The Jesus Myth

tat tvam asi · Mon May 03, 2010 3:04 pm

geo wrote:


	Interbane wrote: I explained to him almost a year ago why his example failed. You can't fix stupid.

I have no doubt you did a better job explaining this. But, yes it's pointless. I haven't been here for awhile until today and the first thing I see is more of the same. Apparently the YEC propaganda machine never tires. It's a damned shame because I think BookTalk's reputation suffers as a result. This is simply insultingly stupid stuff.

On and on . . .

Well, that depends. Take a look at the views my "YEC theory put to rest" is receiving compared to every other thread in the belief R&P forum. It has 1746 views currently, compared to the less than a few hundred views most other topics are receiving. The CMA has received over 1400 views. They both make for hot topics. People are interested in seeing the back and forth debating and observing the outcome I guess.

So People are reading. What they're reading is Stahrwe getting swamped by the other BT members participating in the debate. I don't think his propaganda machine reflects the views of BT as whole, actually they appear to do the opposite. But I understand what you're getting at. It is insulting to the intellect that such a topic can even go on this long. But entertainment is entertainment.

stahrwe · Mon May 03, 2010 3:08 pm

geo wrote:


	stahrwe wrote: Penelope, on the contrary, as genetic discoveries continue to show the complexity of the genome of even the simplist organism, Creationists are more convinced than ever that we are correct and that we will ultimately prevail. I even do a science experiment with my 3rd and 4th grade students where I hand them a bag containing the parts of an old alarm clock. The are instructed to assemble the alarm clock by shaking the bag. It soon becomes apparent that the pieces will be reduced to powder before any assemply will tak place.

It's hard to conceive of a lamer argument than the Creationist clock-pieces-in-a-bag canard, but it does illustrate how ignorance begets ignorance thanks to the fact that "Stahrwe" feels himself qualified to teach "science" to children. What a travesty and a downright lie. I guess Creationists think it's okay to lie to children as long as they're doing what they perceive as God's work.

This is not even remotely close to how evolution works.

First off, evolution has to do with living organisms, not alarm clocks. The idea that alarm clock pieces in a bag is somehow representative of the living evolutionary process is absurd. Evolution has to do with the slow change over generations of living things by way of replicating genes. Alarm clock parts are neither living or replicating.

Another point is that evolution is not based on pure randomness but something called Natural Selection. There is a random element in mutation but anyone who thinks evolution is just randomness has no earthly clue what it's about. This clock-parts-in-a-bag bit reveals only the boundless idiocy and the cancerous nature of organized religion.

Geo,

It's nice to see you are still around.

Of course an alarm clock is not a living organism but what is wrong, or lame about questioning a process which has so much importance attached to it? Isn't your tag, "Question everything?!" Perhaps you should change it to, "Question everything I don't agree with."

In fact, assembly of an inanimate object when all the parts are present should be easy compared with the compexities of living organism. I should have said that I used to do the experiment with parts of an old alarm clock but that really didn't seem fair so I simplified it. I would buy these Bionicles, their like Leggo characters consisting of a number of pieces (usually half a dozen) which fit together to form a creature. Put the parts into the bag and shake. Nothing happens. But when the kids take part, the Bionicle is assembled in no time even without instructions. The difference is the intelligence element.

Penelope · Mon May 03, 2010 3:19 pm


	Quote: Stahrwe wrote: The basics of Buddhism are contentment and that anyone can become a Buddah, which, for want of a better term is God, so we are back to the original lie that started everything, "You can be god."

No, there are many Buddha's; it just means 'enlightened one'. They teach that we all have 'Brahma' in us. Which is more like 'the life force'. They do not have a conception of an 'Almighty God' personality. We can be god-like in our attitude to life, which is a good aspiration, and only heretical if you wish to see it as so.


	Quote: Geo wrote: Maybe we are kind and virtuous because we evolved that way, which would mean it is entirely natural.

But, if we look at natural selection, then the monkeys caring for one another would, one assumes, be selected as they helped the species to evolve. 'Being useful and getting on with one another' gene.

I think it is different for human beings. I don't know of an instance of true altruism anyway. But if our races were to evolve to become strong and healthy, then we would not nurture our weaklings of mind and body......we would destroy them as Hitler tried when he wanted to create his master race. That is abhorent to most people - we just can't do it because we 'know' it isn't right- but it would make the human race stronger - but nastier, don't you think?

tat tvam asi · Mon May 03, 2010 3:34 pm

And Stahrwe the same is true if you take a glass of water and leave it out for a long time. Life appears in the water all by itself. Did a supernatural God have to come down to the glass of water and create the life? No. Nature makes that happen, nature brings life to that glass of water. And, everything we humans are and everything that we do is natural because we are of nature itself, not separate or apart from it. When the kids assemble the Lego's in your class it's simply nature, through the medium of these living human bodies, that has assembled the Lego pieces which are likewise made out of the natural universe as well - matter working with matter! The same applies to the assembly of an entire city. Nature itself is never unpresent in the making and creation of anything, that is true enlightenment. Everything traces back to nature itself (the realm of existence), which simply was, is, and will always be and interconnects everything in existence in that way.

And if one assumes the literal existence of mythical Gods, souls and spirits, well then if they truly exist then they are merely one more part of the very realm existence itself, the whole, the all, nature! There is nothing unnatural or supernatural about any of it when you really analyze the situation in-depth, even if I grant you the existence of God, souls, and spirits. God, in that specific sense, is simply the totality of nature itself. Nature is the driving force of it's own evolving processes, it's basically the source of the reference behind the mythic god that creates everything out of itself, or it's word coming out of itself in your case. The totality of Nature itself, as a whole, may or may not function as an eternal mind, but if it does then evolution is a specific result of the mind of nature itself and it's intention. That includes all of the perceived good and bad spread throughout nature. Indeed Naturalistic Pantheism is far more powerful (permitting that knowledge = power) and truth based then any of these shallow monotheistic concepts you've been making around here Stahrwe. And I'm well aware of that at this point in life. This isn't strictly an atheist verses monotheist disucssion here.

Interbane · Mon May 03, 2010 4:40 pm


	Quote: In fact, assembly of an inanimate object when all the parts are present should be easy compared with the compexities of living organism. I should have said that I used to do the experiment with parts of an old alarm clock but that really didn't seem fair so I simplified it. I would buy these Bionicles, their like Leggo characters consisting of a number of pieces (usually half a dozen) which fit together to form a creature. Put the parts into the bag and shake. Nothing happens. But when the kids take part, the Bionicle is assembled in no time even without instructions. The difference is the intelligence element.

What is at first apparently the parsimonious solution on your part is actually far from it. First, who builds the kids that shake the bags or construct the bionicle? That construction is far more complicated than building a bionic robot! Second, the parts of the bionicles would need magnets attached to the ends of each joint to mimic the attraction effect of various molecules. Third, how many millions of years did each of your millions of children shake the bags for? There's nothing like misrepresentation of science to an impressionable mind in the name of conversion. I do honestly believe it should be criminal. Such closed-minded practices handicap the human race.

There is no need to hypothesize a higher intelligence. Biogenesis in the environment of ancient Earth was inevitable, with no guiding hand.

Evolution is a separate subject.

tat tvam asi · Mon May 03, 2010 5:51 pm

I was reading through some electrical universe and plasma theory material when I happened across this quote from Eric Lerner, which is a perspective of evolution that fits in with this discussion.


	Quote: Cosmic pessimism is unsupported by science. ... the idea that the evolution of humankind is purely an accident, divinely engineered or otherwise, ignores the vast mass of evidence that there are long-term trends in biological evolution. Over these millions of years there has been an irregular but unmistakable tendency toward adaptability to a greater range of environments, culminating in human adaptation to virtually any environment. Over this period the intelligence of the most developed animals on earth has risen with increasing speed, from trilobites, to fish, to amphibians, to the dinosaurs, to mammals, to primates, to the hominid apes and the direct ancestors of humankind. Of course, through this long period there have been many chance events, many zigs and zags, advances and setbacks, which determined the exact timing and mode of the development of a creature capable of social evolution. Yet this unpredictability in no way erases the long-term tendency that makes the development of higher levels of intelligence, and eventually something resembling human beings, all but inevitable - as inevitable as the development of amino acids in a primal chemical soup. Thus we find that the apparently improbable accidents of the universe are neither the products of a random and incomprehensible cosmos nor evidence for a designing creator. Rather, they are misinterpretations of the general evolution of the universe. (Eric Lerner)

I tend to agree. And this stupid little child proselytizing experiment with clock parts in a bag should be criminal when you really think about it. It's intellectually dishonest to say the very least.

Veneer · Mon May 03, 2010 6:25 pm

Regarding Stahre's comment to my post, sorry you will have to take it up with Elaine Pagels. She is a professor of religion at Princeton and has researched the early church. The book was exactly about the turmoil and danger that the early Christians faced. Quite amazing actually. I paraphrased what she said about the appeal of Christianity although through the filter of 15 years and a very bad memory.

http://www.amazon.com/Adam-Eve-Serpent- ... 284&sr=1-6

stahrwe · Tue May 04, 2010 9:41 am

Interbane wrote:

Stahrwe:


	Quote: In the same way, in another post I demonstrated that if God appeared to a group of people and proved that He was God science would still deny that God exists.

WRONG

For the fourth time. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, as I've shown 4 times. You've passed the line of intellectual discussion and now you're preaching. Tell your damned neurons to accept new information. How can you justify repeating something which was shown to be wrong? Do you forget you've been shown wrong? Do you not understand my words?

EDIT: The only other explanation is if other people are using your account to post. I don't understand how there's any other way you're repeating your past mistakes.

The fact is that I was not and am not wrong. Science is limited by its structural requirements to reject God even if He made an appearance.

Interbane · Tue May 04, 2010 9:45 am

Explain why you think that. If you make the same mistakes in reasoning as last time I'm done with you, since I'd previously explained in great detail why you're wrong.

stahrwe · Tue May 04, 2010 10:22 am

Penelope wrote:


	Quote: Tat wrote: Not some supernatural being apart from nature tinkering around with nature, but nature itself as a whole doing what it does according to it's own intention.


	Quote: Stahrwe wrote: I have encountered people who subscribe to the theory you espouse, it was during the 70’s and usually random encounters with individuals who were doing their best to emulate Cheech and Chong. It usually was accompanied by numerous expressions of, “Wow! Man.” These were not serious people and I did not take them seriously then … or now, unless Penelope believes it in which case I would disagree but still take her seriously, oh, and Bleachededen too.

With regard to Tat's statement. I don't know how nature works or what makes it work. I don't understand how, (a) Time can be different at different velocity. Nature is not behaving scientifically, it would appear. (b)An object getting heavier, the faster it travels - yet surely, if something weighs something, it is that weight however it moves around - but Richard Feynman showed that a train got heavier as it moved faster. So I have no idea what rules nature follows. But I do know there isn't an old man in the sky.

It is interesting, and good that we don't know all the answers. If there is a God type inaugurator of everything, I am damn sure he/it wont give a toss how we imagine him/it to be.
But if God/Religion is not going to give us the rules for our behaviour and philosophy, then we must expect to create our own way of being. It isn't just about natural selection or the survival of the fittest, for human beings, because we have this emotional response to existence - we want to protect the weakest ones. We want to be kind and virtuous, even if there is no God, nay, I would say, especially if there is no God.....we must be Godlike.

We (most of us) want to be good, kind and virtuous.....and that is not natural and it certainly isn't scientific. But, it is how we just are. Thank goodness!

So, it is not about shaking clock pieces up in a bag and noting that they don't fit together to produce a clock. A thousand monkeys at a thousand typwriters will never, never produce the works of Shakespeare either. Not even one line of Shakespeare. Because Shakespeare had a soul which expressed itself via his writing and Mozart had a soul which expressed itself in music - they first needed to learn the technology, science, technique of language, or music in order to create - so I am not decrying science, but it takes soul and unscientific emotion to produce a masterpiece. Do you see what I mean? I've just realised that I'm reitering that old cult novel 'Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance'. That was a new agey, Wow Man! Book. It was very enlightening too. Not serious, because my favourite Guru says, 'If it gets serious, you're on the wrong track'.

Please bear with me for a minute as I pick a nit. Weight and mass are not the same thing though we tend to use the two terms interchageably. Under normal conditions, Newtonian physics, the mass of an object is constant but its weight can vary depending on where the object is. For example: A 5 pound hammer on earth weighs nothing in space but, were I to hid you with it, the hammer would still yield a force relative to its mass.

As for the clock parts in a bag, that experiment was designed to remove the creative element completely, and, in fact, it removes the intellectual requirement as well. It is a brutish experiment and I fail to understand the howls of complaint about it so I will ask for an explanation. If the clock bag experiment is so silly, explain how hemoglobin is manufactured. Can I just put the chemicals in a baggy and shake it?

As to God, why does everyone assume God would not be interested in us? I guess people think God would be like that big blue guy in Watchmen, bored out of his mind. That is not the way He is

stahrwe · Tue May 04, 2010 10:29 am

Penelope wrote:


	Quote: Stahrwe wrote: The basics of Buddhism are contentment and that anyone can become a Buddah, which, for want of a better term is God, so we are back to the original lie that started everything, "You can be god."

No, there are many Buddha's; it just means 'enlightened one'. They teach that we all have 'Brahma' in us. Which is more like 'the life force'. They do not have a conception of an 'Almighty God' personality. We can be god-like in our attitude to life, which is a good aspiration, and only heretical if you wish to see it as so.

I was aware that drawing a parallel between God and Buddah was a stretch but that is a close as I can get given that they don't line up. Also, Buddhism is inward looking while Christianity is outward.

johnson1010 · Tue May 04, 2010 10:43 am

Star said:


	Quote: I was aware that drawing a parallel between God and Buddah was a stretch but that is a close as I can get given that they don't line up

So, knowing that it was fully incorrect, even by your own understanding, you made the statement in an attempt to deceive people?

As to the bag "experiment".

No scientist anywhere has ever made the assertion that evolution is where something complex poofs into existence out of nothing. You may note that that is the exact argument of religious creation. God poofs all wildlife into existence with no process. God himself, the ultimate in complexity, is given no explanation at all, and so there is no explanation to be had for existence.

no scientist is making the claim that you should be able to shake a bag full of clock parts and make a clock. That is the extremely foolish stance of creationists like yourself. It is not even close to representing the process outlined by evolution.

Evolution talks about change occuring over generations due to the combination of genes and through random mutation, which is then selected through environmental pressures.

You are talking about shaking a bag of junk.

Scientists have studied the replicating structures of DNA and how they interact to come up with theories, which have been observed to be applicable through hundreds of thousands of experiments and real world applications, proving the theories to be an accurate representation of real biological processes.

You are talking about taking apart a toy, putting it in a bag, and shaking a bag of junk.

stahrwe · Tue May 04, 2010 11:10 am


	tat tvam asi wrote: And Stahrwe the same is true if you take a glass of water and leave it out for a long time. Life appears in the water all by itself. Did a supernatural God have to come down to the glass of water and create the life? No. Nature makes that happen, nature brings life to that glass of water. And, everything we humans are and everything that we do is natural because we are of nature itself, not separate or apart from it. When the kids assemble the Lego's in your class it's simply nature, through the medium of these living human bodies, that has assembled the Lego pieces which are likewise made out of the natural universe as well - matter working with matter! The same applies to the assembly of an entire city. Nature itself is never unpresent in the making and creation of anything, that is true enlightenment. Everything traces back to nature itself (the realm of existence), which simply was, is, and will always be and interconnects everything in existence in that way.

Kind of jumped in here without any lead in. Ok, there is an electron shortage afterall. You picked an interesting example to cite. Pasteur demonstrated the origin of living things in vesels by proving the existence of microbes. What is amusing is that while science stands against spontaneous generation in modern times, it proposes in as the explanation for the origin of life, therefore, the only difference between scientific fact and nonsense are a few hundred million years.


	tat tvam asi wrote: And if one assumes the literal existence of mythical Gods, souls and spirits, well then if they truly exist then they are merely one more part of the very realm existence itself, the whole, the all, nature! There is nothing unnatural or supernatural about any of it when you really analyze the situation in-depth, even if I grant you the existence of God, souls, and spirits. God, in that specific sense, is simply the totality of nature itself.

As Ben Stein would say, "Excuse me?"
There is no logical step from your premises to your conclusion. You assume that God is part of nature, then jump to God is the totality of nature. You are a confused man.

And btw:

There is nothing scientific about asthrotheology. It is merely astrology with a veneer of scientific lipstick applied to it.


	tat tvam asi wrote: Nature is the driving force of it's own evolving processes, it's basically the source of the reference behind the mythic god that creates everything out of itself, or it's word coming out of itself in your case. The totality of Nature itself, as a whole, may or may not function as an eternal mind, but if it does then evolution is a specific result of the mind of nature itself and it's intention. That includes all of the perceived good and bad spread throughout nature. Indeed Naturalistic Pantheism is far more powerful (permitting that knowledge = power) and truth based then any of these shallow monotheistic concepts you've been making around here Stahrwe. And I'm well aware of that at this point in life. This isn't strictly an atheist verses monotheist disucssion here.

I don't think I even need to comment on this nonsense. I will let its lunacy speak for itself.

Penelope · Tue May 04, 2010 11:18 am


	Quote: Stahrwe asked: As to God, why does everyone assume God would not be interested in us?

Stahrwe........this is why:-


	Quote: David Attenborough: The revered presenter of such groundbreaking series as "The Living Planet" and producer of the classic "Life on Earth", told The Times: "I tend to think of an innocent little child sitting on the bank of a river in Africa, who's got a worm boring through his eye that can render him blind. "Now, presumably you think this Lord created this worm, just as he created the hummingbird. I find that rather tricky."

stahrwe · Tue May 04, 2010 11:21 am

johnson1010 wrote:

Star said:


	Quote: I was aware that drawing a parallel between God and Buddah was a stretch but that is a close as I can get given that they don't line up

So, knowing that it was fully incorrect, even by your own understanding, you made the statement in an attempt to deceive people?

Oh bother. For clarification purposes, for you Johnson1010, saying that something is a stretch isnot the same as 'knowing that [a statement] is FULLY incorrect.


	johnson1010 wrote: As to the bag "experiment". No scientist anywhere has ever made the assertion that evolution is where something complex poofs into existence out of nothing. You may note that that is the exact argument of religious creation. God poofs all wildlife into existence with no process. God himself, the ultimate in complexity, is given no explanation at all, and so there is no explanation to be had for existence. no scientist is making the claim that you should be able to shake a bag full of clock parts and make a clock. That is the extremely foolish stance of creationists like yourself. It is not even close to representing the process outlined by evolution. Evolution talks about change occuring over generations due to the combination of genes and through random mutation, which is then selected through environmental pressures. You are talking about shaking a bag of junk. Scientists have studied the replicating structures of DNA and how they interact to come up with theories, which have been observed to be applicable through hundreds of thousands of experiments and real world applications, proving the theories to be an accurate representation of real biological processes. You are talking about taking apart a toy, putting it in a bag, and shaking a bag of junk.

So where did the DNA the scientists are replicating come from?
At some point in the past, like it or not, evolution has to posit a systhesis of inorganic chemicals into organic chemicals, a bag of clock parts into a clock, or if that is too complex a bag of bionicle parts, into a bionicle.

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