What did Job, Jesus, Revelations of His Heavenly Father, and Paul know of the Heavens? Did the Ancient Jews of the First Century Reject Babylonian as well as Greco-Roman culture?
Given Ancient Babylonian Jews and, later, the Babylonian Talmud, the rejection of Babylonian culture may not have been as strong as the rejection of Hellenistic culture.
Did the biblical John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul have astrological evidence of coming Judgement, Tribulation, and a New World Order in favor of Jewish Apocalypticism?
No.
Did Jesus or Paul move the world closer and faster to Babylonian Sidereal Asstrology preventing error in knowledge, a salvific thing?
No.
An all-knowing God would know about the Earth’s relation to the Sun and other stars.
The god of Truth blesses the former captive of the Jews with understanding the heavens?
Yes.
Interesting.
AND, understanding the heavens has helped the understanding of human character.
And there is a connection between character and soul, yes or yes?
What “unraveled” astrology was astronomy. The attempts by astrologers to incorporate the findings of science into their systems is rather sad because these findings ultimately render the entire astrological project absurd and meaningless. The Babylonians can be excused because their cosmology was purely observational and empiricist. If all you have is the evidence of your senses, then the world does look like a flat disk covered by a heavenly dome. The Greeks figured out that the earth was a sphere but of course still maintained that it was a fixed point at the center of the cosmos. It is not a trivial matter that the origins of astrology rest in a world view requiring that the earth possess a privileged position in the cosmos.
The fundamental insight of scientific astronomy, perhaps its most precious gift, is the concept of Deep Space. The “Zodiac” as it appears to us is contingent and arbitrary. Move just a few light years in any direction and the shape of the sky begins to shift. The earth spins and moves around the sun. The sun moves around a local group of stars. The local group of stars move around the galaxy. Our galaxy moves around a local group of other galaxies. Our local group of galaxies is being pulled by the gravitational effects of the Shapley supercluster of galaxies some 750 million light years away. Nothing rests. There is no privileged position.
It is interesting to speculate on the cosmological views of the writers of the New Testament. As educated persons in a Hellenistic culture you could assume they were aware of the views of the Greeks. But there are odd hints. When Satan takes Jesus up on a high mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world you might wonder how this would be possible unless you had some idea that the world was flat. When Jesus bodily ascends into the clouds you might wonder how this works without some idea that Heaven was literally above the sky, redolent of the ancient view of a three-tiered cosmos with layers above and below a flat earth. We know that the NT writers for the most part were heavily apocalyptic in outlook. If you look at the apocalyptic literature that would have been available to them, both canonical and non, you see that it adheres to the older view, free of newfangled Greek insights.
Did Jesus believe the earth was flat? Few people at the time probably had any kind of systematic view of their cosmos. For most people the known simply flowed off into the unknown.
I think Steefen’s view of astrology already incorporates scientific astronomy and is not based on a view that the earth is the center of the universe.
Well undoubtedly that would be the claim. My point is that this attempt is incoherent because astrology by its very nature requires the earth to have a privileged position, the very claim that is invalidated by modern science.
Essentially, in the most general of terms, it’s hard to distinguish such a scientific view of astrology from philosophical determinism, although one still has to wrestle with the question of causality. Is my horoscope in this morning’s newspaper a result or a cause of everything else happening in the multiverse today? Or is it just a deterministic coincidence? Is there even such a thing as a deterministic coincidence?
Robert, interesting questions.
It’s hard to see how to reconcile any sort of causality with a non-deterministic view of reality.
Popular astrology would say that we study the stars to gauge their influence over earthy events. But the ancient more studied view was a bit more subtle than that. The belief was in correspondences. As above so below. It was not that the stars had an influence so much as it was that each moment had an essence shared by all of reality. I study the position of the stars and planets at the moment of my birth because each part of reality shares the same essence. This reveals another assumption behind astrology that is problematic. Not only does astrology require us to privilege our position in space. It also requires us to subscribe to a philosophically suspect metaphysic of essentialism.
What about a reality that is largely deterministic but with some allowance of a partially free will for some creature, at least temporarily before we croak?
I’m not a physicist but I think determinism would be considered an absolute state, meaning reality is either deterministic, or it’s not. You can’t qualify it. Like evolution by natural selection. If God interferes as some theists claim, then it ceases to be natural selection and becomes artificial selection. You’re either pregnant or you’re not. But just for the sake of argument let’s suppose that your supposition is correct. Where do you see the discontinuity? Where is that moment when reality ceases to be deterministic and the creature flies free?
Some kind of interconnectedness of all reality. That’s a cool idea. That’s not problematic, is it?
Well as a metaphor it succeeds admirably. The problem is the essentialist metaphysical assumption required to claim more. This idea has a venerable history predating Aristotle. Alas, the conclusions of modern scientific inquiry seem to undercut it.
I just find it hard to believe that we don’t have even the slightest measure of temporary free will. I’m not talking about God interfering in natural selection, but sometimes I want chocolate and other times vanilla. There both good!
But consider the dozens of flavors you rejected without thinking about them. Why chocolate? Why vanilla?
What if the entire universe, even the multiverse, is somehow part of one big thing, a whole that cannot be irrevocably separated into completely disparate parts?
Which of course exists without being deterministic, right?
As a cultural study astrology is actually very interesting but as a description of how the world works it’s rubbish. Like alchemy in comparison to chemistry.
You’re saying I have no freedom whatsoever?
What if I responded, “No, you don’t”? You would still experience your life the same way you do now would you not?
It is interesting that there has always been a strain of religious philosophy given to determinism. So that idea is not completely new. What is more deterministic than God’s will?
For my part:
I don’t think there can be proof one way or the other. Both determinism and libertarianism are entirely reconcilable to the data.
But, my own daily experience of myself is of a self that is (at least sometimes) self-determined and responsible. And my interactions with other persons is likewise entirely predicated on a mutual recognition of the other’s capacity for self direction. People treat me like a moral agent, and that’s how I treat them.
So, while all of that could conceivably be an error, if I can be mistaken about something so fundamental to my experience of the world and even myself, then I might as well give up knowing anything.
If I’m sitting deliberating about which alternative to choose, believing–as I sincerely do–that *I* really can choose either one according to my good pleasure, and if it turns out I’m wrong in thinking the outcome really is up to me, then what can I possibly be sure of?
Both determinism and libertarianism are entirely reconcilable to the data.
It’s difficult to see how one can accept any form of causality and not tend to determinism.
…if I can be mistaken about something so fundamental to my experience of the world and even myself, then I might as well give up knowing anything.
Or we can acknowledge our mistaken impressions.
…then what can I possibly be sure of?
Reality is probabilistic. We deal in likelihoods not certainties. We build models of reality. But at every point these models are subject to modification or even disconfirmation as we perfect our understanding.
Why? If I accept that there is causality in the universe, why does that exclude me from being a cause of some of my own actions?
Well as far as can be determined all current states are based on prior states just as future states are the result of current states. Can you provide an example of you “being the cause of your own actions”?
I choose not to do so.
Then I wonder who this “I’ is you speak of. “I” do not make a choice. “I” am the choice. What I call “making a choice” describes the moment when the choice rises to the level of conscious awareness. As in many things what is required here is a conceptual leap.
“as far as can be determined” is a massive qualifier when we are talking about human psychology. The amount we don’t understand about the function of the human mind dwarfs what we know about it.
Sometimes God hides?
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert