Rock Beyond Belief

[Roll the Bones 74]

And finally it brings me back to the point of the thread, that athiesm is still thought of in a negative light in this country and that Chritians won't keep it out of others lives and involve it in government and politics rather than keep it a personal belief. The problem lies in that . Christians and religons try to push their influence onto others virtually every day and recently there has been a whole wave of attempted laws legislating Christian morality on the rest of us, in the form of abortion laws, teaching creationism, or plastering your rules on walls or money. The new conservative wave brought on by the last election seems to have given a new fervor to a huge wave of idiocism.So let me ask this, do you think the comander at Ft. Bragg is acting bigoted or wrong?I'll get to your previous post in a bit.

[Roll the Bones 74]

You can't look at it differently. That's the Bible. You specifically said, "What's the point of the OT for a Christian?". I don't even understand what you are saying you look at differently. I told you exactly why the OT is important to a Christian.You need to reread Leviticus. The Jews weren't dying left and right. They just had to jump through a lot of hoops. They had like 10 different sacrifices they had to make, including one that covered them if they did something they weren't supposed to unknowingly.I missed the section where he murdered 2 million people. Also, again, the rules were impossible but the continual sacrifices were the way out. Jesus is the final sacrifice and now we don't have to do that anymore.?? That was always there, he didn't come up with a new plan.Are any of those guys scientists? Dawkins rejected the idea that "god" created the universe and instead proposed that aliens planted life on this planet. Is that really any different?

The number of people that were killed by God in the Bible. I came up with 2,476,633, which, of course, greatly underestimates God's total death toll, since it only includes those killings for which specific numbers are given. No attempt was made to include the victims of Noah's flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, or the many plagues, famines, fiery serpents, etc., with which the good book is filled. Still, 2 million is a respectable number even for world class killers. But how does this compare with Satan? How many did he kill in the Bible? Well I can only find ten, and even these he shares with God, since God allowed him to do it as a part of a bet. I'm talking about the seven sons and three daughters of Job.

I would want to add that having just read Job as mentioned, that Satan had God's permission to do this. But I would still agree and credit Satan with the ten deaths though.If you add in all the rest estimates are around 24 million though.

[Roll the Bones 74]

QUOTE (Roll the Bones @ Wednesday, March 30th, 2011, 11:04 AM) No, I perfectly understand but look at it from a different point of view than you do.You can't look at it differently. That's the Bible. You specifically said, "What's the point of the OT for a Christian?". I don't even understand what you are saying you look at differently. I told you exactly why the OT is important to a Christian.

Sure I can. I look at the old testment as mythology, exactly what it is. Your explanation didn't make alot sense to be honest and is more of a regurgitation of biblical apology than addressing the content of the bible. I mean, "God didn't do it on purpose?" Really?

QUOTE No kidding, just ask the Jews. God was smiting them left and right for not getting it. God was either pretty bad at spreading his rules or the people were to dense to get it. In either case this omni-everything God had alot of faults which is obviously a huge contradiction.You need to reread Leviticus. The Jews weren't dying left and right. They just had to jump through a lot of hoops. They had like 10 different sacrifices they had to make, including one that covered them if they did something they weren't supposed to unknowingly.

God killed Jews left and right throughout the OT. He was contstantly punishing them throughout the OT like when Moses came down the mountain with the commandments and found them partying. I can't remember how many he killed then. But I get the point you are making, the writers of the OT got carried away with the rule making to the point of impossibility thus the NT to revise it and make it simpler to follow. Hardly the word (or plan) of a divine God.

QUOTE Right, becase he had the great idea to let everyone off the hook from the rules by coming up with the "asking forgiveness" clause.?? That was always there, he didn't come up with a new plan.

Really? Where in the OT because I missed it.

[Roll the Bones 74]

Are any of those guys scientists? Dawkins rejected the idea that "god" created the universe and instead proposed that aliens planted life on this planet. Is that really any different?

And well, I obviously know more about the bible than you do Dawkins.This host of scientists and writers have pretty much refuted every philosophical and scientific argument for religon there is.

[brvheart 1,752]

Really? Where in the OT because I missed it.

You missed the part of the OT about sacrifices?

[Roll the Bones 74]

You missed the part of the OT about sacrifices?

okay---

For the believer, the OT is full of rules on purpose. It shows what one must do to be "holy", and it's impossible.

You need to reread Leviticus. The Jews weren't dying left and right. They just had to jump through a lot of hoops. They had like 10 different sacrifices they had to make, including one that covered them if they did something they weren't supposed to unknowingly.

So you are saying it's impossible to be holy because of the contrary and complex rules or because of they had to sacrifice things? Look, Leviticus was full of a bunch of crazy stuff, though I didn't find him personally all that crazy surprisingly. I am not sure how this, or what this has to do with the ignoring the old testament in favor of the NT. Perhaps you could clarify or I am forgetting something about those "sacrifices".

[vbnautilus 48]

I missed the section where he murdered 2 million people.

The flood?

Are any of those guys scientists? Dawkins rejected the idea that "god" created the universe and instead proposed that aliens planted life on this planet. Is that really any different?

Yes, Dawkins and Harris are scientists, and Dennett is virtually a cognitive scientist even though he's really a philosopher. I don't know how much you are just joking about Dawkins, but that's a pretty gross misrepresentation of his point of view.

[Roll the Bones 74]

Sacrifices in Leviticus are coming back to me. Give me some time and I'll address Leviticus more.Okay I was confused when you said something about the 10 sacrifices or something. Leviticus was the king of sacrifices. I mean if I ever go back in time to these days, this is the must have book if you don't want to look like a doofus when they are doing all these rituals. The whole first part of the book, 7 chapters, are like a guide book to ritual sacrifice. I suppose that's why alot of people don't bring up reading it and only point out certain passages. It's like reading the guidebook to your cell phone, repetetive and kinda boring. But if you want to know how to do it right you better have it around. Know that the priest gets to keep most of it to eat, be prepared for the blood splatter, pinching a pidgeons head off, etc..The more I think about it, Leviticus was like a guidebook to being God's slave. He was the king at the time after all before passing it on later to mere mortals. After all the rules regarding animal sacrifice, and damn sam, they did it alot and for everything, along came Aaron's sons with the wrong incense. Big ****in mistake.Poof- so much for Moses' nephews. Such a shame too, because really Aaron was such a jackass and one of the real bad guys in the bible, his poor sons got the brunt of it and Aaron always seemed to get a pass for his shit.But anyway, God wasn't petty. It was the wrong incense dammit!God told Aaron- "You must distinguish between the sacred and the profane, between the impure and the pure; and you must teach the Israelites all the law which the Lord has imparted to them through Moses." So God isn't being a vindictive jerk, per se, he is simply telling people you better watch the details of the way in which you serve me and get it right. God must be hell on waiters as well. But really it's like I said, he is the master and we are the slaves and the demon is in the details.So then Leviticus goes on about eating and why (Jews can't eat pork), impurity and why you should always carry your own stool to sit on, since it's a sin to sit where an impure women (on her period) has been for two weeks. Also tons on Lepers, skin diseases (lots of skin disease stuff in the OT) and why baldness and shaving your body is a good thing.This isn't even half way through, so I know what you mean about it being impossible to follow all these rules. In fact, I am getting ready to read a book called, "A year of living biblically" which should be a hoot, about a guy who actually tries all this.So, what does this have to do with, oh yeah, God set the rules and Jesus came along to what, "fulfill" the promise or something.

[brvheart 1,752]

Yes, Dawkins and Harris are scientists, and Dennett is virtually a cognitive scientist even though he's really a philosopher. I don't know how much you are just joking about Dawkins, but that's a pretty gross misrepresentation of his point of view.

Hmm. He said it, word for word.

[vbnautilus 48]

Hmm. He said it, word for word.

No, he didn't. I assume you are talking about Creationist Ben Stein's presentation of his interview with Dawkins. In that interview Dawkins was asked how "Intelligent Design" could possibly be true. In response, he offered a hypothetical in which intelligent life from another planet planted life on earth. He did not purport to support this view. He was giving ID the benefit of the doubt by trying to extract an actual testable hypothesis from it. He was speaking entirely hypothetically. Note that there is nothing wrong with this hypothesis, although there is currently no evidence to support it. I don't know if you are the victim of some kind of misinformation campaign or if you twisted this yourself, but turning this into "Dawkins believes life came from aliens" is pretty ridiculous.

[vbnautilus 48]

Here is Dawkins describing what happened: Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.This 'Ultimate 747' argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.Well, you will have guessed how Mathis/Stein handled this. I won't get the exact words right (we were forbidden to bring in recording devices on pain of a $250,000 fine, chillingly announced by some unnamed Gauleiter before the film began), but Stein said something like this. "What? Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN." "Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE." I can't remember whether this was the moment in the film where we were regaled with another Lord Privy Seal cut to an old science fiction movie with some kind of android figure — that may have been used in the service of trying to ridicule Francis Crick (again, dutiful titters from the partisan audience).http://richarddawkins.net/articles/2394So it looks like you just bought Ben Stein's twisting of Dawkins.

[Roll the Bones 74]

I think you're jumping from A to Z without acknowledging there are some letters in between, but at least I understand what you're saying now.I would like to hear some of these historical inaccuracies though. Not because I don't believe they exist, but just because I'm curious.

Sorry, forgot about this.One of the major stories of the OT was the Exodus, where Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt where they were enslaved for centuries. Problem was, they were never enslaved in Egypt according to archeological records. Of the ones that were there, there is no discrepancy between how they lived and anybody else. There certainly wasn't a mass tribe enslaved there though. This is kind of a problem since a large portion of the bible is based on this story. It really calls Moses existence into question and thus the whole house of cards. The ten commandments, the plagues, parting the sea, wandering in the desert, numerous miracles, him leading them to the promised land, etc...

[Roll the Bones 74]

Depends on what you mean by taking a side.If you ask me if I think the Bible is infallible, then no, I don't believe that.I also don't believe, however, that the current attacks on it here are that compelling.

So, if you found out that large portions of the bible were plagarized or rewritten, that most of it was innacurate or impossible, would you still use it as your sole guidance and moral code to live your life?

[brvheart 1,752]

Here is Dawkins describing what happened: Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.This 'Ultimate 747' argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.Well, you will have guessed how Mathis/Stein handled this. I won't get the exact words right (we were forbidden to bring in recording devices on pain of a $250,000 fine, chillingly announced by some unnamed Gauleiter before the film began), but Stein said something like this. "What? Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN." "Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE." I can't remember whether this was the moment in the film where we were regaled with another Lord Privy Seal cut to an old science fiction movie with some kind of android figure — that may have been used in the service of trying to ridicule Francis Crick (again, dutiful titters from the partisan audience).http://richarddawkins.net/articles/2394So it looks like you just bought Ben Stein's twisting of Dawkins.

It sounds like you are buying Dawkins BS backtrack to me.

[vbnautilus 48]

It sounds like you are buying Dawkins BS backtrack to me.

Are you serious???First of all, it's pretty clear from watching the interview what he was saying. He never ever says he believes this proposition. You can watch it here:

Also consider that he was tricked into doing this interview by the producers of the movie, who lied to him about the title of the movie and its purpose. They pretended to be pro-science to get him to do the interview. Ben Stein is the Michael Moore of creationism. Now, you think Dawkins is lying about what he actually believes??! Why would he do that? It makes no sense. If you can't get to the truth on this simple case -- where a propagandist intentionally misrepresented someone's point of view for the purposes of a movie, and we have verbal testimony from that person about what their views really are -- how can we possibly expect you to evaluate something like the bible?

[brvheart 1,752]

Are you serious???First of all, it's pretty clear from watching the interview what he was saying. He never ever says he believes this proposition. You can watch it here:

Also consider that he was tricked into doing this interview by the producers of the movie, who lied to him about the title of the movie and its purpose. They pretended to be pro-science to get him to do the interview. Ben Stein is the Michael Moore of creationism. Now, you think Dawkins is lying about what he actually believes??! Why would he do that? It makes no sense. If you can't get to the truth on this simple case -- where a propagandist intentionally misrepresented someone's point of view for the purposes of a movie, and we have verbal testimony from that person about what their views really are -- how can we possibly expect you to evaluate something like the bible?

Thanks for the link. Ben Stein sure had him on the run, didn't he?

[vbnautilus 48]

Thanks for the link. Ben Stein sure had him on the run, didn't he?

I mean, you can pretend now that you didn't believe it, but I'm willing to bet that this morning you were walking around with the belief "Richard Dawkins believes aliens seeded life on earth" firmly planted in your head.Just remember that in the reality where he believes that, you have an earring.

[brvheart 1,752]

I mean, you can pretend now that you didn't believe it, but I'm willing to bet that this morning you were walking around with the belief "Richard Dawkins believes aliens seeded life on earth" firmly planted in your head.

You said yourself that he thinks it's possible. That's what I was saying and it sounds like we all agree.

[vbnautilus 48]

You said yourself that he thinks it's possible. That's what I was saying and it sounds like we all agree.

No, I'm putting my foot down: no more pretend-agreeing! We most certainly do not agree. ( I have noticed that you often fake-agree in order to diffuse an argument. You'll say "I agree!" then your next sentence belies that you do not agree at all. )You said

Dawkins rejected the idea that "god" created the universe and instead proposed that aliens planted life on this planet. Is that really any different?

Which is totally and entirely false. Dawkins did not propose any such thing. He does not believe that aliens planted life on this planet or support the idea in any way whatsoever. You directly suggested that Dawkins put forth this idea as his alternative to god creating the universe. He did not. There is no agreement here unless you are admitting that you were mistaken about what Dawkins' was saying.

[brvheart 1,752]

Which is totally and entirely false. Dawkins did not propose any such thing. He does not believe that aliens planted life on this planet or support the idea in any way whatsoever. You directly suggested that Dawkins put forth this idea as his alternative to god creating the universe. He did not. There is no agreement here unless you are admitting that you were mistaken about what Dawkins' was saying.

Of course he did. He was given a hypothesis and he proposed.... exactly what I said he did. Later you posted the link and agreed with me.

[vbnautilus 48]

Of course he did.

See, we disagree. If I ask Obama: "What would you want to do regarding taxes for the rich if you were a republican?"And he replies "Well, I would want to lower taxes for the rich". Would it be fair to say that Obama proposed lowering taxes on the rich? Because that is exactly what you are doing. Dawkins was describing the position of Intelligent Design, not his own position. So to say he proposed that is just as misleading as saying that Obama proposed lowering taxes in the dialog above. It's effectively a lie.

[SuitedAces21 2,722]

this is great stuff.

[BaseJester 1]

I'm always fascinated how easily you guys buy this.Peter didn't write Peter...because you guys figured it out... 2,000 years later.....from your in-depth understanding of common literary copyright infringement practices being carried out in a small corner of the Roman empire...

Traditionally the Church considers Moses the author of the Pentateuch and Daniel the (singular) author of Book of Daniel. So I think it's fair to ask, what makes us suspect that Peter wrote 2 Peter?

[Spademan 94]

Ideologues produce ideologues. (in religion and in higher education)I think I disagree with you here. Evidence and discovery are and have always been repressed by the establishment. It's harder now to keep everything under wraps, but anything that gets out is immediately dismissed as crazy and fringe, and then killed by the people in power. <snip>Btw, I'm not specifically trying to make the claim that proof of the Bible's accuracy has been purposely hidden. I'm just taking exception to this point that all scientific discovery is easily and freely available.

Your misunderstanding of how the scientific method works is not surprising, is telling and, when joined with your particular beliefs, accounts for your absurd, 9/11 nutter-like conspiracy nonsense. You should research the scientific process some before making claims about the scientific process.Really.

It's just like that in the scientific community. Global warming? yep.

I have no idea what "Global warming? yep" is intended to mean here.

Also, I didn't see VB's video. Do you have a list of these books I should read? I'm interested.

Watch the video's, they're well presented and should be of interest to believers and non-believers alike. In regard the bullshit you're going on about concerning Dawkin's "proposing we came from aliens", I really, really hope you're joking. At first it could have just been that you were hoodwinked by the propaganda of the embarrassingly fallacious Expelled!.But your continued defense of yourself on the matter is approaching a disgusting level of intellectual dishonesty.

[Skeleton Jelly 2]

This is why I occasionally, as you may see it, jump on you. You are defending it, even though you present it as a sort of outsider position, an "I'm not taking a position" position, but the result is you defending it nonetheless. The "I don't have a position", when you are defending a position, is actually pretty annoying and comes off as cowardly and hints at intellectually dishonest. It should be clear where one stands on an issue before one engages in discussion on the issue.So when you come in and defend a claim "attacking" the bible or a "believer", even if you make a claim that is only about a particular approach to the "attacking" of the bible or the "believer", it compels me to come in and point out how you're neglecting everything else that's been pointed out. Because you haven't declared anything yourself, it translates simply to a defense of the bible or the believer. Know what I mean? Your posts imply you are at the very least a free-range deist. This implication is derived from the meaning I find in your posts in the religious forum. I've never seen you express your "beliefs" explicitly. You may have and I didn't see the posts. I've never seen it however. I am 99% sure you're at the very least a deist, and as a result your posts come off as a defense of deism. One time out of a hundred I'd be wrong on that.

I looked up "free range deist," but apparently that isn't an established thing. Fortunately I know what "free range" means and I could look up "deist." From wiki:Critical elements of deist thought included:

• Rejection of all religions based on books that claim to contain the revealed word of God.
• Rejection of reports of miracles, prophecies and religious "mysteries".

Constructive elements of deist thought included:

• God exists, created and governs the universe.
• God gave humans the ability to reason.

That seems pretty close to what I believe I guess, except I don't know why that last bullet point is needed. If God created the universe, why is it necessary to point out God also did something else?Anyway, one of the things I hate (from both sides) is attributing human qualities to "God." I think if there is a God (and it still is "if") it wouldn't be like anything we can imagine. So there's really no point to my belief that a God is possible, but I guess I don't feel as comfortable writing the possiblity off. I suppose even my explicitly stated belief is pretty wishy-washy.But that's why I'm more interested in specific arguments on here rather than the big picture. The big picture isn't interesting to me because I don't believe it actually matters. I do want people to be honest in their arguments. And I don't usually attack BG or brv, although I have before, because generally guys like vb do a much better job than I would anyway.I guess if it annoys people that I'm defending a minor position while not even believing the major postion, I'll stop. I like the debate in here though.

Sorry, forgot about this.One of the major stories of the OT was the Exodus, where Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt where they were enslaved for centuries. Problem was, they were never enslaved in Egypt according to archeological records. Of the ones that were there, there is no discrepancy between how they lived and anybody else. There certainly wasn't a mass tribe enslaved there though.

That's interesting, thanks.

Just remember that in the reality where he believes that, you have an earring.

Nice.