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=> What I Resent

What I Resent

Posted by Farid (Moderator) - Saturday, November 15 2003, 15:51:42 (EST)
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Here's what I resent...

This quote from Oates' book, "Babylon", comes at the end of a long paragraph outlining the scientific achievements of the Sumerians on down through the Assyrians and everybody else in BetNahrain to the later Babylonians...

...."...mathematics and astronomy was much developed and expanded in the Classical world, and Hellenistic science...later transmitted through Arab sources (sorry Aprim)...was to dominate the ancient world and Western Europe until the time of Newton. But its roots lay undoubtedly in Babylonia, and the Babylonian astronomy of Seleucid times, with over a millenium of remarkable mathematical development behind it, was without question a major force in the development of true science IN THE ANCIENT WORLD (Caps mine)."

Now why the "ancient world"? There could be no modern science without "science"...no computer without cuneiform. What does the qualifier "ancient" add to the discussion? Here's the thing...at the same time our ancestors were doing all of this and so much more...the Hebrews were eating bugs and honey, on a good day...such days obviously being rare cause look how much they went on and on about it when it happened and even put it in their "holy book" where the rest of their "achievements" are stored. On a bad day they were tromping down to Egypt for work and pasture for their starved goats or cutting the throats of their firstborn sons in order to make their God feel sorry for them so he'd send more bugs.

And it WAS a miracle too that the bugs even bothered coming because there was nothing for them to eat in dusty Israel either but were on their way to BetNahrain when they made the mistake of setting down to rest in what looked like a barren hillside...Judea, whose inhabitants then rushed out and ate them raw. Yahwe couldn't be bothered to send rain or plant his darlings anywhere but in the rocky hills no one had wanted, only the Jews said it was "impregnable" and where nothing could grow anyway...instead he sent them bugs to eat...and they never got over being thankful and bragging to the neighbors about their "bountiful Lord...would you like to sign up"? Is it any wonder that sort of a god had to be forced down people's throat at gunpont and which inhabitant of BetNahrain in is or her right mind would EVER have done so?

Whenever the ancient Hebrews and their accomplismets in the field of morality and ethics are mentioned...there's no talk of its being good "in the ancient world"...where that sort of backwards idiocy should have been left. Instead it's all about how them amazin' Hebrews invented "ethics"...PERIOD...for all time...timeless and immutable...and let's all go back to the "good old days". As savage and brutal and barbaric as they were, their morals and ethical precepts are supposed to have been good enough for the ancient world, far superior to those brutes whose achievements the Hebrews couldn't begin to approach, as well as for 1000 years later...for the next 3000 years...and for 20,000 years more down the road. But Babylonian "SCIENCE", for Ashur's sake...was good for the "ancient world".

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