Returning to yesterday's posts...
Originally posted by OldThinker
reply to post by Byrd
Byrd…..thank you….I’ll investigate…..Here’s some for you to review, too….
www.asa3.org...
Good science (reasonably so), bad religion.
The science explanation is fairly well done. It glosses over a lot of details... details which have some minor importance but the discussion can go
forward without it. Then he gets off basic quantum mechanics.
...oh dear.
So we end up with statements like:
If, during the Big Bang, some values would only differ by 0.000000000001%, the resulting universe could never yield any biological life. Even
conservative mathematical estimations show that the probability for the existence of a life-bearing universe is at least 1:10229.9
...and he knows this... how? Science believes biological life can come in all forms, and even ordinary thinking postulates alternate dimensions where
life varies from life here by just a little bit. What's his proof that life couldn't exist if the universe had more or less background radiation?
Given that conditions in the universe and here on earth were different when life first started, how does he intend to prove that different conditions
are inimical to life?
His citation for that is a religious text. Now, I've prayed about stats tests before, but I didn't cite religious texts when doing stats.
That's a "D" on the biology bits, there.
And he pulls numbers out of his hat when talking about the chances of intelligent life arising. Again, we ask, "and you know this... how?" We
should also ask "and what do you mean by 'intelligent'?" The answer may be "modern homo sapiens", meaning that he discounts the idea of any
ancestors and cousin humans (like the Neanderthals) being intelligent in any manner.
That's an 'epic fail', in today's parlance.
Theological points:
* he cites Titus as proving that God cannot lie, a statement directly contradicted by Jeremiah 4:10 and 20:7 who says that God deceives him.
* His other arguments take one phrase or sentence out of a chapter and out of context. So we are presumably to believe that in the Book of Isaiah,
when God stops in the middle of a vision he's sending to Isaiah about the future of Judah and Jerusalem, prattles on for one sentence about
scientists some 2400 years later and then goes back to scolding Judah and Jerusalem?
Really?
Then he does the same sort of psychotic turn and leaves his theme (being written down by Isaiah for a few centuries until he finishes his thought with
Timothy?
Really?
That the great divinity (who foresees which of six dozen books will be selected to form the Bible after 100 years of arguments) has a scribe write
down Exodus 20:4, 5 to forbid humans from making models of the cosmos?
Now... if this is so, then the Hebrews would have been forbidden to make dolls, sculptures, paintings, drawings, decorated pottery, symbols of their
religion and so forth... like this one, found in a dig at a Biblical site:
www.fas.harvard.edu...
and these:
www.fas.harvard.edu...
And many more.
The presence of these objects suggests that there is no restriction by the deity that prevents people from creating images of other things although
they are forbidden to create images of God (which means that all those paintings of Jesus really are forbidden by that verse.)
He shows his bias and lack of understanding of context when he comments :
Every man is brutish in [his] knowledge: every founder is confounded by the graven image: for his molten image [is] falsehood, and [there is] no
breath in them. They [are] vanity, [and] the work of errors: in the time of their visitation they shall perish" --Jer. 10:14, 15 (KJV).
One could quite provocatively say that the classical image of the universe,
constructed by the "founders" called scientists, breaks down. It seems to be a "work of error."
Actually, the original Hebrew word (tsaraph ) is translated as "metalsmith". You can check this by referencing the Vulgate Bible (it's Latin, but
you can work your way through it...) where the verse reads"...stultus factus est omnis homo ab scientia confusus est omnis artifex in sculptili
quonia..."
But... can't we change "artisans" to mean "scientists"?
Well, not if we're reading the bible. You see, that particular chapter is talking about how much better the things are that God makes than the
things that man makes and a mere 4 sentences before the one that is cited, Jeremiah says "Silver spread into plates is brought from Tharsis, and gold
from Ophaz: the work of the artificer, and of the hand of the coppersmith: violet and purple is their clothing: all these things are the work of
artificers."
So Jeremiah isn't and couldn't be talking about scientists four sentences later unless he has a sudden bout of psychosis and starts babbling
nonsense. Yet the chapter is one cohesive structure and the point being made is not about people making models in a search for knowledge.
Taking verses out of context and stretching them via ambiguity to mean something that's out of joint with the chapter and book where they were found
is not good theology. It's like taking 2 sentences out of Moby Dick and using them to prove that whales have the ability to travel at warp factor
five.
) 
