Bill Nye: “Creationism is not Appropriate for Children”

^ IIRC, the Koran also makes allusions to Eve's daughter Lillith, who became the progenitor of all modern demons.

I've also heard that the Tanakh implies that humans OTHER than Adam and Eve existed, but that the two of them were the only two who were created by God for some higher purpose. That would seem to suggest the actual lineage of the Chosen People is more properly traced to Adam than to Abraham, but that Abraham gets the credit mainly because he's the one who actually restored the covenant with God after his ancestors had fallen out of favor.

Of course, the REAL reason for the discrepancy is because the Bible is an amalgamation of stories written at different times by different people, many of whom did not actually worship the same god or even a SINGLE god and the stories were adapted into monotheism later. For the canaanites from which the Exodus story is derived, the God of Abraham is an entirely different figure from the creator god in Genesis, and there's even some question of whether the first two chapters of Genesis were even written by the same culture.

It's like if you tried to create a coherent religious text by splicing together elements of Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5 and Doctor Who in the overall framework of scientology.

 

Yeah, but good luck convincing a True Believer of any of that.

 

I've always wondered why the English translations say "God of Abraham", which is redundant in monotheism, and not just "God".

 

Genesis is especially funny, because it displays God in a pretty bad light. He's portrayed as a sort of tyrant who created the world, men (and women ) for his pleasure, and tried to keep them uneducated with a lie. He told them they would die when eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And that was simply not true. Someone else came along and told humans: you are not going to die when you eat from it, try it. So they ate from the tree. And suddenly they became aware that they were naked and covered themselves. They, for the first time, decided for themselves (!).

FREE WILL!

And that's when God became angry and casted them out. He cast them out with the specific reason to prevent them from eating from the tree of life. Because then they would have been just like him. And the only way to prevent that was to cast them out. Because he, God, himself, didn't have powers over the trees. He couldn't remove them. And he couldn't revert the effects from eating from the tree. He couldn't make Adam and Eve dumb again. And if they ever ate from that other tree, he wouldn't be able to revert that either. They became self conscious, and he couldn't do anything about it. Only thing he could do was to deny humans access to paradise. He PUNISHED them because they became smart, for crying out loud!

I find that very interesting. I noticed that as a child already. Essentially it's the basic story about tyrants and the uneducated population, and how you gain power and strength from knowledge, and how the higher levels become very disturbed by that.

 

I always wondered about all the people in hot parts of the planet who don't now nor ever did cover themselves. As a child, I wondered. What about them?

 

^ Out of context that sounds awful.

 

Apologies if I missed it, but has anyone yet posted a link to Bill Nye's expansion on/clarification of what he said in his initial remarks?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505270_...eationism-critique-im-not-attacking-religion/

It seems that while I still think he went too far in the way he expressed himself (he should have better explained that it was literalism that was the issue and not all belief, and should've suggested open debate and access to information as the prescription, not suppression of views), he's actually not so far off from my own perspective, that the problem is fundamentalism intruding on science, rather than the problem being faith as a whole.

 

To me it was completely clear the first time around. Bill doesn't go hating on religions. This was about Creationism directly interfering with scientific processes, and the effect it has on children.

 

I think a lot of these problems come out of people reading the OT books without taking genre into account. The creation story/stories are not about material creation, and have nothing to do with modern science. They are about functional creation, that is, the ancient Israelite view on how the world is organized against chaos. This is pretty typical in comparison with surrounding cultures: Baal (Canaanite God) kills Tiamat (sea serpent, with water representing chaos) and uses her body to create earth and such (bringing order). What sets Israel apart is that they don't ascribe any gods to the lights in the sky or the seas or underworld. Everything is creation, and God "rests" with it as his "footstool." He doesn't need to use anything to create either, as Baal or Marduk did, but simply speaks. So functionally, rather than a world ruled by capricious gods who use humans as their slaves, the world is intentionally created to be "good" with humans as the image and representatives of God. The question of material creation doesn't enter into the thinking behind it at all.

In other words, it's not a science textbook. It's poetry. Fundamentalists who hold it up otherwise destroy the very text they are so worried about protecting the "inerrancy" of.

The Bible can be read that way too. The first creation account just speaks of God creating men and women. Cain is worried about other men killing him (not mentioned as relatives), and, of course, there is the whole "did he marry his sister or someone else?" conundrum that's being discussed.

There are plenty of theories regarding source criticism, none of them all that conclusive. I've never heard of the Exodus story being a Canaanite one originally, but then, my father-in-law is convinced that they all actually lived up in Scandinavia during the last warm snap, and a mini-ice age forced everyone down to what is now the Middle East. So everything from Homer's stories to the ancient Biblical ones actually took place in Norway. This is how people find things to get PhDs out of.

The Israelite literature does stand out from other Mesopotamian/Egyptian/Babylonian in some pretty significant ways, though, and there are some strong arguments for good internal coherence, so I wouldn't write them off as amalgamations quite as extremely as you do.

 

The stories in the bible are fables, tales. It's about the message, not the details. Anyone who takes them literally does it wrong.


But then again I'm amazed how anyone can take the texts literally when they don't make any sense that way. Talk about canon violations!

 

God could've easily avoided debates about original authorship by creating laser printers to spit out his unedited text, or giving the ancient Israelites iPads or Kindles so they could read his words without destroying any of the trees he created. If Dell can throw in a free ink-jet printer with your order, why couldn't God have offered Abraham a free printer and a Kindle for every sacrifice of a lamb?

At least polytheism forces gods to compete in the free-market by offering bells and whistles instead of exploiting monopolistic advantage to force the customers to write promotional advertisements on their own dime.

 

I like polytheism. It makes more sense.

 

And it's more versatile. No wait, that's polythene, nevermind.

 

At least with polytheism there is a division of labor. If I was the first God, I would totally make more gods to delegate the work.

 

Bill was on Coast to Coast AM last night for the first hour.
Here it is, if you wish to listen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6VOHoLWRgM

 

Isn't Coast to Coast AM usually the last interview stop before the men in white coats are called?

*Plays soothing music while waiting for the public health crew to show up*

Tall and tan and young and lovely,
The girl from Ipanema goes walking,
and when she passes...

 

Sure enough, Nye was followed as a guest by a paranormal investigator who wrote a book on time travel. Most guests on Coast to Coast AM believe some really, really weird things: Fairies, bigfoot, UFO's, ghosts, chemtrails, etc.

 

I don't see anything weird about 'em, just because it's not mainstream or anything.
Ya can't disporove 'em.
Plus I prefer listening to Coast to Coast than most radio shows, since most radio shows have obnovious hosts.

 

You can't disprove unicorns either. Doesn't make them real.