I'm not Jewish at all. And it is true that Judaism is not mythological. Albert Einstein stated that he understood that biblical religion was "simply a negation of superstition". You can google that and read the whole quote somewhere, which I don't agree with in its entirety.
Here is an example. In the myth of Enuma Elish, the main character gets a hold the plant of "eternal life", but while he is climbing out of the water after retrieving it from the deep, "the serpent" snatches it while he is getting his clothes back on. Not his fault. Oh well. Adam, on the other hand, freely chooses to loose "the tree of life". Completely his fault. Enuma Elish precede Genesis in the history record. Which one sounds "right" to you? Genesis *is* a reaction to Enuma Elish historically speaking, and attempts to correct a worldview that resulted in horrible oppression. Read a little history to learn about life as a Babylonian.
The Babylonian creation myth has, after a long succession of gods duking it out, people created to serve the gods as pure slaves. Translated: kings (gods) get to have slaves (the masses). The myth is the scafolding for their entire economy and social structure. Same with, for instance, the Caste System of India today (i.e. "the untouchables" and the "Brahmans". Biblical religion puts regular man and not gods on top. Translated: slavery is wrong. That is a gross oversimplification but essentially myths are used to construct a social reality.
Today's myth is spontaneous generation and undirected evolution with no external intelligence guiding the process. There of course is no scientific proof of this. Translated: I can live however the hell I want to (as long as government is god). That is the essence of the Marxist framework that led to communism, and the backbone of the "good life" espoused by athiest socialists. You can read up on that anywhere, like any the Humanist Manifesto 1 or 2.
And I haven't yet told you anything about what I believe, so these are just facts worth considering, and not bias of any sort on my mpart. A fair amount of deduction can be done with just a few facts, however.
My attempt is anything but crude, as it is well informed and backed up by history and a scholarly understanding of the reality of the power of myths. They are as present and powerful today as they have ever been, you might agree.
I'm using the term mythological in the prescribed sense that scholars of mythology talk about it. By the books, Genesis is non-mythological. It has no explanation for the existence of God. It just states it. In the myth-filled world in which Genesis came to be, this was, to say the least, a rocker and a shocker. See "Enuma Elish" and compare to Genesis. You have to understand what Genesis actually dethroned, what it challenged, and what it overcame. You have to stop and think for a second - that something actually did happen as a result of this non-mythological monotheism arriving on the scene. It eventually gutted the Roman Empire. You need to think about that, even if just for a second. There has been no greater idea, except evolution, to rattle civilization.
I personally believe in some kind of evolution. Science of course will simply never be able to answer questions for which it cannot test and observe, so at some point, there is a kind of faith required - even if it's loose - to grasp a theory of origins.
But this quandry leads us back to what Paul says in Romans - that a maker is self-evident. It's kind of a dead end argument. But it holds water if you believe.
Now here is probably the best quote you'll ever read about Genesis. You might read something as insightful, but not more insightful:
"The reason for this detachment if cosmogony from the ritual is not hard to find. The supreme characteristic of the Mesopotamian cosmogony is that it is embedded in a mythological matrix. On the other hand, the outstanding pecularity of the biblical account is the complete absence of mythology in the classical pagan sense of the term. The religion of Israel is essentially non-mythological, there being no suggestion of any theo-biography"
That quote is by Nahum Sarna (now deceased), Professor of Biblical Studies and Chairman of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis U. Book is called "Understanding Genesis." He is the author, for instance, of the official Jewish Publication Society commentary on Genesis, so understand that his opinion is not really opinion, but rather the broad consensus of Jewish scholars. That should eliminate the argument that I'm "not reading" someones post.
The point of this paragraph, and the point of Genesis, is that it takes little thought to apprehend that God exists. That is the assertion, plain and simple. You can't prove or disprove this, and so it is not science. But this is what the Bible teaches, to be sure. It's beyond science, but based on the observation of science, where it's limits leave off. Science can't define meaning. Humans do that by faith, assertion, or whatever you want to call it.
In the same sense a modern person quickly surveys the scientific landscape and "sees" that evolution (of some kind) is true, and that this takes no particular effort to apprehend at this point in human history, the biblical writer of Genesis, and of Romans, say exactly the same thing about the existence of God. Evolution, for me, only further solidifies my faith which is apprehended by the finite amount of reason I'm capable of.
To come full circle back to the statement that started this post, the infinite recursion is as I said, a non-starter, because it is not informed about the most basic element of a structured theology of origins, as I have shown above. ID is religion, no matter what the ID supporters say, I can give you that! But lets not dismiss the argument with simplistic pat answers that aren't based on the facts of the matter.
"If we allow the creating intelligence to be natural, by our original premise, it too must have a creating intelligence that created it, and so on. We're left with an infinite regress. So, how to go about breaking it?"
There is no breaking it. Biblical faith starts with a completely 100% myth-free statement that offers no explanation. The hallmark of myth is the detailed origin of the gods. "In the beginning when God..." is glaringly unmythological according to all the experts of mythology.
The non-mythological statement of Genesis 1:1 just hangs there to be accepted at face value or not, and it offers no myth to go with it. But you have to understand what myth is and how it works to agree or disagree with this.
Any excellent book on Genesis and what it really talks about is Nahum Sarna's "Understanding Genesis", professor at Brandeis.
So the recursion problem is simply a non-starter when you consider the "designed" nature of the completely unsubstantiated claim of Genesis 1:1.
Forget the literal interpretation. Forget the Bible as science. Now that we've cleared the pallete of that, we have other work to do. You can't understand the Bible if you haven't studied it. Have you studied it? If you glance at a C++ manual and you get the "gist" of it, do you really understand anything? No.
Now lets move on. What's important to consider is what the story is saying. That was the original intent. Can't you tell the Bible wasn't a science book? It's full of contradictions if you read it like science. In the exact same way, XML for Dummies is obviously the worst poetry! It's so full of non-rhyming couplets! Phrases that really make no sense! And what's up with the rhythm? XML for Dummies obviously can't be trusted as a source of Poetry because it's obvious it doesn't make sense. Those XML fundies are nuts. You can't argue with them! (end sarcasm)
When I read this list, as someone who has studied the Bible even a little in college (I got A's) I can say many of you are like the fictional narrator above. This is addressed to you. You are slamming it. However, you are slammning it because it's being used by certain groups in ways it wasn't meant to be used. And you are correctly reacting to it. If you were poets, and a group of zealots force-fed XML for Dummies as the gold standard of Poetry, you'd rightly be rankled. Nor would you understand XML. You would be rightly rankled, motivated to lobby against XML for Dummies as the Standard Poetry Book For All Students. You might even win and get the fundies kicked out. Hurrah! You still don't know anything about XML at this point.
I am saying that there is something else here to discuss, beyond the goofy science, and rancor. Surely you get the idea of Pharisee, don't you? You are being forced a version of things by modern Pharisees. And you are rankled. Indeed. You are upset. I get it.
Ok. So what does the Bible say if it's not talking about science? What is the "gist" of the Bible? Do you really know? I mean, using your brain, using your reason, are you sure you know? If you are all upset about ID, I tell you the truth, you don't know the half of it. If you are upset, that is the indicator that you don't see the real issue. Forget what you think are contradictions. The Bible is full of seeming (meaning, you can read them in plain english) contradictions and inaccuracies. And it obviously doesn't give a rat's ass. If you are testing my new wallpaper print for geometric accuracies, you'll find a lot wrong. But I drew it by hand!! If you are hung up on inconsistencies, I would say you are like someone who is debating the value of a rat's ass. There is more going in the Bible than the rat's ass you are rightly transfixed on. Or maybe misled to think that is the issue. It's not. Keep your protractor off of my Picasso! Now maybe you get it.
You are right. Bible bad science.
But there is this crazy idea that God loves you somehow stuck in there between the spilled guts and smashed brains. God loved Abraham. God loved these assanine people that just didn't get it. And when they didn't get it, so the story goes, he ups the antee (sp?), all the way up, and "fails". But did he really fail, according to the story?
Isn't it scandalous to think that God loves you? Yuck. Here I go. "There he goes," you say. Just stop and think for a second, if you can stop the green spinning head long enough to get what I'm saying. I'm saying the Bible says that God loves you. No matter what you (head spinning) are upset about (green puke flying) or what you think is all f$#$@& up in the Bible, it's actually saying that God loves you. I would like to cordially leave this on that thought. The rest of the Bible is a complex footnote to that central idea. Much abused, seldom thought about, rarely reacted to.
Surely, all by itself, that's a nice idea, isn't it? You have to give me that. That's not a nice idea? Just think for 7 seconds. That's all I ask before you slice and dice me, which I'm excited to endure because I already made my point and I can't take it back.
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I'm not Jewish at all. And it is true that Judaism is not mythological. Albert Einstein stated that he understood that biblical religion was "simply a negation of superstition". You can google that and read the whole quote somewhere, which I don't agree with in its entirety. Here is an example. In the myth of Enuma Elish, the main character gets a hold the plant of "eternal life", but while he is climbing out of the water after retrieving it from the deep, "the serpent" snatches it while he is getting his clothes back on. Not his fault. Oh well. Adam, on the other hand, freely chooses to loose "the tree of life". Completely his fault. Enuma Elish precede Genesis in the history record. Which one sounds "right" to you? Genesis *is* a reaction to Enuma Elish historically speaking, and attempts to correct a worldview that resulted in horrible oppression. Read a little history to learn about life as a Babylonian. The Babylonian creation myth has, after a long succession of gods duking it out, people created to serve the gods as pure slaves. Translated: kings (gods) get to have slaves (the masses). The myth is the scafolding for their entire economy and social structure. Same with, for instance, the Caste System of India today (i.e. "the untouchables" and the "Brahmans". Biblical religion puts regular man and not gods on top. Translated: slavery is wrong. That is a gross oversimplification but essentially myths are used to construct a social reality. Today's myth is spontaneous generation and undirected evolution with no external intelligence guiding the process. There of course is no scientific proof of this. Translated: I can live however the hell I want to (as long as government is god). That is the essence of the Marxist framework that led to communism, and the backbone of the "good life" espoused by athiest socialists. You can read up on that anywhere, like any the Humanist Manifesto 1 or 2. And I haven't yet told you anything about what I believe, so these are just facts worth considering, and not bias of any sort on my mpart. A fair amount of deduction can be done with just a few facts, however. My attempt is anything but crude, as it is well informed and backed up by history and a scholarly understanding of the reality of the power of myths. They are as present and powerful today as they have ever been, you might agree.
I'm using the term mythological in the prescribed sense that scholars of mythology talk about it. By the books, Genesis is non-mythological. It has no explanation for the existence of God. It just states it. In the myth-filled world in which Genesis came to be, this was, to say the least, a rocker and a shocker. See "Enuma Elish" and compare to Genesis. You have to understand what Genesis actually dethroned, what it challenged, and what it overcame. You have to stop and think for a second - that something actually did happen as a result of this non-mythological monotheism arriving on the scene. It eventually gutted the Roman Empire. You need to think about that, even if just for a second. There has been no greater idea, except evolution, to rattle civilization. I personally believe in some kind of evolution. Science of course will simply never be able to answer questions for which it cannot test and observe, so at some point, there is a kind of faith required - even if it's loose - to grasp a theory of origins. But this quandry leads us back to what Paul says in Romans - that a maker is self-evident. It's kind of a dead end argument. But it holds water if you believe. Now here is probably the best quote you'll ever read about Genesis. You might read something as insightful, but not more insightful: "The reason for this detachment if cosmogony from the ritual is not hard to find. The supreme characteristic of the Mesopotamian cosmogony is that it is embedded in a mythological matrix. On the other hand, the outstanding pecularity of the biblical account is the complete absence of mythology in the classical pagan sense of the term. The religion of Israel is essentially non-mythological, there being no suggestion of any theo-biography" That quote is by Nahum Sarna (now deceased), Professor of Biblical Studies and Chairman of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis U. Book is called "Understanding Genesis." He is the author, for instance, of the official Jewish Publication Society commentary on Genesis, so understand that his opinion is not really opinion, but rather the broad consensus of Jewish scholars. That should eliminate the argument that I'm "not reading" someones post. The point of this paragraph, and the point of Genesis, is that it takes little thought to apprehend that God exists. That is the assertion, plain and simple. You can't prove or disprove this, and so it is not science. But this is what the Bible teaches, to be sure. It's beyond science, but based on the observation of science, where it's limits leave off. Science can't define meaning. Humans do that by faith, assertion, or whatever you want to call it. In the same sense a modern person quickly surveys the scientific landscape and "sees" that evolution (of some kind) is true, and that this takes no particular effort to apprehend at this point in human history, the biblical writer of Genesis, and of Romans, say exactly the same thing about the existence of God. Evolution, for me, only further solidifies my faith which is apprehended by the finite amount of reason I'm capable of. To come full circle back to the statement that started this post, the infinite recursion is as I said, a non-starter, because it is not informed about the most basic element of a structured theology of origins, as I have shown above. ID is religion, no matter what the ID supporters say, I can give you that! But lets not dismiss the argument with simplistic pat answers that aren't based on the facts of the matter.
It would be wiser for you to ask a question about my post than to assume you understood what I posted.
"If we allow the creating intelligence to be natural, by our original premise, it too must have a creating intelligence that created it, and so on. We're left with an infinite regress. So, how to go about breaking it?"
There is no breaking it. Biblical faith starts with a completely 100% myth-free statement that offers no explanation. The hallmark of myth is the detailed origin of the gods. "In the beginning when God..." is glaringly unmythological according to all the experts of mythology.
The non-mythological statement of Genesis 1:1 just hangs there to be accepted at face value or not, and it offers no myth to go with it. But you have to understand what myth is and how it works to agree or disagree with this.
Any excellent book on Genesis and what it really talks about is Nahum Sarna's "Understanding Genesis", professor at Brandeis.
So the recursion problem is simply a non-starter when you consider the "designed" nature of the completely unsubstantiated claim of Genesis 1:1.
Forget the literal interpretation. Forget the Bible as science. Now that we've cleared the pallete of that, we have other work to do. You can't understand the Bible if you haven't studied it. Have you studied it? If you glance at a C++ manual and you get the "gist" of it, do you really understand anything? No.
Now lets move on. What's important to consider is what the story is saying. That was the original intent. Can't you tell the Bible wasn't a science book? It's full of contradictions if you read it like science. In the exact same way, XML for Dummies is obviously the worst poetry! It's so full of non-rhyming couplets! Phrases that really make no sense! And what's up with the rhythm? XML for Dummies obviously can't be trusted as a source of Poetry because it's obvious it doesn't make sense. Those XML fundies are nuts. You can't argue with them! (end sarcasm)
When I read this list, as someone who has studied the Bible even a little in college (I got A's) I can say many of you are like the fictional narrator above. This is addressed to you. You are slamming it. However, you are slammning it because it's being used by certain groups in ways it wasn't meant to be used. And you are correctly reacting to it. If you were poets, and a group of zealots force-fed XML for Dummies as the gold standard of Poetry, you'd rightly be rankled. Nor would you understand XML. You would be rightly rankled, motivated to lobby against XML for Dummies as the Standard Poetry Book For All Students. You might even win and get the fundies kicked out. Hurrah! You still don't know anything about XML at this point.
I am saying that there is something else here to discuss, beyond the goofy science, and rancor. Surely you get the idea of Pharisee, don't you? You are being forced a version of things by modern Pharisees. And you are rankled. Indeed. You are upset. I get it.
Ok. So what does the Bible say if it's not talking about science? What is the "gist" of the Bible? Do you really know? I mean, using your brain, using your reason, are you sure you know? If you are all upset about ID, I tell you the truth, you don't know the half of it. If you are upset, that is the indicator that you don't see the real issue. Forget what you think are contradictions. The Bible is full of seeming (meaning, you can read them in plain english) contradictions and inaccuracies. And it obviously doesn't give a rat's ass. If you are testing my new wallpaper print for geometric accuracies, you'll find a lot wrong. But I drew it by hand!! If you are hung up on inconsistencies, I would say you are like someone who is debating the value of a rat's ass. There is more going in the Bible than the rat's ass you are rightly transfixed on. Or maybe misled to think that is the issue. It's not. Keep your protractor off of my Picasso! Now maybe you get it.
You are right. Bible bad science.
But there is this crazy idea that God loves you somehow stuck in there between the spilled guts and smashed brains. God loved Abraham. God loved these assanine people that just didn't get it. And when they didn't get it, so the story goes, he ups the antee (sp?), all the way up, and "fails". But did he really fail, according to the story?
Isn't it scandalous to think that God loves you? Yuck. Here I go. "There he goes," you say. Just stop and think for a second, if you can stop the green spinning head long enough to get what I'm saying. I'm saying the Bible says that God loves you. No matter what you (head spinning) are upset about (green puke flying) or what you think is all f$#$@& up in the Bible, it's actually saying that God loves you. I would like to cordially leave this on that thought. The rest of the Bible is a complex footnote to that central idea. Much abused, seldom thought about, rarely reacted to.
Surely, all by itself, that's a nice idea, isn't it? You have to give me that. That's not a nice idea? Just think for 7 seconds. That's all I ask before you slice and dice me, which I'm excited to endure because I already made my point and I can't take it back.
Doug