Supposition
- Thread starter Michael
- Start date
sure
I mean even a chimpanzee could have written the encyclopedia Britannica given enough numbers and typewriters to make the odds tenable
I mean even a chimpanzee could have written the encyclopedia Britannica given enough numbers and typewriters to make the odds tenable
The Bible - I imagine it would be possible for humans to write it, possibly by copying another source.
I am not familiar enough with the Torah and Quran to have an opinion about them.
As for the Vedas, some other Sanskrit texts and the Buddhist Pali Canon - I find it hard to imagine that modern humans could have written that.
Consider: over two millenia of Western philosophy, and they haven't come up with a viable and authoritative explanation of how the self and the world exist. But those old texts have.
not really
if you succeed at 1:999 999 999 999 999 999 999 999 999 odds, you don't have to sift through the 999 999 999 999 999 999 999 999 998 failures
of course it's possible for humans to write books, they do all the time. And it may even mean the same thing to, or have the same effect on some readers, as i think many people perceive these scriptures to be just books, but they're not just books when god uses them to teach people and to change their lives and to show himself to them. so it's the presence of god that matters. and i have had him write things through me. poetry that changed someone's life a great deal but i didn't really know why. and the opposite has happened when he's imparted a message to me through someone else, who had no idea what the message meant, or that it was valuable to me...in conversations or in art.
There are those who want power and control and with a good mind they can take command over others by their verbal words or written words alone. I think that a few very bright people who saw a way to manipulate others used their own skills to write stuff so that others would follow them and therefor their ways become a part of the way things are surrounding them. Having a way to influence people comes easily to a few gifted people and way back when there weren't to many gifted people so they took advantage over the others to create their own fantasy world in which others took care of them.
Is emotion the only criterion by which you evaluate a book?
I believe that any creature that is self aware and aware of time, is a piece of "God."
You slip into a coma, 40 years go by, you wake up 40 years later, but since it was a very deep coma with no dreams, you essentially traveled around the sun 40 times in a single moment.
Now let us suppose you were never-ever born, at that point, since there is nothing to perceive time, it doesn't matter if I say 40 years goes by in one moment, now since you were never born 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years goes by in a single moment, in-fact, infinity goes by in a single moment.
I should write a book..
You slip into a coma, 40 years go by, you wake up 40 years later, but since it was a very deep coma with no dreams, you essentially traveled around the sun 40 times in a single moment.
Now let us suppose you were never-ever born, at that point, since there is nothing to perceive time, it doesn't matter if I say 40 years goes by in one moment, now since you were never born 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years goes by in a single moment, in-fact, infinity goes by in a single moment.
I should write a book..
i think people put way too much stock in emotion personally, but if your point is that you've learned more from other works, i could probably say the same.
the thing about the bible is, that it's the story of christ. and the story of him has a purpose and an importance that transcends other supplementary works.
but again, it's intentions that rule. i and you have seen it a thousand times...
people will take the story of christ and use it to hate one another. to pursue a personal agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with christ, and is taking his name in vain and witnessing falsely against him, and they don't even care.
i think considering those texts viable and authoritative is biased.
Muslims believe that since the Qur'an was created no one has matched its poetic style of writing, which they take as proof of its divinity or whatever.
Consider Einstein's work. If Einstein had never been born, would we have figured all that shit out by now? Einstein's brain was supposed to have been designed best for mathematical problems (something about larger lobes). The point is it only takes 1 dude to blow everyone's minds, i figure one of those dudes was involved in ur sanskrit writing, if its as good as you say it is.
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword - J Dog. Mathew 10.34
Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law - J Dog. Luke 12:51
Why do people think that someone as involved in christianity as Jesus would be a messenger of peace? Has anyone read leviticus? The bible wants us to fear god, cos when he's not smiting he's banishing you to hell. J-dog is just carrying out this dude's wishes.
The Bible was written by about 40 people over about 1500 years, so the "few gifted and manipulative people" hypothesis doesn't really hold water. And why would there be any less gifted people back when the Bible was written as there are now?
(Insert title here)
Very slowly. The Torah, for instance, is a record of communal history and myth.
Likewise, remembering that the Bible is a distillation of oral histories and myths and, furthermore, considering the years of interactive interpretation, rearrangement, and reconsideration of the materials, it does not seem so rarified. Given the obsession that comes with redemptive monotheism and the overriding fear that superstition can inspire, the end product becomes even more mundane compared to what the Bible purports to represent.
We must remember, too, that the Qur'an comes from an alleged illiterate man distressed by the very issues the revelation considers, who is said to have received the words while suffering episodes that could in modern objective language be described as seizures or other neurological or psychiatric events. As the revelations historically coincide with a period of increased wealth and comfort among the Quraysh, we might consider two additional points about Muhammad in a broader context.
First, this was a time in which the people were attaining a certain luxury. While some might consider that an overstatement, Islam came about in an environment comparably more harsh and demanding than the Christian experience in Europe. One of the first basic luxuries of a society is the difference between sitting high on a rock to escape the big animal that is trying to eat you and sitting on the rock in order to stare at the stars and attempt to comprehend the scale of everything you take for granted. Even before we know how to express certain fundamental, abstract questions, we consider them. By this time, Muhammad had the luxury of retiring to a cave at Mount Hira during Ramadan; he certainly had the luxury of abstract thought.
Additionally, because of the changes the increased wealth brought, not only did the questions take on a new and mysterious context, but so did the methods of consideration changed as well. It's as simple a difference as which of your presuppositions just are, and which, when you stop to think about it for a moment, don't quite work. More time to think, more ways to think about more things.
Between the possibility of a psychiatric or neurological disorder, the pressures he perceived, and what seems to be a lack of well-defined prior method to build from, it does not seem difficult to accept that Muhammad could become a bit obsessive about his revelations. So even if we accept that the Qur'an was internally generated, it doesn't seem so far-fetched. Muhammad was essentially alone in what was for his personal and social experiences undiscovered country. Given the number of people in the history of the world, it does not seem so unusual that certain combinations of circumstance occur within the locality of a single person that they might communicate. Sometimes the difference between a poet like Byron and a prophet like Gibran is context. Muhammad's was the last great revelation so far. Perhaps someday we might say that about Joseph Smith and his magic hat. But with the greater diversity of context available in the modern era, perhaps Muhammad might be a memorable lyricist, or an infamous revolutionary college professor. Perhaps he would be a philosopher-novelist, an Arab Camus: imagine the beatnik coffehouses, "Kamal Kamu, Friday Night, with Allan Ginsberg and Margaret Atwood."
Plus, the Qur'an has had 1,300 years of people showing it devotion, transforming its meaning through the ages much as the millennia have treated the Bible.
Imagine putting either book before the extraterrestrials: Wait, wait. There's discontinuity here at chapter two. What the hell? There's an episode of the Mark Steel Lectures ("Sigmund Freud") with a bit depicting a mother reading her five year-old boy the Penguin Classics edition of Oedipus Rex, and the kid is just horrified at what he's hearing. At what point, between God's repenting of a kingship over a failed genocide, the blessing of a man who offered his daughter to be gang-raped, extraterrestrial rape, or the bit about a God who arranges his own Son's murder, will the one alien look at the other explaining the story to him and say, "Are you freakin' kidding me?"
Especially in the Christian West, people are conditioned to accept that the Bible is a monumental literary standard. Truth is that while it certainly is a testament to human creativity, it's not the literary all-that-and-a-side-of-fries we've come to accept it to be. The remarkable thing about the Qur'an, to me at least, is its focus. They are certainly exceptional events, but not, for their existence, beyond belief.
_____________________
Notes:
Armstrong, Karen. Islam: A Short History. New York: Modern Library, 2000
Michael said:
Very slowly. The Torah, for instance, is a record of communal history and myth.
Likewise, remembering that the Bible is a distillation of oral histories and myths and, furthermore, considering the years of interactive interpretation, rearrangement, and reconsideration of the materials, it does not seem so rarified. Given the obsession that comes with redemptive monotheism and the overriding fear that superstition can inspire, the end product becomes even more mundane compared to what the Bible purports to represent.
We must remember, too, that the Qur'an comes from an alleged illiterate man distressed by the very issues the revelation considers, who is said to have received the words while suffering episodes that could in modern objective language be described as seizures or other neurological or psychiatric events. As the revelations historically coincide with a period of increased wealth and comfort among the Quraysh, we might consider two additional points about Muhammad in a broader context.
First, this was a time in which the people were attaining a certain luxury. While some might consider that an overstatement, Islam came about in an environment comparably more harsh and demanding than the Christian experience in Europe. One of the first basic luxuries of a society is the difference between sitting high on a rock to escape the big animal that is trying to eat you and sitting on the rock in order to stare at the stars and attempt to comprehend the scale of everything you take for granted. Even before we know how to express certain fundamental, abstract questions, we consider them. By this time, Muhammad had the luxury of retiring to a cave at Mount Hira during Ramadan; he certainly had the luxury of abstract thought.
Additionally, because of the changes the increased wealth brought, not only did the questions take on a new and mysterious context, but so did the methods of consideration changed as well. It's as simple a difference as which of your presuppositions just are, and which, when you stop to think about it for a moment, don't quite work. More time to think, more ways to think about more things.
Between the possibility of a psychiatric or neurological disorder, the pressures he perceived, and what seems to be a lack of well-defined prior method to build from, it does not seem difficult to accept that Muhammad could become a bit obsessive about his revelations. So even if we accept that the Qur'an was internally generated, it doesn't seem so far-fetched. Muhammad was essentially alone in what was for his personal and social experiences undiscovered country. Given the number of people in the history of the world, it does not seem so unusual that certain combinations of circumstance occur within the locality of a single person that they might communicate. Sometimes the difference between a poet like Byron and a prophet like Gibran is context. Muhammad's was the last great revelation so far. Perhaps someday we might say that about Joseph Smith and his magic hat. But with the greater diversity of context available in the modern era, perhaps Muhammad might be a memorable lyricist, or an infamous revolutionary college professor. Perhaps he would be a philosopher-novelist, an Arab Camus: imagine the beatnik coffehouses, "Kamal Kamu, Friday Night, with Allan Ginsberg and Margaret Atwood."
Plus, the Qur'an has had 1,300 years of people showing it devotion, transforming its meaning through the ages much as the millennia have treated the Bible.
Imagine putting either book before the extraterrestrials: Wait, wait. There's discontinuity here at chapter two. What the hell? There's an episode of the Mark Steel Lectures ("Sigmund Freud") with a bit depicting a mother reading her five year-old boy the Penguin Classics edition of Oedipus Rex, and the kid is just horrified at what he's hearing. At what point, between God's repenting of a kingship over a failed genocide, the blessing of a man who offered his daughter to be gang-raped, extraterrestrial rape, or the bit about a God who arranges his own Son's murder, will the one alien look at the other explaining the story to him and say, "Are you freakin' kidding me?"
Especially in the Christian West, people are conditioned to accept that the Bible is a monumental literary standard. Truth is that while it certainly is a testament to human creativity, it's not the literary all-that-and-a-side-of-fries we've come to accept it to be. The remarkable thing about the Qur'an, to me at least, is its focus. They are certainly exceptional events, but not, for their existence, beyond belief.
_____________________
Notes:
Armstrong, Karen. Islam: A Short History. New York: Modern Library, 2000
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It really depends on the book. If it's a novel or such then yes I expect to be moved. If it's a science or math book then on how clearly it instructs.
I think the reason this is so is because different people with different agendas wrote different parts at different times for different reasons and within different cultures.
how about something that moves you only if you follow the instructions?
I often doubt human beings stupid enough to write these books could possibly evolved as a result of natural selection.
Perhaps these books are the elusive proof of intelligent design. There's no way someone dumb enough to write this crap could ever have evolved.