A Muslim who believed Mohammed flew to Heaven on a winged horse asked Dawkins:
"How do you know I am wrong?"
Dawkins answered:
"Oh, come on, you are a man of the twentyfirst century!"
That is not logic. That is making the Century one lives in the Religion one believes in and everyone else has also to believe in. It is as illogical as saying "I am a man of Tuesdays" and attach especial importance to news read in newspapers or ideas thought about on exactly Tuesdays as opposed to other week days.
Only, since the Century unlike the Tuesdays is larger than one's own life, one is less likely to notice the bad logic.
Furthermore he expressed a hope that as Zeus and Thor were dead religions, so it will happen to the God of Abraham.
It did not occur to him that neither Epicurus nor Zenon, but only Jesus Christ actually killed old paganisms off all across Europe. It is like wanting to get rid of Yersin along with the Yersinia pestis. Or like getting rid of Pasteur along with Rabies.
And that attacks like his on the Christian God are only helping to revive in a spookish sort of way the old beliefs./HGL
Source: IRISHINFIDEL : Richard Dawkins Debates Flying Horses with Muslims
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBt2XPpJ25I
jeudi 24 octobre 2013
jeudi 10 octobre 2013
Is the Genesis "the Basis of the Whole Bible" or are there others?
1) Creation vs Evolution : Heard of Libby Anne? , 2) Did Libby Anne misunderstand at least Something about Young Earth Creationism? Or: Why don't they teach logic in these schools?! 3) Further Faulty Logic in Craig A. James's "refutation of a dialogue" 4) Stupid Word Game, Craig A. James? 5) Whose assumptions are best or least well proven? 6) Somewhere else : Is the Genesis "the Basis of the Whole Bible" or are there others? 7) Great Bishop of Geneva! : How is Chick erroneous about where we got the Bible from? 8) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : ... to Hitchens on Revelation, Decalogue and Evidence for Moses. 9) Correspondence de / of / van Hans-Georg Lundahl : Notifying Craig A. James of a refutation of his refutation ...
In a Theological and a Historical sense, yes, Genesis is basis for the whole Bible. It sets the scene.
However, if you want to know what is the basis for believing the Bible true, there are other parts that are easier to verify, unless you mean the Flood as such. Like Exodus, like victory over Sennacherib, most notably the Life, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Indeed, Genesis and Gospel stand together so that if either were false, the other would be false also. Christ says that "God created them man and woman from the beginning of Creation" ... if the timeline of evolutionists were true, this would be in an obvious sense false and discredit the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. On the other hand at the end of Genesis, when blessing the son Judah, Jacob gives a timelimit meaning the Messiah must already have come. "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah ... until the hero cometh, and the Nations shall fall unto him."
How so?
Judea lost its sovereignty, and especially its power to execute death penalties, after Herod the Great died. The Jews had not lost sovereignty as much as that during the Babylonian Captivity. Or immediately after. Jews that deny that Jesus is the real Messiah often say the prophecy refers to Cyrus of Persia. But during that period Daniel defends a woman falsely accused of adultery so she is not stoned. Susannah, by name (Daniel ch. 13). Meaning Jews could stone offenders against the Mosaic law. Also, many nations never came under Persia, such as Rome. Nearly all have come under Christ and all but the very smallest have had at least Christian minorities. And in the Persian epoch there is first a law against Jews, then another one that gives them right to slay attackers. By contrast, "Pilate therefore said to them: Take him you, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said to him: It is not lawful for us to put any man to death; ..." (John 18:31) meaning the sceptre had departed from Judah by then. Meaning that Messiah must already have come.
In that sense, Gospel cannot be true if Genesis is false, but also Genesis cannot be true if Gospel is false.
Each of them has its own supporting evidence from outside that circle.
If you want the victory over Sennacherib, denied by that despot, we know another account from Herodotus in which mice chew the bowstrings to pieces. Meaning of course that the real explanation was not known to Herodotus, since God sending an angel of death is much less surprising than mice doing that stuff. Supernatural things can be supernatural, like God sending angels, but natural things, like mice, are not supposed to do very weird and unnatural things, like chew up exactly just the bowstrings of a whole army. And if neither happened, Assyrians would have won (as Sennacherib boasted) and there would not have been any tale of mice and bowstrings. (C. S. Lewis said "mice don't behave that way", hat tip!)
If you want the Exodus, do not take the version in which Hebrews are Hyksos and real Moses either Ahmoses or Thutmoses. Rather, Exodus happened before Hyksos invasion and the drowning of Pharao's army was helping the Hyksos a lot at the invasion. You can consider Hyksos as possibly equal to Amalekites. (Hat tip to a Creationist and Egyptologist living currently in France and to another one called David Down).*
If you want the Genesis, at least there is pretty extensive evidence for the Flood.
And if you want the Gospel, which is the most important, there is the consideration "what happened to the body?" (Hat tip to Dale and Elaine Rhooton, Can We Know?).
Indeed so much that even if Gospel logically cannot be true unless Genesis is true, Gospel can be believed as true by somone not concluding that so is Genesis. I had been an evolutionist as a child and after becoming a Christian at age nine, I spent about a year trying to fit Evolutionism together with what Christ believed (and knew as God) of Genesis. I did not become a Creationist until that failed. Even later I was still a little Evolution geek who was interested in Evolutionistic explanations (like for language)** even as an unbeliever in that non-Christian worldview.
Now, here is a general discussion on how to deal with claims about the supernatural in the sources:
History vs Hume (part one of four, see links within)
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2013/01/history-vs-hume.html
Here is a discussion of contemporary evidence outside Bible:
The Question of Contemporary Evidence
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2011/03/question-of-contemporary-evidence.html
Here is against a claim that St Paul was bluffing when he said five hundred "most of whom are still alive" had seen Christ risen:
What a blooper, Dan Barker from Atheist League!
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-blooper-dan-barker-from-atheist.html
But we would not have the Gospel without the Church, so my next question is whether the Apostolic Church remained intact as the Catholic Church. This will get us to a new blog, one which I made against outrageous Protestant claims about Church History.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre - Paris X
University Library
St. Francis Borgia, S. J.
10-X-2013
* CMI : David Down : Searching for Moses
http://creation.com/searching-for-moses
I have linked to David Brown earlier:
Appendix A on : So, Dionysus was a Copy of Moses, may One Presume?
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2012/11/so-dionysus-was-copy-of-moses-may-one.html
** You may have heard of a theory in which the first articulated sound and also first word was a bilabial f, a targetted breathing out of air on embers in fire, and hence used also for "fire", "light a fire", "warmth", "human ingenuity", "life" and a few more things. Funny if this were true why today phonemes have typically no significance in themselmves, but each only in combination with others - in a purely arbitrary way! Language as we know it and as distinguished from animal communications by "double articulation" (message articulated into morphemes meaningful in themselves through a system of arbitrary morphosyntax - or system which says what says what about what - and each morpheme except the shortest articulated into sounds or phonetic traits meaningless in themselves unless combined) is a very good argument against evolution and for Genesis (or other supernatural accounts of man's origin).
In a Theological and a Historical sense, yes, Genesis is basis for the whole Bible. It sets the scene.
However, if you want to know what is the basis for believing the Bible true, there are other parts that are easier to verify, unless you mean the Flood as such. Like Exodus, like victory over Sennacherib, most notably the Life, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Indeed, Genesis and Gospel stand together so that if either were false, the other would be false also. Christ says that "God created them man and woman from the beginning of Creation" ... if the timeline of evolutionists were true, this would be in an obvious sense false and discredit the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. On the other hand at the end of Genesis, when blessing the son Judah, Jacob gives a timelimit meaning the Messiah must already have come. "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah ... until the hero cometh, and the Nations shall fall unto him."
How so?
Judea lost its sovereignty, and especially its power to execute death penalties, after Herod the Great died. The Jews had not lost sovereignty as much as that during the Babylonian Captivity. Or immediately after. Jews that deny that Jesus is the real Messiah often say the prophecy refers to Cyrus of Persia. But during that period Daniel defends a woman falsely accused of adultery so she is not stoned. Susannah, by name (Daniel ch. 13). Meaning Jews could stone offenders against the Mosaic law. Also, many nations never came under Persia, such as Rome. Nearly all have come under Christ and all but the very smallest have had at least Christian minorities. And in the Persian epoch there is first a law against Jews, then another one that gives them right to slay attackers. By contrast, "Pilate therefore said to them: Take him you, and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said to him: It is not lawful for us to put any man to death; ..." (John 18:31) meaning the sceptre had departed from Judah by then. Meaning that Messiah must already have come.
In that sense, Gospel cannot be true if Genesis is false, but also Genesis cannot be true if Gospel is false.
Each of them has its own supporting evidence from outside that circle.
If you want the victory over Sennacherib, denied by that despot, we know another account from Herodotus in which mice chew the bowstrings to pieces. Meaning of course that the real explanation was not known to Herodotus, since God sending an angel of death is much less surprising than mice doing that stuff. Supernatural things can be supernatural, like God sending angels, but natural things, like mice, are not supposed to do very weird and unnatural things, like chew up exactly just the bowstrings of a whole army. And if neither happened, Assyrians would have won (as Sennacherib boasted) and there would not have been any tale of mice and bowstrings. (C. S. Lewis said "mice don't behave that way", hat tip!)
If you want the Exodus, do not take the version in which Hebrews are Hyksos and real Moses either Ahmoses or Thutmoses. Rather, Exodus happened before Hyksos invasion and the drowning of Pharao's army was helping the Hyksos a lot at the invasion. You can consider Hyksos as possibly equal to Amalekites. (Hat tip to a Creationist and Egyptologist living currently in France and to another one called David Down).*
If you want the Genesis, at least there is pretty extensive evidence for the Flood.
And if you want the Gospel, which is the most important, there is the consideration "what happened to the body?" (Hat tip to Dale and Elaine Rhooton, Can We Know?).
Indeed so much that even if Gospel logically cannot be true unless Genesis is true, Gospel can be believed as true by somone not concluding that so is Genesis. I had been an evolutionist as a child and after becoming a Christian at age nine, I spent about a year trying to fit Evolutionism together with what Christ believed (and knew as God) of Genesis. I did not become a Creationist until that failed. Even later I was still a little Evolution geek who was interested in Evolutionistic explanations (like for language)** even as an unbeliever in that non-Christian worldview.
Now, here is a general discussion on how to deal with claims about the supernatural in the sources:
History vs Hume (part one of four, see links within)
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2013/01/history-vs-hume.html
Here is a discussion of contemporary evidence outside Bible:
The Question of Contemporary Evidence
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2011/03/question-of-contemporary-evidence.html
Here is against a claim that St Paul was bluffing when he said five hundred "most of whom are still alive" had seen Christ risen:
What a blooper, Dan Barker from Atheist League!
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-blooper-dan-barker-from-atheist.html
But we would not have the Gospel without the Church, so my next question is whether the Apostolic Church remained intact as the Catholic Church. This will get us to a new blog, one which I made against outrageous Protestant claims about Church History.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Nanterre - Paris X
University Library
St. Francis Borgia, S. J.
10-X-2013
* CMI : David Down : Searching for Moses
http://creation.com/searching-for-moses
I have linked to David Brown earlier:
Appendix A on : So, Dionysus was a Copy of Moses, may One Presume?
http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2012/11/so-dionysus-was-copy-of-moses-may-one.html
** You may have heard of a theory in which the first articulated sound and also first word was a bilabial f, a targetted breathing out of air on embers in fire, and hence used also for "fire", "light a fire", "warmth", "human ingenuity", "life" and a few more things. Funny if this were true why today phonemes have typically no significance in themselmves, but each only in combination with others - in a purely arbitrary way! Language as we know it and as distinguished from animal communications by "double articulation" (message articulated into morphemes meaningful in themselves through a system of arbitrary morphosyntax - or system which says what says what about what - and each morpheme except the shortest articulated into sounds or phonetic traits meaningless in themselves unless combined) is a very good argument against evolution and for Genesis (or other supernatural accounts of man's origin).
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