Page 8 of 11

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 4:35 am
by Robert Tulip
Interbane wrote:RT: "Lazarus, in the interpretation of Tom Harpur, signifies Osiris, Egyptian God of the Dead, with his cyclic sense of time that is quite foreign to the modern linear mentality."Your mention of time being cyclic is interesting. From what I understand, the arrow of time continues on in one direction quite unlike Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time." The synchronized and cyclical systems found throughout our universe unfortunately aren't perpetual motion systems. Although I'm not sure what the math says of the effects of entropy on the universe as a whole. We will forever "Big Bounce", and perhaps that is an infinite cycle.
Osiris has green skin, signifying his link with plants with their annual cycles. Harpur points out that Lazarus and Mary and Martha correlate to Osiris and Isis and Nephthys, with Lazarus in mummy gear just like Osiris. Etymologically, we have Lazarus = El Azarus = El Osiris = Osiris.

And, Osiris and Isis are listed among the subordinate devils in Paradise Lost. Strangely, Osiris' brother Set, who seems to have an etymological connection to Satan, does not get a mention in PL.

Your mention of the arrow of time raises a really interesting point. Yes, modern cosmology is linear, in that the expansion of the universe from the big bang is actually accelerating (this was discovered in the 1990s) and it appears there is nowhere near enough mass for it ever to turn around to a big crunch.

However, my view is that there is validity in constructing an intermediate cyclic cosmology, considering our solar system as the framework. If our solar system was the size of a quarter dollar, the nearest star would be one hundred yards away and our Milky Way galaxy, which is just one of billions of galaxies, would be about the size of the continental 48 states of the USA. So our system is very isolated, and it does operate with a cyclic structure of time, notably with the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune harmonic cycle discussed in the opening post here. Ten billion years, the expected life span of the sun, is not eternity, but in human terms it is effectively pretty close.

I will get back to you soon on your previous post about precession and the Bible, and Frank's comments on Earl Doherty.

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 6:51 am
by Penelope
Robert said:
Eliot first describes ordinary time, admittedly with a nod to Hesiod:
Quote:
There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. ... In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all:— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
Robert, I don't know who or what Hesiod is. :oops:

And I always thought this section above was alluding to Chapter 3 in the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. For every thing there is a season... So I find your comments absorbing. Of course I knew that Eliot's poetry had many allusions to the Greek Classics etc., but knowing very little about Greek Mythology, I have never been able to make the connection.


I am a trifle besotted with Eliot although I think one appreciates 'Prufrock' more as one reaches 'a certain age'.

I like WB Yeats very much too and feel these two poets have quite an affinity.

Prufrock is my favourite poem, and my favourite part is the very beginning, Let us go then you and I, as the evening spreads itself across the sky, like a patient etherised upon a table.....if this is misquoted, it is because I am typing from memory. Also I very much like 'sawdust restaurants with oyster shells' - my favourite kinda places.
;-)

If you have the time, Interbane and Robert, I would like to hear more of your commentaries.

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 8:19 am
by Penelope
Oh dear, I've just read my last post - completely off topic!!! I beg your pardons. :(

I am reading these posts though and making what I can of it all.

And what I really wanted ask at one point was, when Robert said to Frank
Frank, I admit I have an emotional commitment to the Gospel story, rather like Anselm's fallacious reasoning that I quoted above that a perfect story becomes even more perfect for us if we believe it is true.
Are atheists really saying that we're all alone in a Godless, Hostile and Meaningless Universe - but that we mustn't tell ourselves stories and try to fit them into our cosmic consciousness? And that we mustn't under any circumstances, laugh at our own efforts?

Fundamentalist Christians are only annoying because they've stopped laughing at themselves......and, in fact....they've stopped telling the truth...but all Deists aren't liars. The worst we can be accused of is 'undue optimism' . :cry:

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 8:51 am
by Thomas Hood
I think Frank and Robert are at cross-purposes. The idea that the Jesus story is wholly myth does not conflict with the idea that precession has had mythic influence. Both could be true.

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 10:40 am
by Frank 013
Penelope
Are atheists really saying that we're all alone in a Godless, Hostile and Meaningless Universe - but that we mustn't tell ourselves stories and try to fit them into our cosmic consciousness? And that we mustn't under any circumstances, laugh at our own efforts?
Actually I am saying why I cannot accept RT’s proposition; I am not telling him what to believe.

As you pointed out above, (and as RT has admitted) he has an emotional attachment to the gospel stories and I believe that that attachment keeps him from being objective on the matter.

Even supposing that the cosmic portion of his theory is completely correct why attempt to force it in to Christianity?

Maybe the special event that it is attached to those times is actually more inclusive of leaders within the Roman Empire… or something that happened in China… or world wide… maybe it is purely coincidence?

To suggest that the cosmos is influencing actions of people on earth and only those in Christendom is beyond a reasonable stretch.

Now if RT wants to say that the stories can be interpreted a certain way without the insistence that they were originally conceptualized that way, it would be easier to accept.

It would still be just another splinter of Christianity to me, but I would have no argument against any particular reinterpretation.

To say that the long process of creation and revision that the biblical writings went through and the almost randomly mismatched stories included in the current bible actually speak to a greater cosmic truth is again immeasurably improbable.

All of this would be fine except RT is claiming a reason based approach to the gospels.

Knowing what I know of the cultures, people and histories of those texts I personally find his interpretations too far of a leap to accept them as reasonable.

But he is free to believe what he will.

Later

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 11:32 am
by Penelope
Frank:
As you pointed out above, (and as RT has admitted) he has an emotional attachment to the gospel stories and I believe that that attachment keeps him from being objective on the matter.

Even supposing that the cosmic portion of his theory is completely correct why attempt to force it in to Christianity?
Well, no, we can't be objective....the attempt to understand something unfathomable at the present time.....is bound to be somewhat subjective.

I don't know why Robert wants to place his theory within a Christian framework...I would have thought that would detract from peoples' ability to take it seriously.....but it is his theory and so his perogative as you point out.

Thank you.

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:36 pm
by Robert Tulip
Interbane wrote:RT: "You misunderstand. Precession results in the earth spinning like a top with one wobble per 26000 years. A good scientific diagram is here. My argument is that central Christian concepts, notably Logos and the Age, are intrinsically built into this temporal structure. I claim this cyclic structure resonates with daily and annual cycles to produce real millennial periods."
Actually, I think I understand quite well, but not with any of the depth in which you understand it. My problem is with some of your phrasings. For example, you say "My argument is that central Christian concepts, notably Logos and the Age, are intrinsically built into this temporal structure." Logos and the Age aren't built into this structure, they are explanatory models helpful to our understanding of the mechanics of this structure.
Thanks Interbane, this is the sort of discussion I have looked for in vain for twenty five years. Earlier, Tom Hood teased out of me the symbolic archetypes for the twelve signs, providing the predictive content for the structure of the Ages. This predictive content indicates that we are now ending the age of belief and nearing the start of the age of knowledge, and in about 2300 years we will enter the age of use, followed by the ages of vision and desire. You can find a table at the essay I linked above. This mythic narrative for our planet pulls together the main cyclic structures of our cosmos and is what I understand as the real content of Logos – original connecting connectedness. My postulate is that this narrative framework has the same level of reality as the laws of evolution and gravity. It provides an elegant explanation for Christian ideas of the end of the world, indicating that belief-based approaches are sending the world towards destruction and need to be replaced by knowledge-based approaches.

Regarding how the Age is “built into” this cosmic cycle, my argument, re the gas giants, starts from the observation that the JSN cyclic period is 1/144th of earth’s precessional Great Year. Hence the Zodiacal Age, 2147 years, twelve JSN cycles, is the square root of the Great Year period considering the JSN period as the unit, so the Age is a sort of mechanistic hinge linking these two major stable cyclic patterns in which our planet is imbedded.
RT: "Use of such cosmic findings is a way of searching for an explanation of how our world ultimately connects to the cosmos."
This presumes our world does ultimately connect to the cosmos in some metaphysical way. Earth is a part of the heavens, and interacts in measurable ways, but this is explained mechanistically. When you say that you're searching for further explanation, I take you to mean that you believe there's some connection above and beyond the mechanistic. Could you be more precise in what this connection is?
Actually, I am suggesting a mechanistic metaphysics. I know this looks like a contradiction, but humanity is so complex that identifying deep cultural trends – the strange attractors of chaotic cultural fractals – inevitably opens questions in the domain of metaphysics, eg to what extent our society is built upon belief or knowledge. As I said before, I wish to exclude all supernaturalism from religion, so I don’t really have what is traditionally seen as metaphysical beliefs. Yet, archetypal myths of belief, for example the Easter Passion, are often immensely valuable and meaningful, so are very useful as an explanatory framework. My claim is that deep spiritual writers have a prophetic intuition of cultural fractals, providing the cosmic connection that seems to go beyond the mechanistic. However, like Marx’s idea of economic base and superstructure, spiritual ideas have a cosmic mechanistic explanation, grounded in the remorseless Laplacian clockwork of precession.
RT: "If we take this cosmic identity as the primary meaning of the Christ myth, in line with Biblical ideas such as Colossians 1:17 “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” together with the Logos imagery of John 1 “in the beginning was the Word”, I simply cannot see how we can find a rational underpinning other than interpreting Christ as a symbol of the precessional structure of time.”
If you present a vague enough prophecy, it's bound to come true. "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" is like saying "all reality is begotten from my spirit"(I just made that up, but I'm sure there's a similar phrase somewhere). You take such a general statement and use it as evidence that Christ is a symbol of the precessional structure of time! This is subjective validation, a cognitive bias. You stretch vague and general scripture to support a rational underpinning, but what exactly is a rational underpinning in the first place? A rational way to pin together your religious blues clues so that your theological worldview doesn't come crashing down?
As I noted above in claiming the Logos is built in to precession, the ‘connectedness’ of our cosmos involves real cycles. There is no other way in which “all things hold together” and this way of explaining it makes sense as a way to understand the past and predict the future. These cycles are present at each level, so the structure of the Great Year is a fractal mirror of the annual structure of the earth’s seasons, with the twelve-fold symbolism of the signs. The Cosmic Christ symbolises the entire cycle, so for the last 2000 years has been interpreted in the manifestation of belief and for the next 2000 years will be interpreted in the manifestation of knowledge.
RT: "This cycle provides the long term structure of time for our planet, and is what the ancients pointed at in numerous obscure coded references."
I wouldn't argue that the ancients discovered some of the mechanical workings of our solar system. When you say 'structure of time', you don't mean the cycle is fundamental to the workings of time, correct? It might be better to say that the precession is temporally repeating, therefore useful to us as a framework to measure longer lengths of time than a year.
The phrase ‘fundamental to the workings of time’ is complex. Yes, the lunisolar precessional wobble of the earth is as fundamental to terrestrial time as the wobble of a top would be to hypothetical creatures living on a top, but thankfully earth’s wobble is very stable. To the question ‘what is time?’ I would say time is the actual cyclic structures of the cosmos, whereas the dominant scientific view sees time as an overlay of measurement imposed by the human mind.
RT: "Your 'footprints in the sand' comment is ambiguous regarding what is 'objectively real' and what is 'metaphysical'. These are slippery concepts."
They are so much fun to ponder for that reason! The ambiguity comes from the inability of the human brain to divorce its methods of understanding reality from reality itself. We cannot know reality without our cognitive framework. When considering footprints in the sand, the only thing objectively real about them are the footprints themselves. We as deliberators can read into that pattern and reason that a creature made them. We could also be mistaken, since there are other ways footprints could be in the sand. There are two things to take from the example. One is that the footprints are distinctly separate with no objectively real connection (again, this is difficult to grasp as it requires divorcing 'understanding' from 'reality'), and the other is that the explanation for the pattern can easily be false.
It depends on the evidentiary basis. If you make footprints yourself you know you are an objectively real connection between them. There is an evidentiary forensic continuum all the way down to dubious Bigfoot prints. I am arguing that precession as a temporal structure is much higher on the evidentiary continuum than has been hitherto recognised.
RT: "I am arguing that the Logos, which the ancients identified with Christ, is objectively real and is displayed in the precessional structure of time, and that this hypothesis is a scientific argument."
Is the Logos a concept open to critical examination? Is the Logos as Christ a connection that's open to critical examination? When you say that it's 'displayed', you don't mean visually, so what do you mean?
Great questions. Yes, logos is very much open to critical examination, providing the underpinning of what we mean by reason, language and logic. The challenge here, with the claim that Christ is the logic of the cosmos, is to view the cosmos in four dimensions, with time having regular deep cyclic patterns that structure the local cosmic spatial environment. The Logos is dynamic, and freeze-frames such as Jesus on the Cross need to be located in a cosmic drama, on millennial time frames, to understand them. This is what Plato meant by describing time as the moving image of eternity – and what Colossians meant by describing Jesus as the image of the invisible God.
RT: "Your simple dogmatic assertion that it is untestable is not based on real examination, but rather on an agenda that the past errors of Christianity invalidate any effort to make religion and science compatible."
I've criticized your inclusion of religion a couple of times, but I'd like to think most of the time I've taken to critically examine what you've posted. I probe deeper, but you still have yet to offer a hypothesis directly representing what you propose that's also testable:
I appreciate your discussion of these issues Interbane, this was just noting the semantic point that if you say something is untestable, that is a much stronger (and more dogmatic) claim than to say it seems untestable. This is new territory, exploring analytical tools to explain religion in ways that have not been used before. With this point I am simply pointing to the risk of consigning ideas before they are understood. I think the claim that the world has gradually shifted from a belief-based framework to a knowledge-based framework mirrors the prediction of this model in testable ways.
RT: "Testing it is primarily a matter of systematically analysing history and the Bible against this framework."
You would discover correlations between findings in the ancient world and the workings of the solar system, but as a hypothesis this does nothing other than to show that our ancestors were able to read the stars as we are.
It does more than that by providing a path to develop a predictive explanatory model for world history.

Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2009 8:53 pm
by Interbane
RT: "This predictive content indicates that we are now ending the age of belief and nearing the start of the age of knowledge, and in about 2300 years we will enter the age of use, followed by the ages of vision and desire."

The critical question is then whether this content is predictive, as you say, or correlative. Before that can be answered, you need to clarify who decided what each age corresponds to. I couldn't find the essay you mention, so sorry if the answers are there. What this correspondence decided on a philosophical/theological basis(prophetic intuition as you say), or was the schema gained from divine inspiration directly from a higher power? If the answer is the former, then I'd say the content may have been an attempt at prediction in much the same way we predict emerging world powers or winners of a political race. In this case, the proper term is 'forecast'. I guess you'll need to clarify all this before we critically examine the prophetic intuition used to forecast these correlations.

There is also the problem of the classification of each age being ambiguous and extremely difficult to demarcate. What does it mean for us to be in the age of belief? We must be extremely wary here of subjective validation. Belief is a part of being human, and will continue to apply as a characteristic until the end of time. Faith seems to more accurately embody what this age represents. Also, there has been a great accumulation of knowledge throughout our history. The correlation between the internet boom and the upcoming age of knowledge seems to be just that, a correlation. As a correlation it lacks the precision you would expect from a natural law, such as gravity.

RT: "As I noted above in claiming the Logos is built in to precession, the ‘connectedness’ of our cosmos involves real cycles. There is no other way in which “all things hold together” and this way of explaining it makes sense as a way to understand the past and predict the future."

The cycles are real, interconnected in interesting ways, but I consider the connectedness as a mental construct to understand the interplay of mass, gravity, and time. Perhaps "all things hold together" simply means gravity. :razz2:

RT: "Regarding how the Age is “built into” this cosmic cycle..."

I apologize in advance, but i have to criticize your use of words here. If you meant something different disregard this. Saying the age is "built into" suggests a creator. Without reading volumes into this, how much do you agree with the scientific models that describe how celestial bodies formed from the primordial cosmic soup, guided by the laws of physics? Were we to be living in a different solar system with the different celestial mechanics that come with it, there would also be correlations in orbits, rotations, tilts, and constellations that we as pattern seekers would discover, then inevitably apply names. So rather than phrasing it as "built into", we are instead applying a name to a mechanical phenomenon. I realize this is little more than semantics, but I felt the need to address it.

RT: "To the question ‘what is time?’ I would say time is the actual cyclic structures of the cosmos, whereas the dominant scientific view sees time as an overlay of measurement imposed by the human mind."

Time is a slippery concept as well. The cyclic structures of the cosmos have definitive motions and points we can use as benchmarks by which to measure time. They are far less precise than the benchmark of radiation from a caesium atom, but perhaps more precise than the rotation of our galaxy(unless you include that in your cosmic structure). As a benchmark for measuring time, it's consistency comes into question. For how long will the cycles remain precisely as they are? You can expect them to be eternal until a silly little comet smashes into one of our beloved planets to throw a wrench into the Laplacian gears. If a comet doesn't suffice, name your poison. In what way would you redefine "time" if that were to happen?

RT: "If you make footprints yourself you know you are an objectively real connection between them."

Not really. It depends on how you define "connection". We could say that I'm an objectively real piece of meat, but you'd need to show me the metaphysical umbilical cord between myself and the strange arrangement of sand particles we call a footprint. Then you could say I'm an objectively real object, the footprints are objectively real(though only mentally categorized as a pattern by the arrangement of sand particles), and there's an objectively real tether connecting me to these footprints. The concept of "connection" is a mental construction in this situation. The more you've explained your stance, I see the discussion of patterns as more of a tangent, although an interesting and fun one! You're claiming the patterns are "evidence of" something, with no metaphysical connection. I can sign onto that, disregarding the other issues we're discussing.

RT: "With this point I am simply pointing to the risk of consigning ideas before they are understood."

You're right, I apologize. Yet, my hindsight bias informs me that it prompted responses with substance! :razz2:

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 5:56 am
by Robert Tulip
Penelope wrote:Robert, I don't know who or what Hesiod is. :oops:
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet, of around the eighth-century BC. Hesiod and Homer have generally been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived, and they are often paired. Eliot alludes in Prufrock to Hesiod's Works and Days, which lays out the five Ages of Man, as well as containing advice and wisdom, prescribing a life of honest labour and attacking idleness. It describes immortals who roam the earth watching over justice and injustice.
I am a trifle besotted with Eliot although I think one appreciates 'Prufrock' more as one reaches 'a certain age'. I like WB Yeats very much too and feel these two poets have quite an affinity.
Funnily enough, just yesterday in a second hand bookshop I picked up A Vision by WB Yeats - the linked site is a summary of his comments on The Great Year, linked to his idea of the widening gyre in The Second Coming. Yes there is a affinity between Yeats and Eliot in that both saw that deep poetry points to the eternal. I am now reading WB Yeats - Twentieth Century Magus by Susan Johnston Graf. Yeats poem The Two Trees is very Miltonic, describing the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. His poem Adam's Curse is the title of a 2001 book.

Posted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 9:11 am
by Penelope
Robert:
prescribing a life of honest labour and attacking idleness.
I don't know whether I like the sound of this! I'm very fond of idleness. When I work I work...and when I'm idle I'm very, very idle. Although I suppose, thinking about poetry and philosophical enquiry, whilst staring at a blank wall....is not quite idleness. It's fortunate my husband is used to me! :smile:

Thank you for the pointers Robert, I do appreciate your help. Do you know Yeat's poem- The Wild Swans at Coole? I do love it, it is beautiful, but much of it is a complete mystery to me. It was taught to me that it was about the soldiers in the Great War....but it seems to signify much more than that to me.....but I'm not sure what. :cry:

Do you think I'll be properly educated before I die?