Your post confuses me a little, you seem to be arguing my point as if I didn't make it and arguing against things I never said at all. Maybe you not just commenting on what I wrote.

I see the confusion here, what I mean to say is that you must be secular in following the scientific method and that is falsely seen as an agenda by many. In order for there to be an agenda there has to be a choice.

No atheism does not conflict in any way with the scientific method. Atheism is nothing more than believing that supernatural gods do not exist, it certainly has nothing to do with a belief in aliens.

I said theist beliefs conflict only when they're applied to the scientific method and just as you said if they're not then there's no problem.

No it's the other way around, ant-evolution groups choose him as their whipping boy long before he anything at all to say about religion, he has simply responded with more intensity than other scientist. Which is I believe the reason they choose him to vilify in the first place.

 

 

 

 

 

And then you address what I said as if it was a direct answer to your points:



I think you are mistaken "secular" for "rational". You don't have to be secular to apply the scientific method. You can believe in G-d, if you like, and you can believe that He created the world, and you can even believe that he still interacts with the world. The scientific method is not about removing G-d from the equation. The scientific method is about viewing the world without resorting to supernatural explanations. The scientist can still believe in G-d, he just cannot use a belief as an explanation. (The explanation might still be true, but it wouldn't be scientific.)

Jewish view on evolution in the 1880s:

"Judaism in that case would call upon its adherents to give even greater reverence than ever before to the one, sole God Who, in His boundless creative wisdom and eternal omnipotence, needed to bring into existence no more than one single, amorphous nucleus and one single law of "adaptation and heredity" in order to bring forth, from what seemed chaos but was in fact a very definite order, the infinite variety of species we know today, each with its unique characteristics that sets it apart from all other creatures."

-- Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch

Let me clarify that in the 1880s there was not so much evidence available for evolution as today, and the rabbi did not believe that evolution was correct. However, he was perfectly willing to accept what science found and he didn't have to remove G-d from the equation at all to accept scientific research. In fact, he was not only capable of distinguishing between belief and science but he also understood CORRECTLY what the theory of evolution said (as you can see he speaks of a "very definite order" as opposed to "random chance").

The idea that G-d created a world in which evolution was bound to happen to create the variety of species He wanted is not secular. But it absolutely doesn't conflict with studying that world scientifically.

Atheism is also not another word for "rational". You can be a 100% secular atheist and still believe in space aliens like a big loony. In fact, that is where "Intelligent Design" comes from. The Creationists, like you to an extent, have come to the conclusion that science has something to do with G-d (as in being the opposite of it), hence they thought that if they remove G-d and refer to a creator that could be anything, they would have a scientific theory. They don't, for the simple reason that removing G-d from the equation has nothing to do with whether something is scientific or not.

If you use the belief in space alien life creators in your idea, your methods are not scientific. It doesn't matter if you have a god in your idea or not. Any belief in some being we cannot observe is non-scientific (but might still be true).




Well, that wouldn't work. They couldn't have chosen him because he would respond with more intensity if they had not known that he would respond with more intensity.

But to know that he would respond with more intensity when it comes to religion, they must have known about his militant atheism.

Incidentally, Dawkins is also villainised by religious groups who don't reject science at all. Just recently I had a discussion with a Catholic friend of mine and we both thought that Dawkins is an arrogant idiot when it comes to religion. But neither of us reject evolution. So please don't tell me that hostility to Dawkins is merely due to his science.

Some people are prejudiced towards religion. Just a few weeks ago somebody here commented what I wrote on my Web site. On it I wrote that Richard Dawkins is among my favourite authors (which he is). But the gentleman in question couldn't understand that and said that he was "surprised" that I read Dawson. In the same thread he saw me write something about the Bible (a rant on some Hebrew roots, if I recall correctly), so I assume that he couldn't reconcile what he knew about me from the thread and what he knew about me from my Web site. Apparently, I think he thought, people who read the Bible in Hebrew do not read biology books.

BTW, the guy in the video is mistaken.

Most ancient religions were not mutually exclusive, which is why you have so many different gods in history.

I am not an expert on dharmic religions, but I can tell you about Semitic (including Abrahamic) religions.

Most Semitic tribes had city gods or tribe gods. The Phoenician city states and later their colonies in Carthago and Spain had Ba'al. (The word means "master", "lord," or "husband" in modern Hebrew.) Just like the Israelites, the Phoenicians included the name of their G-d in names for their children. Think of Hannibal the famous general. His name means "grace of Ba'al". ("Hanna" means "grace" in Hebrew. The Phoenician language was very similar to the Hebrew language.)

Those tribes interacted and mostly ignored each other's gods. The question for them was not which gods to believe in, but which god to pray to. Phoenicians prayed to Ba'al. Israelites prayed to El. ("El" simply means "god" in Hebrew and most Semitic languages.)

Some Semitic tribes prayed to several gods. All Semitic tribes originally believed that all of these gods probably existed.

Earlier parts of the Bible still refer to the other gods as existing. It is then clarified that Israelites must only pray to one of them. It is also explained that only one of the gods (El) is the creator of the world. At some point El reveals His name.

Israelites then started making fun of those other gods, referring to them as unimportant or not really powerful at all. Ba'al specifically was referred to as the "lord of the flies" (i.e. a lord over something unimportant that pretty much just flies around aimlessly), or, in Hebrew "ba'al zevuv" (the "v" is spelt as a "b"). That's where the modern term "Beelzebub" for the devil comes from. The Israelites didn't think he was evil. They thought he was a joke. (You may count that a an example of mutually exclusive religions, if you like. But it also means that while Ba'al might be a god, El is just so much more powerful that Ba'al might just as well not be.)

(There are also issues about G-d being referred to in the plural in Genesis and theory is that perhaps the story of Genesis is older than monotheism.)

Belief in that one true G-d, the god who created the universe, then became common among some tribes, not only the Israelites. Some of those became incompatible. Mandaeans believe that their god is the god of Adam and Noah but that Abraham prayed to a false god and so do all Jews and Muslims and Christians. Samaritans believe everything the Jews believe up to the Babylonian exile, except they think that the temple was located on a different mountain. ("Mountain" is a bit of an exaggeration anyway. Those things are walkable hills.)

Judaism believes that G-d might send or might have sent prophets to other peoples as well as to Jews.

Zoroastrian Persians, when they conquered the Babylonian empire, found the Jews living in Mesopotamia and after talking to the Jews, discovered that the Jewish god and the Persian god are one and the same. They believed that G-d wanted the Jews to live in the land of Israel and hence sent them back there and funded rebuilding the temple.

There was an incompatibility between Judaism and the Roman and Greek religion. The Israelites wouldn't pray to Greek gods (but didn't care whether they existed or not), but denied that the Roman emperor was a god (because that is incompatible with Biblical teaching).

From the faith of Abraham then came Islam, which specifically points out that adherents of Judaism, Christianity, and Sabianism (could be Zoroastrianism or Mandaeanism) are also following the true G-d and must be allowed to live according to their religions. Islam believes that some things in the Bible are wrong, but Judaism and Islam are hardly "mutually exclusive".

Perhaps he was referring to the last 2000 years or so, when, mostly due to Christianity, the idea of mutually exclusive religions became fashionable?

well actually that's just a story. The truth is and can be seen in other parts of scripture that God in the plural is speaking of the trinity. Because if you go to John 1 you see an explanation. "In the beginning was the word and the word became flesh and dwelt among us." We see this thought played out all thru the scriptures both OT and NT that Jesus was part of the creative process.

oops!

I took a chance

Again we're saying he same thing.

"I see the confusion here, what I mean to say is that you must be secular in following the scientific method"

Secular IN following the scientific method not secular TO follow the scientific method. God out of the scientific method. 

Never said it was, however new information could change that. The discovery of a digital signature in our DNA or them coming back to check up on us

Perhaps; Thank you for the very interesting and informative post BTW.

 

 

 

Thanks, I always try to explain what I can.

Needless to say, "Jesus" is just about the only character who isn't even implied to exist in any of the old legends, Biblical or outside Jewish scripture. A messiah was expected (and still is), but what that Messiah would do was explained in detail and the historical Jesus did none of the things. (Performing miracles was not part of what the messiah was supposed to do.)

And the Semitic pantheon of many gods is also not symbolic for a "trinity".

In fact, and this is perhaps ironic, Hebrew has a specific plural form for plurals that appear as a set. This is usually called a "dual tense" because it most often applies to pairs: "yadaim" (YDYYM) = "hands", "einaim" (`YNYYM) = "eyes". But it also applies to larger groups, if they belong as a set. The four legs of a dog are "reglaim" (RGLYYM).

But "elohim" is a normal plural, not a dual (i.e. not a plural describing a set). If "elohim" and other references to more than one god referred to a trinity that is also one (and it would have to be a trinity that is also one, I'll explain in a second), I would assume the word to be "elohaim" instead of "elohim", i.e. 'LHYYM instead of 'LHYM.

It seems odd to me that somebody, G-d or any human author would try to hide this "trinity" message by using a method that specifically rules it out, even though a method that would allow for it was available as an alternative.

What the Bible is very specific about, despite many references to a god plural, is that the Jewish god is _ONE_ god. In fact, "adonai eloheynu, adonai echad" has been the most common prayer statement in Judaism for 3000 years. "Adonai" is a plural of "my lord", here representing a polite form of the singular and used as a name for G-d: "Adonai is our god, Adonai is one".

So while it might be true that there is meant to be a trinity, I think it hardly likely that the Bible text, specifically written to allow for ONE and MANY, is supposed to mean that there is a THREE involved