From: Hermit (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Tue May 07 2002 - 23:39:49 MDT
[Fabes 1]
[Hermit 2]
[Matt 3]
[Kharin 4]
[Hermit 5]
[hr]
[quote from: arcadia@lynchburg.net on 2002-05-07 at 08:40:48]
Hermit
> \"As far as I'm concerned, nothing in the Bible is meant to be taken at face
> value, but instead the stories are more like parables than factual stories.\"
>
[Hermit 5] Err, that was not me but Fabes (fschoonr@csc.com). See virus: Egyptian history contradicts the Bible, Fabes, 2002-05-06 22:25:43 (http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25464).
[Hermit 5] I'd suggest that if the babble was intended as parables or "moral tales" then they fail rather dismally, being in the large, so miserably "immoral" (and unethical and plain not nice) and so far from life (at least, life as any civilized person would advocate it) that they surely fail as parables. My favorite example being "Lot" (another mythical character from a mythical city) - who supposedly offered his virgin daughter to the crowds if they would stop bothering him. According to the bible tale, he later fucked (and had children) with both of them, and is allegedly called "a righteous man" by "Jesus". If this is a parable or "moral tale" perhaps it explains quite a bit more than I feel the need to know about "religious morality". For myself, I prefer Kharin's suggestion. Aesop's tales are altogether more coherent, relevant and appealing - and, translating them from animals back to humans, much more believable than most of the bible.
[Kharin 4] In which case, I hereby nominate Aesop's fables as the new holy book of christianity. A vast improvement, I feel.
[Matt 3] This reminds me, the Aeneid was taught to school children in ancient Rome as literal history. Now, if anything, the 'history' books of the Old Testament, like Joshua, Judges, Samuel, etc read a bit more like a real account (however garbled) of some sort of real events than the Aeneid. And as for being derivitive, anyone could see even then that as masterful as Vergil was, much of his material was borrowed from Homer.
[Matt 3] Still, serious people ran a vast empire believing they descended from gods and goddesses and heros suckled by wolves, etc. (It seems that having highly implausible ideas of who one descended from or of the history of one's people does not prevent good sense and pragmatism and technical advancement in the present.) By comparison, believing in a phantom enslavement, which could well have been based on real events, though vastly inflated in the telling of the story for all the reasons that the cruelties of one's enemies are always inflated, actually seems somewhat reasonable.
[Hermit 5] I'd suggest that the Roman's were quite aware that Aesop was "fabulous" - the very name "fable," from "fabular" a made up story, provides the needed clue. In addition, they were quite comfortable with the concept of myth as background, as they carefully differentiated between history (from scriptus - writings), folk memories of seminal events and deeds (from rerum gestarum memoria), archeological knowledge (antiquitatus) and just as carefully, had multiple classifications for "types of story" (e.g. fabula, res, narratio, commenticia, mendacium, tabulatio and tabulatum). As Latin clearly demonstrates, the Romans were a very pedantic lot, no matter what others may have told you about them.
[Matt 3] I see both the OT and the Aeneid as equally valid expressions of the collective self images of the peoples that produced them. Whether the accounts themselves are true, in letter or in spirit, we'll never really know, but that people believed they were true and that this belief affected them, that is solid testable fact.
[Hermit 5] To a limited extent I'd tend to agree - bearing in mind that the babble is a marvelous compendium of ancient stories, many contributed by the Babylonians and Sumerians, others predating all of these peoples. But there is a certain nasty tone to the OT which the Aeneid does not carry and which I would suggest is the authentic taste of the "Patriarchs" of Israel, hell-bent on ridding their history of the worship of the goddesses of the moon and differentiating their tribe from those surrounding it.
[Matt 3] Similarly, what we believe about where we came from has an effect on us, irrespective of whether these beliefs are 'true.' We believe that all life descends from some single common ancestor, and so we and all life are brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles. Radical idea, eh? Yes, and that is why the theory of evolution scares some people so profoundly. Most folks
have not fully internalized the new paradigm in all its implications, even those who say they believe it.
[Hermit 5] Yes, I'd suggest that what people "believe" about their history is important, perhaps more important than what they know to be accurate or inaccurate. But more important than that, is the fact that they are able to "believe" - in other words to delude themselves. After all, belief can only occur where acceptance is not compelled, for if acceptance is compelled, then belief is not required to accept that thing. Belief is thus the acceptance of some thing as being provisionally true where:
[*]contradictory evidence exists which throws doubt upon or compels the rejection of the thing being accepted as truth.
[*]insufficient evidence exists to compel or suggest acceptance of the thing as truth.
[Hermit 5] A common "Eve" (indeed, current research indicates five or six "Eves") is simple fact (proven by examination of Mitochondrial RNA). When people reject fact, it tells us quite a lot about those people. If this is rejected, then DNA identification should also be rejected, because the one cannot exist without the other. Of course, some people do attempt to reject DNA identification and I would imagine that most of those are “creationists” – but it does rather leave the onus for alternative explanations for the observed facts on their hands.
[Matt 4] What do we believe about where our countries came from? Did Wise and Strong Founding Fathers Wrest the American Continent From the Savage and from Untamed Nature, Setting us on the Honorable Course of Subduing Her with the Whip Forever? Not anymore, but here again there's resistance to accepting the truth that national boundaries occur where rival gangs of thieves and pirates got too exhausted to fight anymore.
[Hermit 5] We should remember that rather than nature, North, Central and South America were all occupied prior to the arrival of the "Wise and Strong Founding Fathers."
[Hermit 5] One could argue (and some have) that the South and Central American Indians were more civilized than their European conquerors (and perhaps that this condemned them to being overwhelmed). But having been defeated, by the laws of the day, such as there were, they had to be condemned as savages for it to be permissible for them to be used as slaves. So their civilizations were deliberately destroyed in order to portray them as savages.
[Hermit 5] As far as the US is concerned, there is undoubtedly very much weaker grounds to argue that the peoples being displaced were not condemned by being less evolutionarily advanced. Equally, there was no more reason to justify the illegal dissolution of the treaties made with the Indian nations than there is for Mr Bush's current demolition program being perpetrated on International treaties. And it is perhaps these unfortunate facts, which creates the need to create a mythos, in order to justify not rectifying the faults of history and permitting us to repeat them which explains the apparent love of man for mythos. We excuse our own invidious actions on the grounds that they conform to the standards held by our ancestors. Not very evolutionary is it? And this is the principle difference between virianism and other religions. Virianism is, like ethics, designed to evolve and adapt. Other religions, by accident or design, provide a "holy" spurious legitimacy to the illegitimate actions and always-illegi
timate beliefs of their adherents. And again, by accident or design, their very vagueness allows their leadership to define the religion in any way they choose and so justify whatever action is deemed meet. Virians do not have these excuses.
[Hermit] Perhaps this is why virians appear to tend to identify more with one another, across traditional geographic and cultural boundaries, rather than with those in geographic proximity. I suspect (and hope) that this tendency continues and grows, as I suspect that this may well be critical in enabling us to survive long enough to take our next evolutionary steps and thus maintain our relevance in a rapidly changing environment.
Kind Regards
Hermit
PS Matt, if you log onto the BBS at [url=http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs[/url], you can change the displayed name from arcadia@lynchburg.net to "Matt" - which will may make it easier for those of us using the BBS to identify your communications.
---- This message was posted by Hermit to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25464>
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