The Bible's Buried Secrets

[Robert Tulip]

all humanity is descended from the same "scientific Eve" who lived 120,000 + or - years ago...

...Just drop a few digits and get real...

Dawn, it does perplex me that someone as gracious and intelligent as you can hold such stunningly stupid opinions. Your ability to defend young earth creationism is a measure of the perverse hold of Biblical inerrancy on your brain. Your false opinion in this instance is dangerous and malignant. The truth will set you free.

My earlier point was that there is just one mention of the word 'history' in the New Testament, and that instance uses the word in a false way, by claiming that an imaginary narrative, the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden, is literal historical fact. We can contrast this to actual history, dating from great books such as The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, where the descriptions of events are based on a goal of explaining what actually happened, and are corroborated by external sources. True history is contestable and falsifiable, and honest historians are willing and eager to revise their opinions based on observation and evidence through robust logical analysis of sources.

The terrible thing about the Bible is that worshipers of the emperor's new clothes have convinced themselves over thousands of years that their moral framework depends on the actual truth of myths such as Adam and Eve, Noah's Flood and the incarnation of Christ. All these stories are pure allegory, with no external corroboration for the literal reading. The psychological pathology of literal faith emerges from the social reality that people who claim fiction is fact can gain political power through their deception. When politics is based on lies it has harmful effects. We see this in the sick ideologies of all fundamentalist beliefs. Reading the Bible dispassionately, we see the emperor stands naked, causing extreme embarrassment for all those who have been spruiking his wondrous attire. But the wonderful thing in the message of Christ is that if you repent about allowing yourself to be deceived you will be forgiven.

We can only understand the Bible's buried secrets if we free our minds from the shackles of literalism, and look for the hidden real meaning behind the texts. There is a divine wisdom in the Bible, but human ignorance has covered it over like archaeological rubble, and methodical excavation is needed to find it.

[stahrwe]

Nova special TBBS page 4 –
MICHAEL COOGAN (Stonehill College): The view that Moses had personally written down the first five books of the Bible was virtually unchallenged until the 17th century. There were a few questions raised about this, for example, the very end of the last book of the Torah, the Book of Deuteronomy, describes the death and burial of Moses. And so, some rabbis said, "Well, Moses couldn't have written those words himself, because he was dead and was being buried."
NARRATOR: And digging deeper into the text, there are even more discrepancies.

Whoa, did you see what the producers just did? The complaint of the rabbis reported by Michael Coogan didn’t cite a discrepancy merely a mystery though one could argue that Moses was recording the end of his life and burial as God told him it would happen. But all of a sudden this is assumed to be a discrepancy and is placed at the top of a list of more discrepancies about to be developed.

Nova special TBBS page 5
MICHAEL COOGAN: For example, how many of each species of animals is Noah supposed to bring into the ark? One text says two, a pair of every kind of animal; another text says seven pair of the clean animals and only two of the unclean animals.

This is artfully worded so as to be technically true but creating a false impression, a bit like my ‘what if I said I was blind?’ question. There are indeed two different quantities called for but the use of the term ‘texts’ implies the writings were by different authors at different times but recalling the same order. In fact, the different quantities are within a few sentences of each other and there is no discontinuity which would point to a different author. The requirement for 7 pairs of clean animals is stated first and the need becomes obvious as upon settlement sacrificing begins and with only a single breeding pair the species will go extinct. The second requirement is for breeding pairs of all animals, separate and distinct from the sacrificial pairs.

Nova special TBBS page 5
NARRATOR: In one chapter, the Bible says the flood lasts for 40 days and 40 nights, but in the next it says 150 days. To see if the floodwaters have subsided, Noah sends out a dove. But in the previous sentence, he sends a raven. There are two complete versions of the flood story interwoven on the same page.

Regarding the duration of the flood, the narrator is just wrong. The flooding (outpouring of water) lasted for 40 days and 40 nights but the duration of the flooded land was 150 days. The is no confusion or even room for such an error in the reading of the text so it is hard not to assume that the producers intended to mislead the audience at this point.
The raven vs the dove comment fails to even deliver a point. One verse records the release of a raven. The next verse a different bird, a dove. Two separate events, so what? To cite the above as evidence of two complete and by implication different stories is unsupported, and frankly laughable from the material presented.

Genesis 6
19And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
20Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.

Genesis 7
2Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female.
3Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.


Genesis 7
4 For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

24And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.


Chapter 8

2The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;
3And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.

[lest some confusion ensue, verse 6 is 40 days after the end of the flood, i.e. 190 days after the flood began]
6And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made:
7And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.
8Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground;
9But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark.

[Frank 013]

Interbane
There aren't many places we can get a front row seat to the workings of delusion. I've run this discussion off the rails, sorry. It's fun territory though.

Too True!!!

[johnson1010]

I took what he said as a shameful, silly attempt to gain points from those reading, knowing full well that he was not blind.

You are heaping additional shame upon yourself with yout pathetic semantic games. I have said before that you are the intellectual nadir of booktalk, and it seems you deserve credit for being an out and out phony as well.

I did not ever believe you were blind, Stahrwe, but it was obvious that you were trying to sew those seeds in those who read. It seemed about as likely as your claim that you work at Nasa, for all your suggestion, as some kind of physicist, or computer programmer, yet you fail to understand the workings of the "quote" button on book talk or basic logic as has been demonstrated up and down, back and forth all over this site.

You have long since lost all credibility with anyone here who has the slightest regard for integrity or honest discussion.

You should be ashamed of yourself. And not just for lying about being blind.

[lady of shallot]

Robert Tulip:

Dawn, it does perplex me that someone as gracious and intelligent as you can hold such stunningly stupid opinions.

Dawn, sadly I have to agree with Robert. The only thing I can think is that people you love and honor very much hold these same beliefs and this is the way you have been trained. But Dawn, you do not do your children and grandchildren any service by training them in these beliefs. They will not all (cannot all) share these erroneous beliefs and do you want them to feel intellectually and emotionally estranged from their family?

Can you really truly believe that only a small segment of the population is right and everyone else is wrong?

[Interbane]

Handy theory, misguided though. How many millions do you suppose? Why isn't he being more specific? Do we have any concept of what even one million years looks like? Only in 'science' texts! This is bad science.

Is this what you're referring to Lady, Dawn's comment? I don't think it's a matter of stupidity, although there is definitely something going on that's abnormal.

It's as though the scientist is making a joke. To be cynical about "millions of years" is to be cynical of the ocean and saying "how many millions of gallons do you suppose?" Which is to say, the specific method of reaching such high numbers is completely ignored. There isn't even an implication that such a process exists, let alone that it's remarkably reliable at giving us answers.

Only the scientist and his comment are considered. The technique used to arrive at the answer is ignored. Dawn, if you were to fully understand the techniques used, you would see that the numbers are not produced on a whim. They reflect empirical evidence. They are the voice of the universe, giving us clues to it's history and how it works. It is not the subjective opinion of a scientist. It is a pattern that points at an objective mathematical answer. In some cases, we might have used the process many many times. The answers were precise, but not identical. The small variance translates to the margin for error in the end product.

But the answer does not lay outside this margin for error as long as we trust inductive reasoning. But of course, with inductive reasoning there is no such thing as certainty. This would appear to be a weakness to someone who is a strong advocate for certainty. Are you certain of anything Dawn?

[stahrwe]

Interbane
There aren't many places we can get a front row seat to the workings of delusion. I've run this discussion off the rails, sorry. It's fun territory though.

Too True!!!

Perhaps but 'moderators' should be more objective and disciplined. Additinally, were the rolls reversed you would be calling for my banning.

But it is fun so settle in that seat.

[stahrwe]

Regarding Interbane's comment to Dawn, the true scientific method is;

Look for available grants.
Submit a grant proposal in line with the prevailing grantor's interests.
Obtain grant.
Do research in connection with grant.
If research doesn't provide results within acceptable parameters redesign protocols and start over.
If results are still abberant adjust constants until desired results are obtained.

PS, it helps to have an interesting or charasmatic front person, and a catchy formula or slogan.

Wait, what's that, you say scientists are honorable, honest people? Then how come scientists paid by corporations invariably produce science to support their sponsor's business? But then it is LOGICAL to kiss the hand that feeds you isn't it?

[Interbane]

If research doesn't provide results within acceptable parameters redesign protocols and start over.

Those people who give grants must be pretty darn good when they pick the results they want the scientists to find. By golly their lucky guesses landed us computers, satellites, and around the world travel. But of course the areas where science overlaps with your beliefs, science is wrong by a millionfold! Watching how you believe your own deceptions, I'm convinced you believe this lie as well.

Here's a challenge: show me what "protocols" could be changed with respect to carbon dating to show the age of things to be exponentially younger or older than they were before.

[Robert Tulip]

Interbane, you have not read the thread very carefully. The "stupid" comment was my remark, quoting Dawn's suggestion to take several zeros off the 120,000 year estimate for mitochondrial Eve.

The cynicism of Stahrwe's conspiracy theory regarding all of science concealing its fallacious methods is breathtaking. Just like all of NASA has carefully kept mum about faking the moon landing.