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Technically, the Bible (or at least the Old Testament) wasn't really written for us. It was written (mostly) for 800 BC Hebrews.Why didn't god inspire something a little more universal? Your issue with god needing to poke holes in the boat is exactly the kind of issue I have here.
I don't know. (At least to your question).
As to your statement -- you think that Hebrews writing scriptures for Hebrews is the same thing as God telling his prophet to put air-holes in the bottom of the boat?
If an all knowing, all powerful god is incapable of getting his true message to me…yeah. If you are willing to cede that god is not all knowing or all powerful, then I would be willing to admit putting in holes is a little 'dumber'.
You admit you do not know why god did not make his message more universal. Fair enough. Maybe, you simply do not know the reason god told his prophet to put holes in the boat. I have seen a few explanations offered up for many of the seeming contradictions in the Bible. Why is it so incomprehensible there are equally 'valid' explanations for the boat?
Perhaps god had already planned a miracle that would save the people from dying from asphyxiation but, instead of explaining that to his obviously concerned prophet, he simply gave him the comfort of poking holes in the boat.
Perhaps the boat was not air tight and they were never in danger to begin with. Again, to give comfort, he suggested the holes.
Perhaps he was going to command his prophet to punch the holes in all along, but wanted to give his prophet an opportunity to exercise free will and question god.
You and I think it was a stupid over-sight, but how much of an over-sight is it to create an angel you know is going to rebel and put your entire creation into an eternal struggle that you will have to eventually clean up? A few hundred dead from asphyxiation or the countless souls lost to Satan? Which is really the bigger blunder?
Opinion piece on Confession app
If you sign in as a 33-year-old married man, that commandment offers this query: “Have I been guilty of masturbation?”
Well I am damned.
If an all knowing, all powerful god is incapable of getting his true message to me…So, what do you think the "true message" of God is (as much as is written)?
What do you think the "true message" of God should have been?
How should I know? It seems more likely there is no god to be trying to send me a message. I do not know what it should have been either. However, I do think a message from any god would be unmistakable.
What sort of boat do you think god should have instructed his prophet to build?
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What sort of boat do you think god should have instructed his prophet to build?
The one made of gopher wood made more sense to me.
Seriously though, I actually had more of an issue with the story that the prophet had to repeatedly correct God in his instructions than that there was an air hole in the bottom of the boat.
However, I do think a message from any god would be unmistakable.
<tentatively raises hand, delurking briefly> Has anyone read Conversations with God Book One? Sure, there's plenty of hippie, feel good stuff in there, but I also felt like there were some important messages about how god communicates with us.
It certainly helped me after my cancer diagnosis. It's been a while so I'm not sure I can adequately explain it, but I think it does explain some of CourtFool's concerns over a god who can't communicate.
Sorry for the intrusion... <return to lurk mode>
... <return to lurk mode>I think that I'd be surprised to find just how many people "lurk" in this thread...
I feel like I've learned a lot by listening to you and CourtFool and others debate. So, thank you!!
... <return to lurk mode>I think that I'd be surprised to find just how many people "lurk" in this thread...
I haven't driven everybody off yet? When news like this comes in I always wonder if I don't eat enough babies to really deserve my place in the Evil Atheist Conspiracy. :)
When news like this comes in I always wonder if I don't eat enough babies to really deserve my place in the Evil Atheist Conspiracy. :)
If you weren't specifically called out and vilified by "You're Not Helping" and/or his legion of sock puppets, you're just not a card-carrying Gnu Atheist. That schizophrenic maniac spewed all over everyone from Dawkins to Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers, to Greg Laden and Ophelia Benson (especially), and all the way on down to me and the other nobodies. If you didn't cater to religion, he had plenty of time to dump on you, no matter what your public exposure or lack thereof. It was a fun spring, while it lasted.
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If you weren't specifically called out and vilified by "You're Not Helping" and/or his legion of sock puppets, you're just not a card-carrying Gnu Atheist.
I think what I need is a sex tape.
Why?
How difficult would it be to appear to everyone? Or even a sufficiently large enough population? And then simply say here is my message. Why do gods only speak to individuals when no one else is around to verify?
Seriously though, I actually had more of an issue with the story that the prophet had to repeatedly correct God in his instructions than that there was an air hole in the bottom of the boat.
I have more problem with god commanding Abraham to kill his son than having a bad brain day.
I haven't driven everybody off yet?
No, not quite. Pass the popcorn...
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Seriously though, I actually had more of an issue with the story that the prophet had to repeatedly correct God in his instructions than that there was an air hole in the bottom of the boat.I have more problem with god commanding Abraham to kill his son than having a bad brain day.
Not really the point of that story. Doing a quick Google search brings up all kinds of explanations and most of them are fairly consistent with each other. This is probably the best one I found quickly as it references ... well a lot of stuff from the anomolies in the text to the strict translations to the Jewish traditions.
Even without help from other sources, there are clues in that story that all is not as it first appears to Western readers -- like when Abraham tells his servants to wait and that both he and his son will return when the sacrifice is over. Like that Isaac carried the wood up the mountain -- enough wood to burn a sacrifice -- yet he was unable to overpower his 120 year old father?
Yet, in spite of this, it appears that you have made up your mind about the passage. Namely that God is a bastard who wants his people to selectively kill children as a sacrifice.
Not really the point of that story.
And god's bumbling is the point of the Mormon story? Could it be god was testing to see if the prophet was more than a simple 'yes man' and was willing to question what seemed obvious errors to him?
I came up with that just off the top of my head. I do not have thousands of years and countless creative individuals to spin the story. How can you be so sure your justifications are not just that or that they do not equally apply to any other religion?
Yet, in spite of this, it appears that you have made up your mind about the passage. Namely that God is a bastard who wants his people to selectively kill children as a sacrifice.
Just as it appears you have made up your mind.
Just for the record, I do not believe there is a god to be a child killing bastard. I think the passage was written by man who wanted convince others to obey god's commands without question and then slip the author in as the middle man, thereby gaining unconditional obedience.
Something else occurred to me as I was reading the link, Moff…
Maybe the test was not so much for the prophet, but for the modern reader. God realizes that sometimes we are not going to understand his motivations, especially in a modern world. God wants to point out that no matter how absurd his commands may seem, we must still obey them.
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And god's bumbling is the point of the Mormon story?
No. The point of that story is that God wanted to bring his people to a new "Promised Land" and how he did it. God's "bumbling" is really to show how awesome and Godly the brother of Jared really is. But that alone is incredibly contrary to the Bible in general but especially the Old Testament.
(And I kind of know where you're going with this...)
What?! You have uncovered my secret agenda?!
I started writing a line by line rebuttal, but I gave up. I can not speak on Dawkins…I honestly have not read any of his stuff. However, most of the article seemed like base assertions.
What irked me most was Mr. Mohler's attempt to make atheists appear like bumbling fools for not having any clear argument for why the cosmos exists or why life forms appeared. In my opinion, most people do not make up¹ explanations for things they do not understand. This is a feature, not a bug. To imply such a stance is foolish or unfulfilling is rather alien. What is the alternative, to accept that it is magic?
¹Sure, you need somewhere to start and that is usually some idea you pull out of your bum. However, you do not believe that is fact without testing it.
I did not really see any of this. I mean its not a pro-evolution argument but, considering its source, it seemed reasonably fair. I actually very much agree with the point that Darwin really sets the stage for the possibility of a well rounded, broad based, Atheistic world view.
Without Darwin, what prevents you from having a well rounded, broad based, Atheistic world view? Other than the assertion that you need to explain why we are here? If I am not mistaken, evolution does not explain the existence of the universe, so we are still kind of stuck aren't we?
I put forth that 'I don't know' is a perfectly valid answer.
I put forth that 'I don't know' is a perfectly valid answer.
Amen. Claims of omniscience annoy me to no end; I prefer a guy who's not afraid to say, "maybe X, but we're not sure."
P.S. In a lot of cases, I'd also amend the "I don't know" to read "we don't know yet."
I put forth that 'I don't know' is a perfectly valid answer.
Amen. Claims of omniscience annoy me to no end; I prefer a guy who's not afraid to say, "maybe X, but we're not sure."
P.S. In a lot of cases, I'd also amend the "I don't know" to read "we don't know yet."
I agree, furthermore there are problems that have no solutions, pretending that there is an answer for everything and then pretending that we have the answer to questions like "why the Universe is here" is silly and a huge sign of ignorance.I put forth that 'I don't know' is a perfectly valid answer.Amen. Claims of omniscience annoy me to no end; I prefer a guy who's not afraid to say, "maybe X, but we're not sure."
P.S. In a lot of cases, I'd also amend the "I don't know" to read "we don't know yet."
Aye, there are even fairly decent reasons to believe that it might logically unanswerable. One of my favorite goes as follows:
If we suppose that the universe is contingent, then everything inside the universe is contingent; this includes time. Now if we follow the cosmological argument, contingent things have causes. Causal relationships require a temporal ordering (you can't have things in future causing things in the past). Since time is contingent, time must have a cause. This means that something must occur before time. Now brains explode at the fact that "before" is only defined in the presence of time.
If we suppose that the universe is contingent, then everything inside the universe is contingent; this includes time.
Flawed starting premise: time isn't a physical "thing," it's a mathematical reference inserted to make the equations work. It's most certainly not uniformly linear, as Einstein demonstrated mathemetically, and as confirmed by subsequent empirical experiments.
Isn't time just a human concept?
Or am I thinking of Morris Day?
Ninja'd by the satyr!
Yes, a god can bring whatever powers it has to bare. That does not mean it is worthy of worship.
And in my opinion there's no point in discussing if a religion was inspired by god itself, you believe it or not, no reasons to believe or not believe here.
I am kind of stunned. It sounds like you are suggesting one should not seek out the truth but accept blissful ignorance. Would you please elaborate.
As physical as space, you can't define the position of a particle by X-Y-Z, you define its position by X-Y-Z-time.
However both space and time doesn't make sense "before" the Universe was created.
The only really physical "thing" seems to be matter.
Move your frame of reference away from Earth (or just change your scale to the subatomic), and the whole X-Y-Z coordinate system you're using can also be seen as an artificial construct, jerry-rigged by humans to help us make sense of things, but not an integral part of the universe.
Matter and energy are equivalent as well (Cf. nuclear fission), rather than being separate "things." So the most you can say fundamentally say about the universe it that it represents one possible state (not necessarily unique) of a range of energy conditions.
Treating time as being fundamentally important because of your perception of it, and then artificially declaring restraints on the universe because of that perception, is edging towards the type of hubris that, when applied to religion instead of science, says things like "God has to do X because I think He should."
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I put forth that 'I don't know' is a perfectly valid answer.Amen. Claims of omniscience annoy me to no end; I prefer a guy who's not afraid to say, "maybe X, but we're not sure."
P.S. In a lot of cases, I'd also amend the "I don't know" to read "we don't know yet."
There's something in here that bugs me. I'm still not entirely sure -- so forgive me as I "think out loud"...
There seem to be other things that this "I don't know" seem to imply.
Christians seem to start with the premise that "God exists" but then use "God" as the answer to all sorts of questions. Not really helpful in general.
On the other hand, you (or similar others) are starting with the premise that "God doesn't exist" and are using "I don't know" to somehow "prove" that your premise is therefore correct.
The truth is, I'm not sure how related they actually are to each other. Knowing or not knowing how planets were started, how life started, what makes stars or how the universe came to be really doesn't have any bearing on whether or not God exists or if he had a hand in creating things.
We should not be using "God" as a catch-all to anything we don't know yet. That's the "Gap Theology" I was talking about the other day. But, similarly, we shouldn't be jumping up and down every time we figure something new out as though it somehow proves that God doesn't exist.
I'll stop now. Not sure if I hit on what was annoying me there though.
On the other hand, you (or similar others) are starting with the premise that "God doesn't exist" and are using "I don't know" to somehow "prove" that your premise is therefore correct.
Not at all, from my standpoint. I start with the premise that I don't know how things work, to begin with. Then I look for explanations, and if I find one that holds up to repeated testing and observation, I provisionally accept that one, and then go on to the next. If "God" provided a unique explanation for anything (one that consistently fit the observations), I'd adopt Him at that time, and add Him to gravity and so on as explanations for things.
So far, though, He hasn't provided an explanation for anything that doesn't seem to be better explained by a different, testable, explanation. So it's not that I start with the premise that He doesn't exist; it's that I've never found Him as a necessary addition to the list of things I provisionally do accept.
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On the other hand, you (or similar others) are starting with the premise that "God doesn't exist" and are using "I don't know" to somehow "prove" that your premise is therefore correct.
Not at all, from my standpoint. I start with the premise that I don't know how things work, to begin with. Then I look for explanations, and if I find one that holds up to repeated testing and observation, I provisionally accept that one, and then go on to the next. If "God" provided a unique explanation for anything in order to fit the observations, I'd adopt Him, and add Him to gravity and so on as explanations. So far He hasn't provided an explanation for anything that doesn't seem to be better explained by a different, testable, explanation.
It's not that I start with the premise that He doesn't exist; it's that I've never found Him as a necessary addition to the list of things I provisionally do accept.
Perhaps I was using a more general "you". It just seems like it is difficult for Christians and non-Christians both to separate the two.
For quite a while Christians have been saying that the earth had to have been placed here because if it was off just a little bit, there could be no life. The video clip that I watched a couple days ago said that there are other planets in the "sweet spot" and therefore there is no God.
Both positions annoy me and I wish there was more room for "middle ground".
Spoiler:We should not be using "God" as a catch-all to anything we don't know yet. That's the "Gap Theology" I was talking about the other day. But, similarly, we shouldn't be jumping up and down every time we figure something new out as though it somehow proves that God doesn't exist.
Today I got a DVD in the mail from Netflix. One can explain that by saying that a while back I signed up with them, set up a DVD queue, and so this DVD came up on the list and arrived today.
One can also explain this by saying that mind controlling aliens have used their powers to make me think that I signed up for Netflix and set up the DVD queue, and are even cooking my perceptions right now so I think that I have and I could go to the website and see the queue, look at my credit cards and find the charges, etc.
Take me out of the equation, since my perceptions could be wrong. How would I know if my brain was being hacked? Be agnostic about the mind controlling aliens. We're still explaining the same events. Is it more likely, all other things being equal, that I signed up for Netflix back in the day or more likely that aliens are hacking my brain?
It's certainly the first, and unless we have some reason to suppose the Samnell Buys His Own Netflix theory is incorrect (it doesn't fit with what we observe in that nobody else could see my account, my credit card bill doesn't have those charges on it when other people look at it, etc) or we have some kind of good outside reason to suspect alien involvement (like say one of their ships crashed, we're quite sure it's not a fraud, and inside are logs of the alien conspiracy meeting to discuss what to make me think I'm watching next, etc).
This applies to aliens and gods alike. We either have to have some kind of failing that makes the theory incomplete, a gap if you will, in which to insert a god or we must have some kind of independent reason to suspect a god is involved in this kind of thing. But, as you noted, the presence of a gap itself wouldn't be enough to squeeze a god in. So in the end you'd need both: the theory would need to have obvious failings that are solved by the inclusion of the additional entity AND we would have to have other reasons to believe that this entity is actually out there to be involved to begin with.
Or to put it in more folksy terms, one should not go looking for zebras until one is out of horses.
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I think that we are on the same page and then you say ...
Or to put it in more folksy terms, one should not go looking for zebras until one is out of horses.
... and I have no idea what you're talking about.
I just see that there is room for both religion and science. "Suns are formed from a whole lot of gasses and particles coming together -- it's a natural process..." "Birds evolved from dinosaurs through a natural process..." What do "laws of nature" mean? Where'd these "laws" come from? Could it not be that a divine being put them in place so we would have the potential to better understand the world/universe around us? Either way, it's not really "provable". They are exclusive concepts in that neither one needs the other to be "wrong" or "right". In fact, I don't see how you could use one to prove or disprove the other. No matter how much people try.
What do "laws of nature" mean? Where'd these "laws" come from? Could it not be that a divine being put them in place so we would have the potential to better understand the world/universe around us?
Possibly, but that would be Deism, rather than Christianity. In the latter (as well as in Islam, Hinduism, etc.), a divine being would have to put them into place only to egregiously violate them, repeatedly, in order to specifically influence human events.
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What do "laws of nature" mean? Where'd these "laws" come from? Could it not be that a divine being put them in place so we would have the potential to better understand the world/universe around us?Possibly, but that would be Deism, rather than Christianity. In the latter (as well as in Islam, Hinduism, etc.), a divine being would have to put them into place only to egregiously violate them, repeatedly, in order to specifically influence human events.
I'm not sure I'm following you here. I know that there are Christians who at least feel this way -- but I'm not sure why this must be the case.
I'm not sure I'm following you here. I know that there are Christians who at least feel this way -- but I'm not sure why this must be the case.
Incarnating yourself as an avatar in order to redeem mankind and reverse entropy via scapegoat blood sacrifice and subsequent bodily resurrection sort of flies in the face of natural laws. Not to mention worldwide floods, talking bushes, and the like. Christianity is founded on the assumption of violation of natural law by the Creator in order to guide and redeem the Created.
God: (Sighs) "Okay, you people STILL can't play nice in the perfect universe I made for you, even after I hit the reset button once to show you where you went wrong. Fine. I'll step down there myself and fix it for you."
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I'm not sure I'm following you here. I know that there are Christians who at least feel this way -- but I'm not sure why this must be the case.Incarnating yourself as an avatar in order to redeem mankind and reverse entropy via scapegoat blood sacrifice and subsequent bodily resurrection sort of flies in the face of natural laws. Not to mention worldwide floods, talking bushes, and the like. Christianity is founded on the assumption of violation of natural law by the Creator in order to guide and redeem the Created.
Since "heaven" and "hell" are outside of "natural laws", I don't necessarily see the whole "redemption" thing as "in order to specifically influence human events". "Worldwide flood" if it's to be believed (and doubtful, but we've been there...) I would count as "influence human events". But "talking bushes" doesn't really "influence human events" as much as is implied.
More often than not, God really didn't take direct actions to "influence human events". There was the Exodus, the Tower of Babel, the Flood, maybe Sodom and Gomorrah, but outside of that, God makes his presence known, influences a few people (or one?) and then "human events" move on.
I guess that I also feel that humans operate outside of "natural laws". We force or impose our will on the "natural world" around us. I mean, is a bush that talks to one person more of an "influence on human events" than say a nuclear power plant?
But, actually, I was talking more about present day rather than what many of you consider to be fairy tales.