Proving anything from the Bible
Posted on: May 16, 2007 - 5:05am
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Proving anything from the Bible
I think that if one uses enough imagination in one's interpretation of that book, one can prove just about anything. So I offer a challenge: can anyone demonstrate biological evolution from the Bible? I myself have come up with such a "demonstration", which I will reveal after you other people take a stab at it. And you people may want to come up with challenges and "proofs" of your own.
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I fear the "Polly Wanna Cracker" response is comming.
It may take a stroll through "complexity" or "thermodynamics" or "macro" but you'll find in the end that all they have is the god of the gaps. When we dont know I'll stick my super hero in(incert name here).
"Pay no attention to the mythology behind the curtian" that is what you are dealing with here in their following answers.
Still it is interesting to see how elaberately people delude themeselves into belief in Hocus Pocus by trying to make science a square peg that fits in a round hole.
I hope I didn't chase away any potential chewtoys for you.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
The Bible, in essence, is a family book. It's only used as the celebration of a group on insiders (i.e. religious believers). It can't be used as evidence to prove anything to outsiders (i.e. non-believers).
I take pride in being a newb. I'm not all experienced and boring like the normies.
Lets not just pic on Christians here. The same can be said for all the Abrahamic holy books, and even the polytheistic religious writings prior.
It is hero worship. The polytheists and monotheists of the ancient world BOTH were under rulers who were superstitious and wealthy. These rich dictators, which is what a King, Ceazar(sp) or Pharo are, truely believed that magical beings gave them divine intitlement because of their ability to gain wealth and power.
The reality is that there was no magic behind King Tut's rule because of Ra or Osirus, fictional beings that the Egyptians believed were real. I dont think modern monotheism is any different.
All these writings are reflections of what the cultures projected as their altruism. Humans are capable of believing in magic wich is not real because they have not fully learned to stop their emotions from grabbing at the first thing that makes them feel good.
These ancient families, be they Caananite, or Egyptian, or Hebrew, incorperated their culture into what they wanted in a super hero. If you create that super hero, you feel that you are going to be protected, even after you die.
The problem throughout human history is that most humans would rather cling to something that makes them feel good, even if is a lie. I dont think modern monotheism should get a pass because it is popular today.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Now, how do you determine that something that makes humans feel good can be a lie? Isn't that offensive to that branch of metaphysics that says all positives are ultimate reality? To me, altruism sounds like a more rational determination of reality than what most people on these forums try to employ as a determination of reality.
I take pride in being a newb. I'm not all experienced and boring like the normies.
You people are going off on a tangent. I was asking if any of you people could come up with an interpretation of the Bible that demonstrates biological evolution. Not just compatibility with the Bible, an actual demonstration of evolution from the Bible. So can you people please see if you can come up with such a derivation?
And yes, one might say the same about other sacred books, like the Koran, various Hindu and Buddhist books, etc. Can one derive evolution from the Koran or the Vedas or whatever?
An interesting question. While I'm not a sceintific type, I have done a bit of reading on this subject. One of my favorite writers is Gerald Schroeder, a Jewish physicist. He examines the creation of the of the universe through Genesis, the Talmud, and the writings of several rabbinical writers of the Middle Ages, mostly Maimonides and Nahmanides.
I understand that his works fall into the category of "popular science", much like the works of Brian Greene (The Fabric of the Cosmos, The Elegant universe) on which my scanty understanding of physics is based.
Schroeder postulates a "cosmic clock" looking forward in time from the creation of the universe (the big bang) tuned to cosmic radiation at the moment when matter formed, reducing 15billion years to six days (I could expand on this if you like, but I'd have to dig up the books). Based on this, he develops the following timeline.
Biblical day one. 16 billion to 7 billion years ago. Genesis (1:1-5) creation of the universe, separation of light and dark. Big bang marks creation of the universe; light breaks free as electrons bond to form atomic nuclei; galaxies form.
Biblical day two. 7 billion to 4 billion years ago. Genesis (1:6-8) heavenly firmament forms. Disk of Milky Way forms; Sun forms.
Biblical day three. 4 billion to 2 billion years ago. Genesis (1:9-13) Oceans and dry land appear; plants appear; kabalah states this is only plant life. Earth cools and liquid water appears followed almost immediately by first life: bacteria and photosynthetic algae.
Biblical day four. 2 billion to 750million years ago. Genesis (1:14-19) Sun, moon and stars become visible in the heavens. Earth's atmosphere becomes transparent; photosynthesis produces oxygen rich atmosphere.
Biblical day five. 750 million to 250 million years ago. Genesis (1:20-23) first animal life swarms in the waters; followed by reptiles and winged animals. First multicellular animals; waters swarms with animal life having basic body plans of all future animals; winged insects appear.
Biblical day six. 250 million to 6,000 years ago. Genesis (1:24-31) land animals, mammals; humankind. Massive extinction detroys over 90% of life. Land is repopulated with hominids, then humans.
Again, I am not a scientist, but this makes sense to me. Also, I vehemently disagree with trying to view the Bible as a science text. The whole purpose of the opening chapter of Genesis is to show divine intent in creation in a broad brush explanation. Religion asks why; not how. How belongs to science.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
No, religion does not ask "Why" it makes naked assertions besed on emotional appeal.
If you dont care "how" something happens you are a fool and will never seek reality and wallow in myth.
We know how and why computers work because of science.
"A spirit knocked up a girl" is a naked assertion without a shred of tesable or falsifable data to be replicated or verified. It is merely a claim that people like believing and is no different in belief in crop circles or ouiji boards or 4 leaf clovers. It is a superstition.
The ancient Egyptians believed that the buring ball of gas called the sun was a cognative super being interacting in their lives. They litterally believed this for over 3,000 years and no amount of time believing this absurtity made it real. It was a supertitious claim because they didnt know any better at the time.
Human behaivor today is psycologyically no different. Modern monotheism should not get a pass because it is the flavor of the day.
Belief in superstition has a natural explination having nothing to do with the super natural. It has to do with human ignorance combind with natural mundain human psychology, nothing more.
The idea that the dead talk to you is hocus pocus just and just as absurd as believing that David Cooperfield can magically make the atoms of a Jet dissapear. Our brains missprecieve something and we are susseptable to incert a superstition to compinsate for a lack of knowlege.
This happens because of our natural disire to have a sense of control. If we think something makes sense, even if in reality it doesnt, we feel comfort.
Religion, from the anthropromorfic worship of volcanos and thunder, to polytheism to modern monotheism is merely a human projection of human characteristics on objects which is a side effect of evolution that creates a missfire causing humans to believe myth as fact.
So Occums Razor is a good way to mesure reality.
If presented choices as an explination which would make the most sense.
1. Thor really makes thunder and lighting?
2. Someone made up that story?
Now, if it can happen to those people back then, what makes modern flavors of monotheism today immune to that same missfire?
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
I did this in two posts to separate my thoughts from those of Dr Scroeder. Schroeder goes into evoultion in some detail and does some nice work on the subject. What follows is my impression of Biblical evidence for evolution loosely based on his work.
Notice that in the seven days narrative, God speaks things into existence. They simply are. To me, this indicates that God let nature take its course as long as it didn't stray from His basic plan (ie, dinosaurs), only then did He interfere, until...
Day six, Genesis 2:7-8: 7* then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
This is the only act where God "forms" anything (with the exception of Eve, whose creation is through a similar, hands-on process). He creates Adam through a process, over a period of time. Like any act of construction, it takes place in stages, the last of which is "the breath of life". That is the point at which man becomes after God's likeness. Adam is able now to reason, to love, and to know himself and God.
So, the creation narrative clearly shows that man came about as the result of a process and over time.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
[MOD EDIT - duplicate post removed]
The Biblical creation story matches scince much more closely than any other mythology or which I'm aware. Again, I belive that science is science. I accept evolution as a fact. My religious beliefs reflect my acceptance of science. They match nearly enough for me.
Thanks for your opinion.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
I think that Gerald Schroeder made a valiant effort, but one that requires a lot of shoehorning. The order of the first Genesis creation story is often just plain wrong, and the only thing to be said for it is that the second creation story's order is even worse.
Fruit trees appeared only in the Cretaceous and Cenozoic, after birds and insects appeared. And land animals, though after aquatic animals, are nevertheless before flying animals. And the evolution of these various sorts of animals and plants is continual and overlapping. Birds did not stop evolving in order to let fruit trees evolve.
And I don't see how Gerald Schroeder gets evolution out of the Bible.
For more, see:http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/vic_stenger/schrev.htmlhttp://www.talkreason.org/articles/schroeder.cfmhttp://www.infidels.org/library/modern/scott_oser/hidden.html
Finally, totus_tuus, have you researched other creation stories and applied Gerald Schroeder's style of interpretation for them?
I agree that this needs work. I read your links, and must say that I always suspected the science anyway. I have only a passing familiarity with other creation myths, but intend to look into them more in the near future.
As for the timing, I realize that Genesis is off in places. But I reiterate that anyone who takes the Bible creation story for science is kinda foolish. The Bible was inspired by God, not dictated to the writers, therefore, the wirters limited understanding and lack of sophistication and scientific knowledge also come into play in these accounts. I believe that what believers should walk away from Genesis with is the knowledge that God was involved in creation, and that the existence of the universe, Earth, and man himself was the divine intent.
A lot of "Bible believing" Christians seem to think that the Holy Spirit sat on the shoulders of the writers of Scriptures saying things like "Desert only has one 's'." and "now write this down word for word". I don't think so. I think these men recieved revelations of some sort, filtered throught their own minds, knowledge, beliefs and fears and communicated these revelations to the best of their abilities.
"With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation." Pope John Paul II
Here's the Biblical argument for evolution that I had invented.
Consider the numerous genealogies in the Bible, all those numerous lists of begots. They are very low on entertainment value, and they are not very edifying, either. So why are they there?
They could be there to indicate that genealogies are very important and very worth looking for. And what an important part of evolutionary biology? Phylogeny, which is genealogy by another name. Thus, the Bible supports evolution. In effect,
Hyracotherium begot Orohippus, which begot Epihippus, which begot Mesohippus, which begot Miohippus, which begot Parahippus, which begot Merychippus, which begot Dinohippus, which begot Equus: present-day horses and donkeys and zebras (a good source: Kathleen Hunt on Horse Evolution at talkorigins.org).