On 04-02-98 Bob Eyer wrote to Day Brown... 
 BE> Why did God make the situation so complicated, given His nature as 
 BE> described by John? 
 BE>  
 BE> No good answer to this question can be provided. 
Well spoze God was *not* as John described him? I support a system 
that is not complicated instead. 
 
 BE> So their response to the writing problem was complicated by two 
 BE> inconsistent purposes: (1) to reflect a tradition grown up from 
 BE> the stories of ignorant and illiterate men, and (2) to tell a 
 BE> consistent story to congregations, the priests in which could read 
 BE> and write. 
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War: "...The way that most men deal with 
traditions, even traditions of their own country, is to receive 
them all alike as they are delivered, without any critical test 
whatever. ... My conclusions have cost me some labour from the 
want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrances by 
different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, 
sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other. The 
absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat 
from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers 
who desire an exact knowlege of the past as an aid to the inter- 
pretation of the future, which in the course of human things must 
resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, 
I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the 
applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time." 
 
I dare say, he had no idea of how fine a possession it has come to 
be.  Here I see yet another characteristic difference between the 
Aryan and the Semetic cosmology.  After all, who would have enough 
chutzpah to doubt the 'word of God'?  Yet, earlier in his works, I 
see him take on Homer, who was regarded as divinely inspired, with 
a rational analysis of the facts such as he could verify them.  In 
no case do I see this test applied to the scripture by Semites. 
 
Truth's not revealed in scripture, it's searched for in experience. 
If I strip away the decorative embellishment of myth, the Aryans in 
prehistoric times beleived that Chaos was first, and that the time 
eventually arrived when a self-replicating order randomly appeared, 
which *evolved* into God and the universe concurrently.  And since 
then, both have continued to evolve. 
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 * OFFLINE 1.58 * Does Murphy's break the law of probability? 
--- Maximus 3.01
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