Yeah baby, get up into mountains in time for a thunder storm and have a few nearby strikes,
Ain’t nothing like it to put the fear of god in ya, even if you don’t believe in God.
Regarding evolutionary roots
Cleaning Corpses: Chimpanzee Funerary Rites Seen for 1st Time
By Megan Gannon March 21, 2017
Sometimes I realize I’m not that adventurous. Like I’ve never done any lengthy hiking. I plan a lot, have the best maps, give myself exit routes, and haven’t ever been more than two days hike from my car. People who head out for days at a time, not being sure of the terrain just amaze me. If I were to do such a crazy thing as head up a mountain for a storm, I’d bring some large rubber mats and many extra pairs of underwear.
I’ll have to defer this for another time then. I’m only being casual and lack any ability to prove anything regarding my views on this without extensive research into many other corelating subjects like archeology and linguistics. I believe that much of it is political. For instance, I see that the authors of the Wikipedia links regarding history of language treats onomatopoeia that I believe forms the foundation for language as relatively naive. While I can agree to some of the other arguments for other debates about these origins, I cannot agree to their dismissiveness of that.
The onomatopoeia, for instance, is what I argued for where “Ra” (the sound), as what significantly gave the Egyptians justice to refer to energetic meanings that also map to the suns rays, and evolved into the biblical roots that use ‘ra’ in their words. [Like “Is-ra-el”].
As to me interpreting ‘el’ as meaning “the” and correlating to the cardinal use of “thee” to reference absolutes is how I believe “-el” at the end evolved to mean “god”. “God” is the emotive religious term expressing the generic sources of natural phenomena, known or unknown as a “good” source, implying that “thee” nature is a source favorable specifically for humans. It opposes some ancient philosophers interpretation of duality (where “diesm” actually referenced) and meant a “thee” that is both ‘good’ and ‘evil’. The neutral use of the term, ‘el’ (or ‘al’, etc) in French and Spanish languages show that they too added emotive distinction between sexes while still also using it in a neutral froms.
I can only beg an appeal to this and so cannot prove anything nor would trust others in such soft sciences authoritatively who also require the same form of reasoning to infer the actual meanings. Its all speculative. The way I approach interpetation is to imagine placing myself in the times knowing that words, especially of the most universally significant titles and names, were thought to be highly significant and non-arbitrary. So to me, “el” is either “the” or “thee”, where “thee” became ‘god’ given this was synonymous as a type of pronoun article.
I’m just not sure why you think it is a ‘stretch’. (?) I personally think it is a stretch, however popular it may be to most today, how many think that ‘god’ would precede the imagination in creating words with meaning before something more neutral, like ‘the’ or ‘source’ (or ‘the source’)? I mean, isn’t this the kind of presumptious thinking that the religious would presume that to be a ‘theist’ is the normal way to interpret nature, but that to be ‘atheist’ is a stretch of the imagination?
Exactly. But there are people who spend their entire day thinking about this, studying every available reference to the words and sounds, and know when a word was first known to have been heard in a region, by whom, and to whom it was passed on. I don’t understand why you wouldn’t trust their work, or seek it out if it interests you. Of course words aren’t arbitrary, and placing yourself in the times is exactly what you need to do, but I don’t get any sense that you’ve done that, except in the most cursory manner.
I’m not sure what you are asking here.
At the moment this is not suffiently important for me. I’ve got to pick my battles. I’ve stated what my opinion is and do not defer to authority regardless of how much investment one has shown by their formal credentials alone. And I actually DO seek out others opinions where need be. Language origins are necessarily political and so that fact alone suffices to be doubtful.
My meaning of ‘non-arbitrary’ refers to terms that have necessary precedence to terms that are artificially dependent upon them. Pronouns ‘precede’ given names. We can live without a God but not Nature; So meanings that are generic, like my proposing “el” as “the” or “one” precedes a more specific artifact of creative licence, like that the term IMPLIES, “a God”; to me, they are the same. I also wasn’t denying that it meant “God” later as it is interpreted. I’m talking about the common roots of both uses as originating of the same ancestor.
“the” precedes “Thee”
I interpreted I mriana as insulting my interpretation as something disconnected to reality.
So the comparison:
When a religious person tries to tell me that I am the one who is being irrational for daring to suggest that I am ‘denying God’, I would say that being “atheist” PRECEDES “theist” by meaning even though the literal terms have reversed precedence in its present symbols. I am born “without religion” like any other animal; then we have to be taught to “have religion”. This is a comparable analogue to me interpreting ‘el’ meaning “the” has necessary precedence to a special particular “Thee” (referring to God by metaphorical extensional meaning).
But is all that not sophistry?
The scientific method demands that the burden of proof is on the claimant. This holds for theism as well. If the claimant is unable to prove the necessity of a supernatural intentional agency, the default position must be non-recognition as natural lawgiver.
As to language, AFAIK almost all mammals have a form of communication and human language is still made up of sets of symbolic grunts and clicks, regardless if they are arranged and ordered by Shakespeare.
This is not a ‘scientific’ claim that I’m making. It is a casual convsersation and while I try to argue it out logically, I am also not using premises that are unreasonably possible to agree to.
“Sophistry” refers to the use of rhetoric that appeals regardless of logic. One can also use one’s authority to do this too. If someone is trustworthy regarding their credibility, this can be used to assert things that are not sound but counting on the listener to assume they would not make things up.
“Allah” means "Thee One " (and ONLY) as implied by ‘thee’.
I can use this statement as a premise and if you disagree, then I might look it up and then quote from “Allah” from britannica.com
Allah , Arabic Allāh (“God”) , the one and only God in Islam.
Etymologically, the name Allah is probably a contraction of the Arabic al-Ilāh , “the God.” The name’s origin can be traced to the earliest Semitic writings in which the word for god was il , el , or eloah , the latter two used in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament).
I underlined “the one and only” to show an example. That the term “God” is implied is why the description in quotations in the following sentence has “the God” in quotations.
This is a logical argument and my own reference link acts as supportive proof of the common definition of the term. But you don’t require accepting it. It can be considered, ‘scientific’ given it is something you witness and may agree is true for trusting the link but I didn’t require using an empirical experiment to ‘prove’ it.
As to interpretation, if you assert that it literally says “God” in there and so that closes the issue, right? But then I might ask why you we use “President” to stand in for “Joe Biden” but no one would think that any use of “president” assures it has to be Joe Biden, nor that it has to be “the leader of the United States of America”. It is a shorthand reference in context but has a more general meaning of “leader of a republic” here. The same goes for “Allah”. It only means “Thee one” but IMPLIES a specific being.
This is a ‘proof’ and needs no extensive study nor authority to argue unless it is blasphemous for me to say so. That I might be expected to be dismissed as being ‘unscientific’ for arguing like this, though, is and example of “sophistry” because it begs the listener to ignore what I have to say for lacking authority, a fallacy of reasoning being used as though it has logical soundness.
“unless it is blasphemous for me to say so.”
Therein lies the rub. Ask 5 religious persons of different faith who is the “one and only” and you’ll get 5 different answers.
George Carlin put it very succinctly;
Do you believe in God?
No? 
Boom, you’re dead!
Do you believe in God?
Yes? Do you believe in my God?
No? Boom , you’re dead!
Scientifically, and in my IMO, there isn’t much difference. Only religion is arrogant enough to separate us, when we are animals too.
First of all, el in Spanish isn’t used as “thee”. It translates into English as “the”. You don’t say “thee road” in any royal sense and even if one said, “el Camino Real” (the King’s Highway) in Spanish and the “el” be the royal part of the name. In Hebrew, the “El” does mean God. So yes, you are stretching language.
There is a big difference, man gets conscience and abstract thinking. Some animals seem to possess fragments of them, or be very near possessing them, but only man fully does.
@scottmayers
Your understanding of “deferring to authority” is going to be an issue with me. I could go into greater detail, but having experts in a field who can interpret the data they are familiar with is a key part of applying the scientific methods.
You mention not requiring an empirical experiment to ‘prove’ it. I wouldn’t ask you to design and carry out an experiment unless you were positing something that had never been proven before. If you were positing that, that’s still fine, as long as you present it as something unproven, speculation, and allow everyone here to disagree if they feel differently. Just before saying that, you site a source. I accept that source, and I could track down how they got their information and all the proof on which they base their entry. That’s how the scientific methods and authorities of the underlying data should be applied.
But then you keep inserting this idea about it being “necessarily” political.
Your use of the example of “President Joe Biden” is not proof. If anything, it matches what Mriana did. In the Bible, for the Jews at the time, “El” was what they called their god. That’s clearly what Mriana said. The word “el” in Spanish doesn’t change that.
Generally, I accept your idea that there was non-language, then simple language like “the”, then more specific language giving some things importance, then the concept of God. I’ve seen figurines from 80,000 BC, so I think it was a long time between “the” and “God”.
This topic is way off its OP, and djtexas isn’t around anyway, so, might was well switch to discussing the argument from authority fallacy. In my 3 searches, 2 or them noted that there is debate about the fallacy itself, so authorities on fallacies don’t agree on all the details of this fallacy. What they do seem to agree on, is that if you cite one authority, and especially if that authority is a relative of yours or someone whose authority derives from their fame, and then claim that the matter is settled, that’s fallacious. No one here has done that.
Dismissing the council of legitimate experts and authorities turns good skepticism into denialism. The appeal to authority is a fallacy in argumentation, but deferring to an authority is a reliable heuristic that we all use virtually every day on issues of relatively little importance.
Without this, we would all need to have expert-level knowledge on every topic. We couldn’t have a reasonable discussion if, with every utterance we were challenged and evidence was demanded. I don’t know if there is a formal name for it, but it’s a common online tactic, claiming that nothing can be known for sure, that scientific knowledge changes and is not 100% certain and therefore the particular point being made is invalid.
Some balance has to be found between claiming something is true and accepting that there are opinions. A simple question about why someone thinks something is true should not be taken with offense. In this world of so much information, we all need time to absorb something new.
Recognizing that there was a flood does not in any way confirm the tale of Noah’s Arc .
Moreover, the rest of the story tends to render the entire tale unbelievable.
I was speaking more to the recent posts about words, and how they might have evolved, and how Scott determined his thoughts.
Humans are still, by scientific definition, animals. So there really is no difference just because we have a few more brain cells. Humans are also apes, even scientifically, and often behave like chimps too and I see it every day. The number of brain cells does not eliminate us from being one of the great apes. Besides, chimps do show some abstract thinking of their own, but not quite on the level of the human ape. Humans are still apes though. There’s no difference.
“The” is what I clearly said is the root default where “thee” is just the cardinal version of it to emphasize it as an absolute. It is the same as one might disinguish between a proper name from a general term. I hear you disagree with my interpretation and I accept that without prejudice.
I just don’t see how you get a noun or pronoun from an article. “The” is an article and “Thee” is an archaic pronoun for “you”. I dost thinkest thou is mixing up thy words greatly.
If this is the digression, then …
I would respond that we would have to question who the ‘legitimate’ experts are. “Denialism” only means something if both parties are directly involved in whatever evidence one is denying in respect to the obvious. Thus, it is political. And by ‘political’, I mean any process of appeals between two or more people for the sake of some common goal.
When I am arguing with a religious person with strong resistance to some particular science I trust, I cannot beg them to appeal to these authorities regardless if I have any hope to change their minds. I also cannot use their own authorities (other than as supporting rhetoric demonstrating hypocrisy) because if I disagree with their intepretation of their authority, this too would backfire.
An article is a type of pronoun in that it represents a quantifier and direction indicator in one.
Note that I only used “thee” to emphasize how I interpret the meaning of “el” in contrast to “the” and when it lacks a direct but understood being. “The” and “thee” relate etmologically **and ** in meaning in the right context.
Below I am quoting from how we pronounce “the” and “thee” and is what my particular use of it is for speaking about the meanings as well for comparison to ‘el’: (How to Pronounce the | Pronunciation | EnglishClub)
Normally, we pronounce the with a short sound (like “thuh”). But when the comes before a vowel sound , we pronounce it as a long “thee”.
| vowel sound | write | say |
|---|---|---|
| a | the a pple | thee apple |
| e | the e gg | thee egg |
| i | the i ce-cream | thee ice-cream |
| o | the o range | thee orange |
| u | the u gli fruit | thee ugli fruit |
It is important to understand that it is what we say that matters, not what we write. It is the sound that matters, not the letter used in writing a word. So we use a long “thee” before a vowel sound , not necessarily before a vowel. Look at these cases:
| we write | with | we say | because |
|---|---|---|---|
| the house | consonant h | thuh house | consonant sound |
| the hour | consonant h | thee our | vowel sound |
| the university | vowel u | thuh youniversity | consonant sound |
| the umbrella | vowel u | thee umbrella | vowel sound |
Edit: spaces removed to the quote that didn’t match the original