Oh, do I hate it when quantum mechanics is used as an excuse for mysticism.
It's very important to realize that Schroedinger's Cat is a thought experiment, meant to be illustrative of a concept, and this illustration doesn't say anything that would ever be true of a real cat in a real box.
The thought experiment's "box" is not a physically possible box. It is a purely theoretical box which isolates the entire universe outside of the box from any effect caused by events within the box. Human eyes and human thoughts are not the issue, but the relationship between waveforms inside and outside of the box.
Just wait until the String Theorists start to chime in with crackpot versions...
Because you just know (stop me if you can see this coming)...
Cat + String = hours of Schroedingerling comedy fun
I said I considered people who took the Bible as literal truth to be crazy.
You responded with "You seem to be falling into the same simplistic trap on this matter as so many do", and linked to something that you wrote in another thread, pretending as if I'd have to work hard at it, having to take psalms and parables and the like out of context before I'd ever, ever run into anything that one might consider blatantly absurd in the Bible.
Slogging along, I then have to make it utterly and perfectly clear for you what kinds of too-absurd-to-take-literally things I'm talking about, with a clear-cut example -- Noah's Ark -- a tale of the kind written by primitive superstitious goatherders for audiences of primitive superstitious goatherders.
Your response to having my point made utterly plain? A lame "And you are entitled to your belief" -- in other words, admitting there's no "simplistic trap" involved or needed here, and coming damn close, without straight-out saying so, "Yes, I'm one of those nuts you're talking about."
Now, while you are indeed apparently afflicted with the form of insanity I speak of, I'd think you'd still want me to give you credit for having for having at least half a brain. Giving you such credit, I'd know you had to know what I originally meant and know there were places I could easily go, even if you don't agree with my assessment, for Biblical crazy-to-take-as-literal-truth absurdity.
So why even bother with such pretense? What possible rhetorical benefit do you imagine you gain by playing dumb, by behaving as if you can't even see half a move forward in the argument you're having?
I said I considered people who took the Bible as literal truth to be crazy.
You responded with "You seem to be falling into the same simplistic trap on this matter as so many do", and linked to something that you wrote in another thread, pretending as if I'd have to work hard at it, having to take psalms and parables and the like out of context before I'd ever, ever run into anything that one might consider blatantly absurd in the Bible.
Slogging along, I then have to make it utterly and perfectly clear for you what kinds of too-absurd-to-take-literally things I'm talking about, with a clear-cut example -- Noah's Ark -- a tale of the kind written by primitive superstitious goatherders for audiences of primitive superstitious goatherders.
Your response to having my point made utterly plain? A lame "And you are entitled to your belief" -- in other words, admitting there's no "simplistic trap" involved or needed here, and coming damn close, without straight-out saying so, "Yes, I'm one of those nuts you're talking about."
Now, while you are indeed apparently afflicted with the form of insanity I speak of, I'd think you'd still want me to give you credit for having for having at least half a brain. Giving you such credit, I'd know you had to know what I originally meant and know there were places I could easily go, even if you don't agree with my assessment, for Biblical crazy-to-take-as-literal-truth absurdity.
So why even bother with such pretense? What possible rhetorical benefit do you imagine you gain by playing dumb, by behaving as if you can't even see half a move forward in the argument you're having?
Help me see where this relates to the original topic (not just this post, but this whole conversation) and I'll leave it here, otherwise start your own thread on the matter.
I considered people who took the Bible as literal truth to be crazy.... a tale of the kind written by primitive superstitious goatherders for audiences of primitive superstitious goatherders.
Shetline, do you realize by your reckoning, that the country you live in was started by "crazy" people, who got their ideas from English common law which was congealed by even more "crazy" people, and the that the legal code of these "superstitious goatherders" is chisled into the walls of the American Supreme Court?
This is a quite durable 'tale', especially when you consider it's audiance over the centuries.
As to Noah's ark, I find it odd that a legend that shows up in nearly every single culture on Earth, is an 'impossibility.' Naturally, you can point to geological records and rule out any such global catastrophe?
The records from 'nearly every single culture on Earth' that you speak of do not in any single case support the Biblical version.
Gilgamesh was a solitary hero minus entire animal Kingdom (and God)
The Babylonian myths referred to localised floods
Islamic is vastly different in emphasis and location
And on and on.....
Therefore, the literalist who believes in the Bible stories must deny these as they differ and in many cases, are contradictory.
It's either that or admit that the Bible story is just another folk-memory alongside them and subject to the same deteriorations over time.
In any event it has been proved that the dimensions given for the ark in the Bible could result in a vessel big enough to house the animals it claimed to house. Another nail in the coffin.....
This goes to the point of the flood being "impossible" -- not 'unlikely', 'improbable', etc. The legend exists in many forms, yes; it would be reasonable to assume that it had it's roots in an actuall event.
Impossible is quite a statement.
(and there have been feasability studies that worked -- although I am still confused why fully grown animals have to be used)
Shetline, do you realize by your reckoning, that the country you live in was started by "crazy" people, who got their ideas from English common law which was congealed by even more "crazy" people, and the that the legal code of these "superstitious goatherders" is chisled into the walls of the American Supreme Court?
Do you realize that they rejected the supernatural aspects of religion, including the trinity, the virgin birth and divinity of Jesus, and any intervention whatsoever of the Deity? These people were products of the Enlightenment, an age characterized by the downplaying of centuries of religious dogma in favor of humanism and rationality. It was their lack of religiosity, at least in the way that modern American Christians view religiosity, that stood them apart in history. As an American I'm very proud of that legacy.
Do you realize that they rejected the supernatural aspects of religion, including the trinity, the virgin birth and divinity of Jesus, and any intervention whatsoever of the Deity? These people were products of the Enlightenment, an age characterized by the downplaying of centuries of religious dogma in favor of humanism and rationality. It was their lack of religiosity, at least in the way that modern American Christians view religiosity, that stood them apart in history. As an American I'm very proud of that legacy.
Ah yes, you're trying to leave out the Reformation, but that's not a position that is grounded in the reality of what happened. You had the Enlightenment, but there was enough comingling, philosophically, to make a West Virginan family blush.
If you leave out the Reformation, that would preclude a feasible explanation for the 'Christian Lockeanism' that was generally prevelant at America's founding.
You would still need food for them which would double the payload. Anyway, why would God need Noah to build such a vessel?
Why couldn't He use His God powers? He does elsewhere in the OT with lightning bolts, salt pillars and such and in the NT by raising people from the dead.
Why is he reliant on some dubiously constructed craft built by an old dodderer with no nautical or zoological experience? It isn't as if He couldn't start the world from scratch again anyway or even stop time and roll it back.
This ark stuff doesn't hold water.....
There are many questions on the Ark, and yes those are some long odds. Some say it could be done -- in any event I don't think it's 'impossible'.
In any event, the flood itself would be supernatural and hence 'impossible' and once you say that then you run into the problem of making universal negative statements on what may or may not exist.
Ah yes, you're trying to leave out the Reformation, that's not a position that is grounded in the reality of what happened.
If you leave out the Reformation, that would preclude a feasible explanation for the 'Christian Lockeanism' that was generally prevelant at America's founding.
Oh sure, the Reformation (and the Renaissance) were part of the same trajectory of human history that led to the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and has since reversed course in 21st-century America.
But that trajectory was one of reducing the superstitious aspects of religion in favor of rationality and science, of limiting the power and scope of religion in government, and of emphasizing humanism over "God-ism." Those are the kinds of principles that guided our founding fathers.
Shetline, do you realize by your reckoning, that the country you live in was started by "crazy" people, who got their ideas from English common law which was congealed by even more "crazy" people, and the that the legal code of these "superstitious goatherders" is chisled into the walls of the American Supreme Court?
It's certainly not the case that those who started this country, while nearly all Christian to one degree or another, were all Biblical literalists -- and that's the issue here -- that they were people who insisted on the Absolute TRVTH of the Bible in each and every word (parables and the like aside as you wish).
They certainly didn't found the kind of government that men who believed in the absolute authority of the Bible would have created, annoying chiselings driven by poorly contained religious sentimentalism or not. BRussel has already spoken to this point quite well.
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This is a quite durable 'tale', especially when you consider it's audiance over the centuries.
As to Noah's ark, I find it odd that a legend that shows up in nearly every single culture on Earth, is an 'impossibility.' Naturally, you can point to geological records and rule out any such global catastrophe?
I'm supposed to prove that the flood didn't happen? Interesting shift of the burden of proof there!
And if I can't prove the negative that means that all of the particulars of the Biblical story of Noah's Ark get to go along for a free ride as Absolute Historical TRVTH given that there was any world-wide flood at some time?
First of all, I'd say it's the more spectacular claim that demands spectacular evidence, and a globe-enveloping flood having occurred sometime in the past few thousand years qualifies as a spectacular claim.
The common theme of great flood legends is not at all surprising. Where is the most fertile farmland in the world found? Drum roll please... the flood plains of great rivers! Tah dah!
Many, many cultures will naturally have experienced enormous and devastating floods -- floods which would have encompassed each culture's entire "world", or at least enough such that, as is the nature of legends, in the retelling of these tales the whole world would be subsumed.
I suppose I should start another thread on this tangent if I'm to continue, and perhaps I shall in AO/PO later.
It's certainly not the case that those who started this country, while nearly all Christian to one degree or another, were all Biblical literalists -- and that's the issue here -- that they were people who insisted on the Absolute TRVTH of the Bible in each and every word (parables and the like aside as you wish).
They certainly didn't found the kind of government that men who believed in the absolute authority of the Bible would have created, annoying chiselings driven by poorly contained religious sentimentalism or not. BRussel has already spoken to this point quite well.
No, shetline Brussel did not address this very well at all: you can't willy nilly ignore the progression of English common law, with it's metaphysical underpinnings being Christian. This talk about the enlightenment and leaving "godism" behind, what is that all about, it just doesn't describe the scene in America, 1775. Shetline, they tried that in France in 1789, they were very self-conscious when they did it; compare the general 'rights of man' with the declaration of Independence -- they are polar opposites.
Without the concept of the sovereignty of God, God's laws, rights endowed by their creator we would have had no American Rebellion. And that notion comes from a "crazy" take on the Bible, which most subscribed to at that time.
You called "people who took the Bible as literal truth to be crazy." Well the greatest president America ever had, America's second president, as well as majority of the people who formed the first congress, were "crazy". I wish I had a nickel for every time Washington and Adams penned the word "providence". They understood the principle of revelational truth, and they took it self-consciously, and very seriously. These were great men, some of the greatest and bravest that America will ever produce -- they weren't "primitive superstitious goatherders".
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Originally posted by shetline
I'm supposed to prove that the flood didn't happen? Interesting shift of the burden of proof there!
You called "people who took the Bible as literal truth to be crazy." Well the greatest president America ever had, America's second president, as well as majority of the people who formed the first congress, were "crazy".
The second president, our greatest president? Are you sure you want to go there? He referred to Christianity as "the most bloody religion that ever existed." He said, about the divinity of Jesus, that "God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world." He signed a treaty with a Muslim country that said "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." And I know you don't want to get into the president after him.
Adams and the rest of them, including all of the first presidents (in fact just about all up until the 20th cenntury) and almost all of the important founders, rejected most of the supernatural beliefs that you subscribe to, dmz. They did believe in God, a creator, and perhaps shetline would fault them for that. But they relegated God to an unknowable force with no interaction with the universe, a kind of place-holder for the Big Bang.
What makes them unique in human history is how far they went in rejecting superstition and advocating humanism and rationality, not how religious they were, and certainly not in how many supernatural stories they took as literal.
No, shetline Brussel did not address this very well at all: you can't willy nilly ignore the progression of English common law, with it's metaphysical underpinnings being Christian...
I wish I had a nickel for every time Washington and Adams penned the word "providence".
Whoa, there! Binary thinking alert!
There's a big, big difference between believing in Providence, putting faith of some sort in the Bible on one hand, and on the other being a rigid Biblical literalist who insists that down to the literal serpent in a literal tree, down to the literal pillar of salt, down to every literal and exact width, breath and depth of cubits for a wooden ark carrying seven pairs of every "clean" animal, and one pair of every "unclean" animal, that this is all literal, historical fact.
That's the real insanity of -- the "in for a penny, in for a pound" abdication of any critical thought whatsoever in the face of gasping absurdity.
On top of that, there's an amazing amount of scientific knowledge which has been gained since the time of Washington and Adams too, knowledge which can at least help relieve some people of this madness, in cases where it is due more to mere ignorance than willful, mind-numbing credulity.
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They understood the principle of revelational truth, and they took it self-consciously, and very seriously. These were great men, some of the greatest and bravest that America will ever produce -- they weren't "primitive superstitious goatherders".
More of the same ridiculous binary thinking.
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You said it was impossible.
I backtracked over this entire thread and found not one use of the word "impossible" by me. Maybe you're arguing with those voices in your head again.
At any rate, what one believes in should, I would hope, have some grounding in what's likely and probable. Mere lack of utter impossibility is a pretty poor metric for believability.
For a story like Noah's Ark, "well, it's a miracle!" hardly cuts it as an explanation. It's details of the story, and taking those details as literal truth that, in my book, takes one from run-of-the-mill credulity to a kind of madness.
If God wanted all of these creatures gone, and if He is all-powerful, He could have, with a mere thought, made all that offended him disappear in the blink of an eye. But no. For some reason, the story instead follows exactly the kind of cartoonish logic we find in many old myths. Would you wish to claim that God decided to make a Cecil B. DeMille production out of his bad people/bad animal purge just so that the story would could be retold in a goatherder-pleasing way?
The ark and the flood would have been nothing more than meaningless props in the whole fiasco, with so many other miracles upon miracles needed to make the big production number come off:
Making so much extra water appear so quickly.
Making it disappear.
Patching up all of the bad genetics cause by drastically reducing the gene pool.
Resurrecting all the fish and other aquatic species, not carried in the ark, killed by the indiscriminate mixing of salt and fresh water, not to mention all of the other problems of water contamination, incompatible pressure and temperature conditions, etc.
Resurrecting all of the plant species killed by being under water for so long.
Gathering the vast variety of animals from all over the world into one small space over such a short period of time.
Keeping all of those animals, with vastly different dietary and environmental requirements, alive in the same Middle Eastern environment while they're being assembled.
Maintaining livable conditions for all of the creatures in the ark over the long voyage.
After the flood, redistributing all of those animals in a timely fashion to their correct environments, before they die of starvation and exposure to the wrong environments.
Speaking of starvation, keeping all of those animals alive after they reach their proper environs, while the herbivores wait for sufficient vegetation to reestablish itself, and while the predators wait for the prey species to multiply to the point that their first few meals won't kill off all they've got to eat forever.
Etc., etc.
To ponder all of that, and, instead of seeing the obvious tell-tale signs of myth, decide it's more important to swallow the story whole and unquestioned as some sort of required act of faith, especially when one had much more education and a much better sense of the scale of the world and the variety of life than the goatherders who wrote the story -- yes, I call that barking-at-the-moon mad.
They did believe in God, a creator, and perhaps shetline would fault them for that.....
Adams, if you read his writings, makes mention of the giving of the ten commandments as a historical event and statements like "The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion." He also makes repeated mention of God's predestinating will, His "constant and vigilant direction".
The same sorts of things can be said of Washington, except in his case, he was a member of the Episcopal Church of America and served as vesrtyman and churchwarden, which would have required a statement of Faith.
I supposed that Adams could be said to have played footsie with Universalism, etc. and that with Washinton, there is some evidence that he refused communion after the American Rebellion. But both men, in their own words, can be condemned as 'crazy' many times over by shetline's standards. And in neither case was God a 'placeholder for the Big Bang", in any way, shape, or form for either of them. BTW, in many cases the 'unitarian' business was not so much a repudiation of the Bible, as such, but a continuing fleshing out the question of trinitarian theology. You need to keep that country and time period in a little more context.
(and "Adams, the greatest president" should have read 'Adams and the greatest president')
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
~Alec Bourne
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
~Albert Einstein
...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
Adams, if you read his writings, makes mention of the giving of the ten commandments as a historical event and statements like "The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion." He also makes repeated mention of God's predestinating will, His "constant and vigilant direction".
I'd like to see the references to Adams' belief that the 10 Commandments were an historical event, because that's inconsistent with what I've read about him elsewhere. I think the statement that the Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are his religion could be agreed to buy most secular humanists. Contemporary American conservative Christianity certainly cannot be reduced to just a set of moral behavioral guidelines like that.
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The same sorts of things can be said of Washington, except in his case, he was a member of the Episcopal Church of America and served as vesrtyman and churchwarden, which would have required a statement of Faith.
I supposed that Adams could be said to have played footsie with Universalism, etc. and that with Washinton, there is some evidence that he refused communion after the American Rebellion. But both men, in their own words, can be condemned as 'crazy' many times over by shetline's standards. And in neither case was God a 'placeholder for the Big Bang", in any way, shape, or form for either of them. BTW, in many cases the 'unitarian' business was not so much a repudiation of the Bible, as such, but a continuing fleshing out the question of trinitarian theology. You need to keep that country and time period in a little more context.
(and "Adams, the greatest president" should have read 'Adams and the greatest president')
I was wondering why you were referring to Adams as our greatest president.
I do think the context is very important. My view of the context is what I said earlier, that it was all part of the growth of humanism and rationality beginning with the Renaissance. I wouldn't discount the Protestant Reformation, it was a key part of those same trends, and the Age of Enlightenment was arguably its culmination.
My understanding of shetline's comments was that he was criticizing literal acceptance of religious fables, like the Great Flood. If that's the test, the founders of the US pass, but unfortunately the majority of Americans today fail.
I'd like to see the references to Adams' belief that the 10 Commandments were an historical event
It's in a letter he wrote to Jefferson, he talks about being on Sinai with Moses for the forty days. (Jefferson was, to quote the Kurgan, an effete snob; and a total contradiction of a man.)
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Originally posted by BRussell
I do think the context is very important. My view of the context is what I said earlier, that it was all part of the growth of humanism and rationality beginning with the Renaissance. I wouldn't discount the Protestant Reformation, it was a key part of those same trends, and the Age of Enlightenment was arguably its culmination.
My understanding of shetline's comments was that he was criticizing literal acceptance of religious fables, like the Great Flood. If that's the test, the founders of the US pass, but unfortunately the majority of Americans today fail.
I'm not certain that any of us can lay our hands on the official position Washington or Adams had on "religious fables". But if the existence of Moses, the gift of the Ten Commandments, Christ, etc., is any indication, along with the overpowering uber-Calvinistic predestination bent, I'd have to say they were under the 'delusion' of their day.
It amazes me that with all this discussion of Christian history, nobody has mentioned the distinction between "truth" and "fact" made in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indi tells his class that archeology is the search for "fact"--and if they want "truth," the philosophy department is just down the hall.
WHile I'm not able to put exact words to this distinction, it makes perfect sense to me. "Facts" are concrete, objective pieces of information, ascertained with the sciences--whether they be social sciences or natural sciences. "Truths" are in the realm of philophy and religion. You don't measure truth with electronic instruments, and you don't discover facts by sitting there and thinking about existence.
Does that make sense to anyone else? Can anyone else put words to that distinction in a clearer manner?
Comments
Originally posted by shetline
Oh, do I hate it when quantum mechanics is used as an excuse for mysticism.
It's very important to realize that Schroedinger's Cat is a thought experiment, meant to be illustrative of a concept, and this illustration doesn't say anything that would ever be true of a real cat in a real box.
The thought experiment's "box" is not a physically possible box. It is a purely theoretical box which isolates the entire universe outside of the box from any effect caused by events within the box. Human eyes and human thoughts are not the issue, but the relationship between waveforms inside and outside of the box.
Just wait until the String Theorists start to chime in with crackpot versions...
Because you just know (stop me if you can see this coming)...
Cat + String = hours of Schroedingerling comedy fun
Originally posted by Chris Cuilla
And you are entitled to your belief.
Why go through these silly games?
I said I considered people who took the Bible as literal truth to be crazy.
You responded with "You seem to be falling into the same simplistic trap on this matter as so many do", and linked to something that you wrote in another thread, pretending as if I'd have to work hard at it, having to take psalms and parables and the like out of context before I'd ever, ever run into anything that one might consider blatantly absurd in the Bible.
Slogging along, I then have to make it utterly and perfectly clear for you what kinds of too-absurd-to-take-literally things I'm talking about, with a clear-cut example -- Noah's Ark -- a tale of the kind written by primitive superstitious goatherders for audiences of primitive superstitious goatherders.
Your response to having my point made utterly plain? A lame "And you are entitled to your belief" -- in other words, admitting there's no "simplistic trap" involved or needed here, and coming damn close, without straight-out saying so, "Yes, I'm one of those nuts you're talking about."
Now, while you are indeed apparently afflicted with the form of insanity I speak of, I'd think you'd still want me to give you credit for having for having at least half a brain. Giving you such credit, I'd know you had to know what I originally meant and know there were places I could easily go, even if you don't agree with my assessment, for Biblical crazy-to-take-as-literal-truth absurdity.
So why even bother with such pretense? What possible rhetorical benefit do you imagine you gain by playing dumb, by behaving as if you can't even see half a move forward in the argument you're having?
Originally posted by shetline
Why go through these silly games?
I said I considered people who took the Bible as literal truth to be crazy.
You responded with "You seem to be falling into the same simplistic trap on this matter as so many do", and linked to something that you wrote in another thread, pretending as if I'd have to work hard at it, having to take psalms and parables and the like out of context before I'd ever, ever run into anything that one might consider blatantly absurd in the Bible.
Slogging along, I then have to make it utterly and perfectly clear for you what kinds of too-absurd-to-take-literally things I'm talking about, with a clear-cut example -- Noah's Ark -- a tale of the kind written by primitive superstitious goatherders for audiences of primitive superstitious goatherders.
Your response to having my point made utterly plain? A lame "And you are entitled to your belief" -- in other words, admitting there's no "simplistic trap" involved or needed here, and coming damn close, without straight-out saying so, "Yes, I'm one of those nuts you're talking about."
Now, while you are indeed apparently afflicted with the form of insanity I speak of, I'd think you'd still want me to give you credit for having for having at least half a brain. Giving you such credit, I'd know you had to know what I originally meant and know there were places I could easily go, even if you don't agree with my assessment, for Biblical crazy-to-take-as-literal-truth absurdity.
So why even bother with such pretense? What possible rhetorical benefit do you imagine you gain by playing dumb, by behaving as if you can't even see half a move forward in the argument you're having?
Help me see where this relates to the original topic (not just this post, but this whole conversation) and I'll leave it here, otherwise start your own thread on the matter.
Originally posted by shetline
I considered people who took the Bible as literal truth to be crazy.... a tale of the kind written by primitive superstitious goatherders for audiences of primitive superstitious goatherders.
Shetline, do you realize by your reckoning, that the country you live in was started by "crazy" people, who got their ideas from English common law which was congealed by even more "crazy" people, and the that the legal code of these "superstitious goatherders" is chisled into the walls of the American Supreme Court?
This is a quite durable 'tale', especially when you consider it's audiance over the centuries.
As to Noah's ark, I find it odd that a legend that shows up in nearly every single culture on Earth, is an 'impossibility.' Naturally, you can point to geological records and rule out any such global catastrophe?
Originally posted by segovius
The records from 'nearly every single culture on Earth' that you speak of do not in any single case support the Biblical version.
Gilgamesh was a solitary hero minus entire animal Kingdom (and God)
The Babylonian myths referred to localised floods
Islamic is vastly different in emphasis and location
And on and on.....
Therefore, the literalist who believes in the Bible stories must deny these as they differ and in many cases, are contradictory.
It's either that or admit that the Bible story is just another folk-memory alongside them and subject to the same deteriorations over time.
In any event it has been proved that the dimensions given for the ark in the Bible could result in a vessel big enough to house the animals it claimed to house. Another nail in the coffin.....
This goes to the point of the flood being "impossible" -- not 'unlikely', 'improbable', etc. The legend exists in many forms, yes; it would be reasonable to assume that it had it's roots in an actuall event.
Impossible is quite a statement.
(and there have been feasability studies that worked -- although I am still confused why fully grown animals have to be used)
Originally posted by dmz
Shetline, do you realize by your reckoning, that the country you live in was started by "crazy" people, who got their ideas from English common law which was congealed by even more "crazy" people, and the that the legal code of these "superstitious goatherders" is chisled into the walls of the American Supreme Court?
Do you realize that they rejected the supernatural aspects of religion, including the trinity, the virgin birth and divinity of Jesus, and any intervention whatsoever of the Deity? These people were products of the Enlightenment, an age characterized by the downplaying of centuries of religious dogma in favor of humanism and rationality. It was their lack of religiosity, at least in the way that modern American Christians view religiosity, that stood them apart in history. As an American I'm very proud of that legacy.
Originally posted by BRussell
Do you realize that they rejected the supernatural aspects of religion, including the trinity, the virgin birth and divinity of Jesus, and any intervention whatsoever of the Deity? These people were products of the Enlightenment, an age characterized by the downplaying of centuries of religious dogma in favor of humanism and rationality. It was their lack of religiosity, at least in the way that modern American Christians view religiosity, that stood them apart in history. As an American I'm very proud of that legacy.
Ah yes, you're trying to leave out the Reformation, but that's not a position that is grounded in the reality of what happened. You had the Enlightenment, but there was enough comingling, philosophically, to make a West Virginan family blush.
If you leave out the Reformation, that would preclude a feasible explanation for the 'Christian Lockeanism' that was generally prevelant at America's founding.
Originally posted by segovius
You would still need food for them which would double the payload. Anyway, why would God need Noah to build such a vessel?
Why couldn't He use His God powers? He does elsewhere in the OT with lightning bolts, salt pillars and such and in the NT by raising people from the dead.
Why is he reliant on some dubiously constructed craft built by an old dodderer with no nautical or zoological experience? It isn't as if He couldn't start the world from scratch again anyway or even stop time and roll it back.
This ark stuff doesn't hold water.....
There are many questions on the Ark, and yes those are some long odds. Some say it could be done -- in any event I don't think it's 'impossible'.
In any event, the flood itself would be supernatural and hence 'impossible' and once you say that then you run into the problem of making universal negative statements on what may or may not exist.
Originally posted by dmz
Ah yes, you're trying to leave out the Reformation, that's not a position that is grounded in the reality of what happened.
If you leave out the Reformation, that would preclude a feasible explanation for the 'Christian Lockeanism' that was generally prevelant at America's founding.
Oh sure, the Reformation (and the Renaissance) were part of the same trajectory of human history that led to the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and has since reversed course in 21st-century America.
But that trajectory was one of reducing the superstitious aspects of religion in favor of rationality and science, of limiting the power and scope of religion in government, and of emphasizing humanism over "God-ism." Those are the kinds of principles that guided our founding fathers.
Originally posted by dmz
Shetline, do you realize by your reckoning, that the country you live in was started by "crazy" people, who got their ideas from English common law which was congealed by even more "crazy" people, and the that the legal code of these "superstitious goatherders" is chisled into the walls of the American Supreme Court?
It's certainly not the case that those who started this country, while nearly all Christian to one degree or another, were all Biblical literalists -- and that's the issue here -- that they were people who insisted on the Absolute TRVTH of the Bible in each and every word (parables and the like aside as you wish).
They certainly didn't found the kind of government that men who believed in the absolute authority of the Bible would have created, annoying chiselings driven by poorly contained religious sentimentalism or not. BRussel has already spoken to this point quite well.
This is a quite durable 'tale', especially when you consider it's audiance over the centuries.
As to Noah's ark, I find it odd that a legend that shows up in nearly every single culture on Earth, is an 'impossibility.' Naturally, you can point to geological records and rule out any such global catastrophe?
I'm supposed to prove that the flood didn't happen? Interesting shift of the burden of proof there!
And if I can't prove the negative that means that all of the particulars of the Biblical story of Noah's Ark get to go along for a free ride as Absolute Historical TRVTH given that there was any world-wide flood at some time?
First of all, I'd say it's the more spectacular claim that demands spectacular evidence, and a globe-enveloping flood having occurred sometime in the past few thousand years qualifies as a spectacular claim.
The common theme of great flood legends is not at all surprising. Where is the most fertile farmland in the world found? Drum roll please... the flood plains of great rivers! Tah dah!
Many, many cultures will naturally have experienced enormous and devastating floods -- floods which would have encompassed each culture's entire "world", or at least enough such that, as is the nature of legends, in the retelling of these tales the whole world would be subsumed.
I suppose I should start another thread on this tangent if I'm to continue, and perhaps I shall in AO/PO later.
Originally posted by segovius
Please God no. I'll repent and be kind to small children and animals....
Dare I ask what you've been doing to small children and animals up until now?
Originally posted by shetline
It's certainly not the case that those who started this country, while nearly all Christian to one degree or another, were all Biblical literalists -- and that's the issue here -- that they were people who insisted on the Absolute TRVTH of the Bible in each and every word (parables and the like aside as you wish).
They certainly didn't found the kind of government that men who believed in the absolute authority of the Bible would have created, annoying chiselings driven by poorly contained religious sentimentalism or not. BRussel has already spoken to this point quite well.
No, shetline Brussel did not address this very well at all: you can't willy nilly ignore the progression of English common law, with it's metaphysical underpinnings being Christian. This talk about the enlightenment and leaving "godism" behind, what is that all about, it just doesn't describe the scene in America, 1775. Shetline, they tried that in France in 1789, they were very self-conscious when they did it; compare the general 'rights of man' with the declaration of Independence -- they are polar opposites.
Without the concept of the sovereignty of God, God's laws, rights endowed by their creator we would have had no American Rebellion. And that notion comes from a "crazy" take on the Bible, which most subscribed to at that time.
You called "people who took the Bible as literal truth to be crazy." Well the greatest president America ever had, America's second president, as well as majority of the people who formed the first congress, were "crazy". I wish I had a nickel for every time Washington and Adams penned the word "providence". They understood the principle of revelational truth, and they took it self-consciously, and very seriously. These were great men, some of the greatest and bravest that America will ever produce -- they weren't "primitive superstitious goatherders".
Originally posted by shetline
I'm supposed to prove that the flood didn't happen? Interesting shift of the burden of proof there!
You said it was impossible.
Originally posted by dmz
You called "people who took the Bible as literal truth to be crazy." Well the greatest president America ever had, America's second president, as well as majority of the people who formed the first congress, were "crazy".
The second president, our greatest president? Are you sure you want to go there? He referred to Christianity as "the most bloody religion that ever existed." He said, about the divinity of Jesus, that "God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world." He signed a treaty with a Muslim country that said "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." And I know you don't want to get into the president after him.
Adams and the rest of them, including all of the first presidents (in fact just about all up until the 20th cenntury) and almost all of the important founders, rejected most of the supernatural beliefs that you subscribe to, dmz. They did believe in God, a creator, and perhaps shetline would fault them for that. But they relegated God to an unknowable force with no interaction with the universe, a kind of place-holder for the Big Bang.
What makes them unique in human history is how far they went in rejecting superstition and advocating humanism and rationality, not how religious they were, and certainly not in how many supernatural stories they took as literal.
Originally posted by dmz
No, shetline Brussel did not address this very well at all: you can't willy nilly ignore the progression of English common law, with it's metaphysical underpinnings being Christian...
I wish I had a nickel for every time Washington and Adams penned the word "providence".
Whoa, there! Binary thinking alert!
There's a big, big difference between believing in Providence, putting faith of some sort in the Bible on one hand, and on the other being a rigid Biblical literalist who insists that down to the literal serpent in a literal tree, down to the literal pillar of salt, down to every literal and exact width, breath and depth of cubits for a wooden ark carrying seven pairs of every "clean" animal, and one pair of every "unclean" animal, that this is all literal, historical fact.
That's the real insanity of -- the "in for a penny, in for a pound" abdication of any critical thought whatsoever in the face of gasping absurdity.
On top of that, there's an amazing amount of scientific knowledge which has been gained since the time of Washington and Adams too, knowledge which can at least help relieve some people of this madness, in cases where it is due more to mere ignorance than willful, mind-numbing credulity.
They understood the principle of revelational truth, and they took it self-consciously, and very seriously. These were great men, some of the greatest and bravest that America will ever produce -- they weren't "primitive superstitious goatherders".
More of the same ridiculous binary thinking.
You said it was impossible.
I backtracked over this entire thread and found not one use of the word "impossible" by me. Maybe you're arguing with those voices in your head again.
At any rate, what one believes in should, I would hope, have some grounding in what's likely and probable. Mere lack of utter impossibility is a pretty poor metric for believability.
For a story like Noah's Ark, "well, it's a miracle!" hardly cuts it as an explanation. It's details of the story, and taking those details as literal truth that, in my book, takes one from run-of-the-mill credulity to a kind of madness.
If God wanted all of these creatures gone, and if He is all-powerful, He could have, with a mere thought, made all that offended him disappear in the blink of an eye. But no. For some reason, the story instead follows exactly the kind of cartoonish logic we find in many old myths. Would you wish to claim that God decided to make a Cecil B. DeMille production out of his bad people/bad animal purge just so that the story would could be retold in a goatherder-pleasing way?
The ark and the flood would have been nothing more than meaningless props in the whole fiasco, with so many other miracles upon miracles needed to make the big production number come off:
- Making so much extra water appear so quickly.
- Making it disappear.
- Patching up all of the bad genetics cause by drastically reducing the gene pool.
- Resurrecting all the fish and other aquatic species, not carried in the ark, killed by the indiscriminate mixing of salt and fresh water, not to mention all of the other problems of water contamination, incompatible pressure and temperature conditions, etc.
- Resurrecting all of the plant species killed by being under water for so long.
- Gathering the vast variety of animals from all over the world into one small space over such a short period of time.
- Keeping all of those animals, with vastly different dietary and environmental requirements, alive in the same Middle Eastern environment while they're being assembled.
- Maintaining livable conditions for all of the creatures in the ark over the long voyage.
- After the flood, redistributing all of those animals in a timely fashion to their correct environments, before they die of starvation and exposure to the wrong environments.
- Speaking of starvation, keeping all of those animals alive after they reach their proper environs, while the herbivores wait for sufficient vegetation to reestablish itself, and while the predators wait for the prey species to multiply to the point that their first few meals won't kill off all they've got to eat forever.
- Etc., etc.
To ponder all of that, and, instead of seeing the obvious tell-tale signs of myth, decide it's more important to swallow the story whole and unquestioned as some sort of required act of faith, especially when one had much more education and a much better sense of the scale of the world and the variety of life than the goatherders who wrote the story -- yes, I call that barking-at-the-moon mad.Originally posted by shetline
I backtracked over this entire thread and found not one use of the word "impossible" by me.
So it is possible?
Originally posted by BRussell
They did believe in God, a creator, and perhaps shetline would fault them for that.....
Adams, if you read his writings, makes mention of the giving of the ten commandments as a historical event and statements like "The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion." He also makes repeated mention of God's predestinating will, His "constant and vigilant direction".
The same sorts of things can be said of Washington, except in his case, he was a member of the Episcopal Church of America and served as vesrtyman and churchwarden, which would have required a statement of Faith.
I supposed that Adams could be said to have played footsie with Universalism, etc. and that with Washinton, there is some evidence that he refused communion after the American Rebellion. But both men, in their own words, can be condemned as 'crazy' many times over by shetline's standards. And in neither case was God a 'placeholder for the Big Bang", in any way, shape, or form for either of them. BTW, in many cases the 'unitarian' business was not so much a repudiation of the Bible, as such, but a continuing fleshing out the question of trinitarian theology. You need to keep that country and time period in a little more context.
(and "Adams, the greatest president" should have read 'Adams and the greatest president')
~Ronald Reagan
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
~Alec Bourne
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
~Albert Einstein
...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
~Umberto Eco
Originally posted by dmz
Adams, if you read his writings, makes mention of the giving of the ten commandments as a historical event and statements like "The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion." He also makes repeated mention of God's predestinating will, His "constant and vigilant direction".
I'd like to see the references to Adams' belief that the 10 Commandments were an historical event, because that's inconsistent with what I've read about him elsewhere. I think the statement that the Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are his religion could be agreed to buy most secular humanists. Contemporary American conservative Christianity certainly cannot be reduced to just a set of moral behavioral guidelines like that.
The same sorts of things can be said of Washington, except in his case, he was a member of the Episcopal Church of America and served as vesrtyman and churchwarden, which would have required a statement of Faith.
I supposed that Adams could be said to have played footsie with Universalism, etc. and that with Washinton, there is some evidence that he refused communion after the American Rebellion. But both men, in their own words, can be condemned as 'crazy' many times over by shetline's standards. And in neither case was God a 'placeholder for the Big Bang", in any way, shape, or form for either of them. BTW, in many cases the 'unitarian' business was not so much a repudiation of the Bible, as such, but a continuing fleshing out the question of trinitarian theology. You need to keep that country and time period in a little more context.
(and "Adams, the greatest president" should have read 'Adams and the greatest president')
I was wondering why you were referring to Adams as our greatest president.
I do think the context is very important. My view of the context is what I said earlier, that it was all part of the growth of humanism and rationality beginning with the Renaissance. I wouldn't discount the Protestant Reformation, it was a key part of those same trends, and the Age of Enlightenment was arguably its culmination.
My understanding of shetline's comments was that he was criticizing literal acceptance of religious fables, like the Great Flood. If that's the test, the founders of the US pass, but unfortunately the majority of Americans today fail.
Originally posted by BRussell
I'd like to see the references to Adams' belief that the 10 Commandments were an historical event
It's in a letter he wrote to Jefferson, he talks about being on Sinai with Moses for the forty days. (Jefferson was, to quote the Kurgan, an effete snob; and a total contradiction of a man.)
Originally posted by BRussell
I do think the context is very important. My view of the context is what I said earlier, that it was all part of the growth of humanism and rationality beginning with the Renaissance. I wouldn't discount the Protestant Reformation, it was a key part of those same trends, and the Age of Enlightenment was arguably its culmination.
My understanding of shetline's comments was that he was criticizing literal acceptance of religious fables, like the Great Flood. If that's the test, the founders of the US pass, but unfortunately the majority of Americans today fail.
I'm not certain that any of us can lay our hands on the official position Washington or Adams had on "religious fables". But if the existence of Moses, the gift of the Ten Commandments, Christ, etc., is any indication, along with the overpowering uber-Calvinistic predestination bent, I'd have to say they were under the 'delusion' of their day.
It amazes me that with all this discussion of Christian history, nobody has mentioned the distinction between "truth" and "fact" made in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indi tells his class that archeology is the search for "fact"--and if they want "truth," the philosophy department is just down the hall.
WHile I'm not able to put exact words to this distinction, it makes perfect sense to me. "Facts" are concrete, objective pieces of information, ascertained with the sciences--whether they be social sciences or natural sciences. "Truths" are in the realm of philophy and religion. You don't measure truth with electronic instruments, and you don't discover facts by sitting there and thinking about existence.
Does that make sense to anyone else? Can anyone else put words to that distinction in a clearer manner?