Old ugarit Adam and Eve cuneiform sheds light on Genesis origin according to publishers and further background info needed...

Sparhafoc said:

Why did Douglas Adams and all the people involved in the publication of that book, including the people who make the ink, the paper, the glue, the typsetters, the spell-checkers, and all the sundry other delivery and logistics people bother to do all this just to make up a fake story?



To be clear though, I am not saying that this was the motive of ancient peoples with their religious texts, just showing that your argument doesn't really mean anything.

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LOL! I think my argument absolutely does mean something! Because I have not completely disregarded the advent of the printing press and the entire industrial revolution!

Sparhafoc said:

That we know it's a false story doesn't mean that they knew it was a false story - they believed it, it was important to them, therefore they invested labour and wealth into it as it had value to them and their society.

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You do not know if it is a false story. But yes I have to say it seems like it must have been something important to them.

Sparhafoc said:

I don't see why there's any need at all to assume that the people who wrote these texts thought they were writing fiction. It's not a necessary conceit to understand what motivated them or why the texts exist.

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I dont think that they thought they were writing fiction. If they were writing fiction, then at least whoever made up the fictional story would have known it was fiction. I dont think people just pull stories out of their own asses and then believe them. Or do they? Fuck if I know..

Greetings,

People see intent in everything around them.

At that time it was the only way they could explain - and understand - the world around them: that there were spirits in everything, that caused things to happen. Lightning, thunder, day, night, etc.

It is thus that these stories about spirits (gods) came into being.

Kindest regards,

James

Dragan Glas said:

Greetings,

People see intent in everything around them.

At that time it was the only way they could explain - and understand - the world around them: that there were spirits in everything, that caused things to happen. Lightning, thunder, day, night, etc.

It is thus that these stories about spirits (gods) came into being.

Kindest regards,

James

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I have heard that said a lot but this does not seem to apply at least to this particular account we are talking about. Does it?

Led Zeppelin said:

You do not know if it is a false story. But yes I have to say it seems like it must have been something important to them.

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I'd argue that I do know it's a false story. I'd argue that the information showing it's a false story is widely available and generally known by a significant percentage of the world's population.

Led Zeppelin said:

I dont think that they thought they were writing fiction. If they were writing fiction, then at least whoever made up the fictional story would have known it was fiction. I dont think people just pull stories out of their own asses and then believe them. Or do they? Fuck if I know..

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Either you think every single religious story in human history is somewhat true, based on a real event, and faithfully recorded by humans - or you believe that at least some of the religious stories are false, in which case you need to explain that the same way I do.

I don't think it's anywhere near as complicated to conceive of as you're making out.

Traditional beliefs, handed down, uncritically accepted, part of one's tribal identity, a system of ordering the world around you, and knowing your place in it. It's not like the ancients had the means or ability to validate the claims of their ancestral forebears. We do, that's why we can say when something's false according to empirical evidence.

Led Zeppelin said:

I have heard that said a lot but this does not seem to apply at least to this particular account we are talking about. Does it?

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I'm not a social/cultural anthropologist but my undergraduate did include mandatory courses every year in that side of the field. My sense, from seeing these cultural narratives across human space and history is that the likelihood is that sometime in the even more distant past, some person did something, the tale of that doing and of that person got handed down, over time the details morphed little by little, the venerable age of the story itself generating a significance beyond normal stories for the audience, eventually the figures involved became more than just human, and the events evolved to have wider cosmic and cultural significance. Generation by generation, wise men/elders/storytellers added a little artistic license here or there for an array of reasons, to strengthen their own status perhaps, or to tailor a past story to a present social or political situation, or just because they were creative, or crazy, or forgetful - simple human foibles. One day, sometime after the advent and development of writing, somebody clocks on to the idea of writing this shit down, and then you have your first dogma because - even though the written word is still subject to revisionism and interpretation - it's nowhere near as much so as with orally transmitted tales.

Led Zeppelin said:

Why would they bother taking the time to make clay and the tools needed (and risk breaking them) to form the the tablets and make up a fake story(according to atheists) to enscribe on them and the carry the tables around with them forever. Why such an effort in a day and age when there there was hardly any garauntee of your mere day to day survival?

How many man hours would have been involved in this process? How much did the tablets weigh?

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A lot of assumptions in there. First, that those making the tablets and those inventing the stories on the tablets are the same people. The best evidence suggests that the first writings of all ancient belief systems are an extension to extant oral traditions. Second, there's the assumption that making clay tablets is difficult and time consuming. In fact, it's really quite easy and takes no time at all.

I also wonder where the assertion comes from that day-to-day survival was significantly worse then. Certainly, the terrain was different, and possibly more difficult to navigate, especially prior to the advent of modern medicine and other technologies, but most of the modern factors are really only visible at population level. The general grind of everyday life is, to a first approximation and in the eye of the contemporary, pretty much the same.

There's always a huge danger in assessing the past with modern eyes. It's one of the reasons that history is a tricky topic. It requires a degree of bias-awareness in order to be able to mitigate insensible conclusions. People are products of their times, and imputing motivations is always a mistake, especially when your assessment of those motivations is contemporary to your view rather than theirs.

These are all iterations of the same basic formal fallacy; affirming the consequent.

Led Zeppelin said:

But were people really writing fiction back then?

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Ever hear of the Epic of Gilgamesh?

Led Zeppelin said:

I dont think that they thought they were writing fiction. If they were writing fiction, then at least whoever made up the fictional story would have known it was fiction. I dont think people just pull stories out of their own asses and then believe them. Or do they? Fuck if I know..

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People pull shit out of their asses all the time and pass it off as wisdom, which other people take as truth and will subsequently cling to it for all they're worth, because it's considerably easier to con people than it is to convince them they're been conned.

The internet is absolutely replete with examples, from creationists and other religious apologists, to antivaxxers, to flat Earthers, to expanding Earthers, to customers of Goop, to Dr Oz, and I could continue for days without drawing breath.

People back then were really no different, from a cognitive perspective. Indeed, we should be better equipped, yet we live in a world in which measles was once declared eradicated.

People make up stories that make sense to them as providing some sort of explanation for how the world around them operates. As my colleague has pointed out above, we are entities with intent, and it therefore isn't a stretch to see intent in the world around us, especially where things in the world around us seem more complicated than we could manage. On first retellings of our tale of origins, it might begin 'it could work like this', a caveat subsequently dropped, and there we have our faith-based origin story, the beginnings of a religion. It gets embellished with each retelling, until somebody decides to make a permanent record of it.

And that's usually when the swords come out.

Led Zeppelin said:

Why would they bother taking the time to make clay and the tools needed (and risk breaking them) to form the the tablets and make up a fake story(according to atheists) to enscribe on them and the carry the tables around with them forever. Why such an effort in a day and age when there there was hardly any garauntee of your mere day to day survival?

How many man hours would have been involved in this process? How much did the tablets weigh?

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So Horon poisoned the world?
Is the 35,000 year old lion human from Hohlenstein Stadel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man depicting a real being?
Are ancient cave paintings of shamans transforming into wolves and panthers and other werewolf like people, real? After all they had the whole day to work...why should they scribble people turning wolves around?
Are stories all over falcon-headed and jackal-headed egypt deities like Horus and Anubis in thousands upon thousands of ancient tombs real? Some of them 5000 years old with people believing the jackal god weights their hearts in the afterlife.
Are Hercules and the witch Circe historical people? Whole theatre plays in towns and cities were played in front of crowds to tell those stories.
Was Merlin a real wizard mentor of Arthur? Legendary King Arthur and was/is his Excalibur a real sword? Some bards traveled far and wide and dedicated their life with thief infested roadways to recite poems of it.
Did Muhammad split the moon like Islam claims in scripture seen as holy to the religion, despite of no-one in China or Europe witnessed any moon splitting.
Is the Loch Ness monster real? Some people dedicated their whole freetime to hunt for the monster and some fabricated photos.
Are hundreds of hundreds of episodes of Starship Enterprise real? Whole crews and millions of dollars went into them...as they would be very important historical records (like Galaxy Quest ;-p )
Questions over questions.

Greetings,

Good points, AngelaMOU.

Interestingly, it's been suggested that Herakles/Hercules may have been based on a case of myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy, a condition where a child has the strength of an adult.

Given he was said to be a demi-god, presumably due to his "god-like" strength, it may be a legend rather than a myth.

Kindest regards,

James

hackenslash said:

I also wonder where the assertion comes from that day-to-day survival was significantly worse then. Certainly, the terrain was different, and possibly more difficult to navigate, especially prior to the advent of modern medicine and other technologies, but most of the modern factors are really only visible at population level. The general grind of everyday life is, to a first approximation and in the eye of the contemporary, pretty much the same.

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I still strongly suspect life was very much harder thousands of years ago. But I think when you say "most of the modern factors are really only visible at population level`` it is probably a line of thought worth considering.

Sparhafoc said:

I'm not a social/cultural anthropologist but my undergraduate did include mandatory courses every year in that side of the field. My sense, from seeing these cultural narratives across human space and history is that the likelihood is that sometime in the even more distant past, some person did something, the tale of that doing and of that person got handed down, over time the details morphed little by little, the venerable age of the story itself generating a significance beyond normal stories for the audience, eventually the figures involved became more than just human, and the events evolved to have wider cosmic and cultural significance. Generation by generation, wise men/elders/storytellers added a little artistic license here or there for an array of reasons, to strengthen their own status perhaps, or to tailor a past story to a present social or political situation, or just because they were creative, or crazy, or forgetful - simple human foibles. One day, sometime after the advent and development of writing, somebody clocks on to the idea of writing this shit down, and then you have your first dogma because - even though the written word is still subject to revisionism and interpretation - it's nowhere near as much so as with orally transmitted tales.

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I am also not an anthropologist but I guess this might be a occasion where everyone's thoughts could be almost equally considered because we are all human beings. You and Hackenslash and everyone else have really made some enjoyable and informative posts.

Led Zeppelin said:

I am also not an anthropologist but I guess this might be a occasion where everyone's thoughts could be almost equally considered because we are all human beings. You and Hackenslash and everyone else have really made some enjoyable and informative posts.

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Not sure why that's relevant.

If we want to understand how people of the ancient world thought, we won't get there by simply emoting at it. There's no question that we all share our humanity, and that gives us some passing insight into the minds and motivations of other people, but it's a very incomplete picture and one that is not amenable to testing.

Led Zeppelin said:

I still strongly suspect life was very much harder thousands of years ago. But I think when you say "most of the modern factors are really only visible at population level`` it is probably a line of thought worth considering.

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Life expectancy was lower, but the contemporary person's perspective on how hard it was wouldn't differ significantly from any other time. That's a bias we have to be careful of. The selection pressures we've mitigated via technology and agriculture are just that, and selection pressures only ever manifest at population level because selection is a function of population resampling, a population phenomenon by definition.

This is fairly rudimentary evolutionary modelling.

Sparhafoc said:

Not sure why that's relevant.

If we want to understand how people of the ancient world thought, we won't get there by simply emoting at it. There's no question that we all share our humanity, and that gives us some passing insight into the minds and motivations of other people, but it's a very incomplete picture and one that is not amenable to testing.

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Jesus Christ, Sparhafoc! This is a web forum! Stop being such a grumblebear!

Led Zeppelin said:

Jesus Christ, Sparhafoc! This is a web forum! Stop being such a grumblebear!

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I mean, guilty as charged, but I am not sure why that's relevant to what you're replying to.

On the topic of legendary or even mythical heroes.

A good example for how we(the rabble) might have mistaken average people for super humans, is the Romance of the Three Kingdoms(Historical fiction). Its set in the warring states period of China 475 BC(roughly). You have many characters that get attributed with super human strenght, the power of 100 or even 1000 men, warlords slaughtering people in the hundreds ..
Well, its not that far fetched, if you take into account, that those legendary heroes were the sons of the upper class, well fed for all their life with formal weapon training, an education and a horse.
Meanwhile the run of the mill soldier was a conscripted farmer, no weapon training at all and on the verge of starvation, most of the time carrying around a disease or two, having marched for days, barely standing upright and most of the time drunk on wine and inspiring speeches, to even be able to fight. Really easy to vanquish ... and now imagine the kind of fear and dread that instills in your enemies and the inspiration it provides to your allies.
Add to that a bit of word of mouth and propaganda .. and there we go, you got gods among men. Super humans fit to lead the masses, capable of crushing dozens of men under their feet.

For most of human history, it was actually enough to have a proper protein and vitamin C source to become bigger, stronger, faster, healthier and smarter than your peers. Especially since easy access to nutrious food, makes it possible for you to spend your time training or educating yourself(Or well, sitting around and thinking about god and the world).
Then there is hygiene, which was also a really important factor, can not stress the importance of having access to fresh, clean water enough and actually making use of it.
And, often overlooked, teeth. The most important genetic advantage you could have till the early 1900, were good teeth.
In addition to that, living a bit isolated in an area with low population that did not see much travel, was also really helpful keeping diseases away from you.
Take that all together, and there you go, a god among men. Or at least someone with the potential to be hailed as exceptional.

Nothing wrong with trying to justify it by a genetic mutation, but gotta keep in mind, the person in question has to make it through its childhood and teens to even get a shot at becoming a legend. And that was ... not easy, especially with Tetanus around. Being born into good real estate seems a bit more likely to me.