Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
42
The Axial Age is nothing to do with YEC.
To quote Robert Bellah and Hans Joas, “The notion that in significant parts of Eurasia the middle centuries of the first millennium BC mark a significant transition in human cultural history, and that this period can be referred to as the Axial Age, has become widely, but not universally, accepted.”
From the Book of Wiki.
Timeless wisdom is found in every culture, including the C12th or even C19th BCE Counsels of Wisdom, “Do not return evil to the man who disputes with you; requite with kindness your evil-doer… smile on your adversary.”, picked up millennia later by Jesus.
The infinitely forgivable pre-scientific fallacy of incredulity does not survive the C17th, let alone the C21st. No, Paul’s repetition of David a thousand years before has progressively not worked for 400 years. It couldn’t not work for 2,600.
The obvious isn’t in the one hand clapping interpretation of Hawking (what if it were larger?) and the third rate cosmology of Crick (who gave us directed panspermia, for Heaven’s sake!). It’s in the observed, empirical, accelerating expansion of spacetime. Driven by what? Negentropic dark energy. WHAT?! The multiverse is a fact, what flavour, of nine types in four levels we have barely the foggiest according to disposition. I favour 11D bulk brane collisions. WHAT!? How are either let alone both of these absolute true P1 ineffable certainties evidence of God? How does He help?
And yes, I agree, we’ve had the spookable, hyperactive agency detecting, sacred taste receptor gene for hundreds of thousands of years. It started when we were fish at least.
Yeah. “not universally accepted” may be an understatement. Iain Provan, a prominent OT scholar today, lectured the class in the Old Testament I took last term, explaining that when one really digs down into the supposed content of the “axial age”, its seems quite vacuous and contrived. Inventing of links and congruence where none really exist.
Interesting, Klw. I am sure the term “Axial Age” is a handy makeshift term — good for a theory and a discussion but not much further. It’s good to consider those different perspectives, take what you can, leave what you must, and move along. And I read Wikipedia too!! I see that your professor Provan is retiring this year???
Yes, he just retired. I feel fortunate to have taken the last class he offered!
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
46
I wouldn’t dream of inventing links and congruence. The civilizations of the Axial Age, with their ‘profound changes in religious and philosophical discourse’, ‘in a striking parallel development, without any obvious admixture’ ‘from about the 8th to the 3rd century BC’ seems pretty uncontroversial to me.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
52
Cognitive bias writes them all off. And not just that innocently. There is desperate agenda in these empty claims, more than one existential agenda at multiple levels. How many have you had second hand (i.e. not from personal experience?). I’ve had accounts of healing in Africa from missionaries, one on one to me. They are desperately sad. Because in each case - two - the men concerned could not lie, they faithfully reported the naked ambiguities in the situations. One believed, on no scientific basis whatsoever, and one wanted to believe what an interpreter was telling him. But I could see the doubt, to say the least. I could see that he could see that I could see the gaping void in what he was saying.
So who told you what?
I have also been at dinner with a devout conservative evangelical missionary doctor and what awed me was her faith. Because she recounted nothing but failure. Nothing. With humour: even the local terrifying Islamist terrorists were utterly incompetent. She looked me in the eye across the table and smilingly said ‘Hopeless isn’t it’ as she radiated hope.
The ‘Axial Age’ (500–300 BCE) refers to the period during which most of the main religious and spiritual traditions emerged in Eurasian societies. Although the Axial Age has recently been the focus of increasing interest, its existence is still very much in dispute. The main reason for questioning the existence of the Axial Age is that its nature, as well as its spatial and temporal boundaries, remain very much unclear. The standard approach to the Axial Age defines it as a change of cognitive style, from a narrative and analogical style to a more analytical and reflective style, probably due to the increasing use of external memory tools. Our recent research suggests an alternative hypothesis, namely a change in reward orientation, from a short-term materialistic orientation to a long-term spiritual one. Here, we briefly discuss these 2 alternative definitions of the Axial Age.
