December 11, 2024

Irreducible Irrationalism

Whenever some believer wants to have a protracted discussion in private, it’s frustrating for me because they expect me to go through all this trouble to re-educate that one person alone, only to then see them stick their fingers in their ears, and then I can’t use that discussion as evidence against them. This is precisely why such discussions should be held in a public forum. For example, below is one of the most recent messages I’ve received from a wanna-believer–who’s only connection to rationality is that he wishes to remain anonymous. I’ll blend my reply with his indented original message.

I’m opposed to idea man is an animal on theological grounds. I can’t prove this empirically to you.
I can only justify my views from my theology. You reject my theology.
Only read the below if you have time as it is full radical and original ideas:
1)Noah did not bring every animal we know into the ark:
Science would refute the idea that penguins or parrots did not exist in the time of Noah. He brought certain types of birds into the ark. These birds were of a “kind”. A raven (we know from genesis he brought a raven into the ark) is a “kind”. After the waters receded the different kinds of birds reached other lands where the developed their traits. For example the Raven then “evolved” into crows, rooks, and other “Corbus” like birds.
It doesn’t matter what our “views” are; only what we can prove. I CAN prove that we are animals empirically. You cannot prove anything to anyone theologically.

1.
(a) Noah never existed. He is an exagguration of the earlier legend of Ziusudra who survived a localized flood of the city of Shuruppak and Kish in 2900 BCE.
(b) There is no such thing as a “kind”. If you want to argue otherwise, you’ll have to take the Phylogeny Challenge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r0zpk0lPFU

2) Noah did not bring Grizzly bears into the ark
Bears, raccoons, weasels, wolverines, badgers developed later from a prototype animal that Noah brought into the ark. This is the case with all the animals. To use simple numbers Noah may have only brought about 100 animals in the ark. These animals became the thousands of animals we have today.
2.
(a) Grizzlies were never on the ark because grizzlies, raccoons, weasels, wolverines, and badgers lived in North America 5000 years ago; not Iraq. In the original story of Ziusudra, he only saved some of his own livestock and that’s it.
(b) There was never a global flood. This is matter of absolute certainty. Here is a playlist to prove it. After you have watched every episode, we can talk about the flood again; not before.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMJP95iZJqEjmc5oxY5r6BzP
3) Object oriented programming taught me something about the creation mechanism
I have a background in Computer programming and linguistics. When I learned to write code I learned Object Oriented programming via the C++ language. You create (to simplify) a class. An object is instance of a class. These are data objects. The class is the prototype of archetype. You can code it in such a way that the instances of your class (the data object itself) can change and adapt to new computing variables.
In nature there are many more variables, and an omniscient God would be a better encoded. What is termed evolution is actually encoding. Our genes and the genes of animals were encoded to adapt and change to changing variables. So let’s go back to penguins. Penguins may not have existed in Noah’s day but an archetypal bird did exist which later developed into the penguin based on it’s original encoding. God is the master programmer.
3.
(a) No one knows anything about the creation mechanism other than that it’s magic, and creationists don’t even realize that much.
(b) Evolution is not “encoded”; it’s a matter of population genetics.
(c) When you state the properties of God, you’re asserting baseless speculation about unsupported assumptions of the evidently imaginary and which is not even physically possible.
(d) The first penguins emerged in the early Paleocene, about 60 million years before the time of your flood legend.
(e) God is not possible. He is a character adapted from Canaanite mythology blended with Mesopotamian mythology.
(f) There is no “programmer”. Genetics shows incidental design through the properties of emergence. This is bottom-up natural pattern rather than a top-down administration.
4)Black pepper and skintone.
An ingredient in black pepper can stimulate the production of melanin. I was always intrigued by the unique skin tone and appearance of people from India. They often share the facial features and hair types of other “Caucasians” or Indo-Europeans but are pronouncedly darker with a unique (and beautiful) shade.  Indians have a affinity for curry. Curry contains turmeric. Turmeric also has effects on skin in the sun: ” Couple of scientific evidences suggest that curcumin in turmeric can offer photoprotection and can be a viable candidate as a sunscreen agent. “ https://www.turmericforhealth.com/turmeric-benefits/how-turmeric-helps-in-sunburns
The point is a number of variables went into why different people developed different skin tones in different lands. Flora and Fauna is key and the in many cases the plant based foods one eats plays a role.
Humans were encoded to change according to their environments, and God is the one who encoded it.
4) It doesn’t matter what foods people eat. Skin tone and the production of melanin are environmental adaptations. We derive vitamin D from sunlight. In the tropics, where the sun is directly overhead, darker skin can reduce it’s intensity to prevent skin cancer. But darker skin also makes it harder to absorb vitamin D. So every population of any perceived “race” or ethnicity to move out of the tropics become lighter skinned after several generations.
5) We exhale Carbon Dioxide and God breathed life into us according to Genesis.
When God exhaled into us he made us Carbon Based life.  Other forms of life did and do exist. But they’re are on the spiritual realm.
In your critiques of the book of genesis I never seen you mention the story of the Nephilim. Now I would venture to guess any skeptic would scoff at that story. I of course wholeheartedly accept the story. The angels lusted for human women and mated with them. Was this the physical copulation man and animals engage in? No. The angels (we can also say gods, demigods, prinicpalites & powers) were non carbon based life, but the elements they had were able to bond with human elements and produce offspring. The offspring of these fallen angels and humans existed on the earth. They were demigods.  Vishnu (as an example) is always shown blue. Silver will turn your skin blue if you ingest it. Vishnu was the offspring of one of these fallen angels and humans and was silver based life.  Where is the non-carbon based life now? A few places. The genes are still present in the human race. Humans beings have angelic and demonic DNA.
5.
(a) We feel the breeze move against our bodies all the time. Since no one yet understood that air was made of particulate matter but everyone knew you would die if you couldn’t breathe, then it was believed that the movement of the air was somehow spiritual. YHWH was granted this aspect as well, so when Genesis 1:2 says that only “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” it’s talking about the wind.

Desert deities and demons were often depicted like djinni (genies). Early Islamic literature depicts the djinn as devious air elementals. They weren’t usually confined to bottles or lamps, but were more often described as freeroaming nomadic spirits. That’s why wandering whirlwinds are called “dust devils.” There are also strong similarities between the medieval vision of the djinni and our modern impressions of God. Remember how Elijah was taken up to heaven? In a whirlwind.

Such a transition was easy for YHWH, because we supposedly say his name whenever we breathe through our mouths. That’s perfect for an air god. Since the earliest creation myths, the gods would “breathe the breath of life” into their clay golems to animate them, and that too is an apparent precedent to Genesis 2. Throughout the time when the Bible was being composed, its authors commonly believed that the first breath of a child was the moment when its body became “infused with the spirit” as a living being. And of course, the flood in Genesis 6 was meant to drown everything that had “the breath of life.” In fact, the single wisest comment I could find in the entirety of the Bible again shows better than any other passage how our notions of spirituality actually stem from a misunderstanding of the natural aspects of air.

“I said to myself concerning the sons of men, God has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts. For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust. Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth? I have seen that nothing is better than that man should be happy in his activities, for that is his lot. For who will bring him to see what will occur after him?”

This is Ecclesiastes 3:18–22 according to the New American Standard Bible. The New Revised Standard Version, the American Standard Version, and the King James Version all replace the word “breath” with “spirit.”

Likewise, if you compare Luke 23:46 in the New American Standard or the New Revised Standard versions of the Bible with the King James or the American Standard Version, you’ll see again that “breathed his last” means the same as “gave up the ghost.” When the story says that Jesus commits his “spirit” to God, and gives up “the ghost,” or “breathed his last,” in each case they’re talking about the “breath of life” as if that is his “spirit.” This translation eloquently illustrates the gaseous origin of man’s belief in his own soul. Another example, Ezekiel 37:5–10, has a necromancer going into a bone yard to revive an army of the dead, wherein YHWH commands that these bodies be reanimated by the spirit/breath of life.

(b) There is no such thing as angels. That idea actually came from the Zoroastrian religion.
(c) There is no such thing as demigods either, though that idea was common across the whole region at that time, from Hindus to Hellenists.
(d) I used to study Bhakti. I’ve read the works of Sri Probupad and I’ve been to the Hindu temples many times. Vishnu and Krishna are shown blue because that’s how they traditionally represented black-skinned people. It had nothing to do with anyone poisoning themselves.
(e) The nephilim are irrelevant to anything, since they weren’t from the sky and they weren’t “high ones” meaning tall either. They were known only as an exalted group, possibly nobles from Babylon. That’s it, that’s all.

6) Evolving or Devolving?
A person named Robert in a church I attended pointed this out to me. I’ve subsequently built on it. Turtles had teeth. We’re not evolving, we’re devolving. We’re basically dying, and we might be at that point where the process accelerates. I have to quote a Bible verse here:

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. Romans 8:22

The creation refers to everything, and it’s dying. Another story in genesis I don’t know if you ever addressed was Antediluvian man. The people (Such as Adam, and Seth) who lived for centuries. They were closer genetically to the original creation. Man was created in God’s image and as he aged he lost much of his animus. Plus God decreed during the time of the nephilim that man would only live 120 years. Because he knew the angelic and demonic DNA was now in the genome. The Neanderthals were these antediluvian people and they developed the way they did because they lived so long.
Scientists now believe everyone except sub saharan africans has neaderthal DNA. Science is beginning to realize the Neanderthal was more advanced than previously thought. I believe the neanderthal was quite advanced and possessed abilities we would consider supernatural because of the angelic and demonic DNA.
6. (a) There is no such thing as “devolving”. Evolution is biodiversity. That means in all directions, not just bigger, better, or more complex.
(b) Turtles did have both beaks and teeth once. So did birds and some non-avian dinosaurs. But the bladed nature of beaks often overrides or replaces the necessity of teeth. So beaked animals tend not to keep their teeth. Instead they’re lost and in some species, the beak builds teeth-like serrations into it.
(c) We do NOT know that “that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now”. If you can’t show it, you don’t know it.
(d) Cosmos refers to everything. Calling it creation is a question-begging fallacy which assumes an unnecessary imaginary invisible man behind everything.
(e) God never decreed anything. The differences in Biblical ages came from a mistranslation of the Mesopotamian sexigemsimal number system.
(f) There is no such things as demons either, just like there is no such thing as angelic or demonic DNA. If there was, we’d know it. Because we have already found and identified Neanderthal DNA, Denisovan DNA, and the DNA of a fourth human subspecies for which we haven’t found any fossils yet. This last group is only evident in the genes of Melanesian.
(g) There is no such thing as the “supernatural” (ie magical). Neanderthals bad bigger hind brains than we do but not as much forebrain. That may be way they couldn’t compete. Interbreeding was also extremely limited, indicating a natural speciation.

7. Everything you think you know is wrong. You’re absolutely wrong about absolutely everything. I could fill your cup with nectar, but it is already full of shit and we’ll have to dump that out first.

This conversation has already exhausted so much of my time that it would only be worth it if I could show it to others for the common good. Otherwise this is much too much just to do a favor for a stranger when I know no one else can get anything out of it.

[end quote]

Since the faithful will never accept any correction, then every post gets longer and longer as they get wronger and wronger. So he wrote another lengthy reply, mostly full of irrelevant citations of passages from his favorite fables. The only important thing he said that he was going to stick by “the truth” [of his lies] and that even if he did allow me to prove evolution to his satisfaction, he still wouldn’t believe it. Why didn’t he just tell me he was completely dishonestly unreasonable and irrational in the first place? I could have saved so much time.

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