The God Equation

Jack said:
Cy: "So we agree that the conclusion that God can neither be proven or disproven applies not only to agnostics, but also to intelligent religious people."
Jack: I know what 'Agnostic' means. I have no idea what 'intelligent religious people' believe.

The 'Stories' in the Bible may or may not be true, but it is a good insight of the Ancient Peoples of the Middle East.
There seems to be a Babylonian influence. The Code of Hammurabi is an example.

"Modern scholars responded to the Code with admiration, at its perceived fairness and respect for the rule of law, and at the complexity of Old Babylonian society. There was also much discussion of its influence on the Mosaic Law. Scholars quickly identified lex talionis, the "eye for an eye" principle, as underlying the two collections. Debate among Assyriologists has since centred around several aspects of the Code: its purpose, its underlying principles, its language, and its relation to earlier and later law collections."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi

The 'Epic of Gilgamesh' is another.

"Gilgamesh observes that Utnapishtim seems no different from himself, and asks him how he obtained his immortality. Utnapishtim explains that the gods decided to send a great flood. To save Utnapishtim the god Enki told him to build a boat. He gave him precise dimensions, and it was sealed with pitch and bitumen. His entire family went aboard together with his craftsmen and "all the animals of the field". A violent storm then arose which caused the terrified gods to retreat to the heavens. Ishtar lamented the wholesale destruction of humanity, and the other gods wept beside her. The storm lasted six days and nights, after which "all the human beings turned to clay". Utnapishtim weeps when he sees the destruction. His boat lodges on a mountain, and he releases a dove, a swallow, and a raven. When the raven fails to return, he opens the ark and frees its inhabitants. Utnapishtim offers a sacrifice to the gods, who smell the sweet savor and gather around. Ishtar vows that just as she will never forget the brilliant necklace that hangs around her neck, she will always remember this time. When Enlil arrives, angry that there are survivors, she condemns him for instigating the flood. Enki also castigates him for sending a disproportionate punishment. Enlil blesses Utnapishtim and his wife, and rewards them with eternal life. This account largely matches the flood story that concludes the Epic of Atra-Hasis.[26]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
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The stories in Torah are Jewish stories, not Christian.

There appears to be some scholarly consensus that when the Jewish people were conquered by the Assyrians and the neo-Babylonians and forcibly brought to Babylon as slaves, etc. they were probably exposed to a lot of the Mesopotamian and Zoroastrian mythology, which ultimately filtered its way back into Genesis and the rest of Torah.
 
Cypress said:
The stories in Torah are Jewish stories, not Christian.

There appears to be some scholarly consensus that when the Jewish people were conquered by the Assyrians and the neo-Babylonians and forcibly brought to Babylon as slaves, etc. they were probably exposed to a lot of the Mesopotamian and Zoroastrian mythology, which ultimately filtered its way back into Genesis and the rest of Torah.
Click to expand...

:) Yeah. Or maybe since the Code of Hammurabi and the Epic of Gilgamesh (along with Zoroaster) pre-date Judaism, maybe these and others influenced the Bible (Old and New Testament).

"As in the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, the snake in the Epic of Gilgamesh is a symbol of trickery and deception. Near the end of his long journeys, Gilgamesh has finally acquired the secret to everlasting life (a plant that restores youth). But almost as soon as Gilgamesh has the plant, a snake steals it while he’s bathing and sneaks off with it into the water. Like in the Hebrew Bible, the serpent is a kind of “trickster figure,” and an obstacle between humanity and its prideful desire for everlasting life (which, like Gilgamesh, Adam and Eve lose after contact with a snake)."
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/symbols/the-snake
 
Cypress said:
The stories in Torah are Jewish stories, not Christian.

There appears to be some scholarly consensus that when the Jewish people were conquered by the Assyrians and the neo-Babylonians and forcibly brought to Babylon as slaves, etc. they were probably exposed to a lot of the Mesopotamian and Zoroastrian mythology, which ultimately filtered its way back into Genesis and the rest of Torah.
Click to expand...

"This wasn't the story of Noah and the ark, though, and this wasn't the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible (known to Christians as the Old Testament). What Smith had discovered was only one chapter in a sprawling Mesopotamian tale now known as the Epic of Gilgamesh, first written in 1,800 B.C.E., around 1,000 years before the Hebrew Bible."
https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/gilgamesh.htm
 
Cypress said:
The stories in Torah are Jewish stories, not Christian.

There appears to be some scholarly consensus that when the Jewish people were conquered by the Assyrians and the neo-Babylonians and forcibly brought to Babylon as slaves, etc. they were probably exposed to a lot of the Mesopotamian and Zoroastrian mythology, which ultimately filtered its way back into Genesis and the rest of Torah.
Click to expand...

"Zoroastrianism is an ancient Persian religion that may have originated as early as 4,000 years ago. Arguably the world’s first monotheistic faith, it’s one of the oldest religions still in existence. "
https://www.history.com/topics/religion/zoroastrianism

"Some scholars say that tenets of Zoroastrianism helped to shape the major Abrahamic religions—including Judaism, Christianity and Islam—through the influence of the Persian Empire.

Zoroastrian concepts, including the idea of a single god, heaven, hell and a day of judgment, may have been first introduced to the Jewish community of Babylonia, where people from the Kingdom of Judea had been living in captivity for decades."
 
Cypress said:
My one nit pick is the boldness of calling it string theory.

It cannot be experimentally tested at this point, so it technically does not reach the threshold of a theory.

At this time, it is more of a creative idea supported by some elegant mathematics.
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It’s a musicians look at life


You look at the instrument and know all the music lies within


You just have to caress it into being

How you touch the string and at what intervals


I love string theory
 
NiftyNiblick said:
You win a swimming race. [Not a great move, but you didn't know.]
You're born.
You live a life where the rewards will unlikely be adequate compensation for the travails.
Then you die, no longer existing or destined to exist again.

One can either be burning with desire to understand all of this,
or at the opposite extreme, one might be glad to get it over with.

I think that the very smartest among us could possibly be the ones who train their thoughts on more fun subjects.
Or not. What the fuck do I know?
I'm going with random confluence and then thinking about food and golf.
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A wise man once said “fuck it, fight it……it’s all the same”


Translation: No matter what your reaction to something is you still have to deal with it as it came to you
 
evince said:
It’s a musicians look at life


You look at the instrument and know all the music lies within


You just have to caress it into being

How you touch the string and at what intervals


I love string theory
Click to expand...

I like it for it's promise of uniting all of physics into a grand unified theory, and the mathematical elegance of conceiving of all forms of matter as just being perturbations of energy.

As for any metaphysical meaning to it all, that is a story for another day.
 
evince said:
It’s a musicians look at life


You look at the instrument and know all the music lies within


You just have to caress it into being

How you touch the string and at what intervals


I love string theory
Click to expand...
We can play guitar by learning the math or by bringing out its nature. So the question is, which way is more likely to advance guitar? Funding for academia highly favors the math players while doing its best to discredit and destroy those who look for the natural flow.
 
This isn’t going to work.

I decided to buy a home in Key West.

He’s dependent and he’s making decisions for the people that are compassionate toward him.

Nobody said you can’t do it.


 
Jack said:
:) Yeah. Or maybe since the Code of Hammurabi and the Epic of Gilgamesh (along with Zoroaster) pre-date Judaism, maybe these and others influenced the Bible (Old and New Testament).

"As in the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, the snake in the Epic of Gilgamesh is a symbol of trickery and deception. Near the end of his long journeys, Gilgamesh has finally acquired the secret to everlasting life (a plant that restores youth). But almost as soon as Gilgamesh has the plant, a snake steals it while he’s bathing and sneaks off with it into the water. Like in the Hebrew Bible, the serpent is a kind of “trickster figure,” and an obstacle between humanity and its prideful desire for everlasting life (which, like Gilgamesh, Adam and Eve lose after contact with a snake)."
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/symbols/the-snake
Click to expand...

I think it is conceivable that the vague commonalities between ancient Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and the God of Plato and Aristotle originate from something older than the Mesopotamian civilizations.

Much older.

The concept of an individual, immortal soul, spiritual salvation, and some sort of divine justice for the righteous and the wicked might have come from the Neolithic proto-IndoEuropeans who lived on the Russian steppes and migrated into India, Persia, and Europe prior to the Bronze Age.

The proto Indo-Europeans are the common archaic link between all those civilizations.
 
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