RE: Why did god create evil?
December 6, 2011 at 9:47 am
(This post was last modified: December 6, 2011 at 10:03 am by The Grand Nudger.)
You bury your dogs with a carpet and and collar and tools, and food, and changes of clothing, and expensive jewelry, and ritual objects, and effigies of loved ones, and half finished projects from their lives, in an ornately decorated hole?
See how sometimes things can be similar, but not exactly alike? How a behavior can come from more than one source? You haven't overturned the entirety of paleolithic archaeology by throwing collars and carpets in your dog's grave.
You're making it too easy to assualt your hypothesis by over-reaching with it's conclusions. First, you go full on euhemerism (ignoring the possibility of fiction for which we have fantastic examples), and then, without any mention of exactly how you propose that this singular narrative was carried across the entirety of the world where cultures believed in souls and the afterlife (in all cases your egyptian philosophers would have needed a time machine). You do this in an attempt to salvage a kernel of truth from myth which is probably there sometimes, but probably isn't all the time. Dracula has many kernels of truth, and remains fiction. Even if we allow for some event to have formed the basis of any given myth, whatever that event was is completely gone. Crushed under the weight of the myth. The event becomes the vehicle by which the myth is communicated, not the other way round. People seem to like good stories just a little bit more than history.
Ah, I see, I see, "immortal" souls. A re-incarnative soul is immortal. In fact anyone who proposes a soul whatsoever is likely to end up with the idea of immortality. Even if they propose that a soul can die in the spirit world, perhaps it simply goes on to another spirit world (that's how they got to the spirit world in the first place). Again, big eyes small stomach. Limit your conclusions to the egyptian myths, and egyptian culture. I understand the drive to explain religion and myth in a way that makes it untenable for us to continue believing in them. However, offering such unsupported explanations will only strengthen some peoples convictions, as they knock down a poorly constructed argument against faith.
(I'm not sure what you were asking about Native American beliefs. If they believed in souls, spirits, afterlives and gods? Long story short, they did. Many still do.)
See how sometimes things can be similar, but not exactly alike? How a behavior can come from more than one source? You haven't overturned the entirety of paleolithic archaeology by throwing collars and carpets in your dog's grave.
You're making it too easy to assualt your hypothesis by over-reaching with it's conclusions. First, you go full on euhemerism (ignoring the possibility of fiction for which we have fantastic examples), and then, without any mention of exactly how you propose that this singular narrative was carried across the entirety of the world where cultures believed in souls and the afterlife (in all cases your egyptian philosophers would have needed a time machine). You do this in an attempt to salvage a kernel of truth from myth which is probably there sometimes, but probably isn't all the time. Dracula has many kernels of truth, and remains fiction. Even if we allow for some event to have formed the basis of any given myth, whatever that event was is completely gone. Crushed under the weight of the myth. The event becomes the vehicle by which the myth is communicated, not the other way round. People seem to like good stories just a little bit more than history.
Ah, I see, I see, "immortal" souls. A re-incarnative soul is immortal. In fact anyone who proposes a soul whatsoever is likely to end up with the idea of immortality. Even if they propose that a soul can die in the spirit world, perhaps it simply goes on to another spirit world (that's how they got to the spirit world in the first place). Again, big eyes small stomach. Limit your conclusions to the egyptian myths, and egyptian culture. I understand the drive to explain religion and myth in a way that makes it untenable for us to continue believing in them. However, offering such unsupported explanations will only strengthen some peoples convictions, as they knock down a poorly constructed argument against faith.
(I'm not sure what you were asking about Native American beliefs. If they believed in souls, spirits, afterlives and gods? Long story short, they did. Many still do.)
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