I'm going to start a fresh thread.

I know these are contentious discussions but I ask that if you do not want to be objective, open minded and respectful that you do not participate.

I want to remind you all about the Religious Discussion thread started by Dino almost a year ago. With few exceptions there were several pages of very great dialog in the early stages.

Some of us found many places of common ground in spite of our own very different belief systems and the prejudices that come with them.

It was quite good actually. I had several in my inbox who did not openly participate but who were nonetheless excited for the dialog.

As an offer of proof that this is exactly still the case, the Biblical precepts thread had over 300 views in half a day.

I'm sure much of that number is a bit exaggerated by the few participants reading and responding and re-reading, but even without those numbers artificially inflating, I think it's remarkable and obvious that the interest is there.

I'm hoping to regain that more loving, honest and open dialog without the venom that crept in and made the whole thing fall apart.

I know what I am about to begin is going to be challenging for both the believer and the atheist alike. You may read something that goes directly against what you believe and have believed for quite some time in most cases.

But when you do encounter such a statement from me I actually encourage any one of you to challenge it and challenge it with passion and reason, but also in a spirit of truth seeking and harmony as best we may be able to attain that.

I am tempted to paste much of that dialog in here, to refresh our memories, because some truly amazing harmonies WERE struck, but will let this grow organically into whatever it will become.

I truly believe that if anyone comes to this discussion with good intentions it will bear a tremendous amount of fruit, both for atheist and believer alike.



Disclaimer:

I do not intend to show that somehow, I am a creature of great intelligence and wisdom. I've always maintained that I don't have all the answers and there are many issues that I still grapple with and cannot or have not yet, come to a satisfactory answer. I expect that will always be the case.

From my perspective what I post is begging to be scrutinized to the highest degree possible.
But I do truly feel these are remarkable and earth-shattering types of revelatory and universal Truths.


There is a man that made a series of videos examining the Biblical stories and he really put forth many of these same ideas that I had posted 10 months ago and helped me to see places where I had it wrong.

It was the first time in my life I've ever heard anyone approach the Word in what I felt was the same exact way I try to approach it.

I am hesitant to name him because I really don't want anyone running off and investigating HIM and trying to bring a pre-conceived notion of these ideas based on some judgement or opinion of him and/or other things he may have written and/or discussed.

I know some will scoff and it will likely inspire a game of "name that man" from some, but I don't think that will be helpful at all.

Let's evaluate these concepts as open mindedly and with the fewest preconceived notions as possible and let the ideas stand on their own merits or fall.

The only reason I even mention him at all is because I don't want anyone to "discover" something I write to be influenced by him and conclude plagiarism has occurred. I admittedly will pull a lot from his videos, but only in so far as he does such an amazing job of clarifying particular elements, that paraphrasing would only do them disservice.

02)

Okay, now we are done with the prologue, cross reference post and disclaimer we can begin the exercise.

I'm going to make a few statements that are going to seem absurd to some degree because they will often fly in the face of whatever belief system you might hold.

I use the phrase "believer and non-believer alike" because I think these Truths have the potential to bring a sort of clarity to both sides of the aisle.
I also believe that BECAUSE it does exactly that, it is even more "evidence" of just how true they might actually be.

We are going to begin with the assumption that the Bible is NOT the "literal, inspired Word of God".

I know that will upset a few and they will maybe tune out right there at that sentence, but PLEASE consider that by starting with this assumption I believe it becomes evident that the Bible CANNOT be anything other than EXACTLY that. Kind of a confirmation to a much greater degree of these two intertwined Biblical verses:

Psalm 19:1

"The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands."

and maybe more importantly,

Romans 1:20

"For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

Now of course at the sight of THOSE sentences the agnostic and atheist may repel in disgust.

Please try to just read along and judge for yourself.

I'm going to revisit something I posted in rsp777's Trump thread.

It was essentially that as best I can tell, every Christian denomination has some portion of Truth in it and other places where it misses the mark to some degree or other. I concluded with "The pieces [of Truth] are out there, but they have been scattered among all the different denominations".

Here I am going to widen that net by quite a bit.

I put forth the notion that there is SOME Truth to be extracted from almost EVERY SINGLE belief system AND that every single belief system is still missing some Truth which they refuse to acknowledge or just simply cannot yet see.

---

Here are a few things that I believe are absolutely critical as a starting place to any possible understanding.

Again, don't jump right in and ridicule or dispense with the ideas simply because "you know better" and/or refuse to believe any such thing.
I don't care how well versed you might be in the matter and how made up your mind is. Just read and take the ideas into consideration. Pray on them.

There is a great divide between those who believe in "Darwinism" and those who believe in an Omnipotent creator.
I believe it is unnecessarily so.

In the "Biblical precepts" thread, Doug posted a two-part video which did a diligent and I'd say almost irrefutable job of dismissing the notion of humankind being a PURELY random result of Chaos.

Indeed, much of what was discussed in that video concerned the remarkable complexity of how cells work and how genes process and how our entire human form, essentially, is a vast network of extremely complex machines that we would be incapable of re-creating ourselves.

However, I don't think one can seriously seek Truth and refuse to recognize that evolution is as sound a scientific fact as we have.

When I say that, I mean the mechanism that has brought us to where we are today evolutionarily.
I DO NOT mean the Godless, non-creator conclusions that were drawn when these Truths were revealed, or the baggage that came along with that idea.
It was/is a very unsophisticated conclusion to draw.

This would be the first instance where we see the ever-present reality that there is a nugget of truth somewhere, but some other truth still missing within it.

The phenomenon of evolution, or the process of it, is very hard to cast aside as rubbish.
But to suppose that somehow, because you believe Darwinean evolution be a fact, you are compelled to conclude there is no God is equally ridiculous.

Another idea I mentioned in an older thread was that there are several different tiers to this type of dialog.
In summary it is basically a grouping of these different types of folks and belief systems:

1) I believe we are merely an "accident of nature", and Darwinian evolution, did in fact, disprove the notion of a Creator.

2) I believe that while there was a Creator, or God if you like, it has nothing to do with the God of Christianity, or any other man made religion.

3) I believe that the Bible is a book of fables and myths aimed at helping teach us how to live in harmony with one another, but it definitely isn't "Inspired".

[EDIT: I suppose one might believe both 2 and 3 simultaneously without being contradictory.]

4) I believe that my specific religious books ARE inspired, and your religious teachings have it wrong.

5) The discussion between two Bible believing Christians from differing denominations who have conflicts of interpretation.

6) Bible study. Where you study the Bible with likeminded folks and try to gain a better understanding of It's precepts and teachings.

In my opinion the Truths that we will be looking at, will have a persuasive effect on every person who is sincerely seeking Truth, regardless of which of the above categories they may fall into.

---

I'm going to use the word "evolution" completely separate of the concept of "Darwinian evolution of species", but rather as "the natural evolution of things that we can observe every day with our own eyes and minds".

For example the evolution of thought, or the evolution of a social construct or perhaps the evolution of the game of football.
I have a hard time believing anyone could object to the word itself when used in this narrow context.
I will try to use the specific term "Darwinian evolution" when that is the context I wish to use it in.

We can see an evolution of religious thought and precepts from the earliest record of civilization.
I'd also argue that these concepts long precede any written history.

It is a large part, or at least a key element of, the reason there are those who dismiss the Bible as a mere amalgamation of the many precepts found in other, more ancient religious viewpoints. To some degree they are absolutely right. But they err when their reasoning ends here.

So let us imagine the beginning of Darwinian evolution, and again I think it is wrong on a lot of levels, but it is also very true in many ways.

We emerged roughly 3.5 billion years ago and have been striving to survive ever since.
And not just simply survive but to exert dominion as well.

We develop traits that are passed down to our offspring and the more successful these traits are at aiding in survival, the more likely we will be successful in continuing as a species.

These traits needn't be confined to only mere physical traits either. Behavioral patterns also are also genetic traits in many instances.
In fact, far more of our behavioral patterns are factually and observably genetic in nature and not dictated by any social constructs whatsoever.

Without a doubt, social constructs have a huge impact on us and do produce certain behaviors, but it isn't the only thing that does.

I'd argue it affects behavior to far less of a degree than does our imbedded evolutionary genetic behavioral patterns. We can see it in nature very easily.

Wild animals have hierarchal structures that they adhere to very closely. You can watch two pack animals fighting for dominance in the pack.
They will puff up at one another and growl and try to intimidate the other. It typically becomes physical as they wrestle for dominance over one another. Eventually however, one will "tap out" as it were.
There is rarely actual bloodshed involved as one animal rolls over, exposing his neck signaling "okay! you win".
Remarkably the victor doesn't rip out the throat of the loser. But WHY NOT?

These are ferocious predators who kill regularly for survival. Either for sustenance or to protect themselves from another predator.
Are we to assign the cognitive faculty of "mercy" to a wild animal? That's absurd.

Then WHAT is it?

Well, it's a social construct of sorts learned over time and passed down genetically by those who successfully reproduce.
I could kill the loser, and maybe I should even, but I might be better off keeping him on the team.
He will be useful down the road when we have to take down a water buffalo.

Again, I don't believe it's plausible to convey the cognitive ability to reason to an animal, so it MUST be hereditary.

They've observed that other packs, where the winner kills the loser, are made weaker by doing so.
AND they're not here any longer, in part due to the that very weakening of the pack.
So not killing the loser is actually the right way to increase our chance of continuing as a species.

Furthermore, especially with primates and not so much pack animals, there is another more complex element at work.
If the victor ape is too much of a brute and viciously kills the loser even though the loser tapped out, the other males will look for the first opportunity to take him out. They are too scared to do it immediately, but at the first sign of weakness they will do the deed and a new leader will emerge who is a bit gentler and kinder, which wins over the other competing males.

Can you not see how direct of a parallel this is to our own hierarchal structures?

We want a strong powerful leader but one that is tempered with the well-being of the entire pack and not just the well-being of self. It is, in essence the BEST way forward for our society and species in general. That this "knowledge" is somehow biological in nature is fascinating and revelatory I believe.

It is a very powerful Romans 1:20 moment if you can set aside preconceived notions and let the facts speak for themselves.

And this is just the first tiniest of scratches of the surface of what nature and science teaches us about God.

03)

I will begin today by going back to the cradle of civilization in Mesopotamia.

We'll see the evolution of some Biblical Truths as well as the evolutionary reasons and mechanisms involved in that evolution.

We'll also take a more detailed look at how hierarchal structures emerge, and their role in social constructs.

So we broke away from chimps some 5 million years ago give or take. Since that break we've "discovered" our own consciousness and have been able to grow remarkably complex since then. As we became dominant we conquered quite a lot and eventually were able to create "civilization".

Many of the hereditary behavioral traits we looked at in the previous post still exist in us today. It is undeniable.
Really quickly, I'll do an aside about crustaceans. Now these creatures are, in our "evolutionary family tree" as it were, some 400 million years back.
And yet some of these evolutionary traits that were derived from them are still with us to this very day.
We're talking super ancient parts of the brain and synapsis that have continued on for that long. It's truly remarkable.

When two lobsters fight for dominance, the winner puffs up and makes himself look bigger.
Kind of like how a boxer or MMA fighter may raise his hands in victory, all puffed up about his dominance over his latest adversary.
The losing lobster, however, shrinks a bit. He's defeated, and vulnerable obviously, as this latest battle just revealed to him so clearly.
In the winning lobster's brain is released serotonin. That's the neurological process that makes him puff up.
What scientists have been able to demonstrate, is that, if you take the losing lobster and inject him with serotonin, he will rise up and fight again.

His natural neuroscience is to shrivel a bit at the unbearable realization that he was defeated. Our neurochemistry is exactly the same.
It's why anti-depressants can help people "face the world" when they are in a shriveled, defeated state like depression.

Okay, back to Mesopotamia. So after millions of years we become dominant over the chimps and rise remarkably well.
Now as you can imagine, after millions of years, every single person alive has beaten an enormous amount of odds.
Who can fathom the number of such who failed to survive? 1 in a million? a billion?
IDK, but it's important, because at this point of our cultural evolution tribes began to have some level of respect for other tribes based simply on the fact that they have also survived and endured.

So at Mesopotamia we can imagine two tribes who might encounter one another.
But here, rather than warring with one another they make the conscious decision to become allies instead.
I don't need to lose half my tribe in a war and maybe we can trade and be useful to each other in other ways as well.

BUT, we have an immediate conflict of deity. We worship God A, and they worship God B. What shall we do?
Well, because my goal is to cultivate an alliance, I'm going to trust that there is something valuable about your God, and you're going to trust the same about mine. Something about your God MUST be valuable as is evidenced by the fact that you are here, as we are. And that is no small feat.

Over time this civilization grew by accepting many other tribes and treating their Gods as valuable and good also based on the same reasoning.
Some precept that your tribe has adhered to, has resulted in you overcoming incredible odds and so we will give that fact the proper reverence it is due.

By the time their civilization was thriving they had evolved this system of belief thusly, and it is a remarkable and revelatory understanding.

Their monotheistic God that emerged from the amalgamation of all the different littler Gods was named Marduk.
Marduk was at the top of the "god hierarchal structure". He was the embodiment all of the traits found in the lesser Gods.
His two most powerful attributes were Eyes all around his head, so that he could "pay attention" and also there's an idea that emerges here, and in a multitude of other religions, that the eye is that which informs our conscious mind.
You see it in the Egyptian God Horus. It is THAT symbol of Horus which appears on our dollar bills. "The all-seeing eye".

His other attribute is that he could "speak magic words".
I find it very akin to the "power of the tongue" idea, especially where speaking something into existence is concerned.

So, there was also, in this mythology, some other characters. I'll go over the basic story briefly.

Tiamat and Apsu are locked in embrace since the beginning of time. They are a representaion of the ying and yang, chaos and order.
Apsu, the representation of the masculine and order. Tiamat the representation of feminine and chaos.
They give rise to all the, maybe let's call them "base human traits" that are intrinsically a part of us all. Traits like Lust, Love, Rage, etc.
Well these traits, individually represented as the children of Tiamat and Apsu are out in the world and they carelessly kill Apsu, who again is a representation of order. When Tiamat finds out about this she is furious. Her children (these inherent emotions within us all) have destroyed the very fabric of structure itself because now there is no order to any of it.

She puts together an army of monsters and at the head of this battalion is one called Kingu. Kingu is the worst and most fearsome of all of these monsters.
She makes a declaration to these gods that she is coming for them.
Well they know they're in trouble now. They take turns going out to confront this battalion but are unsuccessful one by one.

Now a new God emerges who is Marduk.
Also remember that this mythology is being crafted at the same time the Mesopotamian tribes are assembling themselves into the first great civilization.

Now Marduk says "Okay, if I go out there and take her on, but if I am victorious, then I am KIng God and what I say goes.
The other gods gladly accept that proposition.

Well, he goes out and he casts a net around Tiamat and then cuts her into pieces and creates the world out of those pieces.
He creates human beings out of the blood of Kingu, the worst of all the monsters.

What a striking similarity to what is written in the Bible.
Not just the creation aspect but the conceptualization that mankind is inherently flawed because we are made from the blood of Kingu.
And I would add, even though I don't believe the Mesopotamians drew this conclusion, (though elements are certainly there and we'll visit those later) therefore need redeeming.

---

Okay, now let's do some Bible study. This is from an actual Bible study I participated in some 20+ years ago.

I mentioned a few times how when I come to the Lord seeking discernment, understanding and Truth that often as I am trying my best to articulate a specific concept it is as though the Holy Spirit is "lighting my path" in some sense.
I've experienced it often and I would wager that many Christians have had some very similar experience when grappling with any Biblical concept.
Well, this morning as I was in prayer and struggling with the best path forward today, these old Bible study notes came tumbling out of a folder when I pulled the Bible from the bookshelf.
It seemed clear that this was not only very relevant to this whole exercise, but in some ways essential and foundational.

This study is titled: The Names and Nature of God.

You see if there are any parallels to be drawn.

We will go through the names as they appear chronologically throughout the Bible. This is how God reveals His nature to us.

1) ELOHIM (God our creator)
The first name God reveals to us in the Bible is found in the very first sentence of the Book.
El means God and is connected to his might, power majesty, glory and authority.
Elohim is ALWAYS connected to God's acts. The angels know him by this name.

2) JEHOVAH (Our eternal God)
The name of relationship and covenant.
God introduced himself to Adam as Lord God in Genesis 2:7.
Jehovah is connected to the creation of man, to the making of a covenant and to the atonement.
It is Jehovah who reveals to us ELOHIM.
God is always worshipped as Jehovah and one cannot worship Him without a relationship to the covenant.

3) JEHOVAH-EL SHADDAI (God our supplier)
Genesis 17:1-2
El Shaddai means the God of might, nourishment, bounty and blessings.
God revealed Himself to Abraham as El Shaddai when He promised him a son.
Abraham was 99 when El Shaddai, The Almighty God made a covenant with him to 'multiply thee exceedingly" (Genesis 17 1:2)

4) ADONAI (Master Lord)
This name was spoken by Abraham in Genesis 18:3.
God came and told Abraham what he was about to do to Sodom and Gommorah and Abraham became the great intercessor.
This shows us that the name Adonai is connected to God's ownership and Lordship over our lives.
And also to revelation of the future and the intercession of Christ on our behalf.

5) JEHOVAH-JIREH (God my provider)
This name was revealed in Genesis 22:14
When Abraham was about to offer up Isaac and the Lord stopped him and provided a lamb as a substitute for Isaac.
This powerful story reveals Jesus and the work of the Cross.
The name Jehova-Jireh speaks of the Lord providing His Son for our redemption and being the provider for ALL that we need.

6) JEHOVAH-RAPHA (God my healer)
Found in Exodus 15:22-26.
When the children of Israel came to Marah, in the wilderness, and finally found water they could not drink it because it was "bitter".
Then Moses cried out to God and God revealed to him a tree. When Moses cast the tree into the waters the waters were made sweet and they could drink
The Lord also promises that if they obey and heed his instruction, he will heal them continually. Verse 26 reads "I am the Lord which healeth thee".

7) JEHOVAH-NISSI (God my banner)
Exodus 17:15
This name was made known when Moses lifted up the rod of victory, in prayer, for an entire day, as the battle with the Amalikites was fought.
Nissi means "my banner" or my covering, my protection, and also my victory.

8) JEHOVAH-M'KADESH (God my sanctifier)
Exodus 31:13
The Lord declared He would be the sanctifier of Israel, if they would obey Him.
The word M'kadesh means "Our sanctifier'. It also is connected to being wet apart for service and belonging wholly to the Lord.

9) JEHOVAH-SHALOM (God my Peace)
This name was revealed to Gideon in Judges 6:23-24
When the Lord made Gideon a great warrior by showing him that only through dependence upon the Lord and reliance upon His name can we knowHis peace which will bring about triumph over all our enemies.

10) JEHOVAH-TSIDKENU (God my righteousness)
Jeremiah 23:6
God told the prophet Jeremiah to declare that a "righteous Branch" of David would come and...
In this revelation we are told that Jesus is our righteousness and that only through Him can we live righteous before the Lord.

11) JEHOVAH-ROHI (God my shepherd)
Psalm 23
God is revealed as our Rohi (or shepherd). This was spoken as David declared "The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want".
The name Rohi speaks of both leadership and close intimacy.
Once we know the Lord as our Rohi, all of the promises of Psalms 23 will manifest in our daily life.

12) JEHOVAH-SHAMMAH (The abiding presence)
Ezekial 48:35
The book of Ezekial concludes with these words "...and the name of the city for that day shall be, The Lord is there".
This speaks of God's abiding presence. The Lord desires that we walk with Him daily.
The word abide means STAY, not visit.


It is also a very real interpretation or analogy of how we, as believers, come to know God.
He introduces himself as Elohim and as we continue to know Him, he becomes the Abiding Presence in our life.


Interesting also, especially in light of the Marduk story above, is that there are 12 different "Qualities" or "Personalities" of God, just as there are 12 tribes.
I don't find that at all coincidental nor irrelevant.

04)

Now let's establish the importance, development of, and goodness of hierarchal structures as a matter of fact.

They exist everywhere.
In today's political climate there are many on the extreme left who wish to tear down the very fabric of Western civilization.
They see the West as a domineering Patriarchal hierarchal system that has held them down and is wholly created by Men to exert dominance and hold power.

We've briefly revealed a little bit as to why this is just inaccurate, but they aren't ENTIRELY wrong, and we'll see that down the road as well.

Let's look at sports as a good example of the typical hierarchal structure. This sphere, say, is concerned only with who can play basketball, for example.

By natural processes, some become better than others. in part due to gifted natural ability, but also through sacrifice and hard work. We've all seen examples of great natural talent that didn't reach their potential because they refused to practice discipline and hard work.
"We talkin about practice?" right? Iverson didn't make the connection that although he was a very gifted athlete he would never reach his potential.
It's as though he felt he was "good enough" on his own natural gifts and didn't need to put in hard work.

Very similar to mankind's state in general. Right? I don't need a savior, I'm a good person.

So the way these structures work is everyone knows the rules and what the goals are and they strive against one another, not unlike two primitive animals fighting for dominance. It is almost PORECISELY that, but in a game format. We saw earlier how just like the lobster, when the player makes a great play he "flexes". If the team wins they all flex and celebrate to some degree. It is genetically instilled in us.
The losers hang their heads and walk off defeated. Their body language tells a story.

Now what happens on a larger scale within this structure is, some small percentage of this sub population concerned with being the best basketball player, emerges as SUPER STARS. They are paid more, they are the ones whose jersey people buy and the ones everybody wants an autograph from.
They have climbed to the top of their chosen endeavor.

You could say that everyone in the NBA has essentially done this as they are but a very small percentage of those people who play basketball worldwide.

The structure is represented in the shape of a pyramid. With the few at the top and the many at the bottom.
It is a naturally occurring phenomenon when the vehicle used for climbing that structure is competence.

This is also true for evolution and selection of mating partners. In chimps, females are non-discriminitory when they go into heat. The mechanism that decides her mate is male dominance. The dominant chimp will chase away competitors and will pro create.

In humans however, females are the ones who get to choose who they procreate with.

Throughout all of history they inevitably are drawn to those at the top of this hierarchal structure.
And why wouldn't they be? This creature has proven they are successful and can provide.
Why would they choose from the bottom of this hierarchy?

This natural process also increases dramatically the likelihood that your tribe will survive and thrive. Because the best of the best are the ones pro-creating.
So the next generation is comprised mostly of those competent and able bodied "winners".
Extrapolate that over millennia and you can understand just how each and every one of us are the cream of the evolutionary crop.
It also contributes to how rapidly growth within the tribe or culture can occur.

So it is also with ideas. Some ideas win over other ideas. USUALLY because they are better.

Again we will revisit a concept found in the Mesopotamian culture.

We looked at how, there's was a culture that began to thrive when they started respecting each other and each other's belief systems.
All the individual "tribe Gods" had one trait or another that was deemed to be valuable and worth holding onto.
But Marduk was one who exhibited all of these traits and was therefore exalted above the rest. The God of God's say.

Now it's important to see what's about to happen here.

Each tribe valued some precept that rose to the top of their particular hierarchal system. It served them well enough that they had indeed survived.
So you can think of each tribe having its own unique and independent hierarchal system of precepts and their "God" was the one precept that seems to have enabled them to survive and thrive.
Now the Mesopotamian people put forth a wonderfully rich idea and concept.
Marduk actually took a place above and outside of these hierarchal structures. The "all seeing eye" of Horace is another variation of this concept.
He was greater than any one precept. He was one who had all of these attributes.

How this manifested in practical governance is that the king would rule over the people and at the New Year celebration they would bring the king outside their city walls to judge him.

He was stripped of all of his kingly garb and was made to kneel in front of the people.
The people would demand from the king "How have you failed to be a good Marduk this year" and the king would confess his shortcomings.

Now what is he judging himself on? He's judging himself on the precepts set forth at the top of all the independent hierarchal structures. That everyone came to agreement were important and necessary for survival.

If the king had been a mostly good Marduk and was willing to honestly look inward & confess his sins, they would allow him to remain king.
If the king had been a bad Marduk and refused to confess he was killed and a new king would take his place.

While this will make some uncomfortable, it is EXTRODINARILY IMPORTANT.

The concept itself.
That there was a real higher order that even the king himself was subservient to.
Conduct yourself in good standing according to this higher order and your civilization will thrive.
Dismiss the necessity of doing so, and you will not thrive.

What a truly remarkable concept and one that is most applicable to every one of us today.

What makes it even more compelling is that it derived naturally through observation of what "worked".

Purely tyrannical power NEVER works. Like we see demonstrated with the apes. Pure power can NEVER rise to the top of the hierarchal system.

Well, it CAN, but it will cause mayhem and the entire culture will devolve and the leader will ultimately be killed or the civilization will crumble.

So we see that hierarchal structures are necessary, good and relevant to our very survival, but they all must be subordinate to something higher.

05)

Okay, I want to now focus a bit more on the ying and yang concept that is very much a part of pratically every "man-made" religion.

There's this idea of "paradise" or "order" say, which is comfort and security essentially.
Then there is the Chaos of uncertainty which resides outside of the confines of security and comfort.
It is analogous also to what you know vs what you don't know.

In the Marduk mythology Marduk brought order out of the chaos that was Tiamat and created the world with all of the pieces he had cut her into.

In the Bible it's iterated as "...The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said,…”
He brought order out of chaos.

We can also see this in our ordinary everyday life, like I mentioned in the Bible Precepts thread.
You have the power to create a new future for yourself from the chaos or nothingness of tomorrow's potential.

Let's look at the beginning of man long before civilization. We emerged from somewhere in Africa and began to venture out.
This is leaving the secuity and comfort and facing the chaos of uncertainty.
Out there lies danger of every sort. From other tribes who may kill you, to predator animals which may kill you, to nature itself which may kill you.

Additionally, until you actually explore outside of your "paradise" it is precisely without form and void. Because there is an incalculable number of things which might be out there, and since you haven't been there yet, you have no idea what that actually is, nor could you imagine it.

This is also alluded to in the Garden of Eden story. When they ate from the tree of knowledge they became "self-aware".
They discovered they were naked and covered themselves. Why? Because when you're naked you are at your most vulnerable.
Especially true for bipedal creatures, because the very nature of "standing upright" exposes our most vulnerable parts. Our soft belly, our throats, etc.
Animals on all 4s have these parts of their body facing the ground and these parts are somewhat protected by the rest of their body.
They aren't nearly as vulnerable as bipedal creatures.

They also become aware of their mortality. Impending death is certain. So if I'm just going to die, why not just do whatever I want and to hell with everyone else. I want to please myself for this short time that I have on Earth, and I don't even know how long I have remaining. I might as well have fun.

So the picture of Christ carrying His cross is precisely the antidote to this sort of "woe is me" type thinking.
I'm probably getting a little ahead of myself here, but it's a great concept.

Regardless of my inevitable death and suffering of life I will nonetheless pick up that cross and walk in righteousness. THAT's the ideal of man. Isn't it?

Like the hierarchal system of basketball, there is a Michael Jordan at the top, or a Lebron James if you like, and we admire that.
We strive to be that good at something.

Let's say you're watching a gymnastics competition. There is a competitor who does a remarkable routine. It is amazing and you cheer when she's done.
Then the judges come out and score, 9.8, 9.8, 9.8. Holy cow, what a performance.

Now the next competitor is feeling a bit overwhelmed. How do I follow THAT.
They may get up there and shy away a bit earning a lower score, because in their mind they are already defeated.

OR, the next girl may push herself even harder.
You watch as she pushes herself to the very edge of catastrophe. One misstep and the whole thing collapses.
But she DOESN'T. She is amazing and she sticks the landing.

What happens. The crowd erupts. They clap and scream.
They've just witnessed a human being pushing themselves to the highest level of attainment in this given field.
Dopamine is rushing through everyone. It is nearly a spiritual experience.

What is going on here? Well, it's a form of worship.
Not worship of the individual per se, but worship of the witnessing someone hitting their full potential.
And it IS glorious.
It's glorious, because remember, we are created in His image. So we all have that small part of us which is eternal and divine in nature.
Not that we ARE divine, but that we have a divine nature within us.

It's the very concept that gave rise to the US Constitution and our Bill of Rights which are both predicated on the concept of "individual sovereignty."
It's at the core of our judicial system. We assume everyone is innocent until PROVEN guilty.

This was a pretty remarkable concept and absolutely arose because the founders recognized that each person had intrinsic value BECAUSE they were made" by their Creator".

The system of government is closely linked to the Marduk story. Be a good president and we might re-elect you.
The ruler was held accountable to the people they governed.



Okay, let's again revisit and elaborate on some of what I wrote about in the Biblical Precepts thread.

One cannot stay static. It isn't in us and is contrary to our very nature.
Interestingly the same is true of nature itself.
Water is necessary for all of us, but if water sits, it will stagnate and turn bitter.

If we imagine "paradise" as sitting on a beach sipping cocktails, for how long does that actually REMAIN paradise? Not very long I'm afraid.

There is nothing you can imagine that would satisfy you for any real length of time.

Conversely however, we CAN imagine what Hell might be. Can't we?
We've seen many examples here on Earth, especially in the 20th century.

Let's remove all religious connotations and just use our imagination.
We can all come up with something, but let's just define Hell as "the most amount of possible suffering for the most amount of people".
That's a fairly philosophical definition used by many over the years, and I think it's a good definition. Even the Biblical Hell is essentially that. Isn't it?

So, if we are truly "good" people with truly "good" intentions our every aim ought to be anything and everything that moves us farther away from Hell and closer towards paradise. Right?

Here's a nugget to ponder and hopefully it should bring some degree of shame to us all.

How is it that we can EASLIY imagine Hell, but have no concept whatsoever of what might actually satisfy us eternally?

Because sadly, we've seen hell manifested on Earth many times over.
But have not really seen much in the way of cooperation among the people that might produce a greater good.
There are examples, yes.
But the fact that imagining paradise is so impossible for us should tell us a lot about how little we've actually manifested in that direction.

So, we know that we are called to adventure, it's hardly refutable. And in order to adventure we need to be wise about it or we will die.

If you just ran out of paradise full speed ahead, you wouldn't make it very far at all.

No, you have to step out slowly and pay very close attention to your surroundings with each new step.
Just like if you set a vision for yourself that you'd like to one day be able to bench press 300 pounds.
You better not go into the gym and try that on your first day. You'll be severely injured and may even die as a result.

No, you must start with much less weight. How much weight exactly? 10 pounds? 20? 50? 100?

If you go workout with 10 pounds, you will NEVER be able to lift 300.
No matter how much you work out or how committed you are to your vision.

You have to find that balance where you're just on the edge of your current competency level.
There is where you will find maximum reward and gains.

So it is in our daily lives.
You might be stagnant or in a rut. You aren't challenging yourself. We've all been there.

Each of us has greater capacity than we can even imagine for ourselves.
But you have to WORK for it. You must push yourself towards some aim or endeavor. Otherwise, you wither and die.

Just like the apes venturing out of Africa, we must explore and face the danger of the unknown, AND we have to have discipline and balance while doing so.

It's also no coincidence that in most mythologies the serpent represents "that which may kill you".
He ruined paradise for Adam and Eve and they were forced into the unknown.

Interestingly, if you take a chimp who has been raised in captivity and has never seen a snake.
If you show a snake to him he will repel in fear, frozen with eyes fixed on that thing all day long.

I'll give one last illustration to close the loop on this.

Dante of the famous or infamous, Dante's Inferno described the levels or circles of Hell.
Where how bad of a person you were in life would determine in which circle you would spend eternity.
They got gradually worse as you went deeper.

Now Dante imagined that the very bottom, the Ninth circle of hell, was reserved for those who had committed the act of betrayal.
Interesting that he listed so many sins, among them Violence (which was only at level 7), yet he concluded that treachery was the ultimate bad thing one could commit.

Why do you suppose that might be?

Well, because in order to form a civilization, as we saw with the Mesopotamians, you have to be able to TRUST.
It is the cornerstone for all economic relationship really. If you get ripped off, you are furious and would never go back to THAT store.
You'd likely tell everyone you knew about it as well. If we can begin to trust one another, we can establish mutually beneficial reciprocal relationships.
And without trust you can have nothing remotely resembling that.

It is why abused children grow up and live very difficult lives. Their safety and security and concept of trust was stripped from them in their formative years.

It is also why betrayal is the most irreconcilable differences resulting in divorce.

If you are in a relationship with someone, you make certain assumptions about the past, the present and the future.
All based on this trust that has been established between the two of you. You're standing on "solid ground".

But if you discover that your partner has had an affair, your whole world comes crashing down around you. It is a terribly traumatic experience.
Perhaps the most traumatic experience of all.

What actually happens, at least in your psyche is you are essentially tossed from order back into chaos. Immediately.
I thought I knew you, but I obviously I didn't know you at all!
So then every memory is tainted. All of your dreams about the future are shattered.

We see this concept in very common in mythological stories. Where someone journeys into the abyss.

So the abyss is tangible in a very real way. We have all experienced it to some degree or another, and our individual goals and our goals for society should be to keep the abyss as far away from everyone as is possible.

How? By establishing order.

---

Today I want to take some time to look at the importance of play.

You may be surprised to learn that our brain is hard-wired for play.
There’s an actual “play circuit” in the brain of all mammals.

A neuroscientist by the name of Jaak Panksepp, did much research in this area mostly because the established scientific belief at the time was that human emotion was irrelevant and animal emotions were suspect at best.
What Panksepp discovered was remarkable.

This is important because it shows very clearly that a lot of what we typically assume are learned behaviors are much deeper than that and are, in fact, biological.

He experimented a lot with rats and learned a lot from this study.
For example, he found that the rats showed signs of fear when cat hair was placed close to them, even though they had never been anywhere near a cat.

More importantly for this discussion is that he discovered that rats also giggled. LOL.
Rats are highly social creatures.

If you take a rat pup away from its mother, it will die.
The same is true of humans.
Unfortunately, we’ve learned that through some fairly harrowing events that resulted in an overflow of infants in orphanages in the country of Romania.

However, Panksepp found that you could keep the pup from dying by rubbing it with a pencil eraser. Rats will die without love and interaction with one another.

Another interesting thing he discovered was that rats are motivated to play. But only if the other rat plays fair.
So you take 2 rats and put them in a play area. They will play, kind of like how dogs might crouching and barking a bit, like play fighting.

One rat is larger than the other and he pins the littler rat rather easily.
Well, when you put these same two rats together again, the losing rat will have to come and “ask” the other rat to play.
You’ve probably seen dogs do this as well, where on dog is sitting perfectly content and the other dog comes and gets in his face, jumping and barking at him. It’s an invitation to play.

Now here’s the really bizarre part.

If the bigger rat doesn’t let the little rat win about 30% of the time, the little rat will eventually stop asking that big rat to play.

So there is a balance to be struck in order to keep getting invited to play.

What this demonstrates and what is so profound about this discovery is that much of our “notion of ethics” are not merely sociological, but appear to be, at least somewhat, biological in nature.

The same is true with humans.

Let’s look first at children playing house.
What are they doing? They aren’t “copying” their mom exactly. That would be more like mimicking, which is not the same thing at all.

No. What happens is the little girl has observed her mother for several years and has extracted certain traits or characteristics that she associates with “mother like” behavior or the “spirit” called mother.

She tries to embody THAT as she plays house.

She’s never actually seen her mother playing tea party or taking care of a doll. So, she’s smart enough to pull out the abstract of what makes a “mother” and then attempts to embody that spirit.

She’s striving towards an ideal. It’s really very sophisticated, but we typically don’t think of it that way at all.

Additionally, it is very important that children engage in that sort of play quite a bit during their formative years.
What they do is essentially construct some fictional world that they both, or all in the case of many children, play roles in.

Again, fairly sophisticated.

Furthermore, it’s well documented that children who do not get enough social interaction of this sort by the time they are 4 years old suffer lifelong issues with regard to their social interactions. Its debilitating to them.

Some great thinkers and observers of human behavior like Freud, Piaget and Jung deduced this was the manner that cognition came to be.

And how could it be any other way?
We were mostly bodies before we were self-aware and had minds.

So, we were acting out things long before we understood WHY we were acting them out, just as the child does.

Just like why the dominant ape learns it’s better to not rip his subordinate to shreds. Just like the wolf doesn’t tear out the throat of the losing wolf.


The importance of this is staggering. Especially in light of our current political climate.

Many social constructionists would have you believe that things we generally consider “natural” or “normal” in our society are socially constructed and therefore are not an actual refection of reality.

Nietzsche stated it as “Facts do not exist, only interpretations”.

What this reveals to us is this type of thinking is unequivocally wrong on its face.

06)

Before moving on I wanted to take a minute to try and summarize where we are so far.
First, some of this may be a bit disjointed, simply because some of the revelations here were happening in real time and I may have strayed once or twice… Or more.

Second, there’s a great deal of critical content that I want to try and present as concisely and accurately as I possibly can. I’m not sure how this might go but here’s my best effort.

We’re starting with an assumption that the Bible may not be anything other than man-made myths.
We’re going to look at differing belief systems with the intention of pulling out whatever Truth may live there and respect it if it is actually Truth.

We’re not going to be so arrogant as to presume that one or another belief system is superior to any other, because that would negate the entire purpose of this exercise.

Namely is there such a thing as objective Truth and if so trying to determine if one belief system may contain more Truth than others.

You can’t come to an honest and worthwhile conclusion if you bring to the table any preconceived notions or any idea that you already know the answer and are therefore incapable of learning more Truth.

I asked in post 5 that you might Pray on these ideas and reflections. I think God is working something glorious with this.
Next, I put forth the notion that Darwin’s “theory of evolution” was as much of a fact as any theory in science could be.
I was also very clear that the one major problem I have with “Darwinian evolution” is the CONCLUSION that Darwin tried to draw from it.

That if Darwinian evolution is, in fact, True, somehow that renders the Bible and God as obsolete and unnecessary. I think that’s a very foolish and arrogant conclusion to put it mildly.
Doug posted the “Darwinism Doesn’t Work” videos, which goes to great lengths to disprove any rational belief in something called abiogenesis. They are remarkable videos and contain a spectacular explanation of how intricate our body and cells Truly are.

The major problem I have with those videos, is the CONCLUSION that the videos try to draw.

That if our bodies are so wondrously made and so there must be a Creator, that somehow we must render Darwin’s theory as obsolete and foolish.

And we saw 2 strikingly apt examples of how Truth can be in one place or another but still contain things that aren’t necessarily Truth within them as well.
Sometimes those unTruths are caused by deceit, other times arrogance, and still other times just well intentioned but a misunderstanding or misinterpretation of what we think we’re reading or trying to understand.

I also revisited the “tiers of understanding” idea and tried my best to describe them all.
I noted that this exercised should bear fruit to any who would seek Truth no matter which rung on the tier they may currently reside.
Next, I looked a bit deeper into what this Darwinian process actually was and what was going on naturally and evolutionarily as we take it seriously.

We emerged some 3.5 billion years ago. We come from a tremendously long line of ancestors who thrived and were the best of the best. If it were not so, we wouldn’t be here today in our current state.
I mentioned the lobsters, whom were our ancestors some 500 million years back and how even after 500 million years we still exhibit some biological traits from those ancestors.
Namely, the very ancient part of our brains which contain serotonin and create our “highs and lows” from an emotional perspective.

Emotions that we’ve been carrying for at least 500 million years and undoubtedly even longer than that.
I use the lobster because we’ve studied them enough to SEE that it is a FACT.

It likely goes back further, but its certainly at least 500 million years old and that’s remarkable enough.
One thing I don’t know if I mentioned before or not, but there was another revelation that was made while studying lobsters.
The defeated lobsters exhibited a phenomenon in their brain structure that is very similar to what happens to people with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Their brains undergo permanent neurological damage.
It’s REAL PHYSICAL damage, not merely psychological.

The hippocampus shrinks and the amygdala grows.
The amygdala increases emotional sensitivity and the hippocampus inhibits it.

If one is lucky enough to recover from something so traumatic, the hippocampus will regrow, but the amygdala will never shrink again. It’s permanently more influential than it was designed to be.

I mentioned a few times and even dedicated an entire post to illustrate the importance and meaningfulness of “hierarchal structures”. This too can be seen in the lobsters fighting for dominance.

Again, something we can scientifically establish as having been around for 500 million years at a minimum. So, they are basic and natural.
Hierarchy has exerted selective pressure on human beings for a long time and that shouldn’t be in dispute. You could dispute over how and why maybe, but it’s a fact that it has and still does.
Then we looked at rats and how even rats have in idea or notion of “fair play”.

You often hear people say, “It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game”.
What does that mean?
It means play fairly.
Aim at an ideal.
Only by striving for an ideal and doing it honestly and fairly can you Truly transform your life and the lives of those around you.

Life isn’t a game. It’s a set of games.

The rule is to never sacrifice victory across the set of games for victory in one game.
That’s what it means to play properly.

You want to play so that people keep inviting you to play. That’s how you win.

You win by being invited to play the largest possible array of games.

The way you do that is by manifesting the fact that you can play in a reciprocal manner every time you play, even if there’s victory at stake.

That's what makes you successful across time.


Rats don’t want their dominance disputes to end in bloodshed because what good is that?
If rat a and rat b tear each other to bits, then rat c just moves in. There has to be a better way to settle differences more peacefully or the whole thing falls apart.

RATS can teach us THAT.
How basic can you get?

Jean Piaget, the brilliant psychologist, traced the emergence of morality through play.

Panksepp’s discovery of the “play circuit” in the brains of mammals certainly added to that line of thought by showing us that it is biological.

That’s why this notion of a newborn baby being a “blank slate” is such a ridiculous idea.
There’s 500 million years of evolutionary precepts built into the moment they are conceived.

That’s also what is so dangerous about the idea of people not needing some dogmatic set of rules invented by simpletons and attributed to a fictional man in the sky.

We can wipe the slate clean and start afresh with no dogma attached.
We will construct our own set of rules and morals because we’re smart enough now and we don’t need the dogma of fairy tales and simpletons.
We have brains. We can agree on what is good? Can’t we?
We can rely on facts and scientific evidence and draw our own conclusions. Can’t we?

It’s much more complicated than that.

But they fool themselves, because their very own biological evolution has created some bias in how they perceive the world around them.


We can see already at this stage of the exercise that some behavioral patterns emerged biologically.
That, at least to some degree, some “morality”, no matter how primitive, has emerged through nature.

Whether we are aware of it or not.
Hopefully you are now at least a little more aware.

I really struggle to find the “wrong headed” part of that conclusion.


Many unconnected ancient cultures independently constructed giant pyramids of some sort or another.
There is a lot that could be and has been said about this, but I think the most important thing we can take away from that is just how profound and True the idea of hierarchal structures is.
The Egyptians had Horus the “all seeing eye” on our dollar bill. It’s the idea that no matter how many hierarchal structures any culture may have, there’s something outside and above all of them. The ideal.
I believe it’s why they buried Pharos in the pyramids. At least to some degree.
I wrote about Marduk and the mythology of the Mesopotamians.
How so much of it were precursors to many Biblical stories.
How this idea of “Speaking magic words” or “And God said” and how when God spoke, he used the Word.
So essentially to SPEAK TRUTH.

This seems to be coupled in both stories with the “all seeing eye” or the ability to PAY ATTENTION.

Seems like two examples of natural moral law. Doesn’t it?
Not yet?

I wrote about how Dante deduced that the worst of all the sins man could commit towards one another was that of Treachery or Betrayal.

He was really onto something, because of how vital trust is to any relationship between two people or two communities or two countries or even two people of differing faiths.

When that Trust was shattered how it threw the betrayed into utter and immediate chaos of reality.
Both psychologically and literally.
My home has been broken. Where will I live tomorrow?

You want to know what’s wrong with a family member who you’re having trouble with?

Pay attention to them. REALLY pay attention.
Stop revealing things about yourself and learn what they will reveal about themselves to you if you get attuned to it.
They will often reveal a great deal if you pay attention as though you really want to learn something and better understand them.
Try to eliminate any preconceived idea about “what you know” about them and filtering what you’re seeing through that lens.
Because that will inevitably only serve to reinforce those preconceived notions.

I presented the gymnastics example and how the spirit that grabs the audience at their core is stirred up and they rise to their feet, almost unconsciously and uncontrollably. It is a form of worship even.

Because you just witnessed a human being excelling beyond their limits of perfection, into the realm of chaos and establishing a new order right before your eyes. They’ve reached the pinnacle of this particular hierarchy by doing not only what they should be doing, but doing it in such a way that it almost ensures they’ll be better the next time they do it.

So that old axiom isn’t relative at all. There's an absolute, moral stance there, and everyone recognizes it.

It's also the notion of someone goes out forthrightly to face the unknown before it becomes the enemy at the door.

That they accept their mortal and limited condition and choose to live righteously regardless.

We can turn to Moses and the story of the Ten commandments and see a remarkable parallel.
The Israelites were freed from the slavery of Egypt and wandered in the desert.
They came to Moses often to settle disputes among themselves.

They were disgruntled even though they were no longer slaves. They missed their garlic. They were thirsty. How is this an improvement they thought.

They start worshipping false idols and all sorts of calamity follows. One problem after the other.
Moses has to start thinking what’s the rule in this situation? What’s the rule in that situation?

After some time, the rules take on a kind of hierarchy.

Then he goes up on the mountain and BANG the 10 commandments.
Where does God give Moses the 10 commandments? On a mountain. That’s sort of a pyramid, isn’t it?

He’s at the top of the hierarchy receiving word from God, that which transcends the hierarchal structures of man.

Here are the rules we’ve been living by all this time!
That’s the revelation of the commandments.

The rules came first and the obeying came afterwards?
NO!
You say hey look, these are the rules that were manifested in our lives when we were successful.

And when we’ve ignored them, the result has been nothing but problems and calamities.

The people say oh, yeah that makes sense. Because if they didn’t, who would follow them?
It doesn’t make sense that they would. It’s simply a codification of what has been working.

Now you ask was it given by God? Well, it certainly wasn’t arbitrary that’s for sure.

Immanuel Kant put forth some ideas about “universal maxims”.
His #1 was “Act in a way so that each action could become a universal rule”.
The relativists still think this way.

But then Piaget came along and put a different spin on it.
“Act in a way that works for you now, and next week, and next year, and 10 years from now”.
If it isn’t repeatable across time and works every time for everyone, then it’s not really a universal rule.

Another thing Piaget wrote was about an evolution of morality.

1^st learn the rules, then play by the rules, then you just might be able to be a participant in making the rules.

We can kind of see this evolution between the Old Testament and the New.

The Old Testament morality was essentially prohibitions. Here are things you shouldn’t do.
We do it to our own children every day.

When they’re little we’re constantly saying that to them. Don’t do this and don’t do that. It’s a morality of prohibitions.

Control yourself so that you aren’t causing too much trouble and then if you get that part down, maybe, you can start doing something that’s actually good.

That’s the transition between the OT and NT.

Okay, that’s a fairly comprehensive summary with some additional insights thrown in.

Hopefully that helps develop a bit of firm foundation on which we can build a bit more tomorrow.

07)

Today let’s begin with the story of Adam & Eve.
Let’s look at the fall, the nature of sin, and the knowledge of Good and Evil described there.

I want to look first at some of the most common objections.
I also want to be clear that these objections are not merely “people looking for reasons not to believe the Bible”, although there are certainly those whose aim is exactly that.

I also want to acknowledge that there have been many men of faith throughout history who’ve also asked “Just how literally are we to take these first several “mythological sounding stories”.
I’d say that would encompass the first 11 books of Genesis before the story of Abraham begins.

I think it was wylie715 who voiced an objection to the length of years ascribed to Adam and his descendants recounted in Genesis 5. I would call this a reasonable objection made in good faith.
There isn’t a great answer to that particular objection that would satisfy the believer or unbeliever.
Obviously, many believers would answer “the entirety of the Bible is the inerrant Word of God and therefore must be taken as completely literal”.

Okay, that’s a fine answer, but it won’t satisfy the non-believer’s objection and maybe it doesn’t have to. I’m fine with that.

The non-believer might answer there’s nothing you can argue that would make me believe an actual human being lived 900 years. Again, I can certainly understand that stance, and am fine with that also.
I think for the purposes of this exercise it is better to use reason anywhere it is possible to do so.

Maybe let’s go with the assumption that perhaps these early parts of Genesis are some mythological frameworks to set up the rest of the narrative. They certainly have much in common with earlier mythologies of previous cultures.

I think it’s important to do so because these stories, whatever you think of them on their face, have such incredible complexity and depth.

To allow a debate about the “literalness” of them get in the way of diving in and uncovering such profound Truths would be a disservice to everyone.

I also firmly believe that in many cases a “story” can be “Truer” than an actual literal recounting of facts.
I think many Christians miss out on so much of the depth here because by taking them at face value as a 100% literal story they don’t really do much digging.

To highlight this idea about stories being substantially Truer in some cases, we can look to Jesus himself.

In the first three Gospels, Jesus presented 38 different parables.
Why do you think that is?

Because often you can illustrate a deep spiritual Truth most clearly using a parable.
The source definition of the word means “a placement side by side for the purpose of comparison”.

It’s BRILLIANT and it works very well.
Your audience doesn’t have to be intellectual to grasp deep ideas if you explain them in parable form.

Additionally if you study the parables of Jesus, what you discover is that there are four distinct groups.

They progress in such a way that the first group lays the groundwork and foundation for the second.
The second lays the groundwork for the third, and the third lays the foundation for the fourth.

If Jesus, the Logos or Word, used parables to communicate deep spiritual Truths, why is it so blasphemous to suggest that perhaps the first 11 chapters of Genesis, may be doing the same thing?

Especially considering they are foundational to understanding everything else.
I don’t see a contradiction in spirit or in thought to move forward making this exact assumption.

Okay, lets look at some of what is discussed in these beginning stages of Genesis.

1^st was the Creation story of Chapter one.
We looked at that a bit already with God Speaking Truth using Logos to bring Order out of Chaos.
We saw how we can also manifest this power in our own lives.

Chapter 2 is the story of Adam and Eve.
Chapter 3 the story of the serpent, temptation and the fall.
Chapter 4 the story of Cain and Abel & The family of Cain.
Chapter 5 the genealogy of Adam’s descendants.
Chapter 6 The wickedness of man and the Judgement.
Chapter 7 The flood.
Chapter 8 Noah’s deliverance back to inhabitable land.
Chapter 9 God’s promise to Noah.
Chapter 10 More Genealogy (of Noah this time).
Chapter 11 The Tower of Babel.

These are all fairly short compared to most other chapters in the Bible.
Yet there is so much Truth contained within them.

There are also some biological facts and theories that help get a broader understanding again.

I’ll try not to get too lost in the weeds here, but I find many to be remarkable and also overwhelming evidence of just how intricate and awesome the Creator is.

A great example would be Genesis 3:16, and what God says to Eve after she succumbed to temptation and ate of the tree of “the knowledge of good and evil”.

“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception;
In pain you shall bring forth children;
Your desire shall be for your husband,
And he shall rule over you.”

Let’s also look at verse 14 and 15, which is what God told the serpent who had tricked Eve.

Because you have done this,
You are cursed more than all cattle,
And more than every beast of the field;
On your belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.


So, back to biology and evolution.


As we evolved and diverged from our primate relatives, our vision became much sharper.

There’s an anthropologist named Lynne Isbell, who wrote a very interesting book where she puts forth the idea that as snakes diverged from lizards (another remarkable evolutionary discovery that supports the Garden of Eden notion that God told the serpent he would “crawl on it’s belly”), they became much more dangerous predators. A field of brush no more than an inch or two high could camouflage a snake.

So she posits, that over time, we evolved better eyesight so that we might better detect snakes.
The price we paid for developing such acute vision is that our brains had to grow larger.
Our brains, and therefore skulls, are much larger than other primates and they are rounder.
Wouldn’t this cause much more pain during childbirth? Of course, it would.

Now one may read that and think “you’re attempting to lessen God”. Or “You’re explaining biologically, so as to diminish God’s impact”.
However, I think that’s backwards and simple minded really.

Obviously, the writers of Genesis 3 couldn’t possibly have had any knowledge or understanding of these scientific Truths. No, these biological and evolutionary Truths support the notion of God the Creator, even more so, don’t they?

These ancient ghosts penned this mythological story and 6000 years later we can see evolutionary support for exactly HOW these “judgements” may have come to pass. It’s remarkable.

Okay back to the Garden. Now the serpent comes and tricks Eve. It’s very cunning and perverts the Word of God immediately. The first words uttered by the serpent is a lie and a distortion of what God really said.

God said in Genesis 2:
¹⁶ And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; ¹⁷ but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

The serpent says in Genesis 3:
“Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”.

Eve responds rightly and says:
“We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; ³ but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”

⁴ Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. ⁵ For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

What happened?

⁶ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
This part is in stark contrast to the last line of Genesis 2 which reads:
²⁵ And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Now they are naked and ashamed.

We discussed a bit about this earlier, how when you’re naked you are at your most vulnerable.

This is made evident at least to some degree here as well.

⁸ And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
⁹ Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”
¹⁰ So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
¹¹ And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?”

So, now they have acquired “the knowledge of good and evil”. What does that mean?

Well, here’s an idea.

We are now aware that we are mortal and can be hurt.
Only when you know that you can be hurt, do you also know how you may hurt others.

So now we aren’t mere animals with no understanding of morality.
We know how we can hurt one another and must strive to not do so.

Hurting someone with malice is far different than a wolfpack taking down a water buffalo.
There’s no malice in the wolf. He just does what is instinctive in order to survive.
That’s a very different thing and straight away God puts them out of the Garden and sets them into the world of the unknown and chaos, where they start their family.

Do you see the similarity to the parable or “a placement side by side for the purpose of comparison”.

We see they once were naked and not ashamed compared to after the fall they were naked and ashamed.
We see the harmony of God and His creation as they walked together in the Garden compared to the lack of harmony after the fall.
We see the safety and security of the Garden compared to being put outside the garden after the fall.
We see the Truth of what God said compared to the lies and deceit of the serpent.



So immediately after creation in chapters 1 and 2 we have the fall in chapter 3, and the rest of the Bible is an attempt to figure out what to do about that going forward.

Throughout the entirety of the OT we see the nation state of Israel rise and fall over and over. A little tweak here and a little tweak there.

First it’s just Moses and the Law, then it’s the rise of Judges, then it’s the rise of Kings, etc.

But then there is a transition away from the “solution of the state” to the idea that the proper path to redemption is the individual psyche. Because the state’s proper functioning is dependent on the proper functioning of the individual and not the other way around.

It’s also an idea that is somewhat paralleled in the psychiatric relationship.

When a person is suffering from some mental calamity in their life, they sometimes seek the help of a psychiatrist.
In order to come to the psychiatrist, they have to first admit that there is some problem which exists.
It also requires introspection and an honest evaluation of the self and that you speak Truth to the doctor.
If you fail to speak Truthfully, it is a pointless exercise. But if you speak Truth you can come to understand more clearly what the problem actually might be. Once you can identify the problem, you can then begin to formulate a plan to how we might go about laying out some solutions. Essentially it is a variation of “The Truth will set you free”.

People, in general, are very resilient. They can handle all sorts of catastrophes and disasters. What really seems to take the legs out from under them however, is deceit and betrayal. It really hurts them psychologically and often that manifests into actual physical illness. Even worse, it has a tendency to make the person cynical, bitter, vengeful and resentful. Then they may start acting that out in the world and it makes the situation even worse. Not just for them but for everyone around them.

We’ve established how we can “bargain with the future” in a sense.
We make sacrifices today that will lead to a better tomorrow.
Like wolves will just eat the whole elephant, right? There’s no concept of saving some for tomorrow.

That’s such an amazing concept there. We suffer. What can we do about it?
Well, we figure out how to bargain with the future to help minimize some of the future suffering.
That mean you might have to go hungry today, so that you have more food to sustain you for more than a day in the future.

Okay, back to the garden once again.
Prior to the fall they walked with God in the cool of the day. But then after the fall they hid themselves from God. Why?

Look at it this way.

Imagine that you have the capacity to live truthfully, courageously, and forthrightly.
Just imagine that, and then imagine why you might not do that.
How about fear and shame?
How would that work?
Well, let’s say that the idea of living forthrightly, truthfully, and courageously is analogous—given what we already know about these stories—to walking with God in the garden.
What stops people from doing that?
What starts people hiding?
Well, it’s their own recognition of their own inadequacies.
They look at themselves, and they think, how in the world is a creature such as I, with everything that’s wrong with me, supposed to live properly in this world?

Here's a personal exercise you can do.
Sit down and focus for 5 minutes and ask yourself sincerely “What have I been hiding from in my life”?

If you’re sincere, you will have revealed to you many things which you’ve been hiding from.

That’s the thing that’s so terrifying about this story.
We “woke up”, were put out of paradise and thought:
“Look at this place. There is serious trouble here and we’re not what we could be”.

That’s the overarching message being delivered in Genesis 3. We’ve awakened, recognized our own vulnerability, and then hid ourselves from manifesting our divine destiny.

And what was Adam’s punishment?

¹⁷ Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:
“Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
¹⁸ Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
¹⁹ In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.”

What is that? Essentially the creation of work.
What do people do that animals don't? Work.
What does work mean?
It means you sacrifice the present for the future.
Why do you do that?
Because you know that you're vulnerable, and you're awake.

I don't care how many problems you solved so that today’s ok.
You’ve got a lot problems coming up, and no matter how much you work, you're never going to work enough to solve them.
All you're going to do from here on in is worry about the future, and that's the price of waking up.

That’s the end of paradise.

08)
Today we move along to Genesis chapter 4 and the story of Cain and Abel.
In the previous chapter Adam and Eve sinned against God and were put out of the garden.
We looked at how this knowledge of good and evil might actually be the fact that they were now aware of their own vulnerability and how along with that knowledge came the idea of how to hurt others.

In Chapter 4 verse 3 it reads:
³ And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. ⁴ Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, ⁵ but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.

First I want to point out just how quickly we moved from the fall to the idea of sacrifice to help deal with the world in it’s now fallen state.

I would suggest that Abel also had his mind right.
He was grateful and thankful that even in this fallen state, things weren’t as bad as they could be.
That’s what a prayerful posture should be. It should be grateful and inquiring.
Grateful is, thank God things aren’t worse for me than they are.

You should be grateful about that, because they could be a lot worse than they are.
(Especially for people living here. Do you realize that if you live in America, you are part of the 1%?)

Inquiring would be, well, I don’t really know how I could make it better, but I’m open to suggestions.

If I can figure out how to do it, I’ll try it. That’s the humility: a humble inquiry.
How could I make things better? What sacrifices do I need to make in order to make things better?

That’s a good question to ask yourself.

You could ask yourself that every morning. What sacrifice do I have to make to make things better?
You can decide what constitutes better. How about that?
Then, it’s not even as if it’s being imposed on you.

Come up with your own notion of what constitutes better. Try to make it sophisticated.

You could ask yourself, well, I have this day that lays itself out in front of me. What thing could I let go of that’s impeding my progress, that, if I let go of, would make my life better, and my family’s life better, and my culture’s life better, and my being better?


That would give you something to do for the day, wouldn’t it? And to justify your miserable life.

You need that. That’s the whole point of the story of Adam and Eve.
What do you have? A miserable life. Ok. What am I going to do about that?
Well, if you just have a miserable life, you’re just going to suffer stupidly and get bitter about it.

That’s what happens to Cain, and we’ll see more about that below.
So, how about not doing that? That just seems to take a bad deal and make it worse.

How about making a sacrifice, and seeing if you can please God and put yourself on track?
God, that would be something to do. What could be better than that?


Although its not stated specifically WHY God didn’t respect Cain’s offering.
We can infer that it was substandard. Halfhearted maybe.

We can infer this because the story details Abel’s offering a bit.
“the firstborn of his flock and of their fat”.

What you might think of as a “proper” sacrifice.

We can also infer that is exactly what happened because of the next couple of lines:
⁶ So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? ⁷ If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

Let’s dissect this a little, especially in regards to what good and evil might be, and the struggle with the sin nature in us all.

His countenance fell. That’s like, head down and a bit depressed. Angry for sure and resentful also.

Let’s look at it through our modern lens.

You all probably know or have known someone who was kind of useless.
Whining about how catastrophic their life is. But you and most everyone else can plainly see that it’s their own damn fault.
They don’t really TRY very much. They don’t get up in the morning, they don’t get a job, they don’t engage in things. They’re cynical and bitter and angry most of the time. They don’t try to help others or fix themselves and they don’t take care of themselves.

Then they are mad because things aren’t going well. What did they expect?
But most of the time they won’t accept their own culpability in their circumstances.

They’re “mad at the world”. I think that’s something we can all relate to at least a bit.

We all have a little of Cain in us. If you think you don’t, then you probably aren’t very self-aware.

Next time you’re having an argument, especially with someone you love, that’s a good time to become more self-aware and just watch the pictures that flash in the back of your mind.

So we have Abel who came with a proper sacrifice and mind set pitted against Cain who was more or less “going through the motions”. And Cain wasn’t very happy about it either.
Now let’s examine the next part, where God tells Cain:
“Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? ⁷ If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”

If you do well, will you not be accepted? Hmm.

So, Cain wasn’t “doing” well.
Kind of like the sad “woe is me” creature we looked at above.

God is hinting to Cain, “if you acted properly, you would be successful”.

I see this a lot in highly intelligent people with no real aim in life.
They are upset that the world wasn’t handed to them due to their astonishing intellect.

People who are bitter about their “lot in life”. You’ve all seen them.
Maybe it’s a cook at the local diner who you can just tell hates his life.
He’s miserable and he wants to spread that misery to everyone he comes in contact with.
He’s really made cooking food badly a work of art.
I mean he’s REALLY put some work into that little slice of hell he has the most control over in his life.
Then when he gets home, he yells at the children & curses his wife & kicks the dog & he curses God too.

THAT’S the Cain attitude.
I didn’t sign up for this BS. Working everyday just to eke out this pitiful existence.

The last bit “And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it”.
This is really interesting if you go back to study the original Hebrew transcripts.
Essentially what is being conveyed here is a bit more troubling than it seems on the surface.
Instead of doing what is right and proper sin came to your door, desiring a relationship with you and you welcomed it that relationship.

It’s a parallel to 3:16 “Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”

Here sin is attempting to rule over Cain, and part of the reason for that is that Cain desired it.
Cain entered into a creative exchange with sin, and gave birth to something as a consequence.
What he gave birth to, that’s his life.
And he knew he was doing this.
He conspired with this thing to produce the situation that he’s in.


Another angle we could look at it from is the Oedipal mother situation. Freud placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the mother alone, but Jung said hold on now, there has to be a sort of willingness participant within the son.
Like the son may say “I think I’m old enough and I should go out and find a job” (or anything that would require a bit of courage and might lessen his dependency on his mother), and the mother says “well, are you sure you’re feeling well enough to do that”? So, the child could just simply say “Yes, I am”. But often they’ll say “no, you’re right mother”. So, there’s this willful decision to manipulate on BOTH sides of this.
So not only was Cain “not doing well”, but he’s spent a lot of time really thinking of ways how he could not do well. It was some creative effort on his part.
If you want to read about truly malevolent people, you could start with the Columbine killers.
They left some very interesting diaries behind.

If you really want to have your countenance fall and be angry, 10 years of brooding on your own catastrophe, sort of alone, and letting your fantasies take shape, and egging them on, allowing them to flourish and, let’s say, take possession of you…That’s exactly the right way to think about it.

That will get you somewhere like this. There are more people who are like that than you think, and you’re more like that than you think.

So now we have a better understanding of Cain’s mindset here. How bitter and resentful he is.
Then what does God tell him?

The last thing you want to hear if your life has turned into a catastrophe and you take God to task for creating a universe where that sort of thing was allowed, is that it’s your own damn fault, and that you should straighten up and fly right, so to speak, and that you shouldn’t be complaining about the nature of being.
If you can imagine that he was angry before, think how much angrier THAT answer makes him.
And what does he do?:
⁸ Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.

Also interesting about this account is that there’s a “counter position” revealed in Matthew 4:1.
Jesus is tempted by the devil while in the wilderness, just prior to the crucifixion.
But Jesus speaks Truth and resists the devil.
Also juxtaposed to Cain’s wroth and countenance is that of his brother Abel.
He’s doing things right. That’s the ideal.
An ideal person, let’s say, would be someone who you would want to be like, and someone who is operating in the world like you would want to operate, and someone who fortune is smiling on, and someone who is making the right sacrifices.
It’s really what you would want to be. And Cain kills that.

You might also see this cynicism in the world today. There’s a lot of it out there.
If so and so is doing well and is really successful it is only because they are crooked or conniving.
It’s a dangerous way of thinking. Especially to one’s own psyche.

And so, these are the two first human beings born to woman.
The bitter and resentful failure taking the axe to the admirable success.
You want some additional reading to better understand this psychological phenomenon of the aftermath of Cain killing Abel, read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

What happens in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment is that the main character, whose name is Raskolnikov, decides that there’s no intrinsic value to other people and that, as a consequence, he can do whatever he wants.
It’s only cowardice that stops him from acting.
Why would it be anything else if value of other people is just an arbitrary superstition?
Well, then why can’t I do exactly what I want, when I want? Which is the psychopath’s viewpoint.

Well, so Raskolnikov does.
He kills someone who’s a very horrible person, and he has very good reasons for killing her.

He’s half-starved, and a little bit insane, and possessed by this ideology and he finds out something after he kills her, which is that the post-killing Raskolnikov and the pre-killing Raskolnikov are not the same person, even a little bit, because he’s broken a rule.

He’s broken a serious rule and there’s no going back.

Next we look at the concept of evil. Many don’t like this word.
Most modern philosophers actually prefer to not think in terms of good and evil. They think it’s archaic.
I don’t know how people can seriously study the atrocities of the 20^th century and not recognize just how real evil is.
Read about the horrors inflicted on Jews in Nazi Germany. Not just the eventual putting to death but the truly sadistic things they would inflict on the Jews for sport.
To demean and humiliate them and break their bodies to hasten their death.

Read about Unit 731, a Japanese unit during WWII and the things they would do to their Chinese prisoners.
They took their prisoners and put them in a position so that their arms would freeze solid.
Then they would take them outside and pour hot water over their arms.
And then they would repeat that until the flesh came off the bones.
They were doing that to “investigate the treatment of frostbite for soldiers”.

That’s human beings. Someone thought that up, and then people did it.

If that’s not evil, I don’t know what else you could call it.

¹³ And Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! ¹⁴ Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the ground; I shall be hidden from Your face; I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, and it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me.”
¹⁵ And the Lord said to him, “Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” And the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him.

So, now Abel, the righteous son is dead and Cain is banished by God.
He goes out and dwells in the city of Nod and starts his own family.

There’s a few lines of genealogy and then we get to a man named Lamech.
²³ Then Lamech said to his wives:
“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
Wives of Lamech, listen to my speech!
For I have killed a man for wounding me,
Even a young man for hurting me.
²⁴ If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold,
Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”

That is the last two verses in the story of Cain and Abel.
What you can also see here is the proclivity for evil that manifested in Cain’s descendants.

God says “Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.”
Now that has devolved exponentially into:
“If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
That’s like you hurt me; I’ll hurt you back. NO. You hurt me and I kill you and 6 other folks.
Then you kill 7 of my people? I’ll kill 77 of yours.
So, there’s this idea that once that first murderous seed is sown, it has this proclivity to manifest itself exponentially.

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