Goddit versus Evolution

[CrabCake]

As an aside it also brings up the question of whether the bible is a complete work of allegory or a partial work of allegory mixed with a literal reading. Was the story of jesus also an allegory or was it literal? And how do you tell the difference?

The bible contains many kinds of literature. You can tell what type of literature it is the same way you can tell with any other literature you run into; from the writing style, context, and content as well as from knowledge about who wrote it and how it has been used historically from the time it was written onwards.

When you read a text filled with flowery emotional language and metaphor, you know you are reading poetry.

When you read a text that begins with a greeting and appears to be written to someone, then you know you are reading an epistle (a letter).

If you read a story that includes a man whose name translates to "mankind", a woman whose name translates to "breath of life", trees called "the knowledge of good and evil" and "tree of life", and a talking snake...it should be instantly clear to you that this is allegorical.

As for the gospels, we have enough historical evidence for his existence and crucifixion and the fact that a cult formed around him which evolved into what we now call Christianity. The evidence is also fairly strong that his followers believed him to have physically resurrected. As for how much of the gospels is mythologizing / hagiography and how much is historical narrative, there is clearly much room for debate on that and there has been and will continue to be extensive debate. That's ok...there's nothing wrong with debate.

The argument of looking at genesis as an allegory instead of as scientific creationism opens up a very large can of worms as regarding to where we draw the line on all the stories in the bible being a literal translation of events or an allegorical one.

It doesn't open anything up. It's been the standard way of reading it for thousands of years. We have thousands of years worth of writings on this already. It isn't some new thing that opens up a can of worms. It's the regular way of reading it.

What opens a can of worms is the opposite...pretending that it's a historical narrative. Once you do that you have to start discarding science, you have to start explaining who Cain married and who the inhabitants of the city he went to were, and whether incest was God's tool for creation, etc... That's the can of worms that has been opened by modern evangelicals.

 

[devildavid]

Before we get too off-track into a subject we've discussed before: look, if you don't like the triangle example, just change it to whatever you do like. How about dog/animal or table/furniture or whatever?

Anyway, do you think triangles wouldn't exist if human beings didn't exist? That just seems silly. Triangles seem to meet all the same criteria for reality that physical things do, according to your post here. I cannot believe that a triangle has four sides, and make it so, for example. Triangles are things that push back (metaphorically speaking), and there is public agreement about them. My equilateral triangle is not substantially different from your equilateral triangle--yours doesn't have one longer side or an interior angle that is smaller than the others, same as mine. In general, with geometry and math, if that were the case, we'd be in serious trouble.

Math and triangles are human concepts. They do not exist in the same way physical objects do. We did not discover math or triangles, we invented them. They couldn't exist by their very nature until man invented them. The earth existed long before man did. Its existence is not dependent on man's observation of it or man's concept of it. The earth is a physical thing; it is not a concept.

 

[<alt>doxygen]

There is no such thing as evidence of a negative. An entity cannot leave evidence of its non-interaction. There is no reason to invoke a god when the science already explains things.

But what if your life stinks and yet you want to feel okay about it? Wouldn't, "I'll get my reward in the afterlife" be a consoling thought? I can't buy it myself, but there are many who do.

 

[calamity]

I don't think that's why a few survived. The reason why some animals were able to survive the impact, is because they lived in burrows and aquatic environments that shielded them from the intense heat from the meteor impact.

Sure. The burrowing and aquatic existences played a part in hiding out from big bad dino. I don't recall all the details, but dodging dinosaurs led to many unique evolutionary gifts, over and above well-developed brains, including being small enough to survive on insects when everything else died and insect populations exploded due to all the rich food sources decaying bodies provided.

 

[ataraxia]

The allegories of the Bible typically have multiple meanings, and would have been understood as having multiple meanings. Which one is "correct" is therefore not a well-formed question.

Yes. Which one is "correct" depends on which one you WANT to be correct. The Bible, and most holy scripture in general, are just vague, abstract, and non-specific enough that they can mean whatever the reader wants them to mean. They are like those Rorschach tests psychologists use: what people say they mean reveals more about what's going on in their heads that what they actually are. Pages and pages of detailed instructions on how to own slaves so it is pleasing to the Lord? Yes, of course- that's just historical descriptions of how things WERE done in the past, not how it should be done NOW, right? Well, maybe, depending on what you want it to mean. But others may, quite justifiably, disagree:

"Slavery was established by the decree of Almighty God. It is sanctioned in the Bible, in both testaments, from Genesis to Revelation."
- Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.

The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example."
-Rev. Richard Furman, the first president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention,1861

That's why religion is just a mirage, a compelling optical illusion. It's a projection of people and cultures' most current opinions and worldviews to deities and absolute certainty and a heaven of eternity. It is a mirror of people's most current opinions, from the KKK to Mother Theresa. It is no guide:

Intellectually, religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it. They steep and dye intellectual fabrics in the seething vat of emotions; they do not form their warp and woof. There is not, I think, an instance of any large idea about the world being independently generated by religion.
-John Dewey

 

[calamity]

That does not even begin to make sense. It was not only mammals that had to dodge being eaten other species also had the same problem. But no superior brain there. Any evidence found so far suggest intelligence and tool using came long after the dinosaur left . The real question is how does nocturnal habits and a superior brain help you survive a huge rock hitting the planet with the force of a dozen atomic bombs?

Not according to this. The mammalian brain began to develop more complexity during the dinosaur age.

 

[Spartacus FPV]

But what if your life stinks and yet you want to feel okay about it? Wouldn't, "I'll get my reward in the afterlife" be a consoling thought? I can't buy it myself, but there are many who do.

The utility of a religion has nothing to do with the truth of it. If it makes you feel good, you do you. But keep that **** to yourself if you want to avoid criticism, you go around denying evolution then you warrant correcting.

 

[soylentgreen]

I know this was not addressed to me, but I'm going to respond anyway: part of the difficulty seems to be that you may be assuming that a given passage is intended to have only one meaning. In fact that is not correct, especially with the Hebrew Bible, since in Biblical Hebrew almost every word has a vast array of meanings, some of them seemingly incoherent. I've done some scholarship on the Song of Songs. Here, for example, is the way that 1:3 is usually translated:

Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.

But the same words can also be translated thus:

For your pleasing scents, she is being poured out forever, your beloved upon you.

And there are still other things those same words can mean in English. A person speaking Biblical Hebrew would understand all of them by those same words. Whether they would understand them as importing a single meaning composed of the many meanings we have in English, or would understand them as importing layers of meaning, we cannot precisely say. I tend toward the former view, but admit it cannot be proven.

The allegories of the Bible typically have multiple meanings, and would have been understood as having multiple meanings. Which one is "correct" is therefore not a well-formed question.

That i do understand which is why i avoided using the words, which is the correct version, but instead asked how does it get evaluated.
By his saying it is an allegory opens up all sorts of questions about interpretation. At least with those who see genesis as a literal telling they are far easier to deal with because their pseudo science is flawed and easily dismissed.
But when the theists start saying that it is an allegory then they open it up to all sorts of interpretations. Some that are benevolent, some not. Because when it becomes an allegory then it is not the story that counts but what motivates the person telling it.

It s not enough for him or anyone to say the genesis story is an allegory and just leave it at that. Now he needs to define this allegory and give it meaning. Only then can i judge the truth of his words.

 

[Spartacus FPV]

Sure there is.

For example?

What in the world would make you think that?

Its an epistemological fact regarding the nature of knowledge.

More to the point, why is this relevant?

Because you asked for evidence of a negative, which would be impossible.

Science doesn't explain things, at least not to the level most people think.

Are you serious? What doesn't it explain, that can be proven to be true?

Faith doesn't explain ANYTHING.

 

[Fishking]

Many religious people believe in evolution. The Pope for one. Creationists belong in the "flat Earth" clan.

Not sure how that is relevant to my comment.

 

[iguanaman]

The utility of a religion has nothing to do with the truth of it. If it makes you feel good, you do you. But keep that **** to yourself if you want to avoid criticism, you go around denying evolution then you warrant correcting.

Or you can take the Pope's route and take the Bible as a allegory and stop this literal nonsense. Denying evolution makes you look like a neanderthal.:lol: BTW Where DO the Neanderthals fit into the Bible? Oh that's right, they were never mentioned because no one knew about them when it was written.

 

[iguanaman]

Not sure how that is relevant to my comment.

You took his comment as an insult to the religious....it wasn't. Creationism is an insult to our intelligence.

 

[Ikari]

Yep. The Earth ain't 6,000 years old.

you never ask a planet its age!

 

[soylentgreen]

The bible contains many kinds of literature. You can tell what type of literature it is the same way you can tell with any other literature you run into; from the writing style, context, and content as well as from knowledge about who wrote it and how it has been used historically from the time it was written onwards.

When you read a text filled with flowery emotional language and metaphor, you know you are reading poetry.

When you read a text that begins with a greeting and appears to be written to someone, then you know you are reading an epistle (a letter).

If you read a story that includes a man whose name translates to "mankind", a woman whose name translates to "breath of life", trees called "the knowledge of good and evil" and "tree of life", and a talking snake...it should be instantly clear to you that this is allegorical.



It doesn't open anything up. It's been the standard way of reading it for thousands of years. We have thousands of years worth of writings on this already. It isn't some new thing that opens up a can of worms. It's the regular way of reading it.

What opens a can of worms is the opposite...pretending that it's a historical narrative. Once you do that you have to start discarding science, you have to start explaining who Cain married and who the inhabitants of the city he went to were, and whether incest was God's tool for creation, etc... That's the can of worms that has been opened by modern evangelicals.

That is what is annoying about these religions. In general they can be made to sound quite reasonable as you have done here. But when they start delving into the minutiae of it, it all starts to unravel. As your belief in in the crucifixion does.

As for the gospels, we have enough historical evidence for his existence and crucifixion and the fact that a cult formed around him which evolved into what we now call Christianity. The evidence is also fairly strong that his followers believed him to have physically resurrected. As for how much of the gospels is mythologizing / hagiography and how much is historical narrative, there is clearly much room for debate on that and there has been and will continue to be extensive debate. That's ok...there's nothing wrong with debate.

A cult has formed around many mythological people which gives them no more credibility than christianity. A belief in resurrection does not mean that it is evidence the event occurred.

If you read a story that includes a man whose name translates to "mankind", a woman whose name translates to "breath of life", trees called "the knowledge of good and evil" and "tree of life", and a talking snake...it should be instantly clear to you that this is allegorical.

And if i read a story of a man who can walk on water, rain manna from heaven, raise the dead and become one of the walking dead himself. Should that not also be instantly clear that this man is nothing more than an allegory.

 

[soylentgreen]

Not according to this. The mammalian brain began to develop more complexity during the dinosaur age.

This video does not really back you. Around the 25 minute mark it states what another poster here already said was the cause of survival, which was, because they lived in burrows and aquatic environments that shielded them.

The development from just plan mammals of no significance intelligence to tool and language creators began long after the dinosaur disappeared.

 

[calamity]

This video does not really back you. Around the 25 minute mark it states what another poster here already said was the cause of survival, which was, because they lived in burrows and aquatic environments that shielded them.

The development from just plan mammals of no significance intelligence to tool and language creators began long after the dinosaur disappeared.

It clearly stated that they developed more complex brains. Where do you get the idea that I said they developed language and tools? :roll:

 

[ashurbanipal]

Math and triangles are human concepts. They do not exist in the same way physical objects do.

I agree they do not exist in the same way. That does not mean they do not exist.

We did not discover math or triangles, we invented them.

That seems false. Look, what distinguishes invention and discovery? One thing is that, with invention, the only criterion of truth is authoritative. For example, when J.K. Rowling invented Harry Potter, the things that were true of Harry Potter and his world are true because she says so. That is not the case with triangles or other geometric or numerical objects. Certainly, some of what is true of them is arbitrary (that there are 360 degrees in a circle, for example). But a great deal is not arbitrary (the relationships between the angles and sides of a triangle, for instance). We have acquired new truths about triangles over time, and those truths are not true because any authority says they are.

They couldn't exist by their very nature until man invented them. The earth existed long before man did. Its existence is not dependent on man's observation of it or man's concept of it. The earth is a physical thing; it is not a concept.

Well...maybe. I'm not sure the earth existed before there were any conscious beings observing it. Humans may not have been the first ones to do so.

 

[ashurbanipal]

Yes. Which one is "correct" depends on which one you WANT to be correct.

This is clearly false if read literally. If you just mean that often people have their preferred interpretations that are in turn based on sentiment, then sure, I agree.

The Bible, and most holy scripture in general, are just vague, abstract, and non-specific enough that they can mean whatever the reader wants them to mean.

Here, however, I disagree. That a piece of text may have multiple meanings is not sufficient to show it has just any meaning.

They are like those Rorschach tests psychologists use: what people say they mean reveals more about what's going on in their heads that what they actually are. Pages and pages of detailed instructions on how to own slaves so it is pleasing to the Lord? Yes, of course- that's just historical descriptions of how things WERE done in the past, not how it should be done NOW, right? Well, maybe, depending on what you want it to mean. But others may, quite justifiably, disagree:

That's why religion is just a mirage, a compelling optical illusion. It's a projection of people and cultures' most current opinions and worldviews to deities and absolute certainty and a heaven of eternity. It is a mirror of people's most current opinions, from the KKK to Mother Theresa. It is no guide:

I would suggest a couple of things. Scripture is not the end-all, be-all of a human person's relationship with the divine. There's plenty that's in the Bible that I don't think is backed by any spiritual reality at all--possession of slaves among them. Plenty in the bible was written by people who were in tune with their culture, such that their writings became popular, but they were otherwise phonies. People who have not already apprehended spiritual truth within themselves will read the Bible and basically go nuts; that is unfortunately all too common a narrative in contemporary culture. Has been for some time, and that's why I'm not a Christian, Jew, or Muslim. The point lurking behind all of this is that your criticism, while definitely valid of a great many religionists, doesn't tell us anything about whether God exists, or whether God created human individuals.

 

[calamity]

That i do understand which is why i avoided using the words, which is the correct version, but instead asked how does it get evaluated.
By his saying it is an allegory opens up all sorts of questions about interpretation. At least with those who see genesis as a literal telling they are far easier to deal with because their pseudo science is flawed and easily dismissed.
But when the theists start saying that it is an allegory then they open it up to all sorts of interpretations. Some that are benevolent, some not. Because when it becomes an allegory then it is not the story that counts but what motivates the person telling it.

It s not enough for him or anyone to say the genesis story is an allegory and just leave it at that. Now he needs to define this allegory and give it meaning. Only then can i judge the truth of his words.

Of course it is allegory, including the resurrection myth. But, if the Christians started to admit that like they do Noah and Adam and Eve are allegories, then they would have to actually begin doing what Jesus supposedly said instead of just paying lip service to him as a deity. It's cafeteria religion. And, that totally discredits them, IMO.

 

[ashurbanipal]

For example?

Suppose I want to know whether there is a standard-size basketball in my closet. I formulate the hypothesis that there isn't one. To test it, I just go look in every part of my closet big enough to hold a standard-size basketball. If I fail to detect one (since basketballs are uniformly detectable by familiar means), that's evidence there is no basketball in my closet.

Its an epistemological fact regarding the nature of knowledge.

Not in any epistemology I've ever studied.

Because you asked for evidence of a negative, which would be impossible.

No I didn't. I didn't ask for any evidence at all. What I said was that calamity's claims are not sufficient to support his conclusion, whether they are true or not.

Are you serious?

Of course I'm serious. Why would you think I'm not serious?

What doesn't it explain, that can be proven to be true?

In my view, there's very little that science explains. Science elucidates regularities in nature, which we are then able to exploit via engineering. But an explanation requires rather more than that.

Faith doesn't explain ANYTHING.

Who said anything about faith?

 

[JamesBY]

Of course it is allegory, including the resurrection myth. But, if the Christians started to admit that like they do Noah and Adam and Eve are allegories, then they would have to actually begin doing what Jesus supposedly said instead of just paying lip service to him as a deity. It's cafeteria religion. And, that totally discredits them, IMO.

The response above falls apart in that calamity confuses the systems of proof for science and faith. Skeptics do not have the language to evaluate latter. For instance, the question "Can God create a weight he can't lift?" completely confounds them.

Faith believers have a similar problem, in that science confounds their confirmation biases. Scientific evidence clearly reveals creationism and Young Earth theories simply cannot withstand scientific evidence.

 

[Fishking]

You took his comment as an insult to the religious....it wasn't. Creationism is an insult to our intelligence.

Yes, some religious people don't believe in that and he's obviously insulting them. Let me put it another way...the OP has nothing of value to talk about.

 

[calamity]

Do you have anything unique to bring to the discussion or are you just making a public statement of your atheism and your disdain for those who believe in religion?

I guess that I am surprised to hear people in this day and age still addressing the question of the origins of sexual dimorphism by saying "Goddidit." But, I probably shouldn't be.

 

[calamity]

This video does not really back you. Around the 25 minute mark it states what another poster here already said was the cause of survival, which was, because they lived in burrows and aquatic environments that shielded them.

The development from just plan mammals of no significance intelligence to tool and language creators began long after the dinosaur disappeared.

Beyond this.

It clearly stated that they developed more complex brains. Where do you get the idea that I said they developed language and tools? :roll:

I'd also like to add what I meant when addressing Governess re aquatic and burrowing.

The explanation in the video was rather simple. The mammals developed brains which were complex enough to achieve learning and other behavior modifications, such as hiding in burrows by day and feeding at night: nocturnal behavior. They also learned to go hide in remote swampy areas, which apparently were cold and forced them to evolve fur which fluffs, a reflex which today gives us goose bumps.

 

[soylentgreen]

It clearly stated that they developed more complex brains. Where do you get the idea that I said they developed language and tools? :roll:

I only saw that only after the dinosaur had long gone. During the period they diminished in size so as to better dig holes and escape the dinosaur.

Of course it is allegory, including the resurrection myth. But, if the Christians started to admit that like they do Noah and Adam and Eve are allegories, then they would have to actually begin doing what Jesus supposedly said instead of just paying lip service to him as a deity. It's cafeteria religion. And, that totally discredits them, IMO.

Oh! that's right, i had forgotten that you claim to be an atheist. One that now thinks you can support a belief if only we just admit that the stories were allegory.

But if the resurrection is myth then what about all the other claims, walking on water, food from heaven, curing with a touch, raising the dead, being a walking dead. tell me the part about jesus that is not to be seen as an allegory, and why.