I’d say the idol factory is the heart; the mind is generally an idle factory.
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Because the mind is where we do most of our mischief I’d guess it is the source of idols. Intellect seduces us into thinking we are in charge and the most reasonable of people.
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Worship comes from the heart, regardless where the object of worship is produced. (Lamborghini comes to mind. 
)
But most of the mischief humans do with the mind follows the nonsense the heart spins: the mind is used more for self-justification than anything else.
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Yeah, like a Lambo is really worth having.
Well I have much more confidence in the heart than the intellect. I have no illusions about the reliability of propositions to lead to any truth worth holding.
This relates to a quote from McGilchrist’ The Matter With Things which I have finally finished reading (and rereading) which I had intended to share with @Kendel in an email but couldn’t locate. No wonder as it was in the Introduction rather than the place it fits topically.
Philosophy may at times aspire to be, but cannot ever be, coercive: it cannot compel to a point of view. It can only allow an insight to dawn. Sometimes this can happen quite suddenly: I hope that will be the experience of at least a few of my readers. Plato described the process as a spark that crosses the gap: ‘suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another’.9 The truth is not arrived at ultimately by argument alone
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…which is reminiscent of a parable, The Parable of the Rich Fool.
…which is reminiscent of a pair of parables,
The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.
Matthew 13:44-46
Yes, it’s a liar and not to be relied on.
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can know it?
Jeremiah 17:9
(Ego comes from the heart and not an honest mind.)
Aristotle’s “prime mover” to Aquinas’s “first cause,” which both identify with God. The concept is simple. Trace cause-and-effect as far as possible into the distant past, and there must have been something/someone (deity) to set the chain of events into motion, an idea that still haunts us to this day. See Intelligent Design, William Lane Craig’s “Kalaam” cosmological argument and this article for recent examples:
My criticism on this point was we can never perfectly put ourselves in the shoes of the original audience or jump inside the head of the author and discern the “original intent.” According to @Mervin_Bitikofer, Wright concedes that point from the start, so no problem. Keep listening. I said somewhere above that I’m a fan of recovering as much of the literary and historical context as we can. Here’s something I learned from that search.
Genesis 1-11 was written as a polemic against the Neo-Babylonian empire using their own myths against them (creation, wisdom/immortality, flood, etc.) Multiple lines of evidence point in that direction, but I’ll limit myself to a few.
And the good ole US of A, with a bunch of stops along the way.
To unpack my cryptic comment above, ANE mythology and religion regarded an idol in a temple as a physical representative of god, and the king was the living/breathing embodiment of god’s presence on Earth (the image of the god). Israel’s scribes inverted that mythology and asserted all of humanity – both male and female – was the image of God, not just the king.
So right off the bat, the Bible sets itself against the existing narrative of empire and emperor worship. I mentioned the Great Ziggurat of Ur because the ruler who completed it was Shulgi of the Ur III dynasty. He was the second known “divine king” in history (the first being Naram-Sin, grandson of Sargon the Great). Shulgi is the originator of the Sumerian King List, which is a piece of propaganda that connected his newly founded dynasty to Sargon and Gilgamesh. The oldest extant copy of the SKL ends with Shulgi, “my divine king, may he live forever.” (Source is Piotr Michalowski, The Mortal Kings of Ur.) The genealogies of Gen. 1-11 mimic and poke fun at the SKL as a connecting device between creation/fall, flood, and the Tower of Babel.
Emperor worship appeared on and off throughout Old Babylon to the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires. The last ruler of Babylon, Nabonidus, completed the restoration of Etemenanki (the ziggurat in Babylon itself) and was busy restoring the Great Ziggurat of Ur (leaving his son Belshazzar in charge of the city) when Cyrus invaded. Cyrus replaced cuneiform with alphabetic script, and the “language of empire” was broken. (Shades of Babel. Hmmm.)
Skipping over Antiochus Epiphanes and wrapping up with Rome, Augustus used the denarius as a form of propaganda. His earliest coins proclaimed him Divi Filius (Son of the God). This was at first a reference to being the adopted son of Julius Caesar, who was declared a god after his death.
But soon enough, Augustus was being worshipped as a living god. Pergamum, the Roman capital of the province of Asia, built a temple to worship Augustus in 29 B.C. and another for Trajan at the end of the first century. The city was so well-known for emperor worship that the Revelation of John could refer to it simply as “Satan’s throne.” In nearby Smyrna, the famous Priene Calendar Inscription calls Augustus a “Savior” and a “God” whose birth marked “the beginning of the good news (Gk. evangelion) for the world.”
Such is the spirit of antichrist. It’s the counterfeit trinity found in Revelation 13 – the state worshipped in place of God, the ruler worshipped as God’s representative (false Christ), and the priests of the religious establishment (false prophet) propping it all up and encouraging it.
Okay. Rant over. I’ll leave y’all to it.
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Which makes sense given that it was the gods who brought war or peace – usually war – and Augustus brought a peace so stable as to be regarded as holding the fractious gods in check, thus he had to be a god.
Makes me think of the original Libertarian Party USA platform, which spoke of and condemned “the cult of the omnipotent state” – a state striving to be even more omnipotent now, decades later.
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Sorry, Jay. I missed the notes of rant. Thanks for putting so much work and meat into this post. I need to work over it some more. My mind is going in directions very different from the original conversation about Wright.
Thanks so much.
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I started to look at the article. First reactions:
- Whoa! That’s a lot of stuff I haven’t read about in a long time or ever.
- Feels like I’m out of my league, and this will take a long time to read, much less evaluate.
- Is the author reliable, that is, does she or he know what she or he is talking about? How can I be sure?
- Is there a another source I can go to, where I am more sure of the credentials of the author?
- I don’t have time to read through this to find out it’s “fabricated” or comprised of cherry-picked bits, selected to “prove” a point.
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It’s things like this that capture my imagination and I find myself once again leaning back into the possibility the scribes were inspired by God to write as they did… I think Heiser would do well with this theologically and I do miss having him around
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Did you ever see that book by Reno called the Return of the Strong Gods?
This talk of gods and physics reminds me of our…not sure if friend or foe is the correct term…
Here’s the author’s bio at the website I linked. He’s also on wikipedia.
Ethan is a theoretical astrophysicist. Another source? Sure. He’s one by Alexander Vilenkin. He’s also on wikipedia as one of the authors of the Borde–Guth–Vilenkin (BGV) theorem, which Ethan hyperlinked in his article.
You absolutely don’t have to read it. I just threw it out there cuz you asked, and I only link reputable sources.
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Thank you, Jay!
I often find in hindsight that I had no idea the implications of what I was asking.
I wasn’t sure if your example was to show the good, the bad or the ugly.
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thanks for this, @Jay. It is food for thought.
I have to say, I initially though that the first one was someone you did not approve of, after reading this
“If you said “with the Big Bang,” congratulations: that was our best answer as of ~1979. Here’s what we’ve learned in all the time since.”
Vilenkin doesn’t really question the Big Bang, so I was confused. I am listening and reading both. I am intrigued by Vilenkin’s thoughts on the Kalam.
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Food for thought. You should take it with a grain of salt, since I just cooked this up, and I’m fairly far down toward the bottom. (But not all the way at least!)
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Does this sound familiar? @Dale
Eternal inflation raises an intriguing possibility. If inflation goes on and on into the future, could it also have gone on and on into the past?7 A universe without a beginning would make it unnecessary to ask how it began.
@Kendel, I was thinking of pithy words that make you think, even of other languages. I think German has some (though it’s 30years since I studied it). I really like “fernweh,” the longing for something far away (fern being far, and weh meaning pain, as I recall).
Can you recommend any others, including English ones?
Thanks
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