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Warp wrote:
Nach wrote:
Where does the Bible say one should be stoned for being a drunkard?
Deuteronomy 21:18-21: "If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid."
(Notice who makes the judgment. Not judges, not priests. The parents, and the elders of the town.)
If that's your only source, then yes, the Bible nowhere says to stone a drunkard.
This person here is a rule breaker, a glutton, and a drunkard. Not one of them individually.
You are correct that the parents have to make the decision here. Even if someone is a rule breaker and a glutton and a drunkard, if the parents don't feel a problem with it, this person isn't being stoned. Meaning, the person has to be these 3 things, and to the extent that the parents feel the child is completely out of control and deserves this punishment.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
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Bonus question: How would the people at that time treat medical conditions like alcoholism, when they did not have the proper understanding of addiction, bipolar disorder and other related phenomena?
They just didn't understand that stuff. That's why the Bible says ignorant things like that. Obviously written by people who had no clue what was actually going on. It was not a long time ago when uneducated people still believed in the existence of spirits. Every spirit possession has been completely debunked by modern medical science and psychology. No need to stone or burn the evil spirits away from the patients, because we now have the proper understanding of the phenomena and can actually help people who are ill.
So you say that the Quran is "demonically inspired" yet it managed to trick you 35 times out of 200?
Also Hammurabi was circa 1750 BC. Well before the Torah was written or Israel and Judah were nations...
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Aqfaq wrote:
The Bible was undeniably written by uncivilized men who had no concept of gender equality.
You keep pedaling this idea like it has any relation to reality. Equality? Are green and square equal? Are arm and leg equal? If not, you'd assume it's because one is worse than another, right? Or you make such assumptions only to troll?
PS: I haven't read the last page, okay? Will do now.
EDIT: So I started reading this page.
Aqfaq wrote:
Justify
There were several aspects.
1. Era itself, and people relations back then.
2. World that's outside of the Bible's target audience.
3. Temporary nature of all Old Testament laws.
I don't think the first one needs any explanation. If it's common at the time to wear Sepultura t-shirts, and someone somewhere is referring to it as good, you don't need to justify it, because it's just a tradition.
The world around jews was all about idols back then, and you don't wanna know what was common to them. So some aspects of Bible only make sense when you look at the whole population and compare.
The third results from the previous two. If something's no longer traditional, you don't need to consider it in your era. If the outside world is no longer that bad, we don't need old laws either. But there's still its own meaning to the third part: all the old laws were to improve the overall approach of the given nation and to prepare them for the new law.
And if you see such statemenhts in the New Testament, then it means this: it's exactly the way the Church was invented, it's how it works, it's what (in the long run) made it survive 2 millenniums. Have problems with that? Don't join the Church then, I dunno. Sometimes people react to things like it's already a Reckoning Day and they are asked why they didn't accept something.
/me resumes reading...
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
So you say that the Quran is "demonically inspired" yet it managed to trick you 35 times out of 200?
It is strange indeed, because on his little page of divine beliefs he implies that 1,600,000,000+ fellow human beings are gullible enough to be tricked by Satan's super intelligent masterplan, Islam. He also seems to imply that he is himself smarter than Satan as he would not fall into any such trap.
Bisqwit wrote:
Satan masquerades often as God, pretending and misleading people saying he is the God. (2. Cor. 11:14) This is how we get Islam, for instance.
Bisqwit, sorry if I misunderstand this, but aren't you implying here that you are smarter than Satan? If Satan masquerades as God and tricks people, surely he could trick you into thinking that Islam is derived from Satan?
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feos wrote:
Are green and square equal?
No, but we don't have unjustified laws/rules/regulations/ideas concerning the basic human rights of green and square like the Bible of Green and Square would have. Like this:
"Squares are not allowed to teach. They must be quiet."
"If green is raped, the rapist must pay 50 silver to the father of the green."
Edit: As you can see, these laws have nothing to do with the properties of green and square. The same is true of the biblical laws that these two mock-ups refer to.
If that's your only source, then yes, the Bible nowhere says to stone a drunkard.
I said "unruly drunkard".
Meaning, the person has to be these 3 things, and to the extent that the parents feel the child is completely out of control and deserves this punishment.
Oh, well, if it's all three of those things, then it's morally acceptable to punish him with death by stoning.
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Aqfaq wrote:
how come Jesus did not have even a single female disciple
You've only heard of 12 of the disciples, right? Let's count.
Virgin Mary
Mary Magdalene
Photine
Thekla
Helena of Constantinople
Saint Nino
Olga of Kiev
Let me guess. It's too few for you? If so, go ahead and tell us, what actions of God would have satisfied your feminism.
Aqfaq wrote:
(Hmm, if we agree that women should be allowed to vote today, then our explanation for why Jesus had no female disciples should include better reasons than the ones that were once used to stop women from voting.
I fail to see how being a disciple is a "right" in your eyes, let alone comparing it to voting (seriously?!) Do you even know how disciples ended their lives? Most of them were tortured to death. Would you say God is cruel for letting apostolic women die like that? Because you now seem to claim that for God not letting more women die like that.
Aqfaq wrote:
Genesis 2:18 --> The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”
ars4326, how is that honoring the woman? Isn't she clearly stated here to have been made for the use of man, a mere tool?
At first I thought your posts were honest interest and incomprehensibility, now I see you're advisedly writing bullshit about things you have no intention to even know. It's worse than ignorance, and I don't have a proper word for that. It's not scientific skepticism either though.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Aqfaq wrote:
Nach wrote:
why humans MUST be this way on an intellectual level.
What makes you think humans MUST be this way in the first place? They don't.
I didn't say they have to, but the Bible is giving an answer to that for those that ask it, which is the intent of the parable you quoted, and not to provide commands to subjugate women or wherever you were trying to lead it.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
how come Jesus did not have even a single female disciple
You've only heard of 12 of the disciples, right? Let's count.
Virgin Mary
Mary Magdalene
Photine
Thekla
Helena of Constantinople
Saint Nino
Olga of Kiev
Let me guess. It's too few for you? If so, go ahead and tell us, what actions of God would have justified your feminism.
Although I applaud the Eastern Orthodox Tradition for raising these women high, at the end of the day, the problem of church patriarchy is systemic and common. Having women in high places in the church is necessary but not sufficient to counter it. I would grant you that in this way the EO tradition is perhaps an aberration*, rather than the rule. However, I certain wouldn't say that the EO church is a bastion of feminism. See here:
http://www.antiochian.org/role-women-orthodox-church
It seems to be more of a "separate but equal" doctrine, and we know how well those tend to work out.
* I've only ever been to 2 EO services, and I've never been involved in the church, so I cannot gainsay you without research that I do not have time to do.
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Aqfaq wrote:
ars4326 wrote:
I'm also just not a believer in the theory of evolution.
Which part of the theory of evolution you think is false? You can quote some false statement from this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
This naturally goes to everyone else, too.
Alright. There's a thing called microevolution. It's when species slightly change to fit the environment. It's what Darwin saw. Some people believe that there's also macroevolution, when species form other species. Both are said to be caused by random mutations, that can help them survive, or be adverse, or be neutral.
Microevolution is not a belief, it's a fact, there are events of it happening around us. But I'm yet to be pointed to events of macroevolution. Everyone whom I asked says that there are fossils that prove that macroevolution was an event sometimes. But not now, not before our eyes.
I'm kind of okay with that, maybe people witness it happening elsewhere, I dunno. What bothers me though, is that they give endless abilities to microevolutional tweaks. Like, if we only had enough time, anything could evolve into anything. Example:
There are creatures without eyes all around the planet. Then suddenly, by a random mutation, there burns a creature with an eye. But there's no corresponding neural center that would operate that eye, so it doesn't work, and the creature's lifestyle doesn't improve.
Then, randomly, when a next creature with an eye burns (I remind, there were no eyes on the planet beforehand, so either this one's entity appears right out of nowhere, in all functionality, or also randomly evolves into something filled with something that can capture pictures of the world), it also randomly has the required neural center and can finally operate the eye.
Then eyed versions of that creature have their lifestyle improved, they force out their own old versions. Then what? We can find none of the old versions of them in our soil, like they never existed.
Do you trust all that? Because I simply don't believe it. And don't say you have a proof, you only have assumptions based on bones, and some little tweaks in organisms.
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
the problem of church patriarchy is systemic and common.
What problem is there exactly?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Aqfaq wrote:
At least the Muslims I met told me that their religion requires them to treat every guest as family.
There's a rumor that once you leave their house, you're neither guest nor family to them anymore, and if they need, they are free to kill you.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Satan masquerades often as God, pretending and misleading people saying he is the God. (2. Cor. 11:14) This is how we get Islam, for instance.
Bisqwit, sorry if I misunderstand this, but aren't you implying here that you are smarter than Satan? If Satan masquerades as God and tricks people, surely he could trick you into thinking that Islam is derived from Satan?
I don't need to be smarter than Satan.
All I need is to know whom to trust. And the one that I do trust, told me to judge a tree by its fruits.
Aqfaq wrote:
At least the Muslims I met told me that their religion requires them to treat every guest as family.
This is not a Quranic principle or tradition. There's nothing in the Qur'an that instructs you to treat your guests in any particular manner. It is an Arabic tradition. There is a difference. Even if your Muslim friends are not Arabs -- for example, they are Kurdis -- they have received Islam from Arabs. To clarify: It is not a merit that should be attributed to Islam. The Arabs are very hospitable. As in, extremely, astonishingly and unbelievably hospitable. It is a Middle-Eastern custom that predates Islam by at least a thousand years.
In the past, there used to be a covenant-level agreement: When you walk over the threshold of a house, you are under the protection of the owner of that house. This is what was going on with the doorposts in Egypt when the blood of a lamb was applied for instance, right before the events of the Exodus, or so I have heard some scholars explain. Be careful not to step on the threshold though; that would be an insult.
Do you trust all that? Because I simply don't believe it.
I don't believe that either, because nobody is saying that's what happened (except a few deluded creationists.)
If your only objection to the theory of evolution is a blatant straw man, then I think theory is on pretty solid ground. You can't attack what it actually says, so you have to invent a distortion to attack.
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Warp wrote:
feos wrote:
Do you trust all that? Because I simply don't believe it.
I don't believe that either, because nobody is saying that's what happened (except a few deluded creationists.)
Good job telling what happened in reality, thank you.
Warp wrote:
If your only objection to the theory of evolution is a blatant straw man, then I think theory is on pretty solid ground. You can't attack what it actually says, so you have to invent a distortion to attack.
Yes, I see you have a good explanation on how the eye actually appeared. Your detailed post nearly convinced me I was wrong all along.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Warp wrote:
Nach wrote:
If that's your only source, then yes, the Bible nowhere says to stone a drunkard.
I said "unruly drunkard".
Yes, which is an unquantified statement, which is not what the passage of the rebellious child is referring to.
Warp wrote:
Meaning, the person has to be these 3 things, and to the extent that the parents feel the child is completely out of control and deserves this punishment.
Oh, well, if it's all three of those things, then it's morally acceptable to punish him with death by stoning.
Maybe it is?
Both words at the end of the passage are rare in the Bible, and it's unclear what their precise definition is. The first word is used elsewhere in regards to wasting resources, the latter is not attested in the same form to my knowledge (although I'll double check that later). The word for alcoholic drunk as we think of it uses a different word when the concept appears in Samuel, and the word there has the same root as the word for alcoholic beverages, unlike the word in this passage.
The two oldest translations of the Bible into other languages are Greek and Aramaic. The Greek reading has "eats and drinks in excess" (not even sure if it means wine), the Aramaic has "steals meat and drinks much wine". I would also add that historically due to contaminated water, in the time and place of the Aramaic translation, it was common to add wine to water to make it safer to drink.
While glutton and drunk appear to be technically accurate, the intention seems to be closer to that of someone who is taking food/drink for themselves more than they need, and causing others to lack. If unlike today, food and drink is a more difficult resource to come by, and a person is harming others by stealing it or using more communal food than they should despite much protest, maybe one does have to kill them so others can survive. What would you do if you were stuck in such a situation?
I'd also add that you're reading this as implying the child MUST be killed. Many others have already noted that a few times the Bible says that a death sentence MUST be enforced, for example Numbers 35:31-32: "Whoso killeth any person, the murderer shall be slain at the mouth of witnesses; but one witness shall not testify against any person that he die. Moreover ye shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer, that is guilty of death; but he shall surely be put to death." (this in fact goes on to stress 4 times the person needs to be killed)
This may then imply that unless the Bible explicitly says otherwise (take no ransom, show no mercy, destroy the evil from your midst) the intention is not that we must kill the person. Rather the verse's intention is that we try other options first, and then perhaps only kill them as a last resort. Other places in the Bible do show at times various death penalties are enforced, yet indeed there are cases where the Bible mentions for a particular case that the death penalty was not enforced, without condemning the lack of a death penalty.
Various historical sources particularly on this passage mention that no parent in Israel has ever taken their child to receive this punishment. Which if true, it would mean this passage was only ever a deterrent against certain behavior.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
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Thank you for the interesting comments, everyone.
feos, I don't know about your personal beliefs, but some people are keen to worship something that is known as the god of the gaps, the ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance. If you demand the evidence for "macroevolution" then surely you should demand the same level of evidence for comparing the different creation myths:
http://i.imgur.com/0bgKyNl.png
On what basis would you choose one of these creationist explanations of the origins of eyes?
Don't just ask the evolutionary theorists to show you "macroevolution" before your very own eyes. If you want to be honest, you would also need to ask the creationist to show you that it was precisely YHVH who created the eyes and not Bumba or some other creator. Also, ask the creation to be performed before your very own eyes. Otherwise you are giving special treatment to your favorite beliefs and demanding others unjustifiable amount of evidence. Speaking about evidence, there is never enough. What matters is this: Which explanation makes most sense to you, when you compare all given explanations. But be sure to have the best possible versions of the explanations. Otherwise you may end up comparing straw men explanations to each other.
By the way, the evolution of the eye is well established biology and a fact that is well understood, if you actually research the topic even a little bit further. I don't blindly believe it myself unless somebody explains exactly how it happened. It turns out that it has been done and explained and it fits everything else perfectly. There is zero evidence for the fact that eyes did not evolve just the way the theory of evolution describes it. Note that the theory of evolution does not actually postulate "macroevolution" of any sort.
"I can't understand how it could evolve, so Odin did it!" is an argument from ignorance, a common fallacy.
Until a better explanation is given for the emergence of eyes, the Nobel prize for that explanation remains in some Norwegian shelf. Your concept of the theory of evolution seems to come from somebody who has not even read the Wikipedia article on evolution. Like Warp said, nobody claims the things you mention other than creationists who try to defend their personal favorite beliefs, like the fact that Odin created humans from logs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye
The micro/macro evolution is an ad hoc attempt at saving some dear belief that would otherwise be shown to be implausible. Of course there exists no "macroevolution" before your own eyes in the sense that creationists demand it. It is a straw man. Isn't it a naive idea to even consider that different species, eyes or any organs just pop into existence by some macroevolutionary magic force? We all agree on that. Creationists still don't stop representing that "where's the magic macroevolution" argument as if somebody actually claimed something like that to be true.
If gradual evolution alone is not enough, then we need to answer this: What exactly stops small changes accumulating over time into larger changes until they are so large that we had better give the species its own name? Where is the macroevolution in this animated mock-up:
http://i.imgur.com/1Tm54OL.gif
You see, macroevolution is not required. It is an ad hoc idea designed to save a poor explanation. Species don't suddenly turn into other species. It is all explained better than I ever could in Wikipedia alone. There are other ways to get to understand it, too. Visit a museum for example. Observe the nature and all the detailed events that happen.
Oh, did you know that you will likely receive novel medical treatment during your life time that depends on the fact that the theory of evolution is true? It is not just about the origins of eyes. It is about many things as the Wiki page mentions: Evolution is a cornerstone of modern science, accepted as one of the most reliably established of all facts and theories of science, based on evidence not just from the biological sciences but also from anthropology, psychology, astrophysics, chemistry, geology, physics, mathematics, and other scientific disciplines, as well as behavioral and social sciences.
Note also that there is no need for any fossil evidence, because the comparative DNA evidence alone shows the accurate relationships between all the species. The results are the same for scientists all around the world, be it Russian, American, Indian, Finnish, Swedish or North-Korean. Well, maybe not North-Korean... Anyway, no matter who looks at it, they find that it looks AS IF all species evolved from a single common ancestor. That is what it really looks like. We can't help it. I'm not sure I even like the result myself, but I don't have any other explanation for WHY it looks AS IF. If somebody can explain why it looks as if all species evolved from a single common ancestor, then I'd be glad to hear. It is not about believing a random idea. It is believing what we all can see and explain. Thankfully some people actually study nature and don't just make ad hoc claims about it. No reasonable person blindly believes evolution just because some authority says so. I sure don't! What there is to believe are the explanations that make sense to us, or not. But be sure to check the actual explanations and not straw men versions of them. The Jehovah's Witness publications are masterfully written to make it seem that the only other option to the "straw man macroevolution" is their favorite version of the creator. I've heard imams misrepresenting evolutionary ideas, too. It is very common.
What method do you use for deciding what is true and false? Do you maybe compare the different explanations that various sources give you? Do you then choose the best explanation that makes most sense to you and requires least amount of extraneous assumptions? If so, you use the same method that I do. Edit: At least that's what I try to do, but it is impossible to avoid all cognitive biases and other shortcomings that I might have.
Yes, I see you have a good explanation on how the eye actually appeared. Your detailed post nearly convinced me I was wrong all along.
Given how easy it is to use Google today, you present an amazing amount of intellectual laziness and, quite frankly, intellectual dishonesty.
I'm not repeating here what can be very easily found via a couple of seconds of googling.
If you have an objection to what the theory of evolution actually says, then present it. Straw man arguments are weak.
(Besides, technically speaking the theory of evolution itself does not take a stance on how exactly something like the eye formed. It simply delineates the physical model that explains the diversification of life. It does not make specific claims like "the eye formed like this, this and this". It explains the mechanisms by which things like eyes can form, and why that happens.)
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Pokota wrote:
And really, anybody who calls themself a Christian yet still looks to the book of Leviticus for their code of conduct has rather missed the point of Christ's teachings.
And to illustrate more on this point, the prime difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament is the "covenant". Essentially, before Jesus Christ and the New Testament, God operated with mankind on the "old covenant" under the law of Moses. After the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God now operates on the "new covenant".
So now we have this term "covenant" to figure out. If one were to do a word study on every citation of the term covenant throughout the Bible, you'd find that the first mention of it is found in Genesis 6:18. I'll list that citation, with the appropriate context:
Genesis 6:1-22
(1)And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, (2)That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. (3)And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
(4)There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (5)And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (6)And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. (7)And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
(8)But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.
(9)These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. 10And Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
(11)The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. 12And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. (13)And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. (14)Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. (15)And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. (16)A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it. (17)And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
(18)But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. (19)And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female. (20)Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive. (21)And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them. (22)Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.
^ So a lot going on in that chapter, but we can see that God established His first recorded covenant with Noah. And we can also see that, in the face of an impending global flood, a covenant with God is something very significant.
Continuing in chronological order, after the flood and Noah's time, God also established a covenant with Abram/Abraham (Genesis 15:18, and Genesis 17) which extended to his son Isaac, grandson Jacob/Israel, and further down the generational bloodline to Moses in Exodus. This was when Jacob's/Israel's descendents were enslaved by the Egyptians. And after God delivered them from Pharaoh and the Egyptians, another covenant was made with Moses and the Israelites. I'll list a more brief citation below, which still captures the context surrounding the event:
Exodus 24:1-11
(1)And he said unto Moses, Come up unto the LORD, thou, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and worship ye afar off. (2)And Moses alone shall come near the LORD: but they shall not come nigh; neither shall the people go up with him.
(3)And Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD hath said will we do. (4)And Moses wrote all the words of the LORD, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. (5)And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the LORD. (6)And Moses took half of the blood, and put it in basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. (7)And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the LORD hath said will we do, and be obedient. (8)And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.
(9)Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: (10)And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. (11)And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.
^ And, sadly, shortly afterward as Moses was receiving (among other things) the 10 Commandments from God on Mount Sinai, the Israelites rebelled and broke this covenant (Exodus 32).
Anyhow, I realize this response is getting long, so I'll go ahead and list two final citations concerning the "new covenant" in Jesus Christ. One will be a prophecy from the book of Jeremiah, and the other from the New Testament book of Hebrews:
Jeremiah 31:31-34
(31)Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: (32)Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:
(33)But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.(34)And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.Hebrews 12:18-25
(18)For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, (19)And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: (20)(For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: (21)And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:) (22)But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, (23)To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, (24)And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.
Again, studying every reference of "covenant" throughout the Bible would give one a much better understanding of what that term signifies (as well as the study of any other subject, as well).
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Aqfaq wrote:
Numbers 31:17-18 --> Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.
How is this not calculating the value of a human being based on her sexual history?
Okay. So we have Numbers 31:17-18 looking at us there. Let us also, though, expand the context on those verses to see if there is a reason given behind that (I'll quote using the KJV, as that's a translation I'm comfortable with and used to studying):
Numbers 31:1-24
(1)And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, (2)Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people. (3)And Moses spake unto the people, saying, Arm some of yourselves unto the war, and let them go against the Midianites, and avenge the LORD of Midian. (4)Of every tribe a thousand, throughout all the tribes of Israel, shall ye send to the war. (5)So there were delivered out of the thousands of Israel, a thousand of every tribe, twelve thousand armed for war. (6)And Moses sent them to the war, a thousand of every tribe, them and Phinehas the son of Eleazar the priest, to the war, with the holy instruments, and the trumpets to blow in his hand.
(7)And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males. (8)And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain; namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword. (9)And the children of Israel took all the women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods. (10)And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire. (11)And they took all the spoil, and all the prey, both of men and of beasts. (12)And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.
(13)And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp. (14)And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle. (15)And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? (16)Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD. (17)Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. (18)But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. (19)And do ye abide without the camp seven days: whosoever hath killed any person, and whosoever hath touched any slain, purify both yourselves and your captives on the third day, and on the seventh day. (20)And purify all your raiment, and all that is made of skins, and all work of goats' hair, and all things made of wood.
(21)And Eleazar the priest said unto the men of war which went to the battle, This is the ordinance of the law which the LORD commanded Moses; (22)Only the gold, and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin, and the lead, (23)Every thing that may abide the fire, ye shall make it go through the fire, and it shall be clean: nevertheless it shall be purified with the water of separation: and all that abideth not the fire ye shall make go through the water. (24)And ye shall wash your clothes on the seventh day, and ye shall be clean, and afterward ye shall come into the camp.
^ So now that we have a larger part of the chapter to look at, we can see one specific reason given in verse 16: The Midianite women, along with Balaam, caused the children of Israel to trespass against God; which in turn, brought about a plague.
And, going back 5 chapters prior, more details concerning this trespass are revealed in Numbers 25.
And as for the significance of virginity, God established laws to the Israelites concerning sexual conduct prior in Exodus 20 ("thou shalt not commit adultery"), and Leviticus 18 & 20. To allow those Midianite women into the Israelite camp (which they, as Numbers 31 revealed, had already caused the Israelites to trespass against God) would be, essentially, permitting sin.
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Aqfaq wrote:
Which part of the theory of evolution you think is false? You can quote some false statement from this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
This naturally goes to everyone else, too.
Basically the entire belief system, and the idea that all life originated and evolved from a "common ancestor". In addition to being diametrically opposed to the Bible, there's just far too many variables that I do not see Evolution accounting for in the creating and development of life.
If anyone is interested, I believe the individual in the video, below, can articulate my stance concerning the theory far better that I'd be able to type in words on here.
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
Are you asking me to give you a rundown of the ways that the church is patriarchal? Or do you just want justification as to why this patriarchal system is a problem?
ars4326 wrote:
If anyone is interested, I believe the individual in the video, below, can articulate my stance concerning the theory far better that I'd be able to type in words on here.
Well, I have some time, let's go through the video. I expect a magnificent gish gallop.
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First up, the anthropic principle. Yes. Life as we know it could not exist if some of the basic parameters of the universe were changed. But this is only regarding life as we know it. Could life exist? Almost certainly, it would just need to be different. Life as we know it only exists or could exist in a vanishingly tiny fraction of the universe. Most of the universe is inhospitable, cold, lifeless hard vacuum that would kill most life as we know it in a matter of seconds. The universe isn't fine tuned for life in any reasonable sense of the word "fine tuned."
While this is absolutely not the domain of evolution, even the current knowledge of science doesn't really need him to "give [us] that for free."
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Cosmological Constant is not necessary for life in any meaningful way. This is a red herring.
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Entropy is only valid for a closed system. Evolution does not defy entropy, because the Earth is not a closed system. It receives an insane amount of energy from the Sun. But again this is outside of the scope of evolution, as it is a fundamental misunderstanding of physics.
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We do have several recorded examples of new species. The process is called speciation and it's been a well discussed and understood phenomenon for over 150 years.
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"When [he] says species he means an entirely new kind of creature emerging." Well, ok. Then you're not really talking about species. You're talking about a group of species, at the family or order level. And those do happen as well, gradually, over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. So it shouldn't really be surprising that we haven't witnessed such an event on the timescales of a single human lifetime.
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"BioGenesis" is not a scientific concept. "Life only comes from life," is not something you'd ever read in a serious biological paper. This is also outside of the scope of the theory of evolution. There is a separate theory, which is much less mature and worked on, called abiogenesis. Partially because it's likely impossible to find a smoking gun piece of evidence that says absolutely "this is the method that the first life arose from non-life." (Because there are several routes and because the difference between "life" and "non-life" are actually rather fuzzy at that level.) And partially because few people are actually really interested in finding out the exact mechanisms. It's possible, it probably happened several ways, once life started one form out-competed the rest. And that's history.
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The first life was almost certainly not as complicated as a cell. At best it was Amino acids and RNA chemically combining without a cell to produce more RNA. Lipids became a byproduct of some of these reactions, and by chance some of the RNA was scooped as the lipids made small bubbles. Again, outside of the scope of evolution.
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We have seen RNA and Amino acids arise from non-living organic matter, actually. Just needs a little energy (the kind that can come from the sun or from lightning.) Again, outside of the scope of evolution.
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"Needs a digital code that's 10s and 10s and 10s of times more complex than this laptop computer..." No, actually. A laptop has much more data storage than a typical human cell. A human genome is roughly 725MB, which can be losslessly compressed to around 4MB. There is 4MB of unique data in you. That's about the same as an mp3 file. Again, nothing to do with evolution.
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"Can't have any junk code in there." Over 99% of DNA is junk. That's why your 725MB genome can compress to 4MB. Nothing to do with evolution.
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"Instructions line by line." No, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how DNA works. DNA only has instructions to make proteins. And it certainly isn't a line by line thing. Life is and remains kind of a mess. Also has nothing to do with evolution.
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"Trillions and trillions of strands," only if you count every cell in the body. Again, our DNA only has around 2.9 million base pairs per cell. So he's about 6 orders of magnitude off. Great job. Moreover, he makes it seem like any mistake in this coordination can cause things to explode. Normally, nothing happens. If something goes wrong badly enough, well, that's essentially what happens when you get cancer. It's not like that happens ever, right? Nothing to do with evolution.
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As an aside, the human body has only 4MB of unique data, yet the body is so complex, how can this be? Fractals! Remember that the Mandelbrot set is also unbelievably complex, but it can be defined extremely simply: z = z^2 + c
Most of the patterns of the human body are self symmetric. Like the brain, and your blood vessels and so on. These are generated as a fractal would be, from simple rules.
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Consciousness. This has nothing to do with evolution. However, for an excellent treatment on the subject I recommend I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter.
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Dr. Chuck Missler - you'll notice that his list of accomplishments does not include anything to do with biology. Just because a person is knowledgeable in one area does not mean he is knowledgeable in another. Moreover, if he were to find a quote of a respected biologist who rejected Evolution that still wouldn't be sufficient, because science is built around consensus.
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Symbiotic Relationships. They do not develop simultaneously. They do not have to develop simultaneously. Many forms of simple life are not symbiotic at all.
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Mendel's laws of genetics was one of the first and best independent confirmations of a prediction of evolutionary theory. This should be hilarious...
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3D has nothing to do with this. DNA is a 1D array that exists in 3D space (like everything else in the entire world, including non-living things, like rocks). You go up and down it. Not left and right.
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DNA doesn't create something from nothing. DNA uses the other machinery of the cell to create proteins. It just happens to carry the instructions.
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DNA does not do redundant error correction, computers do. He has it entirely backwards.
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DNA does not self heal. Cancer, remember?
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He really likes big, wrong, pointless numbers. But what does this have to do with Mendel?
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Human heart? I don't see his point. There are a lot of variation in human hearts. And the human heart clearly isn't the only way to make a heart. And the human cardiovascular system isn't the only possible system to distribute nutrients across a large multicellular organism. For instance, trees do not have a heart. Moreover, hearts did not arise from single celled organisms directly, they did so as a gradual process over billions of years. Still waiting on the resolution to the Mendel name drop.
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Russian Silver Fox and "microevolution". If you have a calculator displaying 0 and I tell you to flip a coin and if that coin is heads add one, if it's tails subtract one. And I tell you to stop if it reaches the number 5. Do you think you will ever stop? Of course. This is what most people agree with when they agree that microevolution happens.
If I give you the same task and tell you to stop if it reaches 1000000, do you think you will ever stop? It seems a bit more risky. But mathematics tells us that you will stop, but it might take a while.
Random variation within species will accumulate unless something stops it. And people who talk about microevolution often do not have any mechanism for halting this genetic drift. Often times something is forcing the random variations in a certain direction, this force is called Natural Selection. And it is very good at its task.
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DNA is "weakening." According to what metric? Yes, some random mutations are bad. Some can be good. Most, the vast, vast majority have absolutely no effect.
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Oh look, he stumbled upon the definition of a species. I don't understand why he feels this is a problem for the theory of evolution.
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It's now 24 minutes in. I am 1/4 of the way through this. He hasn't stopped "giving us" stuff yet. Which means he hasn't yet actually tried addressing evolution directly?
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Of course giraffes aren't closely related to horses. They're entirely different orders. A giraffe is Artiodactyla whereas a horse is Perissodactyla. Their last common ancestor was between 55-100 million years ago during the initial evolution of mammals. Giraffes are more closely related to Buffalo and Whales than they are to Horses(!)
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Coding does not grow. I guess no one told him about genetic algorithms...
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Come on. Literal valves exist all over the place in our circulatory system.
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Yes, a giraffe is very different from many animals. Yet it still has the nerve that goes from the brain to the voice box at the top of the throat by way of the heart. All of the things he's mentioning could have happened gradually. Had giraffes been created by some intelligent designer, that would have never made it in. However evolution can not only explain that nerve, it actually predicted this before it was known to be a fact.
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I've spent about an hour and 15 minutes on the first 31 minutes of this video. So I'm going to stop. Because I have work that I need to get done, a deadline looming.
I'm willing to address any specific concerns you have about evolution, if you're willing to articulate them to me directly, I'll be more than happy to explain them in detail. However, I believe you get the point specifically on this video? There doesn't seem to be anything in this video that is special or unique. Just a lot of bad science trying to refute good science, all thrown out very quickly in gish gallop style.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Stuff I agree with, which was basically everything that was posted
I actually do try to stay out of creationism/evolutionism arguments because people expect me to pick a side and I like to point out "Why can't [Diety] have instituted evolution?"
(I do enjoy watching people when their brains short circuit on a question like that)
ars4326 wrote:
stuff discussing covenants
The fun thing about covenants is that it's a two-way agreement. You do this, this, and this, and then I will do this, that, and the other. If you follow God's instructions, He will by definition keep his end of the covenant. The problem here is that people generally get impatient and start demanding God hold up His end of the covenant before God is ready to do so - Solomon is a good example of this in that he was initially obedient but over time in order to keep peace among his political wives he drifted in a less obedient direction. I want to say the word covenant still gets used in modern legal parlance because of that bidirectional distinction.
(Note: Solomon is not necessarily a perfect example but it demonstrates what I was aiming to say well enough. Now if only I knew what I was aiming to say.)
Frankly, I'm sick and tired of the creationist dishonesty. They completely misrepresent and distort what the theory of evolution is and what it says, fabricate claims that it doesn't make, and include into it vast amounts of fields that do not belong to it, and keep repeating the mantra that it's a "belief system".
Basically, anti-evolutionism is effectively a conspiracy theory. It's the idea that hundreds of thousands, if not even millions, of scientists from all around the world, from different countries, cultures, backgrounds and philosophical stances, are all in a huge world-wide conspiracy to push this one agenda, all agree on it even though they know it not to be true, and can somehow coordinate to do this, and have been doing so for over a hundred years.
Why would thousands of scientists from northern Europe, China, Japan, India, central Africa, South America, North America, Australia, Israel, Russia and a myriad of other culturally completely distinct places all agree on pushing the same "lie"? What exactly is their motivation, and how exactly do they coordinate to do so? And why would they do that?
Do you even understand how the scientific process works? If you publish something of dubious veracity, peer reviewers will shred it apart and point flaws in it. If your methodology is wrong, they will point it out. If your results are not repeatable, they will point it out. If it goes against known facts, they will point it out.
I'm also sick and tired of creationists bunching into "evolution" all kinds of things that do not belong there. Cosmology and the big bang theory are not part of the theory of evolution. Thermodynamics is not part of it. Particle physics and chemistry are not part of it. Abiogenesis is not part of it. Geology and paleontology are not part of it. Basically, when a creationist says "evolution" he bunches pretty much all of natural sciences into it, even though evolution is a theory of biology relating to a relatively narrow aspect of it (it provides a model of how existing life diversifies). It has nothing to do with those other fields.
The theory of evolution not explaining every minute detail, and there still being unknowns about the history of modern lifeforms, doesn't mean that the theory is not sound. There exists no scientific theory that explains everything. The theory of relativity does not explain everything; quantum mechanics does not explain everything. The fact that there are some details that they don't explain doesn't mean that they are wrong and useless. They work on their own field, and they have been verified to the extent that they do explain things. The theory of evolution is one of the most well-established and verified scientific theories that exist, no matter what creationists like to claim.
If you have a concrete argument against it, please present it. We can discuss it. But please make it about what the theory of evolution actually says, not some creationist straw man.
Joined: 12/8/2012
Posts: 706
Location: Missouri, USA
And Warp, I'm going to be frank with you and state that I don't like the tone of your remarks, nor do I appreciate your claims that I'm being dishonest or attempting to present a "straw-man" argument of some sort.
If that's the way you choose to conduct yourself, fine. But don't expect any further responses from me if you're going to operate that way in this thread.
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
ars4326 wrote:
I don't like the tone of your remarks
When you start to criticize someone's tone instead of the arguments, then you have surely agreed to the arguments. Otherwise you would tell us why Warp is wrong instead of claiming that his tone is something you don't like.
