Interesting paper on Babel. Says that there were already different languages around then.
Yes, this is yet another reason why the Tower of Babel myth makes no sense whatsoever. We have very compelling evidence (including written historical evidence) that numerous languages already existed thousands of years before any credible date for the Tower of Babel based on the Biblical account.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
LittleNipper wrote:The Biblical version of the Tower of Babel is inspired. The origin of linguistics points to a single area of origin for all human language.
It is obvious that some time in the distant pass there had to have been a first human language, and it is certainly possible (though not inevitably so) that all subsequent languages were derived from that original language. Nevertheless, we have extremely compelling evidence that numerous languages were already in existence long before any credible date for the Tower of Babel. Archeologists and linguists have found writings in Sumerian, Elamite, Akkadian, Egyptian and ancient Indus that date well before the supposed date of the Tower of Babel, and these are just the languages of the few civilizations advanced enough to have developed writing systems that early. It would be irrational to suppose there were not already numerous other extant languages as well at that time. Protesting that the Bible says otherwise, when its earliest written books were written well over a thousand years after the Tower of Babel myth could have occurred, only further underscores your own irrationality and ignorance.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
LittleNipper wrote: The reason we have the computer and the Internet, has everything to do with inspiration of men like Bell, Edison, and Tesla without any help from Darwin and his opinion.
Fence Sitter wrote:And Einstein.
Bonus points if you can tell us how the age of the universe (14 billion years or so) and Einstein's electrical theories that make your computer function and intertwined.
LittleNipper wrote:I constructed an addition onto my house. Can you tell me how billions of years and Einstein's electrical theories brought that about?
Yes I can.
Portions of the materials you used to construct the addition started their journey as part of a star that existed millions if not billions of years ago and far away, stars that took specific amounts of time to age, die and explode throwing their material out into the universe to be reconstituted as new,stars, planets and assorted space debris. Materials, some of which, ended up being our planet and solar system. Einstein's theories were foundational to understanding how these process work as well as understanding how to use the electricity that flows through the wires in that addition. Theories that depend on the universe being about 14 billion years old. In other words if Einstein was wrong you and I would not be communicating on the computers in front of us. and you would be sitting out in a yard without an addition.
You do understand that all of the post-iron elements are formed in supernova explosions themselves, right? And since we do not live in a star, those elements must have been formed somewhere else long ago and far away.
It is about this time you start with the "God can do anything" excuses and pretend these process don't really happen in the time frames they actually take, just to defend an absurdly literal reading of a mythological fictional book written 1800-2800 years ago by unknown people who had no idea that the earth was not the center of the universe let alone the fact there was more to the universe than just our solar system.
So yes I do understand how you built your addition, since I work in construction I am quite capable of even doing it myself. What you don't understand is how those pieces of material you use came to be and how Einsteins theories are critical to your use of them. All you see is a book that must be defended in a bizarre manner, no matter how ridiculous the argument is and no matter how many aspects of your own life depend on the very scientific theories you are willing to discard in this misguided defense.
I am firmly convinced that the fact that we humans have been carefully conditioned or groomed for millennia by religious charlatans to accept things on faith (including nonsensical myths like the Tower of Babel), without confirming evidence, helped greatly to make possible the recent election of Donald J. Trump. I think this is a prime example of the harm that can be done by the religious approach to discerning truth.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
Gunnar wrote:I am firmly convinced that the fact that we humans have been carefully conditioned or groomed for millennia by religious charlatans to accept things on faith (including nonsensical myths like the Tower of Babel), without confirming evidence, helped greatly to make possible the recent election of Donald J. Trump. I think this is a prime example of the harm that can be done by the religious approach to discerning truth.
Gunner I think your earlier discussion about ancient people not being dumb about building should suggest that the ancient tellers of this story of a tower May have told it with a bit of irony and a knowing wink.(of course the tower wont reach heaven) It was something a shade off literal. I do not think the theology in the story is dumb though you may have chosen a wooden reading of the theology. I think Genesis several times reviews the sense that human achievement is a two edged sword. Those who find a power may well chose to use it to abuse other people. What is understanding may also become dangerous , hydrogen bomb for example.
Considering this last post I find myself thinking you have a point but at the same time my mind also flips it over for alternative readings. I believe human communities have been carefully grooming their religious leaders to promise just what people are wishing for. I do not see religious leaders having any power or authority to do things the other way around. I mention that because I suspect that getting rid of religion and religious leaders may leave people grooming Trump's to give them the promises they lust after.
Gunnar wrote:I am firmly convinced that the fact that we humans have been carefully conditioned or groomed for millennia by religious charlatans to accept things on faith (including nonsensical myths like the Tower of Babel), without confirming evidence, helped greatly to make possible the recent election of Donald J. Trump. I think this is a prime example of the harm that can be done by the religious approach to discerning truth.
Gunner I think your earlier discussion about ancient people not being dumb about building should suggest that the ancient tellers of this story of a tower May have told it with a bit of irony and a knowing wink.(of course the tower wont reach heaven) It was something a shade off literal. I do not think the theology in the story is dumb though you may have chosen a wooden reading of the theology. I think Genesis several times reviews the sense that human achievement is a two edged sword. Those who find a power may well chose to use it to abuse other people. What is understanding may also become dangerous , hydrogen bomb for example.
What I said was that the builders, architects and engineers actually involved in planning and building ancient monumental structures had to have been very smart indeed. The geniuses who invented the first systems of writing also deserve a great deal of credit and honor. However, I stand fast on the absurdity of much of the theology invented and promoted by their religious leaders. I also deplore the fact that unscrupulous leaders of all ages deliberately used religious indoctrination to intimidate the ignorant masses into acquiescing to the exploitation and misuse of real knowledge and power for nefarious, self-serving purposes. I can't help but think that real prophets inspired by an omnipotent and compassionate God (if there were any such thing) could have prevented, rather than encouraged the numerous atrocities recounted in the Old Testament, and supposedly done in the name of God and by His command.
Considering this last post I find myself thinking you have a point but at the same time my mind also flips it over for alternative readings. I believe human communities have been carefully grooming their religious leaders to promise just what people are wishing for. I do not see religious leaders having any power or authority to do things the other way around. I mention that because I suspect that getting rid of religion and religious leaders may leave people grooming Trump's to give them the promises they lust after.
Undoubtedly there have always been leaders, both religious and secular, who have maliciously exploited what they perceived were the wishes of the people they wished to exploit. That these perceived but irrational wishes and fears made people more easily exploitable does not diminish the culpability of those doing the exploiting. I still think that had mankind not been encouraged for millennia to place more stock in religious faith than in demonstrable reality, the election of people like Trump would have been far less probable.
No precept or claim is more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
“If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”
― Harlan Ellison
Gunnar wrote:I still think that had mankind not been encouraged for millennia to place more stock in religious faith than in demonstrable reality, the election of people like Trump would have been far less probable.
And if humanity had not been encouraged for millennia to place more stock in carts and horses than in combustion engines, we would have had much higher speed downloads by now.
I sometimes feel myself in the weird position of a Christian urging atheists to be less mystical and more materialist. Humans are not enlightened rational beings that have always been held down by religious superstition. Humans are evolved animals, and evolution—cultural as well as genetic—proceeds in infinitesimal steps. Primitive human cultures were not Pocahontas painting with wind. They were into torturing captives to death and then eating them. And it wasn't science that brought us away from that. It was brutal cultures being displaced by slightly less brutal cultures; savage gods displaced by less savage gods.
Science pouring scorn on religion is like the kid who now goes to Harvard laughing at his immigrant great-grandparents for polishing boots in the 1930s and speaking terrible English. They put him where he is and he owes them everything. He doesn't have to talk like them now, or live the way they did. But how dare he mock them?
Physics Guy wrote: Science pouring scorn on religion is like the kid who now goes to Harvard laughing at his immigrant great-grandparents for polishing boots in the 1930s and speaking terrible English. They put him where he is and he owes them everything. He doesn't have to talk like them now, or live the way they did. But how dare he mock them?
If you're looking at it in a historical context, as the role of religion in helping science to evolve, I would agree with you. Unfortunately, your example doesn't apply to modern fundamentalist phenomena like the Ark Park. The Ark Park *should* be mocked as an anachronistic antiscientific fantasy.
huckelberry wrote:I mention that because I suspect that getting rid of religion and religious leaders may leave people grooming Trump's to give them the promises they lust after.
You mean like the religious right community who supported him early?
huckelberry wrote:I mention that because I suspect that getting rid of religion and religious leaders may leave people grooming Trump's to give them the promises they lust after.
You mean like the religious right community who supported him early?
I think the religious right were slow to come around to Trump and always had reservations (outside of a few prominent Evangelical figures). During the primaries there was a pretty strong correlation between those weakly religious who supported Trump and those very religious (in terms of going to church) who tended to not.
Once Trump got the nomination then people slowly came over to him for various reasons. Primarily because many saw it as a choice between two evils and trying to pick the least bad choice. But even if the #nevertrump crowd (of which I consider myself part) didn't end up being as large as we might have hoped, there's still a lot of complicated views people have on Trump. My guess is that it wouldn't take too many screwups for many of the religious right to abandon him.
