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Member (Idle past 2522 days) Posts: 2965 From: Los Angeles, CA USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Commonality of Worldwide Myths | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Why no common language?
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Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Nuggin writes: Funny, though, how dogs bark the exact same way in China as they do anywhere else. Trans migratory birds sound the same, and as far as I know, animals in general are fairly uniform as to species in the sounds that they make. I am assuming, however. Does anyone know, or am I barking up the wrong tree? Just because people experience common events, emotions, etc, doesn't mean they'll make up the same word for it. Why would we assume that someone on one side of the world witnessing a comet would call it exactly the same thing that someone on the otherside of the world would?
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Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
What I mean't is that a Beagle in China sounds like a Beagle in America....A German Shepherd sounds the same in Germany as in Galveston. A Conure squawks the same in my house as in a house in Moscow. Or in a jungle in South America. Why would it make sense for humans to have such diverse and differing dialects?
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Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Nuggin writes: A possible answer, to be sure....a very astute answer, yet not consensual among all intellects. According to The World Book Encyclopedia, no one knows exactly how language began. Your bigger question of why do we have so many languages is best answered by the fact that populations split from each other and spend huge amounts of time seperate, and during that time their languages evolve differently. According to the Bible, God allowed the languages to be confused. It is not clear whether He directly caused it, or whether the human wisdom gravitated towards territorial protective measures, but the authors make it clear that Gods presence contributed towards human independance.
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Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Nuggin writes: My original question is: Are common features in world wide myths a function of common factors in human life?And my first point,related to language, was that the Biblical Tower of Babel story need not be a myth Or do they necessarily indicate that all stories arise from some specific event? If God is a "myth" than yes. But this is far from conclusive. Why can't people from around the world, given the same circumstances, show the same degree of creativity? They can. They do. This message has been edited by Phatboy, 09-11-2005 03:35 PM
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Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Nuggin writes: There are many common elements in the mythologies of different cultures around the world. (ie Flood stories, dragons, man created from clay, etc.) Many of the YEC have sited these as evidence that their theory is correct. But aren't there other (better?) explainations for these stories. I'd like to suggest a few. 1) Common experience - (the is very close to the YEC argument) world wide changes in climate / world wide events will have similiar effects on the cultures of different people. For example: At the end of the Ice Age, the water levels would have risen re-flooding the vast shoreline tracts which had openned and become inhabited. Peoples all over the world would have experienced "a great flood", but not "The Great Flood". 2) Common reasoning - given similar discoveries, people from different cultures may draw similiar conclusions. For example: Megalodon (giant shark) teeth are fairly common fossils. There are a lot of them, they are generally well preserved. If someone with no frame of reference other than the natural world around them discovered one of these fist sized teeth, it's not hard to see how they would imagine it coming from a "dragon". 3) Common psychology - No matter what culture you come from, some things don't change. Children are born, people grow old and die, some people are mean, others are nice. Isn't it reasonable that facing similiar experiences, people would develop similiar coping mechanisms/rationalizations? For example: As babies are born with a flood of water from the womb, so too, couldn't the world have been born from a flood of water? 4) Common materials - The natural world offers up only so much for building materials. We've become very tricky at teasing out alloys and mixing up concrete, but clearly there was a time when people had only sticks, stones and clay. Given this limited exposure to materials isn't it reasonable that many different cultures have myths of man's creation being from clay. After all, clay is much more like flesh than sticks or stones. To my mind, these explain many of the points raised about the common myths. They do so within the framework of the evidence at hand and don't rely on "magic". Anyone have other examples? Questions? Disagreements? There has to be reasons why "myths" or legends arise. The Bible makes sense in its definition of how a group of people gathered in the plains of Shinar Either through a divine action of God,(the myth) or through the natural instincts of human competition and survival, a gathering of people in Mesopotamia to build a symbolic ziggurat failed to demonstrate unity. The "myth"...if indeed we define the story as such...illustrates a point about human nature and alligience.
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Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
PaulK writes: You bring up a key point with THAT word, "worldview". Even if I believed that the Bible was largely myths and parables, I would still never consider God Himself to be a human derived myth. There is certainly some reason why the Babel myth arose. But it might be no more than curiosity and the story-telling impulse. Why are therediffernet peoples with different languages ? what were those large, ancient ruins ? how do we fit those into our world-view? Human wisdom may assert that languages became diverse over a survival mechanism. Its a bit similar to why teenagers have a slanguage common only among their peers. Naaamean? Parents don't quite "get it" unless they bother to seek communion with their kids rather than imperialistic dominance. For a believer, Gods interaction with humanity is a given, so the purpose of the "myth" may be that original sin and the inborn traits of dominance, control, and secrecy within the subgroup were mean't to happen as a result of the human choice to "be god" rather than worship one.
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Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Good point.
Literalists often see the Bible as culturally applicable to the 21st century mindset. It is virtually impossible for a cultural anthropologist to not have a bias originating from their own cultural view. Even anthropologists admit this.
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Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
In my opinion? They are demons masquerading as gods. There are basically only two spirits. The Holy One and the imitators.
If you have never met the Holy One, you would never be able to differentiate, however. I do not believe that one mans Jesus is another mans Loki. I believe that there is One God and many imitations. You won't find Him, yet He will find you.
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Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Nuggin writes: Playing grounds are rarely level, but we hope that spiritual truth seeking is fair for everyone. ...you must recognize that your beliefs are your perspective.and I do...but remember that looking up, everyone has their own perspective...looking down, all humanity could be one perspective
A Hindu very much believes that the God he worships is a divine entity, and probably believes that your God is the imitator.I don't know... Given a fair and level playing ground, what are we to conclude? Conclude?! We will be discussing this until we die!(or get raptured.. Everyone is right?If everyone is right, truth is an internally perceived relativistic fact. God could still impart a universal truth however He wants, though. No one is right? If no one is right, truth is unknowable. This message has been edited by Phatboy, 09-15-2005 12:22 AM
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Phat Member Posts: 18349 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
ohnhai writes:
Lets kick around a few definitions...I will present the definitions and you tell me the difference...OK?
What is the difference between ”truth seeking’ and ”spiritual truth seeking’?1spiritual-adj 1: of, relating to, consisting of, or affecting the spirit : incorporeal 2 : of or relating to sacred matters 3 : ecclesiastical rather than lay or temporal truth - 1: truthfulness, honesty 2: the real state of things: fact 3: the body of real events or facts : actuality 4: a true or accepted statement or proposition 5 : agreement with fact or reality : correctness syn veracity, verity NIV writes: John 18:37-38-- "You are a king, then!" said Pilate. Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." "What is truth?" Pilate asked. With this he went out again to the Jews and said, "I find no basis for a charge against him. I guess that I would say that truth is a corporeal empirical observation, and spiritual truth is a non-corporeal realization.
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