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Creationist Bets $10k In Proposed Literal Interpretation of Genesis Debate
HungWeiLo writes "A California man who believes the literal interpretation of the Bible is real is offering $10,000 to anyone who can successfully debunk claims made in the book of Genesis in front of a judge. Joseph Mastropaolo, the man behind this challenge, is to put $10,000 of his own money into an escrow account. His debate opponent would be asked to do the same. They would then jointly agree on a judge based on a list of possible candidates. Mastropaolo said that any evidence presented in the trial must be 'scientific, objective, valid, reliable and calibrated.' For his part, Mastropaolo has a Ph.D. in kinesiology and writes for the Creation Hall of Fame website, which is helping to organize the minitrial. It's also not the first such trial he's tried to arrange. A previous effort, known as the 'Life Science Prize,' proposed a similar scenario. Mastropaolo includes a list of possible circuit court judges to oversee the trial and a list of those he challenged to take part on the evolutionary side of the debate."
Chapter 1 - Male and Female are created simultaneously.
Chapter 2 - Adam and Eve are created in that order.
One of the two accounts must be false - they are mutually exclusive factual statements.
Genesis is a collection of myths with no more truth to them then the parables.
If nobody shows up for this nonsense and bets $ 10,000, it's proof that this religious believe system is true...
The universe came into being 6 seconds ago, in exactly the state we see now, with all of our memories intact.
Prove me wrong.
Hint - it can't be done. You can always reintroduce the possibility of some omnipotent force. By carefully framing the question, proving it wrong becomes impossible. Instead, you have to unask the question. Western philosophy spent then entire last century trying to unask the premises Descartes set forth for exactly that reason.
This isn't a scientific question, it isn't in a scientific arena, and any scientist thinking they can 'win' the debate/bet is on shaky ground. Not because the science is bad, but because it isn't about science at all...
-V-
Who can decide a priori? Nobody.
-Sartre
There's a church near where I work that has a sign in the window: "Come in and learn the latest scientific evidence for Biblical truth!"
I always smile when I see it, because they don't seem to realize they've already surrendered the epistemological war -- by admitting that weighing scientific evidence is the proper way to ascertain the truth (or falsity) of a claim.
Sure, they can fight a rear-guard action for a while by looking for scraps of evidence that appear to support Scripture (or whatever their take on Scripture is), but unless God starts making public appearances is an independently verifiable, repeatable manner, then the church has already laid the groundwork for their own logical impeachment.
The whole bedrock of religion is faith -- to believe that some things are true regardless of whether there is evidence for them or not. Once you've tacitly admitted that evidence is required, then faith is superfluous, and the church becomes just a group of extremely amateur scientists whose theories can't hold up under examination.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Unfortunately he's set the rules so that he can't lose. He's not saying he'll prove Genesis is true. He's saying you have to prove it isn't. It's virtually impossible to disprove things the previously didn't happen. "Prove the sun wasn't originally a giant marshmellow", etc. You can prove it *isn't*, but there's no manner of proving it *wasn't*. He's aware of the fact that science is all about discovering new knowledge, and the language is science is about proving things. Unlike the popular opinion amongst religous folk that "scientists think they know everything", the facts couldn't be further from the truth. It's them who think they know the answers to everything, where science is saying "we don't know, but we'll keep on discovering more."
It's because scientists aren't fraudsters like this guy, that the only response to such a marshmellow statement is "We can't prove the sun wasn't ever a giant marshmellow, but there's no evidence to suggest that is the case." However, to nuts like this guy, to them that's practically an admission that "you can't prove the sun wasn't a giant marshmellow, and this book I've got here says it was.. so it must have been!". Replace "giant marshmellow" with every claim in Genesis. It's exceedingly difficult to prove a prior negative. So difficult in fact, that he's $10k confident that nobody can disprove the non-events.
It'd be nice if someone put up a counter-offer of "$10 million to anyone who can PROVE a deity exists". While equally unprovable, as none exist, the issue we run into is the "judges". See, the people arguing "for" a deity would fall back on exactly the acknowledgement of science that we can't know everything, and don't. They'd say "how did the Universe come into creation?". "We don't know, we have nothing provable, but we have some good theories". "If you by your own admission you don't know, then you can't explain where all the wonder of the universe comes from.. we can.. blah blah blah". Judges: "Those theists make some good points, and the atheists don't have any solid ground to stand on." This is one of the fundamental flaws with the majority of the population - they want to have an answer for everything, to make sense of everything, and can't take "we don't know" as an answer. When presented with "We don't know.. yet" or "An all-loving zombie did it!!!", they'll go with the zombie.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Incorrect. Adam and Eve had three sons mentioned by name (Cain, Abel, and Seth), and, additionally, "After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and daughters." (Gen 5:4)
Abel is never identified as having a mate before being killed by Cain. Cain expressly has his own wife, though its not entirely clear where she came from, and following the chronology implied by the order of verses in Gen 4, by the time Seth is born, Cain has five generations of descendants. Though, arguably, the similar names in Gen 5 (which only traces Seth's line) suggest a slightly different chronology (or maybe just name-sharing), because some of the descendants of Cain that appear to precede Seth in Gen 4 appear to also be descendants of Seth in Gen 5, which might suggest that the discussion of Seth after the discussion of Cain's line in Gen 4 isn't chronological.
It does no good to debate these people; any evidence against their position is considered inadmissible.
You can point out that chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis tell different and incompatible creation stories: they'll claim that you must read them with the guidance of the holy spirit to truly understand them. Been there, done that.
Genesis says we're all descended from Adam in about 4kBC, and we're also all descended from Noah in about 3kBC (since the rest of mankind was destroyed in the world-wide Genesis flood.) You can bring in the roughly 10k years of Egyptian genealogies which make no mention of Adam, or Noah: they'll claim (without the slightest sense of irony) that the Egyptian genealogies are merely ancient writings of suspect provenance and uncertain accuracy. Been there, done that too.
You can bring in the entire science of geology, which gives zero evidence for and an entire scientific discipline worth of evidence against a world-wide Genesis-type flood: they'll bring in some mouth-breathing "geologist" who got a degree from one of the all-too-numerous fundamentalist "universities" to argue that the question isn't really settled yet, there's still scientific debate. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
You can point out that Genesis 1 is a poem. Instead of rhyme in sound, it rhymes in idea --- just like most other ancient poetry --- with day 1 corresponding to day 4, day 2 corresponding to day 5, 3 to 6, and then day 7 as a finale. You can point out that nobody takes Shakespeare's sonnets literally: "Ah," they say, "But this poem comes from God!" Yes, BTDT too.
Arguments from biology abound, of course: 5k years is insufficient time for one man's genes to diverge into the breadth of human genetic diversity seen today; you can't fit two of every species of insect in an ark, let alone the rest of the fauna; analysis of mitochrondrial DNA puts "Eve" at orders of magnitude before 4kBC; and then there's the whole fossil record of course. All the evidence in the world makes no difference: evidence does not change non-evidential belief.
And you're supposed to convince a JUDGE? That's the trap. Judges are pretty good at determining legal questions; they're about as good as a coin-flip when it comes to scientific questions. We bring in scientific evidence, this nincompoop argues legal blather, which will the judge best understand? If he was serious about the bet being fact-based, he'd offer to have the bet be settled by someone trained in determining the truth or falsity of factual claims. There are such people: they're called "scientists".
When I say "been there, done that", I mean just that. I was raised in a fundamentalist sect, and had most of my education in church schools. I spent 25 years being indoctrinated (it didn't stick, apparently) then 15 years trying to bring the church into the 20th century, and the last 5 years taking what is apparently the only productive approach. Here's the approach, for those who haven't figured it out yet: JUST LEAVE THE POOR IDIOTS ALONE.
Yeah, but they all suffer from a post-Enlightenment bias in favour of science and facts and stuff like that. To get to the real root of the matter, we should ask a 16th century Christian theologian.
Hmm. Looks like Calvin was a postmodernist liberal or something. Clearly we need someone with an earlier, more authentically Christian opinion. The 5th century seems early enough; no pesky modern science then.
Nope, clearly a wishy-washy accommodationist who has been blinded by modernist thinking. Clearly we need to back a couple of hundred more years. Surely third century theologians took Genesis literally.
It looks like every single major Christian theologian before the 20th century, with the possible exception of Basil the Great (and even then it's only a possible exception), who saw fit to write on the topic, thought that Genesis 1 was at least partly allegorical. In this "trial", pretty much all of Christian history is going to have to file an amicus brief on behalf of science.
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The reason no one takes this idiot up, is because the odds are in the houses favor, and he knows it.
Never wrestle with a pig. You will end up covered in mud and the pig will enjoy it.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
You're assuming that he's basing it on the "current political situation" and not the substance of relative defining texts. Islam is demonstrably more evil because the Quran contains imperatives for violence like "take them and kill them [infidels] wherever ye find them" in surah 4:89 among many. The New Testament (which supersedes the Old thus avoiding all the violent prescriptions therein according to many Christians, despite that the New Testament itself is contradictory on whether it does or doesn't supersede) at its most violent stops short of commanding believers to kill. There are times such as in Romans 1:32 where sinners are called out as 'worthy of death' but it doesn't command believers to kill them. (Though things like that were nonetheless used to justify killings, such as the mob murder of Hypatia.)
I'm running out of time and have to go to work so I will toss out a couple other things in passing: in addition to being demonstrably more evil in imperative prescriptions of violence, the Quran is more evil in its explicit misogyny. I don't have time to dig up the exact surah, but I recall one that gives men an explicit pass on beating their wives. The New Testament treats women as second class citizens, mostly telling them to sit down and shut up, but it never goes as far as saying you can and should beat them up.
Lastly, the Quran is demonstrably more evil in that it has encouraged a culture of child rape since many Muslims still see Muhammad's having a nine year-old wife as not just acceptable, but an example of holiness since everything he ever did is supposed to be holy. So yeah, tell it to all the raped little girls that Islam isn't more evil.
Disclaimer: I am an atheist.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit