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

ThEntity,

"My answer to that is that the appearance of a brain is not the same as having intelligence."

Not necessarily, but an enourmous(e) increase in neurons in the part of the brain responsible for abstract thought and reasoning and it's effects upon the capacity of the neural network as a whole is bound to have a long-term effect. This is just an isolated example I used to show that evolution doesn't need much to strut it's stuff.

"But you're right, we could go back and forth on this one until we die and you see I'm right..."

That's hilarious. I hope you're right, I would love for there to be an afterlife with a benevolent loving god. Apart from wishful thinking I can't see anything that points to one.

"Anyway, the text was copied meticulously..."

How do you know? You don't, this is putting faith in flawed mankind, not god. Even if it was, the cumulative errors over the centuries and languages would dramatically alter the meaning of the bulk of the text would it not?

"The Israelites took seriously God's words to hang these words on the doorpost of your house."

Did the Greeks? Did the Romans? Did the countless other politically-motivated groups? I'd bet not.

Re: Post 296:
"Allegorical reading of the Bible is nonsense, since it allows for eisegesis, or giving the text whatever meaning you want it to have, not the real meaning."

And re: Post 298:
"As for the rest, it was written within a historical context. The Israelites may not have considered the hind feet of insects used for jumping to be feet. Rabbits appear to chew the cud, and were popularly considered to do so. We almost certainly classify birds differently than they used to be. I talked about the pi thing somewhere else... Even we approximate pi--we have to! The sun appears to move around the earth, and the earth appears to be flat."
I think you are attempting to have your cake and eat it here. Does the real meaning come from it's literal meaning or from it's historical context? Did people at the time of the bible talk in a literal, scientific-type language? Or did they convey messages using myth and story; allegorically? You can't say that interpreting biblical texts is rubbish one time and then start off colouring them with your own historical interpretations the next.

"Those things were all appropriate for the culture that they were given to."

I agree totally, so viewing the bible as a literal document is deeply flawed (and quite a new phenomenon). Viewing the bible allegorically, with layers of meaning and the ability to remain relevant through the ages, is the way the culture that wrote the bible intended it to be taken. Do you really expect that at the time of the authorship of genesis people told stories and conveyed their myths through historical documents in a form that only recently came about?

Luckily, not only will I ever believe in a god, I'll never get on a motorcycle either. Deathtraps.

Ste

I LOVE this stuff!

OK, here we go...

"

I'm not saying that you believe in God in the same way that you are understanding the word believe."

OK, so we're speaking different languages. Nothing new there. Christians always seem to have their own personal unique definitions of words like "believe", "god", "fact", "true", "objective" and "real". Funny that. (and I do mean funny haha).

"You are not consciously self-delusional or something."

Well, I'm so glad that YOU think *I* am not.

"But all men are born with the knowledge of God."

I wasn't.

Oh, and what about women? Born with a knowledge of cooking?

"If that were not so, then the Bible probably would make an irrefutable proof for his existence."

Sorry? Say again? If we WEREN'T born with a knowledge of a god, some old book would be an irrefutable proof of its existence? I think you have no idea of the meaning of the word "proof", on this evidence.

"But what is says is that all men know there is a God, and SUPPRESS that knowledge, which could be the same a forgetting it, but willfully."

Hang on - I'm not consciously deluding myself, but I'm suppressing the knowledge of a god, wilfully? How is that possible? Doing something wilfully, but not consciously?

"I don't think its something you can forget, however."

I agree. It's not something you'd forget. Since I never had it, that explains why I don't remember it.

"

Yes, they're all PREDICATED on the non-existence of God, but they can only BE MADE because there is God."

Circular argument. I shall ignore that.

"

Uh, that makes you out to be an idiot- trying to do the impossible."

No, it makes *you* out to be an idiot trying to do the impossible. Possibly you missed the point. *You* are the slapper. WE, the audience, are standing around, waiting for you to demonstrate the existence of your uncle by slapping him in the face. But you can't.

"Perhaps you should ask yourself why you are trying to convince me that there is no God."

I have asked myself this question repeatedly, believe me. The answer, my friend, is this. I hate to see humans degraded. I dislike seeing people not fulfilling their potential. We are, almost every one of us, gifted with the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe. We have a limited time in which to use it. That so very many of us choose to waste that time contemplating, praising and glorifying an entity who cannot even be said to exist with any degree of certainty vexes me. Put simply - I wish you wouldn't waste your energy on religion. I believe it to be, on good evidence, a throwback to a prior neurological state of man from an earlier stage of evolution. At root, I'm NOT trying to convince you there are no gods (note the plural). I'm trying to get you to THINK about it, instead of just blindly accepting what you believe on no evidence but what's going on in your head. If you THINK, and come to the conclusion that the evidence of reality points to the existence of a god or gods - TELL ME. I really, really want to know. But don't waste my time telling me about what you just *know*.

"I think rather that you are trying to convince yourself..."

I don't need to convince myself. I AM convinced. And, like I say, I'm not trying to convince you, because if my experience of religious types is anything to go by, none of you people are in any way amenable to reason - indeed you generally seem proud to be uninterested in the evidence of reality. So why would I waste my time trying to convince you? You already ARE convinced.

"I doubt it. Give me chapter and verse. 1. inconsistency- everything you say here is opinion.

Well, you asked....

Hebrews, 11:17 - "By faith Abraham when he was tried, offered up Isaac, ... his only begotten son."

Galatians, 4:22 - ""Abraham had two sons"
-------------------------
Jeremiah, 3:12 - "I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever."

Jeremiah, 17:4 - "Ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn for ever."
----------------------------
Leviticus, 17:11 - "I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul."

Isaiah, 1:11 - "I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs , or of he goats."
---------------------------
Matthew 19:26 AND Mark 10:27 - "With God, all things are possible".

Judges 1:19 - "And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."

Or Hebrews 6:18 - "It was impossible for God to lie."
---------------------------
Luke 6:35 - But love ye your enemies, and do good.

1 Corinthians, 16:22 - "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema."
--------------------------
I could go on, and on, and on. Ask me some more if these glaring inconsistencies in your perfect deity's work are not enough.

" 2. savagery- once again, opinion. You are applying your standards to God."

Oh, I'm sorry, does this sound like savagery to anyone else?

Jeremiah, 16:3-7 - "For thus saith the LORD concerning the sons and concerning the daughters that are born in this place, and concerning their mothers that bare them, and concerning their fathers that begat them in this land; They shall die of grievous deaths; they shall not be lamented; neither shall they be buried; but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth. For thus saith the LORD, Enter not into the house of mourning, neither go to lament nor bemoan them: for I have taken away my peace from this people, saith the LORD, even lovingkindness and mercies. Both the great and the small shall die in this land: they shall not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them: Neither shall men tear themselves for them in mourning, to comfort them for the dead; neither shall men give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or for their mother."

"3. inaccuracy of prophecy- I defy you to provide evidence of that!"

OK.

God told Adam that if he ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he would die that day. Adam ate it, and, we are told, didn't just live that day, but lived another 930 years. Difficult to imagine how much wronger it was possible to be on that one. (cue usual apologist Christian guff about "day" meaning, well, pretty much anything up to and including "millenium", despite the Bible being perfect and completely true).

Here's a nice easy one: Isaiah, 13,:19-20 - And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

Utter nonsense, because Babylon continued to be inhabited.

Isaiah 19:5 - "And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up." This refers to the river of Egypt, i.e. the Nile. Notable because in all of recorded history, this river has never dried up.

And here's a little bit of politics for you - Amos, 9:15 - "And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God." This refers to the Jews - who over the last 2000 years or so have been notable for the way in which they've remained completely settled and not at all "pulled up out of their land" at any stage. Or not.

"4. inaccuracies of... fact- The Ark: God never tells someone to do something that he does not give them the power to do. How do you know that Noah wasn't able to build a wooden boat of that size?"

I don't. I just find it incredible. If you want to believe it, fine. If you want to believe in the tooth fairy, fine. Just don't expect me to (a) believe it too, and (b) credit you with any critical common sense if you believe it.

"He may have known something that we today do not know. Also, it took him a long time to build."

You seem to underestimate the scale of the task. I repeat - Noah, a man with no shipbuilding skill or experience, almost singlehandedly designed and built a wooden boat 50% larger than any other boat which put to sea in the subsequent 3000 years. Possibly you are not an engineer, and can't appreciate the simple impossibility of doing that over ANY timescale. And like I say, that skims lightly over the simply ridiculous notion of what he then put in that boat.

"As for the rest, it was written within a historical context. The Israelites may not have considered the hind feet of insects used for jumping to be feet."

What??? If you're being deliberately ignorant for comic effect, then you've scored, because I'm laughing. If you're being serious, and you've somehow *forgotten* that the vast majority of insects can't jump, then this is another lovely example of the selective blindness which afflicts religious people when they see something which conflicts with their faith. Ever *seen* a beetle?

"Rabbits appear to chew the cud, and were popularly considered to do so."

What? Are you telling me that your perfect deity, who after all CREATED the damn things in the first place, divinely inspired someone to write that they chew the cud KNOWING that it was wrong? That he ENCOURAGED such ignorance? Why would he do that?

"We almost certainly classify birds differently than they used to be."

WHAT??? As far as the Bible is concerned BATS ARE BIRDS. Now, for the zoologically illiterate, in the real world, BATS ARE MAMMALS. There are a few small clues to allow even the most stupi- er... religious person to notice the difference.

1. Birds lay eggs. Bats have live young, like almost all other mammals.
2. Birds feed their young scraps of gathered food. Bats suckle their young with milk from teats, like all other mammals.
3. Birds have FEATHERS, bats have FUR (BIG clue, this one).

"I talked about the pi thing somewhere else... Even we approximate pi--we have to!"

Yeah - except we acknowledge that we're approximating, and don't make pronouncements that if something is ten cubits across, it's thirty cubits round, when in the real world it would be thirty one point four and a bit.

"The sun appears to move around the earth, and the earth appears to be flat."

Not to me. I've watched boats sail over the horizon, so the planet appears anything but flat to me. Are you telling me that to your omniscient, perfect deity, the world looks flat? Because HE wrote the book...

"Those things were all appropriate for the culture that they were given to. Why would God have the writer say something like the earth orbits the sun when the people of that time had no way of discerning such a thing?"

Er... because that's the way reality is? Why would he lie about this stuff to them? Why deliberately misinform people about reality? Was he having a laugh? Deities which deliberately conceal the truth from their worshippers are common in mythology (e.g. Loki, the trickster god from Norse mythology), but they are almost invariably viewed with suspicion and distrust - gods who are blamed rather than worshipped.

"If it would amuse you, go ahead and give chapter and verse. Perhaps I know of a better translation or something."

All above quotes from the King James version. If it would amuse you, defend them.

"Anyway, none of these things is meant to be taken out of context and none of them are crucial to the message of the Bible. They are not wrong in the way that you mean wrong."

Ah, that all purpose get out of the Christian in a corner - "it depends what you mean by the word 'deluded dupe'".

"In case you didn't notice, Adam, Eve, and the serpent all were cursed."

er... who cursed them? Not the god who created them, surely?

"But it was Adam that was most responsible, ...because he was the man, the one created first."

Hang on - God made the serpent on the fifth day, Gen 1:25, THEN man on the sixth day, Gen 1:26.

Oh, no, hang on, you must be talking about that OTHER Creation myth - the one where God makes man first, then makes the animals afterwards, as in Gen 2:18-19. Sorry - that no contradictions in the Bible thing confused me again.

"So you're a naturalist. I can address naturalism in more detail, but how do you explain miracles?"

In exactly the same way I explain David Copperfield flying and Uri Geller bending spoons. I'm surprised you need to ask. It's called LYING TO PEOPLE TO MAKE THEM LIKE YOU SO MUCH THEY GIVE YOU THEIR MONEY.

"I'm not saying that those who believe in a religion are under a direct demonic influence."

Oh, well, so long as it's not DIRECT.

"It is also possible that some modern religions are due to the influence of a demon, such a Mormonism."

So why do you not allow the possibility that YOUR religion is due to the influence of a demon? What makes you so very, very perceptive and demon-proof? These demons are extremely intelligent and resourceful - I know, I've seen several episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

"

That I am right."

You've gotta love that completely unselfconscious certainty, haven't you? You really have no idea at all how arrogant and stupid that sounds, do you? (I on the other hand, know exactly how arrogant *I* sound)

"Christianity is unique in not allowing for there to be multiple paths to God. Other religions will say that we can all be right."

Yeah, right. Islam, that well known, tolerant-of-all-other-faiths religion. Have you ever heard of the word "Jihad"? Judaism, that tolerant, inclusive belief system. How's the weather on your planet, by the way?

"I am the only one that can be wrong, then. But I'm not."

Good for you. You may not be wrong, but you're certainly entertaining.

H.

Some more inconsistency;

John 1:18 No man hath seen God at anytime. (Ex 33:20; Tim. 6:16; John 6:46; I John 4:12)
Gen. 32:30 For I have seen god face to face. (Ex. 33:11, 23; Is. 6:1; Job 42:5)

John 8:14 Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true.
John 5:31 If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.

John 14:27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. (Luke 2:14; Acts 10:36)
Matt. 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, I came not to send peace, but a sword. (Matt. 10:35-37; Luke 22:36)

Psa. 145:9. The Lord is good to all. (Deut. 32:4; James 1:13)
Is. 45:7 I make peace and create evil. I the Lord do all these things. (Lam 3:38; Jer. 18:11; Ezek. 20:25)

Ex. 20:5 For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generations. (Ex. 34:7)
Ezek. 18:20 The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.

Mal. 3:6. For I am the Lord; I change not. Num. 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent. (Ezek. 24:14; James 1:17)
Ex. 32:14. And the Lord repented of the evil which he had thought to do unto his people. (Gen. 6:6; Jonah 3:10; Sam. 2:30-31; II Kings 20:1-6; Num. 16:20-35)

Ex. 20:13 Thou shalt not commit murder.
Ex. 32:27 Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, put every man his sword by his side...and slay every man his brother...companion..neighbor.(See also 1 Sam. 6:19; 15:2,3; Num. 15:36)


Alji (Member of The Guild of Wizards @ U197895)

> "I have never seen a person make something from nothing, have you?"

I have seen a person create an idea out of nothing but his own brain and soul and being. And I have heard of a God creating a universe out of nothing but Hir own will. They are equivalent acts, if different in scale.

> "How could they be FINAL authorities if they weren't [circular]?

Off the top of my head, Science isn't circular (though empiricism is) - you can't use the scientific method to prove science true. Buddhism isn't particularly circular - there's no clear why I can see to derive the Four Noble Truths from themselves.

Pragmatism and Ethics... Actually, my ethical base is utilitarianism (it's another subsidiary authority), which does indeed routinely mark as good things that other ethical theories (wrongly imo) mark as evil. On the other hand, Christians try and justify flooding the entire world, killing all its inhabitants bar one family and an ark-full of wildlife. So I'd suggest that both of our authorities put us at odds with conventional morality.

> "behind many of the other major religions of the world is or was a demonic influence"

Yep: it is written... (A673454)
Seriously, I'm sure you don't believe that, but it seemed relevant, and I'm a stickler for self-promotion.

> "Evidence that the Bible is not the work of a deity?"

Just read the entry hanging over this thread. We have:

Conclusive Evidence of Tampering With the Bible
Jesus's Birth
Common Misconceptions about Jesus
The Death Scene
Development of Christianity
In the Tradition of the Spouter of Lies

You'll be pleased to read that there are chapter and verse references throughout the entry. That's solid evidence, as requested. Don't dismiss it all as opinion before you've read it, eh?

-Martin

Re: post 287

"

Our understanding of the laws of gravity is an approximation; the laws themselves are perfect, though we do not understand them."

I was defining 'laws' as artificial concepts, and 'fundamental laws' as natural 'laws'. A 'law', almost by definition, requires some kind of authority to create it and enforce it (like 'law' in courts). A 'fundamental law' describes a behaviour of the universe (yes, behaviour is a better way of putting it) that needs no authority to create or administer it. I would not call these 'laws' in the usual sense. They are properties of the universe in the same way as colour is the property of an object. They do not imply a creator.

"The universe APPEARS mechanistic and deterministic because it obeys the laws of God. If there were no God to sustain the world and empower the laws that govern it, the world would not appear mechanistic and deterministic; it would be chaos. Toy is a strange choice of word: whose toy?"

The universe does not require God to sustain it. All the evidence we have gathered about it implies that it rattles away on its own without any outside interference. Scientifically speaking, if God supplied any additional matter or energy to the universe it would become more unstable. As I said, the fundamental laws are properties of the universe, not laws in the usual sense. They do not need to be enforced any more than apples need fairies with green paint to keep them coloured. The 'fundamental laws' aren't even very fundamental; they are consequences of mathematics. As an example, take the 'miracle' that the hearts of red giant stars are exactly the correct temperature to allow the formation of iron. Is this evidence that there is some guiding hand in the properties of the universe? Or is it because if you solve the maths it turns out that no matter what assumptions you make about fundamental constants the heart of a red giant star will always be the correct temperature to allow the formation of iron?

I chose 'toy' because it implies a complicated object with no proper purpose (like 'toy' programmes for programmers). I couldn't think of a better word.

"

I have never seen a person make something from nothing, have you?"

Apart from the post you wrote? And the short story I wrote yesterday? And the creation of civilisation, laws, dreams, culture and even religion (except the reader's ) from absolutely nothing? Creation is not limited to the physical. In fact, the most valuable creations are typically abstract. Why would we need more matter? There's plenty of it about as it is.

My job is to create. My remit as I work is, in some small way, to advance the sum of human knowledge. It may only be a very small corner of human knowledge, but I am creating things that no human being has ever created before.

The physical world is an oddity. Dispassionate and mindless. It is the abstract we create that has value and purpose.

""Realizes," eh? I realize that there would be no reasons if there were not a controlling mind behind them. In fact, you are using your mind which creates reasons to argue against there being mind behind reasons!"

I was saying that reasons do not _have_ to have a mind behind them. Some do. Some don't. I think the problem here is one of language; not with either of us. The reason that the teacup broke was because it was falling onto the ground. No mind is required to enforce that reason because all the fundamental laws are properties of the universe.

"

Unless you are familiar with the entire universe, you cannot know this. I am not consistent with the hypothesis that there is no God, and neither are you."

The universe in as great a detail as humanity has been able to examine it, then.

We *are* both consistent with the hypothesis that there is no god. I work with statistics; I *know* that a structured random process is easily powerful enough to produce the sum total of human behaviour. This is not really opinion; that random processes can be frighteningly powerful when it comes to modelling behaviour is known to anyone in the field. Whether that is what we are is still a matter of opinion.

"

Deism, you mean. If you were truly a deist, you would not believe in the ability of man to change his environment, since the universe is a uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system."

It depends how you define environment. I would say that the environment and humanity continually change each other because they are part of the same system. Chaotic systems, even when the 'rules' behind them are simple, display extraordinary complex behaviour. Saying that a system is closed and deterministic doesn't mean that it will present no surprises. For an example of a simple chaotic system that displays complex behaviour, google for 'Langton's Ant'. In any case, the universe may not be completely closed (see below).

"If the universe is preordered, than so is what you do. Therefore whatever you do must be the right thing, since that is what you were meant to do. If you kill someone, that is the right thing, since you were made to do it. So deism has no room for choice, free will, which we have."

I am quite comfortable with the notion that our free will and perceptions nothing but convenient fictions we create for ourselves to aid in our decision making. On the purely physical level, we are all part of the clockwork of the universe, rattling away with nothing resembling free will.
However, this is not necessarily the case. The structured random processes that govern our thoughts can be a mechanism of free will in this mechanical outlook, as long as there is some outside random factor. A appropriate Bayesian learning machine can take any random input and turn out coherent results (like a boat with a large fin on the back; it doesn't matter whether the waves are rolling over the prow or stern, the boat will still move forwards). This can be free will, if you like. And it seems that radioactive decay is truly random, so that can provide the randomness for the system. Chaos theory tells us that even such a small impact will have far-reaching consequences. And there are all the quantum mechanics elements that are random. If you like, these random events (which do appear to come from outside the system) could be god's way of influencing the universe indirectly.

In any case, free will is an assumption not an observation. There is no way to prove or disprove free will.

"However, I believe that "without faith, it is impossible to please God (don't recall the reference)." It is God that frees us from our sin to be able to do good works."

This is what I was saying. Good works count for naught unless you're 'in the club'. I refute the assertion that I require some form of cleansing before I am capable of doing good works. In fact, saying that such is required is a contradiction of free will; we are not free to do good until soem outside agency flips a switch within us.

"Doing the good deeds IS an act of worship if you know God."

And if you don't know God? Are good deeds thenan act of sin?

"

How about: so man can glorify him? This does not mean that we get a raw deal, but just the opposite. John Piper rephrases the Westminster Catechism to say, "The chief end of man is to glorify God BY enjoying him forever." We can only be fulfilled in glorifying God, and that is our highest purpose."

It's no purpose I want any part of. Glorifying him is just stroking his ego. If a parent raised their child only to be a child, to do childish things and obey the parent forever, not only would the parent be neglecting their duty but they probably would have the child taken away by social services. By analogy, a god who wants us only to praise him and obey him is neglecting the duty of care he has towards his creations. Such a god would be flawed; and by many definitions therefore not god at all. Such a god is not worth the time of day, let alone an eternity of praise. 'Playing God' has come to mean doing something wrong, I would contend that even God should not 'play God' with his creations.

When I have children, I want them to exceed me. I will not force them into anything; I will let them grow and flourish at their own rate and I hope that they will better me in whatever ways they choose. To do anything else would be a betrayal of them.

"Even we approximate pi--we have to! "

Only for practical purposes. You name a number of decimal places, and we can calculate it to that number of decimal places with 100% accuracy. We work with approximations because pi is an irrational number. But, even when we do approximate it, we usually take care to say how we are approximating it and use a suitable degree of accuracy for the task in hand. Three is terrible approximation for and task. I'm sure that through the ages whenever that verse was read in church there were wheelwrights in the flock smiling wryly to themselves.

The moral of the story is this: Some parts of the Bible were never meant to be taken literally. Not even in the time when it was written. Given that, it seems less and less sensible to continue to argue the absolute literal truth of the bible in this radically different age. If you go through the Bible and pick which parts to take literally, good for you, as long as you're logical in the choosing.

RE: post 301

Lot of stuff for me to respond to today. Call me your resident Snowball Effect.



There's also the afterlife under the wrath of God if you are not reconciled with him in this life. I know that sounds harsh, but the saying is "the truth hurts." I believe that there can be eternity with a loving God, and I would love to see you there. That's why I share all this with you.



As I understand history, the Bible has not been altered except by translation from the original manuscripts. I can't say for certain, having not lived to see it all. Also, it is putting faith in God to direct the actions of men to preserve his Word for future generations. The point I meant by the meticulous copying is that there was no compounding of error. As for errors of translation, the basic message has never been changed by translation. I know that there are multiple translations in English, which helps add to understanding.



The Greeks and Romans who translated the Bible were Christians first. The only ones who have had an interest in mistranslating the Bible were other religious groups, like the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Mormons, and by doing so they were not regarded as Christians.



None of my explanations is allegorical. Furthermore, the literal meaning includes the historical context. "Literal: a. Theol. Pertaining to the ‘letter’ (of Scripture); the distinctive epithet of that sense or interpretation (of a text) which is obtained by taking its words in their natural or customary meaning, and applying the ordinary rules of grammar; opposed to mystical, allegorical, etc. b. Hence, by extension, applied to the etymological or the relatively primary sense of a word, or to the sense expressed by the actual wording of a passage, as distinguished from any metaphorical or merely suggested meaning." So when all of you are trying to be 'literal' and are looking at the merely suggested meaning, you're actually reading it incorrectly and are in error. Your supposed 'literal' way of reading Scripture is not, in fact, literal.

<(and quite a new phenomenon).>

Where'd you get that idea?



Of course they conveyed their history (not myths) through documentation! What leads you to believe that they wouldn't?!? And you say that the form of 'historical document' is recent. Where are you getting these ideas of chronological snobbery?

I think I'm going to go warn my friend about his motorcycling now...

RE: post 302



I am saying that some part of your being (but not your mind) has the knowledge that there is a God. Your conscience, for one.

<*You* are the slapper. WE, the audience, are standing around, waiting for you to demonstrate the existence of your uncle by slapping him in the face. But you can't.>

Right, I'm going to explain the analogy carefully so you'll get it. To slap someone in the face is an insult. The grandfather, or uncle as you have made him, is God. I have no interest in insulting God. Therefore, I couldn't possibly be the slapper. You, however, do, but you are only able to because you are given the ability to do so by the grandfather, or uncle, which is the 'sitting on the lap' part of the analogy. When you changed your role from slapping a real person to trying to slap something you know to not exist, you made yourself out to be self-delusional, which you have been avoiding otherwise. Besides, you can't change my analogy in the way that you did, however humorous it is, because then it doesn't make sense.



But to use it for what purpose, if the universe is random? Anything we do could immediately be undone by the random forces of the universe, so why bother? Conversely, any wrong thing that we do would have no lasting consequence, so what criteria are there for judging a thing to be wrong?



What evidence?



That's what I've been saying! You're convinced that there is no God, because you have convinced yourself! That doesn't make him go away, though. Here's another analogy for you: You are like a child who puts his hand over his eyes and says, "I can't see you, so you can't see me."



Abraham did have two sons: Isaac and Ishmael. However, Isaac was the only son of the promise God made to Abraham that he would have a son by Sarah. That's why it says "begotten"--begotten of Sarah as well as Abraham. Also, by the time that Abraham offered up Isaac, Ishmael had already been cut off from his household at the request of Sarah, so at that time he was the only son. Remember, the literal meaning is not just 'what it looks like to me.'



The first verse is God addressing Israel, which had repented of its sins, so God was saying he forgave them. This is consistent with God being the God of mercy and a personal God, having a relationship with his people. The second verse is God addressing Judah (as distinguished from Israel), which was unrepentant, and God was warning them to repent or his anger against them would continue. Both verses address the issue of repentance in order to receive mercy. If (as in the first case), you repent of your sins, God will be merciful and not keep his anger against you. If (as in the second case), you remain in sin, you kindle the fire of God's anger, and it will burn forever, unless you repent (the first case).



To require atonement and to delight in it are two different things. I don't see the contradiction here. Do you think that God delighted to sacrifice his Son Jesus? Of course not. But he required it to show mercy to you and me.



I seem to remember addressing the issue of God's power restricted (if you want to call it that) by his will. It's not really a restriction, since he does whatever he wills to do. He simply does not do what he does not will to do. So, as to the first verse, if you are with God, you are in his will, and so you can do anything. As to the second verse, the inhabitants of the valley were the Canaanites. Israel had disobeyed God by making treaties with them, and had violated the covenant that God had made with their forefathers. Judges 2:20,21 says "'Because this nation has violated the covenant that I laid down for their forefathers and has not listened to me, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations.'" The men of Judah were not 'with God' in the case of the Canaanites, so it was a normal war that they couldn't win because of the iron chariots of the Canaanites. As to the third verse, God does not will to lie, so he doesn't (can't).



The first verse addresses Christians (they are the intended audience), not just anyone, while the second verse refers to non-Christians. Only a Christian is able to love his enemy and do good. "We love because he first loved us," and "Without faith it is impossible to please God."



Once again, your label of savagery is a term that depends on the opinion of the speaker (you). To me, the passage refers to the holy, deserved judgment of God on sinners. To call that savage is like saying that it is savage to put a criminal in jail, since they're no longer free anymore. That's the point, isn't it?



No, he told him that he would "surely die." Where are you getting "that day" from? And as you said, Adam did die, after 930 years. Death entered the world through sin which entered the world through Adam. If Adam had not eaten of the tree, he wouldn't have died, even after 930 years. In any case, that's not what you would call prophecy anyway, that's law.



The Babylon as it was when the prophecy was made was deserted by the seventh century A.D. Since it doesn't exist anymore, it can't be inhabited, like Sodom and Gomorrah. All three were destroyed completely. That is an easy one.



a. It hasn't happened YET, as you say. b. This may refer to a cessation not of the entire flow of the river, but of its annual flooding, which is what produces the fertile soil there. I am not aware of a time when the Nile has not flooded, but I'll look into it. Although it makes little sense to ask you for help here, do you know whether it has ever not flooded?



This comes after God totally destroys Israel except for the house of Jacob (Amos 9:8). Since this destruction is accomplished by the LORD actually coming in person to the earth (Amos 9:1), it probably won't happen until the second coming of Christ. Also, Israel does not necessarily refer to the Jews, but can also mean the Israel of the New Covenant, which are those who believe in Christ.



Of course I have. Are you sure that the Israelites had?



No, I'm saying exactly the opposite. The writer probably thought rabbits DID chew the cud, since he lived before our modern times of dissection and scientific investigation of really important things like rabbits. So if God had told him that rabbits DON'T chew the cud, it would just have been a point of confusion for the writer and everyone else who heard it at that time. You think God wrong now; they would have thought him wrong then.



Of course I know that. The point is, did the Israelites? Did they even have a classification known as 'mammals?' Probably not. Again, we know this only since people with nothing better to do began investigating really important things like bats and rabbits.



And what leads you to believe that the writer didn't?



Oh please. This is nonsense. Anyone not knowing FIRST that the planet is round would think that the boat had simply gotten too far away to see, which in fact I think it does before the horizon obscures it. Furthermore, the way the earth was proven round was not by watching boats disappear. This is a self-report, so I can't PROVE that you are lying, but come on.



Not directly.



Just like I don't take the Bible literally like you mean literally.



er... do you have a point here? Sorry, I couldn't resist.



I meant of the humans, Adam was created first. Sin couldn't have entered the world through the fall of the serpent, no matter when it was created.



I mean real miracles. I assume then that your answer is simply that you don't believe in them. That doesn't make them not real, just like not believing in God doesn't make him not real.



Because it's not a possibility. I know, again with the "arrogance." But the onus is on you to believe, not me to soften the message.



I include multiple paths within the same religion. I know Jews who say that there are many ways to God. And the weather right now is gorgeous. Literally no clouds in the sky where I am. And I do mean literally, not allegorically.



Glad to please!

If you can hold off responding to my response, I'll get to the other stuff later.

What sense of the word random are we using here? I think we've already concluded that the universe is rule governed and therefore not random in that sense, so I assume that you mean purposeless rather than random. Purpose, however, is an attribute of consciousness, so the universe cannot have a purpose in that sense. It's function (rather than purpose) is as the environment for purposeful beings, but this does not require the universe to be made for this purpose, any more than the corners of my living room are made for spiders to build webs in.


Human criteria. Nowhere in the Bible is it explained what right and wrong ARE, only what actions are to be placed under each heading.
Criteria like causing suffering to fellow humans appear quite independently all over the world, so can be arrived at without "the one true religion>"


I seem to remember making this point in reverse a few postings ago.
Perhaps I'm also convinced that there are no fairies at the bottom of my garden because I've convinced myself. The evidence for them is just as good.


And you are like a child who thinks there's something under the bed.
At least when I take my hand away there's STILL no one there.

And on a lighter note -


Yes. Surprisingly frequently, apparently. Some archaeologists now believe that the First Intermediate Period in ancient Egypt may have been caused by a particularly severe sequence of such failures.
It can also flood too much, which means that the fields don't drain in time to plant crops. At least one historian has linked one such period in the Middle Kingdom to the time of Joseph (or vice versa). No definite seven years of plenty etc. but a general situation of concern over food supplies. So I do TRY to be fair minded where the evidence warrants it!

I am often troubled by my conscience, but never troubled by God.
You seem to be saying that God is my conscience. However I am never troubled by the fact I'm not one of his followers.

About the babies: if you read the backlog (just a few pages, not the whole thing ) I asked Justin what happened to babies that were either:
a)stillborn, or miscarriages (presuming he followed the idea of life beginning at conception, which I expect he did);
b)dead before a baptism could be arranged, if child baptism was the practice of choice;
c)before they were 'saved', or 'born again' (I got that this was a personal choice and therefore couldn't really be made by babies.)
I wished to know if they went to Hell, which seems awfully harsh since they haven't had the opportunity to 'save' themselves, and could hardly have done anything bad in their short time, or if they were accepted by God, or went to a form of purgatory like the Catholic Limbo.

You speak of miracles. I had an issue with Justin which he just would not address, I hope you can. I am not arguing with the fact that you witnessed someone cured by the power of prayer/belief etc. However, I have also witnessed this- personally experienced it, rather- (not actual physical regeneration, since I've not known anyone so afflicted) but in my case it was by what I would call magick, my preferred expression of belief. (To me, whatever you call it doesn't matter as long as your belief is strong enough to act upon your external self, it's a kind of self-improvement.) I was confused that, whilst Justin had condemned my faith as wrong, sinful, and false, it worked just as well as his in at least one way. I would never dare to suggest that Christian prayer doesn't work since to me there is no difference except the terminology.

Just some factual errors...

> "As I understand history, the Bible has not been altered except by translation from the original manuscripts."

Then you misunderstand history. If your bible is any good, at the bottom of the gospel according to Matthew, you'll find it telling you that some original manuscripts do not have the last few paragraphs (the ones talking about Jesus's ressurection, natch). That's an alteration of the bible that *even the Christian Church* accepts.

Could be God-inspired, of course. But if you claim that there has been *no* alteration, you haven't been reading your own holy book properly... The thing is littered with "some versions have X" footnotes.

> "Anyone not knowing FIRST that the planet is round would think that the boat had simply gotten too far away to see, which in fact I think it does before the horizon obscures it. Furthermore, the way the earth was proven round was not by watching boats disappear."

Uh, not unless it's cloudy. On a clear day you can see the horizon. You know that line you can see where the blue of the sea meets the blue of the sky? That's the horizon. And yes, you can see boats 'sinking' as they cross the horizon. For a while you see just the top half of the boat, while the bottom half is obscured by the horizon.

No, not everyone realized that ships 'sink' at the horizon because the Earth is round. Some people thought that they'd fallen off the edge of the world (but VERY slowly...). Most people ignored it and got on with their lives. But some people correctly figured out that the behaviour was consistent with a spherical earth. And they spread the word.

If you don't have an ocean nearby, wander up a mountain, and you'll notice that the horizon is curved. Basically, nobody outside theological circles believed in a flat earth since the sixth century BC. The Greeks were convinced first, with a variety of cunning experiments, and trade and travel pushed the information round the rest of Europe and Asia.

Try this URL for info on flat earth and the bible:
http://www.skepticfriends.org/articles/showquestion.asp?faq=4&fldAuto=61

Lots of quotes which suggest that much of the bible was written from a flat earth perspective. Which shouldn't surprise - much of it was written pre-600 BC.

-Martin

Of course, all the above quotes only matter if you take the bible as literal rather than metaphorical truth. A trap which the vast majority of Christians, throughout history, have cunningly avoided by the use of the grey spongy mass between their ears. A minority preferred (and still prefer) to trust the evidence of the bible over the evidence of their own eyes.

More info here: http://www.id.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/RUSSELL/FlatEarth.html

"I am saying that some part of your being (but not your mind) has the knowledge that there is a God. Your conscience, for one."

Where *is* my mind? Answer - my brain. Where *is* my conscience (assuming for the moment I have one)? Answer - my brain. How is it possible to have knowledge of something but absolutely no awareness of it whatsoever? What use is such knowledge? My position is that I have no such knowledge. I've LOOKED for it. If any such knowledge was going to make itself known to me, it would surely have done so sometime during the fifteen years of education in a church school, with prayers and hymns EVERY DAY. At the end of that, I can state without equivocation that my knowledge of gods is that they are myths designed by people to control other people - and your protestations to the contrary show them to be very effective, I might add. You've even convinced yourself.

"Right, I'm going to explain the analogy carefully so you'll get it."

Oh good.

"To slap someone in the face is an insult. The grandfather, or uncle as you have made him, is God."

Possibly you misunderstand for comedy effect the reason I made him an uncle. Possibly not. No matter.

"I have no interest in insulting God."

Nor have I. What would be the point? I've no interest in insulting Austin Powers, either, just to pick another fictional character at random.

"You, however, do, but you are only able to because you are given the ability to do so by the grandfather, or uncle, which is the 'sitting on the lap' part of the analogy."

The weakness of your analogy is that you, on evidence which is, despite your inability to understand the reasons, very shaky, are the only one of us who thinks the "lap" exists. I don't need anyone's permission or help to say "gods do not exist". If you think I do, well, you're entitled to your opinion, I suppose. But as you say - since you believe in a god, you have NOTHING useful to say about whether it exists or not. So your analogy is pointless.

"When you changed your role from slapping a real person to trying to slap something you know to not exist, you made yourself out to be self-delusional,"

Like I said - I'm not the one doing the slapping, you are. I was not implying that I am delusional. I'm implying you are. It's interesting to me that it seems you just didn't see that.

"...you can't change my analogy in the way that you did, however humorous it is, because then it doesn't make sense."

Again, the fact that you seem to have missed that THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT interests me. Your analogy of sitting on a lap and slapping a face presupposes the existence of the lap and the slapee. It's a useless analogy, because you cannot presuppose that for the purposes of this discussion. It doesn't surprise me in the least that you missed that.

"[we all have a brain, and we should use it]
But to use it for what purpose, if the universe is random? Anything we do could immediately be undone by the random forces of the universe, so why bother?"

Erm... how about doing good. I think you have an over-inflated sense of the randomness of the universe. If I give money to a beggar, then yes, it is statistically possible that quantum indeterminacy will make that money spontaneously dissociate into its component atoms, thus undoing my good deed. However, I've been giving money to people for a long, long time, and that's almost *never* happened.

"Conversely, any wrong thing that we do would have no lasting consequence, so what criteria are there for judging a thing to be wrong?"

There are any number of criteria, every single one of them a human construct. The main criteria for most of our laws are "if you do this stuff in the village, do we all end up more or less happy?". A small family group may have its own internal rules, which don't necessarily rule out things like stealing or physical violence. However, as soon as human start clumping together in larger groups for their mutual advantage, there has to be some standard of behaviour, otherwise the village will collapse into chaos, and nobody benefits. The rules which develop are rather more restrictive than those appropriate to the family. For instance, it may be acceptable in family groups to beat up your younger brother and take his food. Such behaviour is not acceptable in a larger community, so it ends up getting banned. This is where most of what we call "morals" come from. Getting people to conform to them is hard, particularly if times are hard. Fortunately, people are gullible, so if you tell them enough times that if they break the rules they'll go to hell, they believe you. Religion is a mechanism for control. It still works. Personally, I don't need it, because I'm the kind of person who doesn't *need* the threat of everlasting torment to stop me from killing, stealing or whatever. But whatever works for you...

"

What evidence?"

I really must write an entry on this, but in the meantime, go and read "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", by Julian Jaynes. There's so much evidence I can't be bothered going through it all again here. If you read that book, and DON'T presuppose the existence of gods... why do I bother. You aren't going to read it with an open mind, and you ARE going to start with a presupposition of the existence of gods. I take it back. Don't bother reading it. The evidence IS there, but despite your query, you are not interested in it, and reading that book would be a waste of your time.

"That's what I've been saying! You're convinced that there is no God, because you have convinced yourself! That doesn't make him go away, though."

How, in a universe where there is an omniscient, omnipotent creator who, according to his followers, shows his existence in everything around us - HOW, in a world like that, would it be possible for one of his tiny creations to convince itself that he didn't exist? And why would he create a being so self-deluded? Just curious...

"Here's another analogy for you: You are like a child who puts his hand over his eyes and says, "I can't see you, so you can't see me.""

The Ravenous Bugblatter Atheist of Traal. The difference being that that connection is a logical fallacy, and between the two of us the one with the shaky grip on logic would seem to be you.

Here's an analogy for YOU. You're like a child who swears black's white that his imaginary friend exists. You can see him, but I can't. You can hear him, but I can't. But you talk to him, and he answers. For YOU, he exists. But that doesn't make him real. Many, many children have imaginary friends, just like that. Most of them grow out of it. You obviously haven't.


"

Abraham did have two sons: Isaac and Ishmael."

Thank you for stating that. Then explain this:
Gen.25:1-2 "Then again Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah."

I make that eight. So - one, two, eight? Inconsistent? This?

"That's why it says "begotten"--begotten of Sarah as well as Abraham."

The verse doesn't mention Sarah - you're putting words in the writer's mouth. Rather presumptuous, since the writer is, according to you, a god.

"Remember, the literal meaning is not just 'what it looks like to me.'"

What I remember is that you are using an interesting and different definition of the word "literal" than most of the English speaking world.

"Do you think that God delighted to sacrifice his Son Jesus? Of course not. But he required it to show mercy to you and me."

Why? He can do anything he likes, can't he? He's a GOD, isn't he? Why does he constrain himself in these perverse ways?

"As to the third verse, God does not will to lie, so he doesn't (can't)."

Basic linguistic problem, right there. There is an ENORMOUS difference between not doing something because you choose not to (e.g. I choose not to holiday in Greece), and not doing something because it's impossible (e.g. I choose not to holiday on Venus). It's when Christians start to show apparent ignorance of the difference between things like this that I start to consider them somewhat slow-witted and stupid.

"Only a Christian is able to love his enemy and do good."

Arrant nonsense. Utter, utter, drivel. The worst sort of racist garbage. You belittle every non-Christian humanitarian in the world with this libellous tripe. Presumably, for instance, Ghandi was unable to do good, by your estimation?

"Once again, your label of savagery is a term that depends on the opinion of the speaker (you). To me, the passage refers to the holy, deserved judgment of God on sinners. To call that savage is like saying that it is savage to put a criminal in jail, since they're no longer free anymore. That's the point, isn't it?"

No, it isn't. It's not savage to put a criminal in jail. That is the absolute minimum that a society can do to make the majority of its members safe. "Savage" would be, for instance, strapping a man into a chair and passing a lethal electric current through his body causing incredibly painful spasms until he dies, but there are only a very few backward, benighted, uncivilised, savage nations still using such "cruel and unusual" punishments. But even that primitive and barbaric punishment is only used fairly rarely on children and those innocent of actual crimes, whereas this god you speak of kills children indiscriminately for such heinous transgressions as making fun of bald people - 2Kings, 2:23-25.

"

No, he told him that he would "surely die." Where are you getting "that day" from?

Genesis, 2:17. KJV. "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

Cue, like I said early, the usual spurious nonsense about the different meaning of the word "day".

"And as you said, Adam did die, after 930 years."

Giggling now. You really believe this, don't you? NO concept at all of human biology, and what an enormous difference in the basic building blocks of life it would need to make a human live even half that long. Like I said, slow-witted...

"In any case, that's not what you would call prophecy anyway, that's law."

The difference being? Your god said "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.", and the guy eatested thereof, and 929 years later he's still tooling around happily. What gives? Was your god lying when he said that? Or had he changed his mind?

"i.e. the Nile. Notable because in all of recorded history, this river has never dried up.>

a. It hasn't happened YET, as you say."

I'm not holding my breath...

" b. This may refer to a cessation not of the entire flow of the river, but of its annual flooding"

So why doesn't it say so? This is your god's word, why doesn't he just say what he means? Oh, hang on, you contend that he does say literally what he means. But then you try to "interpret" this "literal" truth. And you can't see the inconsistency. Odd.

"... do you know whether it has ever not flooded?"

No, I don't. I don't think it's relevant. The verse said "dried up". I don't think there's much interpretation required of those two words. "Dry" is a fairly simple concept - even Christians should be able to understand it.

"it probably won't happen until the second coming of Christ."

OK. Till then, god's people better get used to being uprooted and persecuted everywhere they go, eh?

"Also, Israel does not necessarily refer to the Jews, but can also mean the Israel of the New Covenant, which are those who believe in Christ."

That's a rather large leap of logic... any Jews care to comment?

"
Of course I have. Are you sure that the Israelites had?"

Yes. Beetles are the commonest land species group. There are more kinds of beetles, in more environments worldwide than there are any other kind of animal. Are you seriously suggesting that the Israelites had never seen, say, a cockroach? Surely not...

"
No, I'm saying exactly the opposite."

Careful now, you might make it look like you don't even know what you're talking about...

"The writer probably thought rabbits DID chew the cud, since he lived before our modern times of dissection and scientific investigation of really important things like rabbits."

Sarcasm? Ask an Australian farmer how important rabbits are.

"So if God had told him that rabbits DON'T chew the cud, it would just have been a point of confusion for the writer and everyone else who heard it at that time."

Never mind the fact that it would also have been the TRUTH, as in the evidence of objective reality. Oh no. So, what you're saying is that your god told the writer that rabbits DO chew the cud. And since he's a god, he'd know that that's wrong. And yet you said above that he did the opposite. Please try to sort out what you mean, because you don't seem to understand what YOU are saying, let alone what I'm saying.

"You think God wrong now; they would have thought him wrong then."

What does it matter whether they thought him wrong? And anyway, he's GOD. Why would they think him wrong on that, since they seem to be happy to believe him on all other sorts of seriously unbelievable stuff?

"people with nothing better to do began investigating really important things like bats and rabbits."

More sarcasm. People with nothing better to do than develop vaccines against virulent diseases such as rabies, carried by bats. It's when Christians start being condescending and patronising about sciences which directly save lives that I start to think of them as [insert something EXTREMELY insulting here, because if I type what I think I'll get moderated].

""

And what leads you to believe that the writer didn't?

This verse: 1Kings, 7:23. "And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, ... and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about." No mention of "more or less", or "nearly ten", or "thirty one and a bit". Oh no. Ten cubits diameter, thirty cubits circumference. Pi = 3.

"

Oh please. This is nonsense."

I love this. How do you know it's nonsense? Have you TRIED it? Let's see...

"Anyone not knowing FIRST that the planet is round would think that the boat had simply gotten too far away to see, which in fact I think it does before the horizon obscures it."

Which neatly proves that you've never done it. And even more neatly proves that you've never even engaged your brain long enough to wonder why old sailing ships were fitted with a crow's nest for the lookout. The fact that YOU THINK it's too far away to see before the horizon obscures it is yet more evidence of the fact that your world view is based on what goes on in your head, rather than what goes on in the world.

The earth is very, very obviously a curved surface, and this fact was evident even to people of ancient times, because you can SEE the sails of an approaching ship BEFORE you see its hull. And yes, there are other ways to tell which make it equally obvious - but that one is so very, very easy. (You don't live in Kansas, do you? Wondering if you've ever seen the sea...)

"Furthermore, the way the earth was proven round was not by watching boats disappear."

For most ancient civilisations, there was never any question that the world was round. It's OBVIOUS. There was never a NEED to prove it, any more than there was a need to prove water is wet or that day follows night. Only the early believers in the Christian god were so stupid or gullible as to actually WRITE DOWN that they thought the world was flat. Is it any wonder they were persecuted?

"This is a self-report, so I can't PROVE that you are lying, but come on."

Interesting position. You can't prove I'm lying. You *can* prove I'm not. Why would you choose not to?

"Ah, that all purpose get out of the Christian in a corner - "it depends what you mean by the word 'deluded dupe'".>

Just like I don't take the Bible literally like you mean literally."

Yeah - "literally" means whatever you need it to mean, in other words.

"

er... do you have a point here? Sorry, I couldn't resist."

Yes, I do. God created them, then cursed them. Why? Surprised you missed that rather obvious point, but you seem to have been aiming for sarcasm again. Near miss.

"

I meant of the humans, Adam was created first. "

Note the complete ignorage of the inconsistency of the two contradictory myths of creation.

"

I mean real miracles."

So do I. Plenty of people think what Uri Geller does are real miracles. I could say a lot more on that, but you're not the kind of person who would understand.

"I assume then that your answer is simply that you don't believe in them. That doesn't make them not real, just like not believing in God doesn't make him not real."

I believe they happened. People with an interest in controlling other people have all sorts of mechanisms for tightening their control. "Miracles" are a good one. I can turn water into wine. I can do so for entertainment purposes, and nobody who sees me do it thinks for a moment that I'm anything other than an amateur conjuror messing about. But the point is, they don't know how I do it, and if I chose to, I could do it in front of an audience of gullible dupes who I know to be more suggestible than most (a church would be a good place to find such people) and tell them that I'm doing it in the name of their god. And here's the thing - this stuff has been done. And AFTER it's done, and the conjuror explains that it's just a trick, a significant proportion of the audience continue to believe it was a miracle. In some cases, the magician even shows them how its done - and they still believe it's a miracle. There is "literally" no point talking to such people.

"
Because it's not a possibility. I know, again with the "arrogance." But the onus is on you to believe, not me to soften the message."

No, stop, I'm laughing so hard it hurts...

"I include multiple paths within the same religion. I know Jews who say that there are many ways to God. And the weather right now is gorgeous. Literally no clouds in the sky where I am. And I do mean literally, not allegorically."

Hmm. Given that you've demonstrated you don't know what the word "literally" actually means, you'll understand if I take that with a pinch of Lot's wife.

And you don't mention knowledge or otherwise of "jihad". Do you KNOW any Muslims? Just curious, as I say.

H.

Lucinda wrote: "wander up a mountain, and you'll notice that the horizon is curved"

Doesn't work, I'm afraid, even if Mount Everest somehow rose miraculously out of a perfectly flat plain, you wouldn't see it. Look out the window of an airliner (at 35,000ft, higher than the top of Everest) at the sea, and the horizon still appears disappointingly flat. Look out the window of *Concorde* on the other hand (cruising altitude more like 60,000ft), and you WILL see a curved horizon. Sadly, this is not an option for many.

But like I say above - the crows nest is there on ships so that the guy up there can see over the horizon before the people on the deck. That only works if the sea (and hence the earth) are curved.

There's a common misconception that Columbus was arguing with flat-earthers. COLUMBUS WAS WRONG. He thought he could sail to China by going west. Everyone else said "it's too far", NOT "you'll fall off the edge". And here's the thing. EVERYONE ELSE WAS RIGHT. The earth is a LOT bigger than Columbus thought it was. If it wasn't for the accident of two bloody great continents and a lot of other islands being in the way, Columbus's ships would have turned back or been lost.

H.

Oh, and one more factual error (or at least misconception)

> "I include multiple paths within the same religion. I know Jews who say that there are many ways to God."

And I know Christians who say there are many ways to God. And your point is?

Almost all religions have both exclusive and inclusive versions. Islam doesn't, AFAIK: only an exclusive version. So, by your own logic, Islam must be the One True Faith. They're the only ones who can be wrong, so they must be right!

That has to be a classic. A Christian 'proving' the truth of Islam...

Ahh phoot. That's what happens to you when you listen to Science teachers.
Still, I was right about the other stuff...

Except http://www.everestnews.com/vinson.htm seems to suggest that I'm not completely wrong...

handy fact - if you're standing at sea level, the horizon is only three miles away. In other words, no boats aren't going to be obscured before they get there.

http://www.reefnet.on.ca/gearbag/wwwhorizon.htm has the calculations.