Creationists

Post Reply New Topic

Actually poor Jesus was nailed up on the cross by roman thugs. The interpretation of that as the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God happened after the fact.

ruveyn

It is hinted when Abraham nearly sacrificed his own son for God (whom had an angel intervene).

is that a bit of jewbaiting I see? You really need to come to terms with that.

I point out a hint of the coming of Jesus in the Old Testament, and you accuse me of being an antisemite... What your smear calling me a racist no longer work?

Antisemitism is a manifestation of racism.

You two do know that harassment and slander are both crimes.

Although I am reasonably sure that the percentage of thinking people in those ancient times was not much different from that percentage today it must be considered that a coherent mind set of rational analysis was a rare event in those days in comparison to that of today. The long struggle to firm up that rational thinking not only provided humanity with a wealth of extremely useful attitudes that was fruitful in establishing new approaches to manipulating the world but was the basis for all natural phenomena had to be established and confirmed. The solid body of validated explanations did not exist then. It is not that people in general varied in intellect in those days but the world was not educated to understand that the existence of supernatural phenomena was not necessary to comprehend puzzling events. The habit that is more or less universal today of seeking natural causes for observed events was rare or almost non-existent. Ghosts and goblins and gods stalked the world because other explanations for oddities were not understood or did not exist. People see what they want to see and people today see things in the light of reason, not of fantastic legend and reason has become the sturdy tool of rationality which, at least up to now, has not failed. Established religions have fought vigorously to destroy reason in order to preserve faith. torturing and burning and murdering rational people who found that faith was total nonsense and said so. That battle continues.

"COULD have been"? Do you KNOW that they were?

The only empirical evidence is the text itself. I don't get that any of the writings really are the writings of a mad man. The documentation is all we have, and that's all anyone has to base a conclusion on. Do you think it's reliable or not? I can't answer that question FOR you, but the clues that are available to us lead me to trust the reliability of it. There are ancient manuscripts that help us decide whether the Bible we have is the same in use in ancient time. So we do have empirical evidence that it was copied accurately. We can conclude that the ancients believed it and protected it. People tend to not be so careful with fiction--as history demonstrates. So the way I see it, that increases the likelihood that there is SOME truth to it. If there is SOME truth at the very least, then it could be that all of it is true. As with anything, one must examine it to decide for one's self whether it really is. Obviously I see no problems here.

That is the crucial difference. You are partial to seeing no problems. Many people rationally do see problems.

The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experiments. A text is not empirical evidence.


You never read Ezekiel and Revelations?


If you're talking about the period from approximately the Hebrew conquest of Canaan onward, then there is plenty of archaeological evidence, as well as other historical documents. If you're talking about the first few chapters of Genesis, then you can base some conclusions on similar stories from Mesopotamian mythology.


The creation story? That's a silly question.


I can.


A few paragraphs in the Bible, versus thousands of scientific manuscripts on evolution?


Yeah, so?


Homer's tales were carefully preserved.


The Bible's creation story? Nah--it's just a ripoff of Mesopotamian myths.


Now that's some extremely fallacious reasoning.


Along with all of the other evidence, if one wishes to bother.


None whatsoever?

If you want to talk about the text taken as it is written, then the text of the Bible is mostly false, particularly the creations story.

Bishop Ussher took the bible literally and computed the age of the Earth to be in the neighborhood of 6000 years which we know is not the case.

Since the bible is mostly not true, one may question the integrity or sanity of the folks who wrote it. The most charitable way of doing this is to assume the people who wrote it believed in Bronze Age nonsense and did not know just how wrong they were.

ruveyn

WRONG. Written statements that can not be vetted by the original author are, at best, hearsay.

Are they the writings of a sane man? Are they the writings of a well man, or even a well-fed man?

Then the so-called "evidence" is meager, at best.

No.

Do you trust the reliability of Plato's account of the destruction of Atlantis?

All they prove is that the same stories used to dupe people into giving their money to the Pharisees are being used today for the benift of televangelists and doomsday prophets.

But not empirical evidence that the stories themselves have any validity.

Just because a bunch of "ancients" may have believed the stories does not make them true.

The stories of Atlantis, the "miracles" attributed to Buddha, and the Gilgamesh epic all pre-date both the Old and New Testaments - the first appearance of the OT being about 400 BCE, and the first appearance of the NT being about 50 CE. People tend to be careful with many forms of literature, including fiction - which is a very likely explaination of the Bible's longevity.

The antiquity and popularity of a myth, and belief in it, prove nothing. In your case, you have likely first believed, and then sought "evidence" to support that belief. Such is the way of religionists.

Not at all.

If you examine the several posts that I've made on the Scientific Method, you would see that if an assumption is testable then it becomes an hypothesis. Once successfuly tested, an hypothesis becomes a theory. Once successfully vetted by peer-group review, a theory becomes a principle.

But when an assumption can not be successfully tested (try using prayer to regenerate a lost eye or limb), or it is simply untestable (try determining the exact nature of the nearest extra-terrestrial civilization), then it is only an assumption, and is therefore useless as a basis for any scientific claim.

Science may begin with assumptions, but the vast majority of those assumptions are discarded - Science is the cemetary of forgotten assumptions and dead religions.

A scientist believes in proof without certainty. A bigot believes in certainty without proof. (another great quotation from the 1984 book Science and Creationism edited by Ashley Montagu). And when new evidence falsifies a scientific belief, no matter how cherished it may be, it is discarded. Contrast that with some religious people who continue clinging to certain interpretations that have been falsified many times.

The order of creation in the first couple chapters of Genesis is contradicted by the evidence of the physical world. Saying that each "day" may represent a creation event and not necessarily a literal 24-hour day does not solve this problem. The events are still out of order compared to the physical world. Either the Bible is false, or God is a trickster to plant false evidence to mislead us to Hell, or maybe, just maybe, those who focus on the Bible as a textbook of history and science are missing the point entirely.

It is material evidence that can be observed or experienced. Further, the Bible does contain information that was gained from observation. We may not have the people themselves who wrote down what they observed, but we DO have their writings.

Are you saying Ezekial and Revelations were written by insane men? And IF this is your position, did you come to that conclusion by ASSUMING that God doesn't or cannot reveal eschatological events? Eschatological writings are characterized by heavy symbolism. Sometimes the symbols are explainable by making connections with things the person to whom the message is given already knows. The wheels covered with eyes, for example, indicate that the message is from God because their understanding of God is that He is all knowing--the wheels indicate that God has sent the message because the wheels are covered with eyes and are, therefore, all-seeing. Properly understood, there's no reason to ASSUME madness here.

Do you ASSUME that? Why isn't it plausible that Mesopotamian mythology actually derives from the same source as the stories in Genesis, albeit somewhat corrupted?


I personally lean more in favor of special creation. I can't claim to have the skill or training necessary to understand or explain biology among other things that are dependent on evolution. It appears to me to be a rather specialized field of study that I simply don't have time for given my interests and my own work. I do know it doesn't really concern itself with sacred matters. I do know that an inflexible reading of Genesis is unnecessary. Genesis leaves the mechanism for how species originated open, and I think it's a mistake to try to use Genesis or any other part of the Bible as a science text. You wouldn't use a collection of Shakespearean sonnets to understand the internal structure of a tapeworm, would you?


Not nearly as well, though.


Do you ASSUME this to be true?


Not EXTREMELY fallacious. I said "it could be," read "it's entirely POSSIBLE." If you can determine that some aspects of something are true, you can also determine that other aspects might also be true. While absolute certainty is never a guarantee, you can determine that if something has a reputation of being truthful there is a likelihood that directly unverifiable things are also true. What reason is there to lie? Now if I'd said "If there is some truth at the very least, then ALL OF IT has to be true," that would have been an error.


Nope. But elsewhere, it's interesting to me that a lot of assumptions are being made in an effort to refute what I believe! No one seems to have taken up the challenge I offered to simon_says and benbob.


Does that necessarily invalidate them? What about the American Declaration of Independence? Do we need to go ahead and give ourselves back up to the British?

(I generally disagree with the statement on logical grounds)

I think insanity can be ruled out. The other questions seem irrelevant to me.

Meager? I dunno...it's a pretty big book.

How did you come to that conclusion?

I have no way of knowing how Atlantis was destroyed. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. Actually FINDING the lost continent of Atlantis would be a start. I suppose otherwise one might question how Plato himself got the information. But to be honest, I can't claim to know much about Atlantis theories or legend, having only really read Plato in passing. Based on the information that I have I am unable to give a proper answer.

ALL they prove? How did you come to this conclusion?

How do you KNOW the stories themselves AREN'T valid? If they WERE invalid, why go to all that trouble of maintaining the text?

It doesn't make them "not true" either. Why assume that the stories can't be true?

The first appearance of the OT being about 400 BCE is only partially true. The source documents of the OT go back a lot longer.

Assuming you believe the Bible to be untrue: How did you come to the conclusion that the Bible is untrue?

OK. So give me material, physical, empirical evidence of logic without using logic.

Or maybe God's idea of a day does not = 24 hours, we are talking about the being that invented space/time.