Myth: The first twelve hours

The Most High is described by the scriptures of Judeo-Christian religions as unchanging and the Creator. It stands to reason that such a being, when done with this world, would create another. If so, then it also stands to reason that this isn't His first creation...especially, when you consider what wasn't created during the six days of creation.

Now Genesis mentions "the image of God" in which He makes man. If God is indeed unchanging, then how can His image be other than what it is? However, Christianity includes Jesus as part of God; therefore, should The Author of our reality step into this world as a son of David, he will have to have an image that changes from babe to man. And if from babe, then from a zygote. Therefore, the change of our beings and image from a single cell to a multicellular entity may very well reflect the evolution of God's Image from less than what is to what it currently is. And may very well suggest a change to what God's Image will be when He gathers His people to Himself in order to affect the change which the New Testament calls "marriage of the Lamb" with God's new Image that of the city called New Jerusalem in Revelations.

IF God's physical form does change, and the saved will be housed in His body, then His current form houses those that fulfilled the role of man in the previous creation. And what does our bodies house, other than DNA? Which would make viruses "thieves and robbers" that didn't enter in by the Door, and the stray fundamental particle that leaves its place in an atom would also be such.

Now when would such creations have occurred? Why, during the first twelve hours of the first day before God created Light [photons] for "the evening and the morning were the first day" (Genesis 1:5)

Any questions? ...and remember, it is only a myth.

 

From the thread title, I was hoping you were announcing your first feature length film.

 

So... like the opposite of Caitlyn Jenner?

 

I've read this four times and from what I can tell this is meant to reconcile Creationism and science. Is that correct?

 

I think this is the most pertinent part.

 

I read the title and thought, "Hmm. Maybe a discussion on the game Myth", which I've never played so I was looking forward to the thread.
Then I read the first paragraph and my brain sighed with exasperation. It did. I heard the burbling.
I slid my eyes over to the left at there it was..... Xyle.
I stopped reading.
Well, not true. I read the replies.
I'm just going to assume it more of the religiopsychometaphysical babble as the rest of his works.

 

You described my process as well Papa Dog.

 

Mine as well, except I said "get fucked" out loud.

 

I think this is the most pertinent part.

 

Nice idea

Nope. In order to reconcile faith and science, you need repeatable experiments that prove an event regardless of who performs the experiment. At which point, it ceases to be faith. In order to do that with an origin theory/belief you need to create an entire universe that others can interact with. And that thought gives me ideas about how this myth may limit such tech as the fictious ZPM (Stargate Universe). So thanks for the interaction.

Anyways, you cannot prove the origin of the universe, but what you can do is limit whose testimony that you listen to. I trust those that came before us and thereby accept Scripture, others may not. True skeptism trusts no one. If one is not experimenting and believes in science, that one is demonstrating trust (and thereby faith) in the modern scientist. My beliefs teach that there is no prohibitions against faith, but skeptism teaches that all faith is folly. (Choose your own road, just be mindful of the contradicts between skeptism and trust.)

As far as I know, there is no inherent conflict between faith and science; only between one person's understanding of one versus another person's understanding of the other. Relativity teaches that time is malleable thing; therefore the time in took for light to travel one light-day in the beginning may not have been equal to one of today's Earth's rotations. Since science holds the speed of light to constant, then if these two measures are different, it gets complicated to explain how a day is still a day when the modern measure of a light-day was different than a day.

My myth is a partial answer to a question I had years ago. It is a recent acquisition, and I felt like posting it in order to see if that self-fulfilling prophecy mentioned in another thread comes to pass. However, I am finding this to be a worderfull exercise in expressing my self in a nonconflicting manner.

 

I do appreciate your diligence. Genuinely.
The recent resurgence of the flat-Earth theory has reminded me how much faith is required in the modern acceptance of science. There is precious little that I am willing to experiment on my own to discover, so I am reduced to believing or accepting the proclamations of others. As an individual I find that I am more subject to what is relevant as opposed to what is true. Is the Earth round or flat? Did God create the universe or didn't He? The answer to each of these questions is that it doesn't matter to me right now or in the foreseeable future; what I do tomorrow is in no way contingent on these outcomes.

I am reminded of some trivia a co-worker once burdened me with. "Did you know that if you accelerate a 20-foot long ladder to the speed of light, you can fit it in a garage that is only 15 feet deep?" he asked. To which -- killjoy that I am -- I could only reply, "I didn't know that. And neither do you."

 

So, the Babel Fish argument.

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves that you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly disappears in a puff of logic"

 

I don't think this is something unique to science. Historians say that King Canute was an idiot who tried to hold back the tides. Biblical scholars say that women should submit to men. Are these things true? In both cases I could learn the relevant languages, study the original documents, and come to my own conclusions - but I don't. It's easier to believe the experts.

In fact, science has a better track record than most things in this regard. Other historians say that King Canute was actually pretty smart and was trying to prove the point that he couldn't do it. Other biblical scholars say that, no, we're all equal in the eyes of God. By comparison, scientists are unusually consistent with their proclamations. These days, if a scientific theory has gone unchallenged for more than 50 years or so, it's a pretty safe bet. You can't really say the same about much else.

This really depends on how you define knowledge. If you want to be pedantic, you can't know anything. If you choose a more workable definition, there are things you can know. Would you say that it's possible to know that the sun will rise tomorrow? Barring infinitesimally small chances of alien vaporisation, I think we can say we do know that. But how is this different from the knowledge that you can fit the Lorentz ladder into the garage? It's true that the phenomenon is less applicable to your everyday life, so maybe you don't care as much. Or maybe you find it harder to relate to intuitively, but intuitiveness would be an odd criterion to judge whether something is knowledge or not.

Except, sadly, it's the criterion that most people use. Hence religion, warfare, etc.

(Note that one explanation for how the ladder fits inside the garage is that information cannot travel faster than light. So essentially the back end of the ladder keeps moving even after the front end has impacted the garage wall, because the shockwave of the impact takes time to propagate backwards through the ladder. We "know" this, even though it's a slightly absurd thought experiment, because it's predicted by the theories of relativity, all of which have been verified experimentally in other ways. Just as how we "knew" how to send a rocket to the moon, by studying the motion of things on Earth, before we had ever sent a rocket to the moon.)

 

I think pedantry is the only fair way to treat discussions of faith and knowledge. Claiming to know something that has not personally observed or can be reasonably predicted is giving oneself too much credit. The agnostic and the pious are ultimately both guided by faith, simply faith in different experts and their writings.

Natural laws are conveniently consistent as they appear to affect all things in the same way. Exceptions occur at extremes of speed, mass, and gravity, but because I will never experience these extremes I have to concede that I am at best aware of these exceptions and whether or not I accept them is not the same as knowing them. However under the conditions with which I am familiar I can at least trust my observations and use them to predict outcomes of other actions, thus building my knowledge base. Essentially, these experiences form a certain intuition about how familiar events will unfold making intuition the immediate criterion for whether or not a specific datum is knowledge.

Bill Nye has reminded me that because natural laws are consistent and presumably constant throughout time we can safely assume that they influenced past things and events the same way as they do now, so anything we can conclude through observation now we can apply to previous things we cannot observe. This is the basic tenet on which I base my faith in the priests of science and their abstract scriptures. I've observed that the sun has risen and set for over thirty years, so I can reasonably expect it to rise for another thirty. For another week at least. I am confident that I can reasonably accept that it also rose and set for all of the time before my observation of which I cannot be aware. Whether or not this is due to the rotation of a sphere on which I live or the spinning of a disc on which I live doesn't practically change this knowledge. Perhaps there are observations I can make to resolve this issue, but I don't anticipate making them. Likewise, in the past thirty years men have not returned from the dead, so it isn't likely to happen in the future and probably didn't happen in the past. Like you have said, the design and propulsion of rockets is informed by experiments and observations of similar things so we can know that setting foot on the moon is possible, whether or not it was actually achieved doesn't impact its feasibility.

My point is not to be skeptical to the point of paralysis or paranoia, it's more to demonstrate that we are all disciples of somebody else's bullshit.

 

TDC, I admire your ability to turn this into an actual thread for discussion.

 

If we're going to be pedantic, then claiming to know something that you have personally observed is also giving yourself too much credit. For thousands of years before Newton came along, everybody "knew" that an object in motion always comes to rest unless a force keeps it moving. Turns out they were all wrong.

Well, no, actually you can't. See above. If that example isn't topical enough for you then there are also plenty of commonly held opinions today which are just flat out wrong. I believe that debunking these is the subject of the show Mythbusters, as well as roughly half the articles on Cracked.com.

This is a terrible criterion. History has shown again and again that common sense and intuition are appallingly flawed and should not be trusted as any kind of arbiter of truth. The list of logical fallacies on Wikipedia gives over 100 ways by which your brain can trick you into reaching the wrong conclusions when attempting to think about things. The adoption of the scientific method represents a hard won battle against the fallibility of the human mind, and scientists have to be constantly on the alert when performing experiments so that their own biases don't sabotage the results.

What is faith? The best definition that I have heard is that it is "maintaining a belief even when there are reasons for doubt". Are there any reasons to doubt that the sun will rise tomorrow? Not really - as you say it's done so every day for the last 30 years, and probably for all of human history, and probably long before that too. So do you have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow? I'd say no. Any definition of the word "faith" that includes your belief that the sun will rise is so vague as to be useless, since it would encompass basically everything you ever think.

On the other hand, do we have reasons to doubt that people can return from the dead? Well, as you say, it hasn't ever happened in the last 30 years. That seems to qualify as a pretty big reason. So if in spite of this you still believe that it can happen, well, I'd say that involves faith.

It has always baffled me when someone says in an admiring tone "He is a man of great faith." What this really means is "He is a man who is really good at ignoring inconvenient facts." That is not an admirable quality. Strive to reduce the amount of faith in your life, TDC! You'll experience less cognitive dissonance and fewer unpleasant surprises as a result. Dismissing science as a whole because "it requires just as much faith as religion" is missing the point of science entirely.

 

I have nothing to add, but just wanted to keep my record of reappearing whenever Xyle discusses religion and science, which, I have noted, is usually in the week preceding the full moon. Remember, though, lunacy is a myth.

 

It follows that knowledge gathered based on observations that are fallacious would be false knowledge, but knowledge still. I won't deny that knowledge can be wrong but beliefs can be correct. This doesn't change which one is knowledge and which one is faith, only the validity of each one. If we are to continue the exercise in pedantry, we will arrive at the situation where nothing is knowable so anything anybody says is irrelevant, but I choose to draw the line far before that point.

I arrived at my intuition-as-criterion-for-knowledge conclusion in a backward manner. If I were to casually toss a ball in the air, I would expect it to return to my hand to be tossed again. If on one of the tosses the ball simply hanged in the air, this would be counterintuitive to me. This is counterintuitive to me because it contradicts how I expect a tossed ball to behave based on countless past observations I have made, thus when something behaves intuitively it jives with my knowledge. Perhaps "predictable" outcomes expresses what I mean better by "intuitive" outcomes, but this is what I mean.

I think the charm of the scientific method is its repeatability. That it is methodical and reasonable is very important, but this only provides knowledge for the people performing the experiment. They share and publish their knowledge and this is either accepted or rejected by an individual, but if an individual accepts these findings he assimilates them as faith, not knowledge. Of course, one is welcome to repeat the experiment, observe the results, and then assimilate them as knowledge, but to deny that anything up to that point isn't faith isn't accurate.

My working definition of faith is simply the belief in something that has not been observed. To believe something in which there is reasonable doubt is stubborn and to continue to believe something in which there is overwhelming doubt is delusion.

 

Then your definition of faith covers almost everything that you know, outside of a very narrow band of personal experience. If I were to apply it to my own life, then I'd have to say that, for example, I have faith that there are hyenas in Africa, since I have never been to Africa, or seen a hyena. I have faith that Obama is the US President, since I've never seen him myself. I have faith that the moon is a sphere and not a disc. Pretty much the only thing I don't have faith in, according to you, is the laws of physics as they apply to me and my immediate surroundings.

So, as I said before, your definition of faith is too broad to be useful. "Belief in things which I haven't directly seen but which I have decided it is reasonable to believe in". You're using it to mean beliefs, and we already have a word for that - it's "beliefs".

 

Put another way, I'd say we both accept on faith that those pieces of data are true. It seems silly not to use the shorthand "I know" for these things because they are not disputed, but that the Earth is flat went on for years without being disputed and we see how that turned out.

There is a great deal of overlap over what the words "belief" and "faith" cover so I don't think I've been using the word "faith" inaccurately. If you prefer to narrow the usage of faith for things that have not been proven or have been disproven, I have no problem that.