The Faith & Religion mega Thread

BTW, I would like to express my gratitude to all participants in this thread.

@business_kid: Your quick knowledge of scripture, and not just the red letters of my bible, but the black and white too, as well as the words in the ancestors of my bible and its forks from various translations--that knowledge is a testimony to your lifetime of studying scripture, a labor of love and scholarship; and it conveys to my heart a faith that is not blind but is tempered by the steel of critical thinking: you are an asset to this thread and am grateful for the opportunity to discuss faith and religion with someone who is so real about it.

@hazel: ditto... your kind wisdom and hymns are nurturing!

@sundialcvs: I hardly ever have anything to reply to your posts, because I so seldom ever disagree with them. Your POV of tolerance shines through all your words... you are able to cherish meaning from a variety of traditions: spirit, religion, science, poetry, literature, myth, etc... They are all valid and have a place in our customs, and you are right not to get too worked up over what might seem like contradictions between these traditions, but to appreciate all of them relative to their contexts. In regards to algorithmic democracy, we didn't agree, but thanks for sparing me the bullet thus far

@enorbet: you are my favorite advocate of science to discuss science with because you actually listen, respond intelligently, and are patient with me; I have a friend who worked on the genome project, but he/she cannot get their head around the infinite happenstance conjecture, and usually just resorts to ad hominum retorts about hippies and their fluffy ideas; and I have a physicists friend who, though he disagrees, will at least admit that I could be right; but he is a senior citizen with a temper, and requires delicate care to get to discuss science with him... Most of my friends and acquaintances don't like to think this critically and prefer drowning in substance abuse from one party to the next: in the state of Oregon, just about every street drug has been decriminalized, and its difficult to find sober thoughtful people who want to discuss critical issues.... especially living 45 minutes from nearest fuel station... hard to find a person at all. So thanks for your patience. Though we might approach science initially from what seems like oppposite POVs, I believe we are comrades in our desire to reach consensus through rational discussion... Thus you are my favorite comrade adversary

@mrmazda: I am glad that you are here to represent those who believe the Bible to so infallible and that nothing in it has ever been proven false. I find that to be in contrast from what @business_kid said about infallibility of the bible in post #11297:

I'm always wary of saying the Bible is infallible. A few scribal errors have been identified; Some differences in eye-witness accounts can't all be correct. As so much of the Bible is historical, many things have to be seen in the context of the times & places which we may not be familiar with. Figures of speech like hyperbole, parables, cannot be taken literally. Many prophecies likewise cannot be taken literally. For instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oholah_and_Oholibah are aptly referred to as 'pejorative personifications' and many other non-literal examples exist.

I'm curious how your view of infallibility treats the differences in eye-witness accounts, or even in creation stories, as Genesis contains two, and they're not exactly the same? I believe this thread will sharpen the steel in your faith.

I am not implying that these users are more exceptional than other participants in this thread; rather, there are multiple discussions happening at once, most valid and interesting and its a long thread where users have long since chimed out and others have come, etc... my participation is just a thread in this thread, and the users I mention are threads in this thread that have reciprocated my discourse regularly; and I find amongst them, some of the politest disagreements on the web...

I just want to express my gratitude for having a place to discuss these issues amongst you practitioners of classical scholarship: when I look to the streets, I fear we are a dying breed. Thanks for your thinks.

Weird: my post counter got stuck on 666

I've made a few posts, but the number has not incremented correctly... I can only conclude that @enorbet's 1+1 increment feature of the universe has broken, such that 666 + 1 is still 666.

Originally Posted by slac-in-the-box Weird: my post counter got stuck on 666 I've made a few posts, but the number has not incremented correctly... I can only conclude that @enorbet's 1+1 increment feature of the universe has broken, such that 666 + 1 is still 666.

While this is just the layman's "cyclopedia", wikipedia, I think it applies, slac-in-the-box, though it does suffer from some controversy until more is understood about Quantum Mechanics in this area.

Originally Posted by wikipedia - Principle of Locality Locality evolved out of the field theories of classical physics. The idea is that for a cause at one point to have an effect at another point, something in the space between those points must mediate the action. To exert an influence, something, such as a wave or particle, must travel through the space between the two points, carrying the influence.

Conflating "my post counter got stuck on 666" with "1+1 increment feature of the universe" is a non sequitur so "broken" is illogical. The devil is in the details, right? In this case the details are that human pattern recognition often transposes into seeing agency everywhere.

Originally Posted by slac-in-the-box Weird: my post counter got stuck on 666

FYI, posts in General/ don't count towards the total post count.

Originally Posted by ntubski FYI, posts in General/ don't count towards the total post count.

That explains it...

Thankyou @ntubski: now I can relax, knowing I'm not the antichrist. It turns out that PulseAudio was the antichrist--or at least the topic of my 666th post at LQ...

I know about the pattern suggestions, and didn't really believe it to be glitch in math (at least not this time)--but just thought it funny in the context of which thread that happened to happen in...

Ultimately, I'm pretty tolerant of all your thoughtful povs, and I've been the victim of my own divine comedy long enough to laugh at myself and not take any of it too seriously; such that, sometimes, I may juxtapose one or more povs and intentionally take one out of context if it can provide any form of comic relief; the topic of the thread is deadly serious in that many have killed or died or both for their religions; nevertheless there is a comic irony when most of them are saying practice peace...

comedy is just as good as chocolate.

@business_kid: As long as it is important to you that "a prophecy has been fulfilled," in your eyes it always will be. And, to me, that is the essential problem with prophecy.

Prophecy generally doesn't benefit the prophet, who often finds himself killed for having spoken inconvenient words to power. Prophecy benefits those who convincingly assert that the prophecy "has been fulfilled, as they said," which is interpreted to mean that God has approved of and endorsed everything else that they said.

This is why the entire topic of "prophecy" is really unconvincing and unmotivating to me. I could 'prophesy' that "in the last days robins will be red and the moon will turn blue." Someone might then point to red robins as "fulfillment" of my prophecy, which necessarily "proves" that we are in the last days. Others might produce "scientific evidence" showing a "perceptible blue shift" in lunar output, thus "proving" that we are in the last days but they're more of a long way off. There are those who would do these things. It can be a very powerful motivator to some people to see what they want to see, and to know what cannot be known. And, most importantly, to convince others of this "fact" or to persuade them that they ought to believe it "by faith." (Faith in who, exactly?)

Originally Posted by slac-in-the-box now I can relax, knowing I'm not the antichrist. It turns out that PulseAudio was the antichrist--or at least the topic of my 666th post at LQ...

Except absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so you might still be it. (Though I suspect a fair few people would agree with it being a certain author of PulseAudio.)

comedy is just as good as chocolate.

Nah, it's better. Laughing makes one healthier and doesn't hurt teeth.

Originally Posted by slac-in-the-box I'm curious how your view of infallibility treats the differences in eye-witness accounts, or even in creation stories, as Genesis contains two, and they're not exactly the same? I believe this thread will sharpen the steel in your faith.

Let me explain: If I say the Bible is infallible, it is a sweeping statement which indicates everything should be treated as infallible pronouncements of doctrine. But

• Witnesses sometimes differ in their accounts of events. One version is probably wrong.
• Or King Saul, who Jehovah would not answer, went to see a witch in Endor on the eve of a battle. The witch summoned some spirit pretending to be Samuel, who gave him a doom-laden prophecy. But the real Samuel would not speak to him when he was alive. The prophecy was basically correct but inaccurate in details.

Further, once you say the Bible is infallible, some dweeb will throw you some random misunderstanding, and you'll have to divert from whatever you were trying to say into explaining some random piece of trivia.

Lastly, I know of only one Creation account in Genesis, i.e. 1:1-2:4. Where's the second one?

Originally Posted by business_kid Lastly, I know of only one Creation account in Genesis, i.e. 1:1-2:4. Where's the second one?

Genesis 2 vv.3-25. This expands the sixth day of the previous account but has events in a different order: man is created first, then all the other animals. and then finally woman.

There are actually three of what could be called "creation accounts."

Even within the first few chapters of Genesis, you will find "inconsistencies" which reveal the passage of time and probably-oral history. You should expect nothing else. Old [Books] are simply "like that."

Likewise, Genesis 1 and 2 are beautiful poems, and it is easy to find beautifully-executed recordings of them being recited and sung in what is thought to be (close to ...) their original language. We have no way to know when these words were actually written, nor what their sources might have been.

There is also the problem in a way from Locality of LKanguage, even today, butin very old text and often worse than the context and meanings in today's similar languages. For example, ask an American what a "lorry" is and I'm betting few will know and that's an easy one. "Football" is more widely understood as not translating exactly in what are ostensibly the same language for the exact same word. Add to this the earliest written languages were clumsy at best even when current without local context, especially those that only employed consonants.

There is no Rosetta Stone for most and even such a stone could not resolve local context and we haven't even touched on inflection which is even easier to research than pitch dependent languages. We can't even know for certain which languages were altered by pitch since in extinct languages nobody has ever heard them spoken let alone grown up in the areas to learn such context.

Then there are those pesky Mayan prophecies...

@hazel: I wouldn't call that a creation account. Creation was done, and it's early history really. I'm not dogmatic there, but creation is energy --> matter, surely?

@business_kid: As long as it is important to you that "a prophecy has been fulfilled," in your eyes it always will be. And, to me, that is the essential problem with prophecy. Prophecy generally doesn't benefit the prophet, who often finds himself killed for having spoken inconvenient words to power. Prophecy benefits those who convincingly assert that the prophecy "has been fulfilled, as they said," which is interpreted to mean that God has approved of and endorsed everything else that they said. This is why the entire topic of "prophecy" is really unconvincing and unmotivating to me.

That's understandable. In matters of religion, I can't imagine you ever becoming motivated. I tried to quantify the kilovolts that might be required, but above a certain potential, flesh just burns . As for prophecy

Originally Posted by Amos 3:7 For the Sovereign Lord Jehovah will not do a thing Unless he has revealed his confidential matter to his servants the prophets.

The prophets were inspired primarily to proclaim God's judgements. Calling out the leaders of any time was pretty unpopular, and still is. On top of this, they sometimes foretold bad things that were going to happen to egregious sinners. Events sometimes delayed these consequences (e.g. mass repentance of the Ninevites in response to Jonah) but they inevitably happened. Believers can look back on history written in advance and be motivated. But before the fulfillment, there's no motivation if you don't accept previous fulfillments. It's much like Jesus described when warning of the end. If I haven't croaked it before the end comes, it will give me no pleasure to see large numbers zapped. But love for God and fulfilled prophecy provides the motivation to swim against the tide.

Originally Posted by enorbet There is also the problem in a way from Locality of LKanguage, even today, butin very old text and often worse than the context and meanings in today's similar languages. For example, ask an American what a "lorry" is and I'm betting few will know and that's an easy one. "Football" is more widely understood as not translating exactly in what are ostensibly the same language for the exact same word. Add to this the earliest written languages were clumsy at best even when current without local context, especially those that only employed consonants. There is no Rosetta Stone for most and even such a stone could not resolve local context and we haven't even touched on inflection which is even easier to research than pitch dependent languages. We can't even know for certain which languages were altered by pitch since in extinct languages nobody has ever heard them spoken let alone grown up in the areas to learn such context. Then there are those pesky Mayan prophecies...

English dialects change and intermingle continuously. Not so ancient languages. Something you didn't mention was they had a tiny number of root words, so mistranslation was rare as long as you had context. OTOH, a few words on their own were confusing. Look at Daniel 5 for an example - the Aramaic consonantal words the mysterious hand wrote (vs 5) might have been

MN MN TK PS

Hence the requirement (vs. 7) to read the writing. One possibility was the words "Mina Mina Shekel ½Shekel," all decreasing units of currency. That meant nothing. But Daniel read the writing and interpeted it

Originally Posted by Daniel 5:25-28 And this is the writing that was inscribed: MEʹNE, MEʹNE, TEʹKEL, and PARʹSIN.  “This is the interpretation of the words: MEʹNE, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. “TEʹKEL, you have been weighed in the balances and found lacking. “PEʹRES, your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.

"Rosetta stones" do exist: The Greek Septuagint; The Samaritan Pentateuch; The Syriac Pershitta, and various polyglots which had side by side translations into as many as six languages. But the principal guide is the sheer volume of written Hebrew. You can get degrees in Biblical Languages, so your points simply do not accord with the facts.

As for Mayan prophecies: we have high standards for what is considered Divinely inspired prophecy. There continues to be attempts at prophecy from other sources, but there's no value in going there.

Thanks, business_kid. That was interesting. I do have to ask however how does one religions precepts and prophecies vary from anothers'? IOW don't the same criteria apply?

Some of the myths in the early chapters of Genesis are so(!) old that they were originally oral traditions. The legends would be taught by father to son, who had to memorize them exactly. But are human memories perfect? I honestly don't remember ...

When writing came along, scribes would transcribe important books like the Torah character by character, and other scribes would then inspect the transcribed text one character at a time. These people spent their entire lives doing this.

Nevertheless:

Various aspects of the creation story that Noah was telling(!) his sons – he was not writing a letter – in Genesis 5 do not exactly match Chapter 1, and Chapter 1 does not exactly match Chapter 2. To which I reply, "get over it!"

The processes by which these texts finally arrived into our hands involved thousands of years and countless individuals. Inconsistencies are inevitable. And this is true even of much later texts. The Apocrypha contains "the rest of" the Book of Esther! I think that it is pointless to get bent out of shape about things like this. "They are now what they are now, and they got here how they got here. Move along."

Maybe "God originally said it." But, "men have been repeating it ever since!"

If you expand your sights beyond the "canonical" Bible and its "semi-conanical" Apocrypha, you encounter a diversity of texts including many who claim to be "gospels." Fortunately, you can now find the full texts of these writings online, in various versions (in some cases). The people who selected what would be "the canon" were essentially censors. A lot of available writing "didn't make the cut," and unfortunately some of it has since been destroyed or lost. (When you wanted to conquer a people, you often wiped out its official library. And there were no backups.) We have glimpses of some sources, such as "Q," but the original is (so far) lost.

But again: "Here we are now. Move along."