I don't really care if you agree with the original poster -- assuming you know what he thinks, which is unlikely given how little he said on the matter. Furthermore, I could not possibly care less what you think about my position, because you obviously have no idea what I think.
Meantime, you have demonstrated how feeble your grasp of the issues is when you compare the GPL to laws against theft and murder. When will you grow a second neuron so that you can actually have your very first synapse?
My point remains: the first post shouldn't have been moderated down.
This poster made a legitimate point, notwithstanding what others have said in reply. The GPL does restrict your use of GPL-ed software. We can argue till the cows come home about motives for it, and effects of it, and who's restrictions are worse (I'd say any commercial software's restrictions are worse), but none of it changes the fact:
The GPL imposes significant restrictions on use of GPL-ed software.
What you've just suggested is the epitomy of MrCarthyism. Ratting out a few people to get yourself off the hook.
Err, this has nothing to do with what Joe McCarthy was after at all. Sure, some of the people who came before his committee may have behaved in the way you describe, but McCarthy didn't "rat out" anyone to get himself off any hook. He wasn't on any hooks (until the establishment took offense at his activities).
My point is neither to defend nor criticize McCarthy nor the original poster; let's not abuse what "McCarthyism" has come to mean (rightly or wrongly). McCarthyism refers to a so-called "witch hunt." The fact that some people preferred to expose other communists in exchange for leniency themselves is rather different. It's more like moral cowardice -- and if anything may be said of McCarthy, he certainly had the courage to pursue his convictions -- whether you agree with him or not.
I was going to give 50 thousand examples of *stupid* blatently false stuff and contradictions in the Bible (that your popes and bishops are quite aware of)
I'm not Catholic. They're not my popes or bishops.
I'm guessing that you're engaging in a little humorous hyperbole when you say you were going to offer "50 thousand" examples of "blatently [sic] false stuff and contradictions" in the Bible. I certainly wouldn't want to overwhelm Slashdot with such a list. Why not try -- ohh, how about THREE? I'm man enough to take it. Go ahead.
The animals were brought _to_ the man, which means he existed before they were created, as they were brought straight to him. The bible says so. Hell, _your_ bible says so.
Here's your answer. You don't know what you're talking about, and you're going to embarrass yourself.
Secondly, all the action and linking verbs in this passage are past tense, so the 'had formed' part is perfectly natural. Hebrew's structure is a bit different from germanic languages like english, so you can expect to get some funny looking syntax after translation (especially when dealing with complex ideas).
Hebrew tenses are far more complex than you seem to know. There are two major "tenses," traditionally called "perfect" and "imperfect." Both are essentially "past tense" but contextual indicators demonstrate that either one may have present or even future tense meaning (though this is usually restricted to the "imperfect").
I'm a bit fuzzy here; it's been 7 years since I last read Hebrew seriously.
For all the joy you seem to get in talking about Hebrew tenses, it's a shame you don't look at other significant things related to interpretation of a text: like structure, or historical context, or literary context, to name a few. If you did, you might not have so foolishly claimed that there are "two disparate" creation accounts.
Okay, one question then. Can you name me something OTHER than religion that isn't subject to verification or corroboration by the scientific method?
Ethics. Human self-consciousness. Epistemology. Cosmology. There's four for you.
You didn't understand my point; perhaps I wasn't clear. It is an illegitimate use of the scientific method to make the Bible's truthfulness subject to it. Why? Because God is absolutely sovereign and absolutely true. No one has the right to pass judgment on this. It's not anything that we have any standing to question.
But getting back to your question -- the scientific method cannot "verify" ethics. It can't "verify" human self-consciousness -- especially on the evolutionist's terms. It can't say anything whatsoever about the origins of the universe because it's not reproducible.
Evolutionists != materialists.So-called "theistic evolutionists" are so helplessly trapped in contradictions that they aren't worthy of either name.
Evolutionists cannot explain how it is that they are able to say anything is "true" or "false." By their own assumptions, they evolved from primordial goo. They are nothing more than a bag of chemicals with some lightning thrown in. How does a bag of chemicals say "true"? How does lightning striking a tree say "false"? It doesn't and can't. Truth and falsehood aren't even topics of discussion because there's no discussion. "Self-consciousness" doesn' just not exist; it's not even a mirage! There's no thing that could be self-conscious -- only sparks and fizzing. So you see why I scoff at your "religion".
So now you want to throw off the scientific method to embrace Christianity as well?
Read my post carefully. Where do I say that the scientific method is utterly useless for anything whatsoever?
The simple fact is that the scientific method is useful -- within limits. I have never disputed this. What I dispute is illegitimately claiming that evolution has been scientifically verified or proven, as far too many armchair evolutionists are fond of doing. What I dispute is illegitimate uses of the "scientific method" in ways that it simply cannot work.
The scientific method is utterly USELESS for "proving" that man arrived on earth via evolution, because man's evolution (as if it really happened - HA!) cannot be reproduced in the lab. The claim is bogus.
Secondly, no man or method has a right to sit in judgment over the question of whether God exists. He does, despite the pathetic squawkings of atheists.
You can't even adequately defend your own system on your own terms, and you have the gall to attack me?
Apparently the third creation account is located at the end of one of the gospels (no, I not personally familiar with it), perhaps Luke?
Negative. It's not at the end of any of the gospels. Again, I'm not denying it, but absent anyone presenting it to us why don't we just ignore it.
As for the animal thing, I think you may have my argument confused with another.
Again, negative; but I may have guessed badly at your point in raising the "different creation accounts" myth. Too many evolutionists think that Genesis 2 says that the animals were created after Adam; it says nothing of the sort. My apologies for thinking the worst of you in this respect:-)
My understanding of them is as follows: Several hundred years after the death of Christ, many people were diluting Christianity with local religious traditions and additional gods or this and that. So representatives of the entire church met three times to form the Apostles', the Nicene and the Anastatian (sp?) Creeds.
Actually there were many such councils -- such as at Chalcedon and Constantinople. You are essentially correct about what led to the creeds here.
They provide a description of Christianity to anyone who should ask. One must necessarialy believe these core things to be considered an actual Christian, in my understanding.
Very close to correct. The creeds weren't intended to be comprehensive. They were intended to deal with the issues of the day. You will note, for instance, that the Apostles' Creed (misnamed, since the apostles didn't write it -- though I think they would have approved) does not mention God's omniscience -- yet anyone at the council who denied that doctrine would have been burned at the stake. The creeds dealt with critical issues, and most of those in the church's early centuries were Christological/Trinitarian. They were indeed intended to detail what one must believe about those doctrines (namely, of Christ and the Trinity) in order to be a Christian, however.
Everything else is open to interpretation. And there are many of them.
Well, yes and no. First, we interpret literally everything. So there is nothing in the Bible that isn't interpreted. Our task is to interpret correctly -- and that means we must ask (and then answer) the question, "What does God mean in this passage?" We are NOT free to interpret the Bible however we wish outside of a few "essentials." We have to interpret the whole thing correctly. We don't do this perfectly, of course, but this MUST be our aim.
Everyone must apply their best judgement as to how to interpet much of the bible and the events. My best judgement is through logic. This does not make God's existance dependent upon my logic, merely my belief if God.
To the contrary: you are making yourself greater than God: you are effectively saying to him, "God, if you don't satisfy MY criteria, I'm not going to believe in you!" You are wrong to believe that you have a right to do this, and it is a sin.
Interpreting the Bible is not so "up for grabs" as you make it. It is, after all, God's Word written by and through men in a definite historical-cultural context. It is language. Thus, it is a task that is within our reach. We have to cross the cultural gulf that lies between us and it, along with the language barriers, but this only requires study, not mind-altering drugs or anything.
However I don't buy that every historical account in the bible (which one?) is exactly historically correct.
Then you have no reasonable basis for believing any of it. The same God speaks in the whole book. If he's "wrong" in anything, he's not reliable for anything else either. He presents himself as omniscient and truthful. One or the other is false if there's an error in the Bible. That makes the whole thing useless if you are correct. You are not correct.
many things in the bible are disprovable (historical accounts, for example, are vulnerable to being disproved.
This turns out not to be the case. The Bible has never been demonstrated to be in error about any historical event it records, and in fact there are many cases where it has been proven correct after decades or more of "scholarly" doubt. Example 1: for decades at least "scientists" said that the Bible was wrong about the existence of the Hittite kingdoms because no one had ever found evidence of Hittite kingdoms. Well, they finally found the Hittites. Score: Bible 1, "scholars" 0. Example 2: They used to dispute the story of Jericho -- namely, that the walls fell down flat. Archaeology has since demonstrated that this is EXACTLY what happened. Bible 2, "scholars" 0. I could go on, of course.
The majority of the bible was collected/written long after the death of Christ.
False. The entire Old Testament predates Christ. That's 39 of the 66 books. The New Testament was completed within 35 years of the Crucifixion, and certainly before 70 AD, by the apostles themselves.
I'll give you credit for at least venturing a try at this. The last few evolutionists who faced this question ended up muttering to themselves.
Your entire belief system is based upon the concept of an objective truth and false; and along with it, a good and evil. That is where your gods and demons stem from.
Err, you have this exactly backwards. My entire belief system is founded upon the twin premises that God not only exists but is absolutely sovereign over his creation, and secondly that he has spoken infallibly, truthfully (that's a bit redundant, but...), and completely in the Bible (i.e., the Bible is the sum total of God's communication with us). From this foundation comes my belief in truth and false: namely, that God is absolutely true in every respect, and anything which contradicts either his word, or his character, or what he knows to be the case, is irrevocably and unalterably false.
My question to you is, how absolutely certain are that any statement made is the truth, seeing everything and anything you percieve from the environment around you, is subject to the workings of your five physical senses and how your brain interprates what is sensed?
Because God made us and made the world for us to live in, our senses are reliable. Note that this is different from saying that there are no flaws in us. More importantly, because you deny the existence of God, you have no logical means for escaping the trap you have attempted to set for me. You destroy for yourself any means for arriving at the truth because on the one hand you throw empirical observation out the window (when you say that our senses aren't reliable), and on the other hand you destroy rationalism (see below). You are left without any logically consistent means for explaining to me that I'm "wrong" in believing in God, or for explaining to me why evolution is "right."
My point is, an electrochemical reaction is merely an electrochemical reaction. Your trained mind to believe there is a truth and false in life, and a good and an evil, can interprate it as it pleases. It can, at no point, ever claim it is right or true, or vice versa; in the objective sense.
And so therefore neither can you say that evolution is right or true. Nor can you say that it's bad or evil to kill, or lie, or...
This what you are left with when you reduce a human being to a bag of chemicals with a little electricity thrown in. You can say NOTHING about the world or even yourself. True and false -- even about your own nature as a bag of chemicals -- are not categories that electrochemical reactions can test or analyze (or even say anything about). You can't explain self-consciousness on this ground. Ever.
Rather let's put it this way: all religions (including the religion of the evolutionist, which is a materialist one) have presuppositions which remain unchallenged by practitioners. I certainly acknowledge that I have them. Evolutionists are typically reluctant to admit theirs. This is not universally the case; Lewontin (a Harvard zoologist and atheist) freely admits that evolution is a religious faith. In this he is more honest.
The typical evolutionist never questions the assumption that he has a right to logically verify everything. He barely even recognizes that he holds this. It is an untested assumption, and it is a false one. God is not subject to human verification. His existence and the truth of the Bible are not contingent upon whether you or I or anyone else can "prove" them to be. God is absolutely sovereign, and his sovereignty would be diminished fatally if it were true that it's contingent upon human approval or verification (and it's not).
I asked someone else this question. I'll ask you, too. Can an electrochemical reaction make a truth statement?
there are many places in the bible which use parables, poetry, etc.
And they are identifiable as such from the text -- whereas Genesis 1 is identifiable from the text as narrative discourse.
Since there are three creation stories int he bible, and they are not all identical, which is correct?
Well, you have actually stumped me. I can guess two of your three "creation accounts" but the third escapes my memory.
However, with respect to the first two: Genesis 1 presents a history of what happened: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc. Genesis 2, in contrast, does NOT present a precise history. It presents a summary. This particular structure is common in Genesis as an introduction to a new section of the book. You'll see in 2:4 the words "These are the generations..." (some translations have it as "this is the history..." but the actual Hebrew word is "generations"). The same appears in 5:1, "This is the book of the generations of Adam..."; in 6:9, "These are the generations of Noah..."; in 10:1, "These are the generations of the sons of Noah..."; in 11:10, "These are the generations of Shem..."; etc. You will notice that in a majority of these cases, the intro of "these are the generations..." is followed by a summary of some sort. In most cases it is very short -- maybe just a few words. In the case of Genesis 2, it is a longer summary. It's not intended to be chronological; it's a summary.
As to your likely challenge about the animals being created after Adam -- there were animals all over the earth after God created them on the fifth and sixth days. Adam was to name them. There are three possibilities: either Adam must visit them all, in a massive global tour, so that he can name them, or else God must bring them to Adam so that he can name them, or else God must create an example of each animal (already created on the 5th & 6th days) for Adam to see and name. I honestly fail to see the problem. If I want to show my son an ashtray, I can either take him to see one, or bring one to him, or make one. Ashtrays already exist. What's the big deal?
however, you leave yourself open to certain arguments disproving the validity of the entire bible.
No I don't. What makes you think that the validity of the Bible hinges upon anything you or I say or think?
I personally need logical ways to believe in God
Then you have made "logic" superior to God. You have made his existence contingent upon your brain. Whether God exists is not an issue. He does. By claiming the "right" to have logical reasons for believing in God, you are claiming the "right" to judge God. This is not a right you have. You have made reason one of your idols to the extent that you attempt to judge God by it.
It is my opinion, as well as the opinion of many Christians, that the Bible should be believed as a statement of faith, not a history book. If you spend hours arguing about the type of fish that swallowed Jonah, you miss the entire point of the story: one can never hide from God. The entire message of the story, for me, seems to be this.
You fail to understand that Christianity is a historical religion. It depends completely and utterly upon the certainty that particular events actually happened. If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead (but he did), then Christianity is a charade. But if we can't believe the Bible about even ONE historical detail, then we can't be sure about ANY. And that throws the resurrection into doubt and Christianity out the window. So you see, it really does matter that Jonah was swallowed by a fish -- whatever the major point is. It really does matter that the sun stood still (so to speak) at Joshua's command. It really does matter that the Egyptian army drowned in the Red Sea. These things happened. Period. The Bible doesn't lie or get it wrong.
Either way, the religion is NOT dependent on the science, and vice versa.
In this you are mistaken for the reasons I've given above.
If any littel point in the bible is ever disproven, then the entire bible is incorrect. Seems to me to be a pretty fragile foundation for a religion!
That only depends upon whether you believe it's the Word of God or not. It is. Therefore it CANNOT be disproven in ANY particular. Therefore it is a rock-solid foundation for a religion. As to the Vatican: they're wrong if they deny that Genesis one is historical. Period. They're just men. God is not a man, and he doesn't make mistakes.
How can you say it can't be reproduced in the lab?
Like this: "It can't be reproduced in the lab."
All kidding aside, how can you say that it CAN be reproduced in the lab? How are they going to do it? They can't. It is therefore non-scientific. They've made a claim that cannot be empirically demonstrated. It's not subject to being reproduced in the lab. How can it be "scientific"?
Fine, how are you going to prove that the Bible is infallible, God-boy?
I don't have to. It is. How are you going to prove evolution? Why do you think that I have to prove the Bible's infallible? Isn't enough that God says it is? Why not?
If not, you'd better come up with some reason for use to believe your book over all the other ones out there.
What makes you think that the truth of the Bible is contingent upon whether or not YOU have a good enough "reason" to believe it?
People who so vigorously deny reality have an obvious mental defect and should not be allowed to infect the rest of the gene pool.
Again, Thank You. If you'd had the courage to even minimally identify yourself, I'd keep this very kind comment in mind when talking with you in the future.
Please, since I'm mentally defective, explain for me exactly how it is that evolution and the materialist worldview can explain self-awareness. Bottom line: everything that happens in your big brain or my small and defective one is just a bunch of electro-chemical reactions, right? So how does that translate into self-awareness? How does an electro-chemical reaction make a truth statement? When water boils or wood burns, is it possible for it to make a truth statement? Now, your so-called "self-consciousness" is really nothing more than a bunch of electro-chemical reactions, right?
So how can you say that ANYTHING is true or false? Please enlighten my defective brain.
by your logic, it is a better idea to not think things through.
I see. So when I step through the reasons why the Bible doesn't contradict the value of Pi, I am not thinking things through? Instead, the other guy is the one who "thinks things through" when he ignorantly claims that the Bible contradicts the measured value of Pi? Great. Then I guess I can't win with you. If I prove that the evolutionist is wrong, I'm not thinking things through, but when the evolutionist makes ignorant claims, he IS thinking things through. Gotcha.
Could it be that the Bible is not entirely true?!
No.
You prefer to be occasionally smug that to be intelligent.
I prefer to mock that which deserves to be mocked. Someone arrogantly claiming that the Bible contradicts Pi doesn't merit sweetness and light.
You prefer to be a dog to than to be a human. In fact, by your logic, you become exactly what the Bible says we are not: equal to animals!
Now this is very close to being one of the weirdest things I've heard in awhile.
I just felt like pointing out that this thinking is exactly the opposite of the scientific method.
So? While I won't dispute that the scientific method has proven to be very useful in many areas, it's a long way from perfect and it's a long way from useful in every sphere. I've never claimed that the truthfulness of the Bible is or should be subject to verification via the scientific method.
It's not as if evolutionists haven't done the same thing, either. They have always assumed a materialist view of the world, even though such a model cannot explain consciousness. They claim that ethics can exist independent of at least some god of some sort, but this claim is pure balderdash.
Evolutionists are no less "guilty" (if one must use such a term) than Christians of holding to a raft of unchallenged presuppositions. As such, they are no less religionists than the most pious Puritan.
I started to explain why you don't know what you're talking about, but then I realized that I'd be wasting my breath. You aren't really interested in the truth. That much is obvious.
How do I know this? Because you approach the Bible as though it were yesterday's newspaper. You ignore (or are ignorant of) the fact that the Bible is a book written over a span of about 1400 years (give or take), that even its most recent portions are almost 2000 years old, and that it was written in a culture that is vastly different from our own. Yet somehow, for some arrogant or ignorant or cockamamie reason, you still seem to think that you can just walk right up to it, point your finger at something you don't understand, and conclude that the whole thing is hogwash. Teriffic. You're quite the "enlightened soul" there, friend.
So the Bible is true like this: it's true in the sense that it's true but some people, pretending to know something, presume to deny its truthfulness without even a passing familiarity with its contents.
As to your irrational fears about what they'll be teaching in the government schools -- try reading the actual story. They didn't mandate the teaching of ANYTHING. They simply removed the mandate from evolution. Evolution can still be taught (and no doubt will). It's just not required.
And there were actually two versions of creation, one of which was the popular Adam and Eve story (creationist viewpoint), and then there was another version of it (although this led into Adam and Eve) describing something that could almost be interpreted as evolution.
There is just enough here that is partially accurate to make it dangerous. What is found in Genesis 1 is a record of creation. What is found in Genesis 2 is a *second* record -- but it doesn't contradict the first. The second one is presented by way of summary. It is not intended to be "the whole story". It is a summary. And neither one describes anything that could be interpreted as evolution by even an LSD addict.
how do you react towards the mapping of the genetic makeup between two supposedly evolutionarily linked species such as, men and chimps? Do the nearly identical patterns in the strands of DNA indicate anything? Or is that just being 'misinterprated' also? Come to think of it, nearly anything can be interprated as one pleases, it's probably the only explanation as how a religion based on the compilation of works by zealous and understandably ignorant individuals can survive as long as it has. But moving on from petty jabs...
So the DNA is similar. So what? This proves nothing. I can just as easily (and more accurately) say that it's because chimps and humans have the same creator. If evolutionists think otherwise, then yes they have misinterpreted the data.
Really everything is interpreted. There are no "brute facts." Our obligation is to interpret things the way that God does. We are not free to interpret things the way that we want.
Might I ask what differs between a evolutionist's interpration of evidence supporting his beliefs and yours? Do you consider yourself in some manner infallable of being perhaps gullible to a possibility that suits your tastes, and from then on being quite close-minded of any opposition? What authority do you, merely you, have in claiming anyone is in an objective sense right or wrong? Seems quite pompous to me.
Read my post carefully. I don't claim to be objective. NO one is. The difference is that my interpretation is based upon an infallible standard -- the Bible -- whereas the fables of the evolutionist are based solely upon the vagaries of human reason. I don't consider myself infallible; the Bible is, however, and upon that basis I can confidently declare that the evolutionists are hopelessly wrong.
I am rather suprised you would have the nerve to bring up the possibility of reproducable evidence.
You misunderstand me. It is evolutionists who claim that their fable is "scientific." But the scientific method is founded irrevocably upon reproducible results. This is not my claim; this is their claim. And their evolutionistic fable falls flat on its face, as you put it, precisely because it doesn't even measure up to the claims made for it. Evolution of the human race cannot be reproduced in the lab; therefore claims that we evolved are non-scientific.
For my part, I never claimed that creation is or must be scientifically reproducible in order to be true. I claim that it is true because it it what the Bible teaches. Period. And, for what it is worth, it is self-evident that evolutionism is a religion.
There is no incompatibility between scientific cosmology (is there any other kind?) and Gen.1: - the two are describing totally different aspects of the same thing: cosmology deals with how, and the Bible with "why". The bible presents it in a *poetic* fashion, so if you take it literally that things happened quite that way, you're mad. IMHO, at least:)
I hate coffee, so I'll skip your suggestion.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. You need a course in introductory Hebrew. Since a) I sincerely doubt you care, since you are evidently very willing to do whatever violence you wish to the text, and b) I have a background in the Hebrew language, I'll give you the short course. Please take notes so that I never have to repeat myself to you again:
There is absolutely NO indication whatsoever in the text of Genesis 1 that it is poetry. It is narrative discourse. There is likewise no indication whatsoever in the Hebrew text that the word "day" is meant to be anything other than a literal 24-hour day.
Furthermore, while I won't dispute the fact that the Bible is not principally intended as a book on cosmology, it is nevertheless true that the Bible is infallible when it addresses any issue. It actually does address the issue of cosmology: Genesis 1. It therefore speaks infallibly on the issue.
Lastly, I can tell the difference between evolution and cosmology, thanks. The simple fact is that if evolution were true (which it is NOT) it would require a certain cosmology. It is a (false and stupid) attempt at a materialist explanation of human origins. Inevitably this presupposes a materialist cosmology as well (and this is equally wrong).
Your punishment is to write on the chalkboard the following:
"I will not make pronouncements about the nature of the Hebrew text of the Bible when I don't know anything about it at all."
Repeat this until you get it, or ad infinitum -- whichever comes first.
I'm a Christian too. Don't take this as an indictment of anything other than your willingness to consider evolution as a "possibility."
First: we must take it as a given that evolution played absolutely no part whatsoever in human origins -- or in the origins of anything else. There is no way to reconcile the scientific cosmology with Genesis 1. Genesis 1 says the earth existed before the sun, that plants existed before the sun, that birds existed before land animals, etc. Genesis 2 says that God made man from dust (not gorillas). These declarations are utterly incompatible with evolution. The only way that anyone can hope to "reconcile" them is by claiming that Genesis 1 is figurative. The problem with this is that there is no indication either in the text of Genesis 1 itself or anywhere else in the Bible that it's to be taken figuratively. The entire Bible assumes it's literal.
That being the case, we have a dilemma: either the Bible's right about our origins or Darwin is. If the Bible is wrong about this, then it cannot be trusted about anything. God himself has declared that he is not a liar, and that he is omniscient. One or both of these declarations would be false if Darwin were right (which he is NOT). You would therefore have no basis for any confidence in anything the Bible says whatsoever -- about any subject. It's that simple.
The question of whether Darwin or the Bible is right matters. Don't let them deceive you.
Lastly, please note that the article didn't say that evolution could not be taught in Kansas. It says that it is no longer required. There is a big difference, and frankly the Board didn't go far enough. It is not enough to no longer require that lies be taught to our children. It is now still an option for teachers to lie to the children of Kansas. This is completely unacceptable, and Christian parents there still need to get their kids out of those crime-infested, godless government schools.
Thank You. I'll try to refrain from name-calling myself, but I'll keep your excellent example in mind.
I really don't get why these creationists are so sure that the Bible says that evolution can't have taken place.
Have you read the Bible? If you haven't, then you have no basis for criticizing anyone else for concluding that the Bible denies that evolution took place. Nevertheless, it is explicitly clear that the Bible presents a history of creation that is fundamentally and utterly incompatible with the fables that are passed off as the "scientific" theory of evolution. Read Genesis 1.
Denying the validity of evolution, and furthermore denying the right to evaluate its validity to students, is ridiculous and dangerous.
Read the article. No school and no teacher is being forbidden from teaching evolution. What is no longer required is that a student demonstrate an understanding of evolution in order to graduate. This is hardly the scandal that so many here on Slashdot are pretending it is: what is gone is a requirement, not anyone's freedom to teach the subject.
Secondly, please share with us precisely how it is "dangerous" if Kansas schools are no longer required to teach evolution. Will it result in an increase in school shootings or something? -- Oh, wait -- no, that can't be right. We have those now, and evolution is still required. Please enlighten us as to these "risks" you see.
The evidence for evolution is even stronger than for other widely accepted theories
First, let me enter a general "balderdash". Second, there is no such thing as uninterpreted evidence. There is no rock or fossil that all by itself says "Hi! Evolution is true!" To the contrary, human beings have interpreted certain things to mean that evolution is "true." They are wrong.
Thirdly, evolution as the engine behind the appearance of the human race is categorically unscientific. In order for it to be scientific, such "evolutionary processes" (so-called) must be reproducible. They are not. No one has ever evolved a new species from an old one, and even if they had done so that would not ipso facto prove that humans came into being the same way. It's pure unadulterated rubbish that you have been sold, by purveyors who have a singular goal (whether they admit it to themselves or not): to escape the fact that they are accountable to God for their behavior. They hate him, and so in a desperate effort to escape accountability to him they pretend to themselves that he doesn't exist. And part of doing so means fabricating some means or other whereby man can be said to have appeared without any reference to God. And so they have fabricated evolution. It is a pathetic lie. It's that simple.
Here's the facts, sir. Perhaps you would have discovered this had you been less interested in vindicating your foolish and reckless disregard for the Bible and more interested in the truth:
The passage in question (which you failed to mention) is 1 Kings 7:23-26. You seem to have only verse 23 in mind; this is a careless -- and, for your 'argument', fatal -- error known as "ripping out of context".
Yes, the basin was 10 cubits across. Yes, the circumference was 30 cubits.
You ignored the WIDTH of the thing.
Look in verse 26. It was a handbreadth thick. Now, my hand is approx. 4.25" across. Let's use 4" as a convenient measure for a handbreadth, and 18 inches for one cubit (both are pretty close).
That would give us the following:
C = 30 cubits * 18in/cubit = 540in.
diameter = C/PI (since C = PI * d)
diameter = 540 / 3.14159 = 171.887in.
(This is where it gets embarrassing for you)
Now, the difference between the stated diameter and the calculated diameter is 180 - 171.887, which is 8.113. This is almost exactly TWO of our handbreadths of 4 inches each!! Hmmm!!!
The conclusion is frighteningly simple:The diameter was measured to the outside edge of the basin, but the circumference was the INSIDE circumference, where the diameter is actually approximately EIGHT INCHES less than the outside diameter (one handbreadth per side = 4in. per side = 8in.).Thus, wonder of wonders, the Bible is actually accurate in this case, and you are hopelessly wrong (and so was the legislature of whatever state did this, if you're correct about that).
Of course, my numbers are mildly rough, but I think they're well within tolerance considering the technology available at the time of the construction of the temple. And if the man who measured the basin's thickness had a handbreadth of 4.0565 (8.113/2) inches -- just 5 hundredths of an inch larger than what we used as a convention -- then there is almost no error whatsoever.
Next time, try assuming that the Bible is true rather than false. You won't look so foolish.
My principal client consists of an office of about 15 people. They *don't* want time wasted on design; they want results. The programmer who actually took the time to do design (and he's a good coder) nearly lost his contract because there was nothing for the customer to SEE (i.e., WORKING CODE) for far too long (for their tastes).
I hate it, personally. I'm a very linear thinker, and I don't like just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. But the business reality is that for some people you don't really have the option to spend gobs of time on design.
I should say here that my client is quite reasonable when it comes time to fix things that might have been avoided had there been time to do proper planning up front -- so they're at least willing to admit that at least part of the problem is their own impatience.
First, I would strongly suggest you avoid SAMS books. Like the plague. Sometimes (in the past, and never to be repeated if I can help it) I would buy SAMS books on subjects about which I know a thing or two. In literally every case I've found these books to be full of gross errors. And this doesn't address the shoddy editing that fairly permeates them. Avoid SAMS. Buy O'Reilly (unabashed and uncompensated endorsement -- and no, I don't work for them)!
Secondly, I'd say you ought to skip O'Reilly's bash book if you're learning shell programming. This one title is the most disappointing O'Reilly book I own. It was none too clear, and contained very little in the way of practical examples. It's somewhat useful as a general introduction to using bash, but I don't think it's all that hot at teaching shell programming. IMO Beginning Linux Programming is much better at introducing that -- even though it has just one chapter on the subject. Hopefully O'Reilly will improve their bash book, though.
Generally I do exactly what you say: I don't throw my pearls before the swine here at Slashdot.
It just continually amazes me how the people here are willfully blinding themselves. They don't even try to deal with the facts when you present them. They just ignore them.
And it's the "educated", "enlightened" people who are doing this -- those who claim to be "scientific" in their thinking. Clue time, folks: the scientific method doesn't allow for throwing out untested hypotheses. You're acting like knee-jerk religious fanatics.
(RISKS readers know that there are all sorts of programming bugs lurking around--not just Y2K.)
But you don't seem to know that your average programming bug isn't systemic. It's not distributed uniformly across virtually all systems in all industries and in all governments. You ought to know that things break, and that when they break sometimes the consequences are breathtaking.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really care if you agree with the original poster -- assuming you know what he thinks, which is unlikely given how little he said on the matter. Furthermore, I could not possibly care less what you think about my position, because you obviously have no idea what I think.
Meantime, you have demonstrated how feeble your grasp of the issues is when you compare the GPL to laws against theft and murder. When will you grow a second neuron so that you can actually have your very first synapse?
My point remains: the first post shouldn't have been moderated down.
Yours, however, is just begging for it.
The GPL imposes significant restrictions on use of GPL-ed software.
Moderator! Heal thyself!
Err, this has nothing to do with what Joe McCarthy was after at all. Sure, some of the people who came before his committee may have behaved in the way you describe, but McCarthy didn't "rat out" anyone to get himself off any hook. He wasn't on any hooks (until the establishment took offense at his activities).
My point is neither to defend nor criticize McCarthy nor the original poster; let's not abuse what "McCarthyism" has come to mean (rightly or wrongly). McCarthyism refers to a so-called "witch hunt." The fact that some people preferred to expose other communists in exchange for leniency themselves is rather different. It's more like moral cowardice -- and if anything may be said of McCarthy, he certainly had the courage to pursue his convictions -- whether you agree with him or not.
I'm not Catholic. They're not my popes or bishops.
I'm guessing that you're engaging in a little humorous hyperbole when you say you were going to offer "50 thousand" examples of "blatently [sic] false stuff and contradictions" in the Bible. I certainly wouldn't want to overwhelm Slashdot with such a list. Why not try -- ohh, how about THREE? I'm man enough to take it. Go ahead.
Better make them good, though.
Here's your answer. You don't know what you're talking about, and you're going to embarrass yourself.
Secondly, all the action and linking verbs in this passage are past tense, so the 'had formed' part is perfectly natural. Hebrew's structure is a bit different from germanic languages like english, so you can expect to get some funny looking syntax after translation (especially when dealing with complex ideas).
Hebrew tenses are far more complex than you seem to know. There are two major "tenses," traditionally called "perfect" and "imperfect." Both are essentially "past tense" but contextual indicators demonstrate that either one may have present or even future tense meaning (though this is usually restricted to the "imperfect").
I'm a bit fuzzy here; it's been 7 years since I last read Hebrew seriously.
For all the joy you seem to get in talking about Hebrew tenses, it's a shame you don't look at other significant things related to interpretation of a text: like structure, or historical context, or literary context, to name a few. If you did, you might not have so foolishly claimed that there are "two disparate" creation accounts.
There aren't, and you're wrong.
Ethics. Human self-consciousness. Epistemology. Cosmology. There's four for you.
You didn't understand my point; perhaps I wasn't clear. It is an illegitimate use of the scientific method to make the Bible's truthfulness subject to it. Why? Because God is absolutely sovereign and absolutely true. No one has the right to pass judgment on this. It's not anything that we have any standing to question.
But getting back to your question -- the scientific method cannot "verify" ethics. It can't "verify" human self-consciousness -- especially on the evolutionist's terms. It can't say anything whatsoever about the origins of the universe because it's not reproducible.
Evolutionists != materialists.So-called "theistic evolutionists" are so helplessly trapped in contradictions that they aren't worthy of either name.
Evolutionists cannot explain how it is that they are able to say anything is "true" or "false." By their own assumptions, they evolved from primordial goo. They are nothing more than a bag of chemicals with some lightning thrown in. How does a bag of chemicals say "true"? How does lightning striking a tree say "false"? It doesn't and can't. Truth and falsehood aren't even topics of discussion because there's no discussion. "Self-consciousness" doesn' just not exist; it's not even a mirage! There's no thing that could be self-conscious -- only sparks and fizzing. So you see why I scoff at your "religion".
Read my post carefully. Where do I say that the scientific method is utterly useless for anything whatsoever?
The simple fact is that the scientific method is useful -- within limits. I have never disputed this. What I dispute is illegitimately claiming that evolution has been scientifically verified or proven, as far too many armchair evolutionists are fond of doing. What I dispute is illegitimate uses of the "scientific method" in ways that it simply cannot work.
The scientific method is utterly USELESS for "proving" that man arrived on earth via evolution, because man's evolution (as if it really happened - HA!) cannot be reproduced in the lab. The claim is bogus.
Secondly, no man or method has a right to sit in judgment over the question of whether God exists. He does, despite the pathetic squawkings of atheists.
You can't even adequately defend your own system on your own terms, and you have the gall to attack me?
Negative. It's not at the end of any of the gospels. Again, I'm not denying it, but absent anyone presenting it to us why don't we just ignore it.
As for the animal thing, I think you may have my argument confused with another.
Again, negative; but I may have guessed badly at your point in raising the "different creation accounts" myth. Too many evolutionists think that Genesis 2 says that the animals were created after Adam; it says nothing of the sort. My apologies for thinking the worst of you in this respect :-)
My understanding of them is as follows: Several hundred years after the death of Christ, many people were diluting Christianity with local religious traditions and additional gods or this and that. So representatives of the entire church met three times to form the Apostles', the Nicene and the Anastatian (sp?) Creeds.
Actually there were many such councils -- such as at Chalcedon and Constantinople. You are essentially correct about what led to the creeds here.
They provide a description of Christianity to anyone who should ask. One must necessarialy believe these core things to be considered an actual Christian, in my understanding.
Very close to correct. The creeds weren't intended to be comprehensive. They were intended to deal with the issues of the day. You will note, for instance, that the Apostles' Creed (misnamed, since the apostles didn't write it -- though I think they would have approved) does not mention God's omniscience -- yet anyone at the council who denied that doctrine would have been burned at the stake. The creeds dealt with critical issues, and most of those in the church's early centuries were Christological/Trinitarian. They were indeed intended to detail what one must believe about those doctrines (namely, of Christ and the Trinity) in order to be a Christian, however.
Everything else is open to interpretation. And there are many of them.
Well, yes and no. First, we interpret literally everything. So there is nothing in the Bible that isn't interpreted. Our task is to interpret correctly -- and that means we must ask (and then answer) the question, "What does God mean in this passage?" We are NOT free to interpret the Bible however we wish outside of a few "essentials." We have to interpret the whole thing correctly. We don't do this perfectly, of course, but this MUST be our aim.
Everyone must apply their best judgement as to how to interpet much of the bible and the events. My best judgement is through logic. This does not make God's existance dependent upon my logic, merely my belief if God.
To the contrary: you are making yourself greater than God: you are effectively saying to him, "God, if you don't satisfy MY criteria, I'm not going to believe in you!" You are wrong to believe that you have a right to do this, and it is a sin.
Interpreting the Bible is not so "up for grabs" as you make it. It is, after all, God's Word written by and through men in a definite historical-cultural context. It is language. Thus, it is a task that is within our reach. We have to cross the cultural gulf that lies between us and it, along with the language barriers, but this only requires study, not mind-altering drugs or anything.
However I don't buy that every historical account in the bible (which one?) is exactly historically correct.
Then you have no reasonable basis for believing any of it. The same God speaks in the whole book. If he's "wrong" in anything, he's not reliable for anything else either. He presents himself as omniscient and truthful. One or the other is false if there's an error in the Bible. That makes the whole thing useless if you are correct. You are not correct.
many things in the bible are disprovable (historical accounts, for example, are vulnerable to being disproved.
This turns out not to be the case. The Bible has never been demonstrated to be in error about any historical event it records, and in fact there are many cases where it has been proven correct after decades or more of "scholarly" doubt. Example 1: for decades at least "scientists" said that the Bible was wrong about the existence of the Hittite kingdoms because no one had ever found evidence of Hittite kingdoms. Well, they finally found the Hittites. Score: Bible 1, "scholars" 0. Example 2: They used to dispute the story of Jericho -- namely, that the walls fell down flat. Archaeology has since demonstrated that this is EXACTLY what happened. Bible 2, "scholars" 0. I could go on, of course.
The majority of the bible was collected/written long after the death of Christ.
False. The entire Old Testament predates Christ. That's 39 of the 66 books. The New Testament was completed within 35 years of the Crucifixion, and certainly before 70 AD, by the apostles themselves.
Your entire belief system is based upon the concept of an objective truth and false; and along with it, a good and evil. That is where your gods and demons stem from.
Err, you have this exactly backwards. My entire belief system is founded upon the twin premises that God not only exists but is absolutely sovereign over his creation, and secondly that he has spoken infallibly, truthfully (that's a bit redundant, but...), and completely in the Bible (i.e., the Bible is the sum total of God's communication with us). From this foundation comes my belief in truth and false: namely, that God is absolutely true in every respect, and anything which contradicts either his word, or his character, or what he knows to be the case, is irrevocably and unalterably false.
My question to you is, how absolutely certain are that any statement made is the truth, seeing everything and anything you percieve from the environment around you, is subject to the workings of your five physical senses and how your brain interprates what is sensed?
Because God made us and made the world for us to live in, our senses are reliable. Note that this is different from saying that there are no flaws in us. More importantly, because you deny the existence of God, you have no logical means for escaping the trap you have attempted to set for me. You destroy for yourself any means for arriving at the truth because on the one hand you throw empirical observation out the window (when you say that our senses aren't reliable), and on the other hand you destroy rationalism (see below). You are left without any logically consistent means for explaining to me that I'm "wrong" in believing in God, or for explaining to me why evolution is "right."
My point is, an electrochemical reaction is merely an electrochemical reaction. Your trained mind to believe there is a truth and false in life, and a good and an evil, can interprate it as it pleases. It can, at no point, ever claim it is right or true, or vice versa; in the objective sense.
And so therefore neither can you say that evolution is right or true. Nor can you say that it's bad or evil to kill, or lie, or...
This what you are left with when you reduce a human being to a bag of chemicals with a little electricity thrown in. You can say NOTHING about the world or even yourself. True and false -- even about your own nature as a bag of chemicals -- are not categories that electrochemical reactions can test or analyze (or even say anything about). You can't explain self-consciousness on this ground. Ever.
Rather let's put it this way: all religions (including the religion of the evolutionist, which is a materialist one) have presuppositions which remain unchallenged by practitioners. I certainly acknowledge that I have them. Evolutionists are typically reluctant to admit theirs. This is not universally the case; Lewontin (a Harvard zoologist and atheist) freely admits that evolution is a religious faith. In this he is more honest.
The typical evolutionist never questions the assumption that he has a right to logically verify everything. He barely even recognizes that he holds this. It is an untested assumption, and it is a false one. God is not subject to human verification. His existence and the truth of the Bible are not contingent upon whether you or I or anyone else can "prove" them to be. God is absolutely sovereign, and his sovereignty would be diminished fatally if it were true that it's contingent upon human approval or verification (and it's not).
I asked someone else this question. I'll ask you, too. Can an electrochemical reaction make a truth statement?
And they are identifiable as such from the text -- whereas Genesis 1 is identifiable from the text as narrative discourse.
Since there are three creation stories int he bible, and they are not all identical, which is correct?
Well, you have actually stumped me. I can guess two of your three "creation accounts" but the third escapes my memory.
However, with respect to the first two: Genesis 1 presents a history of what happened: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc. Genesis 2, in contrast, does NOT present a precise history. It presents a summary. This particular structure is common in Genesis as an introduction to a new section of the book. You'll see in 2:4 the words "These are the generations..." (some translations have it as "this is the history..." but the actual Hebrew word is "generations"). The same appears in 5:1, "This is the book of the generations of Adam..."; in 6:9, "These are the generations of Noah..."; in 10:1, "These are the generations of the sons of Noah..."; in 11:10, "These are the generations of Shem..."; etc. You will notice that in a majority of these cases, the intro of "these are the generations..." is followed by a summary of some sort. In most cases it is very short -- maybe just a few words. In the case of Genesis 2, it is a longer summary. It's not intended to be chronological; it's a summary.
As to your likely challenge about the animals being created after Adam -- there were animals all over the earth after God created them on the fifth and sixth days. Adam was to name them. There are three possibilities: either Adam must visit them all, in a massive global tour, so that he can name them, or else God must bring them to Adam so that he can name them, or else God must create an example of each animal (already created on the 5th & 6th days) for Adam to see and name. I honestly fail to see the problem. If I want to show my son an ashtray, I can either take him to see one, or bring one to him, or make one. Ashtrays already exist. What's the big deal?
however, you leave yourself open to certain arguments disproving the validity of the entire bible.
No I don't. What makes you think that the validity of the Bible hinges upon anything you or I say or think?
I personally need logical ways to believe in God
Then you have made "logic" superior to God. You have made his existence contingent upon your brain. Whether God exists is not an issue. He does. By claiming the "right" to have logical reasons for believing in God, you are claiming the "right" to judge God. This is not a right you have. You have made reason one of your idols to the extent that you attempt to judge God by it.
It is my opinion, as well as the opinion of many Christians, that the Bible should be believed as a statement of faith, not a history book. If you spend hours arguing about the type of fish that swallowed Jonah, you miss the entire point of the story: one can never hide from God. The entire message of the story, for me, seems to be this.
You fail to understand that Christianity is a historical religion. It depends completely and utterly upon the certainty that particular events actually happened. If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead (but he did), then Christianity is a charade. But if we can't believe the Bible about even ONE historical detail, then we can't be sure about ANY. And that throws the resurrection into doubt and Christianity out the window. So you see, it really does matter that Jonah was swallowed by a fish -- whatever the major point is. It really does matter that the sun stood still (so to speak) at Joshua's command. It really does matter that the Egyptian army drowned in the Red Sea. These things happened. Period. The Bible doesn't lie or get it wrong.
Either way, the religion is NOT dependent on the science, and vice versa.
In this you are mistaken for the reasons I've given above.
If any littel point in the bible is ever disproven, then the entire bible is incorrect. Seems to me to be a pretty fragile foundation for a religion!
That only depends upon whether you believe it's the Word of God or not. It is. Therefore it CANNOT be disproven in ANY particular. Therefore it is a rock-solid foundation for a religion. As to the Vatican: they're wrong if they deny that Genesis one is historical. Period. They're just men. God is not a man, and he doesn't make mistakes.
Like this: "It can't be reproduced in the lab."
All kidding aside, how can you say that it CAN be reproduced in the lab? How are they going to do it? They can't. It is therefore non-scientific. They've made a claim that cannot be empirically demonstrated. It's not subject to being reproduced in the lab. How can it be "scientific"?
Fine, how are you going to prove that the Bible is infallible, God-boy?
I don't have to. It is. How are you going to prove evolution? Why do you think that I have to prove the Bible's infallible? Isn't enough that God says it is? Why not?
If not, you'd better come up with some reason for use to believe your book over all the other ones out there.
What makes you think that the truth of the Bible is contingent upon whether or not YOU have a good enough "reason" to believe it?
People who so vigorously deny reality have an obvious mental defect and should not be allowed to infect the rest of the gene pool.
Again, Thank You. If you'd had the courage to even minimally identify yourself, I'd keep this very kind comment in mind when talking with you in the future.
Please, since I'm mentally defective, explain for me exactly how it is that evolution and the materialist worldview can explain self-awareness. Bottom line: everything that happens in your big brain or my small and defective one is just a bunch of electro-chemical reactions, right? So how does that translate into self-awareness? How does an electro-chemical reaction make a truth statement? When water boils or wood burns, is it possible for it to make a truth statement? Now, your so-called "self-consciousness" is really nothing more than a bunch of electro-chemical reactions, right?
So how can you say that ANYTHING is true or false? Please enlighten my defective brain.
I see. So when I step through the reasons why the Bible doesn't contradict the value of Pi, I am not thinking things through? Instead, the other guy is the one who "thinks things through" when he ignorantly claims that the Bible contradicts the measured value of Pi? Great. Then I guess I can't win with you. If I prove that the evolutionist is wrong, I'm not thinking things through, but when the evolutionist makes ignorant claims, he IS thinking things through. Gotcha.
Could it be that the Bible is not entirely true?!
No.
You prefer to be occasionally smug that to be intelligent.
I prefer to mock that which deserves to be mocked. Someone arrogantly claiming that the Bible contradicts Pi doesn't merit sweetness and light.
You prefer to be a dog to than to be a human. In fact, by your logic, you become exactly what the Bible says we are not: equal to animals!
Now this is very close to being one of the weirdest things I've heard in awhile.
So? While I won't dispute that the scientific method has proven to be very useful in many areas, it's a long way from perfect and it's a long way from useful in every sphere. I've never claimed that the truthfulness of the Bible is or should be subject to verification via the scientific method.
It's not as if evolutionists haven't done the same thing, either. They have always assumed a materialist view of the world, even though such a model cannot explain consciousness. They claim that ethics can exist independent of at least some god of some sort, but this claim is pure balderdash.
Evolutionists are no less "guilty" (if one must use such a term) than Christians of holding to a raft of unchallenged presuppositions. As such, they are no less religionists than the most pious Puritan.
How do I know this? Because you approach the Bible as though it were yesterday's newspaper. You ignore (or are ignorant of) the fact that the Bible is a book written over a span of about 1400 years (give or take), that even its most recent portions are almost 2000 years old, and that it was written in a culture that is vastly different from our own. Yet somehow, for some arrogant or ignorant or cockamamie reason, you still seem to think that you can just walk right up to it, point your finger at something you don't understand, and conclude that the whole thing is hogwash. Teriffic. You're quite the "enlightened soul" there, friend.
So the Bible is true like this: it's true in the sense that it's true but some people, pretending to know something, presume to deny its truthfulness without even a passing familiarity with its contents.
As to your irrational fears about what they'll be teaching in the government schools -- try reading the actual story. They didn't mandate the teaching of ANYTHING. They simply removed the mandate from evolution. Evolution can still be taught (and no doubt will). It's just not required.
There is just enough here that is partially accurate to make it dangerous. What is found in Genesis 1 is a record of creation. What is found in Genesis 2 is a *second* record -- but it doesn't contradict the first. The second one is presented by way of summary. It is not intended to be "the whole story". It is a summary. And neither one describes anything that could be interpreted as evolution by even an LSD addict.
So the DNA is similar. So what? This proves nothing. I can just as easily (and more accurately) say that it's because chimps and humans have the same creator. If evolutionists think otherwise, then yes they have misinterpreted the data.
Really everything is interpreted. There are no "brute facts." Our obligation is to interpret things the way that God does. We are not free to interpret things the way that we want.
Might I ask what differs between a evolutionist's interpration of evidence supporting his beliefs and yours? Do you consider yourself in some manner infallable of being perhaps gullible to a possibility that suits your tastes, and from then on being quite close-minded of any opposition? What authority do you, merely you, have in claiming anyone is in an objective sense right or wrong? Seems quite pompous to me.
Read my post carefully. I don't claim to be objective. NO one is. The difference is that my interpretation is based upon an infallible standard -- the Bible -- whereas the fables of the evolutionist are based solely upon the vagaries of human reason. I don't consider myself infallible; the Bible is, however, and upon that basis I can confidently declare that the evolutionists are hopelessly wrong.
I am rather suprised you would have the nerve to bring up the possibility of reproducable evidence.
You misunderstand me. It is evolutionists who claim that their fable is "scientific." But the scientific method is founded irrevocably upon reproducible results. This is not my claim; this is their claim. And their evolutionistic fable falls flat on its face, as you put it, precisely because it doesn't even measure up to the claims made for it. Evolution of the human race cannot be reproduced in the lab; therefore claims that we evolved are non-scientific.
For my part, I never claimed that creation is or must be scientifically reproducible in order to be true. I claim that it is true because it it what the Bible teaches. Period. And, for what it is worth, it is self-evident that evolutionism is a religion.
I hate coffee, so I'll skip your suggestion.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. You need a course in introductory Hebrew. Since a) I sincerely doubt you care, since you are evidently very willing to do whatever violence you wish to the text, and b) I have a background in the Hebrew language, I'll give you the short course. Please take notes so that I never have to repeat myself to you again:
There is absolutely NO indication whatsoever in the text of Genesis 1 that it is poetry. It is narrative discourse. There is likewise no indication whatsoever in the Hebrew text that the word "day" is meant to be anything other than a literal 24-hour day.
Furthermore, while I won't dispute the fact that the Bible is not principally intended as a book on cosmology, it is nevertheless true that the Bible is infallible when it addresses any issue. It actually does address the issue of cosmology: Genesis 1. It therefore speaks infallibly on the issue.
Lastly, I can tell the difference between evolution and cosmology, thanks. The simple fact is that if evolution were true (which it is NOT) it would require a certain cosmology. It is a (false and stupid) attempt at a materialist explanation of human origins. Inevitably this presupposes a materialist cosmology as well (and this is equally wrong).
Your punishment is to write on the chalkboard the following:
"I will not make pronouncements about the nature of the Hebrew text of the Bible when I don't know anything about it at all."
Repeat this until you get it, or ad infinitum -- whichever comes first.
First: we must take it as a given that evolution played absolutely no part whatsoever in human origins -- or in the origins of anything else. There is no way to reconcile the scientific cosmology with Genesis 1. Genesis 1 says the earth existed before the sun, that plants existed before the sun, that birds existed before land animals, etc. Genesis 2 says that God made man from dust (not gorillas). These declarations are utterly incompatible with evolution. The only way that anyone can hope to "reconcile" them is by claiming that Genesis 1 is figurative. The problem with this is that there is no indication either in the text of Genesis 1 itself or anywhere else in the Bible that it's to be taken figuratively. The entire Bible assumes it's literal.
That being the case, we have a dilemma: either the Bible's right about our origins or Darwin is. If the Bible is wrong about this, then it cannot be trusted about anything. God himself has declared that he is not a liar, and that he is omniscient. One or both of these declarations would be false if Darwin were right (which he is NOT). You would therefore have no basis for any confidence in anything the Bible says whatsoever -- about any subject. It's that simple.
The question of whether Darwin or the Bible is right matters. Don't let them deceive you.
Lastly, please note that the article didn't say that evolution could not be taught in Kansas. It says that it is no longer required. There is a big difference, and frankly the Board didn't go far enough. It is not enough to no longer require that lies be taught to our children. It is now still an option for teachers to lie to the children of Kansas. This is completely unacceptable, and Christian parents there still need to get their kids out of those crime-infested, godless government schools.
Thank You. I'll try to refrain from name-calling myself, but I'll keep your excellent example in mind.
I really don't get why these creationists are so sure that the Bible says that evolution can't have taken place.
Have you read the Bible? If you haven't, then you have no basis for criticizing anyone else for concluding that the Bible denies that evolution took place. Nevertheless, it is explicitly clear that the Bible presents a history of creation that is fundamentally and utterly incompatible with the fables that are passed off as the "scientific" theory of evolution. Read Genesis 1.
Denying the validity of evolution, and furthermore denying the right to evaluate its validity to students, is ridiculous and dangerous.
Read the article. No school and no teacher is being forbidden from teaching evolution. What is no longer required is that a student demonstrate an understanding of evolution in order to graduate. This is hardly the scandal that so many here on Slashdot are pretending it is: what is gone is a requirement, not anyone's freedom to teach the subject.
Secondly, please share with us precisely how it is "dangerous" if Kansas schools are no longer required to teach evolution. Will it result in an increase in school shootings or something? -- Oh, wait -- no, that can't be right. We have those now, and evolution is still required. Please enlighten us as to these "risks" you see.
The evidence for evolution is even stronger than for other widely accepted theories
First, let me enter a general "balderdash". Second, there is no such thing as uninterpreted evidence. There is no rock or fossil that all by itself says "Hi! Evolution is true!" To the contrary, human beings have interpreted certain things to mean that evolution is "true." They are wrong.
Thirdly, evolution as the engine behind the appearance of the human race is categorically unscientific. In order for it to be scientific, such "evolutionary processes" (so-called) must be reproducible. They are not. No one has ever evolved a new species from an old one, and even if they had done so that would not ipso facto prove that humans came into being the same way. It's pure unadulterated rubbish that you have been sold, by purveyors who have a singular goal (whether they admit it to themselves or not): to escape the fact that they are accountable to God for their behavior. They hate him, and so in a desperate effort to escape accountability to him they pretend to themselves that he doesn't exist. And part of doing so means fabricating some means or other whereby man can be said to have appeared without any reference to God. And so they have fabricated evolution. It is a pathetic lie. It's that simple.
The passage in question (which you failed to mention) is 1 Kings 7:23-26. You seem to have only verse 23 in mind; this is a careless -- and, for your 'argument', fatal -- error known as "ripping out of context".
Yes, the basin was 10 cubits across. Yes, the circumference was 30 cubits.
You ignored the WIDTH of the thing.
Look in verse 26. It was a handbreadth thick. Now, my hand is approx. 4.25" across. Let's use 4" as a convenient measure for a handbreadth, and 18 inches for one cubit (both are pretty close).
That would give us the following:
C = 30 cubits * 18in/cubit = 540in.
diameter = C/PI (since C = PI * d)
diameter = 540 / 3.14159 = 171.887in.
(This is where it gets embarrassing for you)
Now, the difference between the stated diameter and the calculated diameter is 180 - 171.887, which is 8.113. This is almost exactly TWO of our handbreadths of 4 inches each!! Hmmm!!!
The conclusion is frighteningly simple:The diameter was measured to the outside edge of the basin, but the circumference was the INSIDE circumference, where the diameter is actually approximately EIGHT INCHES less than the outside diameter (one handbreadth per side = 4in. per side = 8in.).Thus, wonder of wonders, the Bible is actually accurate in this case, and you are hopelessly wrong (and so was the legislature of whatever state did this, if you're correct about that).
Of course, my numbers are mildly rough, but I think they're well within tolerance considering the technology available at the time of the construction of the temple. And if the man who measured the basin's thickness had a handbreadth of 4.0565 (8.113/2) inches -- just 5 hundredths of an inch larger than what we used as a convention -- then there is almost no error whatsoever.
Next time, try assuming that the Bible is true rather than false. You won't look so foolish.
I hate it, personally. I'm a very linear thinker, and I don't like just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. But the business reality is that for some people you don't really have the option to spend gobs of time on design.
I should say here that my client is quite reasonable when it comes time to fix things that might have been avoided had there been time to do proper planning up front -- so they're at least willing to admit that at least part of the problem is their own impatience.
First, I would strongly suggest you avoid SAMS books. Like the plague. Sometimes (in the past, and never to be repeated if I can help it) I would buy SAMS books on subjects about which I know a thing or two. In literally every case I've found these books to be full of gross errors. And this doesn't address the shoddy editing that fairly permeates them. Avoid SAMS. Buy O'Reilly (unabashed and uncompensated endorsement -- and no, I don't work for them)!
Secondly, I'd say you ought to skip O'Reilly's bash book if you're learning shell programming. This one title is the most disappointing O'Reilly book I own. It was none too clear, and contained very little in the way of practical examples. It's somewhat useful as a general introduction to using bash, but I don't think it's all that hot at teaching shell programming. IMO Beginning Linux Programming is much better at introducing that -- even though it has just one chapter on the subject. Hopefully O'Reilly will improve their bash book, though.
It just continually amazes me how the people here are willfully blinding themselves. They don't even try to deal with the facts when you present them. They just ignore them.
And it's the "educated", "enlightened" people who are doing this -- those who claim to be "scientific" in their thinking. Clue time, folks: the scientific method doesn't allow for throwing out untested hypotheses. You're acting like knee-jerk religious fanatics.
But you don't seem to know that your average programming bug isn't systemic. It's not distributed uniformly across virtually all systems in all industries and in all governments. You ought to know that things break, and that when they break sometimes the consequences are breathtaking.