One has to wonder why we see so many Christian theologians trying to intepret a Jewish book (Genesis) without ever calling upon the authors (Jews) to get them to explain it.
Arcanus, wouldn't it be simplier to bypass all these attempts at sorting through all the conflicting arguments and go straight to the scientific argument (where those conflicting arguments have already been so thoroughly meeted out over the course of the last 200 years)? Occam's razor.
Look at it this way. Pretend you are on a jury for a murder trial. You are sequestered in a room with your fellow jurists, trying to come to a verdict. Time after time again, a vote is made, and each time you are the only hold out, explaining that if there is even the remotest possibility that the person is innocent, you cannot find him guilty; despite the fact that 50,000 people in the stadium saw him murder the victim, despite the 20 cameras that recorded the event, you hold out the possibility that somewhere they may be evidence that his is innocent.
The idea here is that in the face of overwhelming evidence, you hold out that the man is innocent on the remotest of chances and base on no real evidence. Similarly, the probability of the universe being created by a God, particularly the God described in the Bible, is so remote as to be infintesimally small. And yet Judeo-Chistians cling to it despite all REASON, and all evidence to the contrary. How can you honestly say that this rational behavior? If you went to a doctor and he told you that you had cancer but the only treatment was a coffee enema, would you take his word for it, or would you seek a second opinion? Of course, you would seek a second, and maybe a third opinion. So why are religious people so reasonable, and thoughtful about such ordinary things in life as buying a dress or a hammer, and yet cannot be bothered to take the time to question what they've been led to believe about their own faith?
Here is a passage from the memoirs of my undergraduate Paleontology professor's memoirs that I think succinctly argues the point:
Arcanus, wouldn't it be simplier to bypass all these attempts at sorting through all the conflicting arguments and go straight to the scientific argument (where those conflicting arguments have already been so thoroughly meeted out over the course of the last 200 years)? Occam's razor.
Look at it this way. Pretend you are on a jury for a murder trial. You are sequestered in a room with your fellow jurists, trying to come to a verdict. Time after time again, a vote is made, and each time you are the only hold out, explaining that if there is even the remotest possibility that the person is innocent, you cannot find him guilty; despite the fact that 50,000 people in the stadium saw him murder the victim, despite the 20 cameras that recorded the event, you hold out the possibility that somewhere they may be evidence that his is innocent.
The idea here is that in the face of overwhelming evidence, you hold out that the man is innocent on the remotest of chances and base on no real evidence. Similarly, the probability of the universe being created by a God, particularly the God described in the Bible, is so remote as to be infintesimally small. And yet Judeo-Chistians cling to it despite all REASON, and all evidence to the contrary. How can you honestly say that this rational behavior? If you went to a doctor and he told you that you had cancer but the only treatment was a coffee enema, would you take his word for it, or would you seek a second opinion? Of course, you would seek a second, and maybe a third opinion. So why are religious people so reasonable, and thoughtful about such ordinary things in life as buying a dress or a hammer, and yet cannot be bothered to take the time to question what they've been led to believe about their own faith?
Here is a passage from the memoirs of my undergraduate Paleontology professor's memoirs that I think succinctly argues the point:
Quote:In the great classic, near eastern religions, man's life on earth is
conceived as pain and suffering, and an inheritance of man's fall from
grace (or Paradise Lost). According to these traditions, after man's
expulsion from paradise, because of his disobedience to his "God", man
alone could not recover his erstwhile innocence, even by striving to become
a superhuman of humility, submission, and kindness, etc., but only by an
intercession of a god, or God-man sacrifice, could man ever hope to regain
paradise, in another world, a spirit world. This "New Jerusalem" is a
concept which it contrary to the universal order of things which man's
science has inductively gleaned from the study of nature, and as such,
man's concept of morality is a product of his vision of the world and his
hope to regain lost innocence.
Man's concept of morality has most recently been connected with what he
conceived to be good (moral) and to be bad (immoral). Man's immorality has
been equated with "sin" in his apriori understanding: this idea of morality
has changed tremendously during his short tenure on earth. But contrarily,
what is moral in Nature? And has this natural morality altered through
time? "Truth" and "falsehood" are important ingredients in man's
consideration of morality, but truth may be defined, in the sense of
subjective truth with its definitions and criteria, differing from person
to person, institution to institution, place to place, and time to time.
Man is essentially incapable of committing "sin" beyond the magnitude of
the individual and collective sins, for the universe is independent of
mankind's hopes, fears, aspirations, and indeed, complete understanding,
past, present, and future. We may, however, admit a possible transient
misdemeanor in that man's efforts have had some deleterious effects on the
earth, and even possibly on parts of the solar system, but certainly this
can have little or no effect on the galaxy or the universe at large.
Further, the earth and sister planets and their satellites are almost
insignificant parts of our almost insignificant star system in an almost
insignificant galaxy, and in an almost infinitesimal speck in our universe
(be it cosmos or chaos matters not).
Man's paradigm of morality is religion based on axiomatic reasoning, not
subject to objective proof, personified as God, omnipotent throughout time
and space. According to this paradigm, Man need not strive to obtain
knowledge from any source other than religion for all is given by God;
submission to his God will make all known which man needs in his life, and
the rest on a "need to know basis" will be revealed to him in the after
world. This is a lazy system for man need not strive to find truth, but it
is handed down from above: All things are known to God and all man needs
to do is apply and follow these laws which are made known by individual
revelation from God to man.
Man's concept, and Nature's concept of reality and harmony differ in the
highest order. Man has accused his a priori deities of duplicity, for men
have always asked the question, "Why should good men suffer", and very
often the misery of good men is far greater than that of those who do not
conform to the highest criteria for goodness as defined by man's totomic
customs and religions. This question has been asked and answers have been
attempted ever since man realized his "selfness" and became an
introspective creature.
In the last analysis of the morality of Nature, we see no evidence of mercy
in the cosmos; its indifference extends to the lowest forms of life to that
of man. The cries of humanity, whether the suffering is imposed by man upon
himself or upon other men, or by natural laws operating independantly of
man, echo down the corridors of time and space and evoke no response from
indifferent Nature.
These anguished cries and pitiful prayers for help are merely cosmic
background "noise" to which Nature must (not out of evil intent, spite,
revenge, or punishment, but by necessity) turn a "deaf ear"; for were it
not so, Nature itself would be destroyed by these same laws which Nature
had ordained "in the beginning" (if there was one) and must continue to
operate in perpetuity (if time and the universe are truly eternal), or there
would be and ending to the cosmic laws: a true "twilight of the gods", and
of cosmic harmony, Chaos never returning to Cosmos.
- James E. Conkin, Professor Emeritus, University of Louisville, 2002
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
