Blasphemy a crime under UN resolution

[Haunted]

From your arguments I would also suggest that you assume that anything that your senses cannot pick up isn't real.

No, just that it's not been determined to be real yet. This is the exact point made by Russell's teapot.

But Christianity is the only one in which you don't work to get to God or transcendence of whatever, that's where the difference lies.

Which brand of christianity are we talking about here, because they all tend to differ on these points? And even so, I have just made up my own religion in which you have to do even less than christianity to get to god or transcendence or whatever, why won't you join it?

Obviously it's not just because they haven't heard the message of Christianity because if everyone who had heard it gave their lives to Christ we wouldn't be having this discussion. For those who have heard what it's about I think in some cases it's possibly partly because they haven't put the question marks down deep enough or have come at it from pre-conceptions?

And I would get the same answer from a devout Hindu, Muslim or Jew.

Reread that statement. What is the subject under discussion? Not the Bible, but God. I never claimed that the Bible was un-understandable, I said that God's ways cannot be fully understood.

Right, that's my fault equating the two.

But I would say that nature hasn't blindly created anything, it was God.

Great. We could've saved a lot of time here had you just admitted you were a creationist from the beginning.

As you well know, there is disagreement over whether the creation account in Genesis is literal or metaphor.

or false

Using it as an example, however, doesn't show that "holy book is wrong", it shows that that the Genesis account of creation is not literal.

It rules out literalism but it can still be false.

We don't know whether it's intended to be literal or not,

We knew it was literal until the evidence against this started piling up and then suddenly it became metaphorical. And if it is a metaphor it's a very bad one because it still gets everything in the wrong order.

so claiming that saying "it's a metaphor" is an adaptation may not be true.

Since the rise of a metaphorical genesis accelerated during the time that geologists started figuring out just how old the earth really was I'd say the case for it being 'adapted to fit' is pretty strong. Otherwise we are talking about a pretty big coincidence.

I see no reason why it shouldn't be a metaphor; they are used throughout the Bible and in Jewish tradition to explain difficult concepts and I would have thought that creation is pretty complex.

Far more impressive to have some science in it. It's funny how there is no science in that book that the authors could not have known about. I would be impressed to find a physical constant or two, maybe something about supernovae. But no, we are left with nothing we couldn't have gotten from the local sages and mystics at the time. They couldn't even get Pi right.

My own interpretation is based on evidence of science;

Still waiting for this.

I have three options: it's literal, it's allegory, it's false. I know it's not false for other reasons

You'd do well to elaborate since that's a pretty serious bias to go in with

literal doesn't fit in with evidence from elsewhere (science) there's it's allegory.

Option 4, you're delusional.

Whether it's an allegory or not, however, it still states that God created the world which science hasn't shown to be false.

Here is a statement: "The invisible pink teapot created the universe by mating with a stick of celery at the big bang". Prove this to be false, and you're assertion will mean something.

Based on the assumption that science is always right? I'm not saying science is false, but that's a pretty big assumption to make.

I'm not about to say that science hasn't had it's fair share of scandal, but ultimately our knowledge is increased over time, science tends towards a description of reality slowly but surely. Not an assumption, an observation.

But to move on from playing Devil's Advocate, because I think science is very useful and relativly trustworthy, other than creation I struggle to see where science and Christian teaching are incompatible.

So in other words: in the creation myth, science and christianity are incompatible. Thanks.

No, we can't even prove what we want to be true. Big Bang theory hasn't been proven (please don't mistake that for a claim that the Big Bang didn't happen, I merely point out that the example doesn't work).

It cannot be proven, but then nothing can be proven, not in the strict terms that mathematicians mean by "proof" anyway. It can be inductively determined however. Again, big bang theory made a prediction about the universe (cosmic microwave background) this was then measured and found to be true therefore big bang theory becomes the most likely explanation.

I think you're looking at a God of the gaps. We don't know what happened here, so we'll say it was God. That's not the claim that Christianity makes.

That's the claim you make when you say something like "the universe needs god to exist". Because there is not yet a satisfactory natural explanation you default to god.

Maybe I'm wrong, I'm entirely sure what you're referring to when you say every time "supernaturalism" has been investigated it's been found not to be supernatural. Could you give a couple of examples?

Lightning, solar eclipses, shooting stars, floods, crystal healing, homoeopathy, ghosts, spirit mediums etc

Hang on, you claim that no such proof is possible but then state that the burden of proof (that which is impossible) is on those who assert. In other words, you're saying it's impossible but it's my responsibility to do it?

I do not believe disproof is possible. I cannot disprove the celestial teapot, just as I cannot disprove your god. But I could prove the existence of the teapot quite easily. The burden remains.

Nope, I said I wasn't getting into this discussion unless you accepted I didn't have the burden of proof (which is not to say that anyone arguing from the other side does have it). As you don't appear to accept that I'm not getting into it.

This is a pretty sorry surrender. If you can't play by the simple rules that everyone else has to play be then you have no case, nothing with which to convince anyone.

I am curious though, would you extend the same courtesy to a Muslim trying to convince you? Would you remove his burdens of proof and let him proceed to talk about the miracles of the koran?

Would you remove the burden of proof from a prosecutor in a court of law? That would make for some interesting justice.

[RedCelt69]

gee thanks god thanks for forgiving me for something i didn't do

Senethro who is without sin.

Wow. You think Senethro is without sin? I mean... you may well be right, but you don't often hear Christians telling someone that they are without sin.

Original sin man's propensity towards sin, which through the grace of baptism and our free will we can resist.

I don't see how dunking our heads in water rinses away evil intentions. Unless that person has particularly leaky ears and neurobiologists are spectacularly wrong about how the brain functions.

What you are describing sounds like the influence of Manichianism and other gnostic tendencies, which are pretty pernicious heresies. The Albigensians were a wierd bunch.

He that liveth in houses of glass, the casting of stones musteth he not doeth. <reaches for the Dentugrip>

[Humphrey]

We knew it was literal until the evidence against this started piling up and then suddenly it became metaphorical. And if it is a metaphor it's a very bad one because it still gets everything in the wrong order.

Not that it matters for the purposes of the argument (which seems to be over anyway) but the truth is a lot more interesting than this. In the Patristic era virtually all the Christian theologians read Genesis allegorically (there were a few exceptions like St. Ephraim the Syrian). Augustine quite explicitly said that there were no days in creation; he maintained that God created everything in one long act. Days, he held were meant to signify logical divisions. He also introduces the idea of certain features of the world forming from rational seeds rather than the spontaneous creation of the literal reading. Origen (154-254) says in First Principles:

"Now what man of intelligence will believe that the first and the second and the third day, and the evening and the morning existed without the sun and moon and stars? And that the first day if we may so call it, was even without a heaven? And who is so silly as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer, "planted a paradise eastward in Eden", and set in it a visible and palpable "tree of life", of such a sort that anyone who tasted its fruit with his bodily teeth would gain life: and again that one could partake of "good and evil" by masticating the fruit taken from the tree of that name? And when God is said to "walk in the paradise in the cool of the day" and Adam to hide himself behind a tree, I do not think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions which indicate certain mysteries through a semblance of history and not through actual events."

Literalism only crept in with the rise of science in the 17th century when people began to think that only material things are true, therefore the bible must be talking about material things and we have to ask questions like 'how big was Noah's ark?'. By the time we get to the 18th century this literalism had yielded to an appreciation of the multi-vocality of the bible and a feeling that taking bible passages at face value might obscure the meaning. In fact, the leading English geologists of the early nineteenth century -William Buckland, William Daniel Conybeare, and Adam Sedgwick- were all clergymen, as was the American geologist Edward Hitchcock. Due to the earlier hermeneutical tradition -which went all the way back to the church fathers- they didn't have any problems reconciling their views with 'deep time'. What they did have a problem with was Aristotle’s concept of an infinitely long and uncreated kind of history and in some ways geology was felt to be countering enlightenment deism, and (according to Sedgwick and Buckland) uncovering progress and progressive development in the fossil record.

Since the rise of a metaphorical genesis accelerated during the time that geologists started figuring out just how old the earth really was I'd say the case for it being 'adapted to fit' is pretty strong. Otherwise we are talking about a pretty big coincidence.

You have this the wrong way round. Scriptural geology (based on a strictly literal interpretation of Genesis) emerged in Great Britain in the 1820s precisely at the same time as the evidence was piling up against it. It had to be combated vigorously by the geologists I mentioned earlier. Now we find (In the 21st Century ffs!) that a literal Genesis is more popular than ever despite the evidence for an old earth being utterly irrefutable. Its actually become less metaphorical as the evidence has accumulated (2008 Gallup poll - 44% of US adults agreed with the statement "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years). That is why the rise of fundamentalism is so scary; here we have a text which started out as a theological polemic against the Babylonians, and now its suddenly a scientific textbook.

[exnihilo]

This is the great problem in relying on one book and only one book. The notion that one is reading - after multiple translation and with the interpretation of the translators - the perfect and inerrant word of God is laughable. The idea that everyone can gain complete understanding of the text using only the text is likewise laughable - especially in respect of the Old Testament which was never supposed to be viewed in isolation from all the other texts of Judaism. In the words of St Thomas Aquinas, "beware the man of one book". But, of course, the very people who reject all scientific evidence on geology, evolution and the rest are the same ones who would reject any academic or scholarly reading of the Bible, they don't need knowledge or understanding, they have revelation instead.

[Haunted]

...

Ok, I am being awfully selective in my history here. I was thinking of things like geocentricity coming from one of the Psalms and this being used against galileo and of course how this had to be changed to reflect reality.

[Humphrey]

Ok, I am being awfully selective in my history here. I was thinking of things like geocentricity coming from one of the Psalms and this being used against galileo and of course how this had to be changed to reflect reality.

Yeah, don't think I'm having a go or anything. My hobby for the last couple of years happens to be the history of science, so of course whenever the usual set piece battles between science and religion come in I have to leap in. The Galileo affair was a major blunder by the Catholic church and again the background is interesting. If I had been alive at the time of Copernicus I would undoubtedly have remained a Geocentrist, as was the case with all the major figures in Astronomy at the time (all of whom read 'De revolutionibus). There are two major reasons for this,

1. At the time it was impossible to observe a stellar parallax, which it what you would expect to see if the earth was moving round the sun. This was the reason Aristarchus's heliocentric proposal was rejected centuries earlier. This didn't actually get observed until 1838.

2. Heliocentrism destroyed the only coherent system of physics available; the Aristotelian system. Aristotle’s world was built on a stationary earth and a rotating and revolving Earth was deemed an absurdity because the motions would require very large speeds. Where was the physics to describe this?.

The theory's sole advantages lay in the elusive fields of elegance, beauty and intelligibility, it was slightly better at giving predictions, and did away with Ptolemy's clumsy equant, but it left too many unanswered questions.

By the time of Galileo we get a return to strict biblical literalism caused by the threat of the protestant reformation and the Catholic response at the Council of Trent. It becomes a much harsher environment for challenging scripture than that inhabited by Copernicus. Heliocentrism became smeared by association with the maverick Giordiono Bruno and the Church therefore condemned it and said it was nothing more than a unproven mathematical hypothesis, thinking they were going along with both the bible and the scientific consensus. Galileo, despite being friends with the pope managed to get every political situation wrong and finally burned his bridges by putting the Popes's words in the mouth of Simplicio in his 'Dialogue concerning the two world systems'. The rest as they say is history. Both Copernicus and Galileo were both devout Catholics who drew heavily on the thought of St Augustine, Galileo saying in a letter:

But I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations. This must be especially true in those sciences of which but the faintest trace (and that consisting of conclusions) is to be found in the Bible.

Ironically this is now the orthodoxy in the catholic Church, while in certain Protestant sects it is rejected.

[macgamer]

As a tiny aside, however, in what sense, macgamer, were the Albigensians a pretty weird bunch or pernicicious? I'm guessing you're not an expert on them because you're version of their view of original sin is at odds with the one I know of. Your post seems to fall into the same pattern we've seen a lot of "my religion is right, deviation from it is wrong. I don't know why I'm in this particular one, but I am, and therefore it must be right or I'd look a fool."

My comments about the Albigensians are based on the view that they held to a dualistic understanding of the soul and body and the good and evil in creation, whose implications were that they considering the soul is good and the body, and indeed the physically world and perhaps universe, as evil. I say that this is pernicious because of its implications for the society which they created, one where any further procreation would be cooperation with satan and perpetuating the evil creation. They are pretty wierd in that they reject sex and evil. Although the rejection of procreation as interesting parallels with today's society. There aren't any new heresies, just old ones repackaged and recycled for a modern audience.

[macgamer]

Both Copernicus and Galileo were both devout Catholics who drew heavily on the thought of St Augustine, Galileo saying in a letter:

But I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations. This must be especially true in those sciences of which but the faintest trace (and that consisting of conclusions) is to be found in the Bible.

Ironically this is now the orthodoxy in the catholic Church, while in certain Protestant sects it is rejected.

Very interesting Humphrey, thank-you very much.

[elyettoner]

But Christianity is the only one in which you don't work to get to God or transcendence of whatever, that's where the difference lies.

Which brand of christianity are we talking about here, because they all tend to differ on these points? And even so, I have just made up my own religion in which you have to do even less than christianity to get to god or transcendence or whatever, why won't you join it?

Sorry, you'll have to search elsewhere for your new religion because, as you just said, you made it up. The question you ask, and which has been asked above, is a fair one. I think the Bible is pretty clear on the issue of grace. Ephesians 2:8-9 is just one example (I hate quoting isolated verses, so please look up the context): "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." This quite clearly states that we are to do works, but that this is not what saves us. The book of Galatians explains all this again and Romans is a full exposition of doctrine. Anyone arguing otherwise would, I think, be hard pushed to explain it Biblically.

But I would say that nature hasn't blindly created anything, it was God.

Great. We could've saved a lot of time here had you just admitted you were a creationist from the beginning.

Can you be Christian and not creationist? Creationist has come to mean something fairly specific (i.e. intelligent design, young earth, the stuff scientists roll their eyes at), but creationist merely means that the universe is here because God created it. That doesn't necessarily rule out evolution (about which I admit to having doubts), the Big Bang, etc.

As you well know, there is disagreement over whether the creation account in Genesis is literal or metaphor.

or false

Using it as an example, however, doesn't show that "holy book is wrong", it shows that that the Genesis account of creation is not literal.

It rules out literalism but it can still be false.

I don't dispute this.

I see no reason why it shouldn't be a metaphor; they are used throughout the Bible and in Jewish tradition to explain difficult concepts and I would have thought that creation is pretty complex.

Far more impressive to have some science in it. It's funny how there is no science in that book that the authors could not have known about. I would be impressed to find a physical constant or two, maybe something about supernovae. But no, we are left with nothing we couldn't have gotten from the local sages and mystics at the time. They couldn't even get Pi right.

What would be the point of knowing these things? It wasn't necessary for this to be known. I don't think the Bible mentions waterfalls, a whole host of animals, a vast range of things.

I have three options: it's literal, it's allegory, it's false. I know it's not false for other reasons

You'd do well to elaborate since that's a pretty serious bias to go in with

literal doesn't fit in with evidence from elsewhere (science) there's it's allegory.

Option 4, you're delusional.

As could anyone about anything, Don Quijote.

But to move on from playing Devil's Advocate, because I think science is very useful and relativly trustworthy, other than creation I struggle to see where science and Christian teaching are incompatible.

So in other words: in the creation myth, science and christianity are incompatible. Thanks.

What I meant as I understand where the confusion with creationism can come in, as discussed above. I don't accept that they are incompatible, though many Christians obviously would.

Maybe I'm wrong, I'm entirely sure what you're referring to when you say every time "supernaturalism" has been investigated it's been found not to be supernatural. Could you give a couple of examples?

Lightning, solar eclipses, shooting stars, floods, crystal healing, homoeopathy, ghosts, spirit mediums etc

Fair enough.

Hang on, you claim that no such proof is possible but then state that the burden of proof (that which is impossible) is on those who assert. In other words, you're saying it's impossible but it's my responsibility to do it?

I do not believe disproof is possible. I cannot disprove the celestial teapot, just as I cannot disprove your god. But I could prove the existence of the teapot quite easily. The burden remains.

If it's proof you're looking for, I'm sorry to disappoint. Non-empirical objects cannot be proven. Evidence is all I can give.

Nope, I said I wasn't getting into this discussion unless you accepted I didn't have the burden of proof (which is not to say that anyone arguing from the other side does have it). As you don't appear to accept that I'm not getting into it.

This is a pretty sorry surrender. If you can't play by the simple rules that everyone else has to play be then you have no case, nothing with which to convince anyone.

Nothing with which to convince anyone is a big claim to make.

I am curious though, would you extend the same courtesy to a Muslim trying to convince you? Would you remove his burdens of proof and let him proceed to talk about the miracles of the koran?

Would you remove the burden of proof from a prosecutor in a court of law? That would make for some interesting justice.

For someone discussing a non-empirical object (i.e. a deity), yes, I would accept that, whatever the religion may be. In fact the evidence for the existence of a creator god is equally applicable to the Muslim god as the Christian one.

In a court of law quite clearly not given that that which is under discussion is (presumably) empirical.

[Haunted]

Sorry, you'll have to search elsewhere for your new religion because, as you just said, you made it up.

That could just be satan going back and changing the internet to test you, how can you be sure?

Anyone arguing otherwise would, I think, be hard pushed to explain it Biblically.

They could always accept this but then tweak it a little, say, to include 'confessions'.

Can you be Christian and not creationist?

The evidence says yes. Catholics and Anglicans have no theological trouble with evolution by natural selection.

Creationist has come to mean something fairly specific (i.e. intelligent design, young earth, the stuff scientists roll their eyes at), but creationist merely means that the universe is here because God created it.

The definition I use is the one that is in contradiction with biology. The one which you seem to ascribe to and, sadly, lowers your credibility to the mad ramblings to the levels of Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, Adnan Oktar and, yes, Chuck Norris.

What would be the point of knowing these things?

To have something that the other faiths didn't have? To have something a bit more impressive?

It wasn't necessary for this to be known.

Conversely, would it have been unnecessary to include it? Would we really have theologians talking about how god was being unnecessary when he included some of the fundamnetla physical constants. Do you really think that's the tune they would be playing if the bible actually contained any scientific knowledge?

As could anyone about anything, Don Quijote.

Indeed. An option worth keeping on the table.

What I meant as I understand where the confusion with creationism can come in, as discussed above. I don't accept that they are incompatible, though many Christians obviously would.

Well then I would be most grateful if you would take the time to explain the metaphor to me. Particularly the point of the order of creation.

If it's proof you're looking for, I'm sorry to disappoint. Non-empirical objects cannot be proven. Evidence is all I can give.

"The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation, experience, or experiment". This must mean your evidence is neither observational, anecdotal or experimental. In which case, why call it evidence?

Nothing with which to convince anyone is a big claim to make.

Let me rephrase, "nothing with which to convince anyone who doesn't subscribe to your ridiculous terms of removing the burden of proof so that you are free to assert anything at will".

For someone discussing a non-empirical object (i.e. a deity), yes, I would accept that, whatever the religion may be. In fact the evidence for the existence of a creator god is equally applicable to the Muslim god as the Christian one.

So a Muslim does not have to bear the burden of proof to prove his religion is true, you must therefore provide proof of it's 'untruth' otherwise the muslim is justified to believe what he believes and you are a fool to challenge this because you cannot prove him wrong?

In a court of law quite clearly not given that that which is under discussion is (presumably) empirical.

Please elaborate on what you mean by empirical. Because either you are defining it too narrowly or you are defining 'evidence' to widely. To determine the truth of an assertion you must provide evidence, do you have any evidence to prove your assertions?

That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

[exnihilo]

I don't want to be pushy, but are any of the professed "Christians" going to answer any of the points made on the subject of their faith? Or is "I believe, although I haven't a scooby why" now a good enough answer?

[LonelyPilgrim]

I don't want to be pushy, but are any of the professed "Christians" going to answer any of the points made on the subject of their faith? Or is "I believe, although I haven't a scooby why" now a good enough answer?

I'm too busy trying to participate in the growing revolution in humanitarian affairs to get drawn into yet another pointless and inconclusive argument about the philosophical fundamentals of faith vs. (narrow) rationality. In fact, the only post I've read on this page is yours, exnihilo. I will say this, I don't need to justify my faith to anyone but myself. Can't we talk about something relevant, like the coming humanitarian catastrophe as Mogadishu's population is expected to double in the next four months due to the return of refugees, and thereby completely overwhelming the already insufficient social service and medical infrastructure in the city?

[exnihilo]

I'm sorry, but I don't think one can say "mine is true" if one doesn't actually know what it is one believes. That's not asking anyone to justify their faith, that's asking them to tell others what it is they actually do believe. You can't hold a position whereby you believe "something" but you're not sure what, but whatever it is it's right. That's absurd.

[Humphrey]

What were the issues raised again?. As regards the trinity, the problem is that Christianity - while professing to be monotheistic - has always suffered from a proliferation of entities, which makes things incredibly messy. Jesus for example, is talking about a father, a son and a holy ghost. So from the start you have 3 separate essences. Add in things like Satan and all these angels and it starts to look like polytheism. The contribution of Arius was to say that since God is begotten , the one who is begotten (Jesus), cannot be God. If he isn't God he must be a creature, and therefore he has been demoted. If you demote the son then it causes no end of problem, you are worshipping a demi-God rather than God, and it makes seeing him as the saviour pretty difficult. Hence the Nicene Council instigated the trinity and condemned the Arians.

Sola fide was the big rallying cry of the reformation and trumpeted by Luther and Calvin. As regards its validity, there are passages both for it and against it. It has been subjected to challenge by the new perspective on Paul which maintains that it was based on mistaken assumptions about Paul's theology (E P Saunders and more recently N T Wright). If it is a valid interpretation of the text then it is morally insane.

[RedCelt69]

Humphrey, you're a knowledegable chap about such things. Mind if I pick your brain on something? I've heard it mentioned before that Yahweh was originally one god among a pantheon of gods prior to the time of Moses. Those gods were referred to as the Elohim - which is a plural word in its original usage. Which would explain one of the "10" commandments that always puzzled me when I was younger; (paraphrased) "Thou shallt have no god before me". Why include this commandment if you are the only god? It seems more reasonable to issue this commandment if you are competing against other existing gods - less reasonable if there are no other gods.

Yahweh, from what I've read elsewhere (although I forget where and can't attest to the validity of it) was the god of war; the semitic equivalence of Mars to the Romans. Which would neatly explain everything that takes place during the exodus from Egypt, wherein the former inhabitants of Judae/Israel get to see just how merciful Yahweh is to any other than his chosen people.

Egypt (not accidentally) being the birthplace of monotheism. /wave Akhenaten

On a seperate (but related) note is there a (surviving) branch of Christianity that sees Jesus as son of God and a prophet of God; a path towards God without actually being worshipped in his own right? Just curious to know which branch (if the indoctrination had stuck) I'd have belonged to. I'm guessing I'd be branded a heretic if I wasn't an atheist... damned if you don't, damned if you do. Etc.

[exnihilo]

It's disputed. Some think it's a plural and refers to an earlier polytheistic religion, linking it to the Canaanite God "El". Others contend that it is not a plural, but a cognate of Eloah, which simply means The God. Either way, the Tanakh makes no claim that God is unique, indeed other gods are mentioned by name, He is simply the only god of the Jews. This is reflected in current Jewish theology which does not oblige one to worship God, nor to be a Jew, nor to follow the commandments in the Torah in order to enter God's presence. As far as Jews are concerned, the God of the Christians/The Trinity are nothing whatever to do with their God.

For the second question: both Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians have a non-divine view or a semi-divine view of Christ. And the Church of Latter Day Saints have him, God and the Spirit s equal but separate, rejecting the Trinity. There were dozens more once upon a time, Gnostics being the main group, but that was heretical and therefore stamped on hard.

[Humphrey]

I was about to say that exnihilo was the best person to ask about this but I see he has already responded. I don't have much to add beyond saying that if you are interested in the ten commandments I found this article by David Bodanis quite interesting. Bit of a health warning though, it is quite speculative and the historicity of Exodus has been disputed, for example by Israel Finkelstein (Personally I would go with Dever and suggest a tribe did come from servitude in Egypt and settle amongst the Canaanite hill peoples). It does however put them in some historical context.

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/arti ... p?id=10525

Regarding the nature of Yahweh, you can perhaps see this most plainly in the text of Genesis. Most biblical scholars now agree that the purpose of this account is to set out the Hebrew understanding of creation in theological opposition to the ideas which were prevalent in the religions of the peoples among whom the Hebrews lived. Other religions in the area were polytheistic and they all had stories of theogony (explaining the origin of the Gods), one of these Gods then moulds the cosmos into being using pre-existing matter (You also find this in Greek thought, e.g Plato's Demiurge). Genesis doesn't have that. God is simply accepted as 'a given', not only that, he seems to be the only God in town, the creator of all that exists. The next attack on the other religions is the references to the twin lamps, the sun and the moon. The peoples around the Hebrews saw these as deities and worshipped them. For the Hebrews, these are simply lights erected by the creator and they exist to serve and assist humans.

It gets more outrageous when we turn to the Mesopotamian creation stories. These involve the creator God battling a series of sea monsters (the forces of chaos). In contrast, the Hebrews say that the monsters were created by God, along with everything else, hence all the repetition as the point is hammered home. The most radical idea concerns the nature of humanity. To the Mesopotamians, human beings were created to be the slaves of the Gods in order that they would not have to do any work; assigned to build temples and offer sacrifices to them. Genesis turns this on its head by saying that humans are actually God's representatives on earth, created in the spiritual image of God, with responsibility to care for creation (The word 'subdue' is superficially a strong one but in this context it means preserve and develop).

Moving on to the garden of Eden story, this clearly parallels 'The Gilgamesh Epic' in which Gilgamesh goes searching for immortality. He finds ‘the plant of life’ but as he travels home is robbed of it by a snake. In the Hebrew version a moral dimension is added, man seeks to be like God but this desire results in spiritual death, the break between him and his creator. In the Mesopotamian flood story, the chief God sends the flood because the land is overpopulated and the humans are disturbing his sleep. As a result he decides to nuke them all. The Hebrews seem to have taken this story and made it a moral judgement on human sinfulness; In other words he actually cares about what human do morally.

As you can see, and its worth emphasising this, Genesis is not a science book. It came to be seen as such because of the modern assumption that scientific knowledge is the only reliable form of knowledge and that this principle also applies to biblical texts. Western culture in now utterly inept at understanding and using figurative or symbolic literature and we expect everything to be written in straightforward, descriptive prose. Ancient people simply did not think that way.

[LonelyPilgrim]

As you can see, and its worth emphasising this, Genesis is not a science book. It came to be seen as such because of the modern assumption that scientific knowledge is the only reliable form of knowledge and that this principle also applies to biblical texts. Western culture in now utterly inept at understanding and using figurative or symbolic literature and we expect everything to be written in straightforward, descriptive prose. Ancient people simply did not think that way.

No. There are still elements in the West very good at figurative and symbolic language - poets, authors, playwrights, filmmakers, and the like. The problem is that we've taken symbolism and we've pigeonholed it into being acceptable only in certain categories of culture. Morality is not one of those - Aesop's fables to the contrary. We use symbolism and figurative language to teach morality to children, but we don't tend to regard them as 'adult' tools, because the adult mind is idealised as 'rational' in the post-Enlightenment tradition. The post-modernists are right to criticise this point, arguing that ALL language and thought is figurative and symbolic and the idea of human rationality is a lie. It's the one point I'll agree with post-modernism on.

[sushiguru]

All I can say is: thank god/allah/mohammed/water/peanuts/any deity or non-deity of your choice for common sense:

http://www.secularism.org.uk/un-drops-d ... igion.html

G.

[Haunted]

This is still utter bullshit. They've just expanded the declaration to protect christians and jews as well as muslims(what form this 'protection' should take doesn't seem to be elaborated on) and also seems to include something about anti-arabism which you can bet your bottom dollar will be used just like the anti-islamic one would've been i.e. to protect criticism of countries exercising sharia law and the gross human rights violations that are intrinsic to it.