Disarmament Begins With Ourselves

Oooops... make that moderate protestants several hundred million strong. Aaarrgh...

There are about 2 billion Christians in the world (a very rough number, probably high). Of these, slightly more than half are Roman Catholic. Moderate protestant groups are several hundred thousand strong. The RCs and the moderate protestants all accept evolution and the big bang, so a sizable majority of Christians are progressing, not stuck in a rut somewhere.

You accept, don't you, Peter, that the Earth goes around the Sun? That there are other planets in our solar system? That the Milky Way is a galaxy? You've never actually observed all this, surely.

When you're told what time the Sun will "rise" in the morning, don't you believe it? Or when a lunar or solar eclipse will occur? Don't you accept that the universe is vast, and that there are billions of other galaxies out there? That all matter is made of atomic particles? (The bombs did work, after all.)

Where do you think this knowledge came from? And yet, when the same people, doing the same sort of calculations, conclude that there was a Big Bang that started this particular universe, you suddenly dig in your heels? What kind of sense does that make?

Pam,

Don't forget that one of Murphy's Laws clearly states, "Don't hope for miracles, rely on them."

Arminius wrote: "Actually, Peter, atheists explain the universe pretty damned well..."

He's right, you know, Peter. Think about it. Everything you know about the universe is courtesy of a-theistic science. Likewise, everything you know about medicine, weather forecasting, aviation, and any "-ology" you care to name.

If you had relied on the bible to teach you everything about the world, you'd still be living on Walter's flat snowglobe earth (held up by pillars), riding on a donkey, and stoning mentally ill people to death because they're possessed by demons.

And "creation science" (a contradiction in terms, if ever there was one), has posed no testable hypotheses at all.

Here's the cartoon:
http://www.webamused.com/blogosophy/archives/002064.html

peter, re your presuppositions:

science and religion are ways of "knowing" the world around us. when you say things like "the Bible...is infallible, inerrant...final authority on any matter...", you can't "do" science. you can't know the world in a scientific way. you're not playing by the rules.

you are free to pursue things like flood geology, but don't think it's science. don't think any creation scientist's theories about biology or geology or astronomy or anything are being used in any technological application.

it's just like that cartoon pam linked to somewhere: "insert miracle here" or something. there are usually a few true sentences in every creation "scientist's" "theoriy", but then comes a point when he has to "break the rules". he'll say, "god could have laid those million varves (annual lock layers) in 6 months" or whatever and chalk it up to god's greatness. you can't do that in science. you have to stick with the physical evidence - not divine revelation - all the way.

Hi, Peter, you said,

"The very starting point for an atheist universe is based on something that cannot explain its own existence."

Actually, Peter, atheists explain the universe pretty damned well, the reason being that it is the job of science to explain the universe, not religion, and religion has no effect on it. Religion, on the other hand, can only explain the universe if one accepts the basis of religion to start with, a position impossible for atheists and also impossible for many believers such as myself. This does not discount/disprove religion - we're talking two separate things, which do not really conflict, and neither should claim to own the other.

Hi Walter, Pam, Arminius,

From your link Walter of the Happy Atheist,

"And the fact that there are many Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans, and atheists whose lives are models of concern for their fellow humans--and many whose lives are sinkholes of selfishness--suggests that religious belief, or the lack of it, has little to do with our daily decisions on behalf of good, evil, or apathy."

It has everything to do with it. Without that objective moral standard for evil the evidence is all around that might is the view that wins. And as for the atheist world view, Ravi Zacharias said it well, in The End of Reason, p. 32,

"The very starting point for an atheist universe is based on something that cannot explain its own existence."

If you want to talk about irrationality, that is it. If you can't explain how it began to be, how do you know it began that way? The answer is you don't. It is your best guess from looking at the evidence from a certain proposition - whether that be BB or naturalism/atheism.

I have to work in the morning and this weekend. I wish I had more holiday time to spend with you like during the summer. I don't know how I am going to respond to all your posts but by plugging away one at a time when the opportunity presents itself. This also gives me more time to think about what you are saying, but it is a slow process. Sorry.

peter, you said,
"The reason is that you can rightly think God's thoughts after Him and not be Christian. You know that murder is wrong. You know that lying is wrong. You know that stealing is wrong. In these areas you borrow from the Christian position."

it's funny how christians always reference the "good commandments" when speaking of their universality. how come i don't "know" that many gods, idolatry and working/playing on the sabbath are wrong?

peter, you said,
"...sin - his pride in his own ability to know things and rightly determine them - has blinded his reason to look at them the way God looks at them.
The evidence is in the world around us, in man's inhumanity to man. Teach him that he is a glorified ape and he is going to act like one."

like pam said, people act badly whether they think they are glorified apes or sons of god. until 200-400 years ago, nearly everyone was "theist". (you'll say they weren't christians, but this applies even in christian communities.) you'll also say more deaths have been caused lately (and incorrectly attribute those to atheism), but the only reason you could possibly say "more deaths lately" is because our "means" have become so much "better". we used to kill with swords, now it's guns and bombs. this is what makes islam so dangerous.

furthermore, even in highly homogenous "christian" societies (take modern southeast u.s., or 1600s england as examples) we still have "bad" behavior, by christian, who do not believe they are "glorified apes".

Hi, Peter,

Concerning revelation. I have had only one, and that is the realization that God IS, and that He is with me. I'll not go into the details, except to say that it had much to do with Creation itself, the beauty and wonder of it. Also, there was no Road to Damascus, no voices out of nowhere, not even any burning shrubbery. God crept up like a thief in the night, and I realized that He had His hand on my shoulder, and He said, "Hey, look!". And I looked, and I saw, and Creation is 14 billion years old and still going.

The bible, as I have said, is evidence, and that includes the Gospels. It takes a lot of ferreting out to extract the truth there, but it is there, despite the textual problems and the contradictions.

So I leave you with this, my #1 rule in this matter: Faith is not a destination, it is a journey, it is lifelong, and it is not easy. I know many Christians, including priests, who agree with this.

flood geology:
http://creationwiki.org/Flood_Geology

and its problems:
http://www.fsteiger.com/flood-report.html

http://evolution.mbdojo.com/flood.html

pam, peter,
did you hear about eilat mazar's new biblical find? i posted a translation on
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/susan_jacoby/2009/10/thanks_but_no_thanks_from_a_happy_atheist.html
at 12:13 PM, October 15, 2009

exciting stuff - to say the least!

pam,
ha! that's so funny...catholics and moonies don't "count" as christian... LOL...

i started to listen, but didn't have time. i read the "lecture notes" and saw that he referenced all the typical christian people (behe, johnson, dembski, wells), and assumed the non-christians were "new-age" types or something.

I listened to the speaker that you linked to, Peter. The questions were nearly impossible to hear, which made his answers a little opaque, but some things were clear. You posted it to show that some IDers aren't Christian? The only non-Christians he mentioned were some Catholics (he grudgingly admitted that they were sort of Christian) and a Moonie! did you expect that this would make it more convincing to us?

"Oh, well then, must be right if Catholics and Moonies think so!"

I would like to have been there to challenge/question him myself. Even though the questions were mostly inaudible, I gathered that they were softballs from wide-eyed gullible believers.

He made a number of assertions (e.g.,there are flaws in "Darwinism", the theory is not falsifiable) that he didn't even make an attempt to support. What flaws? How so?

He said that all life couldn't be interconnected because there was "good evidence of discontinuity between the species," although he offered no such evidence.

His approach to the theory of evolution is entirely negative - he talks about learning to "fight Darwinism." How about first learning about it? Probably 99% of people who "don't believe" in evolution, can't even correctly define the word, let alone explain natural selection.

He says that schools (unfairly) "control the infrastructure," thus promoting Darwinian theory. I went through the US public school system, and believe me, evolution is hardly touched upon. Meanwhile, children are getting years of religious indoctrination from parents, churches, Sunday school, community. Some control!

But the biggest thing he said was that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all good.
Do you believe this? This is religion’s biggest problem, you know, because they can’t all be true. How do we know? Because there’s suffering (a lot of it) in the world.

If he knows about suffering and doesn’t prevent it, then he either can’t, or won’t. If he doesn’t know about it, he’s not omniscient. If he knows but can’t prevent it, he’s not omnipotent. If he knows and can prevent it, but doesn’t, he’s not all good.

And don’t talk to me about free will, please. If God is omniscient (i.e., knows the future) then neither he, nor we, could possibly have free will – we’d just all be puppets, playing out our little assigned roles. It wouldn’t explain suffering arising from natural disasters (“acts of God”), anyway.

Someone once told me to ask you if God could make a rock so heavy that even he couldn’t lift it. Can he?

peter,
i'll get to your presuppositions soon. just wanted to add to something you and pam talked about.

you said,
"Fossils by the millions don't just happen by death. It has to be a sudden quick death by a catastrophic event or events in order to encase and preserve the animal. The Flood is such an event."

and pam said,
"Not true. Animals that become fossilized are those that die (fast or slowly) in shallow water that is moving, but not too fast. They are found where there is evidence of shallow seas, or beaches, or where there were shallow rivers. If it were by a worldwide flood, they would be everywhere, not just where there were bodies of water. A great many of our known fossils are sea creatures that lived in very shallow water, nearest the beach. There would have been no beaches during a Noachian flood. And, as Walter pointed out earlier, there are layers of volcanic ash above and below some fossil layers (including the one that contains Ardi. Not possible underwater."

not only that, if the fossils were all laid down during the flood, they'd be all mixed up! vertically, i mean. but the geologic column "reveals" a perfectly sorted progression of fossils. for the first 80+% of the column, all we ever see are tiny little microorganisms. then we see an increacingly complex sequence of fossils from fish to amphibians to reptiles to mammals, with new traits built on existing traits, and with humans ONLY at the very very top. it's all in perfect order. there are no rabbits in precambrian rocks. what? NO mammals died before the very end of the flood?!

what about the people who died before the flood? shouldn't they be at the very bottom...?

i don't find morris et. al.'s "ecological zonation" and "differential hydraulic sorting" very convincing - funny, but not convincing.

re:ecological zonation: can't fish swim?

re:differential hydraulic sorting: the millions of varves found are impossible during the flood (without god's attempting to fool us). tiny little organisms, no matter what their "ecological zone" or "hydraulic characteristics" are found throughout the geologic column. big, dense animals should be at the bottom.

PH: "It is all interconnected Pam. Without the supposed BB there would not be any supposed evolution. You have to have the one before you have the other."

No, you don't. In fact, millions of Christians believe in evolution, although they believe that God created the universe.

I don't believe that Goddidit, certainly not the God of the bible, but I'm not particularly invested in the BB. I don't have the kind of education (higher math, astrophysics) to have a valid opinion one way or the other. I tend to trust that those who do have that kind of knowledge are on the right track (no, this is not the same as "faith"), but I know that this is a young science, and is complicated by the incredible vastness of time and distance that it entails. I don't need to know how the universe came about to know that evolution occurred.

PH: "And that is the problem with your ever changeable view of evolution and origin. You are at the mercy of subjective human opinion. It could all change tomorrow."

NO, NO, NO, Peter. Not "subjective human opinion." The farthest thing from it. Science follows the evidence - wherever that might take it. Whether or not it's comfortable. Whether or not it conforms to the scientist's original pet hypothesis.

There is so much evidence for evolution, that it's nearly impossible to imagine what could overturn it at this point. Every single discovery since Darwin's own days, and in many and varied fields of science, has only served to reinforce it. It is simple and elegant and fits all observations. It's not going away.

PH: "The view of origin has everything to do with it. That is your grid on which you look at the evidence. That is the grid on which you make the evidence fit."

Your misunderstandings are so profound, that it's difficult to even have a discussion with you. Science does not "make the evidence fit." That's your game, not ours. We start with the evidence and make the hypothesis fit. You start with the hypothesis, and totally ignore the evidence.

PH: "The God of the Bible says young, each created and each to its own kind."

In fact, the bible says nothing about the elapsed time, this is derived by theologians from tortuous calculations of genealogies, which could be incomplete. But whatever it says - how do you know that it's true???

Hi Pam,

Just a quick reply for now.

PAM: "Oh, Peter, how many times do we have to go over this? The BB has absolutely not the slightest thing to do with evolution!"

It is all interconnected Pam. Without the supposed BB there would not be any supposed evolution. You have to have the one before you have the other.

PAM: "If astrophysicists tell us tomorrow that they have discovered evidence that the universe is steady state and has always been here, or that there are multiple universes that bud off a larger one like a lava lamp, or some other - any other - explanation, that doesn’t affect evolution one way or another."

The two would still be connected. You need the one before you get the other. One precedes the other.

And that is the problem with your ever changeable view of evolution and origin. You are at the mercy of subjective human opinion. It could all change tomorrow.

PAM: "Even the origin of life is immaterial to it. If you can present evidence that life was planted here by an asteroid, or a space ship from Alpha Centauri, or even by a god or gods, that says nothing about evolution. Evolution begins one second after life arrives - however that may be."

The view of origin has everything to do with it. That is your grid on which you look at the evidence. That is the grid on which you make the evidence fit. If evolution then millions and billions of years, if God then supernatural and either young or old earth is possible. The God of the Bible says young, each created and each to its own kind.

pam, you said,
"What point is there in making natural laws if you intend to violate them at every whim? Why bother?"

he would just be WAY too busy. generally, the natural world runs on auto-pilot while god deals with theological issues - our prayers and salvation and so forth. occasionally he'll step into nature for the purposes of a flood or famine etc... the "violations" always serve theological purposes, so should not be derided as "whim".

PH: “Yes, if God chose a naturalistic means instead of supernatural one. There are many instances in both Testaments of supernatural events taking place in the natural realm.”
And
“The laws that nature operates by are put in place by the Sovereign Lord supernaturally and will be this way unless/until He revokes them (Genesis 8:22). We discover them and only correctly understand them if we see them as God has made them to be.”

What point is there in making natural laws if you intend to violate them at every whim? Why bother?

PH: “This explains the injustice and evil in the world. Sin is in opposition to what God has revealed as good. The original sin was man deciding to use his judgment above that of God's. Man became his own god, deciding right from wrong.”

Yes, and because man was so sinful and wicked, God wiped him out with the flood, according to you and your bible. And then he allowed him to repopulate, even though he was no better the second time around! What was the point in that? And why kill the animals, too? And why with a flood – why not just wish them away to the lake of fire?

PH: “The evidence is in the world around us, in man's inhumanity to man. Teach him that he is a glorified ape and he is going to act like one.”

LOL. He’s going to act like it no matter what he’s taught – that’s what he is. It’s how he’s always acted, even back in the day when all men were religious, and no man had ever heard of evolution. In fact, he acted much worse back then – those were truly bloody times.

I shouldn’t be taking the time for this, but I just have to comment on a few of your latest, Peter:

PH: “Yes, because these deep seated core values are the lens through which we look at the world and everything it by. No one is neutral. You can call them the foundation, the building blocks on which everything else is built, the central ideas that govern our outlooks, that sway our judgments and opinions, that create our biases.”

I don’t see the scientific “presuppositions” as values, at all. Nor as biases. They are simply the assumptions that are necessary to allow one to do practice scientific inquiry. If science was to assume that everything is mutable, or that reality existed only in one’s own mind, or that a god could overturn the laws of nature on a whim, science just wouldn’t be possible.

But it is, and its fruits are all around us.

PH: “Although evolutionary scientists have not worked out a system of why it happened, what cause it, the BB is the current model that makes evolution possible without God - a event that began the slow ascent from molecules to man, with no apparent reason. It just happened.”

Oh, Peter, how many times do we have to go over this? The BB has absolutely not the slightest thing to do with evolution! If astrophysicists tell us tomorrow that they have discovered evidence that the universe is steady state and has always been here, or that there are multiple universes that bud off a larger one like a lava lamp, or some other - any other - explanation, that doesn’t affect evolution one way or another. Even the origin of life is immaterial to it. If you can present evidence that life was planted here by an asteroid, or a space ship from Alpha Centauri, or even by a god or gods, that says nothing about evolution. Evolution begins one second after life arrives - however that may be.

PH: “Fossils by the millions don't just happen by death. It has to be a sudden quick death by a catastrophic event or events in order to encase and preserve the animal. The Flood is such an event.”

Not true. Animals that become fossilized are those that die (fast or slowly) in shallow water that is moving, but not too fast. They are found where there is evidence of shallow seas, or beaches, or where there were shallow rivers. If it were by a worldwide flood, they would be everywhere, not just where there were bodies of water. A great many of our known fossils are sea creatures that lived in very shallow water, nearest the beach. There would have been no beaches during a Noachian flood. And, as Walter pointed out earlier, there are layers of volcanic ash above and below some fossil layers (including the one that contains Ardi. Not possible underwater.

You never dealt with this, either:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/oldearth2.htm
Scroll down to the part about a conflict based on the number of fossils observed.

ARMINIUS: "Revelation means nothing to me, unless you count the Gospels as revelation."

So what you are saying is that the rest of the Bible means nothing to you. Do you think Jesus of the Gospels felt the same way you do?

Jesus said that the whole of the Old Testament revealed Him (Luke 24:25-27, 44-47). In this way and many others He confirmed that it was God's revelation.

Those anointed by Jesus treated the whole of the Bible as the very words of God.

The OT prophets recorded their interactions with God as "Thus said the LORD, or words of similar effect.

The early church believed both OT and NT to be the very words of God.

The Holy Spirit confirms it in a believers life, and not just the gospels.

ARMINIUS: "My absolute is God. After over 30 years of being a confirmed nonbeliever, God found me, and I know now that He is with me. This is my absolute. It was some time after this spiritual experience that I decided to look into Christianity. After 4 readings of the Gospels, it finally took hold. And I will tell you this, Peter, and I tell you true: I think God guided me to start with the Gospels."

You started there. That is good. But why did you not continue on? Did you get sidetracked by the minds of men?

ARMINIUS: "If I had started with Genesis, after a couple of books of the Hebrew scriptures I would have taken my bible, thrown it in the trash, walked away and never looked back. My belief did not come from a book, or a church, or any person or persons, it came from God. The bible is secondary, but I do take the Gospels very seriously."

That is very good Arminius, to find God, or rather God finding you! So do you believe the gospels to be an absolute revelation of God and necessary for knowing Him, or does your knowledge of Him and relationship with Him come from some mysterious source outside of this revelation? If so, can you pin it down? In other words are the gospels also just words written down by men that reveal God, or are they the very words of God?

Hi Arminius (October 13, 2009 11:38 AM),

A couple of quick thoughts.

ARMINIUS: "Always good to talk to you, even if we disagree. This discussion here is a great example of what these blogs should be, discussion, sometimes spirited, but always in a polite spirit of inquiry."

Yes, it always depends on the persons involved. The heart of debate is the reason why we disagree and sometimes the reasons are hard to come up with or a hard message to swallow.

ME: "Is the Bible God's revelation to us Arminius? What does it claim to be? If yes, do you think God contradicts Himself, or says one thing and means another, or is incapable of relating to us in clear language that we can understand?"

ARMINIUS: "God does not contradict himself."

How was this revealed to you, outside of God's written revelation?

ARMINIUS: "The bible was written by men, seeing through a glass darkly, and they were not taking dictation even if they were inspired."

Written by men as superintended by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21) There is a big difference.

Continuing Walter,

WALTER: "biblical presuppositionalists presuppose:
1) the bible is the inerrant, eternal word of god
2) other people's presuppositions make them misinterpret evidence."

On # 2, those that operate apart from God's thoughts and revelations. The reason is that you can rightly think God's thoughts after Him and not be Christian. You know that murder is wrong. You know that lying is wrong. You know that stealing is wrong. In these areas you borrow from the Christian position.

WALTER: "have i got it right?"

Yes, in so far as you have developed it.

1)God has revealed Himself to man in three distinctive ways, by nature, by special revelation - the Bible - and by His Son and Holy Spirit.

2)Believing the Bible to be God's word means, as His word, it is infallible, inerrant and mans highest and final authority on any matter that it touches on, when correctly interpreted.
God's knowledge is original, man's is derived. Therefore man is dependent on God in order to know things as they truly are.

The reason for such a myriad of views/opinions is because man, as a subjective being, in incapable of seeing the whole picture, so independently of God he wrongly interprets what has been made, not seeing every aspect of the facts or as they truly are, outside of God, or unaided by God's revelation.

3)Man was created for a relationship with God. Sin has separated him from that relationship.

This explains the injustice and evil in the world. Sin is in opposition to what God has revealed as good. The original sin was man deciding to use his judgment above that of God's. Man became his own god, deciding right from wrong.

4)Man no longer see things as they truly are in his natural state, because sin - his pride in his own ability to know things and rightly determine them - has blinded his reason to look at them the way God looks at them.

The evidence is in the world around us, in man's inhumanity to man. Teach him that he is a glorified ape and he is going to act like one.

5)Jesus Christ is the only means God has provided to restore that relationship with Him. Jesus came to meet all God's righteous requirements on our behalf (that is on the believers half), as well as taking the punishment we desire for our disobedience upon Himself for us.

The reason we have so many different religions and religious views is that man refuses to believe and take God at His word. Instead he makes gods in his own image that appeals to his pride and wrongfully thought values.

Sorry, I have run out of time.

Hi Walter (October 13, 2009 11:44 AM),

WALTER: "i think we need to talk about "presuppositionalism". logically, it should cut both ways. we should examine our own and each others' presuppositions."

Yes, because these deep seated core values are the lens through which we look at the world and everything it by. No one is neutral. You can call them the foundation, the building blocks on which everything else is built, the central ideas that govern our outlooks, that sway our judgments and opinions, that create our biases.

WALTER: "scientists presuppose:
1)god is not trying to fool us."

There again, evolutionary science is not built upon God's revelation, so, as Jesus said, it is not built on a solid foundation (Matthew 7:24-29).

Many evolutionary scientists (those who are not theistic), believe that evolution makes the idea of God redundant. Theistic scientist's try to reconcile God's word to fit evoltionary thought, instead of the other way around - that is scieince fitting God's revelation.

Although evolutionary scientists have not worked out a system of why it happened, what cause it, the BB is the current model that makes evolution possible without God - a event that began the slow ascent from molecules to man, with no apparent reason. It just happened.

WALTER: "this applies to fossils and so forth: god did not "plant" fossils there to give the "apperance of" anything."

Fossils by the millions don't just happen by death. It has to be a sudden quick death by a catastrophic event or events in order to encase and preserve the animal. The Flood is such an event.

WALTER: "2)the laws of gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, material properties, gas laws etc... are constant. for example, the flood could have happened, but the "laws" of gravity etc... were still in effect.
pam, can you think of any other "scientific presuppositions"?"

Yes, if God chose a naturalistic means instead of supernatural one. There are many instances in both Testaments of supernatural events taking place in the natural realm.

Hi Pam (October 14, 2009 1:16 AM),

There is something that I want to say to you that is just beneath the surface where I can't get at it. It won't come to mind at the moment.

But I find your list similar in some respects to what a Christian would think like, except for changing a few words and the structure of your thoughts somewhat (that pretty much alters the whole thing). For instance,

PAM: "1) That there is a reality outside of our own minds that exists whether we observe it or not, and whether or not we exist."

God exists, whether we deny Him or not, and true reality is what conforms to His mind, since He created it. In order to see/observe reality as it truly is we must think His thoughts after Him, for reality as it truly is originates from outside our minds, not within them.

PAM: "2) That reality is objective - observations, experiments, or measurements made by one person can be made by another with the same, or similar, results."

Reality is objective but as humans we are subjective and cannot measure the whole of it or understand every aspect of how it interrelates, although the parts we do measure we can know truly, provided we see things as our Creator made them or as He has told us they are.

PAM: "3) That nature operates only one way (corollary to yours about fundamental and unchanging rules or laws)."

The laws that nature operates by are put in place by the Sovereign Lord supernaturally and will be this way unless/until He revokes them (Genesis 8:22). We discover them and only correctly understand them if we see them as God has made them to be.

PAM: "4) That whatever happens or exists is natural, and therefore knowable."

The supernatural precedes the natural and is the unseen, eternal, unchanging and greater reality. The natural is created/began, is changing and temporal in its current state because of sin (Romans 8:19-22). Both realms are knowable because God is knowable to His creation (Romans 1:19-20), although not comprehensively (Romans 11:-36). The reason man does not correctly know things that God has made known or given account of is because man wants to be in control of what is knowable, not God (1 Corinthians 2:14). Thus he misses the mark in correctly interpreting the evidence that God has made.

PAM: "5) That humans have the ability to figure out the laws of nature."

Only when they think God's thoughts after Him through Christ Jesus. Jesus is the way, truth and life and no one comes to God but through Him. The reason you do not know God relationally is because you do not know Christ (1 John 1:23 with John 8:23-24, 31-32). The message of the cross is foolishness to you (1 Corinthians 1:18-2:8).

peter,
be thinking about the presuppositions of presuppositionalism.

our standard procedure will be when a thread "closes" we'll go to susan's newest thread and pick a place from there. so, if this is closed when you get back, check susan's thread.

Hi folks,

I fear our time here is drawing to an end. It will soon be time to send out of trusted scout for a new place to settle.

Walter, here is the web page where I heard of some of the Id movement's non-Christian scientist's. It also explains why the ID movement - you know, why the Wedge approach in attacking Darwinism.

http://www.relyonchrist.com/Lecture/Audio/40.mp3

I'll address some of your concerns when I get time.

Another busy night - dinner out with my brother-in-law, the atheist.

i would also like to thank "pam" for her list of presuppositions...

pan, thanks for your list of presuppositions.

peter,
have i characterized the presupposions of biblical presuppositionalism properly? care to offer your set of presuppositions?

from the article:
"These groups are separated by a large evolutionary gap, identified in Darwin's time, that looked as if it would never be filled – until now.

Details of a new pterosaur, published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences fits exactly in the middle of that gap."

darn it pam! cut it out. don't you see how this plays right into peter's point about "gaps"? we see it as filling yet another gap, but peter's presuppositions probably cause him to see it as creating two gaps. by finding all these fossils, we're going backward... as the kids say, TMI.

Another new fossil discovery:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-10/uol-nto101209.php

OK, Walter, scientific presuppositions...

I've been thinking about this one. Not sure I have them all, but here's what I came up with:

1) That there is a reality outside of our own minds that exists whether we observe it or not, and whether or not we exist.

2) That reality is objective - observations, experiments, or measurements made by one person can be made by another with the same, or similar, results.

3) That nature operates only one way (corollary to yours about fundamental and unchanging rules or laws).

4) That whatever happens or exists is natural, and therefore knowable.

5) That humans have the ability to figure out the laws of nature.

Small correction to my earlier post - I said life was single celled almost to the pre-Cambrian - I meant to say nearly to the end of the pre-Cambrian.

Put another way, the first evidence of single-celled life is 3,850 mya (million years ago). The first evidence of multi-cellular life (soft-bodied wormlike animals) is 900 mya. Long time. It took 87% of Earth's entire history before multicellular life appeared.

pam,
interested in you thoughts on "presuppositions of science".

Pam,

You do put some really incredible stuff up here, thanks!

From the perspective of your resident peculiar Christian (me), the glory of God is much more splendidly told in the 14 billion year unfolding of our incredible universe, than crammed into a 6000 year box with assorted myths, legends, and improbable history.

great post pam!

i think most people don't realize how long scientists think life remained uni-cellular. also, most don't realize how "recently" life came onto "the dry land".

However it came to be, unicellular life was all there was until nearly the pre-Cambrian era (a very long time). Cells had evolved from a simple double-walled lipid container for self-replicating molecules (probably some form of RNA, or similar), to a DNA-containing, protein-generating community of organelles inside those lipid bubbles. Remember the discussion of mitochondria?

The next step was organisms - cells that didn't engulf one another, but that joined by sticking together (this could have been two separate cells, but more likely a mother/daughter pair). At first, this was probably sufficient in and of itself to provide an advantage – two cells stuck together are harder for another cell to “swallow.” Eventually, however, they learned to divide the labor of living. I realize that I’m anthropomorphizing by using terms like “learned,” but you should realize that it’s just shorthand for “gained a competitive reproductive advantage, and thus passed more of their DNA to the next generation than did their competitors.”

At first (and I’m extrapolating from embryology, here) all of the stuck-together cells were alike – stem cells. As they grew, they may have folded over on themselves to form a hollow tube (like worms). At this point, it would have been advantageous for the inner layers to specialize in extraction of nutrients from the water that passed through, while the outer cells became more impervious to danger. Eventually, more and more of the attached cells took on separate tasks, and enervation became necessary to coordinate things like locomotion and swallowing. The nerves eventually developed centralized organization as a brain. Brain cells had to communicate to coordinate, so they developed chemical synapses.

Understand, Peter, that we’re not talking about a steady march upward, each generation better. We’re talking about billions of organisms at each stage, each subject to its own environmental pressures, and, over huge spans of time, some finding better ways to make it in this world and passing these on to their offspring. (Truly vital genes are what biologists call “highly conserved” and we share them with some of the most primitive life forms on Earth.) Billions developed unsuccessful new traits, or failed to keep up, and dropped by the wayside. Huge numbers, huge spans of time. Monkeys with typewriters.

I'll take a stab at this:

"Consciousness is just what it feels like to have a cerebral cortex."
~Jeff Hawkins (inventor of the Palm Pilot)

You have no trouble, I assume, Peter, with the understanding that computers are able to do all the myriad things that they do based on electrical ons and offs...?

Do you know that brains are all about electro-chemistry?

So where's the problem?

Now, I'm not saying that brains work exactly like computers - they don't. But some of the principles are the same. Computers are capable of many things that brains aren't, but the reverse is also true.

What the differences are, is too much for this forum, but Mr. Hawkins (above), with Sandra Blakeslee, has written an excellent book on the subject: On Intelligence. I highly recommend it. It's a wealth of information that he gleaned by research into making a computer that could do what humans do, and it's written in a user-friendly way - not too technical for the layperson.

So how did the brain come about? Easy - it evolved.

interesting article, arminius. thanks.

Walter,

David Brooks has a related column today in the NYT, dealing with the unconscious this time:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/opinion/13brooks.html?ref=opinion

and one from me:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_correlates_of_consciousness

peter, here's a post from persiflage:

Justillthennow,
Howdy! Here's some ammunition for your argument regarding the persistance of consciousness. Researcher Susan Blackmore has also done considerable work in this area and her stuff is worth reading.
Her take is that out-of-body experiences fall under the rubric of cognitive or perceptual illusions - if true, even that says something extraordinary about consciousness.
Consciousness is indeed the 'hard' problem!
PS. You're working a very difficult audience here :^)

http://www.iands.org/research/important_studies/out-of-body_experiences_all_in_the_brain.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Blackmore

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

“Albert, stop telling God what to do.”

ha! that's funny. i love science humor.

Walter,

"scientists presuppose:
1)god is not trying to fool us"

“God does not play dice with the universe.”
Albert Einstein (commenting on Quantum Mechanics)

“Albert, stop telling God what to do.”
Nils Bohr (in reply to the above)

Walter,

Spiritual believers presuppose:

1) God IS.

2) People invariably take very different ways of screwing this up.

Walter,

"...and i don't see how reason can be applicable in the spiritual realm. maybe that was your point all along?

Yes, that was my point. The spiritual is a different path from reason, but both are there and they do not conflict and I walk both paths. Religion tries to bridge the gap, and usually does a bad job of it.

peter, pam,
whenever pam or make make an "air-tight" case about some aspect of science (or biblical errancy), peter's answer is always something like, "that's just your opinion, but the bible says otherwise, therefore you are wrong." we are just talking past each other.

i think we need to talk about "presuppositionalism". logically, it should cut both ways. we should examine our own and each others' presuppositions.

scientists presuppose:
1)god is not trying to fool us.

jbs haldane, the "rabbit in the pre-cambrian" guy, also said, "when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel, or devil is going to interfere with its course."

this applies to fossils and so forth: god did not "plant" fossils there to give the "apperance of" anything.

2)the laws of gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, material properties, gas laws etc... are constant. for example, the flood could have happened, but the "laws" of gravity etc... were still in effect.

pam, can you think of any other "scientific presuppositions"?

biblical presuppositionalists presuppose:
1) the bible is the inerrant, eternal word of god

2) other people's presuppositions make them misinterpret evidence.

have i got it right?

Hello, Peter Huff,

Always good to talk to you, even if we disagree. This discussion here is a great example of what these blogs should be, discussion, sometimes spirited, but always in a polite spirit of inquiry.

You said: "Is the Bible God's revelation to us Arminius? What does it claim to be? If yes, do you think God contradicts Himself, or says one thing and means another, or is incapable of relating to us in clear language that we can understand?"

Me: God does not contradict himself. The bible was written by men, seeing through a glass darkly, and they were not taking dictation even if they were inspired. Revelation means nothing to me, unless you count the Gospels as revelation.

You: "If the Bible is proof of absolutely nothing are you absolutely sure of that
and if so, what is you 'absolute' statement based on?"

Me: My absolute is God. After over 30 years of being a confirmed nonbeliever, God found me, and I know now that He is with me. This is my absolute. It was some time after this spiritual experience that I decided to look into Christianity. After 4 readings of the Gospels, it finally took hold. And I will tell you this, Peter, and I tell you true: I think God guided me to start with the Gospels. If I had started with Genesis, after a couple of books of the Hebrew scriptures I would have taken my bible, thrown it in the trash, walked away and never looked back. My belief did not come from a book, or a church, or any person or persons, it came from God. The bible is secondary, but I do take the Gospels very seriously.

peter, you said,
"You have made statements that generalize but given no explanation how this can be demonstrated to have happened. How does conscious happen or come about from matter? I don't know how many ways I can state it to convey the idea to you."

i've talked to you in the past about how abiogenesis is a rather murky field. there's a lot scientists don't know. if you really want to know what the theories are, pam and i have given you lots of links. we'll give more if you like. as i've said, it is theoretically possible that god assembled those first RNA molecules or whatever.

consciousness is a chemical process. we were just talking about consciousness on susan's most recent thread yesterday. all animals have consciousness in proportion to brain size. like i wrote to mary, our brains are the finest product of 4,000,000,000 years (or so) of evolution. and again, the fact that we can concieve of god, that we concieved him in our image doesn't mean he exists.

peter, you said,
"...but as you learn more about a fact or piece of evidence and how it is related to other facts the theory is constantly changing its viewpoint on how any number of things actual work or come into being."

yes! that's a good thing about scientific theories.

you said,
"The ideas change on the interpretation of it. For example, Charles Lyell's Uniformatarianism has changed to Stephen Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium, from gradualism to sudden genetic mutations by catastrophic events."

you're close, but the theory is that mutations are fairly constant - whether they're selected for, and therefore become pervasive, depends on the environment. we've learned that sometimes the environment behaves "catastrophically".

re: punctuated/gradual: as more evidence came in, as "gaps" were filled, because "punctuated equilibrium" explained the evidence better, it became the generally accepted theory. the improvement in the throry was also in response to improvements in our understanding of geology. we've learned about ice ages and asteriod and so forth. it would be crazy to cling to some "pet theory" like "uniformitarianism" in light of contrary evidence - that's religious thinking.

you said,
"Only with looking at things from God's perspective is certainty possible."

again, certainty would be nice. you're confusing the certainty offered by the bible with accuracy. i've granted that the bible is "certain" and "absolute" and even sort of "eternal", but just reading it shows it's not ALL true.

you said,
"How do you know that the "improvement" [in a scientific theory] is true to the facts as they really are, not just as they are perceived to be?"

if it explains more evidence better, then it's an improvement. it may still not be complete, but it's an improvement.

peter, you've asked, in various forms,
"How does something that is purely physical generate or produce the non-physical, immaterial ideas that are logical or rational thought?"

again, this is weird to me. they're just thoughts. most animals have thoughts - inproportion to their brain size. do you have pets? as far as the human brain, with its thoughts of chess and logic and god, well...our grotesquely large brains are the finest product of 4,000,000,000 years of evolution. that we can concieve of god is not evidence for god.

you said,
"Show me how stones dissolving over billions of years can give birth to mind by any observable natural phenomenon? If you can't do that then is it any more than a theory, some pet idea that you use to justify your world view that lacks observable proof, that lacks justifiable truth, any solid, unmovable foundation?"

where'd you get "stones dissolving...[to]...give birth to mind"? i guess that's rhetoric. but the "pet theory" part applies very well to "biblical creationism". that was the theory of the ancient israelites. you cling to it, despite the evidence, to justify your world view.

peter, you said,
"Simply, if knowledge is based on an ever changing, limited, subjective viewpoint there is never certainty that it is true knowledge. There needs to be something unchanging for knowledge to be grounded upon or else truth is impossible to know."

yes, that's true. that's the nature of knowlegde. i know it makes you uncomfortable. you SO WANT there to be certainty. it's simpler that way. that would be nice, but knowledge not that way.

undaunted, you have created certainty. in doing so, you've confused "eternal, absolute and unchanging" with "true". i will grant that the bible is eternal (starting from each books authorship, and discounting scribal edits and errors), absolute and unchanging. i mean, it's a book, so it's not changing.

and it's JUST a book, written by men, and it has errors. i pointed out two or three trivial ones earlier (immovable earth, held "up" on pillars, with 4-legged insects), and there's still that abram and the amalekites thing out there unanswered. these errors are NOT matters of "opinions" about "interpretations" of "ever-changing evidence". the earth moves, there simply are no pillars holding up the earth, and insects do not have 4 legs. if you can't see how it's impossible for abram to attack his descendents before he's had any children, then we can't really have any further (meaningful) conversation. your presuppositions are getting in the way. these are factual errors, not matters of opinion.

mary, you said,
"Well, we hunted and gathered for a long time (if you accept homo sapiens is some 100,000 years old and agriculture only some 10,000) but I’m not sure Paleolithic man was a chimp. From what we’ve found of him he was as human as you and me. He had just as big a brain, buried his dead, worshipped—what? Animals maybe. Chimps didn’t do that—not then and not now.
So we're not just another animal. Animal, yes, but not just another. Genesis was pretty much right on that too."

i didn't mean to imply that we'd be chimps. but we'd be much more like them. we'd still have our gigantic brains, but they wouldn't have any "cultural content". to do my "what if" better, you'd have to go back to before we buried our dead or worshipped anything. - those are behaviors we teach each other, behavior we learn. chimps have to "start over" every generation whereas i can read aristotle.

we are animals. and i would even concede that we are not "just another animal". what sets us apart is our grotesquely large brain (and our cultural chromosome).

arminius, you said,
"Define 'reasonable' and give three examples.
Then equate this to the spiritual."

edited defs from merriam webster:

reasonable:
1 a : being in accordance with reason (a reasonable theory) b : not extreme or excessive (reasonable requests) c : moderate, fair (a reasonable chance) (a reasonable price) d : inexpensive
2 a : having the faculty of reason b : possessing sound judgment (a reasonable man)

reason (noun):
2 a (1) : the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking especially in orderly rational ways : intelligence (2) : proper exercise of the mind (3) : sanity

reason (verb):
2 : to use the faculty of reason so as to arrive at conclusions

i think the key part for me is "thinking in orderly rational ways".

my examples:
1) given the evidence for (biblical testimony) and the evidence against (people don't rise from the dead), it is reasonable to think the resurrection/ascension didn't happen.

2) if many other religions make absurd claims that we regard as patently false, then it is reasonable to regard the absurd claims of christianity as patently false.

3) it is reasonable to think jim zorn will not be the redskins coach next year.

and i don't see how reason can be applicable in the spiritual realm. maybe that was your point all along?

lose, not loose

PeterHuff:

"Man was never an animal. He was created different from the animals. "

Man was and is an animal, and was not created but evolved. This is proven by Ardi. You (and your "absolute standards") loose, but thanks for playing.

Hi Walter (October 12, 2009 11:52 AM ),

WALTER: "i'm not sure where you're going with this. are you saying that because we can't touch, taste, feel, see or hear logic, that that means it's "from god"? are you saying logic (and math? and courage? and morals?) are evidence for god?"

I'm asking how you explain something that is intangible, non-physical coming from the material realm as per my earlier post this morning?

WALTER: "logic and morals (and football and chess and religion) are HUMAN inventions. they don't exist outside of us thinking about them."

In that case are you saying that we are more than biological bags in matter, that there is an non-physical part of us that originated from the material realm? How does a concept come/originate from matter, from inorganic physical objects?

WALTER: "they are part of what makes us more than 1.5% different from chimps (as DNA alone would indicate). logic, morals, football, chess and religion are passed on in what i've elsewhere called our "cultural chromosome"."

You have made statements that generalize but given no explanation how this can be demonstrated to have happened. How does conscious happen or come about from matter? I don't know how many ways I can state it to convey the idea to you.

WALTER: "if humans suddenly "lost" this chromosome (it's the sum of everything humans teach and learn), we would be right back there with chimps hunting and gathering, trying to eke out an existence, instead of having fancy chats about religion and morals."

I'm not asking what would happen if we lost it, but how we got it in the first place if not by intent, by design, by plan and purpose?

Hi Arminius ( October 12, 2009 5:52 PM ),

ARMINIUS: "Walter, Where Peter is coming from is a place I cannot visualize, for since he accepts the entire bible as truth, then the rest of the universe must therefore be cut and pounded to fit.

Is the Bible God's revelation to us Arminius? What does it claim to be? If yes, do you think God contradicts Himself, or says one thing and means another, or is incapable of relating to us in clear language that we can understand? Do you think that accepting evolutionary science as truth that the whole universe must be cut and pounded to fit it's changing truth claims?

ARMINIUS: "To me, the oddball Christian, the bible is proof of absolutely nothing - it is, however, a source of evidence of many things."

To me the oddball Christian is the one who discounts that God is true and every man a liar (Romans 3:4, 5), who does not trust/depend/rely on His word as the ultimate measure of what is true. Instead he takes other religious truth claims that contradict the Christian message to be equally true. I hope that does not include you.

If the Bible is proof of absolutely nothing are you absolutely sure of that
and if so, what is you 'absolute' statement based on? Knowledge to be absolute has to be based on something that is eternal/unchanging, omniscient/objective, omnipotent and true. So where does your truth come from? Please give me your source.

You used a term that implied absolutely nothing if you have no absolute source on with to base that absolute claim. Or should I say that it would be a subjective opinion that is meaningless in a sea of subjectivity.

Hi Mary,

MARY: "So we're not just another animal. Animal, yes, but not just another. Genesis was pretty much right on that too.

Man was never an animal. He was created different from the animals. The animals were created to their kinds, but man alone was created in the image and likeness of God.

ME: ""You just admitted in another post how scientific evidence is always being tweaked. It is always changing."

WALTER: "i did not say the evidence is being tweaked. evidence is evidence."

Not in those words - tweaked - but as you learn more about a fact or piece of evidence and how it is related to other facts the theory is constantly changing its viewpoint on how any number of things actual work or come into being. Evidence does not come already interpreted. Evidence is evidence, but how you interpret it guides the way you see it.

The ideas change on the interpretation of it. For example, Charles Lyell's Uniformatarianism has changed to Stephen Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium, from gradualism to sudden genetic mutations by catastrophic events. Look down the long corridor of history and show me how any idea on origins has not changed. Only with looking at things from God's perspective is certainty possible.

Now in Darwin's time Uniformatarianism seemed feasible to Darwin as the best explanation of explaining the fossil record. Today it is probably Gould's idea that gains the most widely accepted following. So what was once thought of as true is now discarded or modified, and that is the problem of no original, unchanging, objective knowledge. It constantly changes over time, just like everything in your world view.

WALTER: "new evidence may cause theories to be "tweaked". i went on to explain how this is a good thing. scientific theories are improved by additional evidence."

How do you know that the "improvement" is true to the facts as they really are, not just as they are perceived to be? This is the problem with evolutionary science. As Mary (I believe) said, these experiments cannot be duplicated to test the hypothesis. No human being currently living was around at either the start of the universe or the start of life on earth. Therefore the evidence has to be interpreted. It cannot be repeated. No one was around to see a chimpanzee or great ape slowly evolve over time into human beings. Therefore, the evidence is interpreted, depending on your world view. And your world view cannot make sense of it because truth is never certain. Truth is not justifiable on speculation. Hence the necessity of God to reveal how things came into existence.

Hi Walter (October 12, 2009 5:18 PM),

WALTER: "remind me again what your objective ultimate standard is. is it that 1000s of years old book written by MEN?"

Simply, if knowledge is based on an ever changing, limited, subjective viewpoint there is never certainty that it is true knowledge. There needs to be something unchanging for knowledge to be grounded upon or else truth is impossible to know. If one minute something is true and the very next it is false which is it really? How do you justify that what you propose as truth based on the facts, as best as you have been able in your limited knowledge to relate and understand them, are what they truly are?

God's knowledge is original; ours is derived. The unbeliever has no ultimate, objective foundation in judging anything.

Furthermore, there is no knowledge without a knower. A rock knows nothing or as someone said, and I'm not sure if this is a paraphrase or direct quote, "Nothing - that which rocks dream about."

If, as evolutionary biology suggests, life came from inorganic matter, how did consciousness and thought originate? Neither consciousness nor thought is something physical, but something that is intangible, invisible, immaterial, non-physical. In a universe that supposedly came about by material means, how do we get immaterial, non-physical concepts such as thought - or logic? How does something that is purely physical generate or produce the non-physical, immaterial ideas that are logical or rational thought? How can a random, blind process start to do such a thing? How can a BB or a big whimper organize, arrange, design information into a purposeful state of being? If not God then chance started the ball rolling. Does that seem logical to you? Either a being/mind or blind, indifferent, matter is behind all this that we see and think about; either design and purpose or blind indifferent chance. You want to believe that, then by faith you are welcome to your blind irrational belief.

In all you see, knowing comes from a mind, thinking comes from a mind, reasoning comes from a mind, observation comes from a mind, making sense of things comes from a mind, collecting information, analyzing it, etc. How rational is it to think that it came from anything but mind, if you are going to use the power of observation on what is real to us here and now? That is why we are made in God's image and are capable, as humans, of thinking His thoughts after Him. Show me how stones dissolving over billions of years can give birth to mind by any observable natural phenomenon? If you can't do that then is it any more than a theory, some pet idea that you use to justify your world view that lacks observable proof, that lacks justifiable truth, any solid, unmovable foundation?

WIFC if humans suddenly "lost" this chromosome (it's the sum of everything humans teach and learn), we would be right back there with chimps hunting and gathering

Well, we hunted and gathered for a long time (if you accept homo sapiens is some 100,000 years old and agriculture only some 10,000) but I’m not sure Paleolithic man was a chimp. From what we’ve found of him he was as human as you and me. He had just as big a brain, buried his dead, worshipped—what? Animals maybe. Chimps didn’t do that—not then and not now.

So we're not just another animal. Animal, yes, but not just another. Genesis was pretty much right on that too.

Walter,

Define 'reasonable' and give three examples.
Then equate this to the spiritual.
(Believe it or not, I'm not trying to be a smartass.)

arminius,
wow...well...you SEEM so reasonable, otherwise.
;-)

Walter,

It's pretty complicated. What brought me back to Christianity was a reading of the Gospels - actually, four readings over about a two year period. At that point I accepted the teachings of Jesus. Then I started going to church. At the first Holy Week, a weird thing happened to me - it all seemed very real, as though I had been there. So yes, I do believe in Jesus as the Son of God, resurrected, and part of the Trinity. I KNOW it makes no sense from any possible rational basis! But we're not talking about the realm of reason here. I can't even begin to explain it.

arminius,
your "oddball christianity" should be studied and emulated by more christians.

to me it's pretty weird that not believing in jesus' divinity (have i got that right?, you don't think he was a godman or that he was resurrected, right?) that you'd call yourself christian, but as you say, "if I am nuts, then it is a gentle and beautiful madness, harms none, and I have no problem with it."

Walter,

Where Peter is coming from is a place I cannot visualize, for since he accepts the entire bible as truth, then the rest of the universe must therefore be cut and pounded to fit. To me, the oddball Christian, the bible is proof of absolutely nothing - it is, however, a source of evidence of many things.

peter, you said,
"The only way we can ever really know is because an omniscient, omnipotent, unchanging, Being has revealed it to us."

and,

"There is no such thing as neutrality in a world view unless there is an objective standard and measure, a reference point that sees every detail and knows every event in the creation of any and all particular "fact(s)." "

remind me again what your objective ultimate standard is. is it that 1000s of years old book written by MEN? that's the same book that says insects have four legs (lev11:22-23) and that the immovable earth (1chr16:30) is held up by pillars (1Sam2:8), right?

you said,
"You just admitted in another post how scientific evidence is always being tweaked. It is always changing."

i did not say the evidence is being tweaked. evidence is evidence. new evidence may cause theories to be "tweaked". i went on to explain how this is a good thing. scientific theories are improved by additional evidence.

Walter,

"bingo! all the rest is details.i have called religion a "soul survival system"

Odd. I am Christian, but seldom wonder about any 'soul survival system', and have no use for any 'end of days' stuff. But I'm not yer average Christian, since I come to it from the spiritual side.

Yes, God IS, and He created the universe, probably some 14B years ago, and it is really still ongoing. I guess I assume that there is some kind of afterlife, although I have no proof of it, and this does not bother me. What happens, happens... or not. Further I of course have no proof that God exists, at least in the normal definition of proof, something that can be communicated to another. Does this bother me? No. And I have been accused of being demented, yes, of course, but if I am nuts, then it is a gentle and beautiful madness, harms none, and I have no problem with it.

peter, you said,
"I posted a reply that did not take..."

maybe it was too long? i always "copy" my post before hitting "submit" to make sure i don't lose the whole thing if it "doesn't take".

"testing

mary, you said,
"I think the easiest thing is to say --Occam and all that--is that Jesus existed...

i agree, there probably is a person on whom the jesus legend is based. somewhere i mentioned c.s. lewis' false trilemma: liar, lunatic or lord. it's probably just "legend".

"...that he was a Jewish prophet..."

when you say "prophet" do you mean someone who hears god talking to him and then tells us what god said? or does "prophet" mean "scripture expert"?

Schaum, you said,
"My take on it all is that what people want from religion is...to find assurance that death is merely a survivable event."

bingo! all the rest is details. i have called religion a "soul survival system".

Schaum, yopu said,
"Clearly the Ardi discovery and dating has put an end to the "creationist" controversy: we were not created, separately and apart. We evolved. The proof is there."

one would think so, logically. there is now so much evidence for evolution that there should be no controversy. but, as i've mentioned before, logic and evidence are superfluous for the believer. it doesn't matter how much evidence for evolution we find out here in the real world. judeochrislamic theists already have all the evidence they need - in the form of 1000s of years old books written by earnest, but ignorant and superstitious MEN.

peter,
you keep going on about absolute standards and certainty and denigrating science as "he said she said" matters of opinion. you realize that your absolute standards are just "he said she said". they're based on what ignorant superstitious MEN said god said.

peter, you said,
"How does something non-material come from matter such as rational thought? How do you observe in a material universe the immaterial? Can you taste, touch, see, smell hear intangible logic?
These are things your world view fails to answer, all the while it uses them. You keep borrowing from the Christian world view in order to make sense of things."

i addressed this in an earlier post, which i'll quote here:

i'm not sure where you're going with this. are you saying that because we can't touch, taste, feel, see or hear logic, that that means it's "from god"? are you saying logic (and math? and courage? and morals?) are evidence for god?

logic and morals (and football and chess and religion) are HUMAN inventions. they don't exist outside of us thinking about them. they are part of what makes us more than 1.5% different from chimps (as DNA alone would indicate). logic, morals, football, chess and religion are passed on in what i've elsewhere called our "cultural chromosome".

if humans suddenly "lost" this chromosome (it's the sum of everything humans teach and learn), we would be right back there with chimps hunting and gathering, trying to eke out an existence, instead of having fancy chats about religion and morals.
Posted by: walter-in-fallschurch | October 5, 2009 10:55 AM

hi peter, glad you're back,

i said,
"i've often said how there is NO scripture anywhere in the world (that i know of) that got the creation story right."

and you said,
""That I know of" wreaks of uncertainty."

you mean "reeks"? of uncertainty? i only said "that i know of" because i don't presume to know of every creation story ever invented. there could be one out there that "got it right", but i've never heard of it. certainly the genesis creation story got it wrong. it suffers from all the symptoms of a man-made creation story that i mentioned.

you said,
"The matter of epistemology is a troubling issue in your world view, as is the matter of metaphysics and axiology."

sorry, i don't understand what you mean here. can you expound/clarify?

you said,
"You see the difference between Genesis 1 and 2 as being the influence of two different creation stories. I see it as being the difference in detail of the same account."

of course you do. were you aware of those other creation stories, though? and are you aware that they pre-date the biblical account?

you asked,
"Can you show me anywhere in Scripture where the "Us" refers to angels creating or making other creatures, or are you reading into the Scriptures (as per usual) something that they do not say?"

well, i don't think it's controversial to say that god made the angels. that's standard stuff, right? what i'm saying is that when god said "us" and "our" the was talking TO someone/thing. sounds polytheistic, that's all. my pastor told me the "us" and "our" may have been used because god was talking to his angels.

angels (and demons) exist in just about every religion. jewish "monotheism" was more of a corporate restructuring. for jews, yahweh took on a much greater role, and other gods were reduced to angels and devils – divided into good and evil teams.

the reason for angels and devils is that people already believed in them. and they weren’t going away. people saw evidence of "spirits" everyday: when somebody got sick or found a shekel, heads-up, on the ground.

christians added jesus and the holy hpirit to the mix while somehow keeping the total number of gods at one. muslims diminished jesus’ role, partially deified muhammad and changed yahweh’s name to allah. there are a lot of gods in monotheism...

Mary_Cunningham wrote:

"What they want from religion is God."

You think? Interesting...I used to work in the funeral industry. I've observed many people grieving, praying, pleading, bargaining (which is what so much prayer boils down to) in differing denominational/institutional styles. My take on it all is that what people want from religion is not so much any intimate relationship with a god, as to find assurance that death is merely a survivable event.

Walter, well all I can say is: that’s some take! Where to start?

I think the easiest thing is to say --Occam and all that--is that Jesus existed. After that the simplest explanation of his ministry is the Islamic one: that he was a Jewish prophet, one of a long line, who was unfortunately murdered (Muslims wouldn’t make that mistake) by the state. Christianity erred by assuming Jesus was God, an aberration Islam would subsequently correct. This btw is also the Unitarian take on Jesus.

Christianity introduced a dual Godhead (soon to become a triple Godhead) into a strict monotheistic religion. Then it went one better and combined Greek philosophy with Judaism! The Greek, who desired nothing more than truth (“What is truth” characterized the Greeks) sat uneasily with the ancient Judean who wanted to know “What shall I do” (morality obsessed these ancients).

It was a strange religion. It still is. But, evenso, even with all its inherent tensions IMO Christianity has more faithfully translated the divine message into human language than the others. That is because people go to religion not to seek out the history of the world, or some kind of evolutionary theory, or even morality (they can get all those elsewhere and always have).

What they want from religion is God. They want God to reveal Himself to them (“Do not turn your face away from me” pled the psalmist). Has God revealed Himself to the Christians? If so, what has He shown?

Stay tuned. And hope to have more discussions.

Clearly the Ardi discovery and dating has put an end to the "creationist" controversy: we were not created, separately and apart. We evolved. The proof is there. If there were a god, I'd thank him for science.

To Walter and Pam,

The current view of the origin of the universe, which many evolutionary scientists support also does a lot of presuming. It presumes everything came from virtually nothing by chance happenstance. Since the universe had a beginning in time, per the BB, and since there is no mind behind it, but a mindless process that randomly selects, we see order coming from chaos, minds coming from non thinking matter, many incorporeal, intangibles such as logic and reasoning coming from matter. How does something non-material come from matter such as rational thought? How do you observe in a material universe the immaterial? Can you taste, touch, see, smell hear intangible logic?

These are things your world view fails to answer, all the while it uses them. You keep borrowing from the Christian world view in order to make sense of things.

Finishing Walter,

WALTER: "Yahweh then tells the man and woman to have dominion over the Earth and all life on it. This is the His way of saying They made everything for us."

God made everything to reflect His glory and for His pleasure. Man chooses to reflect upon his own glory instead. It's called pride. Pride puts itself first, glorifies itself, points to itself above all else. It does a lot of presuming. Look at me! And I use the word in these definitions,

The quality of being arrogant: arrogance, haughtiness, hauteur, insolence, loftiness, lordliness, overbearingness, presumption,
# A regarding of oneself with undue favor

WALTER: "Moderates might consider this the domestication of animals and plants. Some take this to mean we should be good stewards of Yahweh’s creation. Others take it as permission to recklessly exploit Nature and assume Yahweh will take care of everything (besides, the Apocalypse is coming soon...in our lifetimes)."

It is never reckless exploitation for although He appointed man as to have dominion, it is a secondary dominion, for God is omnipotent and in control of all things. We are stewards of what He has made.

Hi Walter (October 10, 2009 10:24 AM ),

WALTER: "day 6:
After a busy week, Yahweh comes in on the weekend. He spends the Sixth Day (Oct. 31, 4004 B.C.) making land animals: beasts, creeping things and cattle. Having thus prepared the way, Yahweh says, “Let Us create man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Did you catch that – “Us” and “Our”? Who is Yahweh talking to? Apologists say it was angels, but it sounds like… gasp…polytheism."

Follow the passage through to its conclusion Walter, "So God created man in His image..." That answers who the "Us" and "our" refers to.

So maybe some apologist's think the way you do Walter and say that but that is to read into Scripture something that is never taught. It is obvious by using logic that God is referring to Himself - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for angels do not create man, only God does. (Hebrews 1:5-12; Colossians 1:16-17; John 1:1-3 with Isaiah 44:24).

WALTER: "They say Yahweh needed some help, or company, so He created the Heavenly Host of Gofers at some unspecified time earlier in the week, but failed to mention it."

"When I consider the heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him? YOU MADE HIM a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of Your hands; You put everything under his feet..." (Psalm 8:3-6)

Can you show me anywhere in Scripture where the "Us" refers to angels creating or making other creatures, or are you reading into the Scriptures (as per usual) something that they do not say?

I can show you a ton of verses that says God made man. So how do you get "Let Us" as being God and angels? (Isaiah 29:15-16; Isaiah 45:9-12, esp. vs. 12; Isaiah 44:24; Job 4:17; Psalm 95:6; Jeremiah 10:16)

Hi Walter,

I see you are really dissecting the creation account to fit your world view. I posted a reply that did not take, so here is another.

WALTER: "i've often said how there is NO scripture anywhere in the world (that i know of) that got the creation story right. they all focus it on their little corner of the world, explaining the appearance of the local animals and geographic features. no creation story mentions microorganisms or extinct animals."

"That I know of" wreaks of uncertainty.

I'll only speak for the biblical creation account. The purpose of Genesis 1 was to teach how God did it in a non-detailed, non-technical sort of way, and in six days.

You make a lot of assumptions coming from a position that can only speak in a relative and subjective manner. That is one of the problems with your position. There is nothing certain about it. God is the necessity for certainty and objectivity. You go on the evidence that appeals to your core values and interpret all the facts by your foundational reference points, your deepest convictions. That is the nature of a world view.

There is no such thing as neutrality in a world view unless there is an objective standard and measure, a reference point that sees every detail and knows every event in the creation of any and all particular "fact(s)." That is why your world view is inadequate in explaining anything. It has no ultimate, omniscient source. Thus it is constantly changing just as looking at a cut diamond from different facets changes the way we see it.

WALTER: "no creation story mentions how HUGE the universe is - and they all pretty much assume earth is the center of the universe."

The intent of the biblical creation account is not to convey this information at this time. That is done elsewhere in Scripture.

WALTER: "anyway, that all said, they did get "humans last" right."

Again, your standard of "right" is relative and subjective. The only way we can ever really know is because an omniscient, omnipotent, unchanging, Being has revealed it to us. You just admitted in another post how scientific evidence is always being tweaked. It is always changing. The matter of epistemology is a troubling issue in your world view, as is the matter of metaphysics and axiology.

You see the difference between Genesis 1 and 2 as being the influence of two different creation stories. I see it as being the difference in detail of the same account.

"Tonight on Discovery channel at 9:00 PM Eastern, a special on Ardi."

Pam, ordinarily I would always watch something like that, but I cannot this time, because this is my Holy Month - baseball playoffs! I do hope that Peter watches.

Tonight on Discovery channel at 9:00 PM Eastern, a special on Ardi.

You should watch, Peter.

Walter,

Given that there is no evidence for literacy among the Israelites before 1000 BC/BCE, and only spotty evidence after that until the Babylonian Exile, it can only be assumed that the creation stories, as well as the ark, were obtained from the Sumerians and Babylonians.

"Of course the creations will say that they got it [creation story] from the bible... "

peter has made that suggestion, but the other stories are older...

PeterHuff wrote:

"although when I come to bed the one dog does tend to bark when I open the door. I don't know who she expects to see?"

Jesus, of course.

Thanks, Walter. I was already aware of the Sumerian/Babylonian roots, but had never seen the details before. Rather telling, no? Of course the creations will say that they got it from the bible...

arminius,
since you seem interested, here's more:

Dilmun
Some say Genesis is so astounding and awesome that no one could have made it up. But it turns out it was made up – lots of times. Starting locally, in Mesopotamia, the Sumerian myth has the Earth created from a watery abyss by separating the waters on Earth from the waters in Heaven with a firmament. Two Gods, Enki (male), and Ninhursag (female) live in Dilmun, a lush garden paradise with a spring feeding the rivers. In Dilmun, there is no death or sickness until Enki ate some sacred plants and is cursed by Ninhursag. One curse affects his rib. To cure him, his rib is removed, from which a woman is made. She is called “Ninti” – the mother of life. Later, Enki makes the first mortal humans by kneading clay to give it form.

Enuma Elish
The Biblical days of creation closely parallel the Old Babylonian creation story, Enuma Elish. The first generation of Gods makes the Earth and its waters. The second generation separates the waters on Earth from the waters in Heaven with a firmament (obviously the preferred method in ancient Mesopotamia). The next generation creates dry land, then the sky, then the plants and animals (by speaking them into existence), and so on until, finally, the sixth generation creates Man – as slaves, so the Gods can rest. It is a “logical” step-by-step creation of the world the ancients saw around them. These myths predate the Israelite myth by 1000 years. Every culture has a (false) creation story that goes more or less like this. Genesis has the advantage of being the only creation myth most people know, and many still believe.

http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/sumer-faq.html

http://meta-religion.com/World_Religions/Ancient_religions/Mesopotamia/Epic_of_gilgamesh/biblical_parallels_in_sumerian_l.htm

http://personal.eunet.fi/pp/tilmari/tilmari4.htm

arminius,
of course you're right. but i've heard fundamentalists, like my pastor, say the first part was the creation of all the wild animals and plants. in eden god made all the "special" animals and plants relevant to adam's life.

in one version god is called "elohim" (which i understand is actually plural) and in the other he's called "yahweh". part of the story matches almost perfectly with the babylonian myth and part matches the sumerian myth. like the flood story, genesis 1 and 2 are improved versions of pre-existing myths.

Walter,

Bending over backwards does not help imply any convergence of these two stories. They positively shriek separate sources because the difference in ordering is too difficult to get around, and plus the writing style is very different.

arminius,
thanks. the next paragraph reads:

This creation story is followed by Genesis 2. Apologists will say that these are the same creation stories with different emphasis, but it doesn’t sound like it. In the second creation story, Yahweh first makes Adam by breathing life into clay, then He makes the plants, then the animals. Next, Yahweh parades all the animals past Adam so he can name them. Given that evolution is not allowed, this would have been all the non-aquatic animals that have ever existed – at least 1,000,000,000 species. That must have been some parade. If Adam named one animal per second, 24 hours a day, this would have taken over 31 years. In this version it is only after all the animals have been named that Yahweh decides Adam needs a “helper,” and created Eve – the mother of life – from Adam’s rib, yet, the first version says the land animals, Adam and Eve were all created on day six.

Note that this “helper” verse is the second of many, many sexist sentiments in scriptural his-story. The first is calling God “He.” If you bend over backwards, it’s possible to interpret this as a continuation of Genesis 1, maybe a detailed version of Day Six. Objective Biblical scholars suppose these are two distinct stories (Sumerian and Babylonian) that were merged sometime in Jewish pre-history.

Walter, Peter, et al,

Re: Genesis, the creation

Good summary, Walter, plus some telling analysis. I notice you did not get into the second creation story, the Adam, Eve, and snake gig. There are some curious things with this 2nd attempt. For one, the first story, which I dearly love as literature but, as a solid evolution supporter, do not believe, anyway, it seemed to have everything completed. So the 2nd story starts with the earth in place, but uninhabited either by plants, animals, or homo sapiens. So Yahweh and his buddies create a man. No woman. Terrible oversight, there! Anyway, seems the dude was lonesome, so Yahweh creates plants and animals, which had already been created in the first story before man and woman. So then, woman was created, and then the snake bit took off. Houston, we have a problem....

Hi Walter, Pam, Mary,

Sorry for the absence. I have had neither access nor time to post for the past four days. We have had company and we put the baby crib in the computer room. My brother-in-law arrives in half and hour from England also. He'll be with us for ten days. So it is going to be sporadic at best in answering posts. Isn't that the way it goes? I have not forgotten. I would like more time to sit down and read through the posts. It looks like you, Pam, Onofrio, Arminius, Daniel12 and others have been very busy.

Your last posts on Genesis did catch my eye Walter. As for the rest, well when I get time. I think I will be able to sneak a few late night posts in this week although when I come to bed the one dog does tend to bark when I open the door. I don't know who she expects to see?

Mary C.,

You may not read this, but just in case you check back:

"That said, sometimes you seem to be disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing"

No, Mary, it's just that I find dialoguing with you rather exasperating. You began by making a statement about the lack of science involved in the study of evolution. Both Walter and I posted disagreeing with you. No one posted in agreement. Your next post begins "Let's back up. Do we agree that..." and you restate your premise. The one that we disagreed with.

You also continue to refer to evolution as "only a theory," in spite of having that term explained repeatedly, as it pertains to science.

Mary: "1)Where did I say prediction was impossible in the evolution theory?"

You implied it here:
"• Evolution is a ‘hard’ science bereft (without) meaningful controlled experiments that, by definition, are
o Duplicable
o Observable
o Have predictive value [etc.]"

Mary: "2) IMHO you are dancing around the problem of the lack of controlled experiments in evolutionary theory..."

Gaaahhh! Again, both Walter and I have talked about repeatable experiments with proper controls - Walter mentioned the work leading to the discovery of HOX genes. There are many experiments. Do we have to list them all? I freely admit that I can't - there are too many, and I don't know about all of them. But I can give some specific examples, if that's what you want.

Mary (re social experiments): "Are you admitting such with your statement 'they are difficult to control'? If they are difficult to control, can they be a controlled experiment?"

I was being sarcastic. My point was that no abortion/crime "experiment" had ever been conducted, and likely never will be. You have to just draw your conclusions from statistics.

peter,
hope you're still with us. i know pam and i still have unaddressed questions out there.

all,
when this thread expires, if any of us are still interested, we can go to whatever susan's newest post is and choose a new place from there.

mary,
pleasure "chatting" with you. hope to "see" you around.

Mary C, you said,

"There's enough pantheistic Celt left in me, even after decades in London, to find God in the landscape. I don't worship it like my pagan ancestors, but it is easy for me to find Him there. The ancient Church as well--was keen on knowledge about the natural world because of what it would reveal about the Creator."

And I say, YES! Got Celt? Me too! Where my Pagan friends see many deities in the beauty of Creation, I see the hand of God at work, but are agreed on the beauty and special nature of it all.

Here's an early Christian prayer, from the British Isles, with obvious Celtic roots:

This day and night, grant to us, O God,
The deep peace of the running wave
The deep peace of the flowing air
The deep peace of the quiet earth
The deep peace of the shining stars
To restore our souls in sleep
To enlighten out dreams in the night
To prepare our spirits for eternity
The deep peace of the Son of Peace.
Amen.

PS: I liked your 'treatise'. It highlights your thoughts well. I don't mind some of Daniel12's but he should use headings and condense his thoughts by about 2/3s, give his readers (or non readers really) a break.

One of the reasons I read poetry is that it seems to convey the wonder of the world better than, well, Genesis. Yeats especially is a vibrant poet. Look up The Cold Heaven , it teems with the energy and light of creation. Beautiful stuff.

Best.

WIFC:

As the Moderate wrote, God is a force of energy moving through inert matter creating life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--oh wait! that's the Declaration of Independence.

But the universe teems with energy: the Creator creating life and, after some dead ends and failed experiments, creating us. Fan-bloody-tastic, Walter. Not us. Creation.

There's enough pantheistic Celt left in me, even after decades in London, to find God in the landscape. I don't worship it like my pagan ancestors, but it is easy for me to find Him there. The ancient Church as well--was keen on knowledge about the natural world because of what it would reveal about the Creator.

Anyway, here I am getting all religious on you, and there's not much point as the blog is almost over.

Your seeker of God in the trees and water,
MC

mary,
"My purpose in entering the discussion was mostly to say there’s a lot we don’t know. That’s all. And to argue against certainty. IMHO that's never good, in science or any other subject."

absolutely agreed. scientists, when they're being careful, always attach degrees of uncertainty to their "conclusions". every scientific statement should be prefaced with something like "so far, the evidence indicates..." this seems to bother peter huff to no end, as he's always looking for "absolute" "ultimate" "objective" standards. these can only be found in scripture since scripture (his kind, anyway) is not subject to rational scrutiny.

anyway, sorry for that extremely long daniel12esque post.

that's part of a paper i once wrote dealing with this subject. sure, genesis 1 got some things right, but if god dictated this to moses, i'd have hoped for more accuracy. i've often said how there is NO scripture anywhere in the world (that i know of) that got the creation story right. they all focus it on their little corner of the world, explaining the appearance of the local animals and geographic features. no creation story mentions microorganisms or extinct animals. no creation story mentions how HUGE the universe is - and they all pretty much assume earth is the center of the universe.

anyway, that all said, they did get "humans last" right.

day 6:
After a busy week, Yahweh comes in on the weekend. He spends the Sixth Day (Oct. 31, 4004 B.C.) making land animals: beasts, creeping things and cattle. Having thus prepared the way, Yahweh says, “Let Us create man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Did you catch that – “Us” and “Our”? Who is Yahweh talking to? Apologists say it was angels, but it sounds like… gasp…polytheism. They say Yahweh needed some help, or company, so He created the Heavenly Host of Gofers at some unspecified time earlier in the week, but failed to mention it. They will emphasize that these are NOT Gods (...exactly). Yahweh then tells the man and woman to have dominion over the Earth and all life on it. This is the His way of saying They made everything for us. Moderates might consider this the domestication of animals and plants. Some take this to mean we should be good stewards of Yahweh’s creation. Others take it as permission to recklessly exploit Nature and assume Yahweh will take care of everything (besides, the Apocalypse is coming soon...in our lifetimes).

day 5:
On day five, Yahweh let the waters “abound with life,” and “let birds fly across the firmament.” He leaves out “creeping things.” Birds evolved from reptiles. They are much more recent arrivals than fish. No distinction is made between fish and sea mammals (which evolved from land mammals which evolved from reptiles which evolved from fish).

Scientists think this is too late in the sequence for the first water life and too early for birds and whales. It makes sense from the perspective of ancient man. Seafood and poultry were important food sources, but not as important as cattle. Scientists think life started in the water, and remained there for 85% of it’s history.

day 4:
The fourth day must have been Yahweh’s busiest. “Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.” Also!? Never mind that it is the fourth day before the Sun is created; this is a fundamental, but understandable, misunderstanding about stars.

In the next verse, the stars are “set in the firmament,” like jewels. The authors think 99.999999% of the mass of the visible Universe are tiny lights adorning our protective dome – for signs and seasons. They egocentrically think the Universe was created for them. Later, Jesus warns that stars will “fall” from the sky during His second coming (Mt24:39, Mk13:25). In Revelation 6:13, John has a vision: “the stars in the sky fell to earth, as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind.” Yahweh, Jesus and John were obviously wrong about the fig nature of stars. The fact is we came from the stars. The atoms in your body were made in stars. They are the element factories of the Universe. Our star, a fairly average star, is 1,000,000 times larger than Earth. It is currently making helium from hydrogen. This nuclear reaction converts matter into energy, described by E=mc2, releasing light, heat and all sorts of other radiation. The Sun is a hydrogen bomb, ignited by gravity, which has been exploding for 4,500,000,000 years. After the hydrogen runs out, it will start making carbon and oxygen, releasing even more energy. Other stars, depending on their mass, are producing other elements. Eventually our star will explode, melting the Earth, but sending fresh elements out into space. The scientific estimate for the date of The Apocalypse is about 5,000,002,000 A.D. Hopefully, by then we will have found another planet, or our Savior will have retuned on a cloud (Mt 24:30, 26:64, Mk 14:62, 13:26, Lu 21:27, Rev 1:7).

day 3:
We see things taking shape when on the third day Yahweh “let the dry land appear.” The ancients noticed that wherever they traveled they eventually reached an ocean. Naturally, they imagined a central land mass bound by ocean, just as fish might imagine a central ocean bound by land. Now that He had dry land, He could get busy creating life. He gets started with “grass, herbs with seeds, and trees that bear fruit” – as if to furnish the house before the animals arrived.

Agriculture was very important in the life of ancient man, but crops were not the first life on Earth. Scientists are pretty sure plants and animals evolved concurrently, in the “waters,” with forms so small the ancients didn’t even know they existed. The “dry land” remained barren for nearly 4,000,000,000 years while life flourished in the waters. Flowering plants (including fruit trees) are a recent development, even among terrestrial plants, and scientists also tell us that all plants, being dependent on photosynthesis, came after the “greater light that rules the day.”

day 2:
At the beginning of the Second Day in ancient Mesopotamian cosmology, the Universe was mostly just water. So, Yahweh created a “firmament” to “divide” the water into the waters above and the waters below.

One might say this describes the formation of our atmosphere. There is water in our atmosphere, and, in a sense, it does “divide” us from outer space. Was Yahweh speaking to the ancients in code? He could have saved us thousands of years by saying, “An invisible cloud of gas to trap heat, for breathing and for protection from cosmic radiation formed around the spherical Earth.” He could then have added, “It is held in place by gravity,” and told us something about the water cycle and Earth’s magnetic field. What the authors actually had in mind was a rigid dome (Job 37:18) creating an air bubble between the waters of the (flat, stationary) Earth and all the other water. This is step two in creating snowglobe Earth. They knew rain came from the “waters above,” and thought there were “waters below” the waters of the Earth.

Later, Yahweh would need all this water for The Flood. This didn’t sound so crazy in 1000 B.C. Mesopotamia. Water was obviously very important. In 2000 A.D. America, there is actually a debate in fundamentalist circles as to whether or not it had ever rained in the 1,500 years before The Flood. Citing Gen 2:5,6 as evidence, the High Priests suppose a primordial mist or “vapor canopy” which nurtured all life on Earth was let loose during The Flood. Some credit the (imaginary) canopy’s and/or the (disproved) firmament’s protective powers with the laughably long antediluvian life spans.

day one continued:

Scientists don’t know what caused the Big Bang. They talk about anti-particles, random fluctuations, strings and membranes, but they don’t know – it could be God. They are pretty sure “days” are the result of Earth’s rotation and proximity to the Sun, not from “dividing the light from the darkness.”

They think the atoms in us and the world around us were created in stars that exploded and coalesced to make our solar system. The primordial Earth was a ball of molten rock, not water, in the beginning. Lighter material floated to the top and cooled to form a crust. Volcanic eruptions and perhaps comets brought gas and water to the surface to produce our atmosphere and eventually our oceans. Genetic and fossil evidence indicates that life started about 3,500,000,000 years ago as chemical accretions in puddles of water, and evolved over the eons into us. Fundamentalists have no trouble reconciling these discrepancies.

The Bible is clear about it being the first day, there being all that water at first and Yahweh speaking modern species into existence – so the scientists are wrong. But, moderates compromise. Maybe “days” are geologic ages and so on. After all, “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” Even this doesn’t work: everything is all out of sequence: birds before bees, flowers before fish.

mary,
"It has always bothered me as to why whoever wrote the Torah knew that man came last in the evolutionary process."

well, they didn't know it was an evolutionary process, but it IS true they got the "humans last" part right. that was more a product of anthropocentrism (is that a word?). they thought everything else was created for man. like god was furnishing the house for our arrival.

here's something i once wrote about this. (the "fundamentalists" parts obviously don't apply to you.)

day one:
Let’s take a close look at Genesis. Maybe we’re misunderstanding it. Genesis 1 describes the Six Days of Creation. “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.” The author describes a completely dark, starless, water-covered, primordial Earth. Then, while hovering over the face of the deep, Yahweh says, “Let there be light,” and there was! Notice how Yahweh creates things: He speaks magic words, like a witch or sorcerer. He then “divides the light from the darkness” to make day and night. “God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.”

It seems pretty clear the author meant a regular 24-hour day, with an evening and a morning, a day and a night. It is easy to see why fundamentalists take this literally, and why rational educated people cannot.

For millennia, we wondered how we got here. Is the Universe eternal? Or did God create it 100s or 1000s of years ago? In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that everything in space was moving away from everything else. Extrapolating this information backwards led to the idea that there was a beginning: a Big Bang. This is like Genesis 1:1, but where the text has the Earth and waters created on the same day as the Heavens, scientific theory has the Earth being created about 10,000,000,000 years later.

Anyway, before I go: I could not—no rational person could—deny that life on earth evolved according to some evolutionary process. And, to the best of my knowledge, most Christians are not required to deny this. I have some reservations about the certainty—almost seems religious sometimes--with which some hold what is, at best, a theory, the most plausible one we have of course, but still not in the same category as, say, physics or engineering.

And, to have a little fun, parts of Genesis are right! It’s interesting that the chronology of events in Genesis 1 is arguably very close to the sequence of events which scientists now believe characterizes the natural history of the earth. And, the probability of picking the correct sequence from 7 randomly ordered events is 1/5040. It has always bothered me as to why whoever wrote the Torah knew that man came last in the evolutionary process. After all, if you were going to write a fictional text; there are endless possibilities. Why not have a fellow in a penguin suit pull man out of a hat (before the rabbit)?

My purpose in entering the discussion was mostly to say there’s a lot we don’t know. That’s all. And to argue against certainty. IMHO that's never good, in science or any other subject.

Best to all,
MC

PamSM:

First and most important I only entered because PH was absent. Evolutionary theory, whilst extremely important to many, is not particularly vital to me. My quibbles were about its scientific foundations.

That said, sometimes you seem to be disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing:

1)Where did I say prediction was impossible in the evolution theory? It is not a key feature, but a few predictions are possible. But they are special. Can a prediction in, say, chemistry result in a book?
2) IMHO you are dancing around the problem of the lack of controlled experiments in evolutionary theory with your descriptions of the scientific method. If I recall my history of science correctly controlled experiments (C.E.) were a breakthrough and
the main difference between philosophy--especially scholastic philosophy-- and science.
3) Again never said C.E. in the social sciences are impossible, only prone to error due to the repeated tendency to omit key variables. Are you admitting such with your statement "they are difficult to control"? If they are difficult to control, can they be a controlled experiment?

I hope Peter has not become disillusioned with this mess, and I will feel somewhat responsible if that is true. But he seems pretty tough, and does come and go without warning. I do wish he would show up!

pam,
i hope "events" haven't scared peter away.

susan has a new post
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/susan_jacoby/2009/10/thanks_but_no_thanks_from_a_happy_atheist.html

Pam and Walter,

Nice interchanges with Commissar Farnaz, very enjoyable. She seemed totally clueless.

Oh, Peter, where are you....?

"• Controlled experiments in social sciences are possible but extremely error prone. Think we discussed the Freakonomics abortion ‘experiment’ previously where we highlighted the omission of key variables. Most social science experiments suffer from similar deficiencies. We can just about call social sciences ‘scientific’ but should proceed here with the great caution."

There was no abortion "experiment." This was an observation. Please refer again to the scientific method post.

This, if it were to be scientifically studied, would be the first step only. Next, you'd formulate a hypothesis. This might be that "legal abortion causes the crime rate to drop."

Next, you'd have to formulate an experiment, and here you'd have your work cut out for you. You'd have to have two geographic areas with the same range of social & economic conditions, education, housing - everything equal except that abortion would be illegal in one of the locations. Then you'd have to somehow prevent the women in that location from leaving it to obtain abortions, even though they wanted them. Good luck with that last part.

If you could manage this, then you'd just have to wait 20-30 years and compare the crime rates, and draw your conclusion.

It's not that such experiments are "error-prone," it's that they're difficult to control.

Sorry, Mary, but I'm still going to disagree with two of your points. Probably need to do one at a time:

"• Sciences such as evolution and cosmology whose subject matter involves living things and/or matter over huge stretches of time—in evolution hundreds of millions of years, in cosmology billions—obviously cannot be observed in real time nor can they be duplicated. Controlled experiments are thus largely impossible and my contention was, in their absence, evol & cosmology’s scientific foundations are not so assured as in the sciences previously listed. However, evolution can be disproved (it has not been so far) and some prediction is possible."

Man, you're like a bulldog with this - you just keep hanging on to it. The thing being studied is not itself the experiment Even in chemistry. To be understood, it need not be duplicated, nor does the whole thing need to be observed in real time (parts of it can be). Observation (fossils, human selection), experiments (fruit flies, bacteria, etc.), and predictions are some of the tools we use to understand it. The experiments are as well-controlled and duplicable as those in chemistry or any other field of science. Experiments are certainly not "impossible," largely or otherwise.

At least you're now conceding that "some" prediction is possible. Progress, however slow.

Daniel12, nice essay. Here is a Zizek piece you might want to read: "Defenders of the Faith."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/opinion/12zizek.html?_r=2&oref=slogin

And, Walter,

Again, just as a matter of principle--you can do what you like.

Vilifying Quoran, finding it illiterate and laughable as you do, finding the Tanakh "cartoonish," "disgusting," while keeping the "NT" sacrosanct nullifies your atheistic arguments.

Your comments on Quoran I've taken you to task for before, Walter, many times. I'd think about all this, were I you, but, then, of course, I'm not.

WAlter, I asked you in the nicest possible way to leave us alone on the Jacoby thread, promising in return not to post here. This you cannot do.

Re: Your post

The word "inifdel" does not appear in Tanakh, nothing approaching it.

On the "NT" (sic)

The NT is a throwback to pre-Judaic times, along with a melange of imports from other regional religions.

It posits a deity so viscious as not only to reinstate human sacrifice, which should have been ended for all time with the binding of the thirty-five-year-old Isacc, but to create circumstances in which human will make that sacrifice. Human is then held hostage for eternity for this bloody torture. Adding to the moral insanity, the sacrifice of Seth, Osiris, Marduk, Jesus, whatever, is of course divine in nature.

Further, the essentialist document particularly holds "the Jews," who would have known nothing whatsoever of the Jesus myth, particularly guilty.

The confusion between existence and essence, which Mary Queen of Nada, thinks she understands, is part of that ritual cannibalism, also regional, which no Jew could have participated in. Said disgusting ritual led to the slaughter of millions. Superstitions persist among some Christians, abound in the Middle East on "The Jews," torturing the host (torturing a cracker--Ritz?), and killing children to get their gentile blood.

Of course, the Christians have nothing to worry about since they have "grace," very, very cheap grace. Allows them to keep everything, follow no one, nothing, free people.

Do what you will but believe in the corpse and you shall be saved. Do great works but don't believe and your damned.

As Hinudus say on that bit of moral psychosis: nice.

So, to use your words, what is "disgusting"? What is "cartoonish"?

please, just leave us alone on Jacoby's thread.

INTRUDER ALERT!

The multi-part offering just posted is NOT by Daniel12, but by the false Daniel, Daniel-12. We've been thru this before, already.

Will these back-stabbing weasels never quit?

Part1

The scriptures of each of the major classically theistic religions contain language that suggests that there is evidence of divine design in the world. Psalms 19:1 of the Old Testament, scripture to both Judaism and Christianity, states that “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” Similarly, Romans 1:19-21 of the New Testament states:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse.

Further, Koran 31:20 asks “Do you not see that Allah has made what is in the heavens and what is in the earth subservient to you, and made complete to you His favors outwardly and inwardly?” While these verses do not specifically indicate which properties or features of the world are evidence of God’s intelligent nature, each presupposes that the world exhibits such features and that they are readily discernable to a reasonably conscientious agent.

Part 1A

Perhaps the earliest philosophically rigorous version of the design argument owes to St. Thomas Aquinas. According to Aquinas’s Fifth Way:

We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that they achieve their end, not fortuitously, but designedly. Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God (Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Article 3, Question 2).

It is worth noting that Aquinas’s version of the argument relies on a very strong claim about the explanation for ends and processes: the existence of any end-directed system or process can be explained, as a logical matter, only by the existence of an intelligent being who directs that system or process towards its end. Since the operations of all natural bodies, on Aquinas’s view, are directed towards some specific end that conduces to, at the very least, the preservation of the object, these operations can be explained only by the existence of an intelligent being. Accordingly, the empirical fact that the operations of natural objects are directed towards ends shows that an intelligent Deity exists.

This crucial claim, however, seems to be refuted by the mere possibility of an evolutionary explanation. If a Darwinian explanation is even coherent (that is, non-contradictory, as opposed to true), then it provides a logically possible explanation for how the end-directedness of the operations of living beings in this world might have come about. According to this explanation, such operations evolve through a process by which random genetic mutations are naturally selected for their adaptive value; organisms that have evolved some system that performs a fitness-enhancing operation are more likely to survive and leave offspring, other things being equal, than organisms that have not evolved such systems. If this explanation is possibly true, it shows that Aquinas is wrong in thinking that “whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence.”
b. The Argument from Simple Analogy

hi ubka. thanks.

Part 2A

The next important version of the design argument came in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Pursuing a strategy that has been adopted by the contemporary intelligent design movement, John Ray, Richard Bentley, and William Derham drew on scientific discoveries of the 16th and 17th Century to argue for the existence of an intelligent Deity. William Derham, for example, saw evidence of intelligent design in the vision of birds, the drum of the ear, the eye-socket, and the digestive system. Richard Bentley saw evidence of intelligent design in Newton’s discovery of the law of gravitation. It is noteworthy that each of these thinkers attempted to give scientifically-based arguments for the existence of God.

David Hume is the most famous critic of these arguments. In Part II of his famous Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume formulates the argument as follows:

Part 2B

Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: you will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human designs, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since, therefore, the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.

Since the world, on this analysis, is closely analogous to the most intricate artifacts produced by human beings, we can infer “by all the rules of analogy” the existence of an intelligent designer who created the world. Just as the watch has a watchmaker, then, the universe has a universe-maker.

As expressed in this passage, then, the argument is a straightforward argument from analogy with the following structure:
The material universe resembles the intelligent productions of human beings in that it exhibits design.
The design in any human artifact is the effect of having been made by an intelligent being.
Like effects have like causes.
Therefore, the design in the material universe is the effect of having been made by an intelligent creator.

Hume criticizes the argument on two main grounds. First, Hume rejects the analogy between the material universe and any particular human artifact. As Hume states the relevant rule of analogy, “wherever you depart in the least, from the similarity of the cases, you diminish proportionably the evidence; and may at last bring it to a very weak analogy, which is confessedly liable to error and uncertainty” (Hume, Dialogues, Part II). Hume then goes on to argue that the cases are simply too dissimilar to support an inference that they are like effects having like causes:

Part 3A

If we see a house,… we conclude, with the greatest certainty, that it had an architect or builder because this is precisely that species of effect which we have experienced to proceed from that species of cause. But surely you will not affirm that the universe bears such a resemblance to a house that we can with the same certainty infer a similar cause, or that the analogy is here entire and perfect (Hume, Dialogues, Part II).

Since the analogy fails, Hume argues that we would need to have experience with the creation of material worlds in order to justify any a posteriori claims about the causes of any particular material world; since we obviously lack such experience, we lack adequate justification for the claim that the material universe has an intelligent cause.

Second, Hume argues that, even if the resemblance between the material universe and human artifacts justified thinking they have similar causes, it would not justify thinking that an all-perfect God exists and created the world. For example, there is nothing in the argument that would warrant the inference that the creator of the universe is perfectly intelligent or perfectly good. Indeed, Hume argues that there is nothing there that would justify thinking even that there is just one deity: “what shadow of an argument… can you produce from your hypothesis to prove the unity of the Deity? A great number of men join in building a house or ship, in rearing a city, in framing a commonwealth; why may not several deities combine in contriving and framing a world” (Hume Dialogues, Part V)?

Part 3B

Though often confused with the argument from simple analogy, the watchmaker argument from William Paley is a more sophisticated design argument that attempts to avoid Hume’s objection to the analogy between worlds and artifacts. Instead of simply asserting a similarity between the material world and some human artifact, Paley’s argument proceeds by identifying what he takes to be a reliable indicator of intelligent design:

[S]uppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think … that, for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for [a] stone [that happened to be lying on the ground]?… For this reason, and for no other; namely, that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, if a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it (Paley 1867, 1).

There are thus two features of a watch that reliably indicate that it is the result of an intelligent design. First, it performs some function that an intelligent agent would regard as valuable; the fact that the watch performs the function of keeping time is something that has value to an intelligent agent. Second, the watch could not perform this function if its parts and mechanisms were differently sized or arranged; the fact that the ability of a watch to keep time depends on the precise shape, size, and arrangement of its parts suggests that the watch has these characteristics because some intelligent agency designed it to these specifications. Taken together, these two characteristics endow the watch with a functional complexity that reliably distinguishes objects that have intelligent designers from objects that do not.

Paley then goes on to argue that the material universe exhibits the same kind of functional complexity as a watch:

Part 4A

Every indicator of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. I mean that the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtilty, and curiosity of the mechanism; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety; yet in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office, than are the most perfect productions of human ingenuity (Paley 1867, 13).

Since the works of nature possess functional complexity, a reliable indicator of intelligent design, we can justifiably conclude that these works were created by an intelligent agent who designed them to instantiate this property.

Paley’s watchmaker argument is clearly not vulnerable to Hume’s criticism that the works of nature and human artifacts are too dissimilar to infer that they are like effects having like causes. Paley’s argument, unlike arguments from analogy, does not depend on a premise asserting a general resemblance between the objects of comparison. What matters for Paley’s argument is that works of nature and human artifacts have a particular property that reliably indicates design. Regardless of how dissimilar any particular natural object might otherwise be from a watch, both objects exhibit the sort of functional complexity that warrants an inference that it was made by an intelligent designer.

Part 4B

Paley’s version of the argument, however, is generally thought to have been refuted by Charles Darwin’s competing explanation for complex organisms. In The Origin of the Species, Darwin argued that more complex biological organisms evolved gradually over millions of years from simpler organisms through a process of natural selection. As Julian Huxley describes the logic of this process:

The evolutionary process results immediately and automatically from the basic property of living matter—that of self-copying, but with occasional errors. Self-copying leads to multiplication and competition; the errors in self-copying are what we call mutations, and mutations will inevitably confer different degrees of biological advantage or disadvantage on their possessors. The consequence will be differential reproduction down the generations—in other words, natural selection (Huxley 1953, 4).

Over time, the replication of genetic material in an organism results in mutations that give rise to new traits in the organism’s offspring. Sometimes these new traits are so unfavorable to a being’s survival prospects that beings with the traits die off; but sometimes these new traits enable the possessors to survive conditions that kill off beings without them. If the trait is sufficiently favorable, only members of the species with the trait will survive. By this natural process, functionally complex organisms gradually evolve over millions of years from primordially simple organisms.

Contemporary biologist, Richard Dawkins (1986), uses a programming problem to show that the logic of the process renders the Darwinian explanation significantly more probable than the design explanation. Dawkins considers two ways in which one might program a computer to generate the following sequence of characters: METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. The first program randomly producing a new 28-character sequence each time it is run; since the program starts over each time, it incorporates a “single-step selection process.” The probability of randomly generating the target sequence on any given try is 2728 (that is, 27 characters selected for each of the 28 positions in the sequence), which amounts to about 1 in (10,000 x 1,000,0006). While a computer running eternally would eventually produce the sequence, Dawkins estimates that it would take 1,000,0005 years—which is 1,000,0003 years longer than the universe has existed. As is readily evident, a program that selects numbers by means of such a “single-step selection mechanism” has a very low probability of reaching the target.

Part 5

The second program incorporates a “cumulative-step selection mechanism.” It begins by randomly generating a 28-character sequence of letters and spaces and then “breeds” from this sequence in the following way. For a specified period of time, it generates copies of itself; most of the copies perfectly replicate the sequence, but some copies have errors (or mutations). At the end of this period, it compares all of the sequences with the target sequence METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL and keeps the sequence that most closely resembles it. For example, a sequence that has an E in the second place more closely resembles a sequence that is exactly like the first except that it has a Q in the second place. It then begins breeding from this new sequence in exactly the same way. Unlike the first program which starts afresh with each try, the second program builds on previous steps, getting successively closer to the program as it breeds from the sequence closest to the target. This feature of the program increases the probability of reaching the sequence to such an extent that a computer running this program hit the target sequence after 43 generations, which took about half-an-hour.

The problem with Paley’s watchmaker argument, as Dawkins explains it, is that it falsely assumes that all of the other possible competing explanations are sufficiently improbable to warrant an inference of design. While this might be true of explanations that rely entirely on random single-step selection mechanisms, this is not true of Darwinian explanations. As is readily evident from Huxley’s description of the process, Darwinian evolution is a cumulative-step selection method that closely resembles in general structure the second computer program. The result is that the probability of evolving functionally complex organisms capable of surviving a wide variety of conditions is increased to such an extent that it exceeds the probability of the design explanation.

Mary,

There was a sad joke during the worst times: “Ladies and gentlemen we will shortly be arriving at Belfast International Airport. Kindly set your watches back 400 years.”

yeah, so what was the joke?

Walter,

evolution is the story of how life came to look designed.

nice turn of phrase. I use one of your earlier ones, about the constitution providing for freedom of religion while the first commandment forbids it, as my signature line on email.

Peter Huff is a throwback to the Dark Ages. Everybody knows there is no god. Intelligent Design is just a pile of bs. Evolution explains everything. And it has never been disproven, so what is all the argument about.

Especially for Ono:

In today's London Times:

Out of the waste land: TS Eliot becomes nation's favourite poet

The list:

1. T. S. Eliot

2. John Donne

3. Benjamin Zephaniah

4. Wilfred Owen

5. Philip Larkin

6. William Blake

7. William Butler Yeats

8. John Betjeman

9. John Keats

10. Dylan Thomas

http://tinyurl.com/ylr6p

(BZ is a Rasta poet, for those--like me--not in the know).

PamSM (and all)

I made my comments regarding evolutionary theory (in the layman’s sense) mostly because Peter Huff seemed to withdraw but I’ll list them here with some responses.

• Sciences concerned with inert matter (as opposed to living things), for example physics, chemistry, engineering, are more precise than those concerned with living things over a long period of time (evolution, cosmology) because the former rest on a large number of controlled experiments (definition agreed)
• Sciences concerned with living things (medicine, pharmaceuticals, biology, genetic) also can run controlled experiments where standards are rigorously upheld before any procedure or drug is approved
• Sciences such as evolution and cosmology whose subject matter involves living things and/or matter over huge stretches of time—in evolution hundreds of millions of years, in cosmology billions—obviously cannot be observed in real time nor can they be duplicated. Controlled experiments are thus largely impossible and my contention was, in their absence, evol & cosmology’s scientific foundations are not so assured as in the sciences previously listed. However, evolution can be disproved (it has not been so far) and some prediction is possible.
• Controlled experiments in social sciences are possible but extremely error prone. Think we discussed the Freakonomics abortion ‘experiment’ previously where we highlighted the omission of key variables. Most social science experiments suffer from similar deficiencies. We can just about call social sciences ‘scientific’ but should proceed here with the great caution.
• ID is not scientific as it can be neither proved nor disproved.

The others have rejected most of the above assertions. However we managed to have—if not a good because of the terrible disruptions—at least a discussion.

Hope to have another.

PS Walter, nice message on the Jacoby.

Hello Onofrio,

I have been trying to stay out of trouble, that’s all. I drop in once in a while to check how things are going. I hope all is well with you. BTW I always enjoy reading your posts even if I disagree with your POV. I am also glad that you’re still around giving everyone hell. Just kidding. salam.

Hello, Ukba :^) Haven't seen you around for a while.

Arminius wrote: By the way my father was born in Belfast

And lucky you are that he emigrated! You wouldn’t have wanted to be there during the Troubles. There was a sad joke during the worst times: “Ladies and gentlemen we will shortly be arriving at Belfast International Airport. Kindly set your watches back 400 years.”

Best,
MC
Back later.

Pamsm and Arminius,

Interesting you mentioned Ian Anderson. Lately I came across Sylvain Leroux and the band ‘Fula flute.’ I thought this clip on Link TV is very good. Notice the overtones created while playing the flute.

http://www.linktv.org/worldmusic/blog/keyword/djandjou

Check it out, you might like it.

the idea of a "rock flute" just makes me giggle - but it works for ian anderson. reminds me of the times frank zappa used a "rock kazoo" in his music.

pam, i do enjoy making the snow sculptures more than the technical drawings. i'm like a kid on "snow days" - all too infrequent occurences here in d.c..

i forgot you knew about those.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58171957@N00/

wow...i have "cronies" apparently....cool. i prefer the term "posse"...

"While reading an ID book - can't recall who wrote it, maybe Behe - I noticed that *irreducible complexity* in organisms was often described by means of technological analogies - outboard motors, intricate watches, etc. The cumulative effect of these mechanising metaphors was to make organisms seem *constructed* like some artefact of human ingenuity. It was all unconscious on the author's part, I'm sure."

are you joking when you say "it was all unconscious on the author's part"? that's the whole point - to make living things look designed.

YECs, finding ancient mesopotamian cosmology untenable and, well, embarrassing monday through saturday, have seized on God Our Designer (GOD) theory, lately called intelligent design. it's not exactly biblical creationism, but it's close enough, for now – and it's way better than "godless" evolution.

GOD theory is basically what OECs have believed all along. strictly speaking, GOD theory does not tell us about the age of the earth, evolution or much of anything, really. it just says the creation is Designed - capital "D" – by an intelligent entity (historically assumed to be male). hilariously, but disingenuously, they say they can't speculate on who the designer is (that would be unscientific...), but they don't think it's frank lloyd wright.

GOD is the hindus’ brahma. it is aristotle’s prime mover. aquinas saw GOD in the way “natural bodies…act toward an end not fortuitously, but designedly.” many of our founding fathers held a related view. they saw the Designer in the order, beauty and power of nature. this could be the GOD of einstein, whose sense of god was his sense of wonder.

these nature gods are relatively harmless in that they don’t write scripture and therefore can’t be scientifically inaccurate, divisive, territorial or genocidal.

"modern" GOD theorists might say,
“see how a hummingbird’s beak is precisely the right size and shape to reach the nectar of its favorite flower. it seems designed for that purpose.”

they might note how other nearby hummingbirds’ beaks are slightly different – just the right size to reach different flowers’ nectar, and marvel at how all animals are perfectly suited to their environment.

it is exactly this kind of observation that led darwin to propose evolution. evolution is the story of how life came to look designed.

Arminius,

"So I urge all of us to NOT reply to any posts of Farnaz, Schaum, or any of her offspring, to include, sadly, Onofrio."

Poor, frightened, anal-retentive Armenius! You need a truck driver to pull your pants down, bend you over a table, and make you *his* worse than any white man I've ever encountered.

Pam, Arminius

Re the organic and the constructed.

One of my brothers paints full time; actually sells his work. He likes juxtaposing landscape/seascape with unlovely, meticulously rendered constructs like sewage pumping stations, container ships, chimney stacks ... brings together, into a single frame, the traditional *picturesque* with the non-natural *ugly*. His pictures make you start seeing these unlikely things differently, detaching them from their usual banal associations. You stand there thinking: I'm looking at a sewage pumping station; I'd normally be aesthetically *blind* to it, so why is it now so compelling, and mysterious? Just the fact that it has been represented so lovingly in paint seems to work a sort of spell...

Pam,

IMHO, Anderson is the Jimi Hendrix of the flute, and that is high praise indeed! I am in total awe of Hendrix.

Pam

Thee:
"To me then, they blow themselves out of the water with this argument. Far from clinching their case, it turns it turtle."

Certes. It's just that old William Paley canard recycled. 18th century. Not exactly a fresh idea...

You're more than a bit *renaissance*, I have to say. Not only steeped in science, but adept at poetry and visual art as well.

I know what you mean about that aversion to the straight line in your art. Myself am more into drawing than painting. I find the human face and form world enough. Not that interested in man-made things, unless they're related somehow to a figure or face. Like those ID types, human, all too human...

"Have you heard Ian Anderson's flute solo?"

Ammazing, isn't he? He did something similar at the Roller Rink. We were blown away.

"Organic forms are forgiving. There are no two alike."

OK, Pam, I understand now, and that's cool.

"Er, Pam... have you ever seen a Ferrari? Have you ever looked at a picture of the SR 71 Blackbird, the most beautiful airplane ever made? Have you ever studied the beauty of the Parthenon, which has perfect visual symmetry because it violates all the laws of right angles?"

I have (seen the Parthenon in the flesh, so to speak), and I find them beautiful too, as I do many man-made objects; but to draw them accurately still requires tools and measurements.

Whereas, although elms and live oaks and lombardy poplars have characteristic shapes common to others of their kind, they're not so precise that someone could look at a drawing of one and say "I've seen an elm before, and you don't have this branch right." Organic forms are forgiving. There are no two alike.

Pam,

Have you heard Ian Anderson's flute solo? Video link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRo5whIbau4&feature=related

" My God, can Ian Anderson play a wicked rock flute!"

Yes, he can!

I went to a concert at the Alexandria Roller Rink (gone now) back when I was home for Christmas from my freshman year in college (dating myself, here), to see the Jeff Beck group (with a very young Rod Stewart). The opening act was the brand-new, and unknown, Jethro Tull band. They stole the show.

The Roller Rink was a small venue, with no stage, so the audience was up close and personal with the talent.

I remember that it was snowing hard that night, and my father didn't want me and my brother to go (driving his car), but I'd paid for the tickets, and wasn't about to miss it. By the time the concert was over, there was a foot of snow on the ground, and the roads were terrible. The drive back to Fairfax (20-some miles) was slow, white-knuckle driving, and there were hills to negotiate to get to the house.

I made it to about 10 feet from the driveway before getting hopelessly stuck - not bad! And the concert was definitely worth it!

".I hate drawing man-made objects such as cars and buidings, because they're too perfect, too symmetrical, too full of straight lines and precise angles.

Er, Pam... have you ever seen a Ferrari? Have you ever looked at a picture of the SR 71 Blackbird, the most beautiful airplane ever made? Have you ever studied the beauty of the Parthenon, which has perfect visual symmetry because it violates all the laws of right angles?

And now for something completely different...

Just viewed the video of Jethro Tull performing 'Locomotive Breath'. My God, can Ian Anderson play a wicked rock flute!

Next up is Eluveitie, a Swiss metal group, who actually sing in ancient Gaulish.

Along those lines, one of the favorite arguments that IDers like to make is that of walking along a beach, coming across a watch, and instantly recognizing that it must have had a designer. They then extrapolate from that to the complexity of nature, and state that the same principle applies.

What they fail to recognize, is that the reason they can see that the watch was designed, is by its very contrast with its natural surroundings!

I'm an artist - not professionally, although I do a bit of graphic art at work - but for my own amusement, and for my friends and dog clubs.

I'm a bit lazy as an artist - I prefer organic subjects - animals, people, landscapes, still lifes (lives?)...I hate drawing man-made objects such as cars and buidings, because they're too perfect, too symmetrical, too full of straight lines and precise angles.

I don't want to be bothered with T-squares, triangles, compasses, French curves, or any of the other paraphernalia that it takes to accurately draw a man-made object. (Admit it, Walter, aren't your wonderful snow sculptures more fun than your architectural drawings?)

To me then, they blow themselves out of the water with this argument. Far from clinching their case, it turns it turtle.

Hi Onofrio,

Frankly, I just checked in to Susan J's thread, when I was stopped in my virtual tracks by a post from Walter, who has taken a thread-hopping lesson from arminius.

Honestly, the issue I raised re sacred texts has yet to be addressed. Arminius accuses away as did Walter, who also added a charming observation, unanswered by the Christians on Jewish ritual.

Both have built thick walls of bigotry, and it would take a force greater than and more interested than I to demolish them. The discussion which should have concerned atheism vs. belief has been skewed from beginning to end, holds no interest for me.

I have responded to Walter and cronies, asking that they leave bloggers alone on Susan's thread. If they comply, I shall do the same here.

At all events, hope you manage to get through the cant and nonsense, find some substance through the fog coming your way. If anyone can, I'd suspect it would be you, friend of the Austral Fundament.

I'm signing off for now, really need a break from the virtually deluded. Will check in from time to time on Susan Js thread, where hopefull, we'll all be left in peace.

Onofrio,

You have never offended me, and your posts seem to be neutral, often funny, and sometimes informative. But I have always seen you defer to Farnaz in every way, so I do not entirely trust you.

Arminius,

"So I urge all of us to NOT reply to any posts of Farnaz, Schaum, or any of her offspring, to include, sadly, Onofrio."

Sadly? How have I offended thee, Reiver?

Farnaz,

Good to read from you. Apparently that's now a shunning offence ;^)

Thanks, Pam :^)

I think you just nailed it, Onofrio.

Walter,

Speaking of flagella...

While reading an ID book - can't recall who wrote it, maybe Behe - I noticed that *irreducible complexity* in organisms was often described by means of technological analogies - outboard motors, intricate watches, etc. The cumulative effect of these mechanising metaphors was to make organisms seem *constructed* like some artefact of human ingenuity. It was all unconscious on the author's part, I'm sure.

I think this betrays the anxious anthropomorphism at the heart of ID and its cousins YEC, OEC etc. They attempt to make the cosmos the result of an externalised human mind - a big, brilliant, cosmically extended ONE OF US who devised the whole shebang, tinkers with it, and drives it to some sort of destination.

"God is in control" is a mantra I hear a lot among evangelical Christians, apparently a sort of code for "I want control, can't get it". Human, all too human...

Pam,

Farnaz, seriously, please leave us alone on this thread.

We came here to avoid all this drama, paranoia, and multiple personality disorder - to have a quiet discussion with Peter.

Thanks.

Posted by: Pamsm | October 8, 2009 11:53 PM
----------------------------
Seriously, I would have had the jabbering not continued. Also, Walter posted on Jacoby's thread, complaining to me, forcing me to respond yet again.

Seriously, leave us alone on Jacoby's thread. I said as much to Walter, re all his cronies, not just you.

Leave us alone.

Farnaz, seriously, please leave us alone on this thread.

We came here to avoid all this drama, paranoia, and multiple personality disorder - to have a quiet discussion with Peter.

Thanks.

ATTENTION Walter, Pam, Peter, and especially Mary C:

To Mary C: note well that Farnaz hates anything, everything, and everyone associated with Christianity. No amount of discussion will change her mind at all, it just makes her mad and filled with a lust for vengeance.

To All: This hatred seems to have poisoned her entire life. As to the posts pretending to be me, note that a constant insult is alcoholism. This is a hallmark of a Farnaz insult - she has accused me of that, using her own handle, and has also accused CCNL of it as well on multiple occasions. Farnaz was definitely behind the attacks on me, that is painfully obvious, and any denial of that from them is ludicrous.

So I urge all of us to NOT reply to any posts of Farnaz, Schaum, or any of her offspring, to include, sadly, Onofrio. But she will be back, so beware of unknown people trying to butt in.

MaryCunningham, with customary lack of cunning, accuses, Satanically, yet again.

"Arminius: very clever in exposing the 'fake'...And a math-deficient impostor would invert PI! So for sure it's Farnaz1Manzur1 and not Schaum."

Shaum and I are not one soul, though I admire and respect him. Nor am I Speed, at al, one of your numerous pseudonyms. You and Arminius would do well to take a course in detecting (remedial, of course).

Jes' love all that great Chrustian feelin'

"putti"....nice...
how many putti can dance on the tip of a flagella?

Walter,

Thee:
"you know, that really may seem like a perfect transition fossil that filled a "gap" in the fossil record, but it created TWO GAPS...one on each "side" of tiktaalik. is this is why people are "starting to question" the evolutionary paradigm...?"

The gaps are getting too small for God to squeeze into, even sans putti. So his legions of fans are busy shrinking him. In our lifetimes, he may even reach atomic stature.

Walter,

For every question answered in science, at least two more questions pop up, regardless of the branch of science.

I read your post to Farnaz over on Jacoby's blog. Well done, sir!

peter, check out pam's post/link for mary:

you know, that really may seem like a perfect transition fossil that filled a "gap" in the fossil record, but it created TWO GAPS...one on each "side" of tiktaalik. is this is why people are "starting to question" the evolutionary paradigm...?
;-)

"It seems to me that "sample size of one" ignores many cases of parallel evolution."

Right, Arminius.

As for predictions, I gave several general examples in my post about the scientific method, but evolutionary theory also makes more specific predictions.

You probably haven't read Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish, Mary, but it begins with his desire to find a fossil that was intermediate between fish and amphibian. He knew what he should be looking for, and he knew where he should look. He had to find rocks of the right age, and with enough exposed strata, in an area where everything hadn't been dug up and paved over. He chose his spot, went there, and found what he sought -tiktaalik.
http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/#

And then there's the problem of one fewer chromosome in humans than in chimps and other great apes. If we had a common ancestor, this shouldn't be true. An animal that loses a whole chromosome will not be viable.

The prediction, therefore, is that two ape chromosomes became fused (failed to separate completely in meiosis) in an ancestor common to all humans).

And don'tcha know, that's exactly what they found. One chromosome with two centromeres, and some teleomere sequences in the middle, where they don't belong. A chromosome that matches two chimp chromosomes exactly.
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html

OK, well, from that perspective, almost everything we study is a sample size of one.

There's only one universe, one solar system (though probably uncountabajillions of planetary systems that we can't study), and one Earth. There's only one type of life (carbon-based) on that earth. There's only one set of weather conditions that affect that Earth.

That doesn't mean that controlled, replicable experiments can't teach us about these things.

pam,
"It also doesn't matter what the particular variations are. Any viable change will suffice. There didn't ever have to be humans, or even mammals. There just had to be something that differed from its ancestors."

right. maybe mary thinks evolution has to "predict" this outcome - the world as we know it. if we were to "rewind the clock" on life on earth, the chances of it coming out the way it did are infinitesimally small. (unless you subscribe to certain forms of ID, then i suppose you could say humans were inevitable, even the goal.)

pam,
to mary, you said,
"I'm not certain that I completely understand what you mean by a "sample size of one,""

i think she's saying we don't have a "control earth". like evolution is an experiment which has only been "run" once. like we can't "do experiments" on earth by modifying one variable at a time and measuring its effects against a control.

right mary?

i tried to answer it from that perspective in my last two or so posts to mary. there was one from yesterday (now buried the farnaz mess below).

Pam and Mary C,

It seems to me that "sample size of one" ignores many cases of parallel evolution. For example, mammal eyes and squid eyes. Or various types of animals, not at all related, developing similar life styles and bodies to match - examples are the anteater, the aardvark, and the numbat, all on different continents, but adapted for eating ants or termites.

OK, Mary,
First, I'm not certain that I completely understand what you mean by a "sample size of one," and "theory based upon a series of single events."

Are you talking about the mutations?

In the first place, mutations aren't the only way that organisms produce the variation that natural selection works on. There is also natural variation (which is why sexual reproduction came about) and the transference of chromosomal material during meiosis.

Secondly, some mutations happen easily, and are not isolated. Scales-to-feathers, for instance, is a simple change in just one gene. It's probably the way that feathered theropods came about, and its the reasons that fanciers have breeds of chickens and pigeons with feathered legs.

Thirdly, it doesn't matter! All that's necessary for the theory to work, is to show that viable variation does occur, and that it does make a difference in reproductive rates. There have been many controlled, repeatable experiments that have proven this to be true.

It also doesn't matter what the particular variations are. Any viable change will suffice. There didn't ever have to be humans, or even mammals. There just had to be something that differed from its ancestors.

the cascades - of course. many times. tubing too, on the "new river" (actually one of the oldest rivers in the world).

"go hokies! are those relatives of yours veterinarians or similar? tech had a good vet school too."

No, none became vets - I wish they had!

You're right, though - Tech is the place for us Northern Virginia breeders when we have veterinary problems that are out of the ordinary.

Did you ever hike to Cascades when you were there?

Test

Mary,
"problem was the (without), know brackets should be excluded by somehow bereft of followed by without didn't sound right."

Easy - just leave out the bracketed word. However, if you must assume that our vocabularies are so impoverished as not to allow comprehension of the word "bereft," and that we're either too lazy or too stupid to look it up, then why not just use "without" in the first place?

Sorry, but nothing irritates me quite so much as being talked down to.

Much to say on evolution as hard science (it is), but am stuck in meetings for a while. Back after 2 PM.

Armenius:

"one of Farnaz' camp followers."

My god. Even now, you still don't get it! How bloody stupid are you?

Walter,

Watch out for Schaum - he is a backstabber, one of Farnaz' camp followers.

arminius3142,
i just realized it was "arminius3412" who talked about blacksburg... i walked right into that one, huh...? too trusting....

Schaum,
thanks for that psalm 137 reference. good ol o.t., huh? reminds me of hosea 13:16 where God warned unbelievers in Samaria that they would have their "little ones dashed to the ground and pregnant women ripped open."

but overall i'd still have to rank psalms above most judeochrislamic scripture for "good thoughts".

re: blacksburg:
i haven't been back except for once about 10 yrs ago. i remember "mike's" at the top of that hill on main street, and of course the lyric theater. i saw "the wall" there as a freshman.

Arminius The Fake:

"by the way, my father was born in Belfast."

...perhaps explaining your inclination to alcoholic excesses... Certainly it would explain your intellectual thickness.

Walter, I've been to Blacksburg. Remember that great Mexican restaurant at the corner of North Main and Prices Ferry?

More Lies from Arminius the Fake:

"Never been to Blacksburg, actually never heard of it. I live in Georgia now, but Tennessee is my true home."

Yet more lies. Only recently you claimed to live in Tennessee. What a fraud you are.

Walter,

Never been to Blacksburg, actually never heard of it. I live in Georgia now, but Tennessee is my true home.

Hi, Mary C,

Let's hope the back-stabbing impostor has departed for a while, running back to Mama.

Yes, the Irish - on both sides of our Civil War. Probably a lot of Ulstermen, too - by the way, my father was born in Belfast.

"WIFC; still think "running on the railtrack of sanctified slaughter from start to finish (with a detour for the Psalms)" the best description of the ot. Of course, I love the Psalms."

Me too! My favorite is 137, specifically the last verse:

"Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, and dashes them against the rock!"

mary,
thanks for the invite. next time i'm in london(?) i'll look you up... i have been to a few catholic masses and my wife was catholic when we married (in a catholic church), so i suppose i'm technically somehow catholic or something.... your predictions of my reactions are largely correct. i do think it's ridiculous to have mass in a language the congregation doesn't understand. the music is pretty good, but i prefer the let-it-all-hang-out music of america's southern black churches. of course those old cathedrals are architectural marvels with their ribbed vaults and all that.

re: evolution the "soft science":
what do you want from evolution? the theory explains what happened - animals and plants evolved over time as shown in the fossil record. it explains how it happened - random mutation, genetic drift, natural selection, sexual selection. (any others, pam?) the discovery of genes explained something we already knew - that kids are like their parents, but a bit different. that's all that's needed for evolution.

these things can be studied in the lab with repeatable experiments on bacteria, flies, mice, etc... manipulation of HOX genes shows how easy it is to make big changes in body plan. i mentioned somewhere down there amid yesterday's clutter how extrapolating these experiments is like extrapolating micro plate movements into plate tectonics. do you consider plate tectonics "hard science"?

you said something about the "fallacy of composition" - how we can't assume that what applies to little parts of the system applies to the whole. i get your point. it's true we can't run an experiment on fruit flies for 40,000,000 years and see what happens, but god has already done that for us. madagascar and australia are experiments that have been run for 10s of millions of years. just as evolution would predict, they have unique suites of species that have "macro-evolved" from related (living and extinct) mainland species.

i don't think evolution is a "soft science" in the ways psychology, sociology and economics are. those involve human decisions and emotions.

Oh, I don't mind admitting I make mistakes (like posting here--a big mistake!)

Unlike the cool one who is "often wrong but never in doubt" and the puppet master herself who is, well, there to be adored (at least by her marionettes).

arminius314159265358979323846264338327950288...
yes. i design new houses and additions. i worked in several offices around here until my daughter was born. then i started my own company so i could work at home. i just saw her off to school, and will be here when she gets back.

you mentioned living in blacksburg for a while. fake arminius said he was from tennessee. is real arminius?

pam,
go hokies! are those relatives of yours veterinarians or similar? tech had a good vet school too.

peter,
i hope yesterday's events won't keep you away...

Unless.....Schaum has again succeeded in fooling the foolish Arminius3142?

Hmmmmmmmm......which would mean that MC's wrong again!

Could that be?

Merde(r) in the Cathedral

Mary Cunningham,

Thee:
"I find evolutionary theory mostly coherent. But it is incomplete."

And that gap is filled by...anyone...?

Well whadya know! Catholic God's the perfect fit! All that tooth and claw is just the long, long prequel to pyx, chasuble, and coyly loinclad Verum Corpus.

Ignudi bulge, flex, putti cavort, and St Teresa cries Si, si, si, SI...

My background is social sciences: specifically economics and demography (the latter the most precise of social sciences even when it forecasts reproductive behaviour .) But I sat a lot of history as well as the history of European thought (rather than philosophy).

I have had a lifelong problem with economists who refused to recognize the restrictions of social science. We used to say economics suffered from ‘physics envy’. Specifically economists constructed models completely divorced from historical fact and then, incredibly, acted upon them. They believed their own propaganda, or as the line in one long ago film went: They got high on their own supply. And the rest, as they say, is history (and soaring unemployment and plunging dollar etc.)

This is, in a much lesser sense, a problem I find in evolutionary theory. Oh, taking a theory as ‘gospel’ truth won’t hurt the wider world in the way the ‘efficient market hypothesis did but evenso…refusing to recognize the limits of a theory based upon a series of single events can’t have beneficial consequences.
I find evolutionary theory mostly coherent. But it is incomplete.

Arminius: very clever in exposing the 'fake'...And a math-deficient impostor would invert PI! So for sure it's Farnaz1Manzur1 and not Schaum.

Lots of southerners here. Afraid I know very little about the American South, outside of the Civil War where I know the Irish fought on both sides, not for the principle of the thing, but for the love of fighting. There are some constants in history and that seems to be one! Of course, in a desperately poor, rural country the men won't have the skills to do much else. Anyway, see my last post on violence.

PamSM:

I v. much agree with your later posts. The problem is more man's nature--his tendency towards violence--than any religion per se . And, unlike probably you and WIFC, I believe we have made progress here, back towards Christianity's pacifist roots. But that is a subject for another post.

Anyway, let's get back on track.Re my OCTOBER 7, 2009 4:54 AM post below.

Why do you hold 'hard' sciences bereft of* controlled experiments (such as evolution and cosmology) on a par with those supported by the same? IMHO evolution and cosmology share many of the same problems as do the social sciences: constructing theories on the basis of a one event, or a sample size of one.

WIFC; still think "running on the railtrack of sanctified slaughter from start to finish (with a detour for the Psalms)" the best description of the ot. Of course, I love the Psalms.

*problem was the (without), know brackets should be excluded by somehow bereft of followed by without didn't sound right.

Walter,
Both of my brothers, one sister-in-law, and a nephew all went to Tech. Lots of Hokie fans in my family. :)

I'm at a complete loss as to how Farnaz figures that you hold the NT "sacred." Absurd.

I hope we can get back to dialoguing with Peter, as we came here to do.

Arminius,

"Onofrio, you said nothing, nothing."

Perhaps. If so, then nothing's lost :^)

"You are better than that - at least I still, somehow, continue to hope for that."

Here's no great matter; bristle not, reiver.

If nought I am, and nought I say,
hope not for nought, for nothing may.

There...no starkle sparkle, but original.

"This *hireling* wishes you a good night. The signification of nought is not so certain as you suppose, and a good deal more satisfying ;^)"

Onofrio, you said nothing, nothing. You are better than that - at least I still, somehow, continue to hope for that.

Arminius,

This *hireling* wishes you a good night. The signification of nought is not so certain as you suppose, and a good deal more satisfying ;^)

Farnaz,

What's right for you, of course. Should you choose to bow out (:^U , I will miss your posts keenly, and shall have to take on a more direct responsibility for my enlightenment (:^U

I would much rather that you returned to the fray, once you're refreshed. I sure hope you do.

Peace, salutes, and seven Zestas!

Susan Jacoby,

I know you routinely read this, and I sincerely hope you read this post.

I urge you to go to Greg Epstein's blog, and read first, the spirited debate that Farnaz and I had. I am sure that I was calm and polite. Eventually she fled to your blog here, and called on Schaum, one of her associates, to check in to Epstein and do something (see her post of October 7, 2009 5:08 PM). Schaum made a non-committal reply. But what immediately followed on Epstein's blog was over a dozen ad hominem attacks on me by an impostor. Note that my true login is Arminius3142, that's pi to 3 decimal places. The impostor logged in as Arminius3412, note the different 4 numbers.

Nothing is being done about this. I really fear for the integrity of the blogs, and have few that I can trust now. Please help if you can.

Posted by: arminius3142 | October 7, 2009 10:19 PM
-------------------------
Onofrio,

Can you believe this? It appears on Susan Jacoby's thread. (One could not make this up. He's accusing ME of making ad hominem attacks.

Yet, still runs from the point. No, I have no time for such as he.

Be very, very well my Aussie friend. Keep posting your beautiful poetry. And, Schaum, never stop writing. You've more than one gift, old pal.

OK, Farnaz, Onofrio, and back-stabbing hirelings,

Being tired, I yield the blog to you for the night. Have fun with your mutual back-slapping and pointless self-congratulating comments, which are not even full of sound and fury, but certainly signify nothing.

"Too verveless for merde hurling right now. I take solace in what fortified the ancient dead.'

Pity. How about something that might comfort the living? Let the dead rest, our world needs help now.

Farnaz,

There is only one Onofrio (no hubris intended). My posts are actually mine, except the triple-nought *Starkler* that Arminius pointed out. It wasn't me, nor did I make him. I prefer to keep it simple, since I am. :^)

PS

You came across a bit final just now. Rest ye, but don't go.
-----------------
The problem is that except for those I mention, there seems to be no one who quite gets it, any of it. It's too threatening for them. So...one is talking to oneself. Colin Nick is terrific, used to blog as Yoyo, recently intervened in one of Arminius's rampages against me, he accompanied by Moderate/Affectionate Uncle, but Colin is otherwise occupied. Good for him!

There's little point, Onofrio, my friend. But I'll keep checking in. Schaum is hilarious. I want to say goodbye before he relocates in Cologne.

I can't grasp this Ali Gomaa fatwa declarer blogging here in the name of mutual understanding. Of course, there was considerable code in his post. I didn't believe his essay, but I never would have thought....

Onofrio,

This appears to be the real you: small letters is you?

PS

You came across a bit final just now. Rest ye, but don't go.

Farnaz,

Followed jeff-in-dc link to 'hegabs, nekabs & other trash' and saw the al-Gomaa citation. You'd think someone would check these things.

Mufti says one thing to the home crowd in one language, the opposite abroad.

Wouldn't be the first time. WaPo needs to use its antennae.

Onofrio,

Frankly, I'm tired of merde. I wish you could have known this blog in days long gone. You are very learned, a wonderful poet. I greatly appreciate Schaum and all his gifts, Norrie, Persiflage, Colin Nicholas, and others.

Farnaz

Arminius,

I have nothing to be ashamed of, but you do. If you read your miserable posts to me, you will see what I mean. You have an interesting version of Christianity. However, that doesn't mitigate my very valid point, the point, Arminius, which you steadfastly run away from, refuse to address, bury in childish name-calling.
----------------------------------------

The problem, though remains. If one sacred text is not sacrosanct, then no sacred text may be. Otherwise, the discussion deteriorates into bigotry.

Arminius, pi,

Thee:
"I don't suppose you have anything original to offer?"

Not this time, Arminius. I thought Farnaz might appreciate a bit of Amichai, is all.

Too verveless for merde hurling right now. I take solace in what fortified the ancient dead.

Farnaz,

Sadly, I can only conclude that you inhabit the same moral cesspool as Spidey and ccnl. You are determined to destroy, not to build, to hate, not to love, to despise, not to create. Apparently all you want to do is cut and paste stuff and own the blog, driving all others away. True banana republic tactics.

With your mind and determination, you could have done so much good simply by reaching out a hand in friendship. I can't imagine what drove you to this. You might try to read some of Elie Wiesel. Regardless of the horrors you have endured, they pale beside what he suffered. But you - you reject all who differ with you, but Elie reaches out a hand to all of humanity, offering friendship and a hope of healing.

You should hang your head in shame.

I paste this from Ali Gomaa's thread. If this is true, how is it possible that OnFaith has him blogging here?
_________________________________________

Ali Gomaa has called for the "slaying" of Egyptian writer Dr. Sayed Mahmoud El Qemany
--- "Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the former Chairman of the 'State Religious Affairs Advisory Board', issued a statement declaring my infidelity and calling for slaying me for 'insulting the Prophet of Islam, the God of Islam' on July 24, 2009"
http://hegabs-nekabs.blogspot.com/2009/07/blog-post_26.html

Posted by: jeff-in-dc | October 7, 2009 6:06 PM
----------------------
My God, jeff-in-dc, this appears to be true. Below is a link to a Frontpage article and Youtube. But how could OnFaith not have looked into Gomaa?

http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35777

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Svne7Kh-Wa8

Posted by: Farnaz1Mansouri1 | October 7, 2009 9:49 PM
Report Offensive Comment

onofrio.

This, then, is from the real you:

Farnaz,

Struth, a merde mêlée.

"No text is sacred or all are."

Both true, Q.

I'll stick to the pri.t-m-hrw
"Sh*t is my abomination, and I shall not eat it."

Won't you join me for a merde(r) free chai, amie?
------------------------------
Thank you for your support. The odd thing is that my assertion on sacred texts seems so obvious, needless of defense. Yet, look at this? The dogs of the blog bite. Only you and Schaum, thus far, at least, seem to get the point.

Walter,
Get lost.

God, it's just that I didn't have my glasses! Different order of numbers! Pi! :

farnaz,
please go away.

peter, sorry...

Assuming there is only the one Walter, he neglected to post the reply:

Farnaz:

You said it yourself...'why do I bother'.

Posted by: Schaum | October 7, 2009 5:56 PM
Report Offensive Comment
--------------------------
The problem, though remains. If one sacred text is not sacrosanct, then no sacred text may be. Otherwise, the discussion deteriorates into bigotry.

If someone has a valid disagreement with the foregoing, I'd like to hear it.

The Real Farnaz

PS. Pi?

Posted by: Farnaz1Mansouri1 | October 7, 2009 9:34 PM
------------------------
Anyway, I leave you this this, since all the chatter doesn't bury the original issue.

I've got to be off for awhile. If I weren't though, I'd check out jeff-in-dc's comment on Ali Gomaa's thread. I found two links, posted there, which seem to support jeff's claim. Scary, IF true.

If the real can't explain "pi," could the ah alter?

Thanks for the pity. I know this must be the "real" Arminius. Perhaps the real would be so good as to explain his pi comment.

Farnaz, having returned after her flight to rally her minions, doth remark:

"Which one is this? Who wrote the err "verse"?
What's this business with pi?
Did the real Onofrio hack into Amichai?"

What more proof do we need of the false impersonations of me?

I really pity you, Farnaz. Such a waste - you could have done so much for the world.

On "Starkle, Starkle," this stanza's "moves":

I’m not drunk as thinkle peep,
I’m just a little slort of sheep.
Tee martoonis make a guy
Fool so feelish, don’t know why.

Neat.

Well, now, onofrio, and apparently this time you are the real one -

I suppose we must thank you for your delightful display of cut-and-paste.

I don't suppose you have anything original to offer?

Farnaz, Farnaz, what have you now let past?
Perhaps 'tis time to fold your tents at last
Your wisdom flowered from a mind so good
Changed from bright bloom to mere dead wood
Walled within your lonely cell of hate
Each brick placed by you to never fall
You call your underlings, but much too late
Their backstabs turned by truth's own wall.

Ya know, Farnaz, I have posted much (poor) poetry here of my own composition. For the life of me, I cannot remember you ever doing that.

Arminius-pi-3142

Posted by: arminius3142 | October 7, 2009 9:38 PM
------------
Which one is this? Who wrote the err "verse"?

What's this business with pi?

Did the real Onofrio hack into Amichai?

Arminius, pi,

"We have another fake - '0N0FRI0'."

I haven't had the honour of being faked before. I must say, the author of "Starkle, starkle" is a good rhymer! Would like to have wrought it. Methinks the verse has been pasted, not authored, by my thrice-nought doppelganger.

Farnaz, Farnaz, what have you now let past?
Perhaps 'tis time to fold your tents at last
Your wisdom flowered from a mind so good
Changed from bright bloom to mere dead wood
Walled within your lonely cell of hate
Each brick placed by you to never fall
You call your underlings, but much too late
Their backstabs turned by truth's own wall.

Ya know, Farnaz, I have posted much (poor) poetry here of my own composition. For the life of me, I cannot remember you ever doing that.

Arminius-pi-3142

Farnaz,

Struth, a merde mêlée.

"No text is sacred or all are."

Both true, Q.

I'll stick to the pri.t-m-hrw
"Sh*t is my abomination, and I shall not eat it."

Won't you join me for a merde(r) free chai, amie?

....

They throw stones, throw stones at me
In 1936, 1938, 1948, 1988,
Semites throw at Semites and anti-Semites at anti-Semites,
Evil men throw and just men throw,
Sinners throw and tempters throw,
Geologists throw and theologists throw,
Archaelogists throw and archhooligans throw,
Kidneys throw stones and gall bladders throw,
Head stones and forehead stones and the heart of a stone,
Stones shaped like a screaming mouth
And stones fitting your eyes
Like a pair of glasses,
The past throws stones at the future,
And all of them fall on the present.
Weeping stones and laughing gravel stones,
Even God in the Bible threw stones,
Even the Urim and Tumim were thrown
And got stuck in the beastplate of justice,
And Herod threw stones and what came out was a Temple.

....

Please throw little stones,
Throw snail fossils, throw gravel,
Justice or injustice from the quarries of Migdal Tsedek,
Throw soft stones, throw sweet clods,
Throw limestone, throw clay,
Throw sand of the seashore,
Throw dust of the desert, throw rust,
Throw soil, throw wind,
Throw air, throw nothing
Until your hands are weary
And the war is weary
And even peace will be weary and will be.

Hacked from 'Temporary Poem of My Time', Yehuda Amichai

Assuming there is only the one Walter, he neglected to post the reply:

Farnaz:

You said it yourself...'why do I bother'.

Posted by: Schaum | October 7, 2009 5:56 PM
Report Offensive Comment
--------------------------
The problem, though remains. If one sacred text is not sacrosanct, then no sacred text may be. Otherwise, the discussion deteriorates into bigotry.

If someone has a valid disagreement with the foregoing, I'd like to hear it.

The Real Farnaz

PS. Pi?

But I think there's only one Walter, no?

Good heavens, multiple arminii. Not being of mathematical kind, I ask for someone to explain the pi business. Also, that can't be Onofrio, no offense to whoever posted the parody.

All,

We have another fake - '0N0FRI0'.
The difference is the real one uses the letter, not the number 0.

Actually, this has passed from the annoying to the amusing.

Arminius-pi

Yep, Arminius3142 is definitely a fake.

Starkle, starkle, little twink,
Who the hell you are I think.
I’m not under what they call
The alcofluence of incohol.

I’m not drunk as thinkle peep,
I’m just a little slort of sheep.
Tee martoonis make a guy
Fool so feelish, don’t know why.

Rally don’t know who’s me yet
The drunker I stay the longer I get
So just one more to full my cup,
I’ve all day sober to Sunday up!

Fake Arminius:

"I worked for an architect firm for a dozen years, as a bookkeeper and a computer programmer."

Professional soldier, bookkeeper, computer programmer, marksman, Your Affectionate Uncle, TheModerate...just no end to your talents. Have you always been a drunk? Is that the reason you have so many different personalities?

Walter,

3.1415925... whatever. You're an architect? I worked for an architect firm for a dozen years, as a bookkeeper and a computer programmer.

Fake Arminius:

"Farnaz BREATHES

(with apologies to Savatage)"

No need to apologize. Its your alcohol haze that is to blame.

Hi, Walter,

Glad to see a real friend here! The attacks have been something out of a cesspool, for sure.

arminus3142,
(can i call you 314159?)
yes. VT. i was there when bruce smith was there.... started in engineering, moved to architecture. now an architect.

Somewhere in the silence
Farnaz hides
Farnaz lies
Farnaz dies.......
Farnaz BREATHES

(with apologies to Savatage)

omg! i was just talking about "moniker games" - despicable. losing respect quickly....

arminus3142 - pi! one of my favorite numbers.

Walter, its a small world.

I used to live in Blacksburg. On Marlington Street, near the soccer field. Did you go to VT?

The REAL Arminius.

"Farnaz, you have committed blog suicide by these actions."

Now, now, fake Arminius. You've started thinking with your sphincter again.

Well, I'm back. False alarm. Jemimah's (my cook) husband got blind drunk on some moonshine he made. He'll be back in the fields tomorrow.

Did Gabriel Kelly show up? I miss seeing her. She is a trip. I know her husband dumped her because she would rather sleep with her favorite dogs than with him. She probably needs some cheering up. I know they show a lot of Nazi stuff on History channel. She's probably off watching that.

Let it be noted that Farmaz, her acolytes, sycophants, and assorted arse-kissers and ankle-biters, have resorted to back-stabbing instead of true dialog.

Farnaz, you have committed blog suicide by these actions. You have my pity. I really thought you were better than that.

Arminius3142 (note pi)

"Farnaz and company is desperate"

You are too illiterate to be a real Southerner, whoever you are. The phrase would be "Farnaz and company ARE desperate..."

The Real Arminius

To all:

The real Arminius: Arminius3142 (pi to 3 decimal places)

The false Arminius: Arminius3412 (not the same)

My God, Farnaz, I can't believe you would sink so low.

If Nevermore the NeoNazi shows up, tell her to wait for me. I'll be back.

Farnaz and company is desperate - they have resorted to posting/hacking false posts by me. My God, how despicable she and her sycophants are! I despise cowards.

The real Arminius

Well, I gotta run out back for a minute. One of my darkies died and the rest of them are all moaning and singing. If it isn't one thing its another.

TO THE MODERATOR:

The following quoted post, date-time October 7, 2009 8:02 PM, IS NOT BY ME:

"Besides, I'm always too drunk to get hysterical or angry. Alcohol is a great tranquilizer. Someday, I'll get so mellowed out and realize the futility of my life, and I'll put my claymore in my mouth and pull the trigger."

I request that this post be deleted, and an investigation started to find the hacker.

The other Arminius is a fake. He is really TheModerate, and Your Affectionate Uncle. God in heaven, you need a scorecard to keep up with these perverts.

I'm from Tennessee, Walter. Sour-mash whiskey, hillbillies, incest, lynchings. All the good stuff in life. We know how to handle our women here. Good smack in the mouth clears up the air.

arminus,
you say you're from "the south". where?

persiflage, one of my favorite posters, is also from the south - south carolina i believe. poor guy.... i went to college in blacksburg, va., so i am somewhat familiar with the southern mentality.

people you like and think you know well will just come out with some kind of racist statement that you know is just a product their upbringing. really makes a good case for nurture over nature....

Besides, I'm always too drunk to get hysterical or angry. Alcohol is a great tranquilizer. Someday, I'll get so mellowed out and realize the futility of my life, and I'll put my claymore in my mouth and pull the trigger.

ha! look at farnaz here. just moments after chiding me for addressing a post to arminus, pam, and mary by saying

"You need not enlist allies, however. This isn't middle school."

Nice, Walter! Farnaz gathers her ankle-biters for a counter-attack!

ha! look at farnaz here. just moments after chiding me for addressing a post to arminus, pam, and mary by saying

"You need not enlist allies, however. This isn't middle school."

she goes over to susans's blog and posts:

"Schaum,
If you have a moment, click on to this thread. REad the last several posts, beginning with Walter IFC's NT defenses.
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/greg_m_epstein/2009/10/disarmament_begins_with_ourselves.html
(Don't really know why I bother. There was a time when this blog was worth reading.)"

Posted by: Farnaz1Mansouri1 | October 7, 2009 5:08 PM

she must teach middle school as she's familiar with the tactics...

"Like Walter, Arminius, who professes to be a Christian, not an atheist, has frequently dealt with the "OT" in unfortunate ways, but gets hysterical when aim is taken at his sacred text."

So give me your best shot, and just see how hysterical I get. You are the one angry here, not me. You can't draw me into combat any more, Farnaz. A pity the same cannot be said for you.

For the last time: The discussion I had with Walter IFC concerned the "OT" (sic), which he finds "cartoonish," "disgusting." He claims to be an atheist, yet while keeping the NT sacred, disparages the texts of other religions, including the Quoran, of which he has repeatedly said the most unfortunate things. At the same time, he wishes to keep the NT sacred, finding various ways out of its ahistoricity, which I shan't repeat since they are on this thread. That text, he protects. I do not.

Like Walter, Arminius, who professes to be a Christian, not an atheist, has frequently dealt with the "OT" in unfortunate ways, but gets hysterical when aim is taken at his sacred text.

If this thread is to allow atheists to take aim at sacred texts and religion, then that means all sacred texts and all religions. Otherwise, it becomes mere bigotry. Out of the blue on Jacoby's thread, came this from Arminius: "I have no problem with Jews."

Good for him, but who cares.

Arminius avoids evidence, facts, delays posting until he thinks the coast is clear. The coast is never clear. Many religionists eschew facts, evidence. Many self-professed atheists do as well.

No text is sacred or all are.

"Let me say this again. Facts, evidence is not bigotry. They are facts, evidence."

The most subtle lie is the half truth. Bigotry is very adept at cherry-picking 'facts' to support its narrow view. They, blinded by their sad moral crippling, are totally unaware of this.

Your continued obsession, confused with blinders, only hurts your cause. You are wandering through a wood, bumping into trees, totally unaware of the total forest - the real problem. Your narrow-mindedness only causes a backlash.

Note well that I am a man of the South - I do not share the prejudice still here, but under wraps. It is much, much bigger than any anti-jewish bigotry in our country.

By fighting the lesser monster, you help the greater one to victory.

Let me say this again. Facts, evidence is not bigotry. They are facts, evidence.

Give it up, Farnaz, your bigotry has totally discredited you. Stick to poetry and literature.

Posted by: arminius3142 | October 7, 2009 4:57 PM
--------------------
Are the twelve Orthodox Christian clergy bigoted? ARe the Catholic priests and nuns bigoted?

Ad hominems won't do. You have an advanced degree. You should know that. The earth is not flat.

Evidence. Texts. History.

arminus, pam, mary,
thanks for your support.

perhaps it's better we ignore her. maybe she'll go back to susan's thread. her attacks/suspicions/paranoia have added nothing to the conversation we were having. it's those kinds of posts we came here to avoid. they're just clutter.

Posted by: walter-in-fallschurch | October 7, 2009 4:55 PM
-------------------------
You are embarrassing yourself. If I'm not mistaken, you had claimed to be in your forties. If so, that is not good. Either you can deal with evidence or you cannot. If you cannot, please do not worry about "ignoring" me. You need not enlist allies, however. This isn't middle school.

I will not post to you again if you cannot deal with either texts and facts. What would be the point?

Give it up, Farnaz, your bigotry has totally discredited you. Stick to poetry and literature.

Pam, you have it exactly right: Tribalism. Why the hell can't we all focus on the greater problem rather than blame one faction for the woes of us all?
--------------------
Sources? Evidence? For a teeny bit, scroll down. For more, use google to locate the bibliographies I've posted, numerous essay-length comments, or just use google, fiddling with keywords, etc.

If you want me to provide it, I will. With new bibs. On Korea (scroll down), on Japan (scroll down), on Hong Kong (scroll down), etc.

May I point out that this began with singling out the "OT" (sic) as "cartoonish," "disgusting," etc., with condemning the Quoran in worse times, whilst seeking to preserve the glories of the "NT" (sic)? That document soaking in blood, bone, carnage?

Any posts that claim to be "atheistic" while attempting to hold one "sacred text," well err sacred, are fair game. Deal.

arminus, pam, mary,
thanks for your support.

perhaps it's better we ignore her. maybe she'll go back to susan's thread. her attacks/suspicions/paranoia have added nothing to the conversation we were having. it's those kinds of posts we came here to avoid. they're just clutter.

"People. Not religion. Christians persecute Jews. Jews persecute Canaanites. It's always someone..."

Pam, you have it exactly right: Tribalism. Why the hell can't we all focus on the greater problem rather than blame one faction for the woes of us all?

As for Thor, to the best of my knowledge, no one worships him at present. However, the worship Christ, read the NT, etc.

ONe of the least rehabilitated Christianities are the various Orthodoxies. In an entirely unexpected development, twelve Orthodox clergy have been struggling to have antisemitic content removed both from their "NT" (sic) and from the liturgy. As of yet, no success. It's been three years.

More than that number of Catholics have for decades called for the removal of same, plus clarifications, etc., of hate in the Catholic Catechism.

The numbers among Protestants are even greater.

These people are not atheists. Yet, they do not deny what an atheist does. This cannot be reasoned away. This is in history, has been investigated, is being examined. To deny it, class it with other isms would be akin to denying the unique qualities of DNA. DNA is not unique in all ways, etc., etc.

No way out of this. None.

Jews persecute Canaanites.
--------------
Canaanites? And the Lilliputions?

Korea, 2009, Christianized during the nineties. Number of Jews: Zero. Antisemitism pre 1990s: Zero. Antisemitism now: Rife. Ditto Japan, not yet Christianized. Antisemitism began post-WWII, has accelerated with Christianizing, contact with Christians.

"...theft/torture of the host massacres, blood libels, first crusade, more blood libels, Isabella the Catholic, the sixteenth century Russian campaign, etc."

Yes, and in their day, the Norse, who worshiped Odin, Thor, and Freyja, raided every seaport and country that they were able to reach, stealing, murdering, torturing, raping.

"But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth" Deuteronomy 21:10-13

People. Not religion. Christians persecute Jews. Jews persecute Canaanites. It's always someone...

Last time I checked, this s*** was not very common these days.
--------------
LOL! Do you want sources? Is that it?

Arminius, are you making a reference to one of my posts? Are you requesting evidence, sources, etc., for my claim that Christianity is the sine qua non of antisemitism? Is that what you wish?

So, Farnaz, both I and Peter Huff, who have harmed none, let alone Jews, are despicable throwbacks to the neolithic era because we are Christian. And so is Walter, because he is not an enemy of Christianity. Same for Pam, because, even if she opposes all religion, does not single out Christianity for special punishment. We are all aware of the crap that Christianity did to Jews, Muslims, Pagans, themselves, and anyone else who got in the way. So what the F*** is new? Last time I checked, this s*** was not very common these days. Can we stop throwing stones and try to make a better world without all too obviously hoping for the total elimination of a religion? This reminds me of Ann Coulter's horrible remark about forced conversion of all Muslims.

Habib won't tell me anything about uncircumcised penises and "femininity." Anyone know anything about this?

Christianity was and is the sine qua non of antisemitism from the beginning to the present. If I have to go into this again, starting with Constantine, through the various theft/torture of the host massacres, blood libels, first crusade, more blood libels, Isabella the Catholic, the sixteenth century Russian campaign, etc., etc., it will take awhile and I can't do that now.

No way out of this. Everywhere Christianity has gone, it has brought this, first, with it. Two of the most recent developments of traditional antisemitism have been Korea (how many Jews in Korea?) and Japan.

It is not religion, in general, or in the abstract, that is at issue. It is Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodox Christianity, very much in specific.

"Given your attempt sans evidence to exonerate Christianity, which cannot be exonerated in this regard given the evidence, I would imagine your understanding of the point I was making to Walter to be limited."

Exonerate Christianity?? Is that what you got out of what I wrote?? I would be the last person to do that.

I'm saying that people are people, and if any group is seen as "other" to a more powerful group, atrocities ensue. Religion is extraneous to the issue - it's just an excuse.

mary,
"PS: if I cut off bits of my baby boy's penis and said it was a religious ceremony, where would that put me in the disgusting stakes?"

;-)

Posted by: walter-in-fallschurch | October 7, 2009 3:18 PM
-----------------------
I think Walter has said it all. I need go no further with this. Perhaps, I'll get to cannibalism, a bit later. Muslim pal laughing as he reads this. Trying to get him to sign up for on faith. Walter, he wants to know if you have a penile obsession, if you think uncircumcised penises are "feminine." I'm not following this....Feminine?

Suggest you go to mass with Mary Cunningham. I remember you "yelling" once: "Nobody's ever accused me of being a Catholic before." You were irate! And I had not "accused" you. Will find the post.

Suggest you go to mass with Mary Cunningham. It could not hurt you. Honestly.

"Arminius sees no "pro-Christian bias." I find that startling."

I certainly do not find it startling that you do. He certainly is not a Christian. Is being friendly to Christians a bias? I am friendly to Jews, is that a bias? If so, I guess it is not a good thing to be friendly ....

I don't care whether Walter is Christian, B'hai, Pagan, Sikh, etc.

When any blogger's posts joke about the Quuoran, OT, finding them nonsensical, "cartoonish," "disgusting," but find that that is not the case with the "NT" (sic), those posts become suspect.

I could retrieve them. Would rather not. The blogger's posts on this thread speak for themselves. My evidence was his own words on the NT (sic) and OT (sic). For the Quoran, I'd need a few minutes. However, Pam, Arminius, et al, this isn't a day for a hanging. It's not about Walter or me. It's about texts.

There is no way, if one is going to OT or Quoran it that I will not NT it: ain't gonna happen. Deal.

Hopefully, someone else with an interest in evidence, with some guts will surface. We'll see.

Arminius sees no "pro-Christian bias." I find that startling.

Pam,

I'd actually located what you posted here, just by googling "Pam OnFaith larvae parasites animals." What an amazing thread that was with Horace Silver, Templeton, Gerry, Jihadist, et al. Times have changed.

On the Walter matter, submit away. The discussion you reference has been ongoing for a long time. On the Christian/Catholic origins of mass murder, torture, etc., beginning in the Middle Ages, I can speak with knowledge. I've posted five or six lengthy bibliographies easily googled.

Given your attempt sans evidence to exonerate Christianity, which cannot be exonerated in this regard given the evidence, I would imagine your understanding of the point I was making to Walter to be limited.

I "submit" that anyone seeking to "diss" the "OT" (sic), the Quoran, etc., which he has repeatedly done, whilst preserving the NT (sic) has a ways to go.

As for you, any theory of antisemitism entails Christianity. Choose one, and I'd be happy to debate it with you.

I'd be happy to debate any aspect of antisemitism that you select, that you can show has now element of Christianity in it. (Include references, please; this is field with a great deal of data, something you should appreciate.)

As a Christian, although not in the same camp as Peter Huff, I see no pro-Christian bias in Walter. Instead I see an interest, for the most part benign, although he is quick to point discrepancies, as he should be. Interesting how some people are 'accused' of being Christian.

mary,
"PS: if I cut off bits of my baby boy's penis and said it was a religious ceremony, where would that put me in the disgusting stakes?"

;-)

Farnaz,
Re your "discussion" with Walter:

You're accusing him of a Christian bias (which I see no evidence of), without owning up to your own biases. You are blatantly pro-Jewish, anti-Christian.

You turn every discussion to the same topic. Jews can do no wrong, and Christians are uniformly evil.

I don't deny for a second that European and British peoples have historically treated other people abominably, and that some of them still do. But I submit to you that although they have sometimes used their religion to justify their actions, that it was not actually anything like the root cause.

Had there been no religion at all, I think these things would still have happened. It's a product of people in power who do what they want because they can, and of tribalism, which is a sad part of our evolutionary heritage.

Thanks mainly to geography, Europeans and Brits were the first since the fall of the Romans (who were also bullies in their day) to develop the technology that allowed them to oppress and that gave them an inflated sense of their own worth.(First, that is, in the Western hemisphere. The Chinese were doing a pretty good job themselves, in their neck of the woods.)

Read your OT/Tanakh - when Jewish people had power, they were behaving pretty abominably to others in their area, too. God told them to.

"Have you considered googling, using your moniker, perhaps, and a couple of key words?"

My moniker at the time was "Pam." Not exactly unique. All the same, I think I found it. There were a great many posts back and forth in that thread (http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/susan_jacoby/2008/06/the_mindbody_connection.html), so I'm not sure which one you're referring to, but this is the one that started it. Is it the one you meant?

Horace: "How can a loving, omnipotent God permit - much less create - encephalitis, cerebral palsy, brain cancer, leprosy, Alzheimer's, and other incurable illnesses to afflict millions of men, women and children, most of whom are decent people?"

That ain't the half of it, Horace. What about river blindness? People in Africa go, perforce, to the river for water to drink and bathe in, and larvae enter their bodies from the water and migrate to their eyes, where they cause blindness. Happens to many children every day. Some sweet guy, that God, to think of that one, eh?

But what really seals the deal for me are the parasites that torture animals - fleas, lice, intestinal and heart worms, bot fly larvae, screw worms - sometimes causing such agony that animals cause their own deaths. The religious may tell you that original sin (or your own) caused human torment as retribution, but what did the animals do to deserve this?

Of course I know that these parasites are merely other life-forms, trying, without intentional malice, to make their own way in the world, just as the spider eats the fly and I have steak for dinner; but if I thought for one moment that there was some creator who was the author of all this, I would set myself to oppose him in every way I possibly could. Worship him??? Not hardly.

"Well, let’s back up. Do we agree that:
• Evolution is a ‘hard’ science bereft (without) meaningful controlled experiments that, by definition, are
o Duplicable
o Observable
o Have predictive value [etc.]

No, Mary, we most emphatically do not agree. And thank you very much for the education, but I know what "bereft" means (and you should properly have followed it with "of").

Did you even bother to read my post on the scientific method [Oct 5, 6:04 PM], or Walter's [Oct 6, 11:53 AM], or mine [Oct 6, 1:20 PM]??

Well, TSE, being dead, can't defend himself, and Julius has certainly sold a lot of books charging him with a charge that was at least a couple of generations old. His one poem is pretty notorious for sure.

Dear WIFC,

You can come to Mass with me anytime, although somehow I don't think you'd like all the candles. As well, parts of the Mass are sung in Latin now, which you'd probably shake your head at. Also there's that pesky Real Presence.*

OTOH, the singing is beautiful, there's nothing so beautiful as a sung Mass esp. the Mozart, as well a psalm is generally sung and you would love that (I like the psalms too), and depending on the church you might also appreciate the architecture.

Yours,
MC

*Re the real presence of Christ, ask Farnz1Manzur1 if she knows the difference between essence and existence. It's in Aristotle I think.

Walt,

Ever heard of James Joyce, lapsed Catholic?
Give me credit for the ability to think with some sophistication.

Julius book is in what edition now? I'll be citing Eliot's antisemtic poetry, prose, French fascist friends, etc. There is no debate. This is not armchair prejudice. It is out and out racism. Garbage.

I've no objection to calling him a great poet, have done so, think, in fact, that his poetry "moves."

As Julius put it (endlessly) he was a great antisemitic poet. A great racist poet.

The following programme shown last June:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00l6km7

featured a picture of Jewish poet accusing TSE of anti-Semitism in his works in 1952! In front of Eliot himself who sat silent throughout the reading and in response said: “That was a good poem.”

Graham Greene commented about anti-Semitism in Britain during the 1920s, a sentiment rife amongst the literati that Greene himself shared (see Shirley Hazard Greene in Capri ) which Greene later disavowed and of which he was ashamed. Along with TSE, Chesterton, and many others. After TSE's notorious 1920 poem, there is nothing more in his ouevre .

Thus Julius’s charge is not new. Eliot still remains arguably the greatest poet (in English) of the 20th c., although this Catholic prefers Yeats, pagan yes, but a brilliant lyricist.

PS: if I cut off bits of my baby boy's penis and said it was a religious ceremony, where would that put me in the disgusting stakes?

darn it farnaz...you got me. good one. how'd you see through my atheist persona? very clever of you. won't you repent and give your life to christ?

farnaz,
is this a "jewish thing" (as it always seems to be for you)? you think my bashing the ot is bashing jews?
---------------------
Walt, old boy, getting a bit desperate, I fear. That happens when one hath ever but slenderly known oneself. Also, there are none so blind....

I forgot the "NT" guarantee that regardless of what you have done, jes' beelieve and yer saved, regardless of what you've done, don't beelieve and yer damned.

Hindus like to discuss this. And they're not alone. How does it rate on the Disgusting scale?

Poor ole Walter. Is it Christian thing for you, as it always seems to be? (Note, I said "Christian," not Catholic, so don't get yer you know what all in a knot as you've done before.)

Take a breath, let it in. Walls won't tumble down, but may weaking. Or at least crack a bit, the better for you to hear a voice besides your own.

Or, you can always carry on as you have. No need to take in anything at all. You'll be one among tens of millions. Not so bad, in your case. Nothing to get so panicky about, at any rate.

farnaz,
is this a "jewish thing" (as it always seems to be for you)? you think my bashing the ot is bashing jews?

peter,
"I'll welcome the eternal any day my friend because of God's grace and mercy, and rejoice in Him and it, while you have nothing to look forward to; no surety, no peace with God, no abundant life."

thanks for your concern for my (imaginary) soul. if the promise of heaven sustains you, good for you. if god's carrot and stick (heaven and hell) make you behave here on earth, that's great too. in your case, i see no real harm in that. however, it is the promise of heaven that lets religious homicide bombers crash planes into buildings. while you personally probably think he's got it all wrong, you probably admire muhammad atta's devout sincerity.

i can't take pascal's wager and believe just in case there's a hell. i can't make myself believe something. i attend church with my wife and daughter almost every week. bible study won't help. i've read the whole bible - parts of it many times - and it doesn't "work" for me. god, that bastard, must have hardened my heart....
(farnaz - that's just for the purposes of conversation. i don't really believe there's a god or that he's hardened my heart...)

i've made peace with the fact that my 80 or so years here on earth is all i get. as a result, i value my time here on earth probably MORE than someone who sees his existence here as a way station on the way to eternal life in heaven.

On disgusting. Human and mangod sacrifice are disgusting. Holding human hostage for Adam and Eve's "sins" (not in the "OT") is disgusting. Eating God is disgusting for some.

"The Jews" is a disgusting phrase. Enmeshing the forgoing in the construct of a Loving God has brought humanity two thousand years of blood and gore.

For some, that is disgusting.

You keep referring to what YOU find this or that. Would that you could read what you write.

Take down the wall, take a breath, let it in.

again, farnaz, oh brother.

the ot is just a whole lot easier to make fun of. the magic is much more spectacular, there are epic battles with hundreds of thousands (!) of soldiers, there's floods, plagues and so on. the scale of the moral atrocities are much more abhorrent in the ot. the ot is just much more "cartoonish" than the nt.
----------------------
Walter, oh brother, sister, aunt and uncle!

Easier for YOU to make fun of. NT jokes, hilarious hymns, etc., are all over the place. Authored by present and former Christians.

Easier for YOU Walter. NOt for many, many others.

Might want to look at this. Your biases are showing, atheistically speaking.

What I'm sayin' ain't hard, bro. Just take down the wall, take a breath, and let it in.

farnaz,
"You cite Luke as if his existence were a historical certainty. You always have.

gee whiz, farnaz... i would say "joshua" when referring to the book of joshua - that doesn't mean i believe joshua wrote the book or even existed. again, must i say "whoever wrote the book called "luke" said..."

for purposes of discussion i might say, "when jesus was on the cross, he said..." that doesn't mean i believe jesus was on the cross or that he said what the author of the book commonly attributed to luke (is that better?) said he said. it just means i'm trying to have a discussion about the book.

farnaz,
"Walter, your biases have been showing for some time. You'll readily take on the "OT" with jokes, etc., but must leave the "NT" sacrosanct. Not sarcasm, just observation.
Maybe something for you to think about."

again, farnaz, oh brother.

the ot is just a whole lot easier to make fun of. the magic is much more spectacular, there are epic battles with hundreds of thousands (!) of soldiers, there's floods, plagues and so on. the scale of the moral atrocities are much more abhorrent in the ot. the ot is just much more "cartoonish" than the nt.

there are also MANY more ways to "check" the ot for historical accuracy. it covers thousands of years as oppiosed to just 30 or so. the ot mentions many many cities and peoples and events that should be easy to find in the archaeological record, but they aren't there.

so, all that said, i find the nt much less disgusting than the nt. rather than exhorting believers to kill unbelievers on the spot, jesus (supposedly...) told believers that he would take care of all that on judgement day. i consider that a moral advance over the ot. if that makes me christian in your eyes...oh well.

i'm not sure if you're "accusing" me of being a stealth christian or something.

it's just weird. maybe you're so caught up in those "fake moniker games" with ccnl, moderate, schaum, uncle etc...that you can't just take me at my word when i say i'm atheist. again, weird.

ON "Luke." Some put NT scribes names in quotation marks.

oh brother, farnaz... LUKE - the supposed author of the book of luke. must i preface references to books named after people with "whoever the author of the book of X said..."? sheesh. are you just looking for a fight or what?!
------------------
You cite Luke as if his existence were a historical certainty. You always have.

You forgot to mention NOah.
--------------
I'm not looking for a fight, are you? As I've mentioned to you before, your biases are showing. They've always shown. Might be worth thinking about. You say the whole thing was made up for "doctrinal purposes"? Cute doctrine. Not made up by Jews, obviously.

You're forever "OT" opining--we've discussed this ad infinitum. The violence, two centuries long of the "NT"? NT jokes, etc.? Don't believe I've ever seen them from you.

This is a rushed post--sorry. Might want to think about this stuff, though, atheistically speaking.

Farnaz

farnaz,
"Do you consider holding mankind hostage for the "sins" committed by the first couple in Eden compatible with a loving God?"

no.

"Do you see sending a mangod to earth to be tortured to death by his fellow humans consistent with a loving God?"

no.

"Do you consider holding all mankind responsible for said murder consistent with a loving God?"

no.

"The annual celebration, subsequently accompanied by bunnies and baskets?"

as i said the celebration of the passover massacre seems pretty horrible to me, but i do love hard-boiled eggs and chocolate.

"Do you find historically problematic the Sanhedrin meeting on Passover? Do you think JEWS engaging in a blood/wind, flesh/bread ceremony a stretch, to say the least?"

i think that's all made up for doctrinal purposes.

"Do you wonder at Greek stick figure Pharisees making?"

huh? is there a typo in here?

"Do you consider the oddity of no mention of the all-important Tanaim in the NT?"

never really thought about it. i see no need to, as i see the nt as entirely made up - with a few historical references (pilate, herod etc...) to lend credibility.

"Btw., YOu mention Luke, Luke who?"

oh brother, farnaz... LUKE - the supposed author of the book of luke. must i preface references to books named after people with "whoever the author of the book of X said..."? sheesh. are you just looking for a fight or what?!

"Walking on water must have been a passing novelty among magicians of the period."

i don't think jesus walked on water. as i mentioned (somewhere below, to mary, i think) the miracles were thrown into the story, believe it or not, to lend credibility to jesus as god (though it's curious they portray simon as doing magic too...).

On a possible real Noah....Don't have the reference a the ready, but many years ago, the ark was built, using Tanakh directions. Was sea worthy.

i think i've read of john the baptist being a real person. as we just discussed there could have been a jesus who thought he was the messiah - who knows?
--------------------
No sarcasm. MIght have been a real person Noah, too--who knows? Histories of great floods abound.

And where did all ashen Wednesday lead the free versifier?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/jun/07/poetry.thomasstearnseliot

i do. i consider the passover massacre incompatible with a loving god. i know the egyptians were infidels, and in the context of the stroy, they deserved to die...but...ugh. even worse is the tradition of celebrating this massacre annually.
---------------------------------

Do you consider holding mankind hostage for the "sins" committed by the first couple in Eden compatible with a loving God? The Tanakh doesn't. Do you see sending a mangod to earth to be tortured to death by his fellow humans consistent with a loving God? Do you consider holding all mankind responsible for said murder consistent with a loving God?

The annual celebration, subsequently accompanied by bunnies and baskets?

Do you find historically problematic the Sanhedrin meeting on Passover? Do you think JEWS engaging in a blood/wind, flesh/bread ceremony a stretch, to say the least?

Do you wonder at Greek stick figure Pharisees making?

Do you consider the oddity of no mention of the all-important Tanaim in the NT?

Btw., YOu mention Luke, Luke who?

Walking on water must have been a passing novelty among magicians of the period.

Walter, your biases have been showing for some time. You'll readily take on the "OT" with jokes, etc., but must leave the "NT" sacrosanct. Not sarcasm, just observation.
Maybe something for you to think about.

Farnaz

peter,
you said,
"You are not lead by where the evidence points but by your presuppositions of where it points to."

then i said
"don't you see the flaw in your logic here? the reason it could "change tomorrow" is because there could be new evidence "pointing" scientists in a new direction. if there were new evidence, scientists would follow it. that's what they do."

and then you said,
"That is my point exactly and you admit it. How do you know the evidence you have now is true?"

there's nothing to "admit". i'm saying that science adapts and expands its understanding in response to new evidence. i consider that a strength of the scientific process. you make it sound like adapting to new evidence is a bad thing, like it "wishy-washy" or arbitrary or something.

when science incorporates "new" evidence it doesn't throw out the "old" evidence - that still has to be accounted for. new evidence is more evidence. it's added to the old evidence. theories based on more evidence are better.

"I might, Farnaz, if I knew where to find it. I don't save my posts, and can't remember when this discussion came up. I know it was Susan's thread, but that's not enough."

Have you considered googling, using your moniker, perhaps, and a couple of key words?

farnaz,
i know you've sworn off it until sunday, but before you are tempted to get all sarcastic and/or ironic on me about

"well, we know jerusalem existed as described in the nt - which is more than we can say for solomon's jerusalem."

i do know jesrusalem existed in "solomon's" time, but it was not the seat of the greatest empire ever known. the bible describes "shishak" coming through there and says he "carried off all of solomon's treasures".

we know from shishak's victory stele that he DID go through the area. he mentioned, with proper geographical detail, many little hamlets right around jerusalem that he plundered - just not jerusalem... it didn't even merit mention, so it was hardly the city described in kings/chronicles.

peter,
btw, re: passover:
if god was killing all those first-borns (of other people) to teach pharaoh a lesson, well, that's no good either - in fact it's worse.

peter,
"Do you remember the OT passage on the Passover?"

i do. i consider the passover massacre incompatible with a loving god. i know the egyptians were infidels, and in the context of the stroy, they deserved to die...but...ugh. even worse is the tradition of celebrating this massacre annually.

farnaz,
"And you, Walter, my fellow atheist? What of the Christian Testament do you hold verified?"

well, we know jerusalem existed as described in the nt - which is more than we can say for solomon's jerusalem. we know pilate was really, actually a local ruler. obviously luke or matthew got something wrong with the herod/quirinius references - but they were pretty close... i think i've read of john the baptist being a real person. as we just discussed there could have been a jesus who thought he was the messiah - who knows?

i think most of the geography checks out. unfortunately (for believers) none of the miracles are referenced in contemporary writing. the earthquake and "darkness" that accompanied jesus' "death" are not verified.

Peter Huff,

Thank you for giving your thoughts on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I would hope you can continue your contribution.

This thread is almost over I would like to give you some Eliot:

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
..........
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

TS Eliot Ash Wednesday

Well, let’s back up. Do we agree that:

• Evolution is a ‘hard’ science bereft (without) meaningful controlled experiments that, by definition, are
o Duplicable
o Observable
o Have predictive value

• The theory of evolution is hindered because each instance of evolutionary change occurred one time only. Hence, like history, evolution is a theory with sample size of one.

• The ‘proof’ of evolution is composed primarily of fossils, which, by carbon dating, we can calculate an age range of 1,000 to several hundred million years.

• Evolutionary biologists may be able to observe evolution at work in real time ‘in the small’, that is, in microorganisms, butterflies etc.

• But they don’t have replications of the 4.5 billion year history of the earth, through a collection of parallel universes each of which differs from the others in one observable and measurable aspect only.

• Additionally ‘real time’ evolution suffers from the fallacy of composition: inferring that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole.

If the above are true then evolution is not so ‘hard’ a science as, say, chemistry which is founded upon meaningful controlled experiments.

Evolution IMHO seems akin to a ‘theory’ of historical change, with fossils standing in the place of historical documents. Since is resembles history more than science, it is thus subject to all the restrictions that characterize the historical process.

"...once penned a brilliant essay here dealing with animal parasites....Wish she'd repost it."

I might, Farnaz, if I knew where to find it. I don't save my posts, and can't remember when this discussion came up. I know it was Susan's thread, but that's not enough.

THREE

PH (on “Lucy”): “According to Ian Taylor, In the Minds of Men, in discussing the find, p. 248.
‘The hominid skeleton was of a small creature about 100-120 centimeters tall, and except for the lower jaw there was no head, hands, or feet; other hands and feet were subsequently found…The jaw more closely resembled the chimpanzee than man while without the skull there could be no estimate of brain capacity’.”

Lucy is not the only one of her species found, just the most complete single specimen. And Taylor is wrong on several points. There are skull fragments, some from the brain case, some from the brow area. Of course you know, Peter, that when you’re dealing with symmetrical animals, having a bone fragment from the left side is tantamount to having one from the right, as well. From the curvature, much can be inferred about the size, shape, and capacity of the brain case. From the brow ridge piece, and the (complete!) lower jaw, much can also be inferred about the face. – the size and shape of the jaw, and the fact that upper teeth occlude with lower, tells a great deal. There was more than enough to tell us that Lucy had a mix of ape and human characteristics – upright posture, apelike face and brain size, but more humanlike teeth, arms shorter than a chimp’s, but longer than a human’s. And other fossils of her species tell us that the apelike big toe wasn’t there.

I won’t bother with Homo Habilis, since Walter has effectively fielded that one.

I asked you before, Peter, why it is that people with ideas like yours (and my SDA friend's) won't read anything that disputes their preconcieved notions. I now think that it's out of fear. I think that you're absolutely terrified that your faith isn't strong enough to withstand it. There's just no other viable explanation.

TWO

Me: Do you realize that in a whale’s flippers are all the same bones that are in your arm? Humerus, radius and ulna, carpals, metacarpals, phalanges? He has no use for them, so why are they there?

PH: “To help with reproduction or copulation?”

Huh?? How would that work? Those are arm bones, Peter. In the whale’s flippers, not his flukes. The point is that inside those rigid flippers are all the same bones that are in your arms, wrists, and hands, but the bones have no function inside the flipper. The flipper would work equally well (for swimming) if it had only cartilage inside, or a single bone with one joint at the body. There is no need for all those non-functional bones and frozen joints. Why would God design such a thing? Sharks don’t have all those bones in their pectoral fins, which serve the same function as whale flippers. Why not?

PH: "Leg bones in whales: 'Evolutionists often point to vestigial hind legs near the pelvis. But these are found only in the Right Whale. and upon closer inspection turn out to be strengthening bones to the genital wall.’ —John C. Whitcomb, Early Earth (1988), p. 84.”

I already gave you the information showing this to be untrue. If you had followed the links, you would have found pictures of leg bones and/or pelvises in several whale species, and the information that they are not always present. And even if they were only present in right whales, so what? Why would God put hind leg bones in an animal that has no need for legs? Why doesn’t the shark need his “genital wall” strengthened by leg bones?

Me: Have you noticed that whales (and other mammals that have returned to the sea – seals, porpoises) swim by undulating their spines vertically, the way 4-legged land animals run, rather than horizontally, like fish? Why should that be?

PH: “You are the one making the assumption that they 'returned to the sea'."

Dodge, dodge. That part is completely irrelevant. Leave out the words “other mammals that have returned to the sea” and answer the question.

PH: “Why do they have these? Because of their design, not because they evolved from different kinds or species.”

The question is, Peter, why would that be their “design?” If horizontal motion is so efficient that all fish use it, why would God design a sea creature that uses the much less efficient vertical motion? And that has to breathe air? Crazy. But, fortunately for logic, we know from the fossils that they evolved from 4-legged land animals, which neatly explains all the head-scratchers. Occam’s Razor, Peter.

PH: “The long awaited reply.”

The long awaited disappointing reply. Really, Peter, are you sure you can’t do better than this? Clearly, you never even looked at the material – typical, head-in-the-sand YEC attitude.

PH: “Just because something resembles something else does not mean that the two evolved from one another or share the same gene pool, but that they are designed to share in part or in whole the same environments.”

No, it doesn’t. There are cases where animals have found the same evolutionary solutions to the same problems, developing traits that their last common ancestor did not have. Taxonomists and cladists are aware of this, and know how to tell the difference. This is called “convergent” evolution, and the similar traits are called “analogous” structures, as opposed to “homologous” structures, which have the same source. Bats and pterodactyls, for instance, have/had wings of skin stretched across elongated finger bones, but pterodactyls are not the ancestors of bats. DNA and other traits, including ear structures shared by no animals other than the whale family (which you would know, had you looked at the links) tell the tale.

PH: “I'll admit, I studied the evidence against evolution some fifteen to twenty years ago. I have not kept abreast of the current arguments. They are probably much more sophisticated.”

Studied the evidence against evolution? How about just studying evolution, and then making up your mind between the two?

Duane Gish: "… why can't evolutionists imagine what intermediates may have looked like? Perhaps Gould and Eldredge have tried. They may have attempted, for example, to imagine what viable, functional intermediates between a land animal and a whale may have looked like.”

Ummm… maybe because they don’t need to imagine it – they have the actual intermediate fossils...?

Hello, Peter Huff,

I've joined this joyous free-for-all. FYI I am Christian, but quite progressive. I follow two paths, the path of science and reason, and the path of the spiritual and the religious that comes from it. I see no conflict between the two. These paths seldom meet, but co-exist, and both are lifelong journeys in the search of knowledge. I cannot believe that my path, my journey, is the only one of merit. God is too big to fit into just one church. As Thomas Baum says, don't try to cram God into a box, it won't work.

Onofrio,

It's just that I'm a recovering Christmonger, barking at his own disowned shadow.

Not your problem.
--------------------
I'm not sure of what you mean. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, substantively, I find most of what Peter writes highly problematic. On the other hand, as yet, I see no bigotry in him, no conversionist impulses, though they may well be there. I generally take the live-and-let-live stance with those who respect my identity. When someone gives no evidence of disrespect, I have no wish to meddle with their views.

However, I have considerable admiration for folks like Pam and like you, who differ. Pam finds "Christmongering," as you put it anti-intellectual. Ditto all religious belief. She takes it on in that light. She once penned a brilliant essay here dealing with animal parasites....Wish she'd repost it.

Part 2 to Walter,

I'll welcome the eternal any day my friend because of God's grace and mercy, and rejoice in Him and it, while you have nothing to look forward to; no surety, no peace with God, no abundant life.

You do not have that life unless through God's grace you find Christ and trust in His merits alone. At present you make judgments without knowledge.

When He instructed His followers to take of His body and blood, it is a spiritual lesson on the sacrificial and substitutionary work Christ did on the cross for those who would believe. (John 6:29-58) He reminded them to partake in remembrance of what He did (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

We are counted or reckoned dead to sin and alive in Christ, united with Him (Romans 6:1-11 with 8:1-17 - worth reading!). Over and over in the OT we have actual physical events that happened that teach a deeper message to those who have spiritual ears about Jesus Christ. You do not hear because you live according to the principles of this world which are worthless in the big picture.

That is why I ask you to justify what you know with certainty. What is that? That is why I ask you to explain how you know what you hear is true. That is why I ask you to explain how you can have a measure that is good without an eternal, objective standard or reference point. Whose will you accept? Do you decide? Is your opinion the be-all and end-all (to use Pam's words in a recent post)? What external, objective, universal truths do you know of? How does life originate from non-living matter? How does a non-thinking, non-organic, mindless process produce thinking beings? These are things you need to consider in evaluating you world view.

Hi Walter,

A couple of things.

MARY: "Their belief that Christ was with them--present in the bread and wine which they subsequently consumed--led almost immediately to charges of cannibalism."

WALTER: "sheesh... why are people so literal all the time? i mean, did jesus have to say, "pretend this is my body..."?"

Do you remember the OT passage on the Passover? The blood on the door was only part of the lesson. The other part was eating the lamb. Death passed over those who had the blood on the door and the nourishment of the lambs body sustained the them for there journey. That is what happened in the temporal, seen world in which we live but the typology was Christ and the spiritual lesson is that those who partake by faith in the Son - the Lamb without spot or blemish - have crossed over from death to life and the spiritual nourishment for the spiritual journey is Christ Himself, the eternal Lamb.

Just as the lamb provided them with life/nourishment for their journey out of Egypt, and God provided them with bread in the desert to sustain them, so Christ living in the Christian provides nourishment and eternal life through His life and by His word. It is a life out of bondage and into freedom. That is what the truth of Christ does and it happens here and now, that life, but it is in the eternal and unseen realm, for God is Spirit.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live [eternal realm], but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body [temporal realm], I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)

Christ is our life.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ." (Ephesians 1:3)

This is the realm that you are ignorant of. You think only of the natural realm.

"We have not received the spirit of the
world [temporary] but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught to us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:12-14)

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away [temporary world], yet inwardly we are being renewed. For our light and momentary troubles [temporary world] are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

Onofrio -

I am a recovering atheist.

Onofrio,

I too find PH's posts a bit dull, but interesting because he is alone in my experience of a fundie really trying to present his case with politeness. But... he is NOT trying to ram it down my throat with assorted displays of fire and brimstone, lakes of fire, etc. I read PH as a good but misinformed man, and good people are a lot scarcer in this world than intellectuals.

Farnaz,

"Frankly, I don't know why I have no problem with Peter's posts."

It's just that I'm a recovering Christmonger, barking at his own disowned shadow.

Not your problem.

Leon Festinger, "When Prophecy Fails."

Frankly, I don't know why I have no problem with Peter's posts. Many Taliban are very polite. (They are. I'm not kidding.)

Arminius, Farnaz, Walter, et alii,

Arminius wrote:
"For some reason I never pegged Peter as a fundie, my bad. At least he is rather polite about it! Has he identified his flavor of Christianity, i.e. a denomination?"

Farnaz wrote:
"Must agree with Arminius here. I think Peter very polite, enjoy his posts."

Peter's Reformed of some stripe, a thorough Calvinist, steeped in Young Earth Creationism, reared on the presuppositional apologetics of Cornelius Van Til. He has affinities with theonomy and Christian Reconstruction, though I don't think he's a Rushdoony loony (yet). I would guess the denomination is Presbyterian or independent Reformed of some sort. No doubt he will confirm.

I have nothing against politesse, but it counts for little when it garnishes monotonal theomachinery.

Clearly, I am the only one here who finds PH's posts culpably dull and ever-so-earnestly offensive. Am content to offend by that.

I'll just go over to the corner and fume to no good end...

Walter,

The appearance of wanna-be messiahs is not limited to the 1st century, it continued through the ages and is alive today. Oddly, none of them ever had a bunch of Gospels, perhaps as many as 50, written about them.

farnaz,
"My own tendency is to believe that there was a figure upon whom the Christ myth was based."

me too. there were apparently many jesuses running around first century judea (i understand it was a relatively common name) and a lot of people with messiah complexes. it's very possible there was overlap.

And you, Walter, my fellow atheist? What of the Christian Testament do you hold verified?

arminus,
feeding...and cleaning up after them....

have you seen woodmorappe's "noah's ark: a feasibility study"? hilarious.

"don't know his denomination. he has labelled himself a 'presuppositionalist.'"

Need not say much more, need he? :|

Walter,

Must agree with Arminius here. I think Peter very polite, enjoy his posts. (I've decided to give up on both sarcasm and irony until Sunday.) Hence, I also say, unironically, that there is very little that can be demonstrated as factual in the Tanakh and Quoran. Nothing in the Christian Testament. My own tendency is to believe that there was a figure upon whom the Christ myth was based. That's all, and it isn't a stable tendency.

arminus,
yes, he is polite (after all he is canadian...) and earnest. don't know his denomination. he has labelled himself a "presuppositionalist".

Walter,

Dinos on the ark, huh? There are at least 850 species identified, some say 1200 or more. Some of these are over 100' long. The logistics of feeding these beasties simply gives one nightmares.

Walter,

For some reason I never pegged Peter as a fundie, my bad. At least he is rather polite about it! Has he identified his flavor of Christianity, i.e. a denomination?

Walter, I was being sarcastic. Today, I have failed at sarcasm endlessly. I will try it again on Thursday. I think that from now until then irony is the best I can hope for.

Bottom line: There is nothing historically verifiable in the Christian Testament. An argument for the existence of Jesus holds up as well as Dever's for the existence of Abraham. Not a bad argument for an actual historical figure, stripped of almost everything we know, and that is that. No evidence. None whatsoever.

A possibility, nada mas.

That said, unlike some other folk, I'm with Susan J. Believe whatever you'd like, stay out my own face, don't mess with unwilling others, and we're fine. Not referring to you, here, Walt.

The problem is, as so many agnostics, atheists, nonChristians, nonMuslims, et al, point out, folks just won't keep their own personal religion to themselves.

arminus,
"hammer and tongs"... great expression.

indeed peter is a true-blue literalist - and proud of it. later we plan to discus whether dinos were on the ark.

i guess i should have said, "trying but failing to harmonize the resurrection accounts." it is impossible.

farnaz,
WTF?
you've, once again, totally misunderstood me.

i'm saying it is impossible to harmonize the resurrection accounts.

Walter,

I looked at the first link, and thought it a very good analysis of the Resurrection textual problems. But a harmonizing it was not.

Of course, Walter. Jesus was resurrected, if he existed, that is. Ditto Marduk, Seth, Osiris, et al.

Now, all you need to do is to "harmonize" the water-walking accounts, figure out what magic JC, if he existed, used to bewitch Jews into "dishing" the blood/wine, bread/flesh taboo, made himself known to Judea, occupied with codifying the Tanakh, brushing the prophets, Sons and nephews of God, out of their hair, made certain they'd never mention him, but would mention others in accounts of the period, tricked the Sanhedrin into breaking Passover when a human life wasn't at stake, and you, Walter, will be not home free, but closer.

Harmonize, please.

harmonizing the resurrection accounts:

http://www.2think.org/hundredsheep/bible/ressur.shtml

http://www.ffrf.org/books/lfif/?t=stone

Mutatis mutandi :

Water-walking, Walter. To apply words you humorously used in reference to Quoran: "You can't make this stuff up." I.e., it's gotta be in the text. :\

Walter,

You are largely correct, although "do not" is not quite the case. I've no doubt that if we ever get to excavate the remaining sites, we'll still only have part of the story. But there appears to have been story, some phenomena upon which Joshuah drew, unlike, say, reports of water-walking.

Then there was this part of my post:

On historicity, there is no had evidence of the existence of JC, never was a proto-Eucharistic event, the overwheliming majority of Jews never heard of him, if he existed, no Sanhedrin would ever meet on Passover. While other would-be prophets of the period are present in Judaic literature JC ain't.

Geologic evidence? None. Resurrection? Faith healing?

farnaz,
"What I meant in my initial statement is that discounting that the historicity of certain events reported in Joshuah remains difficult so long as certain sites cannot be excavated."

obviously we cannot comment on the unexcavated cites, but the cities we have excavated do not comport with the conquest narrative (or the period of judges or the united monarchy).

Anuther frunt v the Huff

Mark and Matthew know nothing of resurrection day Christophanies to male disciples. Mark's single 'neaniskos' at the tomb tells the women to relay notice of a Galilee rendezvous between the risen Christ and disciples, to occur at some unspecified future date (clearly not the same day). Matthew gives a vague sketch of the rendezvous on some unnamed mountain in Galilee, where Jesus tells the disciples (among whom are doubters!) he will be with them always. No ascension. No wound exhibitions.

Luke locates the resurrection action in and around Jerusalem. His TWO young men at the tomb DO NOT herald a Galilee rendezvous to the women. Matthew has the risen Christ appear to the women near the tomb, immediately after the encounter with the angel; Luke passes over this in silence (what did he have against primary female Christophany? And against Galilee?), and has Jesus appear instead on resurrection day en route to Emmaus and to the Eleven in/near Jerusalem, exhibiting wounds. Matthew was supposedly there (as one of the Eleven), yet said nothing about it in *his* gospel. Nor did he say anything about Luke's Jerusalem-proximate ascension.

Someone was making sh*t up...

Hi Walter,

I have been reading your responses to Mary and my posts. I see you out in left field. I will respond when I can.

Peter

Just a quick comment.

ME: "It could all change tomorrow as you and Pam and so many others have pointed out so often, even when speaking about evolutionary science and scientists. You are not lead by where the evidence points but by your presuppositions of where it points to."

WALTER: "don't you see the flaw in your logic here? the reason it could "change tomorrow" is because there could be new evidence "pointing" scientists in a new direction. if there were new evidence, scientists would follow it. that's what they do."

That is my point exactly and you admit it. How do you know the evidence you have now is true? Whose grand philosophy do you rest it on? Someone who has been wrong in the past and may not be right now? That is whose. Is it logical to believe that those scientists who you are putting your faith and trust in are indeed wrong in their current surmise? According to past history, yes.

WALTER: " on the other hand, there is not even the possibility of new evidence in the religious realm."

I only support biblical evidence in what you see as 'the religious realm.' And God never changes, neither does truth. If truth is thought true one minute and discovered false the next it never was true. In order for something to be true it must be just that.

ME: ""Without a mind governing the universe and everything in it, there are no guarantees...."

WALTER: "...right....it could be that the sun used to go around the earth, but it doesn't anymore....it's possible there used to be a rigid dome (firmament) around the flat earth... who's to say, we weren't there, but people who were there used to think that"

No, it never was like that, the sun going round the earth or the earth being flat, just believed to be so and not based on the Bible but on a misinterpretation of His word.

WALTER: ". should we trust them about these assertions? or should we trust our own observations?"

Because anything that comes from God is objective. He sees the whole picture.

As Pam correctly pointed out, God's word remains the same, and to correctly interpret it we should realize what kind of language it is, literal or figurative and the context should be taken into account, among other things. Words have meaning and the meaning is discovered through the context. Truth is identical with the mind of God. Without Him all you have are skeptics, people who are never really sure of anything. That is why there is so much scientific disagreement.

Walter,

Last post was a reply to yours.

Farnaz :}

this is a HUGE problem for the historicity of the the tanakh/o.t. nothing archaeologically "lines up" with scripture until well after king solomon.

What I meant in my initial statement is that discounting that the historicity of certain events reported in Joshuah remains difficult so long as certain sites cannot be excavated. Then, there is the problem of those destroyed in the last forty years.

On historicity, there is no had evidence of the existence of JC, never was a proto-Eucharistic event, the overwheliming majority of Jews never heard of him, if he existed, no Sanhedrin would ever meet on Passover. While other would-be prophets of the period are present in Judaic literature JC ain't.

Geologic evidence? None. Resurrection? Faith healing?

I seem to have wandered into a hammer-and-tongs 'discussion' of evolution vs creationism. Am I right, and is Peter Huff truly a creationist?

homo habilis, "invalid taxon"?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/invalidtaxon.html

no...just an outdated creationist "talking point".

Part 5,

PAM: "And how about homo habilis, who had more human traits and fewer chimplike ones, but was still a blend?"

According to The Revised and Expanded Answers Book, p.127,

"Homo habillis - there is a growing consensus among most palaeoanthropologists that this is a "junk" category. It actually includes bits and pieces of various other types - such as Australopithecus [southern ape] and Homo erectus. It is therefore an "invalid taxon." Such a creature never existed. This was formerly claimed as THE "clear link" between apes and humans, but it is no longer valid."

I have run out of time on answering the rest of the post. I will have to respond to the rest on Thursday to Sunday as time permits.

peter,
"The thing they have not been able to do is show the transition or intermediate fossil links between the kinds. There are no intermediate fossils of a cow changing into a whale."

oh puleeze... did you look at pam's many links? there are tons of "intermediates". same goes for horses.

but, as gish and his ilk like to say, every intermediate creates two gaps - one on either side of the intermediate...

Part 4,

PAM: "As for humans, how do you explain Lucy, who was about the size of a chimp, and had a similarly-sized brain, but who had teeth more like a human’s; arms longer than a human’s but shorter than a chimp’s; whose pelvis and spine-to-skull attachment show that she walked upright; whose feet were shaped like ours, without the angled great toe of the chimp’s foot that adapts them for climbing?"

According to Ian Taylor, In the Minds of Men, in discussing the find, p. 248.
"The hominid skeleton was of a small creature about 100-120 centimeters tall, and except for the lower jaw there was no head, hands, or feet; other hands and feet were subsequently found. It was discovered about Christmas day in 1974 and was believed to be female; Johanson and his workers affectionately named their prize "Lucy" after the Beatles record that was popular at the time. The jaw more closely resembled the chimpanzee than man while without the skull there could be no estimate of brain capacity. Potassium-argon dating had given results from which the range 3.1 to 5.3 million years were selected as the benchmark of belief for the age of "Lucy".[27] However, more vital than the technicalities were the politics. The offering to the world of this long-awaited transition from ape to man could not be done in any haphazard manner. Announcement and publicity had to be carefully orchestrated for maximum effect; after all, research grants were at stake.

Lucy was kept a close secret for nearly four years until the most propitious moment, when Australopithecus afarensis, alias Lucy, was formally presented at the Nobel Symposium on Early Man in 1978 (Johanson 1979). The scientific establishment was not overly impressed. As usual, there was controversy, especially since there were no skulls. The principal contention seems to be between Johanson's claim for Lucy's being a missing link in the direct line from the common ancestor of ape and man to man himself and Leakey's claim that Homo habilis is the missing link. Each considers the other's claim to be an aberrant offshoot on the way to man. The popular treatment of Lucy was more favorable, and a book, television appearances, and numerous articles appeared to keep the latest missing link in the common consciousness (Johanson and Edey 1981). We can expect discoveries of this sort to be made every few years, as has happened throughout this century, and with increasing frequency. At this very moment, who knows how many discoveries have been made but are in utero, awaiting their moment for public birth?"

End of quote.

Part 3,

PAM: "Do you realize that in a whale’s flippers are all the same bones that are in your arm? Humerus, radius and ulna, carpals, metacarpals, phalanges? He has no use for them, so why are they there?"

To help with reproduction or copulation?

"Leg bones in whales: "Evolutionists often point to vestigial hind legs near the pelvis. But these are found only in the Right Whale. and upon closer inspection turn out to be strengthening bones to the genital wall." —John C. Whitcomb, Early Earth (1988), p. 84.

PAM: "Do you realize that he often has a small pelvis buried in his body, and that sometimes tiny leg bones are attached to it?"

"A photograph taken of the same exhibit [British Natural History Museum skeleton of a whale] gives a more truthful impression of the "legs". There is no sign of a pelvis or any attachment of these two small bones to the vertebrae." Ian Taylor, In the Minds of Men. p. 270.

PAM: "Why do you think that is? Have you noticed that whales (and other mammals that have returned to the sea – seals, porpoises) swim by undulating their spines vertically, the way 4-legged land animals run, rather than horizontally, like fish? Why should that be?"

You are the one making the assumption that they 'returned to the sea.'

Why do they have these? Because of their design, not because they evolved from different kinds or species.

Part 2 to Pam,

Here is what Duane Gish said in "Creation Science Answers their Critics" p. 136-137,

"If evolution has produced millions of species, including many thousands of different basic morhological designs, via intermediates, whereby sea urchins changed into fish, fins changed into legs, scales changed into wings, legs changed into flippers, ape-like skulls changed into human skulls, etc., why can't evolutionists imagine what intermediates may have looked like? Perhaps Gould and Eldredge have tried. They may have attempted, for example, to imagine what viable, functional intermediates between a land animal and a whale may have looked like. Evolutionists have suggested that some hairy, four-legged mammal, perhaps something that may have resembled a pig, or A COW, or a buffalo (or perhaps a carnivore of some kind) ventured into the water in search of food or sanctuary. Over eons of time, it is imagined, the tail changed into flukes, the hind legs gradually disappeared, the front legs changed into flippers, the nostrils gradually migrated to the top of the head, and the skin was replaced by a heavy coat of blubber, just to name a few of the changes required."

So what evolutionary scientists do is find something that different animals or mammals have in common or that are somewhat similar and imagine ways in which one evolved from the other instead of looking at it as something that two different kinds share in common by design to function in their particular environments. The thing they have not been able to do is show the transition or intermediate fossil links between the kinds. There are no intermediate fossils of a cow changing into a whale.

Hi Pamsm (September 1, 2009 4:28 AM ),

The long awaited reply.

PH: “Yes I recognize that people, animals and plants do change, but not evolve into different life forms, just change within their particular grouping. That is the way they were designed, to adapt to different environments. A whale does not change into a cow over long periods of time. A human is always a human, he just adapts to different environments.”

PAM: "Nope, a whale will not evolve into a cow. Cows already exist, and there is no evolutionary pressure on a whale to become anything like them.... Whales did, however, evolve from four-legged land animals, and, interestingly, they are most closely related to the even-toed ungulates, such as pigs, camels, deer, goats, and *cows*. Their closest relative among those is the hippo. Think about that. Can’t you see the resemblance?"

Just because something resembles something else does not mean that the two evolved from one another or share the same gene pool, but that they are designed to share in part or in whole the same environments.

I'll admit, I studied the evidence against evolution some fifteen to twenty years ago. I have not kept abreast of the current arguments. They are probably much more sophisticated.

Yes, I should have cited a cow changing into a whale over eons of time, not the other way around.

"scientists used to think the cell was the basic building block of life. now, they're thinking it might be RNA."

Or the newly-discovered micro-RNA! It's part of what they used to think was "junk" DNA, comprising a huge part of our genome. Now they know that it attaches itself to regular messenger RNA and prevents it from making its protein. This can be regulatory, but is also a factor in many genetic diseases.

"...they think all those "organelles" in a cell could have been living independently and were 'co-opted'."

Very likely. Mitochondria are an excellent example of this. Single-celled animals engulf other cells as food, but at some point one "swallowed" a cell that didn't break down once engulfed. Probably had evolved an impervious cell membrane. Mitochondria now work in concert with our cells in a symbiotic relationship, but have their own DNA, entirely different from that of the nucleus of the cell they inhabit.

We inherit our mitochondrial DNA only from our mothers.

"...they liked things the way they were when the church (right or wrong) had all the answers."

And all the power.

peter,
"I can go into this [reasons to take genesis as history] further if you like by supplying the exegetical texts for the Christian position."

no need.

you said,
"Either you take the Bible as the Word of God and the highest authority man can appeal to or you base your authority on the opinions of man as the ultimate judge of truth..."

the bible IS the word of man, men actually, who lived 1000s of years ago. sure, they said god spoke to them and so on, but why should we believe them when they said god said things like, "kill the amalekites", and "grasshoppers have 4 legs" (lev 11).

(i'm sure there are "better" examples of of bad or plainly false things in the bible. anybody?)

you know, you say you don't wnat to play "he said, she said" with pam, but that's what the ENTIRE BIBLE is! you're basing your entire "absolute, ultimate reality" on what someone said god said.

More good stuff on whales:

http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/whales/evolution_of_whales/

and see this page:

http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/latest_2003/cretinist_answers.html

peter,
i said,
"the flood geologists etc..., must check all scientific results for compliance with ancient mesopotamian cosmology. those "presuppositions" kind of limit their thinking."

to which you said,
"It's your assumption. You are assuming that the Bible borrowed from these other ancient flood myths, but have you ever thought that they borrowed from the Bible accounts and from the accounts of those who witnessed and handed down these accounts to others?"

i think it's pretty clear that the bible borrowed the flood story (and the creation story), but that's not my point. my point is that modern scientists cannot be constrained by 3000 yr old science (whether hebrew, egyptian, babylonian, sumerian or whatever).

you said,
"It could all change tomorrow as you and Pam and so many others have pointed out so often, even when speaking about evolutionary science and scientists. You are not lead by where the evidence points but by your presuppositions of where it points to."

don't you see the flaw in your logic here? the reason it could "change tomorrow" is because there could be new evidence "pointing" scientists in a new direction. if there were new evidence, scientists would follow it. that's what they do. on the other hand, there is not even the possibility of new evidence in the religious realm.

you said,
"Without a mind governing the universe and everything in it, there are no guarantees. Throw a ball into the air and gravity has its effects on it that we can measure, but what guarantees do you have that this will always be the case or always has been?"

...right....it could be that the sun used to go around the earth, but it doesn't anymore.... it's possible there used to be a rigid dome (firmament) around the flat earth... who's to say, we weren't there, but people who were there used to think that. should we trust them about these assertions? or should we trust our own observations? or, as you propose, it could be that things really used to be that way, but then things changed.

peter,
"The ID crowd do not see...how these mutually dependent parts of the cell could come together by chance happening all at once. Take away one part and the other parts fail to function."

that's classic behe: "i can't imagine how that happened "by itself", so god must have done it."

you keep conflating the evolution of life with the origin of life. it's a shame darwin called his book "the origin of species", because now uninformed people think he meant the origin of life. scientists are pretty darn sure about how evolution of existing life forms works. they are a lot less certain about abiogenesis. you're much better off putting god in this gap than the flagella gap. scientists used to think the cell was the basic building block of life. now, they're thinking it might be RNA. they think all those "organelles" in a cell could have been living independently and were "co-opted". this is still kind of murky and maybe pam can help out here with details. anyway, my point here is that even this gap (abiogenesis" is getting smaller.

you said,
" The dichotomy between science and religion seems to come about with the rise of humanism, the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment."

that's because religion kept fighting rather than embracing these moral and scientific advances. they liked things the way they were when the church (right or wrong) had all the answers.

Let me help you out a little, Peter.

Kent Hovind (and a bigger horse's patootie never existed) opines that muscles important for reproduction are attached to the whale pelvises.

This might make sense if A) all whales - or at least all females - had pelvises (they don't), B) the pelvises were attached to the rest of they skeleton for support (they aren't), or C) the whales without pelvises had reproductive difficulty (they don't).

And it still doesn't explain why some of the tiny, rudimentary pelvises have tiny rudimentary legs attached (and some don't).

Mary C.,
You said, "To prove a scientific hypothesis it needs to be duplicated... Additionally, there should be some type of control."

Not true. Experiments have to have controls and be duplicable, not the entire studied event(s).

And, as Walter pointed out, one doesn't actually prove a hypothesis, one supports and possibly develops it into a theory (which you seem to be using as it's used in the vernacular, to mean "speculation" - see http://wilstar.com/theories.htm )

"Okay that will be my next endeavor, to provide experts that oppose your experts, although I admit I am out of my league here in my understanding as opposed to yours. You have definitely read more widely on the subject of evolution than I have."

I understand, Peter, that you're most comfortable with the "philosophy" part, but unfortunately, when you choose to set forth the bible as the inerrant be-all and end-all of absolutely everything, you sign onto the whole enchilada. You need to be able to say how that can be so in the face of real world observable evidence to the contrary.

I've told you that I read your side of things. I've read the Answers in Genesis site (good for some belly laughs) and many others. You should try doing the same with my side of things (start with Talkorigins.com), it will make you a better debater, if nothing else.

You said (about the whales) that you would research it, and pray about it. I would think that if you have a pipeline to God, that the research part would actually be superfluous. Even if he won't speak to you directly (why not?), can't God just make you have an explanatory dream that would make research unnecessary? Or at least point you to the right research? I would think he'd be happy to help you slap me down.

Where is he when you need him??

farnaz,
"A lot remains unanswered with respect to the Tanakh, especially, concerning the excavation of sites relevant to Joshua."

this is a HUGE problem for the historicity of the the tanakh/o.t. nothing archaeologically "lines up" with scripture until well after king solomon.

mary:
"Evolution IMHO starts backward with the proof, in this case the fossils, and constructs a theory around them."

there is no "proof" in science - that's for math and logic. the fossils are evidence, the observation. a theory is created to explain observations. that's how it should work: we observe fossils "change over time" "from simple to complex" in the geologic column. we explain this by supposing life evolved over time. darwin proposed a mechanism (natural and sexual selection), but any "new, improved or revised" theory of life would still have to explain the observation of the sequence seen in the fossil record.

you said,
"[evolution] cannot be duplicated, not the big stuff. Yes there is evidence and it is impressive. But evolution--like most of economics--will always be a theory not yet disproved."

consider plate tectonic theory. we can only test little parts of it. those we can test we can duplicate. we can't build a real mountain or a volcano. we cannot "prove" that india's crashing into asia over the past 50,000,000 yrs has built mt. everest. we can't test that idea in the lab, but that's the theory.

when we measure plate movements today, that's analogous to watching bacteria evolve. peter distinguishes btwn "micro" and "macro" evolution. he can't concieve of how millions of micro-evoltions make a macro-evolution. it's like not seeing how plate tectonics can make a mountain.

mary,
you use KJV, right?

you said,
"In any case the intentions of the gospels were not to write a history of Jesus and his teachings but to provide proof that he was who he said he was: God. Within a generation early Christians were adding the word Christ , or the anointed one, to the name of Jesus."

the gospel authors - if they were who they say they were, and if they wrote things down honestly and accurately - were probably getting "itchy". they were wondering where the hell jesus was! apparently, he promised (mk13, mt24, lu21) them he's be back for them, soon...in their lifetimes. if the gospels were written 20-60 yrs after jesus "died", the authors - if they were who they say they were, and if they wrote things down honestly and accurately - were getting old.

it might seem weird that it took "mark" et. al. 20+ years to bother writing about seeing god. but - if they were who they say they were, and if they wrote things down honestly and accurately - there was no need, no time, no point, to record things for posterity. according to jesus, he was supposed to come soon after the destruction of the temple.

regarding the gospels as "proof" of his divinity:

it's funny to me that the proof is his miracles. (how could it be any other way, i suppose?) people didn't believe him...but then they were "amazed". other people were, apparently, doing miracles too though, simon e.g. (but probably not as amazing ones as jesus). the OT is filled with magical things nad i get the feeling from reading the NT that miracles were still pretty common. sure, sometimes they were "bad" miracles, like evil curses or tricks from satan, but it was a time of magic. that stuff may have been convincing "proof" in first century judea, but it undermines credibility today. why's god so chintzy (or subtle) with his miracles these days...?

you said,
"Their belief that Christ was with them--present in the bread and wine which they subsequently consumed--led almost immediately to charges of cannibalism."

sheesh... why are people so literal all the time? i mean, did jesus have to say, "pretend this is my body..."?

keep going peter. i admire your persistence. your responses have been pretty sparse of late, but i understand life happens.

Error: 3:15 AM post

John not Matthew.

Evolution IMHO starts backward with the proof, in this case the fossils, and constructs a theory around them. And it cannot be duplicated, not the big stuff. Yes there is evidence and it is impressive. But evolution--like most of economics--will always be a theory not yet disproved. Unlike, say, knowledge of inert matter, the stuff of physics, which is subject to scientific laws and has been proved.

PamSM:

To prove a scientific hypothesis it needs to be duplicated. This is not possible with evolution which, by definition, took place over hundreds of millions of years. Additionally, there should be some type of control. Again, impossible. Any event set in history faces this problem: the problem of constructing a theory from a single event, a sample of one, which any scientist will tell you is too small. (Economics faces the same restriction. And we are suffering today from it.)

I am not a creationist, which obviously is wrong, although Genesis at least is correct in one sense, man is a late arrival in the universe.

I think Nicholas Wright, an impressive Biblical scholar, has competently handled the discrepancies in the New Testament. In any case the intentions of the gospels were not to write a history of Jesus and his teachings but to provide proof that he was who he said he was: God. Within a generation early Christians were adding the word Christ , or the anointed one, to the name of Jesus.

The above was explosive stuff, given the turmoil in Judaea at the time. Matthew is fraught with the tension between Christians and Jews and unhappily (for them) the former still thought they were Jews, right up until they were ejected from the temple. We have some evidence of early Christian worship in the Acts. They attended synagogue Sat. evening, and on Sunday they met in eachothers' houses, read aloud from their holy writings, broke bread and called down the Holy Spirit upon them. Their belief that Christ was with them--present in the bread and wine which they subsequently consumed--led almost immediately to charges of cannibalism.

FWIW I think Revelation was partly code. It was written during one of the more traumatic persecutions and the numbers--which of course were written in Roman numerals-- could also signify names.

"It seems quite likely that these were well-indoctrinated believers from different areas, each trying to promulgate his own vision of the story."

Interesting, analogous to some of the thinking of those who subscribe to the Documentary Hypotheses, analogous, not identical.

The question regarding the Christian Testament is what might have motivated the desire to promote various visions.

Maimonides (twelfth century), extremely important, if not vital, to Judaism did not take the Tanakh literally. In fact, he doubted the historical truth of some parts now considered factually based. In no way did this inhibit him as a practitioner of Judaism, to understate the case much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides

It's odd about who doubts what biblically speaking. I think Dever has made several good points regarding Abraham, best among them, that there might have been a nomadic leader upon whom the figure of the patriarch was built. Then, too, there is Dever's argument that if Abraham is entirely fictional, he is unique in epic, since nowhere else do we find such humble beginnings for the founding of a nation. This last continues to trouble even Rabbi Wolpe, made famous here by CCNL.

Then there is the mysterious figure of Deborah, whose existence I've yet to see questioned. (Why not?)

A lot remains unanswered with respect to the Tanakh, especially, concerning the excavation of sites relevant to Joshua.
----------------------------
Regarding the New Testament, in addition to what has been mentioned, there is the problem of the bread/flesh, blood/wine business, not engaged in by any Jew at any time anywhere in the known world. The prohibition against ingesting blood goes back long before Christ, obtains to this day. This is, of course, now considered an import from the mystery religions of the region.

The Sanhedrin could never have met on Passover as is also generally acknowledged, and, at, all events, would not have considered the matter of Jesus, if they were aware of his existence, which is doubtful. Again, there were prophets abounding, Sons of God, et al, all of whom were left in peace, viewed as afflicted, symptoms of the barbaric Roman occupation.

For the Jews, the Tanaim were the focus of attention, the hope for a future.
-------------------------
Perhaps the best analysis of the resurrection I've yet to see is in Festinger, "When Prophecy Fails." It is a participant observer study of a cult. Using his findings, Festinger ventures an analysis into the Resurrection phenomenon as described in the NT. I believe Onofrio has read it, could explain its relevance. It is a classic study, originally published in 1956, reissued in 2008.

Hi Pam,

Okay that will be my next endeavor, to provide experts that oppose your experts, although I admit I am out of my league here in my understanding as opposed to yours. You have definitely read more widely on the subject of evolution than I have.
(^8

Part 3

"15 Reasons to Take Genesis as History" by Dr. Don Batten and Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, sums up the Christian argument neatly in support of an exegetical biblical view on origins,

"•Jesus understood the Old Testament as history
•Jesus regarded Adam, Eve and Noah as historical people
•Genesis was written as history
•The rest of the Old Testament takes Genesis as history
•The New Testament takes Genesis as history
•Genesis history is consistent with God's nature
•Genesis as history explains the origin of death and suffering
•The Gospel presupposes the historical events of Genesis
•A consistent Christian worldview depends on Genesis as history
•Denying the history of Genesis disconnects Christianity from the "real world"
•The early church leaders accepted the time frame and global flood of Genesis
•The Reformers understood Genesis as history
•Atheism requires naturalism —Christians should not deny Genesis as history in order to accommodate it
•Abandoning Genesis as history leads to heresy and apostasy
•Why not take Genesis as history? Only the fallible speculations of historical "science" stand in the way"

I can go into this further if you like by supplying the exegetical texts for the Christian position.

ME: "As for evolutionary science, no, they don't look to God. Instead, in many cases, they make up theories to support their deeply grounded core values and deepest convictions, that have nothing to do with true science."

WALTER: "...you mean "core values" on which personal salvation hangs, like the presupposition that the bible is inerrant."

Either you take the Bible as the Word of God and the highest authority man can appeal to or you base your authority on the opinions of man as the ultimate judge of truth, and in that it depends on which man because subjective opinion is varied and different and changing. Can you point to any foundation that does not change with certainty? If not then how do you know that you have understood the changes as they actually took place? You assume. In this way God is necessary to make sense of anything.

As man being the ultimate judge your problems come in justifying this claim because the standard then becomes which man since views are subjective if man is the final reference point. Why does your standard necessitate that I believe it if it is just your subjective viewpoint or based on a collective of human subjectivity?

WALTER: "(which reminds me, have you solved that "childless abram attacking his descendents, the amalekites" errancy? (gen14:7 vs 36:12))"

It is on the back burner. As you can see, I'm having a problem keeping up with the correspondence. I answer what I am able to and try researching the rest and asking for God's help and understanding.

Don't get caught up in answering recent posts, Peter. We're still waiting for the old ones (whales, Noah).

Hope you had a good anniversary.

Part 2

WALTER: "as indicated by the "list of steves", 99% of all scientists "believe in" evolution. and a recent pew poll shows that about half of all scientists are theists. these theist scientists think the "observable universe" reveals that "god did it" via evolution over billions of years."

They are right about one thing, their belief that all this could not come about without the handy work of God, that this world shows design, purpose, plan and mind.

ME: "...and in the case of some Christians, in a way that does not contradict His word."

WALTER: "like i mentioned francis collins and ken miller see no conflict btwn science and the bible, but the ones you're talking about here, i.e., the flood geologists etc..., must check all scientific results for compliance with ancient mesopotamian cosmology. those "presuppositions" kind of limit their thinking."

It's your assumption. You are assuming that the Bible borrowed from these other ancient flood myths, but have you ever thought that they borrowed from the Bible accounts and from the accounts of those who witnessed and handed down these accounts to others?

It is the way you look at the evidence. But the troublesome issue is that without God's revelation of Himself and His creation we have no solid foundation in which anything can be known with certainty. Truth is objective. Logic is objective. They don't change. Without them there is no way we could know anything.

Something cannot be both true and false at the same time and in the same relationship. It needs to be based on an unchanging measure of which your world view has no such thing. It could all change tomorrow as you and Pam and so many others have pointed out so often, even when speaking about evolutionary science and scientists. You are not lead by where the evidence points but by your presuppositions of where it points to.

You see the uniformity in nature but why "should" the future be like the past? What guarantees do you have that evolutionary science will not change in the way things operate? Without a mind governing the universe and everything in it, there are no guarantees. Throw a ball into the air and gravity has its effects on it that we can measure, but what guarantees do you have that this will always be the case or always has been? The miracle is that anything "Should" stay the same (Colossians 1:17).

There is no conflict between science and the Bible, just evolutionary science and the Bible. All facts are God's facts. He made them what they are and understands their relationship in whole. You and I do not. We try to link them together as best we can and when you are talking origins in universe and life you are talking of something that no human was here to witness. It is all based on assumptions that such and such means such and such.

Hi Walter (October 5, 2009 10:42 AM),

Where do I begin??? Let me start at the bottom with your posts here.

WALTER: "peter,
i said,
"thank god scientists don't just "throw their hands up" and say "god did it" every time there's something they don't understand - or we'd still have polio and horse-drawn carriages."

ME: "That is a generalization if you are implying Christian scientists just throw up their hands in explaining the yet unexplainable."

WALTER: "not all scientists who are christians "throw up their hands" - just the ID crowd, just the ones who say, "DNA (or flagella or the blood clotting cascade or bombardier beetles) could not have evolved without god's help."

The ID crowd do not see what evolutionary scientists have been saying as meshing with the complexity of life, how these mutually dependent parts of the cell could come together by chance happening all at once. Take away one part and the other parts fail to function. They are synergistic. The flagellum was just one illustration in question.

There are deeper questions involved.

http://static.veritas.org/media/files/a96oreg10.mp3

ME: "They look for the way in which God did it through the observable universe..."

WALTER: "that's fine if you want to look at it that way. that's the way francis collins and ken miller look at it. they see no conflict btwn science and religion and see science as seeking to understand HOW god did (does) it."

Is that not the way the Christian should look at the facts? Your trust is in the bastion of modern evolutionary science. It is your highest authority that you can appeal to and you use your mind as the judge that balances the scale. I look at God's mind as the weight that balances it, and as true science as that which corresponds to His revelation to us.

The dichotomy between science and religion seems to come about with the rise of humanism, the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. Before and during this time many scientists looked at science as a way of thinking God's thoughts after Him and saw science as a way of looking at His glory and majesty in what was made. The shift came with "The Origin of Species." Darwin made it possible to think outside of this world view and it gained the support as the predominant view.

"If someone made it up, then they would have been one hell of a lot more consistent. In other words, they would have done a much better job of it."

Maybe, if it were made up by only one person, but it was by committee.

I think that biblical scholars are in agreement that the first we hear of Jesus is from Paul, some 10-20 years after his supposed crucifixion. Yet Paul ascribes no miracles to him, says nothing of a virgin birth, imputes no sayings to him. He's a quasi-spirit-world being who Paul knows only from his "visions." He says only that he died for our sins, was resurrected, and would soon return to judge the living and dead - little more.

The gospels were written in 70-90 CE (Mark, Matthew, & Luke) and later (John, probably well after the turn of the century). No one knows who actually wrote them, the names were "assigned." Each one seemed to try to top the one before, adding more quotes, more miracles, more detail. It seems quite likely that these were well-indoctrinated believers from different areas, each trying to promulgate his own vision of the story. It's impossible to take all the accounts of the Easter story and make one coherent narrative from them, leaving out no details.

Onofrio,

"Yet mere Topia is where we dwell, whether god-garbed or nongod-naked."

Unless we live in Ohio. :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia,_Ohio

See y'all.

Farnaz,

Thee:
"Most all of us, perhaps, atheists most of all, have some utopian faith in common, do we not?"

Yet mere Topia is where we dwell, whether god-garbed or nongod-naked.

There's a sharp, indelible mote that we all oyster.

Arminius,

I'm not among those minimalists who think there was no Jesus at all. I think there's good evidence that he was a real person who was executed by the Romans, and that the content of his teachings can be recovered somewhat, and debated. I also admit that the early Christians believed Jesus *rose* from death, vindicated by God, and that his spirit possessed those initiated into his sect. I do question the nature of that *rising*; the wound-exhibiting, fish-eating post-mortem Christ of Luke and John seems ahistorical to me, an embellishment of *a conviction of things unseen*.

As for those who deny the very existence of Jesus, I think it's a reaction to the romance of the *historical fact* that pervades much popular Christian apologetic. One extreme tries to tip the other off the tilting edge.

In Jesus, history and myth are tangled in a bramble, iron reality is bent by white-hot expectation, and deep human hopes run amok, as a whip cracks, a hammer strikes, and a veil is torn...

What rough beast?

Gosh, almost like the old days--atheists vs. believers! Sans some I miss, though, Mr. Mark, Gerry, Pagans, Yoyo, Spiderman, et al.

Pretty civil, thus far, but where does it go? End up? Believers are only troublesome when they become bigots, religionists, or foisters. Atheists, when they become "superior." Even Susan J. does not reprove the privately religious. If believing does not grieve you or anyone else, why not believe? (Whether or not empirical evidence suggests you might be factually incorrect?)

Shucks! (Shucks?) Most all of us, perhaps, atheists most of all, have some utopian faith in common, do we not?

Onofrio,

OK, we're doing the same thing, in a way. The first principles of Christianity, for me, are the actual teachings of Jesus. The resurrection is another matter - I accept it, noting all the discrepancies, but I am not exactly sure why. I am perfectly aware that it makes no sense, but where the hell is it written that religion should make sense in the eye of reason?

What I need is a better understanding of the theory of historicity. The evidence for the historical Jesus is second-hand and maybe cirumstantial. This is true of many historical characters, such as Solon of Athens. No one doubts that he existed. Yet many doubt, or deny, the existence of a historical Jesus, whether divine or not. Why? Do they feel threatened?

Sometimes we're all just dancers on the devil's dance floor.

Arminius,

"I am NOT preaching."

I know that, mate. And I am not so much seeking to refute your faith as to account for my abandonment of same. I'm perhaps being a little like Danielinthelionsden here, just musing in text.

You have often depicted your own faith-base as mostly Gospels-derived, placing the rest of *Scripture* in a secondary, tertiary, or even lower (i.e. Revelation) order of significance. It is with the Gospels that I take particular issue, narrowing my focus down to the resurrection, which Paul identifies as THE defining essence of Christian faith.

As far as I can see, the *bodily resurrection of Christ* is dubiously attested, albeit fervently believed. I find it easier to believe in the revival of Osiris, since in that case there is neither dogmatic *closure* nor pretense of historicity.

The Christ myth qua myth is OK with me; the much-touted, forensically substantiated, dead-man-walking Christ leaves me cold. Yet the vast majority of the Christian world is enchanted with it.

So I sup with Satan.

Onofrio,

If someone made it up, then they would have been one hell of a lot more consistent. In other words, they would have done a much better job of it.

Also, witness testimony is witness testimony, whether first hand or second hand.

Note well, all, that I am saying what I believe, and what I think that the few bits of second-hand evidence we have points towards. I am NOT preaching.

Walter,

The epistles were written from the mid 40's on. That is not a Fundie thing, but a biblical scholar thing.

Yes, there are issues with the dating of the Gospels, and also of the date of Jesus' birth. The census is a real problem.

Arminius,

Thee:
"it is kind of amazing that at least the synoptic Gospels are as similar as they are."

Not that amazing. Luke and Matthew are simply updated editions of Mark: they each augment his lean gospel with their own birth narrative and resurrection narrative, and integrate the *Q* sayings collection into the mix.

Comparing the bits they's added shows that they were not all that sure of the circumstances around Jesus' birth and his resurrection. If *Matthew* really was written by the member of the Twelve of that name, we strike some major problems when comparing his *eyewitness* resurrection account with that of Luke. In a nutshell, *eyewitness* Matthew narrates a vague "I will be with you always" Galilee-based Christophany; Luke keeps all the post-resurrection action (wound-probings, etc)in Jerusalem, from which Jesus definitively, visibly DEPARTS, ascending to heaven.
(Odd that *Matthew* feels that this astounding event, of which he was presumably an *eyewitness*, was not worth reporting! Nor does the author of the Fourth Gospel, another purported *eyewitness*.)

Christians often downplay the discrepancies by analogy with court witnesses that empahsise different details in their recollections. The analogy is invalid - the synpotic gospels are not first person eyewitness statements, but hearsay.

Quite simply: someone made sh*t up...

arminus,
i'm aware of all that chronology, but don't fundamentalists say paul wrote earlier - in the 50s?

and of course they like to put the gospels before 70 so that jesus' "prophesies" of the temple's destruction can be portrayed as prophesies. somebody here had a nice latin expression for that phenomonon (after-the-fact "prophesies").

interestingly, as you probably know, luke mentions "quirinius" and the census and all that. (imagine linus in the peanuts christmas special.) that would have been around 6 AD. so, we can add to the list of jesus' miracles that he was born twice! (born again...?)

Walter,

Given that the death (and resurrection!) of Jesus was probably in 29 AD/CE - He had to be born no later than 4 BC/BCE because that is when Herod the Great died - and given that, according to the Gospels, He was 30 when He began His ministry, and that lasted for 3 years - hence, 29 AD/CE. (I apologize for the long and disjointed sentence!)

Anyway, the first Gospel most probably written down was Mark, no later than 70. So we have a 40 year gap. It is possible, but not too likely, that some of the apostles lived that long. More likely is that the writers interviewed some witnesses, and a lot of people with second hand evidence. Luke says outright that he talked to witnesses. Given the gap, and the known propensity of witnesses to any event to have different stories, it is kind of amazing that at least the synoptic Gospels are as similar as they are.

onofrio:
"He believed in his God to the end, and was forsaken."

that is certainly the story we hear, but i'm actually skeptical that he said the things he's supposed to have. i hinted at that previously, and pam asked who was following him around with a steno pad. add the fact that nothing was written down until at least 20 (probably more) years later, and it's all too easy to see priests "putting words in his mouth".

onofrio:
"I think Jefferson's miracle-free sagely Jesus is wishful thinking."

yeah...me too...he probably was just one of a hundred lunatic would-be messiahs in first century judea. probably had a "jesus complex"...

nonetheless, to maintain relevance today, he's got to be that jefferson/humanist jesus.

Jesus was a sailor when He walked upon the water
And He spent a long time watching from His lonely wooden tower
And when He knew for certain only drowning men could see Him
He said All men are sailors then, until the sea shall free them
But He Himself was broken, long before the sky should open
Forsaken, almost human, He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.
- From the song "Suzanne"

Walter,

I think Jefferson's miracle-free sagely Jesus is wishful thinking. Eschatological ferment is key to Jesus' message, permeating the whole of it; not foisted on him by gospel redactors. I see him as a tragic figure who tried to take on the mantle of *Messiah*, made a stir with his shrewd, subversive, radical view of the Messianic agenda, and paid the ultimate price for his profound delusion. He believed in his God to the end, and was forsaken. The genius of the early Christians was to turn this utter abandonment into the path to glory, through their viral belief that God had approved Jesus' unshakeable faith-unto-shameful-death (rather like he had credited Abraham's faith as righteousness), and vindicated him post-mortem. The resurrection stories grew from this conviction, not vice versa as the canon would have it. And so the martyrs - the little Christs - teemed.

The whole Christian trajectory is a sort of potent denialism - sometimes magnificent, sometimes sickening. Jesus himself has become the paradigm *man for all seasons*, a repository of ultimate value, often regardless of the content of that value. In him, everyone is able to see themselves as a victim, and harness the power of the victim - the prey that came up trumps. Rescue for ressentiment. Everyone wants Jesus' endorsement for their agenda; his own agenda remains ambiguous, his true nature as elusive as his unknown face.

Sorry, not presuming to lecture you, Walter; just sharing, airing, riding off on a rant. :^)

All true, Onofrio. I am aware that the inclusion of Revelation in the Christian Canon was opposed by some, and I agree with them. I have poked my head into the Wikipedia article, but did not read it intensely. Since the anchor of my religion (as opposed to the spiritual) is in the Gospels, that is where I do the most head-scratching.

Arminius,

Thee:
"I pay no attention to Revelation, but I'm not your average Christian."

It may comfort you to learn that Revelation made it into the NT canon under a cloud - a grudging *pass conceded*. Christian divines like Eusebius and Jerome took a dim view of it, and the Eastern Orthodox don't read from it in church. Calvin was sceptical of its worth, and Luther initially rejected its apostolicity (though he later changed his mind).

So you're not too far out on a limb. But given the widespread misuse of Revelation by various alarmist Christian factions, it behoves liberal Christians like yourself to have a nuanced grasp of the book's possible interpretations. It repays study, if only to learn what all the fuss is about. The Wiki article is an excellent place to start.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Revelation

"or more accurately, if what people say he said about the end times is true..."

Yeah, I've always wondered who it was who followed Jesus around with a steno pad.

“If evolution--like any social science--can only be disproved, and cannot be duplicated, can we say it is scientific?”

Social science? Yes, of course it’s scientific. And controlled experiments are possible. Let’s review the scientific method in general, and as it applies to evolution:

1. OBSERVATION –This is the research phase. For evolution, we have an embarrassment of riches in this area: fossils, related physical features of animals, locations of fossils (vertical layers and geographical distribution), geographical distribution of living species, changes brought about by human selection… etc., etc., etc. There’s really far too much to list here. Did I mention the fossils?

2. HYPOTHESIS – Based on the observation, the scientist formulates a possible explanation that takes into account and unifies all of the observed phenomena. The hypothesis that came from the above observation was that evolution took place – that species branched and changed over time. Darwin added a hypothesis to explain how and why this took place.

3. PREDICTION – The hypothesis should allow the scientist to make testable predictions, the failure of which would falsify the hypothesis. There are many arising from evolution – that intermediate fossils would be found, and found in particular places at particular levels; that (pre-genetics) a method for the transmission of heritable characteristics would be found; that (post-DNA) animals that appeared to be related would have the most matching DNA, that geology would show the age of the Earth sufficient for present speciation…much more.

4. EXPERIMENTATION – Here is where bacteria, mice, and fruit flies (among others) come in, with their hugely greater reproductive and mutation rate. It also includes the work to uncover the ways that a cell works; reproduction works; DNA, RNA, and now micro-RNA function; paleontological digs; geological work, plate tectonics…so much more.

5. CONCLUSION – based on all of the above, the scientist forms a conclusion that summarizes the results and how well they match the hypothesis. At this point, the hypothesis may be falsified, or it may be deemed supported, but it is never considered proven on the basis of one (or one man’s) experiment. For evolution, every single prediction has panned out, every experiment added to the evidence in its favor. Evolution itself is now considered fact, and Darwin's theory one of the most well-supported in all of science.

There are a great many scientific theories that deal with things that took place with no human observer. That certainly does not mean that we should consider them simply a matter of pure speculation.

Walter,

As far as strange stuff in the NT, the Book of Revelation takes first prize.

At best, it is some kind of weird metaphor.
At worst, it is the ravings of a lunatic.
In the middle,it is proof positive that some of those early Christians were goin' down on some really heavy drugs.

I pay no attention to Revelation, but I'm not your average Christian. I came back into it from the outside, from spiritualism, and therefore claim the right to 'cherry-pick'.

arminus,
"I have to confess that I have serious doubts about all that end-of-days stuff. If it is metaphor, I do not understand, and I cannot take it literally."

if accurately related, they sound like the rantings of a lunatic... i'd go for that prong of c.s. lewis' (false) trilemma: liar, lunatic or lord.

i call it false because the most likely (but most boring) option is "legend".

Walter,

I have to confess that I have serious doubts about all that end-of-days stuff. If it is metaphor, I do not understand, and I cannot take it literally.

arminus,
"my take on the 'come with a sword' passage is that it is a warning: families will be divided against one another."

i totally agree that that is what is meant - that people, families included, will have different opinions about jesus' divinity. not that dividing families is what jesus set out to do, but that that will be a consequence of his coming.

still, if what he said about the end times and hell are true, jesus wasn't a very nice guy.

or more accurately, if what people say he said about the end times is true...

Walter and Mary C,

If I might intrude here, and stick out my neck into the shadowy field of exegesis, my take on the 'come with a sword' passage is that it is a warning: families will be divided against one another. This does not mean, IMHO, that Jesus Himself will wield a sword, that goes against all that he said before. Jesus also warns his disciples that they themselves will be the objects of violence.

mary,
"He used sword in the context of dividing families, but here PH would far excel my own poor attempts at Biblical exegesis."

i don't think dividing families is a humanist value...

i understand the "biblical" answer is that if family members are "unbelievers", it's better to stay away from them - i mean, unbelievers are going to hell, and you don't want any of THAT to rub off on you...

if i'm going to accept jesus as a "great moral teacher" (apologies to c.s. lewis), i'm going to have to think someone (matthew, mark, luke, john, paul) added all that doctrinal crap to jesus' humanist words.

i know peter can't pick and choose parts of the bible he like, but i can.

WIFC:

He used sword in the context of dividing families , but here PH would far excel my own poor attempts at Biblical exegesis.

I've asked Schaum for some input on constructing a theory with a statistical sample of one. Maybe he could add.

But this is all from me today.

Hope PH returns.

Best,
MC

mary,
i said,
"...but then, some humanist comes along and gives us an advanced morality - where we value charity and caring for the least among us."

and you said,
"Well, I would say that sounds a lot like Jesus Christ who predated Darwin and Nietzsche by a millennia or two. Sermon on the Mount anyone?"

i've got absolutely no problem at all with THAT jesus, thomas jefferson's all-natural, miracle-free, humanist, moral teacher jesus. that jesus "totally rocks" as the kids say.

it's the jesus who comes "bearing a sword" "to divide people" that bugs the hell out of me...

;-)

hi mary!
"[evolution] only has not yet been disproved."

correct. people have been trying ever since darwin, and as i mentioned somewhere, the scientist who could disprove it would be the most famous scientist of all time.

"noah's ark theory" on the other hand has been disproved (beyond any crazy kind of theological assertion that god is trying to "trick us" by hiding noah's ark evidence...).

peter,
"Until we start thinking God's thoughts after Him we are going to be wrong in establishing the true view of science. It just becomes a battle of he said, she said philosophy where one side is pitted against the other."

no! "he said, she said" is what YOU do when you say "the bible says..."

peter:
"That is why I prefer the presuppositional argument. It cuts to the chase by demonstrating that without an objective, ultimate, omniscient standard truth cannot be known."

presuppositionalism CUTS OFF any rational discussion because you begin by assuming your assumption is right and all others are wrong. i do (did) NOT do that. i read the bible and looked in the real world for evidence to confirm/deny it's assertions. did you read that link i gave way back there on who knows which thread about what evidence we should expect to see had there been a global flood a la noah's ark? here it is again for convenience.

http://evolution.mbdojo.com/flood.html

peter:
"...the ID movement is...questioning many of the problems with Darwinian philosophy and science."

huh? evolution IS NOT a philosophy. anytime you bring "darwinism" into, say, the realm of economics, politics or philosophy, it becomes an analogy. analogies are dangerous and often misleading because, well, they're just analogies - not the real thing.

My questioning of the ability of evolutionists to observe an experiment in 'real time'--there being no parallel universe some 4.5 billion years old to act as a control to life on earth-- does not mean I agree with the creationists view of the earth as described in Genesis. Finding fossils that can confidently be dated as 150 million years old makes a hash on creationists' account of a universe created 5,700 - 10,000 years ago.

peter:
"...the idea of Darwinism is starting to be questioned very intensely and new avenues are starting to be investigated as to how we got here."

what?! "darwinism" has been under fire from the beginning. it's always been "questioned", i.e., tested, against new evidence. haldane, i believe, said something like "finding a fossil rabbit in precambrian rocks would disprove evolution."

pardon me, but i just have to laugh at the "new avenues" assertion. "maybe god did it" is the oldest avenue there is.

peter:
"...to be a credible scientist by todays standards you have to support the old evolutionary boys club. That is the mindset. People are starting to question it and the boys don't like it."

are you kidding me?! the scientist who could disprove evolution (using evidence, not scripture) would be the most famous scientist ever. the reason every scientist not presuppositionally beholden to ancient mesopotamian cosmology "believes in" evolution is the evidence.

(un)naturally, you'll say that's because they're wearing their "evolution goggles". at least you've got to admit that these goggles seem to work really really well. when one "presupposes" evolution, all the evidence falls perfectly into place.

but, if you presuppose noah's ark you're left with "explaining away" sloths migrating to south america from ararat, and kangaroos migrating to australia (and only australia). you are also left trying to explain how the rock layers were laid down during the flood in such a sequence to make it appear as if life evolved "from simple to complex".

note that the point i'm making here is the sequence of fossils, not the millions of years.

and of course evolution has alway been questioned on religious grounds.

here are some resposes to peter's earlier posts which i addressed on susan's thread. i'll repost them here for peter's convenience.

peter:
"Did you open the link to Discovery Institute? It is just a brief clip."

yes i saw it. i'm curious as to who their resident "agnostic" is. i mean, really, think about it. how can you be agnostic if your theory is "god did it"?

did you read the "wedge document" link i gave you? if not, google it. do you know who their founder is? it's a religious group. when it suits them, they say they're not, but doing so just makes them look bad, and undermines their credibility on "scientific" isues.

the wedge document describes how the goals of the intelligent design movement are:

"To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies"

and

"To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"

sounds religious...

Walter wrote in the Jacoby:

the more "primative" a society, the more "darwinist" it is. the more it is survival-of-the-fittest in the social sense. "fit" here could mean strong or smart or pretty or even "socially skillful". a society guided by these principles would evolve into a meritocracy. the wheat gets separated from the chaff, and damn the chaff.

Nietzsche's philosophy in a nutshell and didn't he also say: "God is dead". His atheism was integral to his philosophy.

And WIFC continued: but then, some humanist comes along and gives us an advanced morality - where we value charity and caring for the least among us.

Well, I would say that sounds a lot like Jesus Christ who predated Darwin and Nietzsche by a millennia or two. Sermon on the Mount anyone?

OK, I'll start with a few thoughts:

*Firstly evolution--like any history--starts with a statistical sample of one. Controlled experiments are not possible. Thus it cannot be proved, but only has not yet been disproved.
OK, Dawkins has shown by simulations that it is possible but that does not mean that it happened that way .

*If evolution--like any social science--can only be disproved, and cannot be duplicated, can we say it is scientific?

peter,
"You're looking for a material, empirical, phenomenal, time/space evidential answer to a (what Kant would call) "noumenal world", something innate, one that is beyond our sensory perceptions and experience, that we don't know of its nature without presupposing God.

Logic would be from the noumenal world, in that we don't know where it came from (outside of God). There is nothing empirical about logic - it is a concept. How in a "brute fact" empirical world did logic develop?"

i'm not sure where you're going with this. are you saying that because we can't touch, taste, feel, see or hear logic, that that means it's "from god"? are you saying logic (and math? and courage? and morals?) are evidence for god?

logic and morals (and football and chess and religion) are HUMAN inventions. they don't exist outside of us thinking about them. they are part of what makes us more than 1.5% different from chimps (as DNA alone would indicate). logic, morals, football, chess and religion are passed on in what i've elsewhere called our "cultural chromosome".

if humans suddenly "lost" this chromosome (it's the sum of everything humans teach and learn), we would be right back there with chimps hunting and gathering, trying to eke out an existence, instead of having fancy chats about religion and morals.

peter, pam, mary, onofrio(?),
hope you find your way here.

peter,
i said,
"thank god scientists don't just "throw their hands up" and say "god did it" every time there's something they don't understand - or we'd still have polio and horse-drawn carriages."

to which you said,
"That is a generalization if you are implying Christian scientists just throw up their hands in explaining the yet unexplaable."

not all scientists who are christians "throw up their hands" - just the ID crowd, just the ones who say, "DNA (or flagella or the blood clotting cascade or bombardier beetles) could not have evolved without god's help.

you said,
"They look for the way in which God did it through the observable universe..."

that's fine if you want to look at it that way. that's the way francis collins and ken miller look at it. they see no conflict btwn science and religion and see science as seeking to understand HOW god did (does) it.

as indicated by the "list of steves", 99% of all scientists "believe in" evolution. and a recent pew poll shows that about half of all scientists are theists. these theist scientists think the "observable universe" reveals that "god did it" via evolution over billions of years.

in fact, these are very interesing statistics re: presuppositions. half of all scientists "presuppose" god and half don't, but 99% conclude evolution.

you added,
"...and in the case of some Christians, in a way that does not contradict His word."

like i mentioned francis collins and ken miller see no conflict btwn science and the bible, but the ones you're talking about here, i.e., the flood geologists etc..., must check all scientific results for compliance with ancient mesopotamian cosmology. those "presuppositions" kind of limit their thinking.

you said,
"As for evolutionary science, no, they don't look to God. Instead, in many cases, they make up theories to support their deeply grounded core values and deepest convictions, that have nothing to do with true science."

...you mean "core values" on which personal salvation hangs, like the presupposition that the bible is inerrant. (which reminds me, have you solved that "childless abram attacking his descendents, the amalekites" errancy? (gen14:7 vs 36:12))

greg,
i predict the "actors" we have to worry about with regard to nuclear weapons are the religious ones - muslim, specifically. who among us does not think that if osama bin laden (or similar) had a nuclear device they would feel morally compelled to use it on infidels.