Via Diglotting:

While I claim ignorance regarding what happens when we die, I must say that I definitely don’t ascribe to the idea of hell. Even though I did believe in it during my teenage years, I now find the idea of eternal conscious retributive punishment to be an abhorrent thing to believe in. I do believe in some sort of existence after death, but I am somewhat skeptical of the idea of an incorporeal soul part of us that survives death and flies through a tunnel of light to heaven. I find the idea of a future resurrection of the body to be a much more holistic and meaningful concept in this modern scientific age regarding the question of life-after-death.

I do. I ascribe several things to the idea of hell. Barbarity, injustice, sadism, sociopathy, and unspeakable horror, to name a few. I do not, however, subscribe to the idea of hell.









Sorry, couldn't resist. My hobby is spotting when smart people use the wrong fancy word. My Dad got me started, with his awful habit of saying "prodigious" when he meant "propitious."

It's previously been raised. The Horde didn't lose faith. Myers is competent developmental biologist who has carved out a niche at his current home...

What's the niche? Teaching?

Ah, how I miss academia--and the war between the researchers and the teachers! One crusty old curmudgeon (who was a favorite teacher of mine) asked my thesis advisor, "Do you realize that students are paying for your research?" My advisor replied, "Do you realize that students are paying for your no research?"

Good times.

I've casually assumed that misogyny is at work, based on generally-remembered material I've read in the 1980's remarking that the Qumran community (1) were Essenes, (2) were a male-only ascetic community, and (3) did have writings that, e.g., made heavy use of the "sinful woman" imagery from Proverbs.

And combination of those might have been debunked by now, but assuming that all three are true, I'd still vote for misogyny. It's hard to imagine folks joining an ascetic all-male community while having good healthy attitudes toward women.

In that case I'd revise my estimate of the likelihood of misogyny downward, more or less in proportion as the gender mix approaches 50:50.

In the US, for example, the Shakers were a celibate community with a fairly equal gender mix, in which men and women shared leadership roles, and regarded "Mother Ann" as a prophetess, was as you'd expect full of bias against sex but relatively free of bias against women.

Since I can't find any source willing to commit to a guess about the gender mix, I'm stuck assuming they were about even. The graveyard studies, which aren't necessarily statistically significant, suggest 46% women, after excluding the graves that are thought to have been later burials by bedouins (i.e., shallow, east-west facing graves). So now I'd rate Ken's #! and #2 about equally likely.

In a recent exhortation I got this right: I said that Mark, specifically, borrowed elements of a "heroic" narrative style for his gospel, but then (purposely) "betrayed" the readers by having the hero die a criminal's death, and then denying the readers any triumphal climax by ending on an ambiguous note with confused women at an empty tomb.

(I suggested that verses 9-20 of Mark 16 should be treated as an "afterward," and that the reader should pause after verse 8 for a bit before reading on.)

The book is extremely light on knowledge of Christianity (Carrier only evinces a very rudimentary knowledge of C.S. Lewis’ brand of “mere Christianity”), and doesn’t even really attempt to touch the surface of theology and philosophy...

Slightly tangential, but Dawkins and Myers have taken to directly mocking the notion that a knowledge of these subjects is necessary to debunk theism. Their meta-argument is roughly that arguing the details of textile technology is nothing but a distraction from noticing that the emperor is stark naked. It dovetails nicely with their generally angry outlook, since it allows them to make various cracks about "discussing the merits of imported versus domestic newt tongues for making love potions," and such like.

I'd like to see a cogent meta-counter-argument explaining where "sophisticated theology" comes into play. As a non-theologian, I'm ill equipped to make it myself: I can see Myers and Dawkins et al veering off the beam, but can't necessarily articulate where they went wrong exactly. Unfortunately I can see that their mockery is partly on target: a sizable chunk of apology appears in my view also to rely fatally on the assumption of what they're trying to prove; they really do take the form of "discussing textiles" instead of confronting the question whether the emperor's posterior is or is not showing.

In "The God Delusion," which in all honesty I haven't read, I understand it to focus mainly on origins. God's reason for being is to explain the unexplainable concerning origins; we now have explanations for those previously unexplainable mysteries; therefore, there's no need for God. And since beings only exist if they're needed, God doesn't exist. QED. On that score my first reply is, "Jessica Simpson!" Clearly useless beings have an annoying habit of existing. So putting God out of a job does nothing to attack the question whether He exists or not.

Dawkins of course thinks he's addressing a deeper epistemological problem; he believes that the only reason people believe in God today is their need to fill the gaps. His error is clear: practically nobody believes in God for that reason. It's as good a theory as any other, I suppose, for how primeval people went about inventing their myths and superstitions, but subsequent generations don't repeat that process anew. They believe in God (or their parents' gods) for the simple reason that their parents did. It's now communicated to them, along with other cultural elements, as part of their upbringing. If asked why they believe, most will say they "Just do." So attacking "God of the gaps" doesn't lay a glove on them.

American fundamentalists (and their overseas brethren) make Dawkins overconfident, because they do retroactively pin their belief on such things. I.e., they didn't start believing in God to fill gaps, but after the fact they did start hanging their faith on the idea that these gaps are proofs of God. It makes their faith easy to destroy, because the foundations are so shaky: instead of attacking what might even be an impregnable structure, you undermine the foundations and watch it fall like Jericho. It has the opposite effect on those of us who aren't fundamentalists, because he's not touching our building nor its foundations, but he is strutting around proclaiming himself conqueror of all he surveys. It makes one want to snicker and call, "Jettez la vache!"

But to my regret, it's not a complete response to Dawkins. If I personally pointed this out to him, he would turn the tables and reply, "So tell me, Mr. Jeenyus, why do you believe in God?" Any reply I make will get me skewered, since my main reason is... I just do. I have only indirect evidence to point to, such as the power and meaning of scripture in my life, and mumble mumble prophecy. I'm not the David to send out to slay him with a well-chosen apologetic sling stone. So while I see that his theological unsophistication causes him to miss the mark, I'd be interested myself in a more complete, cogent explanation of what this mark is that he's missing.

Palis are holding their breath, waiting to find out if these laws are still on the books.

I'd like to be encouraging about your project, and I hope it's very successful. As far as looking up, and commenting on, every use of the word "one" in scripture, I think it's good to remember that the Hebrews were ordinary humans, and "one" was an ordinary word to them. If you imagine what it would be like to look up every occurrence of "one" in Moby Dick, say, or War and Peace, I think you would conclude that it was a huge effort likely to bear only a very little fruit.

On your question, I know that Malachi never heard of the "Holy Trinity," had no conception of the Holy Spirit as a person, and had never in his life heard of "God the Son." So he couldn't possibly be arguing for or against any of those ideas. Just like the verse says, Malachi was saying, "We all have the same God, so we should all be true to each other and our religion."

The biggest takeaway I see in this report is that even 2,000 years ago, people had an irresistible compulsion to throw coins in pools.

Before I relinquished it, my version of the "gap theory" was like the Stephen Wright joke: "One day I came home and realized that someone had stolen everything, and replaced it with an exact duplicate."

what forced me to drop even that, almost unfalsifiable theory, was Russell and his tree-rings. I was prepared to ignore completely the global flood implied by "the face of the waters," but the least I would expect is a discontinuity at about the time of the six-day recreation. Evidence of trees happily living before and after the creation week was more than I could accept.

The argument about verb tenses is a bit of a sideshow--too easily dismissed. So the earth "was" formless and void... at the time. It's easy enough to conclude that scripture is silent about how it might have been in prior ages.