The Barcode Model of Evolution
Oh My God!
Pg. 11
Origin of 3s Hunters as of 10/17/2024
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No doubt many a researcher will indulge in an exploration of trying to find the Etymological root(s) to words such as three, triad, trinity, triple, tripod, trident, etc.... However, though one might encounter relative responses to written or spoken instances of one or another "tri" related expression or "three" meaning, this is not to say there wasn't an earlier widespread usage taken for granted without a tangible record thereof. In other words, a given word or expression could be used long before it was recorded by at least one person who knew how to write. (Which begs the question how does a person with a proclivity towards collecting, make a record of their efforts if keeping physical specimens is too impractical?) For example, who was the first to use the word three or triad or trinity... and did they occur outside of some religious context such as in a tally or accounting circumstance? Indeed, the word "three" may not even be mentioned but that it is customarily understood as a defining feature such as in the case of what we of today would call a 3-legged stool, but in ages past, it was supposedly referred to as a tripod. However, a culture that gives a name to a piece of furniture (or equipment) is not necessarily the culture in which such an item first appeared and quite possibly had some other name which did not reference any supporting quantity.
The man-made stool quite possibly began as a single support structure used by workman for cutting stone, though before this may have been a kind of stool created by a natural depression or human made seating position hewn out of a boulder. Following such instances, a two-support bench structure may have then been human-created... From there, perhaps due to scarcity of materials or artistic license if not workman laziness, a 3-legged stool emerged, followed sometime by a four-legged one. Whether or not the 1-2-3-4 numerical succession occurred like this or not, we cam at least say there was a limitation imposed on the number of legs (or feet), for whatever reason the reader might want to supply as part of their logical assumptions. If I am able to be permitted some creative thinking allowance then the idea of tying three sturdy but crookedly-shaped sticks together is an imaginative supposition for the creation of the first 3-legged wooden seat (what we would call a)stool). Then again, the idea may have occurred to someone who placed sticks in a pyramidal fashion for a fire, atop which sat an animal like a bird or rabbit as an honored guest for the upcoming feast. No doubt some experimentation, serendipity, and luck may have played a part. And yet the thought in the back of your mind as it weighs the development of a possible scenario for the origination of the three may come across the question of whether the idea of a Christian Trinity may have been the inspiration for constructing a 3-pronged support structure. So if we take a stab at lining up the origins for the words Tripod (for stool) and Trinity (with its supposed 3-complete idea as a religious revelation), we might come up with:
- Tripod: Tripod comes from Greek words meaning "3" + "feet" and refers to a three-legged structure. The best known tripod is the stool at Delphi (8th - 4th century BCE) on which the Pythia sat to produce her oracles. This was sacred to Apollo and was a bone of contention in Greek mythology between Hercules and Apollo. In Homer, tripods are given as gifts and are like 3-footed cauldrons, sometimes made of gold and for the gods.
- Triad: group, union, or conjunction of three,1540s, from Late Latin trias (genitive triadis), from Greek trias (genitive triados) "a triad, the number three," from treis "three" (see three). Musical sense of "chord of three tones" (root, third, fifth) is from 1801. Related: Triadic.
- Trinity (non-religion):
- Trinity: The meaning "state of having three parts, threeness" is from late 14c., also "a threesome, a triad."
- Three: "1 more than two; the number which is one more than two; a symbol representing this number;" Old English þreo, fem. and neuter (masc. þri, þrie), from Proto-Germanic *thrijiz (source also of Old Saxon thria, Old Frisian thre, Middle Dutch and Dutch drie, Old High German dri, German drei, Old Norse þrir, Danish tre). This is from PIE root *trei- "three" (source also of Sanskrit trayas, Avestan thri, Greek treis, Latin tres, Lithuanian trys, Old Church Slavonic trye, Irish and Welsh tri "three").
- Trinus (non-religion): From Proto-Italic *triznos, itself from Proto-Indo-European *trís (“thrice”)and the adjective-forming suffix *-nós (see Latin -nus), equivalent to Latin ter + -nus (compare the alternative form ternus).
- The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the Bible; the concept was finalized at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE after years of debate. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (from the Latin trinus, meaning "threefold") professes that there is one God, but three eternal and consubstantial persons (aspects): the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
- First usage of the Word Trinity in a religious context:Tertullian (ca. 165-220) asserted the threeness aspect of God, being the first to use the word Trinity.
Since there are so very many resources expounding on the idea of the word Trinity belonging foremost to the Christian religion, let's look a little deeper into the religious origins of the word "Trinity" and associated doctrines. It is of interest to point out that while there are numerous uses of the word "Nature" in describing details of the Trinity, the idea of the Trinity being a reflection of an actual Natural event does not cross the minds of those involved in the discussions over the centuries, nor that the originating rudimentary idea was co-opted from Pagan worship of the Sun with its three phases (or "moments"). Because it is well known that the idea of the Trinity did not occur in the Old Testament with a retrograde model of reinterpretation, and that it did occur as a perspective later on, we are supplied with a time frame of its inception and "borrowing" from extant sources elsewhere, though those sources may have been mere word-of-mouth ideas crossing cultural and linguistic boundaries.
In addition, there is the issue with what I am describing as a basic pattern of geometric and numerical design and the actual Christian Doctrine having evolved over time. I am not referring to the minutia of incidental ideas, but the interconnected pattern-of-three "profile" sharing remarkable similarities to the 3 aspects of the Sun having originated with solar... or at least Nature worshipers where the Sun played a major point of observance, and to which most life forms are responsive to. While many speak of Nature, they don't actually discuss Nature and nor do they even mention the multiple examples of "threes" in Nature, one of which is the Earth being the Third planet, or DNA's triplet code, or the three fundamental particles of Atoms. (Note: the following is only a short excerpt):
Supplement to Trinity by Dale Tuggy © 2020
History of Trinitarian Doctrines 1. Introduction
This supplementary document discusses the history of Trinity theories. Although early Christian theologians speculated in many ways on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, no one clearly and fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity as explained at the top of the main entry until around the end of the so-called Arian Controversy. (See 3.2 below and section 3.1 of the supplementary document on Unitarianism.) Nonetheless, proponents of such theories always claim them to be in some sense founded on, or at least illustrated by, biblical texts.
Sometimes popular anti-Trinitarian literature paints "the" doctrine as strongly influenced by, or even illicitly poached from some non-Christian religious or philosophical tradition. Divine threesomes abound in the religious writings and art of ancient Europe, Egypt, the near east, and Asia. These include various threesomes of male deities, of female deities, of Father-Mother-Son groups, or of one body with three heads, or three faces on one head (Griffiths 1996). However, similarity alone doesn't prove Christian copying or even indirect influence, and many of these examples are, because of their time and place, unlikely to have influenced the development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
A direct influence on second century Christian theology is the Jewish philosopher and theologian Philo of Alexandria (a.k.a. Philo Judaeus) (ca. 20 BCE–ca. 50 CE), the product of Alexandrian Middle Platonism (with elements of Stoicism and Pythagoreanism). Inspired by the Timaeus of Plato, Philo read the Jewish Bible as teaching that God created the cosmos by his Word (logos), the first-born son of God. Alternately, or via further emanation from this Word, God creates by means of his creative power and his royal power, conceived of both as his powers, and yet as agents distinct from him, giving him, as it were, metaphysical distance from the material world (Philo Works; Dillon 1996, 139–83; Morgan 1853, 63–148; Norton 1859, 332–74; Wolfson 1973, 60–97).
Another influence may have been the Neopythagorean Middle Platonist Numenius (fl. 150), who posited a triad of gods, calling them, alternately, “Father, creator and creature; fore-father, offspring and descendant; and Father, maker and made” (Guthrie 1917, 125), or on one ancient report, Grandfather, Father, and Son (Dillon 1996, 367). Moderatus taught a similar triad somewhat earlier (Stead 1985, 583).Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165) describes the origin of the logos (= the pre-human Jesus) from God using three metaphors (light from the sun, fire from fire, speaker and his speech), each of which is found in either Philo or Numenius (Gaston 2007, 53). Accepting the Philonic thesis that Plato and other Greek philosophers received their wisdom from Moses, he holds that Plato in his dialogue Timaeus discussed the Son (logos), as, Justin says, “the power next to the first God”. And in Plato's second letter, Justin finds a mention of a third, the Holy Spirit (Justin, First Apology, 60). As with the Middle Platonists, Justin's triad is hierarchical or ordered. And Justin’s scheme is not, properly, Trinitarian. The one God is not the three, but rather one of them and the primary one, the ultimate source of the second and third.
Justin and later second century Christians influenced by Platonism take over a concept of divine transcendence from Platonism, in light of which no one with even the slightest intelligence would dare to assert that the Creator of all things left his super-celestial realms to make himself visible in a little spot on earth. (Justin, Dialogue, 92 [ch. 60])
Consequently, any biblical theophany (appearance of a god) on earth, as well as the actual labor of creation, can't have been the action of the highest god, God, but must instead have been done by another one called “God” and “Lord”, namely the logos, the pre-human Jesus, also called "the angel of the Lord".
Another influence may have been the Neoplatonist Plotinus’ (204–70 CE) triad of the One, Intellect, and Soul, in which the latter two mysteriously emanate from the One, and “are the One and not the One; they are the one because they are from it; they are not the One, because it endowed them with what they have while remaining by itself” (Plotinus Enneads, 85). Plotinus even describes them as three hypostases, and describes their sameness using homoousios (Freeman 2003, 189). Augustine tells us that he and other Christian intellectuals of his day believed that the Neoplatonists had some awareness of the persons of the Trinity (Confessions VIII.3; City X.23).
Many thinkers influential in the development of Trinitarian doctrines were steeped in the thought not only of Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism, but also the Stoics, Aristotle, and other currents in Greek philosophy (Hanson 1988, 856–869). Whether one sees this background as a providentially supplied and useful tool, or as an unavoidably distorting influence, those developing the doctrine saw themselves as trying to build a systematic Christian theology on the Bible while remaining faithful to earlier post-biblical tradition. Many also had the aim of showing Christianity to be consistent with the best of Greek philosophy. But even if the doctrine had a non-Christian origin, it would would not follow that it is false or unjustified; it could be, that through Philo (or whomever), God revealed the doctrine to the Christian church. Still, it is contested issue whether or not the doctrine can be deduced or otherwise inferred from the Christian Bible, so we must turn to it.
2. The Christian Bible
2.1 The Old Testament
No Trinitarian doctrine is explicitly taught in the Old Testament. Sophisticated Trinitarians grant this, holding that the doctrine was revealed by God only later, in New Testament times (c.50–c.100) and/or in the Patristic era (c. 100–800). They usually also add, though, that with hindsight, we can see that a number of texts either portray or foreshadow the co-working of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit....
It is nonsense to attribute every or most three-patterned ideas as having been influenced into development by the idea of the Christian Trinity. It is not the foremost originator.
Let now change the footing of the discussion:
Humanity apparently has a physiological basis for seeing the world and thinking in an opposite fashion (such as the Yin/Yang compilation of ideas), in addition to the idea that the presence of Mirror Neurons in the brain account for mimicry and empathy. Needless to say that the presumed symmetry of the left and right sides of the human body also suggests the analogy of mirror-imaging as well as pairing, but not necessarily the notion of reversal.
However, there are medically defined cases of body organ reversal called Situs Inversus. We might also include the example of Bilateral Symmetry, which is one of the three types of body symmetry (radial, bilateral, and asymmetrical), where the right and left sides appear to exhibit remarkable similarities, albeit in a mirror-image but not reversible fashion as some clothes are made to be worn commonly called Reversible Clothing that can be worn inside-out.
With respect to the question of whether the brain is also affected in individuals with Situs Inversus:
Methods: Using anatomic and functional MRI techniques, we analyzed asymmetries in the brains of three individuals with SI.
Results: Two major anatomic asymmetries of the cerebral hemispheres, the frontal and occipital petalia, were reversed in individuals with SI. In contrast, SI subjects had left cerebral hemisphere language dominance on functional MRI analysis as well as strong right-handedness. (Structural and functional brain asymmetries in human situs inversus totalis) by D.N. Kennedy, PhD, K.M. O’Craven, PhD, B.S. Ticho, MD, A.M. Goldstein, MD, N. Makris, MD, PhD, and J.W. Henson, MD.
Another example of a physiological inversion can be found in Human eyesight where objects are seen upside down. A famous expression of having identified inversion as a "Natural Law" is known by "What goes up must come down." Similarly, we find the current phrase "The Bigger they are the Harder they fall," may be derived from an earlier "The taller they are the longer/further they fall", though an expression such as "The more you have the more you can lose" and various other expressions of dichotomy such as "Laugh/sing in the morning, cry at night", though I am uncertain how many I know are mere fabrications concocted by those living in the 20th and 2ist centuries.
Clearly there are examples of reversal that occur with human physiology which we can follow up with the view that such influences can cause us to view the world in a flip-flopped manner such as the once held Religious belief that the Sun revolved around the Earth. It is the same phenomena we see in the commonly expressed notion of the Sun rising and setting, when it actually is the Earth which is revolving that creates the illusion, yet millions of people still speak of the Sun as doing the movement instead of the other way around. If one were to wake up the next day and no longer see nor reference the world in such a dichotomous way, they might be viewed as a "little off" or "strange" or "Eccentric" if they were well groomed with clean clothes and were not perceived as a threat.
And this brings us to the point I want to make for the present context involving notions regarding the origin(s) of "threes". If I say that it is likely that there are physiological and planetary explanations for the recurrence of such a pattern, religious minded people inevitably claim it was some religious defined Trinity which is the primary influencer. Their religion comes first and all other ideas are secondary, if not tertiary. Yet, there is no way such an idea as a Trinity in religion can account for all the very many threes examples, some good, others not so good. In fact, the idea of a Trinity in religion, regardless of the name (e.g. Triad, Triune, Triangle, etc...) and era one looks at or the geographical location of dominant usage... as having influenced itself into being created by human thinking processes, is a reversal of what most likely occurred.
The idea of an inverted or lopsided reality is captured in a poem by William Brighty Rands (1823- 1882) called Topsy-Turvy World as well as being illustrated by the Flemish Painter Pieter Bruegel The Elder in his Flemish Proverbs painting.
Date of Origination: Aug. 9th, 2024... 4:30 AMInitial Posting: Oct. 21st, 2024... 4:13 PM