The Glade 4.0

In case you hadn't noticed, those parts occurred in completely different parts, written by different people at different times. The first once is easily explained as allegory; the second one.. yeah, it pretty much happened.

You can't just express incredulity at the story and act like that obviously makes it fiction. That's exactly the form of question-begging I'm talking about. Your personal incredulity is not evidence.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The story of Noah. Is not fiction?

You're out of your goddamned mind.

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Holy shitsnacks!

It's allegorical. There almost certainly was A) a dude with a boat B) a very large flood, possibly appearing to cover "the whole world" from that guy's perspective and C) some animals on the boat.

Genesis is a very, very condensed book intended to get all the preliminary bits out of the way before the important bits start with Moses. It's got a lot of stories, all very quick and lacking in detail.

If you think, however, it's just blatant fiction, all you're doing is engaging in the same circular argument as everyone else.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I think there was a misunderstanding here. You refer to the 'first' - being allegorical. First in the chronology of the book, but not first in Mus's post--he mentioned them in the reverse order.. I was a little confused myself when I read your statement to mean that the crucifixion and resurrection was allegorical but the flood was literal.

It actually makes a bit more sense the way DE said it.

Its still ridiculous, but at least a little less nonsensical.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Mus -

Are you suggesting that works be 100% accurate or they are fiction? Understandings change over time, translations, loss of context, etc. Very few people claim that the Bible is 100% accurate, and should be taken literally. It is not, however, fiction.

Damn. I thought I had murdered another thread.

Yes, the Bible is fiction, with certain historical details. Its a bunch of made up bullshit with only passing relation to reality.

But those are the most believable sorts of lies. Those with a kernel of reality in them. I think there probably was a dude called Jesus of Nazareth. He likely did cool things, but he did not come back from the dead, he did not cure lepers with a touch, he did not turn water into wine, loaves into fishes etc. There probably was a dude called Moses. He did lead people away from the Pharaoh, he did not part the red sea, nor were there plagues and **** caused by a vengeful sky beard.

They're all made up stories about possible people.

Hence, fiction. Much like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer. Abraham Lincoln was real, however, he didn't slay vampires. Same thing.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Show your work.

EDIT: Note that Jesus need not have come back from the dead. The people that wrote the story only need to believe that he did for the book to be non-fiction.

Agreed. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, so if you're going to sit here and tell me that Abraham Lincoln didn't really slay vampires, you're going to have to marshal some pretty compelling evidence to convince me.

The problem being that you have no basis whatsoever for this.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

There are no "extraordinary" claims. Calling a claim "extraordinary" and demanding "extraordinary" proof is a form of special pleading, in which the speaker places a claim into an arbitrary category of "extraordinary" based on nothing more than his own desire to raise the bar for proof as high as necessary to make it unreachable.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Bullshit.

You're claiming as true that some mystical father figure in the sky created the world in 6 days, along with a whole host of other fantastical stories. If that isn't "extraordinary" nothing is.

Everything in the Bible is extraordinary and when asked for evidence the only evidence is itself.

Thats because it is the evidence of the events in question. Its documentary evidence. Asking for evidence of the evidence is just an endless cycle.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

A) I'm not claiming that and B) you're right. Nothing is extraordinary.

Its just impossible to get you people out of your habit of seeing your own unbelief as simply self evidently true just because it is unbelief. You just keep right on claiming things are extra ordinary, fantastical, whatevrer with never any explanation as to why that doesn't amount to "because they just ARE!!" Your entire approach to the topic amounts to nothing more than making assumptions and then simply refusing to acknowledge them in the hopes that if you just insist enough, everyone else will too.

Its really just impossible to take seriously.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I challenge anyone in this thread to prove the Universe is 13.8 billion years old without an appeal to authority.

I don't think any of you have collected the evidence and done the calculations yourselves. You rely on scientific authorities for your knowledge just as much as religious people rely on spiritual authorities/the Bible. I'm not saying the evidence for both is equal, I personally think the evidence for the universe being 13.8 billion years old is a lot more compelling. But it's not as black and white as you guys make it out to be. There's thousands of really smart people who say the universe is billions of years old, and thousands of really smart people saying God created the Earth in 6 days. You have to choose which group to believe.

bold is mine



I guess we have very different definitions of the word 'smart'.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque

Unfortunately none of us has the millions of dollars required nor do we have observatories placed at high altitudes throughout the world. What we do have is data collected from scientists of many nations that we can look at and come to conclusions for ourselves. For areas in which we may not be experts, we listen to arguments both for and against, and decide which makes the most sense to us. I don't think any of us is stupid enough to believe that the universe is 13.8 billion years because anyone said so, but because many people have submitted analyses of the deep universe that all seem to agree and make sense.

If you drop a cup from your hand, you can be certain it will fall the ground due to gravity. Scientists know the universe is billions of years old with similar levels of certainty.

In which case his would be right and yours would be wrong.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Funny you should say that, because there was an article in the Smithsonian's Air and Space magazine an issue or two ago (in the last 2 months) discussing how they're constantly having to revise various hypotheses about the universe; various ideas have had to be tossed out because no evidence has turned up - and by none, I mean NONE. While none of it calls into question the age of the universe, our level of knowledge of what's out there and how it all works is still very infantile.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I need more popcorn.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

So you don't believe it because one person said so, but because many people said so. How is that different than someone who chooses to believe in the Bible?

I mean, I agree with you. I don't find the evidence for a literal interpretation of the Bible compelling at all. I don't even believe in God. And I'm inclined to believe scientists when they say the Universe is 13.8 billion years old.

But I don't know that. I'm not reasoning any differently than someone who decides the Biblical interpretation is right. It's all inductive reasoning. I believe the scientists because there's a lot of them and their reasoning sounds logical enough to me and I don't think they have any reason to lie or deceive me. Therefore, it's probably true. But that doesn't make it fact.

There's also lots of evidence that the Bible is true and accurate (2 billion people swearing something is true is pretty good evidence that it might be true), I just don't find it as compelling. But I wouldn't be so sure of myself to dismiss it on its face as "fiction." I weigh that evidence against the evidence to the contrary and make my own conclusion.

I don't agree with it just because many others do. I agree that it seems likely because I have read the different viewpoints, read about the methods used to come to the conclusions we have, and the claims made make sense to me.

I am not trying to state that I personally know anything as fact. I am just stating that given the current positions of each side, and the evidence for each, that 13.8B makes the most sense.

If you think believing something as truth based on insufficient evidence is 'smart', then your definition of smart is also wrong.