Oddbean

i don't recall any mention of a quaternity, it's pretty dry almost academic in quality for the type of book it is, it's not really theistic, per se it hardly even mentions the idea of capital G god anywhere actually, the whole focus is pointing out that the origins of these stories seem to suggest that the quality of the myths has that same property as cargo cult stories - of people struggling to find words to describe technologies they don't have any analogy for other than "wings" and "fire" and "lightning bolts" and "the heavens" as regards to the old testament, and especially the pentateuch (first 5 books of the old testament) they are not even jewish texts, you can find the same basic catalog of stories in several other places, notably the hindus and the sumerians and to some extent the babylonians i see it like this: a central value in religions like Taoism and Buddhism (which is a lot like christianity both in name and principle) is non-interference if you have knowledge of how to control people's minds, manipulate them, make them hallucinate, trick them, etc, if you believe in non-interference, you aren't going to be going out there making believers and religions you are going to be trying to teach the basic principles bit by bit and hope that the people will eventually piece enough of it together it's a really interesting question to ask, what should you do, as a modern human, if you encounter a village in the middle of the jungle who barely even know how to make blades? isn't there something a bit immoral about just throwing them into your modern world without giving them a moral compass to deal with the ethics of it first? they are going to see you as some kind of magician the moment you pull out a torch or a mobile computer, hell, some of them are gonna be completely amazed at just a knife

Interesting thought experiment. I'm sure many missionaries have encountered that situation (Jim Elliot comes to mind). One of them ended up like this guy, God rest his soul: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12636503/American-missionary-John-Allen-Chau-killed-tribe-documentary.html

yup exactly imagine a high tech society arose on this planet, and in its initial form, it was highly ethical they wouldn't just colonize the rest of the population they'd send out emmisaries disguised as solitary loner weirdos who would search for the most intelligent and curious of these other cultures and teach them... with their clear permission and desire to learn any other model of sharing culture is some kind of invasion