The introductory schtick to my talk at the Seattle Skeptics meeting last night was to take a Bible and read a bit of Genesis, making the point that it was vague, wrong, and useless (I also ripped out the page and waved the pathetic thing around a bit, which had several people asking if they could have the bible defaced by PZ Myers afterwards). Then, of course, I summarized some small bits of the story of eye evolution to demonstrate that science has a much deeper and more powerful origins story than that little scrap of piss-poor poetry that half this country wants to make the backbone of our science curriculum.
Now here’s something cool: somebody has tried putting the actual creation story as revealed by modern physics into the same kind of portentous, simple language that even a Mesopotamian goat-herder could understand, the point being that if a god had chosen to tell primitive people how the universe came to be, he/she/it could have done so in just as awe-inspiring a way as the false myths we’ve got.
It’s rather neat that modern scientists know more than God.
Scientz Pwns G0d.
Big deal, a greeter at Wal-Mart knows more than God, what’s yer point?
UMMMmmmm…You tore a page out of a bible!. Man are you in trouble.
Thanks for the link. What a great movie – am sending it along to friends.
But won’t a religious person just say, “What about the light in the beginning… where did that come from? What was there before that?”
I’m just echoing the questions of my 9 year-old. Which pretty much sums it up…
Wow. If that were in Genesis, I’d be a Christian.
Awesome.
Wow… defacing books, wishing that Christians went about labeled. Is it any wonder that some see atheists as dangerous militants?
Behaving like religious people does none of us any good.
Nice :) There are just so many little ways in which a deity could have explained reality in simple terms.
#4:
Asking where did the light in the beginning come from is no different than asking where did god come from.
narrated by Gandalf, right?
“When it could be so, so it was.” Great line!
So what do we get out of this, eh? The Abrahamic god thing is either make-believe nonsense, or else it’s a feckin’ edjit. Well, I worked that one out when I was twelve.
But this little movie isn’t aimed at the likes of us. It’s for the feckin’ edjits that believe in the Abrahamic god thing. It ought to make them see reason, but I’m not holding my breath.
I learned from John Rohmer’s excellent series “Testament” that the Bible’s days of creation (what was created, and the order they fell) correspond exactly to the hierarchy of gods in Sumerian mythology. In other words, it was plagiarized. Who’d have guessed? They stole the Flood as well. Fascinating stuff.
Heh.
Back when I was confirmed (I was never a very individual and courages kid) we had to put on a show and for reasons I cannot now recall I was assigned some reading from Genesis.
I didn’t notice this myself, but our neighbour (whose daughter was up at the same time) afterwards told me that every time I had said “And God said”, I cleared my throat before going on. That is it must have gone something like the beginning of that video: “And God said ‘*ahegm* Let there be light!'”
That video is fantastic.
Carl Sagan would have been proud.
PS: Nice work, PZ. That’s certainly pulling no punches.
Catholic apologist John Martignoni does a schtick where he takes a Catholic catechism and tears out selected pages in emulation of “cafeteria Catholics” who pick and choose the tenets they prefer to believe (while discarding those they prefer to disbelieve). His point is that deleting different dogmas reduces the Catholic faith to a kind of Protestantism. Well, of course it does! And if you keep tearing out more pages, you can eventually get it down to nothing! His audience is supposed to be horrified by this conclusion and I imagine he’s often pleased with the reaction. Martignoni thinks he’s demonstrated that God’s plan for humanity is irreducible, whereas he’s really shown exactly the opposite.
Instead of tearing out the pages of a Bible or catechism one by one until it’s all gone, it’s simpler to just shelve the entire book in the fiction section.
PZ Myers:
I don’t believe the Bible is the word of God. There is plenty in the Bible that I actively dislike. But I wouldn’t physically destroy any book. And not because it offends believers. Maybe because it’s too much like what many believers do. Also, the Koran is as much bullshit when it comes to science. Will you do the same to a copy of the Koran? Can you imagine the reaction if a moron like Robertson or Hagee or the like tore up a Koran? But the video is cool.
Loved it… but it should have ended with the god-voice saying, “ah… well, let’s just go have a cup of tea and not worry about it, eh?”
Candide (#4),
It makes no difference if there are still unanswered questions. The point of the video is that God *could have* dictated an account of creation (using language intelligible to the goat-herders of the time) that would have contained facts that no one at the time could have known. Had the bible contained such an account, our science of today would be confirming those facts. Had the bible contained such an account, it would be strong proof of the existence of God and his role in creation, even if we haven’t yet figured it all out.
Similar suggestions have been made by others, all as a way of pointing out that the bible lacks such passages. (My favorite would be the bible stating that the string of digits in pi startng at the 1 billionth decimal place is 535807633906108472764959. Confirmation would take the development of electronic computers.)
PZ wrote:
“The introductory schtick to my talk at the Seattle Skeptics meeting last night was to take a Bible and read a bit of Genesis, making the point that it was vague, wrong, and useless.”
Which passage?
@ Divalent, #19:
“Had the bible contained such an account, it would be strong proof of the existence of God and his role in creation, even if we haven’t yet figured it all out.”
But would it be enough?
Actually, it’s rather neat that we humans can interact with the creation in different ways. One of those ways is through mathematical modeling. Another way is metaphor. Both are products of human ingenuity and imagination, and both are useful, even if the metaphor seems vague and ‘spiritual’ in its tone. Doubtless, the sort of ‘scientific mythos’ portrayed in this link will be taken as such in certain quarters, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that in and of itself.
Where I part company with the creationists, PZ, is that they wish to dogmatically impose a literal reading of their own untestable commitments into the curriculum. They don’t want a useful metaphor that might inspire real science; they want a useless Truth claim enshrined instead of science.
What a good and interesting video. I wish Carl Sagan was still alive to narrate it. I am sitting here imagining his voice as I listen a second time. Will be sending this link to friends and family.
Ciao, y’all
What gets me about genesis is that it was obviously meant to be a story. If you read it as fact, it is full of contradictions and doesn’t make any sense. The two contradictory creation myths is one. Another example. My comments in bold.
Those bronze age sheepherders were far smarter than the modern creationists. They knew it was mythology and would probably look at the fundies as raving idiots.
I learned from John Rohmer’s excellent series “Testament” that the Bible’s days of creation (what was created, and the order they fell) correspond exactly to the hierarchy of gods in Sumerian mythology. In other words, it was plagiarized. Who’d have guessed? They stole the Flood as well. Fascinating stuff.
Actually, I think a more careful reading is that Genesis 1 is a liturgy that is designed to allude to, but subvert the authority of the Sumerian pantheon. Same thing with their version of the Noah story. The charge of ‘plagiarism’ is absurd: you’re imposing a modern concept of authorship onto the text, a concept that did not exist in these cultures.
buckyball asks:
But would it be enough?
It wouldn’t hurt, that’s for sure. Of course if I were god and I’d inspired a holy book, it would have an appendix that was a copy in Klingon, and a footnote someplace or other reading “eventually you will discover about a number that shall be called ‘pi’ of the many digits. And you will discover that the 1,000,000th digits of ‘pi’ are 198408302494820929302928″ (or whatever). And do not invest in Enron lest thou losest thy garment. Kthxbai.”
“The introductory schtick to my talk at the Seattle Skeptics meeting last night was to take a Bible and read a bit of Genesis, making the point that it was vague, wrong, and useless.”
Which passage? – buckyball
Does it matter? Any passage from Genesis would do.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield | June 7, 2008 4:27 PM
Just because the modern word for plagiarism wasn’t around back then does not mean that the act of rewriting stories and putting your own name – and interpretation – with it was not around as well. As a matter of fact, it was a widely used practice for both religion and mythology in ancient times, especially when conquering nations wanted to pacify populations of cities and states that they had recently taken over.
That is not to say that anyone has attributed the criminal connotation that it holds today to the religions and nations that used this practice in antiquity. Instead, it is brought up in this light in order to show that the claims of ultimate or divine truth that are made on behalf of those religions are far from valid.
The first part was powerful indeed, and the second may be the clearest, most specific articulation I’ve seen of how the Bible betrays the limited knowledge and impoverished imagination of the cultures that created its supposedly omniscient, omnipotent deity. This reinforces the need that PZ’s articulated for scientists and educators to fight fire with fire by communicating the beauty and majesty of “creation” in more powerful, poetic terms.
I have to agree with Plastic Flag, though, and with PZ’s recent post about manners. Knowledge comes closest to a sacred thing in my life, and destroying books goes against my sensibilities as a crime against “thought incarnate” (even primitive, superstitious thought edited and interpreted to support the schemes of power-hungry theocrats). Not that there haven’t been books I’ve wished didn’t exist, but getting out a red pen and doing a little post facto copy editing is as far as I’m willing to go. We already have the higher intellectual ground – let’s stick to a higher standard of behavior, too, if for no other reason than that civility gets certain fundies foaming at the mouth.
“Do Notte Buye Betamacks”
(Note that my last post was in reply to Marcus Rarum.)
The charge of ‘plagiarism’ is absurd
Heh, should’ve just written “stole”. Still, it’s good to know that the first readers of Genesis had a grasp of “subversion” and “allusion”. Bet they laughed their asses of at those silly Sumerians.
buckyball: (#21) “But would it be enough?” (i.e., would we accept God existence if Genesis really did say what the video author suggested?)
It’s an interesting situation to ponder. However, although the video’s author is explicitly criticizing the content of the bible as any source of unknown truths that modern science is now confirming, implicit in the work is a criticism of the method by which God is presumed to prove his existence.
If I were God, I wouldn’t be so indirect. If he is all that his believers say he is, it would be no problem to just show up every now and then (perhaps in a ginormous form occupying a substantial fraction of our view into space) and just say, “Hey, remember me? I can do this.” Followed by some suitably impressive display of his clearly superior powers (like pointing to a distant galaxy and saying “Super nova!”)
Needs more killing.
And even if Genesis did begin like that, the rest of the books would still be brutal, dogmatic, and otherwise hard to venerate. No, Einstein probably wouldn’t have been a Christian or a religious Jew. He would’ve been very distressed and conflicted.
I wish the video had included the story of evolution. The video does well enough when it comes to the mysticism and numerology that are the obsession of early man, but no holy book is complete without the epic gristly struggle for survival.
“Always keep in mind the question: why are there not more details?” The narrator (at around 05.30) asks this, and then goes on to ask why there are not detailed, timescale-accurate descriptions of the formation of galaxies, the relative positions of the Sun and Earth, etc. He concludes “there should be hundreds of pages of detailed, factually accurate descriptions.”
Bear in mind the target audience. A primitive Bronze Age tribe, who Professor Myers correctly describes above as “Mesopotamian goatherders”. To them, a few river valleys in the ancient Near East were the entire world. They could not even conceive of the very concept of galaxies, or of space, or elements. Their language would have had no words even approximating to these concepts.
So what do you ask for? A textbook of science which would have been incomprehensible to its audience, and would have contained answers not useful to human reason until thousands of years later?
I remind everyone that (correct me if I’m wrong about this) to my knowledge, until the 1920s most scientists believed that the Universe was eternal and had not had a finite beginning. When Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic priest and physicist, proposed the “Big Bang model” in 1927 based on the observations of Edwin Hubble, he was widely derided; many thought he was trying to lend credibility to the idea of a finite Universe in order to back up the biblical account. Today, on the other hand, it is widely accepted by physicists that the Universe did indeed have a finite beginning, starting from nothing – just as the Bible suggests.
I’m not saying Genesis is an accurate textbook of science. It’s far from it. But considering the audience for whom it was written, I don’t think a few poeticised half-truths, metaphors and romanticisations are too bad.
Saint Gasoline @34 –
Yes, it does. Evolution would cover that nicely.
Phil Hellenes is one of the best YouTube Atheists! This is one of his better videos. But his others are really god too.
buckyball: (#21) “But would it be enough?” (i.e., would we accept God existence if Genesis really did say what the video author suggested?)
[Acknowledgements to Divalent for the paraphrase]
I’d accept that some nonhuman intelligent agent had had a hand in writing it, and hence might have interfered in Earth or human history in other ways. I wouldn’t see any reason to worship that agent, or accept it at its own evaluation.
No, it says that the Earth was created from nothing (and the “nothing” is an inference too). Saying that the “heavens and the Earth” of the Genesis equals anything like the Universe we know now is stretching it very far.
ENTERTAINMENT ALERT:::::ENTERTAINMENT ALERT:::::ENTERTAINMENT ALERT:::::
Thunderfoot has just answered VenomFangX’s How to prove the existence of God in 1 minute, which was a thread, here, the other day.
Thnderfoot‘s response
‘Proving’ Venomfangx is the Anti-Christ in about 30 seconds
Bwahahaha it’s a good one !!
I’m not saying Genesis is an accurate textbook of science. It’s far from it. But considering the audience for whom it was written, I don’t think a few poeticised half-truths, metaphors and romanticisations are too bad. – Walton
Have you read Genesis? I’ve recently read the whole thing for the first time, and I was astonished at how badly written it is. Full of absurdities, repetitions and inconsistencies, lacking any dramatic unity, full of disgusting and/or ludicrous behaviour by both God and by his favourites without any sign that the writers recognised this.
The Theologian’s Nightmare
by Bertrand Russell
“The eminent theologian Dr. Thaddeus dreamt that he died and pursued his course toward heaven. His studies had prepared him and he had no difficulty in finding the way. He knocked at the door of heaven, and was met with a closer scrutiny than he expected. “I ask admission,” he said, “because I was a good man and devoted my life to the glory of God.” “Man?” said the janitor, “What is that? And how could such a funny creature as you do anything to promote the glory of God?” Dr. Thaddeus was astonished. “You surely cannot be ignorant of man. You must be aware that man is the supreme work of the Creator.” “As to that,” said the janitor, “I am sorry to hurt your feelings, but what you’re saying is news to me. I doubt if anybody up here has ever heard of this thing you call ‘man.’ However, since you seem distressed, you shall have a chance of consulting our librarian.”
The librarian, a globular being with a thousand eyes and one mouth, bent some of his eyes upon Dr. Thaddeus. “What is this?” he asked the janitor. “This,” replied the janitor, “says that it is a member of a species called ‘man,’ which lives in a place called ‘Earth.’ It has some odd notion that the Creator takes a special interest in this place and this species. I thought perhaps you could enlighten it.” “Well,” said the librarian kindly to the theologian, “perhaps you can tall me where this place is that you call ‘Earth.'” “Oh,” said the theologian, “it’s part of the Solar System.” “And what is the Solar System?” asked the librarian. “Oh,” said the theologian, somewhat disconcerted, “my province was Sacred Knowledge, but the question that you are asking belongs to profane knowledge. However, I have learnt enough from my astronomical friends to be able to tell you that the Solar System is part of the Milky Way.” “And what is the Milky Way?” asked the librarian. “Oh, the Milky Way is one of the Galaxies, of which, I am told, there are some hundred million.” “Well, well,” said the librarian, “you could hardly expect me to remember one out of so many. But I do remember to have heard the word galaxy’ before. In fact, I believe that one of our sub-librarians specializes in galaxies. Let us send for him and see whether he can help.”
Read entire piece HERE.
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell3.htm
#17
No see…bibles are like cockroaches, PZ was just playing the ORKIN man.
To Nick Gotts.
Yes, I’ve read Genesis. I believe that textual critics explain the inconsistencies and repetitions by the theory that it (along with the rest of the Torah) was compiled from four different sources (labelled the Deuteronomist, Jahwist, Elohist and Priestly texts) around the time of King Josiah of Judah.
I do agree with you that there is some seemingly appalling, and bizarre and inexplicable, behaviour by God; the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob seems remarkably capricious and vengeful. The worst bit is probably the killing of the first-born of Egypt as punishment for the intransigence of Pharaoh; why not just strike down Pharaoh? Did his subjects need to be murdered? And it gets worse after Genesis; in Numbers 31 Moses, on God’s instructions, orders the slaughter of the Midianite women, and Joshua is basically the history of a divinely-ordained genocide. It’s also difficult to understand why an omnipotent God would resort to so much seemingly spontaneous favouritism and petty forms of intervention.
So I have massive, massive problems understanding most of the Old Testament and how it fits with the idea of a God who is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent. Every Christian theological writer I’ve read on the subject has failed to give me a satisfactory answer. But the morally outrageous nature of much of the early OT doesn’t have any bearing on its truth or falsehood.
Walton, no, you’re right in your last sentence, and I shouldn’t really have included the bit about their bad behaviour, since what I wanted to share was my astonishment at Genesis’s low literary quality. I really did expect better, since it’s widely said that the KJV of the Bible (which is the one I’m reading) is a literary masterpiece – which of course it could be even if completely false, and morally outrageous. I’ll see if it gets any better from that point of view after Genesis. (I’m not planning to read the whole thing word by word, but given its importance in history and culture, I’ve long meant to gain greater familiarity with it. Ironic that a couple of months reading and commenting here should have stimulated me to finally get round to doing so.)
It would follow from Walton’s comments that God didn’t foresee that his collection of stories would become popular outside Mesopotamia…
But if God was only going for a small segment of the human market, it makes sense that there’s no giraffes and penguins in the Bible.
But if God was only going for a small segment of the human market, it makes sense that there’s no giraffes and penguins in the Bible.
It makes even more sense that the collections were themselves examples of what people do all the time: make up stories including the things around them while also engaging in fantasy.
In all of ‘scripture’ (a word that simply means ‘writing’) there isn’t a single cooking recipe. There’s nothing useful like how to sharpen a saw, start a fire, dig a well, or build a fence. The bible was written by men who lived isolated from society because they didn’t fit in. So it’s not surprising they didn’t know anything about their own community, let alone the planet or the universe.
They weren’t the intellectual equals of farmers. They’d seen rain in the distance, followed much later by flash floods, and from this they assumed that the rains come down and the waters rise up. Any self-respecting idiot would know that water runs downhill, not up.
That’s how stupid these people were. Making stuff up was all they could do. They could never hold down a real job like minding sheep.
The reason god did not reveal basic physics and especially atomic theory, or E=MC2 is because he figured the dumbasses would blow themselves up, cuz they wuzn’t all socsully advanced and evolved like us modurn hyoomans.
Wake me up “when […] Hitchens, drunk of course, throws a bomb into a church”. Granted, I have a psychological inhibition against doing any damage to books, but “militant” is still something else.
[citation needed]
Some think that the second creation story, unlike the first, is only about the origin of the People of Israel. After all, Yahwe, the creator in that story, is the god of Israel the same way that Khemosh is the god of Moab (Judges 11:23-24), to mention only two of the seventy sons of El Elyon, the Most High (Psalm 82). Egypt even has several gods (Exodus 12:12, Numbers 33:5, Jeremiah 46:25); I wonder if they are two (Upper and Lower Egypt) — anyone know if the original has plural or dual? Egypt itself is a dual in the Bible (Mitsrayim), but Ex 12:12 is translated with “all” rather than “both”. The Philistines, too, have several gods (1 Samuel 6:5), perhaps one for each of the five cities.
Yes. In the Enūma Elish (the Babylonian version), “the waters” contain the dragon/goddess Tiamat, whom Marduk hacks to pieces to build heaven & earth out of her; in Genesis “the waters” are completely demystified, and the vaguely plural but unspecific ‘Elohim create heaven & earth just so. In the Enūma Elish, the sun, the moon and Venus (at the very least) are deities; in Genesis, they are mere creations. It’s not a plagiate, it’s the almost exact opposite of its source.
A singularity that contains the entire matter & energy of the universe isn’t exactly “nothing”…
This is a widespread attitude, even among conservative Europeans. However, having the birds created at the same time as the unspecified fishes and before all land animals is not a half-truth, not a romanticisation, and not a metaphor for anything I can figure out. It’s simply wrong.
In response to post #49: Wouldn’t you say that’s rather speculative? Do you have any evidence in support of those assertions?
The trouble with the Torah is that the events it purports to chronicle are so far back in history that we really can’t judge its reliability. For instance, there’s no independent historical evidence for the existence of Abraham, Isaac or Jacob – but would we really expect there to be, given that it’s the history of one nomadic family in Mesopotamia several thousand years ago? The Exodus and the conquest of Canaan are more problematic historically, since the evidence doesn’t fit with the conventional chronology (archaeology shows that the Canaanite cities were destroyed around 1550 BC, whereas traditional chronology dates the Exodus to around 1300 BC), but David Rohl’s revised chronology goes some way towards addressing this. (While Rohl’s conclusions are by no means undisputed, it’s worth noting that he’s an agnostic, and has no pro-Biblical agenda. His book A Test of Time is worth reading.)
We know that Genesis 1-11 isn’t accurate if read literally; in particular, there wasn’t a global flood (though – correct me if I’m wrong – current geology suggests that there was a local flood in the Black Sea basin at about the right time). We also know that the Torah texts were passed down through generations and probably corrupted considerably by the time they were compiled in their present form (which is thought by most secular scholars to be during the reign of King Josiah of Judah); so it’s no surprise that bits of it seem incoherent, repetitive or distorted. Unlike the Qu’ran or the Book of Mormon, the Bible doesn’t purport to be the literal dictated Word of God given directly to a prophet, only to be “God-breathed” (Paul). But as far as we know, it’s a fairly reliable historical document (and indeed one of the best ancient primary sources we have, given the several ancient manuscripts – Masoreti, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc. – and the Jewish tradition of memorising and copying the text exactly), though not one that should be relied on to the exclusion of all else.
To anyone interested in a good take off of the bible, I highly recommend The Boomer Bible. But be warned; It is guaranteed to offend anyone. It says so in the introduction.
This is a little off topic, but I’m wondering if anyone knows of the content of this video being written somewhere? I haven’t really searched that hard, but I’m at work and don’t have time.
I’m partially deaf, and the bad audio quality of this video is really hard for me to try and interpret, so does anyone know where I could read the content somewhere, what I did hear sounded good.
Thanks!
P.S: How’s this for irony: I work at a space centre, and we have two spaces that can be rented out to public. On Sundays, both spaces are rented out to churches…
I hate coming to work on Sundays, as I want to heard them all upstairs and show them around and say LOOK! LISTEN! USE REASON! Or perhaps I could show them that video (if I could understand it first though…)
Posted by: Walton | June 7, 2008 6:06 PM
Actually, the Bible does contain the claim (in more than one verse) that it is the divine word of God. Then again, due to its contradictory nature – in large part because of the fact that it is not one book, but rather a comparatively small collection of texts that were decided upon as canon – it also contains verses that discredit the claim that it is literal truth.
(Proverbs 14:15 – The simple man believeth every word; but the prudent looketh well to his going.)
As for it being a historical document, that is definitely true. It is not, however, even remotely reliable in a historical sense. While there are events within that have some historical credibility, those are far outweighed by the fact that the major claims made in the text – the Great Flood being, in my opinion, one of the most widely recognized – are unsubstantiated.
As an aside, I came across a theory that posited the Great Flood story, Sumerian in origin, as being a passed down story borne out of the flooding of the fertile plain where the Persian Gulf now sits due to the melting of Ice Age glaciers. I don’t know how much this theory is rooted in fact, but it seems much more plausible than a supernatural cause.
A long comment from me is being held up.
I’d just like to lament that both this video and the one that proves VenomFangX is the Antichrist are among those that YouTube does not let me see. I have recently installed the latest Flash player and can see an apparently random sample of YouTube videos (for example, some of the “Why do people laugh at creationists?” series), but not all of them. Can someone help me?
The worst bit that it uses “Pharaoh” as a name, when in fact it’s a title. Given that Jeremiah 46:2 mentions “Pharaohnecho”, one would think someone would have got a clue. But no…
Fixed that for you.
The intention behind that book was probably “if you worship anyone above Yahwe, or do anything against his commands, he’ll order someone to kick the living shit out of you, like (I say it, so it’s true) he did last time”.
The J text may have been a Bildungsroman: Yahwe is a little boy who grows up and learns and finally does great deeds. The P text most emphatically wasn’t. Conflagrate these, and oh boy will people Fear The Lord™ for the next 2500 years till they go insane.
Well, due to various issues I’m having an ongoing crisis of faith, so I’m really not the best person to deal with this particular issue. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, I was raised as a fairly liberal Christian, went through a semi-fundamentalist stage, then became an agnostic for a while. Now I don’t know where I stand.
I was playing devil’s advocate to an extent, but I really don’t think there’s massively conclusive evidence either way as to the reliability of most of the Bible. Of course, the fact that it’s a disparate collection of texts, collated a long time after the events they purport to describe, means that its reliability is not uniform.
To brokenSoldier: As an aside, I came across a theory that posited the Great Flood story, Sumerian in origin, as being a passed down story borne out of the flooding of the fertile plain where the Persian Gulf now sits due to the melting of Ice Age glaciers. – I’ve heard something similar, which I alluded to in my post above. I think we all acknowledge that modern geology indicates that there was no global, worldwide Flood. However, it’s entirely plausible (and, indeed, the evidence suggests it) that there was a local flood which affected the Black Sea basin and much of the Middle East, probably caused, as you say, by the melting of Ice Age glaciers. This, doubtless, would have seemed like a global flood to the primitive people of the time. (I’m not a geologist and can’t evaluate this critically, so all input is, as ever, appreciated.) The “raining for forty days and forty nights” claim in Genesis may not square with this (since the purported flood was caused by melting glaciers), but I would imagine it was a cause-and-effect confusion on the part of people at the time; it rained heavily at the time the flood occurred, so those primitive tribesmen assumed that the rain caused the flood.
Of course, none of that is evidence for God or the supernatural, nor does it have any bearing on the validity of the rest of the Bible; it just suggests that the Noah’s Flood story is a somewhat corrupted, mythologised account or memory of an actual event in the history of the Near East.
Oops, forgot to close the <a> tag. But that doesn’t matter, all of the text that now forms the link fits the link. :-) I did screw up the link to Pharaohnecho king of Egypt, though (Jeremiah 46:2).
Worse. Throughout the whole time, the land all the way north to the Euphrates (central Syria nowadays) belonged to Egypt! How stupid to make all that grandiose exodus without leaving Egypt a single time!
What would the right time be? If it’s 4004 BC or later, we have a problem.
Everything before 2 Kings is completely forgettable.
Six days and seven nights it rained according to Utnapishtim.
that should of course read “the Gods of Abraham etc…”, as even a cursory reading of Genesis would seem to indicate some sort of polytheism goin on.
#49 WTFWJD: – I’ve often wondered about this, given that the entire “Christian” bible is supposedly centered around a carpenter. (I’m a carpenter …believe me, I’ve looked hard)
Walton, I appreciate many of your comments on this site. They appear articulate, well-meaning, educated, well-thought-out …entirely reasonable.
Reading them thoroughly, I believe you are about two steps away from atheism.
There are a whole lot of us here like you, don’t especially want to get our ass kicked, but who are just looking for truth. I’ve found more truth here than anywhere else. Here’s to us…
(Shit, I just posted)
Reply to #55
The warfare being carried out at You Tube between the kooks and non kooks gets very nasty. One of the tactics used by religious Chooks,Jukes, and Mukes is that they ‘Flag’ videos which they consider offensive as pornograhic or obscene.
This will AUTOMATICALLY set off any kind of porn blocker or firewall, such as the one here at my workplace, or various institutions, or parental blockers etc.
This is a fairly effective form of censorship, since a lot of us are surfing i.e. goofing off from work. Our particular firewall is fairly sophisticated, and when it blocks something, a page comes up explaining that the URL has been blocked.
I ran into this watching Pat Condell Videos on you tube from work, none of which are sexually explicit, but some are blocked due to a flagging campaign by snake handlers.
There is an appeal process to remove a flagging but it’s nevertheless a nuisance and fairly effective dirty trick.
This could be what you’re experiencing.
Seriously, the beginning of that video gave me chills.
@ Walton, #36:
“To them, a few river valleys in the ancient Near East were the entire world. They could not even conceive of the very concept of galaxies, or of space, or elements. Their language would have had no words even approximating to these concepts.”
Job the sheepherder received a reply in Job 38-41.
@ Walton, #45:
“…and Joshua is basically the history of a divinely-ordained genocide…”
Although Joshua is surprising in places, some of the other civilizations in the area were into things like child sacrifice, etc., which was in pretty sharp contrast to what God was trying to establish with the Israelites. That said, it’s still a tough thing to read.
@ WTFWJD, #49:
“There’s nothing useful like how to sharpen a saw, start a fire, dig a well, or build a fence.”
Yet the instructions for the Tabernacle, and the subsequent temples are ridiculously detailed. For the Tabernacle, see Exodus 26. There’s even a city described in the Revelation 21 that is 1,400 x 1,400 x 1,400 miles across.
If you’re really bored, you could spend some time at http://www.templemountfaithful.org to see how some Jews are preparing utensils, bowls, designs, etc. for the “next temple”. It’s kind of odd.
@ Walton, #51:
“…the Bible doesn’t purport to be the literal dictated Word of God given directly to a prophet…”
Er, that depends on which book you are talking about. Ever read any of the books of the minor prophets? Or passages out of Isaiah? Frequently, there are passages which start with “…and the word of the Lord came to [insert prophet’s name here]”.
Posted by: Walton | June 7, 2008 6:40 PM
You’ll never be faulted for playing devil’s advocate, but I’d caution you against making definite claims while doing so. Presenting dissenting opinions is never wrong, but when someone comes on here and does so with a harsh air of certainty that the facts behind their posts do not reflect, the response is usually swift, and often just as harsh.
As for conclusive evidence of the bible not being reliable, such a thing is irrelevant. What is relevant is positive evidence either way. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” and that idea is what drives the debate over the reliability of the bible. In a sense, the burden of proof is on proving that the bible is reliable, not the other way around. Just as we can hardly disprove Russell’s teapot, it is equally futile to rely on proving the negative concerning the reliability of the bible. If it is reliable, evidence should be offered in support of that conclusion. And since there are plenty of examples that cast doubt upon that reliability, that evidence will have to be extremely convincing.
I learned from John Rohmer’s excellent series “Testament” that the Bible’s days of creation (what was created, and the order they fell) correspond exactly to the hierarchy of gods in Sumerian mythology. In other words, it was plagiarized. Who’d have guessed? They stole the Flood as well. Fascinating stuff.
if you read the book of Judith, you would find the genealogy of the Hebrew People: they came from Chaldea in Mespotamia.
Judith Chapt. 5
5 Then said Achior, the captain of all the sons of Ammon, Let my lord now hear a word from the mouth of thy servant, and I will declare unto thee the truth concerning this people, which dwelleth near thee, and inhabiteth the hill countries: and there shall no lie come out of the mouth of thy servant.
6 This people are descended of the Chaldeans:
7 And they sojourned heretofore in Mesopotamia, because they would not follow the gods of their fathers, which were in the land of Chaldea.
8 For they left the way of their ancestors, and worshipped the God of heaven, the God whom they knew: so they cast them out from the face of their gods, and they fled into Mesopotamia, and sojourned there many days.
so, no, the Hebrews/Children of Israel did not “plagerize” they simply retold their own, pre-monotheistic mythos.
Only a palaeocon would believe that the Bible is “What God knows” and therefore that whatever isn’t in the Bible are “things God doesn’t know”. So North America was a surprise to God?
Also, it is ridiculous to assert that Genesis “could have been written like this” when the video contains phrases like “four thousand millenia”. There simply was no way in Ancient Hebrew to say such a thing. Even during the Roman period the largest number that had a name was “myriadoi” (meaning “ten thousand” or “zillion”) so any span of time longer than 10,000 years was inexpressible. Hillel (1st century AD, founder of modern Judaism) supposedly said something like “The days of creation were God’s days. Each of God’s days is like 10,000 years of human time.” Since “10,000 years” was the longest span of time with a name, what Hillel said was basically “a zillion years for each Genesis day”, which was as close as he could get given that the word “billion” didn’t exist yet.
Yes, there’s still the problem with darkness-before-light in the Genesis timeline, but something’s gotta give when God’s Hyperdimensional Word gets filtered through the minds of 3½-dimensional human prophets, whose ability to predict what will happen 20 years into the future is laughably bad yet some of them claim they know Evolution is false and humans and chimps couldn’t have had a common ancestor only 5 million years ago because “that’s not enough time”.
Posted by: KellyL | June 7, 2008 7:22 PM
In light of the consensus on that work, I’d hardly lean on it for historical evidence of the genealogy of an entire ancient population. The link below has far more than the little excerpt I’ve quoted. But even if Judith was a reliable source, it wouldn’t change the fact that stories such as the creation myth and the great flood are obvious adaptations of similar stories from Sumerian mythology.
http://www.specialtyinterests.net/judith.html
Excerpt:
The least the author of Genesis could have done was get the order of creation. Stars were most certainly not created after plants. That’s not-truth, not a half-truth.
Walton #63
‘Although Joshua is surprising in places, some of the other civilizations in the area were into things like child sacrifice, etc., which was in pretty sharp contrast to what God was trying to establish with the Israelites.’
What references do you have relating to child sacrifice and other horrible practices outside of biblical text. Even if it was true, was genocide really the best solution god could come up with?
Oh this one is going into my playlists on YouTube, my blog, and via email to a bunch of folks. I love this.
Thanks, but that can’t be it. I’m at home, and I’d be very surprised if IE 7 had any such blocker inbuilt.
Ah yeah, all that nonsense about heaven (a metal kettle) and earth (flat, with foundations) and ostriches and the storehouses of snow and hail… and that followed by a chapter that flows over with theological contradictions to the rest of the Bible. <yawn>
As opposed to, say, sending a prophet to them (like Jonah to the Assyrians) and telling them to repent…
You recently scoffed at the idea that spirituality was deserving of your respect, calling it “empty noise”. However, I think this video is a good illustration of what spirituality really means, and how it’s not inextricably tied to religion. When people talk about being spiritual they generally mean that they have a sense of awe at the workings of the world, a sort of metaphysical sense that there is some vast order of which we are each a tiny part. (Certainly that’s what Katie Kish was talking about, this “deep connection” to something larger, separate from any belief in the supernatural.) That’s actually a pretty good description of how I feel — how I think many scientists and skeptics feel — when thinking about the Big Bang and the observation of the cosmic microwave background and the relationship between energy and matter, or about the search for a Grand Unified Theory. Is that so wrong?
Brilliant. Standing and clapping.
he/she/it could have done so in just as awe-inspiring a way as the false myths we’ve got.
Well, I’d quibble a a contention that we don’t have false myths so much as we don’t have myths that say anything particular at all.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” and “God created Man and the animals” doesn’t *say* anything.
This awe-some myth sounding creation sounds really good goes into more detail and is *accurate* but it’s still metaphorical (“clouds of atoms” “heralds” “void grow faster than light”) and imponderables without science knowledge “light to solid” “spherical world among stars”) etc. considering translation over thousands of years… I don’t know how much accurate details *would* be there.
I guess I find it a weird concept that one thinks a myth is *told* to us by a God (why would he use third-person) and that a mythical God (I’m using “myth” to mean a story with social and spiritial relevence *not* as something that is not true) would tell us how thinks work. I suppose a line like “God created the world” is simply … a statement by the mythteller, taken at face value to be true. “What happened?” “The world began” “How?” “God made it?” “How?” “I don’t know; he’s a God” “What was it like?” “Well first it was void without form and then light was split into day and night and God’s face moved across the water and made land?” “Cool, do you know more?” “Not really” (Course that is *wrong* … well, at least vague)
Actually “we are made of water” and “we are made of dust” I find surprisingly accurate considering the narrative and heritage nature of myth. How many generations of the 40 sciectific concepts creation last before “clouds of atoms” and “heralds” and 92 types of atoms become muddled and translated to simpler less accurate and less specific terms?
Of course the rather absurd notion of the last hundred years or so, that the very sentences of Bible KVJ are *absolutely* true and *absolutely complete* has been taken up by creationists. This is the one thing that bugs me most about “creation scientists” (the ones who make up creationism and push it; not the folks who eat it up– what bugs my about *them* is their utter stupidity and continual regurgitation and refusal to *listen*); the one thing that bugs me most about “creation scientists” is they *never* state what they are proposing when they claim “God did it”; *what* occurs when God ‘creates’ man? How long does it take? Is it the spontaneous generation of mass, or is it a transformation of material or is it a construction of existing parts? Are there mechanics (chemistry, physics, soulanimology) we can study? I mean if I stated “Dr. Frankenstein created his monster” that one sentence is woefully incomplete.
However this is a critique of the modern day creation scientists who claim such comments *are* complete. I don’t see any reason that a myth should be expected to be complete. That is, if I *were* a literal believer of the bible and I hear “God created the heaven and the earth” I’d think “Cool, I wonder how that worked and I’d like to study and see if I can find out more about what that involved”.
‘Course that seven days biz and the firmament of sky seperating the waters that are heaven and the waters that are earth are … well … wrong and bizaar.
My guess, is there were a few exposures to some half-way descent natural philosophers. The “made of dust” “made of water” “God breathed life into clay” sound like classical statements of elementism as does the firmament seperating two spheres of water (although this is a bit a *weird* theory unfamiliar to any other I know of). But I think the actual statements got lost and mangled when repeated without precise understanding.
What references do you have relating to child sacrifice and other horrible practices outside of biblical text.
The Phoenicians/Carthaginians were big on sacrificing children to Moloch – according to Roman sources (e.g. Plutarch, Tertullian, and Livy) that are probably more reliable than the babble, uh, bible. There have been archeological discoveries of piles of child bones in Carthage but it might have been a result of disease or other causes.
Of course the Romans were at war with Carthage, off and on, until they implemented a “final solution” – so it’s possible that the claims of human sacrifice were propaganda.
When people talk about being spiritual they generally mean that they have a sense of awe at the workings of the world, a sort of metaphysical sense that there is some vast order of which we are each a tiny part. (Certainly that’s what Katie Kish was talking about, this “deep connection” to something larger, separate from any belief in the supernatural.)
I think that’s a *start* of what is meant by “spiritual” and “metaphysical” but I think the terms imply a bit more; i.e. a sense of meaning and code of thought and behavior one should adopt for the sake of this meaning.
My spiritial, secular, “neo-pagan” friends of mine do not believe in the gods of any bible but tend to believe “the cosmos connect us” and “the cosmos is aware of us” and some even “the cosmos keeps us in balance”. They don’t particularly believe these metophorically or as a guideline of behavior or abstractly but that there is realism to the ideas.
These are *nice* ideas (very sweet and gentle and kind) but I simply do not believe they are true in any *real* sense of the world.
I do wonder, and I’ve brought it up before, does one’s religion/spiritualism require one believe one’s “sense of meaning” or “code” or, for lack of a better word, “mythology”– does one’s religion/spirituality require one to believe these have a real accualization?
Can one be a Christian Atheist? Or a pagan materialist?
Z writes:
When people talk about being spiritual they generally mean that they have a sense of awe at the workings of the world, a sort of metaphysical sense that there is some vast order of which we are each a tiny part.
When people talk about being spiritual they usually are talking about “things of the spirit” – hence the spirit in spirituality. In other words: metaphysical woo-woo that is disconnected from the real world.
Feeling connected and awestruck when confronted with the vasteness of the real world is not a “spiritual” experience in a literal sense. Maybe it’s more along the order of “a sense of perspective” or simply appreciation of what is.
Put another way, if appreciating the real world for its wonderfulness can be a “spiritual” experience, then eating Ben and Jerry’s is, also.
It’s possible to be duly gobsmacked and appreciative of something cool without having to haul in all the trappings of woo-woo. In fact, humans’ tendency to want to haul in the trappings of woo-woo is exactly how something as wonderful yet simple as the sun rising can get turned into a religion.
Where’s the spirit in that?
It’s not hard to tell that Phil Hellenes hails from the astro-physics corner of the quad, rather than, say, the squishy- and tentacular-minded bio department.
Wouldn’t a deity who actually wanted to be, like, helpful, have told the prophets to utter teachings along the lines of:
“Boil thy water ere thou washest thine wounds and bandages therewith”,
“The left-handed ones are no more sinful than the rest of you”, and
“Strive that the pregnant and nursing women eat well, especially of the green and leafy”?
Says the video is no longer available. Grr! Was it EXPELLED?
Grr! Never mind! I forgot to refresh the page that had been sitting there for hours…so sorry…just ignore me!
Dude! I triple dog dare you to do that to a Koran! When you’re triple dog dare you HAVE to do it! We’ve all seen A Christmas Story, must I stick your tongue to a frozen light pole?
Patrick Conley, #30, wrote:
Respect. Good Omens = genius.
@ #71, David Marjanovic, OM:
“As opposed to, say, sending a prophet to them (like Jonah to the Assyrians) and telling them to repent…”
…which was followed by Nahum, because apparently the warning didn’t take…
From wikipedia:
“This whole extensive space is now one immense area of ruins overlaid in parts by new suburbs of the city of Mosul.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineveh
@woozy, Marcus Ranum, and David Marjanović:
I know that what I was talking about isn’t spirituality in the technical sense. The meaning of spirituality you’re expecting (belief in things having actual spirits) seems to me to be ruled out when we’re discussing people who say they don’t believe in god, don’t accept any dogma, and are not religious. I might be misusing the word, but I think I’m using it in the same sense that Katie Kish used in her post. It’s also the sense that a lot of people mean when they talk about how hiking through mountains or or watching the sun rise was a “spiritual experience”. While that’s not the dictionary definition of the word, I think that’s a kind of “spirituality” that anyone can respect, regardless of personal religious beliefs or lack thereof.
The flood.
There are flood myths in Sumerian, Babylonian and other ancient civilizations in addition to the Hebrews. The one bit of tangible evidence came by way of an unexpected source (doesn’t it always?). A treasure hunter sailing around the Black Sea towing a submersible camera was searching for a Roman shipwreck that included gold but found instead the remains of a village. This was far enough from shore to indicate that pre-melt the Danube and Don rivers emptied into a much smaller inland body of water, perhaps the size of one of a couple of the Great Lakes. The Dardanelles straits in present day Turkey held back the Mediterranean the Sea of Marmara was a valley and the Bosporus straits a passage to the larger Don and Danube basin. At the end of the last ice age rising sea levels caused a catastrophic flood of what would have been a very fertile (and possibly populous) double river basin.
Z,
If I may. I understand where you’re coming from, but I think the use of spiritual you’re proposing is cursed by its connection to ideas of “spirits.” What’s wrong with “awe-inspiring”?
I cried when i saw this photo. The bloody Mars Orbiter photographed Phoenix on its descent and sent the picture back.
The word “spirituality” confuses the issue unnecessarily, it links to easily with “spirits,” which is how it’s defined, and how so many people use it. Nothing wrong with, “intensely emotional,” “awe-inspiring,” or “profoundly moving.”
I’ve been told I’m “spiritual” because I get very emotional when I see or read about suffering; it touches me. Doesn’t mean I’m “spiritually connected” or any nonesuch. I’m emotional, and I’m deeply affected by suffering. Nothing more.
We have the awesomest flood mytholgy right here in Houston. And we have photographs to prove it.
An interesting question is, would you have the chutzpah to do that to the Qu’ran?
In addition to God dishing out things in Genesis that are scientifically accurate, God could have put in an absolute prohibition against slavery and other evils.
God could have put in an absolute prohibition against slavery and other evils.
Blended fabrics. He did.
But to hell with it on that whole shellfish and homosex stuff. Natural fabrics aren’t worth giving up scallops, clam chowder, or sex with hot men.
Z, 72# and 86# (for the moment, anyways)
Just to add to what others have said:
I understand your point, and in the way that you mean “spiritual” I don’t disagree. Asking questions like, “What is life all about?”, and recognizing the limits of one’s perceptions, and knowledge, and significance in the face of a vast cosmos, (or just feeling awe at a beautiful sunset) does not make you anti-science, it makes you human.
All too often, however, the term “spiritual” is applied to, and by, people who, whether they are Southern Baptists or New Agers, profess to know what that “vast order” is. This does not make them “spiritual”; it makes them lazy minded, generally deluded, and irritating, and most of the commenters here have little patience with that. We tend to want facts, not emotionalism.
Personally, I feel as you do. I kind of like the word and still tend to use it sparingly–in the right crowd when I’m not misunderstood. But I also tend to not relate it to religion and woo and mysticism, and in fact, see people like Hagee and Falwell and Sylvia Browne as being the exact opposite of “spiritual.”
It’s too bad that the term has been polluted by people who proffer mythology, guess work, hunches and feelings as “fact,” but it has been.
@#91 a lurker —
Generally the argument I encounter in response to this one is that you have to consider the Bible in socio-historical context. This makes some sense if we’re considering the Bible to be a moral/ethical code crafted by a bronze-age people, but not so much if you consider it to be the word of a god who, in that text, explicitly says, “I the Lord do not change” (Malachi 3:2).
Dear PZ,
I am deeply appalled by what you did. You can think that I’m too sensitive, but I find it incredibly low for someone to imply that it is ok to damage or destroy a book because of what it contains especially when it is you who values knowledge so high. Books were, are and will be the only way how the ideas and thoughts of people who lived millennia or centuries ago can be preserved for us and for the future, or how we can preserve and share our ideas now. It is just because of people who thought is was important and worthwhile to protect, preserve and spread books even though they didn’t agree or didn’t understand their content, that we have these immortal witnesses of our past. And it is as important to conserve good ideas as it is important to conserve bad ideas, if only for the sake of not repeating previous mistakes.
Anyways, I love your blog, but this just touched me somewhere very deep…
Oops…in #94, that was Malachi 3:6.
I was raised to love books and always had thought that it was a crime to destroy one. That was untill my brother keep sending me right-wing crap like Ann Coulter and Global Warming sceptics. Now I have an abundant supply of fire starters.
“Books were, are and will be the only way how the ideas and thoughts of people who lived millennia or centuries ago”
Your argument is specious. There are literally millions of copies of the bible in dozens of forms. PZ did not destroy a priceless Guttenberg or scribed, hand bound antique. Bibles are a dime a dozen. Future generations will have no problem finding a copy. If you are so hypersensitive over the destruction of books, I’d advise you to stay away from used book outlets and book depositories; eventually most unused/unsold books get destroyed.
Just a few words on book destroying…
Approximately 40 million tons of paper found it’s way to landfills last year. A good portion of this was bound into book form. Shall we cry a little tear for each one?
The tearing out of a page is hardly synonymous with a campaign against knowledge. Particularly, in this case, PZ was commenting on the quality of the work written on the page, not advocating the destruction of all copies of the work in existence.
“Books were, are and will be the only way how the ideas and thoughts of people who lived millennia or centuries ago can be preserved for us and for the future, or how we can preserve and share our ideas now.” – Norbert Pozar
A hundred years ago, maybe this could be arguable. It just isn’t anymore. If anything, people should stop printing books and distribute text in digital format.
Etha: Malachi was right. Nobody’s ever given The Lord a buck and received so much as a penny back.
Aaarg! You ripped a page out of a book! On purpose! On the other hand, it’s just a bible, and I presume it was your book, or you had permission to damage it… still, destroying books; I have a hard time with that.
I love the idea of “What Genesis Would Have Been If It Had Been Dictated By An All-Knowing Being.” To the point where I tried my own version a couple of years ago, and now have a second version half finished, as a song. Unfortunately there’s a *lot* of stuff to fit in there; the song is up to six verses and I haven’t got to photosynthesis yet.
And, in answer to the objection that the ancient Hebrews wouldn’t have understood the concepts if a hypothetical all-knowing being had tried to tell them what happened, I will just point out that most of the concepts can be more-or-less explained in very simple terms:
In the beginning, everything that existed was pressed together in one spot and it was smaller and heavier and hotter than anything you can imagine. It was so hot that in the next instant it sprang apart into clouds of wind and breath, flying outward in every direction into the endless night. These clouds were so vast that slowly, over a longer time than you can imagine, they began to collapse, drawn by their own weight, into clumps. And each clump pressed in on itself until the pressure became heat, and the heat became so great they caught fire, not ordinary fire like a campfire, but sunfire, a special kind of fire that changed the very stuff they were made of.
And so on. It really isn’t all that hard. The song uses some more advanced concepts, like bacteria, because I just don’t have the same kind of space that prose offers to explain things. And besides, bacteria scans so nicely.
About ancient Hebrews not being able to understand: we’re talking about god here. He should be able to MAKE them understand. Or is that not in his power? Why dumb it down/get it wrong?
#86
Z, I’m not disagreeing with you. Feeling deep and in awe of stars, (or, heh-heh, a frozen waterfall) is very “spiritual”. And it invokes a *deeper* feeling in many in wanting to muse *deeper* questions in the form of “what purpsoe can I serve” “what meaning can I draw from this” “how can I relate the sense of awe and wonder to real aspects in my life”. I actually think and worry about these “spiritual” issues all the time.
My few religious friends are not flaky idiots and they don’t believe in “sky-fairies”. They do believe in a sense of order and meaning in the universe in a “real” sense. I like, and believe in the metaphor that comes of looking inward and outward to find “spiritual” truths and observations that I can use to lead my life. However I don’t believe these have any *realness* other then the pschology and constructs of how my human brain and my communication with other humans through language constructs and how language abstracts and the brain interprets the “real” world. That doesn’t mean the *concept* of “spirit” is false, nor that the conclussions of this sense of “spirituality” leads us are false. It only means they their “realness” is only those of the human experience.
This is the “metaphor” that Christian apologists are always babbling on about. And perhaps, so people are more sensitive to this touchy-feely philosophical “nonmaterial” stuff than others. Bible literalists and creationsts, for example, seem utterly immune to it. And some may feel if it doesn’t have any “realness” it can’t really “mean” anything. I think a lot of the discussion of the “coldness” of atheist stem from the idea that an atheist thinking this isn’t real means they think it doesn’t mean anything, and the fear of a theist that if it isn’t real it can’t actually mean anything.
So for example, my not at all stupid, theist friend will say “don’t you feel we are all connected”, and I’ll say “yeah, looking at these stars make me reflect on the human experience and the philosophical concept of the ‘humanity’ we all share”. “No, I don’t mean just the psychology and concepts; don’t you feel we are all *connected*? Connected in some… real … spiritual plane.”
I think that, yes, we *are* all metaphorically connected in the way we all experience the same “human condition”. I don’t believe we are physically connected and there is no actuality to a “spiritial plane”. And I think this “spiritial” idea of mine is a valid idea, just as I think someone can be a “good friend” even though “friend” and “good” have any physical reality. I think my theist friend is going some sort of realness if and only meaning or meaning is another reality mindset. Sometimes it gets so vague that I think we both believe the same thing but only disagree on the meaning of the word “real”. Once she *did* ask me how I can believe in the actuality of Mathematics and dismiss the possible actuality of God, so perhaps we merely have different concepts of what reality *is*. However I think she views it as some form of Plato’s cave *existing* whereas I view Plato’s cave as an analogy of how the human brain percieves reality via language. I’m really *loath* to say that concepts are “real” or “exist”.
Ooops, That was a bit of a tangent!
My point being, these “religious” feelings and thoughts are associated solely with theism or spiritualism which I think is a shame. I think they do not depend on the existance of a god. Nor do I think the validity of their “meaning” need dependend an any sense that they actually exist.
It’s the stupid “Can you love if you are a materialist” crap. Of course, we can. Only this is “Can we be ‘spiritual’ if we are materialists”. I’d like to say, of course we can.
I sometimes think about telling/retelling current scientific knowledge in pre-scientific language.
As noted above, really large numbers were not used. But if they had words for “ten”, “hundred”, and “thousand”, it’s easy to simply define words like “million” and “billion” using those more-well-known words…
:: Ten tens is one hundred. Ten hundreds is one thousand. A thousand thousands is one million. A thousand millions is one billion.
There might be an entire appendix that covered the definitions of terms. Which would be a bit boring, but necessary for comprehension. There are places in the bible that have obscure words or phrases where the understood meaning is more than a bit tentative.
Another point is that even this simplified science tale should include the encouragement to find out more.
:: This tale is not complete. It is not exact. Go and discover more, and add to this tale.
Hm.
:: In the beginning, all things came to be. And all things were in the same place, and very hot.
:: And all things began to move away from each other at great speed, and cooled.
:: Now, all things bind together in four ways. And these are:
:: The strong way, the weaker way.
:: The way of lightning and lodestones, which seem different and yet are one, like pushes away like, and unlike binds.
:: And the way of falling, which only binds.
:: As all things cooled, they became the first things.
:: The first things pushed each other away, for they all have the like nature of the way of lightning. But they were joined by the lightning-bits, which have the unlike nature of the way of lightning. And these are called atoms.
:: And atoms, no longer pushing each other away, fell by the way of falling together in great clouds, billions and billions.
:: And these great clouds pushed the first things together such that the strong binding overcame their pushing away.
:: And the first things became the second things, and gave off heat and light.
:: And the clouds of things, giving heat and shining with light, were the first stars.
(and so on. needs work, I think.)
I would probably want to put in there that the seventh and eight kinds of atoms are in the air that we breathe.
Speaking of explaining modern concepts to stone-age people, there’s this game:
http://www.ironcircus.com/blog/000814.html
Keely @ #53:
I whipped up transcript, but since I don’t have anywhere to post it, I had to put it up on pastebin. Hopefully the C syntax highlighting won’t be too much of a distraction:
http://pastebin.com/f6a20cf17
Now lest you all think “Oh boy, woozy’s really gone off the deep end”:
I think it *is* accurate for PZ to dismiss talk of spirituality as “white noise”.
It is nearly always presented as a “I feel something and the something must be real” which is just sophis-sollip-sloppy noise. *my* wacky ‘spiritual’ feeling is “I feel something so I feel something”. Now, I can feel all sorts of stuff but they are all subjective and personal and very open-ended philosophically. As such they are “soft” to the extreme and there is little reason to discuss them with someone disinclined to care what *I* think about the meaning of life. Likewise it’d be absurd for me to *push* my philosophies onto someone else as I acknowledge them as feelings, concepts, and philosophies and not as anything with “actuality” or truth.
Some books are useless, others evil or misleading. We can discard them.
The echoes in the Bible of older stories show that the biblical legends are borrowed. It makes them look no more divinely inspired than a story about a plucky lad, son of a poor and virtuous widow, who goes to the city to seek his fortune, meets an old woman/weary traveller/distressed animal or three on the way, helps her/him/it/them, gets advice/a useful tool/a magical reward, falls in love with a rich but beautiful girl who has a stern father/wicked uncle/high opinion of herself, wins the girl with the help of the advice/magical aid/critters he helped, supports his mother, and lives happily ever after. If you’re an experienced bard, the stories practically write themselves.
Reply to #90
As far as trembling before the frightening Muslim threat. I aired this piece in Hyooston, it has to do with the martyring of Benazir Bhutto.
RTFM, she qualifies for the 72 Virgins.
This is about opening a Whorehouse with 72 horny adolescents in Muslim Heaven.
Benazir Booty’s Gentleman’s Club
Houston has more Muslims than any other major city, and ask me if I feel threatened by Muslims.
The point is that I taunt them just like I do the Christards, point me to some dumbass quote in the Koran that I could possibly care about, and tell me why tearing it out would make a point in Christard America.
Unlike dumbasses such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, I am not afraid of Muslim tards. No Haji ever beat the shit out of me and threw me into the back of a police car for a little bag of powder or a couple of joints.
I’ve been cut, beaten half to death, jailed for long stretches, and every sunuvabitch who ever ruined my life was a white christian fascist mutherfucker.
Muslims don’t scare me, they smile and take my credit card. If you are afraid of Muslims you are afraid of what your child says when he says, “I hate you, I’m going to KILL you” in a temper tantrum.
Take your dare elsewhere, lightweight.
You’ve been frightened by the fascist arm of of this Atheist revolt, and your challenge to PZ Myers to rip a page from the Koran as a symbol of righteous brave crusading Atheist movement’s fair game for all asshats, or assturbans is irrelevant.
If you think the assturbans are a threat to America, enlist, and if you are too old, they need truck drivers at KBR and Haliburton.
They will take anybody up to the age of sixty.
Put up or shut up.
You are exactly the same as the Christard Fascists who want their battles fought for them.
While they type with great fury.
Just tore a page out of the Bible? Pshaw. My friend and I demonstrated our insolence several years ago by burning a large chunk of this nasty book in front of pious friends and other hangers-on who were aghast. Over ten years ago, and not a bump in the road. Perhaps Hey-Zeus is waiting until the time is right to get back at me. If there’s a line to hell, P.Z., I’ll let you budge in with me, since I’ll obviously be way ahead of you!
I’ve been an atheist for awhile now, but I admit that I had a moment of shock when P.Z. ripped that page out of the bible. Then, I was a little chagrined at my reaction. Why such a visceral reaction to tearing a page out of that book? It was, I think, a pretty neat moment of “breaking the spell.” When he held that single page up and said something like “this is what creationists want to teach in schools,” it was a pretty powerful moment.
When he finished his summary of “small bits,” I was reminded of Life of Pi. Only, the story that I believed was true was also the one I liked the best — the version that actually mentions squid. (Sorry, Genesis)
Thanks, P.Z.
Genesis might be vague and pathetic as a science text but read as a kind of psychological allegory of the change from innocent carefree child to workaday adult and taking on all the hardship that entails is compelling. So too is the thought that Genesis might have originally derived from some kind of oral story describing an era, pre-agriculture, during which climate and environment made life more leisurely.
In any case, PZ – it’s disappointing. I don’t think you’re normally obnoxious.
PS: Philly.com has a “do you believe in god” poll in conjunction with its story on an atheist billboard in the region.
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20080605_A_word_for_nonbelievers.html
The real story of how the genesis came to be written:
http://www.sumware.com/creation.html
It makes them look no more divinely inspired than a story about a plucky lad, son of a poor and virtuous widow, who … and lives happily ever after.
Except softy touchy-feely types, Jungian archetype enthusiaists, literary criticisists would say those stories are also divinely inspired.
as an atheist lover of church music, some of you might be interested to know that the background music in the first part is from the third part of Rachmaninov’s vespers, the ‘glory be to god alleluia’ section. One of the great works of music in history and one still performed by Soviet choirs even during the time of state-mandated atheism.
I really like this video up to five minutes. But when they start bashing on about ‘Where’s the detail??’ it’s really not needed. Why remind people about the bible after such a moving account of creation? The point is, as PZ notes, that there is nothing lacking in the poetic sense. I’d like to see a version with just the first five minutes on youtube. Maybe get david attenborough to redub the voiceover…
Heh, should’ve just written “stole”. Still, it’s good to know that the first readers of Genesis had a grasp of “subversion” and “allusion”. Bet they laughed their asses of at those silly Sumerians.
Some of you people are still missing the point I was trying to make about the text. The author (or more likely, compilers) of Genesis were at pains to show how their tribe’s version of God was transcendent, and thus superior to other, more established cosmogonies.
Rather that butt heads with the literalists among us, I commend this piece by Lawson Stone as an interesting take on Genesis as liturgy.
Walton @45:
Oh, but wait! There’s another twist to this!
(Exo 4:21 NIV) The LORD said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.
God himself claims responsibility for the “intransigence” for which he punishes Pharaoh and his apparently blameless subjects!
I’ve read where apologists say that God basically put Pharaoh into that position for the express purpose of providing an example. So…God creates and presumably ensouls people, as deliberate throwaways, as lessons to suggest that other peoples should stay on his good side and immediately cave when his Special Pets are involved? From the usual Christian perspective, presumably Pharaoh then went to hell, as a non-believer? And, surely, the Egyptian people as a whole were innocent bystanders.
Can you say “set-up”?
Personally, I find this behaviour on God’s part morally indefensible.
I remember reading the book of Job. When God gets to browbeating Job and his buddies it becomes somewhat clear that God holds a view of the world that makes flat earthers look sophisticated. God talks about the storehouses of hail built into the firmament, opening windows in the firmament, seeing “where the sun is born through the earth every morning” and of course laying the foundations of the earth.
The Bible is filled with facts and specifics, unimaginably backwards wrong and primitive specifics. When you read it it doesn’t sink in to the modern mind how backwards it is because it’s just so mind-numbingly primitive.
I liked the apocryphal Book of Enoch where first century Israelis tried to write this whole new updated addition to their Torah. They expanded genesis 4 and 5 a little and poured in this huge chunk of raw fan fiction. They tried to show themselves as sophisticated and knowledgeable as their neighbors the Philistines (Greeks). Enoch is taken up to heaven and shown how different spheres rotate in heaven. I so totally bought that they were sophisticated people after that. Enoch then goes on to try to mediate Gods wrath against the Giants (Nephilium) that had been produced by the miscegenation of angels and mortal women. He begs that the world shouldn’t be flooded but he fails to get a reprieve. Only his grandson Noah and family are spared because they are “perfect of their generations” (i.e. still full blooded humans).
This is is all kinda biblical fan fiction but it’s also exactly how they read Genesis 5 almost two thousand years ago. When we read Genesis 5 it’s mostly gobbly gook but we get the idea God is mad at the world and Noah is somehow good. We over look the story that is sketched out there because we just don’t easily catch on to how backward and primitive some of these myths were. So many lines are passed over because they make no sense to a modern mind. They are just impossibly backward.
This almost made me cry …
Excessive bible referencing
Wow. The video has been pulled from YouTube.
Hey PZ, you obviously pissed off someone.
Anyone have another link to this? I’m always late …
Never mind, good folks, I am a goose.
Never mind, good folks, I am a goose.
For what it’s worth, a photo of the defaced bible signed by PZ Myers is also featured in the Facebook Seattle Skeptics Group. Now if that’s not a reason to sign up for Facebook, I don’t know what is. ;)
It was a wonderful talk, by the way. Thank you for visiting us in Seattle.
One way to save YouTube videos is to use Firefox and the Video Download Helper extension. you can then view them using VLC or (for Windows) add the flv codecs to Media Player. My favourites are from Thunderfoot and AronRa.
Here is my own contribution to the effort to convey the wonder and majesty of science, in contrast to the banal provincialism of the Bible. Enjoy! ;)
@ cicely, #116:
“(Exo 4:21 NIV) The LORD said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.
God himself claims responsibility for the “intransigence” for which he punishes Pharaoh and his apparently blameless subjects!”
Actually, if you back up to Exodus 5:1-9, it states that Pharaoh hardened his own heart first. Pharaoh thought the Israelites were just being lazy.
@ Josh, #117:
“This is is all kinda biblical fan fiction but it’s also exactly how they read Genesis 5 almost two thousand years ago. When we read Genesis 5 it’s mostly gobbly gook but we get the idea God is mad at the world and Noah is somehow good. We over look the story that is sketched out there because we just don’t easily catch on to how backward and primitive some of these myths were. So many lines are passed over because they make no sense to a modern mind. They are just impossibly backward.”
Apparently, Noah was significant enough to be referred to later on in Ezekiel 14:14, Matthew 24:38-39, etc.
Buckyball my point about the story of Noah is not that Noah was significant but that the story is so backwards we don’t get a lot of it. We don’t get the sons of god and daughters of men line. We don’t get the giants in the story. We don’t get what God was upset about (oh generic sin again). We don’t get why Noah was spared. My point is we are too developed to even entertain some of the absurdity on the page, our eyes almost slide right off.
You should auction the defaced bible for charity, PZ.
Buckyball@127,
Don’t you know that “Well he started it” is one of the most contemptible excuses ever used? Exodus quite clearly says, repeatedly, that God hardened Pharoah’s heart – and makes it clear he did it so he could show off. Vile. Face it buckyball, you worship evil. Why?
@ Nick Gotts, #130:
Don’t you know that “Well he started it” is one of the most contemptible excuses ever used? Exodus quite clearly says, repeatedly, that God hardened Pharoah’s heart – and makes it clear he did it so he could show off. Vile.
And Exodus 1, specifically, verse 1:16, implies what then? This took place before Moses was even born. Pharaoh in Exodus 1:22 then goes and makes another attempt at “population control” with the Hebrews. Now whether this is the Pharaoh as found in later chapters is somewhat unclear; however, it’s evident the Egyptian government was determined to keep them as slaves and keep their numbers down.
What Nick Gotts said.
Also, the thought occurs; if God could harden Pharaoh’s heart at will, could he not also have softened it? No need for the genocidal (on God’s part) plagues, and, as a bonus, the Hebrews, in their quest to become a nation, could have been on friendly terms with one of the superpowers of the time!
Omnibenevolent, my a$$!
Buckyball, since Moses is supposed to be 80 (Exodus 7:7) on one of his visits to Pharoah, it is abundantly clear it was not the same Pharoah. Anyhow, you are evading the issue. Exodus 4:21
“…see that thou do all these wonders before Pharoah, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.”
Exodus 7:3
“And I will harden Pharoah’s heart, and multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt.”
Exodus 10:1
“And the Lord said unto moses, go in unto Pharoah: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him:”
Exodus 10:20
“But the Lord hardened Pharoah’s heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go.”
Exodus 10:27
“But the Lord hardened Pharoah’s heart, and he would not let them go.”
Exodus 11:9-10
“And the Lord said unto Moses, Pharoah shall not hearken unto you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.
And Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharoah: and the Lord hardened Pharoah’s heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go out of his land.”
There is not the slightest room for doubt that “the Lord” is boasting of his responsibility for hardening Pharoah’s heart, and is doing so in order that he can show off.
I note also that “the Lord” orders the children of Israel to rob Egyptians by deceit: Exodus 3:22:
“But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.”
Now, it would clearly not be possible to borrow such things except from those you were on good terms with – so “the Lord” is ordering a despicable fraud.
Of course, all this pales before the genocide committed by “the Lord” himself, when he murders all the firstborn of the Egyptians (Exodus 12:20).
So I ask you again, buckyball, why do you worship this psychopathic monster of evil? Is it fear, or are you a psychopathic monster yourself? I really see no other alternatives. Answer me, without any more wriggling and squirming, if you have the slightest shred of integrity.
Buckyball, since Moses is supposed to be 80 (Exodus 7:7) on one of his visits to Pharoah, it is abundantly clear it was not the same Pharoah. Anyhow, you are evading the issue.
You missed one: Exodus 9:16. This concept is also mentioned in Romans 9:17-9:18 and is the crux of the Calvinist argument. Although the Scripture clearly states the God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, there is nothing in the text that describes what his heart was like beforehand. This is why it is useful to look at the larger context of Exodus 1 and what the government (in general) was doing…it’s about the only hint that’s given.
“Of course, all this pales before the genocide committed by “the Lord” himself, when he murders all the firstborn of the Egyptians (Exodus 12:20).”
Which parallels Exodus 1:16 (which was first ordered by the king of Egypt).
crux of the Calvinist argument
*runs screaming into the night*
I escaped the Christian Reformed tradition and am never going back to that life-despising sickness.
Well, golly gee, isn’t it a wonderful thing that everyone everywhere agrees that it is perfectly fine to kill children if their daddy killed your children? I mean, that’s fair and just, right?
Of course, the bible also says that it is perfectly OK to kill your own children. Such a morally perfect book.
[/sarcasm]
Buckyball, I see you do not have the slightest shred of integrity, as you continue to evade the issue. How does genocide ordered by a mortal excuse a similar crime by “the Lord”, carried out against people who had no responsibility for it?
He is probably in it for the sex slaves. In Exodus, it describes how it is legal to sell your kids as slaves. Males are only to be slaves for 6 years but girls are stuck for life.
He is probably in it for the sex slaves. In Exodus, it describes how it is legal to sell your kids as slaves. Males are only to be slaves for 6 years but girls are stuck for life.
God is a misogynist fuckwit.
Ah, I guess I missed one possiblity buckball: sheer moral cowardice. As a Calvinist, you can pretend to yourself that you are predestined to worship this psychopathic monster of evil. Given your repeated evasions, this is perhaps the likeliest possibility.
Maybe buckyball is in it for the murder. Deuteronomy says you are supposed to stone disobedient children to death. Hmmm, are there piles of tiny bones around his house?
Anyone who followed all the OT laws would be doing multiple life sentences in the modern world.
You are supposed to kill False Prophets. Which includes all prophets of any other religion. There goes Falwell, Robertson, Kennedy, Bush, Hagee, and a few thousand other ministers. Looks like Reverend Moon is in trouble too.
I’ve read the various horrific passages in the Old Testament. The worst, I think, is Numbers 31 (the slaughter of the Midianite women).
I wish I had an answer to this problem, the problem of reconciling the capricious, vengeful and spiteful God of the OT with the benevolent and caring God of the NT; and the problem of reconciling either with the view of God as omnipotent. But I don’t.
I want to be a believer, I really do. In principle I believe in God. And I find much of the teaching of Jesus inspiring. But the contradictions and frankly nonsensical aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition are too much for my inadequate human mind to handle. Either I suspend thought and accept that the mysteries of God are beyond human understanding – or what else? Do I have another option?
Sorry about the philosophical rambling, I know this really isn’t the place for it. It’s late, and I’ll be embarrassed about posting this in the morning. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about my personal religious crisis.
To those arguing the problem with PZ ripping up a book. Books are no more sacred than the flag, no matter what they contain. If someone advocated burning “every” flag, that would be one thing, burning a single one to protest something, not so much a problem. One scientist ripping some pages out of the most published book on the fracking planet, is hardly even meaningful, beyond the concept being expressed by doing it. Some idiot in my city a few years back suggesting that ever place should have book burnings, so they can *permanently* destroy the works they don’t personally like, **that** is a problem.
Heck, some place along the line I ended up with the Dianetics book, then hear more about it via TV programs on the deprogramming of some people that got away from it, etc., and ripped the damn thing to shreds. It pissed me off that I nearly bought into the idea that it *might* contain something useful. Now.. I would probably keep it, just because its evidence of the stupid BS people fall for. Who knows, in 1,000 years it *might* matter if one of these dang things was kept intact, but probably not. There are so many of them that I would be far more worried about some new cult rising up from reading Dianetics or the Bible 1,000 years from now (should one or both fade by then), due to teh billions of fracking copies around already, while The God Delusion became some obscure book you could only find on a shelf in rare used book stores.
So, I am of two minds about it. On one hand, obviously its bad to destroy knowledge, on the other hand, you might as well claim that my deleting spam emails from my account every day is “evil” because it destroys some unique piece or useless garbage, which 50,000 other people also received, and some probably have on backup media, due to them still being in the email junk bin on those copies. Heck, there is probably at least one nut that “collects” the stupid things. In 100 years, their entire archive of spam, junk mail and porn ads may end up in the Smithsonian. lol
In any case, its *highly* unlikely that every Bible on the planet is going to go extinct, so PZ’s actions are no more monumentally offensive, unless you are just seriously obsessed about it, than someone intentionally stepping on one ant, as a protest of how many ants they found in their back yard.
Sorry about the philosophical rambling, I know this really isn’t the place for it. It’s late, and I’ll be embarrassed about posting this in the morning. I’m sure you don’t want to hear about my personal religious crisis.
We’ve all been through them. Honestly, once you realize that the God in which you so want to believe is a human production, just like the religions that worship it, you’ll be free of a lot of baggage. Not easy, but it happens. The monster of the Bible simply isn’t worthy of human worship. Jesus occasionally had some interesting things to say. Humanity can do better than both.
Deism, Agnosticism, and atheism.
You might try reading Doubt, by Jennifer Hecht, in order to understand that you are not the first to realize that there is a huge contradiction between traditional religion and reason.
No such reconciliation is required if one adopts the simple expedient that neither of them exist. There isn’t the tiniest shred of evidence, after all.
The bible is a collection of myths, legends, stories, and parables invented, or adapted, by tribes of iron age nomadic Levantine goatherds that, coincidentally, happen to be consonant with 21st century morality occasionally, but no more often than similar stories and teachings of other cultures.
Nothing more, nothing less.
#140, Nick Gotts:
Calvinism is unbiblical on many levels, but that’s another tangent altogether.
Buckyball, it was you who introduced the topic of Calvinism, not me. Why do you persist in evading the issue?
@ #149, Nick Gotts:
Buckyball, it was you who introduced the topic of Calvinism, not me.
I mentioned it because the verses that were referenced are what Calvinists base their theology on. It was a side note, nothing more. Yet in #140, you took it several steps further:
As a Calvinist, you can pretend to yourself that you are predestined to worship this psychopathic monster of evil.
Divalent, #19:”Had the bible contained such an account, it would be strong proof of the existence of God and his role in creation, even if we haven’t yet figured it all out.”
buckyball, #21: “But would it be enough?”
No but it would narrow down the options to the existence of gods or ETs.
May I present… mr. deity. Most hilarious take on Bible-type stuff since Bill Cosby’s Noah.
To those of you opining the destruction of a book as if this is some moral sin, I have news for you. Books are destroyed on a regular basis.
This company alone,
http://www.book-destruction.com/
claims to destroy, “Each day, some 90 tons of books, directories corporate reports, pamphlets and bound volumes of every type..”
And this company
http://www.quincyrecycle.com/services-book_destruction.shtml
claims, “One of our fastest growing services over the last five years has been our book destruction service. Quincy Recycle provides a NOTARIZED LETTER OF DESTRUCTION for each and every load we destroy for you. You can be sure that when your load of books arrives at our facility, the load will be ground into tiny fragments and then baled within hours of its’ arrival.”
So your arguments border on being silly.
I was at the dinner/talk and can say I found the page tearing to be a pretty good teaching technique. It visually illustrated the point quite well and definitely got people’s attention. Those are key features that research in education tells us promote retention of the information being taught.
Uh no it’s not. It hasjust as much support as any other theology. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean a case can’t be made.
A Google search gives 63,700 results for “Christian atheist,” including a Wikipedia entry.
I don’t know whether or not quantum physicist Freeman Dyson would call himself a Christian atheist, but he commonly refers to himself as “a practicing Christian but not a believing Christian.”
To pcarini @ #106, you are a million times my hero.
I really appreciate it. Being partially deaf is extremely frustrating, no matter what I do, I can always hear bits but never the entirety. It rather sucks being sort of suspended between hearing and not, so I really appreciate the time you took out for me to do that.
You are extremely kind.
It’s things like this that make so frustrated about many Churches. It’s pitted as us vs them. The atheists are terrible people who are to be hated, feared, etc. It diminishes so many things. It frustrates me that people attribute the wonder of our universe, people, everything to some God. It diminishes the beauty of the world, and it diminishes the beauty of people themselves.
But I digress.
Thanks so much.
Skeptigirl #151: “No but it would narrow down the options to the existence of gods or ETs.”
One could also consider intelligent species evolving on earth predating humans, and advanced human civilizations predating the authorship of the book in question, ala the Atlantis fables.
Keely @ #156 – That URL worked for you then? Someone posted on the YT comments that they had trouble with it, but it works for me. (I hope it works, since I won’t be able to check back in on it for most of this next week.)
I fear that the “us vs them” is a permanent fixture of the religious mode of thought. My explanation (which is totally speculative) is that I think the role of religion in early human life was mostly political. It was a powerful force for keeping order and consolidating authority on the tribal level, and served to unify larger social groups for purposes of either conquest or defense. In this political sense, I feel the principle of separation between church and state is unnatural, but also a visionary and necessary step which enables social order on a global scale. Anyway, I ramble.. so I’ll just leave it at that.
Buckyball@150 – I misunderstood you as meaning you were a Calvinist. So we’re back to the two possibilities: you worship this psychopathic monster out of fear, or because you’re a psychopathic monster yourself. Which is it?
Any time PZ or anyone else wishes to find out the total and undeniable technical accuracy of GENESIS, just roll on over to http://www.creationtheory.com . Of course, if PZ intended to follow standard and approved procedure in this case, he wouldn’t now be making such a public fool of himself. And he would have long ago have come down here on PHARYNGULA and attempted to defend the modern laughingstock of the world – common descent Evolution. It’s all over. Technology, she has sped past, leaving that anachronism beside the road, covered in mud.
What’s worrying me to kingdom come is what’s going to happen when people such as some of the contributors above, suddenly decide they need to get with it, and decide to help the Bible along. Leave religion right out of it, will you? I implore you. Tear the Bibles to pieces by all means, please, have mercy on humanity out there, and flush the fragments. Stick with Common Descent – anything. You can’t rewind the advance of modern technology, but at least you can do the world a service by trying to make the transition a change to something better than the disgrace to humanity that official religion has so often been. You wish to find God with your head? Since he won’t be found that way, all that will be discovered is that your head is empty. It’s being publicly shown to be so, to the world.
At least some of the facts as they relate to modern technology and Origins could be inserted in it: go over to www. creationthoeory. com and glean a few.
“What’s worrying me to kingdom come….”
Something strange is going on up there…..but I can’t make sense of it.
(where’s my popcorn?)
Posted by: Philip Bruce Heywood | June 9, 2008 6:52 AM
(bold mine for emphasis)
You could do the world a favor and hold your breath until that happens… Feel free to start now.
Philip Bruce Heywood – you’re a loony! (Pun intended.)
Philip Bruce Heywood, you’re an odd duck.
Hey wÒÓ†, got something suitable for us here please ?
I really liked the one a few weeks ago with the blue beak and feet.
thanks
In regards to Myers’ original comment:
“Then, of course, I summarized some small bits of the story of eye evolution to demonstrate that science has a much deeper and more powerful origins story than that little scrap of piss-poor poetry that half this country wants to make the backbone of our science curriculum.”
Myers’ eye evolution story is utter nonsense, has NO scientific underpinnings to it, and displays an utter lack of critical thinking. See ‘Example #2 for a critique of his eye evolution scenario’:
http://whoisyourcreator.com/how_does_evolution_work.html
whoisyourcreator.com definitely sounds like a peer reviewed science journal…
I looked. More like a pier review – you know, stand up comedian, magic act, illusionist…..
Why is God so shitty at proselytisation? How come he always sends us the boring morons with the completely non-compelling arguments? For someone who purportedly had a kid just so he could sacrifice Him to Himself for all our sins, He sure seems to go through the motions when it comes to sending us emissaries of the ‘Good News’. He’s like a 6-year-old who shoves all of His clothes and toys in the closet so that He can technically say that He cleaned his room.
One wonders exactly what goes on in God’s war room:
Archangel Michael [sitting in front of a bank of blinking computer terminals]: “Let’s see, we’ve got a 67-year-old PhD in Physics who hasn’t been sent his missionary yet.”
JC: “Send him the homeless guy who froths at the mouth and rants about UFOs. He occasionally mentions my name.”
AA Michael: “Uh, him? Do you really think that’s going to work?”
JC: “Who cares? The path to heaven is narrow, right? Legal out!”
AA Michael: “Okay, next. Ooh-ooh, good! Incan warrior, very ethical.”
JC: “Pizzaro’s already on his way.”
AA Michael: “The lying, mass murdering, gold-lusting Conquistador?”
JC: “Uh-uh, Conchristador!”
AA Michael: “Hoo-boy. Okay, here’s a six-year-old in Boston.”
JC: “The Catholic Altar Boy? He’ll have my message of love practically rammed down his throat.”
AA Michael: “Fine. Here’s a tough one. Name’s Myers, runs a blog. Evolutionary biologist, atheist, outspoken critic of religion, and occasional squid fetishist.”
JC: “No problem. There’s a guy named Kenny, lives in the US. Have someone turn a computer on for him. He’ll do the rest.”
AA Michael: “You’re totally just phoning this in, aren’t you?”
Hahahaha
if you liked that video you should check out his other videos
youtube.com/philhellenes
Thank you for articulating a compelling argument against the page we linked. Please don’t claim that it’s not worth responding to because your rant could have easily been redirected at silencing us with actual facts – If you had them, of course.
Your inability to indulge in an intelligent debate is quite intriguing. Keep up the good work!
If you were actually interested in facts, you could, very easily, go to scholar.google.com, and find the relevant papers that discuss subjects like gene duplications and evolutionary pressure.
If you are claiming that research has been proven to show that gene duplication creates new functional genes that have NOT been previously found in an existing organism, please cite your paper.
Otherwise, it’s just empty claim.
How ’bout icefish antifreeze protein derived from a duplication of the gene for trypsinogen?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9108060
Be sure to move those goalposts, now.
The icefish example above is valid, but is pretty unusual. However, gene dups are generally common.
One generation before duplication event: In the organism, gene A exists. It codes for a protein that the organism needs. At some point during the meiotic splitting and chromosome shuffling in the organism’s gonads, gene A is duplicated.
Generation duplication event: The above genome with the duplication is fertilized. The two genes exist and are identical, gene A and gene A’. They both code for the same protein in the organism. No harm, no foul. So what?
Some number of generations post duplication event: Now new mutations occurs in A’, in different members of the organism population. It’s no longer A’ in all of them (although some might still have A’), but in some it’s B, in some it’s C, in some it’s D, and so on. Let’s say that most are non-functional mutations. Fine. However, Q, R, V, and Z are functional, and are also new (that is, they are new mutations of A). If, of those, Z codes for a protein that is useful and can enhance the survival of the organism, that means that those organisms with Z will slowly spread through the population during successive generations.
Naturally, all of the above still have gene A. That’s the whole point.
And so on:
“Understanding Protein Evolution: From Protein Physics to Darwinian Selection”
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.physchem.58.032806.104449
First, in regard to the icefish, review the abstract:
“Freezing avoidance conferred by different types of antifreeze proteins in various polar and subpolar fishes represents a remarkable example of cold adaptation, but how these unique proteins arose is unknown. We have found that the antifreeze glycoproteins (AFGPs) of the predominant Antarctic fish taxon, the notothenioids, evolved from a pancreatic trypsinogen. We have determined the likely evolutionary process by which this occurred through characterization and analyses of notothenioid AFGP and trypsinogen genes. The primordial AFGP gene apparently arose through recruitment of the 5′ and 3′ ends of an ancestral trypsinogen gene, which provided the secretory signal and the 3′ untranslated region, respectively, plus de novo amplification of a 9-nt Thr-Ala-Ala coding element from the trypsinogen progenitor to create a new protein coding region for the repetitive tripeptide backbone of the antifreeze protein. The small sequence divergence (4-7%) between notothenioid AFGP and trypsinogen genes indicates that the transformation of the proteinase gene into the novel ice-binding protein gene occurred quite recently, about 5-14 million years ago (mya), which is highly consistent with the estimated times of the freezing of the Antarctic Ocean at 10-14 mya, and of the main phyletic divergence of the AFGP-bearing notothenioid families at 7-15 mya. The notothenioid trypsinogen to AFGP conversion is the first clear example of how an old protein gene spawned a new gene for an entirely new protein with a new function. It also represents a rare instance in which protein evolution, organismal adaptation, and environmental conditions can be linked directly.”
Note the usage of the following terms that prove that this ‘research paper’ is based purely on speculation, not evidence:
1. “but how these unique proteins arose is unknown.”
2. “We have determined the likely evolutionary process by which this occurred”
3. “The primordial AFGP gene apparently arose”
Without one bit of evidence, the conclusion is based on the presupposition that evolution created the new protein. We know most evolutionists have no problem with this, but this type of rhetoric is NOT scientific and does NOT qualify as ‘naturalistic’ under your own standards:
http://whoisyourcreator.com/scientific_criteria.html
Second, in regard to gene duplication being common:
We are specifically discussing gene duplication creating a NEW functional gene never seen before in the organism.
Again, if you wish to cite proof of that occurring, go ahead. Until then, it’s just your faith, not science.
Breaking news about evolution of bacteria in the lab:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news1_head_dn14094
He just did that. Gene duplications are common in humans and other vertebrates.
We know gene duplications are among the most common mutations among eukaryotes. Here is one of many cases. RNASE duplicated and diverged to help monkeys eat leaves, a difficult food source for most primates.
This is the stupid trick whereismysanity pulls a lot. It happened 4 million years ago. So we never saw it of course. Which is just as well, no one wants to stay up for a few million years and watch them diverge. Duplications are common, beneficial mutations are common. It isn’t much of a stretch to infer that duplications followed by beneficial mutations results in two similar genes that nevertheless perform different functions.
We’ve never seen an ice age come and go either but the evidence is all around us and no one but mythology believers doubt them.
Whereismysanity should spend more time on his own field, religion collecting tangible evidence. Adam’s skeleton, the oars from the dingy of Noah’s ark, Jesus’s laundry list, Mose’s broken stone tablets, the Trees of knowledge and life, and a few fossils of walking, talking snakes would go a long way to proving the bible.
O rly? How about we reword this a bit…
Without one bit of evidence, the conclusion that you are your parents’ offspring is based on the presupposition that the man you call daddy impregnated the woman you call mommy.
So, you’re saying that you’re a bastard?
Sure it is. That’s what a scientific theory is: the best explanation, given the evidence.
In this case, the evidence of how genetic variation occurs.
Sure it does. That’s what naturalism is. You can’t posit non-naturalistic answers precisely because there would be no way to falsify them. If they are falsifiable, they are naturalistic.
Like I said, read up on the science of genetics. We know in general how genetic variation occurs based on hundreds and thousands of specific genetic experiments.
It’s up to you to come up with the falsifying evidence that a perfectly natural genetic variation did not occur, in some specific case, or in the general case, and why.
More gene duplication:
“The Evolution of Trichromatic Color Vision by Opsin Gene Duplication in New World and Old World Primates”
http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/full/9/7/629
Actually we have seen duplication followed by mutation in at least one model system.
So much for whereismysanity. So it isn’t an empty claim. Time to move the goal posts once again. Or maybe realize that evolution is a fact and theory. No doubt which way he will go.
You guys have been doing this for thousands of years now. First it was Zeus and Apollo Helios. Then it was the flat earth followed shortly by geocentrism. Then it was creationism. Some people never gave up any of those.
@ Nick Gotts, #159:
“So we’re back to the two possibilities: you worship this psychopathic monster out of fear, or because you’re a psychopathic monster yourself. Which is it?”
According to Webster’s, psychopath is defined as “a mentally ill or unstable person”. Considering passages such as Malachi 3:6, how does instability factor in?
From your previous remarks in post #133:
“Of course, all this pales before the genocide committed by “the Lord” himself, when he murders all the firstborn of the Egyptians (Exodus 12:20).”
Per Webster’s, genocide is defined as “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group”.
My question back to you, however, is what is the context of this passage?
For instance, take the definition of genocide and apply to a battle from history…let’s say the invasion of Normandy in WWII. If one looked strictly at the Allied forces advancing on the beaches, one could say their primary goal was the removal of the German army. Without additional context, it could also be said the goal of the German army was to eliminate as many advancing Allied troops as possible. In other words, both sides were committing genocide on some level. But, if you look at the larger context of the time and the war itself, the meaning changes.
(Or does it?)
In a prior post, you admitted to just having read Genesis, but it is unclear whether you’ve read any of the subsequent 65 books. Now if we apply the same concepts as discussed above (focusing in on a small subset of events whilst discarding the larger context), it’s easy to see how one could formulate such philosophies as these:
“Of course, all this pales before the genocide committed by “the Lord” himself, when he murders all the firstborn of the Egyptians (Exodus 12:20).”
Of course if you would like to single out lone passages from any book (a history book, a science book, the Bible, etc.) and construct entire worldviews around singular passages, you are certainly welcome to do so.
…or should it be inferred that you are against all types of warfare? And then, is all war essentially genocide at the core, justifiable or not?
How then, do you resolve this with concept of “survival of the fittest” in the natural world?
Or, are there times when war really isn’t “genocide”?
When will people get it through their heads that a description is not a prescription?
Here, this is may help:
“[…] natural selection is better defined by some specific postulates. Namely, heritable variation exists, and there is differential survival of that heritable variation.”
http://evolutionarynovelty.blogspot.com/2008/05/evolution-of-random-random-of-evolution.html
No, we’ll leave that to the superstitious, I think.
Excellant video
As for the Bible, I have read it from cover to cover over 20 times which is one reason I am an Atheist
That was great!!
I’m still trying to figure out what the “lore of the magnet” is, though. Is that like the Riddle of Steel?
Buckyball,
Yes, there are times when war isn’t genocide. The murder of the firstborn was not war, so I fail to see the relevance. Being omnipotent, God could clearly just have instantaneously moved the Israelites to where he wanted them, but no, he had to show off by murdering the firstborn.
A more specific definition of a psychopath is an individual who regards others simply as tools to be used to their ends – and if it suits them, to be murdered. Like your evil God. I repeat my question, buckyball, and will continue to do so until you summon up the courage to answer it: why do you worship this evil and disgusting monster?
Sure it is. What a silly question. BTW, in WWII small bibles were handed out to soldiers. They found the page size thickness and paper quality was well suited for rolling cigarettes. I wonder how many of these bibles were “defaced”. Thousands? Millions? It’s just a book written by humans, containing the imaginings of a god.
Sure it is. What a silly question. BTW, in WWII small bibles were handed out to soldiers. They found the page size thickness and paper quality was well suited for rolling cigarettes. I wonder how many of these bibles were “defaced”. Thousands? Millions? It’s just a book written by humans, containing the imaginings of a god.