Reed,
And that is my point, that it is possible the premise is itself wrong, and that there is nothing fundamentally "wrong" with humans at all.
But there is a difference between saying there is something wrong with relaity, and saying there is something wrong with humans. There is something wrong with humans, because they have assessed themselves as lost, and unhappy.
Ouch. You are setting up a straw man by idealizing the Amerindian lifestyle.
I do tend to idealize aboriginal life, but I merely in this case mentioned several components of civilized life that they lack, which is not a strawman.
Because it sets the stage for EVERYTHING that follows.
Well, you may be right about that. But I say the feeling comes first, and the story weaving is the natural human tendency to make sense of the inner sensation by justifying or explaining why it is so.
Kenny,
But if one account is "true" then the other is an obvious lie; they are not congruent, they refute each other. I see this as a point of major importance. See, if the second account is wrong then everything Jesus said and did makes sense but if the second account is true then I may as well join the fundies and go back to reading my bible with a shoe horn and a hammer.
You will really have to elaborate here. And what are the shoehorn and hammer for?
That's what's unapparent and that is what a man like Moses would have known and tried to convey somehow, through the ages.
It seems whoever sewed the Bible together was trying to cover the difference, not show it. What do you think Moses was trying to convey?
You probably need proof that wolves eat each other also, no?
Well, yeah.
What does Mort Farley say?
I don't know. I read one of his books many years ago.
Have you ever considered how a moose dies? It usually takes only six days; isn't that nice?
I realize I don't happen to be an expert, but I doubt this. Does it sometimes happen? Probably. But a six day hunt to get a meal? Something is wrong with the picture here. That can't be the norm. I have certainly watched my share of nature programs, and sometimes they are quite in-depth. A couple involved watching a lion pride for months. There were a couple of bad scenes. A baby elephant got trampled and his leg was broken. Elephants are pretty nice but eventually they had to move on. The poor thing hobbled along painfully all day trying to catch up, and a group of half-grown lion siblings ambushed him. Even though they were near two, they were too stupid to finish him off so they just dug in. It took several hours before he died.
But they also filmed many scenes of hunting, and nothing like a six-day hunt. I guess I hadn't thought about exactly how animals die in the wild. They don't die of alzheimers. I suppose getting killed when you're getting feeble is as good a way as any.
That's what a moose has to look forward to.
Yea, it's bad. Let me tell you what you have to look forward to. A nice heart attack of you're lucky. If not, diapers, spoon feeding, a bloated body, shortness of breath, skin that tears...
if you have any marbles and you probably won't, you'll pray for wolves.
Moose wouldn't have been made so tough if there were a god. Nature is merciless. Everything in nature is half starved to death all its life until it gets torn apart by something bigger and also starving to death. Nature never allows six fat wolves. Nature always opts instead in that place for 20 miserible starving wolves.
This just doesn't jive with what else I've seen. I have seen a few wild animals, and they weren't skinny. None of the animals I've seen on TV have been skinny. Maybe wolves have a hard life, or maybe your area has been partially disrupted? Even the caribou, who live a very hard life, can be skinny in the worst of the winter, and even a few die, but mostly they look good.
And maybe you could update your idea of God. Anyway, if you are right, it lends credence to the idea that this place is fallen! One of my premises is that we are in hell now. That isn't as negative as it sounds. Hell has many levels, and some are rather paradisical. One of the several wicked designs of the Christian dogma, is to keep people in denial of their true situation, so that they won't realize how dire it is. They dream of a future in heaven and a future in hell. That way they won't look so hard for the exit. The exit is always now, never the future.
but that they didn't have "crime" is silly because they didn't have laws, per se or governments per se but still they had rules and harsh disciplines for breaking them. Much much harsher than civilized types like us would dream to apply.
What do you know about this? There is no harsher treatment of minor crimes than has been done under civilization. How does 100 lashes grab you? How does being sent to Australia in a penal colony for stealing bread grab you? How about getting your hand chopped off?
And what makes you think they didn't have dogmas? or have need of dogmas?
What makes you think they did? It is true that any human society is going to have a story, and if you were an Amerindian, you probably had to go with whatever that society came up with, unless you were quite the thinker, simply because you wouldn't have the kind of exposure to ideas. But they had nothing like a systematized and millenia-long written documents that got built up like the Christian dogma. I wonder why your views on most things seem so dismal?
Dogma is only bad when it becomes obsolete for one reason or other.
All dogma is obsolete.
Truth is a pathless land.