When I was 19...

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Or another title may be, "the dumbest post I'll ever make"

OK, so I'm 37 now and was just looking through some old computer stuff to help the Brandeis Crew in an alumni fundraiser. yes, a Mac SE30 circa 1993 will still start-up. And I found the text below, my first letter to a good friend (still a friend, actually even part of G9Girl) in our discussions on religion and specifically, evolution. She's a new-age style Christian for which I have the greatest respect as she actually lives what she believes, and truly, truly follows Christ's teachings. The amount of community service she does, both with and without a Christian tone is inspiring.

Caveats:
1. Haven't really read this again, just glanced through it now
2. I was 19, raised Catholic, going to a Jewish University where for the first time in my life I felt like a minority
3. If you are going to comment, criticize, etc., please at least read through the whole thing.

Should be fun and entertaining all around. BTW, be really glad I'm not posting my old poetry! And with that...


Hi Kellee,

Well, I have reread the two pages of Genesis that tell the stories of creation. My first thought was it was strange that only two pages are ascribed to the creation of the universe and everything in it. Going through the text, here is my interpretation with notes.


First account of creation:
Day 1: God creates the heavens and earth, the earth being a sphere of water, although the text gives the earth as a formless void, with water. A void, by definition, is nothing.

Day 2: God then creates light, but without the existence of the sun or any other celestial body to give light. We have to wait till Day 4 for these things.

Day 3: God creates a vault or arch. It should be noted here that ancient peoples believed that the vault was solid. Clearly, this is a description of the creation of what we would call the atmosphere.

Day 4: God creates every celestial body known and unknown. This is interesting in itself and certainly there can be no answer to the question, “Why did God create a universe so large that its size is as inconceivable to the human mind as a divine being is. The Milky Way, a rather small galaxy contains over 400 billion stars alone, our sun being one of them. There are many hundred trillion galaxies in the universe.

Day 5: God creates fish and birds.

Day 6: God creates every other animal to ever inhabit the earth. He then creates human beings, in the image of himself. We are not sure of God’s true image, and certainly cannot call him male, since men and women do look decidedly different. What is God, male or female, both or neither. Certainly, male and female sex organs and secondary sexual characteristics are different enough to cast doubt on what image he created men and women.

Day 7: Took a break.

In the second account of creation, there are no specific days mentioned here, just a series of events, with a completely different order from the first account.
God makes heaven and earth. Here, the earth is, well, solid earth with no water. But, a flood was coming to completely cover the earth. God then creates man from dust. God then plants a garden and puts man into it. God then creates all animal life on the planet and asks man to name every single creature. Aside from the obvious absurdity of naming every animal on the planet, it is important to note here that neither the Bible nor any other ancient text mentions dinosaurs. Since we know dinosaurs to have existed, it is hard to believe that they would have been overlooked in stories, etc. Essentially, if dinosaurs shared the earth with man, something we know not to be true, man would have at a minimum drawn dinosaurs, and certainly kept the dinosaur names alive aurally if nothing else.

God then puts man to sleep, pulls out a rib (ouch) and makes a woman from it. That is truly strange!

I want to now turn to the question, a large one, “Can the Bible be trusted to accurately describe the beginning of the earth, the universe and everything in it?”

First, I think that since the two stories contradict each other in terms of timing and what was actually created, that both should be dismissed. Furthermore, since they are very similar to stories of creation that are older than biblical texts, they appear to be simply duplicates of earlier peoples’, ones who believed in many gods. Those two aside, the simplicity and brevity of the description of “how it all got started” jives much more with the primitive nature of early man than an actual description of divine events.

end, see reply for more

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Continuing with the Bible as a trusted source, several things are clear:
The early chapters in the Bible are little more than war stories and accounts of nomads. In fact, the Bible is predominantly based on war and barbarism. This is further enhanced by looking at how man has used the Bible and to a larger degree, has used religion as a whole to control other groups of people and to kill others with divine certitude. This is perhaps my strongest point, that early peoples all the way through to modern man use religion for their own political purposes. Knowing this to be an absolute fact, can you trust a work such as the Bible knowing how man has consistently used and abused religion for his own ends? NO WAY!

It is important to take the Bible for what it is: a collection of stories to teach people. You may be going on the grounds that people were educated several thousand years ago. In fact, most people could only speak and not read nor write. They thought that the earth was flat, woman were property much like cattle, simple, common natural phenomena (a total eclipse, comets, volcanoes) had huge consequences on daily life, etc. The Bible is really a collection of war stories to show why our side won, and to justify it, and a collection of stories to instruct “virtual children” how to behave in society.

I want to take a brief break from explaining why the Bible cannot, and should not be trusted as an absolute when it comes to the origins of everything. If you even want to continue this discussion, assuming you don’t think that I am a total jerk, you should probably at least read everything at the following link: http://books.nap.edu/html/creationism I would prefer that everyone who wants to argue evolution vs. creationism at least take collegiate level biology, genetics and molecular biochemistry classes so that the theory of evolution can be intelligently debated. This brings me to another point. I have never heard of evolution described as a fact, but ONLY as a theory, just the same as gravity is only a theory. Do Christians not fall down? Something like Carbon 14 dating, however, is a fact and can be demonstrated as a fact to anyone. In contrast, creationism should not even be considered a theory. It is a story, well two stories really, that encompass maybe 1,000 words.

I also want to explain how science works. Science works on the basis of looking at an unknown and then trying to describe it using the known. On a deeper level, science is, although not absolutely, free of corruption. Rarely do scientists ever seek to control or harm others with the use of science. Instead, government fills that position first with religion close behind. If you can come up with an instance where a scientist on his own initiation and volition used science for the control or degradation of a population, please let me know. The instances where government and religion have done this are too numerous to even begin listing them. If we had a list, it would probably be 1000 to 1, government and religion to scientist misuses of science.

Science itself, evolves unknowns into theories, into discarded theories and more theories, into facts. Someday, science may disprove the theory of evolution, but for now it seems to work well. The amount of time and analysis that has gone into Evolution is far from trivial, whereas the stories in the Bible are trivial in length and scope. The Bible is static, and not only is it static, but it is absolute. It is absolute apostasy for any new interpretations of what is in the Bible. While science can repostulate theories based on new evidence, the Bible is the Bible and that’s that.

There is so much more I want to say, but I really ought to wind down. The Intelligent Designer theory sounds rather cruel and certainly does not jive with God as the all-loving God we are supposed to think of (neither does the Bible for that matter, but that’s a whole different controversy). Would a God so intelligent create a system with such terrible consequences for its inhabitants? I mean, if you have the intelligence to create a human, why are there so many terrible things in the world, and on a completely different level, why are things in general not all living in harmony, which seems like a much better way to go if you are going to the trouble of creating it all, unless God is cruel. No, I don’t believe in the Intelligent Designer theory because there is little intelligence in what was designed.

One final problem with the Bible as an absolutely trusted source is the notion of its own and singular Christian God. If one God created everything from Adam on down to Noah, then washed it all away and left Noah and his children, how did other Gods come about? I mean, these people had personal relationships with God, the one God. If this is all they knew, how did new gods come about? There would have been no need. In fact, early believers in Yahweh were polytheistic. You just can’t trust these people.

Kellee, it is very important for you to understand where I am coming from with this narrative. You see, I actually think that Creationism falls within the same bounds as Nazism. Nazism was in part based on the scientific theory of Eugenics. It was used by Hitler, however, as justification for killing “subordinate races” moving on to ruling the world. Eugenics had no scientific fact to back it up, it was only a theory. I see Creationism as the same thing: a Christian theory (story) that will be used in public schools that will pull people into the Christian way of thinking. It is irrelevant whether this way of thinking is right or wrong. I don’t think that religion, ANY religion, has the right to use government to espouse its moral and political objectives and I see great harm in teaching young children a philosophy espoused by such a religion, one that has very strong political and moral objectives. This is in contrast to Buddhism, say. There are NO political or moral objectives taught in Evolution. It ONLY seeks to explain one way that all living things have come about. Furthermore, I care about you. While I think that your belief in God is great, I am envious in fact, and I would NEVER want to do anything that would dissuade you from your faith, I think that anyone who believes in creationism might as well believe that the earth is flat. Much like at some point in history the sacrificing of animals to God (defined by God in Numbers and Deuteronomy as one of the most important things to him) was stopped and seen as a barbaric ritual, I believe that Christians need to understand where reality starts and the Bible ends. Religion and a strong belief in God is important, but so is knowing when to take the stories in the Bible as teachings and when to take them as absolute fact.

I will stop here for now.

Love

Shaun

[creaturecat]

Insightful 19 yr old. So - having 20 more years under your belt,how has your opinion changed?

[skipdup]

Did she respond? Plans to share?

It wasn't that long ago I had MANY of the same questions you pose above.

- Skip

[Hugh R]

When I was 18, I was a Forward Observer in the Marine Corps, and I'd already called in hundreds of 175 millimeter and 8" Howitzer rounds on villages and encampments. I aided in the killing of several thousand people before my 19th birthday.

[pwd72s]

Originally posted by Hugh R
When I was 18, I was a Forward Observer in the Marine Corps, and I'd already called in hundreds of 175 millimeter and 8" Howitzer rounds on villages and encampments. I aided in the killing of several thousand people before my 19th birthday.

So Hugh...your opinion on the old phrase about there being no athiests in foxholes? A buddy of mine carried a St. Christopher medal, a jewish star, a cross, a crucifix...he told me he was looking for any and all the help he might find. Since he made it back to "the world", he thought one or all of them must have helped...BTW, a belated thanks for your service...people like you and my buddy allowed many others to remain in school and debate religious philosophy...

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally posted by creaturecat
Insightful 19 yr old. So - having 20 more years under your belt,how has your opinion changed?

I just reread it more carefully and I don't think my opinion has changed much. I picked up "The Elegant Universe" a while ago and was really charged about String Theory for some time and how the concept of God works within the model, but my brain was a bit small for the task.

BTW, I definitely believe in God, but not religion, and ironically, my justification for the existence of God is based on Evolution Theory.

Originally posted by skipdup
Did she respond? Plans to share?

It wasn't that long ago I had MANY of the same questions you pose above.

- Skip

I'm sure she did, I'm going to give her a call and see what happened with these conversations. I remember having to read the Bible a few times (which really turned me off on religion) and our discussions were passionate to say the least.

If anything turns up, I'll post, but I'm really shocked I still have stuff from this long ago. there was a B/W painting I did in '85 on MacPaint on a Mac 512 that I would pay dearly for today.

[Moses]

Originally posted by Shaun 84 Targa

BTW, I definitely believe in God, but not religion, and ironically, my justification for the existence of God is based on Evolution Theory.

That's two of us!

[MikeCT]

Originally posted by Hugh R
When I was 18, I was a Forward Observer in the Marine Corps, and I'd already called in hundreds of 175 millimeter and 8" Howitzer rounds on villages and encampments. I aided in the killing of several thousand people before my 19th birthday.

That's some heavy *****.

[lendaddy]

Originally posted by Moses
That's two of us!

Make that three, and I thought I was unique

[island911]

How could you guys not believe in religion? It obviously has a huge roll in the functioning of our society.

Or do you guys simply mean that you don't practice religion?

[john70t]

Remember that before the monotheistic Christianity, Buddhism and Islam there were the multiple Roman Gods based almost directly on the Greek Gods which were based largely on different emotional charcteristics and natural phenomina.

[john70t]

I think the concept of a higher being/power brings a calming emotional equalization to the mind regardless of surrounding conditions, sometimes serves as surrogate parent and subconcious alter-personality in some, creates the societal structures of morality, worth, duty, and responsibility, creates a purpose where none exists, and is a convienient way of explaining the fabric of existence which our primitive minds have only taken a small bite into.

[nostatic]

"Well, I believe in the soul, the c*ck, the p*ssy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days."

- Crash Davis

[stevepaa]

I'll bite. How do you get a belief in a god from evolution?

[ZAMIRZ]

19? That was last year, what would you like to know?

[lendaddy]

Island,
You sorta have it for me. I am not at all "organized religion" though I firmly believe in a higher being(s).

I think anything else would be incredibly arrogant. Currently I think our god(s) is/are unaware of our existance or is pissed. I guess what I'm saying is that just because we were created doesn't mean our creator(s) knew/know or care. If that makes sense, I'm pretty deep in the Stoli right now.

I do NOT accept the Bible, purely because it was written by man. You know, people like me, now that's scary!
Where's that bottle?

[island911]

Originally posted by lendaddy
. . . I do NOT accept the Bible, purely because it was written by man. You know, people like me, now that's scary!
Where's that bottle?

Soooo, you believe that man can not self-direct? . .. cannot write rules, or analogous stories to provide a smart framework to live by?

Well, when I was 19, I was wondering how so many wise old men could promulgate such religious nonsence, like the bible.

The thing is, *religion* is used on so many different levels, by different people.

And, Just because parts of a bible can be interpreted as complete non-sense, doesn't mean it ALL is without value. . . for someone.

[lendaddy]

Sad as it must seem coming from a staunch conservative, but I don't reject the Bible coming from "intellectual" level but rather an emotional one.
If it is, as it is written, then god is not a nice man/being and certainly not someone I would "worship". He /she/it knew damn well(or so I'm told) how this would all go down and I reject the fact that they were "cool with that". My god is not such a prick. Again, too much Stoli, but I mean it.

[creaturecat]

Originally posted by stevepaa
I'll bite. How do you get a belief in a god from evolution?

I'll bite as well,please elaborate!