Agnostic Atheism? Your opinions..

[dtango]

This of course begs the question "and how do you know that you have studied the question more than I have?"
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Frankly I hope it is you because I'm no longer much interested in any of it, and if I had it to over again would have put the same interest into other subjects.

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That is exactly what I mean! On this particular subject I know more than you do because this subject is a passion for mine. I’ve spent thirty years studying it and I had to teach myself to read Egyptian hieroglyphs in order to keep going on with the study.

In a lot of other subjects you know much more than I know, but not on this one.

Do tell, how did the idea of the existence of a god come to be? [Personally I agree with Campbell that there is something in the human psyche that gives rise to the idea or makes it appealing once the idea is out there.]

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Campbell’s theory is no better than Daniken’s (if you know his theory about alien gods) because it is not based on what words of the ancients managed to reach us. It is no more than pure speculation.
If you really want to know how the idea came to be, you have to start thinking for yourself. Answer the question: Why is it that the Native Americans tell the same story about gods as the Europeans, Asians and Africans tell, while they had lived for 14,000 in isolation?

From this I take it you think it is all a bunch of shit? You have certainly identified an odd passage concerned with the after life, a subject that has always seemed absurd to me as well.

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A bunch of shit are the translations of the Egyptian funerary texts by the modern Egyptologists. The man who was complaining about the god’s conduct was not in the Netherworld, he was in the gods estate serving them as their slave (the Christians still think of themselves as the slaves of the God).
The texts do not describe a life after death but a life after judgment. A judgment of people alive is described in those texts. Did Campbell told you that? No, because he could not know as the translators had deceived him as had everybody else.

Okay I do recognize appeals to authority as a form of argument, albeit a very weak form.

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What I meant to say is that they were no idiots to believe in life after death of their own. They were taught to believe in it, while still kids, as it happens today.

I am genuinely curious now. I confess I have turned over more than a few rocks looking for secret meanings, but there are many more I haven't touched.

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Well, you now have the stone of the judgment to reflect on!

Your blog, which I added to my blogosphere for future reference.

Most people don't even think of this stuff. Many just accept it as fact based upon inertia, i.e. it has been around for so long with so many believers, there must be something to it. Some people are rational and use logic to disavow themselves of the meme.

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Thank you very much. I certainly can use some encouragement!
I am currently translating an article on The Great Mother but it will take some time.