[helene_t]

Fluffy, on Jan 4 2009, 12:39 AM, said:

I am just angry about another pro-atheism topic

This is not a pro-atheism topic. It's pro Darwinism. You can easily appreciate science and believe in God at the same time.

[jdonn]

Fluffy, on Jan 3 2009, 06:39 PM, said:

you just fail to understand that you cannot even prove that gravitation is not a pure luck phenomemon that can stop working at any time.

Denial is a terrible thing.

On second thought, it's just plain hilarious.

[barmar]

helene_t, on Jan 3 2009, 09:14 PM, said:

Fluffy, on Jan 4 2009, 12:39 AM, said:

I am just angry about another pro-atheism topic

This is not a pro-atheism topic. It's pro Darwinism. You can easily appreciate science and believe in God at the same time.

But not in the God that's described in the Bible, the one that created the world in 7 days about 6,000 years ago.

[helene_t]

Gerben42, on Jan 3 2009, 12:57 AM, said:

. What do you think the "Darwin year" will bring?

We will learn that natural selection does not apply in the financial sector: survival of the fittest. And of the less fit as well who get bailed out.

Quote

For examples of evolution in action check out the Darwin awards, which have been compiled for several years now.

No, it used to be about non-survival of the less fit, now it's just about stupidity.

Quote

But not in the God that's described in the Bible, the one that created the world in 7 days about 6,000 years ago.

Right, so it's an anti-biblical-literalism post. Like any post about cheese burgers and other non-kosher food.

[Al_U_Card]

God blessing anything is ironic....or maybe redundant...He made everything and He is perfect so therefore.....what, He screwed up? Nahhhh

[Winstonm]

Quote

you just fail to understand that you cannot even prove that gravitation is not a pure luck phenomemon that can stop working at any time.

Franz Kafka was God? I didn't know.

I am certainly glad, then, that I have not as yet transformed in my bed into a monstrous vermin - although I did dream last night that I was simply floating, hovering above my sheets as if some great and unexplained universal change had occured while I slept and altered my life forever....along with my weight....

[Fluffy]

barmar, on Jan 4 2009, 02:47 AM, said:

But not in the God that's described in the Bible, the one that created the world in 7 days about 6,000 years ago.

Old testament might be true, or not true, but if it was, it is just a human interpretation of what God said, a human who had no knowledge (or words) to understand much of what he was seeing/being told. Taking Bible literarilly doesn't work very well.

[P_Marlowe]

barmar, on Jan 3 2009, 09:47 PM, said:

helene_t, on Jan 3 2009, 09:14 PM, said:

Fluffy, on Jan 4 2009, 12:39 AM, said:

I am just angry about another pro-atheism topic

This is not a pro-atheism topic. It's pro Darwinism. You can easily appreciate science and believe in God at the same time.

But not in the God that's described in the Bible, the one that created the world in 7 days about 6,000 years ago.

There are at least to stories "How the world was created" described in the
bible, they differ.
And of course even if you ignore this, there are lots of "contradictions",
Kain married someone in the land No, but whom? Assuming Adam and Eve
were the only person created by god, to my knowledge there are no other
persons mentioned in the bible, but I may be wrong, they gave birth to Abel
and Kain, Kain killed Abel, fine, but which woman got married to Kain?
And even if the Bible does not menation any sisters of Abel, does one really
believe he married a blood sister?

I have read once, that Jew read the holy text in a certain way:
they are not interested in the answer to the question: did this happen, no,
they are interested in the answer of the question, what does the text tell
me for my current day to day live.

With kind regards
Marlowe

PS: If you like literature, you may like the retelling of the first bible chapters
by Thomas Mann, you can find it at the beginnin of "Josephus and his Brothers",
my mother told, if you want to start reading Thomas Mann, "Josefus" would be
a good start.
But I guess you need to like the style, the style is comparable to Henry James,
dont ask me how often I tried to read a book written by James from A to Z,
usually I give up after 40-50 pages.

[kenberg]

Fluffy, on Jan 4 2009, 07:05 AM, said:

barmar, on Jan 4 2009, 02:47 AM, said:

But not in the God that's described in the Bible, the one that created the world in 7 days about 6,000 years ago.

Old testament might be true, or not true, but if it was, it is just a human interpretation of what God said, a human who had no knowledge (or words) to understand much of what he was seeing/being told. Taking Bible literarilly doesn't work very well.

On this we agree. The people who are causing so much trouble in the schools do not agree.

[Gerben42]

Quote

Old testament might be true, or not true, but if it was, it is just a human interpretation of what God said, a human who had no knowledge (or words) to understand much of what he was seeing/being told. Taking Bible literarilly doesn't work very well.

I like this statement a lot, it shows that you have given it serious thought. And that's what I like in people. Thanks, Gonzalo

It's possible to give religious beliefs serious thought and come to different conclusions. That's why they are beliefs. And if you believe something different than I, that's fine with me.

But when you've never thought about it and just believe what you've been told, is it really worth believing? Because this means that had you been told something else, you would really believe that instead!

[barmar]

Gerben42, on Jan 5 2009, 07:21 AM, said:

And if you believe something different than I, that's fine with me.

Unless they impinge on my life. For instance, lawmakers who allow their beliefs to influence the laws they pass, or school boards who want curricula to reflect their beliefs.

[Fluffy]

Gerben42, on Jan 5 2009, 12:21 PM, said:

Quote

Old testament might be true, or not true, but if it was, it is just a human interpretation of what God said, a human who had no knowledge (or words) to understand much of what he was seeing/being told. Taking Bible literarilly doesn't work very well.

I like this statement a lot, it shows that you have given it serious thought. And that's what I like in people. Thanks, Gonzalo

Before firmly* beliving in God, I spent a lot of nights thinking on the scientific way: What if god didn't exist?. And looking for a contradiction. I found a couple that are a contradiction to me, but probably they are not to you, I think I tried to explain one of them in the forums.

Anyway, thinking that way, I aproached the dark side, and it was dangerous!, at some point I was almost convinced the other way.

*: this is not true, I haven't yet managed to completelly expell the other option out of my head, and I often find myself thinking: what if actually....

[mycroft]

Jesus (it is said) taught in parables. He told stories. The stories may or may not have been true, but the point they made was.

He did that because it was an accepted way of teaching, in Jewish culture. It's called "speaking the language your audience understands". That's also why there are so many references to the Hebrew Scriptures - his listeners are going to get it, and all the context associated with the reference, the way you or I would get a reference to preempting my friend's (phone) call.

A fair amount of the Pentateuch - at least the history sections - is allegory. Story. Myth. That doesn't, in and of itself, stop it from being true, just because it didn't happen exactly as the words say. It could even be, for a wandering tribe learning to live in a strange, oppressive land 4000 years ago, more "true" than The Actual Truth (after all, what's more true: potentially exaggerated history of a living race, or people armed with Quantum Mechanics, but who dies from a food-borne disease?)

The idea of literalism is a Western European thing, almost uniquely; and it has produced a lot of good things (among them, modern, experimental Science). It has also produced an occasional inability to understand non-literal teaching. I wonder if some of these Bible literalists would attempt to convict Swift of conspiracy to commit cannibalism.

I guess all of this (from a Scientist who is also a Christian, as are/were, strangely enough, many many famous Scientists past and present) is saying that some of us are capable seeing the Truth that can be proved (or more correctly, can be disproved but hasn't), the Truth that is, but is not testable by Science, and the Truth told by tales, or history, or spiritualism, or...

[kenberg]

The thread started with schools, and let me come back to that.

I am, myself, just fine with teachers having beliefs that they express.

My biology teacher believed that color blindness was the result of children not being correctly taught their colors. I am not making this up.

One of my English teachers believed that many well regarded writers, Hemingway for example, just wrote trash. "Some people think it is good" she told us. So back to reading Shelley. And Millay.

My chemistry teacher believed that colds were caused by emotional stress, without any contact with germs.

My civics teacher explained to us that in his view no unmarried woman is completely happy engaging in sex.

My Spanish teacher was really quite unusual and used to talk to us of her days in Paris. It seems she had a very good time.

OK, so a teacher thinks evolution is crap. I have no problem with him/her saying so, but I would expect him to teach the youngsters the essence of the ideas and to acknowledge that, while debates flourish in all science, the general concept that humans are an evolutionary development from earlier life forms is really universally (close enough for government work anyway) accepted in the scientific community.

Kids catch on. Long before "Don't trust anyone over thirty" was a motto, I realized that not everything you were told by adult authority figures was true. To help sorting out truth from propaganda, I am fine with teachers expressing their own views as long as they make it clear that these are their own views.

[PassedOut]

kenberg, on Jan 5 2009, 07:19 PM, said:

My biology teacher believed that color blindness was the result of children not being correctly taught their colors. I am not making this up.

One of my English teachers believed that many well regarded writers, Hemingway for example, just wrote trash. "Some people think it is good" she told us. So back to reading Shelley. And Millay.

My chemistry teacher believed that colds were caused by emotional stress, without any contact with germs.

Your schools were a lot like mine.

One of my high school teachers (before the lunar landing) insisted that the "dark side of the moon" never received sunshine and was covered with mountains of ice. I got on his ***** list for (among other things) asking him then to diagram an eclipse of the sun.

And that was one of many, many teacher stupidities I witnessed. I don't remember very many times that those opinions were presented as anything other than facts.

[Elianna]

One of my fellow math teachers believes that after calculating expectation of what would be the result of a gamble, one must THEN compare it to what one could lose in order to decide whether to proceed. (This was brought up in discussing whether we should teach students to take a guess on the SAT after eliminating at least one answer as impossible.)

Another teacher (who no longer works there) told students that gold was formed in volcanoes. (She was an English teacher and they were reading Call of the Wild.)

I recently had students who told me that a Jr. High science teacher taught them that the reason that Albert Einstein was the smartest man ever is that he used 9% of his brain, while other people use 7%.

Anyway, I teach science at an Orthodox Jewish girls' high school. We teach evolution. In their judaic studies classes, they learn that the Bible is literal truth. How do we reconcile these? Well, I usually leave that for the JS staff, but before I get to this section in Biology, I make the following two statements (out of a handbook about issues in science published by the Orthodox Union):

1) Religion is about believing certain truths, not proving them. Just science is about an ordered set of beliefs that must be proven. They do not relate to each other. One cannot prove religion scientifically, that is the essence of religion. One should not believe in science religiously, that is the essence of science.

2) An analogy: "If G-d creates a 30 year-old man, how old is he, and how long has he been alive?"

Everything else I leave up to their Judaic Studies teachers. Like the question of why G-d would go to the trouble to create bones of creatures that never existed. I don't lead them to the question, but I definitely don't address it.

[Codo]

Elianna, on Jan 6 2009, 12:13 PM, said:

1) Religion is about believing certain truths, not proving them. Just science is about an ordered set of beliefs that must be proven. They do not relate to each other. One cannot prove religion scientifically, that is the essence of religion. One should not believe in science religiously, that is the essence of science.

2) An analogy: "If G-d creates a 30 year-old man, how old is he, and how long has he been alive?"

These are two of the nicest statements I ever read, thanks for sharing them.

I heard a lot of funny stories about teachers telling terrible things to their students here. I have some stories about my teachers myself.
But it is true for anybody I know that we sometimes tell others our opinions as facts. And unluckily these opinions are sometimes false.
At least the opinions from anybody else of course. Not mine.

[kenberg]

We do all have opinions, not all of which will survive when looked at critically. It is vital to get young people to think critically even if they do not always come to the accepted truth. My civics teacher, for example, gets high marks from me for bringing up, in the mid-fifties, a discussion of the emotional content of sex. Unfortunately from the male student's viewpoint none of the girls spoke up to explain that she was perfectly happy having sex. But this possibility could be explored later. If one takes the larger view that he was saying that engaging in sex has emotional consequences, I would say he was right on target.

And you could say that my English teachers point could be that just because an author is regarded as good it does not follow that we all must agree. This is useful also. When it comes to Byron and Shelley, I very much agree.

As mentioned, my biology teacher was simply an idiot. So we learn there are idiots in the world. My chemistry teacher was definitely not an idiot although he had some unusual ideas.

The fundamental point about science that I think should be gotten across to all students is that science is self-correcting. The estimated age of the universe has changed significantly during my lifetime. Possibly it will be revised again, but it is really a very safe bet that the revision will not place the age at 5000 years. Various evolutionary ideas compete for acceptance. Again views will change, but the creation of Eve from Adam's rib is not apt to be a winner.

If the guy who fixes my car doubts that evolution is a correct explanation of man's existence, we can live with that. But he is a citizen and a voter, and it would be very good if he had a general understanding of how science progresses. Facts, model building, conceptual frameworks, checking facts against models, revising views in the light of new evidence. That's how it's done and to stick dogmatically with religious claims (or other ideological claims) that don't hold up under scientific examination is a dangerous approach in a dangerous world. If that message comes through then he can have a few facts wrong, as no doubt I do myself.

[ASkolnick]

Although I do like Elianna's approach, I think it is very difficult, at least with evolution, to keep them mutually exclusive. However, the good news is, I don't think it has to be mutually exclusive. Remember, Clarence Darrow in a famous court case was able to use the Bible to prove evolution by interpreting the Bible not as literally as most religion does. A "day" representing an era, etc.

The funny thing about the doctrine of "Separation of Church and State" is:

Although it was suggested in a letter, there is no specific clause of Separation of Church and State, it was an interpretation made by the Establishment Clause. The government violates this all the time.

In our courts, we swear on a bible.
On our money it says "In G-d we trust". But my favorite saying I got from a bumper sticker "In G-d We Trust, all others pay cash."
The pledge of allegiance in school, now uses Under God, although it didn't use to.

But one of the things I would like a school being for my son and daughter is to be open and discuss people's different ideas and leave it up to their own interpretation.

Problems with Science: Many science things are suggested as fact instead of theory, until somebody disproves them.
Problem with Religion: There is no evolution of information once new information comes to light. For example, being Jewish, I think Kashrut laws were a great idea prior to refrigeration, now I don't think they are necessary.

[Winstonm]

Quote

But one of the things I would like a school being for my son and daughter is to be open and discuss people's different ideas and leave it up to their own interpretation

Should the schools teach Bhuddism, Scientology, and Astrology? Will those be taught in religion class, philosophy class, or science class?