One important thing to remember is that the separation between religion and science was non-existent until about 500 years ago. When you don't have any notion about how the world around you works and suddenly crazy things like earthquakes happen talking about tectonic plates moving 200 km under you is more surreal than saying god is furious because you din't do any offerings last harvest.
Religion, to the human early societies, was not only beneficial, but necessary from the group cohesion standpoint.
Even in the Old Testament, offerings were not seen as the end all. Primary aim should be giving heed to the commandments like thou shall not kill etc.
Isaiah 1:11, "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats."
1 Samuel 15:22, "And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."
Ecclesiasticus 35:1, "He that keepeth the law bringeth offerings enough: he that taketh heed to the commandment offereth a peace offering."
King David also requested God to accept his lifting of his hands as a sacrifice, Psalm 141:2, "Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice."
Hebrews 10:6 (New Testament), "In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure."
So strong would the need be to sacrifice to God, if that was your belief, that I can imagine people during times of drought and famine still sacrificing animals.
I wonder if a lot of those conversation around obeying, are just because people were being incredibly stupid, and sacrificing during those times of need. Especially, I can imagine a king with control of enormous herds, slaughtering half of them rather than feeding his people.
This isn't consistently true. The kind of animal sacrifice that happened during the First and Second Temple periods often involved burning the entire animal, except for its skin[1].
(To my understanding, giving the god(s) only the "undesirable" parts of the animal is popularly associated with the Greek gods, not Abrahamic faiths.)
> Primary aim should be giving heed to the commandments like thou shall not kill etc.
"thou shall not kill"
Wait... There were "civilizations" torturing kids for as long as possible to extract as much tear as possible from them before killing them to please the gods in south america when europeans discovered them.
And I can name one other religion where killing infidels and apostates is not just cool but where you're rewarded with virgins for killing infidels while committing suicide. Infidels are considered so filthy that in addition to killing them, it's recommended you enslave their wives and daughters and turn them into sex slaves. As for offerings in that same religion, we could have a talk about slicing the throat of animals as a normal ritual.
"thou shall not kill" is specific to only two big monotheistic religions.
And even in the religions were it was asked to not kill other fellow humans, well fellow humans have been killed in the name of...
> And even in the religions were it was asked to not kill other fellow humans, well fellow humans have been killed in the name of...
If you mean the Templars and their Jerusalem crusades, it's likely that they were adhering another religion (or no religion) and using Christianity as a guise.
From the Wikipedia page for Baphomet (a famous occult symbol that is a god-like figure depicted as half man half animal; similar to ancient Egyptian gods such as Anubis), "The name first emerged in the 14th century during the Trials of the Knights Templar, when the order was accused of heresy for worshipping Baphomet as a demonic idol." This is just one of the bizarre activities that the Templars appeared to have participated in. Other witchcraft and occult ideas can be found on many of the churches that the Templars have founded including the Notre Dame. When looking through all the works of the Templars, it's just incredibly hard for to make a case that they have read or adhered to any part of the Bible. Maybe some things in letter, but definitely not in spirit. (For example, Matthew 22, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.")
Hmm, leaving the naked bigotry dripping from your "comment" aside (a question for mods, not me), I'll just say: preaching from a CIA-funded ISIS training manual has less in common with Islam than the Waco Branch Davidians or Moonies have with Roman Catholicism.
I thought this level of off-the-charts anti-Muslim misinformation was going out of fashion, after enough people in the West started realizing how much of a knuckle-dragging lie-strewn psyop it all was.
> the Prophet Muhammad, for example, kept a slave-concubine (Mariya the Copt) who was given to him as a gift by the Roman governor of Alexandria.
> The male owner of a female slave can either marry her off to a different man, thus renouncing his own sexual access to her, or he may take her as his own concubine, using her sexually himself.
And in practice in the modern day:
> In the Sudan, Christian captives in the ongoing civil war are often enslaved, and female prisoners are often used sexually, with their Muslim captors claiming that Islamic law grants them permission (citation) [https://books.google.com/books?id=NaVhAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT139&dq=9... ].
It may be inconvenient for those still trying to push the "religion of peace" narrative, but that doesn't mean it's not true, or that we can't talk about it.
An interesting 'natural experiment' happened with the invention of the telescope around ~1600: it quickly spread with-in Europe, spread to the Ottoman's by 'cultural osmosis', to India by the British, and to China by the Jesuits. Certainly there were individuals in these latter places that were interested in it, but it was generally put aside by the societies/governments as a whole, and so did not really lead to knowledge revolution that happened in Europe. (That knowledge revolution helped lead to a technological one, so whereas in 1600s Europeans came as supplicants, a century later they were more conquerers.)
Well, the "you" now is not the same "you" 10 minutes from now. The only thing the new "you" inherits is your code, but otherwise it could be a different person. So in a way we are code too.
A bit off topic, but there’s a funny passage in the book “Weavers, Scribes, and Kings” about a tablet from a scribal school. It read:
The door monitor (said), "Why did you go out without my say-so?" He beat me.
The jug monitor, "Why did you take [water or beer] without my say-so?" He beat me.
The Sumerian monitor, "You spoke in Akkadian!" He beat me.
My teacher, "Your handwriting is not at all good!" He beat me.
26 comments
[ 0.34 ms ] story [ 16.1 ms ] threadReligion, to the human early societies, was not only beneficial, but necessary from the group cohesion standpoint.
Even in the Old Testament, offerings were not seen as the end all. Primary aim should be giving heed to the commandments like thou shall not kill etc.
Isaiah 1:11, "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats."
1 Samuel 15:22, "And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."
Ecclesiasticus 35:1, "He that keepeth the law bringeth offerings enough: he that taketh heed to the commandment offereth a peace offering."
King David also requested God to accept his lifting of his hands as a sacrifice, Psalm 141:2, "Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice."
Hebrews 10:6 (New Testament), "In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure."
I wonder if a lot of those conversation around obeying, are just because people were being incredibly stupid, and sacrificing during those times of need. Especially, I can imagine a king with control of enormous herds, slaughtering half of them rather than feeding his people.
I have no proof, just musings.
The good meat was normally eaten by humans after sacrifices, not wasted.
(To my understanding, giving the god(s) only the "undesirable" parts of the animal is popularly associated with the Greek gods, not Abrahamic faiths.)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnt_offering_(Judaism)
"thou shall not kill"
Wait... There were "civilizations" torturing kids for as long as possible to extract as much tear as possible from them before killing them to please the gods in south america when europeans discovered them.
And I can name one other religion where killing infidels and apostates is not just cool but where you're rewarded with virgins for killing infidels while committing suicide. Infidels are considered so filthy that in addition to killing them, it's recommended you enslave their wives and daughters and turn them into sex slaves. As for offerings in that same religion, we could have a talk about slicing the throat of animals as a normal ritual.
"thou shall not kill" is specific to only two big monotheistic religions.
And even in the religions were it was asked to not kill other fellow humans, well fellow humans have been killed in the name of...
If you mean the Templars and their Jerusalem crusades, it's likely that they were adhering another religion (or no religion) and using Christianity as a guise.
From the Wikipedia page for Baphomet (a famous occult symbol that is a god-like figure depicted as half man half animal; similar to ancient Egyptian gods such as Anubis), "The name first emerged in the 14th century during the Trials of the Knights Templar, when the order was accused of heresy for worshipping Baphomet as a demonic idol." This is just one of the bizarre activities that the Templars appeared to have participated in. Other witchcraft and occult ideas can be found on many of the churches that the Templars have founded including the Notre Dame. When looking through all the works of the Templars, it's just incredibly hard for to make a case that they have read or adhered to any part of the Bible. Maybe some things in letter, but definitely not in spirit. (For example, Matthew 22, "Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.")
I thought this level of off-the-charts anti-Muslim misinformation was going out of fashion, after enough people in the West started realizing how much of a knuckle-dragging lie-strewn psyop it all was.
What's it doing here on HN?
Some good reading material: ( https://www.brandeis.edu/projects/fse/muslim/slavery.html )
> the Prophet Muhammad, for example, kept a slave-concubine (Mariya the Copt) who was given to him as a gift by the Roman governor of Alexandria.
> The male owner of a female slave can either marry her off to a different man, thus renouncing his own sexual access to her, or he may take her as his own concubine, using her sexually himself.
And in practice in the modern day:
> In the Sudan, Christian captives in the ongoing civil war are often enslaved, and female prisoners are often used sexually, with their Muslim captors claiming that Islamic law grants them permission (citation) [https://books.google.com/books?id=NaVhAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT139&dq=9... ].
It may be inconvenient for those still trying to push the "religion of peace" narrative, but that doesn't mean it's not true, or that we can't talk about it.
Nonsense, it is present in pretty much all religions, monotheistic or not.
Worth noting that you need certain metaphysical assumptions to be present to do science:
1. That there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers.[35][36]
2. That this objective reality is governed by natural laws;[35][36]
3. That reality can be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation.[35][36]
4-7. Etc.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)#Provid...
Not all world views ("religions") have them.
An interesting 'natural experiment' happened with the invention of the telescope around ~1600: it quickly spread with-in Europe, spread to the Ottoman's by 'cultural osmosis', to India by the British, and to China by the Jesuits. Certainly there were individuals in these latter places that were interested in it, but it was generally put aside by the societies/governments as a whole, and so did not really lead to knowledge revolution that happened in Europe. (That knowledge revolution helped lead to a technological one, so whereas in 1600s Europeans came as supplicants, a century later they were more conquerers.)
* https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8332333-intellectual-cur...
Make them believe that breaking out of the sandbox will make them burn in hell eternally.
A recent decree in the land of Texas is for the Ten Commandments to be in every public school now.
Looks like the state will catch up eventually.