Would they dream of the originals or the many, many edits that occurred over the years?
You’ve never read the Bible until you’ve read it in the original Klingon
The old testament makes a lot more sense and is considerably more palatable if you read just the text separated into their sources. Basically all of the crazy and deplorable shit comes from the “Priestly Source” that was added in to justify the priesthood and their existence or Deuteronomist Source that was added during the exile
“The difference between science and religion is that if all knowledge in both were to disappear, science would rediscover the lost knowledge”
You can’t just put that in quotes without telling us who said it.
While true, what I don’t like about this quote is that it’s self evident to atheists and incomprehensible or just wrong to believers, changing no minds at all.
Yeah, I don’t believe it. Religions all over the world have certain commonalities, and many of them contain knowledge that’s just good ideas. Like, I don’t think Buddhism is going away forever if all knowledge is forgotten. I don’t think the Tao concept of the oneness of the universe is going away. FFS, George Lucas even tricked everyone into learning Taoist philosophy by calling it Jedi philosophy.
Well, they wouldn’t come back the same though. Simple concepts like “Love Thy Neighbor” or “Being one with the Universe” might pop up again, but the religions as a whole would be different, have different origins, different names, diferent dogmas, etc.
Yeah no shit. You think if everyone’s mind was wiped we’d still call a quark a quark? Nah, we’d have a different name for it. Maybe the political tensions in psychology wouldn’t be between the psychoanalysts and the behaviourists, but between the diagnosticists and the freewillists. Maybe we’d skip the plum pudding model and decide rotating reference frames should be the default and centripedal force is an imaginary force that only exists when you use a silly linear reference frame. A LOT of science is subjective and culturally determined, mate. We’re all just making this shit up as we go along. Theories persist because they’re easy to arrive at and understand. Different interpretations of the same results appear all the time, like the many worlds interpretation saying superpositions can’t actually collapse. That shit is subjective AF, there’s no way of determining a “right” interpretation of quantum theory, at least not that we know of. We assume the universe’s spacetime is flat because we haven’t found a curve yet and we think we’ve looked really hard, but we don’t know that. There are cultural contexts where proposing the existence of dark matter just because our math on the gravitational pull of galaxies turns out funky is a laughable idea.
We wouldn’t call a quark a quark but we’d still know that quarks exist and what they are. My point is aside from some simple ideas that are simply too basic to not think of, religions would still be fundamentally different.
You’re underestimating the similarity of religions and overestimating the similarity of scientific paradigms
Perhaps i’m putting religion through a higher scrutiny here, but that’s because we’re comparing two things with a very different level for complexity here.
The idea that there’s some invisible force that makes things you don’t understand happen, or that we should love and respect eachother, or even more specific ones like “we shouldn’t eat so and so food” or “we should dress in x or y way” are still simple enough that anyone could come up with at any point in their lives with little effort. All that remains is a game of chance of how similar the combination of these ideas is to the religions we had previously.
With science, it gets much more complex, each field of science, or even each concept within that field, required way more effort to learn, and goes much more indepth than anything religion can provide.
So while i’d consider humanity rediscovering even basic arithmetic to be most certainly more than just chance, forgive me for thinking people eventually coming up with a religion that uses a cross as a symbol isn’t enough to say that that is christianity reborn.
I don’t think they’re talking about ethical principles. Ethical principles are a part of psychology, and exist outside of religion. They’re talking about details. Jesus Christ wouldn’t be rediscovered, because he didn’t exist in the first place. Whatever would take his place would be different.
What do you mean by details? Do you mean a name? I agree, if all knowledge were lost, names would be lost. But that’s equally true of science and religion. After all, we wouldn’t call the force of massive attraction gravity, nor would we call the property of matter mass. Nor, of course, would we call solid materials matter. So perhaps you mean something different than names. Please be more specific.
I meant the entire beings, the lore, the stories, the mythology, the miracles, all of that shit that (almost certainly) never actually happened. Ethical principles aren’t defined by authorities, by deities. We would find those just fine if there was no religion.
That’s a really broad and general thing you’re talking about. I’m afraid there isn’t much to say about such broad strokes, because it’s hard to prove such nebulous claims. If you’re interested in having a discussion that can actually get into the facts as opposed to vague opinions, I’m afraid you need to be more specific.
I mean, they have to believe that. It’s either that or admit that it’s all made up.
Afawk, every known religion in the world is some variation of the ancient Sumerian religion. Yhwh* was a storm god and supposedly the Elohim were more peaceful, hence the Jekyll -Hyde personality of the OT god, trying to reconcile the two into one, although it’s been suggested “Elohim” are plural.
*I didn’t think there was a more horrible autocorrect than iOS until I returned to Android.
I think you’re referring to Abrahamic religions. The mythology of, say, Japan is distinctly their own. But yes, to my understanding, Islam is derived from Christianity, and Christianity is derived from Judaism, and Judaism is derived from Yahwism.
Yahweh was a warrior-storm god, which is why apparently a lot of his curses are carried out via storms or floods. And also why he was very warlike. Then Yahweh eventually got merged with El over time, who was the kind, wise father god of the pantheon. Apparently you can still figure out which parts of the Bible came from which god by looking at if the Biblical god was referred to as Yahweh or Elohim. Apparently there was another storm god from a nearby mythology named Baal, and instead of merging into 1 god, they ended up becoming rival ideologies, which is why the devil ended up being named after Baal (Beelzebub).
Anyways, Yahwism is kinda wild. Yahweh had a goddess wife at some point and then people just kinda forgot about her
Hey, thanks so much for a detailed reply. YT isn’t always or even often the best source, but I did watch a lot of YouTube videos on the subject because I tend to get fixated on weird things. It wasn’t esoterica channel that gave* me the information about every known religion being some variation of the ancient Sumerian religion. I’m sorry I can’t remember which channels, but they did seem to be somewhat credible.
I do see where I failed at punctuation, paragraphs, and clarity in referencing yhwh and Elohim. Even a simple “for example” prefacing the reference would have been more clear! I really need to pay more attention to these things, and order my thoughts more, before writing.
Thank you again for your kind reply.
*Edited, because autocorrect seems very much to be devolving, on the two major handheld devices available in the USA, or intent on vexing me.
Nevermind, I see what happened, with another reply to my comment. Thanks again for your kindness! D’oh
There are plenty of known religions that share no significant similarity with Sumerian beliefs, ie basically every First Nation/Native American religious system. People have been in the Americas longer than Sumer existed.
And thats just stuff I’m even vaugely familiar with. I’d wager 0% of Subsaharan African religions, aborigional, and probably most Asian religious beliefs don’t have any Sumerian influence.
Yeah, Sumerian religions have had a massive impact on world religions given Sumeria’s location in Mesopotamia and being the home to the first permanent settlements in the Eurasian continent. But as you say there are places they didn’t reach.
Though it’s particularly interesting what spreads and how. Enki was one of the most important gods to Mesopotamia, and that makes sense, but he didn’t spread nearly as far as aspects of Inanna who was regularly reimagined as she found her way to new cultures such as as Cybele in Rome.
This is all I need: another fixation right before I’m about to be incredibly busy for some months. Paleo American you say? They had developed, organized religion, you say? Thanks!
Yeah lol, haven’t you heard of Quetzalcoatl? Or Sky Woman?
Ooh about a hundred years ago.
“And then Jesus stood up to speak before his disciples but Alas he realized that he had not worn pants to school, and his teacher was Will Smith for some reason.”
If you destroyed all science books and knowledge, in a few generations they would all be rewritten.
If you destroyed all religions, in a few generations you’d have completely new religions.
A few generations? I think you’re massively underestimating the combined effort required to get us to where we are now. Our society is built upon thousands of years of discoveries and progress.
I think you are missing the point
There’s nothing wrong with correcting people even if they understand the point. Especially with so huge of an error.
I love this. Thanks for this.
So they’re admitting that the bible really is just a series of fever-dreams? Cool.
Revelation sure is, no?
Mormons: lol. Dreams? No. It’s seer stones and gold tablets secretly placed for exactly these types of situations.
Islam?
Let’s test this.
Removed by mod
I mean, that’s where that bullshit came from to start with.
I had this gf that I thought was smart until she told me she hadn’t read any of the books in her library and would just sleep with them under her pillow to get the information needed.
That would be a neat trick.
But unless she blends them with skimmed milk and drinks them for breakfast, she won’t learn much. I hope you told her.
We don’t even have the books of the Bible already disappeared. https://www.grunge.com/154122/bible-mysteries-that-remain-unsolved/
If we destroy in an irreversible way and a new one appears, we will have no way to compare it. If we save a hash of the content, will it still respawn ?
If we have a hash that can verify if the text is the same, would it even be irreversible since we can generate random text until we have a match ?
Also, what if we erased a page ? will a dude dream with it, or will it only reaper on total destruction ? If it doesn’t respawn, can we keep only a page and keep it from respawning ?
If we throw the last copy into space, will it respawn ? The copy still exists, but it’s unlikely anyone will be able to read it.
If we rewrite it, adding more text between the words, we will still have the same text, but we won’t be able to distinguish between the original words or the added ones, rendering it unusable ?
Behold, a person of science.
Who’s to say that the dream accounts of various randos aren’t the lost books of the Bible?
Are you sure this isn’t sarcasm?
that isnt a good sign for the veracity of your book
