CB, don’t tell me what to do. Especially when it’s obvious that you have no clue what you’re talking about.
You have shown that you don’t even understand where I am, so there is no possible way I will believe that you understand it. For one, there is no “angst” and no difficulty in my position (again showing you don’t actually understand it). Don’t try to play psychologist; you’re no good at it.
Indeed. And what makes you think your idea is any less of a myth than, say, the Norse gods?
Those are several reasons for belief, yes. Indeed, we’ve had whole threads on the topic here. Perhaps you should go search them out.
Excuse you? I have no “theory of ‘everything from nothing’” and even if I did, it certainly wouldn’t involve an unscientific concept like God.
Man’s belief in God may be a product of evolution, yes. God, Himself, either exists or He does not, and it has nothing to do with us.
Man, you ought to go on tour – you can do incredible twists and turns of logic that are astounding to behold!
Your conclusion does not at all follow from anything else that has been said.
Again, no.
Now, are you ever planning to answer the questions that have been asked of you? At least two people (one of them being me) have asked you about your beliefs, but you have managed to ignore those questions. I don’t think it was accidental. If you fail to answer them now, we will all know it wasn’t accidental.
This is my first visit/post to the Straight Dope message board and I must admit that I have found the discussions here to be very intriguing. I have one thing to add to the current discussion and a question to add to the pot. First, the question.
I have been told by a friend of mine that in order for photosynthesis to evolve over 30 separate mutations would be required to occur around the same time. Further, that each of these mutations would be useless in and of themselves and would only be beneficial once combined with the rest of the aforementioned mutations. Finally that the chances of 30+ non-beneficial mutations occurring simultaneously, thus causing the evolution of photosynthesis is (from a statistical standpoint) nearly impossible. I must admit that while I am very logical in nature (by profession I’m a computer programmer) and possess a fair depth of knowledge in some areas, I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to more in depth questions of biology and evolution. Could someone provide me with some information about the veracity of the above statement?
Now for the addition to the discussion…
Correct me if I am in error but it seems to me as if some people consider the scientific evidence (or lack thereof) regarding scriptural events proves or disproves the existence of God. I submit the following for consideration:
God is outside the realm of observation and therefore not subject to the scientific method. Others have stated this in previous posts and I believe it to be true.
If we assume that God is a perfect being then all products from this perfect being would necessarily need to support a perfect design. To be otherwise would suggest fallacy on the part of a perfect being which is a paradox.
A principal tenet of all religions pertaining to God AFAIK is faith. Faith is essentially the belief in an idea or thing without proof of its existence.
Conclusion: If God provides “proof” of his existence at any time then it invalidates the need for faith. Therefore any creation of God (i.e. man, the world etc.) can in no way provide direct indication of divine intervention if he intends to preserve the tenet of faith.
I understand that there can be no clear solution to this issue, I merely present the above idea as a possible reason for the “If there is a God why would he mislead us with scriptural content contradictory to our understanding of scientific data?” line of reasoning.
Grim_Beaker
(you know… the evil muppet who comes for your soul when you die!)
To the world you might be one person but to one person you might be the
world.
Interesting thoughts. I think most will agree with you that a faith based belief in God is not scientifically disputable.
Issue is specifically being taken with “creation science” which seems to have a pronounced tendency to ignore whatever aspects of science or the scientific method which disagree with creation. As such it’s not science at all.
As for photosynthesis, it’s process of evolution is pretty well understood. Your friend is incorrect. A quick search on Alta Vista on the words “evolution of photosynthesis” will yield a host of information to dispel this assertion in the eyes of most reasonable folk.
I’ll have to agree, although I am unfamiliar with the particular case of photosynthesis. It used to be the bombadier beetle (talk.origins has an explanation of how it could have evolved.) Now it’s moved towards photosynthesis and suchlike, most likely because laymen can’t really respond to “30 (unspecified) mutations would be needed to evolve a system which you know next to nothing about,” whereas a reasonably intelligent person can imagine a beetle developing new anatomical structures, even if they don’t have a PhD in comparative anatomy.
It’s worth pointing out how full of it Behe is. When I learned about the molecular structure of cilia, my first response was, “Wow- it’s so obvious how this evolved!” Behe’s response was, “Wow- my inability to see how this evolved means that my genius surpasses that of Einstein and Newton!”
Sorry I haven’t responded in so long. I was away for a week (in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, which I’m not sorry about!), and have not yet caught up on stuff. Now, addressing your questions:
There’s a lack of evidence for a flood, and many assumptions about what’s possible or not. Not quite the same as evidence against, especially considering that most of the reasonableness of the assumptions falls away when it’s explicitly stated as a miracle.
No, I’m saying that if Mormonism appeared to meet the standard of proof as I understand it, I’d be forced to confront those who presented the standard of proof to me and ask why, considering that bit of evidence, they still consider it a valid proof of the Judaic religion.
An analogy: You studied high-school physics from a teacher who has a Ph. D. in physics. Something arises to challenge your understanding of what you learned. Do you immediately assume that your teacher was wrong, or do you ask him how the new information you just acquired fits into what he taught you?
Same idea.
All Jewish understanding of G-d (and supernatural concepts at all) comes from the Torah. The Torah is what gives us our definition of G-d…and bases it on what the Jewish people witnessed at Sinai. For example, the belief that G-d lacks any physical form is expressed in the following way in Deuteronomy (not an exact quote; more of a paraphrase): “Remember that when you stood at Sinai, you saw no form on the day that G-d spoke to you.”
The Bible makes a number of falsifiable statements. I could give you one right now, but it’s so much more interesting if I have the exact Talmudic discussion about it, so mark this for reference later.
But even if G-d created the universe from whole cloth, he still did the impressive things you describe, e.g., he created the DNA code to allow for perpetuation of species, he created seed plants, he created spiders who can weave webs by instinct, stuff like that.
This may underline where you and I depart in our philosophy. As someone who was taught to think critically for myself, I have as many sources of information as possible, not just one fountain of truth. I have no problem believing that my high-school teacher was wrong (or purposely vague) on issues. In fact, he most likely was wrong about gravity (and other things), but what he taught served a purpose for my level of understanding at that time. I was taught new ideas in college that were supported by the evidence, so I did not have to go back to my high-school teacher in order to validate them. And if he held that the earth was flat despite all the available evidence, I would still have to conclude that he was in error, no matter how much I valued his intellect.
"After leading the evolutionist through all of the steps that would have had to have happened in order for the world to come into existence Rabbi Tatz delcares “You have more bitachon (faith) than I do.”**
[/QUOTE]
Sorry, this is from a strict evolutionist/atheist. True, 20 billion years ago the odds of me sitting here right now typing this message were astronomically small. Yet here I am. The same thing goes for a deck of cards. Randomly take away all the cards but one. Say the ace of spades is the last card. The ace had relatively small odds of being the last card, but one card had to remain. Same thing with the universe, albeit on a larger scale. Something had to happen. Why us, who knows. But just because the odds are small doesnt mean its impossible.
First of all, it’s not clear to me whether you feel that circular logic is an acceptable part of rational argumentation, just as you feel that it is acceptable to dispense with Occam’s Razor. Is this the case? The reason I ask is because you use circular logic quite often, in declaring that the Torah must be true because it passes its own test, and other religions fail that test only because the Torah declares their conceptions of God to be invalid.
As for “lack of evidence of a Flood,” I’m not sure what you would consider to be evidence that a Flood did not occur. Certainly the climatological record as recorded in ice cores demonstrates unequivocally that a Flood did not happen (in fact, the ice caps would have floated away during a global Flood.) How do you explain them? Since you believe that sloths were not miraculously transported to South America, then I am assuming that you believe that there is a scientific explanation for the ice core data.
As for your analogy to high school physics teachers, no, I don’t go running back to my high school physics teacher every time I have a physics question- I examine the evidence on all sides of the question and come to my own conclusion.
You claim that the Bible makes falsifiable claims. If these claims are supported by evidence, I suggest you go to the “strut your stuff” thread, and we can discuss them there. If these claims were falsified, would that mean that God did not appear to the Jews at Sinai? Because my original point was not that all of your claims are nonfalsifiable. My point was that it is irrational to make even one nonfalfisiable claim.
As for your statements about God creating the universe out of whole cloth, all I can say is that you’ve completely missed the point of my argument and should go back and reread it.
That might be a valid accusation, if it only applied to religions that existed at the time of the origination of the Torah (whatever time you say that was). However, all major world religions (with the possible exception of Hinduism) arose afterward. How could the writers (assuming they were human, and assuming that they were merely keeping a self-interested, self-promoting agenda) have constructed a set of criteria to test for future-arising religions?
As I’ve said, assuming that the icy regions had been cold all along, it’s entirely possible that the rain which fell in those regions froze when it fell.
Even when you know that the teacher’s knowledge of the subject is greater than yours? (That’s why I specified that the guy has a Ph. D.) If that’s true, then quite frankly, I think you rely too much on your own reasoning abilities. Experts are there for their knowledge to be drawn on, not ignored in favor of our own mediocre level of knowledge.
Yeah, I opened up that thread and immediately saw DavidB’s open challenge. What a moderator. No thanks. But…
To put it bluntly, yes. It’s certain things written in the Torah which were put there to say, “Test me with this.”
Well, then, I’m afraid that that’s a standard I can’t possibly meet, because much of what the Torah says deals in spiritual, rather than physical, matters…things which almost by definition are not provable by scientific means, and not falsifiable by physical beings. However, the physical claims it makes which can be falsified do, in fact, hold true. To me and millions of other Orthodox Jews, this translates into added credibility for the book as a whole…but such a concept os obviously one you don’t support.
Then why is there no trace of such a thick frozen layer, which would have to be the same order of magnitude of thickness as the depth of the supposed flood?
How is it not circular logic to point to the Torah as proof of the Torah? I don’t see how comparisons between the religions of the time and the religions of the present day really changes that fact. You have said that the Torah is true. Why? It passes its own test. Why doesn’t Shinto pass that test? The Torah says it doesn’t.
You are using a straw man argument with regard to the Flood, since I never said that the ice caps would melt. I said they would float, and that even if they didn’t, the Flood would be detectable in the climatological record. Why don’t the ice caps contain a thick band of uniform ratio between O16 and O18?
You state that I rely too much on my reasoning abilities when I decide to make up my own mind. What you are forgetting is that I do draw on the expertise of others- I just use my reasoning ability to make decisions about which ones to believe. I suspect that our dispute over how to deal with evidence for Mormonism is more a problem of communcation than real disagreement, because it seems to me that you’re saying that if Mormonism seemed to meet your standard of proof, you’d ask the rabbis whether there was more to the standard of proof than you had originally thought.
Since you claim that the Torah makes objective, falsibiable claims which are supported by the evidence, then let’s hear them!
JonF: Your point is identical to Ben’s #2, so in replying to him, I’m addressing you as well…just without the inconvenience of multiple quote-posts.
Ben:
Because the Torah challenges doubters amongst the Jews to seek if any other nation makes such an incredible claim (mass communication from G-d (as defined by the Israelite religion)). Even if you maintain that the author of the Torah tailored this criterion to exclude all other known religions, he couldn’t logically predict that other religions in the future wouldn’t make such a claim, thus undermining the Torah by its own criteria. The only possible answers are: the author is so far very, very lucky; the author knows that you can’t tell people that their ancestors witnessed something en masse and have them believe it unless it was actually true, and he had a guarantee that it would never be true.
This applies only because the Jewish and Shinto definitions of G-d are different. However, there are other religions in which that definition isn’t different…Islam for example. However, Mohammed claimed a personal communication…not a mass communication, and thus the criteria in Deuteronomy still holds the Israelite experience unique.
(By the biblical account,) The flood occurred over a period of 40 days; the water started subsiding after 150; the Earth was back to normal after a single year. Is this O16/O18 stuff really sensitive enough to pin down a certain section of ice that precisely? Or would it have gotten lumped together with all of the general ice buildup in its general time period?
More accurately, I believe what I said was that I’d ask them how they’d explain that Mormon anomaly. Why would I go back to them for an explanation rather than just discard what they say? Because, they’re the [metaphorical] PhD’s who taught me the high school physics I know[/metaphorical], and therefore might have information which I hadn’t been taught or hadn’t understood when I was taught it. I’m not specifically seeking or assuming the existence of additional details in the standard of proof; I’m seeking their explanation of this contradiction to my understanding of their teachings, and it’s possible that their explanation might include additional details.
But, speaking of that Mormon thing, I’ve looked up a Mormonism thread on this board, and it seems to me to not meet the Deuteronomy criteria in two ways: 1) the mass communication was not with G-d as described by the Torah, but with JC of Nazareth, and 2) the receivers of that communication did not hand down the information to their children, who are today’s Mormons; they (according to the Mormon story as I understand it from the Mormons’ own description) died out, their chronicler appeared in a dream to Joseph Smith, who transcribed/translated the writings and then retold the story. The whole thing hinges on the word of Joseph Smith.
Well, here’s a paraphrase from the Talmud on the subject:
(quote from Torah, Leviticus)“And the pig, which has split hooves but does not chew its cud”, etc. Why does the Torah list the forbidden animals with only one sign (of being kosher)? We know without that listing that those animals would not be permitted, because the Torah requires both signs! This is to tell us that these are the only animals which have only one sign.
[interruption from me]The Torah lists 4 such animals, 3 which chew their cud, and one (pig) with split hooves. Of the 3 which chew their cuds, we recognize the first one listed as being a camel, but the translation of the other two is in doubt. Modern bibles usually translate them as rabbit and hyrax, but this is uncertain, especially since neither animal truly chews its cud. Therefore, I’m focusing only on the pig, as it’s clearly identifiable.[/interruption from me]
Was Moses a hunter or trapper that he knows all animals? No! Rather, these verses were included as a response to those who would say the Torah is not from heaven.(end Talmud)
So the upshot of this is that the Torah specifically says that there is no animal in the world that has split hooves and does not chew its cud except for the pig. Now, we modern humans have explored a lot more of the world than the ancient Israelites possibly could have, and discovered some really odd animals. In fact, within the last few years, there have been several new species of large mammal discovered in Vietnam! But no one has yet discovered an animal with split hooves that does not chew its cud that is not clearly identifiable as a kind of pig.
That’s one example. There are more, of course; one example out of the entire Torah is a hit rate lower than for Nostradamus’s “prophecies,” and couldn’t be expected to convince anyone of anything. However, you saw how long I took above. This post is long enough as it is.
I believe thatBen is arguing that the ice sheet would have been destroyed (by flotation) during such a flood. It wouldn’t require much precision to detect that.
O16/O18 varies on a yearly basis, so as-deposited it has a precision of a year or better. Diffusion blurs the results, but I don’t know at what rate.
Annual ice core layers are easily discernable visually for 1,000 year old ice cores. With the appropriate equipment, annual layers can be detected at least 85,000 years ago (Physical Properties Research on the GISP2 Ice Core). If the ice cap was not destroyed by a flood, a flood would have left some markings or muddlings of other markings in the ice. I think it’s safe to say that a global flood on the order of a few thousand years ago would be easily detectable.
Interesting approach you have there, cmkeller. You list the part about the pig as being some sort of “evidence” that the bible is literally true, yet in the same set of verses you discount as “translation error” the obvious mistake about rabbits chewing their cud. If you dismiss errors from your own sources in this manner, it is easy to maintain a self-reinforcing delusion that the Bible (or the Torah) is infallible.
That’s not true. I say it’s a translation error because it is a translation error; the result of gentiles who feel the need to attach a word in their language to Hebrew even if they can’t manage a precise translation of it. Amongst Jews, words we don’t have a tradition of how to translate, we just leave in the original Hebrew with no problem, and shafan and arneves (the two other animals which chew their cuds but lack split hooves) fall into this category, as do a number of other bird and animal species named in the Torah.
I’ve looked at the sites you’ve mentioned. The first one, besides having the obvious anti-Bible slant (“Biblical Phonies” page? Boy, that sounds nice and objective…), goes back only 1000 years, as you said. The second site says that those measurements were taken only to a depth of 300 m. It says on that site that their calculations are based on an average annual water accumulation of 25 cm. According to my calculations, then, their measurements only go back about 1200 years…about the same as the first site, and nowhere near far back enough to look for the Biblical flood, which according to Biblical history, took place some 4500 years ago.
“A preliminary depth-age scale to 2811 m for the GISP2 core based on annual layer counting has been completed by D. Meese and the dating committee. Annual counts based on visual stratigraphy was initiated in the field and completed at the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) in Denver. This work was facilitated by use of a focused fiber optic light source that illuminated stratigraphic detail permitting essentially continuous layer counting to 2811 m, corresponding to ice at least 85,000 years old.”
They visually detected annual layers back to 85,000 years old between 0 and 2.8 km. A tad previous to your 4,500 years …