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Clandestinely replace Leviticus with a Physics Textbook

Nobody ever reads it, anyway.
  (+7, -3)
(+7, -3)
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Step 1: surreptitiously enroll physics teachers into seminary. Step 2: slowly redefine some obscure biblical concepts as obtusely-hinted-at physical laws in midrash form. Step 3: Over several generations, render the language used to be so obscure as to require translation by "biblical experts," who are actually physics teachers. Step 4: Replace vague worship music lyrics with concepts reinforcing actual physics. "Your love, oh God, is like gravity... the closer I get to you, the more that I am attracted to you..." or somesuch.
RayfordSteele, Apr 14 2014

obligatory disclaimer http://www.myconfin...isclaimer-label.png
bible disclaimer [sophocles, Apr 14 2014]

[link]






       Not only have I read it but it forms a major part of my first degree dissertation.
nineteenthly, Apr 14 2014
  

       Leviticus is the best book in the OT!
calum, Apr 14 2014
  

       There's not a lot of laughs in it. Well, there are, but not on purpose.
MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 14 2014
  

       [+} But, replace "Leviticus" with "the entire bible", and "Physics" with "Anglican State Policy", and you have the King James Bible in ~1600.   

       The only point being: "Clandestine editing to suit your purpose" is a very common, old game indeed. The only new thing here is adding physics.   

       However, I fear the backlash would be for the science haters out there to just have more ammunition to say, "Science is just another religion, & thus has to be taught like a (heretic) religion, not a mandatory class without challenges".   

       I like Hitchens, & other's tweaks, which are more playful, such as "May contain nuts", "This work is fiction", etc.
sophocles, Apr 14 2014
  

       Yes, a [-] from me, because this dangerously starts to suggest an equivalence between physics (evidence-based, testable, internally consistent, able to change over time as new findings are made) and religion (faith-based, not testable, inconsistent, dogmatic).
hippo, Apr 15 2014
  

       If you stare at the book of Leviticus long enough, it becomes disturbingly rational.   

       The more startling parts generally fall under one of two headings, namely, things which reduce financial inequality (short of communism) and things which reduce sexual competition (short of celibacy).   

       More generally, it seems to be about group cohesion - and about keeping the group focused outward, on problems of survival and of engagement with a world much larger and more powerful than that one little community, instead of focused inward, on status competition and on keeping track of who's had whom.   

       Now, if you tell me that the people who wrote it and the people who listened to it were delusional morons, I won't contradict you - but, in that case, it may be said that their rules were, in a slightly creepy sense, more intelligent than they were. I got a similar feeling about some of the staff of IBM when I worked there in the 1990s (not that that none of them were intelligent, but that the intelligence of the organisation didn't really reside in or rely on the individuals).   

       Anyway, to falsify this text is a bad idea because it is a falsification of a primary historical source. It is a primary historical source because even it, for the sake of argument, we suppose that not a word of it is true, the fact that a particular group of people had these rules over a long period of time is a significant fact in itself, not least because their group survival indicates that, at some level, the rules worked.   

       Abraham Maslow thought that if you were on the right side of history, then you ought to be allowed to cheat at science. He turned out to be wrong, and his very influential wrongness on this point is one of the major root causes of disappointment in disappointed old Baby Boomers. Being on the right side of history does not make it all right to cheat at science, and does not make it all right to cheat at historiography, either - and cheating at historiography (and at science) is what this idea tries to do.
pertinax, Apr 16 2014
  

       Now, if you could somehow trick people into reading the text, as it stands, more intelligently, *that* would be an idea... but I don't know how you could do that.   

       ... Actually, I do, but it's rather over-complex and over-ambitious.
pertinax, Apr 16 2014
  
      
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