Sunday, August 23, 2020
The Informal Fallacy I want to invent: "Special knowledge" / "Mind reading"
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
The God of the Bible is still incoherent, yet people believe anyway.
200,000 to 300,000 years ago, give or take, Homo sapiens emerged from the hominid predecessors they had been, as they slowly made there way out of Africa 130,000 to 200,000 years latter, they also began to develop language 20,000 to 50,000 years after beginning that journey.
At some point Jehovah, Yahweh, YHWH, reached out, and plucked two people from among them to be placed into a garden full of things to eat, it revealed itself to these two humans, let them be tempted by a talking serpent, then when they failed the test, it kicked them out of the garden with a curse that the man would have to work for food, and that the woman would have to have (MORE) painful child birth. At this time, "sin" entered the world.
Before this point, things lived and died and there was natural disasters, all because it just was that way, but now that sin was here, now there was a reason for all that bad stuff. You see, this god of Abraham Isaac & Jacob let bad things happen before the "fall" because.... it did.
Of course, that doesn't really make sense, so actually God made two humans that already somehow knew language and were homo sapiens, and then put them in the garden, once they failed the test then evolution began due to sin and.. wait no that doesn't work... you see its... a metaphor yes- right the Genesis story is just sort of, kind of what happened. I found out I was wrong when I thought I was right, its always the same just a shame, that's all.
So, how do modern Christian's make sense of any of this?
Well, you could pretend the world was made 6,000 to 10,000 years ago and ignore the realty of how we got to the place we are, in total denial of all evidence that we have of all the things I suppose. Plenty do this, but many do not.
Yet, how do they, how can they possibly have the story of Genesis fit within reality? BioLogo's tries its best to do this, and when I was a Christian, I felt that these guys "got it" that they were trying to do what made sense - make seance out of what we know is true, and what these stories tell us are true.
Still - why would God leave it to us puny mortals to do this for it? Why make the world in such a crazy way in the first place? Just what sort of all powerful being does this anyway?
Of course, Christians might have some excuse answer's to this, but I doubt it.
What happened to all the millions upon millions that existed before Jesus, and during Jesus who did not know about Jesus - when they died, what happened to them? What about the ones who were alive, yet had not heard about Jesus? What about those souls?
Well, uh. God - had a plan for them? I guess. I mean, the bible doesn't say anything about them.
Of course, the bible does not say much about any of the world, other then the tiny part of it that God happened to visit that day. Revealing itself to a select few people. (Count the times that God reveals itself in the Torah/Old Testament...13!!! just thirteen people!!!) but you know, God wants to have a relationship with "everyone". Sure.
God loves me, I am told by those that believe, yet God doesn't reveal itself in such a way that all of humanity would know, without doubts, without questions, without the need of a book of all things. A BOOK mind you... to tell us it exists.
Its incoherent. Yet, people believe it anyway.