I don't think that's what he's saying, but its more or less true given people in the present day have a wealth of accumulated knowledge as part of common sense that the progenitors of the Old Testament would not have.
Do we have to move this to Chat?
11 Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, 12 “Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13 Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.” 14 So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days.
15 At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. 16 So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead.
Confirmed for never having studied Buddhism's history.The problem with religion... ALL of them (save maybe a little bit less for budisms) is that basically it's a fight for power and dominance: priests can power and kings want power.
That's not how it worked in China, or in West Africa, or the Swahili Coast, or many other places I could mention. I don't understand why you bring this up.A king has no specific reason to be a king unless there is a religion to back him. He needs priests to say that he's the rightfull king. He has money and armies. Priests need his protection and want more power.
Where do I even begin with this?A prophet says "well, listen to me and shut up, I'm god's mouth and you should follow his path". Priests distord it a little bit. kings take advantage of that.
Now WTF the scientific methods is going to do here. If theyre is one thing that prophets, priests and kings don't want is common bozo asking themselves "and by the way, if we think a little bit, why are they in control of the city/country/tribe?"
“Don’t give me anything,” Jacob replied. “But if you will do this one thing for me, I will go on tending your flocks and watching over them: 32Let me go through all your flocks today and remove from them every speckled or spotted sheep, every dark-colored lamb and every spotted or speckled goat. They will be my wages. 33And my honesty will testify for me in the future, whenever you check on the wages you have paid me. Any goat in my possession that is not speckled or spotted, or any lamb that is not dark-colored, will be considered stolen.”
34“Agreed,” said Laban. “Let it be as you have said.” 35That same day he removed all the male goats that were streaked or spotted, and all the speckled or spotted female goats (all that had white on them) and all the dark-colored lambs, and he placed them in the care of his sons. 36Then he put a three-day journey between himself and Jacob, while Jacob continued to tend the rest of Laban’s flocks.
37Jacob, however, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. 38Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, 39they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted. 40Jacob set apart the young of the flock by themselves, but made the rest face the streaked and dark-colored animals that belonged to Laban. Thus he made separate flocks for himself and did not put them with Laban’s animals. 41Whenever the stronger females were in heat, Jacob would place the branches in the troughs in front of the animals so they would mate near the branches, 42but if the animals were weak, he would not place them there. So the weak animals went to Laban and the strong ones to Jacob. 43In this way the man grew exceedingly prosperous and came to own large flocks, and female and male servants, and camels and donkeys.
That's not how it worked in China, or in West Africa, or the Swahili Coast, or many other places I could mention. I don't understand why you bring this up.
What if the bible would have encouraged scientific exploration?
Let's say that the first chapter is just slightly modified with something like "And God created the divine rules that would control land, water, animals and everything between."
Somewhere in the bible it is also explained that the purpose of mankind is to constantly learn more about God's creation, to understand the rules on which he created the universe, that these rules never change - neither by humans nor by God and that man should always use his intelligence and creativity to improve the life of himself and his loved ones.
In addition there is a proto scientific method outlined on how mankind should pursue the quest to understand God's rules. For example:
God's rules are understood by first using the intelligence and creativity given to man by God to come up with a hypothesis on why God's universe is behaving in a certain way. Secondly man has to prove his hypothesis by conducting experiments that constantly produce the same result. Thirdly the result of the experiment has to be repeated by third parties.
Working on an ASB / sci-fi timeline where a concept similar to this is explored so it would be interesting to hear what you guys think would be the consequences of such a dramatic change in the bible![]()
Point is, though, it was in there and the problem is that it was drowned in everything else.That's not bad at all! The sample size might be a bit small (particularly given that the results weren't replicated), and ideally you'd want to have the experimental observer blind to which diet each person was on, but that's a matter of rigor rather than principle. One could do a lot worse for a fairly quick-and-dirty experimental intervention.
I think that if your goal is to develop an appreciation for the scientific method among Christians though, you'd need to have something like the above spelled out in the Gospels, and perhaps elaborated on in other books, like St. Paul's letters and so forth.
Any culture capable of perceiving nothing (a void), and then having substance being brought forth by word alone alongside other complicated abstract principles is more than capable of putting into words the basic idea of the scientific method which, depending on how you define it and understand it, had earlier iterations as far back as first millennium bc.Such changes to Genesis exceed the conceptual ability of those superstitious nomadic shepherds that organized their oral tradition campfire stories into a comforting monotheistic explanation of the frightening and mysterious natural world that confronted them.
True, but the scientific method was not just dreamed up by one man during the enlightenment. It was a long process that took earlier ideas on how to formulate knowledge and then systematized them in a list. The many hundreds or thousands of ways understanding the empirical world was understood in religious, philosophical, other epistemological, and ontological schools of thought were consolidated into a single simple list. The enlightenment era, keen on getting rid of the old and decrepit ideas of the past, along with anything associated to what they believed to be superstition, hoped on this new method and went for it.I don't think that's what he's saying, but its more or less true given people in the present day have a wealth of accumulated knowledge as part of common sense that the progenitors of the Old Testament would not have.
Well, there is this example of animal breeding, where Jacob's boss asks him what he can do for him to reward him for his good work: