The Universal Moral Law & Devolution since the Fall

Equinox: And it's also very funny.The ancient records of every culture on the planet are filled with the same kinds of exaggerations: talking animals, people who are taken up directly into heaven without dying, warrior-kings who live incredibly long lives, giants, trees the bestow knowledge and immortality, etc.Even at that, these 'ancient records' are not incorporated into every sacred text the way the Hebrew Bible incorporates the stories of the ancient Middle East. China, for example, has produced a huge volume of legends over its 3000 years of continuous history. But good luck finding any of them in the Tao Te Ching.I agree. Time to get some answers on the things YEC's proposed 'theory' should be able to predict. Thanks for getting us back on track, Equinox.Merry Mabon and Happy Herfest.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Archer op wrote:

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But good luck finding any of them in the Tao Te Ching.

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Minor point - remember that many sacred texts are even bigger than the Bible's hundreds of thousands of words. The Taoist Canon is huge (Daozang - Wikipedia), for instance. I'm not sure how much of what is in there.

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Merry Mabon and Happy Herfest.

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Thank you. That was quite perceptive.Have a good weekend everyone, and welcome to Autumn!Edited by Equinox, : No reason given.

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-Equinox
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You know, it's probably already answered at An Index to Creationist Claims...
(Equinox is a Naturalistic Pagan -  Naturalistic Paganism Home)

God inspired the Bible, God seeking man. The others were written from the human perspective, man seeking God. God doesn't exaggerate. Human beings do. As for racism, God could have chosen the Chinese or the Australian aborigines. He happened to choose the Jews.

well other animals show more wisdom than we do sometimes, but if you mean some sorta of metaphysical being, i'd like to see a real one beofr assessing how wise it is
but you miss understand phat, just because its myth doesn't make it anyless useful or meaningful. you just can't say its history or how things happened. hmm yes, but believing in something doesn't mean it happened that way no all moral law has execptions to it, even the bible shows this, both faith and i brought up verses in the OT from the same book about punishment by decent, both in context are both right and wrong.
this shows that morality is reletive to even god hope,faith,desire,any good positive emotion to incite people to a higher calling?
why do we tell our children that they can be anything, even if they are dumb as a brick? to show gods power and control over everything and via that the power and control of the priests being his serventsmyths are good things,but i get tired of people using the word as if it makes the word distasteful
being not true doesn't make it a lie, it was a belief of people, not intended to deceave after all

you see, the books do not show this at all. most of the OT and NT show that at some point they hacked out parts of it and pasted in things. why does it have three versions of the ten commendments?i hope you mean men inspired by god and not written or controlled by god, because if god wrote, i doubt it would be such a mess and be more accurate
all of the books are inspired, just like the bible, they just arn't inspired by yahweh

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"no intelligent agent who is strictly physical could have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of life." - William Dembski

(Note to Admin: I know this is a side alley as far as the main topic is concerned. I intend this one post to clarify an earlier statement and leave it at that.) I hesitated before making the statement you quote about the Tao Te Ching. It accurately represents the content of Loa Tse's book, but one could question--as you do--what 'canonical' role the book occupies. Would it be analogous to The Song of Songs or Ecclesiastes, say, or to the whole Bible (and whose)? The truth is that it's not really analagous to either. The word 'canon' means different things for different cultures and traditions.Lao Tse's book represents the definitive statement of philosophical Taoism. Together with the writings of Chuang Tse it has long been regarded as standing in a category of its own. (The Wiki article you cite calls these two books the canon's 'core.')In religious or ritual Taoism, a more complex affair than philosophical Taoism, these books were supplemented by later writings to form a 'canon' that represents a truly imposing library of texts. The collection is so vast that no one could entertain the notion of making it a single omnibus volume. No one would suggest presenting all of it in a liturgical cycle of oral readings. No one would use this canon the same way Jews or Christians use their canon.The result is that no one thinks of this library the same way. A different religious culture develops with a different relationship to its texts. The tradition doesn't give rise to a lot of Bible thumpers because there's no Bible to thump.That difference noted, it's worth remembering that Judaism never upheld the Hebrew Scriptures--the Tanakh--as a single authoritative guide in which every book carries the same heft. Yeshua (Jesus) regularly spoke of 'the Law and the Prophets.' He, like his fellow Jews throughout the ages, thought of his Scriptures as the Torah (Law) first, then everything else.Christians have their Old and New Testaments, too, and their Apocryphal and Deuterocanonicals. Biblical inerrantists don't like being reminded of the multiple levels of 'divine authority' and 'inspiration' even they assert for the texts they have inherited. But the plurality exists._Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Punctuation.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Clarity.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Clarity.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

A prayerfull request.In your messages you often touch on things that may be either unfamilar to many readers, or that may be familar but not fully understood. As an example, here you mention "a liturgical cycle of oral readings".I wonder if you could perhaps expand on that, what it is, how it operates, what purpose it serves, either here, if Admin let us get away with it, or in a separate thread that could go into, say, Faith and Belief?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

But it doesn't matter whether they "show" this to you or not, they do show it to me and to millions of others. This is the position of believers in the Bible, and being one I affirm that it was completely inspired by God and its facts are completely trustworthy for that reason. This is why it's not racism. This is why it's trustworthy whereas merely human productions aren't. Again, it doesn't matter whether you are persuaded that this is true or not.

It doesn't matter whether or not we're persuaded that the Bible is trustworthy and inspired?That's a relief, I was beginning to think it was one of those important questions.However, given that we are clearly not agreed on this totally unimportant question, you cannot use the affirmative answer as a premise in debate without convincing the rest of us first.

it should matter a lot, how in the world do you convince people if its true or not? how can you tell non-believers it is true, if it doesn't show it? As i have said a lot now, just because you believe something doesn't make it true, anymore than if i believed i could fly hard enough, it still wouldn't make me defy gravity.the fact that you and a million or 10 billion people believe some guy can walk on water doesn't mean crap if the book you believe in doesn't show its consistent or inspired by god and the way you use inspired is so twisty i never know what you mean by inspired.do you mean it was written by god through the authors or written to understand god? i can see the latter, but the way the book is written i can never believe the former no matter how many times you claim it, it just doesn't show it.
its sad that you would trust a book constructed by COMMITY, than the creation of god around you, this just plain scares me! then why do you stay on here? why bother? it doesn't look like you give a damn about what anyone else thinks and you don't exactly show very good tolerence of others points of view.
Hey believe what you want i guess, but don't think i will let anyone claim that they have the one key to the universe in a book written by people who didn't even have books is right, without a fight!by the way where in the world did i even talk about racism??! you need to get your posts streight, i know why god chose the jews, they wrote the torah, it was a book about their religion of course they would make themselves specialif all your belief henges on whether or not people before you believed what you do, then that just scares me too, thats no way to pick what to believe!

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"no intelligent agent who is strictly physical could have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of life." - William Dembski

its odd that a person who tries so hard to convince people, says that it doesn't matter if we do or do not think its true.its reminds me of those artsy people who make crappy movies, then when their audience says it was terrible, they snub the critics by saying "well it wasn't made for YOU!"

jar: Sorry my wording in that post is a bit unwieldy. I slapped it together in a hurry.I'll push my luck with Admin in the hope that one more post may catch this. If more interest exists in liturgies or canons we can start a new thread.I appreciate you letting me know, Jar, of anything I post like this that might be obscure. I'm new here and it's hard to know what things may need some explaining.Liturgy Liturgy means an order of worship. The ceremonial structure. The schedule.We can speak of liturgies in reference to an individual service. We might discuss a 'wedding liturgy' or an 'Easter liturgy' or the 'liturgy for Yom Kippur.' We can discuss liturgies as a body of ceremonies across the calendar. For Christianity we might discuss the Greek Orthodox, Coptic, or Anglican liturgies, for example. For Judaism we might talk about the Orthodox, Reformed or Reconstructionist liturgies, or contrast ancient liturgies with modern ones.Oral ReadingsBefore the invention of the printing press in 1453 no one was carrying around their own personal copy of the Bible. People learned the words of their Scriptures through public gatherings where the texts were read (more often chanted) out loud.Synagogue worship was actually invented for this purpose. Ancient Jews already had formal worship. They had a Temple worship with a priesthood and its own formal liturgy centered on the offering of sacrifices. The synagogue was more informal. It served as a community center where people could gather and hear the Scriptures being read. The job of reading from the Law (Torah) and the Prophets (the 'Writings') fell to a community rabbi (teacher), who would also translate and explain things as needed.The liturgy--the schedule of events--for synagogue worship was structured so that Jews who attended the gathering daily could hear the entire Torah read in the course of a year. With each new year the readings began anew--hence the 'cycle' of readings I mentioned. The synagogue liturgy also included congregational singing and prayer.Early Christians incorporated many elements of synagogue worship in the design of their own liturgies. They were just as concerned as Jews had been about giving everyone a chance to hear the Scriptures read in their entirety.The Christian canon was larger than the Jewish one, though. A typical service included at least three readings: one from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), one from the Epistles (letters of Paul, etc.), and one--always at the end--from the Gospels (the life of Christ as described in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John). In the medieval times you could also expect to hear a reading from the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books; these still form an important part of Eastern liturgies.Christians who attended daily prayer services could expect to hear their entire Bible read in a three-year cycle. If you open a Book of Common Prayer or Lutheran Book of Worship today you can find a cycle of readings printed in the front or the back.I'm not the person to discuss Islam in detail, but you can bet a cycle of readings from the Koran is a crucial part of that liturgy, just as in synagogue worship.TodayA Jewish service today features many of the same activities that would have been familiar to Yeshua (Jesus) and his followers. The climax of the service will be the unrolling of the Torah and the reading of its words. This moment serves a function in Judaism very much like one the Communion does in Christianity. It is the moment, after sins have been confessed and prayers offered, that the community enjoys its greatest intimacy with God.If you attend the service of a Christian denomination that carries forward much of the traditional liturgy (Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican/Episcopalian) you will see the centuries-old liturgical structure observed. People rarely chant the texts now (our modern world has microphones, and bad acoustics). But the order is the same.This is why the Book of Common Prayer and King James Bible were so influential in English-speaking culture. They shaped liturgy. Their images, cadences and phrases were absorbed though communal rituals. English speakers all over the world who don't think they know anthing about the BCP can recite portions of its wedding liturgy by heart: 'Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today...'People bond to texts in a profound way when the texts accompany every rite of passage in their lives: holidays, christenings and baptisms, confirmations, weddings, funerals, public memorials. At such moments the words assure them of continuity across the generations. The words tell them that, whatever transition they undergo at the moment, all the most important things endure.You can see how changes in wording or interpretation would be disorienting to some and spark heated conflicts. You can also see why a doctrine of literal inerrancy might be invented to hold the line.Taoist canonI mentioned this because talk of a 'canon' for religious Taoism can be misleading if your idea of a canon depends on this Middle Eastern/Western model. Taoists have always valued scholarship. The Taoist canon is a library of over 5,000 books. It was assembled primarily so that valued documents would be preserved for scholars. It is far too large a collection to be read out loud to the public in its entirety. Taoist liturgies do not attempt this.For this reason the Taoist canon has a role in its culture that is very different from the role played by the Jewish and Christian canons in theirs. Its contents are mainly the concern of Taoist scholars. People value having the stories and the lore and the cultural continuity the library provides. But they value it rather like you would value your country's best art museum. No one thinks they are going to bind copies of everything in one cover and carry the book around. No one wants the whole thing in their house. No one gets so attached to every word that they argue inerrancy for the library.It's a different culture. Taoists take it for granted that libraries grow and understandings change. Scholarship goes on. So does faith._Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Correction.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

One question. Two or Three year cycle? I assume that you include books like Acts in with the Epistles.So what you describe is an organized reading of the Bible over a specified period. Are the parts read at any given time related?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Christianity developed a three-year cycle. I said two in my post; I'll fix that.Three. Of course. People who are interested in seeing a cycle of readings (a 'lectionary') can find one here:
Oremus Lectionary Often very much so. The readings in a Christmas or Easter service, or on saints' days, share obvious connections. So do readings for weddings and funerals and other special occasions. On more 'ordinary' days it can take some doing to find a common thread in the readings.For anyone curious about Christian liturgy I recommend this international Anglican site as a good place to begin exploring:
OremusYou can find material about the liturgies in most English-speaking countries. New Zealand has developed a fascinating liturgy that blends English and Maori traditions. The site offers a fine online Bible (NRSV or KJV) with good search tools. It's an inclusive text--you'll find all the books regarded as canonical by Christians or Jews anywhere. The site also offers a calendar, a Psalter, and the complete Book of Common Prayer (1662 and 1979 versions).Web resources exist, of course, for other Christian liturgies: Greek and other Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Roman Catholic, Lutheran. On these sites you can expect to encounter more non-English terms and texts.Don't miss a chance to hear Coptic chant if you're surfing. It can be easy to forget sometimes that Christianity was originally a Middle Eastern religion rather than a European one. Coptic music will remind you. Listening to it really peels away the centuries._Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Faith wrote:

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God inspired the Bible, God seeking man. The others were written from the human perspective, man seeking God.

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OK, someone hasn't looked much at other religions. I've heard the "only in Christianity does God seek man, not vice-versa", from Christians before, and it always shows an ignorance of other religions. Islam is clearly about God seeking man, both by including the history leading up to Abraham and by having God seek out Mohammad to dictate the Qu'ran. Reading the Bagahvad Gita shows God appearing unasked for in the chariot, to explain the meaning of life to someone who wasn't even looking for God. Those come to mind without thinking very hard. Saying that only Christianity has "God seeking man" is like saying that "only Ford cars have radios". The statment is supportable only when one doesn't open the door of the others and look inside.

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As for racism, God could have chosen the Chinese or the Australian aborigines. He happened to choose the Jews.

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Why did God choose only the Jews? Again Christians make out their God to be too small. Why not inspire the message in several or all cultures? Why not write it in the stars or in the crystallographic lattices of rocks,the leaves of trees and the formations that form when water freezes, in addition to "inspiring" a single tribe of a bronze-age people with a contradictory and convoluted text, written in malleable words on fragile paper? Why then stop all inspiration and expect people 2000 years later to get the right message? And that's supposed to be God seeking man? Even Islam has more recent divine scripture than that.However, all those are off topic. Again, we aren't looking at the evidence about the topic of this thread, which I tried to point us back to
In Message 165 .Also, Archer, thanks for explanation of the levels of canonicity.Edited by Equinox, : No reason given.