Posts

Showing posts from 2017

Methodological Naturalism Explained - Why Science Can't Consider The Supernatural

I am going to make a bold statement. "For all practical purposes, it is always irrational to assign a supernatural cause to an event observed in the natural world." Now I am going to attempt to back up that statement. The only reason (of which I am aware) to assign a supernatural cause to a given event is the following: "I do not currently understand the details and outcome of this observation given my current state of knowledge and understanding of the natural world." Also, I suspect that many of you would prefer to add the caveat "And the details and outcome of this event are consistent with a particular supernatural belief or belief system", but that is clearly an example of circular reasoning and cannot be a valid part of this discussion.  The supernatural belief or belief system is, in fact, the item in question, or to be more accurate, the observation cannot be assigned a cause which has not been demonstrated, it can only be assigned a hypo

The State of Judaism at the Dawn of Christianity

The State of Judaism at the Dawn of Christianity * References coming soon * Modern Christianity seems to have a tendency to paint a picture of Jews around the time of Jesus being organized, in control, and in charge.  In fact, during and quite a bit before the time of Martin Luther (and unfortunately for a while after), it was commonplace for Christians to paint the Jews as a dedicated group of evildoers who had been hell-bent on the murder of our Savior.  However, the state of the Jewish people between 70 BCE and 70 CE tells us a very different story. "The Conquest of Judea" Scholarship tells us that the Jews had been defeated by Rome at Jerusalem about a hundred years prior (ca. 63 BCE), during a time when Jewish factions were warring against each other.  The nation of Israel was subjugated under Roman rule, with excessive taxation and harsh decrees which prevented them from practicing their religion.  The authority of the Sanhedrin, the Judges who had final and u

Attempt at A Unified Theory of Biblical Biology through Mutation and Special Selection, a Hypothetical Experiment of the Mind

The following is a summary of the hypothesis overall. If Bibles could suddenly copulate and reproduce (say, from a miraculous event), assuming that all versions of the Christian Bible (Yes, including the Catholic Bible. Shame on all you Protestants for assuming I meant just yours) could initially reproduce with each other; and Given an amount of time [t] between generations [g] and a mutation rate of, say, approximately one word per generation; and Given an environment where the selection mechanic is determined by human agreement [A] on the Bible; then It should be possible to calculate roughly the minimum number of generations it would take before a speciation event [e] occurs which produces a generation of Bibles which is universally agreed upon, with a margin of error of, say, plus or minus 1,000 people (perhaps 100 words?). The selection pressure would be determined by something like this:  Each generation [g] produces random mutations at the rate of approxi

Bronze-Age Credibility

So let me see if I understand this correctly… Modern Christianity believes that a particular group of bronze-age sheep herders were right about the biggest, most complex, and most important questions that humanity has ever asked.  They were right about life, the universe, and everything, right? So why is it that these same people think that that same exact group of bronze-age sheep herders were wrong about pretty much everything else?  Why do they trust them implicitly for the big important questions, but not the smaller, day-to-day life questions with real-world consequences?  Let’s take a look at just a handful of some of the things that the authors of the Bible believed: They believed that slavery was acceptable and practiced it regularly, including being able to sell your own children (Leviticus 25:44-46, Exodus 21:2-6, Exodus 21:7-11, etcetera and ad nauseum) . They believed that women should have to marry their rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) . They believed that