Tuesday Thought
Consider the following Old Testament claims believed by fundamentalists Christians, Jews, and Muslims:
To believe that no animals died (or therefore ate anything) originally, or that humans lived for 1,000 years is to exhibit a disconnect with reality so great that if the belief was not shared amongst millions we would surely call such believers mentally disabled. Ironically, if enough people believe an insane idea we call their conviction religion, whereas if the group of believers is small enough we lock them up.
On a political and social level this serves as a reminder that secular society must be defended, continually, from those who would gleefully pull us back into the dark ages of fear and oppression.
- Woman was created from a rib torn from man's side.
- Within the animal kingdom there was no animal death before Eve ate the apple.
- People lived up to 1,000 years of age.
- There was no rain before Noah's Ark and the flood.
- Noah fitted hundreds of millions of species from every corner of the globe on a boat, and then redistributed them after a global flood.
To believe that no animals died (or therefore ate anything) originally, or that humans lived for 1,000 years is to exhibit a disconnect with reality so great that if the belief was not shared amongst millions we would surely call such believers mentally disabled. Ironically, if enough people believe an insane idea we call their conviction religion, whereas if the group of believers is small enough we lock them up.
On a political and social level this serves as a reminder that secular society must be defended, continually, from those who would gleefully pull us back into the dark ages of fear and oppression.
posted by Joel at
3:18 PM
5 Comments:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/july/13.22.html
Who created you? It seems according to your position that everything we see and know is a mistake. But at some point you have to admit that there was an original creator. I find your position far more absurd than the concept that a creator as powerful as God would have to be to craft life could not make a boat to haul some animals around in.
Call me what you will, but if you will read the article posted here, you will see that you have some steep uphill philosophical and intellectual mountains to climb in order to defend your position. It is not as plainly without "holes" as you would contend.
The next time you are on top of some mountain taking in oxygen before you descend, look at the intricacy of all that lays before your eyes and tell me that it is a product of chance. While an open debate is healthy regarding these things, be well advised that your position is just as ridiculous as the "fundamental" beliefs you so readily dismiss.
Creationism posits a very, very complex being as the beggining of a very simple state of affairs. I see this is the ultimate example of shootings one's self in the foot. Plato pointed this out a long time ago: if you state that a god created everything, then what created god? There in lies the infinite regress. You can simply define him out of argument by saying he is eternal, but that is too easy.
If all life was created by a god then he surely deserves a failing grade. Why are 99% of all species that have ever existed now extinct? Why would he have created over 250,000 species of beatles alone? Why won't the Panda Bears have sex? The answer is we are all honed and created by nature's non-random caretaker: natural selection.
Evolution by natural selection is not a science of chance. It is a non-random mechanism which builds upon circumstantially beneficial mutations within DNA. It doesn't shoot in the dark, it selects for traits that benefit reproductive fitness. Please don't call it chance, it simply isn't. Richard Dawkins' book "Climbing Mount Improbable" explains the concept beautifully.
There is a lot in this discussion that makes me twitch. I want to word vomit in this comment box. But I'm gonna try to just focus on one thing at a time.
"You can simply define him out of argument by saying he is eternal, but that is too easy." --- Never, ever discount a truth/fact/theory simply because it is easy. That is a very poor reason.
The idea that humans are the end-all, be-all, top of the ladder, glorified beings, definitely makes me shake in my shoes. Joel, you of all people know how dumb humans can be. That's pretty much why you have this blog in the first place.
Once one can humble themselves and realize that there is One who is greater than humanity: God, then that person realizes that not everything has to follow the patterns of their flawed mind.
Plato, who also preached that we live in a world of shadows of the "true forms," but would never identify what/where these forms are, should have had no problem with the idea of the eternality of God. An eternal, all-powerful God, who gave his creation the power of choice, is a lot more of a logical system to adhere to than Plato's.
Over & out. till next time. :)
Hey Goober,
Yes Plato was an idealist when it came to the subject of knowledge but if you scratch the surface of Platonic formalism you won't find anything of substance philosophically, as his smart student Aristotle showed us. Plato's epistemology has been debunked for over 2,000 years.
Another thing, I'm no humanist. In an enormous universe it would be arrogant to use man as the measure of all things. JBS Haldane once said there are more wonders between heaven and earth than in the dreams of man. I believe that statement to be true on many levels. We humans are tiny creatures that have always thought we have a grasp on what is really true. Our history is a petty one full of all types of bad ideas.
Concerning (G)god(s). If you posit a supreme being as the creator of all things then that being must be a very complex thing indeed. Any 'thing' with creative powers of that level is not simple, and demands an answer as to it's existence. Simply stating that God is eternal is bad thinking, its an argument from personal incredulity: "Well how else could things have come about, it must have been God!"
Remember, the more you want something to be true the more you must question your own reasoning. Its easy to accept ideas we want to believe without examining the evidence properly.
Think about this, Christians claim to know things that even the most boastful and brilliant scientist doesn't know: the nature of reality, the cosmos, life, death, and everything in between. I think its ok to say we don't know everything; science and philosophy are inherently humbling disciplines: they are study of how much we don't know!
Indeed Joel,
the more I learn, the more I realize how much there is that I do not know. It can be discouraging, but completley inspiring at the same time.
I find your comment very interesting about the complexity of a creator. Indeed, I believe God to be very complex, a God of order, but still very complex. As complex as nature, the human body, and all other life systems are, He would HAVE to be complex. To me, the fact that the Bible paints God as eternal (on both ends) adds to his complexity. It is another thing which our human minds, having a beginning and an end, cannot fully understand. We can believe it to be true, but not fully understand it. That reasoning is not only found in religion however. There are many scientific processes, for example, that I can understand and map out the details of, but I still do not understand them.
Interesting thoughts, indeed...
I pity the people on this earth that are not willing to be challenged intellectually or otherwise. I'm glad you and I are of the same blood.
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