Steve Pinker ... evidence on the surprising decline in violence

by digderidoo 52 Replies latest jw friends

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  Island Man

  " Rather, I'm responding as to why God 'cloaked' (encrypted) this message."

  So God went through the trouble of inspiring the writing an infallible collection of books - the bible - but made sure it's written in a cryptic way that no human can perfectly understand or interpret all of it correctly? What then is the value of it being infallible if no human can benefit from its infallibility by virtue of the fact that no human can perfectly understand all of it? That is not the mark of divine wisdom at all!

  Your God is like a song-writer who goes through the trouble of writing the most beautiful song and musical composition - in a way that no one can fully understand all of it so as to render it perfectly. So the most beautiful song will never be heard despite all meticulous effort that went into creating it. Isn't that a waste? Isn't that foolish?

  I think its more reasonable to believe that the books of the bible were written by imperfect men of long ago and not an all wise God. An all wise God would have not a much better job. This claim that God 'cloaked' or encrypted his message is nothing but a convenient and false excuse to explain away the poor authorship that makes it difficult to understand it all fully.
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  cofty

  Christian faith is evidence based

  That is something christians keep telling themsleves. Faith is the opposite of evidence.

  If you had sufficient evidence for god you would not require faith.

  Faith is the enemy of knowledge. Christians were only able to do science by leaving god outside the lab.
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  cofty

  the world would function perfectly if we followed the Sermon on the Mount

  No it wouldn't. It is full of platitudes.
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  AndDontCallMeShirley

  God wrote a book full of errors and contradictions so that not too many people would be gullible enough to believe in him.

  God 'cloaked' (encrypted) this message.

  I heard a CO give this very explanation at my Pioneer School years ago. It sounds just as ridiculous now as it did then.

  What a silly god the god of the Bible is.
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  Island Man

  " Island man, you are confusing 'blind faith' with the biblical conception found at Hebrews 11"

  Christianity does rest on blind faith - blind faith in the traditions of men. Christianity is rooted in belief that the bible is the inspired word of God. How does one know that the bible really is the inspired word of God. One doesn't. One accepts it based on handed down tradition. It is traditionally accepted by theologians that the bible is the inspired word of God because earlier theologians from earlier centuries considered it the word of God. The "evidence" for the inspiration of bible books consists simply of earlier writers quoting them and considering them to be inspired and the fact that later books appear to be in harmony with earlier books. It's all based on faith in handed down tradition and fallacious reasoning!
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  Island Man

  One example of the utterly fallacious reasoning used to prove the inspiration of the bible is the internal harmony of all the books written by different authors. I find it surprising that theists can't see through this ruse. Given that the bible was written by different authors who lived at different times wrote their books years apart isn't it very likely that the authors of later bible books would have had access to and read the earlier bible books? For example, isn't it likely that the author of Revelation would have had access to and read Genesis? And having been educated by what he read in Genesis and believing it to be true, should it be surprising that the author of Revelation would think and write Revelation in a manner consistent with the "education" he received from Genesis and pre-existing bible books? So it's to be expected that each bible writer who would have read and believed what was written in the preceding bible books would have had their minds shaped by that information and would only naturally write their own books in a manner consistent with thinking shaped by preceding books.

  By way of an example, a person who has studied the subject of evolution and believes it, would go on to write a book that is in harmony with current scientific thoughts on the subject of evolution. If you were to pick up that person's book and compare what it says with what is said in other scientific books on the subject of evolution, you would notice harmony. Are you to conclude from that the all those books were inspired by the same divine author because that's the only explanation for the harmony despite there being different writers? Of course not! How ridiculous!

  For the internal harmony argument to have any merit, this is what would have had to have happened: All the bible writers would have had to write their books at the same time in different locations and not being aware of the contents of each other's books at the time of writing their own books. If that were the case then we could give merit to the internal harmony argument being evidence of divine inspiration - but not when writers wrote their books years apart and would have had access to preceding books, so as to make any harmony be explanable by purely natural means.
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  Apognophos

  Even the whole "harmony" thing is grossly overstated. I wonder if SingleCell has taken the time to read about issues like this in the Bible: http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/238054/1/The-Bible-Full-of-Errors-And-Inconsistencies
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  never a jw

  Christianity produced modern science ... Keppler, Nicholas of Cuza, etc.

  Similarly, Western legal conceptions.

  We have modern science despite Christianity. Without Christianity we would have have built on the achievements of the Greeks and the Romans (the Arabs, the Indians, the Chinese too). Instead, we got Christianity and set us in a stagnating path for a 1,000 years until the Renaissance when the Greeks thought and art were brought back. Almost 2,000 year wasted. Quite pitiful that there are people who are just as superstitious as the civilizations of Bible times.
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  SingleCell

  The Christian conception of a creator outside the universe generated a plethora of men and women dedicated to unraveling that mystery without resorting to Greek 'god of gaps' notions.

  You mention Hammurabi -- but did Hammurabi inspire European legal formation?

  No, Christianity and the Torah did. Hence, these other notions are irrelevant to facts of history.

  [you can attempt to link them, but you will need to provide documentation]

  Would they have produced the enlightenment?

  What did produce the enlightenment? The printing and distribution of the Bible.
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  never a jw

  What did produce the enlightenment? The printing and distribution of the Bible

  Maybe. As people got to know the bible they realized what a book of superstition and contradictions that was. Then, that's when great thinkers started turning away from it. Check the views on religion of Diderot and most of the Encyclopedie writers, Voltaire and Rousseau included.