01-16-2008, 12:00 AM
Quote
on't go there. I am just a guy. No honor to talk with me.
Just as I wrote that, I was getting weary of the "variety" of personalities one can meet on the internet.
"It's good to talk with you" would have been more accurate.
Quote:No, because God is one and you are looking at nature as a bunch of disconnected events or details..
The issue as I see it, is that things can be interconnected without having to be all one unit.
If a stream of water flows through a forest, and then a city, it does not mean that the city and the forest are one, even if there is a mutual dependence on the stream.
Even if the stream and the forest are "one" it's not their unity that defines them, but their differences.
The term I prefer can be misleading. It is "discrete" used in an uncommon way to mean that something has a specific end and a begining spatially.
"The natural world" is a catch all phrase for a lot of discrete, but interconnected systems.
Ultimately, within our current understanding of the way things are, there are four fundamental powers that run the universe.
Two are hidden within the atom, two are electricity and gravity. There is no indication that these fundamental forces have a common source.
Then in another vein of thought:
It is thought that gods do not appear in the mythology of cultures that are preagricultural. Once agriculture begins, then gods are created.
Before then, and in areas such as jungles and deserts where agriculture is problematic, there are only spirits such as you find in animism.
Further, it's been suggested that monotheism spontaneously occurs only in societies that have specialized industries. It's is a relatively modern idea in context of human prehistory.
Strictly agricultural societies creat large pantheons, as diverse cultures are unified around the crops.
It's thought that the early Phoenecians might be the ultimate source of the Biblical gods that we are familiar with. These gods would have entered the semetic world through trade and cultural exposure, being unified into a single monolithic deity in the time of David.
Much of this thinking relies upon a definition of "god" as opposed to tribal spirits we find in animism.
Animism and totemism arise spontaneously in all tribal societies. Those are not "revealed" religions, but deduced religions that American Indians have in common with Aborigine and Ainu populations.
The details differ, but the principle is always present.
I have a lot more to say, and some of this might seem disjointed, but I've run out of time for now.
It may be late tonight or tomorrow before I can tie these ideas tofgether and add more.
Perhaps it's a good thing to hear your comments on these ideas before heading down roads that are not interesting to you.
on't go there. I am just a guy. No honor to talk with me.Just as I wrote that, I was getting weary of the "variety" of personalities one can meet on the internet.
"It's good to talk with you" would have been more accurate.
Quote:No, because God is one and you are looking at nature as a bunch of disconnected events or details..
The issue as I see it, is that things can be interconnected without having to be all one unit.
If a stream of water flows through a forest, and then a city, it does not mean that the city and the forest are one, even if there is a mutual dependence on the stream.
Even if the stream and the forest are "one" it's not their unity that defines them, but their differences.
The term I prefer can be misleading. It is "discrete" used in an uncommon way to mean that something has a specific end and a begining spatially.
"The natural world" is a catch all phrase for a lot of discrete, but interconnected systems.
Ultimately, within our current understanding of the way things are, there are four fundamental powers that run the universe.
Two are hidden within the atom, two are electricity and gravity. There is no indication that these fundamental forces have a common source.
Then in another vein of thought:
It is thought that gods do not appear in the mythology of cultures that are preagricultural. Once agriculture begins, then gods are created.
Before then, and in areas such as jungles and deserts where agriculture is problematic, there are only spirits such as you find in animism.
Further, it's been suggested that monotheism spontaneously occurs only in societies that have specialized industries. It's is a relatively modern idea in context of human prehistory.
Strictly agricultural societies creat large pantheons, as diverse cultures are unified around the crops.
It's thought that the early Phoenecians might be the ultimate source of the Biblical gods that we are familiar with. These gods would have entered the semetic world through trade and cultural exposure, being unified into a single monolithic deity in the time of David.
Much of this thinking relies upon a definition of "god" as opposed to tribal spirits we find in animism.
Animism and totemism arise spontaneously in all tribal societies. Those are not "revealed" religions, but deduced religions that American Indians have in common with Aborigine and Ainu populations.
The details differ, but the principle is always present.
I have a lot more to say, and some of this might seem disjointed, but I've run out of time for now.
It may be late tonight or tomorrow before I can tie these ideas tofgether and add more.
Perhaps it's a good thing to hear your comments on these ideas before heading down roads that are not interesting to you.