> I think it’s highly likely with lots of circumstantial evidence that life is an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions create life
Out of curiosity, if you reject religion, what other possibilities are there?
Just inorganic material combining at random and eventually, over about 10 billion years, randomly creating something that self replicates in some way, beginning the process of evolution through natural selection and inevitably progressing to life as we know it.
I don't think religion is needed at all for this. I also don't think this has to be a common thing (after all, here on Earth it only happened once, but it's also possible that once life is widespread it makes it very difficult for emergent new forms of life to take off).
Where did you get 10 billion years of random chemistry?
The articles I read assert that life began just 500 million to 1 billion years after formation of earth. 3.5-4.1 billion years ago with an earth age of 4.5 billion.
Presumably like your parent, I believed this was a discussion about the probability that life has originated elsewhere in the galaxy / universe, independently of life on Earth.
Commenter is referring to the case where life is a common occurrence as an "an evolutionary emergent phenomenon where inorganic material reactions create life" in contrast to the case where life has only happened once, which would be more like an extremely lucky fluke where inorganic material reactions create life.
Simulation hypothesis: all this may be much younger than we expect.
Nonuniform physics—call it colliding universes or whatever, but the processes that gave rise to life on Earth may not be possible anywhere in this universe now. Including labs on Earth!
As someone who is both an organ nerd and... I'll say very religiously conservative (although that's only relevant to some points), a couple things people in this thread might find interesting:
- If you're looking for pipe organs and are in the US, check out https://pipeorgandatabase.org/ . It's very comprehensive, has stoplists for most organs, and has pictures for many of the larger ones.
- I see quite a few people calling organ music boring, particularly in association with church music, and I'd like to challenge that assumption. Off the top of my head, a handful of things that come to mind:
(1) Hymns are meant to be sung with, usually by people who are not trained singers. That leads to significant limitations for the accompaniment. That said, there is a lot more variation in preludes, postludes, etc.
(2) Organ is hard. Being able to play boring hymns well with a week or two of preparation can easily take 2-3 years of daily practice, even with previous background on piano.
(3) Many recordings fail to capture the full magnitude of organ music. To repeat something that I think is a bit oversaid, but is accurate nonetheless: the building is the instrument. The building is the instrument.
(4) One thing that it's hard for me to tell is how much of the difference of opinion is that I have unusual tastes in music, and how much is that a lot of people haven't had the opportunity to hear good organ music played by a good organist.
(5) Yes, you can be expressive on organ. Yes, it's hard. Depending on the song (and the composition itself plays a big role here - don't think that a composer can't be expressive) that may come across in rubato, opening/closing the swell box (and potentially others), articulation, manual changes, etc. (I've heard just a few pieces with people one foot on the swell pedal for most of the song. They were very impressive, although I suppose a lot of that comes from the perspective of an organist. It's also very hard. See point 2.) Also:
(6) Choosing registration in and of itself is kind of an art (and a lot of fun, especially on big organs). There are so many different timbres you can get on an organ that it's really beyond comparison to most other instruments; using this alone it's easy to express everything from mournful to bombastic fanfare.
That became more of a jumbled mess than I intended, but hopefully there's something of interest to some of you.
Lovely comment! Thank you, agreed on all points, especially 'the building is the instrument', an organ played with the church in which it is housed in mind and various parts 'speaking' into different parts of the building can make all the difference between a boring performance and an outstanding one.
Oh, and then there are such exotic ones as the ones that speak through conduits on the other side of the church (and good luck managing that trying not to get confused when the sound reaches you...).
re point 3: It's really hard to overstate how impressive the sound an organ makes is. I've had the pleasure of being in a proper old-timey church with a proper old-timey organ when the organist decided to play a couple songs.
It felt like the whole building was shaking. Imagine that, meter thick walls being shook by sound. It was impossible to talk to anyone, even at centimeters away. It's not simply that organs are loud, which they are, They also simply fill the air with sound. To call the experience soul-shaking would be an understatement.
I can totally see why people would associate organs with god. When the organist stopped playing the silence was absolutely deafening.
Also: I have easy access to a few pipe organs (mostly small, but not all of them), so if anyone has questions feel free to ask; general organ questions are also welcome, of course.
Ignoring that the mechanism has been demonstrated in laboratory conditions, the argument you suggest stems from the bizarre and witless idea that evolution suggests evolution takes place over a human timescale.
I've had the same experience (although I don't remember if it was specifically the melody being claimed). I don't always bother to dispute them (in my understanding, most of them just claim ad revenue, and we don't run ads), but sometimes it annoys me enough that I do. (The organist and people singing are pretty clearly pictured, and I get especially annoyed when it's a capella.)
Historically Google only put ads when requested by the channel, which required a fairly significant threshold of views and subscribers and supposedly manual review by Google. Some time last year they started a switch towards serving ads on all videos, regardless of the preferences of the channel (whether you’re big or small, whether you want ads or not), which I hear has been progressing steadily further and further. (I wouldn’t know. The internet’s too dangerous to view without an ad blocker. I also just generally hate ads and only see any at all when I leave my peaceful rural environs and go to the big city.)
My reading of the situation at the time was that if there was a copyright claim, the video would be monetised in certain regions (depending on the claimant). So once I cottoned on to the situation, I always disputed the claims before publishing, so that no one would be fed ads. Now, who knows. Once I returned from India to Australia I stopped uploading the videos personally, and I don’t intend to publish any of my own stuff that I might make to YouTube.
But as (in the words of the at-present top comment) a fundamentalist adhering to scriptural literalism (aka a conservative Lutheran) [addendum: who does not hate everyone], I feel compelled to offer to answer questions anyone might have for me, so AMA.
I don't really want to individually respond to everything throughout the rest of the comments, but I will begin by saying that most churches have either very little by way of actual bible-based doctrine, or very little by way of in-depth theology. (Prosperity gospel/megachurches fall in the latter, a decent portion of other churches - eg. the Roman Catholic Church - fall in the former.)
Responses will be sporadic throughout the day, I'm a bit busy at the moment, but I'll do my best to get to it.
I think it's helpful to point out that the Bible contains a variety of types of literature including historical narrative, poetry, etc., some of which uses figurative language that is not intended to be taken literally.
We all understand this when we use modern language such as "sunrise" which is not literally true (the sun does not actually "rise" in the sky though it appears that way to the casual observer) even though we're educated enough to understand basic astronomical phenomena such as the rotation of the earth giving rise to daytime and nighttime.
A Biblical literalist who takes figurative language in the Bible literally would end up making the same mistake that someone taking "sunrise" literally would. This is not at all an attempt to classify as figurative language all controversial or supernatural claims of the Bible (its claim that Jesus was crucified, buried, and raised from the dead is clearly supernatural and impossible to classify as figurative), but so many of the lists of contradictory claims in the Bible rely on wooden interpretations of what is pretty clearly figurative language.
Thank you for making this point. It is important to recognize that the Bible does make use of a variety of literary techniques (eg. psalms, parables, etc. especially). However, there are vast swathes of history throughout; it isn't just a book of fictional stories.
I think when people talk about a "literal" interpretation of the Bible, they mean that it uses human language (including figures of speech like "sunrise", number rounding/approximation, etc) to describe literal, historical events with exceptions for explicit fictions or metaphors (such as psalms or parables).
How do the aspects of the early church align with scriptural literalism? Specifically the split of the early church between Paul and Jesus brother James. James was Jesus's choice to lead the church in his absence. A direction which aligned more with Judaism - including circumcision, and kosher foods. Yet later Christianity revolves around Paul at odds vision. Paul was a Roman who 'saw the light' whilst being sent after Jesus. He never met Jesus. His version of 'Christianity' didn't require those aspects - not least because adult male Romans who were interested in Christianity, weren't too keen on circumcision.
If this is correct, it means modern Christianity, is not based on Jesus stated future direction of his church.
What does your 'scriptural literalism' say about this? If your literature doesn't cover these aspects - then what is decided is canonical and what is not? Presumably such a distinction has to be outside of said literature - and therefore not 'scriptual literalism'. Implying 'scriptual literalism' itself is not grounded.
I should probably also say that it seems to me that claiming 'scriptual literalism' is a defensive position against claims of subjectivity. It is 'literal' and therefore not subjective. This is a fallacy - as there is always subjectivity and interpretation in human understanding, and certainly in interpreting something as nuanced and contradictory as the bible.
This might come across as somewhat aggressive questioning, and I'm sorry for that - but I am legitimately curious how it works.
I'm not sure where you're getting some of these ideas. Paul was very much a Jew. He trained under Gamaliel, one of the most prominent Jewish rabbis of the time. He did also have Roman citizenship, but those two things were not mutually exclusive.
Also, James, while prominent in the early church, was not in any sense Jesus's choice to lead the church. The closest thing to a single designated leader of the church was Peter though that is a point of contention between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Nowhere are circumcision or kosher foods required for Christianity, either.
Indeed, some points were a bit unclear. This is literalism in the sense of "God is real, created the world, Jesus lived and died to save you from your sins", not "there is no figurative language in the bible" or "the Bible is a bunch of stories about how to be a good person."
One important phrase in interpreting Scripture is "let Scripture interpret Scripture." (cf. 1 Cor 1:18f, Romans 11:33-35, 2 Cor 10:5 - our reason is not capable of fully understanding God, so we interpret it as his Word says and leave it at that.)
I should point you toward the Council of Jerusalem for part of the early history of the church, and I'm not really sure where you're coming from with the rest.
As for the rest (mostly about the history of biblical manuscripts), could you please put what I missed into a couple more clear questions?
> If this is correct, it means modern Christianity, is not based on Jesus stated future direction of his church.
One view is that this was resolved at the council described in acts, and all agreed. The view that there was some paul-led split that is covered up by the selection of the NT canon is often used by detractors of christianity, who typically try to frame Jesus as purely a jewish reformer, and that Paul was some 'kook' that invented his own religion (despite the texts that he was working with, rather than against, the rest of the apostles).
YMMV, but probably useful to be just as skeptical to sources on both sides when trying to ascertain what might have actually happened historically
> It is 'literal' and therefore not subjective. This is a fallacy - as there is always subjectivity and interpretation in human understanding, and certainly in interpreting something as nuanced and contradictory as the bible.
At the sermon on the mount, Jesus said "you are the salt of the earth". A literal take would be Jesus was saying the listeners were salt. You can be subjective and think this is a metaphor, but allowing for metaphors in the bible puts an end to literalism.
the universally considered authentic Pauline epistles are commonly dated from the mid 40s to the late fifties AD.... So any arguments made about church leadership 'before' then are arguing from a very small body of evidence (luke/acts) ... rather a less persuasive argument than the iron clad one you present here.
What scripture? As Bart Ehrman has written in his books condensing scholarly tomes for the layman, there are many scriptures, and we don't have the originals. The Comma Johanneum being the clearest passage that there is a trinity is not found in the Greek until the 15th century. Mark thought to be the earliest gospel, it ends without a clear resurrection from the earliest manuscripts - a resurrection was tacked on later. The story of the adulteress Jesus refused to condemn is not found in the earliest scriptures. And on and on. Much of contemporary scripture were things invented centuries after the events recorded.
Scholars are pretty divided on the long ending of mark , it's TRUE to say the oldest codices do not include it, but some old manuscripts do.
There's also some slight of hand being done by Erhman, the codex Vaticanus does not include the ending but the scribe has left space for it at the end of the chapter, showing that they had access to it and were debating putting it in... So you can say 'oldest manuscripts don't have it' but that isnt as conclusive as one might assume... This slight of hand is extremely common in Erhmans work.
As far as the woman taken in adultery, this passage is found in early manuscripts/lectuonaries but its position is being moved around d. Erhman is more committed to selling books and impressing undergrad baptists at UNC than be is with nuanced treatment of the facts...and his background as a low church protestant shines through all his work.... From an easterner perspective it's far less persuasive
I suppose maybe I'm missing something, but this seems a bit on the vague side. Furthermore, I am far from an expert on the history of biblical texts; to be quite frank there's a general text (okay, maybe two) that's accepted by every Christian church I know of. I'll try to answer your point regardless. While over several millenia there certainly may have been some minor changes to the text, I would like to break this down into two major points:
1. The Bible is has (to my knowledge) by far the largest corpus of ancient texts compared to pretty much anything prior to the invention of the printing press. The existence of so many ancient texts (both directly, translations, and quotations in other materials) spanning so far both geographically and temporally with fairly minor differences is rather compelling evidence for the accuracy of many biblical manuscripts. A similar interplay is found within the Bible itself. I can think of numerous other passages commonly used to support the doctrine of the trinity from both the Old and New Testaments. Similarly, there are several accounts of as well as numerous prophecies of Jesus' resurrection. The adultress in Mark is actually found in a significant portion of ancient manuscripts; that it is not found in all is noted in most translations I've seen.
2. I stated this somewhere below, but put simply: God isn't going to let the Bible change contradictory to its original meaning (cf. Isaiah 55:11, although I could probably find a better reference for this).
Here’s some to kickstart things. Genuinely curious
1) did you grow up in the church you currently belong to or did you join later? If the former, did you ever explore other ones? Why/why not?
2) there can be doubt about what the Bible literally says given the number of authors, editors, and time involved. For example, someone chose x word when translating to English, that also could have meant y. Or, x book was included and y book was not. What are your thoughts on this?
3) there are a lot of rules in the Bible, especially one like Letiviticus (sp?). As someone adhering to literalism, do you aspire to follow them all? If not, which ones do you? If so, how do you deal with (likely) not following them all?
4) how do you keep your faith nourished / going in today’s society, where membership in churches is declining and Internet denizens can have a lot of skepticism toward religion?
The entire point of the law was to show that it couldn’t be followed, they nearly always failed miserably, even the most famous and well regarded people in the Old Testament that were spoken very highly of like Abraham and David had their fair share of major fuck ups. The point was to show that we couldn’t do it, we were fundamentally flawed and needed Christ to take the burden on our behalf, and needed to be wholly remade through death, “born again” literally as a new creation, into a new lineage, that of Christ, after dying to the lineage of Adam that we inherited from our parents. It was never about doing enough right to outpace the wrong, it was always lineage and inheritance that determined our fate.
This paved the way for the Holy Spirit to come at Pentecost and basically kick off the church which has been growing and spreading from there ever since, and the church has only ever grown, never has it lost numbers, because it’s not an institution of man measured by attendance, those who are born again and counted cannot become “un” born again.
It also says that the path to life is narrow and few find it, there was never a heavenly expectation that they would ever be in the majority, despite that there is also a desire for all to be saved.
The difference is the human view and the God view. We were instructed to have the human view and act accordingly, spread the gospel far and wide because we didn’t know where the seed would fall and take root even though God knows, he didn’t want us to be choosy, that is his domain. All part of this grand cosmic theater that is infinitely beyond my limited perspective.
1) yes I did. I did not join later. I have attended many other church's. Many are trying to put butts in seats and are focusing on which distortion peddle gets more people in than using the scriptures and lessons in those words to do it. If you read the gospels you will find them full of life lessons you can apply right now, today.
2) This is an issue. What is more of an issue is the way words can and do change meaning over the years. So you can have a translation from 100 years ago and it takes on a different meaning. All because the choice of words they used just happens to mean something similar now vs then. The cure is to read many translations. Also keep things in context. There are online resources which you can use if you are unclear on a particular meaning in that context and go back to the original texts. Context for many translations is also the context of the year it was translated. There are also some translations that leave things out, or change the meaning, because they decided for you what you should hear so you have to watch out for those.
3) Many of those rules are wiped clean at the end of the 4 gospels. As the price has been paid. But there is a simpler price to pay.
4) It is good to find a church in your area that sticks to the gospels. Does not try to be trendy and use worldly lessons replacing gospel. That does not mean they do not talk about world events, but that they do not take on fads. There is also a huge amount of youtube and individual pages you can go to. In many ways the internet has made it even easier to converge all of these resources. Remember many searching engines try to tailor your search to what you like. So you may not even be seeing them.
I would also add many times you find that if it is out of context it is someone trying to distort a meaning. The trick is do not feed the trolls and ignore them.
2a. "Verbal inspiration" - while the words were written by people and they certainly did recount their experiences in their own styles (perhaps involving consulting others who had been there), but God (through the Holy Spirit) breathed into them the words they were to write (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16). Basically God's not going to be like "eh oh well whatever if the Bible just goes away."
2b. Translation is, inherently, inexact. This is why it's good for pastors to learn Greek and Hebrew; but there are two main points I'd like to make here. The first is that while not all of the meaning may be conveyed perfectly, there is a lot of effort that has been put into ensuring that the essence will remain there. The second is that, when the meaning may be initially unclear, let Scripture interpret Scripture.
2c. As for which books are included and which are not, I haven't researched this enough to give a thorough answer.
3. Laws are divided into three categories: civil, ceremonial, and moral. Civil is laws to govern the nation of Israel, which don't apply today. Ceremonial laws related to the worship life of Israel. Jesus is, in essence, the fulfillment of these laws (cf. Romans 10:4, Acts 15); as such, we are no longer required to follow them. This leaves the moral law, God's will for believers. Most of the 10 commandments fall into this category (as summarized further by Jesus saying "love God and love your neighbor"). Anyway (as pointed out below), Jesus kept the entire law because we, with our sinful nature, cannot.
4. I'm lucky enough to have a church that believes what I believe near me; regular bible studies and a few online devotions that I follow also help.
This was a but rushed to finish; sorry. Feel free to follow up.
I'm not OP, but I felt compelled to offer my own response to this one. Hopefully some people find my perspective interesting.
1) I grew up in a different church - the Catholic church. It felt more like a social club than anything else so I grew up with barely any understanding of the religion to which I supposedly subscribed. I became somewhat jaded towards large, organized religious organizations and floated around a few smaller-scale churches as I tried to learn more about Christianity and, in particular, the Bible. I no longer attend a "church" but I regularly attend lecture-style bible studies put on by a local middle school teacher.
2) One of the things that appeals to me about the Bible study I attend is that it's very very slow compared to most churches. We often spend an hour doing nothing but covering as few as one or two verses. That time is spent analyzing the text by comparing translations, linking it to related verses, explaining the Hebrew/Greek words used in various manuscripts, filling in historical context with what we know from archeology and other ancient records, and comparing interpretations of various theologians and denominations. Often times the teacher will present his own interpretation, but invite us to be critical and point to other possible interpretations.
One thing I've discovered since leaving the Catholic church is that studying the Bible goes far beyond just listening to sermons and reading what ever hard copy happens to be most accessible to you at the time. It's hard work and I'm not surprised most people aren't interested. I doubt I'd get far if there weren't scholars and teachers compiling and presenting the information for my benefit.
3) This question inclines me to believe you don't understand a fundamental aspect of Christianity, which is that God's sun (Jesus) was made a sacrifice so that humans would no longer be bound by sin or the laws of Moses. Christianity teaches that people are saved by faith alone, not by adhering to laws or refraining from sin. Or course, part of that belief suggests a desire to recognize and refrain from sin. I do not use grace as an excuse to sin, but I recognize that I fail from time to time and so does everyone else. Also, while societies values sometimes align with those described in the Bible, I do not expect non-believers to adhere to Christian values nor do I have any desire to enshrine Christian values in secular law.
4) It's interesting how many people have strong opinions on Biblical Christianity without knowing hardly anything about it. I still consider myself a complete novice, but I know enough to recognize how shallow a lot of the criticism is. Of course, there is also plenty of intelligent criticism and I don't pretend to have all the answers nor can I promise that future me wont be persuaded to abandon his faith. But so far I simply haven't seen anything that compels me to believe the Bible is wrong.
Some people believe science and the Bible are at odds with one another, but I don't see how. I've had no trouble embracing both and I'm perfectly capable of differentiating between knowledge based on science and knowledge based on the Bible.
A quick google search for 'contradictions in the {bible, new testament, jesus, etc.}' turns up a fair few pages. Viewing them either gives the answer as zero full-stop, or a long list of subject and their relevant citations. In looking at the citations, there does seem to be merit to the contradictory claims. I'll admit that the contradictions are a bit 'small' and may not always alter the main theme or may mix up the new and old testaments, but they seem to exist nonetheless.
I may not be all that up to date on what 'scriptural literalism' is exactly defined as, but as a lay person that would mean to me that contradictions would be a difficult circle to square.
What do you make of such contradictions and how do they affect your adherence, if at all?
Looking through the top few, most appear to be intentional misinterpretation, one has to do with much of the Old Testament law not applying in the New Testament (see above or below somewhere), different focuses (i.e. something being mentioned somewhere but not somewhere else doesn't mean it didn't happen, the other may have just had a different focus), etc.; if you have anything specifically you want me to take a look at I can, but it generally seems to be a combination of poor understanding of the Bible, failure to let Scripture interpret Scripture, trying to use the human mind to understand the full mind of God, etc.
I created this account on the idea that it would probably be more productive to have political discussion separate from (unrelated) technical discussion, and probably be beneficial on the privacy front as well.
Phone numbers might work, but I personally would prefer something text-based, as I like to think through things before I say them. Again, though, I could see why some people would prefer the opposite.
I'd also like that thank czep for the idea, though - I find myself in a conservative echo chamber in my personal bubble and generally liberal echo chambers online, neither of which are especially receptive to good discussion.
Out of curiosity, if you reject religion, what other possibilities are there?