No modern biology, but the idea of microscopic causes for disease has been around longer than you think, though it wasn’t popular let alone proven until this last century and half. The solution of boiling water was also used at many times in history as far back as 2000 BC and the fact that this didn’t settle the issue, but that the ancients tried many more complicated methods of water purification suggests that the problem is a little more complicated than this. In other words, it is not just about germs but also toxic substances of many kinds and we just didn’t have a way of distinguishing between the various kinds of contaminants.
In fact… you can say this has been an on-going problem because every time our lives change with new innovations and new ways of doing things, there is always the chance we also introduce new contaminants into the water we drink, and then our water purification methods have to compensate.
But unfortunately most of the Christians I have known (very conservative) believe that being bodily raised means he was physical. After all, he was able to eat with his disciples. But there were theophanies in the old testament that seemed to eat. So I say he was raised as a spiritual body that appeared to his disciples to work like a physical one. This was necessary due to his disciples’ failure to understand the primary importance of the spiritual over the physical.
Furthermore, since we have no record of Jesus’ DNA with which to compare any DNA that might be found, it would be impossible to prove that his bones had been found.
Replying now to the proposition raised earlier of intelligent aliens who have no concept of God—
I have done a lot of reading on the subject of alien abductions. Lots of you are now scoffing and chortling I’m sure; but I don’t necessarily toss out something because everyone says it’s silly. If it’s interesting, I check it out. I have been very much persuaded by the work of David Jacobs, retired history professor at Temple University. His conclusion: they are here, and not for our benefit. Did Columbus cross the Atlantic in order to help the residents of the land he would find? Laughable. One time my husband and I went to hear Jacobs speak and were convinced that he was right. When we came home, we had the feeling that we were suddenly living in a strange universe, one we had not recognized before. One of the questions we asked each other was: do they know about God? Do they serve God? Does God have power over them?
As time has gone on, these questions have not been answered, but have become far more complicated. Believe me, the recognition of the existence of beings who know way more than we do, shakes everything.
Quite honestly, while I accept that there may well be other intelligent life in the universe, the energy and time requirements to travel to another solar system are so great with physics as we know it, I doubt we will ever have any evidence that they exist or existed (since the life span our species (and presumably any alien species) will be just a flash in the pan when looking at the age of the universe.
I guess it is just something I don’t worry about.
Yes, these are the common objections. But how much energy is required is relative to how much you have; there is a lot of energy in matter itself. Except for the atomic bomb we haven’t tapped into that very much. Who knows what else there is. And how long the journey is to another star is also relative to the life span of the beings doing the travelling. Right now there are many scientists exploring the possibility of extending the human life span, even to doing away with aging completely. If you live 1,000 years or so, a trip of several years to another star isn’t all that long, especially if you desperately need something. And if individuals live for thousands of years, there is no need for reproduction, having babies – until you need something that modified bodies can give you, like the ability to breathe a slightly different atmosphere. We can’t rule out something just because we don’t know how it might come to be.
Still there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it, so, like you, I don’t think about it much. I kind of put it in the basement and close the door. That’s not a good way to deal with reality if it is indeed reality; so I wish I could be more certain about it either way.
I wish some of the very bright people on this blog, or anywhere, would read all of David Jacobs’ books (there aren’t that many) and tell me what they think. UFO debunkers rarely talk about his work, and when they do, they point to errors that aren’t actually in it. I don’t like being the only one I know who is thinking about this in a serious way. It’s not a happy picture, and it does interact with belief in God in various ways.
In previous posts I have testified that I have witnessed such an occurrence (i.e.,a miracle not violating physical laws). Besides myself, three humanists/atheists/naturalists were witnesses. I believe that one of these (Prof. Eric Lien) was the 'target’ of this occurrence, and he has since assured me (and other audiences) that it changed his life for the better. I have not followed up on the other two, but since the “conclusion to be drawn” did not directly affect their lives, they may have shrugged it off as a “happening against impossible odds”, and not attributable to God.
@pevaquark, your link to the humanist group is very interesting, but it shows that most of them would expect the event would have to be witnessed by thousands to count as ‘scientifically’ proven. God may prefer to be more subtle than that.
Al Leo
Exactly. God can provide such an experience, but he only will do what it takes for those who would benefit.
What I meant is that if God disregarded the negative consequences they He certainly could convince ALL of them but I see plenty of evidence that this wouldn’t do them any good and wouldn’t do the world any good either.
I don’t think the ancients knew about microorganisms. How could they? They probably had their ideas, and it probably included curses, demons, and like. Jews were at one time blamed for the plague.
They did solve the problem of preserving their food and drink from spoilage by pathogens, at least for a while. There was fermentation (beer, wine, etc.) And drying (the Native Americans dried fish and made pemmican, the very first protein bars). And there was salting. And so forth.
In Marah, the Israelites couldn’t drink the bitter water, but God had Moses throw a special tree into the water that sweetened it up. What that was about is anyone’s guess.
Taste alone can’t always tell you if something is safe. At one little town in Texas where we spent the night, the water was very soft and tasted so disgusting it was practically undrinkable. But it was perfectly safe. Then again, the Romans used to add lead to wine to make it sweeter!!!
No more than we can say they knew about atoms. And yet we take that word “atoms” from Democritus who had this hypothesis of very small units of any material. As for micro-organisms, I remember reading about some long ago philosopher proposing something similar about the cause illness being small creatures of some kind, but I confess that I haven’t been able to find this again to back up my claim. But when you think about it, this is a very natural idea to think of because of the trouble caused by all kinds of visible parasites.
Yes these were the more popular explanations especially if we also add ideas like “humors,” “miasmas,” “unclean-ness” (reminds me of “cooties”), “sin,” and “karma.” So perhaps the point is that we had no proof for what was causing disease and so anybody’s guess was as good any others.
Just goes to show that the more things change the more they stay the same. I am thinking about all the sweeteners that we have tried and discarded in modern times.
Do you have a summary of the evidence he’s looking at? Anecdotal stories are generally not preferred as people can have false memories of things that didn’t happen.
Having ways to test his ideas is rather important. If we sequenced their genomes they should reveal a greatly different history than homo sapiens. But then someone could just claim ‘oh they integrated their genomes to be like ours.’ In other words, the idea is not testable.
But I am just rambling a little bit without knowing Jacobs arguments though as @jpm they would still be subject to the same laws of nature.
Though we do understand how these particles interact with each other:
Yes and the writing of the american James Hillman even more so. I especially found his book Re-Visioning Psychology eye opening and my own thinking has definitely been shaped by it.
Whereas Jung’s psychology focused on the Self, its dynamics and its constellations (ego, anima, animus, shadow), Hillman’s Archetypal psychology relativizes and deliteralizes the ego and focuses on psyche , or soul, and the archai , the deepest patterns of psychic functioning, “the fundamental fantasies that animate all life” (Moore, in Hillman, 1991).
That is why I say that God and myself are on the same epistemic footing, both are entities arising in the consciousness associated with this body/brain. The body and brain are distinct objects in the world. The consciousness they give rise to is an emergent phenomenon not reducible to the atoms and neurons which support it. We use words like “I” and “mine” all the time and it is common to think of consciousness as being ours, but in doing so we’ve put the cart ahead of the horse.
Thank you, Mark! I won´t guarantee that I will read any of his work in the forseeable future, but I will save this comment so he will at least be on my radar.
I could do a summary of each of his books myself and send them to you. That might be the way to go. Then you could get any book that you wanted to know more about and not the others. But how shall I do this? I don’t know that any one else here would be interested so I don’t see posting them unless you think otherwise. Should I send them to an email you might suggest?
Found one! Whether it is the same one as before, I do not know. But the name of this one is Marcus Terentius Varro 116–27 BC who said “there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, but which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and cause serious diseases.” For this reason he warned against swamps as a place where such minute creatures bred.
But again making the hypothesis and being able to check it is a big difference, and it is also what it takes to get the facts straight about these tiny creatures and find a way to combat them.
