George E Hammond
Registered Senior Member
Yes. These people have managed to take a more primitive (i.e, stupid) view of the Old Testament than Origen, who lived in about 200AD. In fact, biblical literalism is a comparatively late invention. For most of the church's history, until the c.§8th and 19th, it seems to have been fairly widely understood, at least among the theologians, that some of the older bible stories are allegorical.
[George Hammond MS physics]
Exchemist, I notice that you are the only other person on this thread who is actually a graduate scientist (MA chemistry). And moreover I find that you have some theological knowledge.
... Given that; I have a couple of simple questions for you.
1. How surprised are you that the world's first scientific proof of God has been discovered? Or put it this way; how surprised would you be if it has?
2. The Egyptians were very big on the "Afterlife". And so are the Christians. But betwixt Egypt and the Christians chronologically we have the Jewish Old Testament. The OT is very scant on life after death, only a sentences even mention an Afterlife in the OT !
... Why do you think that is? In case this question puzzles you, let me reveal my answer to the question. And my answer is this: Both the Egyptian religion and the modern Christian religion are what you might call "elite religions" formulated by elite societies (Egypt and Rome). On the other hand, the Old Testament was written by the Hebrews who had a long history of bondage, captivity, and servitude and never enjoyed military superiority in Old Testament times.
... Do you think that might be why the Egyptians and the Christians advanced tatheory of life after death, but the Hebrew Old Testament never did?
George