Did a God or Gods create the universe? EDITED
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@unknownuser said:
Part of the problem with our culture is that we've turned the Bible into a series of children's stories. I think this is not only false but it damages our perception of God. Noah's flood, is a classic example, painted on the walls of many sunday school rooms. It makes for a pretty enough scene if you focus on the cute animals and not all of they drowning people and animals which are left out - but those things are important to the story.
-Brodie
the story of noah's flood is almost laughable but the fact that many adults believe the story is entirely laughable.. (sorry)
if i have the story straight, noah was a man.. just like us.. with no divine powers etc..
so he builds a boat that has to house two of every single species on the planet.. penguins & anacondas on the same boat.. octopi and scorpions etc..you do realize how big that boat would have to be right? i think larger than anything we've built today.. it'd have to have a polar zone, aquatic zone, desert, sky.. etc.. plus, somehow noah has to keep a zillion animals from eating their natural prey for 40 days (then another hundred or so years after until the population builds up to a survivable level)..
so one guy, noah, managed to find every single species on earth and put them on one boat while the earth floods..
meanwhile, there are thousands to millions of people that have spent their time on earth trying to document all the species we have living amongst us and they are still finding new things to this day.. lots of them..but somehow, you actually believe this story of noah? i'd have an easier time believing in santa clause (much easier).. santa's task is impossible.. noah's task is well beyond impossible..
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@marian said:
I love the new direction this thread is taking.
My opinion is that the blending of human and machine will be more subtle.
As nanomechanics develops, technology could become more organic and also make humans more suitable and compatible for technological updates.
This coupled with AIs could some day in the future make possible the creation of some unique, non-human, sentient beings. Whether they will become new species or not will depend on whether we will give them the ability or if they will want to.
In essence such a being would be almost immortal, what purpose would procreation serve?So...yeah no god in there
i think i'll be satisfied when we figure out how to grow new teeth (i think we're pretty close to growing skin already.. we can but it's not quite there yet)..
anyway.. pop a little tooth seed in the jaw and a new one grows out.. gonna be sweet
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@solo said:
@unknownuser said:
@unknownuser said:
So I'm kinda like him
Pete, you've just had your Beatle 'Bigger than Jesus' moment.
Although, I did see you on the white phone to god at Basecamp....very inspiring stuff
Nah, not bigger than him, I'm sure he has many more twitter and Facebook friends than me.
But with exception of all the praying, god stuff, miracles and walking on water stuff (does ice skating count?) I believe I live my life according to much of his ideals, does that make me Christ-like?
YES
I wouldn't say that you are like him, but that HE WAS THE PERFECT VERSION OF US (after TomTom's Cleanup He showed us that you don't need walking on water and stuff like that to be powerful (as earlier gods had, and TV show us). His greatest power was, and is in Love, which is the ability to sacrifice yourself for other. For example, would you stop playing with SketchUp if your son needs you more? Bringing this sacrifice to the extreme, as a man only, not as God he showed us that we all have that power...but have to work on it...which is the biggest challenge of our life. The purpose of prayer is like practice of this Love capacity...it is not in service of our desires like discussed earlier. -
@solo said:
These are the virtues of Jesus:
- Humility
- Kindness
- Patience
- Chastity
- Temperance
- Charity
- Diligence
Now IMO one does not need to follow a religion to live life by these virtues, okay Chastity may take work.
I'd say that's a pretty good list. I'm sure you'd agree that it's not exhaustive but certainly paints the picture. I'd agree with you, btw, that one need not be a theist to do a very good job at living according to these virtues. I think a disservice is done when we turn some peoples story (I was a wretched person, found Jesus, became a great person) into everyone's story.
I think, like the issue of heaven, our society has popularized Christianity as a way of becoming a good person and we Christians often go right along with the idea. Not that I don't think God can't do that - He does. It's just that it isn't the point and shouldn't be the focus (neither is 'getting to heaven' but we fall into that trap too often as well).
-Brodie
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i think i just saw misunderstanding around recent post.
nevertheless, i'd like to point little things that some might misunderstood. else, i'll just let it be.i do think our intellectual capabilities and consciousness are different that those artificial or human made things. as if the same thing went through by this kind of sentences,
@unknownuser said:
"Could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even that being could not lift it?" If "he" could lift the rock, then it seems that the being could cease to be omnipotent, as the rock was not heavy enough; if "he" could not, it seems that the being was not omnipotent to begin with..", Averoes/Ibn Rusyd.
and physicians as far as i know, admit that even the most advanced computer cannot be compared to human brain. a simple thought, compare the size of human brain with those super computer. and let's think of how many nerves, muscles, etc. a brain controlling.
about the flood. i think i remember someone mentioned that the flood were not really drown the whole earth. i don't really know what others have to say about their scriptures. i do believe in those scriptures and scrolls (kitab and mushaf), in their former shape though.
rather to drown some kind of a civilisation. that's a "world" in certain meaning. for those whales, it does make sense to be there. there were news about whales stranded on the beach even without storm or flood.the topic is still "did God or Gods..." even if i am not really think i am a religious pious kind of person. i do believe someday people will have their enlightenment. perhaps not all, but at least most. hopefully.
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@unknownuser said:
the story of noah's flood is almost laughable but the fact that many adults believe the story is entirely laughable.. (sorry)
if i have the story straight, noah was a man.. just like us.. with no divine powers etc..
so he builds a boat that has to house two of every single species on the planet.. penguins & anacondas on the same boat.. octopi and scorpions etc..you do realize how big that boat would have to be right? i think larger than anything we've built today.. it'd have to have a polar zone, aquatic zone, desert, sky.. etc.. plus, somehow noah has to keep a zillion animals from eating their natural prey for 40 days (then another hundred or so years after until the population builds up to a survivable level)..
so one guy, noah, managed to find every single species on earth and put them on one boat while the earth floods..
meanwhile, there are thousands to millions of people that have spent their time on earth trying to document all the species we have living amongst us and they are still finding new things to this day.. lots of them..but somehow, you actually believe this story of noah? i'd have an easier time believing in santa clause (much easier).. santa's task is impossible.. noah's task is well beyond impossible..
I can certainly understand that position. I don't spend much time fretting about that one. There are a variety of ways which people have interpreted the story to make sense of those questions. I don't really come down in any particular position. Some like to prove with science that all of those seemingly impossible things you mention are actually possible. Some say the flood was not world-wide in our sense but in their sense - ie. it was localized to their 'world'. Some say it's not meant to be taken literally.
You should understand though that even if we assume the 'worst case scenario' the claim isn't that a normal guy built a boat and gathered all the animals, etc. The assumption here is that God, himself, was involved in these circumstances and it's claimed that He did far more unbelievable things than this (everything from creating light to feeding 5000+ people with a handful of food). Debating the believability of the flood is, to me, like arguing that Mother Theresa was a good person because she never went to jail.
-Brodie
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[flash=600,400:1c31ih1v]http://www.youtube.com/v/3LtiyefHCe4[/flash:1c31ih1v]
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@unknownuser said:
i think i'll be satisfied when we figure out how to grow new teeth (i think we're pretty close to growing skin already.. we can but it's not quite there yet)..
anyway.. pop a little tooth seed in the jaw and a new one grows out.. gonna be sweet![i have a dentist appt in a few hours.. root canal.. so that's why i'm on about teeth ]
Well, I keep reading from time to time on Popsci about some gizmo or solution that has been invented that can repair the damage done by tooth decay and so on.
I also saw on Discovery a segment on a show that a powder made out of pig stomachs can regenearate limbs if you put it on the wound every day. It showed how the brother of the researcher had the top of one of his fingers regenerated after he injured himself with a model airplane propeller.The only problem with these is that they can't be in the doctor's hands soon enough. I also have two teeth with problems and I keep dealying the moment.
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Well, no doubt one day they shove a few shark genes into the human genome and we'll be able to grow endless sets of teeth.
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@unknownuser said:
Debating the believability of the flood is, to me, like arguing that Mother Theresa was a good person because she never went to jail.
-Brodie
no it's not.. debating the believability of the flood is about showing obvious holes in the bible. if one single part of the bible can be accepted as fiction then the whole thing is discounted as a literal truth..
and the idea about you being able to interpret however you like in order to make this flood story sit well in your mind is bs.. either the bible tells the truth or it doesn't.
so do you believe Noah loaded up the boat or not? -
The "seven virtues" do not belong to Jesus.
They were simply ascribed to him, long after his death, by mere men.
They same way that he ceased being a middle-eastern semitic Jew and was metamorphosed in writings and illustrations into a European !
That's not to say he didn't have these virtues, but it's only our inferences, not Biblical fact...In the Catholic catechism, the seven catholic virtues refer to the combination of two lists of virtues, the 4 cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, restraint/temperance, and courage/fortitude, (from ancient Greek philosophy) and the 3 theological virtues of faith, hope, and love or charity (from the letters of Paul of Tarsus - an early churchman with no direct contact with Christ in his day); these were adopted by the early Church Fathers as the "seven virtues".
A list that was developed later, sometimes called the seven heavenly virtues, was proposed by a Christian governor named Aurelius Prudentius [who died around 410 AD], in his poem "Psychomachia" ["Battle of the Soul"]. This poem proposed "seven virtues" to directly counteract the "seven deadly sins". These virtues were chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility.
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The holes in the Biblical story of the flood are so gaping that it takes a wholesale suspension of disbelief to take it literally; not least the amount of water needed to drown the entire planet...and it would need to be a global flood for it to have any relevance at all. God was supposedly wiping the slate clean; not one just tiny corner of it.
A mere local flooding would immediately relegate it to the status of a regional folk myth...which it almost certainly is. There is well-documented archaeological evidence for a very substantial flood in Mesopotamia around 2900 to 2800 BC. This flood is almost certainly the basis for the Babylonian and later Sumerian flood myths upon which the Genesis version is based.
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@unknownuser said:
@unknownuser said:
Debating the believability of the flood is, to me, like arguing that Mother Theresa was a good person because she never went to jail.
-Brodie
no it's not.. debating the believability of the flood is about showing obvious holes in the bible. if one single part of the bible can be accepted as fiction then the whole thing is discounted as a literal truth..
and the idea about you being able to interpret however you like in order to make this flood story sit well in your mind is bs.. either the bible tells the truth or it doesn't.
so do you believe Noah loaded up the boat or not?I do, but I am also glad I don't have to prove it since physical evidence is pretty slim -- one point people often overlook about the thing is it took him 120 years to build the thing... which makes sense since it was absolutely huge. Also it wasn't a boat, "ark" means coffin and it was pretty much just a really huge box... since it wasn't sailing anywhere it didn't need a "boat" shape or rudder, oars, or sails.
Most of the visualizations I've seen are pretty "off" from the description -- another interesting facet is the story says it never rained before the flood, and also that some of the water was removed from the surface of the earth and was outside our atmosphere... and that water along with the "fountains of the deep" whatever they are all came crashing together at once. I'd say it was alot more cataclysmic than most people imagine it.
My point is there are plenty of things that are outside our scope of experience within that story, and I don't find any one aspect any less (or more) believable than any others.
Best,
Jason. -
@alan fraser said:
The holes in the Biblical story of the flood are so gaping that it takes a wholesale suspension of disbelief to take it literally; not least the amount of water needed to drown the entire planet...and it would need to be a global flood for it to have any relevance at all. God was supposedly wiping the slate clean; not one just tiny corner of it.
A mere local flooding would immediately relegate it to the status of a regional folk myth...which it almost certainly is. There is well-documented archaeological evidence for a very substantial flood in Mesopotamia around 2900 to 2800 BC. This flood is almost certainly the basis for the Babylonian and later Sumerian flood myths upon which the Genesis version is based.
Did you know there are "flood myths" within almost all the ancient cultures all across the world (including Aztec)-- and oddly enough they all say the only guy who survived was one of them... which is true if everybody is descended from him.
I'm enough of realist to say we don't really know too much at all about much of anything -- and we make an awful lot of assumptions based on the little bit we do know extrapolated out... which has throughout history been proven wrong over and over again. I'm not willing to say that we know much of anything for sure... human knowledge is flimsy and based solely on our own limited experiences.
Best,
Jason. -
@unknownuser said:
no it's not.. debating the believability of the flood is about showing obvious holes in the bible. if one single part of the bible can be accepted as fiction then the whole thing is discounted as a literal truth..
and the idea about you being able to interpret however you like in order to make this flood story sit well in your mind is bs.. either the bible tells the truth or it doesn't.
so do you believe Noah loaded up the boat or not?Jeff, we simply have different starting points. If I understand you correctly, you feel it necessary to be able to explain and reconcile the entire Bible from within a naturalistic worldview before you could accept it's truth. I think that's an unfair position as the Bible doesn't claim to work from within a naturalistic worldview.
My position starts with the resurrection of Jesus and the reliable portrayal of who is from within the Gospels, in particular. If the resurrection of Jesus happened (and I happen to find it the best explanation for the events) and Jesus is portrayed accurately in the Gospels then that will inform how we read the rest of the Bible. Most importantly in means there's an all powerful God with a stake in humanity who is participating in the ongoing processes of the world.
I think it's only through that framework that we can fairly work out an accurate hermeneutic (interpretational structure) for the Bible. Even outside of that hermeneutic, it should be clear to us that all truth isn't 'literal truth.' Movies are based on this simple fact. Without expressing literal truth, they can convey a sort of...emotional or even spiritual truth that is incredibly meaningful to us. Not that the Bible is simply a work of fiction but it's a collection of LOTS of things - letters, poems, histories, stories, etc. Most times it's obvious which you're reading but there are certain passages like the Noah story in which honest intelligent Christians disagree. But if the Bible uses a sort of allegory in Genesis doesn't mean it must also be doing so in 2 Chronicles. You don't read all of the symbolism in Revelation and then try to read Matthew the same way. That just wouldn't be smart hermeneutics.
So, do I think there was a guy named Noah who loaded up a boat? I guess so. But if I got to heaven and found out that particular story wasn't meant to be taken literal but more to make a point - a point about how wretched man can become, how God will go to great lengths to prevent humanity from falling into complete and irrevocable decay, about God's power, etc. - would I be shocked or surprised or feel lied to? Na. Likewise, would I be surprised to find out God did something completely crazy - like before the flood the earth was actually much smoother and so it didn't take that much water to flood the whole earth and then to recede the floods God caused some major techtonic craziness to occur giving us huge mountains and huge oceanic trenches or some such thing? Ya, I'd be a little surprised by that one I guess but He's God so I guess he could do something like that were he so inclined.
The point is that because of my starting point I believe that God COULD have done it. If we take God out of the picture then we'd both agree that it's an impossible feat, not unlike many other miracles the Bible mentions.
-Brodie
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Myths and other ancient stories do often have a kernel of truth, just messed up in the retelling.
The legend of the labyrinth and minotaur are reflected in the maze like ruins in Crete and the more recent evidence shows the Minoans has many games/rites relating to bulls, Odysseus and the Golden Fleece sounds fanciful BUT Sheepskins are still used to extract gold particles from stream-water because the dust sticks to th lanolin - so maybe he did steel a sheepskin covered in gold ! ... so there's some [tiny] basis to many tall tales.Similarly there are 'ancient flood' stories in most cultures...
There is archaeological evidence of well established civilizations that vanished suddenly and also evidence of floods affecting several significant areas [not the whole world, but obviously 'the world' the storytellers knew].
Examples include the Black Sea bursting through the Bosporus into the Mediterranean basin, what is now the Persian Gulf flooding and engulfing 'The Plane [Garden] of Eden', which probably lay some miles SE in the old rivers' deltas, of what is now the coastline, when the sea level was much lower. Also in the Stone Age a 40 mile wide strip of the East coast of the UK [where I live] was completely destroyed by a tsunami, which was caused by a major landslip in Norway on the other side of the North Sea. So the ancient Brits' storytellers did had something to tell, at least for a few generations, but it was mainly forgotten until the evidence in the sediments was uncovered. I'm sure localized floods and tsunami have messed with may civilizations over the years, unfortunately the storytelling blurs the truth in the final written/verbal records, so you can't ever believe anything like, BUT you also can be sure that a tiny bit of it IS true - but you can't differentiate which bits.Incidentally... on the question of THE Flood - Noah DIDN'T take a 'pair of every animal' - IF you read the text he was instructed to take seven of 'animals with cloven hooves' - like sheep and goats ???
But of course God knew what was important.
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@ Brodie: Sorry ... I burnt my thinking cap. The ashes I put in a lead-lined box which I tossed in the ocean.
Ah, free at last!
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@unknownuser said:
Jeff, we simply have different starting points. If I understand you correctly, you feel it necessary to be able to explain and reconcile the entire Bible from within a naturalistic worldview before you could accept it's truth. I think that's an unfair position as the Bible doesn't claim to work from within a naturalistic worldview.
My position starts with the resurrection of Jesus and the reliable portrayal of who is from within the Gospels, in particular. If the resurrection of Jesus happened (and I happen to find it the best explanation for the events) and Jesus is portrayed accurately in the Gospels then that will inform how we read the rest of the Bible. Most importantly in means there's an all powerful God with a stake in humanity who is participating in the ongoing processes of the world.
sort of, but not entirely in that order.. i used to believe in god because that's what i was taught since i was born.. i was baptized, went to church/sunday school every week etc.. my family is religious... the whole nine..
so it's not as if i'm looking for a plausible explanation of the bible in order for me to accept it as true.. it already was true to me but it became untrue once i was able to think for myself on these matters and realize everything everybody tells me isn't true..so much of it doesn't make any sense at all and if we were talking about anything else, i'm pretty sure you'd decide wether or not to believe it based on an entirely different thought process.. but with god, people have this block (or something) that prevents them from thinking about it using the same thought process they use for everything else they may encounter in life..
the second paragraph i quoted from you shows an example of how incredibly narrow minded religious people tend to be..
god has a stake in Humanity and the World..
as if god chose earth to do all this stuff on and put jesus here on our world and flood it and do whatever it is god does.. all right here on earth...earth is nothing.. it's not even a blip on the map in the grand scheme of things.. why here? is this the only planet god interacts with? are other civilizations in other reaches of the universe reading the bible and hearing about this guy jesus from planet earth and how the red sea was parted and how three kings and a few donkeys hung out in bethlehem etc?
i mean, it's only been a few hundred years since (white) people found out that there was more to the earth than europe asia africa.. just a little while ago, the earth was the center of the universe... do you think discovering the americas is the end all/be all of what's out there? we don't know jack, jack.. but somehow, we're supposed to know how the earth and life were created? it's such a crock and deep down, i'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about.. it's probably just scary to admit it.
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@unknownuser said:
@unknownuser said:
Ah, free at last!
Gahh! If that's freedom I'll take oppression!
-Brodie
Ah, but you get to say: "I am Pan, you're argument is invalid." Surely that must sound at least a tiny bit enticing.
Er, sorry, I'm in one of my silly moods. I'll shut up now.
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