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My wife had her surgery today: everything went well and she'll be in the hospital for a day or two or more.
Now that all is fine, I'm left wondering how much it would have cost us if our health care wasn't free. Enough to bankrupt us? Huh.....
As an aside, while waiting (we got up at 4am to be there for 6am for her surgery at 8am and she was in her room at 2pm) I was reading Isaac Asimovs 'study' of the old testament.
According to him, In The Beginning the Bible talked about, basically, polytheism:
"God
The Bible centers about God, and God is brought into the tale at once:
Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
The Hebrew word, translated here as God, is "Elohim" andthat
is a plural form which would ordinarily (if tradition were defied) -be
translated "gods." It is possible that in the very earliest traditions on
which the Bible is based, the creation was- indeed the work of a
plurality of gods. The firmly monotheistic Biblical writers would carefully have eliminated such polytheism, but could not perhaps do any-
thing with the firmly ingrained term "Elohim." It was too familiar
to change.
. Some hints of polytheism seem to have survived the editing. Thus,
after the first created man disobeys God's injunction not to eat of the
tree of knowledge, God is quoted as saying:
Genesis 3:22. . . . Behold, the man is become as one of us, to
know good and evil.. . Then too, still later, when God is concerned over mankind's ar-
rogance in attempting to build a tower that would reach to heaven,
He is quoted as saying:
Genesis 11:7. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their
language . . . It is possible to argue that this is not true evidence of early poly-
theism. God might be viewed as using the royal "we"; or as speaking
to an angelic audience; or even, in the Christian view, as speaking in
the persons of the Trinity.
Nevertheless, as far as we know the history of religion outside the
Bible, early beliefs were always polytheistic and monotheism was a
late development in the history of ideas."
I didn't know this. Interesting. (Copy/pasta from pdf is problematic: it seems to go through OCR which is not perfect. Hoping I didn't miss any fixes).
To me, the only 'true' word of God we have are the ten commandments. Why would anyone try to seek the word of God(s) in the Bible (written by imperfect people long after the events) when you just have to look at the Ten (taken down by an imperfect person and translated by imperfect people).
To me, the Bible just boils down to "be a good person". The ten commandments lay out a guide how to do that.
My wife's surgeons and anaesthesiologists were good. Very good.
Or, at least, good enough, thank god(s).
;)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Wednesday February 28 2018, @01:50AM (1 child)
Best wishes for a full recovery for the Mrs., Gaaark.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday February 28 2018, @11:43AM
Thanks, Ari:
You gets an up-mod!
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday February 28 2018, @02:27AM (4 children)
Firstly, I hope your wife has a speedy recovery, and is now (and remains) cancer-free.
The Ten Commandments, even as they come to us now, explicitly references the polytheistic views of the "god" that is purported to have created them:
Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me [wikipedia.org].
That pretty explicitly says that other gods exist, but that this one (YHWH, Hashem, whatever) is more important, and its interests must be considered before that of any other gods.
If one assumes that the above refers to the worship of things that are not the "one god," then why did this "god" find it necessary to include a prohibition on "graven images" [wikipedia.org]?
If a representation of anything is just a thing and not an avatar of Ba'al or Isis or any number of other "gods" worshipped in that region at that time, why would the "one god" care?
It's all pretty ridiculous, as most of this stuff (as you mentioned), the Torah/Old Testament and the New Testament is mostly just a bunch of rehashed stories from other cultures/eras.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 03 2018, @03:07AM (1 child)
Logical progression?
Pan theism --> mono theism --> a theism --> post theism*
Or as a retort to a born again -- we have a lot in common, I just believe in one less god than you.
* https://naturalistphilosophy.wordpress.com/2017/06/11/what-is-post-theism/ [wordpress.com]
And also, https://thehumanist.com/magazine/january-february-2008/features/the-post-theological-umbrella [thehumanist.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @12:43PM
> beyond the god question
Now we can model the relation with the supernatural by building a virtual world and examining the relation with its unreachable and almost godlike creators.
Now we can reasonably conceive artificial life (no, not AI which is mere imitation, rather, the emergent property of a universe given some rules).
So, is this the moment we should consider ourselves beyond the god question? SMH
Somebody has something to hide, or somebody else is doing very good reverse psychology by hijacking the opposite camp and making them look like they do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @12:01PM (1 child)
>> Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me
>That pretty explicitly says that other gods exist
Bro, will you read a bit more? For example:
When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” So Aaron said to them, “Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”
MAKE US GODS. They are asking a guy to build gods. It is obvious that god does not necessarily implies a supernatural being, creator.
The bearded guy is speaking to people so idolatrous that by the time Moses came back they had already bowed before an idol. So He can say no other gods without implying they are peers. QED.
Be wary of your own rationalism, western guys. It cannot get to meaningful conclusions unless you considered everything.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 29 2018, @02:20PM
Thanks for that info.
The more i read, the more i learn, the more i can't believe people believe in supreme all-powerful beings (aka, Gods), especially when the bible is their reference.
But then again, scientology. Need i say more.
Sheeple need someone to follow, methinks.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by rylyeh on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:22AM
'Elohim' is the plural, 'El' [wikipedia.org] is the singular.
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @04:54AM (5 children)
You realize, of course, that that started out as 15 commandments.
3 stone tablets were unwieldy and Moses was clumsy, so they ended up with 2 tablets and 10 commandments.
...according to Mel Brooks and "History of the World Part 1". [google.com]
...and George Carlin said that 10 was overkill.
He boiled it down to 2.
Text [genius.com]
Video 8:14 [youtube.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @05:22AM (4 children)
Fun fact: the Ten Commandments is actually composed of 17 verses. This has lead to different denominations using different numbering [wikipedia.org]. This leads to one of my favorite mix ups in television, where they are obviously confessing to a Catholic Priest for breaching the 5th Commandment (murder), however, there is a strong Calvinist and reformed history in the U.S., so the writer may have intended that they confess to their 5th (Honor your parents) or just picked a number.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:07AM (3 children)
Yeah.
My parents were Catholic.
Catholics have 66 books in their Bible and Protestants have 72 (IIRC).
Similar thing there with commandment numbering.
This has lead to
I bungled that one some months back.
Lead==the metal (Pronounced differently, it's a verb--but the wrong tense for that usage)
Led==past tense of that verb
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:01PM
Yeah, I changed that sentence a couple of times and only caught that mistake the split second after hitting submit. I even checked the preview, links and all. But no, had to be right after I clicked submit.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:18PM (1 child)
You have that backwards. Protestants have 66 books and Catholics have 72. In addition, some of the books in the Catholic Bible are longer, as they contain other books from the Jewish tradition. However, some sections are omitted from the Bible by Catholics as there is good evidence they are forgeries or later additions. The Lutheran Bible sometimes omits even more (5 (6?) additional books) because they are read to go against their beliefs. At a minimum, they are usually categorized as "spoken against" or "apocrypha."
Regardless, the Bible is way more complicated than most people realize, especially most believers. People just echo what they have heard from their parents and pulpit. Even when they decide to study it, they tend to stick with sources that agree with what they already decided is true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @05:45AM
Not surprising.
Me and religion are like that:
{Takes fingers that are side-by-side and moves them as far apart as they will go}
the Bible is way more complicated than most people realize
It definitely needed better editors.
A deeply flawed text.
Hundreds of examples of self-contradictory nonsense.
Bible Inconsistencies - Bible Contradictions [infidels.org]
This stuff was known LONG ago.
Self-Contradictions of the Bible -- William Henry Burr, 1819-1908 [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @02:29PM
Have you read the Bible?
It certainly doesn't boil down to "be a good person" for most modern definitions of "good" unless you exclude the bad parts and selectively interpret the other parts.
As for the ten commandments: the first three are not necessary, 4 is garbage unless it is warranted, 5-8 are generally alright, and the last two are thought crimes.
At least you didn't claim that the "Golden Rule" was invented by the Bible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule#Antiquity [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:55PM
Indeed. People seek new knowledge as time goes on. Humans are not perfect, but we are capable of progress.
Amen.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 18 2018, @10:01AM
We have a guy here, named Mauro Biglino, with a vocal group of supporters which is surely not only made of 50cent army people from his publisher, who decided to translate literally the old testament and came with god is an alien scenario.
Unfortunately, he is in bad faith or particularly resistant to reason. Why? Hebrew is a language with no abstract words (source for this assertion, Biglino). What happens if you want to convey abstract meanings in such a language? you use symbols. What happens when you translate symbols literally? you get nonsense.
But, to get to Elohim, there are also grammar rules. The term is plural but the associated verb is singular, so Biglino has been grilled by hebrews because he cannot recognize what in Italian has been defined as "plural of abstraction", which means Elohim is not "judges" but "the supreme legislator" which is a good definition for a god.
Also, just like no flat earther has come up with a full map of the flat earth where all distances match experience/observations, no alien bible theorist has come up with full translations that convey some meaning.
You can try google translating this, I think it will yield nonsense but will give you an idea anyway.
http://www.gianlucamarletta.it/wordpress/2014/12/gli-ebrei-rispondono-a-biglino/ [gianlucamarletta.it]
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