I am an Atheist and always have been.
- Thread starter Bretrick
- Start date
agreed - scribes were just about the only people in early societies. like when the bible was written, who could read and write. this is why oral traditions develop into legends - there is no checking records of the original event - a big flood or whatever - so each telling gets bigger and bigger until someone records it many years later when it is entrenched i n the society as established "fact"
The scribes writing it down did not observe or participate in the original event
and agreed, they wouldn't be expected to differentiate between fiction and fact - of course when writing ability is so rare and most people cannot read and books are so precious - there do not exist books of fiction
Most ordinary people never saw a book, let alone read one.
I looked up Johannes Gutenburg - person who invented first printing press.
Prior to that books were hand written, usually by monks. It would be extremely labour intensive and long time to write a book. Of course they are not writing with ball point pen either and books would often be illuminated with detailed illustration - On average a mediavel scribe would create 2- 4 pages per day. so, years to do a complete bible.
Books were written on expensive parchment - after all the work to make one, it had to last. which some of them have to this day (eg the Domesday book)
Nobody just wrote a fictional book for the masses to read for pleasure- most of the masses couldn't read anyway and nobody would waste years producing a trashy romance.
I guess this is all a bit tangential to question of atheism but, to me anyway, very interesting aside.
thank you for your post about it,
gruntlabor
Well-known Member
- Location
- Last Frontier, Age 84
Saint Bonaventura's (1221-1274) seven stages of ascent into God are
1. consideration of the wonders of the physical world
2. meditation on the physical sensations
3. contemplation of all these things
4. restoration of our goodness through Christ
5. transcendence into holy things
6. beholding these things, and we are bathed in light
7. the experience of ecstasy in stillness as we rest as one with God
I hope I am correct, Warrigal.
1. consideration of the wonders of the physical world
2. meditation on the physical sensations
3. contemplation of all these things
4. restoration of our goodness through Christ
5. transcendence into holy things
6. beholding these things, and we are bathed in light
7. the experience of ecstasy in stillness as we rest as one with God
I hope I am correct, Warrigal.
Warrigal
SF VIP
- Location
- Sydney, Australia
@gruntlabor, I'm no scholar when it comes to these things, but personal experience would suggest that St Bonaventura's list is very close to the mark. He might have added the modern phrase "rinse and repeat" because renewal is needed for those of us who have a tendency to relapse. Sometimes it seems like two steps forward, one step back.
RambleTamble
Senior Member
- Location
- U.S.
"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter... who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter".
"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator."
~ Adolf Hitler
"I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator."
~ Adolf Hitler
Warrigal
SF VIP
- Location
- Sydney, Australia
Interesting quotation. Many world leaders have had the delusion that they are in power by the Divine Right of Kingship.
Messy
Senior Member
He said that? In the concentration camps the Bible was forbidden. They smuggled a tiny one in. The Nazi's called it das LĆ¼genbuch, the book of lies.
He used Luther's writings.
JustDave
Well-known Member
And maybe they want us to be happy and love each other. On the surface this sounds ridiculous, but it's every bit as likely or unlikely as the Bible God.
At any rate, you would think that all powerful gods would have more important things to concern themselves with. Hell the universe is filled with supernovas so powerful they destroy all life in other star systems light years away, not just some funky rain that floods the Mideast. And black holes! Who' going to decide where to put them? The Devil? Who cares? We got black holes. There's something just a little bit too random about the whole thing; Almost like no one is in charge and it's just physics doing its thing.
gruntlabor
Well-known Member
- Location
- Last Frontier, Age 84
In defense of those words one could say:
Adam and Eve and their descendants are God's chosen. Everyone else is irrevelant.The world of people outside of God's chosen are as cattle to a meat eater.
gruntlabor
Well-known Member
- Location
- Last Frontier, Age 84
I asked Gemini:
Did Adolf Hitler say the following? "My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter... who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter". "I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator.".
Gemini said;
Yes, Adolf Hitler made this statement during a speech in Munich on April 12, 1922. It is an accurate reflection of the "Positive Christianity" rhetoric he used early in his career to garner support from Christians by framing Jesus as a fighter against Jews. --Gemini
Who have I heard that from (paraphrasing of course) lately?
JustDave
Well-known Member
Whenever two or more atheists are gathered together, they come:
Onward Christian soldiers,
Fighting as to War,
With Cross of Jesus,
Going on before.
But we always welcome the refresher courses, just in case we forgot something.
Messy
Senior Member
Wow.
Corrie ten Boom's brother went to Germany in the 1920s.
From Google AI (you can find anything now, I once read this in a book):
Willem ten Boom (1886-1946), the brother of Corrie ten Boom, warned early on about the evil taking root in Germany, specifically from the academic world.
The Dissertation (1927): Willem ten Boom, who studied theology and obtained a doctorate in Leipzig, wrote as early as 1927 that a terrible evil was taking root in Germany.
Warning against Universities: In his writing, he stated that it was precisely at the universities that the seeds were being planted of a contempt for human life such as the world had never seen.
Recognizing Nazism: Willem, who was also a pastor and missionary to the Jews, saw the antisemitic and Nazi ideology emerging early on in the 1920s through his contacts in Germany, long before Hitler came to power.
Reaction: According to family stories, his warnings were laughed off at the time by the few who read his dissertation. Willem was an outspoken opponent of the rising Nazism and, during the war, worked actively in the Dutch resistance together with his son Kik to help Jews.
gruntlabor
Well-known Member
- Location
- Last Frontier, Age 84
Apologies JustDave and Rakaia to you both and Bretrick for wandering off this interesting topic. Unfortunately, I'm sure to forget again so I'll get lost.
JustDave
Well-known Member
Topics wander in forum threads. Interesting topics wander more. I think it's an Internet rule. And what would atheists do without a constant reminder that we are all doomed. What would we have to talk about?
I think I love you, or at least I love that you have questions and wonder. I too puzzle over how anyone came up with the notion of a god in the first place. It makes sense to believe in a "creator" who is very much like a human and that is a logical connection to a "destroyer". But I think to be aware of this consciousness we must do our best to let go of all our modern notions, and focus on humans being equal to trees and other animals. A time when trees and rivers had spirits, to understand the evolution of our separation from nature, and creation of gods and then the separation from God and need to be saved.
I suppose having one god for everything would eliminate some of the "My god is better than your god" squabbles between religious factions. Or may it's all the pharaoh could keep track of. Oh wait the Pharaoh was a god. Hmmm, does this tell us something about what gods strive for?
I'm not familiar with that theory. I'll think about it. I was going to say that in modern times having only one god for our advancement in true knowledge, doesn't seem to need extra gods. But then there's India, a strong contender for national power, which suggests one god or many may not be a modern day factor, but I'm not very knowledgeable about India. Do they discover or copy? I don't know.
It doesn't seem to create a feeling of safety at all. I don't know if things would be different without gods. Man controls politics and strives for power over others, and we wouldn't think about gods if man hadn't come up with the concept of them to begin with. And as I've said before, a world without a god, or one that works independently of a god, suspiciously seems to resemble a world with a god that people claim is what we have right now.
Thank you for that information and explanation. I feel like a child with a new toy/thought to play with.
I don't know if we are making opposing arguments or if we are just react emotionally in different ways. Kind of like I walk into a friends home and freak out because of the chaos and lack of cleanness. He obviously does not have the same emotional reaction. We agree on what we see, but we react differently. You might be like another friend who is kind of a sad fellow because his inner child is in a coma. He is sooo grown up and factual. I think it is easier for girls to get away with being more childlike, and not so factual.
I like the notion that if a god wrote a Bible, the language would be math. I think the whole universe is mathematical and like "mitochondria know that another cell in a remote part of the body is needing help" to make a vital repair. I think the whole universe is connected in that way. The mitochondria does not have to know where the repair needs to be made, it just needs to respond to a trigger and like a stack of dominos falling, one thing happens after another. Like math, not like a human telling a joke and people laughing, or not. How all this happens tickles me, but I think you are being more serious. There is no story, only math- this than this.
For me the universe is an awesome consciousness, but there is no story, until we get to humans. Chardin said, God is asleep in rocks and minerals, waking in plants and animals, to know self in man.
Humans with language are the story tellers, and we can argue until we have a consensus on the best reasoning.
VaughanJB
Scrappy VIP
Sorry, I was replying to your comment: "Without the trinity how could there be any meaningful space?"
I can't answer that for you, and perhaps I completely misunderstood your original comment. It happens!
It is easy to buy the book "The Hiding Place". Is that the book with the dissertation?
There is a growing interest in fascism and I am hoping to pull together people protesting against fascism so we can learn what it is and what we can do about it. I think this subject is the most important one for us to understand right now, so thank you so much for your post.
VaughanJB
Scrappy VIP
They were very much among the elite of their time. They were educated at a time when education broad enough to become scribes was not common at all. It was either the rich, or those working for the rich, that left a record.
Okay I googled for an explanation and AI says.
Uh, yeah, we discuss this stuff every night at my dinner table. Actually, this is really over my head, but maybe someday I will understand it.
VaughanJB
Scrappy VIP
Okay I googled for an explanation and AI says.
I guess it's over my head too, because I don't understand in the context of your earlier post. Don't worry, it's probably me.
That is genius, bringing up Helen Keller. That triggers me to think about when I was preverbal.I wonder if what Helen Keller experienced gives us a clue to what consciousness is and how it arises. She describes her world before her awakening as "nothingness". She had no awareness of anything, just like a worm.
Being conscious doesn't include awareness or understanding. We don't know how the brain/mind makes consciousness/understanding. This is where we begin to mythify it's nature.
Even a worm has feeling, but no story. I am thinking of my own experience of being put in a body cast before I had a vocabular to understand why I was incased in cement. Because in counseling I was regressed to this moment, I know I recorded feelings. My mother was afraid when she discovered something was wrong with her baby and her fear was fearful to me. My experience of awareness of being in a body cast was terror and chaos. No story just feeling. As an adult I have words to explain what happened the baby didn't and my counselor changed the story in my head, that ended the hell I was experiencing as PTSD.
A book about how we create our stories and talk to ourselves was very helpful for my ability to change my story with the help of a counselor.
VaughanJB
Scrappy VIP
Could be? COULD be? It's totally an error to think communication can't happen without human language.
Hell, step into many countries in Europe, and your language might well not be very useful.