Disprove, rebut . . . gotta admit, the difference is pretty subtle.
Hmmm. I don’t know, ambushed. I think you’re all right, but then there’s that “secular religion” thing from the other thread, and now there’s this rebuttal that doesn’t disprove, but does indeed change a few believers’ minds.
Hmmm.
Just answer one question: If God wanted to get rid of all the evil people in the world, why didn’t He just snap His fingers and make them go away? Is God powerful enough to do that? Wouldn’t that have been much less messy than flooding the whole world and killing off 99.99999999% of all the plants and animals in existence?
God’s a show-off. 
Sigh
I mean no personal disrespect, MrO, but it seems clear to me that you are parsing my words incorrectly, with an odd sort of tilt – emphasizing some words but ignoring others – and in the process missing the entire meaning.
I am not playing games with words like “rebut” or “disprove”. As a writer, I generally try not to use the same words over and over, and will instead substitute synonyms to keep my prose from becoming stilted (this post will be an exception).
Let me try yet again. No one can disprove or rebut or invalidate (or other synonym) a religion scientifically. However, one CAN disprove or rebut or invalidate (or other synonym) any empirical claims made by a religion!
To summarize…
Religion —> Science can’t disprove, rebut, etc.
Empirical claims made in or by a religion —> Science CAN disprove, rebut, etc.
Surely I made this plain to everyone else in my earlier posts. It’s not a complicated or even slightly controversial statement.
Noah’s Ark and the Biblical Flood story are examples of empirical claims made in or by a religion. Thus, these stories CAN fruitfully be examined by science and disproved, rebutted, invalidated! Note that even when these stories are disproved, rebutted, invalidated, the underlying religion is NOT disproved, rebutted, invalidated, or whatever, since the religion includes a vast number of NON-EMPIRICAL claims that science cannot touch.
In other words, only those elements of a religion that constitute empirical claims are subject to scientific scrutiny, whereas the rest of the religion is not.
Got it?
And using scientific disprovals/rebuttals/invalidations/whatevers of some of the Bible’s empirical claims, I have indeed successfully convinced people to reject their previous religious beliefs and embrace a more rational and skeptical outlook.
Please note that I’ve already addressed that matter there. The concept of a secular religion is simply not oxymoronic!
By the way, I think your’re okay, too.
Perhaps you don’t make your points as clearly as you think? This is not the first time you’ve said this and I’m not the only person you’ve said it to.
My point was that there “really is no use saying that kind of thing.” You tell some Christian why X couldn’t have happened, and he agrees, and then he goes and talks to another Christian, or he preacher or something, and he is again presented with more pseudo-science and again confused. Creationists/Literalists are slippery folk when it comes to disproving claims… they’ve got biased evidence and bad science stacked a mile high.
If disproving the claims keeps you firmly seperated from Christianity, then more power to you. It’s just not gonna do a whole heap for the millions of borderline-delusional believers. If you read Jack Chick tracts you’ll see his gross depictions of how suddenly after being confronted with “the truth”, a non-believer just breaks down on the spot, repents, and is saved. This is obviously rediculous, and it’s equally rediculous to expect the reverse to happen.
Of course not.
I can’t help suspecting from your other posts that you may well be vindictive and short-fused or something, which might possibly be limiting your perspectives. Crypto-deist, weak agnostic, hell you can call me a Hindu with Zoroastrian tendencies for all I care. What I’m saying doesn’t come from any ideology but from objectivism and open-mindedness. My personal philosophy is that you can never reject anything absolutely, merely have an understanding that its not likely. If you wanna see this as ineffectual or weak-minded be my guest.
I don’t intend to create enemies on this board, so if we can both keep this civil, perhaps we can agree to disagree and move on.
Okay, ambushed, now you get your concession. No, let’s go ahead and make it a full apology. I did inadvertently ignore the clearly-stated fact that it was the empirical claims, not the religion that made those claims, that you were rebutting. Of course, there is a clear distinction. My apologies.
If I have any defense, it would be only that I suspect that most believers would hear your rebuttal and, even if they found themselves unable to respond, continue to have faith in both the religion and in the claims made by that religion, no matter how preposterous. To some believers, the religion and the literal truth of its claims are inseparable. They would probably mumble something about it all being beyond our understanding, that God isn’t required to obey the laws of physics, or something. But I’ll also admit that I wasn’t thinking of that at all; I just overlooked it. Carry on, please.
Ah, I see. It’s my perspectives that are limited. Got it.
Is that the part where you insist the Christians cannot change their minds when presented with reason and evidence? And that there’s no point to my arguments?
You may call me a liar if you wish, but I was a believer until I was presented with reason and scientific evidence, whereupon a “Jack Chick”-like conversion took place in short order. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people who have never even heard the scientific criticisms of the Flood fable. Why is it so important to you to squelch me?
Don’t agree that assessment? You wrote:
Now, I don’t want to make enemies either. I just have trouble understanding why you took off on me for making some straightforward observations about the Noah’s Ark story. Forgive me, but my neck gets a bit out of joint when I’m told to censor myself for no good reason or that no one could possibly care what I have to say or that it is of no use! Wouldn’t you find it offensive if I told you that something you wrote is pointless?
With that said, I, too would like to move on, hopefully leaving any personal animosity behind us. I genuinely respect your views and writing, Kaje. Please don’t interpret the fact that I disagree with you to be a sign of animus between us.
My admirable colleague MrO, you are a most gracious gentleman. Your words humble me, and I hope you weren’t put off by the somewhat injured tone of my previous reply to you. I thank you for your understanding!
Hey so uh, ambushed and MrO… wanna go grab a beer or something?
I was gonna suggest a group hug, but a beer would be good.
Thanks for the invite, you two. I’d love to join you in a hug and a beer!
Sorry if I came off as unfriendly or pedantic. I only get like that when I’m debating/arguing, which (perhaps unfortunately) is one of the pleasures I get from visiting the Land that Cecil Built.
Thank you both for your patience and for straining my brain!
I might add, with respect to the other thread, that I too can get caught up in an argument. As I said in that thread its often useful to take up other perspectives and argue them, except that sometimes in the midst of that argument I can forget what I had intended to do in the first place. And of course this inevitably leads to ad hominem arguments which are not productive at all.
An allusion to a 1960’s Bill Cosby album, god love it!!
If the geological evidence points to a Black Sea flood, and most of the cultures in the area seem to have similar flood legends, then it’s compelling to think that the whole story
boils down to something that really did happen, only on a much more modest scale. It seems more than plausible that at least one person living in the southwest corner of what was to become the Black Sea might have seen a massive body of water on the other side of the hill, that was several hundred feet higher than the ground he was living on. He might well have noticed salt-water springs appearing on his side of the divide, and put two and two together. And so this person, let’s call him–well, Noah–decides to build a large houseboat and gather up his family and at least some of his livestock. Meanwhile, all his neighbors think he’s a fool for wasting his time. “Where are you going to get a boat trailer for something that big?”, they scoff. The flood comes, and the survivors pass down the tale to their descendants. Writing is invented and the story is set down, by this time very much exaggerated.
… they’re gone for a week. When they return, the guy says, “Long time no see.”
And the raven says, “Wrong. Long time all sea.”