"...Yahweh's nudity taboo (how full of crochets the old fellow was)..." (p. 208)
"This being more or less Jesus territory..." (pp. 211-212)
"'Ares and Hephaestus had long since been sneaking off to Yahweh for a whiff of his burnt offerings.'" (p. 213)
"'We knew [America]'d become Yahweh and Jesus country, except for a few enclaves...'" (p. 215)
"'I left Olympus for Mount Athos, where I ascended to the Christian Paradise. St. Francis gave me bread and wine. He's a decent little chap, although I do wish he'd bathe oftener. Next evening I called on Yahweh and shared his kosher altar. (He has a few devotees left in the Near Eastern hills who sacrifice in the ancient way...)'" (p. 216)
"'This will indeed change the world, as Jesus did before him, or Oannes before him.'" (p. 218)
The Olympians thought that they had supplanted the Triple Goddess, then the saints tried to deny the Olympians. However, each pantheon learns from its predecessors. Hermes claims that the Olympians "'...invented science.'" (p. 223) The Greeks invented natural philosophy but not empirical science. Manse Everard of the Time Patrol attributes the latter to belief in a world ordered by an omnipotent creator.
16 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
That bit about God still being offered sacrifices the way the Jews used to do before the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 was probably meant by the Andersons as referring to the Samaritans. I think they still sacrifice in the manner prescribed by the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus.
Ad astra! Sean
Aristotle came sort of close.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Do you mean you think Aristotle came close to believing in a First Cause Who ordered or created the world thru His laws?
Ad astra! Sean
Or maybe it is just that Aristotle came close to inventing science?
We were taught:
every event is caused;
an infinite regress is impossible;
therefore, there was a first cause, which everyone calls God.
Counterarguments:
both premises must be proved;
some events are uncaused in quantum mechanics;
if every event is caused by an earlier event, then there IS an infinite regress and there was NO first cause which, in any event, would be a past event, not an eternal person.
Kaor, Paul!
And I still got the impression, rightly or wrongly, that Stirling had the last two sentences of this blog piece of yours in mind. Which in turn reminded me of what Anderson had said about a God Who respected His own laws in "Delenda Est" and IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS?
AND I don't believe in the eternity of the universe. And I still lean more to Aristotle's argument for a First Cause.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
How do you respond to my counterarguments above? How does Aristotle argue? Why believe in the eternity of anything?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I can't, not in any philosophically adequate way. Unlike Thomas Aquinas, Jacques Maritain, or Mortimer Adler, I am not a philosopher. I can only hope someone at your level of expertise will respond.
I did think you were saying, at other times, that if the universe was uncreated, then the matter or "stuff" which comprises it has to be eternal.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
If the universe was uncreated, then:
matter/energy/being is beginningless OR
it began from nothing in (something like) a quantum fluctuation OR
we just don't know.
Why do we have to claim to know definite answers to such ultimate questions?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Because I think human beings want to know the answers to questions, and are not satisfied with unanswered questions. I thought of this bit from Chapter 4 of ENSIGN FLANDRY: "Kursovikian religion was a paganism more inchoate than any recorded from ancient Terra--the Tigery mind was less interested than the human in finding ultimate causes..."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Because people want an answer, they accept an answer, maybe one they have been brought up with, and defend it emotionally but philosophers try to find the truth and acknowledge when they cannot find it.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That I agree with.
As astra! Sean
Aristotle came close, but no cigar, on science. That needed monotheism, and specifically Latin Catholicism and it’s offshoots as cultural preparation. If you take Aquinas, and subtract the supernatural, you’ve got the philosophical foundation of scientistic materialism.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That was interesting! It reminded me of what G.K. Chesterton wrote in his book about St. Thomas, that he (and other Scholastics) would have been keenly interested in modern science.
I do wonder if Aquinas would have agreed with "scientistic materialism," hoever.
Ad astra! Sean
He probably wouldn’t, but he was a stage on that road. Humans started out as animists, seeing spirits in everything and hence having little or no concept of natural law. To develop science they had to shed the conviction that physical things were moved by intentionality, that it was all tricks or pixies and angry thunder. Monotheism was a step in the ‘disenchantment of the world’.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Since I believe God, and hence the supernatural does exist, I remain unconvinced that any kind of materialism can explain everything. But, unlike St. Thomas or Mortimer Adler, I am not qualified to debate this.
Catholics have a wider concept of "natural law" than those laws or principles worked out by scientists explaining how, as far as we know, the universe works. It also includes logical thinking about right and wrong. E.g., deliberate murder, as such, is always and everywhere wrong. And applies to human beings at all stages of their lives. Hence the Church's unyielding opposition to abortion.
And this principle will also, logically, be applied to non human beings from other planets, if we ever make contact with them.
Ad astra! Sean
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