EEVblog #833 - Mailbag

[AlxDroidDev]

At the moment the evidence for deities is on the same levels as evidence of the existence of Hogwarts and Harry Potter.

At least Harry Potter is consistent, logical and doesn't self-contradict.

At least Harry Potter doesn't make anyone feel guilty about anything.

At least Harry Potter does kick someone's butt when they've done something bad.

[daqq]

At least Harry Potter is consistent, logical and doesn't self-contradict.

Even though I do enjoy the franchise, it must be noted that it does have plot holes you could drive a truck through. I mean, seriously, what's the deal with the time turners? They pointedly choose to ignore the existence of the single most useful device that could have resolved the plots in minutes. Or the whole liquid luck thingie? Seriously? Why isn't pretty much everyone doped up on it before every major event, battle, test...? It is difficult to make? What kind of excuse is that? Can't they just outsource to an alchemist who knows his stuff?

And how can you keep an entire massive population hidden away when they constantly do amazing things?

On the other hand it doesn't want your foreskin, your first born or your soul, or to spend tons of man hours worshiping Harry (though many do so), so I guess it's OK. Also, the worst thing you get for having a dissenting opinion is a heated discussion with name calling.

[EEVblog]

The reality is that, We, as Human beings, Do Not Care about other Human Beings.
Natural Selection at its best.

Err, not quite.
There is evidence for altruism and the golden rule et.al having benefits in natural selection.
Plenty to learn on the topic, perhaps start here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism

Even bacteria appear to have altruistic like tendencies:

[han]

Quote
"At least Harry Potter is consistent, logical and doesn't self-contradict."


Lets build a time machine,set to 2000 year to the past, throw a star wars novel to the Sumerian, and we will have Jedi religion dominate earth.. 

[rrinker]

 Just as long as you don't accidently leave behind any L. Ron Hubbard books.

[Circlotron]

The Bible ... is inaccurate, distorted,

Please provide examples of these inaccuracies that you have found.
And your claim of distorted logically implies that you know what the undistorted version is. Do tell.

[daqq]

Please provide examples of these inaccuracies that you have found.

Well, the whole world wide flood that took out everything aside samples of animals that got on to a gigantic ship that was a hobby project by an elderly citizen, then suspiciously disseminated the various species only onto various continents (kangaroos anyone?) and no where else, and somehow removed any geological evidence of itself is somewhat fishy.

[bookaboo]

The reality is that, We, as Human beings, Do Not Care about other Human Beings.
Natural Selection at its best.

Err, not quite.
There is evidence for altruism and the golden rule et.al having benefits in natural selection.
Plenty to learn on the topic, perhaps start here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism

Even bacteria appear to have altruistic like tendencies:

Richard Dawkins explains this in detail in "The Selfish Gene", it's fascinating how well many human (and animal) behaviours both good and bad are easily explained.

[Fungus]

I didn't throw away  a thing.

Yes you did.  What is Christianity based on if you throw away The Bible?

(If I were you I'd stop digging now).

The reality is that, We, as Human beings, Do Not Care about other Human Beings.

Wrong. Ludicrously wrong.

eg. Go check out the major charities of the world:

Red Cross? Atheist
Oxfam Intermon? Atheist
Doctors without Borders? Atheist
Amnesty International? Atheist
etc. etc.

Plus Atheists in general give more to charity than religious people.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A secular work that's a far better moral guide than The Bible.

Catholic Church? Still largely responsible for the continued AIDS epidemic in Africa and the fact that people still have Polio.

[Fungus]

I've seen how the Algerians are treated in France, or the Moroccans  in Spain, it's even worse than how they treated the Gypsies back in the day, I say they should welcome them, specially with the low growth population in Europe, they do need Immigrants to keep the economy up.

Not by ALL the French and not by ALL the Spanish. A small minority who aren't part of mainstream society.

[miguelvp]

The reality is that, We, as Human beings, Do Not Care about other Human Beings.
Natural Selection at its best.

Err, not quite.
There is evidence for altruism and the golden rule et.al having benefits in natural selection.
Plenty to learn on the topic, perhaps start here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_altruism

Even bacteria appear to have altruistic like tendencies:

Systems Theory at its best, life is self-organizing, self-renewing, self-maintaining and self-transcending.

That doesn't take away our tribal tendencies and our collective nature.
We are fine until we don't need a specific group, so it's a symbiosis and a balance as long as it suit us, once it requires too much effort or we perceive that we need those resources all bets are off.

[miguelvp]

I didn't throw away  a thing.

Yes you did.  What is Christianity based on if you throw away The Bible?

(If I were you I'd stop digging now).

Nope, the Bible is still there, but it's not the ultimate answer according to the Catholic point of view.

I'm not digging anything anyways.

[Lightages]

So where is the evidence that a god or gods can even exist? All we have have are stories and people trying to explain things with hand waving and logical knot tying. Where is the evidence beyond personal experiences and old books that are provably wrong and provably violent and bloody?

[Lightages]

Something else to consider when someone tries to say that the majority of people believe the way you do.
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-evidence-bad.html
Read the whole article and don't cherry pick.

[Circlotron]

Something else to consider when someone tries to say that the majority of people believe the way you do.
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-evidence-bad.html
Read the whole article and don't cherry pick.

So, the majority of the people here say there is no God and that the Bible is untrue. By that reasoning they are all wrong.

Churches can take a long walk off a short pier AFAIAC, BTW.

[mtdoc]

Something else to consider when someone tries to say that the majority of people believe the way you do.
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-evidence-bad.html
Read the whole article and don't cherry pick.

So, the majority of the people here say there is no God and that the Bible is untrue. By that reasoning they are all wrong.

I agree, that is a poor article with little but conjecture. The broad point is likely valid but only in limited cases and not as widely applicable as they imply (with no evidence to support).  Phys.org should do better.  In any case not really applicable to this discussion IMO.

Churches can take a long walk off a short pier AFAIAC, BTW.

Also agreed!

And FWIW:
Church/Religion != God

[EEVblog]

The Bible ... is inaccurate, distorted,

Please provide examples of these inaccuracies that you have found.

 
Start with the very first page.

[Lightages]

Something else to consider when someone tries to say that the majority of people believe the way you do.
http://phys.org/news/2016-01-evidence-bad.html
Read the whole article and don't cherry pick.

So, the majority of the people here say there is no God and that the Bible is untrue. By that reasoning they are all wrong.

Churches can take a long walk off a short pier AFAIAC, BTW.

I think you need to consider that the disbelief of something is not the same as belief. I do not believe in something you you might know, not because I hold belief against what you know, I just have no knowledge of it. Atheism is this; the lack of belief in something asserted by someone else. It is nothing more. The lack of belief in anything is not a consensus, not a majority belief.

[Fungus]

The Bible ... is inaccurate, distorted,

Please provide examples of these inaccuracies that you have found.

Start with the very first page.

And then go to Exodus 34 (which I posted about a couple of pages back). If you can come up with a logical explanation for Exodus 34, I'm all ears.

New Testament? Please show the slightest historical support for the great Roman Census. Rome was a huge bureaucracy. We've still got the receipts for the Roman Legion's underpants; where's the paperwork for the census? Not one person wrote about it outside The Bible?

(And what would be the logic of sending everybody to their home town for a census anyway...wouldn't you want to know where people actually lived?)

[coppice]

And then go to Exodus 34 (which I posted about a couple of pages back). If you can come up with a logical explanation for Exodus 34, I'm all ears.

Why do you like to single out that chapter? Compared to most of the rest of the book its pretty straightforward and clear. Compared to things like god can't get you if you are in your car (the iron chariot thing), and the monotheistic god can't go into another god's domain its pretty straight up stuff.

The thing about boiling a goat in its mother's milk is probably a reference to a practice of some other religion. There's a reference to the goddess Asherah a few lines before. Its probably just saying don't follow the practices of other cults.

[Fungus]

And then go to Exodus 34 (which I posted about a couple of pages back). If you can come up with a logical explanation for Exodus 34, I'm all ears.

Why do you like to single out that chapter? Compared to most of the rest of the book its pretty straightforward and clear.

But... what happened to the Ten Commandments? Where did "Thou shalt not kill" go? Those aren't anything like the commandments I was tought

[coppice]

And then go to Exodus 34 (which I posted about a couple of pages back). If you can come up with a logical explanation for Exodus 34, I'm all ears.

Why do you like to single out that chapter? Compared to most of the rest of the book its pretty straightforward and clear.

But... what happened to the Ten Commandments? Where did "Thou shalt not kill" go? Those aren't anything like the commandments I was tought

The ten commandments gets repeated, because of the stone smashing incident, and they aren't the same in both cases. There don't appear to be 10, either, but maybe that's just an issue of how you count them. The no killing rule is, however, clearly stated in both places:

Exodus 20:13 "Thou shalt not kill."

Deuteronomy 5:17 "Thou shalt not kill."

The snag is the rest of book keeps telling the same people to kill their enemies, kill their naughty children, kill rape victims, etc., so the 10 commandments seem to have a lot of caveats which are not properly footnoted at the time the basic rules are stated.

[Fungus]

The ten commandments gets repeated, because of the stone smashing incident

I know.

and they aren't the same in both cases.

You got that part right.

What happened? Did god forget the other ones? Am I the only one seeing the fail?

[coppice]

The ten commandments gets repeated, because of the stone smashing incident

I know.

and they aren't the same in both cases.

You got that part right.
What happened? Did god forget the other ones? Am I the only one seeing the fail?

I presume this is mostly down to the lack of printing presses. The whole thing is an editorial mess. While producing copies was a major undertaking they would only ever have been in the hands of a small number of people. Even when Constantine got serious about spreading Christianity through the Roman Empire he only paid for a small number (50, 100, something like that) of copies of the bible to be made. Most churches never had a copy, and most priests had never seen one. Cleaning up the inconsistencies was not really a priority. If they had been able to mass produce copies when these books were new, and put them in the hands of the average person, I presume they would have undertaken a massive editorial review so the books told a better story. As it was the religions had stuck so well by the time of the printing press that apologists had plenty of expertise in papering over the cracks..

[Fungus]

What happened? Did god forget the other ones? Am I the only one seeing the fail?

I presume this is mostly down to the lack of printing presses. The whole thing is an editorial mess. While producing copies was a major undertaking they would only ever have been in the hands of a small number of people. Even when Constantine got serious about spreading Christianity through the Roman Empire he only paid for a small number (50, 100, something like that) of copies of the bible to be made. Most churches never had a copy, and most priests had never seen one. Cleaning up the inconsistencies was not really a priority. If they had been able to mass produce copies when these books were new, and put them in the hands of the average person, I presume they would have undertaken a massive editorial review so the books told a better story. As it was the religions had stuck so well by the time of the printing press that apologists had plenty of expertise in papering over the cracks..

Let's see if I've got this straight:

God who created the entire universe just for the benefit of a bunch of apes living on one tiny planet, God who guided every single atom during the evolutionary process, God who can read all our minds in real time to see what we're up to, omnipotent omniscient omnipresent God, who answers all our prayers ...

... couldn't get his message to mankind edited/printed properly?

No wonder the world is such a mess.