DMMcG:

As a Christian, while also being deeply tied to environmental circles, I see five trends within my groups:

1) Ecology and Eastern Philosophies: where equalibrium and reaction drives the infinitly diverse universe. "Leave No Trace" on Your Public Lands.

2) The Mechanism of Chaos: where randomness rules reproduction, life, and death in the patterns of nature.

3) Env-feminisim: Nature is God. You came from her womb; respect your mother.

4) Christianity: God save us from the self-actualized mess that we have cast upon ourselves and our environment.

5) Numb my mind, dude: Bag a peak, then drink beer! (But don't give me weed or I'll enter into the religious trends of #1, #2, #3 or maybe even #4.)


Will you be addressing the current trends and the re-sculpting of eastern religions in post-modern scientific and environmental subcultures?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Dave'71 on 2002-07-07 22:00 ]</font>

Dave71, Yes

The 1965 immigration law opened a new period in America's encounter with Asian religions, and migration emerged as its predominant theme. Almost 40 percent of all new immigrants to the United States between 1965 and 1986 arrived from Asia, and millions of them practiced an Asian religious tradition. Christians remained the majority, but the cultural landscape of many cities had changed, with more tempes and gurdwaras around the corner and more Asians, and American converts, next door. Faced with this ne terrain, Americans began to remap the landscape during this period of passages, when revisios of the immigration laws combined with advances in communications and travel technology as well as Asian economic instabiity and political upheaval to generate crisscrossing transnational movements. In the post-1965 period, peoples, artifacts, beliefs, and practices moved back and forth between Asia and America more quickly and more often than ever before. Those passages, and the concomitant cultural exchanges, transformed both Asia and America. (more later) DMMcG

It has often been said that the prophet archetype generation that came of age during the spiritual warfare phase of the 4thGA (New Age Awakening ca. 1968-1986) were disillusioned with the West, in their judgment, a consumeristic and destructive society. Acording to this theory, this disillusionment with the West caused the cultural descendants of the "Beats" to turn to Asian spirituality. According to Marvin Harris, "Asian religion supposedly provided a critique of "the continuous expansion of wealth and power" and was responsive to the questioning of "whether the quality of life was a simple function of wealth and power, or whether the endless accumulation of wealth and power was not destroying the quality and meaning of life." Recognizing that the United States had many unsolved material problems such as racism and poverty, Bellah nonetheless insists that the crisis was brought on as much by "the success of the society" and by the "realization that education and affluence did not bring happiness or fulfillment" as by its failures. Following this line of reasoning to its logical outcome, we are led to conclude that the basic cause of the Fourth Great Awakening is a crisis of spirit and meaning rather than a crisis of practical material needs." (AN p.144) Of course Robert Fogel agrees with the theory that the cause of the 4thGA is a crisis of spirit and meaning and is a reslut of economic successes rather than failures, "Now, at the dawn of the new millenium, it is necessary to address such postmodern concerns as the struggle for self-realization, the desire to find a deeper meaning in life than the endless accumulation of consumer durables and pursuit of pleasure..." (Fogel p. 176) Again, according to Harris, "This theory, if I have represented it fairly, runs counter to the main thrust of my own interpretation of the current cultural crisis. Of course, everyone agrees that people are searching for new ultimate meanings to replace those lost or damaged during the 1960s. But can America's spiritual and religios questioning be attributed in whole or in part to material success?...It seems to me more plausable that te deepest and most characteristic impulse of the Fourth Great Awakening is not the search for ultimate meaning but the search for solutions to America's unsolved economic and social problems. The human quest for ultimate meaning is a formidable force in history, but it rarely if ever exists apart from, above, beyond, or in opposition to the quest for solutions to practical problems." (AN p. 145) (more later) DMMcG

For some conter-culturalists to the modernism of the New Frontier High-- like hero archetype Timothy Leary, "the pied piper of the psychedelic sixties"--the journey to Asiatic spirituality began with drug experimentation. Many who influenced the counter-culture--from hero archetype Alan Watts to the Beatles--traveled to Asia, where they practiced with Hindu,Sikh, or Buddhist teachers, And some of the eastward travelers returned to lecture and write about Asian religions. For example, artist archetype Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert) wrote a volume, "Be Here Now," that lay on many coffee tables and nighstands in the early 1970s. As we have seen, passages also went the other way; Asian teachers toured and lived in the United States. Artist archetypes Vivekananda and Dharmapala had come earlier, so had prophet archetype D.T. Suzuki and nomad archetype Paramahansa Yogananda, but the spiritual warfare phase of the 4thGA saw an explosion of Asian masters coming to the West. Some of them founded new religious movements that drew on Indian or Japanese traditions. Artist archetype Yogi Bhajan, who arrived in 1968 from India, spread Sikhism among European-American converts in the Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught Transcendental Meditation to millions of Americans, and Masayasu Sadanaga promoted Soka Gakkai, the Buddhist-inspired Japanese new religion. Some of these teachers and organizations, including the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Hare Krishnas) and the Rajineesh International Foundation, attracted controversy as well as converts. National news shows labeled Bhagawan Shree Rajneesh "the sex guru," while other gurus became icons of pop culture. Swami Satchidananda, for example, preached tolerance and peace to the crowds at Woodstock, and went on to establish a large Hindu community in Virginia. (more later) DMMcG

Writing during the spiritual warfare phase of the 4thGA Harris said, "It seems to me that the role of "Asiatic" spirituality in the formation and propaggation of new religious groups and rituals in the United States has been exagerated. The number of people involved in new cults, sects, and movements which have contemplation, withdrawal from worldly affairs, and other supposedly "Asiatic" motifs as their principal concern, is actually quite small by comparison with the number involved in cults and sects and movements which have a definite program for mastering worldly problems and enhancing individual material welfare. The point seems rather self-evident for those Americans who want to predict the future from horoscopes, cure illness through shamanic trances, or disable their boss or teacher by sticking pins in dolls. These are all techniques for mastering the world rather than retreating from it...the predominant recurring theme is that of mind over matter...Similar extreme forms of mentalism--belief in the omnipotence of thought--characterize the principles and goals of the more "meditative" human-potential disciplines." (AN pp.145-147) The turn to Asiatic religions from East,Central, and West Asia and other forms of extreme idealism during the New Age Awakening was in large measure a response to the collapse of the so-called Industrial Revolution in America which began around 1968 and was pretty well completed by 1986. At the beginning of the period America was described as possessing a "blue collar" manufacturing society in which a single bread winner could achieve the so-called "American Dream," which, in effect meant, to achieve consumption levels at the standards set during the New Frontier High. By the end of the period to achieve this level of consumption two adults working became the norm along with various forms of anti-natalism. By 1986, the economy of course had been transformed into a "white and pink collar" service economy and society had become accustomed to abortion on demand, the pill and other forms of birth control, the "sex for joy" movement, gays coming out of the closet, and careers for women outside the home with DINC (double income no children) being the fastest rising income tax filling status. Again, all of this to maintain the "50s" level of cosumption. "That Americans are now resorting to magical formulas and shamanic states of consciousness to predict and influence the course of events is an intelligible reaction to the disappointing cosequences..." of an economy in decline. (AN p.146) "It is true that many of the better-known and more controversial "cults" represent themselves as being opposed to the materialism and consumerism of American society...Yet each of these cults has a definite worldly commitment--a yearning for control--which contradicts the notion that the current religious awakening is best unerstood as an Asian-inspired "critique of the expansion of wealth and power."(ibid.) An East Asian religious import during the period that best illistrates the use of spirituality to obtain political power is that of The First Unification Church of the Reverened Sun Myung Moon. (more later) DMMcG

On 2002-07-07 21:58, Dave'71 wrote:
DMMcG:

As a Christian, while also being deeply tied to environmental circles, I see five trends within my groups: ...

2) The Mechanism of Chaos: where randomness rules reproduction, life, and death in the patterns of nature...

This reveals how little you understand about evolution and nature. Randomness does NOT rule nature, not even entropy. Natural selection is NOT random. Randomness is only a component in the evolutionary equation. Genetic drift IS random, of course, but the genes themselves are deterministic as hell with their conscripted survival agendas. Unlike the Christian world view of Divine Certitude, natural life is quite comfortable with chance and necessity. That would be something like a prayer at the craps table by a destitute Christian for Divine Intervention. Good luck.

The origin and development The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (a.k.a. The First Unification Church) can be used to describe the mind over matter approach taken by highly syncretized religious systems in America during the spiritual, cultural and actual warfare phases of the 4thGA ca. 1968-2019(?). First of all, at the same time that devotees of the "Orientalized" religious traditions are being trained to think that matter is an "illusion" at best or even "evil" at worst, the leadership of the religious tradition are themselves acquiring huge amounts of material goods for the purpose of obtaining earthly power. In 1981. "A former Moonie, Alan Tate Wood, for example explains that Reverened Moon's final victory can come about in two ways: through ideological battle or through physical force. "What was settled ideologically would be settled peacefully. But those who did not come along willingly would be scourged with the worldly arsenal of napalm and nukes." To create the "material base" for the impending battle, the Moonies own and operate several factories in Korea, one of which manufacrures rifles. They maintain a corps of lobbyists in Washington and engage in an aggressive program of real estate purchases. Members view that the expansion of the cult's factories, stores and real estate holdings as evidence of a favorable tide in the cosmic struggle. The need to create the material base for the spiritual war dominates the actual daily life of the Moonie communes. Moonies spend far more time recruiting, panhandling, and selling than meditating or praying. The bulk of Moon's income comes from the sale of flowers, candles and candies by teams of cult members who roam through airports, shopping centers, offices, factories, and suburban neighborhoods, driven by a need to meet daily quotas that would dismay even the best of Fuller Brush man or Avon ladies. To fill their quotas, the Moonies are taught how to "chant-pray-run while practicing "Heavenly Deception'---misleading customers into believing that their money is going to feed starving children or combat Drug abuse. When Christopher Edwards, another former Moonie, objecte to the practice of Heavenly Deception, the head of his flower-selling team retorted. "So what? It's for his soul and the glory of Heaven. Look wouldn't you deceive a little to save the man's soul?...Its turning Satin against himself, using Satin's money to build the Heavenly Kingdom." Chanting, praying running trough grueling eight-hour days with time out for eating a grapefruit, former Moonie Barbara Underwood confesses she wanted to make "millions of dollars" to purchase and maintain hotels, resorts, palatial residences from Chicago to New Orleans, training and living centers, college campuses, yachts and even The Empire State building and Pan Am building. "Instlled in us was the firm belief that Moon must reclaim all ownership of money and land from Satan's stockpile." " Christians think that the Messiah must be poor and miserable," says a Unification Church training manuel. "He did not come for this. Messiah must be the richest. Only He is qualified to have dominian over things. Otherwise neither God nor Messiah can be happy." (AN p.150) (more later) DMMcG

The Unification Church owes both its origin and preservation to one man, hero archetype Sun Myung Moon. Moon was an intense anti-communist. He was North Korean born during the cultural warfare phase of the 3rdGA during, the New Freedom Unraveling ca.1912-1929, in 1920. He became a Presbyterian minister but was defrocked in 1948. His devotees know him as the "God-Priest, Shining Sun and Moon." "In 1946, Moon claims, he came upon the key to all humankinds problems: Satan had sex with Eve in the Garden of Eden. Moon became convinced that he was God's chosen instrument to reverse the fall of humankind caused by Eve's sin. In line with this new commission and his conviction that he was divinity, a new Messiah..." he began to build his Church. (Kyle p.333) In a theological sense this interpretation of the Genesis Cosmology is both fascinating and sad. It is sad because in it we can see the consequences of the devolution of the Augustinian notion which sees the "Original Sin" as sexual in nature which it is not. As I have shown eldewhere, the original sin was a violation at the level of production (i.e.food) not at the level of reproduction (i.e. sex). But evenso the dominant belief concerning original sin remains sexual in nature. The sex as sin complex continues to exist at various places and during various moments in time. In antiquity, the concept was found most famously associated with the terms Manichaeanism and Gnosticism. This notion of sex as sin and matter as evil had been part of the culture of southern France since the time of the spiritual warfare phase of the Albigensian Awakening ca.1204-1231. During this period a neo-Manichaean cult was established at the town of Albi and protected by the Counts of Toulouse. The cult was "symbollically" repressed by Dominican preachers and Fransciscan revivalists and in a more practical way by an "internal crusade led by northern French knights under the inspiation of Philip Capet, King of France and a third Roman Pontif named Innocent. Aristocratic members of the House of Bourbon were among many members of their class to be drawn towards the dualism of Manichaeanism and their capital city of Navarre was quickly becoming a center for the protection of non-traditional or even heretical thologies. Of no little significance is the fact that the city of Navarre and the Bourbon family were influential in the developing thoughts of prophet archetype John Calvin during the cultural warfare phase of the Lutheran Awakening ca. 1542-1571. Under the influences of Albigensianism, Augustinianism and Neo-Patonic humanistic idealism, Presbyterianism was born. Presbyterianism would evolve to become the dominant fundamentalist culture of the Hanoverian steady state high ca.1702-1727. This was the high that counter-culturally produced that neo-Classical modernism that emerged full force during the spiritual warfare phase of the 1stGA. Of course Moon and his theology was heir to the Calvinist cosmological view in his Presbyterian ministry. In Moon's Comology, "The first Adam and Eve were God's initial creations who fell into sin. They were supposed to establish the kingdom of heaven on earth through their offspring. "The goal of creation was thwarted, however, by Adam and Eve's sin." Eve's beauty attracted Lucifer, and he entered into a sexual relatioship with her. Their sexual intercourse constituted the spiritual fall of humanity. When Eve became involved in this illicit relationship with Lucifer, "She received spiritual insight and realized that she had violated the purpose of creation." She then had sex with Adam in an endeavor to restore her relationship with God. This second relationship constituted the physical fall of humanity. So both the spiritual and the physical aspects of the Fall were closely connected with sexuality." (Kyle p.337) DMMcg

It is small wonder, with a cosmology like this, why Moon was excommunicated by the Presbyterian Church of Korea in 1948 under charges of heresy. It is also a small wonder why many religious scholars only marginally recognize that the Unfiation Church as Christian and only then in the sense that Mormonism is considered Chtistian. But the Morman/Moonie comparison is theologically significant and worthy of further study. And Moons cosmology alfo explains the religios ritual known as the Pikaruna. "In 1955 the South Korean authorities arrested Moon on charges of practicing Pikaruna, ablood-cleansing sex ritual, with women of his own congregation. The case was dropped, however, because the government could not get enough witnesses to testify against Moon. According to John Newport, Pikaruna is based on the belief that because "orginal sin came through Eve's sexual itercourse with Satin," a woman could have sex three times woth Moon (the perfect man) and thus "liquidate her original sin." After intercourse with Moon a woman achieved a perfected status, and male church members could have sexual relations with her and liquidate their own sin. Couples experiencing "thid blood cleansing [could] produce perfectchildren." If practiced widely enough, such a ritual could save the world." (Kyle p.334) In the history of religion one might be inclined to simply disregard the Unification Church as a rather arcane and probably short lived phenomena occuring at the turn of the twentieth to twety-first centuries were it not for its enormous political inluence among fundamentalist conservstive groups in the United States from its first expressions in the couter-culture of the New Frontier steady state to its most recent manifestations in the actual warfare phase of the 4thGA ca. 1986 to the present. "During the 1960s the church in the United States grew slowly. under the leadership of Young Oom Kim, David S.C. Kim and Colonel Bo Hi Pak, centers were established mear universities, a periodical, "New Age Frontiers", was begun, and political activities got under way, In 1972 Moon received a revelation to move his headquarters to the United States. He laubched this move by conducting a series of rallies in major American cities. Growth of the American church, as Gordon Melton notes, was spurred by Moon's move to the United States. "During the years 1972-1976 it grew from a few hundred members to around 6,000. International headquarers were established in New York City and missions were initiated throughout the world." The Unification opened centers in most states and began intense fundrasing efforts to give the church a solid financial basis. In 1975 the church established the Unification Theological Seminary to train its future leaders. To further his broad vision and gain acceptance for his church, Moon made major efforts to penitrate various levels of American society. He acquired two major newspapers, one in Washington, D.C., and one in New York. He has attempted to broaden his ecumenical appeal by joinng with other churches to combat certain social problems. He financed the production of a Hollywood film about the Korean War. He also has sought acceptance fom the scholarly world by sending select church members to top graduate schools and by organizing a Washington think tank, a peace academy and numerous academic conferences." (Kyle pp.335-336) One of the two newspapers acquired by Moon in 1978 is the Washington Times. The Washington Times, as everyone knows, was established to be a conservative counter-balance to the percieved liberal bias of the Washington Post. Reporters and columnists from the Washington Times have flooded the airwaves and the Republican revolution in 1994 owes a good deal of its success to the Times. Indeed, the new Editorial Page Editor of the Times is none other than Tony Blakely who had been Newt Gingrich's cheif of Staff. (more later) DMMcG

Dr. McGuiness, you stae that the moonies believe that they are Christians and that nearly all mainstream theologians only "consider them Christian in the sense that mormons can be considered Christians. Based on what you have told us about the almost manichian-like believes of sex being bad coupled with it's direct polor opposite (that a woman can sleep with the leader and become pure and thus have purification effects on all men she thereafter encounters intimately), I can hardly see anything Christian about that. Chriat never peached that! In fact, his minstry to the samaritian woman at the well was to FORGIVE her for being with multiple men. Where the heck do the moonies find their connection with Christianity other than thier extreme perversion of what the creation story is all about? Do they reflect to teaching ocf Christ? Why do they consider themselves Christian? Please respond with a direct answer if you can. thanks!

Bernadette, very excellant questions. If I don't answer questions as completely as one would want it is due to my lack of time. Although I do tend to "work at my own pace," I have several ex-wives and numerous bartenders who expect that pace to be filled with money making activity. I am a slow writer with half wit tendancies and a little ADD thrown in for good measure. As far as Moon's Christianity is concerned he began as a Presbyterian which most would categorize as Christian mainstream. His doctrines made him a heritic. Again, this is not unusual in Christian history. His heresy has cosmological significance since he, like St. Paul, interprets the Christian Cosmology in the light of his own cultural experience. That experience was informed not just by Calvin, Augustin and Mani but by Korea as well,and, more specifically, by the Korean War. The unfortunate truth is that there is a high degree of probability that his interpretation of the "sin of Eden" metaphore is highly inacurate. Many Christian movements in hstory have been anti-sexual in there teachings and most if not all of them have focused on original sin as sexual in nature ( a good book on tis subject was written by Panatti several years ago entitled "The sacred origins of profoud things"). The simple truth is that the sinful action metaphorically described in Genesis was a change in diet. You know, they were told not to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The serpent tempts Eve and she eats and persuades Adam also to eat. They fall, we fall. Only after the change in diet (mode of Production) do we hear about eye opening and a change in attitude towards sexuality (i.e. mode of reproduction)--shame on you, shame on me, shame on us all. HTH DMMcG

Fogel believes that the, "rising popularity of Zen Buddhism, the various meditation cults, civl religion, naturalistic religions and post modernist literary theory all gave testimony to a loss of faith in the progressive modernism of the Third Great Awakening and the desirefor alternative faiths." (Fogel pp.30-31) But in his considerations of Asian influebces in America, Fogel failed to consider other forms of Asian spirituality that have become commonplace in the fundamentalist culture of the 4thGA. Indeed, the Asian religious tradition that has had the greastest hold on American spiritual culture is that of the South Central Hindu tradition of India. My contention is a simple one; that the linguistic culture of both India and the United States is, at its core, Indo-European. This linguistic connection implys other imprtant cultural connections. In fact, many acholars view modern India as a case study or living laboratory in the study of ancient Indo-European forms of "Paganism." This linguistic link between the languages of India and the languages of Eastern and Western Europe , the Americas and other Central Asian countries has been known since the nineteenth century and many scholars have classified many cultural links that can be traced back to something like a hypothetical Indo-European proto-culture. Especially one can find specific links between Hindu culture and other ancient Indo-Europan speakers like the Aryans, Iranians, Kassites, Mittani, Hittites, Mycenaean and Classical Greeks, Persians, Romans, and Germans. The most commonly used symbol that schoars have used to illustrate this cultural connection is that of the Indo-European Triad. In the Poltical Economy of the Indo-European culture one finds triads that express meaning in consideration of both the church and the state. I other words triads are found in their governments and their gods. For example, the ancient Greeks politically expressed themselves with a Basileus (king), Ekklesia (assembly), and Gerousia (council of elders). The king of their gods was, of course, Zeus (mind), who had only two legitamate divine children, Dionysus (body), and Athena (spirit). The ancient Romans had a Rex (king), Comitia (assembly), and Senate (council of Elders). The Romans inherited the triad of the Indo-European speakng Etruscans with Yupiter (mind), Maris (body), and Minerva (spirit). Of course, there is the well-known Hindu triad of Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. The Persians had Ahuramazda, Mithra and Anahita. The Anglo-Saxons matched this with Woton (tag), Thor (tag), and Fria (tag). The Celts used Tyrannos, Esus, and Teutates. And in the United States it is the "balance of power" invested in a President, Congress and Supreme Court and a "Trinity" of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. From its very beginnings Euro-American culture had already been forever linked to the Hinduism of Central Asia. (more later) DMMcG

But Western thought was criticaly inflenced by Central Asian cuture at the very end of the period I have labled Orientaliation I ca, 815-569 B.C. during the spritual warfare phase of the modernist Zoroastrian/Solonian Aakening ca. 597-569 B.C.. In the city of Miletus on the southeastern shores of the Aegean Sea two contemporary prophet archetypes named Thales and Anaximander are credited with the "discovery" of a rational, philosophical and scientific way of knowing. Of the two, Anaximander was the most influenced by Central Asian thought that had been filtered through the spirituality of his prophet archetype contempoary Zoraster (Zarathustra) the Persian. Thales, Anaximander and Zoroaster were all generational contemporaries of prophet archetype Daniel of the lions den fame and Babylonian Captivity of the Jews. All four men would have been children during the great days of artist archteype Jeremiah of Juda duing the fundamentalit steady state high of the Shabakan Awakening ca. 627-597 B.C.. Anximander was two generations older than hero archetype Pythagoras of Samos who was even more influnced by Central Asian ideas. In the same generation as hero archetype Pythagoras in Asiatic Greece was the Central Asian hero archetype Siddharta Gautama whose own "Buddhism" was also inspired by Zoroastrian dualism and the spiritual traditions of both Central and East Asia. The crisis created
in the wake of the rise of the Persian Empire, during the actual warfare phase of the modernist Zoroastrian/Solonin Awakening ca. 539-510 B.C., saw mot only the coming of Age of the Buddha and Pythagoras but also the dramatist and hero archetype Aeschylus whose major claim to fame he tells us was that he was "a Marathon fighter." The Greek prehistorian Hecataeus of Miletus and Nehemia of Juda were also hero archetypes whose "researches" produced the writing of linear sacred and profane histories as opposed to the writing of cyclicl sacred and profane histories. (more later) DMMcG

Prophet archetype Thales was, according to most scholars, the founder of the science of Physics. He is said to have been a native Semitic speaker who was possibly of Phoenician origin. He is also the founder of an intellectual process I call "myth rationalysis." We know that Thales' early thoughts were condioned by the avalanche of mythic information comining into Miletus from West Asia as a result of both economic and poitical contacts. A great deal of this West Asian mythic material came to Miletus via the new trading colony that had been established jointly by the Aeginitans, Samians, and Miletians at Naucratis in the Nile Delta as early as the actual warfare phase of the fundamentalist Shabakan awakening ca. 658-627 B.C.. Like the Sumerians and Babylonians in Mesopotamia, Thales believed that earth, water, and air existed together within a spherical membrane that was surrounded by fire. In the sacred materialist cosmology of Sumer and Babylon the spherous membrane was that of the skin of a slain Dragon named Tiamat. Her skin had been placed, in vaulting fashon over the sky and under the water and earth by the lord of the Air named Enlil by the Sumerians and Marduk by the Babylonians. Thales, like the Sumero-Babylonians, believed that earth floated on water in a bowl. Above and placed on this bowl was a second inverted bowl. The two hemispheres came togeter to create the ball within which humans dwelled. The two theories of humans living in a sphere are identical, however Thales rejected the sacred view of the world with its gods and dogma in favor of a profane view that sought out rational and logical explanaions of material phenomena. Thales followed the same practice when he speculated about the origin of the world. Again, like the ancint West Asians, Thales taught that things were not always the way things are now and that there must have been a very different beginning. He reasoned that in the beginning, there must have been some original prime substance from which all matter was derived derived. For this reason Thales is described as the first "materialist" philosopher/scientist. He is the intellectual ancestor of the modern scientific way of knowing. In this lineage, in addition to Thales we find Leucippus of Miletus and Democratus of Abdera, Aristotle of Athens, Thomas Aquinas, Isaac Newton and Karl Marx. (more later) DMMcG

By rationalizing ancient West Asian cosmological myths, Thales reasoned that water was the logical candidate for the prime substance from which all things evolved. In the Egyptian cosmology hales knew that the creator god Ptah sat on a primevil mountain that had risen out of watery Atum. In the cosmology of Sumero-Babylonia, from which he drew hisown world view, the Dragon Tiamat dwelled in the muddy AB-ZU. Even the Hebrew cosmology has the "Spirit of God" hovering above the "waters." Homer believed that "ocean" surrouded the earth. The Greeks already believed that water was living animate stuff--wter moved --gushing out of springs, flowing in rivers, currents in the sea, and plants needed water to grow. Therfore water must not only be alive, but it must have the power to generate life. Combining the experiential evidence of his senses along with his own observations and myth rationalysis it seemed rasonable to Thales that all forms of matter and living things must have evolved from water. It is important to note that Thales viewed water in literal terms in the way that we would understand water as H2O rather than seeing it as representing the mode of reproduction and ritual purgation a it was understood in the mythopoetics of ancient West Asia. (more later) DMMcG

As I have already pointed out, prophet archetype Anaximander of Miletus was a generational contemporary of Thales and is generally considered to have been his student. If that were indeed the case then the same kind of student/teacher rift as will have existd betwen hero archetype Plato and his prohet arcetype studet Arstotle of Athens.This is so since Thales and Anaximandr like Arisotle and Plato differed in their philosophie of kowledge. For Thales and later Aristotle knowledge is brought about through an understanding of matrial causes that enters the conscosness of humans throuh the five senses of smell, taste, touch, seeing, and hearing. Unlike the materialist philophies of Thales and Aristotle, Anaximander and later Plato are examples of the mind-over matter compex and an early form of rational idealism. Indeed, if Thales be regarded as the founder of Physics, Anaximander is seen as the founder of metaphysics. Unlike the materialists, Anaximander reasoned that the ultimate substance of cosmic matter could not be found among the empirically given forms of matter, like water. All of these he considered to be "limited." He postulated a creative substance he called the "unlimited." Wtth this one thought Anaximander was creating a gulf between the materialist and the Ideologue. According to Anaximander, the "unlimited" is distiguishable from all perceptible forms as a "transcedent reality" that could not be empirically proven and that requires a "leap of faith" from the materialisticaly provable to a non-provable ideology. Mne "unlimited" theory seems to have been derived from the Hindu myth known as the "cosmic dream of Shiva." According to the myth, all realty is made up of elements that were being dreamed by the creator/destroyer god Shiva. Periodically the god would rouse from his dreams and all exitence would come to an end. When the god returned to his sleep, the cosmic dream would be dreamt again and all existence would once again come into being. All reality is actually in the mind or thoughts of the creator god. The material world becomes an illusion, a dream, and what becomes real are the inner workings of the mind. Shiva's dreaming became the Anaximanders "unlimited." Anaximanders philosophy like that of the hero archetype Buddha was influenced by the dualism of Zoroaster the Persian. Like the earlier Zoroaster and later Buddha Anaximander saw creation in terms of opposition. According to Anaximander, after the emanaton of the unlmited, the "hot" moved outward and away from the "cold" which moved inward. The "cold" itself sepaated into a pair of opposits the "wet" and the "dry." THat is to say, dry earth, wet water, cold air and hot fire all a creation of the etheric mind of god. (more later) DMMcG

The opposites of hot,cold,wet and dry are simpe classifications of the four elements of earth,water,air and fire. Thierry of Chartres in the twelfth century A.D. used the same myth rationalizing technique used by Thales to find the same four elements rendered mythooetically in the opening lines of Genesis which he "translated" as "In the beginning God created the hot fire (the heavens) and the cold earth (earth) and was an AB-ZU (mud=earth and water) wet water (the Abyssou) and the dry air (breath) of God hovered above the wet water. That is to say creation of earth water air and fire. We now know that this mythopetic structure owes its origins to Ayurvedic Hinduism and its understanding of the mythic device known as the Hermetic Caducaeus. As I indicated earlier, it was hero archetype Pythagoras of Samos in Asiatic Greece, who came of age as a young adult during the actual warfare phase of the Zoroastrian/Solonian Awakening ca. 539-510 B.C., that was most obviously influenced by the Hinduism of South Cental Asia. One might suggest that Pythagoras and his group must have had a similar effect in the ancient Greek polis that the saffron robed Hare Krishna's had in America during the spiritual warfare phase of the fundamentalist New Age Awakening ca. 1968-1986. One of Pythagoras' most prominent teachings included the Karmic belief in metempsychosis, the transmigration of the soul from species to species. Another teaching was that of humans possessing a knowledge of a pre-existence in a past life, that is to say a memory of former existnce. A belief system that is commonly believed by devotees of the New Age sects of the 4thGA ca. 1969-20??. Pythagoras also believed and taught that the human soul was a "fallen divinity," a description of the human soul usd by devotees of the Church of Scientology of the 4thGA. This fallen divinity, according to Pythagoras, was confined within te body as a tomb and condemned to an endless series of reincarnations as man, plant or animal (Hindu Karma) from which, however it may win release by the cultivation of Apolline purity Hindu Nirvana. Devotees of the Pythagorean cult believed that their souls could be purified and immortalized through the disciplined practice of meditative movement psycho-technologies(Yoga) and food Taboos (vegiterianism). There isn't so far any indication that Pythagoreans thought bovines to be sacred, but that would not surprise me. The Pythagorean ashrams represent a particular kind of sect that is known as a "cult of number." Of course, the geometry of the Pythagorean theorem is forever the symbol (like the Indo-European Triad) of both the man and his metaphysics of elevating mind over matter. Initiation to the Pythagorean cult was obtained after completing a thourough going study of the "mathematics of the perfect solds" with the most complex, the Dodekahedron, held for last. Central to Pythagorean thought was his discovery of the numerical ratios during the principle intervals of the music scale from whence he was led to interpret the world as a whole through numbers. He and his devotees deemed it significant that a point could be represented by one, a line by two, a plane by three, and a sold by four. Moreover, the total of 1,2,3,and 4 is 10. Of some cosmological significance is the idea credited to Pythagoras that the earth was a sphere upon which humans dwelled as opposed to the view held by Sumero-Babylnians, Hebrews, Thales and Hecataeus that had humans living inside a ball. The spherical earth was soon to return to its spherical shell in the cosmology of Pythagoras' spiritual descendant, hero archetype Plato of Athens. Plato came of age as a young adult during the actual warfare phase of the fundamentalist Periclean Aaakening ca. 414-387 B.C.. (more later) DMMcG

Plato's rational cosmology placed the spherical earth upon which humans dwell at the center of a universe of nested spheres upon which the starry nomads wander, the Planatoi. This cosmology was fully worked out by the second century A.D. artist archetype Egyptian astronomer Claudius Ptolemy during the fundamentalist steady state of the Trajanic High ca. 102-130. Like Anaximander and Pythagoras, Plato was a thorough going idealist whose major cosmological ideas have their cultural origins in the Hinduism of South Central Asia. Plato's philosophy, I believe, can be reduced and archetypified in the School at Athens he called the "Academy," and his epistemology recorded in his famous "allegory of the cave." Central to Plato's philosohphy of knowledge is his notion that the process of learning about ideas is actually a process of remembering about ideas from a pre-birth pre exitence in a "world of ideas." The less real world of matter being a very dim reflection of the more real world of ideas. In this abstraction you can see how the "world of ideas" is none other than a rationalization of the mythic "cosmic dream of Shiva." Plato's ideas are Shiva's dreams and, for Plato and his followers, now called Academics, all matter is actually the creation of an interior trenscendent thought. Again, like Anaximander and Pythagoras we find the "mind-over-matter" complex that degrades any attempt to search out material causes and instead encourages dangerous forms of intellectual subjectivism that sees sociey and its culture in very many relativistic ways. Some time later, during the Early Medieval Paradigm and during the spiritual warfare phase of the modernist Augustinian Awakening ca. 388-421 A.D. a prophet archetype bishop of the North African town of Hippo turned "Shiva's dream" into a "City of God." Of course Platonic academic mentalism dominated the Hellenistic educational system that became encapsulated in the "Seven Liberal Arts" school curricula. The Platonic lberal arts were a central part of the rational counter-culture of the Medieval Paradigm ca. 161-1122 A.D. But Platonic idealism became culturally enshrined as Academic Humanism in the Florentine Academy founded by Marcilio Ficino under the patronage of the wealthy banking family, the Medici. Later on still, Shiva was introduced to Luther and Calvin by Augustine of Hippo. Renaissance Academic Humanism and its "seven liberal arts" curriculum dominated European education until the onset of the age of science that began sometime during the lifetime of nomad archetype Isaac Newton. By Newton's time, Capitalists had learned an important simple fact, science sells. That is to say that there are very practical money making and power maintaining benefits that will acrue by adding the study of science and its technologies to the "academic" curricula. After Newton, a proper education was one that would includ the study of science and schools of Arts and Sciences were born. However the union has never been a good fit and C.P. Snow has observed this relationship in action in contemporary academia. Snow concluded that their are two cultures at war with one another in the colleges and univerities in Europe and America. The chasm that divides the scientific "materialists" from the "idealist" Academic Humanist is deep and bloody with many casualties on both sides. The major battle lines are drawn in the various disciplines of the Social and Behavioral sciences, with major skirmishes fought in Anthropology and History departments throughout the land. As we have seen, this is the same dichotomy that divided the prophet archetype Thales the materialist from prophet archetype Anaximander the idealist, the hero archetype idealist Plato from his prophet archetype materialist student Aristotle. The same rift divides the idealistic theology of Augustine of Hippo from the materialistic theology of Thomas Aquinas. As I said, it divides scholarship still. But it is for this reason that materialists such as myself link the idealism of contemporary Academic Humanism alongside other psycho-mystico-intellectual idelisms appearing in the New Age fundamentalism of the 4thGA. Since it too ultimately owes its existence to the subjective idealist spiritual traditions of South Central Asia. And it was for this reason that Marvin Harris said that, "The prevailing consciosness among rhe majority of professionals concerned with explaining lifestyle phenomena is virtually indistinguishable from Consciousness III." (CPW&W p. 255) (more later) DMMcG

It is not insignificant that the vast majority of trained professionals in the social and behavioral sciences in both Europe and America are products of the extreme idealism of Academic Humanism. For that matter the educational systems from kindergarden to graduate school in both Europe and America too are dominated by an approach that emphasizes philosophical idealism as good and philosophical materialism as evil. In his consideration of the 4thGA, Robert Fogel too gives ample evidence of his academic idealism in his discussion of the concept he calls "self-realization." For Fogel, in the history of Western Civilization, self-realization was originally the response that Greeks were giving to the Socratic question, "What is the good life"? "In a world in which all but a small percentage are lacking in adequate nutrition and other necessities of life, self-realization may indeed seem like mere ornament, but not in a country where even the poor are rich by past or Third World standards. That is the case in America today since the poverty line is at a level of real income that was attained a century ago only by those in the to 10 percent of the income distribution. Technophysio evolution (the interaction of thecnological progress and physiological improvement) has made it possible to extend the quest for self-ralization from a minute fraction of the population to almost the whole of it." (Fogel pp.2-3) So, as Fogel argues, since the attempt at the distribution of material resources by devotees of the 3rdGA has proven to be such a moral disaster, the goal of the 4thGA must be a distribution of "spiritual" resources to the poor. This process, of course, would be a much less expensive proposition on the part of Americas "tax payers." But of course the answer to the Socratic question was one of virtue and vice and it is always easy for the rich to give advice to the poor about thrift and self discipline and the importance of self-reliance and personal responsibility. But Socratic virtues have there vices as well and we should all be wary of the age old problem that I have mentioned before about "spiritualizing the plight of the poor." The vices of gluttony and greed and for that matter pride must always be placed in the mix or else the sermon may simply be a form of obscurantism. Fogel's descriptions of self-realzation does betray a bit of his Brahmanist tendancies and does remind us of amother search for self-realization brought to the United States from Central Asia. Back in 1920, Paramahansa Yogananda "formed a small center in Boston. By 1935 his movement had spread to the West Coast, where the Self-Realization Fellowship was formed with national headquarters in Los Angeles...By the early 1970s the movement had forty-four centers in the United States with about 200,000 people involved in it at various levels." (Kyle p 134) Yogananda was not a Hindu of the Vedantist type like Swami Vivekananda. He was a Yogi, who based his teachings and trainings on the fundamentalist principles of the "Yoga Sutras" of Patanjali who flourished during the spiritual warfare phase of the Essene Awakening ca. 105-76 B.C.. Yogananda taught "that underneath all limitations and frustrations, people are an eternal soul. They have the drive and the capacity for love, joy, and power. But because of ignorance they misdirect their energy toward outward hings in the material world. As a yogi, Yogananda brought to America not only this teaching but also techniques for implementing it." (Kyle p.134) One of the ways that Fogel says that self-realization can be achieved is "...through an occupation. Success in occupations requires a work ethic...a sense of discipline...the capacity to focus and concentrate one's effort...a sense of discipline...the capacity to resist the lure of hedonism...the successful realization of a goal requires a capacity for self-education...a thirst for knowledge...an appreciation for quality..." and "...self esteem." To which he adds, "Excess self-esteem also produces vanity and undermines the capacity to learn from others." (Fogel pp.206-207) The psycho-technological practice of Yoga taught by Yogananda has as its object a "separation from the material world." (Kyle p. 134) Back in India Yoga meditation is practiced primarily by members of the upper castes and, of course, would never be practiced by such as the untouchables. Yoga pracice and other types of ego-centered Hindu self-realization techniques are said to "unify a persons inner being, and the accompanying understanding of the basic unity of all things in Brahman. This self-realization or God-realization entails an experiential union with the divine spark within, and a mystical encounter with the all-power in the universe." (ibid) Fogel says that, "Self-realization is not something that can be provided to the weak by the strong; rather, it involves individual choice. However, the quality of the choices made and the range of available opportunity depend critically on how well endowed an idividual is with spiritual resources." (Fogel p.235) It is useful at this point to consider something about the distribution of spiritual resources and self-realization as they are found practiced in India itself. The search for Brahmin consciousness is, as I have already pointed out, primarily the spiritual prerogative of the upper castes in Hindu society. One could argue that in fact that the practice of Yoga is actually producing a form of self-hypnosis that allows the greedy to ignore the plight of the poor. Some scholars of religion have noticed that many devotees of Yoga and other forms of Central Asian psyco-technologies are seeking to deal with the uniquly Christian problem of guilt. These same scholars have pointed to the work of such Christians as Mother Teresa of Calcutta as a way of showing how the Karmically saved ignore the suffering of the poor. Of course the "sacred cow" of Hinduism is the "sacred cow." "In the Trivandwan district of the state of Kerala, in southern India, I interviewed farmers about the cause of death of their domestic cattle. Every farmer insisted that he would never deliberately shorten the life of one of his animals, that he would never kill it or starve it to death. Every farmer ardently affirmed the legitimacy of the standard Hindu prohibition against the slaughter of domestic bovines. Yet it soon became obvious from the animal reproductive histories I was collecting that the mortality rate of male calves tended to be almost twice as high as the mortality rate of female calves. In fact, male cattle from zero to one years old are outnumbered by female cattle of the same age group in a ratio of 67 to 100. The farmers themselves are aware that male calves are more likely to die than female calves, but they attribute the difference to the relative "weakness" of the males. "The males get sick more often," they say. When I asked farmers to explain why male calves got sick more often, several suggested that the males ate less than the females. One or two suggested that the males ate less because they were not permitted to stay at the mother's teats for more than a few seconds. But no one would say that since there is little demand for taction animals in Kerala, males are culled and females reared. The emics of the situation are that no one knowingly or willingly would shorten the life of a calf. Again and again I was told that every calf has the right to life regardless of its sex. But the etics of the situation are that cattle sex ratios are systematically adjsted to the needs of the local ecology and economy through preferential male "bovicide." Although the unwanted calves are not slaughtered, they are more or less rapidly starved to death. Emically, the systemic relationship between Kerala's cattle sex ratios and local ecological conditions simply does not exist. Yet the consumate importance of this systemic relationship can be seen from the fact that in other parts of India, where different ecological and economic conditions prevail, preferential etic bovicide is practiced against female rather than male cattle, resulting in an adult cattle sex ratio of over 200 oxen for every 100 cows in the state of Uttar Pradesh." (CM pp.32-33) While I will further explore the implications of this phenomena later it is sobering to remenber that during the Spring and Summer of 2002, the world came closer to nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missle Crisis in October of 1962. The emics of this fact can be found in the "facts" that Pakastani's kill cows and Hindu's eat pigs. The emics lies in obscurantism. (more later) DMMcG

As I have already said, since its origins, Euro-American civilization has always been in contact with the civilization of a West Asian region it calls either the Near or Middle East (as opposed to Far East). Historically speaking, Western Civilization has its very beginnigs on the banks of the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, and Jordan rivers. Linguistically speaking, Western Asia is the most diverse on the planet with the basic elements of all four proto-languages and proto-cultures being chronologically present in the same geographcal and ecological place. First of all, the African or Hamitic linguistic and cultural element is found in the dominating culture of ancient Egypt. Even though many still see Egypt as primarily a Semitic culture, a holdover from an unfortunate period of nineteenth century racism, at its linguistic core its civilization is native black African. But it was in Egypt where all four proto-cultures of the African/Hamitic, Semitic, Asianic and Indo-European merged to produce that pharonic civilization that evolved throughout ancient Egyptian history from before the Pyramids to long after king Tut. Semitic speakers though have made the greatest single cultural impact on the civilization of West Asia. But it was the Asianic speaking Sumerians, whose civilization was originally located during antiquity in the northern delta of the Tigris-Euphrates confluence with the Persian Gulf, in what today is southern Iraq, who "invented" the concept of civilization, not only for West Asia but for the world as well. Indo-European speakers were also present in West Asia from the very beginning. They lived primarily in what is today Iran, but also, before that, in Anatolia where they were the first agriculturalists and before they were superceded by Asianic speaking Turks. During its later history, West Asian culture diffused first to Indo-European speakers in Greece and then to Indo-European speakers in Rome. It diffused into Greece during the period I labled Orientalization I ca 814-569 B.C., when, as we have already seen, its mythopoetics were rationalized by the likes of Thales and Anaximander. During the time of Alexander of Macedon and the Roman Republic, the process of cultural diffusion reversed and with Western culture being diffused into West Asia. During the period I call Orientalization II ca. 76 B.C.- 161 A.D., the process once again reversed itself and West Asian culture found its way into Roman Imperial Civilization. It is my contention that one can not truly understand the history of the Medieval Paradigm of Western Civilization ca. 161-1122 A.D. unless it be understood that it is essentially an Oriental culture transposed upon culturally inferior Indo-European speaking Occidentals. It was at the onset of the seventh century, during the culturally fundamentalist Heraclean steady state high ca. 603-632 A.D., that the face of West Asian culture changed forever with the emergemce of the modernist Islamic counter-culture preached by the artist archetype prophet Muhammed. Since that point in history, the relationship between Muslim West Asians and Judeo-Christian Western and Eastern Europeans and Americans has not been a good one as the jihad collided head on with the crusade. Indeed, in this struggle between East and West, the victories obtained by the hero archetype Eastern Roman Emperor Leo III at Constantinople in 711 and hero archetype and Frankish king Charles Martel at Tours-Poitiers in 732, were at least as significant and momentous in the history of the West as were Marathon or Salamis. From these early eighth century dates to the end of the Medieval Paradigm during the spiritual warfare phase of the Crusader Awakening ca. 1095-1122 relations between the Judeo-Christian West and Islamic Near East were most often hostile and the threat of Muslim victory did not seriously abate until the onset of the great Age of Exploration, symbolized by the year 1492, which, of course, was the year that marked the end of the internal Spanish crusade called the "reconquista." By that time, of course, Western Europeans had already undergone a third period of Orientalization ca. 1122-1328 whose Arabic Numerals helped birth the great age of science as the Alphabet had birthed reason during Orientalization I. Largely due to this ancient hostility between Muslims and the West, devotees of Islam did not establish a sizable presence in the United States until after the end of World War II during the New Frontier steady state high ca. 1946-1968. "This heritage of Islamophobia was certainly prevalent at the time of the World's Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 1893. The Caliph in Turkey did not send Muslim representatives to the Parliament, and the sole Muslim speaker was an American. Mohammad Russell Alexander Webb, the son of a newspaper publisher in upstate New York, Webb had attended private school and college and had worked as a journalist before being posted in 1887 as America's consul general to the Phillippines. There he was exposed to Islam for the first time and converted to Islam. His background made him well aware of the mistrust most Americans had of his newly adopted faith. "I am an American of the Americans. I carried with me for years the same errors that thousands of Americans carry with them today," said Webb at the 1893 parliament, speaking of the stereotypes and ignorance of Islam. "Those errors have grown into history, false history has influenced your opinion of Islam. It influenced my opinion of Islam and when I began, ten years ago, to study Oriental religions I threw Islam aside as altogether too corrupt for consideration. But when I came to go beneath the surface, to know what Islam really is, to know who and what the prophet of Arabi was, I changed my belief very materially, and I am proud to say I am now a Mussulman." Becoming a Muslim was a radical move for a for a nineteenth-century American. The image of Islam as the religion of the sword was prevalent, just as it is today: the horseman charging through the desert with upraised sword, Arab and Muslim identities conflated in a single image of violence. Webb addressed just this issue: I have not returned to the United States to make you all Musslmans in spite of yourselves ... I do not propose to take a sword in one hand and the Koran in the other and go through the world killing every man who, does not say, La illaha illala Mohammud resoul Allah--There is no God but one and Mohammed is the prophet of God. Despie the stereoypes, Webb articulated a deep-seated confidence that true knowledge of Islam would prevail. He concluded with an imporant challenge: "I have faith in the American intellect in the American inteeligence, and in the Amarican love of fair play, and will defy any intelligent man to understand Islam and not like it." This is a challenge Muslims in America have contined to issue: have a look at Islam, not as you have recieved it secondhand through the media, as it really is. Once you see it through the eyes of Muslims of faith, you will no longer be able to sustain the negative images." (Eck pp.233-235) (more later) DMMcG

By 1893, as we have seen, nineteenth century Europeans and Americans had become aquainted with West Asian cultures through the work of pioneering archaeologists at work with the "Bible and the Spade." The rediscovery of the history of ancient West Asia proceeded in a reverse direction from the latest periods toward the earliest, from the more or less known to the unknown. Naturally, it was the remains of antiquity in Persia, Babylonia, and Assyria that first claimed attention in that part of the world. European travelers from Benjamin of Tudela in the twelfth century A.D. to Claudius J. Rich in the nineteenth had described the ancient mounds and vivible ruins of Persia and Babylon. Although doubts were expressed by some, it was generally agreed that Persepolis, Nineveh, ad Babylon were represented by the ruins which we now know to have marked those ancient sites. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, antiquities began to be collected by travelers and sent back to Europe. Pietro della Valla in the early sevententh century found inscribed bricks in Babylon that he carried to Italy. Karsten Niebuhr in the eighteenth century studied the inscriptions of Persepolis and decided correctly that no less than three systems of wedge-shaped, or cuneiform, writing were represented there. Claudius J. Rich, agent for the East India Company at Baghdad during the late Bonaparte high and early Transcendental Awakening from 1811 to 1821, was the first to make carful studies of the ruins of Babylon and so point the way for future excavators. His two memoirs on Babylon were widely circulated, and, even though he wasted much time hunting for the Tower of Babel, later and less gullible workers were able to use his material as a starting point. Nevertheless, the first serious and concentrated operations began not in Babylonia but rather in Assyria with the efforts of the prophet archetype Frenchman, Paul Emile Botta, and, as we have shown, the nomad archetype Englisnman, Austen Henry Layard. Neither were schoars nor archaeologists in the modern sense, but both differed from Rich in that they dug into the ground more or less systematically instead of wandering about collecting surface finds. The new technique paid wonderful dividends, for the discoveries of Botta and Layard, particularly in sculptural and architectural remains, were spectacular to say the least. (more later) DMMcG

Speaking of the "Tower of Babel", Professor, here is the story...


Genesis 11

1 Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.
2 It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly." And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.
4 They said, "Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth."
5 The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.
6 The LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.
7 "Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech."
8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.
9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.

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I see two events in this story: 1. The building of the tower, and 2. the resulting confusion.

Question: Do both of these events take place in a saecular spring or summer? Or, does does the former take place in spring, while the latter is a summer event?

What's your opinion on this, Mr. McGuiness?

I find it interesting that you would ask anyone's opinion of the applicablility of cycle theory to an ancient Jewish fable.

I guess it makes for a good intellectual exercise, at least.

A "good intellectual exercise, at least"???


"I think that myth is often more credible--and more true--than many a chronicle filled with facts and figures. Myth tells us what's essential about what happened. Facts and figures can lie or (insofar as meaning is concerned) lead in any direction whatever." --Neil Howe


Ever heard of this guy, Mr. Horn?