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[ceejayoz.livejournal.com]

Comments

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

Christianity™ may have everything down, but it's got it down wrong.

[vlion.livejournal.com]

lack of proof in statement for the win

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

Walking Into the Trap for the win! (I was hoping someone would ask for proof)

A few simple, general knowledge biology facts in the bible:
A) Rabbits and hares chew their cud
B) Bats are fowl
C) Grasshoppers have four legs

Anyone care to assert that the bible got these facts right?

[nallyo.livejournal.com]

Just curious, where are they from? They sound like Leviticus (the laws) . . .

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

Leviticus, and then repeated in Deuteronomy.

Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying to them,
"Speak to the children of Israel, saying, 'These are the living things which you may eat among all the animals that are on the earth.
Whatever parts the hoof, and is cloven-footed, and chews the cud among the animals, that you may eat.
Nevertheless these you shall not eat of those that chew the cud, or of those who part the hoof: the camel, because he chews the cud but doesn't have a parted hoof, he is unclean to you.
The coney, because he chews the cud but doesn't have a parted hoof, he is unclean to you.
The hare, because she chews the cud but doesn't part the hoof, she is unclean to you.'"
Leviticus 11:1-6 (WEB)

Every animal that parts the hoof, and has hoof cloven in two, and chews the cud, among the animals, that may you eat.
Nevertheless these you shall not eat of them that chew the cud, or of those who have the hoof cloven: the camel, and the hare, and the rabbit; because they chew the cud but don't part the hoof, they are unclean to you.
Deuteronomy 14:6-7 (WEB)

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

These you shall detest among the birds; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the vulture, and the black vulture,
... [long list of birds]
the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe, and the bat.
Leviticus 11:13, 19 (WEB)

Of all the clean birds you may eat.
But these are they of which you shall not eat: the eagle, and the vulture, and the osprey,
... [long list of birds]
and the stork, and the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, and the bat.
Deuteronomy 14:11-12, 18 (WEB)

[vlion.livejournal.com]

I'm bored. You're plaintiff.
Prove the case.

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

See above for proof that the bible says that rabbits and hares chew cud.

Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, page 525:
The OT...refers to the hare only to indicate that it is an unclean animal, but its assertion that the hare is a ruminant is contrary to fact. Probably, as in the case of the hyrax...some movements of the mouth and jaws have been erroneously interpreted as cud-chewing.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, page 616:
This animal is mentioned only in the lists of unclean animals in Leviticus and Deuteronomy...The hare and the coney are not ruminants, but might be supposed to be from their habit of almost continuously moving their jaws.

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, 2000 edition, page 552:
Because it "chews the cud" but "does not have divided hoofs," the hare is classified as an unclean animal (Lev. 11:6; Deut. 14:7). Actually, it is not a ruminant but may have appeared as such to ancient obervers [sic] because of its constant chewing movements.

This (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i4/rabbits.asp) Answers in Genesis article makes the assertion that rabbits do indeed chew cud, in that they eat their own poo pellets. This is a stretch to start with but in fact, they swallow these pellets whole. They do not chew them like cud.

[vlion.livejournal.com]

*yawn*
see below for mention of probable transcription error.

Your statement was a stupid blanket statement.
I think I'll take some moderately amusing potshots now.

Christianity, having everything down wrong, is incorrect in the fact that there was something called a Dead Sea.
It also is incorrect in the matter of there being Roman soldiers, and, in particular, a position known as centaurion.

It also, being the categorically incorrect religion that it is, distinctly is wrong in its assertation of Judaism as a religion.
---
Goodness, man.
Be a little more nuanced in your statements. It would make for far, far, far more interesting conversation.

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

Okay, now you're just being silly. Obviously when someone says "So and so got it all wrong," they don't mean so and so got absolutelyeverylittlethingintheworld wrong. Goodness, man. Stop it with the obvious strawmen. I'd explain my original point further, spelling out all the nuance of my subtext that you aparently missed, but I'm tired and hungry, so I'm just going to bail on this conversation now and have a sandwich.

[thomasblair.livejournal.com]

Words change. The bat described in Lev. 11 and Duet. 14 may not be the same animal as we call today's bat.

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

That's a good point, and in my brief research on this subject, I discovered that the words translated at rabbit and hare may have referred to different animals which actually do chew their cud. I find it hard to believe however that when the bible says "bat" it's referring to something so different from what we call a bat as to be an actual bird, or when it says "grasshoppers" and "locusts" it's not referring to insects of some sort.

[thomasblair.livejournal.com]

For a person in that day and of the intellectual level I'm assuming the general populous had (they were, after all, the target audience of the Torah) and especially considering that the nomenclature and differentiating methods we use today in biology simply didn't exist then, I don't find it difficult at all to accept that they thought something that flies was a bird.

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

That's exactly my point. The bible was written by people, and describes the natural world based on the best knowledge available at the time. The fact that we now know some of that knowledge to be incorrect proves that the bible is not infallible. This is important because the infallibility of the bible is one of the central pillars of creationism.

[ceejayoz.livejournal.com]

Yes.

However, science has consistenly reduced the amount of unknowns. Religion, on the other hand, has fairly consistently had the unexplainable explained by new scientific knowledge.

I don't expect the trend to reverse itself.

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

I've had people argue to me that creationism is more likely to be true because of Occam's Razor, since "god did it," is the simpler answer.

[rubyspirit.livejournal.com]

One day we will all understand...

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

How so?

[fre.livejournal.com]

THAT IS HILARIOUS

NO, SERIOUSLY.

[nallyo.livejournal.com]

As the devil's advocate (which in this case is an oxymoron), it's not evolution in general that they find far-fetched, but the initial steps from nothingness to amino acids to life. Which, if you remember, was taught for the longest time as impossible (abiogenesis).

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

That's a good point, but many creationists dispute and find far fetched any evolution on a higher level than speciation.

[vlion.livejournal.com]

Abwaaah???
You'd better define that, because as I understand it, evolution- scientifically applied with disregard to religion or philosophy- only gives an possible account for the incremental changes in DNA, thus producing micro- and then macro-evolution.

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

Define "evolution on a level higher than speciation?" Doesn't that kind of define itself?

[vlion.livejournal.com]

No.

[johnraptor.livejournal.com]

Okay then, here we go:

Creationist do not deny that evolution happens, but they only accept micro-evolution, which they define as evolution within a "kind." They usually say something like "a horse can evolve into a smaller horse or a bigger horse or a horse with shaggy hair, but it's still and horse." And then they follow it up with "a fish can't give birth to a tree." (I didn't make that one up) They contend that there were a finite number of originally created "kinds" of plants and animals, and that although these may evolve somewhat over time, they cannot become a different "kind," because the bible says that god created animals to reproduce "after their kind."

Now, because speciation (evolution of an existing species into a new species) has been observed, and because of some animals' ability to hybridize (apparently breaking god's "after their kind" rule), creationist accept evolution on the speciation level, saying that the originally created "kinds" evolved into multiple modern species. What I mean by "evolution on a higher order than speciation" is what creationists would call macro-evolution, that is evolution of an animal from an existing genus, family, order etc. into a new one. They generally don't use the scientific language though, preferring the more biblical (and less clearly defined) "kind."

In other words, creationists accept that horses, donkeys and zebras had a common ancestor, and that dogs, wolves and coyotes have a common ancestor, but deny that humans, apes and monkeys could have had a common ancestor, or that birds could have come from dinosaurs, for example.

[ceejayoz.livejournal.com]

the initial steps from nothingness to amino acids to life

Which have nothing to do with evolution.

Evolution is about the origin of new species, not the origin of life.

Regardless, the point is, it is equally unbelievable that God sprang up from nowhere too. Our human experience doesn't equip us to handle the infinite properly, so for the time being there's no good logical explanation for How Stuff Arose.

[nallyo.livejournal.com]

Which have nothing to do with evolution

Which is the something that has played a large part in the "debate". Frankly, most of the broadsides that both sides launch at each other are due in large part to misunderstandings, not actual, debatable issues (which is something that you will find in almost any walk of life). I would place a large wager saying that the larger problem that Creationists/IDers have is the origin of life without God rather than the evolution aspect. That's just me.

[megiloth.livejournal.com]

What 3 year old did you pay to draw that shit?