(June 16, 2024 at 1:24 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: No literal reading, no original sin, nothing for christs death to fix.

Wouldn't the non-literalist say that the Genesis story of "Adam and Eve eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil" never happened but some sort of fuck up did happen.
As for the Cain and Abel, there was no such people but maybe at some point, there was some neantherthal or homo erectus or homo habilis that killed another one of their brothers so the jewish god had to wipe them off the map.

(June 16, 2024 at 1:24 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Anywho, as far as the archeological record is concerned, those other questions look to be outgrowths of a singular question about human mortality.  In that sense, gods are just background characters in a narrative that predates them and will outlast them.  I'm not entirely sure what you would be referencing by primitive humans and what it looks like they believed..but, it looks like the majority of primitive humans (i use this to refer to early full modernity) believed in ghosts...but not gods, and certainly not gods as we conceive of them today (if/when we do).

When I say primitive humans, I mean somewhere in the range of 100,000 y ago to 100 CE or 1700 CE. I guess I should have mentioned that earlier.
You can define it however you like.

What is early full modernity?

(June 16, 2024 at 1:07 pm)Ferrocyanide Wrote: I am talking about primitive humans.

Well, "primitive" is kind of a tricky word.

Ancient writers seem to have been more comfortable with various means of expression. Today a lot of people think that a good book is like good journalism or a science text -- each sentence has a single clear interpretation. Old-time people wrote that way sometimes (for example, if they wrote in 1750 BC to say that the copper they had received was of unacceptably low quality) but it depends on what they were writing about. 

Remember that in Jesus and Paul's time there was no such thing as the Bible. The books that became the Old Testament were still floating around independently. It made sense then (as it makes sense now) to think about the purpose of each one, and its intended audience, and apply the hermeneutic approach that's appropriate. 

Obviously when the Song of Solomon says "Your eyes are doves," this is not literal. So we know that at least some metaphor is considered acceptable. Which other sentences are non-literal is a case-by-case question. 

Plato's writings contain numerous myths, allegories, symbols, references to gods which may or may not be believed in, all that kind of stuff. For the kind of subject he was discussing, straightforward science-type language wasn't appropriate, and probably still isn't. Homer's epics were probably written as straightforward adventure stories, wildly exaggerated from real events, but by the first century they were being interpreted as containing hidden Neoplatonic messages. Porphyry wrote a fascinating interpretation of a minor scene in the Odyssey, about the cave where Odysseus stashes his stuff. Cicero wrote an interpretation of a dream that Scipio had, even though the contents of that dream are not taken to be a literal report of real events. Then Macrobius wrote a commentary on Cicero's interpretation. All of this was thought to have significant philosophical meaning, despite being based -- knowingly -- on fiction. 

Paul, and the author of John's Apocalypse, were Hellenized Jews converted to Christianity, who would have had some familiarity with the philosophical methods of the time.

The "primitive" guys were comfortable with all this. Non-literal texts were considered worth their attention. I don't see this as something that ends even though we are now so completely non-primitive.

Dude, you are beyond boring with your "Bible is a metaphor" crap. You have been proven wrong over and over again over the years, but you just ignore it and repeat your speech in different threads.

The Song of Solomon actually says ‘Thy eyes are as doves’, not ‘Your eyes are doves’, so of course it’s a simile (not a metaphor, yet another thing Bel has gotten wrong).

But the point is tragically missed. Yes, there is figurative language in scripture, but it’s a colossal mistake to extend that fact to mean everything in the Bible is meant to be taken figuratively.  There’s plenty of passages that are clearly literal and are also factually wrong, horrific, or just plain dumb and stupid.

Boru

(June 16, 2024 at 10:44 pm)Belacqua Wrote:

(June 16, 2024 at 1:07 pm)Ferrocyanide Wrote: I am talking about primitive humans.

Well, "primitive" is kind of a tricky word.

It is just like the words long, short, heavy, light, ugly, rough, viscous, hot, hard, sharp.
These words mean whatever you want them to mean. They are relative words. They are subjective.

So, eventually, I gave a definition to make my earlier posts more clear.


It doesn’t matter if Paul, Jesus and the other primitive people didn’t have a printed copy of the tanakh. There were no high speed industrial printing machines then. All the members of the jewish faith were told the stories from a young age by their parents and their priests. All humans are going to be asking the Big questions. Like I said, some of those questions will be or are addressed by science.
Example: Why do we exist gets converted to how do we exist in Evolution theory (how does nature work, what happened in the past)

All religions try to answer how did it happen, what are the steps the gods took, what was the recipe, at what point did they felt was the best moment to create a human.

Like I said, even if Paul, St Augustine and a few of the guys were were non-literalist, this doesn’t mean that they accepted the Big Bang theory and Evolution theory. It would have been reasonable to them that the jewish god created everything from day 1, in 0 nanoseconds, in 1 nanosecond or whatever. In the end, they are YEC.

They were not aware of cavemen. They were not aware of humans being covered by thick body hair. They were not aware that all humans had dark skin and are from Africa. In their mind, humans are intelligent beings from the moment god creates them. They have a language. They know how to take care of animals and make tools and have a language from day 1. In their mind, humans have a memory from day 1.

In terms of science, humans have no memory for the entire block of 6 million to about 5000 BCE. All that time period has been forgotten.

See also BrianSoddingBoru4 comment.

(June 16, 2024 at 9:59 pm)Ferrocyanide Wrote: Wouldn't the non-literalist say that the Genesis story of "Adam and Eve eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil" never happened but some sort of fuck up did happen.
As for the Cain and Abel, there was no such people but maybe at some point, there was some neantherthal or homo erectus or homo habilis that killed another one of their brothers so the jewish god had to wipe them off the map.

Sure, to be blunt, they'll say just about anything.  Nevertheless..."some other fucked up thing" is not the story of christ and the revisions to fact over all these years have had the effect of eroding christian belief even if the intent was to protect it or shield it from criticism.    The cain and abel thing is fun.  That's about the pastoralist source telling us that god likes his way of life better than the other guys.  Literally translated it's the story of Farmer and Herdsmen and according to magic book - there was a city on earth at the time.  

Quote:When I say primitive humans, I mean somewhere in the range of 100,000 y ago to 100 CE or 1700 CE. I guess I should have mentioned that earlier.
You can define it however you like.

What is early full modernity?

Somewhere around or by 50kya.  Probably earlier, but definitely no later.  It's when we're anatomically and behaviorally modern - including what looks like religious ideation.  We would plug along for another 30ky before there's any evidence whatsoever of the the gods of theism.  They arose right around the advent of agriculture and cities, conveniently enough, with cain and able in mind.  

In the sense that we might want to allow for our just so stories (this one, any of them...really) to reflect some knowledge of events perhaps handed down by an oral tradition and very much built into their cultural narratives...if we proposed the caveman resolution to the dilemma of cain and abel we will have robbed the narrative of the very thing we seek to protect in it's invocation.  It could only be such a story if it concerned events as recent as 10kya and later - leaving a whopping quarter million years or more from anatomical modernity - when the oldest modern human remains show up.

I prefer, "taking it slow atheism".

(June 17, 2024 at 12:41 pm)The Valkyrie Wrote: I prefer, "taking it slow atheism".

Given my age and various minor infirmities, I’m a fairly active atheist.

Boru

(June 16, 2024 at 10:44 pm)Belacqua Wrote: The books that became the Old Testament were still floating around independently. It made sense then (as it makes sense now) to think about the purpose of each one, and its intended audience, and apply the hermeneutic approach that's appropriate. 

This is complete bullshit, because it completely disregards how and why the books of the buybull were selected. The early church fathers put together a book that pushed a particular agenda, discarding many texts that didn't agree with their particular vision along the way. We still have evidence of these writings today, from scraps, to fragments, to complete, to prove the point. Hell, there are even variants of the buybull with differing contents.

As with so many other topics, @Belacqua is ignorant of easily researched facts. of course, the little coward has me on his ignore list because I'm among those who wreck his echo chamber and/or make points he can't counter, but that's his cross to bear.

(June 17, 2024 at 1:34 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(June 17, 2024 at 12:41 pm)The Valkyrie Wrote: I prefer, "taking it slow atheism".

Given my age and various minor infirmities, I’m a fairly active atheist.

Boru

So sm I.

Friday is going to be exhausting for me. I'm going for my black belt.

The rest of the weekend is going to be "taking it easy atheism".