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divine revelation VS falsehood

SylvainMichel
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Posted 04/13/06 - 11:45 AM: Subject: divine revelation VS falsehood	#1
Mythologies provide symbolic materials that are never presented as true historical facts. A sacrificed son of Zeus born again from a virgin, Gilgamesh had discussion with the only survivor of the Flood, numerous wise heros (including Odysseus) get a return ticket for their heavenly kingdom, etc.,etc...but mythologies do never lie, they propose collective myths mainly devoted to individual initiation. But how on Earth do divine revelations manage to propose historical facts that are so close to universal myths? Edited by SylvainMichel on 04/14/06 - 08:23 AM. Reason: bad copy-paste

Yves
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Posted 04/15/06 - 10:22 AM:	#2
Divine revelation is not always about proposed historical facts. More often it presents some deeper message about God's relationship to us, through the use of historical narrative. There are many theists who believe in the Old Testament but who do not believe the Earth was created in 7 days. Instead of seeing the biblical creation story as saying the world was created in this order and in this many days, they see that the world was created, and the creation was good. Similar things can be said about Flood account and a few other older stories. I am not proposing this is the case for every and all revelations, sometimes there are mere coincidences. The fact that a sacrificed son of Zeus was born from a virgin seems merely coincidental. The virgin birth has origins in Isaiah as a prophecy. Jesus' birth by a virgin was meant to fulfill that prophecy, not coincide with a story about Zeus.

SylvainMichel
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Posted 04/15/06 - 01:32 PM:	#3
Dear Yves, thesis : the saving sacrifice of the son overhauls revealed religion There is no doubt that early and pre humans were cannibals. Let's consider the minotaurs, sphinx, centaurus and othersvampires : all half beast-half human, all eating fresh (not cocked) human flesh. They are the symbol of pre-human and they eat FRESH human flesh because they do not cook it, because they had no holocaust tools, meaning no symbols, because they were not yet human. Cannibalism was decisive for the preeminence of the human kind : it is easier to forage on ennemies and eventually on children than on mammoths, isn't it? The sacrifice of the child thus does not originate for spirituality, it was rather first a food attitude. A son of ZEUS and Demeter (the nature) was one day sacrificed by the legal wife of the god. The father discovered the sacrifice, take the heart of the child, put it in the leg (and not elsewhere) of a woman named Semele and the son born again from death. Here we find many components of the sacrifice of the child from the virgin, but it is limited to the mythologic domain. The pratical sacrifice of the child, once a trump for human kind, became a paradox when they became aware of the death. Memory is responsible for the knowledge ofthe death : mouse can plan a couple of days, other can forecast months, and the relational men a couple of years...many years. Once the knowledge of the death embeded in men (please note that very young children do know the death), the sacrifice of the child became a paradox. But men, until today, as in wars, did not cancel their appetite for the sacrifice. This is because it tasted good because it was usefull, just as strawberry taste good and wood do not : the taste of the Child is written deep in the humans. A famous declaration 2005 years ago helped us in a step forward : eucharisty is deeply an attempt to go from real sacrifice of the child to the symbolic sacrifice. Anyway we can usefully consider that this enlightenment do not originate with Jesus. The myth of the famous son of Zeus, just as numerous other myths, says exactly the same thing, except it is limited to no historical facts. this thesis as a goal : may people be interested in a discussion about our capacity to enhance spirituality so that it "boils over" the possibility offered a couple of millennium ago?

Yves
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Posted 04/16/06 - 07:00 AM:	#4
By the same logic, if a mad man started talking about caves and shadows before Plato came along, there would be no merit in his works either. Or any other philosopher or scientist for that matter.

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