Posted on 01/18/2007 1:00:43 PM PST by scottdeus12
Darwin put forward his claim that human beings and apes descended from a common ancestor in his book The Descent of Man, published in 1871. From that time until now, the followers of Darwin's path have tried to support this claim. But despite all the research that has been carried out, the claim of "human evolution" has not been backed up by any concrete scientific discovery, particularly in the fossil field.
The man in the street is for the most part unaware of this fact, and thinks that the claim of human evolution is supported by a great deal of firm evidence. The reason for this incorrect opinion is that the subject is frequently discussed in the media and presented as a proven fact. But real experts on the subject are aware that there is no scientific foundation for the claim of human evolution. David Pilbeam, a Harvard University paleoanthropologist, says:
If you brought in a smart scientist from another discipline and showed him the meagre evidence we've got he'd surely say, "forget it; there isn't enough to go on."
(Excerpt) Read more at darwinismrefuted.com ...
Of course. The planets were always interesting because they MOVE.
Remember, we are reading Genesis carefully to see what it SAYS.
In the process, we find out pretty readily that it is not an accurate depiction of the arrangement of the cosmos, and we discover soon enough that it gives us conflicting order for the development of species.
It's not a scientific text.
It wasn't INTENDED, by God, to be a scientific text.
But the only way we can really see that clearly is to read it clearly and carefully. The Jewish creation myths and legends are here. God was content to use those well-known stories (to those people in that time) to teach something else fundamental and far more important. THAT'S the point of Genesis.
Remember, this is a Crevo thread, with people winging barbs at each other left and right, hurling insults, etc.
I will not do that.
What I will do is very respectfully read the actual Scriptures, line by line, for what they actually SAY.
And what will come out of that is the realization that it's not science, wasn't INTENDED to be science, and that we really shouldn't be opposing the Word of God to science, because God certainly didn't have that in mind. We end up harming our ability to approach God when we mangle his text like this.
Genesis isn't about evolution. It's about individual temptation to sin and the consequences of sin. THAT is all very real. It tells us that God created everything, which is certainly true. But that's it.
And the POINT, remember, is that this is all part of the general purpose of the Old Testament: love your neighbor as yourself and love God over all.
If people are using Genesis to throw battery acid at each other, they're ignoring the very foundational love your neighbor purpose that Jesus said Genesis was intended to teach.
That's not a little thing. It's the WHOLE thing.
The most literal translation of all of the Old Testament texts from the original Hebrew is the Jewish Publication Society's TaNaKh translation. If we've got to pick a text other than the KJV, then certainly the Jewish translation of the Hebrew is the most scholarly and authoritative for literalness.
Do you think that any translation is the word of God, or only the original text? And what constitutes an original text? We have only copies. For the Old Testament, is it the Masoretic Text of the Jews or the Septuagint (also of the Jews)?
This is a side issue because the interesting issues are in all the texts.
Still, if we want the closest word-for-word translation, we should use the JPS TaNaKh.
I doubt he's saying God is not CAPABLE.
The question is DID God express himself in English, or are the translations just echoes, with the real word of God in the "original" texts.
But since the "original" texts are, in fact, all scribal copies hundreds or even thousands of years younger than the real ORIGINAL texts (none of which exist at all), do we HAVE the inspired word of God in our possession at all, or do we simply have a mangled version of them.
>You haven't apologized for plagairizing yet
I droppeed in some Wiki to a post, so?
Get a life!
You "dropped some Wiki into a post" and implied it was your own.
I wouldn't have an argument if you had simply said something like "oops, should have given the link"
But you didn't.
I didn't take any credit for it at all.
Yes, you can be a good boy and stay after class and clean the erasers.
Get a life.
No we don't...get better versed on the bible and get back to me.
I have a definite preference for NASB. In addition to the concordance and dictionary. I have no doubt that this is GODS Word and going through it line by line will not change this. As I have previously completed an inductive study on Genesis, I am well versed in it. If you have specific objections to any of the creation account, please do state the specific verses and lets move this forward.
But your literalist compatriots appear to care rather more than a fig about what other people think about science. Or that people think at all. In fact, they appear to positively relish consigning people who accept “astronomy and the natural science[sic]” to the lowest depths of Hell. Why is that? From what you’ve posted it would appear to be … un-Biblical.
Perhaps God's view of those things is that if we're really interested in all of that business of how he did this brushstroke or that brushstroke, we can go figure it out for ourselves.
Which is what science is all about. You appear to be asserting that it’s Biblically unacceptable to remain ignorant. That’s great! Tell your friends.
Let me give you a concrete example: In the Gospels, Jesus says that the smallest seed is the mustard seed. He also says that unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, a plant doesn't grow.
Well, of course the smallest seed in the world, ISN'T the mustard seed at all. There are seeds the size of spores. Much smaller than mustard seeds. Likewise, seeds don't die at all when they germinate.
So, did Jesus KNOW he was being inaccurate and not CARE, because it was not relevant to his mission, and because he was speaking to people using terms of their times that they understood?
Sorry. I’m not buying this line of argument, and I suspect none of the Biblical literalists who post here will either. The party line appears to be, “If Jesus said it, and didn’t specifically tell us, ‘This is a parable,’ then it’s literally true and exactly correct as stated.”
So, either a mustard seed is the smallest seed, as Jesus himself said, or Jesus was wrong.
Or you interpret the scriptures. This is not objectionable until you start using the scriptures as a club to bash science. If it’s just your interpretation, why should anyone else care? And it is just your interpretation … or did I miss a Grand Reintegration of All Religions yesterday?
Or did Jesus, perhaps, not even know that HIMSELF, when he was in his human form, because His Father just didn't think that this was among the stuff that needed to clutter up His Son's mind when he was down here to DO SOMETHING specific.
So you’re saying Jesus was not omniscient. You’re in opposition to a lot of other posters here. I think they should weigh in on this. Which circle of Hell most appeals to you; I’m sure they’ll do their best to get you there ASAP.
It's entirely possible that Jesus was as limited in his basic natural sciences knowledge as anyone else in his time. It's possible that Jesus himself didn't speak in tongues, and could only speak one or two languages too. Does this mean he wasn't really God's Son, God incarnate? By no means! God didn't need to load up his son with a bunch of superfluous and irrelevant knowledge. He wasn't sending a PhD candidate to earth, but a Savior.
You just stated “Jesus was … limited.” Again, “Tell your friends!”
Even if one accepts this, does it mean we should cut our knowledge to what was known 2,000 years ago? From what follows, it appears not, but …
A gunsmith probably knows a lot more about making gunpowder than Jesus of Nazareth would have, and Mary Magdelene was probably a better cook too.
… who made better wine … or more quickly? Sorry. Couldn’t resist. But I suspect that if your friends on the Biblical literalist side read this post, if they have any sand at all, they’ll correct you for limiting Jesus.
Even though Jesus may have been given all power on earth and in heaven, that might not have included the contents of every page of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
You don’t see the contradiction here?
Jesus may very well not have been able to read a word of the Bhagavad Gita, nor even known it existed, even though he was God incarnate, because he was a man among men in that state, and encyclopedic knowledge of trivia wasn't what God sent him for. Indeed, such knowledge would tend to make Jesus less of a man among men and more of a freakshow or savant. There's nothing about Jesus that indicates a savant. He seems to have known everything he needed to know.
[The rest of your post omitted on the grounds that it’s primarily summation]. Sorry. You’re trying to have it both ways: The Bible has to be literally true, except when it isn’t, and even when it’s literally wrong, it’s right because it didn’t need to be right.
And we should conduct science like that?
I don't doubt that Scripture is the inspired word of God either.
What I seriously doubt is that Genesis was intended to be taken literally by God, given the language He inspired to be in it.
If you prefer the NASB, I will need to get a copy of that text so we can use it.
Could you provide the text of Genesis 1:1-3 from the NASB here? We can start with the first word.
The following sections in quotation marks are all quotes from your post, to which I will respond in the interstices.
"But your literalist compatriots appear to care rather more than a fig about what other people think about science."
...
"Tell your friends."
...
"I suspect none of the Biblical literalists who post here will either. The party line appears to be..."
...
"If it’s just your interpretation, why should anyone else care? And it is just your interpretation"
...
"You’re in opposition to a lot of other posters here."
...
"Again, “Tell your friends!”"
...
"But I suspect that if your friends on the Biblical literalist side read this post..."
Truth and logic are not matters of democracy or popularity contests. Whether in science or in religion or in law, words mean things, and they can be read directly for their meaning. Honesty, intellect and logic can be applied to ANY set of texts, be they Scriptures or the latest article on carbon microtubules in Scientific American. Consensus Gentium doesn't have any force when you are reading a text to see what it says. No matter what's IN the text, whether it bears a relationship to reality OUTSIDE of the text or not, on the terms of the text itself, it has meaning. So, you needn't trouble your head too much about what Christians think or say to each other about the content of a text YOU think is nonsense.
On the other hand, we COULD apply these very same techniques to "science". A rigorous march through definitions, concepts and authorities is in order.
Indeed, you invite it, when you ask:
"And we should conduct science like that?"
The noncontradiction principle is very, very strong in what you write, to wit:
"The party line appears to be, 'If Jesus said it, and didn’t specifically tell us, "This is a parable," then it’s literally true and exactly correct as stated.'"
And:
"So, either a mustard seed is the smallest seed, as Jesus himself said, or Jesus was wrong."
And:
"You don’t see the contradiction here?"
And:
"You’re trying to have it both ways: The Bible has to be literally true, except when it isn’t, and even when it’s literally wrong, it’s right because it didn’t need to be right.
And we should conduct SCIENCE like that?"
So, let's leave religion aside as a talk between strange ducks who care about old fairy tales, and discuss serious, adult, logical, rational, ordered and noncontradictory things: SCIENCE. Let's apply the same logic I have applied to Genesis and the Jewish Creation myth to your much-vaunted "SCIENCE".
"Science", too, all hangs on words and definitions and authority, and these words and definitions, when pressed, very rapidly, in a few short steps, dissolve into "I don't know, but we ASSUME..."
With the Scriptural discussions, I was very insistent on specifying A TEXT, and sticking to it. By doing that, the conversation is bound and limited to that text. One cannot run around looking for OTHER texts to bolster a weak position. One cannot fudge OTHER words. The text is the text, and the text is the universe of the discussion.
You have asserted, with your incredulous: "And we should conduct SCIENCE like that", that there is a thing, "Science" which is something quite unlike the contradictory and messy business of Scriptural religion such as I was discussing with the Christians. Evidently you place "Science" on a very, very high pedestal, a pedestal almost asymptotic with "truth".
Such a thing as this is most splendid, and I should very much like to discuss it with you.
But before we can talk about a thing, we have to DEFINE that thing.
With the Christians, we DEFINED our text: Scripture, as written in the King James Version. THAT'S what "Scripture" meant within the context of our discussion. It's limited, concrete and accessible to everybody. Nobody can "change the definition" of what is being talked about, because there is a fixed, concrete external object, the KJV Bible, which contains certain, fixed words and not any other ones. The Christians can argue about MEANING in those words, or interpretations of those words, but they CAN'T argue that there are no words THERE. The KJV is an objective source of authority, not for what the words mean, but for what the bounded universe of the words in the KJV are.
"Science" is nebulous term, like a talismanic invocation, a term laden with religious piety when you use it.
I would love to discuss "Science" with you, but I need to know precisely what Science IS, according to you, so that I will then know everything that it is NOT.
Of course when you tell me your definition of "Science", so that we can discuss it, you will need to give me some basis of authority for your definition. Note that, for the sake of discussion with the Christians, I freely accepted A text, the King James Version of the Bible, as THE Scripture set. It doesn't matter whether I think the KJV is the best translation of the Hebrew and ancient Greek texts. It only matters what the KJV itself says, for the purpose of the discussion I am having with them.
For the discussion I want to have with you, it doesn't matter so much WHERE you get the authority to define what "Science" means - Webster's dictionary is fine - so long as you specifically give me the source, and we stipulate the definition. This is important, because soon enough you're going to start adding bells and whistles to the definition when things get hairy for you in the discussion. Above, you said this: "If it’s just your interpretation, why should anyone else care? And it is just your interpretation …" It would be a fair point, except that in Genesis I did very little interpreting at all. I just read the words, fair and clear, and where a word was ambiguous ("firmament", to be specific) consulted a dictionary.
Possessed of an ordinary degree of English language capability, I can read words and see what they say and don't say, and I can parrot what they say or don't say. Some people find that very threatening, but it isn't because I am doing much interpretation. It's because the words themselves, read aloud, put the kibosh on THEIR treasured interpretations. I don't appeal to my OWN authority for anything. I just read the text and let the chips fall as the English falls.
And I will do precisely the same thing with you too.
Your "Science" won't bear up very well under scrutiny.
You will find it is based on faith, deeply held, stubborn faith, but faith. The biggest assumption in all of the historical sciences is uniformitarianism, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
After all of that straining and writing and reading, we're really down to a very simple question:
You, the devotee of "Science" telling me, the seeking inquirer, what "Science" is. Specifically.
Please define this thing, this "Science" that you find so worthy that the sort of interpretive use of language done with Scripture would be an affront. "Science" is certainly not that! (Says you.)
So what, pray, IS Science?
And who says?
And why do they have authority to define the term?
Please give a definition of the term to which you are willing to both bind me and be bound, and cite to the external source of authority other than yourself to which we both can refer back for the definition of the word "Science".
How can we discuss anything scientifically if we cannot even define what it IS in the first place?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
Ok. Good.
I apologize for this, but could you also give me Gen 2:15-20, and Gen 7:11, and Psalm 148:4?
I apologize for the inconvenience.
So, the first three sentences of Genesis in the NASB tell us that there was a beginning, there's God, there's a thing called "the earth" created and a thing called "the heavens" (plural, "s") created (as opposed to "heaven" in the KJV, or "the expanse of the sky" in the Jewish translation).
Could you give the exact text of Gen 1:8?
We discover that before there's an earth or heavens - when the earth is "void", that there's water: "the deep". So, the water is there first, and God makes a bubble in the water for the earth, sun, moon and stars to be in, just as in the KJV and all other versions.
Interesting.
Does the NASB Gen 7:11 say "floodgates" or "the gates of heaven"?
So the quote marks or the link just sort of fell off the screen. I get it.
I’m not asserting the text of the KJV (or any version of the Bible), is nonsense, I’m asserting what you are posting is nonsense. Can you see the difference?
There isn’t a Biblical literalist at Free Republic who isn’t convinced his personal interpretation of the scriptures is inerrant (thereby confusing his understanding with His intent). The many, many different Christian churches, all assert exactly the same thing: Only this church has it right. By definition, a maximum of one can have it right. Which church is right, and how do we know?
I’d love to leave religion aside as you suggest, but a lot of posters here can’t seem to tolerate that. Even the poster who started this thread is willing to use radical Islamist propaganda, designed to convert people to a different religion and destroy western civilization, to bash science. Any port in a storm?
You ignored the question: Which interpretation of which version of the Bible is correct, how does one know, and why should that interpretation be used to trump scientific evidence? You’ve admitted already that you’ve done some little interpreting. How do we know your interpretations are correct? You have only your assertion. Other posters have other interpretations. Oddly, they assert that they are the ones who have it right. How’s a poor fellow to know?
"Science", too, all hangs on words and definitions and authority, and these words and definitions, when pressed, very rapidly, in a few short steps, dissolve into "I don't know, but we ASSUME..."
No, it rests on the absence of assumption. As in, “Don’t assume an entity not in evidence.”
Science has no “TEXT” in your sense of the word.
You have asserted, with your incredulous: "And we should conduct SCIENCE like that", that there is a thing, "Science" which is something quite unlike the contradictory and messy business of Scriptural religion such as I was discussing with the Christians. Evidently you place "Science" on a very, very high pedestal, a pedestal almost asymptotic with "truth".
That “high pedestal” bit is 100% incorrect. Science is a methodology and it’s quite unlike religion. In science, there is no sacred text against which all else must be measured. Science uses data, hypotheses, and theories. None of these are “truth.” Theories must conform to data, and they are used to organize it and predict new discoveries and new lines of research. If theories fail to account for all the data or fail to offer new lines of research, they are discarded. If “A” announces experimental results which no one else can replicate, “A’s” results are discarded. If “A” then does off and starts his own, personal “Science of A,” which rests on “A’s” irreproducible results accepted on faith … it isn’t science. But it could be a religion. There is no reason to expect religion to work like science as far as I can see. There is also no reason to expect science to work like religion … unless you don’t know how science works.
With the Christians, we DEFINED our text: Scripture, as written in the King James Version.
The above is a perfect example of what I’m talking about: You defined the “correct” text as the KJV … not that there’s anything wrong with that. But you are not all Christians, you don’t speak for them, and Christians are not the only religion on earth. And you’ve specified an authority which may not be contradicted. That’s as unlike science as you can get.
[T]here is a fixed, concrete external object, the KJV Bible, which contains certain, fixed words and not any other ones. The Christians can argue about MEANING in those words, or interpretations of those words, but they CAN'T argue that there are no words THERE. The KJV is an objective source of authority, not for what the words mean, but for what the bounded universe of the words in the KJV are.
Well, good. Everyone agrees the KJV contains words. Even I wouldn’t dispute that. The meaning of those words is where the trouble starts. I dispute that you can get two Christian churches to agree on what they mean. And again, that’s got nothing to do with anything but Christian religion.
Science is a method.
You keep assuming there is some KJV of science. There isn’t.
I know you do “very little interpreting.” Some do none at all when it comes to the Bible, and won’t permit anyone else to do any interpreting. Others do a lot of interpreting. Who’s correct?
You do have one thing in common with most science bashers around here -- you trust your own authority regarding the Bible and none other. This is unpersuasive and utterly unimpressive.
Science uses “uniformitarianism” because there is no evidence to suggest it’s wrong.
You want to use your interpretation (or, if you like, “non-interpretation”), of the KJV to control everything. You seem to imply you speak for all Christians. You may be sincere in this, but I don’t accept it for a moment. And I don’t accept the idea that someone’s religion can invalidate scientific research. So whatever definition of science I may use or accept really doesn’t matter. There’s nothing to discuss.
I disagree. Intelligent design argues that life on Earth is too complex to have been a random event.
--No we don't...get better versed on the bible and get back to me.--
Quack Quack!
Do you speak Hebrew?
Well, I read it. The author was blows a lot of smoke about the Hebrew pluperfect used in the NIB (and nowhere else), but eventually admits the truth: there is no pluperfect in the Hebrew account at Genesis 2:18, 19, 20, et al. He even admits that he was corrected in this error by Hebrew scholars (telling us that he isn't one in the process).
And he finally even acknowledged that the language is written in the progressive, which it is (in both Hebrew and English).
What followed was a strange disquisition into the "vav consecutive" which doesn't cite any other text which uses it in the Bible, cites a text (1 Kings 7:13) which doesn't, but links them together with his own embarrassing supposition "if we are to understand the wav/vav consecutive". Why would we do that?
Genesis 27:10-25 is an example of the vav consecutive, a whole bunch of incidents linked with "and". (In English class in high school, this would be called a "run on sentence".) And Genesis 1:1-16, and Genesis 2:15-22 - the texts at hand are examples of clear progressives. Even in English.
I sense his panic.
He would be eminently convincing if he presented examples from the Bible of this construction, which isn't a bit confusing even in English in Genesis or elsewhere, and showed it confusing. But he doesn't. He doesn't because he can't. So, he can just speculate about how it COULD be thus and so.
I would be more sympathetic to him and his efforts if had been able to restrain his need to write this: "Once again it is obvious that they are hiking into our territory without so much as a map or directions -- and little wonder that they end up lost!"
This is puerile.
He didn't make his case. He once asserted the pluperfect was CORRECT, but then admitted he had to back away from that when it was demonstrated to him (by people who can actually read Hebrew and are actually scholars of it) that the pluperfect is not correct. So, his Hebrew wasn't good enough to see that, and it's not good enough to find a questionable vav progressive, but he insists on triumphalism in his closing line, asserting that the people who have in fact showed him wrong are clueless and without a road map.
What he has done is what is called "tradition". He's generated a tradition. It's not based on any text. It's based on what he NEEDS the text to say. When it is stubborn and just plain doesn't, first he resorts to honest mistake (the NIB says what I need it to say!). Then, when corrected by people who actually can read Hebrew, he grudgingly ackowledges that the "had" he needs, the pluperfect case, is not there. Then he resorts to dishonesty, asserting (based on WHAT? He's obviously not a Hebrew scholar or he wouldn't have fallen into the trap in the first place!) that the pluperfect IS perfectly correct there (in other words, that he understands Hebrew better than the people who can actually speak and read Hebrew, all of those translators of all of those English language Bibles going back to 1600 are all wrong and HE, who was called onto the carpet by a basic Hebrew dictionary, is nevertheless right!). And then he charges onward to assert more Hebrew expertise, and wraps it all up with...NO BIBLE EXAMPLES OF ANYTHING HE IS TALKING ABOUT.
But he fires a parting shot at all the people, all the scholars who DO speak Hebrew and who corrected him: they're all ignorant, they don't have a map, and HE has shown the way (with his superior Hebrew skills, doubtlessly).
Look, I want to have a good discussion with you. I understand if you don't have time and need to spread it out. The reason I wanted to stipulate to an English text in the first place (NASB is fine by me) was precisely to avoid the sort of embarrassing nonsense that's in the link you posted to me. The guy admits that he doesn't understand Hebrew well enough to know there's no pluperfect where he needs one, then he starts asserting Hebrew expertise to show how everyone else is wrong, and to prove it he serves up...no Biblical text with a vav progressive.
It's embarrassing.
It's not just a waste of my time, it's a waste of yours.
That the guy has to be so surly and nasty to people who know more than him about the subject is pathetic.
THAT sort of thing is the opposite of persuasive.
What is persuasive to me is the TEXT.
Don't tell me what it means. Tell me what it SAYS.
What it says is not obscure.
That is why I want to stipulate to a text. I want to avoid all of this recourse into people's non-Biblical TRADITIONS, like that website. There's a tradition there of some fellow and his followers who have a certain view of the Bible and what it means. That's great. But he gets huffy, nasty and insulting when it is pointed out that the text does not SAY what he believes it means.
So, the FIRST recourse is to assert superior extrinsic knowledge, in his case of Hebrew: that it DOES say that.
But he gets called on the carpet and admits it (and in the process admits he's no scholar of Hebrew).
But rather than sticking with the text, he runs off into another tradition, and once again asserts extrinsic, non-textual knowledge to "prove" his case (apparently the Inspired Word of God can't do it, but he, unknown scholar of Hebrew, can do it for us), and then he doesn't cite to ANY Scriptural text that demonstrates his example.
I say again, it's embarrassing.
And I say again that I was hoping to avoid that sort of thing by stipulating to a text.
The Inspired Word of God is properly rendered into English by many translations. The Jewish Hebrew translation is best, most scholarly, least forced, but the NASB will do. And that text, God's Word, either stands on its own or it fails. Citing to some tradition by some guy claiming Hebrew expertise and then embarrassingly botching the Hebrew is WORSE than not convincing. It's the opposite of convincing. It demonstrates Jesus' warning about relying on mere human tradition.
It's true: the text has the birds created before man in Genesis 1, and created after man, for man, in Genesis 2.
The Hebrew cannot be tortured to get around the contradiction. And some guy on a website saying otherwise cannot override the thousands of real Hebrew scholars, Christian and Jewish, who have read many different, competing manuscripts, and all produced basically the same English text, for 400 years. That conflict is in the text.
Plain as day. It's in the Hebrew. It's in the English.
Some guy who can't read Hebrew well on a website claiming otherwise, and triumphantly claiming that HE has the roadmap...while all of these translators and scholars don't...well, that's a guy with his own little cranky tradition who will lead you straight OUT OF the inspired word of God, and straight into something that the Bible doesn't say.
I'd prefer to stick with the Bible, thanks.
Indeed, this episode demonstrates why you've GOT to stick with the text itself. Start changing the words and meanings in order to protect a preferred belief system, well, that's the sort of tradition-mongering that the Bible says is a mistake.
You've got God's word in your hands and can read it in English. Some guy on a website who says it doesn't say what it says, but that in Hebrew it REALLY MEANS...(but who isn't a great scholar of Hebrew)...well, that's not God's word. It's just buffoonery.
I read it. And I'm getting back to you.
We will be much better off sticking to the text.
You are certainly a better reader of English than that fellow is of Hebrew. The English in the NASB is faithful to the text. So read that and do not run to non-Biblical authority of the sort like him, who seeks to deny that the Bible says what it plainly says.
Let's just stick with the NASB.
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