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Well, the bible is "some" evidence. But then again, if we must accept the bible as conclusive evidence, then one must also accept the Tipitaka as conclusive evidence for Buddhist beliefs.
I know you don't accept this (thus all the qualifiers!), but for any onlookers who do.....
The Bible provides evidence for the existence of god(s) to the same extent that Harry Potter books provide evidence for Hogwarts and Dumbledore. Both collections of literature contain some factual things, some real geographic locales, some history, and both contain some (...ok, many) fantastical claims. The latter would need some form of verification beyond "it was written in a book," before they would constitute evidence worth considering. At present, I see no reason to give more credence to the fantastical claims of the Bible, than the fantastical claims of the HP series.
Last edited by HeelaMonster; 06-14-2021 at 01:57 PM..
I know you don't accept this (thus all the qualifiers!), but for any onlookers who do.....
The Bible provides evidence for the existence of god(s) to the same extent that Harry Potter books provide evidence for Hogwarts and Dumbledore. Both collections of literature contain some history, and both contain some (...ok, many) fantastical claims. The latter would need some form of verification beyond "it was written in a book," before they would constitute evidence worth considering. At present, I see no reason to give more credence to the fantastical claims of the Bible, than the fantastical claims of the HP series.
I know you don't accept this (thus all the qualifiers!), but for any onlookers who do.....
The Harry Potter books were specifically written as fiction and we have no doubt about that. You cannot claim the same about the Bible stories. However primitive, uninformed, figurative, allegorical, embellished, or hyperbolic they may be, they were NOT specifically written to be fiction. You ignore that to your own misinformation.
Mensa is basically right on this. I remember threads that interested me, at least based on the OP, that then devolved into (literally) pages of pure science. Even as a former science teacher, that's not what I'm here for. And, the mods gave warning after warning after warning. To no avail. As a result, the abuse had to be put to rest.
That's pretty much what happened. For some reason, we can't get people to tell us when something goes wrong. If people would report problem posts (not just because you disagree with a post), we could delete the problems. Instead, people reply to the problem posts, resulting in two problem posts when we finally get to them.
I saw this happen last week when a Newbie kept highlighting text in red. Instead of reporting it, somebody kept replying to him, with the problem post quoted, so when I stumbled across it, I had to edit two posts.
Yesterday, we had a similar problem when somebody altered spelling to avoid the language filter. Some of the religious people are quite offended by that, so we had to write a rule. Sure enough, the post was quoted. When I found it, I had to fix two posts.
Look, some of the Christians want us to ban the use of the words "damn," "Hell," and "ass," even though those words appear many times in the Bible. We can't do that, but we can insist that language be acceptable for a Religion and Spirituality forum. (See? The rule wasn't written just to entertain the moderators.)
The situation removes ANY possibility of educating those ignorant of science about even the existence of science that contradicts their religious rationale since they are unlikely to visit the science forum. It actually contradicts your professed goal to convince religious people not to try to impose their views on society, phet.
This is the same problem you religionists have with religion -- an inability to control yourselves. If you had restrained yourselves and followed the rules, the rules wouldn't have been tightened so much. You did it to yourselves.
I know you don't accept this (thus all the qualifiers!), but for any onlookers who do.....
The Harry Potter books were specifically written as fiction and we have no doubt about that. You cannot claim the same about the Bible stories. However primitive, uninformed, figurative, allegorical, embellished, or hyperbolic they may be, they were NOT specifically written to be fiction. You ignore that to your own misinformation.
Well, all I can say is, if they were "primitive, uninformed, figurative, allegorical, embellished, or hyperbolic", then they're of no historical value other than understanding the human environment back then. [remember, those were your words]
This is the same problem you religionists have with religion -- an inability to control yourselves. If you had restrained yourselves and followed the rules, the rules wouldn't have been tightened so much. You did it to yourselves.
Actually, it was the atheists who debated and tried to discredit the science presented who engaged in the protracted science discourse, Phet!
I know you don't accept this (thus all the qualifiers!), but for any onlookers who do.....
The Harry Potter books were specifically written as fiction and we have no doubt about that. You cannot claim the same about the Bible stories. However primitive, uninformed, figurative, allegorical, embellished, or hyperbolic they may be, they were NOT specifically written to be fiction. You ignore that to your own misinformation.
Well, in the sense that the history of western literature shows that insisting on the distinction between fiction and non-fiction is a recent development, sure. Did Ovid think that he was recounting factual events? Probably not.
In fact, neither you nor anyone else knows why the stories that eventually came to be written down and included in the bible were originally told. We can't even know whether the people who eventually wrote them down attributed the same significance to them as the original tellers did.
We are story-telling animals, and we tell stories for many different reasons. Including telling them during the dark periods of the year to restless children who would drive everyone nuts if they weren't entertained. While you're entertaining them, might as well throw in a moral or two by means of a scary story...
I know you don't accept this (thus all the qualifiers!), but for any onlookers who do.....
The Harry Potter books were specifically written as fiction and we have no doubt about that. You cannot claim the same about the Bible stories. However primitive, uninformed, figurative, allegorical, embellished, or hyperbolic they may be, they were NOT specifically written to be fiction. You ignore that to your own misinformation.
Ironically, I almost added a disclaimer to that with you in mind, noting that my comments applied regardless of the author's original intent! So no, I did not ignore, even if I didn't explicitly state.
Whether the work was intended as fiction, or factual history, or science textbook... or we really don't know (which would have to be said of many of the individual books that were eventually gathered into the collection we now know as the Bible)... my conclusion is exactly the same. That you are able to describe the biblical stories as "primitive, uninformed, figurative, allegorical, embellished, or hyperbolic" merely reinforces that conclusion. Namely, that we can't take something as gospel truth (pun intended), merely because it was written down. There needs to be something backing up those words.
Last edited by HeelaMonster; 06-14-2021 at 02:30 PM..
Well, the bible is "some" evidence. But then again, if we must accept the bible as conclusive evidence, then one must also accept the Tipitaka as conclusive evidence for Buddhist beliefs.
It is evidence that people believe stuff; it's not evidence that said stuff is true.
Ironically, I almost added a disclaimer to that with you in mind, noting that my comments applied regardless of the author's original intent! So no, I did not ignore, even if I didn't explicitly state.
Whether the work was intended as fiction, or factual history, or science textbook... or we really don't know (which would have to be said of many of the individual books that were eventually gathered into the collection we now know as the Bible... my conclusion is exactly the same. That you are able to describe the biblical stories as "primitive, uninformed, figurative, allegorical, embellished, or hyperbolic" merely reinforces that conclusion. Namely, that we can't take something as gospel truth (pun intended), merely because it was written down.
Neither can you dismiss them as fiction. Someone with the mindset of a Norseman witnessing something we would take as not fantastic would be reported in ways that would seem fantastical. A man comes out of the clouds in a helicopter and lands in a field. He takes a 45 caliber pistol and shoots a rabbit. Then proceeds with the rabbit back into the clouds. The Norseman would probably have reported that Thor came hunting with his Hammer that throws lightning bolts and went back into the clouds.
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