Why did god create evil?

[Epimethean]

"I guess he never suggested to the students to explore the origin of the concept of god or soul. He most probably was expecting students to react in the normal but sterile way of thinking that Rhythm demonstrates above."


Firstly, I do not find Rhythm sterile in his thinking at all. Secondly, there was nothing sterile in that professor's thinking. He was stunning in his insight, the scope of his vision, and his understanding of the indexing of religious concepts and their development. One need not take god or the soul to heart in order to understand why man has wanted invisible friends or some innate piece of immortality. Fear is an amazing motivator which is subsequently quite often mistaken for the great gravy.

[dtango]

Secondly, there was nothing sterile in that professor's thinking. He was stunning in his insight, the scope of his vision, and his understanding of the indexing of religious concepts and their development.

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That is exactly what I mean by sterile thinking: the lack of the product.
There can be no understanding of the indexing of religious concepts and their development when the first item of the index is missing.

How did it happen that man produced the idea of god?

>He wanted an invisible friend to rape his mother, woman and daughter. A killer like the one described in the OT!
>He was afraid of thunder and lightning and as he was so stupid he imagined Zeus shooting from the clouds and thus, because of his stupidity, offered Zeus roast beef in order to appease him!
>God had his brain programmed accordingly. The innate knowledge of God!!

Man did not produce the idea of god for the simple reason that the idea is so ridiculous that it would have required a ridiculously stupid man that cannot had ever existed.

Moreover, the story of the production of the idea can be found in the texts but philosophers prefer to look down into the unfathomable depths of their souls rather than look down into the texts.

[Epimethean]

You need to read your Joseph Campbell. Man absolutely produced god. What we have done since has been a joke we've been playing on ourselves and will continue to tell as long as we are afraid of the unknown. God is conceptually knowable, and the massive set of flaws in the concept are easily traced back to ... his earthly creators. You are arguing from a top down perspective, and conflating ignorance with stupidity: The former is a condition can be cured in the absence of the latter, and time and memetic evolution are showing this. Unfortunately, the latter condition is persistent through genetics reinforced with bad memes, and the god meme is one of the worst. That said, we have cured many diseases, so in time, even this one may be eradicated.

You suggest that the "soul" is unfathomable. That puts us at opposite ends of this discourse. Since the texts are man-made and man-sourced, those who do search them without positing an "O God" premise tend to find the limits to be mental, not supernatural.

[dtango]

You need to read your Joseph Campbell.

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Oh, my dear friend, I read Campbell twenty years ago. A treasury of information he is but I wanted to know what my ancestors believed and not what Campbell thought they believed by analyzing funny theological concepts.

Want to discuss Campbell?
Page 47 of the “Oriental Mythology”:

We may take as example the case of the mythologies of Egypt, which for the period c. 2800-1800 BC are the best documented in the world.

How much did he know of those documented mythologies that he so much esteems?
Zero! He knew nothing because the Egyptologists’ translation of the texts containing the said mythologies are not only completely useless but dangerous for the student because they are deceptive.

He is good in philosophical assumptions but so naive!!
He writes of the Bull symbol:

Between the period of the earliest female figurines of c. 4500 BC (he means the figurines of the East) and that of the seals of Figures 2 and 3 (rams and bulls are depicted on the seals) , a span of a thousand years elapsed, during which the archaeological signs constantly increase of a cult of the tilled earth fertilized by the noblest and most powerful beast of the recently developed holy barnyard, the bull –who not only sired the milk-yielding cows, but also drew the plow, which in that early period simultaneously broke and seeded the earth. Moreover, by analogy, the horned moon, lord of the rhythm of the womb and of the rains and dews, was equated with the bull; so that the animal became a cosmological symbol, uniting the fields and laws of sky and earth.
And the whole mystery of being could thus be poetically illustrated through the metaphor of the cow, the bull, and their calf, liturgically rendered within the precincts of the early temple compounds –which were symbolic of the womb of the cosmic goddess Cow herself.

I could say that here we have just reached the point where naiveté ends and stupidity begins, but it is even worse: For Campbell, Jung, and unfortunately for Kerényi too, there are only scholars, poets and philosophers on this world. What about common people? Were they informed what it was that one which poetically was illustrated through the metaphor of the cow? Because they had been taught by their ancestors that the Cow, the Mother-womb who bore them after having been raped by the Bull-god, was their mother and not some imaginative metaphor.

The Coffin Texts, Spell 317 §135

I have come into being, one whom no vulva made, whom no womb bore.

Copy SIC of the same Spell

I have come into being, one whom no bull fashioned, whom no womb made.

Do you want a piece of worthy knowledge? Forget Campbell and Jung and read the texts.

[Epimethean]

Ah, when you suggest as you do that Campbell was ignorant, I see a preconceived agenda here. I have had professors (one of whom you have also suggested was ignorant) from Harvard, Cambridge and Stanford among other extremely prestigious universities revered for their classics and near eastern studies departments, and none of them have disparaged Campbell as ignorant. Truly, the man knew more about myth and spirit than anyone known to us yet. That "sterile" professor from Harvard counted him as one of the few truly great thinkers in the field of mythology in the past 100 years.

I read primary sources very well, thank you. So did Campbell, and with more knowledge than either of us have. Do you truly think you have a grasp on a myth or soul concept Campbell did not grok? Goodness. Animus animaque hic fiunt fastus!

[dtango]

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I provide evidence and you only can afford commercials for prestigious universities!!

I said Campbell is a treasury of information but when it comes to his esteemed Egyptian mythologies he is so ignorant as your illustrious universities of Harvard, Cambridge and Stanford.
The top Egyptologist of our time is James Allen, an American too. Here is his excuse for not translating in his works three key Egyptian words:

The crucial terms bA, kA, Ax are rendered as “ba,” “ka,” and “akh,” respectively, rather than by a translation, because they each carry a wealth of connotations that is often impossible to capture in a single English word (see the Glossary). In a few cases, our knowledge of the Egyptian language has not (yet) made it possible to know the meaning of a verb or noun; such words are represented in the translations by a transliteration of the Egyptian term.
It is neither the “wealth of connotations” nor our limited knowledge of the Egyptian language that is to be blamed but the fact that we believe that everything there is to know about myth it has already been told by Campbell and Jung.

We cannot understand the funerary texts because we believe Campbell who had no idea of what is written in the funerary texts. And, of course, he cannot be blamed for being ignorant in this aspect since we, today, also cannot understand the texts as long as the translators are afraid of really translating them.

It may be true that there are different meanings for the word “ba,” for example, but when it occurs with the meaning of “soul” it could be so translated, when it occurs as the name of the person who acted as defence witness during judgment it could also be rendered as such, when it occurs as the name of the person who is at the head of a group of gods, humans or loathsome sub humans, it could also be rendered as such but then... explanations would have been required and these cannot be provided when thinking Campbellwise.

We are not talking physics here. We are talking about the subject that I have studied and I know. Your prestigious university professors are either ignorant or dishonest. The choice is yours.

[Epimethean]

"We cannot understand the funerary texts because we believe Campbell who had no idea of what is written in the funerary texts."

You love to say this. Apparently no one but you has ever been able to read these texts. Sorry, but you are so wrong here it is ridiculous to continue. You have your agenda, which is to state that there must be a soul due to a set of texts that have been available and translatable to us since the 19th century. I am afraid the ignorance lies elsewhere here, as it certainly is not with Campbell or the universities.

[dtango]

Apparently no one but you has ever been able to read these texts.
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Millions did read them. The point is what did they understand:

The Pyramid texts. Utterance 436 §789

Translated by Faulkner: “This mighty one has been made a spirit for the benefit of(?) his soul.
Oxford Universwity Press
Translated by Allen: “ this controlling power has been akhified for his ba.

[quote='Epimethean' pid='213683' dateline='1323349073']
You have your agenda, which is to state that there must be a soul due to a set of texts that have been available and translatable to us since the 19th century.

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What I am saying is that the idea of the soul is ridiculous and that there is that set of texts that shows how the idea was produced.
The hieroglyphic script is translatable but the funerary texts are not understandable because... you now know why.

Sorry, but you are so wrong here it is ridiculous to continue. I am afraid the ignorance lies elsewhere here, as it certainly is not with Campbell or the universities.

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Prove me wrong. I, on my part, furnished enough evidence to support my thesis that Egiptologists do not know what the funerary texts are about, and as a consequence neither did Campbell nor do the universities.