A Creationists View of Dinosaurs and the Theory of Evolution

[Markbnj]

I've asked people repeatedly to provide even a crumb of evidence for this.

Secondly, seeing how the Bible was routinely kept OUT of the hands of common people during the Dark Ages flies in the face of your "fact".

Obviously, it would have been used as a means of coersion then if what you say is true.

With all due respect, you're way off on this. First of all, the term "Dark Ages" refers to a particularly western European view of the period from roughly 500 AD to 1000 AD, following the collapse of the western Roman Empire. It's really meaningless outside that context. Within that context, Christianity was at the time still vying for dominance with Celtic and Germanic pagan belief systems. There was no need to keep the bible out of the hands of common people, because no common people could read it. Reading and writing was done in Latin, and was limited to a very few Christian religious institutions, from whence we get nearly all our chronicles of the period (i.e. Bede, Nennius, Gregory of Tours, etc.). Ulfilas and his mission to the Goths aside, it really wasn't until Alfred the Great (ca... 800-ish?) that much religious writing began to be done in Germanic languages.

The period you may have in mind when you think of the bible being "kept out of the hands" of the "common people" probably coincides more with the 150 years before and leading up to the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The first English language Bibles were probably produced by John Wycliffe in the later 1300's. That was considered a rebellious act for the reasons cited by other posters, namely that by this time Christianity and the church had become well-established and very powerful, and only a religious elite were considered educated enough to gain benefit from reading the bible. Everyone else knew it existed, of course, and were bound by the edicts that issued forth from the religious hierarchy based on justifications found within it. So to cite this repression as evidence that the Bible was _not_ a tool of oppression and coercion of the masses is pretty humorous. Not allowing them to read it was very specifically a component of that same oppression and coercion.

 

[crashtestdummy]

The Jewish understanding of the Torah disagrees with you. The Torah depicts a God who is faithful to mankind despite the repeated failures of humans to be faithful to God.

There isn't one particular "Jewish interpretation" of the Torah. Even though the Talmud is considered a divine text, Jewish scholarship is constantly in debate over the meaning of just about everything (and the Talmud itself is written as something of a debate).

While the God depicted in the Torah is incredibly generous in some spaces, this is also the God that killed Aaron's sons for making a single mistake in sacrificial practice, that made the Jews wander the desert for 40 years because a couple of them thought the Canaanites were more powerful than them, and that dictated the Genocide of all people the Israelites displaced in the Levant. There are many others, but this is a start.

 

[Retro Rob]

Sorry, but you are wrong here. "Hot" has no absolute definition because it is a relative term, which is what that person was saying. What you are trying to say is

x (P(x) ^ H(x)) where P(x) means x is a Person and H(x) means x Thinks the Sun Is Hot.

Fair enough.

I don't think anyone's saying that there aren't any absolute truths...because that statment in and of itself is a contradiction.

 

[Tweak155]

Fair enough.

I don't think anyone's saying that there aren't any absolute truths...because that statment in and of itself is a contradiction.

Haha.

Yeah I agree there are absolute truths.

 

[crashtestdummy]

Very interesting view. Perhaps applying the term "supernatural" is the pain point here, as we set our own definitions to natural and supernatural. I'd argue that if a god exists, he or she would not be outside of what is natural. Rather our view or knowledge would be forced to expand as to what is included in natural. I suppose I lean towards your wife's point of view.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I do agree that by your very own definition, you can never prove a god or gods exist (possibly reasonably concluding there isn't one). I would have to think more as to whether you have constructed a reasonable framework to test or prove the existence of a god, though. I'm leaning towards not since I think we both agree it is impossible to prove there is no god.

This is drifting into semantics, but supernatural should refer to a phenomenon that can't be explained by more fundamental laws of nature. Unless you want to consider "pray to god and something happens" to be a law, but that kind of eschews the whole part about god being there and acting on it in some way. We could extend this to include some more feedback and interaction with this entity. Just because this god participates in some kind of reliable interaction with people wouldn't mean that people could really describe or explain the process behind it.

I do agree that any model is inherently naturalistic though, I actually started my previous post with "what is a supernatural model supposed to mean exactly?" But something doesn't have to be modeled to constitute as evidence.

Okay, I think I'm seeing my disconnect now. I think this is considering proof in the mathematical sense, ie something you can construct from fundamental axioms. In that case yes, you wouldn't be able to prove something supernatural exists. But I don't think the word "proof" is usually used that way, even in science (where I guess it shouldn't be used at all)

But to counter that, in the quote you gave, the paradoxical "proof" for god's existence by virtue of the Babelfish's existence surely lacked mathematical rigor.

These are both very reasonable points, but I do think we're drifting deep into realms that I had not intended (i.e. whether a definition of God has to be supernatural). I don't have a fundamental problem with someone proclaiming a God that is physical, except that doing so still requires a verifiable and predictive approach. If you want to argue for a supernatural God, though, it sort of by definition exists outside of verifiable observation and ontological argument.

 

[Retro Rob]

With all due respect, you're way off on this. First of all, the term "Dark Ages" refers to a particularly western European view of the period from roughly 500 AD to 1000 AD, following the collapse of the western Roman Empire. It's really meaningless outside that context. Within that context, Christianity was at the time still vying for dominance with Celtic and Germanic pagan belief systems. There was no need to keep the bible out of the hands of common people, because no common people could read it. Reading and writing was done in Latin, and was limited to a very few Christian religious institutions, from whence we get nearly all our chronicles of the period (i.e. Bede, Nennius, Gregory of Tours, etc.). Ulfilas and his mission to the Goths aside, it really wasn't until Alfred the Great (ca... 800-ish?) that much religious writing began to be done in Germanic languages.

The period you may have in mind when you think of the bible being "kept out of the hands" of the "common people" probably coincides more with the 150 years before and leading up to the time of the Spanish Inquisition. The first English language Bibles were probably produced by John Wycliffe in the later 1300's. That was considered a rebellious act for the reasons cited by other posters, namely that by this time Christianity and the church had become well-established and very powerful, and only a religious elite were considered educated enough to gain benefit from reading the bible. Everyone else knew it existed, of course, and were bound by the edicts that issued forth from the religious hierarchy based on justifications found within it. So to cite this repression as evidence that the Bible was _not_ a tool of oppression and coercion of the masses is pretty humorous. Not allowing them to read it was very specifically a component of that same oppression and coercion.

Thanks.

But my larger point was, even though it was used as such, its quite a stretch of ignorance to assert that the point of the Bible being written was to control people.

We'd end up having to establish some sort of motive, and be able to prove that, to make such a statement plausible.

 

[Aikouka]

We'd end up having to establish some sort of motive, and be able to prove that, to make such a statement plausible.

Eh, I think it's certainly a very plausible assertion that religion (note: not just Christianity) has been used in the past to assert control over people. I'm not even trying to state that all of the control is bad. The Bible does specify a moral guideline, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Although, I think the whole "repenting for your sins" thing really undermines the entire purpose of trying to enforce a moral code. Anyway, the reason why I think it's very plausible is simply that you can look back at human history and notice a very clear lust for power in some men/women.

 

[Retro Rob]

Eh, I think it's certainly a very plausible assertion that religion (note: not just Christianity) has been used in the past to assert control over people. I'm not even trying to state that all of the control is bad. The Bible does specify a moral guideline, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Although, I think the whole "repenting for your sins" thing really undermines the entire purpose of trying to enforce a moral code. Anyway, the reason why I think it's very plausible is simply that you can look back at human history and notice a very clear lust for power in some men/women.

??

I agree with you about religion as there is mountains of evidence that religion has been used as a means of control, but I was saying the purpose of the Bible being written was not to control people.

It's one thing to assert that something is used as a tool of control, but its a very different argument when one says that that "something's" whole point of existing is for the purpose of control.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Thanks.

But my larger point was, even though it was used as such, its quite a stretch of ignorance to assert that the point of the Bible being written was to control people.

We'd end up having to establish some sort of motive, and be able to prove that, to make such a statement plausible.

I'm not sure that I care whether Christianity was designed to control people or not. I kind of doubt that it was, at least not expressly. Of course the people in charge of various religious institutions selectively "interpreted" their faith so that it conformed to their preconceived notions about it. Of course they thought that the things that they had "discovered" about the will of God should be followed by all of God's children. I doubt that the majority of these people thought they were controlling anyone. They just thought they were spreading the word of God as they saw it. It was just a happy coincidence that so much of it agreed with what they had already thought to be true. Thus the face of Christianity was molded in an organic fashion by those in power to meet their ends possibly without most of them even being cognizant of what they were doing.

The same thing is happening now as Christians continue to bend the words of the bible so that they jive with modern life. It will continue into the future.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

A guy came in the store I work at yesterday giddy as all shit. He said "guess what the number for Obamacare is?"

"I dunno"

*BIG ASS GRIN* "800-fuck-you"

"uh huh"

"no I swear, dial it, I called it ten times today!"

so for shits and giggles I call it, and it's a number that you press 1 and it redirects you to Obamacare. But this guy legitimately believed that was the actual Obamacare number.

Really? Because this article says it's a phone sex hotline.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol...search-affordable-insurance-article-1.1475337

As it should be.

 

[Ban Bot]

Furthermore, it depicts a God that becomes decreasingly involved in the lives of humans, at first directly speaking to people, then only distantly rewarding and punishing, then appearing briefly (by the Christian account) in the form of Jesus before disappearing again.* There's no sense anywhere in there that this sort of God does things in a way that could be accounted for in repeated experimentation.

I agree that there is no sense anywhere that could allow a predictable and repeatable experiment.

That said I want to elaborate on a nitpick regarding your presentation (as it always irritates me when it is repeated, especially by those who present themselves as having a functional knowledge of religion): I find you summary inaccurate and lacking the academic rigor expected of such firm summaries RE: divine intervention and immediacy. I find it interesting when people wade into these issues, speak with strong conviction and opinion on a set piece of literature, and present an exceedinly skewed summary that was crafted to fit a select narrative. Yeah, religious people do that all the time with their religious works, but I don't get it why this carelessness is so common in secular analysis.

Strong words, so I guess I need to back it up now

I know this is what comparative religion and Biblical literature classes tech at secular schools (I heard the same stuff in those classes) but it is inaccurate. About as inaccurate as, "The god in the Old Testament is an angry, national war god while the god of the New Testament is a kind, forgiving, god." These are generalities based on appeal to select texts unrepresentative of the general corpus.

Concerning your specific point regarding YHWH's interaction in the Old Testament: Looking at a Biblical "timeline" from Adam to the Exodus to the Monarchy down to the Exile and Return direct intervention is highly variable.

Gen 1-4: Significant reported interaction with Adam/Eve/Cain
Gen 5-11: Exceedingly marginal involvement for ~ 1000 years (Enoch, Noah; Tower of Babel)
Gen 12-36: Frequent theophanies to the Patriarchs (~200 year window)
Gen 37-50: Almost complete absence in the Joseph narratives

Per the narrative a long spell (200-400 years) passes until Moses with no recordable interaction. One could say that from Joseph to Moses YHWH is completely absent from direct human affairs.

During the Moses narratives there are frequent theophanies (Exo 3, 19, 24, 34, etc; Pillar of Fire/Cloud in the camp) but Exo 40 marks a significant event in Israel's interaction (the Cloud of Glory in the Tabernacle) that continues through the Exile (1Ki 8; cf. Eze 8-11 where the Cloud is removed as a form of temple abandonment / punishment). Any discussion of YHWH's immediacy with Israel is incomplete without consideration of the direct presence believed to be manifest visually in the Tabernacle and later the Temple of Solomon.

Going back to the Exodus, per the Biblical account, after the Exodus Theophanies and interventions resume a pattern similar to that of the Patriarchs with major figures in each generation having contact (e.g. Josh 5; Jud. 2, 6, 13; 1 Sa 2; etc) and this continues down through Solomon. Much like the Exodus (Exo 40) the Temple deduction (1Ki 8) relates to their perceived change in how YHWH intervened and mediated his presence, although this did not preclude drastic intervention (e.g. 2Ki 19 // Isa 37; Similarly the book of Zechariah).

This immediacy and direct interaction ceased, again and very much like the Joseph-Moses period, during the Exile. The book of Ester in this accord has much affinity to the view presented in the Joseph narratives (YHWH is in control of history, even if not immediate and not remembered).

If the New Testament is taken into consideration the concept of the divine breaking into the human sphere is heightened by the incarnation; on narrative grounds this was viewed as a new creation, new exodus with strong thematic parallels to the Exodus interventions. And like the Exodus interventions the shift is again to Temple "presence," which was viewed by these early Christians as the indwelling Spirit (cf. Acts 2; 1Co 6; etc). And thus the cycle continues itself with an anticipated difinitive judgment not unlike that brought on Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon before but this time cosmic in scope.

The actual pattern in the text is quite different from what you postulate. It is appealing to frame that text the way you did, especially in regards to the evolution of Religion approach, because it paints a pretty picture where the Jewish (and Christian) religions "grow up" like other religions (e.g. Greek) that definitively moved from human like gods who were at one time close and intimate (even crude) and slowly faded into the distance as being relatively hands off (and ultimately neo-Platonic concepts where "the one" has no immediate contact with the material).

Unfortunately the, "Bible" doesn't follow this pattern unless it is forced onto the text. Harkening back to the "war god" example earlier, Jesus is very much a war god in Rev 19 (even Matt 24) with few of the loving, kind, and gracious traits often prescribed to him. Again, prejudicial selection of texts to fit the narrative one wishes to present.

RE: Your point. Divine presence/intervention. I agree, the text doesn't present anything where you could clearly capture "God in a Box" to do any specific, repeatable, and confirmable text to prove a divine being in the rational, scientific sense. In fact the general witness of the New Testament is that the presence of the divine would be discernable through Christians (in whom they teach the divine dwells), although Romans argues creation is a general witness. But if you are trying to prod a heavenly spark you can you scientifically test we would need to poke a Christian

RE: Creationism.

Fundamental Christians are doing the same thing I point out above. There is a pre-supposed narrative of how the evidence should look and it is molded to such. Anything that disagrees must be adapted or rejected to fit the preconfigured paradigm.

While it is common to contort their own texts out of their historical basis, it doesn't encourage profitable dialogue when both parties are misrepresenting basic facts.

What I find curious is how often the fact, statistically, a large segment of Catholics and traditional Protestants don't take issue with Evolution and yet the general sentiment is, "Christians are anti-Evolution." Yes, a significant block of Christians (Evangelicals, Fundamentalists) trend strongly this direction but they are hardly the majority world wide, or even in America.

Ok, off my soap box. I will let the proxy war and socio-cultural conflict continue on without me! We are all better off that way

 

[Retro Rob]

I'm not sure that I care whether Christianity was designed to control people or not. I kind of doubt that it was, at least not expressly. Of course the people in charge of various religious institutions selectively "interpreted" their faith so that it conformed to their preconceived notions about it. Of course they thought that the things that they had "discovered" about the will of God should be followed by all of God's children. I doubt that the majority of these people thought they were controlling anyone. They just thought they were spreading the word of God as they saw it. It was just a happy coincidence that so much of it agreed with what they had already thought to be true. Thus the face of Christianity was molded in an organic fashion by those in power to meet their ends possibly without most of them even being cognizant of what they were doing.

The same thing is happening now as Christians continue to bend the words of the bible so that they jive with modern life. It will continue into the future.

I said the Bible...I wasn't speaking about whether or not religion was concocted to control people.

Someone earlier in the thread stated the Bible was written to control people, hence, by comment about needing to establish some reason why this would be done, and what motivated this.

 

[Markbnj]

But my larger point was, even though it was used as such, its quite a stretch of ignorance to assert that the point of the Bible being written was to control people.

I don't think anyone could reliably assert any such thing. The "Bible" was written at such varied points in history, and by such a large number of individual authors, that ascribing a motivation to the work as a whole would be silly.

Fwiw, I don't think religion is inherently about control and oppression. Religion is a human emotional response to certain unknowns, imo. But unscrupulous people always have and always will jump on the opportunity to exploit those feelings, and we would probably all agree that the Bible was often used as a tool for such exploitation.

 

[Retro Rob]

I don't think anyone could reliably assert any such thing. The "Bible" was written at such varied points in history, and by such a large number of individual authors, that ascribing a motivation to the work as a whole would be silly.

Fwiw, I don't think religion is inherently about control and oppression. Religion is a human emotional response to certain unknowns, imo. But unscrupulous people always have and always will jump on the opportunity to exploit those feelings, and we would probably all agree that the Bible was often used as a tool for such exploitation.

Yep, hence, why for a time owning your own copy was considered illegal. I personally think that a person belonging to a religion for 20, 30, 40 years, even in this scientific age, is more than just for emotional reasons. For some, I will submit, its largely due to the "church" atmosphere.

I would say an emotional response would only be temporary -- we have religious people passing this down to their children...I don't think that can be honestly attributed to emotion, IMHO.

 

[Markbnj]

I would say an emotional response would only be temporary -- we have religious people passing this down to their children...I don't think that can be honestly attributed to emotion, IMHO.

Agreed. There are a host of intellectual and cultural considerations there. I meant that the basic human tendency toward belief in Gods was formed from an emotional response to the unknown. Once the belief is established there can be all sorts of other reasons for continuing it.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I said the Bible...I wasn't speaking about whether or not religion was concocted to control people.

Someone earlier in the thread stated the Bible was written to control people, hence, by comment about needing to establish some reason why this would be done, and what motivated this.

Biblical canon took a long time to establish. The process I was describing would have been going on during that time and would have affected the outcome. What I'm saying is that the bible was likely not explicitly written to control people, but the way people interpret religion had much the same effect ultimately.

 

[Retro Rob]

Agreed. There are a host of intellectual and cultural considerations there. I meant that the basic human tendency toward belief in Gods was formed from an emotional response to the unknown. Once the belief is established there can be all sorts of other reasons for continuing it.

But you're not accounting for even this day and age when things have been completely explained and certain things are known to a large degree, and people still believe in God....even plenty of scientists.

Yes, back then, thunder was God's wrath or what have you, but we still have about half the earth's population believing in God or a God of some sort with these explanations and facts being readily available.

People born in this scientific age come to believing, some fall away from it... and many have logical reasons for believing which has nothing to do with what science has explained/has yet to explain, or what is known/unknown.

Applying my logic to your post and with the explanations we do have, belief in God should really be non-existent, IMO.

 

[Slammy1]

Just talk to the creationists. Basic Darwin is irrefutable, and we've seen evolutionary events in our lifetimes (bacteria become resistant to treatment). If they're not stupid, and most really aren't just misguided, they'll never bother you again.

Fossils were placed there to confuse the faithful. That's what I remember about how they argued fossils. If all else fails claim Zeus as the lord father of all creation.

EDIT: If that fails, claim Satan as the lord father of all creation.

Satan is good, all hail Satan.

 

[Exophase]

Agreed. There are a host of intellectual and cultural considerations there. I meant that the basic human tendency toward belief in Gods was formed from an emotional response to the unknown. Once the belief is established there can be all sorts of other reasons for continuing it.

I don't have any kind of source on this, so this is all just my own reasoning.. but I tend to think the development of religion had a lot to do not just with people trying to find explanations for external phenomena but reconciliation with their own psyche/subconscious. Human psychological development would have happened long before human history and maybe even before complete self-awareness. So it's present across a lot of cultures.

For example, near death experiences. Feelings of calmness, bright lights, recollecting past events. These are all survival mechanisms and some (enough) people survive to talk about them. It's not hard to see how this can contribute to specific beliefs of an afterlife, beyond the standard desire to not want to die.

Then there's stuff like dreams. Auditory and visual hallucinations. Multiple personalities. Getting into more extreme examples, but this stuff probably always happened. I know this is really just more coming up with explanations for things that are hard to explain.. but I guess what I'm saying is that explanations like "a spirit is talking to you" or "a spirit is possessing you" is a fairly intuitive conclusion (although still the wrong one). Maybe more intuitive than your run of the mill creation myth, but that could just be me.

 

[Gibsons]

Satan is good, all hail Satan.

 

[Markbnj]

I don't have any kind of source on this, so this is all just my own reasoning.. but I tend to think the development of religion had a lot to do not just with people trying to find explanations for external phenomena but reconciliation with their own psyche/subconscious. Human psychological development would have happened long before human history and maybe even before complete self-awareness. So it's present across a lot of cultures.

For example, near death experiences. Feelings of calmness, bright lights, recollecting past events. These are all survival mechanisms and some (enough) people survive to talk about them. It's not hard to see how this can contribute to specific beliefs of an afterlife, beyond the standard desire to not want to die.

Then there's stuff like dreams. Auditory and visual hallucinations. Multiple personalities. Getting into more extreme examples, but this stuff probably always happened. I know this is really just more coming up with explanations for things that are hard to explain.. but I guess what I'm saying is that explanations like "a spirit is talking to you" or "a spirit is possessing you" is a fairly intuitive conclusion (although still the wrong one). Maybe more intuitive than your run of the mill creation myth, but that could just be me.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think most of the reactions implied in those concepts are emotional in essence, and so I used it as am umbrella to encompass a lot of territory: fear of the unknown, wonder, love, grief, etc.

 

[Markbnj]

But you're not accounting for even this day and age when things have been completely explained and certain things are known to a large degree, and people still believe in God....even plenty of scientists.

But in this "day and age" the belief system has been established for more than 2000 years. So there can be many factors involved in its continuing strength that are entirely unrelated to the conditions that original gave rise to it.

 

[disappoint]

The bible tells us all we need to know.

You don't need to know much do you?

 

[IronWing]

You don't need to know much do you?

I learned FORTRAN in the biblical sense.

 

[Jeff7]

Just throwing this into the ring, from a signature here:

“From my earliest training as a scientist, I was very strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation...For life to have been a chemical accident on earth is like looking for a particular grain of sand on all the beaches in all the planets in the universe—and finding it." -- Chandra Wickramasinghe

It's not like looking for a particular grain of sand.
You are that particular grain of sand, marveling at the fact that you exist, on a beach filled with sand.


The giant asterisk with that is the assumption that there are other grains of sand on the beach that are also coated with a thin film if living stuff.

I consider it to be well into the realm of absolute absurdity to think that we are the only place in the Universe where things meeting our definition of "life" exist. There are untold trillions of galaxies, each with many billions of stars, and it's looking more and more like most of them have planets in tow. I'm to believe that Earth is the only place where some self-replicating molecules showed up?
Life's here for a few billion years, and only just in the past few hundred years we've been able to even begin to open our eyes and look around us in earnest. (I don't think I can place adequate emphasis on the word "begin" in that sentence.)


That grain of sand can cheerfully marvel at its own existence, while its eyes are almost entirely closed. It is simply ignorant of its own surroundings because it has not yet learned how to look beyond itself. There is nothing miraculous or supernatural about that.

Agreed. There are a host of intellectual and cultural considerations there. I meant that the basic human tendency toward belief in Gods was formed from an emotional response to the unknown. Once the belief is established there can be all sorts of other reasons for continuing it.

And it's comfortable. Looking at the Abrahamic religions, you've got a creator entity that made everything, and claims to have a vested interest in the wellbeing of the humans of this planet, given a variable set of rules that are sometimes meant to be followed.
There's order. There's purpose.
Some people just don't like the idea of, "The Universe mixed a bunch of stuff in a huge vat of water bound together by gravity, added sunlight, and let it swirl and stew over a billion years. Eventually, some self-replicating molecules appeared, simply as the result of random interactions and the nature of physics in this Universe. Farther along the timeline, some of those arrangements of molecules tried to determine how they came to be, and learn about the place where they happen to exist."
Physics in this Universe happened to be conducive to allow the formation of life in certain conditions. That's why we exist. That's it. You're a cheerful little accident that happened.
What do we do with that existence? That's entirely up to us. Just because life itself originated in a charming little chemical accident doesn't mean that your life was invalidated before it even began.