(October 1, 2014 at 2:50 am)Blackrook Wrote: The Hebrews were practically saintly compared to the people who lived around them, who engaged in human sacrifices, wild sex orgies, rampant homosexuality and pedophilia, and all the other evils that caused God to destroy Sodom and Gamorrah.I would expect that a tribe of people led by the actual god of the universe would have behaved in a consistent manner from the very beginning and not have had to conform to cultural or societal values at any time. Or did I miss the part where Jews or Christians today keep slaves or stone adulterers and gays?
I know that is not an explanation that will satisfy atheists, who demand that all people in all historical periods act like perfectly civilized 21st century Americans.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
