AntiXtians LOOOOOOOOOOOVE to exploit The Ambiguous Case™. Take for example the idea that God actually endorsed child sacrifice, despite reams upon reams of passages condemning the practice. Not only that, but God Himself going so far as to say in Jeremiah 7:31 that HE had never commanded such a practice, let alone thought of it (or that it was a good idea!)
Yes, there is evidence that the Israelites sacrificed children. Dude, I'd be surprised if there WASN'T. After all, the Bible is FULL of instances where the Israelites turned away from God and started following Other Gods™--such as Baal/Ashtaroth, etc. However, the skeptics like to seize on the Old Testament requirement to "redeem" the Firstborn, and make it sound like they were to be sacrificed.
In light of all the other passages, such an interpretation makes 0 sense. God laid out DETAILED instructions on what to do how and where, and when it came to sacrifices, only specific clean things were permissible. HUMANS were NOT on that list. The major reason being? Humans are sinful and they're the ones that need redeeming! Sacrificing a human (imperfect, at that) to redeem a human is futility.com. (This is also why Jesus was an exception to the No Human Sacrifice Rule™, because Jesus was perfect and sinless).
Similar exploits of the Ambiguous Case by skeptics:
-Jepthah's Daughter (Judges). Sorry, people don't cry over never being married if they're going to die. They cry over never getting married if they're going to LIVE CELIBATE. see here: http://www.tektonics.org/gk/jepthah.html
-Wolves "evolved" into dogs, therefore microbes evolved into Man. That's a huge leap there, and they make it sound so simple, but in actuality the logistics of a single-celled organism giving rise (eventually) to everything from Arthropods to Vertebrates is quite staggering. Completely new genes had to have somehow poofed into existence. Evolutionists like to take the tack of replicated (doubled) genes, thus freeing up one gene to mutate into something "new." That only goes so far, not to mention all the various combinations that are made of EPIC FAIL (and thus instant death) that would have to be weeded through. You know, there's a reason there's something called Haldane's Dilemma...
-Genesis 1&2 allegedly contradict. Umm, no. Person is listening to noobs or people that think they know Hebrew. In any case, whoever it is never learned what Toledoth is. Genesis 2 is a recap of 1 and it's focusing mainly on Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden--not Earth in general.
Genesis contradictions?
First published:Creation 18(4):44–45September 1996
Browse this issue
by Don Batten
Between the creation of Adam and the creation of Eve, the KJV/AV Bible says (Genesis 2:19) ‘out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air’. On the surface, this seems to say that the land beasts and birds were created between Adam and Eve. However, Jewish scholars apparently did not recognize any such conflict with the account in chapter 1, where Adam and Eve were both created after the beasts and birds (Genesis 1:23–25). Why is this? Because in Hebrew the precise tense of a verb is determined by the context. It is clear from chapter 1 that the beasts and birds were created before Adam, so Jewish scholars would have understood the verb ‘formed’ in Genesis 2:19 to mean ‘had formed’ or ‘having formed’. If we translate verse 19 as follows (as one widely used translation1 does), ‘Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field …’, the apparent disagreement with Genesis 1 disappears completely.
The question also stems from the wrong assumption that the second chapter of Genesis is just a different account of creation to that in chapter 1. It should be evident that chapter 2 is not just ‘another’ account of creation because chapter 2 says nothing about the creation of the heavens and the earth, the atmosphere, the seas, the land, the sun, the stars, the moon, the sea creatures, etc. Chapter 2 mentions only things directly relevant to the creation of Adam and Eve and their life in the garden God prepared specially for them. Chapter 1 may be understood as creation from God’s perspective; it is ‘the big picture’, an overview of the whole. Chapter 2 views the more important aspects from man’s perspective.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i4/genesis.asp
-The whole business about "slavery" in the Bible and how God condones it--therefore he condones New World (black) slavery.
Well, "slavery-as-we-know-it" (i.e. that which occurred in the Western World, notably enslavement of African peoples, but not limited to such--the origin of the word "Slav" (Slovakians) means "slave.") is not the "slavery" of Ancient Times. The "slavery" encountered in the Bible specifically fell into two groups: those captured in war/sold by foreigners, and those who sold THEMSELVES (voluntary servitude). This was a survival mechanism, and God Himself forbade the capture of a fellow Israelite for selling into slavery--in fact imposing the death penalty for such (Deut 24:7 If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him; then that thief shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from among you.) Apparently this isn't even good enough for SAB (Skeptic's Annotated Bible), as the dude marks this as "injustice". Umm, WTH? No pleasing you is there?
-murder-death-kill
All Demolition Man kidding aside, Skeptics seem to have a problem with context when it comes to whether "Thou Shalt not Kill" means "murder" or is more broad. It certainly can't extend to all killing, logically speaking. For the most part, it's logical that the word (ratsah) means unjustifiable killing. Most Jewish scholars hold that in the context of the commandment, this is pretty much what ratsah means. There are other places that ratsah is used which does not refer to murder. But this is like complaining about the definition of the word "is." It all depends on the context. The true "kill" word (all-encompassing meaning) in Hebrew is harag, however. The elasticity of the term ratsah, however, can apply to someone merely wishing death upon another person. In any case, it is clear that any killing of human beings is to be avoided where possible. Manslaughter is not murder, but the commandment seems to indicate then that actions should be taken to prevent accidental death of another person. After all, God gave instructions on how to make roofs safer to make sure people don't accidentally fall off them and break their neck.
There are more instances of Exploiting the Ambiguous Case™, many many more...
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Refuting a bucket of s*** with legal arguments
I happened upon this little gem recently:
http://saintgasoline.com/2007/12/01/refuting-creationists-with-only-a-bucket-of-feces/#comment-31802 (language warning for those with delicate sensibilities, but nothing worse than the excrement-word).
For those of you who are too lazy to click or are afraid of malware popping up from viewing that, it depicts two people, one of whom is covered in excrement and his standing near a bucket of excrement that is empty but is labelled "s***". Guy sans s*** is all "so you're the one that threw s*** on my house" and the other guy says, "But it was never directly observed!"
You're damn straight it was never directly observed. Of course, this is intended to "illustrate" that something can be proven without being directly observed.
However, legal jurisprudence would take issue with this oversimplification. While clever, it may also not be correct. How, for example, is Person #1 to know that Person #2 did not, in fact, throw s*** on the house, but rather caught the perpetrators, wrestled the bucket away, and in the process got covered in s***? So while it may be "safe" to assume that guy with the bucket did the dirty deed, it is rather simpleminded to exclude all other possibilities--especially perfectly plausible ones. It certainly doesn't lend itself to irrefutable proof.
For instance how would you be able to tell the difference upon first sight, of a guy that threw a bucket of s*** on your house, and a guy who wrestled a bucket of s*** from some punks who were in the process of throwing s*** on your house? Or he found the bucket later after walking under the guy's eaves and a big load of s*** just rolled off the roof and fell on his head? Answer: you wouldn't.
http://saintgasoline.com/2007/12/01/refuting-creationists-with-only-a-bucket-of-feces/#comment-31802 (language warning for those with delicate sensibilities, but nothing worse than the excrement-word).
For those of you who are too lazy to click or are afraid of malware popping up from viewing that, it depicts two people, one of whom is covered in excrement and his standing near a bucket of excrement that is empty but is labelled "s***". Guy sans s*** is all "so you're the one that threw s*** on my house" and the other guy says, "But it was never directly observed!"
You're damn straight it was never directly observed. Of course, this is intended to "illustrate" that something can be proven without being directly observed.
However, legal jurisprudence would take issue with this oversimplification. While clever, it may also not be correct. How, for example, is Person #1 to know that Person #2 did not, in fact, throw s*** on the house, but rather caught the perpetrators, wrestled the bucket away, and in the process got covered in s***? So while it may be "safe" to assume that guy with the bucket did the dirty deed, it is rather simpleminded to exclude all other possibilities--especially perfectly plausible ones. It certainly doesn't lend itself to irrefutable proof.
For instance how would you be able to tell the difference upon first sight, of a guy that threw a bucket of s*** on your house, and a guy who wrestled a bucket of s*** from some punks who were in the process of throwing s*** on your house? Or he found the bucket later after walking under the guy's eaves and a big load of s*** just rolled off the roof and fell on his head? Answer: you wouldn't.
It's the Abiogenesis, stupid.
AntiXtians (atheists, agnostics, and various others) love to go on about how they can prove that they're more likely to be right based on "science." Of course they point to "evolution" primarily, and you'll never see a greater usage of the bait-and-switch tactic than during a debate with an evolutionist, regardless of stripe (religious or not).
Never mind that the evidence for "evolution" being responsible for more than just dogs with different color coats, but rather for amoebas turning into people is ambiguous at best and relies as much on interpretation of evidence as on the evidence itself. It would be like finding a person holding a knife standing over a murder victim and proclaiming the person guilty on that basis alone, when if one looked harder they'd find another person's blood and fingerprints on the knife as well and it just turns out that the person they caught actually only discovered the body and had just pulled the knife out of dude's chest.
Whatever arguments and counterarguments are put up, they all essentially boil down to one basic argument: what is actually possible? Creationists and IDers (which aren't the same, incidentally, some IDers are actually panspermia-believers in the alien-seeding sense) believe that it's simply not possible for the kinds of required mutations to have arisen even in the time asked for by evolutionists in order to make a single-celled organism into a multicellular vertebrate.
But gone mostly ignored in the debate is the horse before this evolutionary cart: How did Life begin? Evolutionists who don't subscribe to any religion are adamant that it arose on its own ("abiogenesis"). Evolutionists who happen to be religious may also theorize this, but some don't. However, just how possible IS abiogenesis?
Well, if you've ever had any training in chemistry, you'll be aware of a phenomenon called "hydrolization" where water breaks down molecules into smaller components. Proteins are water-soluble and it is directly observable science that water + time = GG for many molecules, including chains of amino acids.
One of the main building blocks of life is the amino acid cytosine. (To those of you who took Biology and Genetics, you'll recognize it as one of the five main base pairs.) Without it, there can't be DNA. Cytosine has never been found in spark discharge experiments. They haven't even found it in meteorites. Biochemist (and evolutionist) Robert Shapiro comments that either Cytosine is very hard to manufacture, or it breaks down before detection. Attempts to manufacture cytosine have resulted in experiments that use different theorized atmospheric mixtures that not only go wildly contrary to what scientists think the early earth was like, but is a highly improbable scenario of what it was like back then. (I'm sorry but trying to pretend there was a Nitrogen-Methane-dominant atmosphere? NOBODY thinks that!) And even then the cyanoacetylene that is supposed to help make cytosine tended instead to hydrolize and thus destroy any chances of making cytosine.
And if that weren't enough, cytosine is highly unstable and breaks down very rapidly on its own. Forget all those "hot" scenarios you entertained, like by the hot deep sea thermal vents. Your precious cytosine--assuming it even formed, rather than its components breaking down even further due to HOT WATER--would get nuked into Uracil before you could blink. Even at cold temperatures, it breaks down too rapidly for it to be able to do anything in the vast periods of time that are indicated. If your theory has water in it, it's boned. But if it doesn't have water in it, it's boned too! Such a conundrum!
So while non-theistic Evolutionists wax nearly poetic (and satiric) about how Creationism or ID is a great big fairy tale, they're ignoring the enormous myth in their own ideological backyard. And the ironic part...is they're ignoring clear scientific evidence that they are wrong!
Nothing is more telling than Shapiro's own admission here:
‘Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical experiments run to discover a probable origin of life have failed unequivocally. Further, new geological evidence may yet indicate a sudden appearance of life on the earth. Finally, we may have explored the universe and found no trace of life, or processes leading to life, elsewhere. Some scientists might choose to turn to religion for an answer. Others, however, myself included, would attempt to sort out the surviving less probable scientific explanations in the hope of selecting one that was still more likely than the remainder.’
Yeah, some people will always believe in fairy tales...and moreso if they're under the blanket of "science"...now it just remains as to which "fairy tale" is right. And in my opinion, any "fairy tale" scenario of Life beginning has to have a being with MORE intelligence than the scientists running these experiments.
references here http://www.trueorigin.org/originoflife.asp
Never mind that the evidence for "evolution" being responsible for more than just dogs with different color coats, but rather for amoebas turning into people is ambiguous at best and relies as much on interpretation of evidence as on the evidence itself. It would be like finding a person holding a knife standing over a murder victim and proclaiming the person guilty on that basis alone, when if one looked harder they'd find another person's blood and fingerprints on the knife as well and it just turns out that the person they caught actually only discovered the body and had just pulled the knife out of dude's chest.
Whatever arguments and counterarguments are put up, they all essentially boil down to one basic argument: what is actually possible? Creationists and IDers (which aren't the same, incidentally, some IDers are actually panspermia-believers in the alien-seeding sense) believe that it's simply not possible for the kinds of required mutations to have arisen even in the time asked for by evolutionists in order to make a single-celled organism into a multicellular vertebrate.
But gone mostly ignored in the debate is the horse before this evolutionary cart: How did Life begin? Evolutionists who don't subscribe to any religion are adamant that it arose on its own ("abiogenesis"). Evolutionists who happen to be religious may also theorize this, but some don't. However, just how possible IS abiogenesis?
Well, if you've ever had any training in chemistry, you'll be aware of a phenomenon called "hydrolization" where water breaks down molecules into smaller components. Proteins are water-soluble and it is directly observable science that water + time = GG for many molecules, including chains of amino acids.
One of the main building blocks of life is the amino acid cytosine. (To those of you who took Biology and Genetics, you'll recognize it as one of the five main base pairs.) Without it, there can't be DNA. Cytosine has never been found in spark discharge experiments. They haven't even found it in meteorites. Biochemist (and evolutionist) Robert Shapiro comments that either Cytosine is very hard to manufacture, or it breaks down before detection. Attempts to manufacture cytosine have resulted in experiments that use different theorized atmospheric mixtures that not only go wildly contrary to what scientists think the early earth was like, but is a highly improbable scenario of what it was like back then. (I'm sorry but trying to pretend there was a Nitrogen-Methane-dominant atmosphere? NOBODY thinks that!) And even then the cyanoacetylene that is supposed to help make cytosine tended instead to hydrolize and thus destroy any chances of making cytosine.
And if that weren't enough, cytosine is highly unstable and breaks down very rapidly on its own. Forget all those "hot" scenarios you entertained, like by the hot deep sea thermal vents. Your precious cytosine--assuming it even formed, rather than its components breaking down even further due to HOT WATER--would get nuked into Uracil before you could blink. Even at cold temperatures, it breaks down too rapidly for it to be able to do anything in the vast periods of time that are indicated. If your theory has water in it, it's boned. But if it doesn't have water in it, it's boned too! Such a conundrum!
So while non-theistic Evolutionists wax nearly poetic (and satiric) about how Creationism or ID is a great big fairy tale, they're ignoring the enormous myth in their own ideological backyard. And the ironic part...is they're ignoring clear scientific evidence that they are wrong!
Nothing is more telling than Shapiro's own admission here:
‘Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical experiments run to discover a probable origin of life have failed unequivocally. Further, new geological evidence may yet indicate a sudden appearance of life on the earth. Finally, we may have explored the universe and found no trace of life, or processes leading to life, elsewhere. Some scientists might choose to turn to religion for an answer. Others, however, myself included, would attempt to sort out the surviving less probable scientific explanations in the hope of selecting one that was still more likely than the remainder.’
Yeah, some people will always believe in fairy tales...and moreso if they're under the blanket of "science"...now it just remains as to which "fairy tale" is right. And in my opinion, any "fairy tale" scenario of Life beginning has to have a being with MORE intelligence than the scientists running these experiments.
references here http://www.trueorigin.org/originoflife.asp
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