The Mythical Bible

When did they vote Kansas out of the union? What is the land they once called Kansas now?

Ned,
If God had enough power to create the universe and the natural laws out of nothing, he has enough power to control those laws. Assuming omnipotence, god could have left earth rotating how it was and rotate the rest of the universe around the earth if he wanted to. I am not arguing that this means God did lengthen a day, but if he wanted to, he could do it a way such that the earth would not be affected. Yup, agreed. This was my point. We cannot check everything. If you wanted to, you could, assuming you had accurate enough equipment, measure the distances from earth to the other planets. But that would take a lot of time and effort. In which case you have to trust someone. How do you decide whether or not to trust that person? You evaluate the accuracy of their statements which apply to things you know about. Then you consider the un-understandable statements with the same trust with which you consider the known statements.By the way, has anybody ever told you that your avatar is really scary?Rocket says: Here is something slightly modified from one of my earlier posts:

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The premise that "The Wizard of OZ" is not true is not falsifiable. The "The Wizard of OZ" makes no claims we can verify. It is written about an event that took place in a location we cannot see.

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The bible was written about supernatural events, yes. But it includes a huge dose of claims about how and where things took place. It is concerned with matters of history which scholars and archeaologists can examine. It makes prophetic claims which can be shown true or false.

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One of these deals with a location, people, and events we cannot observe/left no trace. It is not falsifiable.

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The other deals with well known cities and civilizations, famous kings and rulers, and well known events. It makes claims about these things. Much of it is falsifiable.

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Does that make it clear why I think the analogy is bad? If not, I can go into more detail.Crashfrog says: I agree that proving one part of the bible to be true does not prove the rest of it. Also, if it is possible to prove the truth/falsehood of a statement, the statement should stand on its own merits. Agreed, but what do we do with statements whose merits we can't evaluate? But you do. If you are a scientist, you cannot prove everything for you self. At some point, you trust that others are correct. You could test some, maybe many, claims in a lifetime, but there is no way you could evaluate every scientific claim in a hundred. You are right, there is not that option with religion. It goes back to religion being unprovable. The thing is, assuming for now that there is a valid religion, how would you find out which on it is? Since religions are not provable, they would have to be evaluated subjectively. Many parts could be evaluated objectively, like the many falsifiable claims the Bible makes. But in the end it would come down to purely subjective decision. Not necessarily innacurrate, but subjective.Jar says: In terms of Mars' distance from the sun, you are right. I was using that as an analogy (Ned already pointed out that it was flawed) of textual criticism in the Bible. For the analogy, the position of Mars played the part of a non-falsifiable claim.In science, that would have been an appeal to authority, but in the field of textual criticism, it is (partially) how non-falsifiable statements are evaluated. You seperate events that "simply could not have happened" from events where "all of the evidence seems to show that they did not happen." This makes it look like you are dismissing some events out of hand because they simply could'nt have happened, not because evidence says they didn't. What events are those, and why could they simply not have happened?About events "where there is a lot of evidence...," I do not think there are any, but that is OT and there are other threads about that.Rocket says: The Kansas in the book is completely different than the real Kansas, isn't it? I haven't read the book, so I don't know.{edited out title}This message has been edited by JT, 05-08-2004 01:41 PM

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Benoit Mandelbrot is not a type of wine.

Oooops, sounds like a miracle. If you don't want to stick to creation "science" then I'm happy to leave you to your beliefs. You stay in your church -- you stay out of the classroom and the legislature.Miracles will get you tossed by most western demcocracies to protect your religious rights. That is why there is an ID "movement". They are trying so hard to avoid any magic. LOL, we have a whole thread on that, believe it or not. I get comflicing opinions on that thing. I am going to change it but there are a few women on MSN who are glad to see it appear .I explained in the latter part of my post how I might go about deciding when to trust a source. It is a lot more complex than that of course and I don't usually trust any one source. It's been a fair while but I recall the description being Biblical-like. That is, it is not all that detailed, it makes a bunch of assumptions that you understand the view of the author (eg. firmament) and isn't trying to be a geography lesson. With that I couldn't falsify the book based on it's description of Kansas. Not enough to go on.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 05-08-2004 01:51 PMThis message has been edited by NosyNed, 05-08-2004 01:51 PM

is found right at the beginning of Genesis.It begins by saying God created the heaven and the earth.If God began by creating the heaven and the earth, then the sun and the stars are part of that.Later, it says God created light.That is one example.If the stars and the sun were created, light was created at that time as well, not at some later time. You cannot have the sun and the stars first and light later.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

It doesn't just sound like a miracle, it is a miracle. I agree with that. There is no natural phenomenon which could account for 24 hours of sunlight in the middle ease. This miracle is completly unrelated to creation, and it will not be taught in public schools.About "creation science," that is a huge, seperate debate, and I don't want to get into it here. There are, to my knowledge, only two opinions about the origin of life on the earth. Either that it was created by a diety or that it evolved. Some religions (most notably humanism) have belief in evolution as a tenet, some religions (as we all know) have creation as a tenet. I would object to creation being the only view of origins taught in our schools, just as much (o.k, nearly as much) as I am opposed to evolution being the only view taught. Teaching only evolution is a violation of religious rights, in my opinion. If that is the case, I stand corrected on that point (but the others still stand). The only exposure I have had to "Whe Wizard of Oz" has been seeing a couple tv commercials for the movie, with the surrealist landscapes and stuff. I assumed that was from the book, but it might not be.Jar says: This is an esoteric middle-eastern linguistic device known as an exordial sentence, otherwise known as an introduction (I love the thesaurus. )

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Benoit Mandelbrot is not a type of wine.

JT I must disagree with this statement.It would not matter whether God staopped the earth or rotated the universe around it.Either scenario carries with it physical consequences far beyond the point of the use of such a display in relation to its use in the bible.

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Jar says:

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It begins by saying God created the heaven and the earth.

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This is an esoteric middle-eastern linguistic device known as an exordial sentence, otherwise known as an introduction

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And so it should be taken literally or as a figure of speech?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Sidelined says: My point was that if all God did was stop the earth from spinning, there would have been catastrophic results. God could have easily stopped the earth from spinning, and kept things on earth from being affected. It was a miracle, which means that God superseded the natural laws, which means natural laws would not get in his way.Jar says: The first sentence is merely an introduction, to briefly summarize what comes next. It is not the introduction that should be judged, it is the content. My opinion is that the content should be taken literally, but that debate is happening in this thread.

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Benoit Mandelbrot is not a type of wine.

JT So it must be naturally assumed then that God simply erased the memories of every individual upon the face of the planet to prevent their recording this extraordinary event in their own language and their own legends.And in addition to this maintain free will.A miracle indeed.LOL

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"We cannot define anything precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, 'You don't know what you are talking about!' The second one says 'What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?', and so on."

I think I know what you mean, but as worded there are others. Panspermia being one. Ok, then we don't have any disagreement. There is at least one thread around that discusses what a religion is. Hard to figure out how humanism is a religion unless a lot more things are religion than most people would accept (or allow tax exempt status to). However, surprise!, I think that there are those who attempt to carry humanism in a direction that starts to make it look a bit like a religion. Now, just what does that have to do with biology. The majority of Christians also accept evolution, does that make it a tenant of their religion?

Jar says....
>>One example of a "Could Not Happen event"
is found right at the beginning of Genesis.
It begins by saying God created the heaven and the earth."
If God began by creating the heaven and the earth, then the sun and the stars are part of that.
Later, it says God created light.
That is one example.If the stars and the sun were created, light was created at that time as well, not at some later time. You cannot have the sun and the stars first and light later.<<Genesis 1:1,2 relates to a time before the six days When these days commenced, the sun, moon, and stars were already in existence, their creation being referred to at Genesis 1:1. However, prior to these six days of creative activity the earth proved to be formless and waste and there was darkness upon the surface of the watery deep;and God was moving to and fro over the surface of the waters. (Ge 1:2) Apparently, a swaddling band of cloud layers still enveloped the earth, preventing light from reaching its surface.When God said on Day One, Let light come to be,Diffused light evidently penetrated the cloud layers even though the sources of that light could not yet be discerned from the earth’s surface. It seems that this was a gradual process, as is indicated by translator J.W. Watts: And gradually light came into existence. (Ge 1:3, A Distinctive Translation of Genesis) God brought about a division between the light and the darkness, calling the light Day and the darkness Night.This indicates that the earth was rotating on its axis as it revolved around the sun, so that its hemispheres, eastern and western, could enjoy periods of light and darkness.Ge 1:3,4.Please note again at Genesis 1:2...Now the Earth proved to be formless and waste and there was darkness upon the surface.This darkness indicates no penetrating light at that point of time,although light existed in space.Genesis says "let there be light".But not "God created light".
As for the second part of Genesis 1:2.. The watery deep; and God was moving to and fro over the surface of the waters.This indicates that the revealed "Let ther be light" was from the perspective of the God on the surface of the Earth.Genesis is not mythical but logical,but you need to break it down finely and refer to other scriptures to find the logic.The six creative "days" are merely a preparation of the Earth and its life covering millions of years.Its not made too clear by what means,but it was an Earth made ready for one purpose...Man.

and if you don't take it LITERALLY.Just look at the fudging that we have had to go through and we are not even midway through Verse One. And the next few lines of Genesis, particularly when it gets to the order in which things were created, totally falls apart.I personally don't like the term Myth when applied to Genesis.IMHO, it was an early Theory of Creation.It worked well at the time, explained what the people saw and lasted for quite a while.But like all Theories, when they can no longer explain the facts being observed, they need to be modified or abandoned.This is no different than the early theories of desease that invoked humors, or the Ptolemaic Theory of the Solar Sytem.The Genesis Theory of Creation simply does not hold up and needs to be abandoned.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Isn't that the purpose of faith, then? If their veracity cannot be established - if the statements aren't falsifiable - then they leave the purview of science and become a matter of faith. Arguing about if they're right or wrong becomes rather pointless, don't you think? No. But again, in principle, I could. That's the virtue of science - repeatable claims.Is there any principle under which I could repeat the experience of John the Baptist? Is there any situation where I could repeat the methodology of Jesus? Religion's nature is revelatory - unless God wills it I must forever take the claims of those men - assuming that they actually made those claims - anecdotally. Faith. But for some reason, faith doesn't seem to be enough for creationists - they need proof. I find that diminishes the religious experience but that's their choice, I suppose.

Sidelined said: Here is an article that talks about some cultural legends which include a full day of sun. (disclaimer: this is a really bad artical overall, and it includes the phony stuff about nasa finding an extra day. I recognize this, but I didn't want to spend a lot of time researching this point, so I just went with this article. I think this article is good enough, but if it isn't, I can find some others that are)Ned says: You are correct, I had completely fogotten about panspermia. The distinction I meant was between life being created essentially as it is today, and life coming about by natural processes. I always love it when this happens. I agree that not all forms of humanism are necessarily religious, but some outright claim to be religious (like religious humanism). There are religions which claim creation as a tenet, and religions which claim evolution (or any naturalistic model of origins) as a tenet. For the government to teach the tenets of one religion without teaching the tenets of another is religious discrimination. Whether creation is worthy of being taught in schools or is a worthless myth is another debate, though, so I think we can just disagree about this one for now.Hey Cromwell, I agree with you that the first verses of Genesis are not contradictory, but I think your reasons for believing so are skewed (for lack of a better word).You said: Genesis 1:1,2 relates to the introduction to the chapter. It brifly summarizes what is coming.Pretend I say, "I went to my grandma's house this weekend. My mom drove us there, we had fun, then came home." Does this mean I went to my grandma's house twice? No, I am summarizing what I am about to say, then I am saying it. I would do that to put into context what I was about to say.I hope that clears up what I mean when I say that the first verses serve as an introduction to what comes later.Jar says: We have not had to do any fudging. Why couldn't have God created things in the order given in Genesis? I think you have it switched. The word "myth" means, according to Merriam-Webster online, The word "myth" has a lot of baggage, so I hope I won't be misunderstood. We cannot verify creation, so it qualifies as a myth.On the other side, a theory must be falsifiable, so creation is not a theory. This spefic statement is being debated on other threads, and overall, is what this entire forum is about. If it was that simple, nobody would be here debating it. Crashfrog said: According to Merriam-Webster's online (I'm not sure if me using the dictionary a lot is annoying, but I think it's necessary a lot of times) faith is: This does not say without evidence, it says without proof. Those are two completely different things. I believe that there is good evidence that the earth was created, that a guy came back to life after getting nailed to a cross, etc. These are things I would not believe without evidence.There are many statements the Bible makes which can't have any direct evidence for or against them. Because I believe the Bible accurrately reports the resurection of a man claiming to be God, and accurately reports the creation of the universe, I believe, on pure faith, that those other statements are true.Arguing about whether or not there was a burning bush is pointless, because there can be no evidence for or against it. Arguing about the resurection/creation is possible because there exists evidence that can show the likelihood of those events having happened.If a book tells a true story of a man coming back to life and an entire universe becoming existent out of nothing, I am willing to believe it on other, minor points without requiring evidences.Guys, I need to go stop thinking for awhile. It's only eight o'clock and my brain keeps going in circles (it took me ten minutes to type the last paragraph). I'll be back...

JT An unfortunate choice of legends since they do not record the even more devastating break with the laws of physics recorded by the bible after the sun was made to stand still.Not one of those articles makes mention of the retrograde motion of the sun in the sky evidenced by the sundial of Ahaz.