According to researchers, recent analysis of the Bible strongly suggests that it was written by God. I kid you not. The headline above, from Britain’s Daily Mail, proves it.
The researchers in question were ‘a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University and a Lutheran pastor in Germany’. Their findings were announced by The Mail in its Science section, conclusive proof that God himself, the mythical creation of an ancient nomadic tribe, personally wrote the Bible! He didn’t inspire it or guide the pens of the men who put it together. Oh no, he actually wrote it.
How can we know this? Because there are way too many coincidences, too much foreshadowing of later events in stories written hundreds of years earlier, and too many fulfilled prophecies for it not to be.
This analysis is of course seriously flawed. Operating within the parameters that the far from objective ‘researchers’ set for it, the project told them exactly what they wanted to hear. Yes, there are some themes and ideas that run throughout the Bible but this is because its various authors were all concerned with the gods, one in particular. This is all they wanted to write about and all that subsequent editors were interested in too.
The Bible is noticeably short on recipes and sports reports because such things were of no interest to the priests and zealots who wrote it. We might have had a more engaging and less divisive book if these men and their later editors had been more interested in sport and cooking, but they weren’t and the Bible reflects this fact. But there’s nothing supernatural about this. The authors were, like many other ancients, concerned with meaning of life stuff and the God myths that seemed to them to explain it. The god the nomadic tribes of the middle east thought explained it best was YHWH. Far from being a consistent presence in the books of what is now the Old Testament, YHWH changes depending on who’s shaping the myths he plays a part in. This is not, incidentally, what theologians are pleased to call progressive revelation.
It’s a reflection of multiple authors writing over long periods of time in various contexts about the same thing. Nonetheless, the way humans relate to YHWH changes from book to book, as do his morals, demands and expectations. If YHWH authored the Bible, the one character he hasn’t got a grip on is himself.
Our computer specialist and German pastor also dredge up the discredited fantasy that Jesus fulfils all the prophecies of the Old Testament. Of course he does; that’s the way he’s written. His story – actually ‘stories’, plural – are rewrites of older myths, particularly those about Moses. Did Moses foreshadow Jesus, foretelling all he’d do hundreds of years before he was even born? Of course not. Did Jesus then knowingly mirror the acts of Moses during his life to prove he was God’s chosen one? Again, of course not; only a fool is taken in by this ruse. There have, alas, been plenty of them, including the present ‘researchers’.
The obvious explanation is the one that makes most sense; the Jesus stories are modelled on earlier myths and snippets from the Jewish scriptures without any of them needing to be remotely historical. The article mentions, for example, the description of the Passover lamb in Exodus 12 and gasps that, yes, centuries later, Jesus is referred to as the ‘Lamb of God’ (John 1:29). It doesn’t seem to enter the researchers’ credulous little heads that the later authors knew Exodus and decided to apply its imagery to Jesus. This is how the trick was done. There was no holy dictation making the connection. They simply applied earlier scriptures to Jesus and write his story around them. We can see this in another example from the report: Matthew used a mistranslation of Isaiah 7:14 as a template for his virgin-conception myth.
Claiming, as the researchers do, that the construction of later stories was God making sure no-one missed the point of the earlier ones is painfully niave.
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice foreshadows Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. The details of the two works are, after all, remarkably similar. The only plausible explanation for these similarities is that Jane Austen’s hand must have been guided by a spiritual force to record events almost two centuries before they would occur for real in Helen Fielding’s definitive version of the story. This at least is what these present researchers would conclude if they ran an analysis of the two Mr Darcy books in the same way they have the Bible.
rejectingjesus, 
“…. announced in it’s Science section.”
Oh, I nearly pissed mesekf laughing at this.
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You’re saying The Mail isn’t the well known science journal I’ve always thought it was?!?
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Listen, ‘Tis a very long time since I even saw a copy of the Daily Mail.
When I had a paper-round I generally didn’ t get past page three of the Sun…
Maybe the UK tabloids have since upped their game?
Sorry, Neil, I am struggling to type with a straight face.
😂
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Being American, I grew up without the Page Three Girls. I feel cheated and demand compensation!
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Such claims simply indicate the level of indoctrination that Christianity has instilled within the gullible.
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As I’ve said so often, I can’t imagine an anthology of books, chosen because they agree on the same topic, would agree on that topic! Only The One True God™ coulda dun it!
Also, you know, scores of scribes and priests, over hundreds of years, editing the text to reflect the then current orthodoxy didn’t hurt either. Has child sacrifice fallen out of fashion? Simple, edit the Abraham/Issac story so Issac isn’t sacrificed. Easy peasy.
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I sometimes feel just way you do, but about modern society. Is anything true? Can anything be trusted? Does it matter?
And then I start to imagine.
The end of that thinking is nihilism.
Have you followed Neil down that dusty track? If so, I have an old Irish folk song for you. “Dust in the wind.”
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Here’s the deal, Don. I was raised in God’s One True Church™. We had the Truth™, The Whole Truth™, and Nothing But the Truth™.
I was taught I would never encounter any fact that contradicted their doctrine. If a fact contradicted their teachings, it wasn’t a fact. If their teachings contradicted science, science was wrong.
That kept me indoctrinated for decades. But it was also the ultimate undoing of my belief. Simply because reality contracts nearly everything I was told was Truth™. Eventually, their teachings, the Bible, and Christianity broke under the weight of reality.
And no, there’s no going to another version of Christianity from there. Once you see that the biblical god was created by man from parts of the various gods of Canaan and the surrounding cultures, you can’t unsee it for the Frankenstein monster that it is.
As for nihilism, I was taught to seek truth. I’ve found more of it in nihilism than in any of my dozens of readings of the Bible.
You love your little delusion. I love the cold, hard truth. I find it far more comforting than the fairy tales I was told to believe.
Time to queue up Point of Know Return.
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I am genuinely sorry that you and so many others got caught up in what is really a cult. I am afraid many of those who have “deconstructed” have had similar experiences. I have not found the churches I have been a part of to be anything like that.
My experience as a young follower of Jesus was a bit fundamentalist in interpretation and conviction, and I myself had to work though some of those things. A knowledge of the history of Christianity helped. And an education in literature and linguistics did as well.
The gulf between science, or reality as you put it, and the Bible is a relatively recent thing – 500 to 600 years. I wish we were over it, but that relationship is more of a dance than a problem solved. Science is constantly updating what we think is reality. And interpreters of the Bible we are constantly reevaluating our interpretations. What I find is that scientific knowledge, when it is stripped of interpretation (called opinion or hypothesis) affirms the basic facts of the Bible. Proven things are proven things.
The Bible, on the other hand, is still literary and requires careful reading using the tools of literary analysis, but there are some facts. For instance, God created. Science has not really refuted that, even though no scientist wants to talk about creation. But no scientist has demonstrated some other origin. I doubt any will; it is out of reach of science.
Science is about processes, but that has been a problem for many Christians reading Genesis literally. I don’t find it so. Evolution, being at the heart of the disagreement for 200 years, is in my mind one of the best arguments for God science has ever discovered.
And so it goes. It is a dance, but I think we are learning that we can be partners in the dance. We don’t need to be stepping on one another’s toes.
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You’re so right, Don. Science has demonstrated time and again that brain dead corpses can return to life after 2 days, women who’ve never had sex can give birth. water can be turned into wine, and humans can walk on water.
This isn’t a dance, this is a denial of reality.And you say you’re not part of a cult!
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Don sed: I am genuinely sorry that you and so many others got caught up in what is really a cult.
But your cult is so much more True™ than my was. I’m so happy for you.
Don sed: I have not found the churches I have been a part of to be anything like that.
That’s because you’re still in “do anything to maintain the illusion” mode. Until you seek truth rather than confirmation, you’ll never see the bullshit of your religion for what it is.
Don sed: A knowledge of the history of Christianity helped.
Funny. Looking into the history led me to realize that Christianity was invented and re-invented by humans and never revealed by any god(s).
Don sed: The gulf between science, or reality as you put it, and the Bible is a relatively recent thing – 500 to 600 years.
Yes, Don. That’s because science is a very recent thing. The scientific revolution began in the 16th and 17th centuries. So the gulf you notice really couldn’t exist before then.
Don sed: Science is constantly updating what we think is reality.
No. Also, hell no. Science describes reality. Science continually understands reality better. It builds on the work of those that have gone before. Newton described gravity better than ever before. Yet his laws had gaping holes because his knowledge was limited. Einstein described gravity better than Newton could have dreamed. Yet his theories have gaping holes because his knowledge was limited. And today we are waiting for someone to create a Quantum Theory of Gravity to fill the holes left by Einstein.
But Einstein didn’t “disprove” Newton. Newton’s laws can be derived from Einstein’s theories. Science expands our understanding. It doesn’t replace it.
Don sed: What I find is that scientific knowledge, when it is stripped of interpretation (called opinion or hypothesis) affirms the basic facts of the Bible.
No. You ALWAYS distort and mangle science until that distortion agrees with your interpretation of the Bible. That’s the only way you can get reality to agree with the Bible.
A prime example is Hawking’s hypothesis of imaginary time. Hawking describes it as a 2nd dimension of time that also began at the Big Bang with our currently understood dimension of time. But you, Don Camp noted physicist and Bible expert, declared that it is actually a dimension of space, not time, and did not begin at the Big Bang, but is actually eternal.
The arrogance that it takes to present yourself as outsmarting Hawking in theoretical physics is MIND BOGGLING. But you must do it to make your interpretation of God work. So you do it and pat yourself on the back for being so very fucking clever.
This example doesn’t stand alone. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you represent ANYTHING accurately.
You, Don Camp apologist ordinaire, are the poster boy of pseudo-scholarship. You gleefully toss aside anything established by experts if you imagine it doesn’t fit with your presupposed beliefs. In turn, you readily embrace any crackpot pseudo-science, pseudo-archaeology, pseudo-anthropology, pseudo-history, or pseudo-philosophy that supports you.
You spout this bullshit here and on your blog with an arrogance and confidence possessed only by the delusional. And why not? You are, after all, the world’s leading authority on Don Camp Christianity (Campeanlism? Donistism?).
Don sed: Proven things are proven things.
And you can’t even prove who wrote the gospels, that they were witnesses, or that any of the events in them actually occurred. Yet you proudly proclaim these as facts while denying actual scholarship.
Don sed: The Bible, on the other hand, is still literary and requires careful reading using the tools of literary analysis, but there are some facts. For instance, God created. Science has not really refuted that. . .
Gather ’round, everyone! As Don donsplains things for us! Behold his pseudo-intellectualism! Marvel in his pseudo-logic! Wade in the bullshit he so expertly spreads before us!
Science, Don, “has not really refuted that” because (and I’ll type this very slowly, so perhaps you can grasp it) you . haven’t . presented . ANY . evidence.
– – – – – – –
Fairyist: Gravity fairies grab hold of things and pull them to the ground.
Science: Supper! How do we detect these gravity fairies? With what do they grab things? How do they pull objects?
Fairyist: Things fall, therefore gravity fairies. You don’t need evidence for that!
– – – – – – –
The Great Donist: God created stuff!
Science: Super! How do we detect God? How does he create things?
The Great Donist: Duh! Stuff exists. Therefore God created it! Stupid science!
– – – – – – –
Don sed: Science has not really refuted that. . .
This, Don, is not some great insight or even a marginally good gotcha statement. It is a great flaming spotlight on your utter ignorance of how claims, evidence, and science work. And with this stupefying ignorance you boldly claim to have out-scienced science!
Don sed: . . . even though no scientist wants to talk about creation.
Let me find my sunglasses so I can gaze upon this great, flashing, glaring sign of your ignorance, Don!
What the actual fuuuuuuuuuuuuck ?!?
This is why I have to take long breaks from interacting with you, Don. Every sentence you write is packed with ignorance and/or bullshit.
* deep breaths * in * out * in * out * mother fucking mother fucker * in * out * in * out *
Cosmology, an entire mother fucking branch of mother fucking theoretical physics, “is concerned with the study of the chronology of the universe, the observable universe’s origin, its large-scale structures and dynamics, and the ultimate fate of the universe, including the physical laws that govern these areas.” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmology )
I’d think you’d know that, Don, because one of the people’s whose work you love to mangle, Stephen Hawking, was a mother fucking cosmologist!
Don, you really are too stupid to know how fucking stupid you are!
And, Don, since you seem to know nothing about this area of science: not one cosmologist has ever found any evidence of this God creature you keep prattling on about.
Don sed: But no scientist has demonstrated some other origin.
Yes, Don. Because, by-and-large, scientists are honest people and don’t claim to know what they don’t (yet). Unlike your average religionist who will prattle on endlessly about things they can’t possibly know.
But we’re still waiting for someone to demonstrate that God did . . . something. Anything. Just one fucking thing. But religionist only make claims and NEVER provide evidence. (And, no, a story is not evidence that the story is true.)
Don sed: But no scientist has demonstrated some other origin. I doubt any will; it is out of reach of science.
Stand back, everyone! The man who didn’t know cosmology was a thing is going to tell us what cosmology can and can’t do! Much wow! Plentiful awe! Humongous amaze!
Don sed: Evolution, being at the heart of the disagreement for 200 years, is in my mind one of the best arguments for God science has ever discovered.
I’m sure it is, Don. Since you don’t seem to understand ANYTHING, everything must surely point to your god. You are SO fucking special!
Don sed: And so it goes. It is a dance, but I think we are learning that we can be partners in the dance. We don’t need to be stepping on one another’s toes.
Then why do you misrepresent EVERYTHING? Isn’t that stepping on toes?
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Steady on Kos, your frustration with our definitely-not-a-cult-member is coming through strong. He’ll be claiming persecution or even marytrdom next.
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I thought I’d held it in pretty well, but reading back through my comment it appears my frustration slipped through. Sorry ’bout that.
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Youn should publish, Kos.
Science only 500 years old? Really, I think older. It began when people looked at the world and asked how things work. It began with simple machines. Probably 20,000 years ago. The Greeks had trained physicians who were using science to treat people and even do surgeries.
Hawking. I rather liked Hawking’s use of imaginary time. It sounded to me like he envisioned our time as a universe to be a straight line of one directional time within a larger sphere of time that enveloped our time, more eternal than the timeline of this universe. That seemed pretty close to how I would diagram it, kind of a straight line within a very large boundless oval.
That happens to be pretty close to how the Bible seems to describe time.
Prove. We don’t really need to prove who wrote the Gospels. Probably that is why the aurhors did not sign their names. That question is only of interest to scholars. The average believer is satisfy to let the text authenticate itself in our experience. In a word, what it tells us works.
But origins. Neither the scientist nor the Christian can prove by evidence the origins we propose. But I can prove something, at least demonstrate something.
Go to the window and look out. I see a patch of forest, but it would not matter what. Ask yourself: All this from nothing? By itself?
The answer every thinking persona be he a kid or adult will say is what the Greeks said. No. Nothing comes from nothing. Spontaneous matter or energy is an unknown and logically impossible. But we do know that a mind can create something from nothing. Artists do it all the time. I am not talking about the piece of art but the concept he or she will bring to life in their piece of art. Or in their story, if they are novelists or poets. That is the only something from nothing I know of. So, reason says, something like that happened.
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Think of your blood pressure, Kos.
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‘Something cannot come from nothing’. So where did this ‘mind’ you imagine come from?
Why must this ‘mind’ be the tribal God YHWH? Why not one of the many other gods who have existed and who are credited with creating everything?
What did this mind create with if there was no raw matter or energy? Did he conjure those from nothing? Your first premise rules that out doesn’t it?
What has this mind to do with a first- century itinerant preacher? None that I can see.
Has there ever been nothing? It is feasible there has always been something, if only at the Quantum level.
The argument from incredulity – ‘it all looks amazing to me and I don’t understand how it came to be. Therefore it must be a mind’ – has never been convincing.
Please try again.
On second thought, don’t.
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Jesus Tiddy-fucking Christ on a Stick!¡! Thank you for your attention in this matter.
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Don sed: The gulf between science, or reality as you put it, and the Bible is a relatively recent thing – 500 to 600 years.
Kos replied: Yes, Don. That’s because science is a very recent thing. The scientific revolution began in the 16th and 17th centuries. So the gulf you notice really couldn’t exist before then.
Don replied: Science only 500 years old? Really, I think older. … Probably 20,000 years ago. …
Okay, folks. It’s time once again to face the Campian Trilemma: Is Don a lunatic, a liar, or a lunatic? Yes, I know lunatic is in there twice, but Don’s poll numbers are skewing WAY over toward Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Let’s begin!
Don sed: The gulf between science… and the Bible is a relatively recent thing…
On the surface this seems like a simple claim. But, if you know some of Don’s beliefs, it is actually quite confusing. Don believes that “the Bible” (we’ll come back to that in a minute) is unchanging – it holds the same position on every topic, from beginning to end. Yet, Don recently claimed that science is always changing. How can science be constantly changing for 20,000 years while the Bible holds solidly to its teachings and yet the gulf between them is only recent?!?
But let’s take an example. The Hebrews took their cosmology from the Sumerians before them. The Earth was a flat disk with the cosmic ocean below. Above a hard metal or crystalline structure kept the cosmic ocean from falling in from above. The Sun, Moon and stars were fixed into this firmament which rotated above the Earth. Windows fitted in the firmament could be opened to let water from the cosmic ocean fall to Earth as rain – the “windows of heaven.”
And Don is right. This particular view of the world holds consistent from Genesis 1 through to Jesus ascending up toward Heaven (which was either just above or below the firmament) to Jesus descending from Heaven to give everyone Hell.
Rabbis debated the thickness of the firmament and Christian church leaders defended this model right up until they didn’t.
Of Copernicus the great Martin Luther said, “People gave ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon….This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.”
So, let’s give Don his due. The Bible and the science were in lockstep on this issue until the late middle ages.
Wait… (holding my ear)… My producers are telling me that Don believes that the Bible teaches no such thing and never did. That bit was all an allegorical metaphoric simile. What that bit actually means is that the Universe was created – by God – in a Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago and the Earth was formed from bits of that about 4.5 billion years ago, and humans evolved from apes into which God eventually placed souls. This actual meaning of the allegorical metaphoric simile was clear to all True Believers™ since forever and he (Don) has no idea why we can’t see it. It’s plain to anyone with a high school understanding of English literature!
Which brings us back to Don’s comment:
Don sed: The gulf between science… and the Bible is a relatively recent thing…
and my putting “the Bible” in quotes. (There, I did it again!) What Don means when he says “the Bible” – what he always means when he says “the Bible” – is his personal interpretation of the Bible. And there can be a huge gulf between the two. As we’ve just seen.
* Wow. It’s a good thing Neil doesn’t pay me by the word. Moving on… *
Let’s repeat the original back and forth since we’ve been out in the weeds for a while:
Don sed: The gulf between science, or reality as you put it, and the Bible is a relatively recent thing – 500 to 600 years.
Kos replied: Yes, Don. That’s because science is a very recent thing. The scientific revolution began in the 16th and 17th centuries. So the gulf you notice really couldn’t exist before then.
Don replied: Science only 500 years old? Really, I think older. … Probably 20,000 years ago. …
Don moans, “Woe, woe, woe is me! The Bible and science were always simpatico – brothers from a different mother! And now they just can’t get along! Woe is me! Woe is me!”
And I – in a change from my usual verbosity – gave a rather succinct response explaining the change: The scientific revolution happened, dumbass.
Don waves it away. “Nope,” says Don. “Never happened. Science hasn’t changed for 20,000 years!”
The very anti-Don and always wrong Wikipedia tells us:
“The Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe was an irreversible break with the natural philosophy that had preceded it, fundamentally changing how the natural world was investigated and understood. The New Science that emerged departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions, was more mechanistic in its worldview and more integrated with mathematics, and was focused on the acquisition and interpretation of new evidence.” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Revolution )
and proceeds to go on at length about this thing Don tells us never happened.
The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment are very much products of the same sea change in thinking. They both were effective in weakening the stranglehold the Catholic church held over thought in Europe.
Without them we never would have had Protestantism. Funny, as Don is very much a Protestant. Kneel and give thanks, Don, to science and free thought for the blessing of Protestantism!
At the top of his latest comment in this thread,
Don sed: Youn should publish, Kos.
Why? Volumes and volumes have been written on both the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. I’m certainly no expert. I have much to learn and nothing to add on the subject.
– – – – – – – –
So. What do you think, dear reader? Is Don a lunatic, a liar, or a lunatic? Remember to vote early and to vote often.
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Fun fact: Dumbass has a B. A lot of people don’t know that.
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Oops. Just realized I didn’t cover what science was before the scientific revolution. It’s important to compare.
Before the scientific revolution, Europe followed
Aristotelian physics is the form of natural philosophy described in the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC). …
Key concepts of Aristotelian physics include the structuring of the cosmos into concentric spheres, with the Earth at the centre and celestial spheres around it. The terrestrial sphere was made of four elements, namely earth, air, fire, and water, subject to change and decay. The celestial spheres were made of a fifth element, an unchangeable aether. Objects made of these elements have natural motions: those of earth and water tend to fall; those of air and fire, to rise. The speed of such motion depends on their weights and the density of the medium. Aristotle argued that a vacuum could not exist as speeds would become infinite.>/em> ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_physics )
While the Earth was known to be spherical by the Greeks, it was still the center of the Universe. The Sun, Moon, and stars revolved around Earth. And rather than the cosmic ocean, space was filled with aether.
This was close enough to the ancient view that it was adopted by the Church. The important thing being that Earth was the center of the Universe. And that would be the point that would get astronomers in trouble during the scientific revolution.
Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) supported heliocentrism was condemned by the Roman Inquisition and burned at the stake on the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome in 1600.
And, of course, Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was convicted by the church and lived out the end of his life under house arrest and forbidden to publish on science again. Again, for heresy by supporting heliocentrism.
But the church’s ability to enforce a biblical view on science was waning and modern science would win the day.
With this piece of our puzzle included, we can see that yes, science and the Bible were in sync up until the scientific revolution. And they both happened to be wrong.
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Don sed: Hawking. I rather liked Hawking’s use of imaginary time. It sounded to me like he envisioned our time as a universe to be a straight line of one directional time within a larger sphere of time that enveloped our time, more eternal than the timeline of this universe. That seemed pretty close to how I would diagram it, kind of a straight line within a very large boundless oval.
That happens to be pretty close to how the Bible seems to describe time.
In fact, James Hartle of the University of California Santa Barbara, and I have proposed that space and imaginary time together, are indeed finite in extent, but without boundary. They would be like the surface of the Earth, but with two more dimensions. The surface of the Earth is finite in extent, but it doesn’t have any boundaries or edges. I have been round the world, and I didn’t fall off.
One would still expect some sort of Big Bang singularity in real time. So real time would still have a beginning. But one wouldn’t have to appeal to something outside the universe, to determine how the universe began. Instead, the way the universe started out at the Big Bang would be determined by the state of the universe in imaginary time. Thus, the universe would be a completely self-contained system. It would not be determined by anything outside the physical universe, that we observe. Stephen Hawking ( https://www.hawking.org.uk/in-words/lectures/the-beginning-of-time )
So, nothing outside the universe could have created the universe. Imaginary time is finite but boundless. If you travel in a straight line on earth in any direction, you’ll eventually return to your starting point.
And God, in order to create the universe, must be inside the universe, part of the universe. Indeed, CANNOT be outside. One imagines then, that God must return to the moment of the Big Bang. Stuck in a cosmic Ground Hog Day movie, returning time and again to reexperience the same universe over and over. No wonder he’s gone mad.
But… if the Bible describes time so well, why did it take until Einstein for someone to come up with a theory of spacetime?
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Don sed: We don’t really need to prove who wrote the Gospels. Probably that is why the aurhors did not sign their names. That question is only of interest to scholars. The average believer is satisfy to let the text authenticate itself in our experience. In a word, what it tells us works.
Exactly!
Virgins don’t have babies. Men don’t walk on water. Jesus failed to fulfill a single messianic prophecy. People don’t return from the dead. Jesus failed to return in his followers lifetimes. Jesus failed to return in Paul’s lifetime. Jesus failed to return in John of Patmos’ lifetime.
You’re right. The New Testament speaks for itself. Pure, grade A, unadulterated bullshit.
Thanks for simplifying things, Don. And for ceasing all that “but they were eyewitnesses” shit.
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Don sed: But origins. Neither the scientist nor the Christian can prove by evidence the origins we propose.
Well we don’t need to, now. We’ve adopted Hawking’s imaginary time model. The Big Bang happens inside the universe and doesn’t require anything outside the universe to make it happen.
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Don sed: Go to the window and look out.
I can see mountains, and yes, patches of forest. I can hear the river, although I can’t see it from here.
But no gods. No angels. No fairies. No miracles. No supernatural. No magic. The natural world. Filled with very normal and natural things. Even my computer is made of natural things, in natural processes, invented by humans are natural beings.
And no one – not even the great Don Camp – has been able to demonstrate the supernatural when asked. Never. Not even once. All we ever get is stories. That if you squint just right, look kinda out of the ordinary – if you’re willing to ignore all the ordinary explanations.
The only way to see the supernatural is to presuppose the supernatural exists and does certain things in certain ways.
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Don sed: All this from nothing? By itself?
In the imaginary time model, there is never nothing. The universe is always there. Everything in the universe is always there. The universe is everything and nothing else.
In the more traditional Big Bang model, the universe doesn’t come from nothing. It comes for the singularity – all the matter and energy of the universe condensed into an infinitely hot, infinitely dense mass. In this model the universe doesn’t come from nothing. It comes from everything.
Don sed: The answer every thinking persona be he a kid or adult will say is what the Greeks said. No. Nothing comes from nothing.
But the Greeks got so much of physics wrong. So very wrong. When did the Greeks, or Christians for that matter, ever have nothing to examine? When did they take nothing into the lab and poke it, and prod it, watch it, and measure it? How do they have any idea what nothing can or can’t do?
Sorry. The Greeks, like the Christians, made baseless claims all the fucking time.
And, just to be clear, the Big Bang model doesn’t say – has NEVER said – that something came from nothing. That’s just apologists like yourself lying, as you do.
Don sed: But we do know that a mind can create something from nothing. Artists do it all the time. I am not talking about the piece of art but the concept he or she will bring to life in their piece of art. Or in their story, if they are novelists or poets. That is the only something from nothing I know of.
Wow, Don. That an amazing amount of stupid. Even for you. Is there some award I can nominate you for? Some Apologist Annual Awards night where awards for outstanding bullshit are handed out?
Concepts don’t come from nothing. They come from experience with the real world.
The first sea otter to pick up a rock to bash open a sea urchin, did so because sea urchins existed, rocks existed and hunger was a real thing. Sea otters would never come up with the idea if those things din’t exist.
This is the subject of so much science fiction. A species that never evolved hearing would never invent speech, because there’s no one to hear you talk.
Don sed: That is the only something from nothing I know of.
And you were completely wrong. Completely and utterly.
Don sed: So, reason says, something like that happened.
So reason says, that because Don imagines something that never, ever happened, ever, something like it must have happen.
We have two entirely different definitions of reason.
Stay delusional, Don.
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Your old friend Don here again. I’ve done extensive research on one particular story, the primeval story of Eden, Gen. 2-3. It is an oral tradition dating from maybe 12,000 years ago and transcribed when writing was possible. I has the amazing story of Adam and Eve as they disobeyed God and what he did about it.
In that story we can see what is called a proto gospel. And we can see all the features of the NT gospel. Men hiding from God, God searching for them. Forgiving them when they admit their disobedience (btw they try every trick in the book to shift the blame, even blaming God). It’s all there. Even the sacrifice of the animals to clothe them. Then there is the promise that the seed of the women would defeat the seed of the serpent. Sound pretty much like Jesus to me.
Now tell me how that could be written before Jesus. Even if we go back to 450 B.C if could not be written. It is too New Testament. Yet here it is, the oldest story in the Bible., coming from about the time of Gobekli tepe, and in about the same place btw. Tell me how that could be.
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You, Don, see what you want to see. I’ve also written an exposition of the Adam and Eve myth, which will appear soon. It’s nothing like your ‘it’s so New Testament’ shtick.
You need to recognise how the New Testament stories are devious little rewrites of Old Testament narratives. The Old did not prophesy the New. The authors of the New lifted all they could from the Old to create their own scriptures. You know this really, but you persist in arguing that ‘God’s hand’ directed the writing of both in linear time.
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I’ll be interested. I suggest you include the tas tepeler civilization in your analysis. In addition, maybe check on what the features of oral traditions are. I think the primeval stories of Genesis 2-11 fit that description very well.
You might notice I don’t include Genesi 1 as a primeval tradition. By my analysis using a mother culture literary hermeneutic, I think Genesi 1 was written much later in the mid-2nd millennium B.C. and for the people of the exodus. The chapters were composed as oral traditions before writing from about 12,000 years ago to about 7,000 years ago. They were told and probably performed regularly for the people of that tribe of pre-Hebrews to remember. I won’t include a link, but if you are interested you could look at my blog where I discuss Genesis 2-3.
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I did think of writing the kind of article you suggest, but then I thought it’d be a load of pseudo-intellectual crap so decided against it. You really think the author of the Adam and Eve story thought the same way you do about the stuff he was making up?
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Of course, the writers of the Gospels knew about the Passover lamb. They remembered every year, as they do even now, at Passover. No Holy dictation necessary.
You know, I hope, that almost no Bible scholars or teachers today think God dictated he Bible. You are shutting the barn door after that horse is long gone.
BTW, Neil, Matthew was using a well-known and well-used rabbinical interpretive model call the remez when he connected the Isaiah passage to Mary. He was not making it up. Let chatGPT tell you about it. It is one of the reasons I think Matthew was well educated in the Hebrew scriptures and rabbinical teaching.
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Of course he was making it up. Here’s what the AI you recommended says:
While Isaiah originally spoke about 8th-century B.C.E. political crises, Matthew adapted those passages to fit the life of Jesus.
Originally they had nothing to do with Jesus or Mary or events centuries later. You really are incredulous, Don. Matthew made up the connection to fit his notion of the Messiah.
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And yet the post was about two ‘scholars’ who insist God did dictate it. So I didn’t shut the ‘barn’ door (actually the saying is ‘stable’ door, because that’s where horses are kept) after it was closed ‘long ago’. I shut it after your fellow nutjobs reopened it.
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I am glad you are using a reliable source. You said A. I.? What was the last name? Is he a scholar? What credentials?
Look up remez. That is the rabbinical hermeneutic Matthew was using for this Isaiah passage and several others. But you know, don’t you, that this reference was for his Jewish audience in order to link Jesus to the Old Testament prophecies. We don’t need it. Both Matthew and Luke say directly that Mary was a virgin.
The fact that Mary was a virgin is significant theologically having to do with inherited guilt through a father, but that may be too much for you to handle. Otherwise, it is really not very important. I think you are making a mountain out of a mole hill. (I these idioms, don’t you?)
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I think, Don, you need psychiatric help. Certainly you need to read what I write before leaping to your keyboard to shower us with your intellectual prowess and erudition. You consistently miss the point by a country mile.
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I think they are nut jobs too. BTW in the west, we call them barns. Stable is too English for cowboys.
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Got it. That must be why Jesus was forever leaving doors open.
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credulity /krĭ-doo͞′lĭ-tē, -dyoo͞′-/
noun
A disposition to believe too readily.
Readiness of belief; a disposition to believe on slight evidence.
A willingness to believe in someone or something in the absence of reasonable proof; credulousness.
Toss in some Dunning Kruger, a tad of CD, then add a dash of “we love how our own farts smell,” and a heap of “we’re right becuz we say so!” Voila! an obvious truth, to some obvious idiots.
But here’s the thing, it got published, never mind where, that is certainly suspect. But it means every religiot that comes along now can point and say “See! look! It must be true!” …and the circularly reasoned, mental circle jerk continues, just as it has, for thousands of years, because ignorant, superstitious apes, think they are fucking geniuses.
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