[MD] QRE: The 4th. level's two interpretations. Par

[skutvik at online.no]

Steve and Group.

2 Nov.you wrote:

> Intellect comes into play when we start asking "why?"

Was it intellect coming into play when a Stone Age man asked: "Why 
don't the bison come to our hunting grounds anymore?   

> What is striking to me about pre-intellectual texts such as the Bible
> is that explanations often use the word "because" yet have nothing
> recognizable as an intellectual rationale as in "And God blessed the
> seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work
> of creating that he had done" or "Then Rachel said, "God has vindicated
> me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son." Because of this she
> named him Dan." 

What ought to strike you in these texts are the conspicuous absence 
of SOM. There's no: "I think, In my mind. in my opinion, let's look 
objectively at it, is this really so, there must be a natural explanation" 
...etc. OK my examples are "modern", yet this Old Testamental 
relevation stuff has nothing to do with the Greek thinkers' intellectual 
ques.   

Not long ago I read Homer's "Iliad"which is from about the same "Old 
Testament" times. It's the same lack of any somish reflecting - 
skeptical - subject, only demi-gods and people intermingling in some 
emotional frenzy of hate and love, pride and prejudice. 

> Yet other times, we do see rationales that have some intellectual
> quality, so I think we even see a budding intellectual level (which is
> the collection of all intellectual patterns) even in the early
> Biblical writings to the extent that we can think of a single-cell as
> life

I would have liked to see examples of "intellectual rationale" in the Old 
Testament (maybe they begin to show in the New) Semitic religions - 
Judaism and Islam - have no intellectual quality (re. Jews I mean the 
orthodox, the secular Israelis are OK) That's what they call "Western 
values" and blow themselves up in an effort to avoid infecting Islam. 
The last time "intellectualism" - in the form of secularism  - threatened 
the Islamic world (around 1000 AD) the Assassin sect formed and 
killed the secular sultans who harbored learned "scientists"..  

Bodvar