Since, odds are, you are likely to get a candidate who is some sort of Christian, we'd all be a lot better off if he/she did take the Bible for what it does say, since it doesn't say much of anything about how a country ought to be governed. What it does do is give guidelines for individuals to live their lives by. Nothing wrong with that.
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off.
I said, "Don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said.
I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?"
I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?" He said "Religious."
I said, "Me too! Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian."
I said, "Me too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant."
I said, "Me too! What franchise?" He says, "Baptist."
I said, "Me too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He says, "Northern Baptist."
I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He says, "Northern Conservative Baptist."
I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist or Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist?" He says, "Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist."
I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Eastern Region?" He says, "Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region."
I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1912?" He says, Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1912."
I said, "Die, heretic scum!" and I pushed him over.
Nice try, Kevin, but when I said things along the lines of "Give me one good reason to support the very things we don't believe in. And "at least he isn't a Democrat" is NOT the right answer," you all ridiculed me and accused me of sitting out the election. You made your choice; the least you could do is own it.
Heh, now I remember. See, there's a guy who doesn't take his Bible for what it says, and it does certainly say "Love your enemy," not "push him off a bridge."
Do I wish you (and a bunch of other people) had voted for McCain? Yes. Do I wish McCain was currently President-elect? Yes. Do I disagree with your reasoning? No.
I made my choice. You made yours. All of the choices available to us were poor. Hey, I didn't want Obama to win. No choice other than McCain would have prevented that. As the song goes, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." But in the aftermath of the election, maybe - just maybe - somebody might freaking learn something.
But I doubt it. The GOP is called "The Stupid Party" with good reason.
Interesting that 11 of 12 items are utterly non-controversial and draw immediate assent by all readers. Yet those same readers will then try to put their own spin on why the 12th is controversial and how their own view of it is the right one.
If there is a failure of GOP leadership, it has to be that they allow the divisive elements to be incorporated into the party platform. A coalition agreeing on 11 elements shouldn't fall apart because we disagree on one.
If "taking the Bible for what it says" generates so much controversy, I'd wager that it's because that's a lot harder/more ambiguous than it sounds, more than anything.
Even Martin Luther seems to have had problems with it.
I don't think that it's really that difficult, LabRat.
1. Love your neighbor
2. People without sin may cast the first stone
3. Mind the plank in your own eye before you worry about the speck in someone else's.
etc...
Yes, there are parts of the Bible that are hard to understand, and some parts that are hard to swallow. But there are other parts which are very, very clear. Yet some people "misunderstand" even the very clear portions. (Markadelphia, Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, the United Council of Churches, etc.) Why do you suppose that is?
Quite simply, many people don't understand the Bible because they don't want to understand it. Other people, such as Martin Luther in this case, do work at understanding the Bible, but for various reasons (lack of time, higher priorities, or other reasons) never overcome failings which they've grown up with.
In Martin Luther's case, he definitely had bigger fish to fry. He didn't even see a Bible until he had been a priest for many years. (I don't remember exactly how many, but it truly was scandalous.) That's just how the Roman Catholic Church was at that time. When he was finally able to access a Bible, he started climbing a huge learning curve just learning scripture, understanding it, and eventually doing an initial translation from Latin into German. Furthermore, not only did he do this without help or study aids, he did it in the face of direct opposition of "The Church", even threats to his life. It shouldn't be surprising that he didn't get everything right.
In fact, his situation is fairly analogous to the founding of this country. Many of the founders recognized that slavery was incompatible with the ideals this country was being founded on and wanted to put an end to slavery as part of creating the Constitution. Unfortunately, slavery was a make or break issue, and if they had insisted on ending slavery, the Constitution would not have passed. Period. Therefore, they had to compromise on slavery so they could accomplish the best good possible at that time.
Martin Luther accomplished great good in his life. He cared about the truth and fought for it. That he accomplished as much as he did is remarkable. That he still had failings is not.
That said, what does the failings of one man have to do with whether or not the Bible is true? You could list name after name of both actual and self-proclaimed christians who have held stupid ideas or disagreed with the Bible. You could almost certainly include me in that list. (I work at it, but I probably have something wrong.) I could easily list just as many (and more likely more because Christians are a minority) names of atheists who hold stupid ideas or disagree with other atheists. But you and I both know that truth is not determined by counting votes or flaws in their adherents, but by examining the evidence.
Kevin: most if not all of the smiting done in the Bible was either done in the OT or done to the early Christians. Remember also that the NT supercedes the OT wherever they overlap. Eg eating pork... it is not what goes into a man's mouth that makes him unclean but what comes out (no gay jokes please).
"What about smiting? There was a lot of smiting going on, IIRC."
That's the understatement of (ahem) eternity, Kevin. If you read it exhaustively, you'll find a total of 2,391,421 listed and/or counted, plus millions more mentioned but neither listed nor counted (including, but not limited to, all humans then alive except Noah's family) who were "smitten" to death by God.
Goodness. You generated a lot of comments on that one Kevin.
In between the post-election list and the post Kevin quoted I wrote another post (God and Government and Rights) that might help determine what my original idea was about the Constitution and the Bible. Feel free to visit, but in a nutshell, I mention the Constitution and the Bible on that list with the same words but as separate items for a reason. The Constitution and the Bible address two different things. I am a Christian but I do NOT believe that America is some kind of "Christian nation", whatever that means. All the heat and rancor is generated when one side or the other tries too hard to make them serve the same purpose.
The Bible and the Constitution are not two of the same, nor are they mutually exclusive. And the great thing about both is that, at least in America, you are free to believe or disbelieve either one as you see fit. And THAT freedom is one that I intend to stand back to back with Kevin to defend.
I don't think that it's really that difficult, LabRat... Remember also that the NT supercedes the OT wherever they overlap.
Really? I seem to have missed the language in the NT that says you can ignore, at least some parts of the OT. And that isn't even going into a discussion of the texts that were omitted, like the gospel of Peter. Y'all do realize that the Bible was settled by committee.
"And all that smiting was done in the OT. Not one person was harmed by God in the NT."
Not even one? Let's examine Acts 12:11-23, shall we?
"12:11 And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a surety, that the LORD hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews.
"12:12 And when he had considered the thing, he came to the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark; where many were gathered together praying.
"12:13 And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken, named Rhoda.
"12:14 And when she knew Peter's voice, she opened not the gate for gladness, but ran in, and told how Peter stood before the gate.
"12:15 And they said unto her, Thou art mad. But she constantly affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his angel.
"12:16 But Peter continued knocking: and when they had opened the door, and saw him, they were astonished.
"12:17 But he, beckoning unto them with the hand to hold their peace, declared unto them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, Go shew these things unto James, and to the brethren. And he departed, and went into another place.
"12:18 Now as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers, what was become of Peter.
"12:19 And when Herod had sought for him, and found him not, he examined the keepers, and commanded that they should be put to death. And he went down from Judaea to Caesarea, and there abode.
"12:20 And Herod was highly displeased with them of Tyre and Sidon: but they came with one accord to him, and, having made Blastus the king's chamberlain their friend, desired peace; because their country was nourished by the king's country.
"12:21 And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them.
"12:22 And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.
"12:23 And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost."
Well, it was God'S agent, the angel of the Lord. Does that count?
C'mon Kevin, we've had this discussion before. Have you forgotten the reasons for the smiting?
Let me put it this way. Do you oppose or support the death penalty? Why or why not? Do you agree that private individuals have the right to defend themselves using lethal force if necessary? Why or why not?
I believe I already know your answers, so I'm just going to continue.
If you consider death at the hands of men to be the proper penalty for some crimes, then why does it bother you that God also considers such a punishment to be just? In fact, given the restraint shown by God in the instances described in the Bible (He allowed far worse than what we consider reasonable), I'm convinced that it would have been totally unjust for God to not act.
After all, we're pissed off that Bill Ayers is "guilty as sin and free as a bird" for his crimes. Yet if you look at those cases where God acted, those who God killed made Ayers look like a rank beginner.
For example, Genesis 19 describes the smiting of Sodom and Gomorrah for their crimes. There are a couple of interesting features in this story. The most obvious is the actions of the men of Sodom:
"Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter; and they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.”
(Genesis 19:4-5 NAS95S)
Notice that this section is careful to point out that every single man who was capable of doing so showed up and demanded to rape Lot's visitors. You can't get much thoroughly corrupted than every single person. Lot even offered his virgin daughters, but they were so intent on committing the greater crime against God that they passed up the lesser crime. (Can you imagine a woman being gang raped by an entire town being a "lesser crime"?)
But what's often overlooked, is that in spite of this level of utter baseness on the part of the men of Sodom, God was willing to give the entire city a pass if there were just 10 righteous people in the town. Considering that there would have been thousands of people in those cities, even 10 people (not just men) would have been a fraction of a fraction of a percent. How anxious is God to "smite" a city if he's willing to skip the smiting for just 0.02%* of their population? Does this sound like a "rush to judgement" to you?
(*I don't know the actual percentage, this is an estimate based on archeologists' best guess estimate of the population in a 5 city area which they think included Sodom and Gomorrah. There there were about 260,000 people living in that area. I used a guestimate of 40,000 people just in Sodom.)
Now compare that reluctance to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah to this video from San Francisco. These people in the video are nowhere near as bad as the people of Sodom, yet I kept thinking "I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit." How 'bout you? Are you as tolerant as God is?
Then there's Jonah. God sent him to Ninevah, the capital of the Assyrians. The Bible doesn't describe what Ninevah was like, but other historical records do. Imagine an entire city filled with people like Saddam Hussein and his sons. If they had had plastic shredders, they probably would have used them. One of their favorite tricks was to take someone out to the desert, bury them up to their necks, then stake their tongue out and leave them there until they died.
Jonah was well aware of how bad Ninevah was and he didn't want to go, not because he was scared, but because he wanted God to destroy Ninevah. In fact, he was well and truly pissed off that the Ninevites repented and God didn't destroy them. Does that sound like a "rush to judgement" or "anxious to smite them" to you?
BTW, a couple of generations later, the Assyrians reverted to their bad behavior and refused to repent, and God did indeed destroy them for their crimes.
Can you actually point to even one case where God arbitrarily smote someone? I can point to numerous examples where God held off (and is holding off) on punishing those who deserve it to give them every opportunity possible to do the right thing.
1. What if thy neighbor sold out your Jewish/Kurdish/whoever neighbors? When do you stand up to evil when it's your neighbor, which it may well be?
God intends for us to use our common sense. If our neighbor is doing evil to another neighbor, then we are called upon to stop it. There is no definition of "love" I'm aware of that suggests we must allow someone to commit evil, any more than a parent is considered loving for allowing a child to misbehave.
2. So you can't judge the actions of others if you yourself have done wrong? How wrong? When? Can you judge ever? See also #1.
Of course we can judge the actions of others. Judgement means to discern right from wrong, which we are clearly directed to do elsewhere in the Bible. Ben did not quote the entire passage from the Bible, which does not forbid judgement but admonishes us to judge fairly. Matthew 7:2-5 says that how we judge others is how God will judge us. So go ahead and do it, but be fair, because your own standards will be applied to you.
The concept of figuring out which books are scripture and which are not is much like figuring out which paintings were created by a certain painter and which were not. For instance, during his lifetime, Picasso created quite a number of paintings. When you look at any particular painting, you're either looking at a painting which Picasso created, or you are not. For some paintings the history is crystal clear and there's no question that it's Picasso's. For others its necessary to examine the evidence and determine whether it is, or is not, by Picasso. The examiners do not create Picasso's canon, they figure out which paintings are his and which are not.
"I seem to have missed the language in the NT that says you can ignore, at least some parts of the OT."
Here you go, starting with the Old Testament:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
(Jeremiah 31:31-32 NAS95S)
Notice that the old covenant was specifically with the nation of Israel, not with the entire world. Biblical covenants were either unconditional (I will do this no matter what you do) or conditional (I will do this as long as you do that). The laws given in Exodus, Deuteronomy, Numbers and Leviticus were part of the old covenant given only to Israel. This covenant was conditional, requiring the Jews to obey the laws they were given.
There are also laws/principles given in the Bible with no limiting scope. For instance…
“Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.”
(Genesis 9:6 NAS95S)
… is stated to Noah as part of an unconditional covenant given to all his descendents. (That's every living human.) This is also one of the few instances where God specifically changes the laws for everyone:
“Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.”
(Genesis 9:3-4 NAS95S)
Prior to the flood, animals were not permitted to be used as food. The later restrictions against eating ruminants, shellfish and the like, were part of the laws given only to Israel.
Now, getting back to the old vs. new covenants, Jesus referred to Jeremiah 31:31 during the last support when He told His disciples that He was establishing the new covenant:
And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.
(Luke 22:19-20 NAS95S)
The writer of Hebrews goes into a little more depth in explaining the effect of the new covenant:
When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
(Hebrews 8:13 NAS95S)
Finally, here are two instances where it's made clear that the Jews are no longer bound by the old covenant and neither are christians:
But Peter began speaking and proceeded to explain to them in orderly sequence, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying; and in a trance I saw a vision, an object coming down like a great sheet lowered by four corners from the sky; and it came right down to me, and when I had fixed my gaze on it and was observing it I saw the four-footed animals of the earth and the wild beasts and the crawling creatures and the birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I said, ‘By no means, Lord, for nothing unholy or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a voice from heaven answered a second time, ‘What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.’”
(Acts 11:4-9 NAS95S)
When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?
“We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’ know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.”
(Galatians 2:11-16 NIV)
One final thought. Just because a law was given to Israel does not necessarily mean that we are not to obey them. Some actions are still called evil in the New Testament. For example, adultery, murder, etc. Other laws were given only to Israel, and no one else is required to follow them. Examples include prohibitions against eating shellfish and ruminants, cooking meat and vegetables together, and wearing mixed fabrics. In other words, there are two distinct sets of laws, one for the Old Testament Jews and one for everyone else. There is frequently overlap.
Think of it this way.
Each state has its own set of laws. Texas has a law requiring drivers to stop at a stop sign. Pennsylvania has a similar law. If I'm driving in Texas and I run a stop sign, I've broken Texas law, not Pennsylvania law, even though both states have the same law. This is how adultery works in the Bible. OT Jews and everyone else both have independent but similar laws against adultery. The OT Jewish laws specify the death penalty, while the prohibition against adultery for everyone else does not specify a penalty which a government is to enforce.
On the other hand, (if I remember correctly) Texas law forbids concealed carry into bars which earn 51% or more of their revenues from alcohol. Pennsylvania laws have no such restriction. So I have no problem carrying into a bar here in PA, while Texans can't do so, even if they don't actually drink any alcohol. That's why I, as a christian, am free to eat shellfish (though if I want to stay healthy, I'll make sure it has been handled according to EPA regulations) and Old Testament Jews could not.
I think we're reacting to different common pet peeves, Ed (and Sarah).
My point was not that the Bible is contradictory or untrue, but that it is in no way, shape, or form, simple. I hear a lot of variations on "the Bible for what it says" as though that should be an extremely clear-cut and simple and easy thing to do, yet the entirety of Western history makes it clear that it is none of these things. Sarah says that we are to judge fairly, but what's fair and where are the guidelines? There aren't any- you have to use your judgment, and your mileage may seriously vary per person.
I may not believe in Jesus Christ, but I do believe in a universal human nature, and I am well aware that Christians, atheists, and everyone else share the same failings- Luther included. But I also hear some variation on "if we just had REAL Christians doing this, then..." an awful damn lot, and it just ain't so.
"These people in the video are nowhere near as bad as the people of Sodom, yet I kept thinking "I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit." How 'bout you? Are you as tolerant as God is?"
Since God labels sodomy as a crime to be punished with death and all I have to say about it is that it's not for me, I'd say I'm actually more tolerant than God. What do I win?
"... I'd say I'm actually more tolerant than God."
I am, too. I can't think of any offense that is so awful, so heinous, that a fitting punishment therefor is barbaric physical torture that never, ever ends. I think that fifty billion years or so of such torture ought to be enough to cover anything.
Kevin:"Nothing spurs a comment thread like religion or abortion!"
Ed:"Shouldn't that be "religion or Markadelphia"?"
No, Ed, a comment thread spurred by religion or abortion is not like a comment thread spurred by the resident troll. The difference is that religion and abortion issues can be resolved with relative ease and with finality.
"I hear a lot of variations on "the Bible for what it says" as though that should be an extremely clear-cut and simple and easy thing to do, yet the entirety of Western history makes it clear that it is none of these things. Sarah says that we are to judge fairly, but what's fair and where are the guidelines? There aren't any- you have to use your judgment, and your mileage may seriously vary per person."
Like I said before, some things the Bible teaches are crystal clear. For example:
"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God."
(1Corinthians 6:9-10 NAS95S)
or
let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by this name this man stands here before you in good health. “He is the STONE WHICH WAS REJECTED by you, THE BUILDERS, but WHICH BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone. And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”
(Acts 4:10-12 NAS95S)
Do you see anything unclear about these statements?
Actually, there is a standard for interpreting scripture. It's called hermeneutics.
"In its technical meaning, hermeneutics is often defined as the science and art of biblical interpretation. Hermeneutics is considered a science because it has rules and these rules can be classified into an orderly system. It is considered an art because communication is flexible, and therefore a mechanical and rigid application of rules will sometimes distort the true meaning of a communication. To be a good interpreter one must learn the rules of hermeneutics as well as the art of applying those rules."
Aristotle had a lot to do with establishing the practice of hermeneutics, and it's reliable enough that it's used for analyzing many forms of communication, not just the Bible. In fact, I'm sure you've personally made use of some of those practices when analyzing statements by Obama, McCain, Markadelphia, and so forth.
The most basic of those rules is described somewhat facetiously by Greg Koukle of Stand To Reason as "Never read a Bible verse." What he means is never read just a Bible verse by itself. You must always look at the context of the verse as well as related passages from elsewhere in the Bible. In other words, don't take stuff out of context.
I've seen video of Jeremiah Wright abusing this most basic principle to twist scripture for his own use, trying to contradict the quote I gave from Acts. When asked if Jesus is the only way to God he responded with part of a verse:
"Jesus said, ‘I have other sheep, which are not of this fold;’"
Now look at that snippet in it's context:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.” This figure of speech Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what those things were which He had been saying to them.
So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.”
(John 10:1-16 NAS95S)
Can you see how the context makes a difference, especially when compared to Acts 4:10-12? Jesus was not saying that others would come through other religions, he was saying that others would come from other peoples and religions and follow Jesus, the true and only shepherd.
The Bible also encourages us to check up on such quotations to make sure we're not deceived:
The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.
(Acts 17:10-11 NAS95S)
Notice who they were checking up on? Paul, the author of the majority of the New Testament, and the Bible calls them better than the Thessalonians.
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
(1John 4:1 NAS95S)
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.
(2Timothy 2:15 NAS95S)
I recently learned that the greek translated as "accurately handling" literally means "cut straight". In other words, we're to avoid "cutting up the scriptures haphazardly" to make it fit our preconceptions.
Yes, I know people misuse the Bible; some deliberately, some out of ignorance. (Exhibit A: Black Liberation Theology, Exhibit B: The Roman Catholic Church, especially in the past) Fortunately, we have the Bible in writing (you can't get away with cockamamie distortions when you can point to something in writing) and excellent, time-tested tools for evaluating what it says.
"Since God labels sodomy as a crime to be punished with death and all I have to say about it is that it's not for me, I'd say I'm actually more tolerant than God."
Do you consider the actions of those in the video to be acceptable?
LabRat, you are at once correct and incorrect :) The Bible is both simple and complicated at the same time. Some of its tentants are quite simple and at the same time among the most important. But there is deep meaning in the Bible and it is a challenge to understand it all. I sure don't.
DJ, I miss-wrote... seems God did smite Herod, but if anyone had it coming, he did.
And Jesus smote nobody, unless you count ruffing up the jerks at the temple a little, when you have the entire power of God in your hands to do worse if you like.
Ed- I don't disagree with anything you said, but I DO find it rather illustrative of my overall point that when you looked for something absolutely unambiguous in the Bible, with no judgment or context required, you pointed to "Christianity is the one and only way" rather than any actual point of morality. :)
"I can't think of any offense that is so awful, so heinous, that a fitting punishment therefor is barbaric physical torture that never, ever ends. I think that fifty billion years or so of such torture ought to be enough to cover anything."
I'm not particularly comfortable with that either. This is one of those things that falls into the category of "hard sayings" which I mentioned earlier.
Given God's willingness to be merciful, to such a degree that He sent part of Himself to die on our behalf, plus His willingness to hold off on punishment in this life, I find it hard to imagine why He wouldn't just punish those who have sinned and be done with it, or why eternal punishment is necessary to satisfy the concept of perfect justice. I can certainly understand eternal punishment for Satan and the other angels who rebelled in spite of being able to see God for themselves.
On the other hand, we have good reason to accept the Bible as being authoritative (I know haven't laid out that argument yet) and that eternal punishment is what God intends. Maybe someday He will explain the "why" to us, but for now we just have to swallow hard and accept that what the Bible says will happen.
Even if the punishment were temporary, followed by annihilation, there is no way I want to be on the receiving end. How about you?
"I DO find it rather illustrative of my overall point that when you looked for something absolutely unambiguous in the Bible, with no judgment or context required, you pointed to "Christianity is the one and only way" rather than any actual point of morality."
Actually, the list of sins from 1st Corinthians are points of morality. I presume you don't find them unclear. And I would hope you won't ask me to list out every crystal clear point of morality. ;)
I guess I also assumed that by mentioning the extremes, you would understand that issues the Bible addresses all fall somewhere within that range, from crystal clear to obscure, with most moral issues being relatively clear and easy to understand. I hope I wasn't wrong about that.
"Maybe someday He will explain the "why" to us, but for now we just have to swallow hard and accept that what the Bible says will happen."
No, we don't "have to" accept it, and I don't.
"Even if the punishment were temporary, followed by annihilation, there is no way I want to be on the receiving end. How about you?"
No, I wouldn't. Part of what I wrote was a bit of humorous sarcasm, but I meant what I wrote when I wrote, "I can't think of any offense that is so awful, so heinous, that a fitting punishment therefor is barbaric physical torture that never, ever ends."
Oddly enough, I find myself in agreement with Obama:
Obama:"There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell."
Falsani:"You don’t believe that?"
Obama:"I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup."
What I find amazing is to hear a god described as such by the same person and in the same breath as being merciful. Such thinking makes my head hurt. It is what led Darwin to finally reject his faith and describe Christian doctrine as "damnable".
Ed, you'll pardon me for not necessarily taking an evangelical organization as the definitive word on canonical authority, particularly when it omits mention of the Vulgate. I'd also remind you that the early Christians trusted Greek scripture over Judaic and Aramaic sources.
And it was the Council of Trent that set the authoritative text, at least for Catholics. The heretics were on their own for their versions. :-) Of course, if you're a follower of the Eastern Church, you don't agree with any of those Catholics let alone the Protestants.
Yessiree bub. Good thing there is one Christianity. Maybe that's why God inspired all of those versions of the Bible.
Not versions. Translations. We have sufficient copies of manuscripts in the original languages that we can be certain that there are no meaningful distortions in what we have. There are a few uncertainties, but they all fall into the categories of alternate spellings for words or minor wording differences which do not change the meaning at all.
Now if you think translating from one language to another is easy, maybe you should look around for sites which have fun with everyday phrases translated into another and back again. It's extremely hard, and the results can be very funny. That's why scholars are constantly working to improve the translations of the Bible.
You may have noticed that I've been quoting from the NASB translation. It's more literal than most translations, but the result of that literality is English which is frequently awkward. I've also used the NIV, which follows English rules better, making it more readable, but that also means it's necessarily less precise in its translation.
You may have also noticed that I don't use the King James translation. It has three major problems. First, it's outdated English, making it hard to understand right out of the box. Second, some of it's translation is inaccurate, in part, due to continuing scholarship into the meanings of words in the older languages. (For example, "Thou shalt not kill" is not accurate. The correct translation is "You shall not murder.") Finally, we have found many more manuscripts since the King James translation, allowing us to improve the accuracy of the underlying texts in their original language.
I guess I also assumed that by mentioning the extremes, you would understand that issues the Bible addresses all fall somewhere within that range, from crystal clear to obscure, with most moral issues being relatively clear and easy to understand. I hope I wasn't wrong about that.
No, you're not. Some moral points in the Bible are indeed unambiguous. (Although it's interesting that "effeminate" is listed in that Corinthians verse but not, say, "murderer". Like I said, my problem is with the blithe assertion that morality as outlined in the Bible is so simple that anybody who is not being dishonest or ignorant will come to all the same moral conclusions- there is almost always tension between various ideals extolled, such as tensions between justice and mercy, or between respecting authority and rebelling against it.
And, like DJ said, there's honest reasoning behind folks like us who point to the Bible and go "THAT'S your merciful God?" There may not have been a single righteous man in Sodom, but the children are never mentioned, and they were presumably slaughtered as well. The Israelites and Israelite heroes repeatedly don't just slaughter soldiers on God's command or with His approval, but also rape their women (or force them to be their wives), kill their children, and the presumed sins of these peoples that made them deserving are never mentioned- it's not relevant, apparently. This makes perfect sense in the context of the tribalistic sensibilities of the times- a lot less with a God whose morality was supposedly constant.
"it's not relevant to the original question or my answer to it."
Yes it is. The men of Sodom were not expressing mere sexual preferences. They heard that new meat was in town and they gathered to rape them. This is obviously not the first time it had happened. Nor was it likely to be the only type of evil they were engaged in. The description of the incident includes homosexuality, but it is not the only crime described. Furthermore, when the Bible describes the acts of the city, it uses general terms, not specific sins like you might expect if there is just one crime.
Now the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the LORD.
(Genesis 13:13 NAS95S)
And the LORD said, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave.”
(Genesis 18:20 NAS95S)
Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy.
(Ezekiel 16:49 NAS95S)
just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
(Jude 1:7 NAS95S)
Just like homosexuality was the driving force behind the attempted rape of Lot's visitors, homosexuality was the driving force behind the actions of those in the video. Long before Sodom reached the point where God destroyed them, they would have had to be exactly like the ones in that video. That is precisely why the video is relevant.
And just to make sure I'm clear on this: Homosexual driven behavior was a crime committed by Sodom, but it was not the only crime.
Just like homosexuality was the driving force behind the attempted rape of Lot's visitors, homosexuality was the driving force behind the actions of those in the video.
Uh, what? Is heterosexuality the driving force of the rape of women in the Bible, or is it lust, rage, and a basic "I will take what I desire by force and damn you and your rights and wishes"?
I agree the video is damn ugly, but homosexuality isn't the "driving force". It's rage and the desire to take something wanted by force if necessary and damn the rights and wishes of others.
Hell, that mindset is arguably the root of nearly ALL sin, whether speaking secularly or theologically- the prioritization of indulgence of the self over all other concerns.
Ah c'mon Ed. The King James Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New Standard Version. Don't make it so easy on me!
...but that also means it's necessarily less precise in its translation.
Indeed. I always like that point of Frank Herbert's in the Dune series - some ideas can only be expressed in the language of origination. Favorite current example - schadenfreude. There just isn't a word or phrase that conveys that same meaning.
"Ed, you'll pardon me for not necessarily taking an evangelical organization as the definitive word on canonical authority,"
Now you're starting to sound like Markadelphia. That's the genetic fallacy.
particularly when it omits mention of the Vulgate.
The Vulgate is a translation, specifically a translation into Latin. I should also point out to you that the apocryphal books were added to the Vulgate literally over the translator’s dead body. (Jerome)
"I'd also remind you that the early Christians trusted Greek scripture over Judaic and Aramaic sources."
Yep. For the exact same reason I read English translations. That's the language they knew!
And it was the Council of Trent that set the authoritative text, at least for Catholics.
The apocryphal books have demonstrable errors, including geography and historical events. I don't care what the "Council of Trent" asserted. Those books don't meet the standard of "inerrant." That's why Jerome refused to include them in the Vulgate.
"Maybe that's why God inspired all of those versions of the Bible."
"Hell, that mindset is arguably the root of nearly ALL sin, whether speaking secularly or theologically- the prioritization of indulgence of the self over all other concerns."
True. And Sodom and Gomorrah had taken that root far beyond anything we currently see today, which is why I pointed to the video. It's the closest analog I know to the event described in Genesis.
And you sound like him resorting to a single, cherry-picked authority. Let's at least agree that there is no single, perfect history of the early church.
Yep. For the exact same reason I read English translations. That's the language they knew!
Nope. They didn't trust Jews and Jewish sources - Christianity has had a pretty mean anti-semitic streak that only moderated in recent times. As I recall, Elaine Pagels "Gnostic Gospels" goes into detail on the early distrust of non-Greek sources.
The Vulgate was THE source for all translations for many years. It was Luther's source, not the earlier Greek works, let alone Judaic or Aramaic ones. And yes, Jerome was quite dead by the time the decision was made, but only by a few centuries, so "over his dead body" is a rather dramatic characterization.
You won't really dispute that different sects have different favored translations of the Bible, will you? I mean you see reasonably eye-to-eye with the Catholic Church on the Bible, hmmm?
The original question was "Are you more tolerant than God?" This is open-ended and need not have anything to do with the destruction of Sodom; in fact I was thinking of an entirely different book:
"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." (Lev. 20:13)
No, it doesn't matter that this was part of the law that was supposedly superseded by the NT. At one time in God's history he mandated the death of all active homosexual men. If Paul is representative, God still keeps them out of Heaven. On the other hand, the worst I've ever thought about gay sex is that it's kind of icky. So, to re-answer the actual question, yes I am more tolerant than God, for both this reason and for others expressed by others here.
As I was explaining to Markadelphia, reality does not care whether you accept it or not. It will override your wishes every time.
If the Bible is actually true (and I'm able to argue that it is), then you will be forced to accept it. Period. If it's not true, there is something else to accept.
"What I find amazing is to hear a god described as such by the same person and in the same breath as being merciful."
God is also just. If He were not just, then He would not be perfect.
I think the problem you're having with this is that your understanding of these concepts does not match up with the Biblical description. Let me see if I can explain it.
It begins with the idea that God is perfect. Not mostly perfect, or 99.9999999% pure, or even with just one tiny, insignificant flaw. He is 100% perfect in every single detail.
In order for us to be able to hang out with Him, we also have to be 100% perfect. Otherwise, in order for Him to accept us, He would have to lower His standards, which would damage His own perfection. (If your standards are not perfect, are you perfect?)
Therefore, anything less than 100% perfection requires us to be separated from Him. (It's kind of like matter/anti-matter. You can't bring them together without annihilating both.) Since we are not perfect, God is not simply justified in separating us from Him, He must do so.
(An aside: Though the Bible doesn't explicitly say so, some theologians have speculated that the real torment of hell is not physical pain, but knowing the perfection of God—including His love and peace—and being separated from Him. Jesus had described hell as a place of outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth, which seems to support that idea.)
Does that make sense to you so far?
Here is where the mercy comes in. God has absolutely no obligation to do anything about that separation. He could have chosen to just leave us to our fate, and He would be fully justified in doing so. But He does not want to.
So even though He didn't have to, He provided a way out. He sent Jesus Christ to die in our place. Apparently (though the Bible doesn't explain why) the only alternative to us dying for our own sins is for a creature or a perfect being to die on our behalf. I could not die for you because I would have to die for my own sins. And creatures are not meaningful enough to do more that temporarily cover sins. Jesus (fully God, yet not all of God, one of the brain benders of the Bible) was able to die on our behalf because He is perfect.
Think about that. Jesus, though fully God, chose to become human and live on this disease and death ridden trash heap of a planet for 33 years. That's a huge downgrade from living in Heaven. Not only that, at the end of that time, He was tortured to death; starting with flogging followed by slow, agonizing suffocation on a cross.
If you think He did it on a lark, or that He thought it would be fun, you need to read His prayers the night before:
Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.”
And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”
(Matthew 26:38-39 NAS95S)
And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.
(Luke 22:41-44 NAS95S)
I want you to notice two things in these passages. First of all, Jesus was exact opposite of looking forward to the coming pain. He desperately wanted a way out. Second, he was asking for a Plan B. If there was any other way to accomplish our salvation, He would have been all over it in a heartbeat. But because there was no possible Plan B, He sucked it up and proceeded with Plan A because rescuing us from our due punishment was more important to Him than what He was about to suffer.
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
(Philippians 2:5-8 NAS95S)
In short, God is required to be just and punish sins, but He is not required to do anything to let us avoid that punishment. That He willingly chose to do so anyway is why we consider Him merciful.
Sarah says that we are to judge fairly, but what's fair and where are the guidelines? There aren't any- you have to use your judgment, and your mileage may seriously vary per person.
"Fair" according to the Bible is determined by how you would wish to be judged (and it's how you will be judged, ultimately). That's about as fair a definition as I can think of, at least for sane people.
I may not believe in Jesus Christ, but I do believe in a universal human nature, and I am well aware that Christians, atheists, and everyone else share the same failings- Luther included. But I also hear some variation on "if we just had REAL Christians doing this, then..." an awful damn lot, and it just ain't so.
Human nature is human nature. I don't hold, for instance, that atheism causes people to do terrible things -- those are things which are in our nature to do -- but if you take an objective look at human history, it's apparent that religion tends to act as a brake on our worst tendencies. All you have to do is look at a place China to see that this is true. China, which is de facto atheistic, is probably the most amoral place on Earth. The Chinese are not even immoral, because the concept of morality does not exist there. They live according to the principle of "legal or illegal," and illegal is only a matter of getting caught. Every human abomination that you can think of is happening right now in China, because there is nothing to act as a deterrent on these tendencies.
You can't have morals and values in a philosophical vacuum, and so far history has provided us with few examples of moral societies without a philosophy rooted in some form of religion. I hear variations on the claim that we can have a system of moral atheism with the right people in charge, but where's the evidence for this? In fact, there's quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. Look at places devoid of religion -- China, the USSR, Cambodia, East Germany -- they are/were all miserable, backwards shitholes. Compare to places with a foundation of religious belief, like the U.S. and central/northern Europe. To be fair, there are some religious places that are miserable and backwards, but the only tolerable places in the world are the ones with a Judeo-Christian foundation.
I think that fifty billion years or so of such torture ought to be enough to cover anything.
You're forgetting that eternity and infinity are not the same thing. Eternal is the absence of time.
"If we're going there, so tell me: how did Judas die?"
Please, let's not go there. I'm supposed to be working, and answering your objections could take forever. So for these, I will stop with answering just this one. That doesn't mean there aren't answer to others you could raise, just that I don't have time to do more.
You're thinking of these verses:
Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to that yourself!” And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself. The chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the temple treasury, since it is the price of blood.” And they conferred together and with the money bought the Potter’s Field as a burial place for strangers. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: “AND THEY TOOK THE THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER, THE PRICE OF THE ONE WHOSE PRICE HAD BEEN SET by the sons of Israel; AND THEY GAVE THEM FOR THE POTTER’S FIELD, AS THE LORD DIRECTED ME.”
(Matthew 27:3-10 NAS95S)
(Now this man acquired a field with the price of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out. And it became known to all who were living in Jerusalem; so that in their own language that field was called Hakeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)
(Acts 1:18-19 NAS95S)
He died from hanging. Tradition identifies the place where he died as a precipice over a field with several trees along its edge. That makes a perfect place for hanging yourself if you don't have a horse or something else to stand on.
Trees along that ridge tend to have dry branches which could break given enough stress.
The most likely course of events goes like this:
Matthew says that Judas went and hanged himself after the trial in front of Ciaphas, which which started at daybreak. He probably tested the branch to make sure it was strong enough to hold him, then hung himself.
In the mean time, Jesus was sent to Pilate. Pilate sent him to Herod, Herod sent him back. Then Jesus was flogged and finally crucified. According to Matthew 27:45-50, Jesus died at about 3 PM. By this point Judas would have been dead for 8 or 9 hours and starting to rot.
When Jesus died, there was a strong earthquake. It's also possible that there was a storm. (Matthew 27:45 says there were heavy clouds.) The earthquake and possible storm winds probably caused the branch Judas was hanging from to break, causing his corpse to fall down the cliff.
Another possibility (given that the mention in Acts contains no details such as time or the reason he fell) is that his body was found a few days later (between 4 and 10 days is when the body would still be intact, but bloating with fragile skin) and cut down. Or the branch could have broken later, or the rope could have simply broken. It's even possible that the branch broke when he jumped.
The fact is that Acts does not state that Judas died from the fall or when he fell, merely that he split open when he fell. The two descriptions are vague enough that even though there is the potential for contradiction, there is plenty of room for both statements to simply be details not mentioned by the other. Now if the Bible had said something like "Judas died from hanging himself" and "Judas died by falling from a cliff" that would be a contradiction because the stated cause of death would contradict. Also notice that when both statements discuss common details (the field) they both agree.
"As I was explaining to Markadelphia, reality does not care whether you accept it or not. It will override your wishes every time."
Yup. I've made the same explanation many times.
"If the Bible is actually true (and I'm able to argue that it is), then you will be forced to accept it. Period. If it's not true, there is something else to accept."
That's IF. A mighty big word, isn't it?
I am able to argue that there are contradictions in the Bible, thus it is not inerrant.
"Does that make sense to you so far?" -- episode 1
Certainly. I first heard it long ago.
Do I believe its premise, that there is a god? Not for a moment.
"Does that make sense to you?" -- episode 2
Certainly. Again, I first heard it long ago, too.
Do I believe its premise, that Jesus was a god who died for my sins? Not for a moment.
It is a relatively simple matter to understand the reasoning of Christian theology, given that it is explained well, but it is an exercise in silliness to do so without first accepting the premise upon which it is based, and I don't. Hence the cliché, "One man's theology is another man's belly laugh."
"And you sound like him resorting to a single, cherry-picked authority."
You assumed I cherry picked this one. Assuming motivations is Markadelphia's schtick.
I have plenty of other authorities. I just didn't want to spend the time writing the whole thing out, so I did a quick search to find one which was accurate. I'm already spending way too much time on this and I was looking to save time.
BTW… I just noticed that you apparently didn't even read it. First of all, it cites additional authorities in the body of the text. Secondly, you claimed that it didn't mention the Vulgate. It does.
If you want additional authorities, start with the ones referenced in detail in the article. No, the author didn't use footnotes, he put the references right in the body of the text.
For another thing, HaloScan doesn't allow more than 3 links per post. I could track down plenty of more links to answer your "cherry picked" claim, but HaloScan would make that just about impossible. Not to mention that references to primary sources are usually dead tree books rather than internet sites, thus, rather difficult to link to.
So for brevity, I'll simply suggest that you search Amazon for two books: "The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell which contains a heavily reference based chapter on how we got the Bible, and "Scripture Alone" by James R. White, plus check out some of the referenced books displayed by Amazon when you look at the details on "Scripture Alone".
"Let's at least agree that there is no single, perfect history of the early church."
There is the actual history of the church and then there are multiple accounts. There are usually two basic groups: The Roman Catholic Church's version, and everyone else. The important question is which account is most accurate. I've seen enough proven inaccuracies in the RCC version that I don't particularly trust them.
I find it interesting that you seem to accept the Roman Catholic version of history, but reject just about every else they teach.
"The Vulgate was THE source for all translations for many years. It was Luther's source, not the earlier Greek works, let alone Judaic or Aramaic ones."
Yes, Martin Luther translated from the Vulgate, but that's only because he only knew German (his native language) and Latin. It was not possible for him to translate from the original languages. William Tyndale corrected that shortcoming only 2 years after Luther finished when he finished his New Testament translation directly from Greek. He finished translating the Pentatuch (the 1st 5 books) directly from Hebrew 6 years later.
"And yes, Jerome was quite dead by the time the decision was made, but only by a few centuries, so "over his dead body" is a rather dramatic characterization."
The point is quite simply this: He point blank refused to include those books. Furthermore, he initially refused to even translate them. So yes, "over his dead body" is dramatic, but the central point is that he opposed their inclusion as canon wholeheartedly.
"You won't really dispute that different sects have different favored translations of the Bible, will you?"
Yes, most churches find it easier to use the same translation for group reading. Some churches prefer accuracy above all else, others prefer to slightly give up on accuracy for the sake of readability, and still others prefer versions they can use to suit their own desires.
"I mean you see reasonably eye-to-eye with the Catholic Church on the Bible, hmmm?"
Let's look at how the RCC treats the Bible, shall we?
- They continue to hold that the Latin Vulgate is the only true Bible, basing their translations off the Vulgate rather than the original languages. (See my previous comments about strangeness in translating from language to language to language.)
- At the time of the Council of Trent which you claimed as authoritative, the RCC was actively hiding the Bible from the population and teaching such clearly unbiblical ideas as indulgences.
- They still teach ideas which directly contradict the Bible, such as Mary being sinless and that Jesus was her only child.
- They decided that including books they liked was more important than the concept that Truth matters.
Given that track record, I hope you'll understand if I peg their credibility on the subject as pretty doggone low.
"The original question was "Are you more tolerant than God?" This is open-ended and need not have anything to do with the destruction of Sodom;"
The implication being put forth by referring to "smiting" was that God is capricious, arbitrary, and looking to destroy people for no good reason. I brought up Sodom and Ninevah to show that A) there was a darn good reason, and B) God was most definitely not in a hurry, and was, in fact, holding back.
"in fact I was thinking of an entirely different book:
"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." (Lev. 20:13)"
Did you happen to notice what other crimes earned the death penalty in that section? I'll stick to the sex crimes portion because that's what we're discussing. Adultery (v. 10), sleeping with mother or step mother (v. 11), sleeping with daughter-in-law (v. 12), homosexual sex (v. 13), marrying a woman and her mother (v. 14), sex with an animal (vv. 15-16). Every single one of these either breaks up a marriage or involves sex where marriage isn't possible. Have you noticed that the Bible is fairly absolute about marriage?
Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
(Hebrews 13:4 NAS95S)
Even in the one case where the Bible allows divorce, Jesus explains why it was permitted:
He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.”
(Matthew 19:8 NAS95S)
In other words, divorce was allowed for adultery only because humans are stupidly stubborn.
So take a look at the state of marriage in this country. Would you say the institution is healthy? With 50% + divorce rates and more and more people not getting married to begin with I would say that marriage is life support and failing fast. Give our experience, is it really so surprising that God would address direct attacks on it so aggressively, especially since God wanted Israel to sent an example for others to follow?
"If Paul is representative, God still keeps them out of Heaven."
Maybe I should requote the verse from 1st Corinthians, this time adding the next verse. (Remember the concept that context matters?)
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
(1Corinthians 6:9-11 NAS95S)
In the context of the Bible, homosexuality is just like any other sin (including sins I'm personally guilty of). Without salvation, every single sin will keep us out of heaven. Yet the sacrifice of Jesus Christ cleanses us from those sins so that we can enter heaven. Yes, that includes homosexuality too. In fact, there is only one—that's right, count'em: one—sin which God will not forgive:
“Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.”
(Matthew 12:31 NAS95S)
Gee, I didn't see homosexuality in there, did you?
Put another way, those sins listed here can define who we are. How many times have you heard statements by homosexuals where they primarily define themselves as a homosexual, with all other definitions second. (See this season's Top Chef where at least one contestant defined himself as a homosexual first and a chef second.) On the other hand, becoming a christian means the definition of christian becomes dominant, while the definitions as a sinner become secondary.
In other words, what defines you? Your sins? Or Jesus' salvation? From God's point of view, if you're a christian, it doesn't matter if you still struggle with sin, you are still an adopted child. (And just so I'm not misunderstood. There are those who pretend to be following Jesus and those who actually are. God does know the difference.)
"So, to re-answer the actual question, yes I am more tolerant than God, for both this reason and for others expressed by others here."
Okay, so you tolerate homosexuality. But that's a different question than what I asked. (Aside: Would you tolerate someone misusing something you had created for a specific purpose?)
Getting back to the primary point of whether or not God is smiting just for the heck of it: Would you tolerate what was going on in Sodom as demonstrated by the incident with Lot's visitors? Heck, do you tolerate the actions of those in that video? These are the questions that are relevant to the original implication.
Yep, sure is. Like I said, I haven't laid out the argument yet. I could have Amazon send you a book, which would save me a lot of typing, but only if you would be willing to read it.
"I am able to argue that there are contradictions in the Bible, thus it is not inerrant."
Are they actual contradictions, or, like the one LabRat put forth, statements which only seem contradictory if you read them sloppily and ignore their context.
(See this season's Top Chef where at least one contestant defined himself as a homosexual first and a chef second.)
I'm pretty tolerant of homosexuality too, but I still don't think I want to eat this guy's cooking. Not because he's gay, but because he's distracted by having his priorities backwards.
I find it interesting that you seem to accept the Roman Catholic version of history, but reject just about every else they teach.
Actually, I use it to show that you don't have a history that is beyond dispute. Now, we could argue the history ad infinitum, which is why I was happy to stipulate the inconclusiveness. You want to believe you got the only correct version, well you go right ahead, but don't expect me to buy it.
Let's look at how the RCC treats the Bible, shall we?
I knew you would disagree with this and assert your own superiority to that of the judgment of the Church. That's okay by me, it works for you, but it does not resolve the disagreement for anyone but you. I have no reason to respect your authority on scripture above either the Catholics, the Orthodox, or the many branches of Protestantism that do not accord with your take.
Quite frankly you end up coming off like Markadelphia, asserting what you want to be true without respecting reality.
Ed, you are correct on the mention of the Vulgate in that article. It was a very brief mention, just to set up the Protestant position in the Reformation, but it was there.
Well, since my day is shot, I guess I should lay out the math I promised if the need arose back in this thread.
If evolution is true, there would have to have been a first cell. Evolution would posit that this cell would have to be very crude, but even so, it would have to have certain minimum requirements.
First, it would actually have to be a living cell. Its machinery of life (so to speak) would have had to function. Second, it would have to be able to replicate. After all, a "first cell" that can't replicate would also be the "last cell".
These two requirements also mean that the cell had to have certain features. For this discussion I'm going to focus on just two: DNA and proteins. There are others, but I want to keep things as simple as possible.
BTW… for the sake of keeping the math manageable I will be simplifying things. And to avoid claims of bias, I will always simplify in favor of naturalism. I'm also going to forgo links because of HaloScan's limitations. I assume you will be able to do fact checking on your own. In fact, I expect it. Furthermore, I'm assuming perfect conditions for the formation of the DNA strand I'm discussing.
One of the primary functions of DNA is to hold the definition of how to produce proteins. Strands of DNA are read to produce a sequence of amino acids which, when folded properly, become functional proteins. Proteins are actually the primary machinery and key structural components of a cell. Without proteins, there is no cell. If the strand of DNA is not exactly correct, the resulting protein will not work and the cell would die. In fact, proteins do most of the work of handling the DNA to produce proteins.
DNA is a strand of polynucleotides. Each nucleotide is one of 4 molecules, usually abbreviated as A, G, C and T. (It turns out that there are 4 other molecules which would also bind just as well, but the properties of these 4 provide an extra feature the other 4 don't: parity checking. I'm going to simplify by pretending that only A, G, C, and T could possibly have made it into DNA.) Since there are 4 possibilities that means that having the "correct" nucleotide in any one position is 1 in 4. (That means DNA nucleotides are a Base 4 code, if you happen to know how base math works.)
There are a total of 20 different amino acids which go into making proteins. This means that the cell has to use three nucleotides to select which amino acid to use in a particular location. (2 nucleotide would allow for only 16 possibilities, too few to work. 4 is more than necessary and cells do actually use 3.) This group of 3 nucleotides is known as a codon.
Each codon allows for up to 64 combinations, which is more than necessary to select from among 20 amino acids. Some amino acids are selected by only one codon, while others can be selected by more than one codon. It turns out that cells also use a start codon and a stop codon to mark the beginning and end of a protein definition. These two codons don't appear anywhere else in that strand.
That means the odds of any particular codon being the right one to select the necessary amino acid is 1 in 22.
These codons are translated into the amino acid strands which form proteins. Proteins range in length from 100 molecules to 1,000 molecules long. Since my math-fu can't handle the odds of varying length answers, I'm going to simplify by pretending that all proteins are no longer than 100 molecules long.
Given 22 possible codons for each molecule, the odds against getting all the correct codons in the correct order to produce a single simplest protein is 22^100, or 1 in 1.75x10^134.
(Just to show that using an exponent is the correct function, look at the odds for just 3 codons. You can try writing these down on paper. For the first codon, the odds of having the correct one is 1 in 22, i.e., there are 22 amino acid selections, but only 1 combination, or set of combinations, which would select the correct amino acid. Then for each of those combinations you would write down 22 possibilities for the second codon. That makes it 1 in 484 (22 x 22 or 22^2) that both codons would select the correct amino acid. Then for each of those 484 combinations you would add 22 more possibilities, giving you 1 in 10,648 (22 x 22 x 22 or 22^3) odds that all 3 codons would select the correct amino acid.)
Currently there are more than 402,000 known or suspected proteins among all forms of life. For the sake of simplicity again, I'll round this number up to 410,000 possible proteins. If we assume that all the proteins are only 100 molecules long, that means our odds against the random occurrence of a strand of DNA capable of producing any single protein is 1 in 4.26x10^128. (1.75x10^134 ÷ 410,000).
Now that's a huge number, so let's put it into perspective. Scientists estimate that the total number of atoms in the entire universe is 10^80. That's still smaller than our single strand of DNA odds, so let's add time to the equation. NASA is currently estimating the age of the universe as 13.7 billion years old. To allow for errors, let's round up to 15 billion years old. Furthermore, to match the scale of our numbers, let's convert that time to seconds. That's 4.73x10^17 seconds. (15 billion years x 365.25 days/year x 24 hours/day x 60 minutes/hour x 60 seconds/minute)
So let's combine the total number of atoms in the universe with the total number of seconds in the universe. That's 4.73x10^97 atom seconds for the entire life of the universe. Yet it's still smaller than the odds against the random occurrence of a single strand of DNA which could create any simple viable protein. (4.26x10^128) That means that if every single atom in the universe attempted to create our simple strand of functional DNA once a second since the beginning of the universe, assuming absolutely perfect conditions, the odds against success would still be 1 in 9.00x10^30.
Of course, my math is simplified and weighted heavily in favor of naturalism. A functioning cell requires far more than a single strand of DNA producing a single protein. Scientists are working on figuring out what the minimum number of "gene products*" are in order to have the simplest possible viable life form. Currently scientists figure that somewhere between 200 and 500 gene products are required for the simplest self sustaining cell. A cell with only 184 gene products has been discovered, but it is a parasite which requires a host (another living cell) to survive.
(*"Gene products" is a specific term necessary when talking about molecular biology. It turns out that while a single strand of DNA can produce a single protein, some strands of DNA are capable of producing a completely different protein merely by shifting the starting point for creating a protein by just one nucleotide. Now THAT was a mind blower when I read it. Imagine creating a meaningful sentence of 3 letter words which is 100 words long, then being able to drop the first letter, add 1 to the end, and still have a meaningful sentence after regrouping the letters into threes.)
So take the functional impossibility of a simple protein producing DNA strand "just happening", and multiply it times the 200 to 500 proteins necessary for life, times the variability in the length of protein amino acid chains, the significantly reduced set of proteins which could function in a simple cell, and all the other necessary cellular features such as mRNA, amino acids, the extreme degree of error checking necessary for the cell's "machinery" to keep functioning correctly, and the scarcity of conditions where it all could come together. These details of how a cell works are not theory or speculation. These are things we know.
What do you come up with when you put it all together?
I simply cannot imagine any answer than this: to think that a functional cell could "just happen" randomly strikes me as Simply. Not. Rational.
Matthew 27:4-6 4 "I have sinned," he said, "for I have betrayed innocent blood." "What is that to us?" they replied. "That's your responsibility." 5 So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. 6 The chief priests picked up the coins and said, "It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money." 7So they decided to use the money to buy the potter's field as a burial place for foreigners. 8 That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day.
Acts 1:18-19 18(With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. 19 Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)
In one version, Judas throws the money into the temple and the priests buy the field. In the other, he keeps it and buys the field himself. You can worm your way around to saying the method of death and the reason the field was named "blood field", but the money makes these two versions of events incompatible.
I only asked how he died and didn't give the rest of the context or the full contradiction because I wanted to see if you were going to be honest with me. You weren't, not if you really looked up the passages for yourself and didn't rely on a prepared apologetics response- and then you called ME sloppy!
I was going to call juris harsh for comparing you to Markadelphia, but the deceit- which I recall the Bible has some rather harsh words for, by the way- combined with the accusation that I'm intellectually sloppy or dishonest- is very Marky indeed. Actually, so is the evasion of difficult subjects- you've defended the destruction of Soddom, but you've pointedly ignored the fact that it MUST have included children and infants, and you haven't even begun to address all the other slaughters, noncombatants and rapes included, by the Israelites that God was apparently happy to endorse and whose "deserving" status was never thought relevant enough to even be mentioned.
Oh, and I'm familiar with Josh McDowell. In the book you cited as a reference, he went on at GREAT length to explain that mistakes were impossible because of the standards to which Jewish scribes and copyists were held... but in another book he dismisses internal inconsistencies in the Goliath story about Elhanan as, um, a copyist's error.
The Bible is either COMPLETELY FREE OF ALL ERROR, no matter how trivial, or it ISN'T. I haven't at any point tried to assert that these little problems come even close to invalidating the Bible- YOU are the one claiming complete inerrancy and therefore complete authority.
I respect believers, I really do, but you fool absolutely zero skeptics with this kind of crap. All you do is worsen your image by convincing them that you don't hold yourself to your own standards.
Sarah- I'll have a rather less caustic response for you tomorrow... spent all evening on elk butchery.
"I knew you would disagree with this and assert your own superiority to that of the judgment of the Church.
…
"Quite frankly you end up coming off like Markadelphia, asserting what you want to be true without respecting reality."
Just as when I was arguing with Markadelphia, I showed you the rules by which the cannonicity of each book could be determined. I did not make up those rules, therefore they are not my rules in the sense you assert. Those rules appear to be valid and consistent with other well known rules of evidence and historical analysis, including primary sources.
If you think those rules are invalid, then point out which one(s) are invalid and why. And while you're at it, why don't you point out which rules you are using.
BTW… Including the books of the apocrypha as scripture violate the most fundamental rule of logic: The law of noncontradiction.
Scripture is by definition supposed to be the inerrant Word of God, therefore completely true. The apocryphal books contain known errors, therefore they are not inerrant.
Truth = Not(Truth) is a violation of the law of noncontradiction.
It's pretty bold to assert that the law of non-contradiction is simply "my" rule, and therefore somehow invalid.
As for claiming that I'm using Markadelphia's tactics, I should note that I've still been linking to evidence. I'm still using the same rules of evidence and logic as always. On the other hand, you have committed some of the same logical fallacies as Markadelphia (genetic and assumed motives), waved off evidence and step by step arguments for no apparent reason, and made bald assertions without a single link to supporting evidence. Are you sure you want to keep bringing up Markadelphia's tactics?
I showed you the rules by which the cannonicity of each book could be determined
This is all post hoc reasoning. We don't know how those books were actually settled on at the time - but more on that in a minute.
The law of noncontradiction.
Which isn't one of the five rules in your cite. Non-contradiction is violated in the accounts of creation in Genesis, as well as the accounts of the death of Judas. Don't even get me going on the Book of Job.
Orthodoxy (which is given as a rule in your cite) is not the same as non-contradiction.
"The Bishop of Antioch (199 AD) named Serapion had The Gospel of Peter removed from books that were read in the church of Rhossus when he discovered that it included a docetic (heretical) view of Christ. Docetism and Gnosticism were two views of Christ that competed with the orthodox apostolic teachings in the early church." [I trust you recognize the passage from your cite. My link added.]
So, a bishop, desiring to stamp out a heresy violated the first rule of canonical incorporation (apostolic authority).
Scripture is by definition supposed to be the inerrant Word of God, therefore completely true.
What happened to 'inspiration' (as a method of canonical determination) and the need to interpret the text? Perhaps you'd like to visit ben's link on hermeneutics.
Are you sure you want to keep bringing up Markadelphia's tactics?
I've already seen how other people view this exchange. I'm comfortable with where I stand.
Just so this doesn't go on unnecessarily. I fundamentally see faith and reason as two different things. You no more get to reason by faith then you do faith by reason. Although I may well be wrong, I suspect you seek to convert to faith by laying out a rational path to it. Given your earlier statement about making the irrefutable case, etc. At least the path you imagine yourself to have followed. Believe it or not, that puts you in the same intellectual space as the Jesuits (and Thomists more broadly in the Catholic tradition). I would argue that you can't get there [faith] from here [reason], any more than you can get orange juice from apples.
"Acts 1:18-19 18(With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. 19 Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)
"In one version, Judas throws the money into the temple and the priests buy the field. In the other, he keeps it and buys the field himself. You can worm your way around to saying the method of death and the reason the field was named "blood field", but the money makes these two versions of events incompatible.
And this is a prime example of why the quality of translation matters. Check out the NASB translation of Acts 1:18 which is closer to the original Greek:
(Now this man acquired a field with the price of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out.
(Acts 1:18 NAS95S)
First of all notice that Judas' name is not actually in the greek. The translator for the translation you used added Judas' name in an attempt to make it clear who was being discussed.
Also notice that in the NASB translation it's more clear that the "price of his wickedness" acquired the field. That was the 30 pieces of silver he returned to the chief priests. The phrasing here is also very similar to the phrase used of pilots who have crashed; "He bought the farm." It's Judas' actions which directly led to the purchase of the land, therefore "he" bought the land even though he was already dead.
There is no contradiction.
"You weren't, not if you really looked up the passages for yourself and didn't rely on a prepared apologetics response"
I looked up the passages myself (how do you think I quoted them?!?) and looked up what others have written about this claimed contradiction. If you're gonna pull out a prepared attack that's been attempted thousands of times before, why shouldn't I look up responses that have been given before. Do you expect me to ignore my references, waste my time, and try and come up with answers off the top of my head based on an incomplete understanding of the facts? That's a double standard where you are free to use your sources, but I am somehow wrong for doing the same? The answer I gave used what I found and some of my own speculation based on quick research I did on decomposition as well as simply reading the text several times, especially in Acts. Other than the scripture quotations, not a bit was simply copied and pasted.
If you think I was being dishonest, then you've misread what I wrote.
"and then you called ME sloppy!"
Okay, how about hostile; reading the text in the worst possible light to force a contradiction to appear where there is none?
"Actually, so is the evasion of difficult subjects"
Really? What difficult subjects have I "evaded".
"you've pointedly ignored the fact that it MUST have included children and infants
This is the first time the children came up, so why claim there was some point to be ignored? The culture of Sodom and Gomorrah was rotten to the core. If you think otherwise, I challenge you to offer evidence. God obviously felt the entire culture had to be wiped from the face of the earth. How young would a child have to be to be uninfected? We have a friend with a 3 year old who has already been infected with defective cultural ideas. Furthermore, to a God to whom physical death is not even the slightest hinderance, and who knows how to deal with children who die before they can make any kind of moral decisions (which happens normally), why is this a problem?
'You haven't even begun to address all the other slaughters, noncombatants and rapes included, by the Israelites that God was apparently happy to endorse and whose "deserving" status was never thought relevant enough to even be mentioned."
Now this just pisses me off. Do you suppose I have hours and hours and days and days and months and months to answer your every single objection? Am I supposed to crawl through every verse of the Bible, come up with every possible objection you could throw at me, and do the research necessary to answer every single one to a degree where even your open hostility will be satisfied? It ain't gonna happen.
I gave two examples which covered specific ground. In one case, the Bible stated some of the crimes. In the other, the Bible does not state their crimes, but other historical sources do. The other cases in the Bible fall into the same general categories. Either the Bible states at least part of the crimes of the guilty, or it doesn't. For those where their crimes aren't mentioned, we can often check other sources to learn what those people God chose to destroy were actually like. Remember, the Bible is not the only source of information about the past. You cannot assume that just because the Bible doesn't mention the reason for their guilt that it's safe to assume that they were somehow innocent. We certainly don't know everything, but what we do know certainly establishes the pattern well enough that God supposedly destroying an innocent people group is simply not likely.
If you want to make a case that God is wrong, then do this:
1 - Show that God has no right to do what He wants with his creation.
2 - Make a case that God actually destroyed an innocent people group. Asserting that a group might be innocent is not good enough. The pattern that God destroyed the ultra-guilty has been established. If you want to show that the pattern is not a pattern, then you need to point to the deviations from that pattern. I am NOT going to waste the time to keep proving the pattern over, and over, and over again.
BTW… The Bible does use a concept of corporate responsibility, i.e., responsibility of people acting and suffering as group, even individual members who were innocent of the group's crimes.
"The Bible is either COMPLETELY FREE OF ALL ERROR, no matter how trivial, or it ISN'T. I haven't at any point tried to assert that these little problems come even close to invalidating the Bible- YOU are the one claiming complete inerrancy and therefore complete authority."
Our copies have trivial errors. However, we know exactly where the errors are, and we know what the alternative readings are. This makes it possible for us to know that almost all of them are either spelling or transposition errors. Of the remaining errors, none of them have a significant impact on meanings of those passages or the teachings of the Bible. None.
The concept of inerrancy is this: The Bible, as originally written does not contain any errors in fact or theology. We know there have been copying errors, but we also know that those errors have not changed the original meaning. Because we know that there has been no change in meaning, we can also know that there has been no change in authority.
"In the book you cited as a reference, he went on at GREAT length to explain that mistakes were impossible because of the standards to which Jewish scribes and copyists were held"
Yep. Great length was required to describe what they did because the copyists went to extreme lengths to ensure the accuracy of their copies.
Josh wrote, "In Judaism, a succession of scholars was charged with standardizing and preserving the biblical text, fencing out all possible introduction of error." Read that again. Now again. Notice that they were charged with avoiding all possible introduction of error. "Charged" means that 100% perfect copies was their goal not necessarily their results. Furthermore, Josh does not run away from the fact that there are copying errors. In fact, he covers the issue quite extensively. Your claim that Josh claimed perfect Old Testament copying does not hold up.
"but in another book he dismisses internal inconsistencies in the Goliath story about Elhanan as, um, a copyist's error."
I'm not familiar with that one or what Josh wrote, so I can't answer for him. Given your accuracy about what he wrote in "New Evidence", I have my doubts about that charge too.
"oh, tomorrow it is on."
You'll have to do it without me. I was supposed to spend the day billing, but instead I was here answering all your (collective) attacks. I have no flexibility on this tomorrow.
Why don't we both save ourselves a bunch of time. You can admit that you won't accept anything I write. Period. It's highly unlikely that anything you write will change my mind either. (Though I am curious about how you would oppose such straightforward math where every move away from the simplifications only makes the odds worse.)
"I fundamentally see faith and reason as two different things. You no more get to reason by faith then you do faith by reason."
Why? God created this earth. He created us. He created reason. Why is it "reasonable" to think that God doesn't want us to use reason and evidence? After all, the Bible certainly doesn't tell us not to use evidence. In fact, the whole point of miracles was apparently to be evidence.
“But, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,”—He said to the paralytic—“I say to you, get up, and pick up your stretcher and go home.”
(Luke 5:24 NAS95S)
And according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.”
(Acts 17:2-3 NAS95S)
Also check out the various accounts of miracles in Acts. It's apparent there that each miracle was intended to verify that the apostles were truly speaking on God's behalf.
We can compare the Bible's accounts to history. We can identify places where events described in the Bible took place. We can confirm those events via other historical records. Paul even points out that the centerpiece of christianity is an actual historical event.
Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.
(1Corinthians 15:12-17 NAS95S)
Where does the Bible tell us to be anti-intellectual? Where does the Bible claim to be merely allegories with no basis in facts? The Bible tells us "Act this way all the time." Does that mean we're to pretend to do so?
Let's look at the greatest commandment:
And He said to him, “‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’”
(Matthew 22:37 NAS95S)
God did not ask us to throw away rationality, He told us to use it!
"Non-contradiction is violated in the accounts of creation in Genesis, as well as the accounts of the death of Judas. Don't even get me going on the Book of Job."
Wrong. First of all, I already answered LabRat about Judas' death. Go read it.
Second, read Genesis 1 and 2 for yourself. Read them multiple times. Let what's actually written sink in. Then we can talk.
As for the book of Job, have you even read it? It's almost all poetry, making heavy use of allegorical language. The poetry sections are not intended to be absolutely literal any more than a sports page which says, "The Phillies crushed the Tampa Bay Rays." While the language describes an actual event, it doesn't mean the Rays wound up in the hospital with crush injuries.
"Orthodoxy (which is given as a rule in your cite) is not the same as non-contradiction."
Uh, yeah… Go back and read the description of the orthodoxy rule again. Non-contradiction is the central point of the orthodoxy rule. If a book contradicts scripture which has been established to be cannonical, then its source would be someone other than God. Two things cannot contradict and both be true.
"So, a bishop, desiring to stamp out a heresy violated the first rule of canonical incorporation (apostolic authority)."
Did you read your link?
"The gospel is widely thought to date from after Peter's death and thus to be pseudepigraphical (bearing the name of an author who did not actually compose the text)."
Therefore, it doesn't meet even the first rule, let alone all five. BTW, just because a writing meets the apostolic rule does not mean it is cannonical. A book had to meet all 5 rules to be included. For example, we know that Paul wrote more letters than are included in the New Testament. Yet as far as I know, there is no serious argument that they should be included.
"What happened to 'inspiration' (as a method of canonical determination) and the need to interpret the text?"
Look at the rule again. The basis is that the text bears the hallmarks of inspiration.
As for interpretation, the Bible doesn't tell us to use inspiration, it tells us to use reason:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
(1John 4:1 NAS95S)
Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.
(Acts 17:11 NAS95S)
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.
(2Timothy 2:15 NAS95S)
"Perhaps you'd like to visit ben's link on hermeneutics."
Ben didn't post that link. I did. The only mention of inspiration there is a quote from Plato pondering on the inspiration of poets. What was your point?
"Are they actual contradictions, or, like the one LabRat put forth, statements which only seem contradictory if you read them sloppily and ignore their context."
Begin shortly after the (ahem) beginning, with Genesis, Chapter 6-8. It is the story of how God started over by drowning the earth, saving only Noah, the wife of Noah, the sons of Noah, and the wives of the sons of Noah. In particular, see:
6:8"But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD."
6:9"These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God."
6:10"And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth."
7:7"And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood."
7:13"In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;"
7:19"And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered."
7:20"Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered."
7:21"And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:"
7:22"All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died."
7:23"And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark."
8:15"And God spake unto Noah, saying,"
8:16"Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee."
8:17"Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth."
8:18"And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him:"
9:1"And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."
Now, from this, we can deduce a few things:
1) Any child born of the wife of Noah was a son or daughter of Noah. Moreover, any child born of the wife of a son of Noah was a grandson or granddaughter of Noah. Indeed, any child born after the flood is a descendant of Noah.
2) Any geneology which traces the ancestry of any person born after the flood all the way back to Adam and Eve must show that ancestry through Noah and a son of Noah, as no other path is possible.
Now, skip forward to the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Luke, Chapter 3, in which Luke lays out, in verses 23-38, the geneology of Jesus, the son of Joseph, yadda yadda yadda, "Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God."
Note that this geneology does not include Noah, nor does it include any son of Noah. So, either Genesis was wrong about who survived the flood, or Luke was wrong about the geneology of Jesus.
Let's look a bit further and see if Luke knew what he was talking about. Let's compare a bit of the geneology of Jesus according to Luke to the geneology of Jesus according to Matthew, as laid out in Mathew 1:1-16.
Luke 3:23"And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,"
Mathhew 1:16"And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ."
So, Joseph had two dads, did he? Or, Luke writes "... as was supposed ...", meaning he didn't really know what he was writing about?
Finally, note that both Luke and Mathhew trace the lineage of Jesus as a descendant of David. Mathhew shows 29 generations from David to Jesus, while Luke shows 43 generations. Moreover, except for David at one end and Jesus at the other, only three names are common to both lists, and they are out of order. Neither Luke nor Mathhew were there; they wrote what others told them, and they contradict each other.
Inerrant, is it? No, it is filled with internal contradictions, some trivial, some not. I've shown you three that are not.
Where does the Bible claim to be merely allegories with no basis in facts?
Alright Ed, is the length of a day today (24 hours) the same length as every day in the Bible? Such that God created the universe in 6 of them, and the universe not just the planet is some 6 or 7 thousand years old?
You no more get to reason by faith then you do faith by reason. Although I may well be wrong, I suspect you seek to convert to faith by laying out a rational path to it.
Take two people who represent opposite sides in this argument -- Ed and DJ. Both have obviously read a great deal on the subject -- including scholarly work -- and given considerable thought to it. Each weighs the arguments in favor and against, and makes a decision. In the absence of proof either way, that's the most reasonable approach anyone can take, and yet you would classify DJ as rational and Ed as irrational. On what basis?
It's not right for God to do anything he wants with his creations for the same reason it would be wrong for me to do anything I want with my daughter. Maybe I created her (with my wife's help) but she's an independent sentient being like me. The fact that I have relatively infinite power over her would not justify the evil of abusing her. Similarly, God's infinite power does not justify abuse of any human. Might does not make right; infinite might doesn't make right either.
Bringing up Noah raises two points. The first is the destruction of an innocent group. All children worldwide are supposed to have been drowned in the process. Of course, your explanation is likely to be that God was merely euthanizing them because of their memetic defects. Okay, whatever. The second is a biological discrepancy that invalidates the whole story. If the only male survivors were Noah and his sons (and perhaps their sons), then there would be only one Y chromosome in the entire human gene pool after the flood. This is demonstrably not the case, so we are left with three main possibilities. The first is that the story is false. The second is that one or more of Noah's descendants was the product of an adulterous union; this is unlikely since Noah's family was considered righteous. The third is an abnormally high rate of neutral or positive mutations of the Y chromosome between then and now.
The creation accounts are clearly different, Ed. Seriously? We have a different order of creation and a different story of the creation of Eve. They aren't compatible! Neither are the death of Judas stories; all your verbal contortions do is demonstrate the obvious.
If you analyze the Old Testament in the context of an ancient tribe trying to justify its social structures it makes perfect sense. If you try to look at it as the work of a perfect god, it needs all sort of extra and frankly bizarre support. Further, since the New Testament relies inherently on the Old, what should we make of it? What was it that was once said about houses built on sand?
... is the length of a day today (24 hours) the same length as every day in the Bible? Such that God created the universe in 6 of them, and the universe not just the planet is some 6 or 7 thousand years old?
The Genesis account is literal, not allegorical. But to have any meaning, we have to define whose clock we're using to measure the passage of time. This is because there is no absolute reference frame for time anywhere within the universe -- in terms of general relativity, for instance, there are some locations in the universe where an observer would experience six days while an Earth-based observer would experience 14 billion years. Nachmanides claims that each creation day is literally 24 hours, but whose clock are we talking about? If it's God's clock, then because God necessarily views the universe holistically, the dichotomy is resolved by time dilation. I've gone through the argument in detail from a physics point of view, and it's quite compelling.
BTW… The Bible does use a concept of corporate responsibility, i.e., responsibility of people acting and suffering as group, even individual members who were innocent of the group's crimes.
It's also a concept the American people have used in times of war. Didn't we vaporize places that included women and children? I thought the idea was that the German and Japanese people bore collective responsibility for the actions of their governments. If not, then we have a lot to answer for.
The Genesis account is literal, not allegorical. But to have any meaning, we have to define whose clock we're using to measure the passage of time.
If the account is literal, then a day is a day is a day. If all reference to days in the Bible are on God Standard Time, fine. If not, the word does not have the same meaning throughout the text. To be literal is also to be consistent. If the meaning varies with usage, then interpretation is required and literalness is gone.
Leaving aside the original creation sequence (either one), you're still left with an earth that does not accord with the literal account - man showing up quite late to the party, the aforementioned Noah 'problem', etc.
I did notice that Ed made mention that the Book of Job isn't literal, so apparently we do have a distinction being drawn between literal and inerrant. I guess you don't have to count on everyone word being literally correct and you can still get to the whole thing being inerrant.
"I've gone through the argument in detail from a physics point of view, and it's quite compelling."
Sarah, you understand that time is variable, that the rate of passage of time varies depending on the circumstances in which it passes and from which its passage is observed and measured. You have the benefit of a stroke of genius and of almost a century of effort on the part of an army of physicists who have not only failed to disprove that stroke, but have experimentally confirmed its truth. Moreover, you spent considerable years studying mathematics to understand this as more than a cliché.
We do not know who wrote Genesis, nor do we know when it was written. We do not know what the author understood of time, of clocks, or of relativistic physics. The text of Genesis gives no evidence that the author understood anything about the passage of time other than what you and I, and my cat, experience daily. We are asked to believe that the story of Genesis in the Bible is inerrant because someone else says so?
Now, apply Occam's Razor to the question, "What is the story of Genesis?" As I have related elsewhen, it is a story told by bronze age tribesmen whose world encompassed the mountains and valleys around them and who reckoned the age of their world by counting their ancestors. It is an explanation that does not require the willing suspension of disbelief.
It fits perfectly with the characterization of it as just another story of how it all came to be, as the kind of story that all societies on this planet pass down through their generations, each story being different from the others.
Sarah, what you are doing is rationalizing. You are ascribing knowledge to an unknown author, without evidence the author had said knowledge, in order to justify your belief that the author was correct because he meant something other than what he plainly said, and you do so because what he plainly said was plainly silly. You are enabling a tautology, namely that God exists because the Bible says so and the Bible is inerrant because it is the word of God.
Examine Genesis on its face and it falls flat on its face. It is just a story.
Kevin, you're evil ;-) I'll bet you're back there in the sysop chair laughing your ass off.
And the rest of you folks need to get another hobby. I start with liberty and the stupid party and here you all are days later still fighting about Noah and Y chromosomes and the length of days...
I don't know about days, but I know the net four years are going to feel like an eternity.
I'm not laughing. Intellectually, the arguments are interesting to watch, though it's quite obvious that each individual is firmly entrenched and will not be moved. Unfortunately, these two sides have to work together, or the Statists will win in the end.
BillH shouldn't be laughing. This is precisely why the coalition fractures. Eleven elements that generate NO dispute, but those with an evangelical bent just can't leave it at that.
And yes, I get very enti-evangelical very quickly. Short of crappy play by the San Diego Chargers, this is the quickest way to get my goat!
I suspect that for those who list the Bible, it is actually first in importance. After all, if you believe it's God's word, how can it be any lower? This may be the cause of the fracture.
(Also, just to set the record straight, I cribbed the chromosomal argument from Steven Den Beste.)
We're pretty well united against the Statists, Kevin.
I wish I had your confidence about that DJ. Right now I'm scared as hell that the Repubs are gonna go all Huck & Sarah and that just isn't something I can swallow. I think there's a whole herd of 'conservatives' that have no compunction about growing the state - as long as it's for the 'right' reasons.
Then again maybe I'm just in a sour mood what with the Chargers stinking up the joint again.
I thought the idea was that the German and Japanese people bore collective responsibility for the actions of their governments. If not, then we have a lot to answer for.
But we're not god. We're mortal, have failings, imperfect, unclean etc. God, on the other hand, is perfect, never screws up, knows all, sees all. Mr. Omnipotent there could've smited only the sinners with laser-focus and left the kids alone, but didn't.
All this about a moldy old book about game theory. Sheesh.
Bleh. The parts of the day that weren't unexpectedly busy had me in the sort of mood that would have left Gandhi disposed to kick babies, so I'm just getting to this now. Before I bother with the more subjective bones of contention, let's tackle the science.
First, it would actually have to be a living cell. Its machinery of life (so to speak) would have had to function. Second, it would have to be able to replicate. After all, a "first cell" that can't replicate would also be the "last cell".
This is your first inaccurate assumption. You don't need a "first cell", you need a first self-replicating molecule. Almost nobody working on abiogenesis theory actually assumes everything began with what we'd recognize as a cell except creationists, either because it makes their arguments easier or because they are scientifically illiterate. Depending on the creationist in question, I usually assume the latter.
By the by, there is no "life force" that creates a clear bright line where we may define a "living" cell- at the levels we're talking about, organic chemistry and biology flow smoothly into one another with no clear breaks until we hit prokaryotes. (Which is why you stopped at cells as your "irreducible".) This is why other self-replicating molecules that interact with biological systems, like viruses, are so problematic for systematists. Actually, biological systems being their contiuum-loving fluid selves, almost everything is a problem for systematists. That field fights like twenty snakes in a sack trying to impose some kind of clear categorization system on organisms, some of which even decline to settle on being a single organism or many. (Look up Discoideum.) Your distinction is functionally meaningless.
These two requirements also mean that the cell had to have certain features. For this discussion I'm going to focus on just two: DNA and proteins. There are others, but I want to keep things as simple as possible.
This is your second wrong assumption. DNA is more of a reproductive system than a replicative- the process is so complex that it is seldom without error. See, the thing is, scientists are not retarded. They KNOW this, which is why serious theories of how life could get rolling all by its chemical lonesome DON'T propose anything like the ludicrious scenario you laid out and proceeded to crunch numbers on. Your argment is predicated on two completely wrong assumptions whose problems have been recognized and addressed for the last TWENTY-FIVE YEARS MINIMUM.
I could outline some of the scenarios that ARE currently recognized as plausible means for self-replicating molecules and eventually cells to get going, but I'm not going to, because you have just revealed that you are illiterate for the purposes of this conversation. You have read maybe one book on cell biology, and as I recall, it was a book with a specific agenda at that. If I had just attempted to demonstrate that the Bible was bullshit because a good God would not allow evil in the world, I would have revealed myself as similarly illiterate in that I would reveal I had NO IDEA what theologians were doing- and furthermore that I therefore could have no interest in honest and serious argument.
You, Ed, are attacking the honesty and integrity of tens of thousands of scientists over the last hundred and fifty years based on what? Your doctrine that the Bible is inerrant and therefore evolutionary theory, which is currently the backbone and basis of biology just as much as atomic theory is of chemistry, MUST BE WRONG and you are therefore somehow qualified to say so. I know you're not because you essentially just told me you're not- you have ZERO familiarity with the field you're attacking!
I think there's a word for that in theology. Starts with an s. The specific subtype starts with a p.
By the way, you know what else I could do, but I'm not going to because it's your goddamn responsibility? I could outline the aspects of science and natural law that make me AGNOSTIC with respect to an intelligent creator. (As opposed to flat atheistic with respect to Christianity specifically.) Go do your homework. When you know enough about science to identify these things for yourselves, I suspect your problem with "Darwinism"- which, incidentally, is about as petty and ludicrous as referring to physics as "Newtonism"- will have disappeared.
Reality is not affected by your doctrine. If there is a creator God, then He created natural law. If the rigorous study of the natural law reveals deep conflicts with aspects of your doctrine, which one has to give?
"A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."
Ed/Sarah: Want to (and do, if I read them right) believe in God.
DJ/Juris/Labrat: DO NOT want to believe in God.
Oversimplifying, perhaps, but watching the two sides constantly poking holes in each other is not getting anything useful done.
Neither side will be moved by the other, and all you're doing is getting ticked at each other. As each other's arguments escalate, you are attacking each others core beliefs, naturally getting each other constantly more riled.
The mysteries of the universe will not be solved in an internet comments thread.
As to why that twelfth item is there: That is among the things being attacked by the statists. Fot those who believe, it's important. Live with it.
While I'm not LabRat, and god (ha-HA! See what I did there?) knows I don't always know her mind, I think you've missed her point. Desire to believe in god has nothing to do with this.
If you want to put something forth as True, which some folks are suggesting about the contents of The Bible, you really only need one thing on your side before you start building your platform: You need internal consistency. LabRat et al have argued (and I'll put my bias up front, if it weren't already, that I don't consider The Bible true literally, any more than I consider the Prisoner's Dilemma true literally) that the bible doesn't have this through various contradictions (death of Judas, etc), typos (perfect monk translation club), "translation errors" (again), and so forth. If on day X god's will means one thing, and on day Y it means another, there is no point trying to surmise god's will in the first place. If you can't do that, then STFU about the great and un-pokable truth of the document which supposedly lays out god's will.
If your internal consistency goes further astray, ignoring not only consistency of literal message, but consistency of morals, your platform is further weakened. If God is all powerful and all knowing, then killing a child not old enough to even understand that it needs to poop, because a whole bunch of people around it are evil constitutes a very clear slaughter of an innocent. Ascribing this to "corporate responsibility" where all are guilty of the transgressions of some means that either the god under scrutiny is capricious and not internally consistent (since killing an "innocent baby" in the form of abortion is so often painted as evil, along with countless other citations of the evil of baby-slaughter), or the god under scrutiny lacks the claimed omnipotence to smite only the sinners, and is thus not omnipotent, and thus no longer internally consistent.
Outside the various and sundry Literal Word(s) Of God, there is further room for the point of internal consistency. Evolution being mathematically impossible springs to mind. Arguments presented in that vein are akin to "Well... electrons are really tiny. There's no way something that small could enable communication on this scale" despite the fact that it is de facto plausible as it is currently in use by the person making the claim. As for arguments concerning the length of the original day, in order for god to have an internally consistent clock (ignoring the clock the goat-herder recording His Various Word(s) would have been required to use, not posessing transluminos vessels), the repeatedly and independently observationally documented age of the universe, as well as the independently verified results with time-dialation effects would mean that if god could work on the different timescales necessary to justify Genesis, then he/she/it is a faster than light subatomic particle. This does not have any internal consistency with other claims made about his grand high poobahship.
Circling back around the barn the long way, no, neither side will be moved. But understanding why one side is upset is an important distinction. If you're going to claim that something is unimpeachable literal Truth, be it claims of Hope & Change, or be it claims that man sprung fully formed from a rib*, a dwindling few of us think you'd damn well better be able to back that up, or at the very least assimilate new evidence without sticking your fingers in your ears and flinging bullshit until the other party gets sick of shouting against the surf.
Either way, Rodney has spoken. "Can't we all just get along?" More or less, since killing heretics is not generally acceptable as yet in the U.S. "It’s just not right. It’s not right. It’s not, it’s not going to change anything. We’ll, we’ll get our justice...." Nope, we won't change much, and the religious folk will get their justice in some undefined state after all recognizable functions defining life have ceased, and the scientists will get theirs as the people insisting against all evidence that a 2000 year old book, the contents of which amounting to "Don't fuck people over without a good reason" are increasingly marginalized. In the mean time, while we argue about all this, if you'll excuse me, I've got a president-elect that apparently is going to pay my mortgage, and I need to talk to Him about that.
*(And if god is omnipotent and ever lasting, why should I be impressed that he sent part of himself to die for us? Isn't that like saying "I cut my toenail on your behalf!"?)
No human is perfect, ergo neither is any human argument, on any side of any issue.
It's like locks. Any lock that has ever been engineered can be opened without the key, if people look close enough.
My point was that people will find holes everywhere if they look close enough. That goes for any side of any arguement you choose. People pick the side that seems best to them and stick with it.
Bashing heads over details helps no-one, and changes nothing.
And, uh, I think you missed the point with the toenail thing.
Splodge of Doom:"DJ/Juris/Labrat: DO NOT want to believe in God."
Stingray:"Desire to believe in god has nothing to do with this."
Nor does desire to NOT believe in god have anything to do with this.
How many times have I said it? Reality is what it is regardless of whether or not I like it, and so whether or not I like it is irrelevant to any analysis I make of it.
If you would have me believe you can get from "it musta been god" to "you'll burn in hell forever if you eat meat during a time perioad labeled 'Friday'", then show me the body, i.e. you'll have to come up with something more substantial than "somebody else says so".
"In the mean time, while we argue about all this, if you'll excuse me, I've got a president-elect that apparently is going to pay my mortgage, and I need to talk to Him about that."
Yeah, but I've had enough politics for a long while.
The mysteries of the universe will not be solved in an internet comments thread.
Ha! Says who?! ;-)
As to why that twelfth item is there: That is among the things being attacked by the statists.
There are those who would use the state to ram "the truth" down our throats, and they ain't all 'libruls'. If we agree to the first eleven items there is no need to inject the twelfth - tha state properly has no business there and it should NOT be part of a political agenda.
The real problem as I see it is that Ed supposes you can either traverse between faith and reason, or buttress faith with reason.
The problem is that you don't seem to understand what faith really is. Nonreligious people suppose that faith is accepting something: 1) for which there is zero evidence; or 2) for which there is evidence to the contrary. That definition is wrong. As C. S. Lewis so aptly put it, faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods. Faith is fully compatible with -- and supportive of -- reason.
If the account is literal, then a day is a day is a day. If all reference to days in the Bible are on God Standard Time, fine. If not, the word does not have the same meaning throughout the text. To be literal is also to be consistent. If the meaning varies with usage, then interpretation is required and literalness is gone.
It is literal in the sense that it is not allegory. That doesn't preclude interpretation.
Leaving aside the original creation sequence (either one), you're still left with an earth that does not accord with the literal account - man showing up quite late to the party, the aforementioned Noah 'problem', etc.
How is it not in accord with the literal account? The order of the events described in Genesis fits the order of events as we understand them from modern science.
The account of the flood is problematic, but there is a possible resolution. Gerald Schroeder speculates that the flood may only have occurred in one region, not the entire world. (This is not unreasonable, since the OT was not concerned with the rest of the world.) All human beings in existence at that time may have lived only in that region -- but there were humanoid creatures elsewhere. Schroeder points out that the Bible makes reference to other humanoids. They differed from humans only in that they did not possess the neshama, the human soul. Maimonides discusses such creatures, so clearly the existence of human-like beings even pre-Adam was not problematic for the ancient biblical scholars. Humans in the Bible interacted with these humanoids, and even married and procreated with them. If Schroeder is correct, then the account of Noah is not really problematic.
Sarah, what you are doing is rationalizing. You are ascribing knowledge to an unknown author, without evidence the author had said knowledge, in order to justify your belief that the author was correct because he meant something other than what he plainly said, and you do so because what he plainly said was plainly silly. You are enabling a tautology, namely that God exists because the Bible says so and the Bible is inerrant because it is the word of God.
What you describe is done in scholarly work all the time. Your objection on that basis doesn't hold up.
Your accusation of rationalization is also unfounded. I had a nonreligious upbringing with parents who were hostile to religion, an attitude passed on to me by my teens. When I began studying for my physics degree, I was an atheist, completely indifferent to God and actively hostile to Christianity. Eager to form some kind of philosophical basis for my life, I dabbled in Objectivism for a couple of years, but lost interest when I arrived at some serious logical impasses. By my junior year I began to consider my beliefs about the universe and existence in the context of what I was learning in physics. By my second or third year in grad school I saw Schroeder's The Science of God on my way out of a bookstore and picked it up on an impulse. It seemed a little too good to be true, so I spent about a year thoroughly checking the veracity its claims. I had no vested interest in proving any of them true, I was simply curious. And then I was astonished by what I found.
I became Christian only about two years ago. I accepted God because I was convinced by simple logic (if the universe was created, then that implies a creator), the orderliness of the universe (seems unlikely that its orderliness is by accident), and finally Schroeder's argument for the congruence of the Genesis account and modern physics. Not because it fits a narrative of belief I was imbued with since birth. It was simply too compelling for me to deny, so I accepted the existence of God. My acceptance of Christ, on the other hand, I will admit is for reasons that are subjective, but still not entirely without a basis in reason.
Examine Genesis on its face and it falls flat on its face. It is just a story.
It's not meant to be examined on its face by people like you and me. As with almost all literature, it is meant to be understood on more than one level. The simple, face-value level was intended for the illiterate peasants who were the original audience. There is a much deeper level for those who were to come later, and we are finally at a point where we are able to evaluate it on a much more sophisticated basis.
Stingray has it right: this has absolutely nothing to do with my desire to believe or not to believe. I am actually quite apathetic on this score; I have not been convinced around to anyone's version, but I don't find the notion itself threatening or alarming, and I've never had any sort of experience I would categorize as "religious" other than finding pleasure in studying theology as I would philosophy.
When someone makes an extraordinary claim like "the Bible is inerrant", that's not merely a theological one, that's something we have the same reference for and can argue about- especially when that person is ALSO claiming that that makes the Bible an absolute authority, such as can be used to, say, throw out a massive branch of science or force religiously-acceptable versions of law on society. That's an important damn claim, and one whose tensions won't be resolved merely with "live and let live".
As for evolution specifically, I view this as a much more important issue, because it's NOT theological. It's a massive underpinning of biology, through which much is understood and will continue to be understood- and more than that, it's also a problem for conservatism in that it will be completely crippled in the realm of academia until conservatism no longer attempts to defend the intellectually indefensible. So long as dishonest and uninformed attacks are constantly made on working scientists who are painted as liars, deliberately ignorant, and representing some sort of sinister secular agenda are condoned and continued, conservatism will NEVER regain a strong representation in the universities. Don't think we need them? The products of the current system have come due and they have elected their leader. We DO need them. I can't count the number of scientific types I know who started out siding with liberalism as the "pro-science" faction just based on this single issue *alone*. I know when I was younger I made the same assumption that any school of thought that would condone such gross intellectual malpractice in one area must be intellectually bankrupt as a whole.
Nor does desire to NOT believe in god have anything to do with this.
I don't believe in the Norse gods or aliens or ghosts. But I don't exert any effort to refute their existence, because I don't have a desire not to believe in them. I haven't seen anything to compel me to believe in them, so I'm indifferent.
On the other hand, you have clearly spent a great deal of time and effort to refute something you claim is nonsense. I have a very difficult time accepting that this is not motivated by an intense desire to NOT believe.
The order of the events described in Genesis fits the order of events as we understand them from modern science.
Genesis 1 - yes, but not Genesis 2. I take it then you don't buy the rib business. Or talking serpents that didn't slither on the ground.
All human beings in existence at that time may have lived only in that region -- but there were humanoid creatures elsewhere.
Wow. I am so shocked at this line of thought that I simply don't know what to say. Talk about the Bene Gesserit test! [yes two Dune references in one thread is a technical foul, but it had to be said - take your free throw!]
How about, regardless of the notion of souls (who has them and who doesn't), we just stick to simple genetics and the fact that this is demonstrably untrue?
To get back to the theme of inerrancy (through inconsistency), DJ pointed out the errors in the lineage of Jesus between the two Gospels (including omission of reference to Noah). And it seems to take a lot of extra-Biblical effort to resolve these little difficulties. I noted that Ed made reference to "tradition" [how Roman Catholic] in his effort to reconcile the plainly conflicting accounts of Judas' death.
Now, reading Genesis 1 as metaphor, or allegory, for creation isn't something I have a problem with. Reading it LITERALLY is, because it defies reason to do so. This is precisely why I said reason is different from faith. Instances where reason might support faith are fairly trivial. Where you have to take something on faith is where reason is no help to you.
Sarah: You may be able to tinker either version of Genesis into accurately reflecting physics, but the first and more detailed does not line up even superficially with the fossil record, especially the evolution of plants. It puts fruit (which is expressly a delivery package meant to be used by animals) before animals of any kind, and light after plants... that survive by photosynthesizing. Birds (which are relative latecomers- primates showed up first, though not hominids) appear at the same time as fish.
As for your contention that there is no moral society without Judeo-Christian roots... well, we've already talked about the Greeks in the past, whose advanced system of ethical philosophy was eventually enfolded nearly whole by Christianity and had not a jot to do with their gods, who behaved badly even by Greek standards. Then we have the Japanese, whose internally-locused system of ethical behavior is likewise only tenuously linked to their gods, and while Christianity has found some acceptance there, it's still a minority faith and they don't seem to need it to construct an orderly and decent society.
I note that all the examples you gave of "amoral" societies are also societies upon which atheism was forced expressly in order to make collectivism the ideal. A system that explicitly denies individual agency or responsibility produces bad behavior? Color me shocked, SHOCKED I say! Traditional Chinese ethical philosophies and faiths- such as Taoism and Confucianism- share many of the same positively shaping memes as successful Western ones do. (Confucianism in particular was awfully radical for the time and place for proposing a meritocracy of virtue rather than tribal nobility of birth.)
Oh, and it's widely been pointed out that Africa is now one of the great bastions of Christianity, often having many more devout followers than in the Western societies they originated in. Yet somehow I'd still much rather live in Hong Kong than in Nigeria. Societies shape religions as much as religions shape societies.
As for the flood... there were modern homo sapiens- not "lesser" hominids- in the millions all over the world before the proposed time of the flood. If you're willing to assert that the Chinese are an inherently amoral people I suppose I'm not surprised you're also willing to assert that none of them had souls except for the few in the Middle East that Yahweh was paying attention to.
On the other hand, you have clearly spent a great deal of time and effort to refute something you claim is nonsense. I have a very difficult time accepting that this is not motivated by an intense desire to NOT believe.
I have said repeatedly that I do not consider the idea of God, Christianity in general, or even the Bible to be nonsense. I consider absolute Biblical inerrancy and the insistence that Genesis is a reliable scientific account to be nonsense.
Your continued confusion on this point rather indicates to me that YOU need to believe that's my motivation and the reason I find your arguments- and Schroeder's- unconvincing.
...it will be completely crippled in the realm of academia until conservatism no longer attempts to defend the intellectually indefensible.
I agree. I suggest that the solution is to convince our more outspoken colleagues to keep their pieholes shut about theology. From the experiences I've had lecturing about science to religious groups, what I've discovered is that they are always delighted to find that science is compatible with their beliefs -- they want to believe science -- but when they are told that they have to choose between God or science, they will always choose God.
juris -- Genesis 2 is not incompatible with Genesis 1. I know this looks like a dodge, but I have limited time at my disposal and you and I will forever be talking at cross-purposes unless we have a common foundation, which means you'd have to read Schroeder's books and the relevant parts of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed. I learned that there's no point in engaging LabRat in a discussion about biology until I acquire the foundation from which to argue. Likewise, it would be an exercise in futility for us to continue until you familiarize yourself with the scholarly interpretations of the OT.
Right now I'm scared as hell that the Repubs are gonna go all Huck & Sarah and that just isn't something I can swallow.
I don't think there is a Huck and Sarah of the sort juris_imprudent is worried about. Huckabee certainly is comfortable with the idea of using the State to make better people of us. I'm less certain of the evidence for that with Sarah Palin, though I'd be willing to look at it.
By way of illustration, I am a conservative Roman Catholic who is uncomfortable with the idea of using the State to make better people of you assorted unbelievers, infidels, apostates, and heretics. Shun! SHUUUUNNNNNNN! Wait...ahem. Sorry. I'm okay now. ;) If you want to point and laugh at more people like me, go to acton.org. :)
But "Huck & Sarah" illustrates a belief, the belief that any two believers' attitudes and intentions can be factor-analyzed such that they will load on a single factor called "God-botherer" at north of .90.
For what it's worth, I feel equally tooth-grindy when it comes to folks like Richard Dawkins, or on the bio-blogosphere, P.Z. Meyers and Ed Brayton. They reveal their contempt and ignorance at every turn, and they've done vastly more to cement the entire subject as a war between science and religion- and thus cripple "our side"- than they ever have to show up the creationists.
I want to put them all in a sack and have a soap-based conversation with them.
Likewise, it would be an exercise in futility for us to continue until you familiarize yourself with the scholarly interpretations of the OT.
I would agree with that if it were not for the assertion of inerrancy AND accessibility (the very point that started this whole damnable thread). You can't have it both ways. Also, you don't know how much I have studied - perhaps not as much as you, or perhaps as much but from a different perspective. And you're right, I see disavowing the differences in Gen 1 & 2 as not inconsistent as a dodge, particularly when simultaneously arguing that the meaning is plain, accessible and inerrant. If you want to argue crypticism, or god-forbid - gnosticism, then I'll buy that I don't understand and don't have the inclination to study it enough to know. Otherwise, we are on level enough ground to discuss.
As I understand it, the hoped for effects of Palin were two-pronged: one, to shore up the social-con base; and two, to reach out to presumably moderate Hillary-supporters (Repubs really are bad at identity politics).
What causes me the despair is that the Repub coalition seems most likely to jettison the libertarian element. And what is the one item on that list of twelve that most embodies that? Number tweleve.
I'm happy to make common ground with social cons (heck, and anyone else for that matter) on the first eleven items.
I understand your position, juris. I don't see Sarah Palin as a nascent Nehemiah Scudder (Huckabee ain't either, but as a cross between Elmer Gantry and Jimmeh Url Peanut he's plenty bad enough on his own).
If the GOP thinks it can win elections without libertarian support, they are welcome to try. That leaves us where we will probably end up sooner or later anyway, based on the trend -- insisting on being let alone, and seeing whether we have the means and will (to coin a phrase) to make it stick.
Me:"Examine Genesis on its face and it falls flat on its face. It is just a story."
Sarah:"It's not meant to be examined on its face by people like you and me."
Says WHO?
"It's not meant to be examined on its face by people like you and me."
Not meant by WHO?
Sarah, you don't know who wrote it. How do you claim to know who the author meant to examine it, or how the author meant it to be examined?
This is the crux of the difficulty I have with the notion that the Bible is inerrant. It's a simple thing for me, really. I try to keep in mind, to the best extent that I can, who wrote it. It is plain language, where it isn't twisted into archaic English by translation, and I read it plainly.
The Bible is not inerrant, demonstrably so. It has not been, and cannot be, demonstrated to be inerrant, but it is stated to be inerrant by those who would have me believe it is. Well, golly gee, anyone can make such a statement. The difficulty I have is getting my head around the convoluted mental hoops that people jump through attempting to convince themselves and others that such a statement is correct.
When I read a statement such as ...
"The apocryphal books have demonstrable errors, including geography and historical events. I don't care what the "Council of Trent" asserted. Those books don't meet the standard of "inerrant." That's why Jerome refused to include them in the Vulgate."
... I cannot help laughing my ass off. To me, the standard of "inerrant" is "contains no errors". How in blue blazes could Jerome possibly determine that any book of the Bible contains no errors? The plain language of the books contradict themselves and each other. How can they possibly be inerrant? They contain gazillions of statements of facts. How could Jerome possibly check each assertion of fact for accuracy? That's what it would take to determine that it is inerrant.
The simplest example I can think of is the listing of the geneology of Jesus all the way back to Adam. How the hell could Jerome fact check this?
Here are some serious questions for you:
Can Christian dogma be correct even though the Bible is not?
Can Christianity stand on its own merits without having to claim that it is true because the Bible says so and the Bible is inerrant?
Is stating that the Bible is inerrant simply a holdover from many centuries ago, an age when few people could read and even fewer had a Bible to read, and so an age when the shamans du jour could easily state "The Bible Is Inerrant And The Bible Says [insert claim here]" and convince others to believe what they said?
Can you accept the validity of Christian dogma without having to assert that the Bible is inerrant, and thereby be able to just accept that those who wrote the Bible were wrong here and there?
Finally, why should a belief in the validity of Christian dogma require a belief that those who wrote of its early history were perfectly correct in their recording of that history, even though they weren't there to witness it firsthand? Here's a hint: If you cannot accept what they wrote at face value, i.e. you have to interpret and explain it, then how can you assert that it is infallible?
"On the other hand, you have clearly spent a great deal of time and effort to refute something you claim is nonsense. I have a very difficult time accepting that this is not motivated by an intense desire to NOT believe."
Sarah, wait until a sizable portion of my society actively campaigns to teach the alien assistance hypothesis in Egyptian history class or when polls show that UFO skeptics are the least trusted group in America or when our political leaders erroneously claim that our country was founded on the teachings of grays and you can't be a patriot without accepting the existence of aliens. Then you'll see me talking a little more loudly about the subject. As it is, these debates rage wherever people raise arguments to support these ideas. I suspect you notice the contra-theism arguments more because
they attack something you hold dear and because they attack something very widely believed.
That settles it. Somehow or another The Smallest Minority Commenter's Club is going to have to have a blogbash somewhere. I've got to get all y'all in the same room at the same time. Preferably a room where alcohol is served in large quantities, and the room is wired for audio and video recording!
"I have a very difficult time accepting that this is not motivated by an intense desire to NOT believe."
Given the engineer mind you're arguing against, you should try the same experiment in stating that a keyed linked list with randomly placed keys is, in application, faster than one with evenly spaced keys.
I don't know about the mathematicians and engineers you deal with, but the ones I've met with get very vehement when something is asserted for which no evidence can be given.
The engineer mentality that I have always known simply is *bothered* by nonfactual statements, or statements for which an assertion is made without evidence. You don't need to actively disbelieve in God to argue vehemently against the idea. However, I would revert to Descartes' original assertion - all is void until given evidence to be. I still think that, given this, the atheist is right in stating it is the task of the believer to give evidence to God (just as you would ask for proof of a house on the moon), not his to disprove it.
I do not think our atheists here can be accurately called anti-theists, which is the accusation I (perhaps very wrongly) am reading you to make. We're not talking a difference of opinion or necessarily even opposing sides of an issue. It is still the task of the believer to give rationale for belief - challenging that rationale requires no belief of its own. It's not the comparison I like to make, but a man who tells you there is a pink elephant on the moon is responsible for demonstrating it. The onus is on the proposer of an idea - on its advocate.
Of course, it's a pity we can't convince the average liberal in an argument that all statements require evidence, and that very few can be considered necessary without. An accusation of groupthink, strawman-ing, or selection bias requires reason, rationale, and evidence to why these fallacies appliy - simply calling them out doesn't give them any veracity.
It is still the task of the believer to give rationale for belief . . .
Well, no actually. That's pretty much the point. Believers believe through faith. Some come to their faith through reason, but most don't. However, once you believe, then there's no rationale that will sway you.
As I wrote in Why I Am an Atheist, I don't believe because reason has led me to where I am. I acknowledge the reverse is true of others, but it didn't work that way for me. Is it possible that a Supreme Being is responsible for the Universe and everything in it? Sure. It just isn't provable. As for jumping from that base assumption to Yaweh and all that followed, so far no one has answered my fundamental question with the Abrahamic God meme, so that set of faiths is right out the window for me.
Basically, what we need is acceptance from both sides that neither is going to change, and that neither really needs to. I reiterate Eric S. Raymond:
The trouble with ‘tolerance’ is that it only works as a cultural compact when all parties are civilized and have in practice largely agreed to abandon the more inconvenient claims of the religions they theoretically profess.
I include anti-theism in the list of religions that need to abandon some "inconvenient claims."
I should have said,
"It is the task of the assertor to give evidence for an assertion."
I don't disagree about your statement that belief through faith is a distinct concept.
But if I'm going to approach something through logic and rationality, then, yes, the onus is on a person making a positive assertion. Ergo, someone arguing for the existence of a God who does so in rationality and logic (I'm not saying arguments on the subject are therefore irrational - I'm saying someone who makes use of, for example, scientific inquiry) takes the responsibility of giving evidence for that God. Everyone standing outside that ring has no responsibility to disprove it.
As for your contention that there is no moral society without Judeo-Christian roots...
I said a religious foundation -- I did not specify Judeo-Christian. But in terms of the type of morality I, personally, want I will claim that you only get that with a Judeo-Christian foundation.
...the Greeks ... whose advanced system of ethical philosophy was eventually enfolded nearly whole by Christianity and had not a jot to do with their gods, who behaved badly even by Greek standards.
If the Greek system was so great, why did they whole-heartedly embrace Christianity? Obviously, they were in need of something that their advanced philosophy didn't provide.
Then we have the Japanese, whose internally-locused system of ethical behavior is likewise only tenuously linked to their gods...
This is the same tribal moral system that allowed them to commit atrocities against the Chinese and others. The Japanese have learned a new moral system through more than 60 years of American influence and oversight, but continue to be some of the most racist people in the world. Is this a moral system we'd hold up to the rest of the world?
I note that all the examples you gave of "amoral" societies are also societies upon which atheism was forced expressly in order to make collectivism the ideal. A system that explicitly denies individual agency or responsibility produces bad behavior...
So you think atheism could uphold individualism? Let's put that to the geopolitical/historical test. Where have you ever seen an atheistic society uphold individualism instead of collectivism? The answer is nowhere. No atheist country has ever upheld individual rights. Not in the gangster-state of Russia, not in the communist states of Cuba or Southeast Asia, not in the fascist state of China, and not in the bureaucratic state of Europe. Why would that be so? In the U.S. right now the highest authority is still God. It's right there in our founding documents, each of us is endowed by his Creator with rights. If you have an atheistic country, then by definition the highest power is the state. Decisions are made by a monarchy or an oligarchy/aristocracy. If that group is a majority, then you have democracy, which is capable of (forgive me) electing Hitler. This is the true nature of human beings: the majority becomes a mob. This is not conjecture, it's what history demonstrates. Individual rights are whatever the governing group defines them as at any given time, because without God, there is no such thing as eternal and inalienable. With God, you have a higher authority than government. It doesn't work perfectly, but it's worked better than anything else.
Now, are you going to tell me that the only reason atheistic societies haven't upheld individualism is that the right people haven't been in charge or that the exact right conditions weren't in place? It hasn't worked before, but in principle it's such a great idea, it just has to work?
One of the reasons I converted to Christianity is pragmatism. To be honest, I wasn't completely on board when I converted, and there's a lot to dislike about some Christians. But I observed atheism failing, over and over, to provide the kind of moral, individualistic society I want to live in. I'm not willing to give it another chance no matter how good it sounds in principle.
Chinese ethical philosophies and faiths- such as Taoism and Confucianism- share many of the same positively shaping memes as successful Western ones do.
And China has been a shining beacon for the last thousand years? With Confucianism and Taoism, China has been a backward shithole for centuries. We had the Boxer Era morphing into the Communist Era, and a society so feeble that it was shit-kicked by the Japanese.
So show me how these same positive ideas resulted in moral behavior. If the memes are so similar, then how do you explain the differences between China and the West? The element that's missing is God. What you have with these philosophies is a lovely moral system that's all words and no actions. A moral system has to lead to moral behavior or it's useless. The most moral behavior in the world is in Western Christian culture. You cannot demonstrate that any society has achieved a similar level of moral behavior.
Oh, and it's widely been pointed out that Africa is now one of the great bastions of Christianity, often having many more devout followers than in the Western societies they originated in.
It takes generations to see the effects. Kevin has discussed at length what it took for the U.S. to get to the point that it could elect an effete Marxist as president -- generations of leftist indoctrination. We all know that even if education in this country were to be completely overhauled today, America wouldn't suddenly become a free market paradise. It would take decades to see the effect, because the older generations and institutions are rooted in their corrupted ways -- they're lost, they're societal baggage. It's going to take many years before we'll see the effects of Christianity there.
Yet somehow I'd still much rather live in Hong Kong than in Nigeria. Societies shape religions as much as religions shape societies.
I would, too. But that has a lot to do with the British influence for 150 years. Would you rather live in Shanghai or rural China than Nigeria?
...particularly when simultaneously arguing that the meaning is plain, accessible and inerrant.
Just so we're clear, I'm not claiming to be an OT scholar. But I'm guessing you haven't read Nachmanides, Maimonides, or Schroeder, and I don't have the time to go into depth on this topic. It took me years of reading to understand Genesis, and there's no way I can do it justice in the comments section of a blog with limited time at my disposal.
Also, I never claimed that scripture was plain and accessible, at least not in the sense you mean. Most people with at least average intelligence can understand it, but it requires study. This WHOLE thing started with one simple statement -- "The Bible for what it says" -- which to me meant not using scripture to say things like "God damn America," or to twist it beyond all recognition to justify bad behavior. It didn't mean that the Bible is an easy read.
Oz,
I suspect you notice the contra-theism arguments more because they attack something you hold dear and because they attack something very widely believed.
Of course. But no one is forced to profess a belief in God in this country. You and DJ and every other atheist is free to profess whatever beliefs you wish. (If you object that you're not free to do so without criticism or having missionaries knock on your door, I'm going to be very disappointed.) The point is, I still don't understand the need to spend lots of time and effort refuting something that's supposedly nonsense. As a professional astronomer, I encounter an awful lot of people who believe in astrology. Something like 25% of the population -- including at least one president -- believes it, and apparently doesn't understand the difference between astronomy and astrology. All it took was a cursory look at the evidence to see that astrology was bunk, and I haven't bothered with it since. If I were to spend hours and days of my life refuting astrology, I dunno, it starts to look personal, don't you think?
Kevin,
Believers believe through faith. Some come to their faith through reason, but most don't.
How do you know? You've never been in that position, and I'm assuming you've never regularly attended church, so how can you know how most people come to their faith?
Sarah actually makes a reasonably strong case correlating a religious basis, (specifically, the Judeo-Christian legacy) with moral societies that champion individual rights and prerogatives.
We know that correlation is not causation, but it is sufficient to suspect and test a potential causal relationship.
The position is also slightly tainted, risking circularity, by the filter with which we are evaluating the questions "What is moral? What is ethical? What does a society that champions individual rights look like?". Those filters are part the gifts of the Judeo Christian legacy, which we have all benefited from.
I submit, however, that the features of the legacy that have resulted in the said reasonably just society are subject to Occam's razor, and what's left over after the stropping won't necessarily be theological. (In fact, the exercise might be worth actually doing just to see if anything Theological passes the razor...)
Unfortunately, that's not a testable hypothesis. While we can, as a matter of intellectual exercise, shave off the theology, leaving only those features that promote moral behavior, social cohesion, individual liberty, the spirit of free academic and scientific inquiry, and the infrastructure that promotes memetic promulgation and endurance, but we would have no way to install the thing into a large scale society to test and prove the case. The reason we can't install it is in part due to the fact that we don't happen to have any societies handy for which that niche is empty and waiting.
---===|===---
We also have to consider the ways in which the Judeo Christian heritage doesn't support moral behavior, social cohesion, individual liberty, the spirit of free academic and scientific inquiry, and becomes entangled in superstitious nonsense like serpent handling, homophobia, creationism, theological justification for slavery, misogyny, and all the other noxious stuff that Blue America would have us believe is the essential core of the Conservative Christian.
---===|===---
At the end of the day, society is advanced by reasonable people willing to retain the best ideas (example: morality), eject the senseless ones (example: witch burning, theological support for slavery), and cautiously embrace that which is new and worthwhile (example: autologous organ cloning).
It is necessary that humanity be viewed in context: men are flawed, but nonetheless worthy of dignity and love. This is true, and has no dependency on the literal or allegorical truth of Genesis.
Sarah, I spent most of that comment answering the question you asked again in your response. To that I'd like to add that I'm not accusing anyone here directly of the things in that post, but they do happen extensively throughout society.
I think the mental gymnastics employed in the thread in the defense of the Bible prove the Mencken quote:
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking."
If you didn't believe the Bible was the work of a perfect god, you'd see the obvious: it is a collection of the myths and the laws (mixed in with the history) of an ancient people trying to move along as a culture and a society. All the irregularities make perfect sense that way. If you didn't axiomatically call it truth then you would have no need to invoke context and scholarly studies to attempt to prove it retroactively.
"But no one is forced to profess a belief in God in this country. You and DJ and every other atheist is free to profess whatever beliefs you wish. (If you object that you're not free to do so without criticism or having missionaries knock on your door, I'm going to be very disappointed.)"
Such is not my objection and never has been. I would complain if I were not free to profess my beliefs, but the flip side of freedom of speech is acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of speaking out, and I accept that responsibility.
"The point is, I still don't understand the need to spend lots of time and effort refuting something that's supposedly nonsense."
It isn't a need to refute something that's supposedly nonsense. I stated long ago that I am not an evangelist. But if you'll go back up this comment thread and find my longer comments, you'll find that each was an attempt at refutation of an assertion of fact that is demonstrably not fact.
Now, consider this statement by Adam:
"I don't know about the mathematicians and engineers you deal with, but the ones I've met with get very vehement when something is asserted for which no evidence can be given."
The urge to get very vehement in such conditions is, I think, present in every engineer I know. It took me donkeys years to learn how to not give into it every time it happened, and some engineers never do. You've read my statements many times that I believe in reality and in facts. Well, sometimes it's a gift, and sometimes it's a curse.
To assert as fact something that is trivially easy to show is not fact is to lay one's neck on the block. The subject this time was not trivial, and what I did was give in to the urge to swing the ax. Mea culpa.
As Red Green might say, "It's not necessarily smart, but it's part of what makes us who we are."
First off, let me say I don't have any problem with Christianity or Christians. While I consider myself agnostic (pretty much for the same reasons Kevin stated above), I'll debate the root ideas with you all you like. If nothing else, we sharpen our minds on one another, so there is no downside.
However, no matter how many Christians I know, like and trust, I have a problem with the "Christian values" or "America is a Christian nation" argument coming from the mouth of anyone with any political power whatsoever. That problem is that the whole "Christian values" argument implies, where it does not say outright, that non-Christians are simply not capable of being good citizens, that they are inherently flawed by not having the Judeo-Christian moral/cultural grounding.
While I will freely concede that Christian morality has perhaps made it *easier* to achieve such a great degree of freedom and ethics, I do not accept that it is impossible without that specific moral background.
And yes, I realize that many, perhaps most, Christians are not trying to claim that at all. Nonetheless, if you are, say, a Buddhist or Hindu who came here from Cambodia, hearing "We need Christian values" and seeing fears of Obama because "he's a secret Muslim" and fears of Romney because he's an open Mormon..... realistically, what do you think people in such circumstances hear?
So far, my experience leads me to believe that our staunchest fighters for freedom and individualism are immigrants from countries with a history of collectivism. They've seen the failures up close, and want no part of it. I think the US can ill afford to lose such people, and I think someone who lived in a hell we can scarcely even conceive will rightly feel insulted when others *with no experience of the PRICE of liberty* imply that his non-Judeo-Christian faith makes him part of the problem.
Keep in mind, whether not that is the INTENT of such a line of argument doesn't matter. All communication is defined by the person who *receives* it.
Sarah actually makes a reasonably strong case correlating a religious basis, (specifically, the Judeo-Christian legacy) with moral societies that champion individual rights and prerogatives.
Geek, I would say that is more happy happenstance then anything else. It isn't even true over the whole range of Judeo-Christian culture. A great book on the topic is by Michael Novak "The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism" (which is indeed a word play on Weber). It explores the contrast between the Americas, North and South, and why Argentina and Brazil, with as much natural resource wealth as the U.S. or Canada are so much less developed. I could certainly take the concept even further by looking at Coptic or Orthodox Christianity, let alone where Jewish philosophers have trod.
Yes, Kevin, which is my point - it was a more specific cultural thing. I would argue that the religion (Protestantism) was fitted to the culture (nascent individualism) rather than the culture arising out of the religion (since the larger religious tradition has plenty of variants that do NOT support that one specific slice). Same correlation, reverse of the causation.
Haven't been keeping up since it'd be hugely unfair to inflict my current mood on the topic, but for the interested, a pair of essays that hugely influenced my thinking on the topic, by the same author:
Actually, never mind about the foul temper, because something important just struck me. I've been arguing the wrong idea, or arguing against an idea- that Protestant Christianity, which is special because it derives from greater Biblical adherence over man-made doctrine- inherently improves a society.
I brought up the examples of Japan and the Greeks as cultures that evolved an individualistic and rigorous system of ethics completely divorced from theology to prove that it can be done, and also to point out that the best in Protestant Christianity was brought about by melding it not with greater Biblical literacy, but with the ethical philosophies of the pagan Greeks, to prove that the Bible in and of itself is not a "magic bullet" for a society.
I pointed out some of the more loathesomely vicious and intolerant things Luther wrote in order to prove that not even the author of the Reformation was immune to allowing his own prejudices and indulgences (in his case, primarily petulant rage at those who opposed him) subvert his Bible-based ethics, meaning that there was nothing inherent in Protestantism, again in and of itself, that guaranteed the kind of ethics we can all generally agree are healthiest for a society.
But there's really nothing useful in thinking in those "in and of itself" terms about either the ethics, the philosophies, or the theologies. Western culture and thought- pagan and explicitly theological, Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant- is a product of complete complicity between all these factors. There is no Renaissance or Reformation without that pagan thought, and no Enlightenment without that theological thought. No Augistine or Aquinas without Aristotle, but also no Voltaire or Locke without Augustine and Aquinas.
Western culture and ethics are as impossible to pin on any one thing in and of itself as the evolution of life is possible to distill into a single early cell with any hope of retaining a realistic and accurate picture of reality.
"Western culture and ethics are as impossible to pin on any one thing in and of itself as the evolution of life is possible to distill into a single early cell with any hope of retaining a realistic and accurate picture of reality.
In the same way that English is such a versatile language *because* it is so ready to steal handy words and concepts from any other language it comes in contact with. Capiche?
Sorry I haven't responded in a while. I've been very busy lately. My responses will still have to be slow for a while.
DJ:"What I find amazing is to hear a god described as such by the same person and in the same breath as being merciful. Such thinking makes my head hurt."
DJ:"Do I believe its premise, that Jesus was a god who died for my sins? Not for a moment."
Me: I understand that you don't accept that the Bible is true. I haven't laid out that argument in detail yet. When I wrote that explanation, I was responding specifically to your problem with God being described as merciful. Given the description I laid out—which is a summary of the Bible's central themes—do you still think it's unreasonable to use "merciful" to describe God?
DJ:"Any geneology which traces the ancestry of any person born after the flood all the way back to Adam and Eve must show that ancestry through Noah and a son of Noah, as no other path is possible."
Me: Correct.
DJ:"Now, skip forward to the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Luke, Chapter 3, in which Luke lays out, in verses 23-38, the geneology of Jesus, the son of Joseph, yadda yadda yadda, "Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God."
Me: Noah and his son Shem are in there:
When He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Eli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Hesli, the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Salmon, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Ram, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Heber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
(Luke 3:23-38 NAS95S)
DJ:"Let's look a bit further and see if Luke knew what he was talking about. Let's compare a bit of the geneology of Jesus according to Luke to the geneology of Jesus according to Matthew, as laid out in Mathew 1:1-16.
"Luke 3:23 "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,"
"Mathhew 1:16 "And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ."
"So, Joseph had two dads, did he? Or, Luke writes "... as was supposed ...", meaning he didn't really know what he was writing about?"
Me: I've heard this one a lot. It turns out that this difference is actually important. In fact, you pointed out the critical point yourself, the phrase "… as was supposed …" in Luke. Even though Joseph was Mary's husband, he was not Jesus' father.
Think of it this way, who was Jesus' actual father? It was not Joseph. Nor was it any other human man. It was God who made her pregnant. (But not through physical sex like the Jehovah's Witnesses claim.) I'm going to assume that I don't need to point out specific verses.
If you compare the two genealogies, you'll notice that they diverge immediately after King David. In Luke, the line goes through Nathan. In Matthew, it traces through Solomon.
God had promised David that because of his faithfulness, the Messiah would be one if his descendants.
“Moreover, I tell you that the LORD will build a house for you. When your days are fulfilled that you must go to be with your fathers, that I will set up one of your descendants after you, who will be of your sons; and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build for Me a house, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be his father and he shall be My son; and I will not take My lovingkindness away from him, as I took it from him who was before you. But I will settle him in My house and in My kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.”
(1Chronicles 17:10-14 NAS95S) See also: 2 Samuel 7:11-16, 2 Chronicles 13:5, Jeremiah 23:5; 33:15-26, and Luke 1:32-33
Furthermore, God also promised that the Messiah would come from Solomon's descendents, provided he behaved himself.
“He said to me, ‘Your son Solomon is the one who shall build My house and My courts; for I have chosen him to be a son to Me, and I will be a father to him. ‘I will establish his kingdom forever if he resolutely performs My commandments and My ordinances, as is done now.’”
(1Chronicles 28:6-7 NAS95S)
Unfortunately, Solomon did not hold up his end of the bargin:
Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable idol of Moab, on the mountain which is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the detestable idol of the sons of Ammon. Thus also he did for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
Now the LORD was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not observe what the LORD had commanded. So the LORD said to Solomon, “Because you have done this, and you have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you, and will give it to your servant.”
(1Kings 11:7-11 NAS95S)
It turns out that the genealogy in Matthew is Jesus' legal genealogy traced through Joseph, his "supposed" father. This is important because according to Jewish law (not Biblical law), men had all the legal rights. Women had no rights at all. Therefore, Matthew (a Jew) apparently felt it was necessary to trace Joseph's lineage using the same standards that he grew up with; that only the father's (or in this case, stepfather's) lineage mattered.
On the other hand, Luke was a Greek who was not concerned about "legal" so much as "factual". Instead of just writing about his direct observations and experiences, he actively sought out those who were involved in events and actually interviewed them, just as any modern scholar would do. As his "supposed" comment notes, he was well aware that Joseph was not Jesus' father, therefore he traced Jesus' lineage through Mary.
By tracing both genealogies, the writers showed that God's promises were fulfilled in spades. First that both of Jesus' "parents" were descended from David, fulfilling God's promise in spades. Second, that God's ripping of the eternal kingdom from Solomon's line was also accomplished.
DJ:"Finally, note that both Luke and Mathhew trace the lineage of Jesus as a descendant of David. Mathhew shows 29 generations from David to Jesus, while Luke shows 43 generations. Moreover, except for David at one end and Jesus at the other, only three names are common to both lists, and they are out of order. Neither Luke nor Mathhew were there; they wrote what others told them, and they contradict each other."
Me: As I pointed out, it's not surprising that there are differences after David, after all, they are two completely different family trees after David. You should expect a different number of generations, different names, and even similar names referring to two different people. (You probably have John, Thomas, David, and other similar names appearing in your family tree. I'm sure I do too. But it's unlikely that those names refer to the same people.)
In addition, Matthew apparently skipped a couple of generations in his genealogy for unknown reasons. But even though English translations say "father of", the greek word used there, gennao (γενναω ), does not have the exact meaning as our english word "father". It would be more accurate to say that it means "male ancestor of", which would include father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so forth. Therefore, even though he skipped generations in his "Reader's Digest Condensed" genealogy, it's not inaccurate.
Juris:"That is an assertion of faith. That is not a statement of reason."
Me: That God created everything is what the Bible claims. If that claim is not true, then we can't trust it to be true about anything.
Secondly, the Bible makes direct historical claims, such as that Jesus actually walked the earth, was actually crucified, and actually rose from the dead. If these things did not actually happen, then Christians do not have any actual hope of salvation.
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.
(1Corinthians 15:13-17 NAS95S)
Direct links to actual historical events is one of the key features of Christianity which distinguishes it from most other religious claims. In other words, it's not just made up stories like ones with stuff like the Earth riding on the back of a turtle or animals acting a certain way because some ancestor did thus and such. The historicity of the Bible also make it testable, therefore making it possible to apply rules of evidence.
Finally, it's simply logical. If God did not actually create us, then He has no actual authority to tell us what to do. In which case, the Bible—which does tell us what to do—should simply be tossed rather than pretending it's authoritative at all.
In short, that God created everything is inextricably tied to His authority.
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Since, odds are, you are likely to get a candidate who is some sort of Christian, we'd all be a lot better off if he/she did take the Bible for what it does say, since it doesn't say much of anything about how a country ought to be governed. What it does do is give guidelines for individuals to live their lives by. Nothing wrong with that.
Caveat: Taking the Bible for what it does say is not the same thing as taking it literally. Just had to get that in there.
Good point, Ben. But don't forget the Emo Phillips joke!
Hard to forget since I don't know it. :)
It's in the "of course" link:
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off.
I said, "Don't do it!" "Why shouldn't I?" he said.
I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!" He said, "Like what?"
I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?" He said "Religious."
I said, "Me too! Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian."
I said, "Me too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant."
I said, "Me too! What franchise?" He says, "Baptist."
I said, "Me too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He says, "Northern Baptist."
I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He says, "Northern Conservative Baptist."
I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist or Northern Conservative Reformed Baptist?" He says, "Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist."
I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Eastern Region?" He says, "Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region."
I said, "Me too! Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1879 or Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1912?" He says, Northern Conservative Fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1912."
I said, "Die, heretic scum!" and I pushed him over.
Nice try, Kevin, but when I said things along the lines of "Give me one good reason to support the very things we don't believe in. And "at least he isn't a Democrat" is NOT the right answer," you all ridiculed me and accused me of sitting out the election. You made your choice; the least you could do is own it.
Heh, now I remember. See, there's a guy who doesn't take his Bible for what it says, and it does certainly say "Love your enemy," not "push him off a bridge."
Oz:
Do I wish you (and a bunch of other people) had voted for McCain? Yes. Do I wish McCain was currently President-elect? Yes. Do I disagree with your reasoning? No.
I made my choice. You made yours. All of the choices available to us were poor. Hey, I didn't want Obama to win. No choice other than McCain would have prevented that. As the song goes, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." But in the aftermath of the election, maybe - just maybe - somebody might freaking learn something.
But I doubt it. The GOP is called "The Stupid Party" with good reason.
Interesting that 11 of 12 items are utterly non-controversial and draw immediate assent by all readers. Yet those same readers will then try to put their own spin on why the 12th is controversial and how their own view of it is the right one.
If there is a failure of GOP leadership, it has to be that they allow the divisive elements to be incorporated into the party platform. A coalition agreeing on 11 elements shouldn't fall apart because we disagree on one.
I second what Ben said.
If "taking the Bible for what it says" generates so much controversy, I'd wager that it's because that's a lot harder/more ambiguous than it sounds, more than anything.
Even Martin Luther seems to have had problems with it.
I don't think that it's really that difficult, LabRat.
1. Love your neighbor
2. People without sin may cast the first stone
3. Mind the plank in your own eye before you worry about the speck in someone else's.
etc...
What about smiting? There was a lot of smiting going on, IIRC.
Just off the top of my head, late and distracted...
1. What if thy neighbor sold out your Jewish/Kurdish/whoever neighbors? When do you stand up to evil when it's your neighbor, which it may well be?
2. So you can't judge the actions of others if you yourself have done wrong? How wrong? When? Can you judge ever? See also #1.
Etc. The tension between acting against wrong and tolerating that that is not quite right by your definition is very real and very serious.
LabRat,
Yes, there are parts of the Bible that are hard to understand, and some parts that are hard to swallow. But there are other parts which are very, very clear. Yet some people "misunderstand" even the very clear portions. (Markadelphia, Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, the United Council of Churches, etc.) Why do you suppose that is?
Quite simply, many people don't understand the Bible because they don't want to understand it. Other people, such as Martin Luther in this case, do work at understanding the Bible, but for various reasons (lack of time, higher priorities, or other reasons) never overcome failings which they've grown up with.
In Martin Luther's case, he definitely had bigger fish to fry. He didn't even see a Bible until he had been a priest for many years. (I don't remember exactly how many, but it truly was scandalous.) That's just how the Roman Catholic Church was at that time. When he was finally able to access a Bible, he started climbing a huge learning curve just learning scripture, understanding it, and eventually doing an initial translation from Latin into German. Furthermore, not only did he do this without help or study aids, he did it in the face of direct opposition of "The Church", even threats to his life. It shouldn't be surprising that he didn't get everything right.
In fact, his situation is fairly analogous to the founding of this country. Many of the founders recognized that slavery was incompatible with the ideals this country was being founded on and wanted to put an end to slavery as part of creating the Constitution. Unfortunately, slavery was a make or break issue, and if they had insisted on ending slavery, the Constitution would not have passed. Period. Therefore, they had to compromise on slavery so they could accomplish the best good possible at that time.
Martin Luther accomplished great good in his life. He cared about the truth and fought for it. That he accomplished as much as he did is remarkable. That he still had failings is not.
That said, what does the failings of one man have to do with whether or not the Bible is true? You could list name after name of both actual and self-proclaimed christians who have held stupid ideas or disagreed with the Bible. You could almost certainly include me in that list. (I work at it, but I probably have something wrong.) I could easily list just as many (and more likely more because Christians are a minority) names of atheists who hold stupid ideas or disagree with other atheists. But you and I both know that truth is not determined by counting votes or flaws in their adherents, but by examining the evidence.
Kevin: most if not all of the smiting done in the Bible was either done in the OT or done to the early Christians. Remember also that the NT supercedes the OT wherever they overlap. Eg eating pork... it is not what goes into a man's mouth that makes him unclean but what comes out (no gay jokes please).
What I meant to write was 'no gay jokes please or I will have to smite you'
"What about smiting? There was a lot of smiting going on, IIRC."
That's the understatement of (ahem) eternity, Kevin. If you read it exhaustively, you'll find a total of 2,391,421 listed and/or counted, plus millions more mentioned but neither listed nor counted (including, but not limited to, all humans then alive except Noah's family) who were "smitten" to death by God.
Goodness. You generated a lot of comments on that one Kevin.
In between the post-election list and the post Kevin quoted I wrote another post (God and Government and Rights) that might help determine what my original idea was about the Constitution and the Bible. Feel free to visit, but in a nutshell, I mention the Constitution and the Bible on that list with the same words but as separate items for a reason. The Constitution and the Bible address two different things. I am a Christian but I do NOT believe that America is some kind of "Christian nation", whatever that means. All the heat and rancor is generated when one side or the other tries too hard to make them serve the same purpose.
The Bible and the Constitution are not two of the same, nor are they mutually exclusive. And the great thing about both is that, at least in America, you are free to believe or disbelieve either one as you see fit. And THAT freedom is one that I intend to stand back to back with Kevin to defend.
Amen! ;)
And all that smiting was done in the OT. Not one person was harmed by God in the NT.
Really though they all had it coming.
I don't think that it's really that difficult, LabRat... Remember also that the NT supercedes the OT wherever they overlap.
Really? I seem to have missed the language in the NT that says you can ignore, at least some parts of the OT. And that isn't even going into a discussion of the texts that were omitted, like the gospel of Peter. Y'all do realize that the Bible was settled by committee.
"And all that smiting was done in the OT. Not one person was harmed by God in the NT."
Not even one? Let's examine Acts 12:11-23, shall we?
"12:11 And when Peter was come to himself, he said, Now I know of a surety, that the LORD hath sent his angel, and hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod, and from all the expectation of the people of the Jews.
"12:12 And when he had considered the thing, he came to the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark; where many were gathered together praying.
"12:13 And as Peter knocked at the door of the gate, a damsel came to hearken, named Rhoda.
"12:14 And when she knew Peter's voice, she opened not the gate for gladness, but ran in, and told how Peter stood before the gate.
"12:15 And they said unto her, Thou art mad. But she constantly affirmed that it was even so. Then said they, It is his angel.
"12:16 But Peter continued knocking: and when they had opened the door, and saw him, they were astonished.
"12:17 But he, beckoning unto them with the hand to hold their peace, declared unto them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. And he said, Go shew these things unto James, and to the brethren. And he departed, and went into another place.
"12:18 Now as soon as it was day, there was no small stir among the soldiers, what was become of Peter.
"12:19 And when Herod had sought for him, and found him not, he examined the keepers, and commanded that they should be put to death. And he went down from Judaea to Caesarea, and there abode.
"12:20 And Herod was highly displeased with them of Tyre and Sidon: but they came with one accord to him, and, having made Blastus the king's chamberlain their friend, desired peace; because their country was nourished by the king's country.
"12:21 And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them.
"12:22 And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.
"12:23 And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost."
Well, it was God'S agent, the angel of the Lord. Does that count?
DJ -- What is the point about the smiting? Don't humans do a lot of smiting you'd consider righteous?
C'mon Kevin, we've had this discussion before. Have you forgotten the reasons for the smiting?
Let me put it this way. Do you oppose or support the death penalty? Why or why not? Do you agree that private individuals have the right to defend themselves using lethal force if necessary? Why or why not?
I believe I already know your answers, so I'm just going to continue.
If you consider death at the hands of men to be the proper penalty for some crimes, then why does it bother you that God also considers such a punishment to be just? In fact, given the restraint shown by God in the instances described in the Bible (He allowed far worse than what we consider reasonable), I'm convinced that it would have been totally unjust for God to not act.
After all, we're pissed off that Bill Ayers is "guilty as sin and free as a bird" for his crimes. Yet if you look at those cases where God acted, those who God killed made Ayers look like a rank beginner.
For example, Genesis 19 describes the smiting of Sodom and Gomorrah for their crimes. There are a couple of interesting features in this story. The most obvious is the actions of the men of Sodom:
"Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter; and they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.”
(Genesis 19:4-5 NAS95S)
Notice that this section is careful to point out that every single man who was capable of doing so showed up and demanded to rape Lot's visitors. You can't get much thoroughly corrupted than every single person. Lot even offered his virgin daughters, but they were so intent on committing the greater crime against God that they passed up the lesser crime. (Can you imagine a woman being gang raped by an entire town being a "lesser crime"?)
But what's often overlooked, is that in spite of this level of utter baseness on the part of the men of Sodom, God was willing to give the entire city a pass if there were just 10 righteous people in the town. Considering that there would have been thousands of people in those cities, even 10 people (not just men) would have been a fraction of a fraction of a percent. How anxious is God to "smite" a city if he's willing to skip the smiting for just 0.02%* of their population? Does this sound like a "rush to judgement" to you?
(*I don't know the actual percentage, this is an estimate based on archeologists' best guess estimate of the population in a 5 city area which they think included Sodom and Gomorrah. There there were about 260,000 people living in that area. I used a guestimate of 40,000 people just in Sodom.)
Now compare that reluctance to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah to this video from San Francisco. These people in the video are nowhere near as bad as the people of Sodom, yet I kept thinking "I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit." How 'bout you? Are you as tolerant as God is?
Then there's Jonah. God sent him to Ninevah, the capital of the Assyrians. The Bible doesn't describe what Ninevah was like, but other historical records do. Imagine an entire city filled with people like Saddam Hussein and his sons. If they had had plastic shredders, they probably would have used them. One of their favorite tricks was to take someone out to the desert, bury them up to their necks, then stake their tongue out and leave them there until they died.
Jonah was well aware of how bad Ninevah was and he didn't want to go, not because he was scared, but because he wanted God to destroy Ninevah. In fact, he was well and truly pissed off that the Ninevites repented and God didn't destroy them. Does that sound like a "rush to judgement" or "anxious to smite them" to you?
BTW, a couple of generations later, the Assyrians reverted to their bad behavior and refused to repent, and God did indeed destroy them for their crimes.
Can you actually point to even one case where God arbitrarily smote someone? I can point to numerous examples where God held off (and is holding off) on punishing those who deserve it to give them every opportunity possible to do the right thing.
1. What if thy neighbor sold out your Jewish/Kurdish/whoever neighbors? When do you stand up to evil when it's your neighbor, which it may well be?
God intends for us to use our common sense. If our neighbor is doing evil to another neighbor, then we are called upon to stop it. There is no definition of "love" I'm aware of that suggests we must allow someone to commit evil, any more than a parent is considered loving for allowing a child to misbehave.
2. So you can't judge the actions of others if you yourself have done wrong? How wrong? When? Can you judge ever? See also #1.
Of course we can judge the actions of others. Judgement means to discern right from wrong, which we are clearly directed to do elsewhere in the Bible. Ben did not quote the entire passage from the Bible, which does not forbid judgement but admonishes us to judge fairly. Matthew 7:2-5 says that how we judge others is how God will judge us. So go ahead and do it, but be fair, because your own standards will be applied to you.
"Y'all do realize that the Bible was settled by committee."
Wrong. You're probably thinking of the Council of Nicea which had nothing to do with deciding what was and was not canon.
The concept of figuring out which books are scripture and which are not is much like figuring out which paintings were created by a certain painter and which were not. For instance, during his lifetime, Picasso created quite a number of paintings. When you look at any particular painting, you're either looking at a painting which Picasso created, or you are not. For some paintings the history is crystal clear and there's no question that it's Picasso's. For others its necessary to examine the evidence and determine whether it is, or is not, by Picasso. The examiners do not create Picasso's canon, they figure out which paintings are his and which are not.
Christians had to follow the same process. Here is an article listing the basic criteria used to figure out what is and is not canon. And of course, the idea that a few men arbitrarily selected a few books out of a pool of many equally valid books does not bear any resemblance to the actual history.
DJ,
Do you have any idea of Herod's history?
He had executed John the Baptist for telling him that he was wrong for stealing his brother's wife.
He had James executed for spreading Jesus' teachings.
He was trying to kill Peter.
The Bible doesn't say what Herod was actually saying in his speech, but the people's response is consistent with Herod making himself out to be God.
Does this sound like an innocent man to you?
"DJ -- What is the point about the smiting?"
Nothing of any consequence, Sarah. "Spitballing", it used to be called.
"Don't humans do a lot of smiting you'd consider righteous?"
Yup. Sometimes it's necessary.
"Does this sound like an innocent man to you?"
No, but then I didn't state or imply that I thought he was. I simply pointed out that God "harmed" him rather stoutly, and the New Testament said so.
"I seem to have missed the language in the NT that says you can ignore, at least some parts of the OT."
Here you go, starting with the Old Testament:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
(Jeremiah 31:31-32 NAS95S)
Notice that the old covenant was specifically with the nation of Israel, not with the entire world. Biblical covenants were either unconditional (I will do this no matter what you do) or conditional (I will do this as long as you do that). The laws given in Exodus, Deuteronomy, Numbers and Leviticus were part of the old covenant given only to Israel. This covenant was conditional, requiring the Jews to obey the laws they were given.
There are also laws/principles given in the Bible with no limiting scope. For instance…
“Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.”
(Genesis 9:6 NAS95S)
… is stated to Noah as part of an unconditional covenant given to all his descendents. (That's every living human.) This is also one of the few instances where God specifically changes the laws for everyone:
“Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant. Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.”
(Genesis 9:3-4 NAS95S)
Prior to the flood, animals were not permitted to be used as food. The later restrictions against eating ruminants, shellfish and the like, were part of the laws given only to Israel.
Now, getting back to the old vs. new covenants, Jesus referred to Jeremiah 31:31 during the last support when He told His disciples that He was establishing the new covenant:
And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.
(Luke 22:19-20 NAS95S)
The writer of Hebrews goes into a little more depth in explaining the effect of the new covenant:
When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
(Hebrews 8:13 NAS95S)
Finally, here are two instances where it's made clear that the Jews are no longer bound by the old covenant and neither are christians:
But Peter began speaking and proceeded to explain to them in orderly sequence, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying; and in a trance I saw a vision, an object coming down like a great sheet lowered by four corners from the sky; and it came right down to me, and when I had fixed my gaze on it and was observing it I saw the four-footed animals of the earth and the wild beasts and the crawling creatures and the birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I said, ‘By no means, Lord, for nothing unholy or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a voice from heaven answered a second time, ‘What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.’”
(Acts 11:4-9 NAS95S)
When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.
When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?
“We who are Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners’ know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by observing the law, because by observing the law no one will be justified.”
(Galatians 2:11-16 NIV)
One final thought. Just because a law was given to Israel does not necessarily mean that we are not to obey them. Some actions are still called evil in the New Testament. For example, adultery, murder, etc. Other laws were given only to Israel, and no one else is required to follow them. Examples include prohibitions against eating shellfish and ruminants, cooking meat and vegetables together, and wearing mixed fabrics. In other words, there are two distinct sets of laws, one for the Old Testament Jews and one for everyone else. There is frequently overlap.
Think of it this way.
Each state has its own set of laws. Texas has a law requiring drivers to stop at a stop sign. Pennsylvania has a similar law. If I'm driving in Texas and I run a stop sign, I've broken Texas law, not Pennsylvania law, even though both states have the same law. This is how adultery works in the Bible. OT Jews and everyone else both have independent but similar laws against adultery. The OT Jewish laws specify the death penalty, while the prohibition against adultery for everyone else does not specify a penalty which a government is to enforce.
On the other hand, (if I remember correctly) Texas law forbids concealed carry into bars which earn 51% or more of their revenues from alcohol. Pennsylvania laws have no such restriction. So I have no problem carrying into a bar here in PA, while Texans can't do so, even if they don't actually drink any alcohol. That's why I, as a christian, am free to eat shellfish (though if I want to stay healthy, I'll make sure it has been handled according to EPA regulations) and Old Testament Jews could not.
"I simply pointed out that God "harmed" him rather stoutly, and the New Testament said so."
Fair 'nough.
Nothing spurs a comment thread like religion or abortion!
"Nothing spurs a comment thread like religion or abortion!"
Shouldn't that be "religion or Markadelphia"?
BTW… could you fix the part where I quoted DJ? That was supposed to be in italics.
"Not one person was harmed by God in the NT."
I think you got a little carried away there Ben. There was also Ananias and Sapphira.
I think we're reacting to different common pet peeves, Ed (and Sarah).
My point was not that the Bible is contradictory or untrue, but that it is in no way, shape, or form, simple. I hear a lot of variations on "the Bible for what it says" as though that should be an extremely clear-cut and simple and easy thing to do, yet the entirety of Western history makes it clear that it is none of these things. Sarah says that we are to judge fairly, but what's fair and where are the guidelines? There aren't any- you have to use your judgment, and your mileage may seriously vary per person.
I may not believe in Jesus Christ, but I do believe in a universal human nature, and I am well aware that Christians, atheists, and everyone else share the same failings- Luther included. But I also hear some variation on "if we just had REAL Christians doing this, then..." an awful damn lot, and it just ain't so.
"These people in the video are nowhere near as bad as the people of Sodom, yet I kept thinking "I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit." How 'bout you? Are you as tolerant as God is?"
Since God labels sodomy as a crime to be punished with death and all I have to say about it is that it's not for me, I'd say I'm actually more tolerant than God. What do I win?
"... I'd say I'm actually more tolerant than God."
I am, too. I can't think of any offense that is so awful, so heinous, that a fitting punishment therefor is barbaric physical torture that never, ever ends. I think that fifty billion years or so of such torture ought to be enough to cover anything.
Kevin: "Nothing spurs a comment thread like religion or abortion!"
Ed: "Shouldn't that be "religion or Markadelphia"?"
No, Ed, a comment thread spurred by religion or abortion is not like a comment thread spurred by the resident troll. The difference is that religion and abortion issues can be resolved with relative ease and with finality.
"I hear a lot of variations on "the Bible for what it says" as though that should be an extremely clear-cut and simple and easy thing to do, yet the entirety of Western history makes it clear that it is none of these things. Sarah says that we are to judge fairly, but what's fair and where are the guidelines? There aren't any- you have to use your judgment, and your mileage may seriously vary per person."
Like I said before, some things the Bible teaches are crystal clear. For example:
"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God."
(1Corinthians 6:9-10 NAS95S)
or
let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by this name this man stands here before you in good health. “He is the STONE WHICH WAS REJECTED by you, THE BUILDERS, but WHICH BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone. And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”
(Acts 4:10-12 NAS95S)
Do you see anything unclear about these statements?
Actually, there is a standard for interpreting scripture. It's called hermeneutics.
"In its technical meaning, hermeneutics is often defined as the science and art of biblical interpretation. Hermeneutics is considered a science because it has rules and these rules can be classified into an orderly system. It is considered an art because communication is flexible, and therefore a mechanical and rigid application of rules will sometimes distort the true meaning of a communication. To be a good interpreter one must learn the rules of hermeneutics as well as the art of applying those rules."
Aristotle had a lot to do with establishing the practice of hermeneutics, and it's reliable enough that it's used for analyzing many forms of communication, not just the Bible. In fact, I'm sure you've personally made use of some of those practices when analyzing statements by Obama, McCain, Markadelphia, and so forth.
The most basic of those rules is described somewhat facetiously by Greg Koukle of Stand To Reason as "Never read a Bible verse." What he means is never read just a Bible verse by itself. You must always look at the context of the verse as well as related passages from elsewhere in the Bible. In other words, don't take stuff out of context.
I've seen video of Jeremiah Wright abusing this most basic principle to twist scripture for his own use, trying to contradict the quote I gave from Acts. When asked if Jesus is the only way to God he responded with part of a verse:
"Jesus said, ‘I have other sheep, which are not of this fold;’"
Now look at that snippet in it's context:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers.” This figure of speech Jesus spoke to them, but they did not understand what those things were which He had been saying to them.
So Jesus said to them again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who is not the owner of the sheep, sees the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.”
(John 10:1-16 NAS95S)
Can you see how the context makes a difference, especially when compared to Acts 4:10-12? Jesus was not saying that others would come through other religions, he was saying that others would come from other peoples and religions and follow Jesus, the true and only shepherd.
The Bible also encourages us to check up on such quotations to make sure we're not deceived:
The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.
(Acts 17:10-11 NAS95S)
Notice who they were checking up on? Paul, the author of the majority of the New Testament, and the Bible calls them better than the Thessalonians.
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
(1John 4:1 NAS95S)
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.
(2Timothy 2:15 NAS95S)
I recently learned that the greek translated as "accurately handling" literally means "cut straight". In other words, we're to avoid "cutting up the scriptures haphazardly" to make it fit our preconceptions.
Yes, I know people misuse the Bible; some deliberately, some out of ignorance. (Exhibit A: Black Liberation Theology, Exhibit B: The Roman Catholic Church, especially in the past) Fortunately, we have the Bible in writing (you can't get away with cockamamie distortions when you can point to something in writing) and excellent, time-tested tools for evaluating what it says.
"Since God labels sodomy as a crime to be punished with death and all I have to say about it is that it's not for me, I'd say I'm actually more tolerant than God."
Do you consider the actions of those in the video to be acceptable?
LabRat, you are at once correct and incorrect :) The Bible is both simple and complicated at the same time. Some of its tentants are quite simple and at the same time among the most important. But there is deep meaning in the Bible and it is a challenge to understand it all. I sure don't.
DJ, I miss-wrote... seems God did smite Herod, but if anyone had it coming, he did.
And Jesus smote nobody, unless you count ruffing up the jerks at the temple a little, when you have the entire power of God in your hands to do worse if you like.
Ed- I don't disagree with anything you said, but I DO find it rather illustrative of my overall point that when you looked for something absolutely unambiguous in the Bible, with no judgment or context required, you pointed to "Christianity is the one and only way" rather than any actual point of morality. :)
Ah, the subtleties never get by you, do they, LabRat?
"I can't think of any offense that is so awful, so heinous, that a fitting punishment therefor is barbaric physical torture that never, ever ends. I think that fifty billion years or so of such torture ought to be enough to cover anything."
I'm not particularly comfortable with that either. This is one of those things that falls into the category of "hard sayings" which I mentioned earlier.
Given God's willingness to be merciful, to such a degree that He sent part of Himself to die on our behalf, plus His willingness to hold off on punishment in this life, I find it hard to imagine why He wouldn't just punish those who have sinned and be done with it, or why eternal punishment is necessary to satisfy the concept of perfect justice. I can certainly understand eternal punishment for Satan and the other angels who rebelled in spite of being able to see God for themselves.
On the other hand, we have good reason to accept the Bible as being authoritative (I know haven't laid out that argument yet) and that eternal punishment is what God intends. Maybe someday He will explain the "why" to us, but for now we just have to swallow hard and accept that what the Bible says will happen.
Even if the punishment were temporary, followed by annihilation, there is no way I want to be on the receiving end. How about you?
Fortunately, we have the Bible in writing
And in many different versions no less!
"I DO find it rather illustrative of my overall point that when you looked for something absolutely unambiguous in the Bible, with no judgment or context required, you pointed to "Christianity is the one and only way" rather than any actual point of morality."
Actually, the list of sins from 1st Corinthians are points of morality. I presume you don't find them unclear. And I would hope you won't ask me to list out every crystal clear point of morality. ;)
I guess I also assumed that by mentioning the extremes, you would understand that issues the Bible addresses all fall somewhere within that range, from crystal clear to obscure, with most moral issues being relatively clear and easy to understand. I hope I wasn't wrong about that.
"Do you consider the actions of those in the video to be acceptable?"
I didn't watch it all (got distracted), but it's not relevant to the original question or my answer to it. Please don't dodge what I said.
"Maybe someday He will explain the "why" to us, but for now we just have to swallow hard and accept that what the Bible says will happen."
No, we don't "have to" accept it, and I don't.
"Even if the punishment were temporary, followed by annihilation, there is no way I want to be on the receiving end. How about you?"
No, I wouldn't. Part of what I wrote was a bit of humorous sarcasm, but I meant what I wrote when I wrote, "I can't think of any offense that is so awful, so heinous, that a fitting punishment therefor is barbaric physical torture that never, ever ends."
Oddly enough, I find myself in agreement with Obama:
Obama: "There’s the belief, certainly in some quarters, that people haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior that they’re going to hell."
Falsani: "You don’t believe that?"
Obama: "I find it hard to believe that my God would consign four-fifths of the world to hell. I can’t imagine that my God would allow some little Hindu kid in India who never interacts with the Christian faith to somehow burn for all eternity. That’s just not part of my religious makeup."
What I find amazing is to hear a god described as such by the same person and in the same breath as being merciful. Such thinking makes my head hurt. It is what led Darwin to finally reject his faith and describe Christian doctrine as "damnable".
Ed, you'll pardon me for not necessarily taking an evangelical organization as the definitive word on canonical authority, particularly when it omits mention of the Vulgate. I'd also remind you that the early Christians trusted Greek scripture over Judaic and Aramaic sources.
And it was the Council of Trent that set the authoritative text, at least for Catholics. The heretics were on their own for their versions. :-) Of course, if you're a follower of the Eastern Church, you don't agree with any of those Catholics let alone the Protestants.
Yessiree bub. Good thing there is one Christianity. Maybe that's why God inspired all of those versions of the Bible.
"Yessiree bub. Good thing there is one Christianity. Maybe that's why God inspired all of those versions of the Bible."
"[God] has an inordinate fondness for beetles." -- J. B. S. Haldane
And, similarly, for religions, particularly the various Christian flavors.
"And in many different versions no less!"
Not versions. Translations. We have sufficient copies of manuscripts in the original languages that we can be certain that there are no meaningful distortions in what we have. There are a few uncertainties, but they all fall into the categories of alternate spellings for words or minor wording differences which do not change the meaning at all.
Now if you think translating from one language to another is easy, maybe you should look around for sites which have fun with everyday phrases translated into another and back again. It's extremely hard, and the results can be very funny. That's why scholars are constantly working to improve the translations of the Bible.
You may have noticed that I've been quoting from the NASB translation. It's more literal than most translations, but the result of that literality is English which is frequently awkward. I've also used the NIV, which follows English rules better, making it more readable, but that also means it's necessarily less precise in its translation.
You may have also noticed that I don't use the King James translation. It has three major problems. First, it's outdated English, making it hard to understand right out of the box. Second, some of it's translation is inaccurate, in part, due to continuing scholarship into the meanings of words in the older languages. (For example, "Thou shalt not kill" is not accurate. The correct translation is "You shall not murder.") Finally, we have found many more manuscripts since the King James translation, allowing us to improve the accuracy of the underlying texts in their original language.
I guess I also assumed that by mentioning the extremes, you would understand that issues the Bible addresses all fall somewhere within that range, from crystal clear to obscure, with most moral issues being relatively clear and easy to understand. I hope I wasn't wrong about that.
No, you're not. Some moral points in the Bible are indeed unambiguous. (Although it's interesting that "effeminate" is listed in that Corinthians verse but not, say, "murderer". Like I said, my problem is with the blithe assertion that morality as outlined in the Bible is so simple that anybody who is not being dishonest or ignorant will come to all the same moral conclusions- there is almost always tension between various ideals extolled, such as tensions between justice and mercy, or between respecting authority and rebelling against it.
And, like DJ said, there's honest reasoning behind folks like us who point to the Bible and go "THAT'S your merciful God?" There may not have been a single righteous man in Sodom, but the children are never mentioned, and they were presumably slaughtered as well. The Israelites and Israelite heroes repeatedly don't just slaughter soldiers on God's command or with His approval, but also rape their women (or force them to be their wives), kill their children, and the presumed sins of these peoples that made them deserving are never mentioned- it's not relevant, apparently. This makes perfect sense in the context of the tribalistic sensibilities of the times- a lot less with a God whose morality was supposedly constant.
"it's not relevant to the original question or my answer to it."
Yes it is. The men of Sodom were not expressing mere sexual preferences. They heard that new meat was in town and they gathered to rape them. This is obviously not the first time it had happened. Nor was it likely to be the only type of evil they were engaged in. The description of the incident includes homosexuality, but it is not the only crime described. Furthermore, when the Bible describes the acts of the city, it uses general terms, not specific sins like you might expect if there is just one crime.
Now the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the LORD.
(Genesis 13:13 NAS95S)
And the LORD said, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave.”
(Genesis 18:20 NAS95S)
Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had arrogance, abundant food and careless ease, but she did not help the poor and needy.
(Ezekiel 16:49 NAS95S)
just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
(Jude 1:7 NAS95S)
Just like homosexuality was the driving force behind the attempted rape of Lot's visitors, homosexuality was the driving force behind the actions of those in the video. Long before Sodom reached the point where God destroyed them, they would have had to be exactly like the ones in that video. That is precisely why the video is relevant.
And just to make sure I'm clear on this: Homosexual driven behavior was a crime committed by Sodom, but it was not the only crime.
Just like homosexuality was the driving force behind the attempted rape of Lot's visitors, homosexuality was the driving force behind the actions of those in the video.
Uh, what? Is heterosexuality the driving force of the rape of women in the Bible, or is it lust, rage, and a basic "I will take what I desire by force and damn you and your rights and wishes"?
I agree the video is damn ugly, but homosexuality isn't the "driving force". It's rage and the desire to take something wanted by force if necessary and damn the rights and wishes of others.
Hell, that mindset is arguably the root of nearly ALL sin, whether speaking secularly or theologically- the prioritization of indulgence of the self over all other concerns.
Not versions.
Ah c'mon Ed. The King James Version, the Revised Standard Version, the New Standard Version. Don't make it so easy on me!
...but that also means it's necessarily less precise in its translation.
Indeed. I always like that point of Frank Herbert's in the Dune series - some ideas can only be expressed in the language of origination. Favorite current example - schadenfreude. There just isn't a word or phrase that conveys that same meaning.
"Ed, you'll pardon me for not necessarily taking an evangelical organization as the definitive word on canonical authority,"
Now you're starting to sound like Markadelphia. That's the genetic fallacy.
particularly when it omits mention of the Vulgate.
The Vulgate is a translation, specifically a translation into Latin. I should also point out to you that the apocryphal books were added to the Vulgate literally over the translator’s dead body. (Jerome)
"I'd also remind you that the early Christians trusted Greek scripture over Judaic and Aramaic sources."
Yep. For the exact same reason I read English translations. That's the language they knew!
And it was the Council of Trent that set the authoritative text, at least for Catholics.
The apocryphal books have demonstrable errors, including geography and historical events. I don't care what the "Council of Trent" asserted. Those books don't meet the standard of "inerrant." That's why Jerome refused to include them in the Vulgate.
"Maybe that's why God inspired all of those versions of the Bible."
<Spanish Accent On>
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
I already agreed that there are different translations. I challenge you to point to actual different versions.
"Hell, that mindset is arguably the root of nearly ALL sin, whether speaking secularly or theologically- the prioritization of indulgence of the self over all other concerns."
True. And Sodom and Gomorrah had taken that root far beyond anything we currently see today, which is why I pointed to the video. It's the closest analog I know to the event described in Genesis.
Those books don't meet the standard of "inerrant." That's why Jerome refused to include them in the Vulgate.
"Inerrant"?
If we're going there, so tell me: how did Judas die?
"There just isn't a word or phrase that conveys that same meaning."
Fingerspitzengefuehl" comes to mind; I've not found it in any English dictionary.
"If we're going there, ..."
We could spend a lifetime there. Tread carefully.
Ah, I think I'll eat more turkey and watch the OU/OSU football game.
Now you're starting to sound like Markadelphia.
And you sound like him resorting to a single, cherry-picked authority. Let's at least agree that there is no single, perfect history of the early church.
Yep. For the exact same reason I read English translations. That's the language they knew!
Nope. They didn't trust Jews and Jewish sources - Christianity has had a pretty mean anti-semitic streak that only moderated in recent times. As I recall, Elaine Pagels "Gnostic Gospels" goes into detail on the early distrust of non-Greek sources.
The Vulgate was THE source for all translations for many years. It was Luther's source, not the earlier Greek works, let alone Judaic or Aramaic ones. And yes, Jerome was quite dead by the time the decision was made, but only by a few centuries, so "over his dead body" is a rather dramatic characterization.
You won't really dispute that different sects have different favored translations of the Bible, will you? I mean you see reasonably eye-to-eye with the Catholic Church on the Bible, hmmm?
The original question was "Are you more tolerant than God?" This is open-ended and need not have anything to do with the destruction of Sodom; in fact I was thinking of an entirely different book:
"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." (Lev. 20:13)
No, it doesn't matter that this was part of the law that was supposedly superseded by the NT. At one time in God's history he mandated the death of all active homosexual men. If Paul is representative, God still keeps them out of Heaven. On the other hand, the worst I've ever thought about gay sex is that it's kind of icky. So, to re-answer the actual question, yes I am more tolerant than God, for both this reason and for others expressed by others here.
"No, we don't "have to" accept it, and I don't."
As I was explaining to Markadelphia, reality does not care whether you accept it or not. It will override your wishes every time.
If the Bible is actually true (and I'm able to argue that it is), then you will be forced to accept it. Period. If it's not true, there is something else to accept.
"What I find amazing is to hear a god described as such by the same person and in the same breath as being merciful."
God is also just. If He were not just, then He would not be perfect.
I think the problem you're having with this is that your understanding of these concepts does not match up with the Biblical description. Let me see if I can explain it.
It begins with the idea that God is perfect. Not mostly perfect, or 99.9999999% pure, or even with just one tiny, insignificant flaw. He is 100% perfect in every single detail.
In order for us to be able to hang out with Him, we also have to be 100% perfect. Otherwise, in order for Him to accept us, He would have to lower His standards, which would damage His own perfection. (If your standards are not perfect, are you perfect?)
Therefore, anything less than 100% perfection requires us to be separated from Him. (It's kind of like matter/anti-matter. You can't bring them together without annihilating both.) Since we are not perfect, God is not simply justified in separating us from Him, He must do so.
(An aside: Though the Bible doesn't explicitly say so, some theologians have speculated that the real torment of hell is not physical pain, but knowing the perfection of God—including His love and peace—and being separated from Him. Jesus had described hell as a place of outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth, which seems to support that idea.)
Does that make sense to you so far?
Here is where the mercy comes in. God has absolutely no obligation to do anything about that separation. He could have chosen to just leave us to our fate, and He would be fully justified in doing so. But He does not want to.
So even though He didn't have to, He provided a way out. He sent Jesus Christ to die in our place. Apparently (though the Bible doesn't explain why) the only alternative to us dying for our own sins is for a creature or a perfect being to die on our behalf. I could not die for you because I would have to die for my own sins. And creatures are not meaningful enough to do more that temporarily cover sins. Jesus (fully God, yet not all of God, one of the brain benders of the Bible) was able to die on our behalf because He is perfect.
Think about that. Jesus, though fully God, chose to become human and live on this disease and death ridden trash heap of a planet for 33 years. That's a huge downgrade from living in Heaven. Not only that, at the end of that time, He was tortured to death; starting with flogging followed by slow, agonizing suffocation on a cross.
If you think He did it on a lark, or that He thought it would be fun, you need to read His prayers the night before:
Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.”
And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”
(Matthew 26:38-39 NAS95S)
And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Now an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him. And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.
(Luke 22:41-44 NAS95S)
I want you to notice two things in these passages. First of all, Jesus was exact opposite of looking forward to the coming pain. He desperately wanted a way out. Second, he was asking for a Plan B. If there was any other way to accomplish our salvation, He would have been all over it in a heartbeat. But because there was no possible Plan B, He sucked it up and proceeded with Plan A because rescuing us from our due punishment was more important to Him than what He was about to suffer.
Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
(Philippians 2:5-8 NAS95S)
In short, God is required to be just and punish sins, but He is not required to do anything to let us avoid that punishment. That He willingly chose to do so anyway is why we consider Him merciful.
Does that make sense to you?
If the Bible is actually true (and I'm able to argue that it is), then you will be forced to accept it.
Ed, you and Markadelphia both profess to be Christians. I dare say that you have more in common with him than you do with me.
Sarah says that we are to judge fairly, but what's fair and where are the guidelines? There aren't any- you have to use your judgment, and your mileage may seriously vary per person.
"Fair" according to the Bible is determined by how you would wish to be judged (and it's how you will be judged, ultimately). That's about as fair a definition as I can think of, at least for sane people.
I may not believe in Jesus Christ, but I do believe in a universal human nature, and I am well aware that Christians, atheists, and everyone else share the same failings- Luther included. But I also hear some variation on "if we just had REAL Christians doing this, then..." an awful damn lot, and it just ain't so.
Human nature is human nature. I don't hold, for instance, that atheism causes people to do terrible things -- those are things which are in our nature to do -- but if you take an objective look at human history, it's apparent that religion tends to act as a brake on our worst tendencies. All you have to do is look at a place China to see that this is true. China, which is de facto atheistic, is probably the most amoral place on Earth. The Chinese are not even immoral, because the concept of morality does not exist there. They live according to the principle of "legal or illegal," and illegal is only a matter of getting caught. Every human abomination that you can think of is happening right now in China, because there is nothing to act as a deterrent on these tendencies.
You can't have morals and values in a philosophical vacuum, and so far history has provided us with few examples of moral societies without a philosophy rooted in some form of religion. I hear variations on the claim that we can have a system of moral atheism with the right people in charge, but where's the evidence for this? In fact, there's quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. Look at places devoid of religion -- China, the USSR, Cambodia, East Germany -- they are/were all miserable, backwards shitholes. Compare to places with a foundation of religious belief, like the U.S. and central/northern Europe. To be fair, there are some religious places that are miserable and backwards, but the only tolerable places in the world are the ones with a Judeo-Christian foundation.
I think that fifty billion years or so of such torture ought to be enough to cover anything.
You're forgetting that eternity and infinity are not the same thing. Eternal is the absence of time.
"If we're going there, so tell me: how did Judas die?"
Please, let's not go there. I'm supposed to be working, and answering your objections could take forever. So for these, I will stop with answering just this one. That doesn't mean there aren't answer to others you could raise, just that I don't have time to do more.
You're thinking of these verses:
Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to that yourself!” And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself. The chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the temple treasury, since it is the price of blood.” And they conferred together and with the money bought the Potter’s Field as a burial place for strangers. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: “AND THEY TOOK THE THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER, THE PRICE OF THE ONE WHOSE PRICE HAD BEEN SET by the sons of Israel; AND THEY GAVE THEM FOR THE POTTER’S FIELD, AS THE LORD DIRECTED ME.”
(Matthew 27:3-10 NAS95S)
(Now this man acquired a field with the price of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out. And it became known to all who were living in Jerusalem; so that in their own language that field was called Hakeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)
(Acts 1:18-19 NAS95S)
He died from hanging. Tradition identifies the place where he died as a precipice over a field with several trees along its edge. That makes a perfect place for hanging yourself if you don't have a horse or something else to stand on.
Trees along that ridge tend to have dry branches which could break given enough stress.
The most likely course of events goes like this:
Matthew says that Judas went and hanged himself after the trial in front of Ciaphas, which which started at daybreak. He probably tested the branch to make sure it was strong enough to hold him, then hung himself.
In the mean time, Jesus was sent to Pilate. Pilate sent him to Herod, Herod sent him back. Then Jesus was flogged and finally crucified. According to Matthew 27:45-50, Jesus died at about 3 PM. By this point Judas would have been dead for 8 or 9 hours and starting to rot.
When Jesus died, there was a strong earthquake. It's also possible that there was a storm. (Matthew 27:45 says there were heavy clouds.) The earthquake and possible storm winds probably caused the branch Judas was hanging from to break, causing his corpse to fall down the cliff.
Another possibility (given that the mention in Acts contains no details such as time or the reason he fell) is that his body was found a few days later (between 4 and 10 days is when the body would still be intact, but bloating with fragile skin) and cut down. Or the branch could have broken later, or the rope could have simply broken. It's even possible that the branch broke when he jumped.
The fact is that Acts does not state that Judas died from the fall or when he fell, merely that he split open when he fell. The two descriptions are vague enough that even though there is the potential for contradiction, there is plenty of room for both statements to simply be details not mentioned by the other. Now if the Bible had said something like "Judas died from hanging himself" and "Judas died by falling from a cliff" that would be a contradiction because the stated cause of death would contradict. Also notice that when both statements discuss common details (the field) they both agree.
"As I was explaining to Markadelphia, reality does not care whether you accept it or not. It will override your wishes every time."
Yup. I've made the same explanation many times.
"If the Bible is actually true (and I'm able to argue that it is), then you will be forced to accept it. Period. If it's not true, there is something else to accept."
That's IF. A mighty big word, isn't it?
I am able to argue that there are contradictions in the Bible, thus it is not inerrant.
"Does that make sense to you so far?" -- episode 1
Certainly. I first heard it long ago.
Do I believe its premise, that there is a god? Not for a moment.
"Does that make sense to you?" -- episode 2
Certainly. Again, I first heard it long ago, too.
Do I believe its premise, that Jesus was a god who died for my sins? Not for a moment.
It is a relatively simple matter to understand the reasoning of Christian theology, given that it is explained well, but it is an exercise in silliness to do so without first accepting the premise upon which it is based, and I don't. Hence the cliché, "One man's theology is another man's belly laugh."
And now, please excuse me. It's game time.
"Eternal is the absence of time."
I've never heard THAT before, and frankly, I can't get my head around it.
"And you sound like him resorting to a single, cherry-picked authority."
You assumed I cherry picked this one. Assuming motivations is Markadelphia's schtick.
I have plenty of other authorities. I just didn't want to spend the time writing the whole thing out, so I did a quick search to find one which was accurate. I'm already spending way too much time on this and I was looking to save time.
BTW… I just noticed that you apparently didn't even read it. First of all, it cites additional authorities in the body of the text. Secondly, you claimed that it didn't mention the Vulgate. It does.
If you want additional authorities, start with the ones referenced in detail in the article. No, the author didn't use footnotes, he put the references right in the body of the text.
For another thing, HaloScan doesn't allow more than 3 links per post. I could track down plenty of more links to answer your "cherry picked" claim, but HaloScan would make that just about impossible. Not to mention that references to primary sources are usually dead tree books rather than internet sites, thus, rather difficult to link to.
So for brevity, I'll simply suggest that you search Amazon for two books: "The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell which contains a heavily reference based chapter on how we got the Bible, and "Scripture Alone" by James R. White, plus check out some of the referenced books displayed by Amazon when you look at the details on "Scripture Alone".
"Let's at least agree that there is no single, perfect history of the early church."
There is the actual history of the church and then there are multiple accounts. There are usually two basic groups: The Roman Catholic Church's version, and everyone else. The important question is which account is most accurate. I've seen enough proven inaccuracies in the RCC version that I don't particularly trust them.
I find it interesting that you seem to accept the Roman Catholic version of history, but reject just about every else they teach.
"The Vulgate was THE source for all translations for many years. It was Luther's source, not the earlier Greek works, let alone Judaic or Aramaic ones."
Yes, Martin Luther translated from the Vulgate, but that's only because he only knew German (his native language) and Latin. It was not possible for him to translate from the original languages. William Tyndale corrected that shortcoming only 2 years after Luther finished when he finished his New Testament translation directly from Greek. He finished translating the Pentatuch (the 1st 5 books) directly from Hebrew 6 years later.
"And yes, Jerome was quite dead by the time the decision was made, but only by a few centuries, so "over his dead body" is a rather dramatic characterization."
The point is quite simply this: He point blank refused to include those books. Furthermore, he initially refused to even translate them. So yes, "over his dead body" is dramatic, but the central point is that he opposed their inclusion as canon wholeheartedly.
"You won't really dispute that different sects have different favored translations of the Bible, will you?"
Yes, most churches find it easier to use the same translation for group reading. Some churches prefer accuracy above all else, others prefer to slightly give up on accuracy for the sake of readability, and still others prefer versions they can use to suit their own desires.
"I mean you see reasonably eye-to-eye with the Catholic Church on the Bible, hmmm?"
Let's look at how the RCC treats the Bible, shall we?
- They continue to hold that the Latin Vulgate is the only true Bible, basing their translations off the Vulgate rather than the original languages. (See my previous comments about strangeness in translating from language to language to language.)
- At the time of the Council of Trent which you claimed as authoritative, the RCC was actively hiding the Bible from the population and teaching such clearly unbiblical ideas as indulgences.
- They still teach ideas which directly contradict the Bible, such as Mary being sinless and that Jesus was her only child.
- They decided that including books they liked was more important than the concept that Truth matters.
Given that track record, I hope you'll understand if I peg their credibility on the subject as pretty doggone low.
"The original question was "Are you more tolerant than God?" This is open-ended and need not have anything to do with the destruction of Sodom;"
The implication being put forth by referring to "smiting" was that God is capricious, arbitrary, and looking to destroy people for no good reason. I brought up Sodom and Ninevah to show that A) there was a darn good reason, and B) God was most definitely not in a hurry, and was, in fact, holding back.
"in fact I was thinking of an entirely different book:
"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." (Lev. 20:13)"
Did you happen to notice what other crimes earned the death penalty in that section? I'll stick to the sex crimes portion because that's what we're discussing. Adultery (v. 10), sleeping with mother or step mother (v. 11), sleeping with daughter-in-law (v. 12), homosexual sex (v. 13), marrying a woman and her mother (v. 14), sex with an animal (vv. 15-16). Every single one of these either breaks up a marriage or involves sex where marriage isn't possible. Have you noticed that the Bible is fairly absolute about marriage?
Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge.
(Hebrews 13:4 NAS95S)
Even in the one case where the Bible allows divorce, Jesus explains why it was permitted:
He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.”
(Matthew 19:8 NAS95S)
In other words, divorce was allowed for adultery only because humans are stupidly stubborn.
So take a look at the state of marriage in this country. Would you say the institution is healthy? With 50% + divorce rates and more and more people not getting married to begin with I would say that marriage is life support and failing fast. Give our experience, is it really so surprising that God would address direct attacks on it so aggressively, especially since God wanted Israel to sent an example for others to follow?
"If Paul is representative, God still keeps them out of Heaven."
Maybe I should requote the verse from 1st Corinthians, this time adding the next verse. (Remember the concept that context matters?)
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
(1Corinthians 6:9-11 NAS95S)
In the context of the Bible, homosexuality is just like any other sin (including sins I'm personally guilty of). Without salvation, every single sin will keep us out of heaven. Yet the sacrifice of Jesus Christ cleanses us from those sins so that we can enter heaven. Yes, that includes homosexuality too. In fact, there is only one—that's right, count'em: one—sin which God will not forgive:
“Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.”
(Matthew 12:31 NAS95S)
Gee, I didn't see homosexuality in there, did you?
Put another way, those sins listed here can define who we are. How many times have you heard statements by homosexuals where they primarily define themselves as a homosexual, with all other definitions second. (See this season's Top Chef where at least one contestant defined himself as a homosexual first and a chef second.) On the other hand, becoming a christian means the definition of christian becomes dominant, while the definitions as a sinner become secondary.
In other words, what defines you? Your sins? Or Jesus' salvation? From God's point of view, if you're a christian, it doesn't matter if you still struggle with sin, you are still an adopted child. (And just so I'm not misunderstood. There are those who pretend to be following Jesus and those who actually are. God does know the difference.)
"So, to re-answer the actual question, yes I am more tolerant than God, for both this reason and for others expressed by others here."
Okay, so you tolerate homosexuality. But that's a different question than what I asked. (Aside: Would you tolerate someone misusing something you had created for a specific purpose?)
Getting back to the primary point of whether or not God is smiting just for the heck of it: Would you tolerate what was going on in Sodom as demonstrated by the incident with Lot's visitors? Heck, do you tolerate the actions of those in that video? These are the questions that are relevant to the original implication.
"That's IF. A mighty big word, isn't it?
Yep, sure is. Like I said, I haven't laid out the argument yet. I could have Amazon send you a book, which would save me a lot of typing, but only if you would be willing to read it.
"I am able to argue that there are contradictions in the Bible, thus it is not inerrant."
Are they actual contradictions, or, like the one LabRat put forth, statements which only seem contradictory if you read them sloppily and ignore their context.
(See this season's Top Chef where at least one contestant defined himself as a homosexual first and a chef second.)
I'm pretty tolerant of homosexuality too, but I still don't think I want to eat this guy's cooking. Not because he's gay, but because he's distracted by having his priorities backwards.
I find it interesting that you seem to accept the Roman Catholic version of history, but reject just about every else they teach.
Actually, I use it to show that you don't have a history that is beyond dispute. Now, we could argue the history ad infinitum, which is why I was happy to stipulate the inconclusiveness. You want to believe you got the only correct version, well you go right ahead, but don't expect me to buy it.
Let's look at how the RCC treats the Bible, shall we?
I knew you would disagree with this and assert your own superiority to that of the judgment of the Church. That's okay by me, it works for you, but it does not resolve the disagreement for anyone but you. I have no reason to respect your authority on scripture above either the Catholics, the Orthodox, or the many branches of Protestantism that do not accord with your take.
Quite frankly you end up coming off like Markadelphia, asserting what you want to be true without respecting reality.
Ed, you are correct on the mention of the Vulgate in that article. It was a very brief mention, just to set up the Protestant position in the Reformation, but it was there.
My bad.
Well, since my day is shot, I guess I should lay out the math I promised if the need arose back in this thread.
If evolution is true, there would have to have been a first cell. Evolution would posit that this cell would have to be very crude, but even so, it would have to have certain minimum requirements.
First, it would actually have to be a living cell. Its machinery of life (so to speak) would have had to function. Second, it would have to be able to replicate. After all, a "first cell" that can't replicate would also be the "last cell".
These two requirements also mean that the cell had to have certain features. For this discussion I'm going to focus on just two: DNA and proteins. There are others, but I want to keep things as simple as possible.
BTW… for the sake of keeping the math manageable I will be simplifying things. And to avoid claims of bias, I will always simplify in favor of naturalism. I'm also going to forgo links because of HaloScan's limitations. I assume you will be able to do fact checking on your own. In fact, I expect it. Furthermore, I'm assuming perfect conditions for the formation of the DNA strand I'm discussing.
One of the primary functions of DNA is to hold the definition of how to produce proteins. Strands of DNA are read to produce a sequence of amino acids which, when folded properly, become functional proteins. Proteins are actually the primary machinery and key structural components of a cell. Without proteins, there is no cell. If the strand of DNA is not exactly correct, the resulting protein will not work and the cell would die. In fact, proteins do most of the work of handling the DNA to produce proteins.
DNA is a strand of polynucleotides. Each nucleotide is one of 4 molecules, usually abbreviated as A, G, C and T. (It turns out that there are 4 other molecules which would also bind just as well, but the properties of these 4 provide an extra feature the other 4 don't: parity checking. I'm going to simplify by pretending that only A, G, C, and T could possibly have made it into DNA.) Since there are 4 possibilities that means that having the "correct" nucleotide in any one position is 1 in 4. (That means DNA nucleotides are a Base 4 code, if you happen to know how base math works.)
There are a total of 20 different amino acids which go into making proteins. This means that the cell has to use three nucleotides to select which amino acid to use in a particular location. (2 nucleotide would allow for only 16 possibilities, too few to work. 4 is more than necessary and cells do actually use 3.) This group of 3 nucleotides is known as a codon.
Each codon allows for up to 64 combinations, which is more than necessary to select from among 20 amino acids. Some amino acids are selected by only one codon, while others can be selected by more than one codon. It turns out that cells also use a start codon and a stop codon to mark the beginning and end of a protein definition. These two codons don't appear anywhere else in that strand.
That means the odds of any particular codon being the right one to select the necessary amino acid is 1 in 22.
These codons are translated into the amino acid strands which form proteins. Proteins range in length from 100 molecules to 1,000 molecules long. Since my math-fu can't handle the odds of varying length answers, I'm going to simplify by pretending that all proteins are no longer than 100 molecules long.
Given 22 possible codons for each molecule, the odds against getting all the correct codons in the correct order to produce a single simplest protein is 22^100, or 1 in 1.75x10^134.
(Just to show that using an exponent is the correct function, look at the odds for just 3 codons. You can try writing these down on paper. For the first codon, the odds of having the correct one is 1 in 22, i.e., there are 22 amino acid selections, but only 1 combination, or set of combinations, which would select the correct amino acid. Then for each of those combinations you would write down 22 possibilities for the second codon. That makes it 1 in 484 (22 x 22 or 22^2) that both codons would select the correct amino acid. Then for each of those 484 combinations you would add 22 more possibilities, giving you 1 in 10,648 (22 x 22 x 22 or 22^3) odds that all 3 codons would select the correct amino acid.)
Currently there are more than 402,000 known or suspected proteins among all forms of life. For the sake of simplicity again, I'll round this number up to 410,000 possible proteins. If we assume that all the proteins are only 100 molecules long, that means our odds against the random occurrence of a strand of DNA capable of producing any single protein is 1 in 4.26x10^128. (1.75x10^134 ÷ 410,000).
Now that's a huge number, so let's put it into perspective. Scientists estimate that the total number of atoms in the entire universe is 10^80. That's still smaller than our single strand of DNA odds, so let's add time to the equation. NASA is currently estimating the age of the universe as 13.7 billion years old. To allow for errors, let's round up to 15 billion years old. Furthermore, to match the scale of our numbers, let's convert that time to seconds. That's 4.73x10^17 seconds. (15 billion years x 365.25 days/year x 24 hours/day x 60 minutes/hour x 60 seconds/minute)
So let's combine the total number of atoms in the universe with the total number of seconds in the universe. That's 4.73x10^97 atom seconds for the entire life of the universe. Yet it's still smaller than the odds against the random occurrence of a single strand of DNA which could create any simple viable protein. (4.26x10^128) That means that if every single atom in the universe attempted to create our simple strand of functional DNA once a second since the beginning of the universe, assuming absolutely perfect conditions, the odds against success would still be 1 in 9.00x10^30.
Of course, my math is simplified and weighted heavily in favor of naturalism. A functioning cell requires far more than a single strand of DNA producing a single protein. Scientists are working on figuring out what the minimum number of "gene products*" are in order to have the simplest possible viable life form. Currently scientists figure that somewhere between 200 and 500 gene products are required for the simplest self sustaining cell. A cell with only 184 gene products has been discovered, but it is a parasite which requires a host (another living cell) to survive.
(*"Gene products" is a specific term necessary when talking about molecular biology. It turns out that while a single strand of DNA can produce a single protein, some strands of DNA are capable of producing a completely different protein merely by shifting the starting point for creating a protein by just one nucleotide. Now THAT was a mind blower when I read it. Imagine creating a meaningful sentence of 3 letter words which is 100 words long, then being able to drop the first letter, add 1 to the end, and still have a meaningful sentence after regrouping the letters into threes.)
So take the functional impossibility of a simple protein producing DNA strand "just happening", and multiply it times the 200 to 500 proteins necessary for life, times the variability in the length of protein amino acid chains, the significantly reduced set of proteins which could function in a simple cell, and all the other necessary cellular features such as mRNA, amino acids, the extreme degree of error checking necessary for the cell's "machinery" to keep functioning correctly, and the scarcity of conditions where it all could come together. These details of how a cell works are not theory or speculation. These are things we know.
What do you come up with when you put it all together?
I simply cannot imagine any answer than this: to think that a functional cell could "just happen" randomly strikes me as Simply. Not. Rational.
Ed: Sloppily ignored context, did I?
Matthew 27:4-6 4 "I have sinned," he said, "for I have betrayed innocent blood." "What is that to us?" they replied. "That's your responsibility." 5 So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. 6 The chief priests picked up the coins and said, "It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money." 7So they decided to use the money to buy the potter's field as a burial place for foreigners. 8 That is why it has been called the Field of Blood to this day.
Acts 1:18-19 18(With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. 19 Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)
In one version, Judas throws the money into the temple and the priests buy the field. In the other, he keeps it and buys the field himself. You can worm your way around to saying the method of death and the reason the field was named "blood field", but the money makes these two versions of events incompatible.
I only asked how he died and didn't give the rest of the context or the full contradiction because I wanted to see if you were going to be honest with me. You weren't, not if you really looked up the passages for yourself and didn't rely on a prepared apologetics response- and then you called ME sloppy!
I was going to call juris harsh for comparing you to Markadelphia, but the deceit- which I recall the Bible has some rather harsh words for, by the way- combined with the accusation that I'm intellectually sloppy or dishonest- is very Marky indeed. Actually, so is the evasion of difficult subjects- you've defended the destruction of Soddom, but you've pointedly ignored the fact that it MUST have included children and infants, and you haven't even begun to address all the other slaughters, noncombatants and rapes included, by the Israelites that God was apparently happy to endorse and whose "deserving" status was never thought relevant enough to even be mentioned.
Oh, and I'm familiar with Josh McDowell. In the book you cited as a reference, he went on at GREAT length to explain that mistakes were impossible because of the standards to which Jewish scribes and copyists were held... but in another book he dismisses internal inconsistencies in the Goliath story about Elhanan as, um, a copyist's error.
The Bible is either COMPLETELY FREE OF ALL ERROR, no matter how trivial, or it ISN'T. I haven't at any point tried to assert that these little problems come even close to invalidating the Bible- YOU are the one claiming complete inerrancy and therefore complete authority.
I respect believers, I really do, but you fool absolutely zero skeptics with this kind of crap. All you do is worsen your image by convincing them that you don't hold yourself to your own standards.
Sarah- I'll have a rather less caustic response for you tomorrow... spent all evening on elk butchery.
...And after seeing what you posted while I was writing... oh, tomorrow it is on.
"I knew you would disagree with this and assert your own superiority to that of the judgment of the Church.
…
"Quite frankly you end up coming off like Markadelphia, asserting what you want to be true without respecting reality."
Just as when I was arguing with Markadelphia, I showed you the rules by which the cannonicity of each book could be determined. I did not make up those rules, therefore they are not my rules in the sense you assert. Those rules appear to be valid and consistent with other well known rules of evidence and historical analysis, including primary sources.
If you think those rules are invalid, then point out which one(s) are invalid and why. And while you're at it, why don't you point out which rules you are using.
BTW… Including the books of the apocrypha as scripture violate the most fundamental rule of logic: The law of noncontradiction.
Scripture is by definition supposed to be the inerrant Word of God, therefore completely true. The apocryphal books contain known errors, therefore they are not inerrant.
Truth = Not(Truth) is a violation of the law of noncontradiction.
It's pretty bold to assert that the law of non-contradiction is simply "my" rule, and therefore somehow invalid.
As for claiming that I'm using Markadelphia's tactics, I should note that I've still been linking to evidence. I'm still using the same rules of evidence and logic as always. On the other hand, you have committed some of the same logical fallacies as Markadelphia (genetic and assumed motives), waved off evidence and step by step arguments for no apparent reason, and made bald assertions without a single link to supporting evidence. Are you sure you want to keep bringing up Markadelphia's tactics?
I showed you the rules by which the cannonicity of each book could be determined
This is all post hoc reasoning. We don't know how those books were actually settled on at the time - but more on that in a minute.
The law of noncontradiction.
Which isn't one of the five rules in your cite. Non-contradiction is violated in the accounts of creation in Genesis, as well as the accounts of the death of Judas. Don't even get me going on the Book of Job.
Orthodoxy (which is given as a rule in your cite) is not the same as non-contradiction.
"The Bishop of Antioch (199 AD) named Serapion had The Gospel of Peter removed from books that were read in the church of Rhossus when he discovered that it included a docetic (heretical) view of Christ. Docetism and Gnosticism were two views of Christ that competed with the orthodox apostolic teachings in the early church." [I trust you recognize the passage from your cite. My link added.]
So, a bishop, desiring to stamp out a heresy violated the first rule of canonical incorporation (apostolic authority).
Scripture is by definition supposed to be the inerrant Word of God, therefore completely true.
What happened to 'inspiration' (as a method of canonical determination) and the need to interpret the text? Perhaps you'd like to visit ben's link on hermeneutics.
Are you sure you want to keep bringing up Markadelphia's tactics?
I've already seen how other people view this exchange. I'm comfortable with where I stand.
Ed,
Just so this doesn't go on unnecessarily. I fundamentally see faith and reason as two different things. You no more get to reason by faith then you do faith by reason. Although I may well be wrong, I suspect you seek to convert to faith by laying out a rational path to it. Given your earlier statement about making the irrefutable case, etc. At least the path you imagine yourself to have followed. Believe it or not, that puts you in the same intellectual space as the Jesuits (and Thomists more broadly in the Catholic tradition). I would argue that you can't get there [faith] from here [reason], any more than you can get orange juice from apples.
"Acts 1:18-19 18(With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. 19 Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.)
"In one version, Judas throws the money into the temple and the priests buy the field. In the other, he keeps it and buys the field himself. You can worm your way around to saying the method of death and the reason the field was named "blood field", but the money makes these two versions of events incompatible.
And this is a prime example of why the quality of translation matters. Check out the NASB translation of Acts 1:18 which is closer to the original Greek:
(Now this man acquired a field with the price of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out.
(Acts 1:18 NAS95S)
First of all notice that Judas' name is not actually in the greek. The translator for the translation you used added Judas' name in an attempt to make it clear who was being discussed.
Also notice that in the NASB translation it's more clear that the "price of his wickedness" acquired the field. That was the 30 pieces of silver he returned to the chief priests. The phrasing here is also very similar to the phrase used of pilots who have crashed; "He bought the farm." It's Judas' actions which directly led to the purchase of the land, therefore "he" bought the land even though he was already dead.
There is no contradiction.
"You weren't, not if you really looked up the passages for yourself and didn't rely on a prepared apologetics response"
I looked up the passages myself (how do you think I quoted them?!?) and looked up what others have written about this claimed contradiction. If you're gonna pull out a prepared attack that's been attempted thousands of times before, why shouldn't I look up responses that have been given before. Do you expect me to ignore my references, waste my time, and try and come up with answers off the top of my head based on an incomplete understanding of the facts? That's a double standard where you are free to use your sources, but I am somehow wrong for doing the same? The answer I gave used what I found and some of my own speculation based on quick research I did on decomposition as well as simply reading the text several times, especially in Acts. Other than the scripture quotations, not a bit was simply copied and pasted.
If you think I was being dishonest, then you've misread what I wrote.
"and then you called ME sloppy!"
Okay, how about hostile; reading the text in the worst possible light to force a contradiction to appear where there is none?
"Actually, so is the evasion of difficult subjects"
Really? What difficult subjects have I "evaded".
"you've pointedly ignored the fact that it MUST have included children and infants
This is the first time the children came up, so why claim there was some point to be ignored? The culture of Sodom and Gomorrah was rotten to the core. If you think otherwise, I challenge you to offer evidence. God obviously felt the entire culture had to be wiped from the face of the earth. How young would a child have to be to be uninfected? We have a friend with a 3 year old who has already been infected with defective cultural ideas. Furthermore, to a God to whom physical death is not even the slightest hinderance, and who knows how to deal with children who die before they can make any kind of moral decisions (which happens normally), why is this a problem?
'You haven't even begun to address all the other slaughters, noncombatants and rapes included, by the Israelites that God was apparently happy to endorse and whose "deserving" status was never thought relevant enough to even be mentioned."
Now this just pisses me off. Do you suppose I have hours and hours and days and days and months and months to answer your every single objection? Am I supposed to crawl through every verse of the Bible, come up with every possible objection you could throw at me, and do the research necessary to answer every single one to a degree where even your open hostility will be satisfied? It ain't gonna happen.
I gave two examples which covered specific ground. In one case, the Bible stated some of the crimes. In the other, the Bible does not state their crimes, but other historical sources do. The other cases in the Bible fall into the same general categories. Either the Bible states at least part of the crimes of the guilty, or it doesn't. For those where their crimes aren't mentioned, we can often check other sources to learn what those people God chose to destroy were actually like. Remember, the Bible is not the only source of information about the past. You cannot assume that just because the Bible doesn't mention the reason for their guilt that it's safe to assume that they were somehow innocent. We certainly don't know everything, but what we do know certainly establishes the pattern well enough that God supposedly destroying an innocent people group is simply not likely.
If you want to make a case that God is wrong, then do this:
1 - Show that God has no right to do what He wants with his creation.
2 - Make a case that God actually destroyed an innocent people group. Asserting that a group might be innocent is not good enough. The pattern that God destroyed the ultra-guilty has been established. If you want to show that the pattern is not a pattern, then you need to point to the deviations from that pattern. I am NOT going to waste the time to keep proving the pattern over, and over, and over again.
BTW… The Bible does use a concept of corporate responsibility, i.e., responsibility of people acting and suffering as group, even individual members who were innocent of the group's crimes.
"The Bible is either COMPLETELY FREE OF ALL ERROR, no matter how trivial, or it ISN'T. I haven't at any point tried to assert that these little problems come even close to invalidating the Bible- YOU are the one claiming complete inerrancy and therefore complete authority."
Our copies have trivial errors. However, we know exactly where the errors are, and we know what the alternative readings are. This makes it possible for us to know that almost all of them are either spelling or transposition errors. Of the remaining errors, none of them have a significant impact on meanings of those passages or the teachings of the Bible. None.
The concept of inerrancy is this: The Bible, as originally written does not contain any errors in fact or theology. We know there have been copying errors, but we also know that those errors have not changed the original meaning. Because we know that there has been no change in meaning, we can also know that there has been no change in authority.
"In the book you cited as a reference, he went on at GREAT length to explain that mistakes were impossible because of the standards to which Jewish scribes and copyists were held"
Yep. Great length was required to describe what they did because the copyists went to extreme lengths to ensure the accuracy of their copies.
Josh wrote, "In Judaism, a succession of scholars was charged with standardizing and preserving the biblical text, fencing out all possible introduction of error." Read that again. Now again. Notice that they were charged with avoiding all possible introduction of error. "Charged" means that 100% perfect copies was their goal not necessarily their results. Furthermore, Josh does not run away from the fact that there are copying errors. In fact, he covers the issue quite extensively. Your claim that Josh claimed perfect Old Testament copying does not hold up.
"but in another book he dismisses internal inconsistencies in the Goliath story about Elhanan as, um, a copyist's error."
I'm not familiar with that one or what Josh wrote, so I can't answer for him. Given your accuracy about what he wrote in "New Evidence", I have my doubts about that charge too.
"oh, tomorrow it is on."
You'll have to do it without me. I was supposed to spend the day billing, but instead I was here answering all your (collective) attacks. I have no flexibility on this tomorrow.
Why don't we both save ourselves a bunch of time. You can admit that you won't accept anything I write. Period. It's highly unlikely that anything you write will change my mind either. (Though I am curious about how you would oppose such straightforward math where every move away from the simplifications only makes the odds worse.)
"I fundamentally see faith and reason as two different things. You no more get to reason by faith then you do faith by reason."
Why? God created this earth. He created us. He created reason. Why is it "reasonable" to think that God doesn't want us to use reason and evidence? After all, the Bible certainly doesn't tell us not to use evidence. In fact, the whole point of miracles was apparently to be evidence.
“But, so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,”—He said to the paralytic—“I say to you, get up, and pick up your stretcher and go home.”
(Luke 5:24 NAS95S)
And according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.”
(Acts 17:2-3 NAS95S)
Also check out the various accounts of miracles in Acts. It's apparent there that each miracle was intended to verify that the apostles were truly speaking on God's behalf.
We can compare the Bible's accounts to history. We can identify places where events described in the Bible took place. We can confirm those events via other historical records. Paul even points out that the centerpiece of christianity is an actual historical event.
Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.
(1Corinthians 15:12-17 NAS95S)
Where does the Bible tell us to be anti-intellectual? Where does the Bible claim to be merely allegories with no basis in facts? The Bible tells us "Act this way all the time." Does that mean we're to pretend to do so?
Let's look at the greatest commandment:
And He said to him, “‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’”
(Matthew 22:37 NAS95S)
God did not ask us to throw away rationality, He told us to use it!
"Non-contradiction is violated in the accounts of creation in Genesis, as well as the accounts of the death of Judas. Don't even get me going on the Book of Job."
Wrong. First of all, I already answered LabRat about Judas' death. Go read it.
Second, read Genesis 1 and 2 for yourself. Read them multiple times. Let what's actually written sink in. Then we can talk.
As for the book of Job, have you even read it? It's almost all poetry, making heavy use of allegorical language. The poetry sections are not intended to be absolutely literal any more than a sports page which says, "The Phillies crushed the Tampa Bay Rays." While the language describes an actual event, it doesn't mean the Rays wound up in the hospital with crush injuries.
"Orthodoxy (which is given as a rule in your cite) is not the same as non-contradiction."
Uh, yeah… Go back and read the description of the orthodoxy rule again. Non-contradiction is the central point of the orthodoxy rule. If a book contradicts scripture which has been established to be cannonical, then its source would be someone other than God. Two things cannot contradict and both be true.
"So, a bishop, desiring to stamp out a heresy violated the first rule of canonical incorporation (apostolic authority)."
Did you read your link?
"The gospel is widely thought to date from after Peter's death and thus to be pseudepigraphical (bearing the name of an author who did not actually compose the text)."
Therefore, it doesn't meet even the first rule, let alone all five. BTW, just because a writing meets the apostolic rule does not mean it is cannonical. A book had to meet all 5 rules to be included. For example, we know that Paul wrote more letters than are included in the New Testament. Yet as far as I know, there is no serious argument that they should be included.
"What happened to 'inspiration' (as a method of canonical determination) and the need to interpret the text?"
Look at the rule again. The basis is that the text bears the hallmarks of inspiration.
As for interpretation, the Bible doesn't tell us to use inspiration, it tells us to use reason:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
(1John 4:1 NAS95S)
Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.
(Acts 17:11 NAS95S)
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.
(2Timothy 2:15 NAS95S)
"Perhaps you'd like to visit ben's link on hermeneutics."
Ben didn't post that link. I did. The only mention of inspiration there is a quote from Plato pondering on the inspiration of poets. What was your point?
"Are they actual contradictions, or, like the one LabRat put forth, statements which only seem contradictory if you read them sloppily and ignore their context."
Begin shortly after the (ahem) beginning, with Genesis, Chapter 6-8. It is the story of how God started over by drowning the earth, saving only Noah, the wife of Noah, the sons of Noah, and the wives of the sons of Noah. In particular, see:
6:8 "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD."
6:9 "These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God."
6:10 "And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth."
7:7 "And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood."
7:13 "In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;"
7:19 "And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered."
7:20 "Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered."
7:21 "And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:"
7:22 "All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died."
7:23 "And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark."
8:15 "And God spake unto Noah, saying,"
8:16 "Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee."
8:17 "Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth."
8:18 "And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him:"
9:1 "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth."
Now, from this, we can deduce a few things:
1) Any child born of the wife of Noah was a son or daughter of Noah. Moreover, any child born of the wife of a son of Noah was a grandson or granddaughter of Noah. Indeed, any child born after the flood is a descendant of Noah.
2) Any geneology which traces the ancestry of any person born after the flood all the way back to Adam and Eve must show that ancestry through Noah and a son of Noah, as no other path is possible.
Now, skip forward to the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Luke, Chapter 3, in which Luke lays out, in verses 23-38, the geneology of Jesus, the son of Joseph, yadda yadda yadda, "Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God."
Note that this geneology does not include Noah, nor does it include any son of Noah. So, either Genesis was wrong about who survived the flood, or Luke was wrong about the geneology of Jesus.
Let's look a bit further and see if Luke knew what he was talking about. Let's compare a bit of the geneology of Jesus according to Luke to the geneology of Jesus according to Matthew, as laid out in Mathew 1:1-16.
Luke 3:23 "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,"
Mathhew 1:16 "And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ."
So, Joseph had two dads, did he? Or, Luke writes "... as was supposed ...", meaning he didn't really know what he was writing about?
Finally, note that both Luke and Mathhew trace the lineage of Jesus as a descendant of David. Mathhew shows 29 generations from David to Jesus, while Luke shows 43 generations. Moreover, except for David at one end and Jesus at the other, only three names are common to both lists, and they are out of order. Neither Luke nor Mathhew were there; they wrote what others told them, and they contradict each other.
Inerrant, is it? No, it is filled with internal contradictions, some trivial, some not. I've shown you three that are not.
Why? God created this earth.
That is an assertion of faith. That is not a statement of reason.
Where does the Bible claim to be merely allegories with no basis in facts?
Alright Ed, is the length of a day today (24 hours) the same length as every day in the Bible? Such that God created the universe in 6 of them, and the universe not just the planet is some 6 or 7 thousand years old?
You no more get to reason by faith then you do faith by reason. Although I may well be wrong, I suspect you seek to convert to faith by laying out a rational path to it.
Take two people who represent opposite sides in this argument -- Ed and DJ. Both have obviously read a great deal on the subject -- including scholarly work -- and given considerable thought to it. Each weighs the arguments in favor and against, and makes a decision. In the absence of proof either way, that's the most reasonable approach anyone can take, and yet you would classify DJ as rational and Ed as irrational. On what basis?
Bits and pieces:
It's not right for God to do anything he wants with his creations for the same reason it would be wrong for me to do anything I want with my daughter. Maybe I created her (with my wife's help) but she's an independent sentient being like me. The fact that I have relatively infinite power over her would not justify the evil of abusing her. Similarly, God's infinite power does not justify abuse of any human. Might does not make right; infinite might doesn't make right either.
Bringing up Noah raises two points. The first is the destruction of an innocent group. All children worldwide are supposed to have been drowned in the process. Of course, your explanation is likely to be that God was merely euthanizing them because of their memetic defects. Okay, whatever. The second is a biological discrepancy that invalidates the whole story. If the only male survivors were Noah and his sons (and perhaps their sons), then there would be only one Y chromosome in the entire human gene pool after the flood. This is demonstrably not the case, so we are left with three main possibilities. The first is that the story is false. The second is that one or more of Noah's descendants was the product of an adulterous union; this is unlikely since Noah's family was considered righteous. The third is an abnormally high rate of neutral or positive mutations of the Y chromosome between then and now.
The creation accounts are clearly different, Ed. Seriously? We have a different order of creation and a different story of the creation of Eve. They aren't compatible! Neither are the death of Judas stories; all your verbal contortions do is demonstrate the obvious.
If you analyze the Old Testament in the context of an ancient tribe trying to justify its social structures it makes perfect sense. If you try to look at it as the work of a perfect god, it needs all sort of extra and frankly bizarre support. Further, since the New Testament relies inherently on the Old, what should we make of it? What was it that was once said about houses built on sand?
... is the length of a day today (24 hours) the same length as every day in the Bible? Such that God created the universe in 6 of them, and the universe not just the planet is some 6 or 7 thousand years old?
The Genesis account is literal, not allegorical. But to have any meaning, we have to define whose clock we're using to measure the passage of time. This is because there is no absolute reference frame for time anywhere within the universe -- in terms of general relativity, for instance, there are some locations in the universe where an observer would experience six days while an Earth-based observer would experience 14 billion years. Nachmanides claims that each creation day is literally 24 hours, but whose clock are we talking about? If it's God's clock, then because God necessarily views the universe holistically, the dichotomy is resolved by time dilation. I've gone through the argument in detail from a physics point of view, and it's quite compelling.
BTW… The Bible does use a concept of corporate responsibility, i.e., responsibility of people acting and suffering as group, even individual members who were innocent of the group's crimes.
It's also a concept the American people have used in times of war. Didn't we vaporize places that included women and children? I thought the idea was that the German and Japanese people bore collective responsibility for the actions of their governments. If not, then we have a lot to answer for.
DJ as rational and Ed as irrational
No. I would say Ed has faith that he relies on outside of his reason and DJ does not (I'm being presumptuous there DJ, no offense).
The real problem as I see it is that Ed supposes you can either traverse between faith and reason, or buttress faith with reason.
I would put it, in a more apologetic perspective that faith proceeds from grace, not from an individual's intellect.
The Genesis account is literal, not allegorical. But to have any meaning, we have to define whose clock we're using to measure the passage of time.
If the account is literal, then a day is a day is a day. If all reference to days in the Bible are on God Standard Time, fine. If not, the word does not have the same meaning throughout the text. To be literal is also to be consistent. If the meaning varies with usage, then interpretation is required and literalness is gone.
Leaving aside the original creation sequence (either one), you're still left with an earth that does not accord with the literal account - man showing up quite late to the party, the aforementioned Noah 'problem', etc.
All 12. Twice.
I did notice that Ed made mention that the Book of Job isn't literal, so apparently we do have a distinction being drawn between literal and inerrant. I guess you don't have to count on everyone word being literally correct and you can still get to the whole thing being inerrant.
This should be interesting.
"I've gone through the argument in detail from a physics point of view, and it's quite compelling."
Sarah, you understand that time is variable, that the rate of passage of time varies depending on the circumstances in which it passes and from which its passage is observed and measured. You have the benefit of a stroke of genius and of almost a century of effort on the part of an army of physicists who have not only failed to disprove that stroke, but have experimentally confirmed its truth. Moreover, you spent considerable years studying mathematics to understand this as more than a cliché.
We do not know who wrote Genesis, nor do we know when it was written. We do not know what the author understood of time, of clocks, or of relativistic physics. The text of Genesis gives no evidence that the author understood anything about the passage of time other than what you and I, and my cat, experience daily. We are asked to believe that the story of Genesis in the Bible is inerrant because someone else says so?
Now, apply Occam's Razor to the question, "What is the story of Genesis?" As I have related elsewhen, it is a story told by bronze age tribesmen whose world encompassed the mountains and valleys around them and who reckoned the age of their world by counting their ancestors. It is an explanation that does not require the willing suspension of disbelief.
It fits perfectly with the characterization of it as just another story of how it all came to be, as the kind of story that all societies on this planet pass down through their generations, each story being different from the others.
Sarah, what you are doing is rationalizing. You are ascribing knowledge to an unknown author, without evidence the author had said knowledge, in order to justify your belief that the author was correct because he meant something other than what he plainly said, and you do so because what he plainly said was plainly silly. You are enabling a tautology, namely that God exists because the Bible says so and the Bible is inerrant because it is the word of God.
Examine Genesis on its face and it falls flat on its face. It is just a story.
Kevin, you're evil ;-) I'll bet you're back there in the sysop chair laughing your ass off.
And the rest of you folks need to get another hobby. I start with liberty and the stupid party and here you all are days later still fighting about Noah and Y chromosomes and the length of days...
I don't know about days, but I know the net four years are going to feel like an eternity.
I'm not laughing. Intellectually, the arguments are interesting to watch, though it's quite obvious that each individual is firmly entrenched and will not be moved. Unfortunately, these two sides have to work together, or the Statists will win in the end.
BillH shouldn't be laughing. This is precisely why the coalition fractures. Eleven elements that generate NO dispute, but those with an evangelical bent just can't leave it at that.
And yes, I get very enti-evangelical very quickly. Short of crappy play by the San Diego Chargers, this is the quickest way to get my goat!
"Unfortunately, these two sides have to work together, or the Statists will win in the end."
We're pretty well united against the Statists, Kevin. You should be laughing because you got 100 comments without having to work hard for them!
I suspect that for those who list the Bible, it is actually first in importance. After all, if you believe it's God's word, how can it be any lower? This may be the cause of the fracture.
(Also, just to set the record straight, I cribbed the chromosomal argument from Steven Den Beste.)
We're pretty well united against the Statists, Kevin.
I wish I had your confidence about that DJ. Right now I'm scared as hell that the Repubs are gonna go all Huck & Sarah and that just isn't something I can swallow. I think there's a whole herd of 'conservatives' that have no compunction about growing the state - as long as it's for the 'right' reasons.
Then again maybe I'm just in a sour mood what with the Chargers stinking up the joint again.
I thought the idea was that the German and Japanese people bore collective responsibility for the actions of their governments. If not, then we have a lot to answer for.
But we're not god. We're mortal, have failings, imperfect, unclean etc. God, on the other hand, is perfect, never screws up, knows all, sees all. Mr. Omnipotent there could've smited only the sinners with laser-focus and left the kids alone, but didn't.
All this about a moldy old book about game theory. Sheesh.
"I wish I had your confidence about that DJ."
By "We're pretty well united", I meant those of us who make messes in Kevin's parlor. Well, most of us, anyway.
"All this about a moldy old book about game theory. Sheesh."
Yup.
Elk hunting is more productive, isn't it? One more month to go ...
Bleh. The parts of the day that weren't unexpectedly busy had me in the sort of mood that would have left Gandhi disposed to kick babies, so I'm just getting to this now. Before I bother with the more subjective bones of contention, let's tackle the science.
First, it would actually have to be a living cell. Its machinery of life (so to speak) would have had to function. Second, it would have to be able to replicate. After all, a "first cell" that can't replicate would also be the "last cell".
This is your first inaccurate assumption. You don't need a "first cell", you need a first self-replicating molecule. Almost nobody working on abiogenesis theory actually assumes everything began with what we'd recognize as a cell except creationists, either because it makes their arguments easier or because they are scientifically illiterate. Depending on the creationist in question, I usually assume the latter.
By the by, there is no "life force" that creates a clear bright line where we may define a "living" cell- at the levels we're talking about, organic chemistry and biology flow smoothly into one another with no clear breaks until we hit prokaryotes. (Which is why you stopped at cells as your "irreducible".) This is why other self-replicating molecules that interact with biological systems, like viruses, are so problematic for systematists. Actually, biological systems being their contiuum-loving fluid selves, almost everything is a problem for systematists. That field fights like twenty snakes in a sack trying to impose some kind of clear categorization system on organisms, some of which even decline to settle on being a single organism or many. (Look up Discoideum.) Your distinction is functionally meaningless.
These two requirements also mean that the cell had to have certain features. For this discussion I'm going to focus on just two: DNA and proteins. There are others, but I want to keep things as simple as possible.
This is your second wrong assumption. DNA is more of a reproductive system than a replicative- the process is so complex that it is seldom without error. See, the thing is, scientists are not retarded. They KNOW this, which is why serious theories of how life could get rolling all by its chemical lonesome DON'T propose anything like the ludicrious scenario you laid out and proceeded to crunch numbers on. Your argment is predicated on two completely wrong assumptions whose problems have been recognized and addressed for the last TWENTY-FIVE YEARS MINIMUM.
I could outline some of the scenarios that ARE currently recognized as plausible means for self-replicating molecules and eventually cells to get going, but I'm not going to, because you have just revealed that you are illiterate for the purposes of this conversation. You have read maybe one book on cell biology, and as I recall, it was a book with a specific agenda at that. If I had just attempted to demonstrate that the Bible was bullshit because a good God would not allow evil in the world, I would have revealed myself as similarly illiterate in that I would reveal I had NO IDEA what theologians were doing- and furthermore that I therefore could have no interest in honest and serious argument.
You, Ed, are attacking the honesty and integrity of tens of thousands of scientists over the last hundred and fifty years based on what? Your doctrine that the Bible is inerrant and therefore evolutionary theory, which is currently the backbone and basis of biology just as much as atomic theory is of chemistry, MUST BE WRONG and you are therefore somehow qualified to say so. I know you're not because you essentially just told me you're not- you have ZERO familiarity with the field you're attacking!
I think there's a word for that in theology. Starts with an s. The specific subtype starts with a p.
By the way, you know what else I could do, but I'm not going to because it's your goddamn responsibility? I could outline the aspects of science and natural law that make me AGNOSTIC with respect to an intelligent creator. (As opposed to flat atheistic with respect to Christianity specifically.) Go do your homework. When you know enough about science to identify these things for yourselves, I suspect your problem with "Darwinism"- which, incidentally, is about as petty and ludicrous as referring to physics as "Newtonism"- will have disappeared.
Reality is not affected by your doctrine. If there is a creator God, then He created natural law. If the rigorous study of the natural law reveals deep conflicts with aspects of your doctrine, which one has to give?
Ouch, and you were going to accuse me of being harsh?
Granted, there's still a bit of a mood in play, but the depth of "did not do the research" didn't sink in until I started to analyze it.
May I interject here?
"A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."
Ed/Sarah: Want to (and do, if I read them right) believe in God.
DJ/Juris/Labrat: DO NOT want to believe in God.
Oversimplifying, perhaps, but watching the two sides constantly poking holes in each other is not getting anything useful done.
Neither side will be moved by the other, and all you're doing is getting ticked at each other. As each other's arguments escalate, you are attacking each others core beliefs, naturally getting each other constantly more riled.
The mysteries of the universe will not be solved in an internet comments thread.
As to why that twelfth item is there: That is among the things being attacked by the statists. Fot those who believe, it's important. Live with it.
DJ/Juris/Labrat: DO NOT want to believe in God.
While I'm not LabRat, and god (ha-HA! See what I did there?) knows I don't always know her mind, I think you've missed her point. Desire to believe in god has nothing to do with this.
If you want to put something forth as True, which some folks are suggesting about the contents of The Bible, you really only need one thing on your side before you start building your platform: You need internal consistency. LabRat et al have argued (and I'll put my bias up front, if it weren't already, that I don't consider The Bible true literally, any more than I consider the Prisoner's Dilemma true literally) that the bible doesn't have this through various contradictions (death of Judas, etc), typos (perfect monk translation club), "translation errors" (again), and so forth. If on day X god's will means one thing, and on day Y it means another, there is no point trying to surmise god's will in the first place. If you can't do that, then STFU about the great and un-pokable truth of the document which supposedly lays out god's will.
If your internal consistency goes further astray, ignoring not only consistency of literal message, but consistency of morals, your platform is further weakened. If God is all powerful and all knowing, then killing a child not old enough to even understand that it needs to poop, because a whole bunch of people around it are evil constitutes a very clear slaughter of an innocent. Ascribing this to "corporate responsibility" where all are guilty of the transgressions of some means that either the god under scrutiny is capricious and not internally consistent (since killing an "innocent baby" in the form of abortion is so often painted as evil, along with countless other citations of the evil of baby-slaughter), or the god under scrutiny lacks the claimed omnipotence to smite only the sinners, and is thus not omnipotent, and thus no longer internally consistent.
Outside the various and sundry Literal Word(s) Of God, there is further room for the point of internal consistency. Evolution being mathematically impossible springs to mind. Arguments presented in that vein are akin to "Well... electrons are really tiny. There's no way something that small could enable communication on this scale" despite the fact that it is de facto plausible as it is currently in use by the person making the claim. As for arguments concerning the length of the original day, in order for god to have an internally consistent clock (ignoring the clock the goat-herder recording His Various Word(s) would have been required to use, not posessing transluminos vessels), the repeatedly and independently observationally documented age of the universe, as well as the independently verified results with time-dialation effects would mean that if god could work on the different timescales necessary to justify Genesis, then he/she/it is a faster than light subatomic particle. This does not have any internal consistency with other claims made about his grand high poobahship.
Circling back around the barn the long way, no, neither side will be moved. But understanding why one side is upset is an important distinction. If you're going to claim that something is unimpeachable literal Truth, be it claims of Hope & Change, or be it claims that man sprung fully formed from a rib*, a dwindling few of us think you'd damn well better be able to back that up, or at the very least assimilate new evidence without sticking your fingers in your ears and flinging bullshit until the other party gets sick of shouting against the surf.
Either way, Rodney has spoken. "Can't we all just get along?" More or less, since killing heretics is not generally acceptable as yet in the U.S. "It’s just not right. It’s not right. It’s not, it’s not going to change anything. We’ll, we’ll get our justice...." Nope, we won't change much, and the religious folk will get their justice in some undefined state after all recognizable functions defining life have ceased, and the scientists will get theirs as the people insisting against all evidence that a 2000 year old book, the contents of which amounting to "Don't fuck people over without a good reason" are increasingly marginalized. In the mean time, while we argue about all this, if you'll excuse me, I've got a president-elect that apparently is going to pay my mortgage, and I need to talk to Him about that.
*(And if god is omnipotent and ever lasting, why should I be impressed that he sent part of himself to die for us? Isn't that like saying "I cut my toenail on your behalf!"?)
I did say I was oversimplifying.
No human is perfect, ergo neither is any human argument, on any side of any issue.
It's like locks. Any lock that has ever been engineered can be opened without the key, if people look close enough.
My point was that people will find holes everywhere if they look close enough. That goes for any side of any arguement you choose. People pick the side that seems best to them and stick with it.
Bashing heads over details helps no-one, and changes nothing.
And, uh, I think you missed the point with the toenail thing.
Splodge of Doom: "DJ/Juris/Labrat: DO NOT want to believe in God."
Stingray: "Desire to believe in god has nothing to do with this."
Nor does desire to NOT believe in god have anything to do with this.
How many times have I said it? Reality is what it is regardless of whether or not I like it, and so whether or not I like it is irrelevant to any analysis I make of it.
If you would have me believe you can get from "it musta been god" to "you'll burn in hell forever if you eat meat during a time perioad labeled 'Friday'", then show me the body, i.e. you'll have to come up with something more substantial than "somebody else says so".
"In the mean time, while we argue about all this, if you'll excuse me, I've got a president-elect that apparently is going to pay my mortgage, and I need to talk to Him about that."
Yeah, but I've had enough politics for a long while.
Cheezus!
I leave you guys for 4 days and look what happens!
The mysteries of the universe will not be solved in an internet comments thread.
Ha! Says who?! ;-)
As to why that twelfth item is there: That is among the things being attacked by the statists.
There are those who would use the state to ram "the truth" down our throats, and they ain't all 'libruls'. If we agree to the first eleven items there is no need to inject the twelfth - tha state properly has no business there and it should NOT be part of a political agenda.
"I leave you guys for 4 days and look what happens!"
See what happens when you leave a kitten alone with a roll of toilet paper?
The real problem as I see it is that Ed supposes you can either traverse between faith and reason, or buttress faith with reason.
The problem is that you don't seem to understand what faith really is. Nonreligious people suppose that faith is accepting something: 1) for which there is zero evidence; or 2) for which there is evidence to the contrary. That definition is wrong. As C. S. Lewis so aptly put it, faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods. Faith is fully compatible with -- and supportive of -- reason.
If the account is literal, then a day is a day is a day. If all reference to days in the Bible are on God Standard Time, fine. If not, the word does not have the same meaning throughout the text. To be literal is also to be consistent. If the meaning varies with usage, then interpretation is required and literalness is gone.
It is literal in the sense that it is not allegory. That doesn't preclude interpretation.
Leaving aside the original creation sequence (either one), you're still left with an earth that does not accord with the literal account - man showing up quite late to the party, the aforementioned Noah 'problem', etc.
How is it not in accord with the literal account? The order of the events described in Genesis fits the order of events as we understand them from modern science.
The account of the flood is problematic, but there is a possible resolution. Gerald Schroeder speculates that the flood may only have occurred in one region, not the entire world. (This is not unreasonable, since the OT was not concerned with the rest of the world.) All human beings in existence at that time may have lived only in that region -- but there were humanoid creatures elsewhere. Schroeder points out that the Bible makes reference to other humanoids. They differed from humans only in that they did not possess the neshama, the human soul. Maimonides discusses such creatures, so clearly the existence of human-like beings even pre-Adam was not problematic for the ancient biblical scholars. Humans in the Bible interacted with these humanoids, and even married and procreated with them. If Schroeder is correct, then the account of Noah is not really problematic.
Sarah, what you are doing is rationalizing. You are ascribing knowledge to an unknown author, without evidence the author had said knowledge, in order to justify your belief that the author was correct because he meant something other than what he plainly said, and you do so because what he plainly said was plainly silly. You are enabling a tautology, namely that God exists because the Bible says so and the Bible is inerrant because it is the word of God.
What you describe is done in scholarly work all the time. Your objection on that basis doesn't hold up.
Your accusation of rationalization is also unfounded. I had a nonreligious upbringing with parents who were hostile to religion, an attitude passed on to me by my teens. When I began studying for my physics degree, I was an atheist, completely indifferent to God and actively hostile to Christianity. Eager to form some kind of philosophical basis for my life, I dabbled in Objectivism for a couple of years, but lost interest when I arrived at some serious logical impasses. By my junior year I began to consider my beliefs about the universe and existence in the context of what I was learning in physics. By my second or third year in grad school I saw Schroeder's The Science of God on my way out of a bookstore and picked it up on an impulse. It seemed a little too good to be true, so I spent about a year thoroughly checking the veracity its claims. I had no vested interest in proving any of them true, I was simply curious. And then I was astonished by what I found.
I became Christian only about two years ago. I accepted God because I was convinced by simple logic (if the universe was created, then that implies a creator), the orderliness of the universe (seems unlikely that its orderliness is by accident), and finally Schroeder's argument for the congruence of the Genesis account and modern physics. Not because it fits a narrative of belief I was imbued with since birth. It was simply too compelling for me to deny, so I accepted the existence of God. My acceptance of Christ, on the other hand, I will admit is for reasons that are subjective, but still not entirely without a basis in reason.
Examine Genesis on its face and it falls flat on its face. It is just a story.
It's not meant to be examined on its face by people like you and me. As with almost all literature, it is meant to be understood on more than one level. The simple, face-value level was intended for the illiterate peasants who were the original audience. There is a much deeper level for those who were to come later, and we are finally at a point where we are able to evaluate it on a much more sophisticated basis.
Stingray has it right: this has absolutely nothing to do with my desire to believe or not to believe. I am actually quite apathetic on this score; I have not been convinced around to anyone's version, but I don't find the notion itself threatening or alarming, and I've never had any sort of experience I would categorize as "religious" other than finding pleasure in studying theology as I would philosophy.
When someone makes an extraordinary claim like "the Bible is inerrant", that's not merely a theological one, that's something we have the same reference for and can argue about- especially when that person is ALSO claiming that that makes the Bible an absolute authority, such as can be used to, say, throw out a massive branch of science or force religiously-acceptable versions of law on society. That's an important damn claim, and one whose tensions won't be resolved merely with "live and let live".
As for evolution specifically, I view this as a much more important issue, because it's NOT theological. It's a massive underpinning of biology, through which much is understood and will continue to be understood- and more than that, it's also a problem for conservatism in that it will be completely crippled in the realm of academia until conservatism no longer attempts to defend the intellectually indefensible. So long as dishonest and uninformed attacks are constantly made on working scientists who are painted as liars, deliberately ignorant, and representing some sort of sinister secular agenda are condoned and continued, conservatism will NEVER regain a strong representation in the universities. Don't think we need them? The products of the current system have come due and they have elected their leader. We DO need them. I can't count the number of scientific types I know who started out siding with liberalism as the "pro-science" faction just based on this single issue *alone*. I know when I was younger I made the same assumption that any school of thought that would condone such gross intellectual malpractice in one area must be intellectually bankrupt as a whole.
Nor does desire to NOT believe in god have anything to do with this.
I don't believe in the Norse gods or aliens or ghosts. But I don't exert any effort to refute their existence, because I don't have a desire not to believe in them. I haven't seen anything to compel me to believe in them, so I'm indifferent.
On the other hand, you have clearly spent a great deal of time and effort to refute something you claim is nonsense. I have a very difficult time accepting that this is not motivated by an intense desire to NOT believe.
The order of the events described in Genesis fits the order of events as we understand them from modern science.
Genesis 1 - yes, but not Genesis 2. I take it then you don't buy the rib business. Or talking serpents that didn't slither on the ground.
All human beings in existence at that time may have lived only in that region -- but there were humanoid creatures elsewhere.
Wow. I am so shocked at this line of thought that I simply don't know what to say. Talk about the Bene Gesserit test! [yes two Dune references in one thread is a technical foul, but it had to be said - take your free throw!]
How about, regardless of the notion of souls (who has them and who doesn't), we just stick to simple genetics and the fact that this is demonstrably untrue?
To get back to the theme of inerrancy (through inconsistency), DJ pointed out the errors in the lineage of Jesus between the two Gospels (including omission of reference to Noah). And it seems to take a lot of extra-Biblical effort to resolve these little difficulties. I noted that Ed made reference to "tradition" [how Roman Catholic] in his effort to reconcile the plainly conflicting accounts of Judas' death.
Now, reading Genesis 1 as metaphor, or allegory, for creation isn't something I have a problem with. Reading it LITERALLY is, because it defies reason to do so. This is precisely why I said reason is different from faith. Instances where reason might support faith are fairly trivial. Where you have to take something on faith is where reason is no help to you.
Sarah: You may be able to tinker either version of Genesis into accurately reflecting physics, but the first and more detailed does not line up even superficially with the fossil record, especially the evolution of plants. It puts fruit (which is expressly a delivery package meant to be used by animals) before animals of any kind, and light after plants... that survive by photosynthesizing. Birds (which are relative latecomers- primates showed up first, though not hominids) appear at the same time as fish.
As for your contention that there is no moral society without Judeo-Christian roots... well, we've already talked about the Greeks in the past, whose advanced system of ethical philosophy was eventually enfolded nearly whole by Christianity and had not a jot to do with their gods, who behaved badly even by Greek standards. Then we have the Japanese, whose internally-locused system of ethical behavior is likewise only tenuously linked to their gods, and while Christianity has found some acceptance there, it's still a minority faith and they don't seem to need it to construct an orderly and decent society.
I note that all the examples you gave of "amoral" societies are also societies upon which atheism was forced expressly in order to make collectivism the ideal. A system that explicitly denies individual agency or responsibility produces bad behavior? Color me shocked, SHOCKED I say! Traditional Chinese ethical philosophies and faiths- such as Taoism and Confucianism- share many of the same positively shaping memes as successful Western ones do. (Confucianism in particular was awfully radical for the time and place for proposing a meritocracy of virtue rather than tribal nobility of birth.)
Oh, and it's widely been pointed out that Africa is now one of the great bastions of Christianity, often having many more devout followers than in the Western societies they originated in. Yet somehow I'd still much rather live in Hong Kong than in Nigeria. Societies shape religions as much as religions shape societies.
As for the flood... there were modern homo sapiens- not "lesser" hominids- in the millions all over the world before the proposed time of the flood. If you're willing to assert that the Chinese are an inherently amoral people I suppose I'm not surprised you're also willing to assert that none of them had souls except for the few in the Middle East that Yahweh was paying attention to.
On the other hand, you have clearly spent a great deal of time and effort to refute something you claim is nonsense. I have a very difficult time accepting that this is not motivated by an intense desire to NOT believe.
I have said repeatedly that I do not consider the idea of God, Christianity in general, or even the Bible to be nonsense. I consider absolute Biblical inerrancy and the insistence that Genesis is a reliable scientific account to be nonsense.
Your continued confusion on this point rather indicates to me that YOU need to believe that's my motivation and the reason I find your arguments- and Schroeder's- unconvincing.
LabRat,
...it will be completely crippled in the realm of academia until conservatism no longer attempts to defend the intellectually indefensible.
I agree. I suggest that the solution is to convince our more outspoken colleagues to keep their pieholes shut about theology. From the experiences I've had lecturing about science to religious groups, what I've discovered is that they are always delighted to find that science is compatible with their beliefs -- they want to believe science -- but when they are told that they have to choose between God or science, they will always choose God.
LabRat,
I have said repeatedly that I do not consider the idea of God, Christianity in general, or even the Bible to be nonsense.
That comment was directed solely at DJ, not you.
juris -- Genesis 2 is not incompatible with Genesis 1. I know this looks like a dodge, but I have limited time at my disposal and you and I will forever be talking at cross-purposes unless we have a common foundation, which means you'd have to read Schroeder's books and the relevant parts of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed. I learned that there's no point in engaging LabRat in a discussion about biology until I acquire the foundation from which to argue. Likewise, it would be an exercise in futility for us to continue until you familiarize yourself with the scholarly interpretations of the OT.
As for the rest of LabRat's comments, I have plenty to say, but it'll have to wait.
Right now I'm scared as hell that the Repubs are gonna go all Huck & Sarah and that just isn't something I can swallow.
I don't think there is a Huck and Sarah of the sort juris_imprudent is worried about. Huckabee certainly is comfortable with the idea of using the State to make better people of us. I'm less certain of the evidence for that with Sarah Palin, though I'd be willing to look at it.
By way of illustration, I am a conservative Roman Catholic who is uncomfortable with the idea of using the State to make better people of you assorted unbelievers, infidels, apostates, and heretics. Shun! SHUUUUNNNNNNN! Wait...ahem. Sorry. I'm okay now. ;) If you want to point and laugh at more people like me, go to acton.org. :)
But "Huck & Sarah" illustrates a belief, the belief that any two believers' attitudes and intentions can be factor-analyzed such that they will load on a single factor called "God-botherer" at north of .90.
Sarah: ah, sorry then.
For what it's worth, I feel equally tooth-grindy when it comes to folks like Richard Dawkins, or on the bio-blogosphere, P.Z. Meyers and Ed Brayton. They reveal their contempt and ignorance at every turn, and they've done vastly more to cement the entire subject as a war between science and religion- and thus cripple "our side"- than they ever have to show up the creationists.
I want to put them all in a sack and have a soap-based conversation with them.
Likewise, it would be an exercise in futility for us to continue until you familiarize yourself with the scholarly interpretations of the OT.
I would agree with that if it were not for the assertion of inerrancy AND accessibility (the very point that started this whole damnable thread). You can't have it both ways. Also, you don't know how much I have studied - perhaps not as much as you, or perhaps as much but from a different perspective. And you're right, I see disavowing the differences in Gen 1 & 2 as not inconsistent as a dodge, particularly when simultaneously arguing that the meaning is plain, accessible and inerrant. If you want to argue crypticism, or god-forbid - gnosticism, then I'll buy that I don't understand and don't have the inclination to study it enough to know. Otherwise, we are on level enough ground to discuss.
Olds,
As I understand it, the hoped for effects of Palin were two-pronged: one, to shore up the social-con base; and two, to reach out to presumably moderate Hillary-supporters (Repubs really are bad at identity politics).
What causes me the despair is that the Repub coalition seems most likely to jettison the libertarian element. And what is the one item on that list of twelve that most embodies that? Number tweleve.
I'm happy to make common ground with social cons (heck, and anyone else for that matter) on the first eleven items.
I understand your position, juris. I don't see Sarah Palin as a nascent Nehemiah Scudder (Huckabee ain't either, but as a cross between Elmer Gantry and Jimmeh Url Peanut he's plenty bad enough on his own).
If the GOP thinks it can win elections without libertarian support, they are welcome to try. That leaves us where we will probably end up sooner or later anyway, based on the trend -- insisting on being let alone, and seeing whether we have the means and will (to coin a phrase) to make it stick.
Me: "Examine Genesis on its face and it falls flat on its face. It is just a story."
Sarah: "It's not meant to be examined on its face by people like you and me."
Says WHO?
"It's not meant to be examined on its face by people like you and me."
Not meant by WHO?
Sarah, you don't know who wrote it. How do you claim to know who the author meant to examine it, or how the author meant it to be examined?
This is the crux of the difficulty I have with the notion that the Bible is inerrant. It's a simple thing for me, really. I try to keep in mind, to the best extent that I can, who wrote it. It is plain language, where it isn't twisted into archaic English by translation, and I read it plainly.
The Bible is not inerrant, demonstrably so. It has not been, and cannot be, demonstrated to be inerrant, but it is stated to be inerrant by those who would have me believe it is. Well, golly gee, anyone can make such a statement. The difficulty I have is getting my head around the convoluted mental hoops that people jump through attempting to convince themselves and others that such a statement is correct.
When I read a statement such as ...
"The apocryphal books have demonstrable errors, including geography and historical events. I don't care what the "Council of Trent" asserted. Those books don't meet the standard of "inerrant." That's why Jerome refused to include them in the Vulgate."
... I cannot help laughing my ass off. To me, the standard of "inerrant" is "contains no errors". How in blue blazes could Jerome possibly determine that any book of the Bible contains no errors? The plain language of the books contradict themselves and each other. How can they possibly be inerrant? They contain gazillions of statements of facts. How could Jerome possibly check each assertion of fact for accuracy? That's what it would take to determine that it is inerrant.
The simplest example I can think of is the listing of the geneology of Jesus all the way back to Adam. How the hell could Jerome fact check this?
Here are some serious questions for you:
Can Christian dogma be correct even though the Bible is not?
Can Christianity stand on its own merits without having to claim that it is true because the Bible says so and the Bible is inerrant?
Is stating that the Bible is inerrant simply a holdover from many centuries ago, an age when few people could read and even fewer had a Bible to read, and so an age when the shamans du jour could easily state "The Bible Is Inerrant And The Bible Says [insert claim here]" and convince others to believe what they said?
Can you accept the validity of Christian dogma without having to assert that the Bible is inerrant, and thereby be able to just accept that those who wrote the Bible were wrong here and there?
Finally, why should a belief in the validity of Christian dogma require a belief that those who wrote of its early history were perfectly correct in their recording of that history, even though they weren't there to witness it firsthand? Here's a hint: If you cannot accept what they wrote at face value, i.e. you have to interpret and explain it, then how can you assert that it is infallible?
"On the other hand, you have clearly spent a great deal of time and effort to refute something you claim is nonsense. I have a very difficult time accepting that this is not motivated by an intense desire to NOT believe."
Sarah, wait until a sizable portion of my society actively campaigns to teach the alien assistance hypothesis in Egyptian history class or when polls show that UFO skeptics are the least trusted group in America or when our political leaders erroneously claim that our country was founded on the teachings of grays and you can't be a patriot without accepting the existence of aliens. Then you'll see me talking a little more loudly about the subject. As it is, these debates rage wherever people raise arguments to support these ideas. I suspect you notice the contra-theism arguments more because
they attack something you hold dear and because they attack something very widely believed.
That settles it. Somehow or another The Smallest Minority Commenter's Club is going to have to have a blogbash somewhere. I've got to get all y'all in the same room at the same time. Preferably a room where alcohol is served in large quantities, and the room is wired for audio and video recording!
Damn. Y'all are fascinating.
"I have a very difficult time accepting that this is not motivated by an intense desire to NOT believe."
Given the engineer mind you're arguing against, you should try the same experiment in stating that a keyed linked list with randomly placed keys is, in application, faster than one with evenly spaced keys.
I don't know about the mathematicians and engineers you deal with, but the ones I've met with get very vehement when something is asserted for which no evidence can be given.
The engineer mentality that I have always known simply is *bothered* by nonfactual statements, or statements for which an assertion is made without evidence. You don't need to actively disbelieve in God to argue vehemently against the idea. However, I would revert to Descartes' original assertion - all is void until given evidence to be. I still think that, given this, the atheist is right in stating it is the task of the believer to give evidence to God (just as you would ask for proof of a house on the moon), not his to disprove it.
I do not think our atheists here can be accurately called anti-theists, which is the accusation I (perhaps very wrongly) am reading you to make. We're not talking a difference of opinion or necessarily even opposing sides of an issue. It is still the task of the believer to give rationale for belief - challenging that rationale requires no belief of its own. It's not the comparison I like to make, but a man who tells you there is a pink elephant on the moon is responsible for demonstrating it. The onus is on the proposer of an idea - on its advocate.
Of course, it's a pity we can't convince the average liberal in an argument that all statements require evidence, and that very few can be considered necessary without. An accusation of groupthink, strawman-ing, or selection bias requires reason, rationale, and evidence to why these fallacies appliy - simply calling them out doesn't give them any veracity.
It is still the task of the believer to give rationale for belief . . .
Well, no actually. That's pretty much the point. Believers believe through faith. Some come to their faith through reason, but most don't. However, once you believe, then there's no rationale that will sway you.
As I wrote in Why I Am an Atheist, I don't believe because reason has led me to where I am. I acknowledge the reverse is true of others, but it didn't work that way for me. Is it possible that a Supreme Being is responsible for the Universe and everything in it? Sure. It just isn't provable. As for jumping from that base assumption to Yaweh and all that followed, so far no one has answered my fundamental question with the Abrahamic God meme, so that set of faiths is right out the window for me.
Basically, what we need is acceptance from both sides that neither is going to change, and that neither really needs to. I reiterate Eric S. Raymond:
The trouble with ‘tolerance’ is that it only works as a cultural compact when all parties are civilized and have in practice largely agreed to abandon the more inconvenient claims of the religions they theoretically profess.
I include anti-theism in the list of religions that need to abandon some "inconvenient claims."
[This may get double-posted]
Ah, sorry.
I should have said,
"It is the task of the assertor to give evidence for an assertion."
I don't disagree about your statement that belief through faith is a distinct concept.
But if I'm going to approach something through logic and rationality, then, yes, the onus is on a person making a positive assertion. Ergo, someone arguing for the existence of a God who does so in rationality and logic (I'm not saying arguments on the subject are therefore irrational - I'm saying someone who makes use of, for example, scientific inquiry) takes the responsibility of giving evidence for that God. Everyone standing outside that ring has no responsibility to disprove it.
From that perspective, I agree. I just thought your initial comment was overbroad.
Yes, it was - I am, admittedly, incredibly bad at narrowing the scope of my statements while writing them.
I blame the postmodernist writing I did throughout college...
LabRat,
As for your contention that there is no moral society without Judeo-Christian roots...
I said a religious foundation -- I did not specify Judeo-Christian. But in terms of the type of morality I, personally, want I will claim that you only get that with a Judeo-Christian foundation.
...the Greeks ... whose advanced system of ethical philosophy was eventually enfolded nearly whole by Christianity and had not a jot to do with their gods, who behaved badly even by Greek standards.
If the Greek system was so great, why did they whole-heartedly embrace Christianity? Obviously, they were in need of something that their advanced philosophy didn't provide.
Then we have the Japanese, whose internally-locused system of ethical behavior is likewise only tenuously linked to their gods...
This is the same tribal moral system that allowed them to commit atrocities against the Chinese and others. The Japanese have learned a new moral system through more than 60 years of American influence and oversight, but continue to be some of the most racist people in the world. Is this a moral system we'd hold up to the rest of the world?
I note that all the examples you gave of "amoral" societies are also societies upon which atheism was forced expressly in order to make collectivism the ideal. A system that explicitly denies individual agency or responsibility produces bad behavior...
So you think atheism could uphold individualism? Let's put that to the geopolitical/historical test. Where have you ever seen an atheistic society uphold individualism instead of collectivism? The answer is nowhere. No atheist country has ever upheld individual rights. Not in the gangster-state of Russia, not in the communist states of Cuba or Southeast Asia, not in the fascist state of China, and not in the bureaucratic state of Europe. Why would that be so? In the U.S. right now the highest authority is still God. It's right there in our founding documents, each of us is endowed by his Creator with rights. If you have an atheistic country, then by definition the highest power is the state. Decisions are made by a monarchy or an oligarchy/aristocracy. If that group is a majority, then you have democracy, which is capable of (forgive me) electing Hitler. This is the true nature of human beings: the majority becomes a mob. This is not conjecture, it's what history demonstrates. Individual rights are whatever the governing group defines them as at any given time, because without God, there is no such thing as eternal and inalienable. With God, you have a higher authority than government. It doesn't work perfectly, but it's worked better than anything else.
Now, are you going to tell me that the only reason atheistic societies haven't upheld individualism is that the right people haven't been in charge or that the exact right conditions weren't in place? It hasn't worked before, but in principle it's such a great idea, it just has to work?
One of the reasons I converted to Christianity is pragmatism. To be honest, I wasn't completely on board when I converted, and there's a lot to dislike about some Christians. But I observed atheism failing, over and over, to provide the kind of moral, individualistic society I want to live in. I'm not willing to give it another chance no matter how good it sounds in principle.
Chinese ethical philosophies and faiths- such as Taoism and Confucianism- share many of the same positively shaping memes as successful Western ones do.
And China has been a shining beacon for the last thousand years? With Confucianism and Taoism, China has been a backward shithole for centuries. We had the Boxer Era morphing into the Communist Era, and a society so feeble that it was shit-kicked by the Japanese.
So show me how these same positive ideas resulted in moral behavior. If the memes are so similar, then how do you explain the differences between China and the West? The element that's missing is God. What you have with these philosophies is a lovely moral system that's all words and no actions. A moral system has to lead to moral behavior or it's useless. The most moral behavior in the world is in Western Christian culture. You cannot demonstrate that any society has achieved a similar level of moral behavior.
Oh, and it's widely been pointed out that Africa is now one of the great bastions of Christianity, often having many more devout followers than in the Western societies they originated in.
It takes generations to see the effects. Kevin has discussed at length what it took for the U.S. to get to the point that it could elect an effete Marxist as president -- generations of leftist indoctrination. We all know that even if education in this country were to be completely overhauled today, America wouldn't suddenly become a free market paradise. It would take decades to see the effect, because the older generations and institutions are rooted in their corrupted ways -- they're lost, they're societal baggage. It's going to take many years before we'll see the effects of Christianity there.
Yet somehow I'd still much rather live in Hong Kong than in Nigeria. Societies shape religions as much as religions shape societies.
I would, too. But that has a lot to do with the British influence for 150 years. Would you rather live in Shanghai or rural China than Nigeria?
juris,
...particularly when simultaneously arguing that the meaning is plain, accessible and inerrant.
Just so we're clear, I'm not claiming to be an OT scholar. But I'm guessing you haven't read Nachmanides, Maimonides, or Schroeder, and I don't have the time to go into depth on this topic. It took me years of reading to understand Genesis, and there's no way I can do it justice in the comments section of a blog with limited time at my disposal.
Also, I never claimed that scripture was plain and accessible, at least not in the sense you mean. Most people with at least average intelligence can understand it, but it requires study. This WHOLE thing started with one simple statement -- "The Bible for what it says" -- which to me meant not using scripture to say things like "God damn America," or to twist it beyond all recognition to justify bad behavior. It didn't mean that the Bible is an easy read.
Oz,
I suspect you notice the contra-theism arguments more because they attack something you hold dear and because they attack something very widely believed.
Of course. But no one is forced to profess a belief in God in this country. You and DJ and every other atheist is free to profess whatever beliefs you wish. (If you object that you're not free to do so without criticism or having missionaries knock on your door, I'm going to be very disappointed.) The point is, I still don't understand the need to spend lots of time and effort refuting something that's supposedly nonsense. As a professional astronomer, I encounter an awful lot of people who believe in astrology. Something like 25% of the population -- including at least one president -- believes it, and apparently doesn't understand the difference between astronomy and astrology. All it took was a cursory look at the evidence to see that astrology was bunk, and I haven't bothered with it since. If I were to spend hours and days of my life refuting astrology, I dunno, it starts to look personal, don't you think?
Kevin,
Believers believe through faith. Some come to their faith through reason, but most don't.
How do you know? You've never been in that position, and I'm assuming you've never regularly attended church, so how can you know how most people come to their faith?
Sarah actually makes a reasonably strong case correlating a religious basis, (specifically, the Judeo-Christian legacy) with moral societies that champion individual rights and prerogatives.
We know that correlation is not causation, but it is sufficient to suspect and test a potential causal relationship.
The position is also slightly tainted, risking circularity, by the filter with which we are evaluating the questions "What is moral? What is ethical? What does a society that champions individual rights look like?". Those filters are part the gifts of the Judeo Christian legacy, which we have all benefited from.
I submit, however, that the features of the legacy that have resulted in the said reasonably just society are subject to Occam's razor, and what's left over after the stropping won't necessarily be theological. (In fact, the exercise might be worth actually doing just to see if anything Theological passes the razor...)
Unfortunately, that's not a testable hypothesis. While we can, as a matter of intellectual exercise, shave off the theology, leaving only those features that promote moral behavior, social cohesion, individual liberty, the spirit of free academic and scientific inquiry, and the infrastructure that promotes memetic promulgation and endurance, but we would have no way to install the thing into a large scale society to test and prove the case. The reason we can't install it is in part due to the fact that we don't happen to have any societies handy for which that niche is empty and waiting.
---===|===---
We also have to consider the ways in which the Judeo Christian heritage doesn't support moral behavior, social cohesion, individual liberty, the spirit of free academic and scientific inquiry, and becomes entangled in superstitious nonsense like serpent handling, homophobia, creationism, theological justification for slavery, misogyny, and all the other noxious stuff that Blue America would have us believe is the essential core of the Conservative Christian.
---===|===---
At the end of the day, society is advanced by reasonable people willing to retain the best ideas (example: morality), eject the senseless ones (example: witch burning, theological support for slavery), and cautiously embrace that which is new and worthwhile (example: autologous organ cloning).
It is necessary that humanity be viewed in context: men are flawed, but nonetheless worthy of dignity and love. This is true, and has no dependency on the literal or allegorical truth of Genesis.
Sarah, I spent most of that comment answering the question you asked again in your response. To that I'd like to add that I'm not accusing anyone here directly of the things in that post, but they do happen extensively throughout society.
I think the mental gymnastics employed in the thread in the defense of the Bible prove the Mencken quote:
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking."
If you didn't believe the Bible was the work of a perfect god, you'd see the obvious: it is a collection of the myths and the laws (mixed in with the history) of an ancient people trying to move along as a culture and a society. All the irregularities make perfect sense that way. If you didn't axiomatically call it truth then you would have no need to invoke context and scholarly studies to attempt to prove it retroactively.
"But no one is forced to profess a belief in God in this country. You and DJ and every other atheist is free to profess whatever beliefs you wish. (If you object that you're not free to do so without criticism or having missionaries knock on your door, I'm going to be very disappointed.)"
Such is not my objection and never has been. I would complain if I were not free to profess my beliefs, but the flip side of freedom of speech is acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of speaking out, and I accept that responsibility.
"The point is, I still don't understand the need to spend lots of time and effort refuting something that's supposedly nonsense."
It isn't a need to refute something that's supposedly nonsense. I stated long ago that I am not an evangelist. But if you'll go back up this comment thread and find my longer comments, you'll find that each was an attempt at refutation of an assertion of fact that is demonstrably not fact.
Now, consider this statement by Adam:
"I don't know about the mathematicians and engineers you deal with, but the ones I've met with get very vehement when something is asserted for which no evidence can be given."
The urge to get very vehement in such conditions is, I think, present in every engineer I know. It took me donkeys years to learn how to not give into it every time it happened, and some engineers never do. You've read my statements many times that I believe in reality and in facts. Well, sometimes it's a gift, and sometimes it's a curse.
To assert as fact something that is trivially easy to show is not fact is to lay one's neck on the block. The subject this time was not trivial, and what I did was give in to the urge to swing the ax. Mea culpa.
As Red Green might say, "It's not necessarily smart, but it's part of what makes us who we are."
First off, let me say I don't have any problem with Christianity or Christians. While I consider myself agnostic (pretty much for the same reasons Kevin stated above), I'll debate the root ideas with you all you like. If nothing else, we sharpen our minds on one another, so there is no downside.
However, no matter how many Christians I know, like and trust, I have a problem with the "Christian values" or "America is a Christian nation" argument coming from the mouth of anyone with any political power whatsoever. That problem is that the whole "Christian values" argument implies, where it does not say outright, that non-Christians are simply not capable of being good citizens, that they are inherently flawed by not having the Judeo-Christian moral/cultural grounding.
While I will freely concede that Christian morality has perhaps made it *easier* to achieve such a great degree of freedom and ethics, I do not accept that it is impossible without that specific moral background.
And yes, I realize that many, perhaps most, Christians are not trying to claim that at all. Nonetheless, if you are, say, a Buddhist or Hindu who came here from Cambodia, hearing "We need Christian values" and seeing fears of Obama because "he's a secret Muslim" and fears of Romney because he's an open Mormon..... realistically, what do you think people in such circumstances hear?
So far, my experience leads me to believe that our staunchest fighters for freedom and individualism are immigrants from countries with a history of collectivism. They've seen the failures up close, and want no part of it. I think the US can ill afford to lose such people, and I think someone who lived in a hell we can scarcely even conceive will rightly feel insulted when others *with no experience of the PRICE of liberty* imply that his non-Judeo-Christian faith makes him part of the problem.
Keep in mind, whether not that is the INTENT of such a line of argument doesn't matter. All communication is defined by the person who *receives* it.
Just sayin'.
Sarah actually makes a reasonably strong case correlating a religious basis, (specifically, the Judeo-Christian legacy) with moral societies that champion individual rights and prerogatives.
Geek, I would say that is more happy happenstance then anything else. It isn't even true over the whole range of Judeo-Christian culture. A great book on the topic is by Michael Novak "The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism" (which is indeed a word play on Weber). It explores the contrast between the Americas, North and South, and why Argentina and Brazil, with as much natural resource wealth as the U.S. or Canada are so much less developed. I could certainly take the concept even further by looking at Coptic or Orthodox Christianity, let alone where Jewish philosophers have trod.
Juris:
Sarah argues (quite convincingly) that it works with Protestant Christianity. Aren't Argentina and Brazil predominately Catholic?
Yes, Kevin, which is my point - it was a more specific cultural thing. I would argue that the religion (Protestantism) was fitted to the culture (nascent individualism) rather than the culture arising out of the religion (since the larger religious tradition has plenty of variants that do NOT support that one specific slice). Same correlation, reverse of the causation.
Haven't been keeping up since it'd be hugely unfair to inflict my current mood on the topic, but for the interested, a pair of essays that hugely influenced my thinking on the topic, by the same author:
What Religion Can And Cannot Do
God's Grandchildren
Pretty sure Kevin's already seen 'em, though.
Actually, never mind about the foul temper, because something important just struck me. I've been arguing the wrong idea, or arguing against an idea- that Protestant Christianity, which is special because it derives from greater Biblical adherence over man-made doctrine- inherently improves a society.
I brought up the examples of Japan and the Greeks as cultures that evolved an individualistic and rigorous system of ethics completely divorced from theology to prove that it can be done, and also to point out that the best in Protestant Christianity was brought about by melding it not with greater Biblical literacy, but with the ethical philosophies of the pagan Greeks, to prove that the Bible in and of itself is not a "magic bullet" for a society.
I pointed out some of the more loathesomely vicious and intolerant things Luther wrote in order to prove that not even the author of the Reformation was immune to allowing his own prejudices and indulgences (in his case, primarily petulant rage at those who opposed him) subvert his Bible-based ethics, meaning that there was nothing inherent in Protestantism, again in and of itself, that guaranteed the kind of ethics we can all generally agree are healthiest for a society.
But there's really nothing useful in thinking in those "in and of itself" terms about either the ethics, the philosophies, or the theologies. Western culture and thought- pagan and explicitly theological, Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant- is a product of complete complicity between all these factors. There is no Renaissance or Reformation without that pagan thought, and no Enlightenment without that theological thought. No Augistine or Aquinas without Aristotle, but also no Voltaire or Locke without Augustine and Aquinas.
Western culture and ethics are as impossible to pin on any one thing in and of itself as the evolution of life is possible to distill into a single early cell with any hope of retaining a realistic and accurate picture of reality.
"Western culture and ethics are as impossible to pin on any one thing in and of itself as the evolution of life is possible to distill into a single early cell with any hope of retaining a realistic and accurate picture of reality.
In the same way that English is such a versatile language *because* it is so ready to steal handy words and concepts from any other language it comes in contact with. Capiche?
Sorry I haven't responded in a while. I've been very busy lately. My responses will still have to be slow for a while.
DJ: "What I find amazing is to hear a god described as such by the same person and in the same breath as being merciful. Such thinking makes my head hurt."
DJ: "Do I believe its premise, that Jesus was a god who died for my sins? Not for a moment."
Me: I understand that you don't accept that the Bible is true. I haven't laid out that argument in detail yet. When I wrote that explanation, I was responding specifically to your problem with God being described as merciful. Given the description I laid out—which is a summary of the Bible's central themes—do you still think it's unreasonable to use "merciful" to describe God?
DJ: "Any geneology which traces the ancestry of any person born after the flood all the way back to Adam and Eve must show that ancestry through Noah and a son of Noah, as no other path is possible."
Me: Correct.
DJ: "Now, skip forward to the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Luke, Chapter 3, in which Luke lays out, in verses 23-38, the geneology of Jesus, the son of Joseph, yadda yadda yadda, "Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God."
Me: Noah and his son Shem are in there:
When He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Eli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Hesli, the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Salmon, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Ram, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Heber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
(Luke 3:23-38 NAS95S)
DJ: "Let's look a bit further and see if Luke knew what he was talking about. Let's compare a bit of the geneology of Jesus according to Luke to the geneology of Jesus according to Matthew, as laid out in Mathew 1:1-16.
"Luke 3:23 "And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,"
"Mathhew 1:16 "And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ."
"So, Joseph had two dads, did he? Or, Luke writes "... as was supposed ...", meaning he didn't really know what he was writing about?"
Me: I've heard this one a lot. It turns out that this difference is actually important. In fact, you pointed out the critical point yourself, the phrase "… as was supposed …" in Luke. Even though Joseph was Mary's husband, he was not Jesus' father.
Think of it this way, who was Jesus' actual father? It was not Joseph. Nor was it any other human man. It was God who made her pregnant. (But not through physical sex like the Jehovah's Witnesses claim.) I'm going to assume that I don't need to point out specific verses.
If you compare the two genealogies, you'll notice that they diverge immediately after King David. In Luke, the line goes through Nathan. In Matthew, it traces through Solomon.
God had promised David that because of his faithfulness, the Messiah would be one if his descendants.
“Moreover, I tell you that the LORD will build a house for you. When your days are fulfilled that you must go to be with your fathers, that I will set up one of your descendants after you, who will be of your sons; and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build for Me a house, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be his father and he shall be My son; and I will not take My lovingkindness away from him, as I took it from him who was before you. But I will settle him in My house and in My kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.”
(1Chronicles 17:10-14 NAS95S) See also: 2 Samuel 7:11-16, 2 Chronicles 13:5, Jeremiah 23:5; 33:15-26, and Luke 1:32-33
Furthermore, God also promised that the Messiah would come from Solomon's descendents, provided he behaved himself.
“He said to me, ‘Your son Solomon is the one who shall build My house and My courts; for I have chosen him to be a son to Me, and I will be a father to him. ‘I will establish his kingdom forever if he resolutely performs My commandments and My ordinances, as is done now.’”
(1Chronicles 28:6-7 NAS95S)
Unfortunately, Solomon did not hold up his end of the bargin:
Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable idol of Moab, on the mountain which is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the detestable idol of the sons of Ammon. Thus also he did for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.
Now the LORD was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not observe what the LORD had commanded. So the LORD said to Solomon, “Because you have done this, and you have not kept My covenant and My statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you, and will give it to your servant.”
(1Kings 11:7-11 NAS95S)
part 2
It turns out that the genealogy in Matthew is Jesus' legal genealogy traced through Joseph, his "supposed" father. This is important because according to Jewish law (not Biblical law), men had all the legal rights. Women had no rights at all. Therefore, Matthew (a Jew) apparently felt it was necessary to trace Joseph's lineage using the same standards that he grew up with; that only the father's (or in this case, stepfather's) lineage mattered.
On the other hand, Luke was a Greek who was not concerned about "legal" so much as "factual". Instead of just writing about his direct observations and experiences, he actively sought out those who were involved in events and actually interviewed them, just as any modern scholar would do. As his "supposed" comment notes, he was well aware that Joseph was not Jesus' father, therefore he traced Jesus' lineage through Mary.
By tracing both genealogies, the writers showed that God's promises were fulfilled in spades. First that both of Jesus' "parents" were descended from David, fulfilling God's promise in spades. Second, that God's ripping of the eternal kingdom from Solomon's line was also accomplished.
DJ: "Finally, note that both Luke and Mathhew trace the lineage of Jesus as a descendant of David. Mathhew shows 29 generations from David to Jesus, while Luke shows 43 generations. Moreover, except for David at one end and Jesus at the other, only three names are common to both lists, and they are out of order. Neither Luke nor Mathhew were there; they wrote what others told them, and they contradict each other."
Me: As I pointed out, it's not surprising that there are differences after David, after all, they are two completely different family trees after David. You should expect a different number of generations, different names, and even similar names referring to two different people. (You probably have John, Thomas, David, and other similar names appearing in your family tree. I'm sure I do too. But it's unlikely that those names refer to the same people.)
In addition, Matthew apparently skipped a couple of generations in his genealogy for unknown reasons. But even though English translations say "father of", the greek word used there, gennao (γενναω ), does not have the exact meaning as our english word "father". It would be more accurate to say that it means "male ancestor of", which would include father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so forth. Therefore, even though he skipped generations in his "Reader's Digest Condensed" genealogy, it's not inaccurate.
Me: Why? God created this earth.
Juris: "That is an assertion of faith. That is not a statement of reason."
Me: That God created everything is what the Bible claims. If that claim is not true, then we can't trust it to be true about anything.
Secondly, the Bible makes direct historical claims, such as that Jesus actually walked the earth, was actually crucified, and actually rose from the dead. If these things did not actually happen, then Christians do not have any actual hope of salvation.
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.
(1Corinthians 15:13-17 NAS95S)
Direct links to actual historical events is one of the key features of Christianity which distinguishes it from most other religious claims. In other words, it's not just made up stories like ones with stuff like the Earth riding on the back of a turtle or animals acting a certain way because some ancestor did thus and such. The historicity of the Bible also make it testable, therefore making it possible to apply rules of evidence.
Finally, it's simply logical. If God did not actually create us, then He has no actual authority to tell us what to do. In which case, the Bible—which does tell us what to do—should simply be tossed rather than pretending it's authoritative at all.
In short, that God created everything is inextricably tied to His authority.
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