Re: 25 Classic Books That Have Been Banned

On Wed, 28 May 2025 09:13:54 -0700, Bobbie Sellers
<bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:

<apologies for any confusion, this is normal for this sort of thing>

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On 5/28/25 08:15, Paul S Person wrote:

On Tue, 27 May 2025 09:48:38 -0700, Bobbie Sellers
<bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
 

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On 5/27/25 09:13, Paul S Person wrote:

On Mon, 26 May 2025 10:54:47 -0700, Bobbie Sellers
<bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
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On 5/26/25 08:37, Paul S Person wrote:
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2. Science is very good (as far as we can tell) at describing a world
(universe)/corrupted by sin/. It can say nothing about one that is
not. It is, IOW, limited in a way it cannot even detect because
nothing it studies is not corrupted. The situation in which the New
Jerusalem descends is generally considered to taking place in a new
world (universe), freed from sin.

>
How do you know that what you are describing as a Universe
corrupted by Sin is real? You are living within the Xtian mythos.
Myth-OS is not a good place to start from whether Xtian, Jewish,
   Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Shinto, Norse. or other pagan mythos.

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How do you know that a Universe /not/ corrupted by Sin is real?

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Because of the prevalence of death and change.
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The standard interpretation is that prior ot the "original sin" of our
mythic parents they were immortal but with sin came death. However
death is universal for complex organisms as shown by countless fossils.
Therefore the myth and its standard interpretation are flawed at best
and likely wrong. Many deaths before homo sapiens evolved. And much
more time passed than allowed for in the standard interpretation of
the various scriptures apart from the Hindu which are very religiously
focused on battles of gods, their avatars and demi-gods in flying chariots.
over very long periods of time.
Further homo sapiens sapiens evolved as shown by many fossils
and likely had its problems with large scale deaths which reduced our
genetic diversity. This may have been caused by plagues or perhaps
by catastrophic ocean rise when the various ice dams collapsed as
the previous Ice Age waned.

 
And how do you know that the "mythic parents" and their condition was
not quite quite real -- until they fell, and everything changed?

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That is not the story told. They lived in ignorance in a garden and
tasted the
apple of the knowledge of good and evil.  The apple tasted good so they
became
aware of the taste of good things and the un-named individual ate a
poisonous
something and died.  Dying is evil and the body rots and stinks.

That is nonsense. Are you sure you have actually /read/ the story?
Hints:
-- no "apple" (just "fruit")
-- no indication how it tasted and, no, this isn't about how good
things taste
-- all the participants have names (which, like most Hebrew names, are
also common nouns)
-- nobody dies in the Garden (the people are expelled, the Snake loses
its legs)
You last bit is true enough.

Still, it's not as bad as some versions I have read.

IOW, what makes you think that you are not describing a corrupted
Universe? Are you assuming that there must be continuity between the
original form and the corrupted form? On what basis?

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Geology and fossils. Radioactivity used to date the various matter
The latest astronomical data from the extra-terrestial observational
devices usually
referred to as Telescopes which are able to look back in time before
humanity could have existed.

All of which is compatible with a corrupted reality and assumes
continuity with the uncorrupted reality. This is your deeply-held
religious belief resurfacing. None of it is relevant.

The question cuts both ways. And "Myth-OS"es are everywhere.
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And you somehow left out: atheist, anti-religious bigotry, secular
humanism, and any other religion that denies its own nature.

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i do not believe Atheism is a religion. Anti-religious bigotry is
over-blown.
Secular humanism is a philosophy not a religion.  Some people are attempting
to create an atheistic church which will depend on the community of people
who are willing to identify as atheists which is problematic in many areas.
In case you had not heard atheists are persecuted far more than
Christians or most other religions.

 
Well, of course you don't. It is one of your deeply-held religious
beliefs. But reality is.

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Reality is indeed.
>

 
Persecuted for their religious beliefs. Lack of Freedom of Speech is a
bitch.
 
And you can't have Freedom of Speech without Freedom of Religious
Speech, as some Iranians a decade or so found out when they voiced
disapproval of the government's policies. Those policies were the
Ayatollah's policies, and the Ayatollah's policies were Allah's
policies, so they were punished for blasphemy. Which, in Iran, is
quite severely punished.
 

Note that many of these admit to being philosophies or even
ideologies. But when those function as a "Myth-OS", they act as a
religion.
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This is why attempts to change other people's minds by "citing facts"
does not generally work: what is going on is all too often actually an
attempt to convert them from one religion to another.
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And, BTW, my statement clearly supports the validity of Science. But
only for the Universe we are in.

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Well of course we have to specify the validity of science in this
Universe as presently we have no access except through the medium
of imagination. And that is the probably for the best in this world.

 
And yet above you presume to regard the description of the World
(Universe) as God created it as "myth". Without any reason at all
except that you can't fit it into your deeply-held religious beliefs.

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The authors of the scriptures referred to the heavens and the earth.
The heavens are not a place but a vast Universe full of billions of
stars and
galactic conglomerations But they did not know that at all so they told
stories
about everything they could not begin to understand.  We still used some
of the names they coined to tell the stories for example we call the Galaxy
we live in the Milky Way and Galaxy is the same word for the stars they
could see at night stretching across the sky. If g-d had inspired them they
would have had more truth in the scriptures.

Which is all very well, but I don't see you getting upset because
Ptolemy and Copernicus believed much the same thing.

Your last sentence involves so many assumptions that I am not going to
bother listing them. I will, however, point out that even God must
communicate with people in language they understand if He wants to be
understood.

You can't have it both ways: either they /could/ have understood how
things are per science (you are taking it for granted, for example,
that we are not living inside a computer simulation), in which case
God could have used that knowledge, or they did not, in which God's
desire to be understood shaped how He put things. But you can't have
them ignorant and then claim that God's having to take this into
account proves anything. Well, except patience and adaptability.

They were talking about a ceramist god who breathed the breath of life
into the
creation. The authors were enormously ignorant of nearly everything that
did not
contribute to the survival of human persons and the gross facts of
reproduction.
Well they had learned that women did not reproduce without intercourse with
men or gods(?).
They knew nothing of DNA nor of proper nutrition, vitamins, or the true
causes
of illness of all sorts. The prophets, some of them at least, likely
suffered from
very poor diets which can lead to hallucinatory experiences and paranoia.

All of which merely reinforces the prior remarks. Except to add that
here you appear to have abandoned the idea the God wrote it and
attributing it to Man -- who is born enslaved to sin, lives enslaved
to sin, and dies enslaved to sin. You are beating up on your fellow
slaves here.

Oh and by the way it has been speculated that DNA which is the basis of
life on this planet and likely else where as well first came together in
deposits
of clay.  But it may have been an import from the previous generation
of stars and planets which died to make the Solar System including the
Earth.

There are lots of speculations and no real evidence. I expect that
eventually an explanation correct for a corrupted reality will be
found. It may take a few centuries. But it doesn't matter: DNA in a
corrupted universe is also corrupted. And there is /no/ reason to
believe that a universe not corrupted by sin would have DNA in it.

We simply do not know and cannot know. And that is the point: science
is limited to the present corrupted reality. It can say nothing of any
other reality, before or after this one.

That you appear to be unable to grasp the point speaks to the grip
your religious beliefs have on you.

(The point here is not whether or not it is "myth". The point here is
that saying it is so reflects your beliefs, not facts, and certainly
not science.)

--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"