Slashdot Mirror
Google Brings the Dead Sea Scrolls To the Digital Age
skade88 writes "Google has been working to bring many old manuscripts to the internet at high resolution for all to see. From their announcement: 'A little over a year ago, we helped put online five manuscripts of the Dead Sea Scrolls—ancient documents that include the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence. Written more than 2,000 years ago on pieces of parchment and papyrus, they were preserved by the hot, dry desert climate and the darkness of the caves in which they were hidden. The Scrolls are possibly the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century. Today, we're helping put more of these ancient treasures online. The Israel Antiquities Authority is launching the Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, an online collection of some 5,000 images of scroll fragments, at a quality never seen before.'"
I've been typing recaptchas every day like a maniac for years. Where are they offering these works I helped digitize?
Iron Age.
FIFY
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The stories in the scrolls seem more like fables to explain wtf they saw like the ones about the war between angels. I wouldnt discount them as pure fiction, but I wouldnt rationalize modern day wars and crusades based on them either.
The unfortate thing is you really need a degree in hebrew to use the site, otherwise you take whatever little snippets and driblets there are at face value. I wish I had 10 years of theological knowledge and hebrew to go along with my strong background in IT, and military, and general understanding of science. It would make for some great inspiration for some wonderful sci-fi =P
P.S. we kill eachother and do stupid shit, not because of the words and the information, its because of the un-enlightened way in which we percieve and try to control the use of this information.
Rather than reading fables, I would prefer to see some of the manuscripts from Leonardo Da Vinci. Now, that would be something interesting and worth spending my time with!
Mostly Aramaic. Hebrew in the older stuff.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I can't find the percentage of identified vs. unidentified, but among the identified scrolls:
40% are copies of text from the Hebrew Bible
30% are copies of texts not canonized in the Hebrew Bible (i.e. fanfiction) from the Second Temple Period like the Books of Enoch, Jubilees, Tobit, Sirach, and additional psalms
30% are "sectarian manuscripts" - texts that describe rules or a set of beliefs held by certain groups within Judaism.
Dont know if we are smarted but there certainly a lot more self rightious, intolarent, and judgemental folkes around, specially on this here internet. May God have mercy on your soul.
More like bronze age, actually. Mideast bronze age ends 1200BC, as opposed to 600BC in Europe... Jewish scriptures changed tremendously during the Babylonian captivity, which indeed occurred around 600BC (it basically blended in ideas from Zoroastrianism, chiefly the ideas of angels, demons, hell, and basically morality and good vs evil; and its final written form got written around then), but the general ideas of judaism had been around for far older than the end of the mideast bronze age.
Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Nabataean
Hard to believe, but many, many people still believe the stories told in these documents are the literal word of God
I don't know a lot of religions where the sacred book is advertised as containing the literal word of God. Most are (allegedly) God-inspired. The closer you get from the "source" is with the Q'ran because it was never translated - however it was written from memory by followers of Muhammad so if this was a CSI episode one would have to admit that the chain of evidence is somehow broken.
In any event by suggesting that those books are *not* inspired by God (which according to current scientific knowledge may or may not exist) you are taking a position that is not supported by established facts, therefore promoting yourself a "fable". If you want to drape yourself in the cloth of Science make sure you follow its basic tenets. Hypothesis are only the 2nd step in the scientific method.
lucm, indeed.
I noticed the little watermark DRM in the corner of the scrolls, so I'd say we're just as stupid.
Mod parent up. If these fragments were truly the word of god, then surely they would contain useful information that would increase our knowledge of the world/universe and would remain true even today. Instead, we get re-worked fables plagiarized from other sources, tribal customs codified into law, doomsday prophecies, and rants against various enemies (all of which the old testament is full of).
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
You over-simplify how the bible came up to be. It was a much more complex and rich proccess then "explaining things they didn't understand".
Claiming that means diminishing the accomplishments of our ancestors, and disses on one of the pillars of Western culture.
Thanks both for your input on the languages.
The Scrolls are possibly the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century.
Atlantis was discovered hundreds of times during the 20th Century. Surely that adds up to more than a single discovery of some scrolls.
On a serious note, I'm skeptical of the claim anyway. We discovered entire civilizations we never previously knew existed, and a great number of unknown texts, entire unknown languages and writing systems, etc.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Hard to believe, but many, many people still believe the stories told in these documents are the literal word of God, rather than things that our Bronze Age ancestors cooked up to explain things they didn't understand and keep the population in line. Hopefully, at some future point, we will evolve beyond such fables and things like this will be an archeological curiosity, and nothing more.
Even harder to believe that an A/C passed up on an opportunity for a First Post for some mere boilerplate trolling.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You don't need to speak Hebrew - everything has been translated and annotated. It's an easy Google to get the documents online, Penguin Books has a 7th edition of a complete translation. There isn't anything in the scrolls that would be of special interest to sci-fi (at least, no more than a standard Old Testament/collection of apocrypha).
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I don't know a lot of religions where the sacred book is advertised as containing the literal word of God.
I don't know of a lot of religions, but I sure know a lot of people that believe that.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Hopefully, at some future point, we will evolve beyond such fables and things like this will be an archeological curiosity, and nothing more.
I thought that was the whole point of digitizing them? Look, even the US Constitution and things like Copyright Law have become worth nothing of value to any but archaeologists -- They need to be updated to remain relevant. The difference is that legal documents are ideas, they can be changed easily, but religions are based on beliefs that typically can't easily be changed without destroying the religion.
With a good solid reference to look back on, as time goes on the unchangable ideas become less relevant -- Some are worth 3/5ths of a man; Information Scarcity Laws; Homosexuality is evil. At some point new comers are too rational to believe in things that are so dissonant with reality. Without a solid record to reflect on anyone can change history and cling to the other tangential outmodded ideas longer.
It's already happening, many "believers" I've met, even priests, have told me they don't believe in everything that's in the religious texts -- They're quick to provide their own interpretations to match the times -- Much like the content industry says "a limited time" can mean copyright of three generations of humans, or how the Supreme Court says "congress shall make no law" doesn't apply to the Internet -- They can't do this forever. Not too many devout followers of Zeus around nowadays, eh? The same will happen to the other religions, they'll be taken just as serious as one who says they believe in ancient Greek / Roman gods. The same will happen to our laws as well. It's a law of natural selection: Anything that can not adapt to its environment becomes extinct; This applies to ideas as well as organisms.
To answer your question:
"The easiest form of parochialism to fall into is to assume that we are smarter than the past generations, that our thinking is necessarily more sophisticated. This may be true in science and technology, but not necessarily so in wisdom."
That quote is from the introduction to this brilliant essay: "Macaulay on Copyright"
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/25/1345/03329
> Hopefully, at some future point, we will evolve beyond such fables ...
Stories will never go away. Why? What is the purpose of a story? To teach a moral -- it doesn't matter if the story historically happened or not IF you learn the lesson.
Besides, the disciple Peter already commented on how scriptures should be used that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam continues to ignore:
The allegorical nature of scipture:
The contradictions in the scriptures:
The prophets were sent to the spiritual immature minded:
So you are saying that the apostle Paul who wrote most of the new testament wrote it to keep the population in line? Despite the fact that he had no sort of govermental or leadership role outside of the church and was in fact put under house arrest by the Roman government. That argument doesn't make sense.
Mod parent up. If these fragments were truly the word of god, then surely they would contain useful information that would increase our knowledge of the world/universe and would remain true even today. Instead, we get re-worked fables plagiarized from other sources, tribal customs codified into law, doomsday prophecies, and rants against various enemies (all of which the old testament is full of).
[emphasis mine]
Your claim probably makes sense to a lot of people in modern industrialized societies, but actually depends on a lot of assumptions about what a god would want.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Interesting that you don't think the information of not murdering, not cheating on people, not lying to people and loving your enemy is not useful information. It also tells how to beat death which you would think is significant also. Aren't these things true for today still?
What are the other sources that you believe it's plagiarized from? As the article says this is one of the earliest known pieces of writing.
Mod parent and GP DOWN. There's nothing in either post that says anything about the Bible and what people actually, truly believe and instead simply reinforce a blatant stereotype by ignorant people about what's really in the Bible. The reality is there are a few nutjobs out there that take is the literal truth, and there are quite a few people who don't really care, but instead read the stories and see them as a guideline in how to live their own life, as it's meant to be.
There are hard core leftists that refer to all conservatives as "little Eichmann's", and those that believe that violent protest against modern police forces is a valid form of protest. They are a minority and do not define many leftist movements or people, just as the crackpot religious folk who take the Bible as truth do not define all Christians.
Uh oh, turning burdens of proof around again!?!
I say the Easter Bunny wrote all those books! But he stole most of it from the FSM. All just as plausible as any other fairy tales. Without proof of existence all the gods are just like any other imaginary character.
Hard to believe, but many, many people still believe the stories told in these documents are the literal word of God, rather than things that our Bronze Age ancestors cooked up to explain things they didn't understand and keep the population in line. Hopefully, at some future point, we will evolve beyond such fables and things like this will be an archeological curiosity, and nothing more.
Even harder to believe that an A/C passed up on an opportunity for a First Post for some mere boilerplate trolling.
I don't know if there's a god, but if there is.... he's one sick bastard.
"...at a quality never seen before.'"
With the exception of when I saw them at the Royal Ontario Museum.
At a quality never seen before *online* maybe
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
In the US, as of 2011, 3 in 10 people believe the Bible is the literal word of God. 49% believe it is inspired by God.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Given the scrolls were hoarded by religious zealots for decades, I assume that any interesting scrolls (that say, for example, that Mary had a husband) have been hidden safely away from the public by now.
The trouble is not that they believe but that they're also very ready to discriminate, abuse, hate and kill. So my question would be, are we more humane?
By useful information, I meant something that would helped helped people living in that era improve their quality of life. For instance, scientific or medical information (cures for common diseases would have been nice) instead of the ritualistic rubbish found in Leviticus. Do you really need some religion to tell you that murdering, rape, stealing, etc. is wrong? IIRC the story of the garden of Eden comes from Mesopotamia and is something the Hebrews picked up during the exile. The Epic of Gilgamesh (which is older than Genesis) contains a remarkably similar flood myth.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
If it does not liberalize the "Who is a Jew" definition under the Law of Return, why bother.
Agreed with your first point 100%.
To comment on the your second point. It is a fact that the Torah was "plagiarized" from other sources:
* The Noahic flood comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh.
* The 10 commandments come from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, chapter 125. That is 9 out of the 10.
But who cares _where_ a _good_ law comes from if it is for the benefit of society. Only arm-chair critics! We have had the wheel for thousands of years but people don't get into a pissing contest about who invented / discovered it.
They also adopted Zoroastrian monotheism. Prior to this, Yhvh was the local tribal patron god, in a monopolar paganism. The term is henotheism.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Despite the fact that gods are a product of the human mind, the worshiper if forbidden from knowing the mind of God, which is a very neat trick that effectively prevents the worshiper from engaging in introspection. This god that lives as a mental construct inside the head of the worshiper is as "real" as any other perception, it's a human personality that manages the universe, it's not necessarily a benevolent personality, it might enjoy trolling humans via works such as the bible, maybe that's why it created us, perhaps we're its troll food and all the other gods are its sockpuppets. Their belief is not rational it's emotional, logic is not the cure, introspection and self-skepticisim is, only through these "self help" acts will the absurdity of one's religion/ideology become apparent to oneself.
Disclaimer: I have experienced vivid audio and visual hallucinations (from lack of sleep and severe dehydration), I have no doubt "god talks" to people.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
god wants steak.
oh wait, that's dog. I confused the owt.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
An ethical code is probably more important in some ways than a lot of scientific knowledge. Granted the ethical code may be messed up. However the emphasis of what is important or not is a tough subject in itself.
While we don't need religion to tell us that murder is wrong, perhaps we do need something to tell us other things. For instance, what tells us that charity is good? I have coworkers who have told me that I'm stupid for giving money to charities, which says to me that it's basic ethical ideas are not clear to even modern people in modern societies. Even something simple like "treat others how you'd like to be treated yourself" is a new concept to far too many people today.
Look at new testament for other examples, where instead of just saying that murder is wrong it says that even thinking about murder is also wrong, one's internal actions can be just as important as external actions. Other religions and ethical structures also have the same idea. Modern psychology could also tell us this but I don't think it would have as big an impact.
We have had the wheel for thousands of years but people don't get into a pissing contest about who invented / discovered it.
its either apple or samsung. one of those.
(what??)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I actually read the Bible cover to cover twice and I was not impressed. What "good" ethical advice there is in there can likely be found through other sources (Stoic philosophy and tenets of Buddhism) and the rest of it I want nothing to do with.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
Or, maybe things like the "quality of life" are actually not as important as we think they are.
It might be worth at least skimming a translation of the scrolls before forming a strong opinion about their content and value.
Yeah I know what site this is, and I'm not new here.
Something I think is worth keeping in mind....Just as there is ignorance now that rivals ancient ignorance, there was also intelligence in ancient times that rivals the best the modern world has to offer. Though its true that religious writings are largely fiction, a lot of very intelligent people worked on them, and there is significant understanding mixed in unevenly with the nonsense.
Modern academics are very good at understanding subjects where the same observations consistently yield the same statistical distribution of results. They're even better at studying things that can be perturbed in a controlled way, and dynamics that can be modeled well mathematically. They're generally very bad at understanding anything else. Many go so far as to assert that if a phenomena can't be modeled in a predictive way then for practical purposes it doesn't even exist. In this manner they ignore everything they're not good at solving. In my experience some ancient scriptures describe discoverably real aspects of life that modern experts are mostly ignorant of.
I didn't find much of interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but a lot of that is just me personally, it doesn't mean there's nothing there for anyone. Other old writings such as in the Nag Hammadi discovery have a lot of interesting content though, notwithstanding that they're not trustworthy as standards of truth. And I don't mean interesting from a historical perspective, I mean there is insight there that can not be found elsewhere.
Uh oh, turning burdens of proof around again!?!
I say the Easter Bunny wrote all those books! But he stole most of it from the FSM. All just as plausible as any other fairy tales. Without proof of existence all the gods are just like any other imaginary character.
Unless you live in France, the burden of proof is always on the accuser. So if you want to get your panties in a bunch because some people believe in God, you need some kind of evidence that they are wrong, it's not the other way around.
Your personal belief that there is no God is not a fact (unless someone is writing an article about you) and therefore does not qualify as evidence. This belief is shared by about 10% of the American population (14% world-wide) so that makes you part of a minority. Which means that even if the existence of God was to be decided by a jury, by an election or by an "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" process, odds are that God would win.
lucm, indeed.
They do contain useful information, increasing our knowledge of central issues of existence. That you do not acknowledge, within your framework of evaluation, their value, doesn't actually matter at all. Get Naturally Deselected, become totally irrelevant, and we'll move on.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
"Correlation does not imply causation" is a clear concept here at Slashdot--unless the topic is religion. In that case, any broad correlation is fully sufficient to demonstrate that Worldview X "stole" its concepts from Worldview Y.
But, let's get serious. Cite your primary-source documents, showing even the level of correlation, so that the evaluation of independent individuals, rather than your dogmatic posturing, can evaluate their relevance within the context of -overall- similarity.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Your claim probably makes sense to a lot of people in modern industrialized societies, but actually depends on a lot of assumptions about what a god would want.
It may well be that the god in question is an aquatic creature whose only interest lies in counting numbers from 0 to infinity and enjoying the silence of depths. Such a god would indeed command us to do things that we'd never guess. However what use such a god would be for us if we do not share anything with him? If he commands us to go and jump into the water, shall we?
In practice, most (if not all) gods are somewhat homomorphic, and they pretend to be either the parents of the humankind or at least someone who is related to us. They exhibit human characteristics like anger and jealousy. This means that a modern god should be somewhat understandable by his believers. Even the Christian god is declared to be all-loving and such, as if anyone could know for sure. All the facts are, actually, against such a theory - the loving god has a very strange way of expressing his love, from fields of war to schools in small towns. You will find far more miracles in the old Star Trek, where they don't matter, than in real life - where they do.
...whether you know it or not.
Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like."
Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a righteous angel."
Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."
Thomas said to him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like."
Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out."
And he took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"
Thomas said to them, "If I tell you (even) one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up."
--Thomas
We know you better than you think.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Why is it that most successful people believe in God
I wouldn't call myself entirely unsuccessful - and I don't believe in gods of any sort. I know other people who are also doing OK, and they have no need for an invisible man in the sky to guide their hand. IMO, successful people are successful not because they pray a lot but because they work a lot. This independence is an obstacle for many religious notions. The typically high IQ of successful people is yet another problem for religionists.
But if you have some specific religious and successful people (self-made, not inheritors!) in mind, then they have to face the Pascal's Wager. Those guys have a lot to lose. But a small candle and 15 minutes as a gratitude for another $1B in profits or for another year of good health is a small price to pay.
Besides, the disciple Peter already commented on how scriptures should be used that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam continues to ignore:
Depends on which subset you are referencing. Origen of Alexandria, as one of the "fathers" of the Christian Church, was arguing for allegorical interpretation of Genesis in the second century AD. I wouldn't form your notion of the demographics based on Bishop Ussher's 17'th century error and the subsequent Straw Men characterizations issuing lately primarily from Dawkins et al. History simply isn't one of science "stepping in" and correcting the supposed universal Christian error of Young Earth Creationism. History just didn't happen that way.
Overall, though, interesting post.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
People then thought that what they wrote on especially expensive, meant to last a very long time material was very, very important information. They took great strides to ensure those writings would be preserved for future mankind. Now that's us who can benefit from whatever can be discerned from it. Perhaps taking a smug, dismissive attitude that today we know far more than they knew then might turn out to be very short sighted on our part. Why not wait until their meaning is fully known and understood before taking such a superior stance?
Or, maybe things like the "quality of life" are actually not as important as we think they are.
That would depend on what your definition of 'quality of life' is. For some it's having material possessions. Others, helping fellow humans or animals. Might mean discovering the unknown for some. Or to be happy. Some take a lifelong pursuit of the divine. Whatever floats your boat.
By useful information, I meant something that would helped helped people living in that era improve their quality of life. For instance, scientific or medical information (cures for common diseases would have been nice)...
And if God came to you today and told you that curing cancer is as simple as inverting the deflector dish and using a tachyon pulse generator connected to a Heisenberg compensator to reverse the quantum polarity of the cancer cells, would that be helpful?
So it DOES say "blessed are the cheesemakers".
I thought so.
The burden of proof with respect to the existence of God is always on the theist, not the atheist.
And no, I am not an atheist.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
I am quite well aware of Origen's position. :-) Sadly, too many modern-day Christians think they know the gospel better then a 2nd century scholar!
For the benefit of other readers you are referring to:
- Origen - Huet., Prigeniana, 167 Franck, p. 142
This theme is repeated over and over by those who understood the literal, allegorical, and spiritual multi-dimensional nature of the scriptures:
Paul states that "their minds were blinded" by God, "for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament⦠even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart" (2 Cor 3:14-15 KJV).
Theologians Moses Maimonedes says the same thing:
And more importantly, Rabbi Simeon:
completely incorrect
Science
fact
These words do not mean what you think they mean.
... generous interpretation I can come up with.
I love systems that give rise to emergent behaviour at sufficient levels of complexity. I have no problem seeing the interactions of people as giving rise (having already started to give rise?) to something like this. I'm not sure if that's what you mean by a 'spirit of consciousness', but it's the most
In any event calling that 'god' is ignoring the very different definition of that word that most people have and comes across as dishonest. I would be interested in a citation or link to what you are claiming as 'fact'.
Does this mean we can stop Catholicism from spreading lies and untruths with their edited version of the Bible which makes an idol/demi-god out of a certain anarchist that lived 2k years ago?
The ritualistic stuff in Leviticus was to insure it got taught to the next generation as it made it seem important to their souls survival in the afterlife, and there was a lot in there about health for example the ban on pork could be so tha they would not get trichinosis. It also banned marring of close relatives which is definitely good thing for genetic diversity and over all populations health, (that one was obviously good I mean look a pharaonic Egypt where the ruling family married siblings and cousins to keep a pure bloodline which left them with debilitating health problems). It baned polygamy and sex out side of monogamous marriage which is great for a society that lack condoms and has no other way to stop std's from spreading let alone detect or treat them. Leviticus also contains much in the way of basic sanitation and on personal hygiene, very useful for bronze age society that lacks soap that had recently escaped enslavement where they were treated like animals. It also implemented a justice system and basic legal structure and common system of shared ethics that we can all agree on (don't steal don't murder). all necessary for the building blocks for "modern" society.
if you tried to explain any of the real causes behind diseases or give them medical/scientific information they would think you a nutter. (you tell them the water down stream of the latrine has little bugs in it that will get inside of them and make them sick the would look in the water not see bugs and say your crazy, you make it a decree that their immortal soul is in the balance and the will pay attention)
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
All religions are clearly instigated by Loki - Father of Lies, Sower of Strife.
He delights in telling different lies to different groups to trick them info fighting.
Just one look at the world proves Loki is real.
Literally two thirds of the people you meet have no idea how to use that word correctly.
god wants steak.
oh wait, that's dog. I confused the owt.
Have you heard the one about the agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac who lies in bed awake at night wondering is there is a dog?
Macaroni pictures.
If these fragments were truly the word of god, then surely they would contain useful information that would increase our knowledge of the world/universe and would remain true even today
The geek's notion of "useful information" usually translates as "isolated facts devoid of all meaningful connections."
The geek ought at least to know that a great of truth is embedded in the stories we tell and teach to our children. They do not survive three millennia without a reason.
hehe ;-)
The iPod wheel was brilliant.
The closer you get from the "source" is with the Q'ran because it was never translated - however it was written from memory by followers of Muhammad so if this was a CSI episode one would have to admit that the chain of evidence is somehow broken.
Not quite. The verses of the Quran was in fact transcribed word for word during the time of Muhammad. It was later compiled and the script standardised after Muhammad's death.
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
Nice. Finally, I have the sense that I can Slashdot-retire. ;)
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
"It baned polygamy and sex out side of monogamous marriage"
No it did not. Fucking liar.
Leviticus wasn't even around before the final conquest of the southern kingdom either.
When Judah existed there was Deuteronomy.
If you look at the old testament law, a lot of it was pretty useful for survival outside of religion.
Of course you've got the basic ethical principles (don't steal, don't murder, etc.) but then you've got things that their value is not apparently obvious such as don't eat pork. Why pork? Well for one undercooked pork can more easily make you sick than many "kosher" animals. For another pigs aren't exactly the best animals to keep in the desert because they tend to need a lot of water and are best kept in the mud, two things that the Middle East doesn't exactly have a lot of. You've got prohibitions against marrying family members, a pretty good idea to help strengthen genetic diversity at a time when genes were not understood. You've also got basic sanitation. You've got prohibitions against eating animals that could carry diseases. You've got quarantining of people who could carry diseases. Etc.
If you read through Leviticus you can see a whole lot of useful things for the Jews during that era. Of course it isn't presented as "don't eat pork because you'll get Trichinosis" but its all quite useful.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
as i recall the first five are said to be written by Mosses before the kings of Israel and before therefore the split into Judah and Israel after Solomon died thus long before the conquest of the southern kingdom
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
The goddess Eostre/Eastre/Ostara was a goddess in countries that did not have rabbits when she was divine. The rabbits were only spread by the Roman empire who farmed them in a process they called cuniculture (lovely word).
The goddess Easter had no rabbit. The Easter Bunny did not exist.
Yes, and standardised in Kufic script which didn't show vowels. Some words could be read in different ways, nothing too major though.
Nice. Finally, I have the sense that I can Slashdot-retire. ;)
"Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine ..."
First would be defining God. Probably 300 million definitions just in America. Locally God is traditionally defined as a Western Red Cedar (Arborvitae) tree which obviously does exist, can supply many actual needs and will smite you if you don't show the right respect when cutting one down. So as long as we all agree that God is a Cedar tree you're right that God is a fact and the vast majority of people when confronted by a tree will agree that it exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Is goat skin really that expensive in a goat herding society?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
The whole idea is that you learn the language so you can understand the subtleties of it yourself. Many things get lost in translation and interpretation, so you would gain by learning the language.
If you wouldn't do that, you could just as well buy any modern bible and state "it's exactly the same". Given the enormous amount of religions based on stories in these scrolls, they are relevant to a large amount of people. Remember that these religions differ and have gone to war about the interpretation of the stories in these scrolls for the last two thousand years or so. Stating that you don't need to learn the original language because "everything has been translated and annotated" is, in my opinion, the worst advice you could give to someone regarding these scrolls. Their discovery and the discussion about their translation has been one of the most controversial "scientific" discussions in the last few decades of several related religions, Christianity and more precise, Catholicism.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Salva nos, Domine, vigilantes, custodi nos dormientes
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
TV preachers and preachers in many churches, many religions, state the bible to be "the word of god". Since those people tend to be the official delegates of their respective religion, I'd say quite a lot of religions actually *do* advertise "the sacred book" (is bible a taboo word??) as the literal word of God.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
It's because you're living in the church basement and you define success as being upstairs?
"Transcribed word for word" is what the book claims it is. There are many fantasy novels that also claim to be the literal diary or words of a (fictitious) person. Robinson Crusoe comes to mind, as an example. There is no original manuscript written in verified samples of Muhammad's hand writing to directly link the contents of the book to at least his writing, be it original or a copy of previous work by someone else.
The statement that "it was later compiled and the script standardized" implies redacting by the person/people doing that very work. It may very well be that 95% of it is actually rather literal transcript of what Muhammad dictated, but we don't know which parts may, or may not be and more important, which parts have been left out. He may very well have dictated other texts that should have been part of the Q'ran in his mind, that never made it into the "final transcript".
This may sound rather heretic to any modern Muslim, but take one look at how newspapers, magazines, and books are made. Ask anyone that has been interviewed by a reporter or that dictated stories for their (auto)biography to a (ghost)writer. You can tell a story one way, but it gets published totally different, usually. That is a well known fact and it happens while people are still alive. Stories about them and what they said after they died, usually tend to be way more moral and way less literal, unless there's a funny anecdote or some "hand picked quotes" that can be used to prove a point. Things that other people write down, tend to be their interpretation of what you say, especially if you can't verify that they wrote it down correctly. If those things also get redacted, they tend to be the interpretation of what the redaction wants to get out into the world of the interpretation of someone that may or may not have written down what you have said, but probably not what you have meant to get across.
Before someone gets angry and declares a Fatwa on me (what would Jesus do?), this is my personal opinion and interpretation. I wasn't there when Muhammad dictated the Q'ran or when it was redacted after his death. It may just happen to be the full, true and literal words he wanted to be in there. I just happen to think it's not very likely that it is. Regardless of that, you should judge the book on it's contents, not on who allegedly wrote it. For the last few thousand years, that seemed to have worked just fine for Islam, so why bother with someone that questions it's author, but not it's contents?
No, I did not read the Q'ran, so no, I'm not judging it's contents. I don't think that would be fair, although it would fit the SlashDot tradition just fine. ;)
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
So the Iliad or Odyssey should be taken on the same level as the Bible (or more so, since they are actually older than the Bible)? Or the works of Plato and Aristotle? I'd rather actually have Plato and Aristotle over the Bible, less blood, less violence, and at least an attempt at reason. Not to be antagonistic, Homer, Plato, and Aristotle don't endorse archaic tribal mores to the extent that the Torah/Old Testament do.
Age and survival isn't proof of truth. Sure, there probably is some lasting content we can connect to, but that doesn't really mean the contents have a basis in reality. And just because a belief is held for a long time, doesn't mean it is more likely to be true, there were ideas from Aristotle that survived for millennia, that were later proven to be unequivocally untrue.
Yes, the Bible has some interesting morals, but not more so than hundreds of other texts that are contemporaneous, or predate it. And, sadly, there are also bits which are nothing but harmful (fueling hatred).
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
The ritualistic stuff in Leviticus was to insure it got taught to the next generation as it made it seem important to their souls survival in the afterlife
Judaism didn't have an after life when Leviticus was written. It was all about not offending the spiteful, jealous god that they worshiped back then.
While some things made sense such as the ban on pork, other things seem to have just been whimsical such as the ban on wearing cloth made out of 2 different plants (fibers). There could also have been rules against unhealthy things such as shitting close to your drinking water.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
That link was one of the best and most thought provoking speeches I have ever read about copywright. It's too bad we dont cherish and value this stuff for generations to come. I mean if someone bothered handing me that on a sheet of paper in middleschool I might have actually read it. Maybe it has taken all this time to finally understand it.
But this is doubly an argument for the value of things like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Considering the fact that the bible has for quite a long period been the combination of the local gossip rag, readers digest, encyclopedia and all other things we tend to read, store in libraries, on our hard drives, e-readers and what not, it did actually "contain useful information that would increase our knowledge of the world/universe" back in those days. Some of it is rather outdated by modern scientific discoveries, culture and such. Some of it is plain gossip, hate speech, pornography and such. Other is dietary and medical advice. Some of it is political propaganda. It may not fit the whole of our modern universe, but it more or less covered that very thing back in the days when the book was actively copied and spread as the only (hand) written collection of knowledge and stories for an entire civilization.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Jewish scriptures changed tremendously during the Babylonian captivity, which indeed occurred around 600BC (it basically blended in ideas from Zoroastrianism, chiefly the ideas of angels, demons, hell, and basically morality and good vs evil; and its final written form got written around then), but the general ideas of judaism had been around for far older than the end of the mideast bronze age.
When you write, "Jewish scriptures changed tremendously," that is a bit misleading. There were new books added to the Jewish scriptures, including prophetic works during that period. But did the nature of the Jewish faith and scripture change in the manner you indicate? It doesn't look like it. Although the snippets I quote below are instructive, the whole paper is relatively short and informative.
ZOROASTRIANISM AND BIBLICAL RELIGION - CHARLES DAVID ISBELL
. . . as Eichrodt insists, "the idea that the eschatological resurrection hope, in the form attested in the Old Testament, was influenced by Persian conceptions, can be shown by any reasonably detailed comparison to be inadmissable."
To this point, I have spoken of Persian or Zoroastrian matters as if they themselves were composed during and reflective of the Persian era of contact with the exiled Judahites (fifth-fourth centuries BCE). But they were not. In fact, the severe deficiencies in the written sources of Zoroastrianism make accurate analysis virtually impossible. No modern scholar dates Zoroaster earlier than ca. 1400 BCE, and while both Arabic and Avestan29 traditions date Zoroaster to the sixth-fifth centuries BCE, most scholars are more comfortable with a date between the two extremes; the date 1000 BCE is most widely presumed. But scholars of written literature are faced with a problem that has yet to be solved. No written materials are linked to the era of Zoroaster regardless of when he lived, and even scholars who argue that early Iranian texts are linked to ca. 1000 BCE, admit that these Gathas ["hymns" (of Zoroaster)] are so difficult that their meaning can be grasped, "only with the help of the later Zoroastrian scriptures."30
Iranian priests of the early first millennium actually rejected the use of writing for their holy beliefs, and the fact is that these beliefs existed only in oral form until the sixth century CE! And yet these written texts are the ones which Persian scholars are required to use in interpreting the teachings of Zoroaster, who lived between 1000 and 2000 years earlier. Shaul Shaked has framed the matter accurately and concisely:
All arguments about possible contacts between Israel and Iran come to the stumbling block of the problem of chronology. All detailed accounts of any aspect of Zoroastrian theology exist no earlier than in books compiled during the Sassanian period [third - seventh centuries CE] or later, after the Arab conquest of Iran.31
In short, the texts being examined in comparison to the Bible were written more than 1000 years later than the Persia with which Judahites came into contact.
Still, the larger problem with the written sources of Zoroastrianism is not their late date of composition, but rather the fact that even these late written sources present very few close parallels to biblical ideas.
In light of this chronological difficulty, it would seem to make more sense to compare Zoroastrian religious texts with talmudic literature. And even here, Neusner, the scholar with the greatest knowledge of Babylonia during the era of Sassanid rule, has concluded that what the rabbis of the Talmud knew of Zoroastrianism amounted to virtually nothing at all.
. . . Yet, it seems obvious that the claims for Zoroastrian influence on biblical doctrines have been vastly overstated. . . . it should follow that the use of late, very late, written sources of Persian theological tenets must be ruled out as evidence of any significance whatsoever regarding biblical texts. 33
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
They also adopted Zoroastrian monotheism. . . . . The term is henotheism.
The proper term is rubbish.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
God wants peace
God wants war
God wants famine
God wants chain stores
What God wants God gets
God wants sedition
God wants sex
God wants freedom
God wants semtex
What God wants God gets
God help us all
A lot of comments here are dismissing the entire idea of God but they don't seem to have really wrapped their head around 'God.' Generally, God, as known in the old and new testament, is a being...a force...a 'father' who transcends the world and the entire universe and has existed forever and will always exist. God created everything that we see including all of the laws and relationships that define our understanding of 'science.' It is the 'actions' of God that define our understanding of him in the old testament. This is the God who delivered miraculous military victories in the face of overwhelming enemies, who caused bushes to burn but not be consumed, who delivered plagues and pestilence upon enemies, who parted the sea allowing escape, and who fed a people wandering in the desert, gave them a code to live by, and provided a new land for them to live in. We can dismiss all of these events as 'fables', secure in our scientific understanding that tells us such things are 'impossible' but we cannot deny that these events were very real to people who claimed to have experienced them. Similarly, there was a man who lived in what is now Israel approximately 2,000 years ago and performed a variety of miraculous actions before returning to life following a cruel execution. We cannot deny that the events that occurred 2,000 years ago were so amazing to the people who experienced them that their lives were transformed forever and they began living according to a new 'code' that has persisted to the present and is, coincidentally, the basis for most of our current civilization and law. Finally, we cannot deny that a significant portion of the entire population of the world believes in the principles taught by that man and follows them in their daily lives. So those dusty scrolls from 2200 to 1900 years ago, found in those old caves, represent documents produced during a time of religious ferment and upheaval. We are no different than those people were. If there were a religious figure today who was giving sight to the blind, curing uncurable diseases, causing paraplegics to give up their wheelchairs, changing water into wine, multiplying food at the local Safeway by 1000x, teaching us to love others, and then returning to life to walk among us after being beheaded by evildoers, we would be just as impressed as those people were then. Of course, those who were not actually present would be just a little skeptical and their descendants even more so...but, with the power of God, they would recognize the truth for what it was...and so do we.
Mod parent up. If these fragments were truly the word of god, then surely they would contain useful information that would increase our knowledge of the world/universe and would remain true even today.
I disagree. Look at what the world was like during the time the Bible was written. Look at the level of technology, the politics, the treatment of human of human life in general. What's more important for those people: Learning how to harness the atom, or how to live a healthy and fulfilling life? What would the Romans have done with nukes? Were they at the right stage of social advancement that they would rightly fear their use? I would imagine universal themes--brotherhood, love, all that jazz--are more important than mathematics or physics. I also don't think God--if such a being even exists--would care too much about our technological progression.
Besides, there definitely are things in the Bible that still hold true to this day. Don't steal, don't murder, love thy neighbor, etc.
(Disclosure: I'm not religious, and probably never will be. I do know a lot of religious people, though, and have some devout Christians in my immediate family. No, they don't think the Bible was written by God.)
If you can't convince them, convict them.
In any event by suggesting that those books are *not* inspired by God (which is an entity defined in such a way that its existence is both unprovable, undemonstrable and unfalsifiable and, therefore, will NEVER be shown to either exist or not, regardless of the status of "current scientific knowledge") you are taking a position that is not supported by established facts, therefore promoting yourself a "fable".
FTFY.
So, basically, your logic boils down to:
1) Find/choose unprovable non-existent entity (I'll choose Santa Claus, but feel free to choose any other you prefer);
2) Wait until anyone claims the Bible is NOT written by Santa Claus;
3) Claim other people are making shit up, since they can't prove that the bible WASN'T written by Santa Claus, so whatever they might want to claim is simply a "fable", since... well... "established facts don NOT clearly support and demonstrate that Santa Claus, in fact, did NOT write the Bible";
4) ????
5) PROPHET!
So interesting and insightful (not really).
> God (which according to current scientific knowledge may or may not exist)
Science is entirely about the natural world. It does not, nor does it claim to, have any knowledge about the supernatural, or the subnatural, or if, indeed, there is any supernatural or subnatural.
It seems that you have some form of belief in supernatural beings of some form or another, such as angels, demons and gods. In my view it seems likely that most of the gods of the various fables and legends were real people who were leaders: general, kings, tribal chiefs, warlords; of some kind, or perhaps even dynasties of them (the rest were entirely fictional).
So, yes, the ancient religious writings may well have been 'inspired' by these 'gods'.
As a comparison it is interesting to examine, say, the Rastafarians. They made Ras Tafari their 'god'. Or if you look at North Korea you can see that Kim Jong Il is already regarded in much the same way that others see gods. If the country survives in a couple of hundred years the stories would be inflated to match those of many religious texts. The followers will probably have stories about how Kim Jong Il created the world and populated it with good people and how the 'devil' called Bush created all the evil people.
I also have a Master's degree in New Testament and Early Christianity from Harvard where I spent a lot of time studying them as well. I thought I would just repost what I did last year when slashdot ran an almost identical story. The questions that seem to arise when something like this is posted are perennial so I hope this answers some of yours or clarifies some things, and, as before, feel free to ask any questions you might have and I'll do my best to give a scholarly answer:
It's taken this long to publish partly for bureaucratic reasons, but mostly because there are thousands of fragments that are basically shredded wheat that had to be put back together, reconstructed, translated, categorized, edited, and published. This was also around the time the State of Israel was formed, and the cluster**** that was caused a lot of delays and red tape.They have not been kept secret, they have been steadily published in the DJD series (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert) for the last 50 years as this tremendous task has been accomplished. As someone said above, yes people were not very careful with them by today's standards, people smoked around them, drank coffee, and used the handiest invention that had just come out-"scotch tape"- to piece them together. All that said, with the exception of fragments in private collections, the last of the Dead Sea Scrolls were published in the early 90's.
This is not publishing anything new, or secret. It is being scanned and put online for the public, who doesn't have a clue what to do with them, can look at them. Scholars have known how to look at them, in the DJD, and in a half a dozen other widely available publications that have been around for decades.
Facts the dilettantes have said in these comments that have made me [face_palm]:
The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS hereafter) were composed in Qumran, not Jerusalem. (some of the stuff is clearly copies of other documents that circulated elsewhere however)
The Qumran community responsible for the scrolls existed between the 2nd century BCE and ca 70CE during the Roman war.
There is nothing in the DSS about Jesus
There are, however, certain strong affinities between things we find in the DSS and the New Testament, including the method of scripture interpretation, some apocalyptic ideas, as well as the stuff you would expect people with the same basic religion, ethnicity and geography to share
There is nothing damaging or threatening to the modern religions of Judaism and Christianity. To be sure, the DSS are of tremendous importance for contextualizing their origin and telling us what life was like back then, but this is not a conspiracy to keep them hidden.
"The Scrolls are possibly the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century"
No. Nowhere near. This statement is so inaccurate. Anyone who believes it must be retarded.
No citations or examples because there is just TOO MUCH and it's SO OBVIOUS. Do your own search if you really need proof.
It's interesting to note that when the prescribed ethical ideas don't match the current values of the middle class, cf. "ye cannot serve God and mammon", "it is easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into the kingdom of God", "you resist not evil: but whoever shall smite you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also" - then they are happily ignored.
Unless you live in France, the burden of proof is always on the accuser. So if you want to get your panties in a bunch because some people believe in God, you need some kind of evidence that they are wrong, it's not the other way around.
The burden of proof goes to the one making a positive declaration. In court, that's the accuser. Think of it another way. Religions accuse God of existing, and therefore must bear the burden of proof to support this accusation.
Your personal belief that there is no God is not a fact (unless someone is writing an article about you) and therefore does not qualify as evidence. This belief is shared by about 10% of the American population (14% world-wide) so that makes you part of a minority. Which means that even if the existence of God was to be decided by a jury, by an election or by an "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" process, odds are that God would win.
Beliefs are mere thoughts, regardless of whether they are subscribed to by a majority or a minority, and do not constitute facts or evidence. One may believe in a provable fact, but the truth of the fact does not depend one your belief.
There's thoughts and there's reality. When they disagree, in the long run, reality wins.
Excuse me, wtf r u doin?
Mod parent up. If these fragments were truly the word of god, then surely they would contain useful information that would increase our knowledge of the world/universe and would remain true even today. Instead, we get re-worked fables plagiarized from other sources, tribal customs codified into law, doomsday prophecies, and rants against various enemies (all of which the old testament is full of).
And what do you have on offer? Rants against the Bible, spurious theories already disproven, unsupported assertions, and nonsense. That isn't an improvement. . . . it isn't even competitive.
Even a fool, when he keeps silent, is considered wise;
When he closes his lips, he is considered prudent. -- Proverbs 17:28
Let your foot rarely be in your neighbor’s house,
Or he will become weary of you and hate you. -- Proverbs 25:17
It is better to live in a corner of the roof
Than in a house shared with a contentious woman. -- Proverbs 25:24
Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
Or you will also be like him. -- Proverbs 26:4
Like an archer who wounds everyone,
So is he who hires a fool or who hires those who pass by. -- Proverbs 26:10*
A fool always loses his temper,
But a wise man holds it back. -- Provers 29:11
And He said to him, “Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” 18Then he said to Him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER; YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY; YOU SHALL NOT STEAL; YOU SHALL NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS; 19HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER; and YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” -- Matthew 19:17-19
* How far we have fallen - this seems contrary to the governing philosophy and practice of most corporate and government projects.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
These were made of a combination material including metal. Sealed in clay pots.
While we don't need religion to tell us that murder is wrong,
Although arguments have been made regarding humanity's innate moral sense, I still have to ask, are you quite sure about that?
Druids Committed Human Sacrifice, Cannibalism?
Human sacrifices 'on the rise in Uganda' as witch doctors admit to rituals
Four held for kidnapping kids for human sacrifice
Nigeria: Prevalence of ritual murder and human sacrifice and reaction by government authorities (March 2000-July 2005)"
Evidence found of human sacrifice in North America
"Chilling" Child Sacrifices Found at Prehistoric Site
Many in the West cannot conceive of things being different in any way if foundations of its morality and culture are destroyed, but that is an epic mistake. Things will change, and many of the possibilities make for something that may not be nice at all.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It is claimed that the Qur'an was written down as Muhammed recited it, but that this was done by quite a few different people, each recording some bits. The assembly of these various bits into a single text took place after Muhammed's death. In any case, we have idea whether this claim is true. There is no evidence outside of Muslim tradition for the existence of the Qur'an until more than 100 years after the death of Muhammed. Even the inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock, which are from the 690s and do not clearly exhibit Muslim theology, are over 50 years after his death. This issue is hotly debated, but there is so little evidence for either the Qur'an itself or more generally for Islam during the 7th century that respectable scholars have proposed that Islam was created as the ideology of Arab imperialism and that the biography of Muhammed and the Qur'an are essentially a back story.
> The closer you get from the "source" is with the Q'ran because it was never translated
The whole Bible NT is available in the original koine greek.
> however it was written from memory by followers of Muhammad
With the Bible, the things are even worse. Nobody knows who actually wrote the core part, the gospels.
The other half of the NT, Paul's writings, which predate the gospels by a few decades, dont even mention that Jesus was somebody who actually existed outside of Paul's visions and theological concepts.
"The easiest form of parochialism to fall into is to assume that we are smarter than the past generations, that our thinking is necessarily more sophisticated. This may be true in science and technology, but not necessarily so in wisdom."
The technical term for that sentiment is "chronocentrism", but it also applies the other way around. Many conservatives, for example, have a tendency of considering the past wiser than the present just because it's the past, when proper conservatism means conserving what works and drop what doesn't so that a permanent application of critical thinking is always needed.
But I'd like to provide two more examples to yours, these from oriental religions. I didn't find the exact quotation, but Buddhism has the notion that its teachings are like the raft that helps one to cross a river: once you've crossed it, why would you take the raft on you back and go carrying it? In fact, the concept gave rise to the notion that you can have many rafts, hence the different Buddhist schools with somewhat conflicting teachings (and mythologies), each adapted to a different personality type and/or culture, and no special preoccupation about which one might be the most "literally correct'. Similarly, Shinto has the concept of "following the spirit of Great Nature", i.e., if you're actually engaged in this you don't need a hand-me-down moral code, a theology, a bare-bones doctrine or even a consistent mythology, as those are all relative to times and places and needed more by those who don't follow the path, while those who do follow the path get, by virtue of the practice, a certain instinctive understanding, conditioned by one's standing in life, of what to do (or not) at every moment.
Alas, as it happens in Western religions, lots of people either (or both) don't grasp any of this and go on very literally minded...
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Or more aptly:
"God wants dollars, God wants cents; God wants pounds, shillings and pence."
- Roger Waters, 'What God Wants'
"In any event by suggesting that those books are *not* inspired by God (which according to current scientific knowledge may or may not exist) you are taking a position that is not supported by established facts"
Two things wrong here.
The default hypothesis, the null, is that there is no such things as unicorn, faery, gods until an evidence is provided for their existence, which is why science DOES NOT look at the existence of god AT ALL, not even throwing a may or may not. It is up to the CLAIMER to provide evidence of existence. But even if you were to add god to the equation, it is still the null that every book/document were written by men and inspired by men. It would be up to the person claiming isnpiration or divine origin to provide evidence for it as the NULL is : no inspiration all human origin. There is a good reason to use the null : shift the burden of proof on the positive claimant (inspired by gods) rather than shift the burden on an impossible to prove task (was not inspired by gods).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The bible "allows" murder in the name of Yhwh, it allows for slavery and forced mariage/rape, and various other disgusting stuff (old testament) even the new testmaent has a lot of disgusting stuff like slavery, or even women being inferior and not beign allowed to speak up unless their man allow it (in chruch for example, corinthian), not even counting that it is "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife" and not , say , husband or significant other.
Furthermore the moral code do not come from bible or whatever, they were there before (ex. Amurabi code) and even before as soona s we were socially grouped, they are a Necessity for a stable society or group. Heck charity is even one of those. In small group you will be far more likely to help somebody not related to you, charity is only an extension of that, and is practised by non religious.
The bottom line is that the bible bring nothing new or special to the morality of its reader And as somebody said (was it hitchens) "show me any moral act which are practised by religious people and *ENEVER* practiced by any Atheist whatsoever". You won't find ANY such act. You are as moral as you as human are, and religion don't make you more or less moral. You will simply recognize YOUR morality INTO the religion.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It also banned marring of close relatives which is definitely good thing for genetic diversity and over all populations health
That's an innate part of human nature - to be repulsed by the thought of procreating with siblings. You don't need religion, ethics arise naturally.
It seems that you have some form of belief in supernatural beings of some form or another, such as angels, demons and gods.
Taking from my comment that I believe in God is like saying the ACLU is in favor of pedophilia because they defended NAMBLA. It's simplistic and wrong.
lucm, indeed.
With the Bible, the things are even worse. Nobody knows who actually wrote the core part, the gospels.
The other half of the NT, Paul's writings, which predate the gospels by a few decades, dont even mention that Jesus was somebody who actually existed outside of Paul's visions and theological concepts.
How the gospels were written and how the new testament was put together is a fascinating subject. There is a scholar named Bart Ehrman who did tons of book about early Christianity, the historical elements of the gospels, etc. Unfortunately this topic is a very delicate matter because many people apparently don't see a difference between a genuine historical interest and religious fanatism and lose their sh*t when the word "bible" comes up, so talking about gospels on this forum is counter-productive, which really is too bad.
lucm, indeed.
I suggest you read Asimov's "Guide to the Bible" which, as it itself states, is not original research but a collection of the data Bible researchers have put together through the years.
Well, Apple does have a patent on rounded corners and what's a wheel but a square with *VERY* rounded corners? *cue Apple suing every car manufacturer for patent infringement*
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Most Christians have never read the entire bible -- any version. Why would they read the Dead Sea scrolls?
I thought your comment started out with people writing on especially expensive meat (given the comment you were replying to it made sense.)
As I read your comment anyway I may as well reply. A good example is the pork/shellfish restrictions in the bible. It was very important for the people back then to not eat these as they quickly go bad in the desert and will make you very sick. These days we have refrigeration readily available so it's not so much of a concern. We should be preserving this knowledge and applying it to the way we choose to live our lives, but we should be doing that in the context of all the knowledge we've gained in the intervening millennia.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
You should tell that to the Pharoahs or any other dynasty. Clearly they did not get the message.
Most "civilized people" really have no clue what is natural and what pure instinct will allow for. It would blow their uptight little minds.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yeah, that happens a lot.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It says in one of Paul's epistles that if Jesus was not really killed and then resurrected, then we have no hope and are still lost in our sins.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Besides, there definitely are things in the Bible that still hold true to this day. Don't steal, don't murder, love thy neighbor, etc.
I think you may have missed the parts of the bible that completely contradict those things.
A "fact" based on what? Higher criticism tells us that myths become more complex and fantastic over time. The Hebrew flood story is less complex than the Gilgamesh, and the specifications given for the ark describe a vessel that would have been very well suited for its purpose, whereas the epic of Gilgamesh suggests a boxlike vessel that would have capsized. That flood myth also mentions:
1. three kinds of birds, not two,
2. The land "shattering like a pot",
3. The storm pounding "like a woman in labor",
4. Launching the boat into the water, instead of just implying that the waters carried it off as they rose.
5. The reactions of specific gods to the flood
6. Utnapishtim and his wife become gods.
It's more complex and fantastic. Either it came from the Hebrew story, or they both came from the same source.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's occasionally helpful to pop a wiki page before ranting mindlessly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism#Relation_to_other_religions_and_cultures
The first sentence of that section reads:
Most scholars believe[26] that key concepts of Zoroastrian eschatology and demonology influenced the Abrahamic religions.[27][28]
(...)
[26] [author missing] (2012 [last update]). "ZOROASTRIANISM - JewishEncyclopedia.com". jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
[27] Black & Rowley 1987, p. 607b.
[28] Duchesne-Guillemin 1988, p. 815.
I'd add another reference, where I picked up the anecdotes myself. Its first chapter goes through Mazdaism and its relations to local and neighboring beliefs almost exclusively:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Iran-Empire-History-Zoroaster-Present/dp/014103629X
See my reply to Empiric further up.
Yes. Cite a Zionist propaganda tract. That's not by someone with "a pony in the race" - now is it?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
While we don't need religion to tell us that murder is wrong, perhaps we do need something to tell us other things. For instance, what tells us that charity is good? I have coworkers who have told me that I'm stupid for giving money to charities, which says to me that it's basic ethical ideas are not clear to even modern people in modern societies.
Adam Smith disagrees with you. Whatever modern societies have done to the human moral sense, it was evident at one time that people are fairly universally in possession of a "fellow feeling" or "sympathy" which is no wise a result of religious affiliation.
Ah, thanks for the term: chronocentrism
There are two philosophies that politics like to fall into:
* Why change, it worked for the past? (wisdom of elders)
* The past isn't working, we need to change (flexibility of youth)
The hard part is balancing between the two extremes!
Your example of Buddhism is most excellent. My brother's father-in-law has this definition of religion: "Living the lifestyle necessary to prove your philosophy."
As a mystic I would even say the same meta-concept can be applied to Theism and Atheism. There are many different paths to understanding God. Even the path of "no path" is valid (for a certain time frame.) Something the theists and atheists don't understand.
Great post BTW!
Leviticus also contains much in the way of basic sanitation and on personal hygiene, very useful for bronze age society that lacks soap that had recently escaped enslavement where they were treated like animals.
It's highly doubtful that an entire bronze age society ever escaped general enslavement. The exodus is most likely a mythical exaggeration of some event of much lesser magnitude. If you look up William Dever, for instance, and become familiar with his archaeology, you will become acquainted with a number of insurmountable difficulties with this notion of a mass exodus.
> 1) Find/choose unprovable non-existent entity (I'll choose Santa Claus, but feel free to choose any other you prefer);
Santa Claus is an interesting choice. St. Nicolas was a bishop of Myra in 4thC. In the middle ages he became the patron saint of pilgrims and many stories were invented about him, mainly in continental europe. later he was deified into being some sort of superhero of mid-winter gift giving. The reindeer were added by a 19thC poet, the current image by a Coca Cola ad.
St. Nicolas (SinterKlaas -> Santa Claus) was a real person and not 'non-existant'. It is very likely that most of the 'gods' or other heros of myths and legends followed the same process. Jehovah, the god of the jews, was most likely a chief or warlord around 3500 years ago, or possibily a dynasty. Like Santa he was deified and mythologised by stories added over the years.
I did discuss with one person that believed in Santa until he was 11. It happens that many seem to believe in other mythologised people.
Thank you. Also, I apologize for the many grammatical errors. I should have revised the text before posting.
About Atheism, I wholeheartedly agree, at least when it comes to its more intellectual, less militant branches. An atheist who's in love with nature and/or with the laws that govern nature is pretty much devoting himself to something that's higher and beyond, while simultaneously within and closest than anything else might be, even his own mind. This means that, taken at its full potential, Atheism is a fully meditative path. Too bad most atheists don't ever become conscious of this.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
There could also have been rules against unhealthy things such as shitting close to your drinking water.
You mean as in Deut 23:12-14 ?
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
The burden of proof is on you to prove that the burden of proof is always on the theist.
It's occasionally helpful to pop a wiki page before ranting mindlessly
Most scholars believe[26] that key concepts of Zoroastrian eschatology and demonology influenced the Abrahamic religions.
i visited that Wiki page, and here is what I found. The phrase you quote is sourced (26) to:
"ZOROASTRIANISM - JewishEncyclopedia.com". jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 23 February 2012
I then went to the page linked and found this:
Most scholars, Jewish as well as non-Jewish, are of the opinion that Judaism was strongly influenced by Zoroastrianism in views relating to angelology and demonology, and probably also in the doctrine of the resurrection, as well as in eschatological ideas in general, and also that the monotheistic conception of Yhwh may have been quickened and strengthened by being opposed to the dualism or quasi-monotheism of the Persians. But, on the other hand, the late James Darmesteter advocated exactly the opposite view, maintaining that early Persian thought was strongly influenced by Jewish ideas. He insisted that the Avesta, as we have it, is of late origin and is much tinctured by foreign elements, especially those derived from Judaism, and also those taken from Neoplatonism through the writings of Philo Judæus.
Now, here is the interesting thing: Note the source - The unedited full-text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia
Here are the dates from the Bibliography: 1904, 1897, 1905, 1899, 1902, 1803, 1866, 1881, 1878, 1893, 1891, 1897, 1898, 1901, 1902, 1902, 1904, 1903.
Radio carbon dating was invented in 1949. Computers for use in textual analysis probably weren't used until the 70s.
The scholarship is about 110 years out of date, and was conducted without two of the key tools of modern investigation into the past, at least one of which would be almost certain to have a major impact on the work.
Although there are no doubt people today who hold to that view, even at the time it was written the view expressed wasn't universal as you see in the fuller passage I quote above. I'm inclined to stick with more current scholarship on this question: ZOROASTRIANISM AND BIBLICAL RELIGION
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Although there are no doubt people today who hold to that view, even at the time it was written the view expressed wasn't universal as you see in the fuller passage I quote above. I'm inclined to stick with more current scholarship on this question: ZOROASTRIANISM AND BIBLICAL RELIGION
Thanks for the reference. It was interesting. :-)
I would be interested in a citation or link to what you are claiming as 'fact'.
Only morons ask for "citations or links" every time somebody suggests a new and radical idea. How about using your brain cells and thinking about it for yourself? GP is absolutely correct. God is a metaphor for society and nature. Don't believe me? Read the damn Bible, or Quran, or whatever, keeping this idea in mind. It makes a LOT of sense.
I've published on the Dead Sea Scrolls
Impressive, how old are you today Methuselah?
Asimov, an athiest, was always my favorite author, but he got a lot wrong when he talked about religion. Case in point: Asimov On Numbers. He shows his "spherical cow" from a bible verse where God told the Israelites what the circumfrance of a certain vessel should be and what the diameter should be, and it doesn't work out to pi. What Asimov neglected to take into account was the thickness of the vessel's walls.
Remember, he was a biochemist, not a theologan.
Free Martian Whores!
I don't have any sisters, but I have a few first cousins who I'd happily bang.
What you call innate is, at best, fragile and by no means universal and, at worst, merely learned. There are plenty of people recorded through history who have married their siblings.
What you find repulsive may not be repulsive to someone else. It may not even be repulsive to you, once your circumstances have changed a little.
Presumably, these human sacrifices are religious in nature. What was your point?
Thanks for your reasoned and informative reply.
I've read the bible. Several versions (raised Christian). I've read parts of the Quran - not the whole thing. I've a nodding familiarity with most of the major faiths, a fair chunk of various sects and 'heresies' and various philosophies.
I've seen suggestions that god is the system. That god is the universe. That god is the indefinable 'something' that arises out of the complexity of sufficiently advanced systems. It's not new. It's not particularly radical. It may be new to you and if so I wish you well exploring the idea and the implications. The quest for knowledge is more important than the answers you find, IMHO, just don't get too attached - the Dao you can see is not the true Dao, don't you know.
I am not asking for citations expressing these ideas or sentiments. I am asking, specifically, for something to back up the claim that 'Science' has identified something akin to a hive mind and that this is god.
To your implication - you can skim religions looking for common elements. You'll find rules of communal behaviour, standards of ethics and morality and the like and from them you can try to extract a kind of unified meta religion. What you end up with says more about the basic necessities of humans living with each other in groups larger than tribe or small village than about any underlying universal truth.
You can also try and find the minimal definition for 'god' that doesn't contradict any of the big monotheisms which isn't too hard as they have all influenced each other and/or absorbed traits of the others. But even that fairly broad sketch has to be made very vague before you get to the point where you can say that a modern version of the 'universal unconscious' is the 'god' that the major religions describe.
Want to get a buzz contemplating your part in a system that may already be exhibiting signs of order at a level beyond the one at which you are personally aware? Go for it. Try to claim that 'science' has 'identified god' and I'm going to suggest that your need for 'proof' to bolster your own lack of faith is manifesting as aggression when questioned or challenged.
Or maybe you're just an Internet Tough Guy. Who knows?
the 'meaning' is pretty well known.
control the people. keep them in fear.
(any other questions?)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Even the Christian god is declared to be all-loving
well, his father keeps his finger on the SMITE button. you've seen the larson, yeah?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
and all these years, here I was thinking Clapton was god.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
There is some evidence that natural pure instinct does in fact resist procreation with near siblings. Apparently it largely revolves around scent. Double-blind studies have been done asking subjects to rank the appeal of scents of the opposite sex, and the nearer the consanguinity, the lower the appeal.
There's a sensible evolutionary explanation, too. Procreation among people with a high degree of consanguinity results in a higher genetic defect rate in children, up to and including fatal defects. Quite aside from the emotional trauma of losing a baby to a fatal defect, there's the simple cost associated with it. A tribe that expends resources to repeatedly birth and lose bad babies will lose the race against a tribe that avoids producing bad babies. Likewise the tribe that produces lots of non-fatal defects that are a net loss in resources for their lifetime will also lose out to a tribe that avoids breeding too many village idiots.
The number of fatal defects is so high that repeated high consanguinity matches end up appearing to be infertile. In fact, eggs are being fertilized, but the resulting zygote is unable to achieve implantation in the uterus, or if it does implant, development goes so wrong so quickly that it miscarries in less than a month. This was discovered when trying to do very intensive line breeding of animals, but it applies equally well to humans.
Pharaohs and assorted other dynasties were willing to fight nature for ideological reasons, and accepted a high defect rate in consequence. Even for them, it was an uphill battle, to judge by the reported extreme prevalence of mistresses and kept men. The fact that it happened doesn't mean it was either natural or wise.
The default position is not that there is a God. I suppose the default position is the agnostic position, that evidence does not exist either way.
Any claim outside of the default position on any topic, carries the burden of proof.
Now you have the 'proof', it's back to you, AC.
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
About the I Kings reference... do you have any evidence about the different measures or are you just applying "common sense"?
Not common sense, reason. Pi assumes a one dimentional line around the circle, that is exactly zero mm thick. Real vessels have walls quite a bit thicker.
If it had noted the thickness as well as the circumference and the numbers didn't add up he would have had a point.
Free Martian Whores!
> Atheism is a fully meditative path. Too bad most atheists don't ever become conscious of this.
Shhhh, you'll quickly get branded a heretic (i.e. original thought) by the fundamentalists -- of both sides if you keep that up! :-0 Half joking aside, would you agree that the only atheist sub-group(s) that come close to understanding this would be the Buddhists because it frees a person of all the dogma & symbology?
It is too bad the fundamentalists of both sides are cultists -- the ONLY way is THEIR way. :-(
I'm very curious how you were able to come to see/be the full potential of Atheism -- knowing both its strengths and weaknesses? It is very rare to find a person who has that deep grasp of the fundamentals.
Cheers
Half joking aside, would you agree that the only atheist sub-group(s) that come close to understanding this would be the Buddhists because it frees a person of all the dogma & symbology?
It depends on the Buddhist branch. Buddhism, being faithful to the middle path, isn't actually atheist, but indifferent to the debate. Certain schools go about not talking about gods at all, such as Zen or Jodo Shinshu; others acknowledge gods but don't care about them, such as Theravada; and others still fully embrace them, such as the Vajrayana schools. Also, all of them have dogmas and tons of symbolism, the freeing of which comes at the end of the process, not its middle. So, not quite.
But there are self-professed Atheist schools that almost get there. The Bayesian one is the most advanced in that regards, at least as far as I can judge these things. See for instance this essay of theirs for an example: Timeless Physics. It's the closest I've ever seen a non-mystic getting to grasp the notion of the Absolute. IMHO, if there's actual potential in Atheism, it's going to be developed by them, just give it a few centuries or, best case scenario, decades.
I'm very curious how you were able to come to see/be the full potential of Atheism -- knowing both its strengths and weaknesses? It is very rare to find a person who has that deep grasp of the fundamentals.
Well, I've had this habit of going after both sides on any argument then attempting to identify the common ground upon which they're battling and build from there for as long as I remember myself studying anything. and as such my intellectual references ended up spread all over the board. Over time it adds up. :-)
By the way: Currently I'm a polytheist, following both Shinto and the Shingon Buddhist school (esoteric Vajrayana), with a background in Continental Philosophy and the Traditionalist School of Rene Guenon. I've also written more on the theism vs. atheism debate replying to questions on Quora, so maybe you're interested. Too bad I still haven't had time to collect these bits and pieces into more permanent texts. Anyway, let's keep in touch!
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
That's quite an assumption you've got going there. It's far more likely that these writings were put on convenient materials, in some cases - such as the copper scroll, which may well have been written at a later date - materials appropriate to the content of them.
Not to consider the fact that theft, murder, and so on, were and are considered impolite in societies pre- and post-dating the biblical text, with and without contact, too.