The New York Times has published an interesting, very long, article about the Christian evangelical movement and its ties to the Republican party. Here’s the link.
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An elaborate spoof on Intelligent Design, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is neither too elaborate nor too spoofy to succeed in nailing the fallacies of ID. It's even wackier than Jonathan Swift's suggestion that the Irish eat their children as a way to keep them from being a burden, and it may offend just as many people, but Henderson, described elsewhere as a 25-year-old "out-of-work physics major," puts satire to the same serious use that Swift did. Oh, yes, it is very funny. -- Scientific American
Oh my - wrote a long reply to youthpastor and it did not go through…
@Cottura 5 Minuti
I’m gonna hazard a guess and say that you’ve never seen Anchorman…
I do know other languages (french and German plus a little bit of Latin and Greek). I might have considered learning Spanish, but I am horrible at learning foreign (or any) languages, I have no particular interest in learning a new language (I’d rather learn Chemistry, Physics, or Oceanography), and living in the rural upper Midwest as I do, I don’t know anybody that speaks Spanish as a first language. If I lived in Europe, or anywhere where a 20hr. drive could take me to a place with a different main language, I would try harder, but as it stands, I don’t have the time/ability.
Hi youtpastor - I suspect your right. The Jesus from scripture sounded like a nice guy to me.
add an e and an apostrophe :D
Is there some sort of filter that is blocking my lengthy response to youthpastor?
i dont know. weird tho, i’m not really easily offended so whatever you said i’d be really interested to read it
Cottura 5 Minuti, sorry, i want to apologize, i was assuming it was going to be something that would be an attempt to offend me. i’m sorry, it was presumptuous and rude.
@youth pastor.
How in the world would any scholar know that Jesus was homely?
@El Peatieablo
Good guess - have not seen anchorman. And judging by your answer you already know 5 languages (including English) so you cannot be poor at learning them. It also seems that you have learned your own language at least moderately well - I cannot tell better by this length of writings. Knowing your own language well is not by any means a given. Learning it also requires skill and effort.
@youthpastor
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“okay so creationism being taught in schools, cool, that’s fine with me, evolution being taught, also cool. i wonder if they ever link the two, i mean can evolution be the means of intelligent design?”
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The point is not so much whether or not creationism is taught, but IN WHICH CLASS it is taught. In science, religion, literature, history? Or something else? I live in Finland and was taught creationism at school from around the age of 6 to 13. So I was appallingly young when it started. It was taught to me in religion though and only because my parents had me baptised lutheran and hence I had to attend religion class. It was not such a brainwashing experience as it might sound, for the way it was tought at my school (I think most scandinavian schools are like this) was not as the ultimate truth but as the biblical version.
Part 1 through… lets see about part 2…
I shall not inspect more thoroughly your feelings about what is cool unless you want to take a standpoint on the issue of what the forum is within school. Though I am not cool with creationism being taught at school even its mellowed down scandinavian style - but that is not a major problem.
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The second question of whether evolution and ID could be linked - well supposedly any phenomena in the universe could be explained in the most bizarre ways if you wish to do so, and ID is probably not the most bizarre explenation of all time. A more relevent question is why would one like to explain phenomena through bizarre fabrications. Look up Occam’s razor - often referenced on this site also. There is no need to link anything supernatural to the development of life or the universe - why do so then?
Through - I guess it was a server error or something of that sort since I did not edit it one bit.
@youthpastor - no offense taken
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Enjoy the lengthy response.
@eddie spaghetti
if i remember right, it’s something that is inferred by some of the usage of greek in the new testament. i honestly can’t remember where or how so if you want to strike that part it’s fine. i just remember a discussion on it in a theology class i had in college.
@Cottura 5 Minuti
For me, it’s more about my faith. i firmly believe that on some level God did create the universe. how he managed to create the universe i’m not sure. and you are right. science class is perhaps not the best place to teach ID… religion, philosophy, even literary classes would be better.
i tend to view the biblical story of creation less of historical fact and more of a literary work. there are 2 accounts of creation within the book of Genesis, and i believe the purpose for that is to tell the same story (God created the universe) to different audiences.
Paul the apostle who wrote the new testament often did this. he wrote a message in different way in different books to make the message more relevant to the people to whom he was writing.
i’m obviously not a literalist when it comes to the bible, i’m actually kind of annoyed by people who read scripture and take it only for it’s face value (my family does this often). to get the original intent you have to look at who the scripture was written to and why it was written. most often than not Christians don’t do this because they just want to make scripture mean what they want it to mean.
okay i’m sory again. i have a touch of ADD and can get off topic easily
@youthpastor
No need apologise, on this site many of us specialise in straying off topic.
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Returning to the issue at hand. I’m not sure I totally comprehend your meaning, but I’ll assume you are saying that it does not matter that the bible is not true literally, the fundamentalist way, but it is the underlining story that matters. This is actually the official view of the Finnish lutheran church as far as I know and it seemed sensible to me to some degree for a long time. Then I started to really dwell into it, and found it to actually be absolutely absurd.
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If a scientific study should have - for instance - 5% of the content easily proven to be false, I would be extremely sceptical about the rest. Saying that the underlining story is true though the facts are not is a great absurdity. The underlining story draws conclusions from and parses together the facts. If the facts are only about 90% true, the underlining story is almost bound to have made false conslusions. I would not choose the colour of my shoes according to a text that had major amounts of false information - and some people actually base much of their lives on such text.
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Let us suggest that a text is not in any way scientific. Why should it then be treated different from everyday novels? I will not give special priveleges to people or associations who like the philosophy of “Odysseus” or “The Diary of Bridget Jones”.
Good gravy. That’s a lot of unnecessary research right there. I can sum up the whole article in a couple paragraphs.
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In unrelated news, “unnecessary” is really hard to spell off the top of your head.
a lot of the christian faith is based upon just that faith. more than fact, for me that is anyways, the underlying message of scripture and the life death and resurrection of Jesus along with so much more. it is less of trying to figure out the historical accuracy of the bible but more searching for the context in which it was written. what was going on in the culture? why would the early fathers of the faith feel that it’s necessary to write things this way. how would the people of the time understood this. Christianity is also about experience, though it is not held more important than scripture, but that one experiences God through a variety of ways.
for me personally it’s not an issue of trying to make sure it’s completely scientifically correct. i believe i’ve experienced God love through different circumstances in my life. and as a response i am trying to learn about and be more like the savior in whom i claim to be God. in a way i experience God through helping people, serving others. not the stereotypical evangelism where you force God down someone’s throat, but in just being a servant, helping people without any expectations of anything in return. i find true joy in that, and believe that i am experiencing God through that.
it’s a personal preference i suppose. but more than just believing blindly one that requires lots of thought and research and careful study and discussion. i suppose this is absurd to some people. yet still, i think that even for people who aren’t christians there are some really great lessons that can be learned from the life of Jesus. he was an activist in his day, championing for the disenfranchised, that’s what is inspiring to me.
anyway hey if you write back i may check here tomorrow at some point, but it’s about 6:30pm and i am getting a bit hungry and tired so i’m going to leave my office. but i’m open to continuing the dialogue. ya know, i think sometimes i grow more in my understanding of my faith when i talk with non christians than with christians. just because people who aren’t christians actually will challenge me and make me think. anyways it was good talking to ya. have a good night! or morning. i’m not sure of the time difference between us… i’m in california
Youthpastor: Personally, I’m fairly certain that Jesus (who most likely existed, at least as a man) was lying about the “Son of God” part in order to distinguish himself from the Jewish school of thought. This is in Israel two thousand years ago, anything that went against Jewish law was completely revolutionary.
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In that sense, Jesus was a liar, but he used that lie to spread his message of peace and loving your neighbor as yourself. He used God almost as a footstool- “Do what I’m telling you and you’ll be with God for eternity.” Of course he attracted followers, he was a pretty convincing speaker in the ways that he backsassed the Pharisees. Of course, this lead to his own death, but he knew he was going to die for what he was doing before he even started. He probably preplanned the whole “empty tomb” controversy by leaving the Apostles directions as well.
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Jesus was a cool guy and he had some cool things to say. However, he didn’t need any divine intervention to do what he accomplished. Accepting that Jesus was probably lying and preplanning his death lets everything fall into place logically. Most Christians just explain all this by saying “He could do it because he was God,” which for me is inadequate. As long as there is a possibility that Jesus wasn’t God, I’m not going to put blind faith in favor of reason.
@youthpastor
You can see the FSM anywhere you want. Pray to him if you need to go to the toilet in the middle of a movie but can’t. If you make it through it was because of the touch of the noodly appendage.
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There are lots of good teachings in the new testament. Teachings that make life on this planet more pleasant for everyone. The danger is when you forhet to think for yourself and just believe the book, or even worse an iterpretor of the book. The nazi atrocities were possible due largely to effective bureaucracy. The bureaucrats could have stopped them but did not. They just did what they were told - in hindsight one might still think they were responsible, for it is everyone’s own responsibility to think of their actions. And listening to a bible quote is not critical thinking.
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This is one of the best parts about atheism (and pastafarianism too). One must think for oneself. I quote Richard Dawkins: “Organizing atheists has been compared to herding cats, because they tend to think independently and will not conform to authority.”
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I hope you appreciate the irony about the quote. I’ll check back here when I have time tomorrow evening or the day after.
@Cottura 5 Minuti Oct 29th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
“The danger is when you forget to think for yourself and just believe the book, or even worse an iterpretor of the book.”
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Yes! :( It must be so much less taxing on the brain cells to just make like another one of the sheep, just following along and swallowing everything someone else feeds you. A case of, to them anyway, ignorance is bliss.
I always see fundies…or any who lean heavily on religious belief to account for everything that happens in their lives……as those who are too lazy to grow up and take responsibility for their own actions. Whatever happens in their life can be blamed their deities will.
Forget indeed to think for themselves indeed….a case of “use it or lose it”
Assuming they were ever taught to be able to think for themselves and make their own decisions in the first place!