onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
Why do they all have one eye bigger than the other? Is that supposed to be intimidating?
J
J
In the Beginning...
- Thread starter Berzerker
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timtofly
One Day
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Honestly, you are the first one in all my readings that has tried to force the moon to be it's own light source. From what I can gather even the ancients knew that it derived it's light from the sun. Is it fair that you can call a light bulb a light, but the ancients cannot call the moon a light at night, even when they seem, from all accounts, knew that it reflected the sun's light? I used the light bulb, because clearly you get to pick and choose what is or what is not a light. A light bulb clearly does not manufacture it's own light source. Genesis does not claim that they are both equal lights. It just says that one provides light during the day, and one during the night. It does not mention how the mechanics works. Every one seems to understand that, except for those who are trying to say that humans did not know the difference. It is ok to reason out that the ancients seemed stupid, but before you claim they are, where is the proof? If you say in Genesis, that would not be genuine, because the account does not say that the moon creates it's own light. It only says that it shines light at night and every one knows that it gets it's light from the sun. The Hebrews referred to it as the white planet, along with other planets that they could see in the sky. If anything, the Hebrews were wrong in thinking that the sun and moon were planets, but the Genesis account does not call them planets.
I do not get the sense that the Hebrews thought God was required. They just viewed God as a being that interacted with them.
My question would be, where does imagination come from? It manifest itself in the synapsis of the brain. Is it just random coincidence?
This imagination seemed rather definitive as it was about experiences where the human was able to interact with God, in a way that changed their life.
I apologize, and it may have even been on the internet, but I cannot find the specific location. It seemed that he was working for the Israeli government, during the time that he was required to serve in their military.
I understand how it is used. I do not accept it's use, because to me it is change that is more efficient, and not necessarily different or more complex. I kid my family and tell them that my phone is smart and can answer itself. They do not have to answer it every time it rings. That does not mean that my phone is actually a smart AI, although that may happen one day. It just means that the technology is more efficient at undertaking a lot more task than just being a direct line from one person to another.
I may be wrong, but evolution is not a linear line, it is change that weeds out what is not needed. The complexity in biology is already built into the DNA. An organism, cannot get any more complex or change into an entirely different type of organism. Most of the change is eradicating errors in the copying process, and the organism either dies or gets past the changes to survive. The point is to strive for efficiency.
Oh? I've seen the Charlton Heston version (I presume that's the one you're talking about) over a dozen times during my life. It used to be an annual event in my family's household, every Easter Sunday. I appreciate the cinematography, but every time I see it, I have more and more of areaction toward Heston .
I did not have the same experience and would agree that the "Ten Commandments" is not a documentary. It is a production of someone's imagination, based on an account that was written a long time ago. The account being biographical except for the fact that some here think that Moses was fabricated at a later date, even though humans at the time were very capable of writing things down in sheep skin scrolls and even talked about people who preserved and copied these scrolls for hundreds of years.
When I read the Dune series, I was only getting about an hour or two sleep a day, and they just seemed long and drawn out. I did not get the nuisance that other's have mentioned about them. I guess death and rebirth may have been intentioned. I also saw parts of the movie that was out at the time, and thought they would be an interesting read.
When I first read Dune, it was when I was working in the theatre, and I caught one of those bad spring colds, or perhaps the flu (this was before I was diligent in getting my immunization every year). So I was in bed, not able to sleep for fretting about getting well enough to go back to work, and decided to see what was on my bookshelves. I'd had the first three Dune books around for years and hadn't read them; I was actually thinking of selling them back to the book store. But I decided to read Dune while I was sick, and by the second page, I was hooked. Actually, I don't think it even took that long.timtofly said:
And I will say that reading about a dry planet where everyone is chronically water-deprived, while one is sick in bed with a fever, really helped me sympathize with some of the characters!
I've read the entire Frank Herbert series many times since. Herbert had a lot to say on the subject of religion, charismatic leaders, and what it means to be human.
I recommend that you try them again (the Frank Herbert books; the others are just garbage). And yes, there are good points about the David Lynch movie, but some of it makes me wonder if he read the same book the rest of us did. The miniseries are very good, too. If you're interested in seeing those, let me know.
This comment makes no sense. That is the opposite of what I am saying. I am not trying to force the moon to be a light. You are. I have been repeatedly pointing out that the moon IS NOT a light. You are the one who keeps trying to "force" it to be one. Nice try on the Bugs Bunny, "Duck season! Wabbit Season!" move though...
You mean what you gathered from "Some guy in Weaseltown" written by Duke Weselton, that I mentioned earlier?
Now you have contradicted yourself twice in the same sentence. First, you keep chastising me for claiming to know what the ancients were and were not aware of... now you are doing exactly the same thing in order to try and prop up your faulty argument. I don't get to know what ancient man understood but you do? Why?
Second, you just claimed that God called the moon a light because he knew that the ancients were too simple and uneducated to be able to comprehend Genesis otherwise... Now you are claiming that they did understand? Then why did you claim God needed to dumb things down for them? The problem is that you just can't make sense out of things that are fundamentally inaccurate. Once you embrace that Genesis is just a story written by primitive, ancient man with limited scientific understanding, the book makes perfect sense... its beautiful, poetic even.
You can't just say 'ancients'. The Hebrews were rather behind in their understanding of how the universe worked.
I would agree.
Powdered alcohol is getting us there pretty quickly.
I can try.
It is sensible and even rational, and seems to be a basic assumption of the scientific method.
While there is no scientific evidence of god, there is quite a lot of anecdotal evidence. Should all that be summarily discarded?
What MS is suggesting is that he has a different underlying assumption: all that exists, physically or not, are united by a single essence. He calls that essence god and without that, nothing exists. How one would build upon that assumption becomes important from a discussion stand point. And one could argue anything from "so what" to a complex cosmology that encompasses something as vast and complicated as Hinduism.
As assumptions go "we can't accept it, because we can't test it" = "god alone is Real"
timtofly
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Because Genesis said that the moon was a light at night which it is, because it reflects the sun. You claim that the moon does not shine light at night. Any one who is out on a moon lit night can see the light shining down from the moon, just as Genesis said. I was chastising you the same way you were chastising the Bible for a non-issue. I contradict myself all the time. I have no clue what the ancients thought, unless I read their writings or what others have written about them.
I said that God called it the light that rules the night, which it still is to this night. I never claimed that God needed to dumb things down for them. I said that using the term "ruler" was using figurative language. That is not dumbing down. God did not literally say the moon was a light source. God said that one would be able to see light coming from the moon at night. If the passage is not accurate, why would any one in their right mind argue about it? If it makes sense as written, then why does it take any reasoning at all to make sense of it? It makes perfect sense to me, that it was spoken by God, and written down by Moses.
So you are claiming that Genesis is inaccurate, and that is perfectly fine, because they did not understand that the moon only reflected the sun's light?
I was claiming that God did not call the moon a literal light, but that the moon was only able to shine light at night.
Does every child know that the moon reflects the sun's light? How do they come by that knowledge? Would you call that basic science? I like my eggs fried.
No that is not what Genesis says. Genesis does not say "the moon is a light at night." You are once again doing that thing where people start trying to change the text around to prop up their argument/claim. Genesis clearly says that the moon was created as a light, not that it was "only a light at night." I notice that you don't claim that the sun was "only a light during the day"... because you recognize that would be obviously wrong, both scientifically and textually, as the text clearly doesn't say that. Again, here is the text that you keep mis-quoting:
Also notice that the bible says the moon will "give light" not "reflect light." The Bible is clearly designating the moon as a light source, a giver of light, rather than a reflector of it, so that debunks your continual claim that the Bible doesn't say the moon is a light source.
Also, the Bible clearly says that God created lights in the sky and made two larger lights, the sun (or greater/brighter light) to rule the day and the moon (or lesser/dimmer light) to rule the night. It does not say that the moon is only a light at night, you are just making that up to support your argument. All it says is that the moon rules the night, while the sun rules the day.
No. I never made this claim. I have consistently said that the moon shines at night by reflecting the sun's light. The sun illuminates the moon. The moon is incapable of illuminating itself. That is why the sun is a light and the moon is not. You shine light on a white rock, the rock shines in the light as it reflects the light. That does not make the rock itself a light.
Again, the moon is not a light. Genesis clearly states that the moon is a light. Therefore, Genesis is wrong. The reason Genesis is wrong is either because the author of Genesis had inaccurate information/beliefs, or because they intentionally wrote inaccurate information, for whatever reason. Either way, Genesis is inaccurate.
It really doesn't matter. It goes completely off the rails on day 3. No interpretation required.
onejayhawk
Afflicted with reason
Please explain. It is not obvious why Day 3 is more a stumbling block than day 1 or day 2.
Someone once said that the first four words was the hard part. If you can handle the concept of God existing at the beginning, the rest is gravy.
J
What I think is more difficult then imagining some positive Absolute (God) is the absolute Nothing from which everything comes into existence. I have no doubt which one is more rational. But the biggest stumbling block for accepting reality as a positive Absolute lies in our own mental limitations and in our psychology lies the solution as well.
That's like a defendant saying at his trial "I didn't do it. As long as you can handle that concept, the rest is gravy." The problem isn't those four words, although its a poetic concept. The problem is that everything you say immediately after those four words undermines the concept you're trying to get people to accept/handle. Again, it wouldn't undermine it at all if you were a primitive human who believed that the universe consisted of a flat disc of land encapsulated inside a sky dome decorated with mysterious lights all around it. The problem is that once you are a human in a society advanced enough to know better than this, the whole thing is an obvious farce that you now have to redefine as "metaphor" to keep the text authoritative as their religious beliefs require.
As far as day three goes, I am a little reluctant to go into that while still debating day four, but the reason day three is a "stumbling block" is because you have all the plants on earth growing before God creates the sun, which is obviously impossible... that is unless we are falling back on "
timtofly
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Why did you not highlight the two instances that clearly states the moon is to give light at night. "The moon to rule over the night" and "rule over the day and the night" clearly indicate when the moon is giving off light at night. No one goes out on a moonlit night and say the sun is sure bright giving off it's light tonight.
I thought it was a scientific fact, that plants and vegetation germinate quite well in the dark?
This is a classic false choice. You don't have to choose between a universe creator or universe spawning from absolute nothing. Believing in the absolute creator raises the question of where the creator came from, just as believing in the big bang raises the question of where the big bang came from. There is a similar leap of logic to imagine/assume an eternal universe with no beginning as to imagine/assume an eternal creator with no beginning.
There's a tiny issue with photosynthesis and lack of sunlight, but the MST3K mantra applies well enough.
How can have an absolute reality a beginning? Thats clearly a major difference between the two. While absolute zero cant produce anything the finite existence could come only from the unlimited trough its self-limitation in which case any apparent limitation in this universe would be only a surface/superficial appearance. Everything by its very(inmost) nature would be an infinite reality.
I did highlight them, and I talked about them. But the moon does not "give light" it reflects light that the sun gives off. You keep trying to introduce the red herring of "rule over". The phrase "rule over" is completely irrelevant, in fact some versions of the Bible replace "rule over" with "govern." Who cares what the moon "rules over"? Saying that the moon "rules over" the night has no impact whatsoever on the reality that the moon is not a light. The moon rules over/governs the night. The moon is still NOT a light and Genesis clearly says that it is a light, so Genesis is wrong.
And what does that mean anyway (rule over/govern)? That the moon is the municipal, judicial authority and source of law at night-time? No, obviously it means that the moon is the biggest light in the sky at night, the "boss" light... which again, makes sense if you are a primitive human looking up at the night sky, the moon does indeed appear to be the biggest thing in the sky.
As for plants growing in the dark we can talk about that later, once we finish this discussion about the moon being erroneously called a light in Genesis. That's why I was reluctant to even talk about that because I didn't want people trying to change the subject.
There is always a leap in logic. Every path begins somewhere that has no foundation and is rooted in an assumption of some sort. You don't like MS's starting points, but you do have your own that is on equally shaky ground.
Day 3 officially begins the ordering of life's arrival. Even if we allow Berzerker's "the story starts partway through" as an explanation of 1 and 2, 3 is outright incorrect.
I have no problem with the concept of God existing at the beginning. It's the leap to the Bible that's the problem, both due to its failure of actual facts and its horrendous libel towards God.
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