RE: The First Cause? Prime Mover Argument
May 11, 2015 at 10:58 am
(This post was last modified: May 11, 2015 at 10:59 am by Hatshepsut.)
(May 10, 2015 at 9:15 pm)Rhythm Wrote:Quote:Premise 3) This first cause is empistemically hidden from us (we have no direct experience or knowledge of it)Hiddenness...check.....
The Egyptians were fond of that "hiddenness" thing. The word jmn "hidden" is also the name of a god, Amun, "the hidden one," the state god of Waset (Thebes) whose priests elevated Hatsheput to the throne over her young co-ruler Thutmose III. A thing hidden from us not by epistemological considerations, but by lack of surviving documents, or the possibility that the backroom deals were never recorded in writing.
Often I'm tempted to think the Hebrews plagiarized much of their religious textual corpus from Egypt. If that's too extreme, then the creation topography, creative utterance by deity, hiddenness, and flood schemas were all borrowed, and a doctrine of killing the firstborn which the Egyptians didn't have added in. On this last, Pharaoh preferred taking POWs to mass slaughter of civilians.
