(November 30, 2011 at 2:25 am)Rhythm Wrote: People say that this or that god was in control of the rain, and caused the tides to come in or the crops to grow or whatever. I'll go ahead and take their word that they actually believed this to be the case, that they were explaining physical reality in a narrative that is now mythology.Theagenes of Rhegium was a Greek literary critic of the 6th century BC. He is noted for having defended the mythology of Homer, from more rationalist attacks. In so doing he became an early proponent of the allegorical method of reading texts(Wikipedia).
He taught that by Apollo Homer meant the sun. In Greece there was no clergy to create funny gods and so it was left to the philosophers. In Egypt Ra, who was an elderly god whom Isis killed by having a snake bite him, was transformed to a Sun-god by the clergy. No people ever believed in gods who control rain and thunder. They were made, though, to believe in them by theologians.
The layman does not bother to explain physical reality. The philosophers do that.
(November 30, 2011 at 2:25 am)Rhythm Wrote: It also does not take into account that we know for fact that human beings have invented religions whole cloth, out of nothing but thin air.Still you have to explain why did they invent gods who are described to have behaved in the same manner in so many unrelated cultures.
You have to explain why people were killing their firstborns in order to satisfy imaginary gods.
Why were they artificially deforming the skulls of the infants almost all over the globe.
Why were they purifying themselves in so many crazy ways, and they still do.
(November 30, 2011 at 12:43 pm)Rhythm Wrote: You're basing your understanding of history on egyptian funerary texts? Willing to wager that's where everything starts to go off the rails.No objection here.
If it was not for the Egyptian funerary texts, the humanity would be travelling now on the right track. No soul nonsense, no netherworld nonsense, no immortality, no Judgment.
Yet, who is to be blamed? The texts, or the ancient philosophers and modern scientists who knew what was written on the texts before even reading them?
How come students all over the world are aware of the ancient Greek and
Latin literature but know nothing of the Egyptian and the Sumerian one?
