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Bill Nye The Science Guy Booed In Texas

En Gallop

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And those questions will never be definitively, objectively answered, so I don't bother putting how open I am on a scale of 1-10. It's a toggle switch. Open or not open.

Lol okay. Then I guess by that logic I'm "open". :)
 

Mole

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And those questions will never be definitively, objectively answered, so I don't bother putting how open I am on a scale of 1-10. It's a toggle switch. Open or not open.

Quantum Mechanics is based on statistics. And statistics tells us how likely something is on a scale of 1-10.

And Quantum Mechanics is unbelievably mind numbingly accurate. So statistics is accurate beyond our imaginations.
 

Mal12345

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Quantum Mechanics is based on statistics. And statistics tells us how likely something is on a scale of 1-10.

And Quantum Mechanics is unbelievably mind numbingly accurate. So statistics is accurate beyond our imaginations.

QM is not based on statistics. Stats form part of QM, not the basis of QM.
 

Coriolis

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Ok, she said it quietly. She's allowed her free speech. It's not like she made a scene and threatened to kill someone.
Yes, this lady was well within her rights to say what she said and to behave as she did. We all have the right to be wrong, and to act on it as well, provided we don't harm others in the process. Offending a few scientists who I am sure can take it does not constitute "harm".

I don't think that one can cite their religious beliefs as an excuse for refuting any scientific fact they so well please. I certainly don't give a crap how allegedly irreverent it is for someone to state such a scientific fact. If informing someone that the moon reflects light from the sun is an attempt to change someone's world view, then so is educating a child about essentially any part of science..
Any time we try to replace ignorance with knowledge, we are likely to change someone's world view. This applies not only to scientific knowledge, but just as much in more subjective areas, as when we encourage understanding of those unlike us, or recognition of an addiction, or even when preachers urge the faithful to repent and live a more holy and spiritual life. All of this requires a change in world view; indeed, it depends on it. It is not a sign of strength, or intelligence, or character, or any good quality to be able to cling to the same unchanged world view for one's entire life.

The idea of taking the Bible seriously as a guide to understanding the objective world, is something I think was almost certainly unintended by the original thinkers. It isn't meant as a scientific or historical textbook, but as a set of ideas that attempt to give people's lives a meaning and purpose, and make them feel significant in the grand scheme of things.
Yes. Understanding the Bible largely as metaphor does not degrade it in any way, but rather unlocks its true value and purpose. We don't evaluate Aesop's Fables on the basis of whether there was an actual tortoise and hare having a footrace.
 

Beorn

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Yes. Understanding the Bible largely as metaphor does not degrade it in any way, but rather unlocks its true value and purpose. We don't evaluate Aesop's Fables on the basis of whether there was an actual tortoise and hare having a footrace.

That's only true for the moralistic tales and advice spread around the bible. Most of the new testament revolves around the actual death and resurrection of Christ. The epistles are pretty much worthless without a real Christ.
 

Lark

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That's only true for the moralistic tales and advice spread around the bible. Most of the new testament revolves around the actual death and resurrection of Christ. The epistles are pretty much worthless without a real Christ.

Christianity is worthless without a real Christ.

Jesus Christ did not write anything himself and there is a lot of his ministry as recorded by others which suggests that he was a pretty orthodox Jew intent upon transforming scriptural truths into a lived reality again, all the business of leaving the dead to the dead, sabbath was made for man not man for the sabbath and repeatedly outwitting the "athiests" and scriptural authorities of the day when they attempted to ambush him with it.

Which, sorry to just further confuse the f**k out of the thread (I'm not really but I want to maintain a sembalence of good humour with you other believers, I'm serious Beorn, well, my word anyway), is ample evidence that Jesus was about tradition more than scripture, solo scripture is an error which could only really play out in the way it has with the crisis the so called "higher criticism" of the bible has caused amongst "bible Christians" and the emergence of things such as creationism.

That said, I've got to say that I agree that this guys presentation in this context just appears like collosal trolling, I more than suspect that this thread and the lion share of responses from some quarters in it are trolling too btw.

There's a terrible, terrible tendency among a lot of the neo-athiests, and the rest of the science side of the science vs. religion dichotomy thinkers, to seek out and cause acrimony, seizing upon the very least evidence of the same as examples of their "worst expectations", like with a lot of other instances and as a good example of what trolling actually is its all about baiting people into a certain response. It adds nothing to anything at all. Its a game and idle amusement.

So he's either been blundering in his presentation or succeeded in provoking some very easily provoked people, neither of those are accomplishments and they reflect poorly upon him, I mean I presume the guy has had an education and been schooled and should have been able to avoid either scenario?
 

Beorn

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It's really sad to me that you believe that. "pretty much worthless" -- seriously??

Sad?

I'm really confused. If it's all metaphorical then you can take from it what you want and give whatever meaning to it that you want. Yet, if I don't attribute meaning to it you're going to judge that as sad?


My favorite verses are from the end of Romans 8:

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
36 As it is written, "For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This verse is meaningless if it Christ didn't die and resurrect.

I've been reading Athanasius lately who lived while there was still great persecution and he records how women and children were bravely and courageously facing death for their faith. While bravery is admirable on it's own when combined with stupidity or belief in something false it becomes something of scorn pretty quickly. I mean, look at all the stupid Ned Stark memes. If these people let their children die for a lie then they were fools of the highest order.
 

Lark

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It's really sad to me that you believe that. "pretty much worthless" -- seriously??

Christianity is not Christianity without Christ, I dont even mean the more obscurantist or theologically mired sense of discussions surrounding predestination, election, salvation, sacrifice and atonement (or at-one-ment) that go on, readings of the epistles and other post-Christ, emerging Christianity, passages in the bible are very similar to other philosophical and spiritual currents from the time, Platonism, Epicureanism, Stoicism.

Christ is what sets it all apart, even Hasidics and other parallels within the Hebrews didnt come close to the way in which he interpreted the tradition he was born into and revived in many ways before breaking with, at least in some important respects.
 

Totenkindly

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Christianity is not Christianity without Christ, I dont even mean the more obscurantist or theologically mired sense of discussions surrounding predestination, election, salvation, sacrifice and atonement (or at-one-ment) that go on, readings of the epistles and other post-Christ, emerging Christianity, passages in the bible are very similar to other philosophical and spiritual currents from the time, Platonism, Epicureanism, Stoicism.

Christ is what sets it all apart, even Hasidics and other parallels within the Hebrews didnt come close to the way in which he interpreted the tradition he was born into and revived in many ways before breaking with, at least in some important respects.

My comment is in regards to a particular member saying that the epistles are "pretty worthless" if we cannot assume they are entirely historically true [and, in his words, a "real Christ"].

My point is that I don't think they are "pretty worthless." The example of Christ has value regardless of any historicity.

I'm just kind of surprised at how dififcult it is for you and others to find value in things that you can't justify without having to make them a "historical fact" of sorts. That seems like a failure of imagination to me.
 

Lark

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My comment is in regards to a particular member saying that the epistles are "pretty worthless" if we cannot assume they are entirely historically true [and, in his words, a "real Christ"].

My point is that I don't think they are "pretty worthless." The example of Christ has value regardless of any historicity.

I'm just kind of surprised at how dififcult it is for you and others to find value in things that you can't justify without having to make them a "historical fact" of sorts. That seems like a failure of imagination to me.

:laugh:

No failure of imagination, just without Christ they are equivocal to those other things I mentioned, I dont consider them worthless, they were major philosophical and spiritual currents which interacted and even informed Christianity but with Christ there is no Christianity or it is changed so much as to not be correctly labelled as such.

There's plenty of examples of people dying for what they believed in or being hunted down for it, although there's only one resurrection.
 

Coriolis

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That's only true for the moralistic tales and advice spread around the bible. Most of the new testament revolves around the actual death and resurrection of Christ. The epistles are pretty much worthless without a real Christ.


Christianity is worthless without a real Christ.

Jesus Christ did not write anything himself and there is a lot of his ministry as recorded by others which suggests that he was a pretty orthodox Jew intent upon transforming scriptural truths into a lived reality again, all the business of leaving the dead to the dead, sabbath was made for man not man for the sabbath and repeatedly outwitting the "athiests" and scriptural authorities of the day when they attempted to ambush him with it.
You are both correct about there being no Christianity apart from Christ. People will differ, however, on what it means to say Christ is "real", largely because Jesus didn't leave a written record, and everything we know about him is at best second- and third-hand. Lark writes that he appears to have been "about tradition more than scripture". Relatively, perhaps, but my impression is that Jesus was in many ways an iconoclast, standing the customs of his day on their head by reaching out to marginalized groups, associating freely with women, gentiles, tax collectors, etc. But to say this is to claim no more than that the elephant has a trunk.

There's plenty of examples of people dying for what they believed in or being hunted down for it, although there's only one resurrection.
Even that is interpreted metaphorically by some.
 
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