Good points, and my target in this thread is not meant to illustrate my total disregard for all else that constitutes factors and variables in a growing civilization, but rather as one thing to mention, due to me seeing it recently, and wondering what people might make of such a passage.
I don't think that I can take passages out of a whole text. or take certain passages and separate them in order to project on them.
A simple fact is that humanity administrates this planet. this is a fact. we administrate nature. and every botanist, or biologist will agree that once we have started this process we cannot reverse it, or even stop doing it.
The Bible is a great testament from one of the most important regions in the world, where some of the earliest forms of domestications took place, where the Neolithic transition took place, as we know it. and otherwise where some of the notable administrations and priesthoods emerged.
When we talk about the Bible, it is amazing that it suppressed other fine literary works from the Near East, including Egyptian literature, the Babylonian literature, and various incarnations of Sumerian poetry.
To this day, I can read the Bible and be greatly impressed by the achievements of its scribes and lyricists. EVEN when they talk about morality.
perhaps if Egyptian literature and civilization were considered to be a foundation of Western civilization, it would be the Egyptian wisdom literature which we would have criticised in this thread, I don't really know.
Im not one to deny or inappropriately criticise history and heritage, but there’s a difference in how one can look at something like this, be it with the historians hat on or the believers hat on.
My point is, that might such text not be appropriate as a guide in todays age, given that so many people indeed see it that way, and as such there is some responsibility to adopt some reasonable change?
As a historical document its one thing, but as a claimed supernatural moral guideline is it defendable?
Alex
Now that you put this thread in this context. its easier to relate to it in some way.
I do not think one has to breath supernaturalism into Scriptures in order to grasp their richness, be it the Vedas or Hebrew literature.
However, I still think a key point here is that as a whole, human society is a culture of consumption which lives off the fruits of nature. and I think that the Bible is actually a positive breath of fresh air when is not read with an antagonistic approach.
but if you post the original idea that you respond to, perhaps we can give more elaborative answers.
