The Bible Gods Word or Mans (page 4)

James Mixon

Maybe the earth is the insane asylum for the universe.

fulltimestudent

This is a response to the part of azor's request for thoughts on the statement that:

"The Bible for the first time introduces a singular monotheistic god."

I think it is more honest to say that, the proto-jews, believed in one god (yahweh) who was their god, and who they considered to the "true god," that is, a 'real' god as opposed to 'unreal,' or 'false' gods who did not really exist. A re-reading of first Kings ch.18 regarding the contest between Elijah and the priests of Baal surely demonstrates that.

The texts claim that this 'real' god revealed himself to Israel's forbears, and continually demonstrated his 'realness' through his dealings with the one family who worshipped him as their own god.

However, that idea is not supported by facts. Professor Mark Damen (Utah State University) calls attention to a wider possibility.

The concept of monotheism has deep roots in Western Civilization, reaching as far back in time as the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt, well before the formation of the ancient state of Israel or the advent of Christianity. - Reference: http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320hist&civ/chapters/10AKHEN.htm

He is (as that page makes clear) talking about the "new" religious teachings of Akhenaten, an Egyptian Pharaoh of the fourteenth century BCE, likely before the formation of any Israelite nation.

To what extent there was a prior discussion is unknown, as is the spread of the idea after the reinstatement of orthodoxy in Egypt.

We also know the concept of a supreme god was spreading among Greek thinkers at the time of Plato, that quite possibly primed the way for the success of early Christianity.

EndofMysteries

Maybe the earth is the insane asylum for the universe.

I've had a similar thought on one of my many ideas. One of them is this, that Earth is hell, all on Earth were once spirit creatures and we are all being punished. The dense darkness in the bible is the darkness we have in not knowing where we are from, doing, and what's going on. If we are eternally punished then nonstop born again. Or could be a humbling experience, our memories wiped until we become 'good' and then allowed out in the next life, etc.

fulltimestudent

The BIG mistake that bible believers make is to think that the bible is the only record of ancient philosphical discussion on the universe.

May I recommend an ancient, long (verse) discussion called, "On the Nature of the Universe," by a first century BCE. writer known as Lucretius. You can download one translation at: http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.html

Some parts of that discourse, are of course, "way out there," but think of this statement in his Book One, around verses 480.

"Material objects are of two kinds, partly atoms
And partly also compounds formed from atoms."

Lucretius, was of course, influenced by the concept of atomism, developed by early Greek thinkers known as the first philosophers (or, the Pre-socratics)

(See also the Oxford World Classic publication, The First Philosopher-The Presocratics and the Sophists - Robin Wakefield)

Atoms of course, cannot be seen, but these thinkers were able to conceptualise their existence,

For convenience I let the Wikipedia entry expand that thought:

Atomism (from Greek ἄτομον, atomon, i.e. "uncuttable", "indivisible"[1][2][3]) is a natural philosophy that developed in several ancient traditions. The atomists theorized that nature consists of two fundamental principles: atom and void. Unlike their modern scientific namesake in atomic theory, philosophical atoms come in an infinite variety of shapes and sizes, each indestructible, immutable and surrounded by a void where they collide with the others or hook together forming a cluster. Clusters of different shapes, arrangements, and positions give rise to the various macroscopic substances in the world.[4][5]
References to the concept of atomism and its atoms are found in ancient India and ancient Greece. In India the Jain,[6][7] Ajivika and Carvakaschools of atomism may date back to the 4th century BCE.[8] The Nyaya and Vaisheshika schools later developed theories on how atoms combined into more complex objects.[9] In the West, atomism emerged in the 5th century BCE with Leucippus and Democritus.[10] Whether Indian culture influenced Greek or vice versa or whether both evolved independently is a matter of dispute.[11]
The particles of chemical matter for which chemists and other natural philosophers of the early 19th century found experimental evidence were thought to be indivisible, and therefore were given the name "atom", long used by the atomist philosophy

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism

So right up to our time, that thought was held to be true.

Only now, some 2500 years after the presocraticthinkers, were humans able to examine the basic building blocks of matter and find that atoms were in fact, divisible.

Continuing the Wikipedia entry:

However, in the 20th century, the "atoms" of the chemists were found to be composed of even smaller entities: electrons, neutrons, and protons, and further experiments showed that protons and neutrons are made of quarks. Although the connection to historical atomism is at best tenuous,elementary particles have thus become a modern analog of philosophical atoms, despite the misnomer in chemistry.

The bible is left for dead by those thinkers.

James Mixon

EndofMysteries: You never know, your idea is more plausible then the bible.

Tenacious

If God did not exist, how does one explain how thanks to the perfectly positioned Moon the Earth is tilted just slightly enough to give us the four seasons? How about the Coriolis effect which allows for rest and night/day? And also how this effect allows for the water cycle in order to keep the land watered and humans can grow food? How about the Moon and how it affects the oceanic tides? How about not having the moon and seeing our days shrink down to about 8 hours instead of 24? How about the moon providing just enough light for us to see at night?How about gravity and keeping us on the ground? How about the Earth being perfectly positioned away from the Sun so that we don't either burn up or freeze to death? How about our bodies and how they are perfectly controlled by the brain? Our circulatory, vascular, and organ systems? How is it that all of these things are fully automatic without us having to do anything? How about the amazing way the kidney's function in filtering the impurities from our blood? There are many more things that point to someone having designed it and created it.

With all due respect, everything points to an intelligent creator.

azor

Thank you fulltimestudent for the source material. I will be delving into it over the weekend.

Tenacious I had this same discussion with my wife the other day so your thoughts are fresh on my mind. If their is an intelligence behind all of this what is the intelligence that made that intelligence? Which requires greater faith believing a house was built by itself over millennia or the maker of that house just appeared or had no beginning. The ridiculous thought of god not having a beginning would keep me up at night as a kid.

I will no longer believe without evidence. I have been burned for far too long and almost lost what was most precious to me because of wanting to believe without evidence. Never again and I hope others do not continue in a course of willing blindness. Because it comes at a great cost.

Finkelstein

......and how most of all the living animals and fish having to eat other livng fish or other animals to survive and reproduce and then slowly weaken deteriorate and die.

......and how about all deadly asteroids smashing into other physical planetary objects like earth , one so deadly that when it did hit it wiped out just about all living things on earth.

Or perhaps the fact that all stars In the universe eventually die out leaving a black a hole in space, which just like are own sun will eventually die out into the distant future.

So you see there are many examples of an intelligent designer or creator.

You just have to use a logical and rational thinking open mind and look and see exactly how this world is made up.

truthseeker100

Tenacious the observable universe is a very violent and disordelly place. Just because there is some sembalence of order we observe in our neck of the woods does not indicate inteligent design. Would an inteligent designer create an ebola virus or engineer the spanish influenza outbreak of 1919? Why design the earth's orbit with a slight wobble(precession) that causes ice ages? Why design a meteor impact that wiped out the dinasours?

Not everyones kidneys or brain function works properly for example.

How come some people die so young others seem to go on and on. The list just goes on and on.

JamesThomas

The Bible Gods Word or mans???

In our heart we all know the answer; yet our mind (where we look) is confused.

If words that are written or spoken -- divide us and so cause conflict, war, pain and strife, then they are not from the Source which unites us one and all.

What we seek is here, within, now; and not in a book, but we always look and seek outwards in words and thoughts rather than that which silently sees.

The Bible Gods Word or Mans

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