Humanists protest against Noah’s Ark Creationist Zoo — Looks like a must see to me!!
If you think private, multi-million dollar monuments to Creationist-themed education are the sole property of First-World nations with Third-World levels of religiosity (IE: the United States), well, think again. The Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm is located in the lush countryside of Merrye Olde England, just 7 miles from the city of Bristol… and it has outraged the British Humanist Association who are urging British tourism boards to stop promoting it and asking the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums to take action against it.
Here’s some unique commentary.
“[at the museum] I learned,” he says, “that while birds sing to ‘sound warning’ and ‘mark their territory’, they also do so in order to ‘praise their Maker’. In fact, so wonderful is the ability of birds to sing that the necessary features clearly ‘go far beyond what is biologically an advantage, and point to a musically minded Creator.’”
#103, Thomas,
“Once again, I need to instruct you on logic. I am not dismissing your argument because your are a zealot. I’m dismissing your argument because it is empty of logic and that this approach is common amongst zealots. Thus, not an ad hominem.”
Well said. Judging a person because their logic is consistently faulty is not the same as judging their logic beouse of who they are. The person doesn’t condemn the logic, but the poor logic condemns the person.
Summary of thread for those just joining: Multiple contradictions, including links to even more contradictions/errors/horrible ethics all that aren’t bothered to be addressed, responded to by faulty logic. Faulty logic is pointed out and all we get back is false accusations of ad hominem.
#105 Alfred1, your gibberish didn’t even come close to providing a lucid reconciliation of the plainly contradictory claims by Luke and Matthew of Joseph’s genealogy, but I’ve come to expect that from you. Joseph may have been Jacob’s son, as Matthew claims, or Joseph may have been Heli’s son, as Luke claims, but without the miracle of a fertile gay union, Joseph cannot be the son of both men.
I wish you all the best, Alfred. I just hope you’re in a safe place where you can’t bring harm to either yourself or others, in case your delusions should ever take a sudden violent turn. Cheers.
#110
> Luke’s is utilizing
> a figure of speech
And you deduced this how? You couldn’t possibly be suggesting that in the case of clear contradiction that one side “must” be using a figure of speech are you? Why not consider the whole book one big figure of speech?
> You would have us believe
> you rather than the evident
> acceptance of these accounts
> as non contradictory, by the
> disciples who knew what
> happened, who experienced these events.
The authors of the Bible queried supposed eyewitnesses who were remembering events possibly decades after they happened. None of the authors themselves actually witnessed the events that took place. It is very likely that contradictions will occur. People have a habit of embellishing their role in events especially in reference to a connection with some divine source.
Our “presumption” of contradiction is based on evidence: there are contradictory statements in the Bible. That is no longer a presumption but a factual observation.
#112
Your logic is still faulty. Your claim is that even though the entire book of Luke and Acts has been as accurate a portrayal of events and discussions as the author could manage, that on this one occasion, the author decided to go off the reservation and use metaphor.
Between the hypothesis that the author on this one, quite important, occasion used metaphor and the hypothesis that he simply transcribed information from a witness who gave him faulty information (or misunderstood the testimony), the simplest explanation is the later.
Thus, it still stands as a glaring contradiction.
Alfred1, so this thread still lives! Perhaps it has been given eternal life by the Savior himself!
It’s interesting how much your own story has changed, Alfred, and in such a short period. As recently as #76 in this very thread, you maintained the completely literal factual accuracy of the scriptural passages in question, claiming that Judas himself purchased the property in the most literal sense (legal tender changing hands), and you even quoted a scriptural basis for your claim of Judas’ source of the money for that transaction (his prior thievery). Then you claimed that after hanging himself, the rope broke and his body fell and burst open, again in the most literal sense of those words. This was the meaning you easily derived from the inerrant Holy Scriptures.
Now with your remarkable shift away from those claims, you seem to be trying to out-contradict the Bible. I’ve seen this too many times in this type of argument. When scriptural contradictions exist, they always seem to get resolved with figurative language and allegory, so that no set of facts alleged by one writer is ever allowed to be at odds with those from another writer, because at least one of them was writing allegorically. It seems quite strange that the only communications of the Creator to his children so often uses non-obvious allegory, open to widely varying interpretation. Personally, I’d like to see God in a “town hall” format where he would answer questions from the audience. That would be much more helpful to clarify a lot of ambiguities. When eternal bliss versus torture hangs in the balance, there really is no substitute for utter clarity on how to please the Creator and help determine your fate.
Did Jesus really rise from the dead, or did he only rise in the figurative sense, continuing to live forever in the hearts and minds of his followers, and in the lessons he tried to teach them? The resurrection may have been purely allegorical, but in any case Alfred, you certainly wouldn’t know the difference.
Your claim of allegory is no more valid than anyone else’s, and you already proved that to us. You showed us quite clearly that the sole starting point for your “epiphany” that these scriptural statements about Judas from the book of Acts were figurative and not literal was the PROOF that at least one of the accounts was factually false, proven only by their blatant contradiction with one another. Both Thomas and I had to painstakingly point out that contradiction to you in minute detail before you would even admit it existed. Only when faced with overwhelming evidence did you cast about for an alternative explanation. Gosh — now it seems so obvious to you that you can’t see why we don’t buy your bogus explanation.
Ah, the wonder of allegory! It doesn’t have to be factually accurate, and the deeper meaning and ultimate lesson is often open to widely varying interpretation. A hundred pastors and priests could preach a hundred remarkably different sermons on the same scripture to their eager little flocks, and the range of interpretations would amaze and astound us all! Perhaps it’s this malleability that is the real magic of religion.
Now you can see why I prefer to concentrate on the moral contradictions in the Bible rather than the factual ones. When the Bible says that God intentionally killed children by his own hand, or ordered their slaughter by his ethnic-cleansing servants, it makes little difference in the portrayal of his moral character whether those killings were literal or figurative. The message is quite consistent either way.
.
.
P.S. What was the name of the man whose sperm fertilized the egg that developed into Joseph, who grew up to take the Virgin Mary as his wife?
Looking back at my #117 comment, I probably ended my final paragraph above too abruptly, without making the moral contradictions more apparent to Christians who are so completely contradiction-challenged. This is a more complete phrasing of that thought…
The core message is consistently hateful either way, but completely contradictory to the many claims that Yahweh is a god of justice or love, especially where Gentiles are concerned. Intentionally killing someone’s dearly-loved child (even if it’s some sort of allegorical killing) is one of the most hateful acts (or figurative expressions) I can imagine, far more characteristic of a terrible demon than with a loving, caring deity.
Alfred1, one of the reasons your arguments will continue to fail so miserably is that you continually presume that everyone who disagrees with you is driven by an agenda to deny the existence of the Creator that to you is so obvious. In your version of reality, we all know deep in our hearts that the true Creator of the universe is the same one described by the authors of the Bible, and that all other religions are false, completely without any merit. Your presumption is wrong.
Just for one second, consider the possibility that you could be mistaken. Is it absolutely impossible for someone to read the gory details of the actions of your deity and sincerely consider those actions to be contrary to the notions of goodness, fairness, justice, and above all — love? Doesn’t there exist the tiniest possibility that someone seeking truth could consider this deepest of all moral contradictions to be compelling evidence that the Biblical claims are then false?
When long-dead writers of unknown character and sanity say that God is loving and good, and a few verses or chapters later tell us how he killed some more innocent people, one of their claims is obviously false because of the extreme inconsistency. This raises the requirement of some sort of extraordinary proof that he actually exists and is truly as contradictory in his moral character as the Bible alleges. Without that proof, the evidence greatly favors myth.
I can truthfully say that even though I firmly believe the Bible to be myth, if Yahweh were shown to actually exist, I would aspire to have the moral courage to refuse to worship this evil demon. He has far too much innocent blood on his hands, and the only thing worse than hell would be to have to spend eternity with the demon Yahweh. As described in the Bible, Yahweh believes that having created us gives him the moral right to kill and torture us without any consistency or relation to our offenses, just as he has done with so many other people, even including children. He is the archetypal example of the sociopathic deity.
Unfortunately, Christians, Jews, and Muslims universally lack the moral courage to stand up to this demon, and many of them have read enough of their sacred texts to know the depth of evil that he’s capable of doing. So sad…
Alfred1 wrote…
“When man kills, the person who died passes from the killers experience, save the corpse.
When God kills, he [sic] person is relocated.”
Your claim that when your god kills, the person is merely relocated sounds like an apologist’s argument used to excuse your god’s killing of innocent children, such as when he killed tens of thousands of children in Egypt. In your mind, this makes his act seem less evil.
Where your argument still fails, however, is that the purpose of the act, whether characterized as killings or “relocations,” was to bring the greatest, most extreme kind of emotional suffering and grief imaginable, and the targets of that suffering were all the families and friends of the children who died. Apparently, you’ve never had someone kill a child of yours, and unless that happens, you’ll never realize that the pain of that loss never really goes away. It’s a shame that you can’t feel any sort of empathy for the people who were forced to endure that amount of grief, but that’s a typical characteristic of a sociopath, so I’m not terribly surprised.
It’s also unfortunate that the families of Egypt never had any knowledge of your magical “relocations.” All they knew was that they awoke to find their children dead in their beds. As the myth goes, Pharaoh knew which god had done the killings because of his prior warning from Moses, and on that basis, acceded to Moses’ demands to let the Israelites leave Egypt in the wake of all the deaths.
This is the event that legitimizes terrorism as a valid method that God uses to accomplish his will. God’s servant Moses made the threat, “Let my people leave or else…” and God himself followed through with the promised killings. Thus, it is a classic example of terrorism, and the magic of “relocation” doesn’t change the fact that the true victims of the act were the people who remained behind to grieve the loss of their dearly-loved children.
#119,#120
In neither post have you explained away the contradiction in the accounts of Judas. As has been said, you are claiming one to be figurative even though the rest of Acts and Luke make every attempt to accurate portray the events that occurred.
Even your example passages show the author portraying an event and then providing some *additional* interpretation as to the cause (“this is that spirit of the antichrist”, “this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel” etc.)
In the passages we provide there is no other statement of observation about the events other than what we have read. Thus, conclusion is clearly that the author is stating what he felt actually occurred in contradiction to what the other authors of the Bible have stated they thought had occurred.
The question isn’t whether the field is called the “field of blood”. That is a red herring. The question is about the person that made the purchase and the actual form of death. In one case it is Judas and the other it is the priests.
The Commentary you provide is again SPECULATION. It is a guess which cannot be verified. All we have is what is actually written and looking at that, there is a contradiction.
From #120
> Its not Peter’s purpose
> to provide an exact chronology of this event…
Peter did not write Luke or Acts. At best he is thought to have been one of the witnesses used by the author. Thus, chronically the actual events, but doing so in a narrative, was clearly one of the motivations.
> Of course you
> cannot admit this simplest
> explanation of the facts
> (Occam’s razor), your agenda
> is to deny God at all costs…
Again, you are misusing the concept. In the case of your explanation for the contradiction, all hypotheses being equal, the simplest is also defined by the one that has the fewest precedent and consequent facts to be true in order for the hypothesis to be true. That Luke received faulty testimony requires that the someone simply had faulty a memories about the actual event. For yours to be true, it would require that the author intentionally perverted the events in this one case, intentionally deciding not to say what actually happened in addition to the metaphor and that the people that read (or were read to) the material did not object to warping of the events.
In the case of your deity, all hypotheses are not equal. There is no falsifiable test that we can devise to prove its existence. Until you do that, we have no evidence to believe it exists and no potential counter hypothesis on which to use Occam’s Razor.
> The Bible is written
> perfectly, precisely to
> stumble those, like yourself,
> who are looking for
> excuses to stumble.
Right. And your deity intentionally left dinosaur bones for us to find to fool us into thinking the Earth is old.
> But it is fact, scripture’s
> consistency evidences
> its divine origin
Riiiiight. It is evidence of poor writing, incomplete and inaccurate testimony and contradiction. You, playing the Black Knight, refuse to recognize them even with every limb of an excuse removed.
Alfred1 wrote…
“God is God, as He created all things, He alone has the right to do what He wills with His creation.
You have NO STANDING to object.”
Your untiring repetition doesn’t make it so, but this always gives me a good view of your conscience, Alfred. I assure in the most emphatic terms, your conscience is remarkably different from mine in that regard.
This is one place where the weak Christian argument always comes off the tracks. The Biblical claim is that mankind was created in Yahweh’s image, which is obviously not a physical reference, but a spiritual one. But as a non-sociopathic person, my conscience is greatly offended at the notion that creation confers the right to torture and kill upon the Creator, any more than I would torture or kill my own child or ever wish to do so. My conscience also tells me in no uncertain terms that the torture and killing described in the Bible are completely inconsistent with any notion of LOVE. So my moral offense, in and of itself, provides ample proof that those Biblical claims that I was created in his image are utterly false.
I cannot imagine the degree to which I would have to suppress my conscience in order to worship and love the god that Christians claim CREATED my conscience. That’s the ultimate irony and folly (among many) of Christianity. You continually refuse to accept that other people actually have higher moral standards than you do, but when Christians derive their morals from the hateful deity of Bible fame, the bar has been set pretty low.
Obviously, your conscience does not tell you that torture and killing completely contradict love, and for the life of me I can’t understand this, but I’ve learned to accept it, with you and all of Christendom. You’ll simply have to accept that my conscience tells me otherwise. Obviously, you think I should disregard my conscience and allow Biblical teachings to prevail over my moral beliefs, but I refuse to do so. That seems to make you angry at times. Too bad.
Of course, none of this is proof that there is no Creator, but it simply proves to me to the greatest possible degree that any such Creator is not the one described in the Bible, so that case is closed unless we receive late-breaking proof of his existence. Have there been any recent appearances to prove his existence to the beings that he so desperately wants to worship him?
Maybe the REAL creator is one of the hundreds of others worshiped by the many cultures throughout history, with the exact same amount of proof that they exist as there is for yours. Deities always seem to speak through the writings of ancient oracles whose perceptions, integrity, dedication, and sanity we can never allow ourselves to question. I’m not that gullible.
Anyway Alfred, thanks very much for the many, many messages you’ve relayed to me from the Creator, but please just tell him to get in touch with me directly in the future. I’ll be waiting for his call, and he can explain to me himself that he has the moral right to torture me 😉
#125
When you actually get around to disproving one of the contradictions we have already provided, then we’ll consider providing more of them. However, you have yet to do that with anything other than specious logic and circular reasoning.
With respect to your deity, until you present falsifiable evidence that establishes its existence, there is no point in discussing it. Of course, it does require you grasp the meaning of “falsifiable” which you have yet to show.
#126
Ah, the classic “redefine the meaning of the word” tactic. You have provided nothing to the explain the apparent change in tactics by the author at this one specific critical moment. The simplest explanation is faulty testimony presuming that Matthew’s is the correct portrayal of the event. Did it ever occur to you that Acts has the correct portrayal of events and Matthew is incorrect?
#127
> When God decides
> to remove someone
> from the land of the
> living, its His right…
> everything exists by
> His Pleasure…
The deity you describe is evil and megalomaniac by any sane person’s definition and certainly a far cry from one of love. A parent cannot kill their own child by their pleasure. An owner cannot torture their pet by their own pleasure. It is hypocritical to claim that your deity loves its children when it kills what it pleases by its pleasure.
If this is your vision of the deity you worship, you should seriously seek psychiatric help.
Yes, Alfred, you’ve stated the Christian doctrinal position extremely well. If my descriptions of it were in any way vague or incomplete, you certainly helped to round it out. Thank you.
If the deity you worship really does exist, he is capable of dishing out whatever harsh or vengeful punishment he sees fit, even until every creature curses the “gift” of their creation. No doubt, many creatures cursed their own creation the day Yahweh decided to drown them all. That probably wasn’t such a pleasant way to spend their last moments of life, gasping for their last breath of air, and then sucking in only water.
As you say, there are no legal limits on what your god can do because he makes his own rules. There are only limits on what he can do while calling it “love,” limits which your Judeo-Christian story suggests that he has already vastly exceeded.
#133
Your original hypothesis has been so thoroughly trounced in this thread that it is the height of insanity to claim otherwise. It is you that have yet to provide a reasonable explanation. You cannot simply throw out a “well he might have used metaphor because he’s used it before” excuse and hope to have anyone take it seriously. Your explanation would require, much like your belief, a series of preposterous events to be true. Take some classes on critical thinking, the scientific method, cultural anthropology and historical literary analysis and come back converse like an educated person.
RE: OT deaths
Of course, their horrible death did nothing to ease the pain of those that witnessed the deaths. What if there was no error? What if they died by natural disaster? Your deity is supposedly responsible for their pain and the pain of their loved ones as well. The deity you describe is a monster.
As I have said in the past, you represent the pinnacle of indoctrination. You are so clouded by what you think to be true that you are incapable of even considering the possibly that it is false.
…Or when my grammar checker is working. That should read:
“Take some classes on critical thinking, the scientific method, cultural anthropology and historical literary analysis and come back when you can converse like an educated person.”
You talk much but say little. Again, you have no evidence to refute the contradictions we have shown. The evidence of contradictory statements and philosophies is so clear and overwhelming that no sophistry on your part can overcome them. At this point, you are simply hoping to overwhelm the discussion with ranting.
It should be noted that I do not curse that which I do accept to exist. I do not curse Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Pink Elephants, goblins, ghouls, Zeus, Hades, Sheba or a host of other imaginary creatures that have as much evidence for their existence as your deity. Just as I do not curse Lord Voldemort, I do not curse your deity.
#141
We don’t have to provide “overwhelming” proof (although we have). We need only provide evidence of the smallest of contradictions to falsify your hypothesis and between Gary and myself, we have provided at least three clear and irrefutable examples which you have yet to provide evidence to counter.
Especially if you accept the “literal” version of the Bible, you must accept what is actually written and not what twisted interpretation you think is written. What is actually transcribed has contradictions. Your only feeble rebuttal has been to play sophist games with “well, they really meant X” or “I *sure* they really meant Y.” with absolutely no supporting evidence. Much like your entire belief system, lack of concrete evidence does not fly in real discussion.
This has nothing to do with intellectual curiosity and has everything to do with intellectual honesty. You only want to move onto the next contradiction because you have been so utterly proven wrong on your original claim of zero contradictions.
If you claim that the version in Acts is a metaphor, then you are also saying that it is fiction. It is the author’s interpretation of what happened and not actually what happened and only in this one specific incident which is extraordinarily improbable. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence which you have yet to provide.
There are no shadows other than that created by the bag you have upon yourself.
#142
Again you continue with the Black Knight routine. We provided four contradictions: associating with non-believers, Judas, Joseph’s father and the contradiction of a deity that kills its own people but claims to be one of “love”. No only did you lose dozens of posts ago, but we ran up the score.
> But all you really
> have is just one,
> its what you chose,
> period.
By your own admission, you lost. You proposed that there are NO contradictions in the Bible and here admit that is not true.
For my part, this discussion is finished. The game is over. The lights are off. Sportscenter has done its piece about your defeat. It’s time for you to just let it go.