What do you think happened to people in 1981 in Russia who criticised
Lenin? or in modern Iran and Afghanistan to people who criticize Mohomed?
It is generations later. They shouldn't be afraid, should they?
>> I used to
>> bluff my way through English classes by detecting symbolism. I could make
>> stuff up out of novels that even the author didn't know was there. I kept
>> getting A's until one class, English for non-English majors, where the Prof
>> wanted Freudian analyses of the characters in Light in August by Faulkner.
>> I had never taken Psych at the time, so I got a D in the class. THat was
>> the last english class I took. But I will tell you I was quite good at
>> making up motives and symbolisms for the various characters. All of which
>> was bunk but useful bunk because it got me A's.
>
> Sure, there's a lot of BS in freshman lit & literary criticism in general
>& it ought to be slapped down more by teachers. But if it's impossible to
convey
>any meaning at all by literature, which is what your claim amounts to,
then there's no
>point to writing anything which isn't historical narrative - which seems
indeed be your
>view. But it's a bit limited.
Actually my claim is that one shouldn't set out to find the BS in
literature and make things true that aren't true.
> What I've said about Chronicles doesn't require any arcane guesses about
>Freudian symbolism &c. The "tendency" of a redacted history which
systematically makes
>one group all good & their enemies all bad is pretty obvious. You have a
similar thing
>with the Aeneid or Geoffery of Monmouth writing to legitimate & glorify
the Augustan
>empire or the Plantagenet dynasty. But from your standpoint you can't say
that Vergil
>was a great poet with a political agenda. He was just a credulous &
sloppy historian.
But Virgil and Geoffery aren't claimed to be divinely inspired. If they
were, then there would be a different standard.
> & if its impossible to discern the meaning of non-historical texts then its
>equally impossible to see any _meaning_ or existential significance to
historical texts.
>Who cares if there was as flood in the Mediterranean 5+ million years ago
or in
>Mesopotamia 4000 years ago? It's just a fact about the ancient world, &
for any
>theological significance you can read from it I can read from it another.
Who cares? I do, regardless of whether anyone else does, I do care. A
religion can't be true if it is based upon a false history. period!
>
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution