Ed

No, see my post to LP with a list of documents. Actually the creedal formulas in I Corinthians 15:3-5, Luke 24:34, Romans 1:3-4 are considered by many scholars to date to less than 15 years after Christ's death. So using your analogy it would be 1880 not 1930's.

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Ed: Jesus left behind followers that documented his teachings and lived according to them. Rim:No, sir, his "followers" composed, decades after the supposed life of Jesus, a set of conflicting biographies. This is nowhere near the caliber of proof for Caeser's Gaulic campaign; as LP noted, Caeser at least wrote something himself.

The so-called conflicts are not very significant. But the oldest copy we have of Caesar's Gallic wars are 900 years after he wrote them. While the oldest copies of the NT are less than 100 years after they were written. There is much more likely for errors to occur in the gallic war documents given the time span.

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Ed: Unless you are omniscient you cannot rule out the veracity of a document for the sole reason that it reports supernatural events. Rim:I suppose you think the Oddysey is an historical account? Let us pray to Oddyseus, the slayer of the Cyclops!(Great minds think alike, LP!)

There are other bases by which documents can be questioned such as literary style. Mythology has a certain style while historical documentation has a different style.

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Ed: No, not classes, essences. Rim:Substituting a meaningless term for one with meaning is not going to help your case.

Check your dictionary, it DOES have a meaning.

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Ed: No, most other religions believe either that the universe is eternal or that there was a prior existing space-time continuum. Rim:LOL! The ignorance is maddening! You have a lot to learn. BTW, you say most of the other religious traditions teach a eternal universe? Then you have no argument, because unless you can show that ALL other religious traditions besides the Judeo-Christian have an enternal universe, then your religious cosmology is not unique. Plus, you'd have to deal with LP's insightful analysis that the Bible may not teach a definate beginning. This is not so much a problem for reality as it is for standard Xian theology.

Actually I probably could say with a pretty high degree of certainty NO other religion has that judeo-christian characteristic. See my response to LP's analysis above.

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Ed: Well maybe I should have said that most of the evidence points in that direction. Rim: And you'd be wrong; all the evidence points to the Big Bang being the limit of our historical analysis of the universe; it makes no definative statements about what came "before." (Barring the speculations of String Theory, whcih, while interesting, are somewhat tenuous.)

Oh, I know no BB theorists make statements about what came before, because the law of causality points to the existence of a creator. And any scientist that makes that implication is immediately branded as being unscientific and even horror of horrors he may be accused of being some kind of religious nut!

This is the end of part III of my response.

lpetrich

However, the Jesus-myth hypothesis explains 1 Corinthians and Romans very nicely -- he was a sort-of god back then. Luke 24:34 is as fictional as the rest of the resurrection accounts.

However, there is independent evidence such as inscriptions and coins. Furthermore, there is much less ideological motive to corrupt the Gallic Wars than there is with the New Testament -- there is much less doctrinal dependence on the former than the latter.

And the conflicts are serious; look for "Biblical Errancy" in the Library section of this site.

I'm not sure how Ed proposes recognizing each kind of style, but a variant would be to see how well the life of Jesus Christ fits a composite "Mythic Hero" profile worked out by Lord Raglan, Otto Rank, Joseph Campbell, and others. Jesus Christ makes a very good fit, while Moses, Krishna, the Buddha, and Mohammed fitting less and less, going down the list. Mohammed fits less than half as well (8 vs. 18.5), meaning that this historicity criterion supports Islam much better than Christianity. So when are you converting to Islam, Ed?

Ed, you have not provided any counterarguments at all. You've simply asserted what you believe, as though that is an unshakable argument. Even a cursory look at different cosmological beliefs reveals a widespread belief that the familiar Universe had had a beginning.

What is this "law of causality" supposed to be? And for all we know, our Universe could be a bubble in some eternal quantum-gravity soup.

GunnerJ

Damn, LP, you keep stealing my kill! It would be redundant of me to post my own reply at this point, Ed should realise that I concur with LP on this. I will make the following suggestion to Ed: post your replies to LP's first three counter-arguments on the Biblical Crit forum. This is becoming a digression. One comment on the word "essence." I am well aware that the word has a dictionary definition, but I claim that it is meaningless because it has not been defined by you for the application to DinUs. Nor do I see any evidence of such "essences." YOU provide a definition of essence, and prove how the Universe is a DinU defined by these "essences."

Ed

As I stated to LP that was a supernatural event and not a treatise on genetics. There are no passages in the bible about genetics.

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Ed: As far as age of the earth, the scriptures actually don't give an age of the earth. Rim: Unless you're willing to postulate day-age creation with two-billion-year-long days, it sure as hell (ahem ) rules out a 15 billion year old universe.

Maybe creation week occurred 15 billion years ago or maybe the processes of Genesis 1:1 took 14 billion years or more and then creation week occurred. The bible doesnt say how long it took for God to create "the heavens and the earth".

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Ed: See my earlier post about the sequence of life's development and the flood. Rim: Please direct me to it.

A global flood which gradually overcame first the sea and then the land explains the primary order of major groups in the fossil record (sea to land)just as well as macroevolutionary theory. Though I am not saying that ALL fossils are a result of the flood. The amount would depend how long ago the flood occured. Erosion may have destroyed most of the fossils from the flood.

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Ed: Actually according to the great linguist Noam Chomsky there is evidence of one original language that later diversified fitting what the scriptures teach. Rim: Notice the little weasle word: "diversify." So vague it could support almost anything, from an evolutionary paradign of language origin to the "special creations" of languages taught in the Bible. It's well know that students of language development think that all languages developed from a "common ancestor," less frequently heard is the idea that all the modern languages were developed as a punishment for building a tower, which, despite your vague whitewashing, is what the Scripture teaches. Unless you're a "micro-evolutionist" when it comes to language. I have half a mind to write Mr. Choamsky about how his ideas are being misrepresented here.

Such a reason for the diversification of language cannot be discovered just by studying language itself.

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Ed: I didn't say it proves it but is just a piece of the larger puzzle. There IS independent documentary evidence for Jesus and his miracles. Rim: PUT UP OR SHUT UP.

See my post to LP.

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Ed: Almost all biologists agree that the distinction between life and non-life is real so you are going against the majority of scientists. Rim: Another dual set of arguments ad populum and ad actoritam. Erroneous ones, in this case, as this statement is a flat-out lie. Look into virology, to see what I mean. The distinction is nowhere near as fine as you present it. For a more clear demonstration, define "life" for us. You can't draw distinctions without definitions. Many definitions of life are flawed as either to exclusive or to broad, and all are arbitrary and parochial. Here's an interesting article: Is fire alive? What is Life?

From a biologist's perspective viruses are obviously not alive. Only to those not very familiar with biology think viruses might be alive. The 7 main characteristics of life from BIO 101 are:
1. Living things are highly ordered.
2. Living things take energy from their environment.
3. Living things respond actively to their environment.
4. Living things are adapted to their environment.
5. Living things develop (development is not the same thing as change).
6. Living things reproduce themselves.
7. The information that each organism needs to survive, develop, and reproduce is segregated within the organism and passed on to its offspring.

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Ed: Louis Pasteur disproved spontaneous generation 100 years ago. Rim: Point please? And please count LP's commentary on this as my own.

In other words he disproved abiogenesis.

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Ed: It may be theoretically possible for persons to come from the impersonal but such a theory is irrational that is my point. Rim:It is not a point at all, as this "irrationality" is unproven. If it is theoretically possible, then that strikes your causal/developmental barrier down. You have no point, no argument, to stand on.

No, theoretically anything is possible, but some theories are more logical than others and claiming that somehow the impersonal can produce the personal is illogical.

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Ed: The difference is based on substance it is not just qualitative. Rim:Elaborate please.

Persons have a mind, will, and conscience, non-persons don't.

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Ed: No evolutionary sequence has given an adequate scenario of life developing from non-life Yes, that's what abiogenesis is for. Not evolution. Try to get your terms straight, it makes you look slightly less like an ass.

See above about Mr. Pasteur.

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Ed: or the impersonal developing into the personal. Rim: But your distinction between "personal" and "impersonal" seems fundamentally flawed. You have agreed yourself that certain animals have aspects of the peronality. It seems, then, that the delineation between "personal" and "impersonal" is scalar, not binary. This is exactly what we'd expect from an evolutionary development of "personal" aspects.

I am referring to the ultimate cause not the process by which the effect was achieved. God may have guided or intervened at times in evolution to produce persons and part of that guidance may have resulted in animals that have aspects of personhood.

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Ed: I am not saying that it PROVES that such a thing is not possible Rim:THEN YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT. Everything else is a distraction. You need to prove your causal/developmental barrier before I have to knock it down.

Nothing can be proven with absolute certainty except your own existence and that only to yourself.

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Ed: only that it demonstrates that such a belief is not as rational as a personal cause. Rim:You're free to say that, even though it's completely false.

Just saying it is false doesn't mean that it is.

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Ed: No, morality comes from God's objective moral character. Rim: So god is beyond morals? Right, he's amoral. But how can that be? Morality doesn't come from amorality, right?

Who said God is amoral? I said God has a moral character. In fact the foundation of morality is God's character. That is the point of my moral arguement.

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Ed:All of these people were guilty of rebelling against the king of the universe. Rim: It's this type of half-assed thinking that cultism germinates. Even the babies ripped from their mothers' wombs? They rebeled against god? Every pregnant woman was in open revolt against god? Every woman taken by Hebrew soldiers as personal playthings after their families were slaughtered was a god-hater? Those little kids joking about the prophet's bald head were in such revolt against god that they deserved to be mauled to death by bears? And all the animals and plants destroyed in the flood? They, too, were part of the revolution? Such horseshit. There are simple, humane solutions to these problems well within the grasp of an omnipotent being. But, then again, that's what we'd expect from an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being, and as you said, god's full of surprises. Your god chose to be a cruel, heartless motherfucker. What a pisser, that god it! He had me fooled. Please, please stop thinking with your ass, if you can't avoid talking out of it.

All human beings have an innate desire to rebel against the true God. God probably was rescuing the babies from going to hell before their later more serious behavior kicked in as adults raised in a barbarous society. The destruction of animals was an unfortunate side effect of man's rebellion against God. In fact there is evidence that man's rebellion has had a corrupting effect upon the entire universe. God was demonstrating the extreme seriousness of man's rebellion. The prophet was God's representative on earth, it is as though they were mocking God himself. No women were taken as playthings by hebrew soldiers. They became wives of hebrew soldiers because being a single woman in ancient times was basically an invitation to be raped or dying from starvation. So by becoming their wives they were given safe and secure lives with food and the chance to have children in a more humane society than the one they had lived in.

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Ed: How is describing something with a mind, will, and conscience as a person a tautology? Rim:Stop avoiding the issue. You defined personal as what makes me a person. If you can't see that that's a tautology, then I can't help you.

And part of what makes you a person is a mind, will and conscience. Now do you understand?

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Ed: Because throughout all of human experience that is the only source of such things that has been observed. Rim: See LP.

See my response to LP.

[b] See above about logical theories and illogical theories.

This is the end of Part 4 of my response.

Datheron

I love it when Ed goes into hyper-assertive mode with vague references:

I bet that just our evolution alone a few hundred thousand years ago caused a chain reaction of supernovas across the Universe. <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

lpetrich

If that bit of genetic engineering is a miracle, it is not presented as one in the Bible; in fact, it's only one example of an old bit of folklore: maternal impressions. Lamarckism has been around much longer than poor old Lamarck.

Very ingenious. But it would be easier to regard Genesis 1 as comparable to the Earth's four corners in the Book of Revelation.

Flood Geology is long-discredited sauropod dung. There is zero evidence for anything like Noah's Flood in the last 400 million years -- at least. It would have left some big mixed-up sediment deposits, which are simply not found. Instead, the sediment deposits form nice layers with specific fossils, which correlate nicely across the globe. Ed, I suggest that you study some geology before sounding off on this subject.

Furthermore, Genesis 1 gets a lot of the appearance order just plain wrong; it states that flying animals came before land ones, and that angiosperms (fruit trees, etc.) came before land animals.

Also, the sea-to-land order is a natural result of origin in bodies of water; living on land requires lots of adaptations to slow down water loss while doing gas exchange with the air. Thus, sea before land qualifies as a lucky hit.

On the contrary, it is a reasonable extrapolation from the recorded history of human languages. I suggest that you try comparing Latin and the Romance languages some time.

These 7 attributes describe viruses multiplying inside their host cells; outside those cells, viruses are inactive.

Sheesh, Ed, what will it take to show you that Louis Pasteur had done no such thing? Here's an analogy:

Let's say that you are concerned with the color of crows. Every one you have ever seen is black, but only one white crow is necessary to show that this is not a universal rule. Louis Pasteur is like a careful birdwatcher in your neighborhood who only records the colors of well-illuminated crows in full view. But he has not seen all the world, and there might be some distant place where there are some white crows.

You haven't explained why, Ed.

However, mind, will, and conscience develop as each individual grows; does a fertilized egg cell have any of these?

Extraterrestrial visitors or time travelers could also have done that. And many of the features of Earth life could be due to their limited powers and even fallibility ("Why did you make Earth life dependent on something rare like phosphorus?" "Putting phosphorus in nucleic acids seemed like a good idea at the time.").


If there is any positive evidence for any such designing going on. Which there isn't.

This is so harebrained that I'm at a loss for words. I'm a creator of programs, and I try to make them faithfully obedient. As to free will, read what Jesus Christ said about removing parts of one's body that lead one astray. By extension, if free will causes wicked behavior, then get rid of it.

It might be better to keep people from creating "barbarous societies". I do that all the time with all the software that I create.

As if God was not capable of saving them. :-P

???

So God has a skin thinner than Kleenex?

What an absurd fantasy. That's like saying that the Japanese armed forces in WWII had done a favor to some 200,000 "comfort women" by giving them employment and protection in exchange for them sexually servicing Japan's troops. Does Ed agree?

[ January 09, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

GunnerJ

LP, I can't take this any more. In a while, I'm going to try to respond to Ed's replies in a civil manner (and, hopefully, bring some new material to the table that you haven't already presented wonderfully ). But I can't deal with so much innane ass-crap. I fear I may pick up some stupidity by osmosis.

Ed

See my post about certainty.

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Ed: Yes evidence can only be observed in this universe but scientists make assumptions all the time about things that cannot be observed, ie the past. Rim:Bullshit! Inferences made about the past are beased on evidence from the past! Do a little brainwork before you type things up on the screen, ok?

No need for the crudity. Yes, and inferences about the cause of the universe are based on evidence from the universe.


[b] No, two rocks under a tree cannot be at the same place at the same time and in the same relationship (Law of Non-contradiction) whether or not a human is thinking about it or even whether any humans exist.

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Ed: helium and hydrogen are inadequate to produce living things and personal beings. Therefore the cause must also be sufficient to produce those things also. Rim:More assertion based on unproven premises. This is getting embarrasing for you, Ed.

Ok, give an example where helium and hydrogen were empirically observed producing a living thing.

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Ed: Theoretically a pure unity could produce a diversity within a unity Then, once again, YOU HAVE NO ARGUMENT WHATSOEVER.

See above about theories.

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Ed: but it is not as rational an assumption than that the cause is also a diversity within a unity. Rim: Bullshit! By this logic it would be irrational to assume that I can make a UBB post because it doesn't have my properties (6'4", brown hair, brown eyes, composed of moslty water and some carbon and hydrogen). Can you please pull that head of yours out from between your asscheecks at try using some logic? I'm not (just) making fun of you, I am trying to pull you out of this illogical circle you're trying to goad me into running.

No, UBB requires an intelligent mind therefore it is rational to assume that you have one.

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Ed: How is it contradicted in the bible? The bible teaches the transcendence of God. Rim: The various reference to god as a "heavenly father." The word heaven meant in ancient times the sky. God, appearently, lived in the upper atmosphere. High-altitude test flights seem unimpeeded by this. Various passages talk about God having a face, and at one point in the Bible, God instructs someone not to look at his face, but his "backside" where it's safer. I've also seen some advice in the Bible for armies on campaign: Take a shovel with you to cover up your latrine, as God is walking with you, and he doesn't like the smell. Moses's escape from the Pharoh was assisted by God blowing his nose to part the Red Sea. Hardly qualities of a trancendant god.

God has to use anthropomorphisms in order explain what he is like to humans, he is a spirit and does not have a physical body. I am not sure what passage you are referring to, but the part of the actual reason God may have told them to cover their latrine was to prevent disease. In addition to demonstrating that God expects absolute moral purity. And stated that the smell was an offense in order not to confuse them with a treatise on pathogens transferred from human waste.

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Ed: I never said it was unique to christianity but with the additional evidence, it points to the christian God. Rim: No, it really doesn't, just to a personal, DinU, trancendant god. This could be the Xian god, but it could be others we have no knowledge of. And since your "additional evidence" is absurd, you are still without a case.

After you reach this point then you try to communicate with this God and he confirms his existence by experience.

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Ed: His attributes are learned from his communication to us ie the bible. Rim: Haven't we been down this road before? Stop this ad nauseum argumentation and come up with some facts. That is, if you actually have another strategy besides endlessly repeating flawed arguments.

How is that a flawed arguement?

Quote:

Ed: Since only the bible teaches that the cause of the universe is diversity within a unity Rim: More arguing from an unproven premise.

Ok prove it wrong.


[b] Fraid so if you want to have any type of discussion.

Jack the Bodiless

Let's try a few more examples of this fallacious argument.
Another:
Another:
Ed, just because something hasn't been observed, that doesn't mean that it cannot happen! There are no known obstacles to the carving of a statue of Woody Allen, the killing of a President with a hammer, the formation of a volcanic mountain, or the evolution of humans on a planet formed from elements formed in stars formed from hydrogen and helium.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume that these things cannot happen. If you wish to declare that such things are impossible, YOU must provide a REASON for this.

HRGruemm

However, 1 mole of oxygen and 1 mole of nitrogen can be in the same place, since, unlike rocks, these gases will mix at any ratio. IOW, your statement about rocks is an empirical statement about the physics of rocks, and by no means an example of the law of non-contradiction.

The latter of course is based on the semantics of "and" and "not"; because of their truth tables, "A and not-A" always yields "false", whatever the truth value of A. It is that simple.

HRG.