Clashes in Genesis

“In many cultures, it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must of course, ask next where God comes from.” - Carl Sagan (Cosmos p. 212)

Most Christians criticized the theory of evolution for being merely a theory, but not known to many, Christians can't even agree on what "creation process" they will believe in.

Different types of Christian Creation Process.

Q: Do All Christians agrees on the creative process?

Not all Christians believe in a single creative process. Interestingly, Evangelicals, Fundamentalist and Liberal Christians don’t agree with one another with respect to the original creative process.

The creative processes on Genesis are the following:
a.) Progressive Creation (Day-Age Theory)
b.) Gap Theory (Ruin-Reconstruction Theory)
c.) Theistic Evolution

Q: What is Progressive Creation?

Progressive Creation, AKA Old Earth creationism.

Progressive Creationists present God as doing many more creative miracles. That is, God creates the world in numerous progressive steps. That is why this belief is called "Progressive Creation" or "Process Creation." More commonly, some advocates of an old Earth, in an attempt to harmonize mainstream science with biblical literalism, hold that the six days referred to are not ordinary 24-hour days, but rather much longer periods (of thousands or millions of years); the Genesis account is then interpreted as an account of a progressive creation, or sometimes a summary of life's evolutionary history. This view is often called "Day-Age Creationism".

Although there is little widespread agreement among Progressive Creationists, they generally believe the following:

• The "Big Bang" is interpreted as God's way of producing stars and galaxies through billions-of-years of natural processes.
• The Earth and universe are billions of years old.
• The days of Creation were overlapping periods of millions and billions of years.
• Death and bloodshed have existed from the very beginning of Creation and were not the result of Adam's sin.
• Man was created after the vast majority of earth's history of life and death had already taken place.
• The flood of Noah was local, not global, and it had little effect on the Earth's geology, which represents billions of years of history.

It is obvious then that Progressive Creationism is a belief which opposes both atheistic evolutionism and historic Christianity's understanding of biblical creationism. The teachings of Progressive Creationism are not new or original, but only recently have the views of Progressive Creationism received unprecedented wide and favorable publicity through Christian radio, television and magazines. Because Progressive Creationists often present their views as being based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, they have been invited to speak at numerous prominent evangelical churches, schools and ministries.

Another concern for many Christians is the Progressive Creationist belief that the "days" of creation in Genesis 1 can be legitimately understood as long, undefined periods of time.

Q: What is the Gap Theory?
According to the Gap Theory, Genesis 1:1 describes the creation of the heavens and the earth, but then there is a "gap" of millions or billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2:
Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Genesis 1:2: "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

There are different variations of the Gap Theory, but there seems to be a common belief that there was a "pre-Adamite" race of people who lived on earth during this "gap," long before Adam and Eve were created.

In addition, there were many other forms of life on earth during this "gap," such as dinosaurs and other creatures and plants which have been found in the fossil record. The basic idea is that the fossil record and many of the geological changes which have taken place on the earth are remnants from this "gap" between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. Since many scientists tell us that it would have taken millions of years for the fossil evidence and the geological evidence to have been formed, the Gap Theory seems to provide Christians with a way to fit these "geologic ages" into the Bible while still believing in the six literal days of Creation and while denying the theory of evolution.

The basic Gap Theory goes on to say that there was a cataclysm of some kind which killed all life on earth and which left the earth "without form and void" and completely covered with water, and this water is "the deep" over which the Spirit of God hovered in Genesis 1:2. Therefore, the Gap Theory says that the "six days of Creation" in Genesis are not actually six days of Creation, but rather they are six days of re-creation after the cataclysm which destroyed the earth between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. For this reason, this theory is sometimes referred to as the Ruin and Reconstruction Theory. People who believe this theory tend to speculate that the "great cataclysm" which ruined the earth between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2 was caused in some way by the devil being cast down out of heaven.

Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), a notable Scottish theologian and first moderator of the Free Church of Scotland, was perhaps the man most responsible for the gap theory. (W.W. Fields, Unformed and Unfilled (Collinsville, IL: Burgeners Enterprises, 1976), p. 40.)

The idea can be traced back to the rather obscure writings of the Dutchman Episcopius (1583-1643), and was first recorded from one of Chalmers' lectures in 1814. Rev. William Buckland, a geologist, did much to popularize the idea.

Although Chalmers' writings give very little information about the gap theory, many of the details are obtained from other writers such as the 19th century geologist Hugh Miller, who quoted from Chalmers' lectures on the subject.

This ruin-reconstruction view is held by many who use Bible study aids such as the Scofield Reference Bible, Dake's Annotated Reference Bible, and The Newberry Reference Bible.
The most notably influential 19th century writer to popularize this view was G.H. Pember, in his book Earth's Earliest Ages, first published in 1884. Numerous editions of this work were published, with the 15th edition appearing in 1942.

The 20th century writer who published the most academic defense of the gap theory was the renowned Canadian anthropologist, Arthur C. Custance. Custance produced Without Form and Void (1970), which many consider the ablest defense of the Gap Theory ever put into print.

The basic reason for developing and promoting the gap theory can be seen from the following very telling quotes:
Scofield Study Bible: Relegate fossils to the primitive creation, and no conflict of science with the Genesis cosmogony remains.
Dake's Annotated Reference Bible: When men finally agree on the age of the earth, then place the many years (over the historical 6,000) between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, there will be no conflict between the Book of Genesis and science.

The above quotes are typical of the many compromise positions -- accepting so-called "science" and its long ages for the earth, and incorporating this into Scripture.

The Gap Theory has had, and continues to have, numerous supporters. George H. Pember, in Earth’s Earliest Ages (1876), advocated the Gap Theory. Harry Rimmer, in Modern Science and the Genesis Record (1937), helped popularize the theory. George DeHoff advocated the theory in Why We Believe the Bible (1944). 

J.D. Thomas, former chairman of the Bible Department at Abilene Christian University, has stated that “no man can prove that it is not true, at least in part” (1961, p. 54). The popular Scofield Reference Bible was first published in 1909; by 1917, it contained a reference to the Gap Theory in the footnotes accompanying Genesis 1. In more recent editions, references to the theory may be found as a footnote to Isaiah 45. John Clayton has accepted major portions of the Gap Theory, but has added to and deleted from the theory to produce what has come to be known as the Modified Gap Theory (see Clayton, 1976, pp. 147-148; Thompson, 1977, pp. 192-194; McIver, 1988, 8[3]:1-23; Jackson and Thompson, 1992, pp. 114-130).

Arguments Presented in Support of the Gap Theory
Advocates of the Gap Theory base their beliefs on several arguments, a summary of which is given here; comments and refutation follow.

Gap theorists suggest that the word bara (used in Genesis 1:1, 21, 27) must mean “to create” (i.e.: ex nihilo creation), while the word asah cannot mean “to create,” but rather means “to make.” Therefore, the original creation was “created”; the creation of the six days was “made” (i.e., “made over”).
Gap theorists suggest that the Hebrew verb hayetha (translated “was” in Genesis 1:2) should be rendered “became” or “had become”—a translation required in order to suggest a change of state from the original perfect creation of the chaotic conditions implied in verse 2.

Gap theorists believe that the “without form and void” of Genesis 1:2 (tohu wabohu) can refer only to something once in a state of repair, but now ruined. Pember accepted these words as expressing “an outpouring of the wrath of God.” Gap theorists believe that the cataclysm that occurred was on the Earth, and was the direct result of Satan’s rebellion against God. The cataclysm, of course, is absolutely essential to the Gap Theory. Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:11-17 are used as proof-texts to bolster the theory.

Gap theorists believe that Isaiah 45:18 (“God created the earth not in vain”—tohu; same word translated “without form” in Genesis 1:2) indicates that the Earth was not tohu at the initial creation. Therefore, they suggest, Genesis 1:2 can refer only to a judgment brought upon the Earth by God.
Gap theorists generally believe that there was a pre-Adamic creation of both non-human and human forms—a position adopted to account for the fossils present in the geologic strata.

C.I. Scofield, editor, The Scofield Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945). (Originally published as The Scofield Reference Bible, this edition is unaltered from the original of 1909.)F.H. Dake, Dake's Annotated Reference Bible, (Lawrenceville, GA: Dake Bible Sales, Inc., 1961), p. 51.

Q: What is Theistic Evolution?
Theistic evolution is the proposition that God is in charge of the biological process called evolution. God directs and guides the unfolding of life forms over millions of years. Theistic evolution contends that there is no conflict between science and the Biblical book of Genesis. Theistic evolution believes that new species of animals develop from existing species over a very long interval of time, in response to the guidance, supervision, and intervention of a deity.

Famous theistic evolutionists included Asa Gray, Darwin's correspondent, and Henry Drummond, whose Ascent of Man was a popular apologetic work of the 1890s. Among modern proponents of theistic evolution are theologian John Haught and astronomer Howard J Van Till.

Atheism on the march... and JW's were pissed. (Part 2)

It seems the Jehovah’s Witnesses are now affected by the "atheist scare" huh? In the latest Awake! (November 2010) they featured some stories about their issue against atheism.

These anti-atheist articles came out last September 2010.

The  first article is saying atheists are in a sort of "crusade". Crusade?

Ah OK...so atheists can't keep their view to themselves, say whom? Ah, those Jehovah's Witnesses who has this tradition of systematic, door-to-door sales pitch. They just love knocking to your gates in a peaceful Saturday morning to give you their magazines and try convincing you that the Jewish God name is "Jehovah."

These Jehovah's Witnesses who is knocking at your doors and doing the sales pitch not the atheists. In addition, what is the issue about atheist books? Why not write a JW best seller? Oh,  I get it, they seem to be having a hard time convincing people that it is a sin to salute to the American flag and to accept blood donations huh? Well...blame Red Cross not us atheists.

Moreover, when did we bully the agnostics? It seems the JW's doesn’t know that atheism and agnosticism can share a bed together. The issue here is, as Christopher Hitchin saw it, is how religion poison everything. This is beyond having a god belief or knowledge.

If a person believes that the gods are beyond human knowledge, then so be it. The only issue the New Atheists have with agnostics is that atheists now have factual evidences on the improbability of god. However, there is nothing wrong being an agnostic. Agnosticism will not make a person ram a jet plane into a building.

Whose Side Do You Think Time Will Vindicate?

The JW article poses two questions:

1.1. Is the belief in a Creator intrinsically harmful?

2.2. Would universal atheism makes for a better world?

Do these questions answer atheistic issues, or are the Jehovah Witnesses barking at the wrong tree? Let us explore them and, separate the fictions from the facts, and please...lets us have some ounces of honesty here.

Now, does believing in a Creator intrinsically harmful? It depends. If a person believes that a certain god ordered his people to refuse blood, thus letting her child die because of lack of blood, we have a problem.

In addition, what is this about “universal atheism?” Atheists are not interested with a so-called “universal atheism.” They just want to satisfy their skepticism towards religious claims. The issue here is not to proselytize atheism,  but free inquiry. When talking about something as “universal,” atheists are more interested on secularization: that church and state should be separated and that political decision should be based on reason rather than revelation.

I was wondering about this write-up on God’s view towards religious atrocities. Reading this gives me an impression; the people at Watch Tower are justifying God’s brutal action against the Canaanites.

In any case, the issue here is religious atrocities.

Besides, what is the difference between the Hebrews and the Canaanites when it comes to child sacrifices? The Hebrews were guilty of the same barbaric practice (See: Exodus 22:29-30 and Judges 11:39). According to Susan Niditch, “While there is considerable controversy about the matter, the consensus over the last decade concludes that child sacrifice was a part of ancient Israelite religion to large segments of Israelite communities of various periods.” (War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence p. 5)

So child sacrifice is only evil to Jehovah when it is done in the name of foreign gods huh?

Going back to the subject. So what are religious atrocities? I define it as violence and killing done in the name of God and the article seems to be skipping the subject altogether.

The next article (A WORLD WITHOUT RELIGION—AN IMPROVEMENT?) deals with the issue of a godless society. Again, the author seems to imply the connection of being morally good and believing in God. There are even pictures of something from Nazi death camps and Pol-Pot’s ‘Killing Fields’ in Cambodia.

Is there a connection?

It seems the article was implying that communism is synonymous with atheism. The JW article was quite misinformed on the issue. The crime committed by Pol-Pot has nothing to do with theological debates. The “Killing Fields” was about politics and ethnic cleansing, not atheistic.

So let us answer the question, is a society without religion an improvement? Oh…eh wait a minute there folks! This is a little bit of a tricky question. It seems the people at Watch Tower are ignorant to the fact that religion is not synonymous with god – belief. Maybe the better question is “if a society without a belief in a personal God an improvement?”

Well… we can study the statistics of a secular nation like Japan, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. Now these nations do have religion, yet they seem to be too secular to bring God in their everyday issues. Happy, successful and almost crime-free even if these countries do not care what Jehovah has to say.

Zuckerman, Phil. "Atheism: Contemporary Rates and Patterns", chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism , ed. by Michael Martin, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK (2005).

Religion is not the only reason why people kill other people… I agree, but it is “the reason” why a religious fanatic will blow himself together with innocent civilians as ordered by his “Holy Scripture.” As what Baise Pascal has already said, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction” and as Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg observed, “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.”

Religion can impose a certain action in which believers think of it as a duty the pious has to perform in order to please their gods. That is why good Christians blow-up abortion clinics, good Muslims can destroy and vandalized national heritage sites (like what the Taliban did to the Bamiyan Buddha in Afghanistan) and good God believing families can attack and kill AFT agents (like what happened in Waco, Texas).

Morality Requires God

Does atheism mean relative morality as what Law Professor Philip Johnson (who is he?) says? Well, according to this certain Mr. Johnson, “No God means no accountability to a divine authority, as well as no objective values which we are obligated to respect, morality thus becomes relative, with each person determining his own standards-if he chooses to have any.”

Now, it seems this Johnson fellow thinks that the standard of morality can only come from divine authority. That is not true. Before humans have invented religion, we already have a standard source of ethics…if not our ancestors may have already killed each other. Such a standard is significant in the formation of a working society.

Not every atheist on this planet believed in a relative morality. Good examples are Paul Kurtz, Michael Martin and Wielenberg. Others say that the structure of moral theory is objective, yet its practice requires an input of subjective values (Steele 2008).

Yet by looking at it, the view that “morality” is objective seems to suggest that what is right or wrong can be ascertained by purely factual investigation, and if that is true, that would imply that a divine authority is no help in determining what’s right and what’s wrong.

Now the problem with Philip Johnson’s accountability to a divine authority is that he knew that God is all-good by a standard of God’s own decree thus making mortality arbitrary.

To convince their readers that belief in a god is somewhat scientific,  they have to place a certain celebrity – a guy who converted from being an atheist then converting to something else. Therefore, what is the best person to use? Why THEN, it is ex-atheist Anthony Flew (applause! applause!)

According to the article, Flew was convinced that there is a God because of science. What? Well… he was convinced that the universe, the law of nature, and life itself could not have arisen merely by chance. That is according to the JW article, but not from Flew himself.

The obvious reason why Flew headed in that direction is that he was a philosopher and not a scientist. Because of his ignorance with chemistry, physics, and biology, Flew was convinced by the so-called irreducible complexity. This has nothing to do with science. (See: Flew’s Flawed Science – Victor J. Stenger February/March 2005 Free Inquiry Vol. 25 No. 2)

The JW article is implying that an intelligent first cause was the start of everything. Intelligent… that means it is a person perhaps. According to the Jehovah’s Witnesses booklet entitled “Is The Bible really the word of God?” (Watch Tower Bible 1969) on page 17, “Interestingly, there seems to be one point on which most modern scientists agree following Einstein’s equation, the hold that just as matter can be converted into energy, so energy can be converted into matter. If this is so, it would mean that an Intelligent Source of tremendous energy would have no problem in producing a material universe… the Bible speaks of that One as Jehovah God.”

OK, so all the energy in the universe came from an outside source, which is a god-person, called Jehovah, right? Yet the JW article did not explain to us what the proofs that this Jehovah was the source. It can be many things. In addition, the Law of the conversation of mass-energy simply state that mass and energy cannot be created nor destroyed and the total energy in the universe is constant. That means energy can become mass (matter) and vice versa yet the total energy in the universe remains the dame. It is fixed.

If there is a so-called “source” outside the Universe, then that means, there will be an increase of the amount of energy every time the “source” released it, but that will contradict the laws of physics and… oh wait, the Intelligent First Cause can break any physical constraints in nature by making a miracle. Yeah, right… good science indeed!

It is quite amusing for a Cambridge professor to appeal to his ignorance on the subject of evolution. Anyway, the JW article seems to fail to mention what are those “many ways” in which life can fail to evolve in a complex and hostile environment. Since this Awake! article didn’t mention them, we may look at what the Jehovah’s Witnesses believed in.

The Jehovah Witnesses believe that the 6 days in Genesis mean a thousand years per “day” (based on Psalms 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8) They are even that specific to say that each “day” was 7,000 years in length. This is known as the Concordist Interpretation and its first proponent was Hugh Miller (1869).

The real reason for this is to reconcile science with their doctrine. How is that possible? Since geology has been proving the fallacy of a 6000-year-old Earth, the Jehovah’s Witnesses took this interpretation so that it can settle Genesis with recent scientific discoveries.

Yet even with this interpretation of the scriptures, they must explain to their readers the following problems:

1. Did planet Earth come first before the stars, the moon, and the Sun? Reading Genesis 1, we see that the Earth came first and other heavenly bodies followed on the fourth (or should I say, after 28,000 years) day.

2. Vegetations came first before the Sun, so did the green plants survive even without sunlight for 7,000 years? According to one of their booklets, plant life survived on planet Earth through “lightless photosynthesis” – for 7000 years?

Who’s Blind?

What does “blind chance” have to do with atheism?

If Jehovah does not exist, does it follow that everything existed because of chance?

Contrary to the Jehovah Witnesses suggestion, there are many options.

Bear in mind that the questions of existence are answered by “the best guesses” we can come up. We can assume that a supernatural, intelligent being named Jehovah created the material universe or we can assume that a natural event formed it. However, a natural explanation of cosmology is not blind chance as renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said, “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.” He also added, “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

Is the First Cause Intelligent?

In the Awake! article, the First Cause is brought up on the issue of the origin of the universe and the evolution of life on Earth. Now, is First Cause a good argument to prove that Jehovah exists? Is it good science?

Ok, according to this argument:

1. Everything that exists has a cause

2. There is no infinite regression of causes; therefore there is an uncaused cause (a First Cause).

3. This First Cause is Jehovah.

Notice that the First Cause argument does not really answer the question. Why is the “First Cause” Jehovah? What is the explanation for that? That is not scientific. In fact, it only reflects the ignorance on scientific methodology.

True science requires explanations. As philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) has pointed out that what we assume to be the first cause may just as well be due to the ignorance of the cause and explanation of an event. It is a flaw of utilizing a principle beyond its valid range of application. The same issue was deeply expounded by Bertrand Russell in a debate with Father Copleston. According to Russell, the contingency argument rest in the misconception of what an explanation is and does and what makes it intelligible.

It is not surprising for the Jehovah Witnesses to use quotations from the Australian molecular biologist Michael Denton to discredit evolution. Dr. Denton was an influential proponent of Intelligent Design and was a former Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the hub of the Intelligent Design movement. So that is self-serving huh?

They also forgot to say that Dr. Denton is known on recanting his own words. In his second book “Nature’s Destiny ”, Denton took back his earlier anti-evolutionary stand. He now believes that the Fine Tuning argument does not only imply cosmological evolution, but it also implies biological evolution (I wonder why the Watch Tower did not quote from Dr. Denton’s new book?).

The issue here is not faith but about natural or supernatural origin. Did the natural universe start to exist via natural method or with a help from a supernatural being named Jehovah? Maybe the Awake! article has a lot more to explain.

New scientific discoveries by prominent physicists and cosmologists are pointing to a direction that a natural origin of the universe is plausible. (For more discussion of the subject (see: Atkatz, David and Pagels, Heinz. "Origin of the Universe as a Quantum Tunneling Event," in Physical Review D, 25 (1982), pp.2065-2073. ... "Birth of Inflationary Universes," in Physical Review D, 27(1983), pp. 2848-2855).

So after reading the whole magazine...well...where's the beef? Where is the refutation against atheism? Oh I know...it is invisible to human eyes...

I thought so.

Read more: From The AWAKE! Magazine: IS ATHEISM ON THE MARCH? by The Atheist Geek

Strange Christian Logic again...

Hayz! Have these Christians forgotten that there are Christians out there that believes in evolution?

As Dr. Francis Collins has said, "The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate and beautiful - and it cannot be at war with itself. Only we imperfect humans can start such battles. And only we can end them.” 
― Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

Scientific Foreknowledge of the Bible… Weh? (Part 1)

I thought religion is not affected by science Mr Mickhey Pasco?

Anyway, the claim that the Bible has this foreknowledge on scientific discoveries is not new. The reason for this, well… it makes the claim of divine authorship credible. But, these are really all about interpretations. Christians (and their apologists) will twist and turn any scripture to make it scientific as possible.

Now here are Mickhey Pasco’s claims and the facts regarding these claims.

1. The Earth is a sphere.

The claim here is that Isaiah 40:22 says that the Earth is a sphere.  

WRONG

Did Isaiah say the Earth was a Sphere? 

“It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:”

Oh! It just says “circle of the Earth.” 

Christians insist that the “circle” here means a sphere.  This is, of course, nonsense because the word sphere derives from the ancient Greek word for a globe, ball or spherical shape and the word hadn't reached the English language by the time the KJV was written. The original Hebrew of Isaiah 40:22 uses חוּג, which translates as "circle.” (chug; SEE: Job 22:14, Prov 8:27, Isa 40:22) not a sphere or spherical. The Hebrew word chug used here cannot be translated as a sphere (which is rendered by a different word), but must again be interpreted as a solid vault overarching the earth.

Sphere is דּוּדּוּר used for the 3d circular things, but the word can also be used for describing the object one plays soccer or basketball . Ut was used in Isaiah 22:18.

2. Innumerable Stars.

Mr. Pasco concluded that Jeremiah 33:22 says that the stars are innumerable. He also claims that science only believes that there are 1100 stars.

FACTS: The ancient Summerian already believed that the stars are innumerable. They have already made a catalogue of the stars since 1200 BCE. Already have this pre-dated Jeremiah’s claim for 570 years.

3. Air has weight.

Claim: Job 28:25 predicted that air has weight.

Fact: Job 28:25 says "To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure." This is poetic. According to the Pulpit Commentary,  Job 28:25 means “God by his wisdom gives to winds their exactly fitting degree of force and violence, so that they perform the work in the world which they were intended to perform, and which would not be performed, were they either of a less or of a greater intensity.” 

That doesn't sound scientific. 

4. Each Stars are different

Claim: 1 Corinthians 15:41 

“The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.”

Facts: The Sun is a star and the verse doesn't say stars are different from each other. Also,  splendor is not synonymous with size and intensity. Since splendor is not scientifically measurable, that statement by the bible is unprovable.

5. Light moves

Claim: Job 38:19-20

Job 38:19-20New International Version (NIV)19 “What is the way to the abode of light?    And where does darkness reside?20 Can you take them to their places?    Do you know the paths to their dwellings?

Facts: Notice Mr. Pasco conveniently forget to mention that light is also mentioned as dwelling, or staying in one place. Also, he ignores the fact that the Bible treats darkness like it actually exists, when really it's the absence of light. Also, it's Job, which, once again, is a very poetic part of the Bible.

6. Earth free floats in space (classic!)

Claim: Job 26:7

New International Version (NIV)

7 He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;

    he suspends the earth over nothing.

Facts: Earth is not suspended in nothing. Gravity is not nothing.  

7. Wind blows in a cyclone

Claim: Ecclesiastes 1:6

The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.

Facts: Ecclesiastes 1:6 is a pretty much poetics. First of all, Ecclesiastes is all about how nothing matters and nothing changes. So it poetically refers to the wind as not really changing no matter what it does, or where it blows. 

Science and Religion

It is said that evil prosper when good men do nothing. So, if I will just let this uh.... Statement of ignorance prevail, I think I will be as guilty as the OP for proclaiming inanity here on Facebook.

Anyway, let’s take a good look on what this Christian is saying.

According to Milkhey Pasco, “ Science can't stand alone without religion but religion doesn't care about science.” I don’t have any idea if this Mr. Pasco knows what he’s saying. Was the post intended to irritate rational people? Well, I am not irritated… surprised, maybe but irritated? Do he really believed what he posted? Maybe?

Do science needs religion? 
Mr. Pasco never gave us any good example of how scientific studies are dependent with religion. In fact, there are even clashes with religion. The Dalai Lama XIV (which fortunately not a Christian) even nailed this issue in the lid when he said, “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” But it seems Mr. Pasco is ignorant on the matter.

Ken Ham, founding president and CEO of Answers in Genesis have expressed his idea of what science is all about. For these Bible literalists and Evangelical Christians, science must follow what the Bible declares. It must base its finding on what the Bible teaches. But how can science follow religion as what Mr. Pasco was trying to imply? Science is based on a trial-error method, not on absolute authority and revelation.

Religion doesn’t care about science?

It seems history will prove Mr. Pasco wrong. For many years, religion was affected by what science discovered. From a heliocentric solar system, up to biological evolution and even on the issue of vaccination, bio-ethics (stem-cell research, cloning), artificial birth control, the religious community reacts, even violently.

“Science is completely incapable of proving such as a proslogion.”

To most, science is not about proving the existence of a god. It is not a scientific problem. Others have already used science to prove the god hypothesis and as scientist Victor J. Stenger had already said, by using science, we will discover that there is no evidence for the existence of a deity and that God's existence, while not impossible, is improbable.

Theories and “unsolved mysteries.”

Theories are not about “unsolved mysteries.” Theories are working models in a scientific sense and “unsolved mysteries? Well, as my favorite character Dr. Gilbert Arthur "Gil" Grissom of CSI have said, there are no mysteries, just questions waiting for an answer.

“Albert Einstein said science without religion was lame…”

Mr. Pasco has taken this statement of an intelligent man out of context. Let’s see what Einstein really said… (Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, The Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941.)

“At first, then, instead of asking what religion is I should prefer to ask what characterizes the aspirations of a person who gives me the impression of being religious: a person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their superpersonalvalue. It seems to me that what is important is the force of this superpersonal content and the depth of the conviction concerning its overpowering meaningfulness, regardless of whether any attempt is made to unite this content with a divine Being, for otherwise it would not be possible to count Buddha and Spinoza as religious personalities. Accordingly, a religious person is devout in the sense that he has no doubt of the significance and loftiness of those superpersonal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation. They exist with the same necessity and matter-of-factness as he himself. In this sense religion is the age-old endeavor of mankind to become clearly and completely conscious of these values and goals and constantly to strengthen and extend their effect. If one conceives of religion and science according to these definitions then a conflict between them appears impossible. For science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgments of all kinds remain necessary. Religion, on the other hand, deals only with evaluations of human thought and action: it cannot justifiably speak of facts and relationships between facts. According to this interpretation the well-known conflicts between religion and science in the past must all be ascribed to a misapprehension of the situation which has been described.

For example, a conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs. On the other hand, representatives of science have often made an attempt to arrive at fundamental judgments with respect to values and ends on the basis of scientific method, and in this way have set themselves in opposition to religion. These conflicts have all sprung from fatal errors.

Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

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Noticed that Einstein said religion deals only with evaluations of human thought and action. He’s not talking about God or the Christian Bible, but of barring selfish actions and instead aspiring to improve the world for the greater good. That’s what religion was for Einstein. Science without a goal for implovement is lame and the greater good [which is religion] without science is blind.

So before we copy-paste a quote, see to it that we really know our facts first.

Well, that’s all folks.
Thank you for reading.

False science?

The picture above is a good example of personal interpretation.

Looking at this verse in Greek (not in the KJV) it says...

Ὦ Τιμόθεε τὴν παρακαταθήκην φύλαξον ἐκτρεπόμενος τὰς βεβήλους κενοφωνίας καὶ ἀντιθέσεις τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως

The word used was γνώσεως (gnōseōs) not ἐπιστήμη (epistemē). Episteme is what Ancient Greek use for science which was derived from the word ἐπίσταμαι, "to know". Now, the word science here came from the word Latin (scientia = knowledge), thanks to the Vulgate, but that is not the science as we know since science doesn't mean knowledge (in the Greek sense) but "the pursuit of knowledge."

So does 1 Timothy 6:20 means "science" or "evolution?" If you will know your Bible history correctly, the First Epistle to Timothy was written in CE 62-66. That was the same time a lot of Gnostics gospels were already circulating and the Pauline Christianity was trying to preserve itself against church heresies. So knowledge here means "false teachings" from gnostics "false doctrines" about Christianity, not about "Theory of Evolution" or from science which is about the pursuit of knowledge.