To say that decrepid you would have to assume that 3 million years ago primitive man concieved monotheism randomly in their undeveloped brains. You have a point...it looks like it could very well be that way. However it would also explain alot to say that man, from the beginning, knew God and over time a fallen race strayed off into other religions. Eventually Jesus (God) came down and ended the sacraficial system, promting people to follow him, Christianity started. Both are valid explanations I would say.

Jay, this is why people don’t want to debate you on scientific issues: you are “make-sense-impaired” and it quickly starts to seem like a complete waste of time.  It seems you aren’t any better at sociology than you are at biology.

Monotheism was a relatively late development as shown by the various polytheisms with which Judaism competed when it arrived.  It is probable the first “religions” were variations on animism.

Judaism started around 4,000 or 4,500 years ago and Christianity roughly 2,000 years ago. So no million-year scales are involved in that timeline. Christianity evolved from Judaism.  Now before you get all excited about that statement, remember that Jesus was a Jew. 

As the first-century church developed its meme, various features (like gnosticism) were rejected and others (like belief in the resurrection) permenantly engraved.  Eventually a canon emerged and affixed itself to the meme - not the same canon you believe in, by the way.

The Christian meme contains all the instructions it needs to propogate itself as do the memes of many other religions.  What distinguishes Christianity from other religions is… oh, wait, they’re pretty much all alike.  “Believe in this and -god- will bless you, don’t believe in this and you will suffer, and reproduce the meme.” Shampoo, rinse, repeat.

Monotheism was a relatively late development as shown by the various polytheisms with which Judaism competed when it arrived.  It is probable the first “religionsâ€? were variations on animism

Actually evidence is now proving otherwise. My prof. actually addressed this last time I saw him and he is a big Bible scholar. He like knows who reigned when Moses was around, just lots of detail. He also knows of tons of evidence that supports the biblical view. Im going to get back to you on this next time I see him. He also has a book (beta version or something) that is coming out in 05, called “radioisotopes"(subject to change)...supposedly its going to be a big deal. Basically is going to heavily support a young earth and refute dating results that come up old. (vague description)

Christianity did not evolve from Judaism. It did not slowly change traditions and over time drop the sacraficial system and Levite priests idea(evolve: change over time). Simply put, God came down and said follow me now, its about what I’ve done for you. This is a completely new shift, convenant, direction, whatever, if you will.

what doesnt make sense about what I said? Its so simply put. tell me and I will change it.

My prof. actually addressed this last time I saw him and he is a big Bible scholar. He like knows who reigned when Moses was around, just lots of detail.

Hmmm.

I’ve had professors that believed that Western Europe was ruled by an egalitarian, matriarchal society, long before recorded history.  These are people with PhDs.  But they’re wrong.  At least, they don’t have any compelling evidence.

Just because someone has a job, or a degree, doesn’t mean that they know what they’re doing, or that they are immune from being -led- by what they -want- to believe, rather than what actually is.

Don’t assume that your professor is right, Jay, just because he’s your professor.  Ask questions.  Like “how does he know this,” “what are his sources,” and “are there alternative perspectives on this, that might be more compelling?”

I’m certainly not a Bible scholar, but I tend to take your assertion that your professor has some “compelling new material” with a grain of salt, because, so far, you haven’t demonstrated the ability to distinguish between a convincing argument, and seriously flawed reasoning.  You present pseudoscience as a “challenge” to science.

By the way, internet infidels has -another- forum that is entirely devoted to issues of biblical exegesis and accuracy.  Many of the folks who hang out there have a decent command of Hebrew, and know more about history than your average college professor.  If you’re truly interested in these kinds of issues (and if you’re pursuing a religious education, you should be) you really should check it out.

Ok, I realize that I didn’t make any insulting personal jokes about paste in this post, but let’s just pretend I did anyway.

Jay, I’ll start at the end of your last response and work backward:

what doesnt make sense about what I said? Its so simply put. tell me and I will change it.

Did you really mean to say that?  Or were you just tired and not re-reading what you typed? 

I covered it in the previous entry: you jumped timescales.  Typically creationists jump timescales from longer to shorter, but in this case you went the other way.  I was talking about something that happened in the last 2,000 years and you immediately started talking about our distant hominid ancestors.  Have you gone evolutionist on us?  Good for you, but you should keep that a secret from your prof.

The history of the early church may be more complex than you’ve been led to believe.  There was a lot of give-and-take among competing groups between the time Jesus was wrapped and the Apostles’ Creed was committed to parchment in the early 300’s (it was by no means the first or last of competing creeds.) The church as you know it didn’t just leap into being in 34AD.  The first 150 years in particular there was a lot of turmoil and give-and-take.  And you may have noticed that there is by no means universal agreement among Christians as to what Jesus meant about anything, even today.  Unless, as most doctrinaires do, you simply define anyone who disagrees with them as following a “corrupted faith” or even as “non-Christian.”

My prof. actually addressed this last time I saw him and he is a big Bible scholar. He like knows who reigned when Moses was around, just lots of detail.

So your prof knows who was reigning in Egypt when Moses was around?  Good: he reads National Geographic. Seriously, though, he’d better know that much or you should be asking for a refund.  But equally important to knowing a lot of facts is being able to put them in the context of the larger body of human knowledge.  If you just want to be pumped full of doctrine you do well to latch onto one school of thought (like that represented by your prof, or Kent Hovind) and not let go.

For a broader view, I suggest you pore over A History of the Christian Church by Williston Walker, The Heritage of Biblical Faith, by J. Philip Hyatt, and The New Testament, its background, growth and content, by Bruce M. Metzger. Keep a copy of Documents of the Christian Church by Henry Bettenson handy for reference.  These are non-sectarian works of deep Christian scholarship.

Religious meme evolution, like biological evolution, doesn’t all happen at one speed but there are connections.  Jesus focused on the minority Hosean tradition and was something of a mystic (hence the many different traditions regarding what he meant.) This didn’t sit too well with the authorities and turned out to be rather unhealthy as Mel Gibson recently illustrated on film.

But he was apparently quite charismatic and his many followers set about re-interpreting Judaism in light of what they could remember from his oral teachings.  (Note that even the four Gospels do not agree as to what that teaching was, and a Pauline “spin” emerged after the Apostles’ council depicted in Acts.)

He also has a book (beta version or something) that is coming out in 05, called “radioisotopes"(subject to change)...supposedly its going to be a big deal. Basically is going to heavily support a young earth and refute dating results that come up old. (vague description)

Let me tell you a secret: every academic is working on a book, and it will be a big deal when it is published.  I’m sure the world of science little suspects the calamity that will smash their comfortable world view when your prof unleashes his scholarship upon them.  What the Bible and Kent Hovind could not defeat, your prof will sweep aside. 

Question: does he have a degree in nuclear physics?  Does he know the difference between the LIGO project in Louisiana and Hanford, Washington and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN?  Most importantly, did he start with the conclusion that the Earth is young and then go cherry-picking “facts” to prove it? Before writing a whole book, why doesn’t he try getting one article published in a peer-reviewed physics journal?  Or does your definition of a “big deal” include a guy preaching to the choir?

That’s exactly what’s wrong with this whole discussion.  Even if a scientist starts with a theory, he knows another scientist will shoot it down if it isn’t solid.  It won’t pass peer review, and it won’t stand the test of corroberating experiments and analysis by other scientists.  The scientist knows he doesn’t have Absolute Truth - the best he can hope for is a durable theory.

The religionist starts with a conclusion known as a “doctrine,” and selects supporting facts either in or out of context.  Doctrine is immune to criticism and to revision because “God came down” and dropped it in our laps.  But despite that immunity, doctrine is quite brittle as it cannot bend or change shape.  There are no durable doctrines.

The Absolute Truth of doctrine exerts a powerful gravitational field that bends the space in which the believers’ minds operate.  No intellectual convolution will appear too warped to be acceptable as the doctrine bends everything else around it.

So if you’re planning to go running back and forth between your prof and this thread, it’s a waste of time.  You are operating in a different gravitational field.  There’s no way any of us could possibly carry a discussion with you, nor will your doctrinally-dictated understanding convince anyone here about ID let alone any talking snakes. But cheer up!  You’ll have all eternity to laugh at us from heaven while we all sizzle in the barbecue spits of hell, right?

Les, sorry this is so long.  Half your bandwidth must come from this one thread.

Religious meme evolution

You know, the first time you said this, I wasn’t quite sure what you were talking about.  But I guess memes -do- “evolve.” But does a meme “change” to fit environmental pressures?  Kind of a Lamarkian meme? Or can there be multiple different types of meme change-- some random, some dependent upon meme “replication errors,” etc? and then the “best” memes are “selected out” on the basis of the environment that they arise in? 

Makes me kind of nervous, though, to use evolution as an analogy for meme changes.  There’s already plenty of Creationists who talk about the “evolution” of the cosmos, and that just drives me nuts.  I certainly don’t want to encourage people to play fast and loose with the idea of evolution.

This link really IS getting way long.

You know, the first time you said this, I wasn’t quite sure what you were talking about.  But I guess memes -do- “evolve.” But does a meme
“change” to fit environmental pressures?

Meme theory is kind of new - I didn’t notice it until 5 years ago.  But (Jay take note) it isn’t presented as a “Truth” but as a useful metaphor, a way of envisioning, understanding and discussing social phenomena.  Like any other metaphor it can be discarded if it isn’t helpful. The phenomena are the same with or without it.

I have seen studies on how various internet legends (mostly passed around by email) have “evolved” and acquired new features or lost old ones.  On a much longer time scale it seems that religious memes do that too.

Certainly memes do change to fit environmental pressures, and then when they’re passed on they carry the change.  In this respect the metaphor bends or breaks as individual biological organisms don’t do that.  The Principia Cybernetica Web (now there’s an ostentatious name!) has a discussion of meme evolution.

I certainly don’t want to encourage people to play fast and loose with the idea of evolution.

I sure agree with you on that.  It could lead to all kinds of new features on the creationist meme! 

My prof. actually addressed this last time I saw him and he is a big Bible scholar. He like knows who reigned when Moses was around, just lots of detail.

So?  I know who was President of the US when Dorothy went to Oz.  What does that prove?

GM - good one!

When I said “meme theory is kind of new” I should say “I am a dullard and only caught on recently.”

The last chapter of The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (you might want to duck; I think Jay’s head just exploded) introduced meme theory 29 years ago but I didn’t get ‘round to reading it until about 10 years ago.  But my head was swimming as I got near the end of the book and I just didn’t get it.

Maybe 5 years ago I read a magazine article about meme theory and something clicked: I went and picked Selfish Gene off the shelf and sure enough, there it was.

So I didn’t get infected with the “meme meme” until someone ‘splained it to me in smaller pieces and smaller words.  How’s being slow-witted for an immune system?

Finally, I can throw in something sensible into the fray again (people like decrepit or Les intimidate me sometimes because they HAVE read a lot more on most of the topics debated here...)

Jay, you said that if all people lived according to the teachings of Jesus - without sin - we would have a perfect world. No suffering, no God torturing humans.

One big problem here for you. Cancer.

Or any other disease. Living according to the Bible will not cure us of our physical ills, won’t help against virus or germ. And even if you argue that dying after a long life is acceptable, what about kids dying, slowly, in great suffering. There’s so many fortunately rare diseases we can’t even treat yet.

If God made them, I’m very proud of the doctors and scientists fighting against him. If he didn’t - then he is either uncaring or not ommnipotent.

Or he simply - isn’t.

ingolfson, let’s not get started on theodicy.

Remember, no diseases, decay, no nothing until man disobeyed. Check out the Bible and Health by Hovind. It really opens up your eyes on the whole cancer issue. According to that video and the PhD chick, cancer is a nutrient deficiancy. Then realize this generation’s eating habits. Also realize this generation’s selection, processed food, built for profit.

While im on the issue, I watched a show a while back. A woman had a huge tumor. Then she did something she hadnt done in a while: Turn to the Lord. She then saw that her eating habits werent too good. Baddabim baddaboom Tumor goes away...recovery. And there was a Bible that told her how to take care of herself all along.

Leviticus says that bread is good for the heart (what??). Back in the day it had vitamin E or something like that, and another ingredient that made it spoil fast. Bible says love of money is the root of all evil. Well time passes by and companies want profit and shelf life...what do they do? take out whats good. Now we got white bread which has (practically) no beneficial nutrients whatsoever. Whats the message? Man, not God is wrecking things. God gets the blame when something goes wrong, and man gets it when its good.

Another interesting story here (from my church)...a woman had cervical cancer, just really bad condition. It seemed like there would be no recovery. Lots of people prayed for her after that. ughhh couple Sundays later her friend has a complete recovery as told from her friend who was flat out crying. “There isnt even a trace of it” she said. Message here? of all the people who are sick, how many of them are praying about it and actually believe they are talking to God (and not a wall)?

Boyd isnt writing the book, he has the beta version, I believe he is helping with its progress however. Like I said I would get back to you on this because I would like to get evidence as well about the monotheism deal. peace.

Why? Because we wouldn’t want this thread to become too big?

Addendum: Jay - I’ll provide you with the standard counter on this board. Cite respectable sources (heck cite anything beyond anecdotal evidence)!

Spontaneous cures are not limited to religious people. Heck, I remember a study that playing videogames where the opponent was supposed to represent cancer cells helped raise the recovery rate amongst cancer patients.

So show me a respectable study that shows that religious people have a bigger rate of remission than agnostics or flat-out atheists.

Elwed, I know what you meant. But I just couldn’t resist. Even though I knew this was the way it was going to go…

ingolfson, if you must, can we stick to a multiple choice format.

I don’t want to spoil the entertainment, but this banter should move to a shorter thread or the forums.

And here I was waiting until it hit 400 comments. Oh well.

OK, this thread is once again closed. Take any further bickering or, in the case of Jay nonsensical incoherence, to the SEB forums.