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Saturday, 11 July 2009
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Currently
Who Wrote the Bible?
By Richard E. Friedman
see relatedBOTH of Noah's Floods
If one is familiar with the documentary hypothesis, then one knows that the theory states that the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament) were not written at once by Moses, but instead written by at least four authors and a redactor who spliced it all together later on. The authors were given alphabetic symbols for names:
- J, because this author was associated with the divine name Jehovah/Yahweh (normally translated into LORD in all capitol letters in English translations like the NIV I have below).
- E, the author who referred to the deity as God (Elohim, in Hebrew).
- P, who authored most of the Torah and dealt mainly with legal issues and matters dealing with the priests (hence P).
- D, who appears to have written all of Deuteronomy and nothing else.
A great example of some strange redacting of two authors' accounts can be found in the story of the great deluge, better known as Noah's Flood. It is a combination of the Priestly (P) source and Jehovic (J) source. The P source will be in bold and italics:Genesis 6:5-8:22
5 The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. 7 So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.9 This is the account of Noah.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. 10 Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth.11 Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence. 12 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. 13 So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress [a] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15[b] 16 Make a roof for it and finish [c] the ark to within 18 inches [d] of the top. Put a door in the side of the ark and make lower, middle and upper decks. 17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. 18 But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you. 19 You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. 20 Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. 21 You are to take every kind of food that is to be eaten and store it away as food for you and for them." This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.
22 Noah did everything just as God commanded him.
Genesis 7
1 The LORD then said to Noah, "Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven [e] of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and two of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made."
5 And Noah did all that the LORD commanded him.
6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.
13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the LORD shut him in.
17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 1920 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet. [f] , [g] 21 Every living thing that moved on the earth perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 2223 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.
24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.
Genesis 8
1 But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded. 2 Now the springs of the deep and the floodgates of the heavens had been closed, and the rain had stopped falling from the sky. 3 The water receded steadily from the earth. At the end of the hundred and fifty days the water had gone down, 4 and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. 5 The waters continued to recede until the tenth month, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains became visible.
6 After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark 7 and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. 9 But the dove could find no place to set its feet because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. 10 He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. 1112 He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.
13 By the first day of the first month of Noah's six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. Noah then removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. 14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry.
15 Then God said to Noah, 16 "Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. 17 Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it."
18 So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons' wives. 19 All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark, one kind after another.
20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. 21 The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: "Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though [h] every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.
22 "As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease."Try reading earch version seperately (the P version while skipping the J version, the J version while skipping the P version) and you'll see it's the same story told twice in two different styles. They can each be read on their own. The styles are markedly different as well.
- The P story (the bold and italicized one) always refers to the deity as God, while the J version always uses the name "the LORD."
- P refers to the sex of the animals with the words "male and female." J uses the terms "man and his woman" as well as male and female.
- P says that everything "expired" (probably including the milk). J says that everything "died."
- P has one pair of each kind of animal. J has seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean animals.
- P pictures the flood as lasting a year (370 days). J says it was forty days and forty nights.
- P has Noah send out a raven. J says a dove.
- P obviously has a concern for ages, dates, and measurements in cubits. J doesn't.
- J pictures a deity who can regret things that he has done (6:6-7), which raises interesting theological questions, such as whether an all-powerful, all-knowing being would ever regret past actions (but I digress). J pictures a deity who can be "grieved to his heart" (6:6), who personally closes the ark (7:16) and smells Noah's sacrifice (8:21). This anthropomorphic quality of J is virtually entirely lacking in P. In P, God is regarded more as a transcendent controller of the universe.
Friday, 10 July 2009
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Currently
Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot
By Al Franken
see relatedA Day in the Life of Joe Republican
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.
Joe has to pay his underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.
He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”
Thursday, 09 July 2009
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Currently
Childhood's End
By Arthur C. Clarke
see relatedRevelife Submissions
So Revelife recently featured a past post of mine (that I don't remember submitting, but thank you to whomever did) about My Favorite Bible Verses. What surprised me most was that they kept the comic I included in the post, especially since they edited my previous submission somewhat. Now, I'm asking you all to vote on more of my posts to get featured on Revelife. The voting page can be found from this link. The following are posts I've already submitted to be featured:
True Story: About a Christian Scientist girl I met in the hospital whose family disowned her for getting her fatal brain tumor surgically removed.
How I Became an Atheist: My personal saga from Christian to Apatheist to Born Again to Deist to Agnostic to Atheist.
The Creationist Concept of Kind: How disbelieving in evolution by common decent necessitates believing in a form of "super evolution" there is absolutely no evidence or precedent for.
Again, follow this link to vote for any of the previous entries mentioned (the links I provided are to the stories as they appear on my own site so you know what you're voting for). As of the time of my writing this, they all have exactly one vote (my own) and thus are all tied for third place for the front page.
The following are posts I plan on submitting in the future (or wouldn't mind if any of you submitted, so I don't seem so goddamned [pun intended] narcissistic):
Theodicy - God's Defense: All the possibilities or impossibilities to reconcile the existence with an omnibenevolent (all-good) god.
Failed Prophecies: Prophecies within the Hebrew Bible (known to most as the old testament) that have not, will not, and/or cannot come true.
Pascal's Wager: The problems with "hedging your bets" by believing in the Christian God.
Want to Reduce the Number of Abortions? Here's My Plan: A plan I devised (although I'm sure it's not original) to reduce abortions without eliminating Roe v. Wade and outlawing abortion. Basically, "pro-life" needs to extend to the pregnant pre-mother and to the post-fetus, something many "pro-life" advocates seem to forget.
Morality Without God: People question me, as an atheist, as to how/why I obey morally without a divine police presence looking over me.
Let me know which of the others I should submit (or submit them yourselves), and vote for any of the first three that have already been submitted (or don't vote, as you see fit). I just feel that Revelife needs some rationalism thrown into its mix, even if it is just to let the Revelife "trolls" kick it in the internet equivelent of the gonads.
And to counteract all the Christianity and Revelife-ness:
P.S. REC the hell out of this so Revelife is inundated by atheist entries.Do you think me being on Revelife is a good idea, or is this just another piece of evidence for why we need an "atheist-ish" (a name I hate, by the way...got any better ones? Rationalish? How about Reasonish? Soloish? ) site?
Tuesday, 07 July 2009
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Currently
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
By Sam Harris
see relatedThe Ethics of Torture
I think nearly every person who is reading this right now believes that torture is wrong. But is this always the case? I was forced to reconsider the notion while reading the works of Sam Harris. He poses a "ticking-bomb case", which works as follows:
"Imagine that a known terrorist has planted a large bomb in the heart of a nearby city. This man now sits in your custody. As to the bomb's location, he will say nothing except that the site was chosen to produce the maximum loss of life. Given this state of affairs - in particular, given that there is still time to prevent an imminent atrocity - it seems there would be no harm in dusting off the strappado and exposing this unpleasant fellow to a suasion of bygone times."
If this situation doesn't move you, imagine your seven-year-old daughter slowly asphyxiated in a warehouse just five minutes away, while the man in your custody holds the keys to her release. If your own daughter won't tip the scales, add the daughters of all your neighbors. I know that when things get personal, 24-style torture seems like a good idea. I'm militantly against capital punishment, but if someone did anything to my girlfriend I can guarantee it'd take a whole hell of a lot to stop me from finding whoever hurt her and damaging him in ways Torquemada of the Spanish Inquisition would be proud of.
But this only works when we know that the person in question is 100% guilty. What happens when the person's guilt is a matter of some uncertainty? As Harris points out, restraint of use of torture in a situation like this "cannot be reconciled with our willingness to wage war in the first place." After all, what is "collateral damage" but the inadvertent torture of innocent bystanders? Whenever we drop bombs on an enemy country, we do so knowing that some children will be blinded, paralyzed, orphaned and killed as a result. It poses an interesting question about our nature that makes some balk at the concept of torturing Osama bin Laden, but shrug off the idea of dropping bombs on some obviously innocent people. As Jonathan Glover points out, "in modern war, what is most shocking is a poor guide to what is most harmful."
Imagine you were told that your grandfather flew a bombing mission over Dresden in WWII. Hearing this is quite different from hearing that he killed a man with a shovel. Although it's almost certain that more people were killed in more horrible ways in the first case, the second causes a more severe moral reaction.
I'm not going to make any conclusions based upon this, but I thought it was an interesting - and disturbing - concept.What would you do in these situations?
Monday, 06 July 2009
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Currently
Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter
By Rick Shenkman
see relatedWe're Number One!
I got a reprieve from the hospital for a weekend vacation, which I spent getting reacquainted with a side of my family that I have previously had little to no contact with. After meeting many of these people, some of whom had more NASCAR tattoos than teeth, I realized that I was happier before making contact. These people were rednecks in redneck country (I should explain: this part of northern Minnesota is like rural Texas with the accent from the movie Fargo, plus eight months of the year you can't leave your front door without getting frostbite on your testicles.) I spent the fourth of July lighting explosives that I'm sure are illegal in Minnesota, not to mention the rest of the United States (and most of the free world). Because what better way to celebrate your country's independence then by blowing up a small part of it? And their mentality reminded me of one of the things I hated most about America under the Bush years (and which apparently still hasn't died, but is just waiting for the resurrection of Ronald Reagan to come out into the open again): the attitude of America being better than everyone and everything else in the universe.
Amongst the most obnoxious tenancies of redneck culture her in the US is to declare the United States as number one, with no regard for what that actually means. It seems to come out especially loudly when the Olympics or any other foreign event happens to be held on our soil, as if chanting "U.S.A.!" loudly enough will convince all other nations of our superiority.
In total industrial output, political clout, and military spending there is no doubt that America is number one. But I posit that the way we care for our own might be a more telling criteria than these. So please consider:- The US is 49th in the world in literacy, and is 28th out of 40 ranked nations in mathematical literacy.
- Our provision and quality of health care and medicine ranks near the bottom of industrialized nations.
- Childhood poverty is more prevalent here than in all developed countries save for Mexico.
- The best run companies and most successful banks are predominantly European.
- The proportion of scientific articles published by Americans is declining sharply..
- The US ranks 41st in the world in infant mortality.
The rest of the world seems to regard America as greedy, violent, rude and immoral. That's a rather full range of dislike. And attitudes about America's governing body is even more negative. The most prominent view of America by outsiders is that America cares only about itself.
Our constant chanting of "we're number one!" is an affront to the people of the world, and this includes foreign policy that we believe we know better than the rest of the world about. (And Iraq has quite obviously shown that we're wrong about that.) This national arrogance just creates fissures in our relationships with the rest of the world. It also gives us a false sense that if we're number one, nothing is wrong in "God's favorite country", nevermind those infant mortality numbers. America needs to make a concerted effort, at both the government and individual level, to realize that there's a lot of world out there besides us, and we're far less than number one in quite a few things.
Did you know: In America, no matter who you are, you are 150 times more likely to be arrested than mugged (this includes New York City, where the study originated.
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