The Bible

Thanks, kbm. I really appreciate that. Sorry if I came off kinda nutty. I just took a long nap and am feeling much better!

 

Are you suggesting with the analogy, "imagine an african american adopted by whites who beat him constantly because of his color. Would you tolerate his animosity towards whites". Yeah, I guess I would understand his aggression, but it seems like an asinine analogy. And you agree it is an asinine analogy correct?

The second you read my stupid analogy, what happened? You felt a tinge of disgust that I would equate an atheist in a christian home with a racial issue. Most people here, if they had any self respect or appreciation for their God certainly should be annoyed with my suggestion. And bravo, that comparison shouldn't be made. It's stupid. Humans are political animals, and we exchange ideas (hey lookie here! a bbs!); sometimes we're emphatic in those ideas. But judging someone because of fixed attributes (race, homosexuality) is idiotic. We are though, opinionated animals and we try to voice our opinions to help out others or learn the truth. That's why you responded to me (I guess; sometimes I have no idea where the random TheFreak quotes come from. TheFreak: "voice for the big guy"). But more to the point, that's why my mommy tried to shove her beliefs down my throat. My mommy, in all of her wisdom of having been told things from her mommy (hmmm... memes) 'knows' that God exists. In her emphatic style she heaped something upon me. She shoved stuff down my throat to be honest.

And that's why I implored MadMax to be patient. When you have stuff shoved down your throat, you gag. Sometimes it takes a while to shake stuff off. And sometimes you remember that the most important people in your life were different from you. People change. 'Ideas'. Memes. Chatting. Blah blah blah.

Just a couple of asides, and I'm probably blending from the gay thread (reading them both and then typing to a response has left me dazed). I love people's opinions, but can people become a bit more involved with the science before they summarily (now I know I'm probably confusing threads) reject stuff and start talking about their opinions again? yeah, yeah, science, but in my opinion god doesn't do this, or that. It's SCIENCE. Adjust your religion to the science, as believers before you have done! (see Ninja this is when you have to occassionally bite your tongue until after you've eaten for the first time since 7:30 a.m., cause I really want to write "SHUT UP OR LEARN THE METHODOLOGY BECAUSE YOUR ****ING 'OPINIONS' DON'T COUNT", but I shouldn't do that. I should inquire "oh, that's your specialty. yeah the other day when I was listening to am radio they taught me how to be an expert in taxes, let me give you some of my am radio approved tax advice now." That blends the smartassiness of TheFreak with the passive aggressiveness of... hmmm, nevermind there are no passive aggressive people here).

 

bump

 

Man I guess I got in late on this thread.

Couple of things to say.

All of those points at the beginning, about how in the future carbon dating will be mocked and regarded in the same fashion as we hold the ancient belief that the earth was flat, are ridiculous. Its pretty damn solid irrefutable science. dylan, science whizzes back me up here.

And if you say that the time period described in Genesis is open to debate, than the rest of the Bible is open to debate. You can't just pick and choose which parts of the Bible you want to keep sacrosanct.


Also I've always wondered why the church discarded the name of God, Jehovah. I suppose they felt that giving him a name would diminish the grandeur.


I believe religion is for those who can't handle the fact that there is nothing else out there after you die. You can't live forever in heaven. Not going to happen. People should just accept the fact that this life is it, and make the best of it.

I will say that religion is good for influencing people for the better. If it werent for religion, there would be a lot more bad and wrongdoing in this world. But... if it werent for religion there would be a lot less silly wars and senseless killing.

 

I wish I had faith. In any kind of religion. But I don't. I just can't, I don't feel it. And that makes me sad sometimes.

 

Here, folks, is your example of blind faith. "This is what I believe, not somebody give me the proof."

Also, the church did not discard the name of God. The Jews stopped pronouncing the name of God long before the church came into existence. They did so in an effort to keep from violating the command not to take the Lord's (Jehovah's) name in vain. I think it was a little superstitious, but whatever.

To make a long story short, I'm not even sure anyone knows how to pronounce the name of God, which transliterated from Hebrew is YHWH. The prevailing thought years ago was that it should be Jehovah, and the old American Standard Version (1901) translates it that way. So did Rotherham's translation. The prevailing thought now is that it should be Yahweh, not Jehovah. For example, here's a little bit of commentary on Exodus 18:1-12 (just pulled a book off the shelf, opened it, and started looking for the name Yahweh, so there's no significance to why I chose this passage): "Once more Yaheh has provided for his people. Once more he has promised to continue that provision. And once more Yahweh's Presence has been proven, to Israel and to Israel's enemies" (Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 3, 238).

It's true that when the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it replaces the personal name of God with the general title, "Lord," but that was already being done by the Jews.

If there's nothing else out there after we die, I can't figure out why people couldn't handle it. You're not going to know the difference. As for the rest, once again, nothing more than blind faith.

 

If I weren't so lazy TraJ, I'd give you the sort of arguments that I think you'd respect. Then again, you and I both know that anything I write here will not harm your faith. Nor can anything you write injure my comprehension of the issues.

Now I understand your problem w/ little kids that begin to echo everything they hear in class, true or not... but you have to remember there's a bigger trend in college in which kids learn to be shaken from their foundations and question the world a bit more (if they haven't gotten those tools already). That's decidedly different than going away from all empirical data (reviewing everything you know about the world) and saying, hmmmm... rocks, plants, animals, monera... oh *leap* invisible superman (insert greatest american hero soundtrack). Hey lookie here, I can make nucleotides in a jar, oh I can test the isotopic signature of C3 or C4 plants, oh I can see the trends of consumption through grazers vs. browsers (those signatures). Oh I can mathematically prove the decay constant of K40 to Ar39 (or Ar40 to Ar39 too). Oh the East African rift valley is volcanic and lookie at all of these primates, look at the Laetoli footprints, look at the foramen magnum at this little bugger we just dug out of the ground. Look at this innominate. Look at the genetics that shows Pygmy and Common Chimps split off (assuming a standard mutational rate) around ~1.7mya. Oh lookie here at all of these Australopithecines that are certainly bipedal. Oh lookie here now the genetics shows that humans and the mrca of chimps split off at ~5.7 - ~6.5 mya. Oh lookie here, the present is the key to the past (everything we do is comparative studies, or a ton of math and then figure out why your model is stupid w/ again modern homologues). Science is actually entirely common sense. There's nothing secretive about it, there's nothing counterintuive about it. It's open source. Pick up a journal. And deal with it (prove it wrong or catalogue it's importance).

Religion is slightly different than all of that. I have never met a God, so I can't quite use one as an explanation for things that occurred in the past or things that will occur in the future. That is not to say that God and Science cannot coexist. However, I suggest that you absorb the science and then rewrite your religion thing to deal with the real world (i.e. if you were a software developer you wouldn't just walk into a company and say "I wrote this thing to handle your business plan" w/o knowing something about their business). History has shown that religion has always been hesitant, and then receptive of the science. I don't know how to distinguish between current people hesitant... and then receptive to evolution as being any different from people in the past insistent that the world being flat... and then receptive to it being circular.

But, it wasn't their fault of course,

they

asked

the church

for positions on the empirical world.

 

That's a pretty pompous generalization.

 

how old are you?

i know a lot of people who think like that and they're young.

sometimes it makes me sad too.

 

I find this a little arrogant. I hear the Galileo argument used alot. Evolutionists have never falsified information, lied, or just flat out made stuff up? They don't have their own agenda?

If there is an omnipotent, omnipresent God then he is beyond human understanding. He isn't confined to the laws of physics or a linear timeline because he created them. The Bible as a whole is more concerned with the destination of men's souls than anything else.

 

Its not blind faith Traj...

I know what it is, i just can't remember all the scientific particulars.

 

As I frequent this thread, your line really moves me...everytime. Don't worry, your desire is your first step.

RR