Great to see this deep and thoughtful post. Must be some great coffee you're drinking! 😄
Let me propose two alternate views to the stories in the bible. They're not meant to be taken literal but are simple parables to get a point across about different aspect of existence such survival, security, sexuality, morality, etc. The stories don't seem to make sense because they're not meant to, as long as they get the point across.
My second view, or rather that of Isaac Newton, is that the Bible is an alchemical document. In Newton's time, alchemical documents were coded in colorful language. Newton, for instance, called antimony the "menstrual blood of the sordid whore." His notebooks are filled with fantastical passages using this secret code. When you translate them into plain language, you realize, they're just chemical recipes. He seemed to believe the Bible was a coded language for alchemical formulas, which he tried to work out from the Book of Revelations.
So, if Newton was right, then maybe Adam and Eve are code words for chemicals like mercury and gold, while the snake refers to a formula or procedure conducted on Adam and Eve (hence the flickering tongue of the snake). Seen in that light, then the story of creation is just a chemical recipe, but to create what?
Crazy, right? 😇
Splendid special blend coffee, it is :D
Thank you for coming along.
Your alternate views to the stories in the bible are highly welcomed.
That is the nature of such stories, I suppose. They puzzle and I find puzzles worth to chew on. Since no one has absolute sovereignty of interpretation, many interpretations are what is interesting.
To get the point across contains what the writer as well as the reader thinks. And since writer and reader often do not meet in person, one writer has many different interpreters who think that a story brings the point across or doesn't do it. Many superb debates are the result of this.
Religious texts as well as religious handcraft I experience as art. That they also could be alchemical documents, I vaguely remember but wouldn't know more about it. So thank you for explaining further into it. I hope though that Newton was not right since I am very bad ad Chemistry. ;)
Whereas I don't want to see the creation story as "just a ..." for anything. I find it too fascinating for that, also and because the many thousands and thousands of subsequent writings and books inspired from the Bible would otherwise be missing to me.
Indeed, crazy in an inspiring way.
I think that as humans we underestimate how true and impactful this is. We use writing as a medium of communication, but writing is a slow and laborious process for both writer and reader. When I write a story, I "see" an epic event or world in my mind. I then try to put into words this imaginary experience only to completely fail as the words are linearly arranged like Roman soldiers. That is why, it's useful to add some flourishes to one's writing, so you can elicit similar feelings in the reader that you felt when you thought of the story. It might be different for technical or scientific writing, but the medium of writing is still very limited. So, you're right, interpretations of religious texts will differ from reader to reader, which is why we settle those differences with sticks and stones. 😆
Ah, that's a really good point.
Writing cannot convey real time in the same way that you, as a writer, see whole scenes and worlds in front of you in your mind. That is so true! The comparison with linearity and Roman soldiers explains the difficulty very vividly!
The gift of evoking in the reader what lives in yourself, I agree, is done through the senses-exciting phrasing, so that one thinks one not only sees a scene, but smells it, tastes it, feels it. When I am ready to be sensually addressed, it evokes these very sensations.
I think that the differences in interpretation are only tried to be cleared up with stones and sticks by those who don't even want to get involved in an interpretation that differs from their own. Yet this is the opportunity where one's own mental horizon can be overcome.
I state that such rejection comes from the fact that one's own interpretation is too fleshless and too little contemplated in one's own thinking about a metaphor/theological text and that one can assume superficiality here and an unwillingness to engage in a sporting competition regarding the art of debating.
P.S. Check this out:
https://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html
You are going to love it (or so I hope:)
"Hilbert's Hotel" - wow!
Read from beginning to end! It's so much worth it.
This is mind blowing. I think that it also illustrates what we're talking about and how difficult it is to convey concepts through writing and symbols. The Hilbert's Hotel thought experiment is one way to think about the concept of infinity using mathematics and logic. It delights and surprises when we get it, but having experienced a sense of infinity in the past, I can say that both experiences differ. Now, you can take the idea of infinity and use different arrangement of symbols to convey the idea. In this case poetry:
I enjoyed this poem when I first read it, but I never "experienced it" or "grasped its meaning" until I programmed a psychedelic session with poetry and experienced a sense of infinity in this timeless moment. Only then, I felt that I truly understood that poem. And it blew my mind to the extent that I felt a ecstatic bliss when I read it again while under the influence of psychedelics. But here we have another conundrum, now I'm trying to use words to convey the meaning and experience of that internal psychological experience. Another room in Hilbert's Hotel. That is, I'm trying to use words to convey my understanding of Hilbert's Hotel by using words written centuries ago, so that I can use more words to explain an internal state to try to convey my meaning using more words. I keep moving from room to room, in a manner of speaking. It never ends and hence it's truly infinite (or fractal to use even more words and concepts) 🙃
Great that you read it!
The nature of fractals and how we visualised Mandelbrot gives the impression of infinity, but if you look, it is a constant repetition of the same process and is not transferable to reality, i.e. not to the all-sensory experience, limited to seeing alone. When I was watching it, I always had the impression of being somehow cheated when I was zoomed from the big to the small and suddenly ended up in the big again. I don't know, it was like ... stumbling ... ugh, unable to express myself here.
Because mathematics is something you can transfer from reality to the imagination, you can do such great things with it as fractals and there is no limit to mental flying.
Extasy is very seductive, isn't it. You just have to not let it wear you out. HeHe.
As for poems, the way I see it, they are a high form of contemplation and a very successful short form for what other people write epic long books for. It's truly a high art, yes.
I am in awe with minds who can come up with something like Hilbert's Hotel. I am too uneducated for that kind of logic. But glad that others were and are not. It's fantastic. I am always thrilled when I can find sources like that.
It actually is transferable to reality. The repetition is call iteration and yes, it is self similar at different magnitudes but always slightly different. The fact that this mathematical concept is transferable to reality is the key aspect of it. Now we know that seemingly random processes like clouds, pine trees, forests, coastlines, heartbeats, brain signals, a head of lettuce, seashells, waves, even our conversation, and a multitude of non-linear dynamic processes, perhaps everything in the universe, contain fractal properties. This is the revelation of Chaos theory. It's not about chaos but order. An order that exists in that which we thought was chaos.
... or so I understand
I see what you are getting at.
Thanks for the addition.
This chaos (seemingly random processes), as one may have viewed a brain, cloud formations, etc., I myself did not perceive as chaos, but in fact as a hidden order in the supposed disorder that I so assumed. Even a chaotic conversation and formations of peoples I would also include, yes.
Computer-controlled calculation makes it possible to simulate such processes in fast forward. Since the human being (and all things) but passes through his earthly existence by means of natural ageing, this discovery is a very elegant and beautiful method for spiritual understanding. For example, a nine-month pregnancy or the growth of a broccoli, while generally the same, is slightly different from one individual to another. Sickness then also is order (this is something very hard to accept though). And also death is order.