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I'm as atheist as they come, but I guess it's a little weird how many religions describe the earth as being completely covered in water initially. Maybe it's a
by TheFiend7 7y ago
I'm as atheist as they come, but I guess it's a little weird how many religions describe the earth as being completely covered in water initially. Maybe it's a coincidence and a natural progression in thought when thinking up a random story of earth's creation, but interesting nonetheless.
Pfft everyone knows this is all just a simulation and "gods"/creation was just the init-script. Gotta do a bulk load into memory of all that water first before computing textures and other compute intensive shit....
- perl4ever 7y agoWhat about "snowball earth"? Did that happen before or after?
- brink 7y agoThe ice age was well after the continents.
- LocalH 7y agoThe universe itself is the simulation, there is no outside “observer” except consciousness itself. At least that’s my current general belief
- elwell 7y agoWhy is it a simulation? Isn't it reality?
- vermilingua 7y agoOh boy, you're one of today's lucky 10,000. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlTKTTt47WE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlTKTTt47WE
- elwell 7y agoI'm aware of the theory, but I was specifically addressing the case of simulation with no outside observer. In that particular flavor of the theory, I feel the word 'simulation' is not as useful as simply calling this system 'reality'.
- LocalH 7y agoAt this point I don't believe there's even a distinction to make, tbh. I definitely don't believe we perceive "objective" reality, our bodies have so much filtering going on (and different species have different filters, thus a "different" reality).
- elwell 7y agoNot perceiving something doesn't make it cease to exist. So, there's still the question of choosing to believe that an objective reality exists at all, even though we can't accurately/fully perceive it. On another note, if the universe is infinite, either through expansion on the macro level or through endless sub-denomination of particles, and we perceive but a finite portion of it, then do we perceive nothing (as a constant out of infinity approaches zero)?
- goatlover 7y agoA simulation requires something else being simulated in order for it to be a simulation, otherwise it's just itself.
- ComputerGuru 7y agoOr God.
- monocasa 7y agoThere was a really bad flood in the bronze age that wiped out the records of a few civilizations. For a lot of people, it really was a reset of the world after the water receded.
- phs318u 7y agoAlso interesting (and slightly OT) that almost every living thing either has origins in water or gestates in a fluid. Am I wrong? Are there any animals that are born/created "dry"? I can't think of any but it doesn't mean there aren't any. If that's your observation of life, stands to reason you'd come up with a similar "creation story" for the world.
- elwell 7y agoAnother 'coincidence' is that the order that plants, water animals, land animals, flying animals, and humans are created seems to match what you might derive from evolution theory. And, that man is created from dust of the earth. Kind of weird to even think that different animals came about within an orderly process. Kind of weird to think that the universe had a beginning; seems to make more sense to assume it just always was and will be, but current science agrees: universe had a beginning and will have an end.
- tomrod 7y agoMore on what eats what I reckon :)
- raducu 7y agoWhat do you make of Adam being ashamed of being naked in the presence of God? To me, that seems to be just something a clothed adult in a pudic society would think, not something the first man would actually feel.
- elwell 7y agoThe transition from being unashamed to ashamed is a big part of the Garden story. First: "Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame." Then, later: "Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths." I don't know, or care to focus on, how literal or figurative the story is. Perhaps it's describing a change that occurred during evolution to (or within) homo sapiens, a change that caused us to be more self-aware (in a bad way?), self-reliant, conscious of good and evil. Just speculation here.
- anthk 7y agoMore like "shit and pee attracts predators". Also, boobs, the vagina, the nuts and the penis are pretty sensitive to the sun/branches/grass and so on.
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- justanotherjoe 7y agoReligions such as? I'm only familiar with christianity so I'm curious what other religion has this feature. (Obviously any religion that's referring to the same source, genesis, are counted as 1)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- yellowapple 7y agoBy Wikipedia's count, dozens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths Quite a few across a wide geographic range all identically feature a handful of humans (and possibly animals and/or plants) being forewarned of an impending flood, building boats (or otherwise being put in boats), and surviving until the waters receded. (EDIT 2: I realize now that I got things mixed up and you were asking for the "Earth started off underwater" myths, but there are plenty of examples of those, too). EDIT: to elaborate further on some specific examples (pulled from Wikipedia, except for the African example which I pulled directly from the cited source, since the article didn't include synopses of any of those examples): - North America (Hopi): « The other version [of the Hopi story of their entrance into the "Fourth World"] (mainly told in Oraibi) has it that Tawa destroyed the Third World in a great flood. Before the destruction, Spider Grandmother sealed the more righteous people into hollow reeds which were used as boats. On arrival on a small piece of dry land, the people saw nothing around them but more water, even after planting a large bamboo shoot, climbing to the top, and looking about. Spider Woman then told the people to make boats out of more reeds, and using island "stepping-stones" along the way, the people sailed east until they arrived on the mountainous coasts of the Fourth World. » - South America: « "The Inca’s supreme being and creator god, Con Tici (Kon Tiki) Viracocha, first created a race of giants, but they were unruly, so he destroyed them in a mighty flood and turned them to stone. Following the deluge, he created human beings from smaller stones. "In other versions of this story, the impious race is the pre-Inca civilization of the Tiahuanaco Indians about Lake Titicaca, the large high lake in the Andes. Viracocha drowns them and spares two, a man and a woman, to start the human race anew. Some versions of the Unu Pachakuti have the surviving man and woman floating to Lake Titicaca in a wooden box." » - India: « Matsya (the incarnation of Lord Vishnu as a fish) forewarns Manu (a human) about an impending catastrophic flood and orders him to collect all the grains of the world in a boat; in some forms of the story, all living creatures are also to be preserved in the boat. When the flood destroys the world, Manu – in some versions accompanied by the seven great sages – survives by boarding the ark, which Matsya pulls to safety. » - Korea: « Namu Doryeong (Hangul: 나무도령, Hanja: --道令) is a myth about the son of a guardian tree spirit. The son, Namu Doryeong, survived a flood by floating on the tree. He first saved a colony of ants from the flood, then a swarm of mosquitoes, until he had saved all the animals of the world. Namu Doryeong finally saved a young human boy, despite the tree's advice against it. After the flood, Namu Doryeong met an older woman and her two daughters on Mt. Baekdu, where they had been safe from the flood. The woman told Namu Doryeong if he won a contest, he could have her daughter's hand in marriage. Namu Doryeong won the contest with the aid of a swarm of ants, who turned out to be the very ants that Namu Doryeong had saved during the flood. Namu Doryeong and the human boy married the two daughters, and they formed the next race of humans. » - Scandinavia: « According to the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson, Bergelmir and his wife alone among the giants were the only survivors of the enormous deluge of blood which flowed from Ymir's wounds when he was killed by Odin and his brothers Vili and Vé. They escaped the sanguinary flood by climbing onto an object and subsequently became the progenitors of a new race of Jötunn. » - DRC (Bakongo): « An elderly woman, tired and covered with sores, arrived at a town in a valley. She asked for hospitality but was turned away at every home except the last one she came to. The people there took her in and cared for her until she was well again. When she was ready to leave, she told her hosts to come with her. Because of the other inhabitants' lack of hospitality, the town was cursed, and the Supreme God, Nzambi, would destroy it. The night after they left, heavy rain fell, turning the valley into a lake. All of the townspeople were drowned. »
- knee-cartilage 7y agoPretty much all of the significant early civilizations appeared around large rivers (I guess a good source of water and nutrient rich soil is necessary for a large civilization) seems reasonable that a major flood would have to happen at each of those places eventually thus becoming their flood myth?
- scotty79 7y agoAlso sky looks like it's all made of water and some water often falls from it. Dry land therefore must be exception made by gods for us.
- rafaelvasco 7y agoMost of the Bible content comes from scriptures and wisdom that came thousands of years before Christ. It wasn't supposed to reveal something but to remind men of ancient wisdom, which was visualized by seers long before Christ; Not all of it makes sense or is valuable to me, and the religious part of the Bible may be questionable, but the moral teachings contained in it are faultless, because they're so simple and above any prejudices;