Why YEC can seem plausible

[Rhea]

YOu can tell them any manner of things, and, because you told them FIRST that the most holy thing they can do is believe you no matter what without question, they will accept all of it as more true than what their eyes can see in front of them.

Isn't a bigger gaping hole the fact that the flood story is a reworking of the much earlier Utnapishtim story from the Epic of Gilgamesh. With fundamentalist litteralist logic, if that's older, shouldn't it be the more accurate version?

That is also a big gaping hole. There are so many.

 

[Rhea]

This is entertaining, thanks all for some good chuckles to start the day.

In the 19th century a Christian had the idea that when god created the Earth things like fossils were placed there by god.
Human imagination got us to the moon and gave us vaccines. On therother hand it gave us creationism.

You're an interesting fellow steve, you (I suppose plurally too) always have some interesting alternative ideas of Christianity. I learn more each day.

The first time I realized that YECs were actual people who currently walked the earth, I was in a jewelry store in southern Virginia. As I waited for my watch battery to be replaced, I saw a young couple looking at a diamond ring. The clerk bespoke them and sayeth, (cue deep southern drawl)

“Wale, they trah to tale us that thayse dahmonds are millions of yeeyahs old, but we know the arth is only six thousand. But ah bahleeve that our gawd made the earth with aiyge and whayn we know that, we can understaynd these thangs.”

Show

(Well, they try to tell us that these diamonds are millions of years old, but we know the earth is only six thousand. But i believe that our god made the earth with age and when we now that, we can undersand these things.)

I had never hear an actual person believe that the earth was only 6000 years old, and when he blithely proclaimed his god was a liar and a deceiver, I about dropped my shopping bags.

 

[bilby]

YOu can tell them any manner of things, and, because you told them FIRST that the most holy thing they can do is believe you no matter what without question, they will accept all of it as more true than what their eyes can see in front of them.

Isn't a bigger gaping hole the fact that the flood story is a reworking of the much earlier Utnapishtim story from the Epic of Gilgamesh. With fundamentalist litteralist logic, if that's older, shouldn't it be the more accurate version?

That is also a big gaping hole. There are so many.

The whole idea is a string vest. A badly moth-eaten string vest.

There's more hole than substance, and whatever pathetic attempt is made to patch one hole, destroys whatever was done in an attempt to patch the last.

Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely superficial.

 

[excreationist]

Isn't a bigger gaping hole the fact that the flood story is a reworking of the much earlier Utnapishtim story from the Epic of Gilgamesh. With fundamentalist litteralist logic, if that's older, shouldn't it be the more accurate version?

Maybe the oral tradition of the Noah's flood story is older than the Epic of Gilgamesh.

 

[Rhea]

* Science has discovered mind-blowing facts about the early universe just since I've been on earth. Nothing new on the religious front, just the same old *poofery*.

This is really interesting to think about.

What has science discovered since X year, and what has religion discovered.
What has science created since X year, and what has religion created.
What has science improved since X year, and what has religion improved.

Starting with the last 20 years

Then look at the last 100

Then look at the last 1000

Then look at the last 5000

Stick to things you have evidence for. You can’t use, “somebody said science developed the labradoodle,” you have to have evidence that science did it. Same for religion.

There’s a thread about this already…
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?24341-Religion-vs-Science


I’ll take this question there.

 

[Learner]

It's your viewpoint, your 'faith in your surety' that no such thing as creation - is a brute fact.

That, my cocksure friend, is brute ignorance.
Let me set you straight about my "surety", my "faith" and what I actually think about "creation" (as opposed to creationism) ... not that it matters to any cocksure religious rube... .

Well ok then fair enough, but I would of been quite open to hear about your 'surety' anyway. Never claimed my surety was 'bigger than yours', wasn't starting a cockfight, in a manner of speaking.

I believe there is a creation, i.e. an objective external reality about which we can learn. Exactly how and why it came to exist, and whether there is a singly embodied causal entity responsible for its existence, is currently beyond the purview of both science and religion*. If there is such an entity, neither science nor religions have any direct knowledge of it. That's what I believe, subject to change should evidence to the contrary be found.

No problem with the above.

Further, I believe that the nature of "creation" is more accurately determined by observation using the scientific method, than by trying to contort old texts into compliance with observable reality. This is easily verified by the fact that science WORKS.

I agree,.. the nature of creation can be accurately determined by science methods. But... not yet! Just as you indicated above, " neither science nor religion...etc.."

Science defeats plagues and flies helicopters on mars. Religions bilk the rubes.
Science cures diseases, and enables weapons of war.

Science is not atheism nor religion. A whole list of religious people pioneered and contributed to science. Science doesn't work without people and motives, which could be for war or peace.

Religions only cause wars, and enrich scoundrels.

Show that I'm wrong. Guessing about goldilocks doesn't do it for me, but apparently YMMV. Hence, religions.

Religion doesn't have an agenda and uniqueness without people and their personal particular motives - a vehicle use for both 'war or peace.'

So I don't think I disagree with you here.

* Science has discovered mind-blowing facts about the early universe just since I've been on earth. Nothing new on the religious front, just the same old *poofery*.

Not sure of the same old poofery, the bible has better interpretations each day imo, times have changed and there is a whole wide-world pair of eyes and ears, people of all shapes and sizes and backgrounds, scrutinzing & studying the scriptures relating alongside with nature, the modern world and each other. Sharing info, discussing and of course debating each other ... a continuous refinement you could say, with todays understanding, adding to the world knowldge base so to speak, thanks to technology and internet. Hence why ... Christians must like science too.

 

[Elixir]

the nature of creation can be accurately determined by science methods. But... not yet , just as you indicated above, " neither science nor religion...etc.."

You went off the rails there bro. You left out the fact that I wasn't referring to creation, but rather to whether there exists "a singly embodied causal entity responsible for its [creation's] existence".

Why did you leave that out? Because you were looking for some way to put religion on the same footing as science. They're NOT, when it comes to learning about "The Creation". They may be on the same footing regarding direct knowledge any possible Creator, but science flies helicopters on mars and defeats plagues (plagues attributed to a god by many religions - make of that what you will). Religions just fatten preachers and priests. They encourage people to reject science in order to force their faerie tales upon the "faithful".

the bible has better interpretations each day

Well, that's not gonna feed the donkey!
But it reminds me of the Idaho license plate. Only ... potatoes ... exist.

Anyhow, the Bible, then, is not the Immutable Truth in your opinion? That's a start. Now you can try to figure out the incest problem.

 

[Learner]

Perhaps its true... Cain IS the son of satan this may help a little with the issue if it's the case (one of the interpretations)

44Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Oh dear, we may all have a bit of that dna in us too, reminds me of the verse, 'it's appointed for man to die once' - I suppose it would mean be reborn a ridding of that bit o dna or sumink. You do evil, satans your father, do good, God is your father. The battle for who gets custody

Perhaps also, Adams DNA is as some people suggest, was healthier and purer during those times which should therefore follow the same direction of the entropic of universe, i.e. everything including our genetics is degrading,with each generation which may mean "natural selection" could sound a little iffy or am I feeling sleepy?



I do feel sleepy

 

[Elixir]

Perhaps ... Perhaps the DNA is as some people suggest

Or perhaps it is as the evidence indicates. Science is exactly right about it.
You don't seem to even realize that you are not "truthin'" when you say you don't reject science.
That's a problem.

 

[Rhea]

Perhaps the DNA is as some people suggest, was healthier and purer during those times which should therefore follow the direction of the entropic of universe, i.e. everthing including our genetics is degrading each generation which may mean "natural selection" could sound a little iffy.

Do you mean your god was going to make DNA behave differently in a few hundred years and he never warned them?. That DNA didn’t used o mutate, but god was going to make it start, and he warned them against wearing cloth made of two different fibers but not about the *new* dangers of incest?

What was his point? He thought it would serve them right to have disabled children? And those children, what, it served them right for being born?

Wow, that’s cold.

 

[Learner]

back later

 

[steve_bank]

back later

Why?

 

[Rhea]

Perhaps the DNA is as some people suggest, was healthier and purer during those times which should therefore follow the direction of the entropic of universe, i.e. everthing including our genetics is degrading each generation which may mean "natural selection" could sound a little iffy.

Maybe I misinterpreted this.. Did you mean that your god is the thing that is degrading?

 

[bilby]

Religion doesn't have an agenda and uniqueness without people and their personal particular motives - a vehicle use for both 'war or peace.'

This is true.

But it represents a startling admission, because if there were a superhuman, supernatural, or godlike entity in charge, it necessarily would have.

Religion is motivated entirely by people. No Gods are involved.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Isn't a bigger gaping hole the fact that the flood story is a reworking of the much earlier Utnapishtim story from the Epic of Gilgamesh. With fundamentalist litteralist logic, if that's older, shouldn't it be the more accurate version?

Maybe the oral tradition of the Noah's flood story is older than the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Exactly. So believing that anything in the Bible will be accurate is ridiculous.

 

[excreationist]

Isn't a bigger gaping hole the fact that the flood story is a reworking of the much earlier Utnapishtim story from the Epic of Gilgamesh. With fundamentalist litteralist logic, if that's older, shouldn't it be the more accurate version?

Maybe the oral tradition of the Noah's flood story is older than the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Exactly. So believing that anything in the Bible will be accurate is ridiculous.

I thought believing in a possibly older tradition would mean it is more likely to be accurate.... ? (if it was based on eye witnesses, etc)

 

[DrZoidberg]

Exactly. So believing that anything in the Bible will be accurate is ridiculous.

I thought believing in a possibly older tradition would mean it is more likely to be accurate.... ? (if it was based on eye witnesses, etc)

Have you ever played the game Chinese whispers? If a story falls apart completely within minutes when you're in a ring with ten people, imagine when it's tens of thousands of people, over vast geographical distances, over hundreds of years?

We actually know how this works. It has been tested. We also have surviving oral bardic traditions (the Rumanian Roma) who have this same way of telling their cultural mythic stories today as the same oral tradition of the Old Testament. They don't care so much about accuracy. It's more a memetic game of remembering what named person did the good or the bad thing to whom and it what order. Any other facts of the story are free to be embellished for dramatic effect.

This tradition also carried over into a written tradition in ancient Greece and Rome (who sometimes on purpose wrote in an archaic fashion when they retold religious myths) and we have saved reviews and discussions about these works. Even religious authorities didn't care about the facts. They only cared about if they story told was exciting. The goal of the story was to make people more religious. Not to retell factually accurate eye witness accounts.

Not understanding this is to fundamentally misunderstand what Judaism and Christianity is and how their holy texts are supposed to be read.

What's funny is that the fundamentalist movement (what this thread is about) is a continuation of Martin Luther and his ad fontes movement. But for all Martin Luther's talk of Biblical inerrancy he was not above interpreting the Bible in whatever way served his cause. Which what he criticized the Catholic church for doing.

It wasn't until the rise of Darwinism and the Christian reaction against scientific questioning of the specialness of humans, that we got this modern type of blind litteralism this thread is about.

Ie, it's a type of Biblical literalism that is wholly new which never existed from the creation of the Bible right up to the modern age. It's a type of Biblical literalism that the writers of the Bible didn't even share.

If the writers of the Bible weren't too hung about about the facts being correct, then how likely do you think it is that the Bible is inerrant or faithfully accurate eye witness accounts?

 

[steve_bank]

This is entertaining, thanks all for some good chuckles to start the day.

In the 19th century a Christian had the idea that when god created the Earth things like fossils were placed there by god.
Human imagination got us to the moon and gave us vaccines. On therother hand it gave us creationism.

You're an interesting fellow steve, you (I suppose plurally too) always have some interesting alternative ideas of Christianity. I learn more each day.

The first time I realized that YECs were actual people who currently walked the earth, I was in a jewelry store in southern Virginia. As I waited for my watch battery to be replaced, I saw a young couple looking at a diamond ring. The clerk bespoke them and sayeth, (cue deep southern drawl)

“Wale, they trah to tale us that thayse dahmonds are millions of yeeyahs old, but we know the arth is only six thousand. But ah bahleeve that our gawd made the earth with aiyge and whayn we know that, we can understaynd these thangs.”

Show

(Well, they try to tell us that these diamonds are millions of years old, but we know the earth is only six thousand. But i believe that our god made the earth with age and when we now that, we can undersand these things.)

I had never hear an actual person believe that the earth was only 6000 years old, and when he blithely proclaimed his god was a liar and a deceiver, I about dropped my shopping bags.

Way back when I joined one of he old versions of the forum it was eye opening. It took a while to realize that these people are really serious. And that was scary. More so realizing they are in our Congress thinking that way.That s why I have participated here. It has to be opposed as a defense of our atheist , and others', freedoms.

 

[Gun Nut]

Isn't a bigger gaping hole the fact that the flood story is a reworking of the much earlier Utnapishtim story from the Epic of Gilgamesh. With fundamentalist litteralist logic, if that's older, shouldn't it be the more accurate version?

Maybe the oral tradition of the Noah's flood story is older than the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Perhaps... but that necessarily entails the fact that no Christian would be born until thousands of years AFTER that oral tradition was already rolling along.
Christians are a bunch of revisionists, by founding principle. Another word for "revised" is "lied".

 

[excreationist]

Exactly. So believing that anything in the Bible will be accurate is ridiculous.

I thought believing in a possibly older tradition would mean it is more likely to be accurate.... ? (if it was based on eye witnesses, etc)

Have you ever played the game Chinese whispers? If a story falls apart completely within minutes when you're in a ring with ten people, imagine when it's tens of thousands of people, over vast geographical distances, over hundreds of years?.....

Well I think the ages in the genealogies would have been finalised in the end rather than at the start.... to make sure no-one was living when the Flood happened that wasn't meant to....

This is another reason why the Flood story can seem plausible...