and the "reaction" we humans then must have had to it. This idea that all we are are layers and layers of randomly mutated characteristics intertwined, it's bad. It's reductionist thinking that reduces humanity down to mundane mechanistic components.
I'm looking for a better explanation. I appreciate you challenging this. Rather than just spending your time trying to convince me that I'm deluding stuff just because that's what believers do. For actually testing the evidence. Testing the hypothesis. I appreciate that. I'm looking for the truth. That's all. This is the most likely explanation I've found. The most complete. One that accounts for the nuances of the human condition and respects it. Doesn't try to reduce it to act/react mechanics.Headly - I think this is the right thread, and hope you see this.
Just finished watching a PBS special on the "Original Man", with considerable discussion of European man. Modern Man (Homo Sapiens) entered Europe out of Africa, to find Homo Neanderthalis in place, apparently having evolved there as no other Neanderthal remains are found anywhere. We brought with us music, art, jewelry and (we think) "religious" thought as we find what are thought to be totems of "gods" (very poor term, but best I have). All at some 35,000 years ago, long before you propose we grew (evolved, gifted, developed, whatever) free will.
(Neanderthals didn't have the spear point technology that man brought with them. Nevertheless, they very quickly learned to copy that technology, using construction techniques foreign to us. In a matter of relatively few years Neanderthal was making spear points that took man a hundred thousand years to develop (many times longer than Neanderthal even existed), and they did it using their own methods of making them. I wonder - is it possible that this "inventiveness" of the Neanderthal is what gave Europe the push into the renaissance and later the machine age long before the rest of the world? Was it genetic, that drive to discover and learn, to invent and build? Was it Neanderthal culture that they simply didn't have time to develop but passed to us? What was it about Man in Europe that was different from the rest of the world?)
Current thought seems to be that we didn't wipe out Neanderthal - we absorbed them. We assimilated them culturally, geographically and genetically with the massive influx of humans out of Africa. There never were very many Neanderthals, and the migration of thousands upon thousands of the second species simply took them over. One researcher commented that Man was more able to "connect", to live in large groups, than Neanderthal and thus simply absorbed them much as China has absorbed it's conquerors for millenia.
This is also in line with what I mentioned before; that far east man is a hybrid of at least 3 distinct species; Europeans are also a composite of at least 3. The commentator also mentioned that there were likely even more species in Africa that gradually became one (I wonder if that is the basis for what we now term "race" - the remnants and shards of different species' DNA now showing up as only the minor difference of race).
This is at least somewhat in line with your theory, stripped of its supernatural aspects; two (or more) species interbreeding to the point there was only one left. And it was something repeated at least twice more, in Europe and the Far East; it has precedence. Was Babel about meeting and living alongside a different species of man as the peoples of Mesopotamia spread? Records (from Mesopotamia) would of course put them in the drivers seat, most important, etc., but that may not have been true at all. Just as the tales of the supernatural weren't true, but merely "interpretations", embellishments and exaggerations of what happened a millennium prior. Were the "giants" the equivalent of Modern Man(American) migrating to what is now Japan - just another species of man? This seems a lot more reasonable and logical than a god from another universe giving us the secrets of free will, social construction, etc. And even more so that a species of god, far superior to man, that lived, bred and disappeared from the earth without leaving anything but tales from prehistory.
Comments?I appreciate this, Wilderness. I think the timeline's a bit too far back to be relevant to what I'm speaking about, specifically, but you're definitely right about the repeating pattern of differing species integrating and mixing, and the more dominant of the two driving out, or assimilating, the other.
The nature of random mutation in evolution demands this. A mutation would come along, making one strand different than another. If that trait proves more dominant, then those with that trait will eventually overpower the former.
This is why I keep going back to Genesis. Think about this very specifically and look at history. God tells the humans He created to 1) be fruitful and multiply, 2) to fill the earth, and 3) to establish themselves as the dominant species.
There were many species in the homo genus. What's interesting is as they evolved, they began to exhibit traits consistent with what humans were commanded to do. For example, homo erectus. This species in particular began to travel, or migrate, very long distances. Remains are found all throughout Eurasia. One of those commands was to fill the earth. Being fruitful and multiplying, that goes without saying. All life is obviously compelled to do that. But to fill the earth means to travel. And that's exactly what they did.
Then you come to species like homo neanderthalensis. The neanderthal. They actually weren't very inventive. That's interesting what you shared about their getting the idea of spearheads from homo sapien. But their tools notably go through no changes. They'd find one thing and stick with it for thousands of years. But what they did do very well was they were experts and hunting megafauna. The once dominant giant mammals that ruled the landscape. Neanderthals did a lot to carve out a space for us in the natural order. They (and homo sapiens) knocked megafauna off the top of the foodchain. This, of course, is right in line with that third command that says to establish dominance in the animal kingdom.
But I do think there was the possibility, with different lineages of humanity breeding isolated from one another, that you'd have characteristics common to certain groups. For example, if one group has genes that make them relatively tall, say six feet, but all other groups average closer to five feet because they lack that gene, this is how I think some groups come to be described as "giants". It would certainly seem that way if everyone in their group averaged a foot taller than everyone you know. That's most likely how you'd describe them.This is where we differ. You take "God's word" (as reported from prehistory) and work everything around it. God says reproduce, and we reproduce - we follow God's orders. God says become dominant - we follow God's orders and become dominant.
But from my viewpoint, we do that with or without God being involved at all; the popular term is "evolution in action" or maybe "survival of the fittest". It's real easy to say that we did it because god told us to, but we'd have done the same thing without that order (and did, all over the world), and that makes the order rather doubtful. Nothing to support it but the stories from before antiquity, stories about gods that every culture in history has made up. That this specific one "gave orders" that would be followed with or without the god just isn't even circumstantial evidence the orders were given. Just that a tale about gods was created around what little history the story teller knew. Humanity is rather known for that - have you read Homer at all? Imagination and embellishment is not exactly uncommon in our tales of the past or of the gods.
Yes, the timeline is far, far prior to yours, making it useless as an indication that gods came to man and helped them with "gifts" of free will, cities or anything else. But it is a very strong indication that at least the "free will" part existed tens of thousands of years before your gods supposedly gave the gift: you don't create art or music without it and you don't invent gods of your own, either. So it needs factored into your theory somehow as otherwise it is strong evidence that the theory is incorrect. Did the gods visit, and the garden exist, 50,000 years ago, giving the gift of free will, and simple time and population density accomplish the rest, with some evolution and hybridization thrown in to complete the equation? (This is part of my complaint earlier: if something doesn't fit the theory it is ignored as not relevant or something. But this IS relevant and needs included.)
I do think we may be doing Neanderthal a disservice when we say they weren't inventive or very smart. For whatever reason (Genetics? Climate? Fearsome animals? Very small communities?) they didn't reproduce at near the speed of Man. High estimates for maximum population range from 70,000 to just 3500 females, and spread over much of Eur-Asia. This will absolutely limit the inventiveness of the species. They also lived in a much tougher clime, far north of Man, and that will do the same. They didn't have the long history of Man and it's predecessors to build on - when man came along it had the inventions of Homo Erectus, Homo Robustus and even Australopithecus to work with but Neanderthal had to start from scratch. Put it all together and I'm not convinced at all that the species wasn't as capable as Man at inventing things and their prompt reproduction of a better spear point tends to bear that out.
I'd go so far with the giants as to say that there wasn't a need for height - just overall size. Maybe they had a 3' rib cage, were more robust, than other people. Great height wasn't necessary to call them a "giant" - that's just our own preconceived thought from our own language and culture. Taller Polynesians, maybe. Which once more supports that idea of "giants" walking the land - the skeleton would be very close to that of our more common ancestor and could well not be considered by the Egyptian archaeologist as a separate species - but does nothing for any idea that the "giants" were gods, or anyone else for that matter.That's not exactly what I'm doing. All I'm doing is taken what's written and comparing it to history to see if there's any reason to think there's anything to it. When you consider these humans most likely didn't understand that they were, generations prior, not the superior species. That they'd understand that to be something that would need to happen in the dynamics of the natural world I find interesting. It's an important step to making humanity what we are now.
"But from my viewpoint, we do that with or without God being involved at all"
See, this is where your viewpoint lacks something really significant. A God giving commands that nature adheres to offers an explanation. But without that there's no explanation to account for the drive inherent in all living things to survive and thrive. To "be fruitful and multiply". You say that's just what happens. No accounting for that drive being there. It's just a given. Assumed to have been something that must have evolved as well, though that alone is counter-intuitive as that drive has to be there first for evolution to work. But that's just glossed over.
Yes, it's easy to just assume these fantastical sounding stories must have been greatly embellished. That's why I'm looking to use the context of history to figure out what is what. What I keep finding is things consistent with what really happened. It makes sense that if it's as described, if the things of the natural world adhere to the word of this God, that we'd see these characteristics coming out in the species that eventually became humans. That makes sense. That lines up. That offers an explanation that's not anymore fantastical than we already know the natural world to be.
Like it or not, given what we see in the natural world, the answer, whatever it is, is going to be fantastical. You might start getting used to the idea."All I'm doing is taken what's written and comparing it to history to see if there's any reason to think there's anything to it. "
But that's not true. What you're doing is taking what's written and trying to twist both it and history into something that fits with the other, which is why things that don't fit (free will tens of thousands of years too early, cities in the new world, etc.) become "irrelevant". They don't fit, they can't fit and are thus ignored as if it never happened.
Which you go on to exemplify with the claim that without a god the basis of evolution, survival of the fittest including the will to live, could not happen. You can't possibly support that with evidence, logic, reason or anything except a simple claim that a god did it. Well, a god didn't do it; billions of years of evolution did.
Yes, you keep finding things that fit with the theory. And things that don't fit are pointed out to you, over and over, but relegated to file 13 for the simplest of reasons: you don't like them because they don't fit. Just like the obvious free will that existed so long before God gave it to man - we'll ignore it in the hopes that it will quietly vanish into the night instead of using it is additional data to form/refine a theory. That's not how science, learning or anything but religion works.
Finally, a god from another universe that created this entire universe is, by definition, more "fantastic" than anything in nature. It's like saying that the living organism named "Michelangelo" is less fantastic than the Mona Lisa. You have now fallen to the point that you're actually willing to postulate such a god/universe and, because you're ignorant of the details of our universe, you're willing to state that this second one is less fantastic or unbelievable than ours is. The last refuge of theist: "It has to be that way because I (and everyone else) is ignorant of what actually happened".
Well, I'd a lot rather assume that trillions of quadrillions of random mutations might produce something than assume an omnipotent god from another universe (ignoring how it came to be) and did it all just for us. To assume the "god" explanation really is a lot more fantastic than assuming evolution can produce changes in DNA.
So when God's gift of free will 5,000 years ago is the foundation of a theory, and free will is observed 30,000 years ago as well as in periods more current but without God's intervention it kind of shoots the theory down. Perhaps it can be salvaged with some fairly major revisions, perhaps not, but as is it has been shown to be false-to-fact and all the claims of an omnipotent god is somehow necessary anyway won't revive it.
Bottom line: start reviewing the theory with an eye to all data rather than just that which fits and see if it can be resurrected. If not, give it up as a bad job and just accept that the evolution we see happening all around us is what gave rise to man. Accept that the ancient tales of a god (all of them) are the result of man's imagination (which we know is quite active) and the desire to understand the world around us (again, a curiosity we already know to be very active). It is, after all, how man learns; propose and answer and test it for veracity. If it can be shown wrong then move to another proposal and accept that all the hard work that went into the first one was, while not useless, at least was incorrect in the context it was used.
(I'll add that God must have given the command to multiply to every organism on earth, right down to bacteria, because that's what every single one of them does, to every extent possible. And bacteria have won the race.)"But that's not true. What you're doing is taking what's written and trying to twist both it and history into something that fits with the other"
I really wish you'd stop saying that. I haven't twisted anything. And the examples you think I'm ignoring don't fit for a reason. Not because I don't want them to. It's because, while there might have been limited examples of this and that here and there, there's a very broad and noticable change that happened right where/when the bible says. I'm not going to ignore that because of a couple of seeming exceptions to the norm.
"You can't possibly support that with evidence, logic, reason or anything except a simple claim that a god did it."
And you can't either. That's the point. There's no evidence, no explanation at all, other than the assumption that evolution must be the cause. And you have no problem accepting that explanation with the same lack of evidence. This is a big gap in the standard evolution explanation. I'm looking for a more conclusive explanation, you're settling for what you prefer.
" Just like the obvious free will that existed so long before God gave it to man"
Obvious, huh? And what is it that you find to be so obviously a sign of free will? I know you seem to think these 'examples' that you and others provide disprove what I'm saying, and anything other than me acknowledging them as such is me ignoring them, but you're missing the larger picture here. These examples, if actually what they're presented as, are singular moments out of the ordinary of what's going on in the world during that time. What I'm talking about is a line in the sand. A very definite point when humanity changed dramatically permanently. This is the point where humans changed fundamentally. And never turned back. And it wasn't isolated events here and there. It was from that point forward in that region, then spreading from there on out. Much like what you described with homo sapiens overwhelming Neanderthal. It happened in a specific place, then spread out from there. And that pattern can be traced over the entirety of the Earth.
"Bottom line: start reviewing the theory with an eye to all data rather than just that which fits and see if it can be resurrected."
I have done nothing but that from the beginning. What I'm trying to get you to see is that I'm not ignoring any data. The data that "doesn't fit" are the examples that are being given. You're focusing in on the oddities and not on the overall trends. I'm noting where the fundamental changes are. Where the change first came and stayed. Where humanity changed course.
"(I'll add that God must have given the command to multiply to every organism on earth, right down to bacteria, because that's what every single one of them does, to every extent possible. And bacteria have won the race.)"
Well, actually, He did. See what I mean? It keeps lining up. Every living thing He created He commanded to be fruitful and multiply. What's commanded of each lines up incredibly well with what's observed in each wave of life that came about.Of course you're twisting it. Changing the meaning of scripture to something that fits with the theory is "twisting" by definition. Just as ignoring obvious free will long before the gods gave it is "ignoring". You can say it's because it's limited, or out of the time line, not "noticeable" (by your definition) or anything else, but examples of man doing things only the gods could do should not be ignored. They must fit into the theory or the theory is wrong.
Headly, this really is a big thing. It doesn't matter how small a proven objection is, if it makes a theory wrong, then it's wrong! Here: an example. You drop a red ball 5 million times and 5 million times it falls to the ground (in the absence of other forces). Your theory becomes that a dropped ball will always fall. A week later you drop a blue ball and it goes up. We don't say it was because the ball was blue, we don't say that it was because it was outside the experiment, we accept that the theory is wrong. Or else we modify the theory to say that only red balls fall, or balls only fall on Mondays and retest the new theory. But you don't do that; you make excuses to salvage a theory that is proven wrong. Free will long before the gods somehow doesn't show that the god's gift was the only way to get it because it was outside the (artificial) parameters of the chosen geography and time. It doesn't work!
First, what "big gap"? You stated evolution cannot do it, but are unable to provide any reasoning or observation to back it. Evolution has provided everything else, why not free will and social living? All the more complex animals have some free will, and there are hundreds of animals that live in a social setting, so why can't evolution do what it has demonstrably done already? Just because you say so? Because you want the gods to do it? Because it was from an undetectable source (God) by definition?
Nor does it stop there - implicit in your claim is ignorance. Ignorance of every tiny detail in the time line of human development, and you want to use that ignorance to make up a "god answer" that answers every possible question about every possible event. Ignorance is not a reason to make up something that you cannot prove and then just say that it is unprovable but has to be right because we're ignorant!
Well, if you're going to define free will as the ability to disobey a god's orders, then we may as well shut down the conversation as there is no god to disobey and thus no free will. But if not, then there are obvious signs of free will in the art, music and culture of European people never exposed to your gods. So much for the god's gift - whether it was permanent (it was) or not is irrelevant; it did NOT come from the gods, which is an integral part of the theory and without which it all falls apart. Ditto for the Americas. Ditto for the far east. It happens over and over, but because it was not in Mesopotamia you want to say it doesn't count. Doesn't work.
Great! Plug in the free will of the Europeans, then, into the god's gift of free will. Don't just say it doesn't matter because it's not "fundamental" (undefined) or that it didn't stay (it did); fit it into the theory that the gods were the only method of getting free will. And then do it again with native Americans, but without saying "Well, the Mesopotamians might have sailed the biggest ocean on earth thousands of years before we find any evidence of that capability". (For that's all you've produced: a giant "maybe" unsupported by anything but the most tenuous of "similarities")
Yes, of course it does. A made up, undetectable god that does everything provides an answer to every possible question. It just isn't of any value. Once more, this is the last refuge of the theist: "My god did and caused everything because I say so (and you can't prove otherwise) and because an omnipotent god can and did do anything and everything". Well, neither I nor anyone else interested in learning about the world is going to take that kind of an answer for the "what's" and "why's" of nature.
God made the tsunami in Japan; the wind and waves are irrelevant. God made Katrina because he hates gays. God makes the moon go around and gravity doesn't matter because god can do anything. God makes the sun burn and that's sufficient. God made man from dust and we needn't question how because it doesn't matter. And God planted a tree, provided a talking snake and gave free will to Eve; that there were 10 billion that had it without God is not something we need to consider as we know God did it because of tales from prehistory. Right! At the end of the road, that's what you have to work with. Countless generations of stories passed by word of mouth from people almost totally ignorant of how and why nature does what it does. And who got everything else wrong, but has to be right about the gods (in just this one case; all other tales are equally false). You know, you could use the same methodology and "prove" that Zeus was the one true god!
I'll add that it would irrational to think that all peoples all over the world developed "civilization" at the same point in time. You've picked the first large example of that and, because the people said it came from gods, want to claim that they're right. While ignoring that it was already in the process of happening in multiple places. Being first doesn't mean much, not when it was already happening all over the world.What you're not getting is that the theory isn't proven wrong. The reason you think it is is because you don't understand. I do, which is why I can recognize this. For example, you keep saying "obvious free will long before the gods gave it". These examples given are not 'obvious signs of free will'. Living organisms are dynamic systems. They're behavior can vary in all kinds of ways, especially in response to the environment around them. You have to account for this. This is nothing like dropping a red ball. This is why you must take the full spectrum of data and analyze it. Not just focus in on individual examples. It's not just as black and white as you're trying to make it out to be.
Let's talk about what you're ignoring. I have given multiple quotes from actual experts who echo exactly what I'm saying. And they made those statements being fully aware of those handful of examples that you keep clinging to. They still made statements about how uncommon violence was because it's true. That's why I gave quotes from experts. I realize you don't have the same level of knowledge of the data, so you can take the word for the experts who do. Or at least, you should.
Believe me, if you or anyone else actually gave me information that disproved what I'm saying, I'd drop it. Why would I continue to argue and discuss something, continue to commit this amount of time, to something disproven? This has nothing to do with what I prefer. This has nothing to do with my faith. This has to do with the fact that I have extensively studied the history of human behavior. I know the data. And I knew, before they were pointed out, about the examples of violence. The fact still remains, the evidence overwhelmingly supports what I'm saying.
The big gap I'm speaking of is the total lack of an explanation for the will that drives life. I didn't say evolution can't have brought it about. What I said is that that will to live had to be there from the beginning. It would have had to have evolved before anything else as it's a crucial component to evolution itself. This is the danger with the mindset of evolution. You have the same lack of evidence that you're claiming I have, yet you still think you're right in thinking this is yet another quality that evolved. Evolution can be the explanation for anything, whether it's true or not. No evidence required. Just an assumption that this is how every characteristic of living things came about. You don't know that. You just assume that's how it went.Of course data is examined in detail and individually. It's never taken as a lump sum, an "average" if you will, when looking for exceptions to the proposed rule. And yes, it's black and white when looking for those exceptions. They either violate the proposed theory or they don't - there is no middle ground of whether gods were necessary to provid free will.
Yep - you gave quotes from somebody that said there might have been a mass migration to the new world from Mesopotamia. No evidence, no proof and not even a definitive statement that it happened. Just that it might have. Well, there might have been rock monsters coming out a volcano that did it all, too, but I rather doubt it. The world is full of "maybes", but that doesn't mean a single one happened. And I have never seen an "expert" in anything (except theology) that has ever made a definitive statement that a god was necessary for anything man has ever seen or experienced.
"The big gap I'm speaking of is the total lack of an explanation for the will that drives life. I didn't say evolution can't have brought it about."
OK - evolution, a naturally occurring process that we see happening could have caused the will to live. Why propose a god that did it then? No need at all to make such a wild supposition, so why do it, and doubly so when you can't show it is even possible? Because in our ignorance we can't point to the gamma ray that changed the DNA string we haven't found in the animal we haven't seen to give that will to live? Ignorance is never a reason to make up answers that cannot be shown to be true.
"What I said is that that will to live had to be there from the beginning."
Why? How many times has life occurred without that will and promptly died off? You don't know? Then why do you say it never happened? Upon what are you basing the statement that it didn't?
"You have the same lack of evidence that you're claiming I have, yet you still think you're right in thinking this is yet another quality that evolved. "
Except that we know, can observe and even cause, evolution. We can't find either the god you propose or it's universe. After thousands of years of searching (and false claims) we still can't find it, and can't even find events attributable only to a god. Which, then, is more reasonable? An answer we KNOW happens or a proposal that we can never know if true or not?But you're looking for just violence. There's a whole host of behaviors, violence being one of a few. Male dominance is another. Class stratification is another. Pointing to one instance of violence isn't finding evidence of free will. And yes, when your evaluating human behavior and it's various changes throughout the history of humanity, that's exactly what you do. You look at the overall picture.
We're looking for a psychological change, based on the observation of behavior, not directly observed, but rather observed through evidence. In any of the behavioral sciences (psychology, sociology, etc) it's heavily statistical. Because the mind itself can't be observed. You're not dealing with an observable/physical thing. You're dealing with something else.
The problem with evolution being the cause of the will to live is that evolution requires the will to live to work. So you have to somehow have evolution without all the necessary components there yet. That's the problem with your theory. The will to live is what sets apart those who are capable and those who are not. If you're capable, but not willing, then you still don't propagate your genes. So while you can assume any characteristic is the result of evolution, where the will to live is concerned there's a complication. So how does this evolve without a will compelling life to live already existing?
And I'm basing that conclusion on simple reason and logic. To be successful in the game of evolution, you have to be capable to do what needs to be done to survive. If you're capable, but not compelled by a will to do so, you still lose. It's really very simple. Your own body has a will beyond the control of your own, to live. If you don't believe me just try to hold your breath. Your body will force you to breathe.
Just because we can observe or cause evolution, doesn't mean it's the answer to everything. Any characteristic you can put in the vernacular of evolution and "explain" it. Even if it isn't true. No evidence, just say it evolved. It proved successful in survival, so it evolved. Done. No evidence, nothing. Right or wrong. Who knows for sure?Violence? What violence? There is no violence in making art work or jewelry. There is no violence inherent in living in larger groups or in mating with Neanderthal. You're creating red herrings that have nothing to do with the topic of free will existing 20,000 years before the gods gifted man with it.
Evolution doesn't require the will to live - species without it die off just as evolution predicts they will. If anything it is yet another example of those forces work. That we find that desire (to live) in all existing life today (does a plant have a will to live?) is exactly what one would expect after countless generations of evolution - another piece of the puzzle that fits perfectly. And like everything else, it evolves beginning with a mutation from one source or another.
Exactly - you're understanding! Without the will to live, when in competition with those that DO have that will, your species will die. And we no longer have any of those species among us, just as our understanding of the process predicts. So what's the problem? That ignorance of the individual first having that will is unknown?There you go. You're assuming a truth with no evidence whatsoever, and deeming that it "fits". Sure, it makes sense that the will to live is just some genetic trait, and that anything that doesn't have it doesn't live. Sure, makes sense. The problem is you could use the same explanation for just about anything, whether it's true or not. It's a good theory. But there's no evidence. We can't even measure a will to live. Like what you were saying. Does a plant have a will to live? Well, yes, they move much slower, but if you watch their movements they most definitely have a will. They just move through growth rather than muscle.
The problem is that the will to live has to be there FIRST, before evolution works. Understand? That will that compels things to act, if it isn't there, nothing survives. So how is something able to evolve up to the point that this necessary will randomly mutates? Until then, no adaptation matters because there's no will to compel the animal to take action. That's the problem. That's why this one thing, above probably all else, most likely isn't the result of evolution. Because evolution itself doesn't happen until the will to live exists. Therefore it can't be the result of evolution because it's part of the cause.
Violence is what was given as examples that "disproved" my theory. Violence and social stratification. BuddiNsense also gave the Natufians as examples of social stratification before the period I'm speaking of, but from what I've read that seems to be in contention.... http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/Archeology
