-=A Human Sacrifice=-
and flaunt your little dead men on a stick, check your facts, most things that Easter depends on don't cross-check. [edited 4/15/2009. added links]
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In my view debates about Morality derive from the tendency of people to attribute and misinterpret intent and intelligence in self-organizing phenomena. To me it is obvious that Morality fits in a category of phenomena that derive from self-organization.
Self-organization is commonly spoken about, even by scientists whether they mean to or not, as having some kind of intent or intelligence behind it.
I'm a big fan of argument analysis, and in
William Lobdells post he listed several common Christian heuristics for dealing with the problem of apostasy. In the comments section of his article you can see one of our christian guests using some other common heuristics which I've taken a moment to analyze. I welcome William, and I hope he'll consider joining DC as an author.
In a recent comment a Christian Guest said the following.
I do know why some of my friends can't see God;
- generally it comes down to either not wanting to,
- or insisting that if God doesn't follow their rules, he doesn't exist.
- All I can do is testify that for me, it's obvious...
"Feeding the Trolls" is a type of Social Engineering, aka manipulation of well meaning guests. Every now and then a "troll" comes along and makes comments that are in poor taste and meant to generate responses from other commenters. We will clean up the blog after one of these events, but I request that when a troll makes a comment that it be ignored because If a troll makes one comment and it gets 2 responses, then 66% percent of the mess is caused by well meaning guests. It takes less time to only have to clean up after the troll. This is simply something we'll have to live with as long as we permit real time free and open discussions.
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This is yet another Christian Heuristic that "blames the victim" in the same way as "if you don't understand it, its your fault". Some qualifiers are missing in that statement, mainly SCOPE and DEFINITION but also the ACTIONS of the AGENTS DOING THE SEARCH and AGENTS BEING SEARCHED FOR. What are the responsibilities of the Agents? What is the definition of "a comprehensive" search? And how will you know when you find it? There must be a description to go by or how will one know when they've found it?
RichD is one of our Christian commenters. No matter how much we disagree, we can always find a way to inject a little good humor into the dialog. He's smart, he expresses himself clearly, he doesn't seem to take it personally, he keeps his goal in view and he keeps a positive and humorous outlook which, in my view, exemplifies a "good Christian", adds tremendous value to the dialog, and to this blog in general. In my view RichD is one of the commenters that sets the standard.
In the comments section of my article
Jesus Appeared To Other People, Why Can't He Appear To Me? Darrin started by asking me "What would YOU do as God?". Goprairie mentioned what she would do if she were God. Then Russ contributed what he would do as God. I thought the interaction was brilliant so I'd like to feature it and request responses from everyone meaning all categories from Believers to Non-Believers, Buddhists to Zoroastrians.
God has appeared or unambiguously interacted with a wide range of types of persons in The Bible. But every time I mention that I think Jesus should just come down and visit with me, I get the old Christian rebuttals, such as
The Use Or Intent Of Information Does Not Determine Its Quality
Over at
Sophies Ladder, Jeff says
"Reliability, on the other hand, I take to mean “can be dependably used” and so, obviously, reliability relates to the purposes intended."
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Over at
Sophies Ladder Jeff agrees that accuracy and reliability are important but his view of accuracy and reliability all stem from some "inner knowing". This contradicts commonly held principles about accuracy and reliability which generally holds that the source of the information is known, can be verified, represents real world states and can be depended on to accurately reflect real world states when verification is not a viable option and when planning needs to be done. But for the moment, I'll stipulate the Spiritual Realm exists.
By now everyone has heard about the plane crash in the Hudson River. The "miraculous" landing was facilitated by a human being prepared for the split second decisions he had to make by a lifetime of EXPERIENCE, DATA GATHERING, DATA ANALYSIS and SOLUTION PROVIDING. PRAISE SULLY! HALLELUJAH FOR IDQ! Can I get A "HUMAN"?
Very little in the Bible can be understood as it is written. To be understood as relevant and applicable to today necessitates speculation, interpretation and pre-processing for general consumption. The Bible, as it is written, has become meaningless even though Church leaders try to speculate, interpret and derive meaning from it. Since Christian leaders don't agree, large portions of the data in the Bible is demonstrably meaningless which is a result of the Information and Data Quality flaw of "Meaningless Representation".
While acknowledging that Jesus' usage of the term "son of man" has no consensus, this article shows how the term "son of man" was historically used to refer to mankind or Humans as a category, was never generally considered by the Jewish community to be a descriptive phrase for the Messiah, and therefore seems to be used incorrectly either by Jesus, by the authors and/or translators of the gospels as something like a personal pronoun for Jesus. In any case, presuming the Bible is the Word of God, the term still maps to two real world states fulfilling the criteria for Ambiguous Representation which is an Information and Data Quality (IDQ) design flaw.
This article will show how the concept of the Trinity was derived from the Design Deficiency of incomplete representation in scripture leading to "Garbling" causing Scripture to map to a meaningless state. The Bible has many instances of incomplete representation but for the sake of brevity, this article will focus on "Jesus as God". It highlights some disconfirming evidence which refutes the proposition that "Jesus was God" can be rationally determined from the text.
The originators of scripture had a remarkable lack of insight when creating scripture considering it was revealed to them by God. Apparently God didn't reveal to them some fundamental principles in ensuring they were creating quality information and data that would stand the test of time and generations.
By applying principles of Information and Data Quality (IDQ) in research to the Bible, it can be shown that a high level of confidence in the accuracy and reliability of the information in the Bible is irrational, therefore arguments or claims using the bible as a premise are inherently weak.
In the coming weeks, I intend to show that if we posit a null hypothesis about the Bible and we evaluate the quality of data and information in the Bible, the hypothesis that humans alone were sufficient to create the Bible is supported very well by the Data which effectively refutes the hypothesis posited in 2 Timothy 3:16.
I think I've come up with a weighted ranking scale heuristic for scoring the plausibility of claims derived from government, business and theoretical criteria and I'd like to put it out here for critique. This weighted ranking scale could be used for the bible, literature, science, history, news articles etc... and we could compare them.
Worksheet
Here is a logic puzzle. You are walking down a road to a town. You come to a fork in the road. Standing there are two men. You already know that one of them always lies and one of them always tells the truth. What one question can you ask one of them that will give you the information you need to choose the right road?
When presented with a choice of outcomes the rational decision maker will choose the outcome with a positive payoff, but not God.
The best way to understand something is to build it.
In my recent articles I have been facilitating discussion on Adam and Eve and I have been collecting explanations about how Adam came to disobey god. This article identifies the parts of those arguments and diagrams one of them, and tries to tease out whether Adam could in any reasonable way be held accountable by his maker for his transgression and the resultant overall negative result that emerges from Gods Creation. However if we take Adam and God out of the equation, then the properties that emerge from nature are what we should expect once we understand them, and labeling them "good" or "bad" outside of any context becomes meaningless.
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Recurrent claim from Christians in comments:
"you seem to be questioning God. Why didn't God do this? why did God do that? The short answer is, because God does what he pleases and since he is infinite in knowledge, then God knows best, not us."
10:41 PM, August 23, 2008
God was omnipotent, and God must have known the properties and tolerances of everything he created, just like a baker and just like an engineer.
This an article to show that Adam and eve did not know the difference between good and evil before they ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil therefore could not understand the consequences of what they were doing. It uses a timeline and a matrix for analysis.
If we accept the Theist's position, then god chose to create. Choosing instead to not-create would have been a greater good, as it would have necessarily avoided any suffering or evil whatsoever.
This is a short mathematical proof that if God has a plan, then free will necessarily is an illusion. 2 + n = 4, if n = 2 then free will is an illusion.
Last weekend at the pool, in response to some of my critical questions about pagan cannibalism and communion, one of my family asked me if I was an Atheist. Yikes!
In all "civilized" countries in the world, Human Sacrifice is unlawful. The reason it is unlawful is that it is murder. I have seen it argued that a law against murder is one of the Ten Commandments because it is an aspect of a universal moral that proves Gods existence. I think we can all see the irony and logical inconsistency in that.
This Article shows that in the second creation story in genesis the concept of woman made from bone, earth and antler pre-existed the writing of Genesis, spanned cultures and geographical boundaries and that Eve shares aspects of Goddesses in Ancient Near Eastern Mythology.
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"The study reveals how stress makes people more susceptible to illness."
Science Daily Article.
This is a datum to support my assertion that the hypothesis that the "Problem of Evil/Suffering is a Test" is demonstrably false.
This is a datum to support my assertion that Biological Bases for Behaviors are incorrectly interpreted as "Sin" and that we don't have as much free will as we think we do. The new field of Epigenetics is documenting that regulating gene expression in the brain affects how susceptible we are to maladies such as depression, anxiety and drug addiction.
This Article shows that in the second creation story in genesis the concept of man made from earth pre-existed and spanned cultures and geographical boundaries, has the rivers confused between different geographical areas, and has many elements from prexisting Near Eastern Myths such as "The Myth of Adapa".
When you don't have a good argument, just use the Hitler Analogy!
This is a datum to support my assertion that Biological Bases for Behaviors are incorrectly interpreted as "Sin".
This Article shows that even if the physical evidence didn't refute the special creation of the first humans, Adam and Eve, in Genesis 1:27, the problem of Genetic Diversity known as the "Founder Effect" would eventually lead to crippling genetic mutations or extinction.
This is a datum to support my assertion that Biological Bases for Behaviors are incorrectly interpreted as "Sin".
Which fallacies are the good cardinal guilty of and why?
...he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme why he thought it was dangerous to be governed by reason alone. He said that "supposedly faithless societies" ruled only by reason were like those created by Hitler and Stalin, ripe for "terror and oppression". Full Story
This article presents evidence to support the conclusion that Gods creation of Adam and Eve(1a) is a Near Eastern (Southwest Asian) myth.
You can view Vol. I of Sir James George Frazer's famous book from the links below.
QuIRP
- Just Say NO to Faith Based Thinking. Garbage in is Garbage out.
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