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  1. John D. Brey

    The SelfishdeGenerate.

    Ok. Sorry. "ToE" is sometimes Theory of Everything. And I've never used, and rarely read ToE to speak of the Theory of Evolution. Same with ID. I've never spoke of "intelligent design." So forgive me for not connecting the dots. My bad. John
  2. John D. Brey

    The SelfishdeGenerate.

    What do you mean by "ID" and "ToE"? I'm not connecting them to the discussion? John
  3. John D. Brey

    A question for all religious believers -- why is your religion more true than any other?

    You say tomato, I say tamato. . . When I say "thought-collective" just think "confirmation bias." :) I hope you'll accept my apology. I talk past people a lot. Not just to be rude (which it is in most cases), but because I often mix genuine dialogue with more soliloquistic individual...
  4. John D. Brey

    A question for all religious believers -- why is your religion more true than any other?

    I would say one point would be examining what occurs when members of a particular thought-collective encounter members of a different thought-collective. Or else when the ingrained predispositions of a thought-collective come under the microscope for examination and come up wanting, after which...
  5. John D. Brey

    The SelfishdeGenerate.

    Touche! Yes altruism and peacefulness exist in evolved species. So I don't deny that. Which makes it appear, at this point, that your syllogism has me in a choke-hold. :) We anthropomorphize the activities of genes since its impossible to deny that the activities of genes lead to design that...
  6. John D. Brey

    The SelfishdeGenerate.

    No argument with leaving behind the simplistic narrative you've zeroed in on nicely. What this thread was intended to address is the far less simplistic error in evolutionary theory whereby conscious properties of the human mind, properties that can no longer be assumed to be secondary to the...
  7. John D. Brey

    The SelfishdeGenerate.

    I was juxtaposing the difference between the mindless activities of the gene, which Dawkins claims are devoid of qualities like peacefulness, cooperation, and altruism, with the fact that memes (ideas, ideologies, concepts) can indeed foster the cooperation and altruism that's lacking in the...
  8. John D. Brey

    The SelfishdeGenerate.

    Richard Dawkins' famous book posited the idea that evolution tends to occur by the dictates of the gene's ability to survive through fortuitous adaptations such that fitness for survival is fancied the tautological though it be source for surviving. Since survival is the key to everything in the...
  9. John D. Brey

    A question for all religious believers -- why is your religion more true than any other?

    I think you're imputing your modern biases on a completely different epoch. In the first century most people were illiterate so far as the written word is concerned. At that time there were "oral-traditions" passed down through members of society who had a gift for memory (see, Birger...
  10. John D. Brey

    A question for all religious believers -- why is your religion more true than any other?

    Having read Fleck's book, I'd say he's not using the term "thought collective" as though to become a member you must join a club or church. In the foreword to Fleck's book Thomas Kuhn says: These and many other phrases in the book indicate that the effects of participation in a thought...
  11. John D. Brey

    Rabbi Shaye J. D. Cohen Examines Circumcision.

    The idea of God being circumcised with Abraham, God emasculating the scroll that's the delivery organ/mechanism for his two testemonial stones (the writ of the Law), can be read in a manner that implies the so-called "New Testament" is the blood of God's circumcising of his scroll (ala Abraham)...
  12. John D. Brey

    A question for all religious believers -- why is your religion more true than any other?

    The concept of thought styles in science has been developed by Ludwik Fleck (1979). Fleck claims, and we agree, that a thought style shared by members of a "thought collective" determines the formulation of every concept that underlies observation and description. "If we define the `thought...
  13. John D. Brey

    Rabbi Shaye J. D. Cohen Examines Circumcision.

    In Germany during the high Middle Ages, additional customs arose concerning the blood . . . some blood would be allowed to drip onto the baby's swaddling clothes, from which a Torah binder (a wimpel) would later be made and presented to the synagogue. Shaye J. D. Cohen, Why Aren't Jewish Women...
  14. John D. Brey

    Rabbi Shaye J. D. Cohen Examines Circumcision.

    The circumcision of Abraham prefigures the birth of Jesus, who was conceived without lust and without impurity, that is, without "foreskin." Since both the "type" and the fulfillment are male (Abraham, Jesus), circumcision applies only to males. This spiritual and typological exegesis completely...
  15. John D. Brey

    Rabbi Shaye J. D. Cohen Examines Circumcision.

    When correlations like the one above are made, those only vaguely familiar with the rituals and symbols often times roll their eyes and respond with the pixelated version of the rolling of the eyes. And it usually goes off topic too much to respond every time the weekend warriors of the faith...
  16. John D. Brey

    Yahweh is less Divine than most humans

    Ecclesiastes 9:4-5. John
  17. John D. Brey

    Rabbi Shaye J. D. Cohen Examines Circumcision.

    Where the Jewish sage's adage, as above, so below, is acknowledged (which is their way to say there's a parallel between human reality and divine reality), the pre-sexual tearing of the membrane of the male (periah), and the female (virgin birth), speaks of a consummation of the marital covenant...
  18. John D. Brey

    Rabbi Shaye J. D. Cohen Examines Circumcision.

    Professor Boyarin's statement makes Jesus' flesh God's membrane: the membrane on the temple of God's body that must be torn in a divine brit milah in order to initiate a new kind of reproduction that takes place between the singular Male and the body of humanity that make up His bride. All of...
  19. John D. Brey

    Rabbi Shaye J. D. Cohen Examines Circumcision.

    Not only does Rabbi Hirsch frequently use language such as quoted above, but the ideas that lie there are firmly ensconced in Jewish lore and ritual: Several anthropologists have observed that in Islamic society the closest feminine analogue to male circumcision is the ritualized rupturing of...
  20. John D. Brey

    Rabbi Shaye J. D. Cohen Examines Circumcision.

    Suggesting that the blood of circumcision (on the lips of the mohel when he speaks and prays) is like the sound coming out of the shofar lends itself to the new testament concept found in John chapter 6 when Jesus says one must drink his blood to gain everlasting life; also where, later in the...
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