Bible Stories and inerrancy

More on Project: The King and I:

The good-natured back-and-forth between believer and non-believer is heart-warming.

Given that @Bruce's purpose was simply to read the Bible

I'm not totally sure where this project will go once it starts but, I want to at least get people to actually read the Bible.

- it seems like a debate on matters not strictly in the reading are not out of bounds - unless @Bruce says they are. So, tossing in the occasional reference to Jesus, while not strictly in context, seems fair enough. Likewise, making a preemptive "what about that don't you understand" is within bounds, as long as the rebuttals are civil. What gets me is the amount of nonsense creeping in. Any of us may or may not believe in unicorns or space aliens, but, as a courtesy to everyone, have your evidence ready and your arguments clearly defined. The preemptive "how can you explain that?" is not evidence.

For non-believers, the existence of god is hypothetical. I, for example, can sincerely hypothesize that god exists. I can conceive of him in 2 ways, off the top of my head. First - god created the universe - and the big bang was evidence of his handiwork. Where is god now? I don't know - haven't seen him, don't have evidence. Second - god exists, and we are within him. How do I know? I don't - he and nature are indistinguishable - and he doesn't appear to interact with the world except in natural ways. The absence of flying cars is a clear indication of his unwillingness to interact with the little people :-D

More seriously, there is no credible evidence of a god sighting in recorded history.

That doesn't mean he doesn't exist, but there is no evidence that he does. The bible tells stories of god, what he did, what he expects of us and of people who talked with god, but there's no independent corroboration that such events occurred. If we're rational, we say "I need some evidence". As Neil DeGrasse Tyson once said of UFO believers: "bring me an ashtray".


Arguing that the Bible must be accepted as the authority on biology, cosmogony, morality or law is baseless. It is not resolved that god exists (no evidence has ever been given). Arguing about words in a book that refer to this apparently non-existent entity as the authority for the words is pointless. Spending hours talking in circles about topics that the bible is clearly unfamiliar with (biology, cosmogony), as a way of establishing its authority, is equally pointless.

If the god of the bible were real, and if he or she were adamant that certain rules for living be followed in order to attain everlasting life, and if he or she was somewhat competent, the bible would have been written in clear, concise, language in a media that was eternal and unalterable so that all who read it would know it was real and what it means.

No such media, and no such words exist.

What we have is a compilation of stories that are sometimes fascinating and sometimes thought-provoking, and always debate-inspiring. It's just not the inerrant word of god.

To believers

@Edward at Project: The King and I is a good sport - one of few believers in a den of non-believers. He guest-posted earlier in the week, a lengthy and generally worthwhile summation of the Pentateuch, with some preemptive apologia thrown in, I presume on points that he felt the need to defend in anticipation of a rebuttal. Have a read here.


I posted a comment very late in the thread, which I thought I'd cross-post here without further comment.

@Edward & other believers:

I know that the appropriate thing to do here is address your original post, and to the thread of comments that it spawned, but I just gotta get this off my chest.

I appreciate the effort you put into defending your faith. I'm willing to be polite about it, as well - for I was once nominally Christian, and was once born-again. But, to be truthful, I don't admire it. Constructing a stupendous mental Gordian knot for whatever purpose - especially for holding onto beliefs that have no evidentiary support or rational justification - doesn't make the world a better place. If it keeps you happy and healthy, fine. There are any number of other strategies that are equally or better suited to the task, and I encourage you to sincerely explore them.

The one general set of strategies that have worked for me - for nearly 35 years now - are these:

1) Make a determined and sincere effort to be mentally and physically healthy. This is my first priority, since I cannot carry out any other strategy without mental and physical health.
2) Make a determined and sincere effort to treat my loved ones, family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and community with patience, respect and compassion.
3) Do no harm, except when in defense of my loved ones, family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and community.
4) Give more to the world than I take.
5) Know what I can understand and can't understand, but never give up trying to understand.
6) Know what I can do and can't do, but never give up trying new things, or old things in new ways.
7) Accept the uncertainty in life, but know how and when to be more certain or less certain - and live accordingly.

Believing in supernatural beings, and believing in the Bible were not helpful in getting my life in order, nor in treating my loved ones, family, neighbors, co-workers and community with the patience, compassion, and respect that they deserve, and of which I would like to be accorded in return.

The idea that people really think that a supernatural being is talking to them - physically or otherwise - is (honestly, I'm not trying to be disrespectful here) bizarre. The idea that billions of people do, in varying degrees, hold similar beliefs is almost unimaginable. I know that it's possible however, because I've done it, and I see evidence that it is done throughout the world. That doesn't mean that it's plausible, defensible, or worthy of respect.

I didn't "lose" my faith - I unshackled myself from it. Faith is an uncritical acceptance of things in the absence of evidence. It may be benign, it may be sinister. In my book, faith is to be avoided at all cost. In its stead, reasonable expectations based on evidence and sound logic is preferable, and allows a rational ordering of one's life.

But don't forget to party!

Not-so-profound revelation

I finished reading Deuteronomy 19:21, then picked up Richard Friedmans "Who wrote the Bible?" at the sixth chapter - "D" - Friedman's analysis of the Deuteronomic histories.

It won't be a revelation to people who study the bible for a living, but I feel reminded that people in 600-800 BCE had very little way of knowing how much of nature worked. They still didn't understand how floods happened, why the seasons change, how weather is formed, why earthquakes occur, how pests thrive and subside and thrive again over the years, what infections are, how you get sick and how communicable diseases are passed.

Iron Age middle easterners may have had a reverence for the deities of their ancestors because their ancestors had survived while bearing these beliefs, and they hoped that it would do the same for them. It certainly was a link to their deceased loved ones.

The transition from pagan, multi theist and/or animist beliefs to a more monotheistic world view took hundreds, or thousands of years, depending on whether you truly believe that a single Yahweh-based god is responsible for all that there is, good and bad.

This transition of world view may have had some underlying reason to it. The ability to reason that this or that tree deity was responsible for making trees bear fruit would have come into tension with the idea of another imagined force being responsible for the rain, or for the sun, or for pest control. All of these things, eventually, may have converged to be seen as part of a greater milieu in which individual concerns were intertwined.

It is comforting to think that we have a modicum of influence on the individual deities - or on a single great one. That is, regardless of multi- or mono-theistic view, a great attraction. So it seems inescapable that, given the time to reflect on the condition of our being, that we, as ancient members of emerging societies, would look to entities greater than ourselves as entities that could be influenced in order to make life more bearable. But it was never reliable, it just calmed us. It would be millennia before experience, reason and science would make significant improvements to the human condition possible.

Polite Direct Firm Fair

Here's a YouTube clip that I first saw on Pharyngula, of Matt Dillahunty and Jeff Dee on the Atheist Experience TV show, answering caller "Mark" and his concerns/assertions about Matt and Jeff's road to hell: The Atheist Experience TV Show

I've watched this clip in its entirety three times in the last twenty four hours, impressed by how Polite, Direct, Firm, and Fair the two of them were in responding to Mark's comments. I might also add - the adjectives Patient, Empathetic and Effective come to mind, as well.

Rather than write a transcript, please watch the video.

Matt and Jeff make some good points that are frankly applicable to any introductory discussion with a believer:

1. When you (the believer) chooses to believe that the outsider (the atheist or believer of another religion) is subject to divine punishment solely because they (the outsider) do not believe as the insiders do, then you immediately construct an artificial barrier to friendship and trust between you and the outsider [Jeff]


2. What makes you believe what you believe? [Jeff and Matt]


3. What's the evidence that the bible is divinely inspired? [Matt]


4. How can you believe that god reveals himself to a few people, then leaves the [promulgation of this] to copies of translations of that revelation? [Matt]


5. Faith is not the pathway to truth


6. Why should I believe what you do? [Matt]

That's just a shallow scrape of the conversation. A few of the things that come up in my consideration of religion in general, and the question of god in particular, are these:

1. God has never been observed, and his existence has never been satisfactorily rationalized


2. God's existence cannot be disproved, because if he's not there, how do you prove it?


3. Once you've accepted that there is a god (in spite of the lack of evidence and rational justification), what makes you think that a particular claim for god (e.g. the Old Testament) represents the right one?


4. If you accept a specific claim for god (e.g. Yahweh), how do you rationalize and/or reconcile his lack of perfection, omniscience and omnipotence; and his capriciousness, pettiness, violence, oppressiveness, secretiveness, and all-around lack of admirable qualities?


5. Why would a belief system that is based on the sayings or worship of this deity include the distrust for, exclusion of, or violence on people and groups outside the believers? Why would this be appealing and remotely pious or just?

... we could go on, but those are some pretty big hurdles that need to be overcome to mark the god under consideration as the one-and-only god that is worthy of consideration.

Appreciating the bible

I've spent decades making fun of the bible privately - because it seems frankly, nuts. Let me take two steps back and show my appreciation for it. First, our duty as living things is to procreate - so job one is to stay alive, job two is to procreate, job three is to repeat as necessary to ensure the survival of the species.

It's in this ground that my appreciation grows, because we have the written texts (the bible) that give us a glimpse of what nomadic, bronze-age life was like. If any of us today had been born 2500-3200 years ago, we wouldn't know what we know now, and would have no way of learning, because our days would be spent looking for food, water, shelter, and our nights would be dark, and spent procreating, or resting so that we could repeat the effort of gathering food and water.

I'm over-simplifying significantly, but in magnitude, the spare time that is required to learn new concepts and new skills is probably not available in the average bronze age life. They say (well, Malcolm Gladwell says) that it takes 10,000 hours to master a new skill. That's roughly 5 working years for modern man. Given that the nomadic struggle to subsist might take 10-12 hours a day, every day, tacking on an extra hour a day to discover the things that you and I can discover in minutes, would have been an extraordinary burden. Mastering a new skill or concept might have taken a lifetime. Change would have been slow - many generations would pass before simple things like irrigation, food preservation, nutrition, sanitation, simple health care could be advanced to free people to rise above their circumstances in a broad way.

The bible and other ancient texts give a glimpse into the past that is priceless. It gives us a further glimpse into the generations prior to the writing of the texts - generations where oral history was all that is possible. Generations where the smartest of individuals may have been as intelligent as people today, but did not have access to information, did not necessarily have an organized way of reasoning, nor a handy way of checking their logic. They did not have the independent means to verify their observations, interpretations and reasoning. They did not have the time during the day, week, lifetime, to record their observations and interpretations so that others could verify, build on, rearrange, or discard those lessons so that new intellectual edifices could be built. Oral transmission of the best, or the most memorable concepts (right or wrong) was all they had.

We are privileged to read and reflect on this, it is a precious opportunity. I have been derisive in the past of the bible - what it says may be incredible, often redundant, contradictory, and nonsensical - but I probably wouldn't have done any better had it been me doing the speaking or writing 2500 to 3200 years ago. I doubt that any of my words would have made it on to papyrus.

So ... I'm thankful that we have these words, even though they're not believable. It reminds me how little we know, even today, and how we should never cease to observe, reason, record - and read and discuss others' observations so that we can push forward the boundaries of our understanding.

Homeopathy

Here's a link to How Homeopathy works. The comic is funny, but the author - Hector Lowe - describes his inspiration for the comic in the comments section below it. Effing Priceless! Here are the relevant bits without further editing:

So this might seem to make very little sense at all. Fair enough, it’s sort of supposed to. But this did actually happen to me at work – A guy came in to buy some homeopathic tablets, and was quite insistent that I not let them touch the large tub of ice-cream that he was also purchasing. Assuming that it had something to do with astronomically minute quantities of poison that such remedies are reputed to contain (they don’t, by the by – it is entirely water,) I assured him that there was no threat of contamination.

He then proceeded to explain to me, as a primary school teacher would an infant, that homeopathy works due to molecular vibration. Being a mere layman, I will try to explain this process to the best of my limited ability. The water molecules vibrate with the same resonance as the poisons that give them their efficacy. This in turn causes human molecules to vibrate upon ingestion, curing one’s ills. Close contact with the tub of ice-cream will cause the vibrations to shift to the new medium, resulting in an ineffective medicine.

He fucking believed this.

I asked him politely why such problems didn’t occur when simply handling the box, as the human hand also contains molecules. Or why havoc did not arise when different remedies are stored on the shelves next to one another (as they are in our store). To this he had no answer. Perhaps ice-cream is the only fluid capable of destabilising the molecular rhythm. Perhaps it is the kryptonite of homeopathic medicines.

Bottom line: if you think that homeopathic medicine is even slightly credible, you’re a fucking idiot and you need to help yourself to a god-damn chemistry book.

Everyone is crazy

I'm beginning to suspect that everyone is crazy