gdp's Comments

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Learning through painting.

Thu, 22 Oct 2015 01:32:40 +0000

No, Ray. Someone can feel a sense of despair so intense that death seems like the best option and still be a Christian. Christianity is not a magic talisman that keeps its adherents from ever developing a mental disorder or from losing hope in the face of a crisis. There are Christians out there who struggle with suicidal ideation. That does not mean that their faith is not real. It does not even mean that their faith is weaker than yours. It just means that they are suffering in a way that you, though good fortune, apparently never have. I hope that you'll think a bit more the next time that you decide to write something that touches on suicide. Throwing suicidal Christians under the bus is thoughtless and inconsiderate. They deserve better than that.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Lucy.

Fri, 6 Mar 2015 18:42:12 +0000

“Paleontologists have discovered a new skeleton in the closet of human ancestry that is likely to force science to revise, if not scrap, current theories of human origins.” This is the opening line of USA Today article "Discovery Rocks Human-Origin Theories" by Tim Friend. It was published on March 21, 2001. The article says that the then-recently discovered Kenyanthropus platypus lived 3.5 million years ago, which would make it contemporaneous with Australopithecus afarensis. (Friend uses the name Lucy as if it is synonymous with A. afarensis. I really wish that people wouldn't do this, since it could easily give less-informed readers the impression that she is our only A. afarensis specimen, which simply isn't true.) The article also says that Kenyanthropus seems to resemble modern human beings a bit more closely than A. afarensis does in some respects. It also mentions Maeve Leakey saying that she thinks that Kenyanthropus is more likely to have been a direct ancestor to modern human beings than A. afarensis, but that it's also possible that neither of them are our direct ancestors. The article also points out that experts have understood for some time that assuming that we can trace human descent in a straight line which goes back to Lucy. So, to make a long story short, the actual substance of the article does not support the sensationalistic claim made in it's first line. There is no reason to suppose that Kenyanthropus would lead scientists to scrap current theories of human origins, since it actually fits into those theories rather nicely. There isn't even much revision to be done. It doesn't much change our understanding of when or where human beings emerged. Reuters reported that the discovery left “scientists of human evolution . . .confused,” saying, “Lucy may not even be a direct human ancestor after all.” USA Today Although Ray attributes all of this to USA Today, this part isn't in the USA Today article that Ray quoted in the first line of this post. I've found other articles from USA Today articles mentioning Kenyanthropus, but neither of them contain the words which Ray's quoted. This is incredibly sloppy sourcing. Regardless, as I've already explained, the discovery of Kenyanthropus is not particularly confusing and paleontologists have long understood that A. afarensis may not be a direct ancestor of modern human beings.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: One blood.

Wed, 31 Dec 2014 00:29:17 +0000

The Bible and modern science both posit a monogenetic origin for humankind. But that's where the similarities end. The Bible says that we are descended from an original ancestral pair of human beings who were created out of dust. On the other hand, science demonstrates that we evolved from earlier hominins. Science shows that even during the most severe bottleneck in our history we had a population of at least 10,000 individuals. We are not a very genetically diverse species, but we'd have even less genetic diversity if there had ever been a time when there were only two human beings. In confirming monogenism, science has established that just about everything that the Bible says about the origins of humankind is mythical. It's true that the Bible does not endorse modern racial classifications, but that is hardly surprising. The modern concept of race developed with European expansion during the early modern period, centuries after the Bible had been composed. It's easy to avoid using a concept when that concept does not yet exist. When scientists say that the modern concept of race has no genetic basis, they are not catching up with the Bible any more than they are catching up with every other text written before the early modern period. This is not to say that the creators of the Bible didn't have any idea of race at all, just that whatever idea of race they had, it is not going to match our idea of race. The men who wrote the Bible divided up humanity into different ethnic groups and told stories about the supposed ancestors of these groups. Some of Bible's writers clearly regarded their own ethnic group as superior to all others. They invented tales about their ancestors had committed genocide against other ethnic groups at God's command. They created laws which gave Hebrews preferential treatment over people from different ethnic groups. Not only did the creators of the Bible have something analogous to our concept of race, but parts of the Bible even condone something analogous to our racism, even if other parts seem to condemn it.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Another name?

Thu, 27 Nov 2014 04:44:44 +0000

In my experience, it's more common for people to use "Jesus Christ" as a way to express surprise or dismay than it is for people to use it to express disgust. So why focus on "Jesus Christ" being used to express disgust and ignore the other ways that the interjection is used. "Jesus Christ" is used as an interjection in English because England has been Christian for hundreds of years. The language that we speak today developed in a country where everyone was Christian. So of course most of our religion-based profanity is going to reference Christianity. This is not going to be the case with languages that didn't develop in areas dominated by Christianity. For instance, if someone who speaks Mandarin Chinese wants to express surprise, dismay, or disgust, they are not going to use the name of Jesus Christ. The fact that English-speakers use "Jesus Christ!" as an interjection isn't a sign that everyone despises Jesus. It's a sign that Jesus has been venerated by the English for centuries. Even if you look only at the English language, Jesus Christ isn't the only name that's used in this manner. Holy Moses, Ray! Would it really be so hard for you make sure that what you've written is accurate before you post it?

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Shakespeare.

Wed, 1 Oct 2014 01:01:11 +0000

"In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria." -- Luke 2:1-2 Quirinius became governor of Syria in 6 AD. He would conduct his first census during that same year. If you want to argue that Luke is describing another census, then that census must have taken place after 6 AD. Luke cannot have been describing a census that took place earlier than that because Quirinius would not have been governor yet and Luke claims that the census was taken after Quirinius was governor. I'll agree with you that the census described by Luke doesn't really match the census of Quirinius. But that's only because no census matches what Luke describes. No census has ever told people that they need to go to be registered in the hometown of their ancestors from 1,000 years ago. It just doesn't make any sense. If Luke is trying to describe the census of Quirinius in 6 AD, he's wrong when he says that Joseph had to go to Bethlehem because that's where David was from. If Luke was describing another census, he's still wrong about that point. And if he's trying to describe a census that took place in 9/8 BC, then he's not only wrong about that, he's also wrong when he claims that the first census of this sort took place when Quirinius was governor.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Shakespeare.

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 04:46:30 +0000

Ray, the term "common era" has been in use for centuries at this point. The term was coined by Christians. It was not invented to "get rid of Jesus." It was later used by Jews, not because they were trying to "get rid of Jesus" but because the don't want to call Jesus their Lord when they don't think that he is. (AD is short for "Anno Domini" which means "In the year of our Lord.") I generally prefer using AD/BC over CE/BCE, but that's largely for aesthetic reasons. I don't consider Jesus to be my Lord, but as far as I'm concerned AD/BC notation system has a life of its own at this point and the origins of the system and what the letters stand for don't really matter that much at this point. But even though I personally prefer the AD/BC system, I don't go around misrepresenting the people who prefer the CE/BCE system. The people who prefer the CE/BCE notation are taking the religious implications of AD/BC far more seriously than I am. They take what AD and BC stand for far more seriously than I do. They take the words that AD and BC stand for seriously. On the other hand, I don't take it seriously at all. They care about the religious implications of AD/BC, whereas I could not care less. The calendar notation system that someone prefers is not an accurate way to determine how devoted they are to Jesus.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Cleansing.

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 05:17:15 +0000

If you think that the only reason that rape is wrong is that some authority figure said so, then you have an incredibly stunted sense of morality.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Dinosaurs.

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 00:33:42 +0000

Also, I suspect that the "tail" described in Job 40:17 isn't referring to a literal tail. The preceding verses are focused on the creature's loins and belly and that the second half of Job 40:17 talks about its "stones." All of those things seem to relate to fertility. But tails don't have anything to do with fertility. If the word "tail" is taken literally, it seems completely out of place. But if we assume that "tail" was a euphemism for something else, then the thematic unity of the passage is preserved. Other translations of the Bible once again seem to offer credence to this view. Where King James Version says "He moveth his tail like a cedar," the New Revised Standard Version says "It makes its tail stiff like a cedar." The English Standard Version says "He makes his tail stiff like a cedar." The Common English Bible says "He stiffens his tail like a cedar." If someone came up to me and asked me what anatomical feature stiffens like a tree, I know what my answer would be. And it wouldn't have anything to do with tails.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Dinosaurs.

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 00:15:03 +0000

Behemoth could not have been a dinosaur. Read the description again. "The sinews of his stones"? What do you think that means? Well, one obvious meaning comes to mind. Since "stones" are not an anatomical feature, it seems likely that "stones" is likely a euphemism for a certain anatomical feature. It should be noted that the King James Version is a bit unusual in its use of the word "stones" in Job 40:17. Most English translation of the Bible use the word "thighs" instead. Since there are plenty of other Biblical examples of "thighs" being used as a euphemism for the anatomical feature that I'm thinking of, I think we can be pretty sure about what Job 40:14 is describing. And what Job 40:17 is describing is an anatomical feature that is exclusively found in mammals. If Behemoth was a real animals (and not an imaginary monster) then it must have been a mammal. And dinosaurs are not mammals.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Imagine.

Fri, 5 Sep 2014 21:57:04 +0000

If God does not exist, then you obviously can't violate his law or disobey his will. And, since sin is typically defined as violating God's law or disobeying his will, if God does not exist, then sin can't exist either. This does not mean that the things which are typically categorized as sins do not exist, it just means that the category itself has no basis in reality. If you are going to argue for the existence of sin, it is not enough to just rattle off a bunch of things which a lot of people categorize as sins. You have to demonstrate that God exists, and that He has a set of rules that He wants us to follow.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: DSS

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 20:57:35 +0000

A lot of our knowledge of Maya mythology comes from a book known as the Popul Vuh. The only known manuscript was created by the Dominican priest Francisco Ximénez in the early eighteenth century, but most Mesoamericanists think that Ximénez was copying off of a document which was written in the mid-sixteenth century. Imagine that someone discovered not only the sixteenth century text which Ximénez was probably working from. Scholars would rush to study these documents and compare it with Ximénez's manuscript. Let's say that they discovered that Ximénez manuscript was incredibly faithful to the sixteenth century text. Would you say that this discovery proved that the Mayan hero twins were real people and that the Popol Vuh is an accurate account of their exploits? Would you argue that the reliability of Ximenéz's manuscript demonstrates that Xibalba is a real place?

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of comfort: Really Saved?

Wed, 20 Aug 2014 20:06:21 +0000

I wouldn't call it a mistranslation. The word used in the original Greek is ἄνωθεν (anóthen), which could mean either "above" or "again". John 3 relies on this double-meaning, which makes it difficult to translate into languages which don't have a single word which has both of those meanings. If a translator decides to translate ἄνωθεν in John 3:3 as "above," then they manage to get across what Jesus was trying to say more accurately. But this accuracy comes at the cost of making the story less coherent, since Nicodemus's confusion does not make as much sense. If the translator decides to go with the word "again" instead, then the story makes more sense, but it doesn't get across what Jesus said as accurately. There isn't really a wrong choice here, it just depends on what the translator considers literal accuracy or narrative coherency and flow to be more important.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Logic, reason & atheism.

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 20:34:57 +0000

Ray, you live in Southern California. You live on the west coast of the United States. If you were to get on a boat and sail west, the next time you saw land you'd be off the coast of China or Japan. You know, the part of the world typically known as the Far East. If you lived on the east coast of the United States instead and decided to sail east across the Atlantic, you'd eventually end up in either Western Africa or Western Europe. East and west are relative terms. Any given location is to the west of whatever happens to be to its east and to the east of whatever happens to be to its west. There is no place where you can say that you've gone as far east as you can possibly go. You can keep going east till you come back to your starting point, approaching it from the west. East is never far from west. Your analogy makes no sense.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words or Comfort: Banana Peel.

Thu, 19 Jun 2014 20:19:20 +0000

Ray seems to care more about getting attention than being taken seriously. And the banana video probably garnered Ray more attention than anything else he's ever done. From that perspective, reminding people of the banana video makes perfect sense.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Listen to your experts...

Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:29:40 +0000

What do you mean by "kind"? How are we supposed to give an example of a "change in kind" if you can't even tell us what a kind is? Does the dinosaur-bird series of transitional fossils show a change in kind? Or is that just adaptation since birds are still therapods? What about the synapsid-mammal series of transitional fossils? Or the fish-tetrapod series? Or the artiodactyl-cetacean series? Do these count as a change in kind? If not, then what on Earth would qualify as a change in kind?

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: “Evolution is a proven fact.”

Wed, 7 May 2014 23:04:17 +0000

Let's set aside the fact that evolution is still happening. Let's set aside the fact that evolution has been observed in action. Let's pretend that the word "evolution" actually refers only to the natural history of life on earth. Even if, for the sake of argument, I grant all of that, your argument still makes no sense. Just because something happened in the past, that does not mean that we cannot observe evidence for it in the present. We cannot observe the past directly, but we can observe records of the past. We cannot go back in time and witness the Protestant Reformation or the collapse of the Roman Empire. But we still know that these events happened because of the evidence that they left behind. We have the words of people who lived during these events and artifacts which were created during those time periods. Similarly, we know that evolution occurred in the past because it left evidence in our anatomy, our DNA, and the fossil record which we can observe in the present. I suppose that someone could object that this comparison is not fair because we have documents written by eyewitnesses, whereas we do not have eyewitness testimony for our evolutionary history. I don't think that this objection holds up for a couple of reasons. The first is that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. The second reason is that there are civilizations which left no written records, yet no one doubts that they existed. If you are going to deny past evolution because we have no eye-witness documentation, then you might as well deny the existence of the Mississipian culture, the Ancient Pueblo peoples, the Teotihuacán civilization, and the Tiwanaku civilization. They left no written records. We only know that they existed because of the architecture and artifacts that they left behind. If you can accept that they existed despite the absence of written records from eyewitnesses, then why can't you accept the reality of evolution?

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Booth\'s prophetic words.

Tue, 29 Apr 2014 17:54:58 +0000

Our founding fathers were not Christians, but practiced Deism and universalism. Our founding fathers were not a monolithic block. They disagreed on many things. Some of them were deists (e.g. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine). Others were Christians (e.g. John Jay, Patrick Henry, andJohn Witherspoon). Our founding fathers came to America to escape the bondage of the Church of England and evangelists like Booth. Not really. Most of our founding fathers were born in America. They were not immigrants themselves, but the descendants of immigrants. You are probably thinking of the founders of the Plymouth Colony, which was established by English Separatists who had already escaped to Holland in order to avoid being forced to worship in the Church of England. They were allowed to practice their religion as they saw fit in Holland, but this was not enough for them. They left for the Americas because they were worried that Holland's morals were too loose and they feared that their children would take on a Dutch way of life rather than preserving Puritan English culture. They left for the Americas to create their own theocratic regime. They did not have a problem with religious beliefs being imposed, so long as those beliefs were their own.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Loophole.

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 02:27:41 +0000

First, natural selection is not an agent. It does not figure out how to create things. It simply acts upon existing variation. Second, natural selection can act upon more than one feature at a time. It doesn't have to wait until we have a patella in one leg before turning to the other. Third, any mutation that affects one leg is probably going to affect the other. Bilateral symmetry evolved long before legs did. Fourth, the patella is present in most mammals. The patella evolved long before human beings did. If I had to summarize the evolution of the human patella, I would discuss the changes that the patella had undergone since our divergence with chimpanzees and bonobos. I would not discuss the origins of the patella itself. Fifth, it's not particularly difficult to imagine how and why the patella might have evolved. At least I can understand why the evolution of something like the eye might confuse creationists. But the patella? It's a piece of bone that sits above the knee joint. It's not particularly complex.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Loophole.

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 02:12:24 +0000

DBM, you are a Christian. You share the same ideology as Diego de Landa. He created a hell on Earth in the Yucatan in 1562 precisely because of his Christianity. When Christians claim their theocratic worldview is a better alternative to atheism they are either deluded, lying or both. Don't believe me? I invite any Christian to take a midnight stroll through downtown Juárez. The people they are likely to encounter share their atheistic worldview. Chances are the Christian will not survive the encounter. This is the Hell on Earth wrought by you and every other Christian. - - - See how stupid that sounded? What you said sounded even stupider. You see, I can actually demonstrate how Diego de Landa's religion led to his anti-idolatry campaign. I have actual numbers to demonstrate that most of the people who live in Juárez are Christians. On the other hand, you cannot show a causal relationship between Kim Jung Un's atheism and his actions as the dictator of North Korea. You cannot show that most people living in downtown Detroit share our atheistic worldview. Most of the people who live in downtown Detroit are Christians. So are most of the people in American prisons.

http://onthebox.us/ : Words of Comfort: Noah and Prophecy.

Fri, 11 Apr 2014 21:43:31 +0000

While respected Bible scholars may disagree on the timing of some of the signs, they all agree on one thing…that Jesus Christ is coming again. You can't be referring to all of the Bible scholars who are respected within the academic community, because there are a number of well-regarded Bible scholars who are not even Christians. Belief in the Second Coming is far from universal amongst academically acclaimed Bible scholars. So what do you mean when you say that "respected Bible scholars" all agree that there will be a Second Coming? Since you clearly are not referring to the scholars who are respected by the academic community, who is it that these scholars are respected by? Are you referring to Bible scholars who are respected by you? If that's the case, then your argument is laughable. I suspect that you wouldn't respect any Bible scholar that did not hold one of your most cherished beliefs. If I am correct, then your statement about how no respected Bible scholar denies the Second Coming is just a useless tautology -- if you refuse to respect any Bible scholar that denies the Second Coming, then of course all of the Bible scholars who you respect are going to accept it. And why should we care about which scholars you respect, anyway? You have never shown any indication that you are competent to judge the worth of any short of scholarship. Yet, over the years, you've given us plenty of reasons to believe that you are completely incompetent in this area. You don't understand the either the scientific or historical method. You don't know much about ancient history. You don't understand the standards required to publish in an academic journal. You don't even understand the importance of citing your sources. Your past acts of plagiarism prove that you don't get understand even the most basic principles of academic honesty. Whether or not you respect a particular Biblical scholar means absolutely nothing because you have none of the tools that would be necessary in order to evaluate their work.