Where do I live?

For anyone who asks where I live (not that anyone would): Apparently I now live in the People's Republic of Stokes Croft. Cool!

Ever met God?

Have you ever met God? When you have done you tend to believe in Him.

Same goes for Jesus, the Christ: When you've met Jesus you tend to believe in Jesus (that He exists and that He is just what His name says He is, the Christ, the One who was with God and was, from ancient times, foretold as the One who would come from God to Earth to save us) and to believe in God (who sent Him).

Musing: Yin and Yang, En-men-dur-ana and Yeshua

Notice how nature is so mysteriously balanced at the metaphysical level; the yin  and yang - with a little yin in the yang and a little yang in the yin. I wonder what is the relationship between the mathematical constants 'e' and 'pi'; do these constants actually exist in nature (in the Universe) or are they a product of the mind, of psychology if you like, or is the mind just a part of nature or is it a part of God? The mind looks at a perfect circle and assumes it exists in nature because it exists in Maths then it thinks there is a special significance of pairs of points on its outside - the furthest points apart which form a diameter - and a special point on its inside which is the centre - which forms a radius with any point on the outside edge. Then it thinks the edge itself has some significance and tries to divide the length of it by the diameter: And then we get 'pi'. Is that human activity actually part of a psychology which even exists in the mind of the Creator of the laws of physics? Are laws of physics in the mind of God, the mind of Man or both?

I think the mystery deepens when we consider that the mind of Man and the mind of God are linked like the yin and yang - some of the one in the other and so much of the other in the first. Why do I think this? Consider the man who went to God at the start of the history of Mankind - En-men-dur-ana - history had it the angels/gods took him to heaven and there taught him all the mysteries of Creation and the laws of the Universe. Then consider at the other end of history the Elect One, Messiah, Christ - Yeshua - who came from the right hand of God in Heaven to the Earth as a lowly man - the Son of Man - and, having taken human form, suffered the death of crucifixion in order to become the High Priest forever of Mankind. Now these persons take special place in a Universe where the thoughts of a man have risen to the height of God and the thoughts of God have descended to the realm of Man and man and God are united to rule even the angels.

What a mystery.

En-men-dur-ana

According to Wikipedia, En-men-dur-ana was a Sumerian king living before 2900 BC who has been identified by some with Enoch, the ancient patriarchal prophet of God / Allah, to whom is attributed the Book of Enoch. Enoch is chronicled in the book of Genesis and recorded in two books in the New Testament as 'seventh from Adam'.

Well this got me thinking, if this historically attested person, En-men-dur-ana, is linked to Enoch in the Bible, and even Wikipedia has it that he was in history recorded as "7th name in a list of ante-deluvian patriarchs with long lifespans" then maybe the first in the historical list of such patriarchs is actually identifiable with the man known as the first man, namely Adam. Cool!

OK so who was the first in this list of patriarchs, in the list of kings of Sumeria in the centuries before, what, 2500 BC? I'll have a look at the Wikipedia links ...

... En-men-dur-ana's first predecessor is En-sipad-zid-ana (the king of Larsa)

The predecessor of En-sipad-zid-ana = Dumuzid ('Shepherd' of Bad-tibira) - these guys were all kings but that term might just be what we sometimes call 'patriarch' or a head of tribe or family

Predecessor of Dumuzid = En-men-gal-ana (again of Bad-tibira) - these guys can have very similar names in Sumerian, the archetypal language

Predecessor of En-men-gal-ana = En-men-lu-ana (again of Bad-tibira)

Predecessor of  En-men-lu-ana = Alalngar (of Eridu - which makes sense because Eridu was one of the first cities, it seems, and sometimes identified with part of the site of the Garden of Eden, where the tree of life was situated, as attested in the Epic of Gilgamesh who sought the tree of life from the then flooded area around Eridu where the tree had given the water healing powers)

...
I think we are getting warmer since I have it from Sumerian lexica that Adam is also written in Sumerian as Alam or even Alan and does indeed match the Biblical meaning of 'statue' related to his having been formed by God as a moulding from clay or mud (does the prophesy in the Qur'an say 'from a clot'? I think it's something like that, but it's the same kind of imagery of some matter formed into a statue-like object before being given the breath of life by God)
...

Now here we are:
predecessor of Alalngar = Alulim (again from Eridu and again a little like the name Alam equating to Adam so the kind of phonetics is consistent with scriptures) and there we have it - the first in the list and possibly the historical Adam (alias Alam, alias Alulim) and even Wikipedia reports the historical account regarding this person's predecessor as "new creation". Wow. Adam a historical person for real! Whatever next?! I love it!

An Aside: A Human Argument for, well, you'll see

How long might humans continue to exist? Long enough to eventually develop technology for terraforming and even for creating asteroids, even planets? Why not? Doesn't science already, after just a few thousand years of scientific progress, offer hints that given even just a few thousand years of further progress (aside from a possibility of human life coming to an abrupt end on Earth) humans might find ways to create cosmic matter or change planets. There is string theory offering possibilities that matter or energy can spontaneously appear out of nothing at all and unimaginably quickly go back to nothing. Humans might find ways to capture it before it goes back to nothing and so harvest energy on ever greater and greater scales. Then there is dark matter which might be with us, around us, permeating this planet, available perhaps in the distant future to harvest and mould. Just move the harvesting and moulding process further out into space and scale it up more and more and why not believe that in as little as ten thousand years mankind would probably harness all this. Extrapolate from the scientific advances of the past, add the possibility of further evolution of brain and spirit, consider further learning from interactions with more advanced beings. Add the need to survive cataclysms and over, say hundreds of thousands of years, hypothetically at least, being able to make a new planet as a home would seem an inevitable and likely future for humankind. It might even be achieved through development of the spiritual side of humans - mind over matter or mind over space and time. It seems that the longer the human race or the races of its descendants continue the more and more likely it will be that building asteroids, planets, even stars would eventually be achieved.

Now some scientists believe there are unavoidable reasons to consider that other, probably more advanced beings exist in the Universe. So surely, by extension of that same line of reasoning, some of these advanced beings are almost bound to already have the technology to make planets like ours and be using it. Given the size and age of the Universe, even by our present knowledge, there must be finite possibilities that some of these beings are able to make pretty much endless stars and planets just because if you can make one then surely given enough time you could scale that up to huge proportions. So can we really exclude the inevitability that our own planet could have been so formed? Now you see where this argument leads. If similar arguments are taken as proof of the existence of life on other planets, the same reasoning followed through leads first to the likelihood, even inevitability that some beings can and do make planets and then to the likelihood, even inevitability, that this very planet we live on would have been so formed, given that with almost infinite room and billions of years of time for technological advancement by beings somewhere in the Universe, it is impossible to discount this probability. Given the size and age of the Universe, surely it is a deduction from present knowledge that there must somewhere in the Universe be at least one being who could have made this planet and all that is on it. Surely the belief that, given other evidence for design too and historical hints that people such as Jesus, the Christ have manifest unworldly power in relatively recent recorded history and that miracles happen in his Name even today, who can say that it is unscientific to believe in creation and creator or creators?

Now I have presented this line of reasoning to prove that scientific thought itself may lead quite naturally, following conventional modern lines of deduction, to a belief that creation of the Earth and life on it is very plausible and not to be discounted. This is a human argument. It is, in my own opinion, a follow-on from a relatively enlightened, modern understanding of the power of technology via the human brain and the collective learning of many such brains working together over thousands of years. I offer this as a kind of proof which uses what might be called natural or philosophical theology. It is based on what we know of the human being and on the powers of deduction of the human brain enlightened by science and philosophical thought. Now it seems to me that following through with this same line of reasoning leads to the distinct possibility that the religious prophets of Judaism, Christianity and Islam might actually have been telling the truth about the creation of the planet and the nature and character of the one or ones responsible for its existence and nature. Here comes a bit of a paradox though, because those teachings give a slightly different account than the aforementioned deductions. From the religion that came from Jesus Christ we have it that the Creator being, Beings yet One, God, His Elect One and His Holy Spirit, is not one of many, many creators throughout the huge Universe but actually alone in Power and wholly responsible for the existence every other kind of being in the Universe. Moreover, Earth and its human life were not the inevitable result of the scientific advancement of creative technology of beings here or there in the Universe but rather the deliberately planned and possibly first full-blown planetary 'geosystem' (is that a word?) and ecosystem in time and now possibly still the only such system until the Creator chooses to complete this work and start another. Yet further, the idea of evolution is not foremost in the explanation of our existence and that of life but rather the next stage in human natural history is to be a resurrection of believers in the Christ as the culmination of the ultimate upgrade from Human 1.0 to Human 2.0 giving us what seems similar in concept to the famous 'X-Men' of the comic strips; beings able to communicate with animals, establish world peace in supreme love, rule with unimaginable powers and stand side-by-side with the Christ as God "makes all his enemies a footstool for his feet". Now I reckon we have properly and reasonably progressed from philosophical to biblical theology. The thought journey started hand-in-hand with science and reason to have a stab at what could be true until finding the teachings of the Christ and His followers, when it let go and held to those teachings in order to know what is true. I reason that it is in the act of letting go and believing the teachings Christ that many in society impose their allegations that we have not been scientific but up until that point it is no less scientific, I reckon, than the ideas behind the search for life on other planets. This is how I think it is that faith overcomes the world and where many fall at the hurdle and few make it through. I had (and have) quite a struggle of it myself but it's like breaking a world record when you make it through to faith, by faith. A big hint to others who want the same: "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." 

I set out a human argument to refute atheistic scientific arguments and I believe I have shown that even scientific reasoning, classed by some as proof of the existence of life elsewhere in the Universe, can be extended to 'prove' that the Earth and lifeforms COULD have been created. However this paints a picture of God modelled in the human mind and therefore almost inevitably it has to be set aside in preference to the revealed picture God has actually given of Himself. My human-generated picture paints a 'God' who is merely another being from somewhere else in the Universe, perhaps a being which evolved within the time the Universe has been expanding or whatever else science says it has been doing. The next time the scientists change their view of the history of the Universe, this 'God' might have to 'change' too. God has actually made Himself known to His creatures and there is nothing in that revelation I can think of which suggests He didn't exist before all things, au contraire. So having formulated a model of the existence of a Creator and to demonstrate that science should be able to support a model in which the world is created (more so than one in which it isn't), I now have to deprecate that very model in favour of divine revelation which is better by far.