Village statue

In the village square there was a statue. Nobody was quite sure why it was there or who had put it there, but it had been there since before anyone could remember. Even old Thomas knew nothing about it and that was unusual, as Old Thomas knew everything about the village. He knew who grew the best potatoes and when they had done it. He knew the history of every family living there and lots of families that didn’t live there any more. He could tell you who had built the bridge over the creek and not only the current bridge, but also the one before that which had been swept away in the flood of ’87 and the one before that which had caught fire and burnt down in ‘43. If it had happened in the village or to the village or about the village, he knew it. Except for this statue, he had his ideas if course, but then everyone in the village had a theory about the statue. Some said it the power and strength of a storm, while others said it was the beauty of a sunset over a lake and yet a third group thought it was like a flight of swans flying home at evening. But one thing that all the villagers agreed on was that it was the most beautiful statue in the world and they had talked about it ever since they could remember.
It was, indeed a beautiful thing, tall and elegant, carved in Carrara Marble white and pure, with never a flaw to be seen. Round, like a tall column, with an elaborate cap on the top, rather like the head on a Corinthian column, but more ornate. It stood on a plinth of black granite, which had delicate scrollwork around the base and filigree work in the top, just under the white marble. The fame of the statue had spread far and wide throughout the land and people came from other villages just to see it. Simply to stand there and admire it’s beauty. And stand they did, stand there all day with mouths wide open, just looking. Getting in the road of honest folks going about their business, causing all sorts of problems for the people who lived there. And when they grew cold or weary or ran out of money, they would walk the long miles back to their own villages and tell their friends what they had seen.
The trouble was that each visitor had a different idea of what the statue really was. Just like the people who lived in the village with the statue. They each had their own thoughts and each was quite certain that he was right, so it is only natural and quite understandable that the visitors would each have their own thoughts as well and when they told the people what they had seen in this far off village, well each village was told a different story. So each village had it’s own ideas about what the beautiful statue really was. And each village was quite sure that it was right; after all hadn’t one of their own actually seen the statue with his own eyes and he must surely know.
Now I know what the statue really was and I’ll let you in on the secret. The statue was actually the perfection of mankind, it was man made complete, as man was supposed to be. It had, within itself, all the things that the villagers thought it was. It had the power and strength of a storm, it was the beauty of a sunset over a lake and it was like a flight of swans flying home at evening. All of these things and more were in that statue. But because the people were too self-centred, they couldn’t see that, they failed to understand what it really was and, in their own minds, turned it into something that is was not. The people who lived in the village and the visitors who came to look were all the same, none of them could see what the statue really was and they each thought it was something else. The trouble with this is that each visitor went back to his own village and told the others something that was not quite right. The villagers only got part of the story. One village believed that the statue was a group of swans flying home while another village was convinced that it was a frightening storm. Another village was quite sure that it was a beautiful sunset over a lake. Each village, as you can see, had part of the story, a little bit of the truth but not all of it.
When the different villages got together to buy and sell goods, they discussed this wonderful far off statue among themselves. And each village argued that they had the secret of what the statue really was. And each village was convinced that it was right and that all the other villages were wrong and that they just didn’t understand what it was all about. Some of the discussions became quite heated and even blows were struck and soon the whole district was in an uproar over this statue. Village was fighting village. In the village called Roman Catholic, cottages were being burnt down, some one tipped a load of manure down the Baptist village well, all the Anglican hayricks were set alight and the Quaker hen houses were broken open and all the chooks eaten by the Mormon foxes. In one night, all of the sheep disappeared from the village of Uniting Church, every one of them. Just vanished, stolen right away. The fuss and bother was huge, the entire district was in turmoil and all because the people could not see the truth that was in front of them

How was the world made?

I cannot endorse the belief commonly held by fundamentalists that the scriptural account of creation is the only view of that event allowable. I have two main objections to this attitude and they are firstly that the scriptures contain more than version of the event, each different to the other three and all from different sources and times. The second objection I hold is that the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly supportive of some sort of evolutionary process, while the only evidence for the biblical account is the scriptures themselves. I will deal with each in turn.
Firstly to the differing accounts in scripture.
Many readers believe that there are two creation stories in the scriptures. While there are two accounts in Genesis, there are altogether four versions. There are the two Genesis narratives 1:1 –2:4a and 2:4b-25, the first from the “E” source and the second from “J”. The order of creation is different in the two stories as will be seen under.

E...........................................................J
Original watery chaos.......................Original watery chaos with no vegetation
Creation divided into six steps........No note of time
Order of creation...............................Order of creation
i) Light.................................................i) Man
ii) The firmament (heaven)..............ii) The Garden
iii) The dry land..................................iii) Trees of every kind
iv) Vegetation......................................iv) Animals
v) Heavenly bodies.............................v) Woman
vi) Birds and fishes
vii) Animals and man

So here we have two stories with no spacing between about the same issue with major differences in the sequence of events. The argument that there are two different sources does not explain why there should be such a wide variation in the sequence of events. They are talking of the same subject.
The Lamentation of Job, 9:4 ff, 12:7-10, 28:25 ff, 38 is arguably the most poetic of the creation stories and it should be noted here that Robert Pfieffer believed that Second Isaiah, around Chap 40, drew a lot of the material from Job. He also suggested very strongly that Isaiah influenced the authors of the “P” document.
But these are not the oldest versions of the creation myth. That distinction must go to Psalm 104, which is probably a recounting of a much earlier legend, the “Hymn to the Sun” of the Pharaoh Akhenaton, who rules from 1370 till 1353 BC.
We now have four versions of the myth, the oldest being Psalm 104 C 1350BC, J Document C 900BC, E Document C 750BC and the Lamentations of Job C 400BC. The argument has been advanced that Oral Tradition (the handing down of legends by word of mouth from one generation to the next) is largely unreliable and would explain local corruptions of the story, but this will simply not hold water. The accuracy of oral tradition in pre writing times has been amply demonstrated. The art has only been lost since the discovery of writing and our total reliance on that means of communication.

(As an aside, it is interesting to note that the first error in translation occurs in this context Genesis 1:1 translates the word “Elohim” as “God”, and this is inaccurate. Elohim is a Hebraic variant of a Canaanite word “El” which was a generic term used to denote spiritual beings, including, but not restricted to, God. Angels, archangels, seraphs, cherubs, evil spirits, all were included in this word. The Hebrews took this word and added a suffix “ohim” which made the word plural e.g. Cherub/Cherubim, Seraph/Seraphim. This was in line with Hebrew theology of the time that saw Gods as territorial rather than universal. It should also be noted in this context, that Ps 8:5 translated this same word Elohim as “Angels”. While Genesis 1:1 may perhaps be theologically sound, it is still an error of translation)

Secondly, there is much argument about the reliability or otherwise of scientific evidence supporting the theory of evolution. Some of the arguments are well founded and valid, but most of them are not. They are, for the most part, ill founded and unsupported criticisms advanced by people whose enthusiasm outweighs their scientific understanding. But even discounting the doubtful evidence, what evidence there is supports the evolutionary concept. The only evidence that can be advanced for the creationist theory is from the scriptures themselves and as has been shown, they cannot be treated as a scientific document, the writers simply had no science whatsoever. A wide range of attempts have been made to disprove evolution, there have been far-fetched explanations of the fossil finds, including one seriously advanced by a fundamentalist that they are hoaxes perpetrated by God to test our faith. Doubts have been cast on the accuracy of carbon dating techniques claiming that they can be out by 20 percent and therefore are totally unreliable. No evidence has been shown to support this claim, yet it is accepted as accurate and therefore creationism must be the truth, and the world was created in the year 4004BC.This is in spite of the fact that materials have been dated as far back as millions of years and even allowing for a 20 percent error rate, this far exceeds that magical 4004 BC figure

Finally, the reasons for the recording of the story must be examined and to do this, we must understand the reasons for the bibles existence. While the bible contains a variety of literature such as history, genealogy, poetry and eroticism etc., these or not the main purpose of the book. They are included, not as stories in their own right, but to support the purpose of the scriptures. The Hebrew and later Jewish people who committed the stories to written form were primarily concerned with the relationship between them selves as a nation and their God. While they had a sense of their own history and had a highly developed form of poetry, they knew nothing of any of the sciences. Everything that happened in their world occurred as a result of the direct intervention of God. If it rained, then God had made it happen. It was God who stopped the rain and caused a drought, God made the water spring out of the ground to form a well. If they won a battle, it was because Yahweh was stronger than the god of the enemy. Today, we understand something of meteorology and we know that warm air carries more moisture than cold and it rises. As it rises, it is cooled and the moisture condenses out and under the right conditions, falls as rain. The Hebrew people knew nothing of this and saw rain as the result of the direct divine intervention. Yet, even though we understand how it happens, we cannot make it happen. Many have tried; there have been huge sums of money spent on seeding clouds with silver iodes and all to no purpose. We cannot make it rain, rain happens because God has established certain meteorological rules and we can only enjoy the results of those rules.
The same situation applies to healing, we cannot heal ourselves, not even the most advanced, best-educated doctors can heal a patient. All they can do is to establish the optimum conditions for the body to heal itself. We reap the benefits of the miracle of healing. And healing is a miracle even though we now understand more of the principles on which our bodies work. If healing were done by humans, then no one would die.
I claim that the creation is a miracle, regardless of the manner in which it was achieved. We cannot create life; scientists are unable to initiate a new life form. Yes, cloning is now a reality in certain conditions, but that is not creating life. It is simply copying it; a scientist needs to have a living creature in order to duplicate it. Even a baby starts with already existing lives. God, on the other hand, needed no such head start. He created life where there was none and that is the miracle.
We cannot create rain, we cannot heal ourselves, we are unable to form new life. These things are the provenance of God; only He can achieve such miracles. Yet is the rain any less of a miracle because we understand the method by which it happens? Is healing less marvellous because we know more about the way our bodies work? Is a newborn baby dimished because we understand the process of conception and development? The miracle is the fact that these things happen; the manner of their occurring is not relevant.

Update

It's a while since I did anything here and I want to show Tony and Marie my workshop and some of my stuff, so just for you two; here goes.

This is a desk I made for the office. It was a project for the cabinet making apprentices where I was working at a trade school and the apprentice who started this one was a dropkick who made a total mess of the whole thing before he left his apprenticeship. So I brought it home and fixed it up and then finished it off. The wood is leatherwood from tasmania with a leatherette insert in the top and the finish is Tung oil.

This is a dressing table I made for Kaye. The same story as the desk, but a different apprentice. This apprentice was another dropkick idiot who stuffed up the project. Samewood and same finish.

This is the lathe, drill press and dust extractor (outside the door), with a corner of the workbench

The view from the compound saw end with one bench grinder, two wetstone grinders and the workbench on the left; drill press across the top; lathe, bandsaw, benchsaw and shaper on the right. The white thing on the workbench was a work in progress, a holder for the routers and bits.

This is the view from the doorway. The sawbench, shaper, and compound saw are on the left with the grinder station on the right at the far end of the workbench. I have actually finished the router cabinet and it's now in place at the side of the grinder station.

This is the compound mitre saw with a restoration project sitting in front of it. The restoration is a couple of bridge chairs that need a good cleanup. The fabric is original and in good order, so I will find an upholsterer to take it off while I clean and frenchpolish the woodwork, then he can put the rags back on the frame. I've had the chairs for three years now so I'm in no hurry to finish it.