Sorry Anthony.

Until you can show me how the it is intellectual to believe that the Sun, air, water, the moon or a dead body has a soul or that some words can communicate with the soul in a dead body to release it, you won't change the facts. Beliefs in soul, the afterlife a moon god, a sun god, a dead god of the soil and so on are not intellectual. That is absolute nonsense. It is a belief system and yes the Egyptians did evolve this belief system over time and add a lot more in the way of deep symbolism, but fundamentally it is still all 'irrational' belief in spirits of the earth, air, sky and water, which are not intellectual in any way as you cannot talk to water or air or a lion or vultures or a cobra. But certainly you can believe it all you want. People have been believing in such things as nature spirits and so forth since time immemorial. Therefore, the fact that the Egyptians also believed in such things shows that the roots of such beliefs go back to ancient traditions of belief in mankind itself. That is not some special "intellectual" aspect of Egyptian cosmology. What the Egyptians were doing was refining their beliefs in terms of their cosmology. It is not intellectual in the sense that a belief in a spirit of air is intellectual. Now if you say that it is intellectual because such ancient beliefs in natural spirits and elements eventually evolved into a more intellectual pursuit of the fundamental make up of such elements, then of course that is an intellectual pursuit. What it shows is that rational understanding of the universe was born out of ancient "magical" beliefs in earth spirits and other forces in nature. That reinforces the argument that those roots still lie in ancient traditional beliefs.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/16/2007 08:32PM by Doug M.