Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Automaton · 02-14-2002, 01:32 AM

ROFLMAO

Stars too many to count? Duh. Let's see you sit down and point out each individual star and keep count! It doesn't take a personal Lord and Saviour to tell us that.

The Earth is shaped like a sphere? ROFL. Try pulling the other one. It says CIRCLE!!! in the Isiah quote, not ball, nor sphere, of which the ancient Hebrews had plenty of words. I don't know how the Luke quote is supposed to prove anything, but it did have such interesting phrasing as "I tell you, in that night there shall be two [men] in one bed;" and "Two [women] shall be grinding together;"

The "sun moving" thing is absolutely pathetic.

It says the sun moves across the sky (which any five year old will observe)! Which is wrong anyway, the sun is in the CENTRE of the solar system.

The Job quote "proving" that "light travels, darkness does not" is also wholly unconvincing. Perhaps someone should alert the scientific genius Christians that "darkness" is merely the absence of light.

Quote:

He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, [and] hangeth the earth upon nothing.
Job 26:7

This is supposed to mean that the Bible understood the universe is expanding! All the other ones in this sector of anguish declared something similar, but almost all referred to the "stretching" in the past-tense, and many referring to the sky as a blanket or cloth! Oh, the brilliant science of the Bible!

The universe is finite in size? They give a few verses symbolizing the universe as an object ... a finite one. This is not impressive at all, I doubt the ancient Hebrews had any words to describe infinity, and that wouldn't have made good poetry either. Also, this is typically referring to the very flawed cosmology and common belief back then of the "sky" being a solid dome with heaven above it, and hell beneath the earth.

Quote:

Job 26:7 - He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, [and] hangeth the earth upon nothing.

This is in fact actually the most impressive to me. But as you can see, this isn't saying very much.

THEY QUOTE LEVITICUS AS A SOURCE OF MEDICAL "KNOWLEDGE"!!! This is very poor scholarship, finding one little quote that states the obvious ("life is in our blood"? Yeah, it's also in our brains, hearts, lungs, cytoplasm, etc.) and ignore the mountains of ignorance and claptrap that surround it.

Quote:

Circumcisions should be performed on the eighth day after birth

First of all, this is just a religious practice, and one is better off not performing it at all. Secondly, do they honestly have no idea how the ancient Hebrews could have discovered this for themselves, without any knowledge of blood clotting? I mean please, if you cut it off at the wrong time, the baby gets very sick. Thus it's a simple matter of cultural natural selection.

Jews and Arabs descendants of one man? Besides stating the fairly obvious, guess what, all human races are descendants of one common ancestor!

Quote:

Proverbs 17:22 - A merry heart doeth good [like] a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.

Many hands make light work, too.

Quote:

Ecclesiastes 1:6 - The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

Yeah, this means... JET STREAMS!

Or maybe, possibly, maybe, just the very obvious that winds blows from the north and south and whirls around continually?

Quote:

[It is] he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and hath founded his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD [is] his name.

From THIS... they get the hydrological cycle?!?!

Weight of the winds? Give me a break.

WHAT THE FUCK? Since when did science ever declare that man lived with dinosaurs?!?! Perhaps they should roll me up whatever they are smoking.

In three verses they try to claim that the Bible predicted entropy. They all say, in a very similar manner (that looks like a copy and paste job to me) "all shall wax old as doth a garment". Actually, they don't even come close to stating the scientific definition of entropy, the creationists just see their own butcher job of the second law in that writing. Tell me, is a snowflake "waxed old like a garment"?

Quote:

By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.

This apparently predicts sub-atomic particles, of all the nonsense! Notice it is talking in the past-tense again, referring merely to God creating the world out of something we cannot now see. If the verse's author had perhaps included something along the lines of "many tiny particles", I would be much more convinced.

Quote:

And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies [shall lie] in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.

This predicts "sattelite communications", because the bodies can be seen in "all nations"!!! They're getting a bit lost for ideas now, I think.

That whole "paths of the seas" thing has been wholly refuted elsewhere on Infidels (can't find the link just yet though).

Quote:

Job 38:16 - Have you entered into the springs of the sea?

This one is actually quite good, considering it was written some 1000 years before any secular mention of such springs. Anyone care to comment?

Quote:

Or have you walked in the recesses of the deep?

This is supposed to mean that there are deep valleys in the sea! What? It's saying the sea ITSELF is a recess.

Quote:

Jonah
5 The waters compassed me about, [even] to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.
6 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars [was] about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.

And this means there are mountains on the bottom of the sea?!?! What absurdity these fundies will come up with just to convince the flock of their own DIVINE TRUTH.

Oolon Colluphid · 02-14-2002, 01:49 AM

Sorry folks, but this is in the wrong forum...

You've got until I work out whether Biblical Criticism and Archaeology or Science and Skepticism is the better home for it to get in some evolution relevance!

Cheers, Oolon

Gringo · 02-14-2002, 02:01 PM

One of other forums would've been more appropriate. I was thinking of the Creation aspect when I picked this forum.

Valentine Pontifex · 02-14-2002, 02:06 PM

They are doing for the Bible what many other idiots did for Nostradamus.

Peez · 02-14-2002, 02:10 PM

So, just how many 4-legged fliers are there (Lev 11:23)? Are bats realy birds (Lev 11:19)? Did hares chew the cud in biblical times (Lev 11:5-6)? The writers of the bible were as ignorant as, well, a tribe of goatherders a few thousand years ago.

Peez

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Peez ]

Automaton · 02-14-2002, 02:40 PM

It's funny, that the Bible, with all its "begats" and descriptions of the natural order and supposed foreknowledge of science, that it didn't mention something as simple as Mendelian genetics.

Arrowman · 02-14-2002, 03:23 PM

Automaton mentions this one:

Earth floats freely in space
Job 26-7 / 950BC or earlier
"We're still trying to track down when scientists discovered this."

as being the best of a bad bunch, and I agree - but then again - "we're still trying to track down when scientists discovered this" gives a clue to how irrelevant it actually is (and the intellectual capacity of the authors of this site).

Perhaps the authors of this stupid little list could consider the possibility that "the earth floats freely in space" has in fact been so bleeding obvious almost since the beginning of human history, that it has never in fact been "discovered by scientists"?

There may have been myths about the earth being flat, ships sailing off the edge, four enormous turtles or elephants of whatever - but however inaccurate their models (including the Biblical model) all primitive people seem to have worked out very easily the basic concept of "earth below, sky above", combined it with their inability to comprehend the infinite (intuitively to them the earth must have been finite) and concluded that the earth must be floating around somehow in some sort of void.....

This is not and never was a "scientific discovery"; it was just basic primitive intuition which turned out to be right. The Bible did not do a better job of predicting it than any number of primitive myths.

(Thinks... why do we bother writing these little essays about the bleeding obvious? Because some people don't see the bleeding obvious, I suppose...)

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Arrowman ]

Gringo · 02-14-2002, 06:45 PM

I admit we Christians have trouble explaining many of those verses, but yet the understanding of the vast number of stars as spoken of in Jeremiah is remarkable. If you think the writer just used stars for imagery, why did he do so? It seems unlikely that he would be so lucky as to understand that there were far too many stars to count. He compares them to the grains of the sands of the earth. I personally don't know how much of either there happens to be, but how would the writer know that there were more than the few thousand that we can see with the unaided eye? One thought I had was that perhaps he took into account the many "falling stars" that occur every now and then and knew from that experience that there were more out there than we were seeing. But even taking that into consideration, it's amazing that he used the grains of sand, number of stars, descendants of Abraham comparison-- all of which would number into many billions.

bluefugue · 02-14-2002, 06:54 PM

It requires divine intervention to figure out that rain comes from clouds, or that there are a lot of stars? Do these people think the ancient Israelites lacked eyes?

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: IesusDomini ]

Kevin Dorner · 02-14-2002, 07:01 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by IesusDomini:
It requires divine intervention to figure out that rain comes from clouds, or that there are a lot of stars? Do these people think the ancient Israelites lacked eyes?

They are the same people who say that without divine intervention, the really tricky legal code of "Don't murder people" and "Don't steal stuff" in the Twenty And A Half Commandments would have eluded us to the end of time.

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Kevin Dorner ]

02-14-2002, 02:10 PM	#15
Peez Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Canada Posts: 5,504	So, just how many 4-legged fliers are there (Lev 11:23)? Are bats realy birds (Lev 11:19)? Did hares chew the cud in biblical times (Lev 11:5-6)? The writers of the bible were as ignorant as, well, a tribe of goatherders a few thousand years ago. Peez [ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Peez ]</p>

02-14-2002, 03:23 PM	#17
Arrowman Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Adelaide, South Australia Posts: 1,358	Automaton mentions this one: Earth floats freely in space Job 26-7 / 950BC or earlier "We're still trying to track down when scientists discovered this." as being the best of a bad bunch, and I agree - but then again - "we're still trying to track down when scientists discovered this" gives a clue to how irrelevant it actually is (and the intellectual capacity of the authors of this site). Perhaps the authors of this stupid little list could consider the possibility that "the earth floats freely in space" has in fact been so bleeding obvious almost since the beginning of human history, that it has never in fact been "discovered by scientists"? There may have been myths about the earth being flat, ships sailing off the edge, four enormous turtles or elephants of whatever - but however inaccurate their models (including the Biblical model) all primitive people seem to have worked out very easily the basic concept of "earth below, sky above", combined it with their inability to comprehend the infinite (intuitively to them the earth must have been finite) and concluded that the earth must be floating around somehow in some sort of void..... This is not and never was a "scientific discovery"; it was just basic primitive intuition which turned out to be right. The Bible did not do a better job of predicting it than any number of primitive myths. (Thinks... why do we bother writing these little essays about the bleeding obvious? Because some people don't see the bleeding obvious, I suppose...) [ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Arrowman ]</p>

02-14-2002, 06:54 PM	#19
bluefugue Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 1,427	It requires divine intervention to figure out that rain comes from clouds, or that there are a lot of stars? Do these people think the ancient Israelites lacked eyes? [ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: IesusDomini ]</p>

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02-14-2002, 01:49 AM	#12
Oolon Colluphid Contributor Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Alibi: ego ipse hinc extermino Posts: 12,591	Sorry folks, but this is in the wrong forum... You've got until I work out whether Biblical Criticism and Archaeology or Science and Skepticism is the better home for it to get in some evolution relevance! Cheers, Oolon

02-14-2002, 02:01 PM	#13
Gringo Regular Member Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: WV Posts: 207	One of other forums would've been more appropriate. I was thinking of the Creation aspect when I picked this forum.

02-14-2002, 02:06 PM	#14
Valentine Pontifex Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy Posts: 3,092	They are doing for the Bible what many other idiots did for Nostradamus.

02-14-2002, 02:40 PM	#16
Automaton Senior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Posts: 717	It's funny, that the Bible, with all its "begats" and descriptions of the natural order and supposed foreknowledge of science, that it didn't mention something as simple as Mendelian genetics.

02-14-2002, 06:45 PM	#18
Gringo Regular Member Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: WV Posts: 207	I admit we Christians have trouble explaining many of those verses, but yet the understanding of the vast number of stars as spoken of in Jeremiah is remarkable. If you think the writer just used stars for imagery, why did he do so? It seems unlikely that he would be so lucky as to understand that there were far too many stars to count. He compares them to the grains of the sands of the earth. I personally don't know how much of either there happens to be, but how would the writer know that there were more than the few thousand that we can see with the unaided eye? One thought I had was that perhaps he took into account the many "falling stars" that occur every now and then and knew from that experience that there were more out there than we were seeing. But even taking that into consideration, it's amazing that he used the grains of sand, number of stars, descendants of Abraham comparison-- all of which would number into many billions.

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