The parallels between the epic of Gilgamesh and Genesis 1-11 is very similar. Enough so it’s clearly
Borrowed heavily from it.
It also shows God repeatedly not knowing everything.
Isn’t that a little presumptious? They could share a common ancestry!
Richard
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So what writing do you think they both borrowed from? Which historian/scholar are you getting your ideas from? I got mine from the date of the epic which predated the dates attributed to the oldest texts we have. I got the idea from scholars like Dan McClellan, Louise Pryke and so on. We know certain parts of the epic , like the flood, was most likely inspired by *
Atrahasis. But none of that changes the point. It just further suppers it.
It is interesting that you hone in on Gilgamesh whereas modern scholars compare Genesis to the Babylonian Enuma Elish
If you delve further you will find that elements of all Creation stories have common themes.
Logic would dictate that the Genesis story was a direct counterpoint to the Babylonian during Exhile even down to the Babylonian 8 day week being compressed to 6 days and a Sabbath (On two days God does two things)
Richard
It’s not me honing in. It’s what the majority of scholars state that I’ve listened to. For years. It’s also what I hear most historians linking together as well.
Which again. Does not matter does it. What was I arguing Richard? What was my point in correlating Genesis to Gilgamesh? I think you are stuck on an irrelevant aspect of my statement.
So what was my original point to my entire post about building doctrine out of Genesis? What changes if you replace Gilgamesh with any other ancient book from that time? How does that change my actual argument?
I really wish there was a way I could delete every single post I’ve made on this forum. I’ve deleted dozens and dozens one at a time until it’s making me wait minutes in between it. Still it’s so exhausting I just stop. But if I could, just delete all of them, I would bounce from this tiring forum.
How does that even help explain the “transition from the probabilistic to the deterministic”?
Yes, causation gets fuzzy at the quantum level, as an old story illustrates: while they are preparing dinner in the kitchen, Alice drops a place; Bob, startled, bumps the stove top and burns himself, hollering at the pain . . . or while they are preparing dinner in the kitchen, Bob bumps against the stove top and burns himself, hollering at the pain; startled, Alice drops a plate. The point is that from the quantum perspective both of those could be true at the same time.
But on the macro- level, it doesn’t matter which is “real”; regardless, the whole collection of quantum events sum up to the events we see.
True enough, though it’s my recollection that the real differences revolve around which god led or managed the effort while the details are essentially the same – Nut (pronounced like “newt”) is still the sky, Geb is still the earth. An interesting difference is that in one version the sun dies every night and Nut gives birth to it/him each morning, while another has her swallowing the sun each night and expelling it (giving birth to it) each morning, while in yet another the sun rides a barque through the sky, essentially sailing on the body of Nut; the difference depends on just how the sun stands in the hierarchy. Then there are ones where Ptah crafts the world, or speaks it into being, as compared to Shu (air) using the air to fashion everything, putting Nut up high to be the sky, separating her from Geb the earth. But in all these, apart from the differences in who is head deity the events are essentially the same – and Genesis on one level is just another variation except it puts YHWH-Elohim as not just head but only deity, demoting all the rest to the rank of created things.
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It is language, and as such it follows the rules of language: the meaning is made up of the details.
More likely, as I argued in a paper years ago, the two reflect a common origin. The dependence argument was put forth when the Gilgamesh epic provided the only source to compare the Genesis version with, indeed dominated when I was in grad school, but as a couple of my professors argued back then now that we have others a better comparison can be made. My view is that they all derive from the same oral version.
It could be argued that there are other forms of causality than just the linear cause-and-effect that we are used to as a result of the illusion of Newtonian time and having senses that construct a world on a scale above the quantum domain. My understanding is that once you get above the sub-atomic scale, the probabilities from quantum mechanics converge on 0% or 100% which is why Newtonian mechanics becomes a good approximation of what is going on above that scale. At the quantum level, other forms of causality could be possible through which God accomplishes his will, such as backwards causation. I don’t know if that makes it more confusing or less confusing. Nonetheless, the Bible seems to depict God’s way of doing things as being far more mysterious than our image of God designing the universe to work according to gears and mechanisms like a human engineer would. I see God as being the ultimate, not fully knowable reality from which everything springs. However that reality manifests itself in known physics does not change the fact that it is the ultimate reality. The ultimate reality is God because if God is not the ultimate reality, he is not God and whatever is the ultimate reality is actually God.
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I don’t think it does. Probability implies determinism. If an event is uncaused (ie. undetermined) can there be any probability for or against it happening?
Yes. I looked him up when someone told me I sounded like him. I think the similarity is a consequence of our both having a theoretical physics background.
It is why theism largely retreated to Deism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before the advent of quantum physics threw the presumption of physical determinism out the window.
Quantum physics basically disproves the causal closure of the laws of nature, and once again we are left with choosing between events being purely random and the involvement non-physical agents in physical events. For a while physicists like Schrodinger tried to cling to the idea that the randomness of quantum physics did not affect large scale phenomenon. But this was disproven with the advent of chaotic dynamics which showed that non-linearity of the laws of nature meant that even the smallest and most insignificant events could change the outcome of large scale events.
It is a fairly narrow window but it is everywhere. This is not a huge obstacle for a omnipotent God (i.e. to participate in events without breaking the laws of nature), but it does make it difficult to support the idea of a non-physical soul controlling the body like a puppet.
This opens the door for a physicist to embrace traditional theism with God having an active role in the events.
At most this will only show that theism is not inconsistent with the findings of science. It certainly is not a proof the theistic God does actually exist. Thus the intelligent atheist of today simply says they see no reason to believe God exists rather than claiming to know that God does not exist.
I read a great piece on how Boyle’s Law combined with quantum indeterminacy to render all of nature chaotic (math sense, not theological). Boyle tells us that all particles are always vibrating, quantum indeterminacy tells us that the vibration of elementary particles can never be something precise in terms of vectors, so the vectors of vibrating atoms and molecules can never be determined, and thus it doesn’t even take a butterfly’s wings to give the “buttergly effect”, it can just take the mere existence of the butterfly.
I remember thinking I hoped that the molecules of my corn chip would stay determinate long enough to get the next scoop of salsa to my mouth. 
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A point reminiscent of C S Lewis where he wrote that we cannot prove God, we can only show that belief in Him is not unreasonable.
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Wrong again.
You are still dissecting to the smallest parts and trying to build it back again. It is not about the details! The writers were not literary masters! It is not journalism or a scientific paper where every word matters! You can’t argue linguistics with a document that has been translated and redacted as often as Scripture. Language does not translate precisely which is why the Koran can only be read in Arabic. Any translation involves interpretation and compromise. Even going back to the original does not work because you are still translating it. You were not born speaking ancient Hebrew or Biblical Greek. Your translation is learnt. (taught).
You cannot apply scientific methodology to Scripture. They are different animals.
Richard
The same type of process that allows casinos to make money.
What if in not being able to prove God, it was still possible to disprove atheism?
That’d be a real something and a genuine twist on what it would be to be like God.
You’re really going to go with that baseless trope? especially since it has been shown just how faithfully the text has been passed on?
It’s language. Meaning comes from the words and can’t be separated from them.
The best schools require being able to write and compose in the original. In grad school the threshold was when you start to dream in those languages. The utter delight and amazement when someone announced in class, “I dreamed in Greek! (or Hebrew)” was always quite childlike in nature.
I dreamed in Greek about the fourth year, but never much in Hebrew – but then we never did much composition in Hebrew
You can apply the rules of literature: the scriptures are more than human literature but they are never less than that. The same methods that apply to Beowulf and to Don Quixote apply to scripture. If they do not, then the scriptures have less meaning than
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Except that in a quantum casino putting chips on a specific number actually could cause the roulette wheel to hit that number.
Makes me think of a science fiction story where someone developed a quantum computer and in testing it was discovered that information sometimes appeared in memory without having been input . . . . or a program could be run and items from memory triggered the input screen and filled in the prompts.
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