Nature Must Not Be Worshipped (The Case For Judeo-Christian Values, Part XVI) Dennis Prager Alert

Townhall.com ^ | 06/21/05 | Dennis Prager

[Louis Foxwell]

The supposed exceptionalism of Genesis claimed in this article is simply not true, as any study of comparative mythology will show.

Only one who reveres comparative mythology could make such a silly claim.

Genesis reveals truth, not myth. The Creator is not Parusha, Ptah or Gaia. The Creator described in Genesis is the Creator, not a signpost.

Nature aka creation aka the known universe does not teach good and evil. These are spiritual concepts taught by the Creator, not the creation.

The moral equivalency of killer tigers and killer humans is inescapable in a purely natural setting. Nature makes no moral distinctions.

Environmentalism is morally and intellectually empty. It lacks any ethical legitimacy. By defining humanity as the scourge of the earth it legitimizes barbarism.

Love, compassion, mercy, tenderness, et al are expressions of the Spirit of God. These refined sentiments are not natural in nature.

God provides His spirit as the means to transcend His creation and reside in Him in Spirit and in Truth.

The myth maker can not know this because he refuses to accept the truth behind the myth. God is the Truth and He is no myth.

[goldstategop]

The creation of the world came before Man. What I believe Dennis is referring to is that, prior to the Revelation At Sinai, ancient peoples like the Egyptians and the Sumerians believed man was subject to the caprice of fickle nature. The Jews on the other hand, believed man was subject to God who ruled over nature. From that was derived the idea man was the master of nature. With that single discovery, human civilization took a quantum leap forward and the world has never been the same since that time.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[goldstategop]

God makes the point he acts through nature not that he is controlled by it. The point made in the famous encounter of Elijah with God at Mount Sinai - the only other time in biblical literature a Jewish figure returns to the mountain on which Israel received the Torah - is that the various manifestations of nature do not reveal the true essence of God. God in the end is revealed startingly in the "still small voice."

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[Prophet in the wilderness]

Amen.....

[USMMA_83]

I guess we disagree....I belive God is everywhere. You know something to the effect that the kingdom of heaven is within you (around you)....

[USMMA_83]

Probablly the most condensending post I 've read in quite a while...

[USMMA_83]

you are not going to win over many frinds on FR wiht that post. But, nonetheless...I agree with you and your post.

[kanawa]

One in All and All in One

[kanawa]

But the material world is NOT God

Who has spoke of "the material world" but you?
USMMA_83 mentioned laughter, battling and beauty.
Are these material?
What is "the material world" anyways? A human construct?

[biblewonk]

Evolution was called idolatry in the OT:

Jer 2:27 Saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth: for they have turned their back unto me, and not their face: but in the time of their trouble they will say, Arise, and save us.

28 But where are thy gods that thou hast made thee? let them arise, if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble: for according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah.

[goldstategop]

The created as opposed to the spiritual world. The Ten Commandments contains a prohibition from making the things of nature and man in the image of God - who is without appearance, shape or form. When the Greeks and later the Romans entered the Holy Of Holies inner sanctum in the Jerusalem Temple - they found no idol there. And the prophetic teachings hold that the worship of all but God will not save men's souls. Nature can be admired in its own right but it can never be regarded in a sacred sense. The biblical tradition holds, unlike the post-modern pagan environmental movement does, that the earth's bounties can and ought to be exploited for human benefit. It is no accident the idea that man could master nature is what has marked us off as being different from the beasts who must live at the mercy of the seasons and under the constant threat of predation and natural extinction. Man freed himself from the control of nature at last by following God who is above nature.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[hlmencken3]

Prager is the single most over-rated popular writer in the conservative movement. He dumbs down both Christianity and Judaism (not to mention secular studies) to fit his own personal comfort level.

[Elsie]

it was the "mildly amusing" thing.........


;^)

[Elsie]

I've been PUNG!

---

Romans 1: 25

 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised. Amen.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[MEGoody]

God is everywhere...even in Nature. Even in a burning bush, or the rainbow over the rockies. God exists in the breath you take and the beauty around you.

I'm assuming you know that is not a Judeo-Christian description of God.

[MEGoody]

If that isn't a responsibility for environmental stewardship, I don't know what would be.

Yes, we are to take care of what God has given us. But I doubt that God would say to put farmers out of business in order to raise the water level a little bit in a lake so some fishies can live more comfortably. (I'm hoping that was not the kind of environmental stewardship you meant.)

[Carry_Okie]

Yes, we are to take care of what God has given us. But I doubt that God would say to put farmers out of business in order to raise the water level a little bit in a lake so some fishies can live more comfortably. (I'm hoping that was not the kind of environmental stewardship you meant.)

We have to design systems suchy that market forces justly determine which property owners stay in the farming business versus which people go into the fisery habitat because that is what the market demands. Sometimes the same property owner would surely do both.

Designing, prototyping, and implementing such systems is what I do.

[USMMA_83]

Damn straight!

[USMMA_83]

They just don't get it. I mean if you take their view to the n-th conclusion, you'd notice that you will write God as G_d...which in itself is laughable. Our languge is the use of symbols to describe / name things around us. Even to call God, The Nameless, is in effect the same thing....It's a sad world where a person can't see God in everything. Especially in a newborns cry, or look. It boggles the mind.