Sep 06 2008
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“ Le cercle idéologique des auteurs de certains manuscrits de la Mer morte et le christianisme auraient bien l’essénisme pour ancêtre, comme le signale aussi Etienne Nodet[4] , mais il s’agirait de deux rejetons qu’une bonne distance sépare.
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“ Why the Neanderthals disappeared has been an enduring mystery but studies on DNA extracted from ancient bones suggest they died out without interbreeding with the new arrivals to Europe. It is likely that the two species of humans competed against each other for limited resources in the same habitat, with Homo sapiens being the victor. However, the study on the stone tools used by both species suggests that the competition was not as one-sided as some anthropologists had believed. The Neanderthal flint tools were broader and thicker than the somewhat smaller and finer-bladed tools of Homo sapiens but they have turned out to be no less efficient, Mr Eren said.
Aug 25 2008
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“ In this myth, creation is an act of violence. Marduk murders and dismembers Tiamat, and from her cadaver creates the world. As the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur observes (The Symbolism of Evil, Harper Collins 1967), order is established by means of disorder. Chaos (symbolised by Tiamat) is prior to order (represented by Marduk, high god of Babylon). Evil precedes good. The gods themselves are violent. The biblical myth in Genesis 1 is diametrically opposed to all this (Genesis 1, it should be noted, was developed in Babylon during the Jewish captivity there as a direct rebuttal to the Babylonian myth).
Aug 08 2008
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“ How was it that a man whose whole life had been a celebration of reason should have led me to Kierkegaard’s hymn to the absurd?
Aug 07 2008
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“ Dennett’s view is that the “original monotheists” thought of God as a being one could literally listen to, and literally sit beside. (206) If so, the “original monotheists” thought of God as a physical being: “The Old Testament Jehovah, or Yahweh, was quite definitely a super-man (a He, not a She) who could take sides in battles, and be both jealous and wrathful.” (206, emphasis in original). The suggestion here is that monotheism in its original form, prior to deformation, posited a Big Guy in the Sky, a human being Writ Large, something most definitely made in the image of man, and to that extent an anthropomorphic projection.
Jun 16 2008
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May 28 2008
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