Quote:
Deut. 18:10-12
"10 Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in [1] the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, 11 or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. 12 Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD , and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you."
Nostradamus was taken as an example of course, because of his occult involvement (alt. New Age of those days). Let's suppose that everything written in the Bible is the highest law. So the questions is: are we forbidden to be curious, to discover new things and to open new worlds for us?
If so, why did God create us like that? A pretty contradictive guy in this case.
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I don't think this passage means you're forbidden to be curious, to discover new things and to open new worlds ... I think it has more to do with the first commandment, You shall have no other gods before me. Divination, necromancy, witchcraft, interpreting omens; those are set aside as pagan religious practices concerned with spirits or with beliefs with many gods.
The passage, as I look it up, seems to be an admonition against imitating the "detestable ways" of the nations with whom the Israelites come into contact. "Anyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD, and because of these detestable practices the LORD your God will drive out those nations before you." It becomes less an individual matter than a national one, and the distinction is mostly made between a holy nation and a godless one. I have no idea where the Israelites were going but probably into polytheistic areas - right?
I guess you could read it also (and maybe this is how you were reading it) as meaning there are areas of unholy knowledge, and it's not wise to try to look into the future or consult with the dead or practice spells - maybe because it makes man too much like God. I suppose this is a version of the same question posed by the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis
I don't think the injunction against learning new things is clear at all, so, I am not an expert, but I would say that there's no problem.
Also, I didn't read most of
katbeidar's post, but about the last part, what Jesus said about needing to hate your mother and father and family and your life, I think he means that you should not have worldly attachments - like the Buddhists - and unlike Judaism.