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GP is correct, Elohim isn't always plural. The above verse is not a counter-example. slashdot won't let me post Hebrew words, but you can see verse 26 here:

    http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0101.htm

In Hebrew, nouns and verbs agree on singular vs. plural. The subject of "elohim" takes the verb "va-yo-mer", which is singular; the plural would have been "va-yo-m'ru". So basic Hebrew grammar means that the word "elohim" is acting in the singular even though the word looks like a plural. The same thing happens in most other places that the word "elohim" appears, including in the verses before and after this one -- singular verbs.

The verb "na'a'seh", which is usually translated "let us make man", starts a new clause. To whom does "us" refer? That's a classic question, and one which is somewhat controversial, but grammatically does not imply that "elohim" is plural. Think of the analogous English sentence "Jack said 'we are running low on milk'" -- "Jack" is singular, even though "Jack" is speaking in the plural. Some of the options: (1) god is talking to creation; (2) god is talking to the angels; (3) god is using some sort of honorific "we", with modern analogs in the royal we and the editorial we; or (4) in a trinitarian view, god is addressing the other parts of the trinity.

Note that the word "elohim" has other meanings, including "gods" of other varieties (as in "you shall not have other gods before my face" from Exodus 20:2), angels, and judges.

However, GP missed Rael's point. Rael's claim is that the "elohim" aliens were misunderstood by humans, who thought they were god. Rael is explicitly trying to draw that parallel, so doesn't want to use an original term. See http://rael.org/rael_content/rael_summary.php .

According to these "experts" RAEL, 1 parsec is 1 light second so that would be about 946728000 parsecs.

Yeah, the name was actually borne at the now demolished GM assembly plant in Sainte Therese, Quebec. Management leased out the old PPG paint shop to a popular cult loacted in the region -- they're known as the Raelians. http://www.rael.org/

Actually, Saturn was started by GM, it wasn't acquired. For those of us who have gone through mergers and aquisitions of our companies, there is a difference./i/

May be that could explain quantum physics. the apparently un predictable "spontaneous" events are not spontaneous after all. the really tiny particles flying out from "mother-particle" could be a space probe launched by a micro-( or should i say atto-)civilization. and I can say from empirical evidence that since human civilization is unpredicatable, so is the atto-civilization. I mean if we can be part of a larger being, why can't we extend the same to atomic levels and be universe to some other beings. btw, this guy would be happy as hell to read this comment. he thinks exactly that way, claims alien abduction, and that the aliens told him about this infinitely huge creature and millions of infinitesimally small worlds.

but seroiusly speaking, hindu mythology also mentions that zillions of universes come and go out of existence in a "moment" on the time scale of vishnu. may be they were refering to this after all. ... and I would like to welcome our universe-sized overlords but there is not enough space.

There are prominent examples of *non-theists* who are proponents of ID

Such as the atheist UFO-cult of the Raëlians.
That still a religious belief, however.

I read the sticker that the Kansas school board wanted to attach to the textbooks and didn't think it was all that offensive

It was carefully worded that way. The problem, however, is not the wording, it's the intent. It singles out one scientific theory with a warning label!

Funny to think that this whole business around ID started with aliens. It was then "conviniently" adapted to religious purposes.

And for those who claim it's not religion, I'll ask again: If not a watered down diety what is the 'I' in ID, space aliens?

Yup: Goatee-wearing, hippie space aliens.

I think you are confusing Creationism and Intelligent Design.
I acknowledge the differences between the two, but consider them to originate from the same agenda.

I read the article in the link you gave. There were some interesting points. Does the fact that objects such as computers are intelligently designed by humans mean for you that humans themselves have been intelligently designed as well? Is it possible that intelligence comes into existence by chance? That is: do you think every designing object must have a designer itself?

One of the issues I see with ID is that even if it can prove that the universe was designed intelligently, it still won't explain what designed the designers. Also, a whole realm is left open as to what designed us humans. For example, the people at Rael claim that aliens designed us. That say that the Bible even supports their claims.

Naturalism is the abandonment of reason, and is akin to admitting effects without a cause.

The dictionary definition says that naturalism is the philosophy that the world can be understood in scientific terms without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations.

in that ID does not suppose that anything supernatural has occurred.

That's odd, because the authoritative figures on this subject claim otherwise.

These questions have more practical import than all that science has given us in the last 1,000 years. To answer them wrong because we have assumed the answer before starting is simply ludicrous.

As you can see, proponents of Creationism and ID such as yourself are quick to jump from the unnamed Designer to the Christian God and the assumption that we humans must have been designed directly and personally by this Designer. It is much more likely in the scenario of a Designer that we were genetically engineered from apes and have no higher purpose than your average dog or cat. The assumption that higher purpose must exist stems from wishful thinking.

Not in the areas of cosmology or evolution. If these claims were independently verifiable, there would be no creationist movement.

I tend to agree with this, although I believe that no amount of solid science is enough against wishful thinking.

If you're going to be skeptical, shouldn't you be skeptical of ALL unverifiable claims, not just the ones that are based on theistic rather than atheistic assumptions?

Yes, but I can be perfectly skeptical of claims on both sides. The philosophical difference in opinion doesn't stem from preferring natural or supernatural explanations but from the wish to have religion be called religion and science science. I'm all for people being free to follow the personality-worship of their choice. I'll admit that the mathematical angle is a nice one, but the conclusions lead everywhere including UFO-based religions and not just to your church.

evolution is, it is a theory people. Theory. It still has holes, giant unexplainable holes.

Such as?

Intelligent design is simply stating that certain things in life - like DNA - are simply too complex to have been formed by some amino acids randomly millions of years ago. It doesn't necessarily propose a God figure, but SOME intelligence behind our design.

Are you Raelian?

It doesn't propose a God figure, simply an eternal, all knowing, all powerfull superbeing that was there before life existed and that knew in advance how these incredibly complex interactions of millions of molecules would end up as sheep and flowers and people.
"Oh yeah, that's not a thinly veiled way of saying 'god did it"?

And yet, postulating the existence of an entire civilization based on absolutely zero evidence is kind of... pointless. At least in the God-existance debate we have spiritual texts.

Sure.

ID stipulates that the human race was designed by someone else

You mean like what the Raelians think? That Aliens did it?

fucking nutjobs.

This guy is not a psychic, he is a psychotic freak!
There is another religious freak around Quebec you probably have heard with cloned babies fake story : Rael.

You know, Jesus just a man, who a dozen nutjubs worshiped, and a few hundred years after he died, a bunch of people wrote down effectively was an urban legand. (I knew this guy, who knew this guy, who saw...). Unadmissible as evidence in courts for a reason. It's completely unreliable.

We did this thing in grade school to prove the point. We started at one side of the classroom. The teacher gave the first student a simple statement. Each person told the next person, until it got to the last person on the other side of the room. By the time it got there, it didn't even resemble the first statement.

So you have a belief system based off of something that may or may have happened 2000 years ago, in a book that was written hundreds of years later, and has been rewritten more times than you realize, to suit the political, economic, or social needs of the ruling party at that time.

But, since we're going to cite the bible about the loving and compassionate god, ya, he's a really swell fella.

Punished his first two creations by effectively disowning them and kicking them out of the garden of Eden.

Flooded a planet to kill everything but a pair of each creature.

Because his loving creations wanted to be closer to him, he destroyed their tower, and made it so they couldn't understand each other.

And his treatment of a dissident was eternal damnation in hell.

That's not loving and caring. That's vengeful and spiteful.

Oh, and don't forget the Crusades. Would a loving, caring, compassionate 'God' send so many people to fight each other, both sides in his name. That's a god who likes war, killing, and bloodshed for his own entertainment. And it didn't end with the Crusades, we're doing it right now. All you have to do is listen to Bush's speeches.

But now that I've offended you completely, let me remind you of a few other things.

The bible was written after the theoretical time that Jesus was alive (obviously). The entire religion starts with 'creation', which kind of misses the point that humans have been roming this planet for over 10,000 years, and the fact that we know planets and stars are *MUCH* older than that.

The entire concept of "Hell", as well as "Satan" is a creation of christianity. And even more interestingly, virtually every holiday that you celebrate in the name of your god, was stolen from other, much older, religions.

So, when I joke about going to hell, it's a joke, because there's no such place. It's as believable as aliens.

Now you're really pissed, huh? Now consider all the other religions in the world, and every time you go off about your God and your bible, they "know" that you're wrong, because they believe in their god(s) and/or goddess(es).

...if is a product of the raelians.
http://www.rael.org/

Okay, sure, I hear you say, Rael is really a failed French racing driver called Claude Vorilhon, who had the Elohim (read: aliens) meet him on top of a Clermont Ferrand mountain in December 1973, who told him how they created humans through cloning...

Great, just great, now SETI has been linked to the Raelians and Clonaid... That's a sure way to guarantee to be taken seriously *sigh*

Yes, we are the intelligent design of an alien lifeform. Find out more information at http://www.rael.org/.

Unless, of course, you're a Raelian ;).

You've obviously never heard of the Raelians, have you?

Evil Conspiracy Theory 101: If you or your evil company is involved in an evil conspiricay to rig the elections, don't publically announce your evil intentions two years before the election.

Do you honestly think Diebold is trying to irg the election? Do you also believe that humans were cloned by aliens?

An anonymous reader writes "SCO have made much of how their claims about UNIX code being improperly copied into Linux were verified by 3 teams including 'MIT Mathematicians.' However, MIT can't seem to find the mathematicians concerned!"

I hear from reliable sources that SCO's next triumphant contribution to humanity (perhaps even greater than the contribution of owning the code to Unix) will be to clone a human being. Who does this remind me of?

Rael too, you know... ;)

Like so... Raelians

GTRacer
- Not an alien

THIS JUST IN...

A software analysis company has been choosen to review SCO's claims. The newly formed non-profit RAEL Corp will put their reputations on the line by assigning the task to their two best analysts (and largest contributors), Michael Guillen and Steve Ballmer.

An the winner of the 2000 System Engineer of the Millenium, in the Fictional Male category: Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor!

Would the co-author Rael Dornfest be the same Rael of the Raelians? You'd be amazed what an experience like being abducted by aliens and having your way with their beautiful female robots will do for your OSX skills.

You're are very right.

BTW: The "intelligent designer" was an alien.

If Christians believe what you say (intelligent design) then there's no reason why we weren't placed on earth by aliens.

You see, here's the difference between your theory, and the truth:

The process of science:

Observation -> Hypothesis -> Testing -> Debate

The process of religion (intelligent design, ie: Genesis, without God):

Fiction -> Asserting -> Insisting -> Twisting Fact -> Torturing

For a thoughtful debate on this, watch Penn & Teller's Bullshit! episode on creationism (why do these things keep popping up? do none of you watch thought provoking TV?) Actually, I'd swear you've watched it, because those sites you link to are exactly the bullshit they disprove.

There may be debate as to wether evolution is the best scientific model, and if there are mistakes in it, it will be revised through the aforementioned scientific process. There, however, is positively no serious debate as to whether we were cherry picked by aliens or not.

I have a question, though. Why does "intelligent design" require a Noah's Ark?

Riddle me that, and riddle me why an alien with an awesome spaceship would use a shitty wooden boat to transport animals instead of some matter-energy transporter?

Either that or tell me why it is impossible that the "intelligent designer" was an alien.

If you can do neither, then your theory is really pathetic, because I am but a lowly slashdotter, and certainly not a scholar, yet I was able to disprove it.

Don't bank on it for much longer Wang... we'll have that taken care of soon with one of our "spezial macheens"

Yes, it is a loss for India, USA, Israel and the whole humanity and not to forget all the Trekkies around the world ... moves them a step back to making it a reality...
On the other hand, Raelians must be happy because it takes us a step back from eventually proving them wrong...

or even weeks straight of front-page news in major media about some wacky UFO cult's latest attention-getting stunt?

oh, wait... nevermind...

Here's a guy who doesn't want a tinfoil hat. Straigt from the "Communicating with aliens for fun and profit" dept.:

According to my local newspaper, Rael's weird hairdo is supposed to enhance communication with the aliens from the Elohim race. Come to think of it, the little stub on his head has more than a passing resemblance to the GSM antenna on my car roof, hmmm....

I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to laugh or cry about this guy and his followers ("sweeping the world with the most politically incorrect and fearlessly individualistic philosophy of non-confirmism").

Ha! Raelians can't read biology and think p53 is a new gene (first published 1984) that makes evolution impossible, cos its a DNA repair enzyme, which makes mutation and hence evolution impossible (1).

Which is true in that DNA repair exists and p53 is involved in it (although its more involved in getting cells to commit suicide if there feeling a bit precancerous), but it won't stop genes mutating as all it does is checks/corrects DNA base pairing sometimes correcting it the wrong way creating a new mutation

(1) under Evidence -> Science & Future -> Alt theorys of Evolution.... (F***ing frames)

PS Being involved in human gene nomenclature I feel duty bound to mention p53 approved symbol is TP53.

I'm sure the Junk DNA in the human genome, if they have anything to do with the Secret Message of Pi, or the Intelligence In Pi, then I'm sure it's written in the English Alphabet because that's what our Alien(Raelian?) ancestors wrote in. Haven't you seen Star Wars or Futurama?

Check them out for yourself at rael.org. It's much more fun to read Rael's own accounts than the NYTimes summation. That is, if the site isn't down with all the traffic they are probably getting from the /. crowd and the regular public.

The Clonaid organization was turned over to Brigitte Bossellier(sp?) from Rael a year or so ago. I first ran across them about two or so years ago. It's actually sort of fun to learn about their group. :-) I'm guessing they're pretty unhappy about the whole middle east situation because if I remember right for the Elohim to come back they needed to purchase land and build a center in one of major religious areas there, perhaps Jerusalem?

Do your part... continue slashdotting a cult leader!

Doesn't he wan to support the building of the embassy and the cloning of Rael? Click here!

Should read : "It's time to grow up and join the rael world now slashbot."

sorreyyyyyyy!

"Buckland's Guide to Witchcraft"? Maybe "The Message Given By Extra-Terrestrials" by Rael?

Okay maybe I took this a bit too far...

BTW, Rael is the favorite religion of a historian of religion friend of mine, who is studying modern religious movements. Raelians are so nuts, they've got it all... :-)

The work is being undertaken by the Raelian-backed Bahamas-based Clonaid company, which is charging a few hundred thousand dollars. Clonaid says that if it's successful, they intend to make it a business. Some independent scientists who have examined the Clonaid methodology say that it will "probably" work.

Cloning a dead adult is not the same as bringing the adult back to life, because the clone would not have the dead person's memories. But cloning an infant seems different. Clonaid actually refers to their work as "bringing back to life a 10-month old child". (Even a new-born infant has some memories from its mother's womb, though--as well as some affects from the womb environment.)

The London Sunday Times has the story. Brave New World, here we come!

______________________________________________
Don't blame Windows--if you were a Microsoft operating system, you'd have problems too.

Well it is cheaper then the 200 000$ Clonaid is asking for to clone you. Personally I would not mind getting cloned into a new younger me when i'll nbe old enough to use viagra.

Just for the record, Clonaid is owned by Rael the guy who say aliens created us all. They even have a replica at UFO Land of the spacecraft that took this local guru to the Alien planet.

Hehe, their funny but Clonaid seems real though.

wiZd0m

Looking through there website I found this. Something about 'sensual meditation

Anyway, this religion doesn't seem to be based on anything less rational then Christianity, and it looks a lot less dangerous.(based on the philosophy on there website). I'm an atheist, but I don't see why you could condemn these people and not Christianity...

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Check out the simplifed chinese version of their religions web page (http://www.rael.org/users/china/ simplified/index.htm)

Its downright shocking... complete with crappy midi music (:P

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