History repeats itself! Is this true?

Use this forum to discuss the March 2021 Book of the month, "The Biblical Clock: The Untold Secrets Linking the Universe and Humanity with God’s Plan" by Daniel Friedmann, Dania Sheldon
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Sushan Ekanayake
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Re: History repeats itself! Is this true?

Post by Sushan Ekanayake »

Fozia RYK wrote: 04 Mar 2021, 12:24 Countries and human advancements travel every which way. In any case, the possibility that this is by one way or another the villain succeeding at halting God's arrangement to occupy the earth is basically nonsense to me. For one thing, the manner in which the sacred writings characterize paradise, for what reason would God need to leave that for our "bunch of earth?" If anything, God's definitive arrangement is to come and take the individuals who put stock in Him so they can be with Him in paradise—and that is something 1,000,000 "snakes" can't stop.
I see your point. It is a question why God needs to dwell around earth and be around humans, while He can easily be in His paradise and take up the humans who lived up to his standards. That is a more practical and easy solution.

Seemingly this has nothing to do with the development of the world, which is determined by the various ccountries and their political leaders. They might have learned from the past, but that does not mean that they will let the history to be just repeated. After all they have a conscious mind, and also there is a 'random' factor for the events in the world.
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Post by EternalD »

Undoubtedly, history repeats itself over and over again. When you study the fall of empires, the similarity between all the falls is amazing. The most incredible thing is that humanity never seems to learn from its past mistakes.
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Post by Sushan Ekanayake »

EternalD wrote: 05 Mar 2021, 07:34 Undoubtedly, history repeats itself over and over again. When you study the fall of empires, the similarity between all the falls is amazing. The most incredible thing is that humanity never seems to learn from its past mistakes.
I think humans do learn from their past and past mistakes. But they never try to apply them practically to the situation in hand. Or they are too arrogant to take lessons from past and apply them to the present.

And when we look at the falls of empires, I don't say that they have happened in similar ways. But the things that occurred can be put into some sort of a general pattern, and at levels of societies and populations, these can be used to get an idea of what might come next when similar patterns occur
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Post by Jessica045 »

History definitely repeats itself. This is quite unfortunate as history is meant to teach and help us avoid the errors of the past. Just like the saying that, 'there is nothing new under the sun', everything happening now, has happened before.
Therefore, the author is not wrong in saying that events follow a former arrangement and progression.
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Post by Sushan Ekanayake »

Jessica045 wrote: 05 Mar 2021, 11:48 History definitely repeats itself. This is quite unfortunate as history is meant to teach and help us avoid the errors of the past. Just like the saying that, 'there is nothing new under the sun', everything happening now, has happened before.
Therefore, the author is not wrong in saying that events follow a former arrangement and progression.
It is a good thing to study history, identify its patterns, and apply that knowledge when making future decisions. It is a sad fact that many humans do not try to do that.

But if things happen in a predetermined manner, what happens to free will? Can't we do anything consciously? Then what is the meaning of people spending hours on planning the future, without letting things to happen in a predetermined way?
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Post by cd20 »

History absolutely does repeat itself. If you really study the Bible, especially the Old Testament and the kings, you will see a lot of events repeat themselves. Obviously, these guys were not paying attention and would make the same mistakes as the kings before them.
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Post by Mariana Figueira »

I do think history repeats itself, for sure. I do feel like this is the author's arrangement though, and I doubt it will be useful predicting events, because even knowing or thinking that history repeats itself and events have patterns, it's pretty hard to foretell the future.
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Post by Manali_DC »

History does repeat itself. But whether that is God's divine plan is another matter. It probably repeats because Man is restless, thrives in unrest, and is in a constant conflict for power and dominance!
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Post by Kelyn »

Societal history repeats itself certainly. The same pattern of repetition can be seen in many countries and city-states over the centuries, especially Rome and the modern U.S. But this is mostly political and societal. As far as it goes for the repetition of "God's Plan" failing time and again, I'm not certain. I'm not sure we CAN be certain.
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Post by Sushan Ekanayake »

cd20 wrote: 05 Mar 2021, 16:09 History absolutely does repeat itself. If you really study the Bible, especially the Old Testament and the kings, you will see a lot of events repeat themselves. Obviously, these guys were not paying attention and would make the same mistakes as the kings before them.
First of all, bible is not a history book. Nowhere it is referred to as a reference of history, but referred only as a religious books. Religious books include various stories in them to teach various lessons to humans, but history is not among them. So, because biblical stories are repeated, we cannot logically forward an argument claiming that history repeats itself
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Post by Sushan Ekanayake »

MarianaFigueira wrote: 05 Mar 2021, 20:41 I do think history repeats itself, for sure. I do feel like this is the author's arrangement though, and I doubt it will be useful predicting events, because even knowing or thinking that history repeats itself and events have patterns, it's pretty hard to foretell the future.
I agree. But I think history mostly rhymes rather than being repeated. If we study history carefully, we can identify patterns and we can say that these patterns are being repeated. And that is our own argument. Some might look at our patterns and say, "no that is not a pattern". It is like seeing images in the sky which are made by stars.

And also, yes, it is difficult to predict future by studying history, because history is not the only thing that determines future. But,ofcourse, we can learn from history
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Post by Sushan Ekanayake »

Manali_DC wrote: 06 Mar 2021, 00:32 History does repeat itself. But whether that is God's divine plan is another matter. It probably repeats because Man is restless, thrives in unrest, and is in a constant conflict for power and dominance!
Humans are unsatisfied of whatever they achieve. When they get power, they need more power. When they get money, they need more money. So, as you said, they are always restless. So we can see that humankind have done common things, most often common mistakes, to achieve their goals. So, with a general idea, we can say that history repeats, because humans are always humans.

But when it comes to a claim like this, the repetitions occur in the attempts of completing God's divine plan, well, I don't believe that. Let's say that is true. But why should an almighty God attempt so many times to succeed in one simple thing, compared to what He was capable of at the beginning of the universe (as per the believers, he created it) ?
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Post by Sushan Ekanayake »

Kelyn wrote: 06 Mar 2021, 00:34 Societal history repeats itself certainly. The same pattern of repetition can be seen in many countries and city-states over the centuries, especially Rome and the modern U.S. But this is mostly political and societal. As far as it goes for the repetition of "God's Plan" failing time and again, I'm not certain. I'm not sure we CAN be certain.
We cannot be certain about a thing that we don't know. God's divine plan is something stated in the bible, and when considered the year gap that the author claims these things are being repeated, no one can certainly know about something happened 500 years ago. So it is merely an assumption, which is neither can be accepted nor denied.

When we compare Rome and US, we see that socio-political observers have made observations and have shown some patterns. Yet, that does not mean that either we can predict what happens next, or the things are happened according to a predetermined way, because how can we know what the US president or the senate might do next!
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Post by ReviewerDiksha »

I believe that History does repeat itself, as several events have popped up around the world with an alarming similarity over the years. The author uses some good points in the book to underline these events. And I think this repetition is also the reason why we can stop cycle, for the bad things. But this again, restarts the cycle on a different term. As pointed out, a leader emerges in the case of bad events, and is usually influenced by a leader from the past, hence learning from the things that have already happened before. In any case, there is no refuting or running away from this fact.
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ReviewerDiksha wrote: 06 Mar 2021, 09:47 I believe that History does repeat itself, as several events have popped up around the world with an alarming similarity over the years. The author uses some good points in the book to underline these events. And I think this repetition is also the reason why we can stop cycle, for the bad things. But this again, restarts the cycle on a different term. As pointed out, a leader emerges in the case of bad events, and is usually influenced by a leader from the past, hence learning from the things that have already happened before. In any case, there is no refuting or running away from this fact.
Well, leaders emerge in bad situations, I agree. And they may have inspirations from previous leaders. Not all leaders succeed and only the succeed ones are included in the history. So, in that sense, this author has pointed out something that seems to have quite some value.

But does history actually repeat by itself, or do men repeat history? The history repeats itself term implies that the things happen according to a predetermined pattern or order. If that is so, where is the space for free will, decision making, and random chance? And if that is true, the historians should have to be the greatest prophets who can predict the future accurately
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