My House Did not have a Builder (or did it?)

[vulcanlogician]

Well if it says it is and it isn't, then it is lying. If it's lying then none of it should be believed.

This is the sort of all-or-nothing thinking that I tend to reject. There are some true statements in the bible, and if you find a false claim in there, that doesn't make the true statements any less true. The same goes for false claims. They are false because they are false. My favorite book is the Republic. I think, overall, the book contains a lot of truth. Are there false claims in it? Youbetcha. I think it would be rather unwise of me to assume everything in the Republic true and live my life according to its dictates until it is "indisputably known" to contain falsehoods. There is a proper way to approach ancient texts, and "true until proven otherwise" isn't it.

But since it's hard to know whether or not that particular claim is a lie, the only thing we can really do is look at the rest of it and see if anything in there is absolutely known to be a lie. If there is an indisputably known lie in it, then we know it can't be the revealed word of God, because it says that God cannot lie. And no it's really not a debate I wanted to get into. I was just trying to answer the question. 

That's why you have people pointing out incongruencies in the text, trying to find that one false claim that would apparently send the whole house of cards crashing down. On the other side there are teams of apologists intent on lawyering the text in what ever way they can to make sure they can paint the bible as irrefutable. It isn't really an honest debate, so (like you) I have little interest in it.

But how could a layperson verify its claims as to whether they are true or not? What layperson is going on paleontological excavations or testing things in a lab? The layperson has to choose whether to believe it or not believe it. There really isn't a way to prove it true or false unless you're doing the experiments and studies yourself.

All kinds of lay people collect fossils and observe astronomical events as a hobby. It would take some time and effort, but anyone is free to form their own hypotheses, make their own observations, and do their own experiments. 

I don't know if you're a YEC, but if you are, you can go buy a telescope and using a few simple formulas found online, determine that many celestial objects are more than 6,000 light years away. If your going to doubt the validity of the formulas etc. you begin to go down the road of flat earthers who assume science is a grand conspiracy meant to deceive people. Otherwise, you have to say that God intentionally made it look like the universe is billions of years old, giving anyone with the necessary instruments to observe the night sky very good reason to doubt the accounts in Genesis.

[Astreja]

It continually blows my mind that the courts can figure out that I'm not guilty of the crimes of my father, but the thumpers keep wanting me to believe that I'm guilty by association because my alleged great-great-great-great-great-and-so-on-grand-pappy ate some fruit.

Just a way to beat you down emotionally so that they can build you up in their image (and pick your pocket, and monopolize your time on Sunday morning and Wednesday evening).

What really gets me about this sin-poisoned-blood silliness -- aside from the sheer absurdity of it from a genetic and hematologic POV, that is -- is the failure of the offended god to take any meaningful proactive steps to fix it.  One would think that a god capable of creating a whole fucking universe would be able to spot a snippet of damaged DNA and fix it, without waiting for those pesky mortals to invent CRISPR technology.

By the way, Dan, would you kindly identify the damaged segment?  My brother's a geneticist.  He probably has the knowledge and the tools to repair Original Sin (if it actually exists, that is). 

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All kinds of lay people collect fossils and observe astronomical events as a hobby.

*waves*  Got at least one fossil in my bowl of pretty rocks in the living room, and I've been interested in astronomy since I was a kid.

[Dan Brooks]

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How am I taking the dodge? What did I not answer? Why we don't treat leprosy the same now? Because we use antibiotics now. Just like Frank's Red Hot, we put that s**t on everything! So should God have told them to take antibiotics? I guess they should have gone to their local drug store and gotten one. Or maybe God gave them an alternative method since there weren't any readily available antibiotics at the time. 

I have no idea what claim I made that I haven't supported. You asked me two questions. My first response only answered the second question, so I assume you mean I dodged the first question. Well, the above is my answer to that. As for making a claim, I don't remember what claim I made that I didn't support. I was just answering your question.

Why do we use antibiotics now? Why isn't the bible's/gods treatment still used?

Does gods power to cure not stand the test of time? I think the obvious answer is........NO. Which then begs the question of did it ever work. Answer, apparently not or it would have been used from that time until now. So what changed? 

This can be applied to all of gods "science" in the bible. Why, because it was not from a god. It came from the minds of men.

I'm actually still looking for the treatment and cure for leprosy that you're speaking of. I don't see a procedure for that. I see a cleansing ceremony that was to be done on the day the person was pronounced clean, but it wasn't a treatment or cure for it. Leviticus 13 just says how to check and see if the leprosy is contagious or not (clean or unclean). And the beginning of chapter 14 talks about the birds and the blood and stuff, on the day he was pronounced clean. But I don't see a treatment or procedure for healing the leprosy in there. Unless you're referring to a different passage. I don't have the whole Bible memorized, lol. 
Jesus healed leprosy, but other than that, I don't see a cure for it in there.

As far as God's science in the Bible, here's an example. 
Archimedes is said to have come up with the first accurate estimate for pi in the 200s BC. But apparently Solomon knew pi hundreds of years before in the 900s BC. (And whether or not he was the first to do it doesn't matter. What matters is if it was accurate. And even more than Solomon getting it right, it matters if the biblical account gets it right.)
2 Chronicles 4
2 Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.

People like to make fun of this and say that the Bible indicates that pi=3. But if you read the rest of the passage, it doesn't indicate that.
5 And the thickness of it was an handbreadth, and the brim of it like the work of the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies; and it received and held three thousand baths.

So it had a brim like the brim of the cup, all the way around it. And it was 10 cubits from brim to brim. 10 cubits is about 15 feet, so if the brim was about 4 inches wide, (which is a fairly reasonable estimation based on its diameter, and the fact that it was as the brim of a cup) then that reduces the inside measurement to about 14 feet 4 inches (4 inches off of each side). So that makes the inside measurement about 172 inches. The line of 30 cubits is about 45 feet. So that's 540 inches. So you have a diameter of approximately 172 inches, and a circumference of approximately 540 inches. Pi times diameter = circumference, so circumference divided by diameter = pi. Well 540 divided by 172 is  3.13953488372. That's pretty close to pi isn't it? And of course it would have to be actual pi if the measurements would have been exact. But that's a pretty dang good estimation I think. A lot better than the Egyptians who had it at about 3.16, or the Babylonians who had it at about 3.125.

[Mister Agenda]

In regard to your signature, I've seen that type of faith in pretty much all belief systems, including atheism. It's the nature of a belief system. Once you believe you found your keys, you stop looking for them.

Atheism isn't a belief system. Neither is theism.

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 I've heard a few times that evolution has to take such a long time to occur, that the earth has to be that old in order for the evolution to take place.  If I'm wrong about that, then I apologize.

No need to apologize, but you're wrong about that.

But if evolution doesn't take that long to occur, then why isn't there so much more evidence of it? Not only in observation, but in paleontological finds and archaeological finds, etc?

How much evidence should there be? There are literally millions of tons of fossils in museums. You can make finding fossils a hobby and build quite a collection. How did you determine how much evidence (paleontological and archaeological) finds there should be if the theory of biological evolution is correct? What's the magic number of tons of fossils that would convince you? How many lineages have to be traced before you would find it convincing?

We have fossils that illustrate the transition not only from ape to human, but reptile to mammal and hippo-like creature to whale. Are you one of those who, for each new link found, insists that there are now two more missing links to either side of it?

If evolution is false, we should not have been able to have a series of fossils that illustrate any gradual change of species, such as hyenas branching off from felines. Genetic studies shouldn't match the fossil story if the fossils don't represent common descent. And we shouldn't have the same retroviral insertions as other great apes if we are not related to them by descent...in fact, it's impossible to explain them except by common descent or the deception of some being with the power to fake our genetic heritage for its own fathomable purposes, a being that by definition must be a liar and a trickster.

[bennyboy]

Let me say first of all that some of the first Muslim scholars (not Muhammad's generation maybe) were certainly very intellectual and advanced.  I don't want to denigrate what astronomy or philosophy they may have delved into.  At about 500-600 AD, obviously they were much more advanced than the writers of the Old Testament.

That being said, the things you've quoted are too general, and not supported by enough specific details to be sure that what you say they mean is really what their writers intended.

But I accused you not of a documentary fail, but of a logic fail.  "We don't know, therefore Allah" is a poor argument.  So is claiming to know that which cannot be observed.

Mohammed's generation was mainly composed of merchants; the scientific move began to show itself obviously with Persians, Indians and ex-Romans converting to Islam. Islam was never expanded by Arabs alone; long after the prophet's death other races carried the faith, like the Ottoman Turks.

But it's the leaders who hated the guts of science because it defied their rule in many cases; take the late Ottoman regime that banned the use of typewriters as an example. The only science left without touching from the ruling regime was military and economical science that would benefit the regime.

When I try to put the story of the universe in the context of models like the big bang; this is the only logical conclusion I get: we need a point of start. Just like my comment to SaStrike, I find the thought of the singularity a very exiting similarity to the idea of God. A mere label changing.

Here's the thing, though.  God does not solve this philosophical problem-- in terms of philosophy, God is a philosophical cheat.  You say we need a "point of start."  Okay, but how was God brought to existence?  Your answer must be: "Nono, God is special, He is the unstarted starting point, the one who always existed and never needed a start."

This is your philosophical problem-- you must say, "All things have a start. . . but not God."  But we could just as easily speculate ANOTHER philosophical cheat: "All things have a start. . . but not the multiverse!  All things have a start. . . but not the Big Bang singularity!  All things have a start. . . but not the Universe!"

As for the last, it's an option-- since math breaks down as you approach the singularity (you end up with /0 broken math, I believe), it really can man that almost anything was going.

I'm not unsympathetic to the God idea, by the way.  I have my own interest, especially in consciousness and in the fact that the Universe seems conscious to some degree.  But the use of the God idea as a solution to the philosophical problem of infinite regress is obviously a cheat.

[brewer]

[Dan Brooks]

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How am I taking the dodge? What did I not answer? Why we don't treat leprosy the same now? Because we use antibiotics now. Just like Frank's Red Hot, we put that s**t on everything! So should God have told them to take antibiotics? I guess they should have gone to their local drug store and gotten one. Or maybe God gave them an alternative method since there weren't any readily available antibiotics at the time. 

I have no idea what claim I made that I haven't supported. You asked me two questions. My first response only answered the second question, so I assume you mean I dodged the first question. Well, the above is my answer to that. As for making a claim, I don't remember what claim I made that I didn't support. I was just answering your question.

Why do we use antibiotics now? Why isn't the bible's/gods treatment still used?

Does gods power to cure not stand the test of time? I think the obvious answer is........NO. Which then begs the question of did it ever work. Answer, apparently not or it would have been used from that time until now. So what changed? 

This can be applied to all of gods "science" in the bible. Why, because it was not from a god. It came from the minds of men.

I'm actually still looking for the treatment and cure for leprosy that you're speaking of. I don't see a procedure for that. I see a cleansing ceremony that was to be done on the day the person was pronounced clean, but it wasn't a treatment or cure for it. Leviticus 13 just says how to check and see if the leprosy is contagious or not (clean or unclean). And the beginning of chapter 14 talks about the birds and the blood and stuff, on the day he was pronounced clean. But I don't see a treatment or procedure for healing the leprosy in there. Unless you're referring to a different passage. I don't have the whole Bible memorized, lol. 
Jesus healed leprosy, but other than that, I don't see a cure for it in there.
EDIT: Oh I decided to look up hyssop, because I was wondering why it would be used. 
Hyssopus officinalis or hyssop is a herbaceous plant of the genus Hyssopus native to Southern Europe, the Middle East, and the region surrounding the Caspian Sea. Due to its properties as an antiseptic, cough reliever, and expectorant, it is commonly used as a medicinal plant.

So I guess in lieu of antibiotics, hyssop was a pretty good thing to use. I learned something too with this, Cool. 

I also found this:
Cedarwood essential oil helps in curing tooth and gum aches, boosts metabolism, eliminates cough, cures obesity and high blood pressure, and acts as an antiseptic.

Huh, learn something new everyday. I really didn't know that before. Looks like God did know what He was talking about.
As far as God's science in the Bible, here's an example. 
Archimedes is said to have come up with the first accurate estimate for pi in the 200s BC. But apparently Solomon knew pi hundreds of years before in the 900s BC. (And whether or not he was the first to do it doesn't matter. What matters is if it was accurate. And even more than Solomon getting it right, it matters if the biblical account gets it right.)
2 Chronicles 4
2 Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.

People like to make fun of this and say that the Bible indicates that pi=3. But if you read the rest of the passage, it doesn't indicate that.
5 And the thickness of it was an handbreadth, and the brim of it like the work of the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies; and it received and held three thousand baths.

So it had a brim like the brim of the cup, all the way around it. And it was 10 cubits from brim to brim. 10 cubits is about 15 feet, so if the brim was about 4 inches wide, (which is a fairly reasonable estimation based on its diameter, and the fact that it was as the brim of a cup) then that reduces the inside measurement to about 14 feet 4 inches (4 inches off of each side). So that makes the inside measurement about 172 inches. The line of 30 cubits is about 45 feet. So that's 540 inches. So you have a diameter of approximately 172 inches, and a circumference of approximately 540 inches. Pi times diameter = circumference, so circumference divided by diameter = pi. Well 540 divided by 172 is  3.13953488372. That's pretty close to pi isn't it? And of course it would have to be actual pi if the measurements would have been exact. But that's a pretty dang good estimation I think. A lot better than the Egyptians who had it at about 3.16, or the Babylonians who had it at about 3.125.

[brewer]

I wonder if Dan knows he's repeating himself?

[Whateverist]

I guess that is what happens when you've decided one book is the source of everything worth knowing. Kind of painful to watch.

[Dan Brooks]