Philosophical and Moral Question of the day

[MysticMoon]

This is too perfect an opportunity to pass up: http://xkcd.com/750/

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by devilsadvocate

$50 bonus question:

Would any of us know this pastor's name (or that he even existed) if he hadn't threatened to burn a Koran?

Mission accomplished.

L. Ron Hubbard once said, "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." Having read from both the Koran and the Bible, I wonder if religion and science-fiction (or what passed for it before Jules Verne came along) are not one and the same. They each contradict themselves (and each other) by the way, so I'm not sure reading the Koran will answer many questions for the unenlightened.

In any event, religion was developed as a form of crowd control back when the Earth was flat and we could barely start a fire to keep from freezing. It still persists today because many people feel they're not in control of their lives/destinies. Education in the U.S. has taken a major turn southward over the last 20 years and simultaneously we have Creationism museums popping up, the lawsuit-trolls from Westboro Baptist Church, and this jackass in FL. I'm not saying there's a conspiracy behind it but it wouldn't take much to convince me it wasn't a coincidence.

I feel I must preface the following remarks about The Book of J with a bit of explanation.

Modern Bible scholars believe that the first five books of the Bible, traditionally ascribed to Moses, were in fact written by four different authors, and later combined into a single narrative by editors. One of those authors is simply called "the J author" (AKA "the Yahwist") because this person consistently used the Hebrew equivalents of the letters YHWH for the name of the God of the Hebrews (it works out in German). Attempting to separate the four interwoven threads is not always easy (it was the Yahwist who penned the Adam and Eve story, for example), but in a book published in 1990, Harold Bloom and David Rosenberg attempted to do just that with the J writings.

Among other things that make The Book of J by Harold Bloom (author) and David Rosenberg (translator) interesting reading is the speculation they raise raised as to the possibility that The Book of J was originally written not as Holy Scripture, but as a work of fiction by a woman in King Soloman's court.

Needless to say, not everyone agrees, but it's an interesting possibility to consider.

If anyone is interested in learning more about the Documentary Hypothesis, Wikipedia has an article on it here.

The Book of J (paperback) can be found on Amazon here.

[ardeegee]

There is also a classic book by Asimov on the subject-- available as a hugely overpriced ebook but you'd be much better off buying one of the original hardbacks for a few cents plus shipping.

[dsvick]

Originally Posted by nohmi2

It would appear that there are others who have more enquiring minds.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20100907/pl_usnw/DC60870 WTC

http://www.scientistsfor911truth.org/

http://www.militaryofficersfor911truth.org/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us...er=rss&emc=rss

You will notice that this is all recent news, and I am quite sure that you will post a lot more pictures.

The NY Time link is on a completely unrelated subject and is only mentioning that there may be parts of the book that government may not want published just yet.

The Yahoo link is just a news report on a press conference, you can't imply that Yahoo thinks there is any substance to the subject of the conference just because they post about it.

The other two links perhaps not unsurprisingly are hosted by the same host company on the same IP address so you can't use them as evidence of widespread belief either.

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Among other things that make The Book of J by Harold Bloom (author) and David Rosenberg (translator) interesting reading is the speculation they raise raised as to the possibility that The Book of J was originally written not as Holy Scripture, but as a work of fiction by a woman in King Soloman's court.

I'd never heard of that before, thanks for the link and the info. I can never discuss it at home but it is good to know

Along the same lines weren't a great many books previously published as non-fiction, I seem to recall that Gulliver's Travels, and Robinson Crusoe were a couple of the more notable ones.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

There is also a classic book by Asimov on the subject-- available as a hugely overpriced ebook but you'd be much better off buying one of the original hardbacks for a few cents plus shipping.

That book, In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis by Isaac Asimov is great. I've got a hardback copy that I read years ago. Asimov was a talented writer. He did a very even-handed job with this book.

$12.99 ($11.04 for Fictionwise members) isn't so bad for an ebook edition. I've paid more for a quality ebook.

Amazon's Kindle edition is $11.69. It's well worth it!

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

$12.99 ($11.04 for Fictionwise members) isn't so bad for an ebook edition.

For a new release? You can argue that. For a 40ish year old back catalog? I'd think anything over 5 bucks is highway robbery. I just scanned one of my hardcovers (yes, "one of"-- I somehow managed to end up with a few over the years.)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Druid_Elf

You are absolutely right. More people should read the koran instead of them being read too. Fact is that many people in those countries can't read the arab language, and it are the imams that tell their version of the koran which is the underlying problem (anyone sees the reference to Christianity in the dark ages )

It's an interesting question, and I've seen similar claims. (Like suggestions that Pakistani Muslims reading the Koran in Urdu aren't real Muslims because they aren't getting the original Arabic version.) Translation is an art that few have mastered. You can't simply do a word-for-word translation, because there often aren't words in the second language that are exact equivalents of those in the first. and even if similar words exist, they may have entirely different underlying meanings. (If you can find a copy, see S. I. Hayakawa's _The Use and Misuse of Language_ for some articles that address the issue. Hayakawa was examining the work done by the UN translators, who are generally very good indeed.)

I've actually read it, out of curiosity and in a translated version, but many things which are in their are not practiced correct. The head veils for one, you can't find one damn reference to it. It states that a woman should not draw the attention of men.. In the western world you draw attention by wearing that.

Color that cultural, and not religious. I believe that particular proscription actually comes from the Hadith, not the Koran, and likely predates Islam. The Hadith are sayings attributed to Mohamed by close friends and associates who were there when he said them. They are second only to the Koran as sources for Islamic law. A group of Islamic scholars in Turkey are in an effort to reexamine the Hadith based on current circumstances. The prohibition against a woman traveling alone, for example, dated from a period when it simply wasn't safe for a woman to travel by herself, and you can make a good case that Mohamed wasn't trying to subordinate a woman to her husband, merely trying to keep her alive. Now that it usually is safe for a woman to travel alone, does that prohibition still make sense? I wish them a lot of luck on this. It's a very fraught issue, and there will be people hopping mad no matter which way they jump.

The burka is another cultural thing. Every culture will have standards that define acceptable behavior. The question is where the controls reside. Are they internal or external? In our culture, for example, a man is expected to control himself, and behave properly in the company of a woman. The controls are internal. The culture in many Islamic states assumes he can't control himself, and must be given no provocation. The control must be external. Hence, the burka. Woman, cover yourself from head to toe so men don't get ideas...

Religion shapes culture, and vice versa. It wouldn't surprise me if the Arabs had the burka as a cultural fixture long before Mohamed founded Islam, for the reasons stated above.

Smoking is something that they can't do as it intoxicates the brain (nicotine does that for you), yet they all smoke.

The prohibition I'm aware of is against alcohol. That's an obvious intoxicant. Try to tell a Muslim that tobacco should be proscribed for the same reason alcohol is, and I expect funny looks at the very least.

Burning a book should be prohibited as it has happened before in history and many great works got lost. And think of the poor trees that got chopped down for your pages

Well. trees are a renewable resource...
______
Dennis

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

...Religion shapes culture, and vice versa. ...

Robert Wright wrote an excellent book that not only shows how culture shaped and continues to shape religion, but also gives hope for the future as to the relations between the major religions.

Information on The Evolution of God by Robert Wright can be found at http://www.evolutionofgod.net/.

For information on purchasing the book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Indiebound, go to http://www.evolutionofgod.net/about_book/.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by devilsadvocate

L. Ron Hubbard once said, "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." Having read from both the Koran and the Bible, I wonder if religion and science-fiction (or what passed for it before Jules Verne came along) are not one and the same. They each contradict themselves (and each other) by the way, so I'm not sure reading the Koran will answer many questions for the unenlightened.

See http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30252...-h/30252-h.htm.

It's "The Four Faced Visitors of Ezekiel", which originally appeared in the March 1961 issue of Analog SF magazine.

The author suggests that Ezekiel might have actually encountered aliens visiting in a UFO, but the story was filtered through his own knowledge and preconceptions.

(I had an amusing go-around with the PG cataloger, who placed it in the Bible. O.T. Ezekiel -- Criticism, interpretation, etc. category, and didn't see why I thought it might better be under SF... )
______
Dennis

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Robert Wright wrote an excellent book that not only shows how culture shaped and continues to shape religion, but also gives hope for the future as to the relations between the major religions.

Information on The Evolution of God by Robert Wright can be found at http://www.evolutionofgod.net/.

For information on purchasing the book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Indiebound, go to http://www.evolutionofgod.net/about_book/.

+1 for this book!

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Robert Wright wrote an excellent book that not only shows how culture shaped and continues to shape religion, but also gives hope for the future as to the relations between the major religions.

Information on The Evolution of God by Robert Wright can be found at http://www.evolutionofgod.net/.

I had an interesting conversation about such things sometime back with a late friend who was a Reform rabbi (and married to an Orthodox Catholic priest.) I was curious about when Satan became the great enemy of God. Women were burned in Salem after accusations they were witches, based on a biblical proscription "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!", and I was curious about when that particular phrase was supposedly written, and what it meant to those who wrote it.

The early Hebrews were polytheists, and the early conceptions have God as one of a number of elohim. He didn't claim to be the only god. He simply required his followers to put him first in their worship. (Moses besting the Pharoah's magicians has a strong flavor of "My god can beat your gods!") I was curious about the transition, and how he went from "the god that is our god" to "the only god that exists."

Likewise Satan wasn't a supreme evil to the early Jews, and didn't gain that status until sometime into Christianity. Witches by the Salem reckoning were folks who had sold their soul to Satan, but I doubted that meaning for the term existed when the verse was penned. (A suggestion I saw elsewhere indicated the term might better be translated poisoner, and in the original context referred to someone who would poison a water hole. In the semi-arid area where the Hebrews and the Arabs originated, that would be universally condemned.)
______
Dennis

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I had an interesting conversation about such things sometime back with a late friend who was a Reform rabbi (and married to an Orthodox Catholic priest.) I was curious about when Satan became the great enemy of God. Women were burned in Salem after accusations they were witches, based on a biblical proscription "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!", and I was curious about when that particular phrase was supposedly written, and what it meant to those who wrote it.

The early Hebrews were polytheists, and the early conceptions have God as one of a number of elohim. He didn't claim to be the only god. He simply required his followers to put him first in their worship. (Moses besting the Pharoah's magicials has a strong flavor of "My god can beat your gods!") I was curious about the transition, and how he went from "the god that is our god" to "the only god that exists."

Likewise Satan wasn't a supreme evil to the early Jews, and didn't gain that status until sometime into Christianity. Witches by the Salem reckoning were folks who had sold their soul to Satan, but I doubted that meaning for the term existed when the verse was penned. (A suggestion I saw elsewhere indicated the term might better be translated poisoner, and in the original context referred to someone who would poison a water hole. In the semi-arid area where the Hebrews and the Arabs originated, that would be universally condemned.)
______
Dennis

Yahweh seems to have originally been a member of El's pantheon. There are traces of that origin in the Hebrew Bible, notably Deuteronomy 32 verses 8 and 9. Here they are, from the New Revised Standard version. The word translated as "most High" is elyown (עֶלְיוֹ), which seems to be a reference to El, the head of a Canaanite pantheon of deities. ("El" still survives as a part of many Hebrew names, such as Israel, Ezekiel, etc.) The word translated as "LORD" in this passage is the Tetragammon (YHWH); Yahweh.

...8 When the Most High apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods;
...9 the LORD's own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share.

In time, Yahweh came to supplant El in the minds of his worshipers and many of the attributes formerly ascribed to El came to be seen as his own, according to some scholars.

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

See http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30252...-h/30252-h.htm.

It's "The Four Faced Visitors of Ezekiel", which originally appeared in the March 1961 issue of Analog SF magazine.

The author suggests that Ezekiel might have actually encountered aliens visiting in a UFO, but the story was filtered through his own knowledge and preconceptions.

(I had an amusing go-around with the PG cataloger, who placed it in the Bible. O.T. Ezekiel -- Criticism, interpretation, etc. category, and didn't see why I thought it might better be under SF... )
______
Dennis

Oh hell, my classmates and I had that theory down by the time we were 8 years old.

Sing it together now, friends 'n' neighbors:

"Ezekiel saw--the whee-el,
Waaaaaaaay up in the middle of the air..."

I came up with the idea that it was actually the Chinese who had invented something capable of flight and all my friends thought I was nuts.

[devilsadvocate]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The early Hebrews were polytheists, and the early conceptions have God as one of a number of elohim. He didn't claim to be the only god. He simply required his followers to put him first in their worship. (Moses besting the Pharoah's magicians has a strong flavor of "My god can beat your gods!") I was curious about the transition, and how he went from "the god that is our god" to "the only god that exists."
Dennis

There were multiple natural phenomena to explain away, so it stands to reason that there was a pantheon in early Judaism. Further, Judaism is not only fractious now but probably started as a combination of beliefs meeting at the crossroads which was Canaan. From what I can see it appears to be at least partially the result of an exposure to Zoroastrianism, which appears to have still more in common with Christianity.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by devilsadvocate

I came up with the idea that it was actually the Chinese who had invented something capable of flight and all my friends thought I was nuts.

Did any of them fly kites?
______
Dennis