So Bill Nye is going to debate Ken Ham...

[Kheldarson]

Well, technically, we do know. Seeing as finding out that sort of stuff is an entire academic discipline. >.>

Sorry, couldn't let that one slide. We have a wealth of historical information about that very topic. We do know things were changed, altered, incorrectly transcribed, etc. Which is why modern Biblical liberalism is so, to put it bluntly, idiotic.

The entire early teachings of Christianity were oral tradition. It took quite a while before anyone realized maybe they should start taking notes.

Granted. I'll admit my studies are more focused on Catholic Tradition and dogma.

But I still believe that there's always room for new information, even with the Bible

Its modern day problems are by and large of a social nature. Where it tends to be drifting a few decades behind. However, I would place more of the onus on traditionalism, not caution. Otherwise the new Pope wouldn't be freaking people out in Vatican City so much.

Also true, but if you look at the councils, you see the dogmatic caution. Getting to the point of council is the initial challenge, of course.

[siead_lietrathua]

Huckster was originally positing that the Christian God, since that is who we are talking about, might actually have an open door policy and that we got it wrong.

You came back saying that it couldn't be the Christian God because of basically Biblical interpretation.

That's when I made my statement further talking about the Christian God. I did not bring up other gods, only made mention of other faiths and religions in that we all have our truths and could all be misinterpreting them.

i'm gonna switch to using yahweh for clarification when i'm talking about the christian god.

1) if we got it wrong, and the REAL god is not yahweh as he is described in the bible , then whatever god is really out there is not yahweh. if the god of the bible is defined as yahweh, with all his traits, and the REAL god doesn't have those traits, then the real god is NOT yahweh.
claiming the christian god is anything other than the yahweh of the bible is exactly the same as me saying that yahweh is really zeus. gods are defined by their traits.

2) using the bible to argue that yahweh is NOT my hypothetical god is perfectly justified, since the bible is all we have to go on about the traits of Yahweh. if you are seriously arguing that i can't use the bible to differentiate yahweh from other gods then that's a heck of a roadblock to any actual discussion.

3) you said all faiths and religions,without specifying that you were talking about christian sects. not all faiths and religions are christian, there are heathen faiths out there. if i misunderstood you because you didn't clarify so be it, it was not an intentional misunderstanding on my part. *shrug*


and finally, i think that wanting to feel connected to something bigger than yourself is very cool, and not a bad reason for being in a certian faith . but perhaps i should have worded my question better. i wrote faith, in my brain meaning of all the different faiths. so, a better way to word it would be why did you pick that particular god?

[Kheldarson]

i'm gonna switch to using yahweh for clarification when i'm talking about the christian god.

1) if we got it wrong, and the REAL god is not yahweh as he is described in the bible , then whatever god is really out there is not yahweh. if the god of the bible is defined as yahweh, with all his traits, and the REAL god doesn't have those traits, then the real god is NOT yahweh.
claiming the christian god is anything other than the yahweh of the bible is exactly the same as me saying that yahweh is really zeus. gods are defined by their traits.

2) using the bible to argue that yahweh is NOT my hypothetical god is perfectly justified, since the bible is all we have to go on about the traits of Yahweh. if you are seriously arguing that i can't use the bible to differentiate yahweh from other gods then that's a heck of a roadblock to any actual discussion.

3) you said all faiths and religions,without specifying that you were talking about christian sects. not all faiths and religions are christian, there are heathen faiths out there. if i misunderstood you because you didn't clarify so be it, it was not an intentional misunderstanding on my part. *shrug*

1) The traits in the Bible are the ones that humans have collected and assigned to Yahweh. There could be things we missed, misinterpreted, or just plain ignored. We are imperfect creatures.

2) I wasn't saying you couldn't use the Bible, just saying that it, like all things humans are involved in, cannot be taken as the whole. It's like science in that manner. We constantly study to find the truth. And the first step to wisdom is to understand we know nothing.

3) I was speaking of all faiths as a generic. Perhaps I should've started a new paragraph for further clarification? If you go through the major faiths, you find sects within those beliefs, ranging from minor to major differences. Whether we all believe in the same God is irrelevant to this point: humans tend to interpret things to their benefit.

There's a joke my grandfather told me once where a man was found on a desert island. He showed his rescuers the buildings he had built while there, including the "old church" and the "new church". When asked why the second church, the man declares he disliked what was being taught at the old church.

Kind of highlights the point there.

and finally, i think that wanting to feel connected to something bigger than yourself is very cool, and not a bad reason for being in a certian faith . but perhaps i should have worded my question better. i wrote faith, in my brain meaning of all the different faiths. so, a better way to word it would be why did you pick that particular god?

Cradle-Catholic who reaffirmed her faith in college. I have an interest in how faiths develop in their time periods, particularly the RCC. It's why I know my theology but maybe not my Bible as well as I should.

[siead_lietrathua]

1) The traits in the Bible are the ones that humans have collected and assigned to Yahweh. There could be things we missed, misinterpreted, or just plain ignored. We are imperfect creatures.

i had it explained to me in college that every sect of christianity, as well as every different pagan god, should all be treated as different gods. that, since gods are defined by their traits, we can't call all gods the same. we wouldn't call zeus thor, or allah yahweh from a pure point of study.

that's kind of the background i'm coming to with this. if people try to tell me that yahweh is a benevolent loving god who only wants the best for all humanity, i cannot hold to that. if i show chapters from the bible where god himself says he is a jealous god, that show he is a war-god that picks one tribe to be superior, and demands human sacrafice on occasion, it's argued with me. but that IS the yahweh god.
here's a 10 minute clip form a movie called God on Trial that shows some examples of how god is not benevolent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx7irFN2gdI

now, if we want to talk about god as something we don't understand, we can't also claim to know that this particular interpretation is closest or correct. it comes across as fairly dishonest to say that we can't know something but we know it.

i have no issue with people saying " i don't know what god is, but of the gods i have read of, i like this philosophy". just don't start asserting that we can KNOW that the god is the right one. we cannot claim to know the unknowable. even the most devout of any faith, if they're honest, would have to say they're agnostic.

[Gravekeeper]

i had it explained to me in college that every sect of christianity, as well as every different pagan god, should all be treated as different gods. that, since gods are defined by their traits, we can't call all gods the same.

This isn't exactly right. All gods in any given region or culture are typically deeply interconnected because they are in fact the same concepts/stories being re-appropriated or retold by different cultures. The most blatantly obvious example is Greek vs Roman gods.

that's kind of the background i'm coming to with this. if people try to tell me that yahweh is a benevolent loving god who only wants the best for all humanity, i cannot hold to that.

I have to step in and ruin everything for both of you with history again ( Sorry! ). But Yahweh is not exactly the Christian God. Yahweh is a very very old semitic god for whom some of the concepts eventually morphed into the Hebrew God and then again into Christian God. We're talking 6000 BC or so.

Yahweh also demonstrates the transition from polytheism to monotheism down the line through early Judaism and into Christianity. Yahweh was originally one of many gods of Ugarit and later the Caananites and through them to early Israelites and to Judaism. Many of these other gods are still mentioned in the Bible both in relation to or working with God ( As in Psalms ) and opposed to God ( As in Exodus ). Or just in passing, for example;

Judges 3:31:
After him came Shamgar son of Anath, who killed six hundred of the Philistines with an oxgoad. He too delivered Israel.

Anath is a warrior goddess and Yahweh's sister ( and occasionally consort ). She was also kind of a raging violent lunatic. Later linked to deities like Athena. Eventually, she ended up as a powerful angel in Judaism as Anathiel.

This pattern occurs with practically every early Semitic god as they transitioned through the centuries down through the Caananites and Israelites and then through the shift from polytheism to monotheism of the Israelites into Judaism and then Christianity.

But, getting back to Yahweh. Yahweh slowly took on the mantle of the main god from his father. He was originally a child of a main father god, El, who had some odd 77 children. But he was eventually squished together with his dad and condensed into one god while the other gods, mainly the messenger ones, got demoted from gods and became things such as angels.

Early Israelites had a polytheistic phase as a result which is reflected in the Hebrew Bible and thus into the Old Testament. With many of the terms in the Hebrew Bible being conflagrations of older languages. El, for example, refers both to a father god and as a general term for any god. ( Similar to how we have the word god but Christians just have God instead of a specific name ).

There were several Semitic gods and goddesses who were eventually absorbed, condensed and changed into the shift into monotheistic Judaism. But the remnants of them are still in Bible as well as modern languages. Some of Yahweh's brother's and sisters might be a bit more familiar when you realize the English translations of their names are pestilence, plague, death, etc. -.-

The Christian God, like practically every modern god, is a distillation of earlier deities and concepts passing down through regional cultures and histories. For all practical purposes, there aren't really any gods in western or eastern religions who were not originally derived from other gods.

The only regions that have what you would call more direct lineage gods that remained largely unchanged are isolated regions and cultures that were largely free of European / Asian influence for long periods of time. Such as Native Americans, Africans, South Americans, etc.

Anything coming out of Asia or anywhere remotely near the Mediterranean though is going to be a mash up. Because those regions have so many different cultures who were constantly conquering and absorbing each other. >.>

[siead_lietrathua]

I have to step in and ruin everything for both of you with history again...

oh no worries. i'm aware of all of that, and the crap beyond just the origins of yahweh himself. noah's arc is like all flood myths of that area from the great mediterranean flood (epic of gilgamesh is probably the more famous one). hell, even jesus's traits (healing, raising the dead, born of virgin, resurrected, etc) are not unique, and shared by other myths like Mithra, Horus, Attis, krishna, and a few others.
i'm more than well aware of how mixed up and non-unique the bible is.... but that doesn't make the god in it any less of a dickhead . goodness knows i've read the damn book enough times by now.

sidenote: there's one out there called the jefferson bible. i plan on reading it next when i'm done with The Message version. hubs says it's only the new testament, and only all the good stuff jesus taught without the mystic woo-woo, and apparently not a terrible read. i have a hard time understanding it as an actual bible, since religion kinda requires the woo-woo but it should still be interesting.

[Gravekeeper]

Yes, the Jefferson Bible ( As in Thomas Jefferson ) removes the miracles and what not. Because Jefferson, like most the founding father's, was mainly a Deist. Contrary to all that Christian Nation bullshit. Jefferson in particular loathed the Catholic Church.

You might want to check out the Gospel of Thomas as well. Since its recorded from the oral tradition. So its nothing except what Jesus said, quote by quote. Without any of the stories, myths and circumstance.

[siead_lietrathua]

i'll add that to my to-do list, sounds neat.

[otakuneko]

Well this certainly got lively didn't it?

Anyway, I didn't get to see the "debate" but it seems some of the youtubers I subscribe to believe Nye did fairly well in the debate. It also appears that contrary to my fears, AIG has posted what appears to be the entire debate on their channel. Naturally I downloaded it, in case they decide to delete it some time.

Haven't had time to watch it yet and decide for myself how well Nye did, but I hear that Nye's "opening arguments" so to speak blew Ham out of the water and he spent the rest of the "debate" basically going "nuh uh!"

[siead_lietrathua]

Haven't had time to watch it yet and decide for myself how well Nye did, but I hear that Nye's "opening arguments" so to speak blew Ham out of the water and he spent the rest of the "debate" basically going "nuh uh!"

that's a pretty accurate assessment. Nye is used to speaking about science in a simple, coherent and entertaining way, using everyday language. Ham had no chance, because his methods of explaining things rely on the opposition using too many tech-words that is just sounds like jibberish if you don't know science.
without being able to BS around the arguments from Nye, ham was basically reduced to asserting his position is the right one because of his book.

[Rageaholic]

Thought this was funny.

Pat Robertson told Ken Ham to shut up. You heard that right, Pat Robertson, that televangelist kook, told Ken Ham not to make a joke of himself.

[TheHuckster]

Thought this was funny.

Pat Robertson told Ken Ham to shut up. You heard that right, Pat Robertson, that televangelist kook, told Ken Ham not to make a joke of himself.

In the last few years it seems Robertson took a full 180 on the whole evolution thing, or at least on the young-earth creationism thing. He declared in 2012 that he no longer believed the Earth was 6,000 years old due to overwhelming scientific evidence defying those beliefs.

My respect for him went up a notch, although it's still a negligible amount. Frankly, his creationism prior was a fraction of my distain for his statements. It's more his unchristian and vile "Let's pray for [insert_leader_or_activist]'s death" rants and statements that "queers and atheists are responsible for 9/11" that make him a horrible person.

[Rageaholic]

^

Yeah, belief in creationism was the least of Robertsons faults.

[wolfie]

It's more his unchristian and vile "Let's pray for [insert_leader_or_activist]'s death" rants and statements that "queers and atheists are responsible for 9/11" that make him a horrible person.

Does that mean he was calling Osama Bin Laden a homosexual?