Even Pat Robertson understands, to a point, that God is not conducting an Orwellian 2+2=5 loyalty test. Faith is about believing in more than can be seen, not about denying what has been seen.

burndtdan: God created and manipulates the universe

Which is still "god of the gaps bullshiat".

Moving magic from the point of abiogenesis back to the point of singularity expansion doesn't change squat except the amount of known history about which you are wrong. In the end, you are still, however, wrong. Magic did not create the universe, did not set in motion, and plays no role in its machinations. Playing devil's advocate for these people is impossible because you're just choosing the amount of time about which they're wrong.

Unless there's just nobody else available, there's no real reason to consider the opinions of people who say "god flicked the singularity and that started everything else, but I accept all the science after that point" anymore than you would people who say "god pissed in the dirt and made muck men out of the result, but I accept all the science after that point".

They're both wrong and they can both be easily dismissed and replaced instead with people who don't choose to be flat-out wrong from some arbitrary point in time back.

This About That: Good for Pat Robertson, but WTF is "revealed science"? Is there also "secret science"?

Revelation is a religious concept that there is a third form of knowledge (in addition to the classical forms, a priori/self-evident knowledge and learned/acquired knowledge gained through experience) in which one gains knowledge by directly connecting with an ideal abstract form, rather than figuring the knowledge out by logic or observation.

It was pretty popular with Christian philosophers pre-enlightenment when they were struggling to figure out Greek philosophy and not ever quite getting it, but it's rarely ever been taken seriously otherwise, even as a method for prophets getting information from God (generally he just talks to people in modern mythology, albeit quietly and to your soul). Robertson's going retro on us, apparently, even for him. Usually he only wants us to go back about 120 years, 500 years is a significantly more impressive leap.

Ego edo infantia cattus: They grow up so fast.

Ha! WRONG!!!

I don't see any elephants or a giant tortoise under that thing, so it's obviously fraudulent.

MrEricSir: They gave up on that teaching centuries ago. Turns out not being an asshole isn't conducive to spreading your religion.

And some inside the Catholic Church kind of tried to convince the rest of the Catholics to return to that, but they mostly mock them (Jesuits) or just ask for their tasty beer (Trappists).

eraser8: Son of Thunder: If only there were people who dedicated their careers to questions like this, who earned PhDs in fields like theology and biblical studies

Those are basically the sciences of explaining why the Bible doesn't really mean what it really says...which speaks to my point: when the Bible can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean, it doesn't mean anything at all.

No, precisely the opposite. They are about understanding what the bible actually says. Dismissing entire fields of scholarly inquiry because they produce answers that are too complex to explain to your average seventh-grader is exactly the kind of self-justifying anti-intellectualism that young earth creationists engage in.

Ego edo infantia cattus: [www.glennbeck.com image 600x396]

They grow up so fast.

And we live in a world where that is actually more than just a Bad Religion song.

xynix: abb3w: Nohow, it's an inaccurate minimization to say Leviticus means "nothing" to "modern" Christians.

From a historical outlook it's interesting and puts some things into perspective from a Christian standpoint. However it's outdated. The "revealed" knowledge of the New Testament confirms this and it's excluded as we're gentiles and not Jews. Fundies just blithely choose to ignore this fact or have no knowledge of this fact which means they have little knowledge of their own religion. They choose to use outdated arguments for their own personal distaste/hatred/whatever.

FitzShivering: /really smart dude and a good hearted guy, who treats me like a human even though I share none of his beliefs, which is more than can be said for a lot of people out there in the religious argument land

The church I go to follows this doctrine. I have a magnet on my car that says "Love God, Love People" and it's the slogan if you will of our church. Gay people, Muslims, Atheists, etc are all our people and we're to love them as such. None of Christs teachings were exclusive but mostly inclusive which leaves those of us that are Christians with the "wiggle room" to accept and include people into our faith regardless of lifestyle. I realize I'm one of the few Christians who comment on this site and that's fine with me because the majority of your opinions are of value to me regardless of whatever religions background or affiliation you have.

The one thing that many "Christians" fail to realize among various political topics is that Christ was very clear that the government perform only government acts. So even if Christ were to be against Gay marriage it's not relevant at the government level. Same with abortion which I'm strongly opposed to but feel should be legal for those who aren't of my faith. In the church there are mechanisms in place to help girls/women who might want to have an abortion. There are many children adopted because churches have stepped in and helped those girl ...

The fabled "rational christian" appears. There are so few anymore. They're like unicorns. Most of the ones you hear from are Bible-thumping douchenozzles with too little to say and too much time to say it, coupled with a sprinkling of hate.

Rationalists have been expecting for 150 years that they could convince Believers just by showing them the facts.

But it doesn't work. Emotions trump rational thinking.

Creationists have a deep emotional commitment - they want to believe literal Genesis because if part of the bible isn't true, then how can you trust the bit that says Jesus will save us.

You can't shift that belief with facts - you have to figure out ways to appeal to their emotions.

One way is to show them how other Christians have coped with new scientific ideas Sometimes Science Is Right

And another is to make the point that Robertson is making - when your kids grow up and leave the bubble of your church and family, and find out that they've been fed a lot of BS about evo, they will question all the other stuff you've force-fed them.

And the fundies are open to this argument, because all their churches lose significant numbers of kids when they reach their 20's, and they have no idea how to staunch those losses.

eraser8: Marine1: Problem is, everything means what we want it to mean. We're humans.

I'll agree to that. So, maybe we should stop pretending there's anything divine in the Bible. Or, at least, we should stop pretending the Bible is any more divine than anything written by Wittgenstein or Proust.

All are the products of human imagination, so far as we can tell. And, none -- again, so far as we can tell -- was inspired by any supernatural agent.

It's divine to me, in ways that make sense to me.

I mean, I'm pro-choice (lawfully, pro-life philosophically), pro-gay marriage, pro-legalization, and for teaching evolution in classrooms. I'm dating a Jew and know there's somewhere between a 0 and .00000000000000000000001% chance she'd ever convert; same goes for me. If people can be like that and be religious... why not let them be?

Vegan Meat Popsicle: Unless there's just nobody else available, there's no real reason to consider the opinions of people who say "god flicked the singularity and that started everything else, but I accept all the science after that point" anymore than you would people who say "god pissed in the dirt and made muck men out of the result, but I accept all the science after that point".

Nonsense. God held the pattern of the universe in his mind while in Chaos, and the individual philotes which exist there assumed that pattern. Hence how God made us "in his image."

/What? It could be true.

eraser8: burndtdan: It's only "god of the gaps" if you insist that something happens "because God, tada!", as if God were the methodology.

I'm not technically addressing the "god of the gaps" argument. I'm posing a very simple question: if any part of the Bible can be taken as anything less than literal (that is, less that true), how can we know that any of it is true? And, who is to decide what's strict and true and what just poetic license?

If only there were people who dedicated their careers to questions like this, who earned PhDs in fields like theology and biblical studies, becoming experts in Greek and Hebrew, examining the culture and literature of the context in which the bible was written to better understand the literary structures and styles of the times. If only these people wrote academic-level books about topics like these, and occasionally wrote popular-level books so that nonspecialists could engage with these kinds of issues. Then you might have somewhere to go for guidance as you ask these questions.

/sarcasm, just in case someone's sarcastrometer is broken

Young Earth creationism is not a widely held belief despite what some may have everyone believe.

"But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day" 2 Peter 3:8

"You know, the world's twelve-thousand years old, and dinosaurs existed in that time, you'd think it would've been mentioned in the farking bible at some point. "And o, Jesus and the disciples walked to Nazareth, but the trail was blocked by a giant brontosaurus with a splinter in his paw. And o, the disciples did run a-shrieking 'What a big farking lizard, Lord.' But Jesus was unafraid, and he took the splinter from the brontosaurus' paw, and the big lizard became his friend. And Jesus sent him to Scotland where he lived in a Loch for oh so many years, inviting thousands of American tourists to bring their fat farking families and their fat dollar bills. And O Scotland did praise the Lord. Thank you, Lord."

/aw, comon Bill

Vegan Meat Popsicle: More god of the gaps bullshiat that religionists use to backpeddle when they get proven plainly wrong about something yet again.

eraser8: The next task is for him to explain exactly how people are to distinguish the "poetic" or "metaphorical" aspects of the Bible from the literal.

Though I am an atheist myself, this is actually a very easy subject to play Devil's advocate for (or perhaps God's advocate in this case?):

It's only "god of the gaps" if you insist that something happens "because God, tada!", as if God were the methodology. Obviously this is what a lot of theists believe, but some have a more naturalist view. God created and manipulates the universe, through natural methods as revealed by science. The specific methods espoused in your religious text of choice are simply the best that the author could come up with, or the best knowledge he had access to. In this way of thinking, if we don't know how it happens yet that doesn't mean a shepherd from thousands of years ago had it right, that just means it's something we haven't figured out yet. Which actually, when you think about it, makes a lot MORE sense; I would hope that an omnipotent and omniscient being's methods were a little more complicated than the shiat in the Bible.

This view removes God from the corporeal machinations of the universe and instead places him as an incorporeal being that sets things in motion, which proceed along natural methods as dictated by the physical laws of the universe he created. This also makes more sense because the Bible says that the universe was created by God's word, which would to me suggest that any further action God took would express itself as a natural extension of what he already created. In both cases the will of God would be visible to us simply as the way the universe acts.

This view also, however, makes God an unknowable, unprovable element that exists beyond the world that we can experience. Which is why I'm an atheist. Frankly, if God does exist, it would be absurd for him to expect us to believe it.

Rev. Skarekroe: Pat Robertson is mellowing a bit in his old age.

Guy's also for legalization of marijuana. Hard to believe, but true.

Basically, if you're against these things... you're more insane than Pat Robertson. And that's not something you want to be.

common sense is an oxymoron: NutznGum: scannersexplodinghead.gif


Bevets may look something like that right about now.

He's too busy being i drunk what in another thread.

It still boggles my mind that we have all this accumulated data that the earth is way, WAY older than 6,000 years old, and that we have so many, many, many, MANY fossils, and DNA evidence, and all these facts that keep piling up, and it makes some people so uncomfortable that they go "No, I'll choose to believe this other thing, in spite of all the evidence it is incorrect, because it makes me feel good."