posted
I award Cartman all points, since he has an understanding of physics which obviously postdates 1975.
Omega, whatever source of physics info you're using is seriously outdated.
I knew there was a reason I wanted to write down the titles of the new physics texts I got for Mithrasfest.
-------------------- "The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
Right now I want to get a sounding to make sure I know where the line of scientific knowledge lies here in this thread...
Many so-called "creation scientists" (I put it in quotes, as it's a mutually-exclusive oxymoron) I've seen get published seem to have an elementary-school understanding of the heirarchy of science -- the notion that when you come up with an idea it's a theory, while you test it it's a hypothesis, and when it's proved it's a law...
Reality don't work that way, Chumley. Those who actually live and work science understand a bit better than the layman. The only laws are the incontravertable and immutable physical forces acting on us, like the Law of Universal Gravitation. There's an unfortunate tendancy among the lay-readership to dismiss anything with "Theory" in front of it as an unproved hypothesis. The Theory of Evolution has long since been proved by direct observation and experiment. Move on. The General and Special Theories of Relativity have been proved quite solidly in many labs over many years, and we're now having fun using the frames they provide to find the loopholes.
The preceding has been to forestall any "evolution is just a theory" horse-hockey.
What came before the Big Bang (if that theory ends up holding its own) is an unanswerable question at our current state of knowledge and science. Calling it God and turning your brain off advances Humanity not at all.
There's mounting evidence that the Great Flood was nothing more than the Atlantic Ocean rising high enough after the last ice age to overflow the pass/strait of Gibraltar.
I mean, heck, most of Jesus' popularity is due to the gangbusters marketing efforts of the early Legitimate (post-Constantine) Christian church. Co-opting local pagan festivals and feast days and re-dedicating them to Christian saints and the Son of Man was a wonderful way to keep everyone's superstitions firmly loged in place.
I do celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas, but not as the birth of Jesus, just as it was originally intended -- an excuse to party to welcome back the sun after the longest night of the year. Indeed, if you want to get technical (which I love to do), there was no Jesus. His name was Joshua, and he was born in April, most likely. Yeshua ben Yosef in Hebrew, which got corrupted to Iesus in the first Greek editions of the New Testament -- the Greeks having no 'sh' sound in their alphabet, and also adding the male 'us' patronymic to his name.
We also don't know God's name. That knowledge is almost certainly completely lost. It was forbidden for the Hebrew priests to write His Name, so the 'YHVE' letters were placeholders which meant, essentially, "this is where you speak the Lord's Name". However, not many Jewish priests survived the repeated enslavements, massacres, and general scattering of their people over the millennia long enough to ensure the complete verbal knowledge passed to their inheritors before their deaths. When all you have to go on is the text, without the ciphers... *shrug*
Most of that comes from a deep annoyance at seeing so many people glorifying Jesus and all but ignoring his teachings. I wince every time I see a "What Would Jesus Do?" bumper sticker, as what Jesus would do is about the most readily-accessible bit of information we have access to in the English-speaking world, and quite a few of the non-English nations, as well. My friend's girlfriend occasionally hits a tough choice in her life and prays to Jesus for guidance. His guidance is already there in print in the Gospels. If she were meditating on his teachings, I could handle that. But waiting for a touch of his divine hand is what she's talking about, and until I see some corroborating evidence of the Old Testament stories, I'm gonna chalk most of the acts of God up to exaggeration and big-fish stories (ha-ha).
I'll stop now and give someone else a chance to chime in.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged
posted
I know. I don't doubt it. It just seems one side has trouble hearing. And considering one side has facts, and the other only has opinions... *shrug* Human beings are addicted to being right. Most people alive today would rather die than admit the possibility that they might be wrong. It takes a certain courage to let go of preconceptions and let the facts lead you where they will. And considering religion's biggest draw is as a security blanket and thumb for the soul, I don't think that courage is to be found much in that crowd...
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged
posted
Camouflaging as a complete non sequitur and a partial reply to an earlier point at the same time, I hereby bring forth my utter distaste of the concept of "racial memory" independent of direct meme transfer, and label it repulsive new age hogwash.
The "Huh? How's this a partial reply to anything?" part concerns the Noah's Flood thing. Sure, there must have been a pretty impressive show when the Mediterranean refilled. But AFAIK, that happened about a million years ago or so, and the rerun during the most recent ice age was more disappointing than "Nemesis". The idea that mankind would really "remember" something dating a million years back (or even a hundred thousand) without each and every mother explicitly telling it as a bedside story to the kids... It's more science fiction than the concept of time travel.
Now, something like the flooding of the Black Sea is more credible, as it apparently happened well within plausible oral-tradition memory. Or at least so recently that the said memory could have carried on until the first "historical records" of the event. And big floods or droughts anywhere would certainly make for good and long-living saga material, as the subject will be brought up again and again. ("It was like this flood we now have here, but a hundred times bigger!" "Hah! I remember one a *thousand* times bigger!")
But I'd rather believe in us subconsciously remembering the water in mommy's womb than in us subconsciously remembering what happened to the Med back when our forefathers had hair in places we don't even want to think about.
posted
"I wince every time I see a 'What Would Jesus Do?' bumper sticker, as what Jesus would do is about the most readily-accessible bit of information we have access to in the English-speaking world, and quite a few of the non-English nations, as well."
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
One of the bozos at work had a "WWJD" bracelet from his church and was showing it off. He asked me "Do you know what this means?" I replied "Why would Jesus die?" ....I hit it off really well with that guy yo br sure!
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
