Well one pretty obvious conflict is your continued claim humans were created, when it is a scientific fact we evolved. You have also tried to use irreducible complexity to deny that scientific fact, and IC has been debunked by science for decades.
Plenty of conflict there. Will you be addressing any of it it though? I have to say I am dubious that you will.
So vague that even inerrantist / literalists teach that prophecies can have âmultiple fulfillmentsâ and âpartial fulfillmentsâ. So a prophecy is really about, say, the future millennial reign of Jesus, and will be more fully fulfilled then, but is partially fulfilled by some historical figure or event already past that also fits the vague description in the prophecy. Or sometimes this is used to elide the fact that the prophecy is pretty clearly a prophetic warning for a person or group contemporary to the prophet, even naming names, but also has applicability to whatever their own pet eschatological position says is going to happen in the End of Days.
Youâre going to have be more specific than that if you want me to understand what you are agreeing with, JC.
Are you agreeing with what I say about Hebrews 11 and how faith is a leap in the dark?
Are you agreeing that your apologetic arguments require faith to work?
Are you agreeing that we atheists, agnostics and sceptics have no faith?
Are you agreeing that the only thing that will change our minds is objective evidence?
Iâm left bemused and confused and will remain so until you are more specific.
So please help me out here.
All of this talk about prophecy being fulfilled has made me wonder about a technique used by modern con artists, and if it was relevant in Biblical times.
The con is set up as follows:
Let us suppose that the horse races which happen every day involve six horses.
The con artist approaches 216 marks (which is possible with the Internet) with the story that the horse races are fixed by the mafia, and he has an inside track on which horses will win.
The con artist divides the 216 marks into 6 groups and gives a different âwinningâ horse number to each group for free to prove that he really has the winning horse number (It is important for the con that the marks donât know each other).
One group of 36 wins.
The con artist divides this group of 36 into 6 groups of 6, and gives each group a different winning number again, for free.
One group of 6 wins.
The con artist again provides a different winning number to each of these 6 marks, and 1 person wins.
This 1 person now believes that the con artist has a track record (no pun intended) of successfully predicting 3 races in a row.
The con artist then charges money for his next hot tip.
Ifâby 1 in 6 chancesâthe tip actually pays off and the horse wins, the con artist can fleece him again by feeding the victim another number. If the horse loses, the con artist skips town with his take.
It seemsâat least to meâthat prophecies can be spun in a similar manner by an astute con artist, as the art of manipulation has existed as long as there have been human beings.
Why would there be a deeper reason beyond that natural laws allow radiation and matter to exist and interact, matter to coalesce into huge lumps, form stars that use nuclear fusion as fuel and expel heavier elements when they run out of fuel, and thus allow rock-like planets to form, and under given circumstances to favour self-replication molecules to multiply and evolve into ever larger molecules and aggregations of molecules into what we today call cells, and so on? We as a species (and all other species) exist because natural law allows it under the conditions we have on this rocky planet. Why would there be any other reasons?
One last point has occurred to me since I posted this: Organized religion has always seemed to have a relationship with con artists, with a specific example being Peter Popoff.
Do we have any reason to believe that it was any different 2,000 years ago?
To satisfy a deep-seated emotional need, perhaps?
The problem with that approach however is that whatever shape this emotional need takes, that need is then projected and imposed upon the entire universe by the needful person. This inverts the natural order of reality, where the universe exists in spite of the needful person.
The universe then becomes the slave of that personâs inner desires, conforming to whatever they wish it to be. It was created as part of an overarching grand plan with them in mind. Their need for meaning is so strong that it ends up overwhelming reality. Now, nothing at all, no event in the universe, no matter how small or how large is allowed to just happen for its own reasons. Now, everything happens because of⌠me.
Sure, many needful people do not see it in these terms. They rationalise that whatever cosmic plan the universe was created for must apply to everyone. But the emotional benefit they derive from thinking these thoughts is exclusively personal and individual. Deep in their heart of hearts, in the innermost sanctum of their private thoughts and feelings they LOVE the idea that the universe only obtains its meaning from a divine plan of which they are a part.
How exquisitely beautiful is that? All of creation, the many billions of galaxies, the entire universe was made and is maintained with me in mind.
Does that help, Goml?
As well as with a relative indifference. The need for anything else is an indicator of a human construct, or a display of supreme arrogance.
Agreed.
Speaking only for myself (though I suspect others here share these thoughts) I am entirely happy and at peace with the notion that I exist in an indifferent and extremely hostile universe that has no requirement to bow to my feelings, wants or desires.
Contrast that with a theist who has the hubris, arrogance and chutzpah to believe that everything was first made with them in mind, continues with them in mind and only realizes its true purpose with them in mind.
Please note that Iâm not focusing on any specific person or any specific religion here. My comments apply to any believer of any religion which is humancentric.
Thank you,
Walter.
I agree, but I also acknowledge that how I feel about objective reality is irrelevant. Whatâs the point in wishing away reality?
And contrast that with the objective fact that the universe is 13.787 billion years old, yet humans evolved as one species (the youngest) of great ape, a mere 250k years ago, then that claim becomes risible.
I think this is appropriate here:
Does the name L. Ron Hubbard ring a bell?
I doubt that the original authors of these passages had those motivations necessarily, in part because MANY passages that Christians claim to be prophecy, likely werenât intended to BE prophetic. I think the âsuffering servantâ trope for example probably WAS about contemporaneous figures with a more general subtext about the sacrificial responsibilities of leadership generally. These passages are just being retconned by people who, ironically, in the same breath, will decry how some oily people will âwrest the scriptures to their own destructionâ.
Orthodoxy, dogma and all that jazz are just not this immutable black and white unambiguous position that they make it out to be. It is just whatever fits the need of the current moment in history.*
IMO to whatever extent the original authors were trying to dissemble it was just in keeping things somewhat non-specific to give the priests, shall we say, flexibility in deriving authority from the text.
That would be a good point, if faith actually explained anything. It makes assertions about why, and doesnât even have the decency to admit they are speculations.
I do not understand how that is any different than if I said to you now, that a genie in a bottle told me that the meaning of life is 42. Apart of course from your sources being very old and widely accepted. But that does not convey actual legitimacy. It only speaks to broad appeal. Countless times in history, broadly accepted ideas were just plain wrong. Spontaneous generation. Bleeding with leeches. The humours. The number of elements.
And itâs not like all intuitively appealing notions were never overcome upon a closer look. The sphericity of the earth was widely accepted much further back in history than many people realize â at least among the educated. It was Eratosthenes who first estimated the circumference of the earth in 240 BCE and he was almost spot-on.
I simply want to be able to consider all facts and knowledge at my disposal without having to stress about whether Iâm a heretic for doing so. You canât do that if you believe the Bible to be inerrant and mostly literal, and of divine origin. You end up force-fitting your understanding of reality to the musings of bronze-age goatherds.
Sure but anyone whoâs outside that cult will just disavow it as an obvious con because thereâs no collateral damage to THEIR obvious con.
Mordant,
JCâs wish to have science and faith working together to understand the HOW and WHY of existence might be just that - a wish. And one that he hasnât considered the consequences of. Because if science tells us HOW the universe evolved from a hot and dense state 13.7 billion years, then that HOW demolishes the need for the Bible or faith to explain WHY God did it in six days.
The two are incompatible. The two are in conflict with one another. Science and Faith opposing one another rather than working together.
I suspect that what JC might mean here is that science should confirm what scripture says and not disagree with it. One working with the other, but one conforming to the other. Which, as we know, is not possible. Unless one veers into YEC pseudo-science or simply dismisses mainstream science altogether.
But, to a limited degree, science and faith can work together - provided that faith doesnât take the words of a holy book literally. This being an example.
The year is 1979 and Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salaam and Steven Weinberg have just been awarded the Nobel prize for Physics for their work on Electroweak Theory, one of the foundations of the Standard Model of particle physics.
Salaam was a devout Muslim and saw no conflict between the science he was involved in and his belief that Allah was the creator of the universe. But he practiced his faith privately and didnât bring it overtly into his work, requiring that protons and neutrons behave in accordance with the dictates of the Quran.
If the Christian religion is as important to JC as I think it is, then he probably couldnât countenance doing this. I suspect that for him science would have to yield to a literal reading of the Bible, never contradicting it and only ever confirming it.
But this last paragraph of mine is speculation. The only way to verify it would be to ask the man himself. Assuming that he will return to supply answers to our questions.
Thank you,
Walter.
Yes, wholeheartedly agree, Walter.
I have a suspicion about this message from JC.
But time will have to pass to see if my suspicion is confirmed or not.
Yes, he founded dianetics and scientology as a scam.
The only religious leader I am aware of that actually addressed this explicitly was the Dalai Lama. He said that if science corrected a tenet of Tibetian Buddhism, then Tibetian Buddhism would have to accept that correction.
Of course liberal Christians, while not making this overt commitment in the matter, pretty much reconcile science and the Bible where they disagree because they have a lot more flexibility than inerrantist / literalists and can much more readily accept metaphorical or creative interpretations of the relevant scriptures. So for instance they will embrace something like the âgap theoryâ that allows for millions of years between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, and can treat the seven âdaysâ of creation as not literal days, etc.
Indeed, Mordant.
But even these liberal Christians have their work cut trying to align science and Genesis. Which we can see from even a rough timeline of the evolution of the universe.
God creates everything in the Big Bang and then waits 9 billion years before even getting around to using natural processes to create the Sun. Later thereâs the Boring Billion, a period during which he could have caused life to evolve into more complex forms, but didnât. Then when he did, he almost wiped it out with the Snowball Earth, plunging the whole planet into an ice age. After this, when complex life does form a rich ecosystem he wipes that out with a major extinction event. Then he does so again four more times, each time wiping out his own handiwork as if heâd had second thoughts and didnât get it quite right. The last one involving him throwing a gigantic asteroid at the Earth to kill the dinosaurs. Then, when he seems to be close to getting it right (74,000 years ago) he sets off the Toba volcano in Indonesia. This blast makes Krakatoa look like a firecracker and cause global devastation, reducing the human race to possibly as few as several thousand individuals. Who would then have had to endure lifetimes of misery and suffering cause by the effects of that super volcano. And all of the above before recorded history even gets going.
And weâre supposed to accept that all of Godâs delays and mistakes and all of the setbacks he inflicted on the planet are part of some great overarching cosmic plan to bring humans into being?
A six day creation with a mud man and rib woman makes more sense!
