Would ET Discovery Destroy Religion?

[Freecare Spiritwise]

To me, the bible as a 100% literal work seems majorly flawed. Factually it has more holes in it than Sponge Bob Squarepants, but there's still some good gems of wisdom in it.

[Ddrak]

The point was that in Genesis, plants were created before the Sun and Moon. If there was no sunlight, it wouldn't make a difference how clear the ice is.

There was light, and a night/day cycle before the plants though, implying sunlight without a visible sun/moon/stars.

Dd

[Garrdor]

There's a frustrating amount of loose ends and general confusion when you try to cross logic and science with ancient fairytales.

[Partha]

I think this is you bending religion to suit your belief structure.....not the other way around. The order of creation is pretty much standard evolutionary structure as to the introduction of species.

Care to list them side by side out of your references? Because the last Bible I looked at posited the creation of plants before creation of the sun and the moon.

Well, plants existed before the cloud layer from volcanic activity would have died down so the sun and moon wouldn't have been visible on earth until after the sky cleared.

(Just one explanation I've heard)

Dd

Not a good explanation since plants don't grow without sunlight.

Tell that to mycelia. (Edited because I couldn't remember the goddamned name.)

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Tell that to the plants on the sea floor.

Shhhhh.

[Embar Angylwrath]

The point was that in Genesis, plants were created before the Sun and Moon. If there was no sunlight, it wouldn't make a difference how clear the ice is.

There was light, and a night/day cycle before the plants though, implying sunlight without a visible sun/moon/stars.

Dd

You have a science background. You know that diffuse light through cloud-cover or volcanic haze is not enough to support plants.

Unless they only had to hang on for a couple days until the sun appeared....

[Ddrak]

You have a science background. You know that diffuse light through cloud-cover or volcanic haze is not enough to support plants.

Unless they only had to hang on for a couple days until the sun appeared....

Or they weren't "plants" in the same sense we know them. I'm not suggesting there were leafy forests, the best case interpretation you could want is really single-cell stuff.

Dd

[Klast Brell]

And that is exactly what I mean about rationalizing it to be consistent with the bible.

[Kulaf]

And that is exactly what I mean about rationalizing it to be consistent with the bible.

Nothing to rationalize other than simple understanding that God's hand did not write the bible.....man's did. So in transcribing revelations you see man's point of view. This is what makes the book of Revelation so facinating to read because you can almost feel John's struggle to try to describe things from the future that he would have no frame of reference to describe. Moses wrote down the order of creation as best he could from what he saw.

[Embar Angylwrath]

You have a science background. You know that diffuse light through cloud-cover or volcanic haze is not enough to support plants.

Unless they only had to hang on for a couple days until the sun appeared....

Or they weren't "plants" in the same sense we know them. I'm not suggesting there were leafy forests, the best case interpretation you could want is really single-cell stuff.

Dd

So the writers of Genesis had microscopes???

[Ddrak]

So the writers of Genesis had microscopes???

Well, they were hardly around to witness the first 5 days were they?

Dd

[Embar Angylwrath]

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

Doesn't sound like algae to me...

Also in Genesis, whales existed before any land creature. So there was a mammal before there was a lizard. Or insect. Hmmmm....

[Arathena]

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

Doesn't sound like algae to me...

Also in Genesis, whales existed before any land creature. So there was a mammal before there was a lizard. Or insect. Hmmmm....

We're arguing on the intertubes, use the local language translation.

An Ceiling Cat sayed, DO WANT grass! so tehr wuz seedz An stufs, An fruitzors An vegbatels. An a Corm. It happen.

[Rsak]

The Bible is a book written by man. It is as flawed as the writers are.

Religion and Science really aren't different things. They are both methods to explain the unknown, but while Science tries to explain the "how" Religion tries to explain the "why". Both evolve over time and both struggle to accept change in different ways.

[Taxious]

We're arguing on the intertubes, use the local language translation.

An Ceiling Cat sayed, DO WANT grass! so tehr wuz seedz An stufs, An fruitzors An vegbatels. An a Corm. It happen.

rofl, that's one of the funniest things I've seen in a while - thanks Ara. I can't believe they have the entire thing translated, that must have taken forever.

An so teh threeth day jazzhands.

And I had to look up Lev 18:22

No can has teh mansecks liek has teh ladysecks. Iz teh ghey.

[Sinaiel]

Tell that to mycelia. (Edited because I couldn't remember the goddamned name.)

Mycelia are fungi, not plants. There are no plants in deep water.

[Embar Angylwrath]

There is no such thing as fungi. If it wasn't created in the first seven days, it doesn't exist.

[Fobbon Lazyfoot]

Expecting the first christians to understand how the biology and physics of the creation of the physical earth and the life that populated it is like expecting us to automatically understand how faster-than-light travel works or how to create supermassive black holes by rubbing two sticks together. The Bible is not a comprehensive manual on how the universe works - that's up to us to write. The Bible was an introduction to that manual. It was written so as to be easy to understand, and therefore easy to disseminate. The more school I take the more I realize I've been lied to: time really can be messed with, electrons don't orbit nucleii in pretty little lines, atoms are not the fundamental particle of the universe, DNA is not 100% universal or translatable among all biological life, and not everything needs oxygen to breathe. I was lied to for my own good, because trying to explain quantum theory to a ten year old is kind of hard. The Bible said a lot with very little words, and the only way we're gonna figure out what the rest of the words are is by trial and error.

It is completely ignorant to say that further knowledge about the physical world and religion are not compatible. The only people that will be shaken by the discovery of ET life are the same people that were shaken by evolution or sun-centric solar theory, and those are the people that don't really understand what religion is all about in the first place. I'm not saying I do, heck I still don't even know if I believe in God, but you need to have trust in something bigger than yourself: whether that be the ultimate brute nature of the universe, or God, I don't think it really matters - a lot of people think they're the same thing.

I tried to write this post so I could tell myself me and Rsak arn't saying the same thing, but I think I still agree with him. Shit.

[Arathena]

Expecting the first christians to understand how the biology and physics of the creation of the physical earth and the life that populated it is like expecting us to automatically understand how faster-than-light travel works or how to create supermassive black holes by rubbing two sticks together. The Bible is not a comprehensive manual on how the universe works - that's up to us to write. The Bible was an introduction to that manual. It was written so as to be easy to understand, and therefore easy to disseminate. The more school I take the more I realize I've been lied to: time really can be messed with, electrons don't orbit nucleii in pretty little lines, atoms are not the fundamental particle of the universe, DNA is not 100% universal or translatable among all biological life, and not everything needs oxygen to breathe. I was lied to for my own good, because trying to explain quantum theory to a ten year old is kind of hard. The Bible said a lot with very little words, and the only way we're gonna figure out what the rest of the words are is by trial and error.

It is completely ignorant to say that further knowledge about the physical world and religion are not compatible. The only people that will be shaken by the discovery of ET life are the same people that were shaken by evolution or sun-centric solar theory, and those are the people that don't really understand what religion is all about in the first place. I'm not saying I do, heck I still don't even know if I believe in God, but you need to have trust in something bigger than yourself: whether that be the ultimate brute nature of the universe, or God, I don't think it really matters - a lot of people think they're the same thing.

I tried to write this post so I could tell myself me and Rsak arn't saying the same thing, but I think I still agree with him. Shit.

The problem is not that the Bible is inaccurate, or even inconsistent with itself. It is, after all, a bunch of stories told by bronze age nomads, finally written down almost two thousand years later, once they learned how to write. That's fine. What is a problem, generally, is the refusal of certain segments of society to refuse to admit that human knowledge has moved on, which can leads to stiff, reflexive resistance to things which, in the long run, are good for the individual and the greater society.

The refusal to question knowledge leads to stagnation at best, and suffering and misery at the worst. Consider, for example the current evolution of the microbes that cause tuberculosis - because we have placed a certain evolutionary pressure on the TB bacteria, they have responded by developing strongly resistant, and ever more contagious strains. And we are seeing it again, and again in other infectious diseases, such as gonorrhea and chlamyida. In order to deal with this, we must have a strong understanding of the responses of these microbes to population pressures, and plan accordingly for disease treatment and management. But if we refuse to admit that we can cause the the evolution of the responsible bacteria, and refuse to do the broad studies neccesary to shape our understanding of the process, because of what some old myth says, then real humans will suffer needlessly.

It is unfortunate, but for many, the religious has absolutely nothing to do with asking and answering the great questions of life, but rather, everything to do with evading the need to ask them, the need to confront the unknown and the difficult. It is a set of blinders to be hidden behind for comfort.

[Ddrak]

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

Doesn't sound like algae to me...

Also in Genesis, whales existed before any land creature. So there was a mammal before there was a lizard. Or insect. Hmmmm....

Shit. You got me there.

Dd