Thanks for the apologizing. In the purely speculating mood, a person with a direct connection to God could get personalized dietary advice, while the kosher laws that came later had to be generalized to a whole population.
On a more serious note, my belief on this is that a closer connection to God is the reason for any longevity increase; physical explanations are mere speculation as to how that connection worked.
The thing that confused me about the whole conversation is that many of the people arguing for longevity are known to not be biblical literalists, although all of them take some parts of the Bible very literally.
posted
"The 'thing' being discerned is the place of these speculations in science and logic."
Nope. The claim that is being made is that a handful of people lived in excess -- often great excess -- of 500 years. No proof, besides the claim of one oral history, is presented. No sound mechanism is suggested.
In response, I say that it's flatly impossible.
Your response, of course, is that it COULD be possible, based on our limited knowledge of everything that's ever gone on in the entire universe.
To which MY response is that, yes, invisible planets that have no mass at all, thus violating several known "rules" of physics, COULD exist -- but it's silly to say so.
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Tom, you're looking sillier and sillier here.
Bob said the following:
quote:But when people try to make up a story to EXPLAIN it using quasi-scientific mumbo-jumbo -- usually getting the science part of it horribly and stupidly wrong, then I think I should at least try to disabuse them of their stupidity, lest they lead others down the same path.
It's crummy science and crummy theology. It has no place I can discern in religion or logic.
The thing to be discerned was the place of the "crummy science and crummy theology" in "religion or logic."
You're argument might be valid about some other part of this discussion, but not the quote it was in direct response to.
Technically, no one can discern the appropriateness of any philosophical statement in science or logic, at least by the standards you supplied.
You're response was flat out wrong when you made it, and your defense of it isn't any more correct now.
posted
Dag, when you wrote your response, you were CLEARLY being sarcastic; you were, in fact, suggesting that not all things which cannot be discerned by Bob are worthless.
I disagreed, specifically within the context of the larger conversation.
If you wish to argue whether or not things that cannot be discerned have value, that's one thing; if you wish to argue that Bob is simply not talented enough to discern these things, but that they CAN be discerned by someone with the ability, that's another.
I assumed the first, because the second is frankly insulting. If you're saying that you meant the second, I'll gladly go back and address the comment from that perspective.
posted
i have heard that it is not the environment that alters our ability to live long lives. Some will say, that after the flood, the environment was way different than prior. But if this was the case, Noah, who was 500 or so years old, would have died shortly after the flood but instead lived to over 900 years old.
Here is an article that explains how genetics plays a very big role in how long we will live. I know some of you will dismiss it right away, but at least read it to see what they have to say:long agePosts: 879 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
Out of interest, do those of you who believe in the Biblical ancients ALSO believe in Chinese claims of mystics who have routinely lived 1000 years or more, often said to be due to diet, chi, and genetics?
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quote:If you wish to argue whether or not things that cannot be discerned have value, that's one thing; if you wish to argue that Bob is simply not talented enough to discern these things, but that they CAN be discerned by someone with the ability, that's another.
I assumed the first, because the second is frankly insulting. If you're saying that you meant the second, I'll gladly go back and address the comment from that perspective.
My response was to the assertion by Bob that the only areas of worthwhile speculation were in areas where he discerned the value. I don't wish to belabor the point with Bob, because he's since apologized and we've moved on.
Look, the use of the word discern clearly did not mean with the use of the 5 senses (augmented or not), or inferences based on those 5 senses. Which means your response was non-sensical, since it is based only on physical discernment. The discussion Bob and I were having was akin to whether opera has any value, with one person saying he can't discern any and the other saying that one person's non-discernment of the value of opera doesn't make it non-valuable.
The refutation you posted was about an entirely different topic.
posted
But it's a much more INTERESTING topic, I thought, than whether or not Bob's opinion matters to everyone. And as my take on it was directly relevant to the discussion you and I were having about experience being necessary for verification, I found it a useful digression. Don't you agree?
posted
Since we're never going to agree whether discernment through means other than the 5 physical senses can produce useful knowledge, I'm not sure how useful it is. In this case, the evidence on one side is oral history. I believe it's the inspired word of God. You don't. On the other side is basically a set of norms that we've observed through the scientific method. I'm a firm believer in the scientific method. I just don't believe it's the only way to confirm truth.
By confirm truth, I mean to decide something is likely enough so as to act as if it's true. I have a high enough confidence (faith, if you will) that the Bible is the indpired word of God that I make many important life decisions based on it. As to whether people literally lived 1000 years, I don't need to decide that, since I don't plan to model my life on Methuseleh in order to live that long. BUT, I do believe those stories are there for a reason, that in some essential way they are true, and that speculating on the how and why is a useful exercise.
Dagonee Edit: In other words, as interesting as it might be, it's not a refutation of any point I made in the thread or any point I'm likely to make.
posted
I want to say something that this thread makes me think about. Here at hatrack we're able to discuss religious things with great respect for all views. I think that's the only way to discuss things like that. AJ's friend's comments made me think about this. And then this morning as I was reading in "The Brothers Karamazov" Dmitri's impassioned description of the human condition, I was struck again with how wise and brilliant was Dostoyevsky, who was first an atheist and then later a devout believer.
Back when I was an atheist, my dad once started to jump down my throat about it, and my mom interrupted him and said, "plenty of people a whole lot smarter than you have believed that through the years". And she meant it was true for all sides. Whenever anyone is tempted to have contempt or disdain for a different religious viewpoint than their own, they can with a few minute's research turn up people who believed that, who were far more intelligent, deeper thinkers, greater artists, with more understanding of life, the world and the human soul than they.
Any follower of Christ, in any case, ought never to have disdain or contempt for others, or be quick to ascribe to them bad or unworthy motives.
Yet we tend to do that (all of us, I think) again and again. We have this tendency to slip back into thinking we are right and everybody else is wrong and that's the end of the question.
Ceasing to question, failing to seek and try to learn more, in itself, seems to me to be an unwise course. Closing our minds to outside thoughts. At the very least, gaining a more appreciative understanding of another viewpoint is always worthwhile.
That's why I think hatrack is great, and why I'm grateful for hatrack. It's one of the very few places in which religious differences can be discussed with this sort of respect.
[ June 22, 2004, 10:59 AM: Message edited by: ak ]
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quote:Any follower of Christ, in any case, ought never to have disdain or contempt for others, or be quick to ascribe to them bad or unworthy motives.
Yet we tend to do that (all of us, I think) again and again. We have this tendency to slip back into thinking we are right and everybody else is wrong and that's the end of the question.
Ceasing to question, failing to seek and try to learn more, in itself, seems to me to be an unwise course. Closing our minds to outside thoughts. At the very least, gaining a more appreciative understanding of another viewpoint is always worthwhile.
This is great! It is also true for everyone, not just Christians. Wonderful post!
Thanks!
Back to the topic at hand, I think, Dag, that you have been doing a bit of deliberate misconstruing. If your biggest problem with what I said was about my use of the word discernment, then I do think you missed my point.
My point was, really, that these made up explanations don't add anything of value to scripture. I personally find this kind of thing offensive, but I've already apologized for taking offense and I'm not going to go down that road again. I'll just state calmly (I hope) that the problem with all of these attempts is that they ignore the real beauty of the scripture in order to "figure it out."
I'm not averse to speculation, however. As ak so rightly pointed out, we should never close our minds to alternative ways of thinking about a topic.
And it is rather fun to try to come up with plausible explanations for something weird like this.
I just wish to add that one of the alternatives that should be considered is that the stories are not to be taken literally and that the use of the bizarre longevity figures is actually an explicit invitation by the authors to look for a deeper and more spiritual meaning. It's like a fantasy story, you suspend disbelief to get at the deeper truth. Same thing here. We don't have to pick it apart to make it make sense given our imperfect knowledge of the universe, science and theology.
We can just accept it and look for the deeper meaning.
Anyway, let's call that one way to look at it and not argue about whether I'm personally right or wrong.
Special to Mabus -- interesting selection. I wasn't going to go there because it perhaps implies some very troubling things about God's love. If the Mosaic laws are not for the good of the people God gave them to, well...let's just say I choose not to believe that God is perverse and COMPLETELY inscrutable from a human frame of reference.
I'm sure there's a lot of commentary in the Jewish tradition that might enlighten us on this topic. Rivka? Anyone?
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posted
Hey, ak, go back and read sun's post in this thread. It's a pretty solid argument against people having that life span.
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quote:Back to the topic at hand, I think, Dag, that you have been doing a bit of deliberate misconstruing. If your biggest problem with what I said was about my use of the word discernment, then I do think you missed my point.
I never said anything about your use of the word discernment being my biggest problems with your post. The only reason it got any more play than the one sentence I spent on it was because Tom took that one sentence totally out of context. Had I paid more attention to that point, Tom probably wouldn't have done so.
quote:My point was, really, that these made up explanations don't add anything of value to scripture. I personally find this kind of thing offensive, but I've already apologized for taking offense and I'm not going to go down that road again. I'll just state calmly (I hope) that the problem with all of these attempts is that they ignore the real beauty of the scripture in order to "figure it out."
See, here's what I totally don't understand. Examining possible mechanisms for the extended ages and seeing how they interact with various moral teachings of the surrounding text seems like a very good framework for examining scripture for deeper truths. One of those deeper truths is that the Fall affected every single aspect of human existence.
I guess the problem is that you saw the attempts to "figure it out" as the extent of the analysis. There's no reason discussing one aspect of scripture mandates ignoring other aspects.
quote:I just wish to add that one of the alternatives that should be considered is that the stories are not to be taken literally and that the use of the bizarre longevity figures is actually an explicit invitation by the authors to look for a deeper and more spiritual meaning. It's like a fantasy story, you suspend disbelief to get at the deeper truth. Same thing here. We don't have to pick it apart to make it make sense given our imperfect knowledge of the universe, science and theology.
We can just accept it and look for the deeper meaning.
I agree this is one possibility; nor does this possibility contradict any of my beliefs. But we spend pages speculating about the motivations of entirely made up characters on this board or exactly how an enigmatic woodsmen is immune to an evil ring. I think you miss an entire dimension when you limit your speculation to the moral and not to the untold portions of the tale.
quote:Anyway, let's call that one way to look at it and not argue about whether I'm personally right or wrong.
This is exactly what I wanted throughout this discussion, for everyone's way of looking at it.
Dagonee Edit: I just had to add this:
quote:Hey, ak, go back and read sun's post in this thread. It's a pretty solid argument against people having that life span.
No, it's a pretty solid argument against people having that life span without divine intervention of some kind.
posted
I'm supposing an intelligence with knowledge that far exceeds ours being in the equation, which definitely changes things. I'm not putting forth any hypothesis about how it was done, only giving the example of a counterintuitive lengthening of lifespan that we DO know how to achieve (though I don't think anyone understands yet how it works in terms of telomeres, etc.). I think I'm starting from the premise that there's a whole lot more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our current philosophies.
And the Troy example shows that oral histories are often more accurate than people have given them credit for being.
That's why I consider it to be a reasonable possibility. However I won't argue with anyone who says we don't know at this point how to duplicate those results.
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quote:Out of interest, do those of you who believe in the Biblical ancients ALSO believe in Chinese claims of mystics who have routinely lived 1000 years or more, often said to be due to diet, chi, and genetics?
Sure, why not? Maybe they were talking about the same ancestors.
Sun explained telomeres, not that they couldn't figure into a vastly longer lifespan.
I find it interested that most of our medical research is conducted on animals with much much shorter lifespans than us. A mouse or rat can only last 4 years, top IIRC. Of course this contracted lifespan is why they are good for research, but it also means that not everything we learn from them is applicable. Their immune systems are nowhere near as complex as ours.
So I've just always kind of thought, if seven dog years fit into one of ours, is it impossible that seven of our years could fit into another vertebrate's? If we are physiologically analogous to a mouse that lives 1/20th of our lifespan, is it impossible that something physically analogous to us could last 20 times as long?
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quote:And the Troy example shows that oral histories are often more accurate than people have given them credit for being.
You mean like gods making men invincible? Most myths are based on some sort of somewhat actual occurance. If not, people have nothing to base things from.
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posted
I saw a special on Discovery or animal planet that, for mammals, lifespan has a fairly regular relationship to pulse rate. They put up a chart of a bunch of animals on the screen that showed mice, rabbits, dogs, deer, and elephants all living roughly the same number of heartbeats.
posted
Another thought... suppose that via natural selection populations that matured sexually sooner had a survival advantage as they could outbreed the groups where an individual had to survive to 300 before reproducing. Since I believe variation and natural selection are facts, even if no one has explained chomosome jumping for me yet. (That is, how we get from a common ancestor to humans with x+1 chromosome and chimps with x-1 chromosome)
I hope we are all agreed that gains in lifespan since the middle ages have been due to advances in hygeinic technology and medicine.
The age of sexual maturation continues to go down, though consensus on why they would be is far from established.
P.S. I already explained how it happens on a population wide level. But it now seems to be happening from environmental reasons. I have heard theories on bovine growth hormones in milk, flouride, and the estrogenic compounds in plastics.
quote: Special to Mabus -- interesting selection. I wasn't going to go there because it perhaps implies some very troubling things about God's love. If the Mosaic laws are not for the good of the people God gave them to, well...let's just say I choose not to believe that God is perverse and COMPLETELY inscrutable from a human frame of reference.
I'm sure there's a lot of commentary in the Jewish tradition that might enlighten us on this topic. Rivka? Anyone?
If you're asking what I think you're asking, then I would say that the laws of kashrut and other such laws are primarily for spiritual, not physical reasons. However, there may be some health benefits -- that's a bonus. (Which is not to say that a kosher diet cannot be extremely unhealthy. Gribbenes -- the kosher answer to pork rinds -- are a good example of that.)
So it could easily be that a law is spiritually healthful, but physically not. (Although there is a tradition that physical harm cannot come to a person by doing a mitzvah (commandment). However, this is usually explained as only when the motivations are entirely pure. I cannot claim mine are -- but perhaps those of the aforementioned predeluvians were?)
To comment also on what Dagonee said, I'd like to add that in Jewish traditional exegesis, there are considered to be as many as 40 layers of meaning in the text. But one is always the p'shat, the plain (generally the literal) meaning. So these great ages can both have many non-literal lessons and still be literally true. (I don't know if they are or not -- I started an interesting discussion on the topic at my Sunday night class. I blame Hatrack! )
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posted
rivka, what do you do when the non-literal interpretations appears to claim that the literal isn't possible or true?
It seems to me that this is certainly the case with the claim that the ages of the patriarchs CANNOT be taken literally, or least shouldn't be...
Sounds like you had an interesting discussion. Anything you can share?
Dag, I don't really see the spiritual side of your proposed explanations other than the assertion by you (and others) that the reason we don't live as long as the patriarchs is that we are not as spiritually close to God as they were.
I must be missing something. Is there more to that thesis?
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quote: rivka, what do you do when the non-literal interpretations appears to claim that the literal isn't possible or true?
Bob, I think you're asking about mutually exclusive, yet valid, interpretations of the same piece of text? (For example: Rivka (the matriarch) was 3 when she married Yitzchak; no she was 13.) We say, "Eilu v'eilu divrei Elokim chayim -- This and this are both the words of God."
How can two mutually exclusive facts both be true? In the strictly historical sense, they can't. However, as the rabbi who teaches my class likes to say, the (written) Torah is primarily a source of inspiration -- its functions as history and Law are secondary. So both can be True without being true.
quote: Sounds like you had an interesting discussion. Anything you can share?
Not easily -- it connected to the piece we've been covering for the last few months (which is why I brought it up).
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You apologized for earlier, but I think this topic has been far more interesting because of your posts. I dont really have much to add on this, I just like seeing what other people think. Look at me, lurking on my own topic Posts: 473 | Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
Not about to read 3 pages of Genesis conjecturing, but a small correction from page 1:
quote:People ate healthier back then (not as much meat)
The human body was built for a hunter/gatherer diet. Agriculture provided cheap calories to spawn population growth, but the level of disease shown in post-agro skeletons (Mesoamerica is the usual source) is astoundingly higher than those of a few generations prior.
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quote:Dag, I don't really see the spiritual side of your proposed explanations other than the assertion by you (and others) that the reason we don't live as long as the patriarchs is that we are not as spiritually close to God as they were.
I must be missing something. Is there more to that thesis?
I don't know. We got bogged down in the details and never explored them.
Dagonee Edit: On re-reading this sounds snarky. It wasn't meant to be, but I posted right after I checked my grades and didn't get them, about two minutes after I woke up. Sorry if it sounds snarky - I wasn't blaming you for the lack of details.
posted
OK, I've had a whole metro ride to think about this. The implication is not that we are spiritually farther from God. The key is that after the Fall, EVERY aspect of our lives changed. We are not living any aspect of the life that was planned and given to us. Granted, these lives are after the Fall, but the implication throughout the Bible is that God moved much more directly in the world and through his people.
Speculating on the mechanism helps you think of different ways that difference could manifest. If it was some way of living based on knowledge given by God, that says one thing. If it was direct intervention by God in particular people's lives, it says another.
Some of the patriarchs were said to "walk with God." Was this a poetic device suggesting they followed the Lord's path? Or did it mean something more basic, that these people were accompanied by God in some substantive, but probably not physical, way? Did this have anything to do with the longevity?
Death is said to have come about because of the Fall. Was this a punishment? The withdrawal of a particular gift that went along with the Garden? Was it a property of the Garden? Or was it intrinsic to humanity, a quality voluntarily relinquished?
I think each of these alternatives is an aspect of the entire truth which is inaccessible to us, both because of the inherent weakness of language and the lack of particular knowledge. In other words, the Truth, in its entirety, is not comprehendible to us. But small parts of the Truth are understandable when examined separately. And each examination helps the mind aprehend the whole in a slightly more complete way.
None of these speculations can be confirmed. But by examining each one as if it were true, we can ask, "what are the implications if this were true?" Each implication can be compared to other implications derived from other aspects of Scriptures and examined to see if it's likely to be part of the truth.
Jesus taught in parables, in stories that were not true but were True. This is one of the reasons I love Tolkein so much - he presents alternative ways of looking at things that are not accurate, but contain reflections of the Truth in them. It's not that any of these ideas on the longevity can be proven true. It's that each one, if true, can help us to think about God's word in a new way.
And there's always the possibility that these actual people did not live these actual lifespans, and that the stories are there merely to inspire the type of examination I've been talking about. But I'm sure that some people somewhere lived lives much longer (maybe only 100 years) than was normal, and that this had something to do with their relationship to the Lord. And that contemplating this fact, and the reasons for it, is a valuable means of examining the Scripture.
posted
Interesting discussion. I have always been in the camp of those that believe their lifespans really were that long and that something significant changed after the flood. I don't claim to have any theories on what that change might have been, but I was intrigued with the suggestion that God decided, and stated so, that He would shorten the time allowed each man on the earth.
I have also thought the paralleles to the Numenoreans were interesting. Since I believe there is a great deal of scripture that we don't have and much that has not been revealed to us, it doesn't seem strange at all to me to think there might be so much more going on here than we know about.
I am also of the belief that in Adam and Eve's time, the land of Earth was gathered into one land-mass (Pangea) and that the only information we have on the land-mass being divided is a couple of old-testament mentions:
quote: Gen. 10: 25
25 And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg•; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.
1 Chr. 1: 19 mostly says the same thing. There is also in the creation story of Genesis the statement of the waters being gatherered together in one place, and mentions (in LDS scripture only) of the land being brought back together to be as it was before it was divided. (This would be after Christ's Second Coming, I think.)
Surely if this is the case (rather sudden continental drift) there must be quite a story behind it! But it is just briefly glossed over. (I have no idea how many other people of different Old-Testament-believing religions believe this also or if this is unique to LDS teachings.)
This also reminds me of the occurence of "giants" in the old testament. We certainly don't see people walking around these days the stature of Goliath. But this story, like the mentions of age and other fantastic stories can definitely seem to some like just another example of "tall tales" being passed down from generation to generation.
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posted
I'm pretty sure Pangaea broke up long before human beings evolved.
The best explanations I've ever heard for the various catastrophes in Genesis (including the flood) is that they were local events affecting the Mediterranean area, for example.
Otherwise, you really do have to come up with a plausible explanation for the remaking/reshaping of the Earth in such a short time frame and the unlikely survival of ANY life upon it. The only explanation would be some outside force making it work. The problem is that there's so much evidence of gradual change and no evidence of that much rapid change circa 12,000 to 6,000 years ago.
Sure, God could have done it. But the physical evidence suggests that God did NOT do it at all. The only evidence in favor of this rapid overwhelming change comes from a written account of oral history, made many many years after the actual events.
By the way, rivka, I understand the "this is true and this is also true," idea, but it seems just another way of tossing ones hands up in the air and saying "we don't get it."
It also puts scriptural evidence on a par with scientific evidence. Which seems odd to me given that one is something we can actually replicate and generate testable hypotheses from and the other is an appeal to authority about which we know little and can't really test anything.
The two are at their root mutually incompatible views of the way evidence works.
I think I like the separate magesteria approach a lot better. It says, for example, that if you want to know about the Earth, study geology, if you want to know about God, study theology. And don't try to mix the two because the result doesn't work intellectually.
Oh well. I probably can't be convinced of the value of a different approach because I think the alternatives are fairly unsatisfactory in that they either don't resolve questions or they require too much "looking sideways" at the science or the theology, or both.
I just don't think we can have it both ways and still have functional science and functional theology.
I haven't seen a blend yet that works, at any rate.
Maybe someone someday will surprise me.
Actually, I'd go further to say that science is a great way to study God and how God did things. It still doesn't answer why or with what purpose in mind. And it never will, I don't think.
I think our knowledge of natural science is also a good way to decide which parts of Scripture are likely to have mostly allegorical meaning -- pointing us to look at the stories differently and see what we can gleen from them other than the literal meaning which is contradicted by the available scientific evidence.
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posted
But I think the parts which are "contradicted by scientific evidence" are precisely those parts which need the most attention paid, because they are good indications that something different happened.
It's not like the people who wrote it didn't know that what they were writing was not representative of the natural norm. Science hasn't discovered anything that makes any part of the Bible more or less miraculous.
posted
Yeah, I'm cool with scientific evidence leaning in another direction. That is the case against a lot of Biblical accounts. But I am content that there is much of our universe that "science" does not see.
*Again sympathizes with agnostics.*
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quote:25 And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg•; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother’s name was Joktan.
I see it as more likely that this verse refers to a dividing up of the area by different population groups or families, and not to Pangaea at all.
Noah's descendants had to divide the land between them, which implies that they couldn't get along well enough to share the same land. The hope for a return to an Edenic state of harmony (after the cleansing of the flood) was thwarted by human nature.
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posted
It's interesting that I can see and sympathize with Bob's position totally. I agree that people who say things like, "evolution didn't happen, we don't share a common ancestor with cats or chimps or chipmunks or protozoa, and I know that because of this text in my holy book," are on a dead-end path. The pope tried that with Copernicus and Gallileo, and it just didn't turn out to be a very useful approach to the universe. I think the current attempt by some churches to put on blinders and deny Darwin is exactly the same thing. Another example I read was the founder of the Hari Krishna movement, Sri Prabhupada, a wise and holy man, saying that the other stars were not suns in their own right, they shone by the light of the sun. Obviously there is some meaning in the passage he cites from his holy text to back that up, but I can't see it as an accurate guide for astronomical theories.
However, there IS a very fruitful way of interacting with the stories of the Bible, and it involves being open to the possibility of their truth on many levels, not excluding their literal truth. As God is authoring the universe, there isn't really any limit to his ability to affect how things happen here, other than the limits he puts on himself. So we study both science and religion to learn about the universe. They complement each other and don't conflict.
In other words, God COULD HAVE created the universe in 7 days with all species pre-formed, but the study of geology, astronomy, paleontology, and so on teach us that He did not choose to do so.
His story makes sense on many levels, and I personally believe that when a miracle occurs, no laws of the universe are being violated, but rather because of His deep knowledge of physics and everything else, He can figure out how to make things happen however He wants. In the same way that a walkie talkie would seem miraculous to a society of primitive hunter gatherers, the miracles seem miraculous to us, but are things we could understand, were we developed enough mentally and spiritually.
Another thing that seems to be true is that when God intervenes into reality, there is always some alternative explanation for what happens besides direct divine intervention. Whether this is so people won't be so terrified or what, I'm not sure. Maybe it's just an aesthetic thing, avoidance of the deus ex machina in His work of art, because that's a cheap device and He's a higher level of artist than that. Or maybe there are reasons beyond our ken. It does seem to be the way it works, though.
[ June 23, 2004, 09:09 PM: Message edited by: ak ]
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quote: By the way, rivka, I understand the "this is true and this is also true," idea, but it seems just another way of tossing ones hands up in the air and saying "we don't get it."
Then I didn't explain it very well.
Our brains are not binary, the way computers are. They are associative -- neural nets. That allows us to believe two contradictory things simultaneously. For example, that Person X is both an insufferable idiot, and one of the nicest people I've ever met. A binary or more linear brain would make that difficult or impossible, I think.
I think this is deliberate: God wants us to develop the ability to tolerate and deal with ambiguity. Not too much -- believing too many contradictory things sounds a lot like insanity -- but also not limiting ourselves to strictly linear thinking.
Accordingly, the Torah contains things which are straightforward and direct, and things which are deliberately ambiguous, where we are MEANT to develop our deductive reasoning. (Of course, there may be some argument as to which parts are which.)
It's not just saying "we don't know" -- it's saying "we don't NEED to know" or even "it is better that we do not know, because it allows us to glean multiple lessons from the single text" -- going back to those 40 levels of meaning I mentioned. Dagonee said
quote: But by examining each one as if it were true, we can ask, "what are the implications if this were true?"
and I agree entirely.
quote: It also puts scriptural evidence on a par with scientific evidence. Which seems odd to me given that one is something we can actually replicate and generate testable hypotheses from and the other is an appeal to authority about which we know little and can't really test anything.
Oh no, not at all. It puts scriptural evidence above scientific evidence. But that's ok, science is getting better all the time.
I am familiar with the separate magesteria approach, and on a practical level (i.e., when I teach science classes), I basically agree with it. And I think that many of the books that try to reconcile the two viewpoints not only fail miserably, but are both bad science and bad theology.
However, on a purely personal level, I disagree. The way I look at the world is inextricably tied both to my religious beliefs and my interest in, and knowledge of, science. And I wouldn't have it any other way.
posted
Yohzik, I expect that that is the general interpretation of that passage of scripture. Taken alone, it makes the most sense. I don't have a firm idea in my mind that it definitely is talking about continental divide, but with the other passages I am thinking of, I lean in that direction.
Yeah, on the subject of giants, the NBA came to my mind too.
Just out of curiosity, about when was the concept of a continental divide first being explored? I have no idea.
Ak, your thoughts are pretty close to how I feel about things. I have never felt that evolution and creation are mutually exclusive.
quote: Our brains are not binary, the way computers are. They are associative -- neural nets. That allows us to believe two contradictory things simultaneously. For example, that Person X is both an insufferable idiot, and one of the nicest people I've ever met. A binary or more linear brain would make that difficult or impossible, I think.
I really don't think that's a logical conclusion. The wiring might be binary, but the program could likely handle it.
Actually, rivka, in the history of Hatrack your last is among my 10 favorite posts. It bumped out one of my own puns, so you know it must be near and dear to my heart.
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Was it just my kudos to rivka that were well said? I mean, I'm happy to be known as a rivka cheerleader, but a fella still wants some recognition in his own right. Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I find it amusing -- but not particularly surprising -- that Bob greatly enjoyed my one-liner (well, I guess it was technically a two-liner) more than the post that took me half an hour to compose. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Unless you're just kidding around, you mistook me, rivka. I was absolutely applauding your longer post. It seriously is one of the most perfect things that has ever been posted on Hatrack.
And it's taken you a lifetime to post it, not just a half hour. You put your knowledge and experience in it, neh?
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rivka. Well said.
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