“To All of Those Taking Religion Literally”

rv581 · Newbie Alert Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 4

from www.laststory.com

“To All of Those Taking Religion Literally”

Some people believe the Bible is the literal word of God, with its parables and preaching’s reflective of the divine will of the one true Deity. Some people believe that everything the Bible says is 100% true and meant to be accepted verbatim. Some people believe that the earth was formed in six days, a snake tricked Eve into eating an apple, and Jonah floated around the ocean inside a giant fish. Some people believe that anyone who contradicts an edict or decree found in the Bible is committing a moral sin and displeasing God Himself. Some people believe that the Bible is absolutely accurate in all respects and anyone saying anything otherwise is engaging in blasphemy.

Some people are really stupid.

Exhibit “A” regarding the implausibility of certain Bible stories is the tale of Noah. Any clear-thinking adult who honestly believes that a 500-year-old man in the Middle East filled his hand-made boat with polar bears, kangaroos, saber tooth tigers, penguins, and American buffaloes is bull****ting himself and not utilizing his God-given gift of reason. The story of Noah is absurd to the point of being laughable.

Let’s look at Noah’s plight logically: Even if Noah, at several hundred-years-old, managed to round up all the animals on earth—which is physically impossible, of course—there are too many other holes in the story. Like… once he got all the animals aboard, how did he feed the carnivores? What about the more unpleasant animals, like mosquitoes, fleas, hornets, rattlesnakes, and skunks? Did they keep termites inside this wooden boat? Which one of Noah’s shipmates volunteered to carry the head lice, tapeworm, and pubic crabs for 40 days and 40 nights? If the world was flooded and became one gigantic ocean, wouldn’t Noah need to build gargantuan aquariums for the fresh water fish? 40 days and 40 nights is an extremely long period of time, so where did they store all the food and water? And with thousands upon thousands of different species consuming this food on a daily basis, whose job was it to shovel the animal ****? The Washington zoo ranks among the largest in all of the United States and it only houses only a few hundred animals—tops—and they still need hundreds of employees to care for the creatures around the clock. Yet some people actually believe that a handful of folks in Noah’s immediate family—without any formal training, mind you—managed to cage, feed, groom, and clean two of every animal species in earthly existence? It’s completely and utterly ridiculous. Just do the math: Even if it only took a scant 10 seconds each day to feed, groom, and clean every single animal each day, than just three species—a total of six animals, boy and girl—would require an entire minute. Using this time-clock (and ignoring the birds, reptiles, fish, and amphibians for a moment), it would require 667 nonstop man-hours each day to care for all 4,000 species of mammals in a dimly-lit boat during unpleasant weather conditions. To feed, groom, and clean every species in all of existence would require a staff of thousands… maybe hundreds of thousands. And that’s overlooking the entire issue of plant life. If the world was completely inundated by miles and miles of sea water for 40 days, than all the trees and shrubs on earth would’ve perished. To ensure their survival, Noah would’ve had to keep California redwood, Venus flytrap, marijuana, poison ivy, tobacco, water lilies, and banana tree seedlings in a well-lit section of the ark. On top of that, these plants would need to grow to maturity and mass-reproduce literally overnight or all the herbivores would starve to death and not be able to repopulate the planet. There simply wasn’t enough manpower aboard the ark for this fable to have a realistic shot at working.

I know… it must’ve been another one of those “miracles” I’ve heard so much about…

We’re at a dangerous point of human development. Millions of wackaloons in the Middle East are now taking a different religious book literally and urging the mass-slaughter of a few billion infidels. How can we speak with any degree of credibility when we’re still insisting on the validity of silly fables and tall tales in the Holy Scriptures?

The trouble with religious literalists is that they tend to depend upon others for interpretation, since they feel unworthy of engaging in reasoned, deductive thought on their own. And because of this, they’re ripe for manipulation, exploitation, or worse. In America, the worst possible fate to befall a literalist might be to join a cult, or being conned into parting with one’s personal possessions by a televangelist. But in other areas of the world, the stakes are significantly higher. The literalists receive instruction from dangerous extremists who advise their puppets that God thinks it would be awfully keen to careen a plane full of people into a large building. There’s a human need to gain wisdom and enlightenment; for those lacking in confidence or education, this wisdom and enlightenment is gained through others of disputable moral worth. We’re a P.C. people and more prone to pandering than confrontation. Instead of arguing with the Muslim extremists head-on, we meander about the topic, uttering platitudes designed to appease: “Islam is a religion of peace and the terrorists have hijacked a faith.” Look, a hammer is a tool designed for peaceful purposes, but if someone hijacks a hammer and starts whacking others in the head with it, you need to be wary of the hammer. And subtle niceties won’t divert someone’s path from a brainwashed notion of martyrdom.

Be direct, with both the Muslims overseas and the zealots at home: “Hey, ****-head! Rather than letting a book think for you, why don’t you try to think for yourself?” There’s no sense of nobility in blindly following a faith without employing judgment or rational thought. It’s not a sign of spirituality, but rather, of cowardice and carelessness. Your beliefs spawn actions and these actions carry consequences; absolving yourself from blame because some religious front-man told you that he found the idea in an old book is loathsome. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism in and of themselves are completely neutral—it’s the application that makes them good or bad. And right now, too many people worldwide are of the mistaken belief that blindly following someone’s interpretation of a faith is demonstrative of a greater degree of holiness than someone who questions what he’s told and challenges protocol. Usama bin Laden didn’t just hijack a faith; he used it to justify a sinister goal. And if we want people to challenge the dogma preached in terrorist-friendly mosques, we need to be clear and succinct: Challenging or rejecting a religion doesn’t make you a bad person.

It just might make you a good person.

Matdvd

I'll pray for you.

Nobby

Rv581
You must be a very sad person!
You see nothing ahead of you but death!
I'm truly sorry,
Nobby

rv581 · Newbie Alert Joined: 09 Dec 2002 Posts: 4

quote:
Originally posted by Nobby:
Rv581
You must be a very sad person!
You see nothing ahead of you but death!
I'm truly sorry,
Nobby

Ok... So those who don't take the Bible literally are "sad" and face only "death"?

Okey dokey.

'Course, a few million Arabs have the exact same point of view in the Middle East regarding another holy book, which is the point of the article.

Nobby

quote:
Originally posted by rv581:
Ok... So those who don't take the Bible literally are "sad" and face only "death"?

Okey dokey!

rv581,
Your in Noah's Lounge forum now. If you would move your post to the
Debate Forum, I'm sure you could get any number of members to debate this with you.
Thanks Nobby

[This message has been edited by Nobby (edited 12-31-2002).]

admin

I moved this to the debate forum.

Magnum PI

Welcome to the Bible Debate Forum rv581!!!

Thanks for posting this article, I found it quite amusing but true all the same

Oh, and as you probably predicted the response(s) (argumentum ad hominem) you'd get are quite typical around here. Hardly anyone addresses the content of one's post in this forum, just the messenger.

Which just goes to show you that the point of that article rings true to this very day, even here at bible-discussion.com.

Anyhow, the article was definately interesting but it could have done without the trailer trash language (i.e., BS, *Darn This Censor - I Should Have Just Written "Poo"*, etc.) and would have had just the same effect.

Thanks for posting!

MPI

Matdvd

Yes, thanks.

not.

stuey

Alright, I'm going to take a shot at addressing some of the concerns you have with the story of Noah's ark first, so bear with me.

First of all, according to calculations in The Genesis Flood, by Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, page 69, the Ark could hold the equivalent of 522 standard two-decked railroad stock cars. This would be more than enough to carry all of the animals required, plus all the food & water needed for 40 days (& 40 nights of course!). To provide some sort of comparison, to carry the no more than 35,000 estimated individual vertebrate animals, the average size being that of a sheep, would require no more than 146 such railroad cars. In addition, it is very possible that the animals gathered were not fully grown adults, which would decrease the amount of food required to keep on board.

As for insects, it would not have been necessary to have many of the species on the Ark. Take mosquitos for example - their eggs can survive for seven years in the wild, even through the freezing cold temperatures in Canada during the winter.

When it comes to caring for the animals, I think the care requirements would be less than you might expect. Definitely they wouldn't need grooming or cleaning (no one ever said the Ark smelled like a rose garden) and they could probably feed themselves from the stock of food on the Ark. But I also believe that if God could cause the Flood, then he could also provide a way to manage the needs of the animals.

Regarding the plant life - I believe that the plant life could have survived the Flood - at least enough to feed 2 of each kind until the various seeds began to sprout & grow.

The freshwater fish wouldn't have had any problem at all, since it was fresh water that flooded the earth. This would have vastly dilluted the salt water, to the point that the concern may be more for salt-water fish. However there are numerous examples of saltwater fish being able to survive for extended periods in fresh water.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that their is a naturalistic explanation for all the details of the Flood. I do believe that the hand of God was upon Noah, his family, and all the living creatures. However I do think that a lot of the details can be explained naturally.

The comparison to fanatical Muslims taking the Koran and using it as a license to kill is a false analogy and in no way proves that the Bible isn't true. There are scores of examples of people twisting the words of Scripture for their own personal goals & desires. These people are not doing what the Bible commands.

The analogy of the hammer was in my opinion misleading. You said that when "someone hijacks a hammer and starts whacking others in the head with it, you need to be wary of the hammer." Personally, I would be more wary of the person wielding the hammer. In the same way, I would be wary of people using the Bible for means other than that for which is was intended.

I think you yourself recognized this when you said that Christianity is neutral, and that it is the application of Christianity that makes it good or bad. However I would disagree that it is neutral (it is actually very God-oriented, and thus not "neutral"), and if the Bible is followed closely that it is most definitely good, and not bad.

Forgive me for rambling on, however I trust that some of what I have said makes sense.

Stu

Jim S · Little Guppy Joined: 21 Nov 2002 Posts: 30

1. Isn't the story of Noah's Ark meant to be a parable, rather than actual history? It was probably written down by sophisticated Hebrew scribes in the 6th century BCE in the Babylonian Captivity. Unlike the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the first 11 chapters of Genesis are very similar to the religious mythology that was very common in the Middle East at that time. The Hebrew scribes simply put a Hebrew twist on this mythology. Indeed, the main reason why the first 11 chapters of Genesis were created in the first place was probably to fool the Babylonian captors into thinking that the Hebrew scribes were writing down a traditional holy book as they had been instructed to do by their Babylonian captors. The unique, world-class nature of the Hebrew Bible does not start until chapter 12 of Genesis, with the stories of the Pariarchs, which have no parallels with other religions of the times.

2. There may very well have been a real Flood in the Middle East in prehistoric times. And indeed, all the Flood stories around the world may have some real basis in actual history. But the Flood did not come from 40 days and 40 nights of RAIN. No, it came from the glaciers melting at the end of the last Ice Age.

3. The Bible evidences little knowledge of science in general. But that does not necessarily render the Bible's stories as being baseless. For example, it is very clear that the author of Genesis had no idea HOW Jacob managed to breed so much speckled livestock from Uncle Laban's herds in 6 years. Critics often point to that story (with Jacob erecting signs to tell the livestock when to breed) as being even dumber than the story of Noah's Ark. But although the author of Genesis did not know HOW Jacob did it, that does not mean that a lifetime herdsman like Jacob would not be expected to know how to do it. It's just that neither the original source for this part of Genesis, nor the 7th century BCE urbanite Hebrew scribes who first wrote down this section of Genesis (which pre-dates the Noah's Ark story), knew THAT breeding could be done, but had no clue HOW breeding was done.

Van

Jesus made reference to some events recorded in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Therefore I think they are the inspired word of God. I think Moses compiled the accounts around 1450 BC.

dole · Tadpole Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Posts: 27

It says nothing about the flood being a parable. If you call stuff that some people don't believe a parable, then you are compromising the Bible, which is the inerrant Word of God. We don't pick and choose what we like in the Bible. It is all God-breathed. An Almighty God would have no problem making these things happen. It would be a display of His power, not pose a problem.
The Bible doesn't say it was all rain. A lot of it was rain because it had never rained before then, but a lot of it was also from the springs of the great deep. It was cataclysmic and worldwide (and accounts for most of the fossil record). That is all in the Bible. However, I am not a scientist. But there are many who are more qualified to answer your questions.
If you honestly want answers, you wouldn't go to a forum and pick a fight with your average joe. You would go to a group that works in the area of creation research and pose your questions to them. I've been exposed to evolution and creation and only the latter answers my questions instead of leaving me with more.
Granted, many of you don't want to believe, and instead follow human pride, telling yourself you have all the answers. I'm with mat on this one; you all have my prayers.
There it is. The post you were expecting so much, but won't bother to consider. The thing with forums is rarely do the posters change any views. The viewers who are on the fence are the only ones swayed either way. To all of you, I encourage you to go to the websites and books. Listen to the creationist point of view before you dismiss it as mythology. Evolution is more a matter of faith than science. Science doesn't contradict the Bible either. The answers are there. Don't listen to one person and draw your conclusion. Creationist who defend a worldwide flood as defend Noah and his ark. Check out icr.org and look under Q and A's. If you have questions, ask the people who do the research.

jamesron41 · Moderator Joined: 29 Mar 2002 Posts: 122

God works in mysterious ways.

Jim S · Little Guppy Joined: 21 Nov 2002 Posts: 30

Van: 1. You wrote: "Jesus made reference to some events recorded in the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Therefore I think they are the inspired word of God."

Jesus was certainly very well-versed in the Hebrew Bible. No one could deny that. Thus there is no surprise in the fact that Jesus referenced many things from the Hebrew Bible.

Jesus himself often used parables to make his points. So why couldn't the 7th century BCE Hebrew scribes, who wrote down the received text of chapters 12 - 50 of Genesis, and the 6th century Hebrew scribes who wrote down the received text of chapters 1 - 11 of Genesis, have been using parables to make their points?

Jesus does not say, does he, that every word in the Hebrew Bible is inerrant actual history?

Didn't Jesus view both the Hebrew Bible and his own ministry as being fundamentally about religion and theology, rather than as setting forth textbooks for history or science?

2. You wrote: "I think Moses compiled the accounts around 1450 BC."

If so, then Moses was not alive when the Patriarchs are said to be living. It's really not at all surprising, is it, that Moses, or whoever wrote down the Pentateuch, did not know HOW Jacob bred speckled livestock in 6 years? The author of Genesis simply knew THAT a lifelong herdsman like Jacob could very possibily be able to breed speckled livestock over a 6 year period.

If Moses wrote Genesis in 1450 BCE, then how can there be so many references in Genesis to people who were not yet in existence in 1450 BCE? Abraham is said to be a Chaldean, but the Chaldeans did not appear in history until about the 10th century BCE. Likewise, both Abraham and Isaac are said to spend time in the land of the Philistines with King Abimelech, but there were no Philistines in Canaan until the 10th century. And there are also many references in Genesis to the camel, yet camels were unknown in the Middle East as beasts of burden until about the 10th century.

Isn't it clear that these anachronisms crept into the text as the story was re-told thousands of times over hundreds of years? Not every word in Genesis as we have it today was in the original source, in my view.

Jim S · Little Guppy Joined: 21 Nov 2002 Posts: 30

Van:

1. You wrote: "Genesis does not indicate that camels were the primary beast of burden either."

I agree with you completely on that! I think that references to camels were tacked on to the original source for Genesis many centuries later, such as in the list of animals that Pharaoh gave Abraham. Both Ishmael and Joseph are compared to a donkey in Genesis; no one is compared to a camel.

2. You wrote: "I think it is possible that Moses, acting under the guidance of the Holy Spirit used both oral and written information to put down the accounts prior to his life time."

But this Moses would have been a human being. Moses didn't know what actually happened the night Sarah spent with King Abimelech. He could only repeat what King Abimelech and Sarah said the next morning.

And if Moses wrote anything down, it would presumably have been in Egyptian. There really is very little written tradition in Hebrew prior to the 9th century BCE. As an integral pat of Hebrew lore, oral re-tellings over many centuries must have been the primary transmission source for these thrilling tales of the Patriarchs in Genesis.

And 700 - 900 years of oral re-tellings of the original source of Genesis would have introduced anachronisms and, unfortunately, some outright additions to the text (thought necessary for theological reasons).

So it seems clear to me that the received text of Genesis that we now have is not 100% accurate, not by a long shot. It does not stay strictly with what the original source for Genesis said.

Yet I also believe that MOST of the stories of the Patriarchs in Genesis do in fact stay true to their original source. Given the very odd mindset underlying the stories of the Patriarchs, it seems inconceivable to me that Hebrews could have made up those stories.