i have to rate "aliens in the bible" a half-point less than "moses's cd-rom collection" on the wackiness scale. for some reason, aliens are just slightly more plausible than time travellers from 1994 with a 386.
Well, I haven't seen/read/heard the moses cd-rom collection, so I can't comment specifically, but even the term "slightly more plausible" gives away the game. If the text can conceivably support time travellers from 1994 with a 386, then someone can run with it and as long as there is no evidence to the contrary that is absolutely not subject to interpretation, then your opinion about plausibility is simply an opinion.
well, hang on there. some interpretations are, indeed, wrong. we CAN'T simply interpret it to mean anything we want. people TRY.
I went on to say in my post that some interpretations are obviously invalid (as in unicorns in Psalm 18, like CS mentioned). What I meant was that many, many interpretations are equally valid or close to it and there isn't much anyone can do to prove most of them right or wrong. Kinda like RAZD's example of Zeus and lightning in another thread. If Vash or Elone or anyone else wants to interpret certain passages as supporting ET encounters, there isn't much anyone can do about it but give contradictory text. Even if, as jar has done, we show them that the text says God did these things, it is still just as plausible that the authors were using God as a metaphor for the unexplainable...including alien visitation.
It's just like saying that various deities were used to explain earthquakes and lightning and disease. Except we now have naturalistic explanations for these things (altho they can still be attributed to deities and are). The imagery in Psalm 18, however, could be God or aliens and we can't really say, can we?
One delusion is as good as the next.
There is no objective evidence either way (in the previously mentioned and other examples) and that is what I meant by saying that most interpretations are just as good as any other.
well, hang on there too. there's a lot of myth and racism and general goofiness in the bible, yes. but there's other stuff, too. the book of kings is pretty reliable as a history text, even if it omits some choice things. and the exile does seem to have really happened.
OK, I apologize for calling the whole bible "claptrap." That was quite unreasonable.
The historicity of certain biblical events may be unquestionable, but the deity behind the events described may be Yahweh or it may be alien entities or manifestations of psychotropic trances or a conspiracy among ancient priests to keep the people in line or any number of things.
That is where the interpretation comes in and
that is what cannot be proven wrong or right.
"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -
The Iron Heel by Jack London
"Hazards exist that are not marked" - some bar in Chelsea
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