h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Um, i really, REALLY dont want to start a fight here, and i really, REALLY dont want to annoy people and i really, REALLY dont think ill be able to convince you of anything, but as an A level theology student, i can pretty safely say that the bible is not entirely the word of God.

I am not a militant atheist. im not any sort of atheist. im a troubled agnostic, but i can see proof that the bible is not an infallible thing and nor is (all of) it divinely inspired. in fact, some of it is quite wrong in parts. notably, maths fans, the place in Kings where it says that pi is 3.

but i am in favour of christianity, just not in favour of mindless Christian fundamentalism, a logically untenable position.

I promise not to shout if you dont agree with me

moreover, the website you suggest is obscenely wrong in some ways...

I disagree.

*waits for shout-free response*

ok. at one point, the bible says pi is three. please explain

how many angels are present at the resurrection? the gospels cannot agree. do not say 'the gospel writers were unreliable witnesses - didnt see everything' or ' there were three'. as soon as you say this, a bit of the bible is wrong. this doesnt 'not count' becuase as soon as you admit a tiny bit is wrong, you can admit other bits are wrong too.

why would a good God choose to intervene in an israelite battle by stopping the sun to allow slaughter? er...he wouldnt.

in the early OT - there is no mention of the afterlife. you can chart the development of the concepts of the religion through the books.

there are other wrong bits, too, many of which are in my theology notes and not in my head mistake...mocks in a week...

there is much good in the bible. but basically its not all infallible. cos there is much bad in it too - written by Jews who were the product pof their more brutal less PC times.

I deal with the rest later. For starters:

Pi in the Bible:
http://www.yfiles.com/pi.html

um...where do these ratios come from? it looks like someone has just randomly inserted some numbers and said 'look - its there in the bible'. by this reasoning, the word 'line' would have to appear twice. whcich it doesnt. even if it did,. there is no dividing by anything there. nice try but no cigar, my friend

Would you like more possibilities?

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http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/494.asp
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http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Miscellaneous/other_links/Graf_theory.html
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i cant really be bothered to read. say i concede you the point, tho i dont really. my maths isnt good enough to disprove it

why are there two creation stories (Gen 1-3, Gen 6)?

what about the other points i raised?

I have been lurking on this thread, but I think I'll comment on those, seeing as how UH has given up.

The first one (of posting 7) seems to be twisting the facts a bit (admittedly the fact it's from a creationist magazine puts me off) and bases the argument on the wording in the King James bible (admittedly my NRSV says something similar). For some reason the wording turns into gibberish part way down, but the picture gives the basis of the argument i.e. it was wider at the top than the rest of the way down.

The secont page ddombrow mentions gives a similar suggestion, but here the difference is whether we measure to the outer or inner part of the rim. This is pure speculation, but I think that "I don't think the Hebrews calculated the values recorded, merely observed them," hits it. Of course, UH may take this as support that the Bible is not the word of God, since we have cut God out of it and put it down to some bloke with a dodgy measuring stick.

Thanks Bagpuss, for summing it up so nicely. I've been so busy lately I couldn't do much more than post links.

ok. now tell me why the other things are right

I wasn't going to get involved in this, seeing as how I thought you were getting in waaaaay over my head, discussing the original greek or hebrew and that sort of thing............

However, after reading the description of the sea in 1Kings, there may be a very simple explanation for why the measurements don't come out to an exact equation for pi.

The sea is described as having a rim like a lily a handbreadth wide - in other words, curled out on the edge. If I was measuring something from the edge of the rim to the other edge of the rim I'd probably use a measuring stick of some kind - I understand they used measuring "rods". Of course these measuring rods were most likely made of something that was likely to bow when placed across such a large opening (10 cubits..... somethign on the order of 20 feet or so, right? across thin air, most any measuring tool we have today would be likely to bow a bit across a distance like that - they probably used a thin rod of wood which would be verylikely to bow.). So it could have *measured* slightly larger than it actually *was* because of the bowing. I also consider that they were probably measuring from the outer edge of the lip to the outer edge on the opposite side.

Now, considering that it has this lip on it, I wouldn't be likely to try to measure around it on the outside along the lip because it's too rounded to keep the string in place (it does say they used a cord to measure around it didn't it?), so I'd be more likely to measure it under the lip, which of course is smaller than the outer edge of the lip. Then the string was measured, most likely with the same measuring rod lying flat on the ground where it would not bow.

All these things together means the two measurements would not really be related to any kind of mathematical equation, just a reporting of the dimensions measured.

So I don't personally have a problem with stuff like that, because even though I definitely consider the Bible to be God's word, it was still put on paper by humans, some of whom were simply recording observations made at the time.

im glad you said that last comment.

now, how about this: i assume you consider that when it says 'God is a rock' they are being metaphorical? God isnt really a rock. so if you consider the possibility of metaphor there, then maybe the creation story is alos metaphor?

God is a rock - metaphor? Maybe... and then again, perhaps just a descriptive word - the writer may have been using it more like an adjective: The strongest substance known to the writers to describe the strength of our God.

Creation a metaphor? Sorry, can't imagine that one.....

However I'm no stickler for 6 exactly 24 hour days as we experience 24 hour days. Somewhere in the Bible (I'm feeling too lazy to look it up right now) it says that to God a day is as a thousand years, and another place it says that a thousand years is as a day to God. I don't know how many thousand-year-days of thousand-year-days of thousand-year-days it would take to equal the age that scientists seem to think the world is, but by the same token, God is able to do anything he wants in whatever time frame he wants to do it in, so whether he merely looked at it as 6 days or it actually was 6 twenty-four hour days is quite immaterial to me.

You might also be referring to what many people consider to be an apparent discrepency between the narrative of chapter 1 and the narrative of chapter 2, in which case I'll refer you to (oh, rats, now I do have to go look it up..........) Gen 2:8 where it says that God *had* planted a garden in Eden (right after it says no plants had sprung up yet in the world - apparently they had not yet spread into the rest of the world from the garden?) which implies to me that the garden was planted before the man was created from dirt taken from outside of the garden and put in it. Then in verse 19 it says that God *had* created all the animals and birds, again implying that they were already made before this man was made and put in the garden of eden. To me this looks like it's just really additional description of what took place during the creation, told in a different style obviously - but if you can look at it like that then it's the same story, with everything created in the same order.

Here's an example of what I see here - it's sort of like someone calling to tell you "good news I got a new job" then going on to explain the circumstances surrounding how they got the new job, perhaps going back and forth in the story a bit (you know what I mean the "oh yeah, before that, this happened"), but by the time they finish telling you the whole thing you're certainly not sitting there thinking "how could they have already had a new job when they came in here if they just went back and told me about all the events leading up to getting the job and didn't end that with the words 'so I got the new job'".

So I see no real discrepency between the two chapters.

I try not to base what I believe on just one passage taken out of context. When I find a passage that seems to contradict with another, eventually I always seem to find another that brings the two together, making them both make sense. (if my brain was working right now, perhaps I could think of an example,but as it is, it'll just have to wait for another time... especially since i'm sure you've got a list at the ready...)

of course God is a rock is a metaphor. you just confirmed that. God is not literally a lump of rock. if you say he is strength is rock like, which you did, its a simile which is a type of metaphor.

there are two creation stories. which differ substantially. which i cant currently remember...cos i have no bible with me.

i raised some other points earlier which no one has yet countered

Is it ok if we take one thing at a time? (not yelling, really) I know you had other questions...

You specifically asked about "god is a rock" and if creation was a metaphor in your most recent post, so those I tried to answer. (still not yelling) I thought I explained my "take" on what most people consider to be two completely different stories, but if you'd like to discuss it further, I'm up for it.

Hm. Maybe I dont' understand what it is you think creation is metaphor for?

Oh, and there are several translations of the bible available online, you just go to those sites, and do a search for a phrase or the chapter and verse, and voila, right there on the screen... just pick a translation to read it in.

i didnt accuse you of yelling

i did once get angry with amy and yelled at her on the same subject, so im being very careful not to do that here

i think the creation story is a metaphor. there is evidence in jewish targa that they didnt believe it literally either

I'm inclined to agree. Whilst scientists aren't always right, you need to ignore/explain away a lot of evidence to believe in the 7 day creation.

Dont' misunderstand - I just wanted to make sure you didn't think I was yelling back there, OK?.

But I may be way out of my league here... I have no idea even what a "targa" is. If it is a separate work that tells what the Hebrews through the ages have thought about different biblical writings, then of course, I agree, they most likely did not believe most of what was in their bible. Why else would they have ignored God's direct commands and turned so shamelessly away from God to idols and the pagan religions of their neighboring nations so often?

I do remember one time when I was reading in Ezra about the rebuilding of the city walls in Jerusalem after the exile, and it struck me repeatedly that this particular goup of people that was doing the rebuilding believed very strongly in what they were doing, that their city must be rebuilt for the sake of their God (not just for the Jewish nation to be restored)...... and this was a people who hadn't heard much of the word in a long time. It wasn't like everyone owned a bible after all - the scrolls at the temples and synagogues were just read during worship, which they hadn't done in decades. So other than the oral traditions passed down to them from their fathers during the exile, they knew little of the history of their own people, much less their religon. Yet, when the law was read to them, they were deeply troubled because they realized their guilt before God.

Then there was the time of Hezekiah, when the scrolls that had been "lost" in the temple were suddenly found, and when they were read to him, he apparently believed what they said and went to great lengths to try to rid the country of it's pagan religions. Whether this belief covered every word written in it, I dont' know since I don't kwow what anyone else might have had in their heart. For myself, if I start picking and choosing what to believe and what to reject, what criteria do I use? How do I know where to stop? If you say accept the things that there is scientific evidence to support and reject those that science does not support, what do I do about the miraculous things I see happening around me today? Pretend they never happened because science says it's impossible? Or do I just pick the things I like to believe and reject the rest? And then how do I recconcile that with Jesus saying that not one jot or tittle of the word would disappear from the law, and that he did not come to abolish the law and prophets but to fulfill them? What about where it says in 2 Timothy that all scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, etc? If I reject that, does it not mean that then maybe jesus lied about who he is and I then need to reject the whole thing? Sorry, I just can't pick and choose, for me it's either all or nothing. I have mulled these things over in my mind as these ramblings should show, I'm not just blindly believing.

But you still haven't explained what creation is a metaphor for (I know that's worded poorly), which perhaps if I understood that I could figure out what your problem is with it. But again, I may be way out of my league here because I have never done a great deal of study in other writings of that time. It always seems like when I have things I question in the Bible, it ends up supporting itself somewhere else in the bible. I guess a skeptic would discount that too seeing it's in the same bible, but to me, it is a confirmation that what it says was not just some wild notion that the scribe of a particular book happened to have one day, because these confirmations are often repeated in different ways throughout the scripture.

I went back through the posts and saw that you called Gen 6 a creation story.... I'm sorry, I'm not seeing any description of creation in there. All I see is a description of the condition of the people of the world at that time. What are you seeing in there that I'm missing?

(I'm very sorry this is so long.....)

It is very interesting that you say you are not in favor of mindless christianity.How did the mind come into being? Did it just happen or was it by design? How come we are always surrounted by and involved in evil.Is not darkness the absence of light? Can truth ever be beat down without getting hurt? I for one have an experieantial relationship with the one (Jesus) who said "I am the way the truth and the light."

GODS BLESSINGS

Researcher Dave