Religious moderates: does it bother you that science is relentlessly pushing back religious nonsense one directionally, constantly and without pause?

I realize that you've made concessions as time has gone by, and have apparently had little difficulty doing so.

"Oh, the earth resolves around the sun? Well, God still did it, we just read it wrong."

"Oh, the earth is older than 6000 years old and I'll look like a total idiot if I say it isn't? Well, my Holy text must have been metaphorical at that point."

"Oh, prayer, unlike what it says in my scripture doesn't actually ever work? Well, thank god that he has inspired medicine to progress so that my child may live."

"Oh, I'd be considered insane and go to prison if I actually killed people for working on the sabbath or taking the Lord my God's name in vain? Well, I guess Jesus kind of metaphorically implicated that I don't really have to do that any more, kind of, I guess. Heh. Heh."

Now, I know that the percentages of those who claim to believe in the bible are remarkably high in the US, but I also know that a great many of that percent are saying it and not really believing it. That is to say, most "believers" I speak with usually end with, "Well, I just know there is something out there, I believe in a creator". They back off of any real association with any particular religion.

Keeping this in mind, does the flood of understanding we are coming to put any strain on your belief?

Or do you just keep the two totally separate?

How many of you really believe in your particular Magic Zombies and rituals, and how many of you have reasoned out that those particular ancient texts are actually quite absurd and have simply retained your belief in a "higher power"?

You don't have any idea what the positions of an actual Christian are. You just assume that since extremist are blind that every Christian is a young earth believer. They are not. The Bible very easily works in an ancient Earth Christian viewpoint, like mine, and that includes God. There is nothing in the Bible that has been refuted by science and there never will be.

Also you very very clearly have no understanding of basic Christian theology, since you are bringing stuff up from the Old Testament, and assuming that it should apply to Christians today. You may want to pick up a Bible and start reading around Matthew 5 or so. Stop after 1 John and report back.

You are staggeringly wrong in every single one of your assumptions.

I would bring up responses to every one of your common and uninspired retorts but so many have obliterated them already that it's easier to simply refer to these thinkers.

Read Sam Harris or Hitchens or... well, I'm sure you know them all.

The psychotic god of the old testament isn't vindicated by the new testament, nor did the Zombie Jesus take back all of the blood thirsty yearnings of the old testament god.

The bible, old or new, the koran, the book of mormon... all of them are literally laughable when it comes to claims about the natural world, cosmology and ethics. This is not up for debate.

The only answer to the absurdities these days is cherry picking metaphor.

Things that are absurd or downright vicious and disgusting are now "metaphor", and everything that is love or peace is literal.

It is rationalization.

Which is why there are so few actual believers today. Fundamentalists. People who actually exhibit behavior that indicates they actually believe that nonsense.

These people are generally marginalized, thankfully.

The rest fall between the spectrum of cherry picking, compartmentalizing apologists utilizing metaphorical rationalization - which is apparently where you reside - and those who have for all intents and purposes abandoned the texts themselves and are more of a deist now than a theist.

God this thread is going to get ugly quick.

*menacing laughter*

This in itself is a problem. You have an unfalsifiable theory. If what you believe can never be shown to be wrong by observation it is dogma. Very dangerous mind virus that is. Once it goes in, it can never come out.

False

I'm ready. Gimme a list.




I totally agree. I wasn't saying that I would not change my mind given solid evidence, but I didn't state that. The truth is... is that my belief is that it will never happen. It could. I just don't think it will.

http://www.reasonproject.org/scripture_project/



Fair enough.

None of this shows any contridicting points about the natural world in the Bible. It's just the standard atheist nonsense about how they don't like God's perceived personality.

I went to this site.

Went to contridictions, clicked a couple.

These were answered long ago, or are not even contridictions at all.

The fact that they are listed in some manner as proof that the Bible contridicts itself lends me to want to ignor the rest of this guys postulations.

Listing the examples of Israel killing people as some sort of terrible unknown action of violence is completely blind to reality of history.

You would do better to at least present his best argument instead of expecting us to wade through his 1,800 'contridictions' and answer them again because he didn't want to put 1/10th the effort into finding truth as he did into finding errors that weren't there.

That's a contradiction! See, you have a high tolerance for them!



They are not listed there as any sort of "proof" of anything. It's a reference work which catalogs the various issues with sacred texts.



Again, its just a resource, not a reasoned argument. The Reason Project is devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values, not to 'proving' anything. That said, if you want the founder Sam Harris's argument spelled out for you, you could start with "Letter To A Christian Nation", although you will find it infuriating, so I don't really recommend that you read it unless you are really curious.

Yea, the younger BG might go read his stuff, because I used to like to fight these battles.

After fighting the same battle a hundred times, I now only fight them when I can enjoy insults and jokes during the debate.

I suspect Harris takes himself so serious that he can't debate in this manner.

Plus he's an idiot.

Like Dawkins.

Let's go back to the politics section and make fun of BigD and All_in

No it wont,

God loves you weather or not you want him/her to.

Anyone who takes the bait and makes it ugly is just being condescending or purposefully wanting to start something which isnt being christianlike anyway.

John 3:16 is the only relevant post in the bible anyway, everything else is just support.

His email debate with Andrew Sullivan was fun.

Excellent point!


I am also now sorry I took the time to answer a post of your seriously in the Socialism is wonderful thread.

I hate to admit this but Im not gettin it. Was there supposed to be a SW here.

lol

Harris can be kind of funny.

why dont you idiots just read a history book and see how christianity and later islam are just modifications of ancient jewish beliefs. the Mesopotamians and Egyptions had various gods for different aspects of life, then the jews came along and invented the idea of there being one all powerful god, and it progressed from there. is it really so hard to believe that all this stuff was just made up to explain the world around them that they just could not comprehend at all?

that is a good clip.

i know SH pretty well and he does indeed have a sense of humor. however, i don't think he and BG would appreciate each other's debating styles.

maybe I should arrange this just to see...

It would be cute to see "SH" lopsidedly trounce "BG".

Don't bring him around here though if he's getting big headed about his relative fame.

I will smack his ass back down to earth.

Much as I respect the guy.

I think the only sense in which he is big-headed is the literal one.

One time I was deep in an MTT and some guy on stars had his face as an avatar. Freaked me out.

Heh.

Looks a bit like Ben Stiller I think.

YES. the two of them are partially fused as a concept in my mind.

You have yet to make a single point. I'm not being condescending. I've always liked you Spade, but if you're just looking to hurl insults and not have meaningful discussion, then let me know, so I can move along.



Sam is right. We should laugh at an 'Elvis is alive' believer. The problem with the analogy is that Elvis never claimed to be God. Elvis wasn't a character in a book written 4,000 to 2,000 years old that is completely unchanged, proven by the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Remember that your dislike of God's personality doesn't disprove the Bible's claims. What I am asking for is a list of claims the Bible makes about the natural world that is incorrect. I would prefer your own work also, rather than a cut and paste. It's very important to note here also, that in the world of the Bible, God is involved. So saying something stupid like Jonah wasn't swallowed by a fish, because he would have died, doesn't work. Miracles constantly happen when God is around. That should not be confused with the fact that the Koran claims that the Earth is flat, and has an edge... that would be an excellent example of the Bible being incorrect about the natural world. Find anything like that, and the Bible will be easy to dismiss.

That's not the analogy. The analogy is that they are both absurd beliefs unsupported by evidence. ( p.s. did jesus even claim to be god? )



Burden of proof is on you. If you want to claim that something in the bible is true, provide sufficient corroborating evidence. We can't go around "disproving" everything that was ever written by anyone in the course of human history. Remember, you are proposing some pretty outlandish claims (a guy walked on water, came back to life, etc.) and your only evidence is that it was written down.



This is begging the question.

He did.



Not if I'm right it's not. And if I'm wrong, it doesn't matter.

Also, I totally agree that miracles are outlandish, that's why in II Timothy that it says that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. If it's not inerrant, then it's not the word of God. I'm not asking you to believe every story, I'm asking you to show a false claim, outside of the power of God, that the Bible makes. If you find one, then the entire Bible is worthless. If you don't want the burden of proof, then don't bother... it won't matter to either of us in this debate.

It will matter to me personally however, since my desire is that you see the truth and come into a personal relationship with Christ.

By the way, if Elvis had claimed to be god would that make believing him to be alive any less absurd?





oh boy.

The issue we are dealing with is whether or not you are right.



It's not about wanting the burden of proof or not wanting it. It's a question of where it actually lies. If I write a book that says that Elvis is god and was reincarnated as Lindsay Lohan will you be required to disprove that? It cannot be our method of truth-finding that we automatically believe everything we hear until disproven. We can only be successful the other way around.

Now as to your actual proposal about finding a false claim, the problem with that adventure is that your standard for "false" is not properly defined. I can and have shown you several claims which are false in relation to evidence we have about the world, or are contradictions in the plain language in which they are stated. But when you can reinterpret any set of words to fit reality we cannot actually make any progress.

As already stated, if packaged with the other mountains of evidence from thousands of years ago, then yes... it would be less absurd.




Not really. The issue is that Spademan is claiming that I am wrong. I didn't start the thread. The burden is on him.




I agree with this, but the Bible is not a singular claim. It has 66 books written by 40 authors. These writers come from all walks of life (kings to fishermen) and spans over a period of 1,500 years or more. That is FAR from your 'example' of a of solitary claim by a random person.



I agree that it could get tedious, maybe not possible... but in my experience nearly every single one of your side's claims of falsehood, is as if God doesn't exist or has any effect on the situation. This is circlular and is impossible to argue a side, because in the Biblical world, God is there. God is involved. Crow could come in here and say, "The Bible says the sun stopped in the noon sky and didn't move for 24 hours. Not possible. Bible false." The problem is that for whatever reason he is forgetting that God is involved. Every single other religious text I have read has errors about the natural world that don't include a miracle from God.

I have read the Koran, and the Book of Mormon. The Koran claims that the world is flat and that you can go to the edge. The Book of Mormon claims that Joseph Smith's plates were made of solid gold and gives their dimensions. Only problem, supposedly Joseph ran 3 miles carrying 240 pounds of gold while being chased, and then handed them to his mother through the kitchen window. I was in Utah last week, and many people said, "He had supernatural strength." Why then doesn't the Book of Mormon OR the church literature ever give the glory for that 'miracle' to God. (It's because they didn't realize until recently that it would have been impossible. The official church stance is now that the plates were a gold alloy)

That is the only thing I'm asking of you guys. If the Bible is so obviously false, just show me one time where it's wrong about the natural world without God being involved. People have been trying for 2,000 years, and I suspect that they will keep trying.

It wasn't an insult, it was an expression of frustration, because you were again begging the question. More on this below, because it comes up again and seems to be our main point of misunderstanding.



First of all given the age of these writings all of these issues about the origin of the text are in question. But ignoring that, there are even more books written about UFO sightings, and those claims are just as unsubstantiated. The fact is that writing something down does not constitute good evidence that it happened. If it did, you would not only have to believe the bible, but also the koran, the vedas, and Dianetics.



This is a good crystallization of what the problem is.

What you have here is a logical fallacy. You are using the statement-to-be-proven as a premise in your argument. What you are saying amounts to "Since the bible is true, it must be true". We cannot in good faith examine the text to decide whether or not it is true with the requirement that we must already assume it to be true.




You are just unwilling to extend those texts the same liberties you extend to the Bible. If every potential impossibility is explainable by a miracle then there is no possible way anything written in the bible could be accepted to be false by you. Let's say for example I uncover the passage which says "Carbon has an atomic number of 95". You can just say, well maybe it did back then because god temporarily made it that way before changing it! So in contrast to your comments yesterday, I do think you have a problem of unfalsifiability.




If you use "god was involved" to get out of every contradiction you have a get-of-jail-free-card to play whenever you like.

This thread title sounds like the name of a Frank Zappa album.

I'm not saying that since the Bible is true, then it must be true. I'm saying that IF the Bible is true, then God is involved. You are saying the same thing. "since God isn't provable, then all of these situations in the Bible are wrong." I'm not asking you to first believe that the Bible is true before examining the text. I'm saying that you should find anywhere in the Bible that makes a false claim about the natural world. (I would except a false atomic number as proof of inaccuracy)




I agree with all this, except not extend liberties to the Bible. I've never run across a false claim about the natural world in the Bible. (That wasn't EXPLICITLY attributed to God)

Allright then maybe we will have to see the process at work in order to reveal what is going on here. I will start with a couple of contradictions, since those are hard to wriggle out of if they both can't be true. I just picked these out quickly at random; I don't put these forth as particularly good or damning examples, but let's see what you do with them.


#1

Solomon built a house. Any good house has got to have pillars, so he built some:

1 Kings 7:15 For he cast two pillars of brass, of eighteen cubits high apiece: and a line of twelve cubits did compass either of them about.

Allright! Nice job Solomon, gotta love the choice of 18 cubit pillars, a man with a sense of style. Oh wait --

2 Chronicles 3:15 Also he made before the house two pillars of thirty and five cubits high , and the chapiter that was on the top of each of them was five cubits.

Hmm. How high were the pillars?

#2

I suspect Indiana Jones could answer this next one. The Ark of the Covenant contained Moses's stone tablets, and nothing else. The bible says this twice:

1 Kings 8:9 There was nothing in the ark save the two tables of stone, which Moses put there at Horeb, when the LORD made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt.

2 Chronicles 5:10 There was nothing in the ark save the two tables which Moses put therein at Horeb, when the LORD made a covenant with the children of Israel, when they came out of Egypt.

OK we get it, nothing in there except the tablets. But I guess sometimes "nothing" means "and a golden pot and Aaron's rod":

Hebrews 9:4 The ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant.

#3

For a change of pace I will throw in an historical inaccuracy.

Daniel 5:1 Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.

Daniel 5:2 Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein.

Belshazzar was never a king of Babylon, whose history is well known. It should have been Nabonidus who was king at this time, Belshazzar was his son and viceroy, but never became king. Also Belshazzar was not the son of Nebuchadnezzar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmament

it's even worse than that, since the implication is god hid evidence of his miracles to make it seem like they didn't happen.

The dialogue going on in this thread is exactly why I basically just, as you see it, "hurl insults".

It is impossible, I repeat impossible to have a meaningful discussion with someone who resides in "faith" or "god did it".

This is not my first rodeo when it comes to debate or argument concerning religion. I know when things are just going to go the path of "my superstition has a perfect out when it comes to any contradiction or absurdity, (insert magic being here)!

I could trudge out every absurdity ever pointed out in your bible (or any other holy book) by "my own work" or the work of others, list them out in chronological order, cite them, annotate them, bring out experts in science and history and logic, philosophers on ethics and being, mathematicians and logical geniuses... and have them each give a dissertation on their respective problems with your (or any other superstitions) staggeringly unreasonable position relating to god or gods... I could do all of this (as some people literally have), and all of it means nothing in the face of "faith" or "god did it".

Nothing.

This gives solace to many a believer. "Faith is strong indeed, Praise Magic Zombie X". It only reinforces the blind ignorance.

This same blind ignorance helps obfuscate from each believer that the same FAITH exists in every superstition. If one's unwavering belief in a thing is any kind of proof, each of them have proof incontrovertable. Contradictory and mutually exclusive each faith may be.

So instead of doing this dance and kindly attempting to engage in real debate as vb and crow are wont to do, I make declarative statements of fact wrapped in malicious beauty. To do my part to show that it is ok not to tolerate nonsense out of some sense of warped social deference.

The first two don't apply to our discussion, but the third one is very good, exactly what I was asking for. Let me read Daniel again and I'll get back to you tomorrow.




Ok, this is fair. It's important for you to understand that just because something is unprovable doesn't make it untrue or absurd... well maybe still absurd, but definitely not untrue. Also, you won't hear free-pass stuff from me. I'll shoot you a straight answer every time you ask for one.

this would be a fine explanation if you didn't actually start threads with titles like "Magic Zombie Receeds," and "Hey idiots." You start threads with insults, not with the intention of having a conversation, so how do you know that "things are just going to go the path of "my superstition has a perfect out when it comes to any contradiction or absurdity?" Don't get me wrong, I don't ever take you seriously, and you've never ruffled my feathers...I actually find your posts pretty hilarious and harmless (to anyone other than yourself). I actually look forward to your threads because what you do and why you do it are pretty transparent, I just love reading the reactions to them.

He already said that he didn't want to have a conversation... you need to read his post again.

I understand that unprovable doesn't mean untrue. I do. But you need to understand that being unable to disprove something unprovable has nothing whatsoever to do with said thing having merit.

Any silly thing I can come up with akin to the FSM or invisible, intangible dragons share the same quality. And here is the important point: The only difference between any silly thing I can imagine and your religion's god, or any religions god is the number of people who believe it and how socially accepted it is.

I am quite certain this will have no effect on you. That's ok, you clearly know the score since you helped clear this



up.

But I can tell you that if I raise a kid in a community of FSM believers, that kid will not only almost certainly grow up to have faith in and believe in the FSM, but if he were to be let outside he would, at first, talk about the FSM with the same devotion, belief, fervor and certainty with which you speak of your god.




Any god is, by necessity, a free pass if one has faith in that god.

I totally disagree with this. You can not make up anything today that would remain 100% unchanged for 2,000 years. (Proven via the Dead Sea Scrolls) You cannot claim to be something and so prove it to your contemporaries that the entire calendar system for the entire planet is based on your life. You cannot be the fulfillment of prophecies that were written more than 2,000 years before you were born, but fit your life in every conceivable way. You can not have 40+ authors write about your idea in 66 books written over a period of more than 1,500 years and have no one able to disproven anything in any of the books, even though everyone tries.




I don't disagree with this... but fervor has nothing to do with truth.



"The more I study science the more I believe in God," Albert Einstein

"It seems to me that Richard Dawkins constantly overlooks the fact that Darwin himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The Origin of Species, pointed out that his whole
argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers. This is the creature the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account.
Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account. It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and
enormously powerful argument to design."

"Follow the evidence, wherever it leads." - Socrates

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. (Albert Einstein, 1954, The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press)

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.
(Albert Einstein, 1936, The Human Side. Responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray.)

A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
(Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930)

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature. (Albert Einstein, The World as I See It)

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
(Albert Einstein, Obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955)

I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.
(Albert Einstein, responding to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein who had sent Einstein a cablegram bluntly demanding "Do you believe in God?" Quoted from Victor J. Stenger, Has Science Found God? 2001, chapter 3.)

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism. (Albert Einstein)



Of course not.

We have TV and magazines and the web and education and the rigors of science.

You aren't just comparing apples to oranges, you're comparing apples to star-dust covered chicken feathers on the far side of Jupiter.

Absolute and total non-issue.

Why not -- if both statements cannot be true, one must be false. If one is false, then the bible does indeed contain errors and you have a big problem.

That is some emasculating ownage right there. And this thread is now officially ugly.

I didn't post that as a statement on the Christian God, but rather, that there are many intelligent scientists who are, in fact, theists... and most of these quotes back that point up. Up until now, you have stated several times that believing in God is equivalent to any other fairytale, and while he obviously doesn't believe in the Christian God or even a personal God... Einstein was almost certainly a theist, and disagreed with your hypothesis.



haha... awesome.



I'm on the fence about the tidbit that you pulled out here. It's either not very important, since it was a hypothetical anyway... or it's very important that the Bible has proven itself reliable after millions of transcriptions.

Well, if by 7% or so, then yes, many scientists indeed. If we are going to actually crunch those numbers though, it won't look good for theism.

A trailer park or Walmart, things would be looking up for theism in terms of percentage of believers.

Again however, this is a non issue. That something like 93% of the National Academy of Sciences are not "believers" does not make theists "wrong".



You mean to say deist, I don't concede the point as true, and even if it were it would still be a non issue.

Every religion claims their really old, really incredible text has been believed and proved itself the whole way.

All of them.

That's why we should investigate their claims.