In <k0chovgvopclbjj9drc67f141s3tf4jemp@4ax.com>, on 10/12/2003
at 02:04 AM, Matt Silberstein <matts2nopam@ix.netcom.nospamcom> said:

In alt.talk.creationism I read this message from
walksalone@dastardly.dirty.deeds.done.dirt.cheap.llc:

Matt Silberstein <matts2nopam@ix.netcom.nospamcom> Sat, 11 Oct 2003
18:01:44 GMT

In alt.talk.creationism I read this message from
walksalone@dastardly.dirty.deeds.done.dirt.cheap.llc:

Elroy Willis <elo@airmail.net> Sat, 11 Oct 2003 04:30:38 GMT
In an attempt to wake walksalone up from a well deserved snooze on a rainy
morning succeeded with the following & is therefore found guilty of
disturbing my peace.

Snip, new

There are legends that indicate man did manage
to reach the sky but it was always never the original intent,

Certainly stories relate a deliberate attempt to get to the sky
where the (fill in name here, usually the Sun god) lives.

Then perchance you are willing to share your source of information? Given
that there were over 5 hundred distinct tribes, your claim is not an
impossibility by any means.

Sure. I have here _Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with His Daughter_ a
book of Coyote stories by Barry Lopez. One of the stories is "Coyote
Places the Stars" where Coyote and some wolf brothers climb up to the
sky. He uses the arrow ladder trick. He does not visit the Sun god in
this one. Do you want me to look for one where he does?

And which nations are these for I am obviously not familiar with the
legend itself?

As to pursuing other sources, no thank you for you have at
least provided information to back your observation.

snip

Which is probably as close to a tower as we would find. BTW, do
you mean "knew" literally? I assume not, but we tend to end up
getting caught up in such details here. (I recently saw the
Usenet defined as a place where you see people beating the ground
where, years before, there was a dead horse. We have "long"
memories and too much time.)

I used the word knew as a piece of factual information.

Sorry, but I am still confused so I will try again. Are you
claiming that they actually knew how to reach the sky, that the sky was a
physical reachable thing?

What I am telling you is that as far as the people concerned that told
these particular legends were concerned, you could indeed reach the sky
and it indeed was a physical place.

With that said, if you were familiar
with people that lived the old path, you would know that no human would
deliberately try to reach the sky simply to become a great spirit by
themselves. It was almost if not always on a mission for the greater good
of the people.

[snip]

Snip

The way you phrased your statement implied a dual intent to achieve the
same thing as the attempt from the tower of babbel, to wit become people
with the gods, and be attempt to make such a structure to start with.

I am sorry if you inferred such a thing, I never intended to imply it.
Obviously you and Elroy both got that message. Even re-reading I don't
see how, but obviously the ambiguity was there.

The news groups are not famous for providing information the way you
intended it to be presented anytime, they are famous for quite frequently
being received in a manner that you had not intended.

Snip

ROTFLMAO. Sir, I do not know you at all, but I am beginning to
respect you. If I may ask, what tribe are you?

Human.

Are they all. It is ok if you don't wish to do this it is just that I

Of course they all are human::::))))))

It just depends on which missionary
you talk to as to how human they really are.

According to the history of
the United States, it is only recently that they were granted human
status. Allow me to refer you to the trial of Standing Bear in Omaha
Nebraska after the Civil War.

have some friends and relatives (not blood) in various tribes and it
would be interesting if there was something in common. But as long as you
don't claim to speak for a particular tribe you are under no pressure to
say a thing.

OSOD, permit me to cure a minor point of ignorance as regards any one
individual speaking for the tribe at large, let alone other tribes. Or
those that follow the ancients ways it is impossible, it is a matter of
custom as well as of warrior rights. No one person can speak for me before
he tribal council nor can any one person bind me to a given set of actions
by signing their name to a piece of paper. Tribal societys, which some of
us still fall in a very loose structure, is based on the right of the
warrior to choose how he will with his life and the right of that warrior
to deny anyone else permission to tell him how to live. It is so deeply
ingrained with some of us, that it is impossible for us to conceive of
ourselves deliberately breaking our word or permitting anyone to speak for
us. The common phrase for those that permit others to speak for them is
less than complementary even though it can be used in mixed company. There
were times, of course, when a warrior would except be leadership of
someone else for a given period of time or for a particular reason. But
that leadership was always a granted position and never a position of
right.

[snip]

It was not unheard of for a spirit to assist a human in
some manner but it was not an on demand thing like those found in the
revealed desert religions.

Are you just referring to the Middle East or do you have some
ideas about revealed and/or desert religions? If that latter I
would be quite interested in your ideas.

The revealed desert religions are based on a concept of a god going
looking for worshippers and any mythology that would the evolve from those
particular mythologys. To my positive knowledge there is only one that has
two off spring even though one of those offs spring do not share the same
gods. Two claim the Canaanite pantheon and one claims an Arabic pantheon
for their foundational mythology.

I am sorry, but you did not answer my question. Are you speaking of a
general case of revealed and/or desert religions? Or just the ones coming
from that specific area? That is, do you claim that Australian religions,
being both revealed and desert, would be similar?

But I did answer your question, but apparently it was ambiguous to you.
Inasmuch as I am currently familiar with only one revealed mythology, it
would have to be the mythologys of the Middle Eastern Region of the world.
Hopefully, this will answer your question period

[snip]

Sure, it assumes that, but it is not explaining the place of the Sky.
Maybe it came from a story that once explained that, I don't know.

Matt, if you study the mythology of the region that gave you your
mythology you may be able to answer your own question. It would appear
that your mythology is based on Canaanite mythology with various aspects
of the other nations that had conquered them such as Egypt &
Babylon/Syria/who ever was handy.

Please don't make assumptions about *my* mythology. I am only

You have been posting in alt atheism for some time, your mythology is
rather well known and your rather spirited defense of any thing you see as
an indication of inadequacy in it is also known. How long have you been
here now? I believe I've been reading this news groups since about 1995.
so you are not an unknown quantity to me know I am not extremely familiar
with you.

I defend the things I know about against ignorance about those things. I
have defended things I agree with and things I don't agree with.

You also have been known to spiritedly defend things when you were in
error.

Knowledge of a subject does not guarantee that knowledge will be
error free.

Of course, it is embarrassing to admit that you screwed the
pouch just as it is embarrassing for me to admit that. I have usually
managed to quit reading your threads prior to that ever according to my
knowledge. As a perpetual student I am frequently in error in my
conclusions but I am aware of that as a possibility so when they correct
or corrected version is presented with the appropriate elders I have no
problem with hanging my head, scuffing my foot, and admitting that my
knowledge did have a flaw in it. I don't even blame be author's of my
false information. You see, a historical sciences are almost always coming
up with something new about subjects that I have an interest in.

asking Elroy to not misrepresent some ideas, I am not defending
any particular mythic view. I take it as a given that any culture
borrows ideas from other cultures when there is contact. Judaism
is almost certainly an outgrowth of Canaanite culture with
Mesopotamian (a better term than the Babylonian we have been
using) influence. The question of Egyptian influence is open and
contentious.

It would be hard to believe that there was no Egyptian influence on the
Judaic mythology.

Belief is not the issue, the question is what evidence do we have for
what influence.

Belief is directly involved however for the evidence that should be
available in the Hebraic mythology due to an extended period of servitude
in Egypt are missing. Not only from their mythology, but their ordinary
everyday things such as pottery and tools that were used in day to day
life.

They did rule and maintain military out posts in that
particular region or quite some time. Add to that the claim for the
exodus, and a four hundred year long servitude in Egypt and it would be
next to impossible to prevent any osmosis of the Egyptian mythology into
the Hebraic as well as the reverse of that.

And, yet, there is so little evidence of actual Egyptian
influence, either in language or religion or culture, that we have a
problem. Me, I don't think that the Egyptian Captivity ever took place.

In that consideration, I would be obliged to concur with you. I suspect
that particular epic is simply an attempt to qualify be tried & justify
the genocide and land theft that occurred after that time.

But, have you
considered what that does to the claims for Israel to be given to the
Jewish nation as their land by yaweh?

snip less than deathless prose

Again, possible in origin, but not by the time we get the story
in the Torah. One of my points here is that we need to understand
what the story means in context, not just its origin.

If you do not know and or accept the origin than be context is meaningless
or it can mean anything anyone wants to claim.

Not necessarily. Even so, origin is just the starting point. Seeing a
similarity to a Mesopotamian story does not tell you what the Jewish
story means.

This is not a consideration of mine for my concern is not what you and
Elroy have been discussing. My concern is the gods and their relationship
to humanity as claimed by humanity. The tower of babbel and the
babylonians influence on be Jewish mythology is not really a major concern
in this instance.

What place of the sky? And why did you capitalize "sky?"

WELL Elroy, there is a fair dinkum question. It is based on where the
revealed desert mythology came from whether Matt realizes that or not. You
see, the home of el is the sky. This is one of the reasons you encounter
such names as el Carmel or el of Mount Carmel

Sorry, here you are just wrong. I capitalized sky because, in the
context of the post and the story, it was a physical place, a
proper noun so to speak. For us, the sky is simply "out there",
for them it was a specific reachable place. Whether or not El was
a sky god is irrelevant to my point.

Actually, I am quite correct

You are not correct about my reasons. Sorry, but I know them better than
you do.

Inasmuch as you never posting your reasons or your claim everyone will
remain ignorant of them.

But be mythology does indicate that there is
accuracy in my statement. & yes, there is a tendency toward people that
believed in a particular mythology to capitalize the homes of their gods.

snip, expansion of the above.

Snip

Let me present an example, one I hope you don't find offensive.

About the only thing that offense me is delivered stability & willful
ignorance from someone that claims to know what they are talking about.

I don't even know what "delivered stability" means. And you have jumped

Delivered stability is a political concept such as what is occurring in
Iraq today you hear very little about it because it has never worked in
the past even though the current administration and other politicians as
well I am sure, believed it can be made to work. It has not even worked in
the Americas.
If it makes you feel more comfortable feel free to insert deliberate
stupidity or that is what it is.

Suppose you had some unruly children you wish to help. You might
tell a story of Coyote Visiting The Sun. Now you don't think that
the sky is a physical place you can reach with an arrow ladder,
that is not the point of your story. It might be the origin, but
not the point. By the time the Babel story gets to the Torah the
point is not that the sky is reachable, though they may have
thought that.

No, I believe in the case of unruly children in the history of my people
would be to let them be children as long as they could.

Or you can avoid the issue by pretending I meant something else. Somehow
I doubt that your culture has no use of stories to teach children
lessons, but if you want to claim that, go ahead.

We referred to teach by example rather than stories, stories was the
territory of the elders, and rarely would any particular child's activity
be singled out for discussion in a story. They were always ambiguous and
rarely involved humans but there morals and ethical teachings were there.
Is this what you were trying to say?

Or are you thinking about be story of
blood clot boy?

Once they became
body conscious would be soon enough to begin their training into
adulthood. As to your claims for a similarity between the tower of babbel
and coyote,

The only similarity I have claimed is that both have the sky as a
reachable place. You may have misunderstood the first time, but a willful
ignoring of the correction will, as you say, be
offensive.

Now that you are starting to clarify what you are claiming, a continuation
of the discussion is quite possible in a ammicable manner. It has gone
from the first nation's deliberately attempting to enter the sky & become
spirits to that the sky was in fact a place that could be reached &
entered.

Unlike the tower of babbel myth, this was not anything they would
be expected to do solely for the purpose of becoming a powerful spirit.

So
the fact remains that even though the sky was possible to enter and the
sky was where the powerful spirits resided, the contention of similarity
stops there.

It was according to the Old Testament an attempt by humanity
to become gods that the tower of babbel was built.

mythology indicates you are in error.

What error? I just re-read a Coyote story where he shot arrows into the
sky so he could climb up an visit. I know of other stories where he flies
up there to visit. They show that the sky is a physical place. There is
also a Dene story about the world flooding, so people climb to the top of
a mountain and climb through a tunnel in the sky to the next (this)
world. All have the sky as a physical reachable place. Now what error
have I made?

It would appear that you have only way to discuss the possibility of an
existence of a means to enter the sky. In that case here is a gold star
for your forehead.

But that is a bit dishonest if you stop their common for to truly
understand the meaning behind the mythology you need to understand why the
sky been reached was considered desirable.

If I have ever insuleds Elroy by asking for respect instead of earning it
from him, Elroy my apologies.

You are right, you claimed he does not respect you.

Then you can post exactly when and where I said Elroy did not respect me
and I asked for his respect? Yes, no?

Good, for it has not shown up. But then, where I am concerned, just what
is your goal.

Walksalone who is of a mind that this is a conversation being played by
rules that are not posted to everyone. Being this is the news groups known
as alt atheism, it is likely to be a conversation doomed to failure for
there are no rules beyond trying to make yourself plainly understandable &
having something to say in common.