The Ancients

[_SatanWasSetUp]

I agree with your main point, Harmony. However, it is important to study the knowledge gained by our ancestors and build upon it. Ancient astronomers thought the sun rotated around the Earth. Obviously they were wrong about that, but we don't throw out all the knowledge they gained. We build upon it. Our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will learn from our successes and our mistakes.

As for religion, they also learn from the mistakes of their ancestors. The modern Mormon church has jettisoned many of the doctrines that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young implemented. They learned from their successes and from their mistakes. Polygamy is gone. The emphasis is now on the traditional American family of a one mom, one dad, and children. Churches like to claim that they follow scriptures, but every religion picks and chooses which things to follow, and which to ignore.

It's not a bad idea to learn from our ancestors, take the good things and ingore the bad. The biggest problem is when we take the words of our ancient ancestors as the inerrant gospel truth. That's when we stop learning.

[_Coggins7]

Why do we place such importance on the writings of the ancients? What do they have to say that could possibly have relevance to life today? Why does it matter what people who have been dead for thousands of years believed about anything, let alone God or a Savior or how weather patterns worked?

Why are ancient philosophers more important than the philosophers of today?

Nothing...nothing you have ever said tells me more about who you really are than this.



Loran

[_Gazelam]

Why do we place such importance on the writings of the ancients? What do they have to say that could possibly have relevance to life today? Why does it matter what people who have been dead for thousands of years believed about anything, let alone God or a Savior or how weather patterns worked?

Why are ancient philosophers more important than the philosophers of today?

Nothing...nothing you have ever said tells me more about who you really are than this.



Loran

What baffles me is that she sits in the foyer of the temple contemplateing these things while her husband is going through ordinances for the dead.

[_Gazelam]

Harmony you state:

Why is the wisdom of ancient Eastern teachings less valuable? Or ancient Native Americans? Or ancient Muslims? Or any other ancient?

Actually whats fun is to dig through their religious teachings and see what truths they have retained and what they have corrupted.

Nibley spent a lot of time looking at these things and speaks about them.

Here: http://www.farmsresearch.com/display.php?table=insights&id=418

[_moksha]

What baffles me is that she sits in the foyer of the temple contemplateing these things while her husband is going through ordinances for the dead.

Hey, even the cafeteria is a nice place to sit there!

[_Fortigurn]

Why would you assume that the ancients I refered to were the ancient Jews?

I didn't. My answer applies to the ancient Eastern sages, the Native Americans, and the ancient Muslims. The key is the belief that the ancients were in connection with God in a way we are not.

What can ancient man tell modern man, that modern man needs to rely on the ancients for their wisdom?

A huge amount, from where I'm standing. Like 'How to raise a family without one parent running off with someone else, the kids being left to fend for themselves and becoming crack addicts, and the remaining parent indulging themselves while the kids run amok'. A few things like that. Like how to raise kids which don't shoot other kids in the face, or grow up to be serial stabbists. I think that's an important lesson modern man still hasn't mastered.

How about how to raise kids which treat teachers with respect? Who don't drift away from school and spend their lives under bridges sniffing glue? How to teach girls to respect their bodies instead of dragging them into anorexia and bulimia? How to create a society in which people aren't afraid of helping someone, in case they get hit, mugged, or sued?

How about how to grow food without destroying the soil you're using? Allegedly ignorant 'savages' managed that for 40,000 years. We somehow lost the knack after the industrial revolution. How about not soiling the water you're going to be drinking? Dogs know that, but apparently we don't. How about preserving wildlife and natural environments even if we think they don't have any intrinsic value, instead of almost wiping them out and then frantically scrabbling to preserve them when we realise we've just ruined the local ecosystem, and now crops are failing through an imbalance of natural pests, the water table has dropped 20 feet, the top soil has blown away because we knocked all the trees down, and local people are choking with respiratory diseases as a result of huge soot deposits caused by massive slash and burn operations?

Here's another good one, how to teach people that other people are more important than money. That enslaving thousands of native people in your offshore factories making US$300 shoes for US$.50 a day is unethical? That safety regulations should be obeyed even if it costs your company a lot of money? That corporate fraud is actually wrong, not 'creative accounting'? That people below a certain socio-economic status are not disposable, and that those suffering from debilitating mental illness should not be simply dumped in the streets just because the government doesn't want to spend money on healthcare?

Where do I start? Where do I stop? Modern Western society is such a mess of morally depraved, ethically deranged, selfish, snivelling misfits, that I wonder if there's any other society from any era which doesn't have something to teach us?

Modern science has debunked several of the ancient myths (young earth, global flood, evolution of man) yet we still hold onto the myths, the stories.

Because they have value. They're 'fit' memes which have survived the struggle of the centuries, in an intellectual form of natural selection.

Thousands of years worth of myth still impact global policies, still cause wars, still shorten lives.

I think it's pretty clear that the majority of major conflicts from at least the 20th century onwards have had little or nothing to do with 'Thousands of years worth of myth'. Myths are used to justify conflict, rarely do they actually require it.

The Jews were essentially given their reservation in 1949. We call it Isreal now. We supposedly were giving them back their native lands, yet we displaced thousands of people who lived there and who had lived there for a long time. We in the US stole hundreds of thousands of acres of lands owned by Native American Tribes, but we don't give it back now. What is the difference? That we accept the ancient myths of the Jews, but we don't accept the ancient myths of the NA Tribes? Injustice is injustice. If we displaced thousands of people to give ancient Isreal back to the Jews, why do we not hold ourselves to the same standard with NA tribes?

This actually has nothing to do with favouring the Jews over the Native American Indians. The nation of Israel was established by the international community, not by the US. The international community was not following a belief in the Jewish myths, and they did not displace thousands of people in order to establish the Jewish state.

Let me take you through some of the relevant Jewish history:

* The people who are now displaced comprise two different groups, the 1949 group and the 1967 group

* Those displaced in 1949 left as a result of their own choice - no one forced them to leave, the Israeli government offered them the choice of staying as equal members within the new Jewish state, with all their rights, liberties, and property intact - but the surrounding Arab nations poised to invade declared that the Arabs must leave the new Jewish state or be mown down in the war which they had declared on Israel (and certain anti-Arab terror groups in Israel also made threats against the Arab communities, and made raids which encouraged many Arabs to leave)

* Subsequent to the Arabs losing the war of 1949, thousands of Arabs had been displaced from Israel - they didn't want to return to Israel (though there was nothing stopping them doing so), and the Arab nations which had told them to get out or be trodden underfoot by invading Arab armies, now didn't want anything to do with them (Jordan was pressured by the international community into accepting some of them, but all the other Arab states washed their hands of the mess)

* These fringe dwelling Arabs were then advised by their Arab neighbors to stay on the fringe, outside Israel, until the next attempt would be made to wipe Israel out

* That attempt took place in 1967, and was a complete disaster for the Arabs, just as the first had been - only on this occasion Israel appropriated and held territory to which it had not been entitled by international law, and in the process made itself responsible for a new population of fringedwellers which was its own stupid fault (but no, it wasn't 'us' who displaced those people, it was Israel)

So the comparison between Israel and the Native American Indians is actually invalid. They're two completely different situations.

Why do we still hold onto the ancient myths, when we know that many of them were based on that which turned out to be false? When we know that many of them were based on the conditions of the time, not eternal principles? When we know that much of their wisdom was really ignorance of how the world really worked?

You would have to ask individual people that question.

[_Fortigurn]

The issue you've overlooked is that it is believed these 'ancients' were in direct communication with God. That would make their writings of greater value than the writings of philosophers today.

Why do you assume that? When I look at the scriptures, I don't see any greater wisdom or communication with God. I see men, doing exactly what men do today, trying to figure out their world. And much of what they wrote was incorrect, based on their knowledge at the time, knowledge which has grown considerably since then. When I look at the writings of ancients whose writings aren't accepted as scripture, I don't see any more or any less wisdom than those who claimed to speak for God. Much of what we still have is not scripture, Fort. Were those men in direct communication with God?

harmony, please read what I wrote carefully:

The issue you've overlooked is that it is believed these 'ancients' were in direct communication with God. That would make their writings of greater value than the writings of philosophers today.

That is the answer to your question. People pay attention to these 'ancients' because it is believed that they were in direct communication with God, which would make their writings of greater value than the writings of philosophers today.

Whether the people who believe this are right or wrong, that is the answer to your question. That is why they preserve and follow the writings of the ancients.

[_Inconceivable]

Why do we...

We as in us humans in general?

Perhaps it's a sheep mentallity of most that will cave their intellect and common sense to the security offered by the social architects of the ages.

Obviously not all is either good or evil.

I'm trying to work it all out by using the attributes of charity as one of the litmus tests. I think those that lived these principles were on to something.


I'm getting the impression that if you're feeling lost, I would be careful as to who you may trust to bring you back to any fold here. From a few of the posts above I'd be wary of hunters disguised as shepherds looking for lost sheep.

[_Fortigurn]

I'm getting the impression that if you're feeling lost, I would be careful as to who you may trust to bring you back to any fold here. From a few of the posts above I'd be wary of hunters disguised as shepherds looking for lost sheep.

Actually I think the hunters around here are pretty open about their intentions.

[_Yoda]

Why do we place such importance on the writings of the ancients? What do they have to say that could possibly have relevance to life today? Why does it matter what people who have been dead for thousands of years believed about anything, let alone God or a Savior or how weather patterns worked?

Why are ancient philosophers more important than the philosophers of today?

I think we value the ancient writings of man in the same way we value advice from our parents. They went through this before we did. They lived through things we haven't lived through yet. It's the whole "respect for your elders" concept.

I remember how stupid I thought my parents were until I was around 22...Then, all of the sudden, they seemed very wise.

;)