Quote: (07-04-2015 05:47 PM)Truth Teller Wrote:
Quote: (07-04-2015 03:30 PM)Lumbre Wrote:
Sorry, my mistake, I meant to write Iron Age. You're right, none of them arose until a relatively late period. The majority of the Hebrew biblical scriptures were composed during the Babylonian Captivity in the mid 1st millennium and Christianity only has a history of about 2000 years!
That means that Sumerian Paganism is more ancient than Judeo-Christianity by over two millennia, Akkadian Paganism by at least a millennium, the Indian Vedic Pagan tradition by about 6 centuries and Greek Paganism by a few centuries. Hell, even Buddhism was most likely contemporaneous with biblical Judaism and is much older than Christianity!
It is evident that ancestral Paganism came long before Judaism or Christianity and that the biblical religion is actually a mere reaction to the former.
By the way, the more ancient Sumerian mythological accounts reveal some really mind-blowing stuff. They reveal that Enki, the Sumerian serpent god of wisdom, was the true creator and father of mankind, the true benefactor and enlightener of our species bestowing upon Adapa (Adam) the knowledge of godhood in the Sanctuary of Eridu (interestingly located in a region called Edin), and the true savior of mankind from the Deluge. Enki's mythological homologues include the Greek god Prometheus and of course the Serpent of Eden in Genesis. Pretty cool, eh! No wonder they never told us about the Sumerian texts in church!
The deistic Unmoved Mover of the Pagan world is nothing like the Judeo-Christian god. He doesn't order sadistic genocides and merciless massacres on Earth. He doesn't have a Chosen People or incite bloodthirsty wars on our planet. He doesn't demand sacrifice or require any plan of salvation. The Unmoved Mover of Pagan philosophy is more like the concept of Brahman, the primordial expansive creation principle, in Hindu cosmology.
Christianity never helped me. It was a totally useless philosophy. On the other hand, Pagan practices such as Yoga and meditation have helped me a lot and the improvements in my life have been abundant.
As for when the Hebrew scriptures were developed, opinions vary. A lot of them certainly developed as part of the Babylonian Exile, but other parts developed earlier. The hypothetical J, E, and D sources all developed before the Babylonian Exile.
Yes, paganism came before monotheism. Again, that's not a question really in dispute. The ancient Israelites were certainly familiar with pagan religions, and, like most Middle Eastern religions of the time, co-opted some of the other myths. I wouldn't say that Biblical religion is so much a reaction to paganism, as much as I would say that Biblical religion is certainly shaped by its attempts to differentiate itself from paganism. See, for example, the commandment ordering people to not wear clothing of wool and linen. That isn't, as some people think, some sort of arbitrary commandment. The commandment is designed to prevent the people from imitating the Canaanite (i.e. pagan) practices.
The Unmoved Mover logically has the exact same characteristics as the Judeo-Christian/Islamic God. Aquinas, Maimonides, and Averroes, to name three philosophers in three separate religions, all agree on this point.
As for the usefulness of Christianity, it depends how you look at it. If you look at it, as you seem to have, as a form of moralistic, therapeutic deism, then yes, Christianity is pointless. If you look at it as a religion that holds great truths about the world and occasionally expresses them in very abstract ways, then it's incredibly useful. Meditation is not necessarily just a pagan idea, for the record.
As I've already explained succintly, the Unmoved Mover of the ancient Pagan world is nothing like the highly interventionalist biblical god Yahweh in that he is merely an intelligent designer of nature who set everything into motion and doesn't involve himself in the affairs of the world. There is no election of a chosen people, no commandments for a certain group to invade or massacre foreign nations, no concept of a fall and no plan of salvation. Those are all purely abrahamic concepts and couldn't be any further from the classical concept of the Prime Move /First Cause. Just because some medieval Christian philosophers attempted to blend or conflate biblical theology with the classical European philosophical concept of the Unmoved Mover doesn't mean that the two concepts are the same thing. The truth is that they couldn't be anymore disimilar.
In fact, it is generally understood in biblical scholarship that Yahweh was once one god among many, the preferred deity of the Hebrew people, and that it was only much later that he was afforded the status of sole creator god. Early (pre-exilic) manuscripts of Deuteronomy such as the Song of Moses indicate that Yahweh, the Hebrew god, was originally one of 70 gods or Elohim (plural) and possibly a second-tier junior deity, one of the many deities who received an earthly inheritance from the then highest deity Elyon who was once a separate and distinct god. Later in the exilic period, the Hebrew priesthood adopted an ideology of strict monotheism, began to edit out the numerous pre-existing polytheistic references and rewrite history for their own ideological motives. In other words, the monotheistic Bible was actually a late Hebrew con-job/falsification whose motive was to raise their own tribal deity to the level of universal creator and justify their own fantasy of being the one-and-only "Chosen People" of that now promoted "king of the whole universe". So this created being El-Yahweh is lifted up to the status of Unmoved Mover on the whim of his priesthood.
You accept that the Pagan religions are much older. Good. Now one may logically ask: If all those more ancient and primordial Pagan cultures had similar mythological narratives and said pretty much similar things, then why should anybody believe this one later anomalous and reactionary Hebrew version of theology and history to be true? Logically there is no reason to believe that the many diverse polytheistic/pantheistic Pagan cultures (Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Hittites, Egyptians, Canaanites, Greeks, Hindus and earlier Indo-Europeans) were all wrong and that only the much later Hebrew religion was right. The only reason that Christians can give is simply because they want to believe it that way and it is evident that they already have a strong emotional investment in their own belief system. Any reasonable person would be curious and wish to look into all the earlier Pagan traditions and philosophies, but it is clear that most Christians only close their minds to one particular system and become hellbent on slandering and attacking all other religions.
Christianity had to resort to violence in order to establish itself. That is because in it there was no worthy truth. Christian churches and mobs took it upon themselves to slay rival religious groups such as the Gnostics and destroy Pagan libraries and manuscripts be fire. They had to destroy all that stood in their way to keep their falsehood alive.
I studied the Bible and the Apocrypha for years, first as a believing Christian and then as a deconverted non-Christian. I have beheld the subject from both sides. I do not look to debunk the biblical worldview for some secular agenda like New Age author Archarya S with whom you compare me for some strange reason (kneejerk defensive emotional reaction), I simply read the biblical stories as they are and call a spade a spade.
When I read in Yahweh's people's own words that Yahweh ordered the Israelites to ransack a rival town and brutally slaughter defenseless women and children, I believe what it says. When I read that Yahweh incites horrific genocides against other nations, I accept the text at face value. When I read that Yahweh enjoys the aroma of the burning flesh of sacrificed animals and commands his people to immolate and burn multitudes of living creatures on his blood-drenched altars, I believe what I am reading. I draw my conclusions on the sickening immorality of the biblical god based on the clear and objective information that the Bible itself gives its readers. When the New Testament scriptures say that the Nazarene's brutal execution on the cross was an ultimate blood sacrifice for people's sins, a sacrifice to end all previous sacrifies, I simply hear what the doctrine is saying and conclude that by its own admission the most basic foundation of the Christian religion is a celebration of the sacrifice of a sentient being who had to shed his blood for the appeasement of the biblical god. I just ready what the Bible itself says about its god!
So that is why I can only conclude that the biblical religion and its god are immoral and evil. As a moral and sensitive being, I cannot accept such obscene wickedness and perversion. I cannot follow such religion. It is really that simple. The Bible shows Yahweh to be cruel, evil, perverse, warlike, psychopathic, bloodthirsty and genocidal, so I accept that description as it is and realize that I must distance myself as far as possible from that psychotic and perverted belief system. I don't try to make every possible excuse for the evil actions of Yahweh as Christians do, I simply look at the objective reality and accept that Yahweh is evil as the Bible makes it abundantly clear. I have no hidden agenda or anything like that; I just let the Bible do the talking and just accept things as they are.
Most human beings know instinctively that killing and steeling are wrong from an early stage of their development. Such morality is innate. Only mentally sick people like psychopaths don't understand such basic ethical values and it seems that such psychopathic people were the ones who wrote the incredibly twisted and bloodcurdling Hebrew Bible.
Christianity is completely useless. It is a really shitty and pathetic way of viewing the world. It is a doctrine which teaches that the follower must submit to its sacrificed savior Jesus and accept his bloody sacrifice on the cross in order to be free of the sin of a supposed fallen world, a pathetic and miserable cult of bloodshed for exoneration. That is just so lowly and obscene.
When I speak of Yoguic practices and meditation, I mean full-blown occultism. I mean working with the Kundalini serpent energy within, I mean tantric practices, I mean raising that serpent up through the spine and up to the crown, I mean awakening the dormant occult faculties of the mind and unlocking psychic abilities (Siddhis in yoguic terms). I mean the very practices that people like you would call "satanic". If we were in medieval Italy, you and your people would want to burn me at the stake like your religion did to Giordiano Bruno.
Upon researching the ancient mythologies, I noticed that there are two opposed mythological divine factions: One that wishes for the enlightenment of mankind (the Serpent Enki-Prometheus and his Pagan gods, the "angels" who revealed divine knowledge to mankind during the antediluvian Golden Age/Satya Yuga) and another that only wishes to impose upon humanity a policy of obscurantism and brutality (Yahweh and his "angels").
Thank you for the discussion.
Lumbre