Post by Admiral Lithp on Nov 17, 2010 19:34:39 GMT -5
Yeah, yeah, I know, & the sky is blue. While this seems like just an exercise in internet circle jerking & beating a dead horse, it's been a while since I've played Whack A Fundie.
So, I present excerpts from Conservapedia's article on Biblical Foreknowledge of Science.
He blatantly ignores the ridiculous lifespans that are in the same book, of course. Then there was the runaround he gave someone in the talk page when someone asked him, "What if someone lived to be 121?" Basically, he said that it hadn't happened, & therefore it must be impossible. This argument only drew to a close when someone said that Jesus could have been rounding, something that Andy was apparently too stupid to figure out & use as a rebuttal in the first place.
I'm not sure what was & was not known by surgeons at this time. But the end is just...wow. If those oppressive SCIENTISTS would just ACCEPT THE BIBLE, they could actually DO SCIENCE & SAVE LIVES!
This is blatantly incorrect. Blood was always known to be important for life. It's all over cultural symbolism. Vampiric creatures & ghosts need to drink it to interact with the living. The Egyptians even thought that the HEART was the center of the body & the BRAIN was useless.
The concept of bloodletting "remove the bad blood," which is actually sound. Pathogens are carried by the blood, which is why you can stop infections through amputation, if you have to. The problem is, obviously, that there's no easy way to separate infected aqueous tissue from uninfected aqueous tissue.
Yeah. He went there.
Emphasis is mine. Of course the article doubles as a slam against atheists & liberals. They are the faceless champions of this army of straw men that Andy valiantly rails against.
However, I know of no atheist who would say that. What they might say, knowing from cases like Robert's, is that growing to such a height is not healthy. It puts a lot of strain on the body & is precisely WHY they die so young.
As stupid as all of these are, there comes a time where I--y'know--UNDERSTAND how he came to such a ridiculous conclusion. This has no such time. Unclean hands & food DO cause a lot of illnesses. Why does he think people flip shit over E. Coli?
The only grain of truth here is that a lot of pathogens can't survive in the stomach. But the mouth also connects to the nasal cavities, which lead to the lungs & even the brain. And that which does manage to survive in the stomach will get absorbed by the small intenstines.
Andy is strongly implying that he would follow Jesus's example, not wash his hands after using the bathroom, & then serve his guests food. This is distinctly UN-progressive. Jesus was WRONG.
Abiogenesis, as in "life emerging from out of fucking nowhere" is still discredited. Abiogenesis, as in "organic molecules forming in certain conditions" is feasible, but this is the kind of thing these idiots usually rail against. It amuses me that bigbangabiogenesisevolution (because, let's face it, it's all the same theory to Fundies) is always wrong except for when it can be used to prove the Bible.
There's more to this one, but the quote kind of jumped the shark when Andy implied that the heart was the center of touch & emotion.
I don't know why he restated this one.
I've never heard of any such health risks, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. Someone more knowledgable on this topic than I will have to take this one.
Science still attributes a source to the light, which Genesis does not. There is no light soup. Something has to give off the energy. The big-bang explosion, as a mass of burning hydrogen, could be thought of as a star anyway.
No comment, but I didn't have the heart to edit them out. There's a huge section where he tries to equate Jesus's magic to revelations in quantum mechanics. An editor pointed out that Jesus wasn't an atom, but Andy made some stupid analogy about an apple & Jupiter, ignoring that those are both macroscopic items. It's worth quoting, but it's TL;DR, & this topic isn't to recreate the entire article, so you'll have to look for yourself.
Giant sea creatures and Jonah
The Book of Jonah describes his survival in the belly of a giant sea creature for 2.5 to 3 days. Scientists declared this to be impossible due to powerful stomach acids that quickly break down any material.
Then, in 2010, scientists were astonished to find the following materials intact in the belly of a gray whale that had died after being stranded on a Northwest beach:[11]
a pair of sweat pants
a golf ball
over 20 plastic bags
small towels
duct tape
surgical gloves
a functioning laptop accessing Conservapedia (just kidding about this last item)
Of course, many sea creatures have gone extinct in the thousands of years since Jonah lived.
None of which is a living human body. Forget the damn acid, you would SUFFOCATE in about 10 minutes, 5 of which you would be unconscious for.
Or because of population isolation, something that linguists applying the theory of evolution (because the theory of evolution itself has nothing to do with this) might have overlooked. Regardless, many of the languages do have a lot in common. Of course, I could spin that as evidence for the Tower of Babel, as well. "All languages originated from one? Checkmate, atheists!" (to borrow a phrase from a favorite YouTube satirist of mine).
Not only is this another example of the whole "it hasn't happened yet, therefore it's impossible" fallacy thing, it's also not science.
In attempting to refute some refutations of the Bible, he says:
And this is completely useless information to a biologist. Bats, birds, & bugs. Some members of these species can fly. Doesn't mean they're all the same. This is the entire problem with the "kind" classification, & that's why Intelligent Design isn't science. It's not that people are in denial, Andy.
Edit: Not "species," that was a remnant from an earlier draft of this part. The correct term would be...genus? Phylum? Actually, I'm not sure.
The only time in this entire article where Andy realizes that a vague statement like "it is round" doesn't necessarily equate to a specific scientific description like "it is an oblete spheroid."
So, I present excerpts from Conservapedia's article on Biblical Foreknowledge of Science.
The Bible put the maximum lifespan for man at 120 years (Genesis 6:3), the typical lifespan at 70 years and the typical for a good-living person at 80 years (Psalm 90:10).
He blatantly ignores the ridiculous lifespans that are in the same book, of course. Then there was the runaround he gave someone in the talk page when someone asked him, "What if someone lived to be 121?" Basically, he said that it hadn't happened, & therefore it must be impossible. This argument only drew to a close when someone said that Jesus could have been rounding, something that Andy was apparently too stupid to figure out & use as a rebuttal in the first place.
The first operation described in the Bible was the removal of a rib from Adam, which was performed by first putting Adam into an unconscious, "deep sleep-like trance."[2] This was the equivalent of anesthesia -- thousands of years before anesthesia was developed by William Mortan in 1846. Had scientists and physicians been more openminded about Genesis 2:21, they may have discovered anesthesia far sooner, and saved many more lives.
I'm not sure what was & was not known by surgeons at this time. But the end is just...wow. If those oppressive SCIENTISTS would just ACCEPT THE BIBLE, they could actually DO SCIENCE & SAVE LIVES!
At the time of Jesus and for centuries afterward, arteries and veins were thought to be filled with air, and blood was viewed as something to be used up rather than recirculate. Bloodletting -- the practice of intentionally draining blood from a patient -- was common medical practice through the time of George Washington, hastening his death prematurely for reasons not understood until years later
This is blatantly incorrect. Blood was always known to be important for life. It's all over cultural symbolism. Vampiric creatures & ghosts need to drink it to interact with the living. The Egyptians even thought that the HEART was the center of the body & the BRAIN was useless.
The concept of bloodletting "remove the bad blood," which is actually sound. Pathogens are carried by the blood, which is why you can stop infections through amputation, if you have to. The problem is, obviously, that there's no easy way to separate infected aqueous tissue from uninfected aqueous tissue.
The Bible's prohibition against homosexuality predated knowledge about the many diseases and disorders associated with homosexuality, and thus showed scientific wisdom prescient for its time.
Yeah. He went there.
Atheists thought the size of Goliath in the Bible to be absurdly large (over nine feet tall), until Robert Wadlow grew to nearly 9 feet tall and was still growing when he died at a young age in 1940.
Emphasis is mine. Of course the article doubles as a slam against atheists & liberals. They are the faceless champions of this army of straw men that Andy valiantly rails against.
However, I know of no atheist who would say that. What they might say, knowing from cases like Robert's, is that growing to such a height is not healthy. It puts a lot of strain on the body & is precisely WHY they die so young.
It was common thought throughout history that infections and illness resulted from the digestive system, based on unclean hands or food. Jesus rejected that view, and declared hand-washing before meals to be typically unnecessary. It took many centuries before science caught up to the Bible on this.
As stupid as all of these are, there comes a time where I--y'know--UNDERSTAND how he came to such a ridiculous conclusion. This has no such time. Unclean hands & food DO cause a lot of illnesses. Why does he think people flip shit over E. Coli?
The only grain of truth here is that a lot of pathogens can't survive in the stomach. But the mouth also connects to the nasal cavities, which lead to the lungs & even the brain. And that which does manage to survive in the stomach will get absorbed by the small intenstines.
Andy is strongly implying that he would follow Jesus's example, not wash his hands after using the bathroom, & then serve his guests food. This is distinctly UN-progressive. Jesus was WRONG.
Although scientists dismissed ideas involving abiogenesis, or the process from which life emerges from nothing, as nothing more than archaic beliefs in spontaneous generation, the Bible very clearly depicts an occurrence of this phenomenon, for beginning in Genesis 1:20, God creates life from nothing. It was not until the early 20th century that science finally began to accept the viability of abiogenesis, a view that the Bible had held for almost 2000 years, except that atheists falsely claim that abiogenesis is somehow possible without a creator.
Abiogenesis, as in "life emerging from out of fucking nowhere" is still discredited. Abiogenesis, as in "organic molecules forming in certain conditions" is feasible, but this is the kind of thing these idiots usually rail against. It amuses me that bigbangabiogenesisevolution (because, let's face it, it's all the same theory to Fundies) is always wrong except for when it can be used to prove the Bible.
Abortion advocates argue that it is ok to terminate a baby while dismissing the pain inflicted by ending an innocent life. They argue that a fetus cannot feel pain because senses are incomplete. There is a heart-beating human in the womb that can feel even though still unborn and developing.
There's more to this one, but the quote kind of jumped the shark when Andy implied that the heart was the center of touch & emotion.
The Old Testament teaches that the life of all flesh is its blood (Leviticus 17:13-14 (KJV)). Secular science remained ignorant of the properties and circulation of blood until the 17th century A.D.
I don't know why he restated this one.
The Biblical laws concerning menstruation, including the setting part of the menstruating woman and the prohibition on intimacy during menstruation, address health concerns that were not known to secular science until the 20th century.[5]
I've never heard of any such health risks, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. Someone more knowledgable on this topic than I will have to take this one.
Darkness, and Unexplained Ripples in Cosmic Background Radiation
Genesis Chapter 1 explains that God created light first, rather than merely stars. A "big bang" would result in light everywhere, without darkness, and without ripples in cosmic background radiation. Yet in the 21st century ripples were discovered in cosmic background radiation, which can only be plausibly explained by recognizing that light was created first.
Genesis Chapter 1 explains that God created light first, rather than merely stars. A "big bang" would result in light everywhere, without darkness, and without ripples in cosmic background radiation. Yet in the 21st century ripples were discovered in cosmic background radiation, which can only be plausibly explained by recognizing that light was created first.
Science still attributes a source to the light, which Genesis does not. There is no light soup. Something has to give off the energy. The big-bang explosion, as a mass of burning hydrogen, could be thought of as a star anyway.
Stellar proper movement
In Job, there is a list of challenges that are constructed in the form of questions, with the idea that man can't do it, but God can.
Among those challenges, two are remarkable: one mentions the untying of Orion's belt, and the other is the binding of the Pleiades. One recently astronomers could measure the proper movement of those stars; Orion's belt is moving apart, with each star going in a different direction, while the Pleiades are moving together.
Space flight
Many theorize that the book of Ezekiel contains descriptions of spaceships and rockets, as they would have been described by someone thousands of years ago. Author Blumrich has even published an entire book about this.
Prior to the work of Isaac Newton, white was considered to be the fundamental color of light, and other colors (such as red, green and blue) were formed by adding to white light. Under that traditional theory, the fullness of all light (a combination of all colors of light) would result in something other than pure white.
The transfiguration of Jesus is described with remarkable consistency in all three synoptic Gospels: in the fullness of light Jesus and his clothing display an intense white, whiter than any bleach could produce. This illustrates what was not discovered and accepted until nearly 1700 years later: that white is the combination of other fundamental colors, and the purest white light is formed by a perfectly full combination (see Prism).
In Job, there is a list of challenges that are constructed in the form of questions, with the idea that man can't do it, but God can.
Among those challenges, two are remarkable: one mentions the untying of Orion's belt, and the other is the binding of the Pleiades. One recently astronomers could measure the proper movement of those stars; Orion's belt is moving apart, with each star going in a different direction, while the Pleiades are moving together.
Space flight
Many theorize that the book of Ezekiel contains descriptions of spaceships and rockets, as they would have been described by someone thousands of years ago. Author Blumrich has even published an entire book about this.
Prior to the work of Isaac Newton, white was considered to be the fundamental color of light, and other colors (such as red, green and blue) were formed by adding to white light. Under that traditional theory, the fullness of all light (a combination of all colors of light) would result in something other than pure white.
The transfiguration of Jesus is described with remarkable consistency in all three synoptic Gospels: in the fullness of light Jesus and his clothing display an intense white, whiter than any bleach could produce. This illustrates what was not discovered and accepted until nearly 1700 years later: that white is the combination of other fundamental colors, and the purest white light is formed by a perfectly full combination (see Prism).
No comment, but I didn't have the heart to edit them out. There's a huge section where he tries to equate Jesus's magic to revelations in quantum mechanics. An editor pointed out that Jesus wasn't an atom, but Andy made some stupid analogy about an apple & Jupiter, ignoring that those are both macroscopic items. It's worth quoting, but it's TL;DR, & this topic isn't to recreate the entire article, so you'll have to look for yourself.
Giant sea creatures and Jonah
The Book of Jonah describes his survival in the belly of a giant sea creature for 2.5 to 3 days. Scientists declared this to be impossible due to powerful stomach acids that quickly break down any material.
Then, in 2010, scientists were astonished to find the following materials intact in the belly of a gray whale that had died after being stranded on a Northwest beach:[11]
a pair of sweat pants
a golf ball
over 20 plastic bags
small towels
duct tape
surgical gloves
a functioning laptop accessing Conservapedia (just kidding about this last item)
Of course, many sea creatures have gone extinct in the thousands of years since Jonah lived.
None of which is a living human body. Forget the damn acid, you would SUFFOCATE in about 10 minutes, 5 of which you would be unconscious for.
The theory of evolution suggests that all languages are descended from a common ancestral language, and for a century (1860 to about 1960) scientists clung to that view. But now most linguists identify many different families of languages that have no common ancestor, just as described in Genesis 11 with the Tower of Babel.
Or because of population isolation, something that linguists applying the theory of evolution (because the theory of evolution itself has nothing to do with this) might have overlooked. Regardless, many of the languages do have a lot in common. Of course, I could spin that as evidence for the Tower of Babel, as well. "All languages originated from one? Checkmate, atheists!" (to borrow a phrase from a favorite YouTube satirist of mine).
Jesus stated that there will always be poverty,[12] yet liberals repeatedly insist that poverty can be eliminated with more government spending. Every attempt to eliminate poverty has failed just as Jesus predicted.
Not only is this another example of the whole "it hasn't happened yet, therefore it's impossible" fallacy thing, it's also not science.
In attempting to refute some refutations of the Bible, he says:
A favorite evolutionist canard is that Leviticus 11:13-19 labels the bat, a mammal, as a bird. But this is an obvious failure of translation, as the Hebrew term 'owph did not entail the "clade" of birds, but was a non-biological category referring to any winged creature, mammalian, avian, or insect.
And this is completely useless information to a biologist. Bats, birds, & bugs. Some members of these species can fly. Doesn't mean they're all the same. This is the entire problem with the "kind" classification, & that's why Intelligent Design isn't science. It's not that people are in denial, Andy.
Edit: Not "species," that was a remnant from an earlier draft of this part. The correct term would be...genus? Phylum? Actually, I'm not sure.
However, a simple explanation of the claimed "contradiction" is that the Bible records the ratio of the actual object which Hiram created, not that of a mathematical sphere.
The only time in this entire article where Andy realizes that a vague statement like "it is round" doesn't necessarily equate to a specific scientific description like "it is an oblete spheroid."