Electric Universe

[Big Bene]

I see the problems you have with fundamentalists. I know there are sects in the US who think it is "christian" to denie evolution and even take political action to have it banned from school education (evolution being the most blatant and widely known example, it is probably equally true for other natural phenomena and the scientifc theories to explain them). Seeing you being a science buff (like me), I can understand how you're so upset. But please don't let your anger get the better of you. If you want to discuss religion from an atheist point of view, that's fine.
Please be aware that there are other countries - and referring to the demography of the members of this forum, this means 90% Europe - where such fundamentalists are extremely rare and have next to no influence.

What you call "documented past" is partly correct, partly blatantly false (agents of the Catholic Church occasionally did burn people at the stake, but never for "disagreeing with what was written"), and partly it's just an opinion (how would you know what it was "meant to explain"?).

You seem to value academic education at a high degree. At several times you tell Gold Bearer how it shows that he is a highschool dropout. You stress the fact that you did Uni courses in physics and you use the opinio communis of "professional" scientists as an argument (like here). Well, I normally don't stress this, but I have a PhD in Egyptology, Prehistory and Classical archaeology. I did original research in the field of the egyptian influences in European tradition.
Having done Coptic studies in extense, I'm also

more familiar than your average layman, but no specialist

in theology and ecclesial history.
When it comes to history - expecially intellectual history - I am a professional. So perhaps this is a reason for you to believe me I'm not telling entirely bullshit.
Despite you calling my "apologetic", I have nowhere touched the subject of my personal believes. It's still all about facts and the "well documented past". I just can't stand reading false "facts" about matters I know. Just like you.

You don't have to believe in the bible as a divine relevation, and if you see any worth in it, you can point out its scientific "errors". It would not affect christianity (except for fundamentalists), but of course it is an interesting matter.
But the ones you started with are just plainly not errors.
The Tachasch is probably not a fish - so what, the bible does not tell it a fish.
The classification by habitate (Air, Water, Earth) is just primitive, but not wrong. It's an arbitrary definition, it can't be "right" or "wrong".

Of course, I could answer to the other points you made, but I think this is still Gold Bearer's thread and it is about physics. Plus, I really don't have the time for this.

[el_flesh]

Well, I haven't specialized in bible studies; either; so if a specialist who did claim it can be translated as 'dolphin' and that such was said to be called a "fish", (also by translation), I think I might have enough confidence in their field of specialization not to doubt them.
= you have failed to prove the 'infallible' bible didn't make yet another error.
If you have been trained in Science yet you defend religion as being 'within reason', as you have done for burning at the stake, that makes you an apologetic: someone who downplays the role religion had in atrocities and crimes against humanity.
Malleus Maleficarum.
Giordano Bruno.
Galileo Galilei.
The entire Spanish Inquisition.
Christian IV of Denmark.
Exodus 22:18.

There are many, many proofs of witch hunts to be found. It is ONE example of how religion harms humanity, since Bruno and Galileo were heretics and not witches. So we can add HERETICS to the list of atrocities, along with the torture of the inquisitors and the church imposing its will upon whom one can love and marry, where one should live, and what role one should fulfill (which included slavery).

This is what you are defending.


________________________________________

More DISPROOF of the Eckeltrectric yoUnivarse:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/03/09/supernova_lens_exploding_star_seen_in_quadruplicate.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/05/space_invader_hubble_sees_a_galaxy_shaped_like_video_game_character.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2008/02/19/hubble_spots_67_gravitational_lenses.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/03/15/aurora_what_causes_the_northern_and_southern_lights.html
Maybe I can get Phil Plait to explain why EU is BAD ASTRONOMY.

[Big Bene]

Well, as for the "dolphin" (or badger),
It's easy enough to check the verses in question:

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring me an offering: of every man that giveth it willingly with his heart ye shall take my offering.
3 And this is the offering which ye shall take of them; gold, and silver, and brass,
4 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,
5 And rams' skins dyed red, and Tachshs' skins, and shittim wood,
...

14 And thou shalt make a covering for the tent [of the Ark of Covenant] of rams' skins dyed red, and a covering above of Tachashs' skins.

24 This is the service of the families of the Gershonites, to serve, and for burdens:
25 And they shall bear the curtains of the tabernacle, and the tabernacle of the congregation, his covering, and the covering of the Tachashs' skins that is above upon it, and the hanging for the door of the tabernacle of the congregation,

9 Then washed I thee with water; yea, I throughly washed away thy blood from thee, and I anointed thee with oil.
10 I clothed thee also with broidered work, and shod thee with Tachashs' skin, and I girded thee about with fine linen, and I covered thee with silk.
11 I decked thee also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy hands, and a chain on thy neck.

Nowhere is the Tachash called a "fish". And I doubt a specialist would claim so. Can you name your source?


I never denied that people were burnt at the stake at the base of religion, in fact I remember explecitely saying so:

agents of the Catholic Church occasionally did burn people at the stake

You named a few examples. That's OK, but you don't have to convince me. I already know that. Figures are often vastly exaggregated, but the real numbers are still horrible enough. And I did not try to defend this.
By the way, two examples of the list are not really fitting: Galileo was not burnt or otherwise harmed, other than being hold captive (in a luxury flat) for the time of his trial. He lived quite some years after that (and he was not accused of "heresy"). And Exodus 22:18 does order witches to be executed, but does not specify the method. Given the place and time, they were probably not burned, but stoned.

What I said was that people were not burnt for "disagreeing with what was written". And I would still hold up this statement. None of the examples you give has to do anything with the victims not interpreting the bible in a literal manner.


And after all, this is the point you were trying to make. It's not about the faults of religion throughout history
It's about reading the bible as a "proto-scientific" explantation of natural phenomena.
Which in turn is the only link this discussion of religious matters has to the original subject of the thread.
You mentioned the dolphin and the bat as examples that things don't have to be what they look like (though I'd daresay a bat only "looks like" a bird from very far away). This still clearly referred to the pictures of stellar bodies that look (very vaguely) like electrical field lines, which Gold Bearer had posted.
You made a sideswipe at the bible who allegedly "thinks so". This is just factual false.
The bible does not tell the Tachash a fish.
It files bats under "birds", but it doesn't define the term "bird" genetically, but just by the flying ability, as was usual until modern times.
I have a tendency to correct such errors when I read them. I never said that everything the bible says about natural phenomena is scientifically correct.

There are many, many proofs of witch hunts to be found.

Of course there have been witch hunts, and of course there are proofs for this fact, but I can't see what they have to do with the subject at hand. Witches were accused of cooking babies, using magic to make people sick or destroy the harvest, of laying with the devil and many other bizarre "crimes", but definitely not of something like "explaining nature in a form not in line with the bible".
If you really want to discuss witch hunts, thea are an interesting subject in their own right, having quite some common misunderstandings surrounding them.

If you have been trained in Science yet you defend religion as being 'within reason', as you have done for burning at the stake

I can't remember writing such a thing.

[el_flesh]

Nowhere is the Tacash specified as NOT being a "fish"; it can be translated as a dolphin, (which is what that referenced religious self-claimed 'dr.' claimed it could be translated as).

Often the dolphin is used to depict the whale of Jonah.

ref: http://www.catholictradition.org/Saints/signs1.htm
"For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish," Matthew 12:40
NO cetacean, neither dolphin NOR whale, is a 'fish'.
Thank you, drive through.

Perhaps you should define your estimation of what constitutes "occasionally". Would that be one person burnt alive every five years or so by command of a RELIGION?
And by the way, Galileo was threatened with torture by the church. For saying that the SUN was the center of the Solar system and NOT the Earth. Something every school child knows today. Because it is the actual case, and NOT what is written in the bible and was forced upon everyone under threat of death. And by the way, as a confirmed heretic (one who holds a heretical view) he could have been burned alive if he'd held to the truth. So YES, that WOULD be "disagreeing with what was written". And so NO, you don't get to downplay that one, either.

And you DON'T get to ignore Bruno, who WAS burned alive with his "tongue imprisoned because of his wicked words". So YES, that WOULD be "disagreeing with what was written".

As for your other downplayed estimates of how many people were burned as witches: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/12/02/how-many-people-were-killed-as-witches-in-europe-from-1200-to-the-present/
I think an anthropologist, who studies the past, would have a more accurate estimate than your "occasional" one. Apologist.

[cornixt]

There is no such thing as a fish:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/by/fish

[Big Bene]

Nowhere is the Tacash specified as NOT being a "fish"

I can't see the logic in your argument. Of course it is not specified as not beeing a fish. The same is true for almost every other object mentioned in the bible or any other book. You speak of "planets" in some of your posts. You didn't explecitely make clear that these are not fish. So you are saying plantes are fishes? Come on!
You accuse the bible for falsely "thinking" Tachash (dolphins, badgers or whatever) are fishes. It doesn't make such a claim.

The animal that swallowed Jonah has nothing to do with that. You can list as many "scientific errors" of the bible as you want. Some may be real, others not. I have no problem with that. The one you started with, the dolphin as a fish, is not. Period.

But so you don't think I'm wanting to avoyd a debate here, I'd say for whales (and dolphins, if there would be any in the bible) and fishes, the same is true as for bats and birds. If you read an old book on biology (before around 1600), you will find cetaceans described as mammals in every aspect, but included in the "fish" chapter. I'm speaking of authors who did scientific research here. It was just the agreed saystem of classification.
Plus, as much as I know (but don't nail me down on it), the animal that swallowed Jonah is only called a "great fish", not specified as a whale. That artists later interpreted it as such, is hardly the fault of the authors of the bible.

Perhaps you should define your estimation of what constitutes "occasionally". Would that be one person burnt alive every five years or so by command of a RELIGION?

"Occasionally" just means that - there were occasions in which this took place. No specific number was intended with this word.
Real numbers are hard to calculate. In the time of the witch hunts or the spanish inquisition there were of course more than a few a year.

And by the way, Galileo was threatened with torture by the church.

Not really. It was the normal, legally defined practice that in every lawsuit (by the state or the church) the accused was shown the torture instruments and made aware of the possibility he could fall under torture, and the same was done to Galileo. It was clear that in his case there was no real danger of this really happening. And he was not accused of "saying that the SUN was the center of the Solar system and NOT the Earth". The heliocentric system had been in discussion for over a century, the church didn't take a specific side but did promote and finance scholars of astronomy, both of geocentric and heliocentric preference. Before Newton, a "proof" was impossible, so the debate remained relatively open. In the book in question, Galileo presented an obviousely false "proof" of the helicentric system based on the tides, and attacked the "idiotic" scholars who still did not accept it (academics, not clerics) in an extremely insulting tone. This was the reason why he was ordered to withdraw the book and in future to teach the heliocentric system not as a "prooven fact", but more respectfully as a possible model.
The only authority who once rejected the helicentric model on the ground of a passage of the bible was Martin Luther, but he was not taken serious with that (and perhaps didn't even mean it serious).

And you DON'T get to ignore Bruno, who WAS burned alive with his "tongue imprisoned because of his wicked words". So YES, that WOULD be "disagreeing with what was written".

No it was not. Giordano Bruno was a hermetic. He was a theologican who promoted a strange esoterical world view. He was all religious, nowhere scientific. The heliocentric model just happened to fit into his theology. He had no understanding of its astrological bases. So, he was a heretic in the classic sense. A missionary of a new religion that differed from the accepted. He challanged the authority of the church. We may agree that this should not be a punishable crime. But he was not accused of disagreeing with the word of the bible, by voting for the heliocentric model or by any other of his "wicked words".

The link you cite regarding the number of people burnt as witches is too long for me to read it now, but it certainly does not reflect the opinio comunis of historians. There are many sources, and the real numbers are, while far from precise, still quite clear. Around 50,000 is realistic, perhaps 60,000.

[knightkrawler]

I'll put myself in the line of fire here and concur with Big Bene.
The term "fish", before evoulutionary theoories and modern nomenclature and biological classification, meant nothing but living in the water.
Now it means something else.

To reproach the bible with lying methodically about a whale being a fish of modern nomenclature is ridiculous and seems to be rooting deeply in hate of religion.
There you, Mr Flesh, seem to be the conspiracy theorist.
I am an atheist if there ever was one, but I also know that the bible is a collection of texts by many different authors spanning centuries of history canonized into one work.
That it describes a whale as a fish is nothing but proof of a lack of scientific understanding as we now have embraced as evolution theory.
It doesn't even have anything to do with reading the bible as the conglomeration of allegories and cartoonization-of-everything-not-quite-understandable that it is or reading it literally.
The texts of the bible can only be seen as then-modern, then-state-of-the-art-and-knowledge, nothing more, nothing else.

Whale is a fish is the pseudo-scientific classification of the form seen, explained to belong to the idea that it lives in the water.
There's no lie, just naiveté.

[el_flesh]

Nice point, cornixt! Entirely true! However, the bible, being non specialized and certainly non-Scientific (seeing as it was written by uneducated MAN) uses the same paraphylectic grouping of cold-blooded vertebrates. It's a huge difference to miss the distinction between a shark and a ray-fin bony fish vs a whale and a ray-fin bony fish. The point is that the "infallible" word of "god" is far more fallible than any modern high-school student's knowledge.

BB, your 'infallible" bible should have no problem specifying, with its vast and great knowledge of its ultimate creator of everything, what is a fish and what isn't. (So, yes, knightcrawler, it WOULD be a lie if the writer of the bible is "god", as claimed by his proponents). Saying it did not specify tacash as not being a fish is part of the whole paragraph, like point one. Taking a statement out of context and trying to demonstrate it's ridiculousness in order to defeat the entire argument is a high school trick -worthy of religionists- that will not work. I went on to show that your bible DOES think the whale = dolphin IS indeed a fish. And once again, I will take the statements of specialists in the field over yours - unless you can prove otherwise, as cornixt did.
The false classification is indeed the fault of the authors of the bible, since it is claimed to be the infallible word of their god. Guess it isn't infallible, after all.
Since you want to downplay the effect of witchhunts, I challenge you to specify what constitutes the 'occasional' immolation of a live human being. You make it sound acceptable. I say even ONE wrong murder is unacceptable. Then I gave a reference to another specialist who says you are full of bull toodles in your estimation. So put your money where your mouth is and prove the anthropologist wrong. Until you do so, I say your estimation is full of it.
Galileo was really threatened with torture by the church. If you are shown instruments of torture, that is an implied threat. See how you feel when you walk by actual torture instruments in a museum; where you are perfectly safe from them. I have, at Mont St Michel. You can lie to yourself all you like, but you will not be allowed to lie to others in here. If it is possible to fall under torture then THAT IS A THREAT. Check with your local law enforcement for reference.

I'm sure you'd come up with some really wild stories after a few beers.

Copernicus gave mathematical proof of Heliocentrism which Galileo added support to by use of his telescope; discovering phases of Venus and of the Galilean satellites. So before Newton, proof was indeed possible and was indeed SHOWN by Glaileo; though his "tides" were incorrect as proof. A telescope can show parallax. If Martin Luther wrote a piece against heliocentrism, then you cannot say "maybe he didn't really mean it" - that is just bovine wasting. 'Apologist' is the mildest term I could apply.
If Bruno supported Copernicus, how could he be described as NOT Scientific? Copernicus never said "thou shalt BELIEVE", but instead gave observational data as PROOF of his model. So, once again, you DON'T get to label a victim of burning by the church as being reasonable for the time it happened in. These are his charges: "holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith and speaking against it and its ministers; about the Trinity, divinity of Christ, and Incarnation; pertaining to Jesus as Christ; regarding the virginity of Mary, mother of Jesus; about both Transubstantiation and Mass..." Ya. Good reasons to burn someone alive. This is what you are defending. Aren't you a wonderful human being.
Those charges, by the way, WOULD be "disagreeing with what was written".

I would ask you why you lie and bovine waste, but I'm already assuming it's because you are religious yourself. None of my Scientist friends do that. But I have seen over and over how religious people do it, all the time.

[Diggin]

To be honest, you're the only one that sounds like a religious fanatic Flesh... sorry >.<

[el_flesh]

It's because you might not know the difference between religion and Science. If there's proof which is referenced, it's worth more than a statement otherwise.
I've given references about things that have been proven.
BB hasn't; he's only made statements.
I won't let religious apologists sweep human suffering under the rug.