[MD] Intellect in the Bible?

[skutvik at online.no]

Marksmit and Group

This discussion is a constant landslide covering lots of interesting and 
relevant posts each day, for instance your latest - before this - on your 
doubts about the utility of the MOQ. Only Ham responded, but he has 
his own axe to grind. 

Anyway in the meantime you wrote 3 Nov.
 
Bo before: 
> The 4th. level isn't knowledge of how to do anything, nor of knowledge 
> of good and evil, it can best be recognized as SKEPTICISM. In the 
> ancient times when social value was top notchg in  skeptics were absent,  no
> one (for instance) in Israel said to a prophet "are we supposed to 
> believe this nonsense?" The social age was (what we call) magical. 
> Intellect emerged when the Greek thinkers started to look for - and 
> found - principles (natural laws) beyond the myths. This was the 
> budding skeptical science that by and by over-ran the mythological 
> (social) reality. The Semitic type religions the last strongholds. 

Marksmit
> Hi Bo, This is an interesting proposition.  It would imply that the
> world as we see it now, is more real than the world as seen back then.

More real? At least the 4th.level is the highest static good so it's better 
than the 3rd, but it's static and as such its "reality" isn't ultimate.       

>  Through my readings it would seem that people were just as skeptical
> back 2000 years ago.  In fact, it was only a small minority that saw
> the benefit of a kind and just God over one with a bad temper.  

Do you by "kind and just God"  mean Christendom? Anyway you must 
see the real meaning of "intellect as skepticism", namely the scientific 
article that rejects all god-based explanations.  And the "god-based 
explanations" didn't start with Judaism, but is the SOCIAL LEVEL itself 
that stretches tens of thousands of years back. What I mean is that 
there could not rise a "skeptic" in the Stone Age and say: "Listen you 
superstitious ignorants, these lights in the sky aren't gods and 
goddesses, they must have a natural explanation!". The S/Os 
(superstition/knowledge, supernatural/natural ..etc)  had to arrive first, 
thus the pejorative halves of these dualisms also belong to the 
intellectual level. The social level did not "know" that its reality was 
superstitious. I harp so hard  on this point to because it's so important 
for understanding the social- intellectual transition.     

> There are  just as many followers of enlightening philosophies in this
> day and age as there were back then.  In my opinion, the only thing
> that makes natural laws seem more real to us is our collective
> agreement on them, and the amount of detail that is used to describe
> them.  Have you ever seen gravity?  What is your experience of quantum
> mechanics? We trust what we are taught, but I wouldn't say that it is
> more real. 

I'm not sure what this says? "Followers of enlightened philosophy" .... 
two thousand years ago, there weren't any "natural laws" before the 
the intellectual level which was in its infancy two thousand years ago. 
Social reality ruled, everything was caused by divine wills.   

Yes, people trust what they are taught and in our intellect-steeped age 
we are taught NOT to take anything for granted, scientific experiments 
must be performed to tests any hypothesis before it is accepted. 
However, I'm no 4th. level advocate, rather a moqist who know that 
there is an underlying "value" which isn't taught, but nevertheless 
permeates our culture, namely  that there is an objective reality that we 
just have subjective opinions about. 

Bodvar