Creationists

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Genesis refers to arbaht confay ha'aretz. The four corners of the Earth.

ruveyn

It is very curious that a self-proclaimed linguist is so inefficient at expressing his ideas. You could have said simply "I am a contrarian" and replaced the above two paragraphs with one sentence.

CycloStrum [easier to type] -

Not going to get comprehensive.

If ONLY the NON-thinkers who listen to the all must be literal rabble rousers would THINK long enough to LISTEN to what is being said.

The Bible must be read LITERALLY - a Genesis day is 24 60 minute hours. Yup. Which is why in Daniel seventy weeks is 490 years. Right.

AND, of course - the Bible is inerrant - IN ITS ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS. Which - oops - are not available.

IF any body actually takes what THEY say literally - and thinks about it - the issue of a proven wrong Bible verse becomes trivial.

Inherently the problem is one of either accepting the existence of a creator and a teleological universe and the subsidiary acceptance that this book, the Bible, handed down from a culture so primitive it had no concept of the universe as we know it as being absolutely true or starting from scratch and looking at the universe through the eyes of one merely recording data from the best sources we know and trying to piece reality together in a way that makes sense. There is no way to accept both views without impossibly twisting the meaning of much that is written down in the Bible to attempt to fit it into the current data perceived. The Bible presents one system of order conformed to the early social systems of a primitive culture with rewards and punishments based in man made concepts of justice. The universe we observe shows no such justice and humanity plays such a minuscule presence in this universe that its existence has no impact whatsoever on such a huge collection of forces and objects that interact with overwhelming power with each other and reflect absolutely no relationship to human concepts of good and evil or justice and punishment.
Humanity has benefited hugely in disregarding the Biblical concepts of the universe and merely working with the data observed. Biblical social concepts can be useful in ameliorating some social interactions but history has also incessant and unnecessary conflicts generated out of religion which have given much misery and negative attitudes to social interaction and religious organizations have been constantly used by avaricious and power hungry organizations and individuals for their own benefit and the destruction of much wealth and good behavior of humans.
I see no way to remove religion from humanity whose thought processes are very much directed by wishful thinking and strange fantastic and unreal concepts.
It seems to me a great tragedy.

Jumping in feet first here but:

As a reformed christian, 7 day creation believer and a biblical inerrantist , I would like to point out that the "fundamentalist" christian beliefs some of you are so worried about are a result of a recent theology in Christendom. a theology, I might add, which is in direct opposition to the modern era. The modern era has passed and fundamentalist christianity will also. Part of this movement (started btw at the Niagara Bible Conferences about 130 years ago), requires the practitioner read the Bible literalistically, not literally. To read the Bible "literally" requires the reader to take into account the various principles of the philosophy known as hermeneutics, such as genre, "literalistic" reading can ignore that. For example: literalists will take the statement "the four corners of the earth" as meaning from all extremes, the four points of a compass etc, the Literalist on the other hand will read the same statement and think instead that the Bible is making a claim about the physical shape of the earth.

Take my statements with a grain of salt, I am no literallist as I am Reformed and Amil not dispensational/fundamentalist (not a 1:1 correlation between fund and disp, but close) and you will find that I find fundamentalists as annoying as atheists do. My training is in Theology, Philosophy and History, though I did study Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics at the A and S levels during my 6th form days before Uni.

Further when the Bible speaks of science it tends to speak of science in passing terms scientifically and more for rhetorical reasons. For example the Bible speaks of the Pleiades start cluster as being bound and Orion's belt as being loosed (not bound), which we know from observation to be true on both counts. In the case where this is mentioned however it is NOT talking directly about astronomy, instead the Bible is recording a conversation between God and a man (Job) where the man needs to understand his insignificance in respect to God, else the next part about God providing a mediator to stand between He and man makes no sense what so ever.

I also further fully expect that anyone who is not a christian to dogmatically reject the notion of the christian God as creator or even His existence, the Bible says you will in the same passages that tell me that I cannot reason a person into belief. As a rationalist one of my presuppositions is that God exists, to any atheist it will be that God does not exist. Fundamental presuppositions are very difficult to argue and are effectively unchangeable, the only way I know about successfully challenging such presuppositions involves seeing if the arguments based upon them are sustainable and even then you are only challenging the structure, not the presupposition itself with no guarantee of changing the person's outlook in your own favor.

enough for a first post.

Welcome to Wrong Planet. Thanks for jumping in.

Guitarist: Interesting article and I'll try to spend more time on it. I'm responding to ruveyn for succinctness, however.

The four corners of the earth seems to me merely a directional reference--north, south, east, and west, and any reference to the four corners seems to be about ALL of the earth as it was understood to be at the time. This does not mean that the earth, according to the Bible, REALLY IS FLAT.

Further, I noticed many of the references in the article are from poetic writings. A literal interpretation of poetry or wisdom writings ABSOLUTELY MUST take into account the artistic as well as sacred function of the text. What is expressed in artistic terms is true from the perspective of the poet--that is, for example, under ordinary circumstances when you go walking around, you can reliably assume that the earth is stable under your feet. In broad terms, this is true. The sky APPEARS to be a dome covering the earth. Surely no one will dispute that! Wisdom writings, whether poetry or proverbs, are true in a very broad, general sense, and exceptions to rules are assumed.

Lastly, the article references the book of Enoch, which is Hebrew apocrypha (if I understand correctly). Christians have never accepted Enoch as canon, though common familiarity with it at times has resulted in Christian references to it. But it really would only have been relevant to Christian Jews. So I don't really count Enoch as Biblical justification for a "flat earth."

I think this sums up why scientists don't want faith and other nonsense infecting the classroom.

If Science worked like religion:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYigmGyN2RQ&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

I have to wonder if the Honorable Dr. Dawkins has been reading some of the Religion v. Truth threads on this website?

Dr. Dawkins, phasmatis Sanctus Scientia est super vos. I command you in the name of Saint Issac of Newton to come forth!! !

Impressive in both articulation and depth of research. The levels of intellect and reason have both increased, not only for the Theist side of the house, but for the entire website!

Welcome aboard!

I pray to Sagan that these creationists come to the same divine revelations that we evolutionists have. If only they would respect the deep inner comfort our faith in evolution gives us, surely that alone should be reason to teach evolution.

Oh, and @ RKB...

I was going to say TLDR, but as it's your first post I'll bother with it. I'll do this backwards.

1 Fatuous special pleading at best, tit..err evidence or gtfo.
2 This sentence contradicts it self, badly.
3 Not accepting a baseless claim to be true because some bronze-aged goat herders said it's true isn't a presupposition - it's common sense.
4 Refer to (1)



Yes, that's why bats are called birds, kidneys are said to be the source of all emotions, and Pi is exactly 3 in the bible. There is no science in the bible - that's why that whole dark age saga wasn't full of scientific breakthroughs.



It's more of a mouthful, but salt taken.



Apologetic "blah blah blah" where the bible is just too stupid, gratz. Also, the four points on a compass are arbitrary (Bar "north" and "south"), people made four main directions because it was easier to use on rectangular 2D maps. Left, Right, Up, Down. It's not really a feat of divine intelligence - even a child can make up such direction systems.

It is also fair play to point out that the veracity of the Bible is both faith-based and subjectively determined. For example, some say...

"The city of Jericho existed; therefor, the Bible is an accurate portrayal of actual historic events."

Following this logic, one could also say...

"New York City exists; therefor, the movie 'King Kong' is an accurate portrayal of actual historic events."

AND

"The city of Tokyo exists; therefor, the movie 'Godzilla' is an accurate portrayal of actual historic events."

... which logic cites powerful destructive beings (a 'King' and a 'God') as the primary historical figures, just like the Bible.

Subjective validation, anyone?

I am NOT a contrarian. I am a skeptic with a small but useful talent for detecting propaganda.

There is a considerable difference.

The utterances of fanatics signal loudly that they are not presenting data for examination.

This is a misunderstanding, though. Critics of the Bible used to point to the fact that so many places in the Bible were completely unknown and even doubted that those places EVER existed. This was done as a direct challenge to Biblical accuracy. Archeology has historically silenced those critics, and you don't really find anyone opposed to the Bible who will try to challenge it on the grounds that the places it mentions never existed.

There remains, of course, a number of places that have yet to be found, but archeology is catching up with the Bible all the time.

The tendency to generalize from a few specifics to a demand for total acceptance of a very doubtful document appears to me to be an act of desperation of someone totally committed to a rather odd collection of presuppositions.

Not really. You seem to think that because I am criticising militant atheists, I must therefore be standing up for the militant Christians. In fact, if you go back to my original statement you will see that I criticise both parties equally, so your assertion that I am "part of the problem" is false.

As regards your video of Dawkins:


It's got little to do with geography, and much to do with the people with whom they grew up.

EDITS: fixed a few things.

Last edited by CrinklyCrustacean on 12 Jun 2011, 3:28 am, edited 3 times in total.