SumOfAllFears
Grim Reaper of Misguided Liberal Souls
Posts: 18,213
Joined: Nov 2008
Reputation: 58
I Root For: America
Location: |
RE: The Unthinkable....I'm linking HuffingtonPost
(10-23-2009 02:02 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote: (10-23-2009 11:26 AM)BlazerFan11 Wrote: By that reasoning, what created the inital matter in the universe? Abiogenesis has never been observed. It is a "theory" with no solid scientific evidence to back it up. Although scientists claim to be close to being able to produce it in a lab (a form of "intelligent design" of its own?), even if they do, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that it has ever or will ever occur naturally on its own.
Also, how can you stand to support such "feeble minded" politicians such as Ron Paul, Mark Sanford, Jeff Flake, etc. who all strongly believe in God? Furthermore, do you really want to call 90%+ of Americans "feeble minded?" To me, that is the epitome of arrogance.
The theories regarding the creation of the universe are do not stem from abiogenesis. Most of them are rather "quantum-esk" in nature. Multiple universes like a bubbling foam... ours split off another ... etc. Neither science or religion can go back to the very beginning with any certainty. But at least science is based on existing observations, laws, and properties of matter. Religion is based off a book of questionable content and questionable origin which has been written and written and adapted and altered throughout time.
Creating it in a lab is not intelligent design, as the creatures creating it arose by Darwinian means.
Unlike most of my fellow Americans, I do not see religion as playing any relevancy in politics. I elect on who can follow the Constitution and maximize my liberty. Religion doesn't enter the mix in that, unless you're talking extremists. Note, btw, that the converse is not true, as less people would elect an atheist President than a gay President, according to Gallup. The human species, as a whole, is feeble minded. It is unclear whether we will exit our technological infancy without destroying ourselves altogether. We've been killing each other by the millions over millenia over who has the better imaginary friend. It has been less than 100 years since we allowed women and blacks to vote. Slavery is still engaged in rampantly across the globe. The overwhelming majority of the planet doesn't have a high school level education. Nearly a quarter of the planet has no potable water or steady food supply. We are an undeniably sad lot. Personification of God as having human-like qualities is an extension of this overconfidence and under delivery of our species.
The accuracy of the Old Testament has been verified (for the most part) by the discovery of the dead sea scrolls. For some 5,000 years scribes of the Torah have taken their work very seriously. Their accuracy is undeniable. Now, if you are wrong about this point, (book of questionable content ) could you be wrong on other points, possibly ? Just asking as I really do not want to get involved in this as there can be no ending in sight. You can understand that some people have a hard time believing that life sprang from non-life and evolved from one-celled animals into human beings.Measuring dick on this subject is impossible.
Code:
Ancient Israel
Scribes in Ancient Israel, as in most of the ancient world, were distinguished professionals who could exercise functions we would associate with lawyers, government ministers, judges, or even financiers. Some scribes copied documents, but this was not necessarily part of their job.
In 586 B.C., Jerusalem was captured by the Babylonians. The Temple was looted and then destroyed by fire. The Jews were exiled.
About 70 years later, the Jewish captives returned to Jerusalem from Babylon. According to the Bible, Ezra recovered a copy of the Torah and read it aloud to the whole nation.
From then on, the Jewish scribes solidified the following process for creating copies of the Torah and eventually other books in the Old Testament.
They could only use clean animal skins, both to write on, and even to bind manuscripts.
Each column of writing could have no less than forty-eight, and no more than sixty lines.
The ink must be black, and of a special recipe.
They must verbalize each word aloud while they were writing.
They must wipe the pen and wash their entire bodies before writing the word "Jehovah," every time they wrote it.
There must be a review within thirty days, and if as many as three pages required corrections, the entire manuscript had to be redone.
The letters, words, and paragraphs had to be counted, and the document became invalid if two letters touched each other. The middle paragraph, word and letter must correspond to those of the original document.
The documents could be stored only in sacred places (synagogues, etc).
As no document containing God's Word could be destroyed, they were stored, or buried, in a genizah.
After Jerusalem was sacked by Rome in the First Century, the process was lost. While a Hebrew version of the Old Testament continued to exist, the language wasn't spoken by many. Greek and eventually Latin versions continued to be copied.
[b]Scribe accuracy[/b]
Further information: Dead Sea Scrolls
Beginning in the 6th century and into the 10th century A.D., some European Jewish scribes continued a similar method for copying manuscripts of the Old Testament in the original Hebrew language as originated by the scribes before Christ.
Until 1948, the oldest manuscripts of the Old Testament dated back to 895 A.D. In 1947, a shepherd boy discovered some scrolls inside a cave West of the Dead Sea. These manuscripts dated between 100 B.C. and 100 A.D. Over the next decade, more scrolls were found in caves and the discovery became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Every book in the Old Testament was represented in this discovery except Esther. Numerous copies of each book were discovered, such as the 25 copies of Deuteronomy that were found.
While there are other items found among the Dead Sea Scrolls not currently in the Old Testament, the texts on the whole testify to the accuracy of the scribes copying down through the ages, though many variations and errors occurred. The Dead Sea Scrolls are currently the best route of comparison to the accuracy and consistency of translation for the Old Testament, due to their date of origin being the oldest out of any Biblical text currently known.
[b]Sofer[/b]
Sofer (scribe)
A Sofer (Hebrew: סופר סת”ם) are among the few scribes that still ply their trade by hand. Renowned calligraphers, they produce the Hebrew Torah scrolls and other holy texts by hand to this day. They write on parchment.
(This post was last modified: 10-23-2009 03:22 PM by SumOfAllFears.)
|
|
/
The Unthinkable....I'm linking HuffingtonPost
