Why did god create evil?

[The Grand Nudger]

Except that the Egyptians aren't the only people to have believed in a soul (if they did), nor is the egyptian tradition the basis for all traditions that did. As I've suggested, if everything you wish to propose rests upon these egyptian texts, limit your conclusions to the egyptian tradition, and those that can be shown to have been directly influenced or created by it. The list of myths that do not fall under this category is greater than the list of myths that do by a staggering amount, and those are only the ones that we know about, not those that have been completely and utterly forgotten save for a sentence here and there.

[dtango]

Except that the Egyptians aren't the only people to have believed in a soul (if they did),…

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You are now fighting against evidence.

Preserve me behind you, O Atum, from the decay you reserve for every god and every goddess, for the animals all, for the reptiles all; for each passed away when his soul left after his death; he perished after he passed away. (The Bok of the Dead, Chapter 154, text E. Naville Todtenbuch)

pri (went away) bA (soul) =f (his) m-xt (after) mt (died) =f (he)

… nor is the egyptian tradition the basis for all traditions that did.

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There is life and there is death. Life has something: The spark of life, the spirit in which so many cultures naturally believe. The soul is supposed to be a sort of spirit living after death and that is a notion that a normal, healthy intelligence cannot produce. It was produced in the environment of the Egyptian priesthood because of the texts and because of the way the texts had been exploited by the clergy.
Any peoples believing in the theory of dualism are repeating what the Egyptians taught them.

As I've suggested, if everything you wish to propose rests upon these egyptian texts, limit your conclusions to the egyptian tradition, and those that can be shown to have been directly influenced or created by it.

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Western civilization is based on Roman civilization which is based on Greek civilization which is based on Egyptian civilization, but Western civilization prefers not to mention the Egyptian-Greek part of the story.
Where from did your culture got the idea of the soul?

The list of myths that do not fall under this category is greater than the list of myths that do by a staggering amount, and those are only the ones that we know about, not those that have been completely and utterly forgotten save for a sentence here and there.

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The roots of the humanity and its history are permanently anchored in the Near East. The oldest records of the humanity’s oral traditions were written in Near Eastern scripts and that is what counts, not those recorded millennia later, by the time that, as you say, were utterly forgotten save for a sentence here and there.

[Epimethean]

So, Tango, you feel that the Hun and Po of the Chinese came from ... ? The Native American Ni and Nagi?

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm arguing against evidence? Wow, and here I was thinking that I was arguing against your interpretation and the conclusions you drew from it.

My culture? If you're referring to say, the christian tradition.....that was forced upon "my culture" through military and political pressure, backed up by domestic coercion and torture (to the tune of about 1,000 years worth). Ironic, since they already believed in a "soul" though definitely not the christian version. Nothing about the home grown beliefs of any culture I'm descended from have anything to do with Egypt, Greece, Rome, or Christianity. Nor does the idea of a "soul" find it's only refuge in any of these traditions, as we've been preparing ourselves for the afterlife for more than 30,000 years and across the entire globe. Were the egyptians teaching people in the paleolithic dualism? That's quite the stretch. The near east has tons of history, but it doesn't have any exclusivity on the past. It's not as though nothing was happening in the americas, australia, northern europe, the far east, south africa, or the pacific islands. Again, limit your conclusions to what your evidence can support. I obviously have doubts as to just how strong your evidence is(which appears to be nothing more than a translation of a text that is in all likelihood 100% myth), but I've been going forward on the assumption that you're correct (even though our current understanding of egypt says that you're not). Even with this provisional concession you've been unable to justify the giant (global) brush that you've used to paint all religions of every people as somehow a ripoff of Egyptian thought (let alone your conclusion regarding just what egyptian thought was, and what it was based upon). We hear this shit from christians all the time about their favorite myths as well. Ask Statler what he thinks, lol. I've been willing to offer you more compromise than you'll get if you try to publish your paper anywhere but a blog, and if you want to do that, you'll need more than what you've shown us.

[Epimethean]

Bleedin' Viking!

[The Grand Nudger]

Among many other things, perfect fucking american mutt (we're all mutts in the end aren't we, snapshots in time decide who we self-identify as). Still, not Egytian, Greek, or Roman. Remember, I have the ginger gene too, lol. So I guess I have to defend the neanderthals from this zealot as well.

[dtango]

So, Tango, you feel that the Hun and Po of the Chinese came from ... ? The Native American Ni and Nagi?

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You are asking me this because I wrote… what exactly?

I'm arguing against evidence? Wow, and here I was thinking that I was arguing against your interpretation and the conclusions you drew from it.

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There is neither interpretation nor conclusions involved here. You doubted the belief of the Egyptians in the soul and I furnished proof that they did.

My culture? If you're referring to say, the christian tradition.....that was forced upon "my culture" through military and political pressure, backed up by domestic coercion and torture (to the tune of about 1,000 years worth).

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Well, Christianity is nobody’s culture and it has been raping “my culture” for 1600 years. I am asking for your native culture and where did it get the idea of soul from.

Ironic, since they already believed in a "soul" though definitely not the christian version.

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What version then? What do you know about it?

Nothing about the home grown beliefs of any culture I'm descended from have anything to do with Egypt, Greece, Rome, or Christianity.

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Mine has. It got the idea of the immortal soul from the Egyptians. The ancient Greeks did not believe in such nonsense. Everything in the Greek tradition about Netherworld, afterlife, and immortal souls came directly out of the Egyptian texts. The spiritual gods were the product of the imagination of idealist philosophers taught in Egypt too.

Nor does the idea of a "soul" find it's only refuge in any of these traditions, as we've been preparing ourselves for the afterlife for more than 30,000 years and across the entire globe.

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I am not –preparing- and therefore... some evidence, please?

The near east has tons of history, but it doesn't have any exclusivity on the past. It's not as though nothing was happening in the americas, australia, northern europe, the far east, south africa, or the pacific islands.

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Sub-Saharan Africans excluded, we all come from the Near East, like it or not.

We hear this shit from christians all the time about their favorite myths as well. Ask Statler what he thinks, lol. I've been willing to offer you more compromise than you'll get if you try to publish your paper anywhere but a blog, and if you want to do that, you'll need more than what you've shown us.

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Oh, you hear from Christians all the time that their idea of Judgment comes right out of the Egyptian texts, that the word “Amen” they use to close their prayers with is actually an invocation of the name of the Egyptian god Amen and that Yahweh was originally born into the Egyptian temples as Amen-Re!!

As for publishing my work in a blog, I can do no better but, still, I am happy because although you reject my theory it is crazy enough and you’ll not forget it.

[Epimethean]

Blah, blah, blah. Lovers of Eusebius unite!

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm sorry, perhaps we're suffering a disconnect here do to differences of language. Are you not arguing that "soul" is a product (or invention) of egyptian philosophers and not a common belief of the egyptian people (or any people, were it not for those philosophers)?

Northern European (think frozen north) and Native American. They appear to have come up with the idea themselves, as far back as the paleolithic, and long before any contact or influence had been exerted by any of the traditions you offer as the origin of any "soul" even existed. You'd have to argue for egyptian boats crossing the atlantic and teaching their religion to the cherokee (and probably more than a few sub-saharan africans), if you wanted it to have any sort of universal applicability to me, or the cultures of the people I call my ancestors. Unless that's not what you're arguing, of course.

The version would depend on which people we wanted to focus on. In all cases we have their burials, their art, and their artifacts. All of which seem to point to a belief in an afterlife, souls, etc. All of which predate civilization itself, let alone egyptian civilization.

You aren't, but "we" as in the collective human "we", have been. See above. Judging by the pieces you have linked in your article you should be aware of the evidence we have for religious behavior. Specifically ritual burials and all that they would suggest. You should also be aware that this evidence goes back to the paleolithic (and isn't limited to our own species, but can be accredited to others in our genus). In either case (northern europe or north america), there are afterlives and souls.

Sure, if you mean "we all passed through the near east". That doesn't mean that all of our beliefs have their origins in what people in the near east believed tens of thousand of years after we did so. If you're arguing that the traditional beliefs of the people of egypt were somehow different than that which egyptian philosophers later imposed, then those (non soul) beliefs would be the only ones we carried away with us (if we carried them away at all), wouldn't they? Yet we see evidence of a belief in an afterlife and soul almost anywhere we care to look.

No, Dtango, we hear christians tell us how all other myths or religions are somehow derived from or a perversion of their favorite myths. Which seems to be what you're implying here. Christianity is a near eastern tradition, and it has many parrallels in other near eastern traditions. Unsurprising, since they are all near eastern traditions. Epi asked you the question that he did because you seem to be implying that the idea of a soul is somehow definitively egyptian, and has it's origin in egyptian civilization and philosophy. If this isn't what you mean to suggest, I apologize. If it is would you care to explain the apparent belief in souls in the paleolithic world, or among native americans? In the first case there was no such thing as an egyptian philosopher or egyptian civilization. In the second, you have two massive bodies of water in addition to the span of time I've already mentioned, as well as no trace of any interaction whatsoever. In both cases there are afterlives and souls. The landscape of religious and mythological tradition is so vast in time, geography, and disparity that any attempt to pigeonhole any integral part of it (such as a soul or afterlife) as the sole domain of any given people; with all others borrowing the concept, is to engage in the least reasonable or demonstrable sort of tunnel vision imaginable. The only thing that can be said for the entirety of these traditions with any confidence is that they are the product of the human mind as a whole, and not a single human mind, or the minds of a single part of this larger tradition overall. Through the course of time all of our different traditions have come into contact with each other, but to assume an unbroken chain between egyptian thought on the matter and all other descriptions of souls or the afterlife is not only unsupported by evidence, it ignores a vast body of evidence to the contrary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_religion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Amer...ted_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_paganism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_polytheism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_paganism

Another link, because it has a hell of alot to say about this
"Anatomically modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, reaching full behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

Italics are mine, the position is not. That would be the Smithsonian's position on the matter. Based upon evidence which you can find links to and descriptions of in the link at the very bottom. Behavioral modernity includes religious thinking (afterlives being one of the oldest parts of this). That's a gap of nearly 45,000 years between behavioral modernity and egyptian civilization. We've been engaging in ritual burials for nearly 300,000 years (notice the 100,000 year head-start that burial rites have on anatomically modern humans). An even greater gap.
http://humanorigins.si.edu/

(every now and then I like to defend myths, rather than shit on them)

[dtango]

I'm sorry, perhaps we're suffering a disconnect here do to differences of language.

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Well, I believe that my English is not that bad and that for our differences we should blame my love for OT.
I love the OT because as Richard Dawkins wrote in the “Delusion” the God of the OT (“G” for monotheistic gods, “g” for polytheistic ones): is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. This description matches perfectly the description of the gods as it is found in the archaic texts and older myths and legends. That God is not the Christian God!
The grave mistake of Dawkins (and yours too) is that he calls this narrative a fiction forgetting that the author of the supposed fiction is the oral tradition of so many cultures.

Are you not arguing that "soul" is a product (or invention) of egyptian philosophers and not a common belief of the egyptian people (or any people, were it not for those philosophers)?

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Correct! But it is the product of the misinterpretation/misunderstanding of a single word. It is nobody’s product. The meaning of the word deteriorated and once it got close to the meaning of the soul it was hooked and exploited by the clergy.

However, there is a basic difference between the idea of the immortal soul that came out of the Egyptian temples and that of the “spirit” of living entities which, doubtless, our ancestors had in mind.

The proof that the concept of the soul did not exist among Egyptians (before it was imposed upon by the priesthood) consists of the fact that in the Egyptian tradition it is not the soul that undergoes judgment but the body. When the judgment of the living was transformed into a judgment of the dead by the clergy, they still had to satisfy the requirements of the sacred archaic texts and provide the dead with a body suitable for judgment. A body that will not decompose and thus they resorted to the madness of the mummification. One paranoiac idea had to be supported by another paranoiac idea.

So, when we are referring to the soul we mean an immortal soul that is undergoing judgment. No such concept was found among the Native Americans. All the others were contaminated by the various editions of the soul adapted by the various nations (Plato wrote that we have more that two souls and Pythagoras advised not to eat garlic because it bothers the soul!!)

The version would depend on which people we wanted to focus on. In all cases we have their burials, their art, and their artifacts. All of which seem to point to a belief in an afterlife, souls, etc. All of which predate civilization itself, let alone egyptian civilization.

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I live in a suburb of Athens and I do have a lot of dogs...



...special cat-loving flying dogs, as you can see!

When one of my dogs die I do not dump his body in the trash can. I burry him with his collar and his little carpet. A companion, either man or animal, on dying is not transformed automatically from a companion into dead meat. He is still a companion of whom one continues to take care. That care has nothing to do with belief in afterlife.
The belief in an afterlife is unnatural. If some people do believe in an afterlife (without having been taught to) they either have an excuse or something had gone terribly wrong with them.

Sure, if you mean "we all passed through the near east". That doesn't mean that all of our beliefs have their origins in what people in the near east believed tens of thousand of years after we did so.

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According to the study of the word ba it seems that the concept of the immortal soul appeared in Egypt at about 2500 BCE. The gods and their story is 40 to 50k years old (Australian Aborigines mention giants but no gods because some tribes reached Australia around 55k years ago). Therefore the common stories about gods can be easily explained but the belief in immortal souls requires some evidence as regards the Native Americans. Do you have such evidence?

Let us consider the case of the Celts. Most probably you know Thomas Rolleston and his book “Myths and Legends of the Celts”. We read in page 80:

The classical writers felt rightly that the Celtic idea of immortality was something altogether different from this (the Greek and Egyptian idea is meant). It was both loftier and more realistic; it implied a true persistence of the living man, as he was at present, in all his human relations. They noted with surprise that the Celt would lend money on a promissory note for repayment in the next world. That is an absolutely Egyptian conception. And this very analogy occurred to Diodorus in writing of the Celtic idea of immortality –it was like nothing that he knew of out of Egypt.

Many ancient writers assert that the Celtic idea of immortality embodied the Oriental conception of the transmigration of souls, and to account for this the hypothesis was invented that they had learned the doctrine from Pythagoras, who represented it in classical antiquity. Thus Ceasar: “The principal point of their [the Druids] teaching is that the soul does not perish, and that after death it passes from one body into another.” And Diodorus: “Among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevails, according to which the souls of men are immortal, and after a fixed term recommence to live, taking upon themselves a new body”

(Note that Diodorus is referring to the doctrine o Pythagoras. He himself did not believe in an immortal soul because it was a concept foreign to the Greek culture)

Rolleston also noted the distinction between popular and scholarly conceptions. A distinction of utmost importance for anyone who really wants to understand religion.
In a paragraph entitled “The Popular and the Bardic Conceptions” he writes:

Nor must it be overlooked that the popular conception of the Danaan deities was probably at all times something different from the bardic and Druidic, or in other words the scholarly, conception. The latter, as we shall see, represents them as the presiding deities of science and poetry. This is not a popular idea; it is the product of the Celtic, the Aryan imagination, inspired by a strictly intellectual conception. The common people, who represented mainly the Megalithic element in the population, appear to have conceived their deities as earth powers –dei terreni, as they are explicitly called in the eighteenth-century “Book of Armagh”- presiding not over science and poetry, but rather agriculture, controlling the fecundity of the earth and water, and dwelling in hills, rivers, and lakes. In the bardic literature the Aryan idea is prominent; the other is to be found in innumerable folk-tales and popular observances; but of course in each case a considerable amount of interpretation of the two conceptions is to be met with –no sharp dividing line was drawn between them in ancient times, and none can be draw now

Sacerdotalism, whether Christian, druidic or Zoroastrian makes no difference.

I believe that in order to kill religion it must be shown -as in the case of the concept of the soul- how the idea of spiritual gods was produced. In other words, to show how ridiculous the concept of spiritual gods is by providing evidence that the inhuman gods of our forefathers were no more than just a race of bloodthirsty men.