Is Science getting closer to God and the Bible?
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kmortis
Biomechanoid, Director of IDIOCY (Region 13)
Maybe PKD was right and the Roman Empire never fell and we're all living in the Black Iron Prison. Maybe we're all just bits of undigested food that's torturing Tiberius in his sleep.
kmortis
Biomechanoid, Director of IDIOCY (Region 13)
Keep it up and you'll have a collection to rival the print version of Encyclopedia Britannica.
Irony
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To be fair he only promised to return while some of those listening were still living, which didn't make him a liar until Strom Thurmond died.
bokonon
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So let me ask you this, Creationist. After Noah gathered up a pair of T-Rexes, a pair of mammoths, a pair of pterodactyls, a pair of diplodoci, a pair of mastodons, a pair of saber-toothed tigers, etc., and floated them all to safety, and all those dinos came pouring off the ark, what does Creatin Science say happened to them? 'Cause real science says they were dead for thousands or millions of years before Noah was a gleam in his daddy's eye.
Does Creation science say anything about the ice ages? Real science has quite a bit to offer the world on that subject.
Does Creation science mention plate tectonics? For that matter, does Creatin science even mention the existence of other continents?
Science has been on a roll for the past 200 years, and the gap just continues to widen.
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UnrepentantSinner
A post by Alan Smithee
Did you already have the ad hoc logical fallacy on the list because his post was a perfect demonstration of it.
bokonon
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The Bible does, however, give some additional information, in Genesis 11:
10 These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood:
11 And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.
12 And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah:
13 And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
14 And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber:
15 And Salah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.
16 And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg:
17 And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.
18 And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu:
19 And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters.
Shem's son, Arphaxad, lived to be 438, so it seems like Noah's "longevity gene" must have been passed to Arphaxad, who passed it on to his son (and presumably his daughters).
It was passed on to Arphaxad's son Salah too.
It was passed on to Salah's son Eber.
It was passed on to Eber's son Peleg.
Whoever's keeping track of the things DOC pretends to understand, but doesn't, should put a tick mark next to Biblical genealogy.
six7s
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In response to some of your posts, personally I don't care how God made the universe or how long it took.
If He Made humanity through evolution, fine. If He made it instantly fine. And the Bible is not God. It only offers glimpses at God. It is the best seller of all time. There is a reason for that. And there is a reason why almost all (if not all) 43 presidents belonged to Christian denominations. The bible will be a best seller long after we're all dead unless this world ends before then.
This thread is mainly to inform people there is a lot more to the bible than Children's stories. The scientific genius Isaac Newton (whom Einstein said without his (Newton's) work, his work would have been impossible) didn't spend so much time studying and writing about the bible for the heck of it. You don't write 300,000 words about a topic (as Newton did on Revelation) unless there is something of importance to write about.
If He Made humanity through evolution, fine. If He made it instantly fine. And the Bible is not God. It only offers glimpses at God. It is the best seller of all time. There is a reason for that. And there is a reason why almost all (if not all) 43 presidents belonged to Christian denominations. The bible will be a best seller long after we're all dead unless this world ends before then.
This thread is mainly to inform people there is a lot more to the bible than Children's stories. The scientific genius Isaac Newton (whom Einstein said without his (Newton's) work, his work would have been impossible) didn't spend so much time studying and writing about the bible for the heck of it. You don't write 300,000 words about a topic (as Newton did on Revelation) unless there is something of importance to write about.
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That, finally, is a fair stance on belief. I wonder how long you can stick with it.
No arguments here.DOC said:
No. There are people who claim that it is the inspired word of god. There are people who claim that it is the inerrant word of god. There are people, like you, who change their claims when shown their initial claim is untenable, and who claim that it "offers glimpses at God." The common thread is that they are all just claims, and all of them ignore the many, many problems within the bible itself that argue against those claims.DOC said:
Which version?DOC said:
Yes. Lots and lots of people believe the claims. That in itself does not substantiate the claims.DOC said:
Personally, I think the reason is all the sex and violence. That's what sells Hollywood movies, and none of them have topped the bible's cosmic perversity yet.
Titanic is the most popular movie of all time. There is a reason for that. Maybe it has something to do with romanticizing pre-marital sex that is the result of true love and honor.
Darn tootin'. They all were products of a predominantly Christian nation.DOC said:
There's a reason all of China's premiers and presidents have been members of the Communist Party.
You may well be correct in this prediction. That's a sad, sad thing.DOC said:
1. No. This thread was another of your misguided attempts to demonstrate the truth of the bible in an area in which the bible is demonstrably deficient.DOC said:
2. There most certainly is more to the bible than children's stories. In fact, there are darn few stories suitable for children in there at all. It is mostly sex and violence and predictions of hellfire and monstrosities and the cruelty of a loving god and genocide in support of that god and divinely sanctioned incest and holy capriciousness and sacred jealousies and divine approval of slavery and arbitrary commandments and more sex and xenophobia.
I'm an atheist. My wife is deeply Christian. My 14 year old son has begun reading the bible because I convinced him to, not because she did. He is finding parts alternately confusing, disturbing, and inane.
No. He studied and wrote about it because he believed in it. You'll note that Newton is never quoted, even by theologists, as someone who left a legacy of great theological writings.DOC said:
Wrong. You don't do that unless you THINK there is something of importance to write about. And very few people will deny that the bible is important; most here, however, ascribe that importance to its cultural influence, not to its falsely claimed accuracy.DOC said:
wollery
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And yet, here you are, trying desperately to shoehorn biblical descriptions into pseudo-scientific gobbledygook in order to make it seem that the bible shows something that is patently untrue. I.e. that the flood of Noah took place. So you clearly do care.
No, it offers glimpses at the mindsets of prehistoric and ancient peoples, and their struggles to make sense of the world around them.
How are you measuring sales of the bible? And which bible? Because the Roman Catholics have a different bible with more chapters than the protestants. And the Mormons have a totally different bible again. And there are children's bibles, old testament and new testament as separate volumes, illustrated bibles. In my experience it's not uncommon to find a household of a family of 4 people with 9 or 10 different bibles. Also, to my knowledge the largest purchasers of bibles are churches, which boosts the numbers dramatically, without there being extra readers of the text. Counting all of these as individual purchases skews the numbers somewhat.
However, even if it were the case that it's the most popular book ever written, it's still just an argument from popularity, which is a logical fallacy.
Shakespeare's plays probably rank somewhere in the top ten of all time best-sellers, so are we to imply from this fact (as you would wish us to about the bible) that this adds some credence to the veracity of the book - that Othello really did exist, and was, in actual fact, tried for the murder of Desdemona?
Definitely not all, as well you know. And yes, there are good reasons, principally that the US is a nation with a majority population of christians, settled and founded by christians. Note, that does not make it a "Christian Nation", but it does mean that a non-christian is far less likely to be elected President.
No, this thread is to try to prop up your narrow, unthinking view of the world.
Tanstaafl
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Slimething
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I have to applaud you for stating this. IMHO, one of the greatest travesties a believer can inflict on themselves is an assumption that their holy book is literally correct. Even if a god did exist, that cannot possibly be true. As you yourself have pointed out, a god would have to temper its comments to the level of sophistication of the individual it was addressing. There is no way a god could make any headway telling any OT character that light was a wave-particle. So, what you have in the bible is a text intended to teach (1) fear of god and (2) how to obey said god. To do that, the book does not have to materially correct in any sense.
I am not a believer but I agree that this is a healthier view of a scripture. You can now take from it what you want and leave the rest. Hopefully, you won't accept the genocide parts but take to heart all the forgiveness and kindness thingies.
It's also the first book ever printed. Nevertheless, your argument is flawed if you intend it to back up any claim of divinity. Mao's Little Red Book must rank up there but its "correctness" is questionable.
Yes. Religious bigotry. Proud of that, are you?
No, there isn't. The bible is a tool of inculcation. It has only materials in it for the very young or the very simple. Nothing a fourth grader couldn't get his/her mind around in that book at all. From the evidence at hand, it's been very effective.
That argument would only hold water if every genius who ever lived believed in your god and obsessed on the bible. Otherwise, this fact could be more easily explained by regarding Newton's work on this book as a manifestation of obsession and a flawed hypothesis in his personal search for a Unifying Theory. This stuff happens to the best of us. Newton wasn't god either.
wollery
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Number two on the list, if my research is correct.
Furi
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True, who would want to suffer the persecution, of not having a Bible in your house when and getting denounced as an atheist, but then Xians never would do anything to persecute Atheists or Non believers would they.
BestSELLING book, Salvation and Truth, you too can have it for a price, it does have length of time in print of time in its favour, LOTR isn't far behind, and Mao's is up there as well, so seeing how little time these relative little upstarts have had to catch up, the growth of college students that can spell their name in the Tengwar will out strip xians in hundred years or so (if not already
), does the best selling figure include the ones the Gideon peops give to every school kid, hotel, soldier etc. or just the ones that never move off the shelf in my local book shop,Who knows how much further Newton could have gone if his Unitarian beliefs hadn't forced him into obsessing about working out how God fits in to all this.
IIRC Keppler too had serious doubts about his work, because why would orbits be elliptical, God would have made them circular surely
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Cleon
King of the Pod People
A number of reasons, actually.
It was the first book produced by a moveable-type printing press. Less than a century after this event took place, Protestantism arose in Europe. Protestants encouraged people to buy and read the bible in a way that the Catholic Church never did. The availability of Gutenberg's technology allowed them to do so cheaply.
Later, mostly after the Second Great Awakening, fundamentalist Protestants encouraged the publication and distribution of cheap Bibles in ways no other movement has--organizing charities to print large numbers of Bibles and send them to third-world countries, groups like the Gideons putting them in inns/motels/hotels/, etc. Jews don't do that sort of thing, neither do Muslims, to say nothing of the non-Abrahamic religions. The only group of people I can think of who would even come close to that level of effort to publish a book is the communists, and wouldn't you know it--"Quotations of Chairman Mao" is #2 on the all-time bestseller list.
And there are many, many more such reasons.
Sure. And that reason is, the vast majority of the US population belongs to a Christian denomination. In addition to that, there are enough fundamentalist bigots to ensure that any candidate who isn't a member of a Christian denomination simply doesn't have a chance.
Unlikely. In fifty years the concept of "bestseller" will be completely meaningless.
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I wonder if Mao would move to number one if all the versions of the Bible weren't lumped together.
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