Hi, Tuffers.
tuffers writes:
But their creation story is so far off the mark that they blatantly made it up, and therefore they made up the creator to fit in with that creation.
Non sequitur. Being wrong doesn’t mean you blatantly made something up.
I think it is infinitely more likely that beliefs in spirits and deities long predated beliefs in spiritual creation.
Consider: As an ancient hunter-gatherer, which question would you seek to answer first: How did the world come to be? or What makes these berries I eat grow on this bush, and how can I get it to make more?
{Added by Edit: Even if god-myths and spirit-myths are completely false, it is infinitely more likely that they first arose as an explanation for physical phenomena before they took on their introverted, philosophical nature.}
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tuffers writes:
In your analogy, it as if you told me about your brother Steve's days as a high school football star, but you didn't even have a brother, and there was no such thing as football.
This is an assertion on your part. But, it is a non sequitur.
These two statements are analogous:
- According to the Bible, Creation is something that God did.
- According to my story, throwing four touchdown passes in one game is something that my brother did.
These two statements are
not analogous:
- According to the Bible, Creation is something that God did.
- According to my story, I have a brother named Steve.
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tuffers writes:
The whole Bible story hangs on the proposition that God was a creator.
Nonsense. There is more to God than Creation. Who gets to dictate what is and what isn't a fundamental part of God's identity?
Here is a short list of things that God does in the Bible:
- throws fireballs
- saves souls
- turns someone into a pillar of salt
- heals the sick
- brings people back to life
- prophesies about the future
- exorcises unclean spirits
- sacrifices His Son for people’s sins
Which of these things has anything to do with God creating the universe in 6 days?
Which of these things is automatically false if God did not create the universe in 6 days?
You are arguing a non sequitur.
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tuffers writes:
The whole Bible story hangs on the proposition that God was a creator. But they got that FUNDEMENTAL part wrong.
In our lab at the university, there is an old identification key for spiders of the family Theridiidae. As it turns out though, half of the spiders in that key do not belong in the family Theridiidae (and, in fact, aren’t even particularly closely related to the Theridiidae), and so, do not belong in that book. They got that FUNDAMENTAL part wrong. Yet, interestingly enough, the key still accurately identifies nearly all of the misplaced species, and so, I can still use it when identifying spiders for my research.
One error---even one
huge error---in a book does not mean that everything else in the book is also wrong.
Edited by Bluejay, : Addition.
-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.
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