Babel: The Mother Culture?

If I am contorting things, does that make you a literalist?

You can think anything you want, whether I'm a literalist is not the issue. You trying to make things fit that anyone can see doesn't.

---

Look to this day, For yesterday is already a dream. And tomorrow only a vision. But today We lived, makes every Yesterday a dream of Happiness and every tomorrow A vision of hope. Look well there to This day.

Sure. They are based on the precept that it is immoral to take the life a fellow human.However I think this a natural law that emerges as culture and societies mature. Since the bible covers many years you can read about that progressive development.The Bible documents the development of ethical principles but is not the source. There is very scant little support for a Pro-life stance in the bible. Start a thread on this topic and you may be surprised. Actually I hold a pro-life view but more based on scientific understanding of embryology.Even though the OT gave these commands the stories immediately deviate and violate the commands repeatedly. Consider Samson, supposedly every time the spirit of the lord came over him he went out and killed something. The first he killed a lion but then worked his way up to kill 30 man in one instance and then 1000 men. Sure, it is interesting. The bible is great literature, it has some historical significance, it is culturally important, I just wished people would keep it in perspective. The story of Babel is interesting and to a bronze age people it helps explain why different people have different tongues. It is interesting to view the world from a more earlier perspective, just like future generations will look back at us and wonder at some of our beliefs.Sometimes i have to stop myself and ask why on earth am I debating if the tower of Babel existed and was God really worried about human achievements. It is a ludicrous to believe in such myths and primitive stories. It is like trying to defend the position that the Wizard of Oz was not a real person.

No, not anyone. iceage agreed.

But that's just it! You are not supposed to think about those things. You are supposed to think in terms of spiritual symbolism; finding physical proof is just the icing on the cake, for some. Even the most renowned archaeologists claim to find proof, only to have someone else disprove it. Even if we found the remains of a tower which said 'I am the tower of Babel' in 15 languages, it would be said to be a fake.There is really no point.Edited by anastasia, : include quotes

Not thereStating that yes the bible says this but it then violates this, does not help you.

---

Look to this day, For yesterday is already a dream. And tomorrow only a vision. But today We lived, makes every Yesterday a dream of Happiness and every tomorrow A vision of hope. Look well there to This day.

I am only stating which laws pertain to which commandments, not the entire Bible. When someone says the bible/christianity is impeding progress, they do not mean it is because the bible says to rape and kill, but because it imposes laws which lead to fear of tampering with life. If these are universal laws, then we should fear them even more. It is also important to understand that Christianity is not the OT, nor the stories of the Bible to be taken as anything more than spiritual analogies. I have no reason to believe that God actually commanded Samson to kill, or I would have to claim that his hair literally gave him strength.

RAOFLMAO!Could this sentence sum up the mind set of the biblically minded xian or what?Still LMAO!

Everyone wants us to think the Bible is just a collection of Aesop's fables. So, ok, I start looking for the moral of the story. Now all of a sudden this is unexceptable as well, because all searches for historical evidence of intercommunication between species and animal Olympics, turned up nothing. I think I am the one laughing, at yet another non-believer who takes the bible literally.

and doing a good job of trying to fit a square hole in a round peg Really did you not post this about your bible in msg 76

quote:

---

It is also the basis for the Christian stance on cloning ...

---

what would it be called using the bible to stop the advancement in medicine that will result in lives saved?
Oh yeah, impeding progress! Whose they? Fear a non existent deity who could punish me by sending me to a non existent torture chamber The commandments are OT, do you pick and choose what makes you feel good?

---

Look to this day, For yesterday is already a dream. And tomorrow only a vision. But today We lived, makes every Yesterday a dream of Happiness and every tomorrow A vision of hope. Look well there to This day.

Here is what iceage said; You were kind enough to point out that many non-bible based countries follow the same laws, which iceage called 'evolved natural laws'. Therefore I asked iceage, if these laws are not biblical, how can it be said that the Bible is impeding progress? I think he understood my point. 'They' are the people who claim that the Bible impedes progress; I say so at the beginning of that sentence, remember? If you also believe it, that is fine, but it makes no sense to then claim that our laws or our consciences have nothing to do with the Bible. It makes our laws part of natural, human instinct, and not words from God. If that is the case, they are universal, and should be 'feared', as in 'honored and upheld'. I said nothing anywhere about hell, but you really have to read the thread in sequence, as all of your arguments are out of the context of the whole.And no, I do not pick what makes me happy in the Bible. If a person believes in the Bible, they also believe it evolves (funny, huh?) to encompass all problems of all times. It does not grow stale as technology advances. Christianity is not the OT, because the OT is perfected in the NT, and the whole thing is a living document whose commandments are relevant to every generation. There are ways of killing now which were never dreamed of by ancient people. We update the commandments to include all sorts of situations that were never in the Bible; a lliteralist, like yourself, might indeed take issue to that.

There not, I could say the laws are more based on tsalagi laws than the bible and I would be wrong also. These laws that our laws grew from predate the bible. msg 82It was my fault for cutting of half your sentence, sorry.Edited by alacrity fitzhugh, : No reason given.

---

Look to this day, For yesterday is already a dream. And tomorrow only a vision. But today We lived, makes every Yesterday a dream of Happiness and every tomorrow A vision of hope. Look well there to This day.

Then we are clear that the bible has no factual relevance in this case and its use as evidence for the veracity of the Tower of Babel myth is erroneous?I do appologise however; I assumed you were a literalist and this not being the case I am obviously in error.Not sure what you mean by animal olympics.

There is enough evidence that ziggurats and towers were common place in Mesopotamia of this time period. Whether this particlular one ever existed or not may be a fascinating question for scientists and believers. I will not rule out the possibility that at one time people undertook the erection of a huge tower, and that its subsequent failure and destruction were attributed to the wrath of God. The way that this otherwise ancient and typical story of men finding the hand of God in forces beyond their understanding is riddled with spiritual metaphors which find relevance today, is the true allure of the Bible.Strictly speaking, I do not think the source of a myth can ever be used as evidence of its veracity. I do not expect apologies in a debate, but outright (public) mockery of the other viewpoints is in bad taste, IMO. I am not a literalist in the sense you mean it. I have tried to point out flaws in the reasoning of those opposing the Bible. If for example someone says that Biblical/christian sensibilities are getting in the way of progress, and then claims that these same sensibilities (to commands of God) are not inherently Biblical, there is not much basis for their argument, right? Likewise, looking for physical evidence to prove that the Bible is not the Word of God, is an impossibility. If there is a God, He will not have His plans 'discovered' by men, or this would rule out the need for faith. Finding no evidence will not put an end to Christianity. I do not think I need to adhere to either side to notice these conflictions. Bible-mockers will contradict themselves at times in their attempts to render the Bible obsolete, as it is easier to be contradictory in words, than it is in beliefs. Maybe that is unclear; if I believe and have believed it will be harder to trip me up, as I will speak from the depths of my understanding, and not the dictates of the moment.The 'animal Olympics' was a reference to the hare and tortoise fable.

To be fair it is the religious individual who makes a positive claim about the nature of the bible. The default position is that the bible has no evidence base to support its claims of divine inspiration. Evidence is required to move away from this initial default position.The story of the Tower of Babel is just one story that implies the hand of a god in the developement of humanity. There are many stories that the bible has co opted or out right copied (see the Sumerian Epics). Can't argue with that, but the same could be said of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Illiad, or the Decent of Ianna.I did not seek to mock, but to point out how stopping thinking is what some xians (for example) do far too much.What has the tortoise and the hare story got to do with anything?Edited by Larni, : No reason given.Edited by Larni, : No reason given.