Just because Pope Benedict XVI won’t make male, female, or trans prostitutes say 15 Hail Marys and 20 Oh Fathers for wearing condoms during their sex work doesn’t mean he’s reversed his position on homosexuality. Thank goodness he spelled it all out there in his book then!
Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times, a collection of papal interviews published Tuesday, is quick to call homosexuality “disordered” and “incompatible” with becoming a priest. Skillfully dodging German reporter Peter Seewald’s questions about whether there are gays in the church, the pope says, “Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation. Otherwise, celibacy itself would lose its meaning as a renunciation. It would be extremely dangerous if celibacy became a sort of pretext for bringing people into the priesthood who don’t want to get married anyway.” If there are gay priests, then “that is just one of the miseries of the church. And the persons who are affected must at least try not to express this inclination actively.”
But what about the church’s teachings that gays, while being monsters, deserve respect? Doesn’t that conflict with the church’s position that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered”? “No,” the Catholic leader responded. “It is one thing to say that they are human beings with their problems and their joys, that as human beings they deserve respect, even though they have this inclination, and must not be discriminated against because of it. At the same time, though, sexuality has an intrinsic meaning and direction, which is not homosexual. The meaning and direction of sexuality is to bring about the union of man and woman and, in this way, to give humanity posterity, children, a future.”
And what about the basically accepted fact that sexuality is not a choice, but something you are born with? Tough luck for your homos, who must embark on a “great trial” to deny your innate desires. And if sexuality is biological, “this does not mean that homosexuality thereby becomes morally right,” says the pope. “Rather, it remains contrary to the essence of what God originally willed.”
Sure sounds like a wonderful way to live.
Dan
Pope Benedict EQUALS A huge load of shit.
jack
Self-hatred is a very strong emotion. Unfortunately Ratzinger has not dealt with his own inherent homosexuality and is now projecting his poor self-image on others.
ChrisM
Who cares? It’s the f-ing pope. He’s the king of stupid.
Cranston Cranium
The Pope Doesn’t Care If You Were Born A Pedophile. Welcome to the Priesthood.
Merlyn
Screw the poop! Being GLBT is as natural as being straight. He needs to deal with his own internalised homophobia and self-hatred.
McMike
Excuse me but the guy has a boyfriend.
What a f’n hypocrite.
Mark
Hmm..I wonder who died and made him Pope?
Danny
He’s forgetting his own mythology; Adam and Eve only started having children AFTER they were cursed by God and kicked out of Eden. If they weren’t cursed, they’d be immortal and have no need for having kids. Reproducing, according to the myth, is a sign of being cursed by God. (a pretty self-loathing mythology by any standard)
Pastor Dave
The Pope is a Nazi! A Proven fact!How can anyone believe a man of hatred in his heart and soul.
Look at him and his eyes! He is EVIL! Demonic! He should speak when Millions of his fellow Priest are screwing little boys and girls! He is not a man of God! Jesus NEVER SPOKE OF HOMOSEXUALS!
The Bible was written by MAN!!! Therefore Man interpets what he wants and writes it down on paper does not make it the word of God! Do not believe everything you read!!!
K in VA
Hell, he’s entitled to his religious views, as is everyone. He gets to make the rules for his church, as does every other leader of every other religion.
The problem is when, as in America, the theocrats succeed in imposing their religion on everyone else. And never mind that this is, of course, a violation of our Constitution — as long as politicians are too timid to stand up to theocrats, equality will lose out to dogma.
Constantine
What is this fascination of gay people with the Pope?
If his views does not matter, why keep posting articles about him ad nauseum?
Skipp
At least he stated that that homosexuals “deserve respect, even though they have this inclination, and must not be discriminated against because of it.”
I think that’s a powerful quote and should be used. Make note.
B
No. 8 · Danny “He’s forgetting his own mythology; Adam and Eve only started having children AFTER they were cursed by God and kicked out of Eden. If they weren’t cursed, they’d be immortal and have no need for having kids. Reproducing, according to the myth, is a sign of being cursed by God. (a pretty self-loathing mythology by any standard)”
What Genesis actually says is, “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
So, it could be interpreted to mean that having children was possible before they were booted out, but that as an added punishment, childbirth would henceforth be unpleasant.
In reality, the myth simply tried to give a reason for childbirth being painful: “Blame Eve.”
peteNsfo
@Constantine: AMEN… pun intended!
He should receive coverage only as the silliest, dinosaur left roaming the earth. Enough already… the Emperor’s got no f’n clothes, people!!!
counterpoll
@PeteSNFO:
The pope is relevant only insofar as his church is responsible for the likes of Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown of NOM, promoting legislation such as Prop. 8, the funding for countless hospitals, the education of many students across the world in Catholic schools/universities, and the political views of many legislators and Supreme Court Justices……
But you’re right, he IS a dinosaur, unfortunately followed by millions of people. His grip may be slowly loosening here in the US, but those claws are still powerful worldwide.
Kev C
@B: Childbirth is painful because the woman is passing a 7 lb package through a highly sensitive 3 inch hole. German engineers would have designed this more effieciently than God.
Adam
Wasn’t the argument always that homosexuality is unnatural? Now he’s saying “ok, so it might be natural, but it’s not the way God wants it.”
Didn’t God make nature? If it’s not how he wanted it, then congrats! Your God is now a failure at his craft.
Tommy
If he is anti-everything-everyone-stands-for, why was his first letter to his chuch called “God is love”
1 John 4:7-8 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
Doug Morrison
This pope should wash his mouth out with soap because BULLSHIT tends to spew out of it!
Cassandra
“Didn’t God make nature? If it’s not how he wanted it, then congrats! Your God is now a failure at his craft.”
That is why the Pope’s claim would be considered heresy by many theologians, past and present. Throughout the Bible there is the message that the universe itself reflects God’s intrinsic traits, and that nothing exists separate or apart from God, but here is this elected, fallible human saying “oh, wait, this one thing is not what God willed”.
Of course, what the Pope is really saying is that homosexuality is not in accordance with the Pope’s will, and that of his predecessors. Fortunately, neither the current Pope, or his predecessors, are God.
Constatine
Counterpoll said:
“@PeteSNFO:
The pope is relevant only insofar as his church is responsible for the likes of Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown of NOM, promoting legislation such as Prop. 8, the funding for countless hospitals, the education of many students across the world in Catholic schools/universities, and the political views of many legislators and Supreme Court Justices…”
Wow, you give much credit to a Pope who is a “dinosaur”.
I can only stifle a giggle. I can’t wait till Queerty publishes another article on the Pope, like receiving a blood transfusion made of kool aid.
the crustybastard
Q: What do you give the pedophile who has everything?
A: A new parish.
B
No. 16 · Kev C wrote, “@B: Childbirth is painful because the woman is passing a 7 lb package through a highly sensitive 3 inch hole. German engineers would have designed this more effieciently than God.”
Which is why I called the explanation in Genesis a myth. At the time, they didn’t know much about biology, and in particular there was no German engineering 4000 years ago.
Question...
Why is queerty obsessed with Catholicism? Let go. If the Church is irrelevant, then it’s irrelevant, right? No one is listening to the pope, right? So why give a platform and engage in debate with a party with whom no one has any interest? I mean, this compulsion on queerty’s part is enough to make me wonder whether the Church is actually very relevant, and a voice that expresses views that queerty doesn’t like. So that voice flusters queerty, and then queerty keeps engaging. What are you afraid of, queerty?
kokobean
@Question…Good point
Joe
For those of you saying that the news posts about the Pope should stop since he is irrelevant. I would remind you, that while yes, he is a `leering old villain in a frock`(to quote Dawkins), the fact that members of the U.S. Supreme Court follow his advice should show that the gay community must continue to stand up and ridicule this silly man and his beliefs. His ideas have a direct result on our civil rights.
Tessie Tura
Fuck the Pope.
Oops. Several 14-year-olds already have. They thought they were humping Chucky.
SteveC
Ratzinger needs to fire all the gay priests then…
Mike in London UK
and this from the man wearing a big white ankle length dress.
I mean .. who is he kidding, White is SO NOT his colour.
Cassandra
Joe
“ridicule this silly man and his beliefs.”
Ridiculing him and his beliefs simply reduces you to his level – petty, simplistic, abusive of others, and lacking in compassion and civility. For all the childish insults post here, what did they accomplish? Certainly, the Pope will never see them, so folks here didn’t even manage to hurt his feelings. At most, the insults may have offended some Catholic ally, or potential ally, or made life that much more difficult for a GLBTQ Catholic teen. Is that really worthwhile?
Better to refute, repudiate and reject. Study up and challenge the accuracy and logic of his claims within their context, and show Catholic laity that his arguments contradict not only established church positions, but the teachings of Christ. Be able to go to your Catholic friends and say “you know what the Pope said about gays the other day – doesn’t that contradict what Jesus said at chapter x, verse y? What do you think when the Pope says the opposite of what Jesus said?”
Then you will change minds, and when enough Catholic laity change their minds, the hierarchy and the Pope will follow.
Cassandra
B
“Which is why I called the explanation in Genesis a myth. At the time, they didn’t know much about biology, and in particular there was no German engineering 4000 years ago.”
Of course, if you dismiss it as mere myth and ignorance about biology, you lose the opportunity to challenge a foundational principle of anti-gay theology: the idea of heterosexual superiority.
One of the big arguments that homophobes make is that heterosexuality is superior, blessed by God, etc, because it produces offspring, and homosexual intercourse does not. But the curse in Genesis 3 challenges that superiority complex. And perhaps, that is even its function – to prevent heterosexuals from feeling superior about their particular accident of birth.
The fact that one of the biological purposes of heterosexual intercourse is the target for God’s first curse on any humans in the Bible, means that heterosexuality is not exalted above any other form of sexuality. It cannot be God’s preferred sexuality, He cursed it.
When some homophobe declares that God loves heterosexuals best, ask them why God cursed something that is only caused by heterosexual intercourse?
Carlos
Ratzinger, you are a duchebag…
B
No. 31 · Cassandra wrote, ‘B “Which is why I called the explanation in Genesis a myth. At the time, they didn’t know much about biology, and in particular there was no German engineering 4000 years ago.” Of course, if you dismiss it as mere myth and ignorance about biology, you lose the opportunity to challenge a foundational principle of anti-gay theology: the idea of heterosexual superiority.’
Not true at all. First, I originally replied to Danny, who had read more into a myth than was actually there, and I simply pointed out what the text actually says. Then, to avoid any confusion, I specifically called it a myth, but someone got confused anyway and seemed to think I was taking the myth seriously. What you are missing is that we were talking about a single sentence in Genesis – the claim that pain during childbirth was a punishment. That claim has nothing to do with sexual orientation and even less to do with any “anti-gay theology”. Rather, it was simply a story someone made up to explain the fact that women did not find childbirth to be a particularly pleasant experience. Women at the time were probably asking why it hurt so much, so some priests manufactured an answer.
It’s a difficult point for some, but if you are going to criticize some ancient text, at least criticize it for what it actually states.
Rafalo
If it is biological, it is willed by God. Nuff said.
Cassandra
B
“Not true at all.”
My statement was absolutely true. Treat the Genesis text as literature, myth, fiction, when you argue with homophobes who defend their bias with the Bible, and you are wasting your time and theirs.
“Then, to avoid any confusion, I specifically called it a myth, but someone got confused anyway and seemed to think I was taking the myth seriously.”
You may be forgetting that homophobes who defend their prejudice using the Bible, take Genesis very seriously. Maybe you have heard the tired trite meme “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”? Well, the fact that according to Genesis 3, God places a curse on the fruit of heterosexual sex invalidates their claim that the Bible teaches that God grants preferential, positive attention to heterosexuality.
“What you are missing is that we were talking about a single sentence in Genesis – the claim that pain during childbirth was a punishment. That claim has nothing to do with sexual orientation and even less to do with any “anti-gay theology”.”
No. You just didn’t get my point. One of the core ideas in anti-gay theology, which the Pope is actually claiming indirectly, is that God prefers heterosexuality.
But how can that be true when the very first curse on humans, directly targets the fruit of heterosexuality? Of all the uncountable things God could have cursed – God picks the fruit of heterosexual intercourse. God couldn’t value heterosexuality all that much, since He placed a curse on its end result.
Bear in mind, the Pope is arguing that the purpose of sex that makes it acceptable is reproduction, only sex that is “open to life” and or could lead to reproduction, according to the Pope, is God’s will. Yet in Genesis 3, God puts on curse that directly target human reproduction. Clearly, human reproduction is not all that to God.
In the NT, by the way, Jesus points out that God could raise up children of Abraham from the very rocks if God chose, another sign that human reproduction is not even necessary to God, much less some guarantor of special favor from God.
“Rather, it was simply a story someone made up to explain the fact that women did not find childbirth to be a particularly pleasant experience. Women at the time were probably asking why it hurt so much, so some priests manufactured an answer.”
This is where you throw away a valuable argument to use with people who interpret the Bible literally. They claim that heterosexuality is superior, but look, God places a curse on something that, in humans, is ONLY caused by heterosexual intercourse (until modern science invented in vitro fertilization, of course).
“It’s a difficult point for some, but if you are going to criticize some ancient text, at least criticize it for what it actually states.’
LOL. If you are going to criticize any text, B, including mine, at least criticize it for what it actually states.
Your mistake is in treating the Genesis text as an anthropologist would, as something with an ordinary, mundane origin, when homophobes use it as something with an extraordinary origin.
Whether you believe in their context regarding the Scripture, if you want to be effective, you have to argue within that context. Treating Genesis as an anthropological artifact just doesn’t work with fundamentalists.
Mike B's Husband
The title of this whole thing is “Light of the World.” Anybody remember who called himself that? Maybe B-16 has decided he’s Jesus after all. Good thing Jesus rose from the dead, otherwise this guy would have Him spinning in His grave.
TomMc
Well…
Papa Razzi thinks a lotta things that aren’t true.
Kev C
@Cassandra: Interesting. So if God created Adam and Steve instead of Adam and Eve, we might have not been kicked out of paradise and suffered death. We’d be forever young young young.
B
No. 35 · Cassandra wrote, “B “Not true at all.” My statement was absolutely true. Treat the Genesis text as literature, myth, fiction, when you argue with homophobes who defend their bias with the Bible, and you are wasting your time and theirs.”
No, your statement was absolutely false: as I said, I was replying to Danny, simply pointing out that he had misinterpreted what was actually written in Genesis, and Danny is not a homophobe. Just read his comment. What he got wrong was an assumption that there would be no reproduction at all because, prior to being shown the door, Adam and Eve were “immortal” according to the myth. The problem is that the myth also stated that Eve was created to keep Adam company. The phrase “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception” implies an initial non-zero “sorrow and conception” because zero multiplied by any finite number gives you zero. Obviously there was an intention for Adam and Eve to have some additional company even if they stayed in the “Garden of Eden”.
So, Danny got it a bit off (no big deal – an easy mistake to make when posting quickly), and I just pointed out that, because of the error, it would make a weak argument: if you are going to argue with homophobes regarding the Bible, rule # 1 is to not misinterpret it in some way that would give them an out so that they would not have to talk about your real point. If you get the Adam and Eve story a bit off, they’ll beat you up on that and succeed in avoiding talking about the substantive issue – how you treat people.
Finally, all of us should know that the “Adam and Eve” story is merely yet another creation myth. There’s no reason for us to not admit that when talking among ourselves, which is precisely what we were doing.
ewe
EVIL!!!!!!!!!!!
Where are all those bitches who were commenting last week that this poison was a good thing? This pope is a dysfunctional virgin and i don’t give a fuck what he thinks of anyones orientation.
ewe
@B: If you are going to criticize anything at all then at least use your own intelligence. Your stupid inane tired old book of fantasies is not all that for most of the worlds people. Get over it. NOT INTERESTED. Grow a brain. More importantly stop pushing ignorance. People like you are annoying. Grip reality. Adam and Eve is the most basic of fairy tales. There is not talking logic with someone who does not know the difference between reality and myths.
ewe
I am not surprised. This pope and millions upon millions celebrate cannibalism every time a mass is said. Over and over and over again worshipping cannibalism. It’s SICK. Hence; who gives a fuck what this psyche nut thinks or says. Take it with a grain of salt and banish him back into his golden tomb.
J.R.
Wow, those words came from HIS mouth.
people are just too curious these days.
ewe
Christianity would have Jesus arrested for terrorism today. The pope is a foul vulgar degenerate. Shame on him.
Scotty708
Haha.. Wht ever.. nore have I and Nore will I ever care wht the Pope or the church have to say about who I am as a person and wht tht means to god.[=
ewe
Even if the earth does revolve around the sun, i don’t care because i am the only one with a direct link to gODD.
Cassandra
Sorry, B, but you are still wrong.
“No, your statement was absolutely false:”
No, it is not. And B, you completely fail to prove any falseness in my statement, much less that it was entirely false.
“as I said, I was replying to Danny, simply pointing out that he had misinterpreted what was actually written in Genesis, and Danny is not a homophobe.”
Which has no bearing on the accuracy of my assertion. I did not declare Danny to be a homophobe.
“Just read his comment. What he got wrong was an assumption that there would be no reproduction at all because, prior to being shown the door, Adam and Eve were “immortal” according to the myth.”
Again, Danny’s comment, with it’s minor error that you are harping one, is irrelevant to my point.
“The problem is that the myth also stated that Eve was created to keep Adam company.”
Which does not disprove my position at all, and actually confirms a larger point – reproduction is not the sole, or even primary goal of sexuality and intimacy.
“The phrase “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception” implies an initial non-zero “sorrow and conception” because zero multiplied by any finite number gives you zero.”
You are assuming several things that are not substantiated here – that multiply is used here in the exact mathematical context you assume, rather than a broader and more general expression of increase. You were playing anthropologist, but you’ve forgotten that the concept of zero is more recent than the text we’re discussing.
“Obviously there was an intention for Adam and Eve to have some additional company even if they stayed in the “Garden of Eden”.”
No. The passage from Genesis 2, which tells of creation of Adam and Eve, contains no command that they ‘go forth and multiply’. The prior creation account, which also includes the creation of human beings, in Genesis 1, does include a ‘go forth and multiply’ statement.
None of your remarks so far, though, refute my premise.
“So, Danny got it a bit off (no big deal – an easy mistake to make when posting quickly), and I just pointed out that, because of the error, it would make a weak argument:”
Actually, no, his mistake would have gone unnoticed by most homophobes.
“if you are going to argue with homophobes regarding the Bible, rule # 1 is to not misinterpret it in some way that would give them an out so that they would not have to talk about your real point.”
Ah, like dismissing it as mere myth and fiction. Your premise, that the Genesis account and the curse on childbearing is just an explanation for the pain women have – is the argument that gives homophobes an out.
“If you get the Adam and Eve story a bit off, they’ll beat you up on that and succeed in avoiding talking about the substantive issue – how you treat people.”
They get the Adam and Eve story a lot off.
“Finally, all of us should know that the “Adam and Eve” story is merely yet another creation myth. There’s no reason for us to not admit that when talking among ourselves, which is precisely what we were doing.”
And the moment you dismiss it as ‘merely another myth’ when arguing with homophobes who use religion as their excuse, you have lost any chance of convincing them of anything.
It is like a math problem with variables. When the problem states “let x = 7” and you say, oh, to hell with that, x = 58, you are not going to arrive at a useful answer. To argue successfully with literalist Christians, you have argue within their context, their “let x = . . .” otherwise they simply dismiss any argument as “Well, you don’t believe the Bible, so what do you know”.
Another example for you, B. How successful would you be arguing some point of physics with physicists, if you declared that mathematics was all myth? You’d get nowhere. Have the same discussion with very frustrated second graders after they’ve failed a math test, and you’d get cheers, but try it with physicists and they’d dismiss you.
You have to argue within people’s frame of context, even if you don’t believe it.
I’ll let you in on a little testimony from experience. The position I’ve articulated above – that the curse in Genesis 3 indicates that God does not grant preferential status to heterosexuality – is one I’ve used with homophobes quite a bit, and so far, it is one they have no rebuttal for.
Cassandra
ewe
Your accusation of cannibalism is hate speech, and it is not accurate. The host is not made from human flesh, it is made from flour and water.
Transubstantiation, the idea that the host and the wine become the Body and Blood of Christ isn’t cannibalism either, because Christians belief Christ is the Son of God. For those who believe transubstantiation, they are not eating human flesh, but bread and wine that has been spiritually altered.
How exactly it has been altered, varies across the breadth of Catholicism, and many other Christians do not believe in transubstantiation. Some mystic oriented Christians believe that all matter is of the substance of the Divine.
Your insulting remarks parallel very strongly the kinds of ugly, uninformed things that homophobes say.
By the way, it is estimated that one third of the world’s population is Christian, and Muslims find value in the text, not equal to the Qu’ran, but value, as well. Atheists make up about one one-hundredth of the world’s population. The numbers game is not a useful argument for you.
Mack Robertson
Add me to the Atheist column, thank you. The positions and actions of the Popes, throughout history, have been hypocritical and immoral. Unfortunately, there are too many people who are so ignorant of religious history that it is ‘mind boggling’. I have not, nor do I intend to deny myself the pleasures of the sexual orientation with which I was born.
Mack Robertson
@Cassandra Your extremely ignorant comment about the superiority of heterosexuals is so easily contradicted. Google “Famous Gays in History”.
B
No. 47 · Cassandra wrote, ‘”Sorry, B, but you are still wrong. “No, your statement was absolutely false:” No, it is not. And B, you completely fail to prove any falseness in my statement, much less that it was entirely false.’
LOL. Cassandra, you got it wrong because you failed to understand the context. Then in No 47, you are trying the “bury them with bullshit” ploy.
You wrote, “Ah, like dismissing it as mere myth and fiction. Your premise, that the Genesis account and the curse on childbearing is just an explanation for the pain women have – is the argument that gives homophobes an out.” What you did not notice is that I was not talking about the Genesis creation myth in full, but about one sentence in it – the myth about why labor is painful. Maybe you are some sort of religious nut, but the fact is that this account in Genesis is obviously a myth – an ancient attempt to explain something that they could not possible understand because they did not know enough biology to even get started.
Then you go on with your garbage about “arguing with homophobes” when the post was a reply to Danny, who is obviously not a homophobe. Nobody was arguing with homophobes. You made that up. If you want to argue theology with religious nuts and pretend to believe some of their more idiotic beliefs, go ahead but don’t expect us to phrase everything we say for your benefit when we are trying to have a conversation among people with more than a bit more intelligence.
Then you try a ridiculous straw-man argument about mathematics.
Let me suggest a remedial course in English comprehension. You need it.
B
Regarding No 47, where Cassandra writes, “You are assuming several things that are not substantiated here – that multiply is used here in the exact mathematical context you assume, rather than a broader and more general expression of increase. You were playing anthropologist, but you’ve forgotten that the concept of zero is more recent than the text we’re discussing.”
Cassandra, you obviously can’t think: with no “concept of zero”, they would not use the word “increase” unless there was something there to begin with: if childbirth was new, they would have used a different word or phrase: you don’t “increase” something that was never there unless you have a concept of zero.
Then you write, ‘”Obviously there was an intention for Adam and Eve to have some additional company even if they stayed in the “Garden of Eden”.” No. The passage from Genesis 2, which tells of creation of Adam and Eve, contains no command that they ‘go forth and multiply’.’
You botched that argument too. Having a small family for “company” is not the same thing as “going forth and multiple” to take over the earth. The passage I quoted clearly indicates that Adam and Eve could make babies before being thrown out. It takes about 9 months, and the creation myth uses a time frame of a few days. Of course there were no “Adam Juniors” running around – Eve didn’t have enough time to pop one out even if she did get pregnant before eating the proverbial apple.
Maybe you should stick to religious web sites. The rest of us are going to call what is obviously a myth a myth when talking among ourselves.
Cassandra
Mack Robertson
@Cassandra Your extremely ignorant comment about the superiority of heterosexuals is so easily contradicted. Google “Famous Gays in History”.
What comment about the superiority of heterosexuals? Do you mean
“One of the core ideas in anti-gay theology, which the Pope is actually claiming indirectly, is that God prefers heterosexuality.”
I’m not saying that heterosexuality is superior, I’m saying, and accurately, that heterosexism – the idea that heterosexuality is superior, is a fundamental part of homophobia.
Your vitriol is misdirected.
Cassandra
B
“LOL. Cassandra, you got it wrong because you failed to understand the context.”
Please, I’m not wrong here, B. The context doesn’t change any thing. You could have tried to demonstrate how it does, but what did you do instead:
“Then in No 47, you are trying the “bury them with bullshit” ploy.”
A perjorative and an empty dismissal. What is clear is that you did not understand what I wrote, and feel threatened by your lack of understanding.
“What you did not notice is that I was not talking about the Genesis creation myth in full, but about one sentence in it – the myth about why labor is painful.”
You are ducking the point, yet again. It does not matter that you are focusing on one sentence – when debating with people who have a literalist interpretation of the Bible, treating it as myth, playing the amateur anthropologist, is not a successful strategy.
B, the moment you argue that any portion of the text is just a human created explanation for a natural phenomena – as you do regarding childbirth – you immediately lock yourself into a position that people who interpret the Bible literally simply ignore.
“Maybe you are some sort of religious nut,”
Ah, insults, the tool of people with no rational or accurate argument to make.
“but the fact is that this account in Genesis is obviously a myth”
You’ve still missed the point, out of prejudice obviously. Your bias against people of faith, evidenced in your deprecatory term ‘religious nut’ has blinded you.
Argue that the account is myth, and Biblical literalists will more than ignore you, B, they will dismiss everything you say as nonsense or worse.
“– an ancient attempt to explain something that they could not possible understand because they did not know enough biology to even get started.”
You are assuming, without evidence, that the Genesis text is not the product of someone receiving information directly from God. You are ignoring the possibility, held by many Christians, that it is metaphor – which is different from myth.
You are still missing the huge point – your perspective of the text – that it is just human invention – intrinsically discredits anything you say about it to people of faith in general, and to Biblical literalists, who make up the bulk of homophobes who use religion as their excuse, in particular.
No amount of dismissal and insults is going to change that.
“Then you go on with your garbage about “arguing with homophobes” when the post was a reply to Danny,”
Ah, but while your post was a reply to Danny, B, mine was not, not in the slightest. See, B, there are other people in the world besides Danny, and I figured that you might just encounter some of them, and some of them might be Biblical literalists who use the Bible to bash gays and lesbians, and that you could use the point that Danny tried to make, and that I clarified, to demonstrate to them that their literalist interpretation of the Bible was deeply flawed.
“Nobody was arguing with homophobes. You made that up.”
LOL. Woe is me, I acknowledged that information acquired in this situation might actually be relevant in some other situation. How terrible.
This is your mistake – you presumed that I was only seeing this discussion as some sort of stand-alone experience, with no relevance to any other moment, any other person, any other situation kind of way, ever.
But instead, I pointed out that, gee whiz, other people talk about this issue, and one can make a very good argument to those people in that situation.
“If you want to argue theology with religious nuts and pretend to believe some of their more idiotic beliefs, go ahead but don’t expect us to phrase everything we say for your benefit when we are trying to have a conversation among people with more than a bit more intelligence.”
Ah, more insults and prejudice. Someone’s ego got hurt a bit. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be acting so childish and snarky.
Look, you misread my initial post, misunderstanding the scope I was directing my remarks to, and now, to cya, you are going nasty.
“Then you try a ridiculous straw-man argument about mathematics.”
Not a strawman, a comparison employing an analogy. I equated discussion with a mathematical formula, where context is the equivalent of a variable. I’m sorry if you didn’t understand, but your lack of understanding doesn’t make it ridiculous, nor does your lack of understanding reflect poorly on me.
“Let me suggest a remedial course in English comprehension. You need it.”
That’s ironic considering the source and your complete confusion about what I have posted recently. That is the trouble with relying on insults, B, instead of reason, they tend to boomerang.
“Cassandra, you obviously can’t think: with no “concept of zero”, they would not use the word “increase” unless there was something there to begin with:”
Oh, another personal attack. Wow, insulting my intelligence when you have repeatedly misunderstood what I have presented in plain English is such an effective technique.
Not true. In fact, many species of animals demonstrate that they understand the concept of increase, but do not understand zero in the mathematical sense you used it in.
The concept of increase is not contingent on the concept of zero.
Further, you are pulling a diversionary stunt. Genesis was not written in English, and to presume that the english translation to multiply is so wholly accurate that it precludes all other related meanings, is unfounded at best.
B, the phrase you are having such a problem with, per your quote: “The phrase “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception” implies an initial non-zero “sorrow and conception”
is Genesis 3: 16. Note how the NIV, for example translates the same Hebrew:
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
The concept of multiply or increase isn’t even there in this particular translation. I suppose I could go to Strong’s on this, but wouldn’t you just dismiss that as a strawman?
Oh, what the heck. http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H7235&t=KJV
The word in question is rabah:
1) be or become great, be or become many, be or become much, be or become numerous
a) (Qal)
1) to become many, become numerous, multiply (of people, animals, things)
2) to be or grow great
b) (Piel) to make large, enlarge, increase, become many
c) (Hiphil)
1) to make much, make many, have many
a) to multiply, increase
b) to make much to do, do much in respect of, transgress greatly
c) to increase greatly or exceedingly
2) to make great, enlarge, do much
2) (Qal) to shoot
Nothing here requires that there was some initial level of pain that Eve was familiar with or susceptible. Her pains could have gone from zero to immense or from minimal to immense, and still the word would encompass it.
You are befuddled by something trivial, while ignoring the useful bit.
“if childbirth was new, they would have used a different word or phrase: you don’t “increase” something that was never there unless you have a concept of zero.”
There is nothing to suggest that Adam and Eve had produced any children while in the garden of Eden. In fact, Genesis 4 is very explicit:
“1Now the man had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have gotten a manchild with the help of the LORD.” ”
This follows after the expulsion at the end of Chapter 3.
So, at least in the context of Genesis, childbirth was new, and whether her pain, had she not sinned, been non-existent or negligible, or mild, what matters is that now she will experience pain in childbirth.
And the useful part of this is that this is a curse on something that is, in humans before in vitro fertilization – solely caused by heterosexual sex. It is a curse on that thing the Pope says is the only sexuality God favors.
“Then you write, ‘”Obviously there was an intention for Adam and Eve to have some additional company even if they stayed in the “Garden of Eden”.” ”
Actually, B, that first part is a quote from your post.
I wrote the following: “No. The passage from Genesis 2, which tells of creation of Adam and Eve, contains no command that they ‘go forth and multiply’.'”
“You botched that argument too.”
Nope.
“Having a small family for “company” is not the same thing as “going forth and multiple” to take over the earth.”
No where is a small family indicating in the first three chapters of Genesis, nor is there anything to indicate that Adam and Eve stopped after having Cain and Abel. Genesis 5 says “4Then the days of Adam after he became the father of Seth were eight hundred years, and he had other sons and daughters. ”
Where you get “a small family” is a mystery.
And again, you’ve missed the point. In the first creation account, the men and women are commanded to go forth and multiply, in the second, with Adam and Eve, there is no mention of reproduction until after the fall and expulsion.
“The passage I quoted clearly indicates that Adam and Eve could make babies before being thrown out.”
It is silent on the matter, B. The Bible doesn’t say one way or the other. They may have been like the angels and non reproductive, they may have been prepubescent, or fertile but celibate – the text does not say.
So you are being all fretful and nasty over nothing, while ignoring the real usefulness of this passage.
“It takes about 9 months, and the creation myth uses a time frame of a few days. Of course there were no “Adam Juniors” running around – Eve didn’t have enough time to pop one out even if she did get pregnant before eating the proverbial apple.”
We have no knowledge of how long they were in the garden of eden, B. It might have been hours, days, aeons. Time periods are explicitly delineated elsewhere regarding the creation, but after that, there’s no way of knowing. The Garden, a place where God walked, may have been outside of time, since one of God’s attributes is that He transcends time.
Your argument is based on assumptions that are not in the text.
“Maybe you should stick to religious web sites. The rest of us are going to call what is obviously a myth a myth when talking among ourselves.”
In other words, you cannot refute what I present, your only option is to try to chase me away.
What is obvious to you, frankly, is not a very reliable standard, B. You are fallible, after all, and your scholarship here has been poor at best.
Further, the issue of obvious to you is irrelevant if you ever chose to debate/discuss/argue/persuade some Biblical Literalist that they are wrong about anything in the Bible. You have to work within their set of working assumptions, or you’ll get no where.
Your ‘talk amongst ourselves’ dismissal is short-sighted, and inaccurate. Essentially, you’ve reduced all the conversation here about religion, at least, to idle gossip, a pointless exercise in egotism.
I see it as something more; not the pointless, childish carping of talking amongst ourselves about how bad “those people” are, but a chance to develop and share arguments to use to change the minds of people who oppress GLBTQ people.
ewe
@Cassandra: No Cassandra. It is you who is mistaken. Christians truly believe the sacrament is the changing of a host into human flesh and wine into blood. Now i happen to like you but you and your personal faith is not going to cloud my judgement. Your ignorance can be verified by any catholic priest.
ewe
@Cassandra: Darlin, tell me where where i mentioned atheists anywhere. Your attempt to bolster you story failed.
robert in nyc
Danny, No. 8. Ratzinger, among other religious degenerates, can’t even explain the incestuous relationships that must have occurred among “Adam & Eve’s” children. How else could the planet have become populated assuming they were the first parents of the human race? None of them can come up with any logical let alone rational explanation. Sick people.
All of this one man one woman procreation nonsense is nothing more than a red herring to justify a ban on same-sex marriage. He must know that there are many straights who choose not to procreate or can’t and yet choose to marry anyway. Further, there was no such thing as civil marriage in the old and new testaments either which has absolutely nothing to do with religion of course.
Cam
Oh Please, this Pope slapped a reporter for asking him a question. It was the most stereotypical pissy queen response you’ve ever seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qvgdS0s56Q
Cassandra
Ewe
“No Cassandra. It is you who is mistaken.”
No, I’m not. Remember, Ewe, you are pontificating about something you know nothing about, something that has no value to you, while I have spent nearly fifty years in the Christian church, my father is a minister, and I have studied Christianity since before I could read.
“Christians truly believe the sacrament is the changing of a host into human flesh and wine into blood.”
No, that isn’t true. Catholics come close to that, but they do not believe that it is materially human flesh and human blood.
Other Christian denominations consider transubstantiation to be heresy, that the host and wine are sacred, but not Christ’s flesh, sacred in the same way that the altar and vestments and crucifix and anything else dedicated to God is sacred. Others believe that that bread and wine are symbols, and are only made sacred when consumed by someone in an act of faith.
You are making the same mistakes that homophobes make about GLBTQ people – using false information about a small portion of your targetted population to define all of them, ignoring the tremendous diversity of opinions within the group.
Now you are insisting that you know better than I the truth about a sacrament I have been enriched by for decades, in order to affirm your vicious lie.
“Now i happen to like you”
Yet you lie about something of value to me.
“but you and your personal faith is not going to cloud my judgement.”
So your judgement is not based on the truth, but on your prejudice.
“Your ignorance can be verified by any catholic priest.”
Go ahead. The first thing a priest will tell you is that you are wicked and sinning to call the sacrament of communion cannibalism. That was hate speech, Ewe. The next thing any priest would tell you is that there is great diversity among Christians about the sacrament of communion.
Maybe if you had religion, you would not be so verbally abusive and dishonest, Ewe.
“Darlin, tell me where where i mentioned atheists anywhere. Your attempt to bolster you story failed.”
Your dismissal accomplishes nothing. I was addressing your shrill ad hominem: “Your stupid inane tired old book of fantasies is not all that for most of the worlds people.”
I pointed out that a third of the world is Christians, while people like you are about 1%. Your dismissal is the voice of a prejudiced minority hurling hate in the wind.
pimples
it all seems to have gone quiet over all the abuse cases that allegedly never happened in pope land, appparently its ok to be both fucked up and fucked by religion. as both a catholic and a mental health professional ive seen what damage secrets, lies, guilt and so called ‘normal’ practises in the name of god have done to people
Cassandra
Ewe
The false accusation you made – that the sacrament of communion is cannibalism, is hate speech, with a very long history. It has its root in the ancient persecution of Christians, in the first centuries of Christianity. When you use it, you are aligning yourself with people who tortured and murdered people for being Christian.
It is the equivalent of comparing same-sex lovemaking with pedophilia or bestiality. It is the equivalent of using the word “n*gger”.
pimples
as a deeply spritual person, im a little shocked that someone could liken communion to cannbalism its an important and symbolic part of mass, before casting stones at what you dont understand please educate yourself then we could all have a more reasoned discussion.
as a gay man i am sometimes at odds with my personal and spiritual
lives and i choose to observe my beliefs at home as i find i dont need a church to follow my god.
i’ve been called many things over the years but never a cannable, lol.
its almost like a bad b movie plot.
Kev C
I do understand the symbolism of communion. But that doesn’t change the outward appearance of ghoulishness. Also, christians idolize a man who was tortured to death on a cross. While it’s intended to honor his sacrifice, it does appear ghoulish. While unintentional, appearances are important.
pimples
i do understand where your coming from and can appreciate what it can appear to people, high church services is all a major performance piece and could be seen from an outsiders point maybe a little, god forgive me, pagan. lol
i view my belief system as very personal and not something i want to ring bells or burn incense. i would rather draw from all religions from hindu through to judaism.
catholicism is more of a culture in a way as much as a religion. and like most cultures resistant to change
Tallskin
So, eating of the flesh of jesus and drinking his blood seems pretty cannibalistic in intent to me.
And, like most, if not all, of christianity, stolen lock, stock and barrel from the pagan religions of the ancient world. The whole eating of flesh of the god and drinking his blood originally came from the ancient belief in Osiris, whose followers did exactly that.
When the second coming of the messiah didn’t happen the early christians were in rather a quandry as to what to do next- what with the hungry and ignorant mob demanding miracles. So, they stole all the useful philosophical notions on morality from the Roman philosophies like the Epicurians, wrapped these up in pagan religious packaging, like the virgin birth etc and HEY PRESTO, bob’s your uncle, a religion that they pick and mixed.
And once they had exterminated all the opposition, like the cannibalistic nazis (please note the correct spelling of ‘cannibal’ , folks) they were (and still are) there was no opposition left to remind them of who they had stolen their entire religion from, cos they’d killed them all.
No doubt they ate them, cos that’s what cannibals do! (just joking. I wouldn’t want to be accused of a hate crime by that nutjob cassandra)
Cassandra
Kev C.
“I do understand the symbolism of communion. But that doesn’t change the outward appearance of ghoulishness.”
That outward appearance is all a work of prejudice. Bear in mind, that to homophobes, the outward appearance of homosexuality is rather ugly too.
The outward appearance is simple – people receive a small piece of wheat based (usually) food and a small amount of a grape based liquid.
“Also, christians idolize a man who was tortured to death on a cross. While it’s intended to honor his sacrifice, it does appear ghoulish.”
Really? Because many different cultures respect and honor people who have sacrificed their lives for others. Your premise means that Memorial Day and Veterans Day are both ghoulish too.
It appears ghoulish to you because you interpret the actions of Christians in a negative reflexively, out of prejudice.
“While unintentional, appearances are important.”
Homophobes make the same argument about leather daddies, drag queens, gay pride celebrations, and anything else they find fault with and think they can use to create a negative appearance about homosexuality.
What you call “appearances” is really just your bias at work.
Tallskin2
“So, eating of the flesh of jesus and drinking his blood seems pretty cannibalistic in intent to me.”
But you are a rather extreme example of anti-religious prejudice. To homophobes, anal sex appears to be pretty disgusting and degrading.
How are you and Kev C. any different from homophobes then?
“And, like most, if not all, of christianity, stolen lock, stock and barrel from the pagan religions of the ancient world. The whole eating of flesh of the god and drinking his blood originally came from the ancient belief in Osiris, whose followers did exactly that.”
Nice accusation, it demonstrates how clearly you are devoid of morality and ethics.
In order for Christianity to have stolen from “the pagan religions of the ancient world” – Jesus, and the disciples, would have had to have been deeply familiar with said religions, and yet, much of the allegedly stolen material comes from mystery rites that were only made known to initiates.
Of course, this argument has come up before, so, by your own logic, Tallskin2, you have stolen it from others. Luckily for you, your belief system does not condemn stealing or lying or any other abusive and destructive behavior.
Your post is hate speech, and if it were not, you wouldn’t have included the snarky insult directed at me. But because you are engaged in hate speech, all you have to offer is abusive behavior, and thus, the ugly and abusive joke and the insult directed me.
Your posts are the anti-religious equivalent of Fred Phelp’s ugly little signs. Perhaps you can give him a hug next time he’s out demonstrating his prejudice.
B
In No. 54 · Cassandra, trying to bury the discussion in even more bullshit to cover up poor reading comprehension, wrote, “You are ducking the point, yet again. It does not matter that you are focusing on one sentence – when debating with people who have a literalist interpretation of the Bible, treating it as myth, playing the amateur anthropologist, is not a successful strategy.”
…. thus proving Casandra can’t read (and is lying as nobody was playing “anthropologist” but simply pointing out what the text literally said). It is not “ducking the point” to refer to one sentence when that one sentence was quoted as an indication that another poster misinterpreted that particular sentence. And we were having a discussion on this thread, not “debating with people who have a literalist interpretation of the Bible.” The account in Genesis is a myth. It’s obvious to any educated person.
Then Cassandra goes on with strawman arguments like “It is silent on the matter, B. The Bible doesn’t say one way or the other. They may have been like the angels and non reproductive, they may have been prepubescent, or fertile but celibate – the text does not say.” Let’s see. It uses the word “increase”. They don’t understand zero, so ‘increase’ requires something there to start with. They are called a man and a woman, not angels, and “fertile but celebate” is irrelevant as “fertile” implies they could in fact reproduce. If they were prepubescent, Adam would have been called the first boy, not the first man. Cassandra is just throwing out a bunch of nonsense for the sake of being argumentative.
The rest of Cassandra’s rantings are simply a waste of time – replying to each silly statement in detail leads to the “exponential post growth” syndrome, in which case each comment becomes twice as large as the last.
ewe
@Cassandra: Cassandra. You are the one who pontificates. You have absolutely no idea of my background. I have always thought of you as a scholar when it comes to the bible and have even called you a champion but it does not make you right just because you spin the current day interpretations of your religion and avoid its history. You are mistaken. Your defense is something that took place as a change of thinking that occurred centuries ago. You conveniently forget to mention that Cassandra. You cannot run from history and it is good that you are on the defense. This wretched vile pope should be on the defense for attacking gay people and using your book as a weapon. The pope is a catholic and that is who i am talking about. You don’t have credence with people outside of your box Cassandra. You can spend your life studying christianity if you so choose but it only matters to people who have the same interest. It does not make it real for someone else just because you feel it does for you. If you were spouting off about the koran i would say the same thing. Most people on this site have no interest in your storybook. I am not attacking anyone that has not attacked me. You can try and call a flock something other than a bunch of sheep as well but it does not ring true either. I noticed you choose to avoid my question about your insistence i am an atheist. People who think differently than you are not necessarily atheists. Your fantasies have no value to me Cassandra and that’s just plain ol tough if you don’t like that. It is you that won’t accept stepping out of your ego. I don’t call you a liar. You just perceive it that way. I think you are delusional when it comes to the supernatural and that is what i think. I can still like you and think you are a nut or perhaps misguided. I don’t think of you as a hater. What ever makes you think i never asked more than one priest about this? The answer i got is nothing like you have submitted as your truth. And therein lies the truth. Your truth is not mine and mine is not yours but your beliefs don’t stand outside of yourself Cassandra hence; cuckoo for cocoa puffs. You should not assume i have no religion. I am laughing at you for insinuating that just to make yourself feel better. One great difference between me and you is that i do not wear it on my sleeve because i was taught my spirituality was so inate and strong within me that i did not have to prove anything to anyone. It is your pope hurling hate in the wind. Get your priorities straight. I have no problem telling assholes who attempt to turn things around on me to fuck off Cassandra and you are coming close to meeting that criteria. Christians also have tortured and murdered. They are not insulated nor immune. I do not have a problem using the word nigger and realize that bestiality and pedophilia fall within the parameters of human sexuality. Get over yourself. This is about that ugly minded hatemonering pope.
Cassandra
B
So, you’ve decided to talk past me, rather than to me. Such class.
“Cassandra, trying to bury the discussion in even more bullshit to cover up poor reading comprehension, wrote,”
B, when Bill Purdue calls you names and insults your intelligence, does it ever change your mind about what he has written? Why then are you behaving like him?
Your dismissal above simply indicates that, yet again, you cannot refute or disprove what I have presented.
“thus proving Casandra can’t read”
And yet, I clearly have repeatedly responded to the actual contents of your sentences, proving that I can indeed read. Your insult does not advance your argument, B.
“(and is lying as nobody was playing “anthropologist” but simply pointing out what the text literally said).”
Of course, claiming that I cannot read, when I have repeatedly addressed the actual content of your posts, means you lied a quote ago. Further, you have been playing anthropologist, by treating the Genesis 3 account as an explanation by humans for why women suffer pain during pregnancy – that is a standard interpretative tactic that anthropologists use to interpret myth.
“It is not “ducking the point” to refer to one sentence when that one sentence was quoted as an indication that another poster misinterpreted that particular sentence.”
Sure it is, because the point I have been making from my first post to you here, is that dismissing the Genesis 3 account, as you do, takes an argument that is very useful when arguing with Biblical literalists out of play.
“And we were having a discussion on this thread, not “debating with people who have a literalist interpretation of the Bible.”
How egocentric, B, to assume that dialogue with you only has one purpose. I was talking about more than just this one tiny moment in time, because homophobia occurs all the time, and lots of people, besides you, have and will continue to have opportunities to discuss this subject with people who have a literalist interpretation of the Bible. Life is not all about you, B.
“The account in Genesis is a myth. It’s obvious to any educated person.”
There’s the reliance on insult again. Many millions of educated people do not consider it to be myth. Just because someone disagrees with you about Genesis does not mean that they are uneducated, in many cases, they may even be, shock of all shocks, better educated than you are.
“Then Cassandra goes on with strawman arguments”
You know, educated people know what a straw man argument is. You are using the term incorrectly. A straw man is a misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.
My statement: “It is silent on the matter, B. The Bible doesn’t say one way or the other. They may have been like the angels and non reproductive, they may have been prepubescent, or fertile but celibate – the text does not say.”
is not a straw man, is it not a misrepresentation of your argument. It may be an inaccurate statement, but since you chose to dismiss it instead, I’m confident that you, at least, found nothing you could prove false in it.
“Let’s see. It uses the word “increase”.”
Actually, the text was not written in English. The text uses the word rabah, which some translators have rendered “increase”. At least you are dropping your whole multiply claim.
“They don’t understand zero, so ‘increase’ requires something there to start with.”
Not exactly. People can be aware of something without understanding or conceptualizing it, you’ve bogged yourself down fixating on zero – forgetting that your initial mistake was based on the mathematical properties of zero – i.e., that zero times anything is still zero.
“They are called a man and a woman, not angels,”
That is why I used the phrase ‘like the angels’ – which has an NT source, we are told that in the life to come, we will be like the angels too.
“and “fertile but celebate” is irrelevant as “fertile” implies they could in fact reproduce.”
When you quote me, have the decency not to introduce typo’s that I did not make. Your dismissal is a cheap trick. The fact is that the Genesis 3 account does not tell us any of the things you claim are there.
“If they were prepubescent, Adam would have been called the first boy, not the first man.”
Says who? I suppose I could provide a comparison of the Hebrew word used in the relevant text, and whether or not is was ever applied to pre-pubescent male children, but wouldn’t that effort be wasted on you?
Oh, alright, the hebrew word used in the text is adam, http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H120&t=KJV
and it does not specify adulthood. We do not know how mature Adam was at creation.
Something that is interesting is here, from Genesis 1 and the first account of the creation of humans:
“So God 430 created 1254 man 120 in his [own] image 6754, in the image 6754 of God 430 created 1254 he him; male 2145 and female 5347 created 1254 he them.”
The numbers refer to specific Hebrew words, and here we have the word ‘adam’ number 120 used again, and later explained as ‘male and female’. It just indicates that the word used in the Genesis 3 account does not mean ‘adult male’.
“Cassandra is just throwing out a bunch of nonsense for the sake of being argumentative.”
Projecting is not a useful argument, B. Dismissing the material I have carefully provided for you as ‘nonsense’ simply indicates contempt, and argumentativeness, on your part.
“The rest of Cassandra’s rantings are simply a waste of time – ”
In other words, you cannot refute anything I posted.
I suppose you are going to stalk me now the way you and Bill Purdue stalk each other. Oh well. How helpful and mature.
ewe
@Cassandra: and please don’t be telling me a flock can represent other species. You know what i mean.
ewe
@Cassandra: Cassandra. The pope talks past you all the time too. Please don’t take what i am saying as negative. I am not trying to be mean to you.
Kev C
@Cassandra: Where in the bible does is say that we should idolize or worship the Cross? Where does it say we should re-enact the Last Supper? These are religious embellishments that have nothing to do with what the bible says. But I’m the blasphemer because I think crosses are creepy?
ewe
@Kev C: crosses are creepy? They keep that dead man hanging up on the cross for over 2000 years. Just starin at it day in and day out every time smack front and center. You would think the pope and his flock would maybe just maybe take the poor guy off the damn cross. uch!!! Disturbing. Yeah i am gonna stick to my original assertion that the sacrament celebrates cannibalism.
Cassandra
Ewe
“Cassandra. You are the one who pontificates.”
You are welcome to back that up with evidence.
However, that unfounded accusation aside, Ewe, you are making false assertions about a very complex and deeply nuanced subject, about which there is tremendous difference of opinion among Christians.
“You have absolutely no idea of my background.”
So? We are not talking about your background, so why are you introducing it as a subject?
“I have always thought of you as a scholar when it comes to the bible and have even called you a champion but it does not make you right just because you spin the current day interpretations of your religion and avoid its history.”
I am not spinning anything, Ewe.
“You are mistaken.”
No, I am not.
“Your defense is something that took place as a change of thinking that occurred centuries ago.”
Ah, so you admit, to begin with, that Christians today do not commit cannibalism even in thought. Second, you are inadvertently acknowledging that there is dissent and disagreement about the nature of the sacrament of communion. Will you though acknowledge that transubstantiation, the concept you are distorting, does not date back to the early church, but is a much later invention?
“You conveniently forget to mention that Cassandra.”
Forget to mention a distortion you make up. Wow. Shame on me.
“You cannot run from history”
I don’t have to, Ewe. You are the one who is invoking a historical libel, an ancient example of hate speech that is directly linked to acts of violence against Christians.
“and it is good that you are on the defense.”
Homophobes say the same thing. Funny how bigots enjoy attacking people.
However, not to burst your bubble, but I am not on the defense here. I am correcting your errors, and pointing out that you have posted hate speech, using a libel that has an established history as part of the persecution of Christians. Are you sure that you are not the one being defensive?
“This wretched vile pope should be on the defense for attacking gay people and using your book as a weapon.”
Of course, but, Ewe, lying about a sacrament you do not believe in, and branding a third of humanity as cannibals, is not constructive. It is hate speech, and it places you on the same miserable moral level as the Pope. He paints ugly word pictures about gays and lesbians, you paint ugly word pictures about Christians. You both are engaged in abusive behavior.
“The pope is a catholic and that is who i am talking about.”
Catholics are not the only Christians, nor are they the only ones who practice Communion. You repeatedly used all-inclusive terminology.
“You don’t have credence with people outside of your box Cassandra.”
Ah, the ugly ad hominem dismissal. However, Ewe, if your statement were actually true, you would not have to say it, would you? You are simply being abusive and insulting again.
“You can spend your life studying christianity if you so choose but it only matters to people who have the same interest.”
If only. Unfortunately, the lies that people like you and tallskin2 indicate something else. Your vehemence here indicates that you are vested in your lies, your lies about Christianity matter to you, and, they matter because the truth does not validate your prejudice.
“Most people on this site have no interest in your storybook.”
So? A good percentage however, do care about prejudice, and hopefully, are willing to consider how atheism is itself a prejudice. And even more people here care about how religion has been raped into a weapon to use against GLBTQ people.
Your dismissal of the Bible as a storybook indicates contempt for a third of humanity; that is a symptom of prejudice, a subject of interest to people here.
“I am not attacking anyone that has not attacked me.”
Sure you are. You call all Christians cannibals, including those who have fought for you, risked their lives and careers for you, even died for you.
“I noticed you choose to avoid my question about your insistence i am an atheist.”
Which post is this in? I try to be careful and address as much of people’s relevant material as possible.
Did you mean this statement, in post 56:
“Darlin, tell me where where i mentioned atheists anywhere. Your attempt to bolster you story failed.”
If so, I did in fact comment on it, in post 58. If I was unclear, or you have further questions, by all means. However, I do not see any statement where you deny being an atheist, or ask how I concluded that you were an atheist.
“People who think differently than you are not necessarily atheists.”
Never said they were, did I? Why are you chasing after something I never said? Oh, that’s right, because you think you can smear my character with an oblique false accusation.
“Your fantasies have no value to me Cassandra and that’s just plain ol tough if you don’t like that.”
And another dismissal. How kind. However, I’m not interested in getting you, or anyone else here, interested in my fantasies, which are private. Nor am I here to proselytize or evangelize. I am participating primarily to explore and share the understanding that atheism is a prejudice, that spreading or celebrating any prejudice, including atheism, reinforces all of them, including homophobia.
“It is you that won’t accept stepping out of your ego. I don’t call you a liar. You just perceive it that way. I think you are delusional when it comes to the supernatural and that is what i think.”
More character attack. Funny, Ewe, apparently, because I think and experience life differently than you, that makes me delusional.
What bigotry and malice, Ewe.
“I can still like you and think you are a nut or perhaps misguided.”
No, not really. That’s just a variant of the old ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ routine.
“What ever makes you think i never asked more than one priest about this?”
The fact that you are wrong about the sacrament of communion, and the fact that you used hate speech, and characterize it in a way that was used to justify persecuting Christians.
“The answer i got is nothing like you have submitted as your truth.”
Did the priest you allegedly talked to use the word cannibalism?
“And therein lies the truth.”
No. Therein lies your opinion of something you claim happened to you, a discussion with one person that you allege occurred.
“Your truth is not mine and mine is not yours but your beliefs don’t stand outside of yourself Cassandra hence; cuckoo for cocoa puffs.”
The irony is that there are many ideas about what is true about the sacrament of communion, but, only atheists and other bigots call it cannibalism. You committed hate speech, Ewe.
“You should not assume i have no religion.”
You have consistently articulated an anti-religious perspective. Have you been lying all this time?
“I am laughing at you for insinuating that just to make yourself feel better.”
Why would it make me feel better? Projecting a false reality onto me is something that homophobes do all the time as well, Ewe. Why do you have to invent a fantasy like that?
“One great difference between me and you is that i do not wear it on my sleeve because i was taught my spirituality was so inate and strong within me that i did not have to prove anything to anyone.”
Actually, the biggest difference between you and I, Ewe, is that you frequently, and abusively, lose your temper here and revile people with dreadful and horrific insults. Seems to me you give the impression of having a lot to prove to people.
“It is your pope hurling hate in the wind.”
Not my pope, I’m not Catholic, and non-Catholic Christians, like myself, are not bound to him, do not consider him an authority or leader in their spiritual lives.
“Get your priorities straight.”
How kind of you to assume that they are not. I get the same advice from homophobes all the time.
“I have no problem telling assholes who attempt to turn things around on me to fuck off Cassandra and you are coming close to meeting that criteria.”
What a shame. However, do you think that, after you have called me a cannibal, this new insult will have much weight? You’ve already maligned and libeled something I consider sacred and beautiful, using a hate speech term long associated with the violent oppression of Christians. Any other obscenity you chose to use now, or in the future, is not going to have much impact.
“Christians also have tortured and murdered.”
So? Are you genuinely suggesting that gives you the right to use hate speech targeting Christians? No matter who you are, Ewe, in at least one way, you fall into a category of humans of which some have committed torture and murder. Whether it is gender, ethnicity, age, race, height, weight, ideology, you name – at least one, and odds are, many traits that you have, you share with people who have committed atrocities.
Does that mean it is open season on you for hate speech?
Your implied argument would say yes.
“I do not have a problem using the word nigger”
Well, it is hate speech, its use indicates contempt and malice, so, you are sharing with everyone here something about yourself that you might have wanted to keep private.
“and realize that bestiality and pedophilia fall within the parameters of human sexuality.”
But not healthy sexuality,Ewe. Really. And equating something beautiful and fulfilling and meaningful with something abusive and degrading like raping animals and children, or cannibalism, is hateful and malicious.
The absence of empathy you are exalting in yourself, is not good.
“This is about that ugly minded hatemonering pope.”
But your remarks calling Christians cannibals is just as much a case of hate-mongering as anything this Pope has said. He, at least, makes an attempt at civility.
Tallskin
@EWE -“Crosses are creepy? They keep that dead man hanging up on the cross for over 2000 years. Just starin at it day in and day out every time smack front and center. You would think the pope and his flock would maybe just maybe take the poor guy off the damn cross. uch!!! Disturbing. Yeah i am gonna stick to my original assertion that the sacrament celebrates cannibalism.”
You think crucifixes are creepy? Imagine how Jesus must feel about them. As Bill Hicks said, “The last f*cking thing jesus wants to see when he returns is a f*cking crucifix”
ewe
@Cassandra: Lmao. Evidence? You submit novels right on this website. Key phrase you used was “among christians”. Now maybe you don’t think others exist or matter but i do. I talked about my “background” because you accused me of being an atheist. And as for the rest of what you wrote, i will read it later perhaps. I have to go somewhere.
Cassandra
Kev C
“Where in the bible does is say that we should idolize or worship the Cross?”
Christians do not idolize or worship the cross. It is used as a symbol of the sacrifice made by Christ. That is a very different thing.
Now, the Bible does not indicate that the cross should be, could be or ought to be used as a symbol. So? The Bible also doesn’t say anything about computers, cars, electricity, No. America. You are using a standard homophobe argument: that the absence of affirmation of something in the Bible creates condemnation. Sorry, but that is not a rational argument.
“Where does it say we should re-enact the Last Supper?”
Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell the story. Luke 22 contains the point of origin for the sacrament of Communion:
14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”
17 After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. 18 For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”
19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.[a] ”
I’ve bolded the answer to your question for you.
“These are religious embellishments that have nothing to do with what the bible says.”
So, no, they are not.
“But I’m the blasphemer because I think crosses are creepy?”
Just looking at it simplistically and superficially. You see the instrument of torture, Christians see the moment when God, in the person of Christ, sacrificed Himself on behalf of humankind. You see tool for execution, but for Christians, the cross is a symbol for the mystical heart of Christianity, something is extraordinarily difficult to express in words, but which can be understood, more or less, from experience. To really understand what the cross means to Christians, you’d have to become one, and be one for awhile.
And there are denominations that do not use the cross at all.
Cassandra
Ewe
“Lmao. Evidence? You submit novels right on this website. Key phrase you used was “among christians”. Now maybe you don’t think others exist or matter but i do. I talked about my “background” because you accused me of being an atheist. And as for the rest of what you wrote, i will read it later perhaps. I have to go somewhere.”
So you have no evidence and cannot refute what I have presented. You may go somewhere, but your hate speech remains.
B
No. 68 · Cassandra wrote, “B. So, you’ve decided to talk past me, rather than to me. Such class.”
What a hypocrite – Cassandra took a simple statement about what a sentence in the creation myth in Genesis states (which another person misinterpreted) and has been posting long, content-free diatribes that ignores the fact that the poster I replied to obviously viewed the Genesis creation story as a myth, just as any educated person would.
Earth to Cassandra: when you continually misinterpret what others say and try to turn discussions into long, pointless theological arguments, don’t be surprised if you get dismissed.
Then Cassandra says things like, “You know, educated people know what a straw man argument is. You are using the term incorrectly. A straw man is a misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.”
… but of course I used the term correctly since Cassandra is obviously misrepresenting my position, which was simply that another poster got a detail wrong regarding this myth (you want to get the details right to avoid someone using the error to divert the discussion to something else).
And of then Cassandra shows her lack of understanding of logic by stating (regarding her “angels” thing), “It may be an inaccurate statement, but since you chose to dismiss it instead, I’m confident that you, at least, found nothing you could prove false in it.” The only conclusion you can draw from me not saying anything about Cassandra’s nonsense is that I timed out due to boredom.
And then there is, Cassandra’s objection to the statement, “The account in Genesis is a myth. It’s obvious to any educated person,” by saying, “There’s the reliance on insult again. Many millions of educated people do not consider it to be myth. Just because someone disagrees with you about Genesis does not mean that they are uneducated, in many cases, they may even be, shock of all shocks, better educated than you are.”
Now Cassandra, this was not an insult – educated people know that the Genesis creation story is a myth. It has to be. You can’t explain concepts like quark-gluon plasmas that are important in understanding the behavior of the early universe (first 100 microseconds or so) to people who had trouble with simple arithmetic (read http://www.skypoint.com/members/waltzmn/Mathematics.html) which points out that “Hebrew mathematics frankly makes one wonder why God didn’t do something to educate these people. Their mathematics seems to have been even more primitive than the Romans’; there is nothing original, nothing creative, nothing even particularly efficient. It’s almost frightening to think of a Hebrew designing Solomon’s Temple, for instance, armed with all the (lack of) background on stresses and supports that a people who still lived mostly in tents had at their disposal. (One has to suspect that the actual temple construction was managed by either a Phoenician or an Egyptian.)”
I’m ignoring most of your statements because having a discussion with you leads to wonder what planet you spend most of your time on.
Cassandra
Ah, more insults from B.
“What a hypocrite – Cassandra took a simple statement about what a sentence in the creation myth in Genesis states (which another person misinterpreted) and has been posting long, content-free diatribes that ignores the fact that the poster I replied to obviously viewed the Genesis creation story as a myth, just as any educated person would.”
Gee, B, the word hypocrite doesn’t mean what you think it means. I have addressed my responses to your posts to you, directly. You’ve decided to be rude. How does your bad behavior make me, well, anything?
Dismissing my posts as content free simply indicates that you cannot refute what I have presented.
“Earth to Cassandra: when you continually misinterpret what others say and try to turn discussions into long, pointless theological arguments, don’t be surprised if you get dismissed.”
That’s a nice fantasy, B, but it appears to be a better description of your own posts here to me, as well as your little flame wars with Bill Purdue. You don’t get very far with Bill, why do you expect that I will be moved by your insults?
Of course, you could’ve tried to show how I’d misunderstood your posts, as I have done with your misunderstandings, but instead you chose to be insulting again.
“Then Cassandra says things like, “You know, educated people know what a straw man argument is. You are using the term incorrectly. A straw man is a misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.”
Yes, my statement above is correct.
“… but of course I used the term correctly since Cassandra is obviously misrepresenting my position,”
But since I have not, your false accusation doesn’t help you. Of course, you could have provided an example, perhaps to counter the way I explained that I was not misrepresenting your positions, but you chose to be rude instead.
“which was simply that another poster got a detail wrong regarding this myth”
At no point have I misrepresented the above. I acknowledged that you attempted to criticize another poster about his interpretation, I pointed out that your assumptions are equally unfounded.
“(you want to get the details right to avoid someone using the error to divert the discussion to something else).”
Isn’t that advice you should begin to apply in your own posts, B?
“And of then Cassandra shows her lack of understanding of logic by stating (regarding her “angels” thing), “It may be an inaccurate statement, but since you chose to dismiss it instead, I’m confident that you, at least, found nothing you could prove false in it.” ”
There is no lack of logic in my statement quoted above. It is logical that when someone chooses to employ a lie, as you did by characterizing my statement as a straw man when it was not, they are doing so because honest rebuttal is not possible for them.
“The only conclusion you can draw from me not saying anything about Cassandra’s nonsense is that I timed out due to boredom.”
If you can make the time to be insulting, you can make the time to present a reasonable and convincing rebuttal, if you have one. Since insults and dismissals accomplish nothing but the exaggeration of your ego, it stands to reason that they are a substitute for a substantive argument. But perhaps you simply enjoy being abusive and degrading to others.
“And then there is, Cassandra’s objection to the statement, “The account in Genesis is a myth. It’s obvious to any educated person,” by saying, “There’s the reliance on insult again. Many millions of educated people do not consider it to be myth. Just because someone disagrees with you about Genesis does not mean that they are uneducated, in many cases, they may even be, shock of all shocks, better educated than you are.” ”
Ah, because insults are such a civil way to communicate, and so strong an indicator of critical thinking. How could anyone object to the slander of dismissing millions of people who do not see things the way B does as ‘uneducated’? It looks like B’s definition of educated is ‘believing what B says you should’.
“Now Cassandra, this was not an insult – educated people know that the Genesis creation story is a myth. It has to be.”
Many people who are highly educated, in fact, more educated that you are without a doubt, do not believe the Genesis creation story is a myth. Some consider it metaphor, some consider it fact. Some consider it an account of a divine revelation or vision that has been handed down by oral tradition.
And no, the Genesis account does not have to be myth. It can be many things, including an account of a miracle, something happening outside the laws of physics. It may be Divine revelation and be poetry. It does not have to be myth.
“You can’t explain concepts like quark-gluon plasmas that are important in understanding the behavior of the early universe (first 100 microseconds or so) to people who had trouble with simple arithmetic”
You couldn’t. But you are not God. Nor are mathematics necessarily required to explain concepts like quark-gluon plasma’s anyways. Perhaps we’re encountering a little ego-driven insularity in your worldview – anyone without the specific interests you have – is inferior to you, apparently.
“(read http://www.skypoint.com/member…..tics.html) which points out that “Hebrew mathematics frankly makes one wonder why God didn’t do something to educate these people. Their mathematics seems to have been even more primitive than the Romans’; there is nothing original, nothing creative, nothing even particularly efficient. It’s almost frightening to think of a Hebrew designing Solomon’s Temple, for instance, armed with all the (lack of) background on stresses and supports that a people who still lived mostly in tents had at their disposal. (One has to suspect that the actual temple construction was managed by either a Phoenician or an Egyptian.)”
Gotta love modern prejudices. Ancient people have created works of architecture that would still challenge modern builders, but, oh, we are just sooo superior nowadays. Love the antisemitism there as well.
Not quite sure how this dig at an ancient people validates any the material B claims is contained in the Genesis 3 account. I’m not going to speculate either, that would be rude.
“I’m ignoring most of your statements because having a discussion with you leads to wonder what planet you spend most of your time on.”
So basically, because you cannot be civil or decent, you have to sit this out. Oh well.
Kev C
@Cassandra: Lighten up, Cassandra. Children aren’t born knowing what transubstantiation is. Most adults don’t even know that it’s like a time-release capsule exploding with Jesus flavor, but totally non-cannabil like 🙂
B
No. 79 · Cassandra wrote, “Ah, more insults from B.” That’s a lie: calling you a hypocrite is a statement of fact.
What I called hypocrisy was your statement, “”B. So, you’ve decided to talk past me, rather than to me. Such class.” Well,
my original statement in No 13 (replying to Danny) was
———————-
What Genesis actually says is, “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.”
So, it could be interpreted to mean that having children was possible before they were booted out, but that as an added punishment, childbirth would henceforth be unpleasant.
In reality, the myth simply tried to give a reason for childbirth being painful: “Blame Eve.”
———————–
Then Kev didn’t notice the word myth and seemed to think I was taking the creation myth seriously, so I replied to him by saying
———-
No. 16 · Kev C wrote, “@B: Childbirth is painful because the woman is passing a 7 lb package through a highly sensitive 3 inch hole. German engineers would have designed this more effieciently than God.”
Which is why I called the explanation in Genesis a myth. At the time, they didn’t know much about biology, and in particular there was no German engineering 4000 years ago.
———-
Then in No 31, you “talked past me” by saying:
“Of course, if you dismiss it as mere myth and ignorance about biology, you lose the opportunity to challenge a foundational principle of anti-gay theology: the idea of heterosexual superiority.
“One of the big arguments that homophobes make is that heterosexuality is superior, blessed by God, etc, because it produces offspring, and homosexual intercourse does not. But the curse in Genesis 3 challenges that superiority complex. And perhaps, that is even its function – to prevent heterosexuals from feeling superior about their particular accident of birth.”
But I was merely replying to Kev since he seemed to have not noticed that I had called the creation myth in Genesis a myth.
Your statement itself “talked past me” as your reply had nothing to do with what we were talking about.
And you got the theology wrong to boot – the alleged “punishment” had nothing to do with homosexuality or heterosexuality in general, but was rather targeted at Eve (and as the legend implies, inherited by her offspring).
Everyone who is sensible is going to consider this stuff to be a myth – the knew hardly anything about biology, physics, or mathematics at the time compared to what we know today.
Then you say idiotic things like “You couldn’t. But you are not God. Nor are mathematics necessarily required to explain concepts like quark-gluon plasma’s anyways.” That sort of statement shows how little you know (i.e. about the necessity of a mathematical description of the theory). Try reading
http://www.physics.umd.edu/courses/Phys741/xji/chapter2.pdf and
have fun. This isn’t theology, where people just make things up (and BTW, researchers have now created this state of matter in a particle accelerator, albeit for a very brief period of time).
Tallskin
EWE, Kev C, B
Look guys and gals, you’ve fallen right into the massive trap the manipulating cassandra has set for you.
Don’t encourage her. You know it’s bad for her. She needs to take her medication and not be stressed out.
She needs to relax in a darkened room not be inflamed with reasoned, well thought out arguments that only serve to remind her what an utter loon she is.
Have pity on the poor benighted creature.
Leave her in peace.
Cassandra
B
“That’s a lie: calling you a hypocrite is a statement of fact.”
You are confusing the word fact with the word lie. Calling me a hypocrite is a lie, B, a false statement made to justify bad behavior on your part.
“What I called hypocrisy was your statement, “”B. So, you’ve decided to talk past me, rather than to me. Such class.” Well,
my original statement in No 13 (replying to Danny) was”
And still, B, your accusation of hypocrisy is false, because I have not talked past you, posting about you rather than addressing you directly.
So the question is, are you unsure what the word hypocrisy means, or were you just using it as a false accusation for the jollies of it?
“Then in No 31, you “talked past me” by saying:
“Of course, if you dismiss it as mere myth and ignorance about biology, you lose the opportunity to challenge a foundational principle of anti-gay theology: the idea of heterosexual superiority.”
No, B. I addressed that to you. Which apparently is why you’ve been so worked up and emotional here.
“But I was merely replying to Kev since he seemed to have not noticed that I had called the creation myth in Genesis a myth.
Your statement itself “talked past me” as your reply had nothing to do with what we were talking about.”
Ah, here’s the problem, you didn’t understand the plain English phrase ‘talked past me’. I was referring to the way you suddenly switched from posting to me directly, to posting about me, i.e. “Cassandra, trying to bury the discussion”, addressing me in the third person, rather than directly.
I have not done that to you, so, no, oh false accuser B, no hypocrisy on my part.
And B, my post to you most certainly was relevant to what you were talking about – as your subsequent, argumentative and abusive posts indicated.
“And you got the theology wrong to boot – the alleged “punishment” had nothing to do with homosexuality or heterosexuality in general, but was rather targeted at Eve (and as the legend implies, inherited by her offspring).”
Still wrong, B. You still are not getting the point. I didn’t say that Eve was punished for being heterosexual. I said that when arguing with people who claim that God prefers heterosexuality, that it is God’s favorite sexual orientation, the fact that the very first curse on humans in the Bible explicitly targets the product of heterosexual intercourse, and only heterosexual intercourse, is useful.
I really am surprised that you cannot understand that. Oh well.
“Everyone who is sensible is going to consider this stuff to be a myth”
Oh, you found a new word to play with. Now everyone who doesn’t agree with you that “this stuff” is myth is not sensible. You really seem to need to put down people who find a value and meaning in this text that is different from your opinion of it. Why do you need to malign millions of human beings, B?
Does it make you feel smart or sensible or educated?
” – the knew hardly anything about biology, physics, or mathematics at the time compared to what we know today.”
So? God certainly is not limited in that way.
“Then you say idiotic things like “You couldn’t. But you are not God. Nor are mathematics necessarily required to explain concepts like quark-gluon plasma’s anyways.” ”
Dismissing it as idiotic indicates that, once again, you’ve come across something you either cannot understand, or do understand, but cannot refute.
Just because you are not capable of explaining quark-gluon’s without using mathematics, doesn’t mean that no one else can either, or that God cannot. The fact is, B, that there are texts that explain quantum theory, and sub-atomic theory, and current theory about the history of the universe, entirely with words.
“That sort of statement shows how little you know (i.e. about the necessity of a mathematical description of the theory). Try reading”
LOL. You do understand that reading uses words, not math, right?
Your derogatory dismissal, for the umpteenth time, simply indicates that you cannot refute my statement. Authors have indeed explain complex ideas like quark-gluon plasma using only words.
Let me guess, you are a first year university student?
“This isn’t theology, where people just make things up”
So, you are undereducated, and yet contemptuous, about theology. That explains the errors and the arrogance in your prior posts.
“(and BTW, researchers have now created this state of matter in a particle accelerator, albeit for a very brief period of time)”
Hey, guess what, you are not the only person who reads PopSci. Now, B, aside from the reference to temperature, here is an explanation of quark-gluon plasma that does not rely on mathematics:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/rhic-collider-creates-72-trillion-degrees-fahrenheit-quark-gluon-plasma
“Until the LHC finally gets up to full speed, Brookhaven National Lab’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) remains the world’s most powerful heavy ion smasher. And on Monday, they showed off some of that power by announcing that a recent collision resulted in the hottest matter ever recorded. Coming in at a scorching 7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit, the plasma not only recreated the environment of the Big Bang, but might have also resulted in the temporary formation of a bubble within which some normal laws of physics did not apply.
The plasma, which was 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun, seemed to create small pockets where particles lost their left- or right-handed identity. All particles have a specific spin direction that dictates different behaviors, and many chemical compounds have an orientation that makes mirror-image molecules react differently. According to scientists at the RHIC, the creation of these small, transient, bubbles that voided handedness may explain the process by which matter came to outnumber antimatter in the universe.
These results are still controversial, and have not been independently verified with other experiments. In fact, the RHIC researchers were so astonished by their findings that they spent an entire year trying to formulate alternative explanations for their data before publishing their results.
However, if these results are vindicated, the bubbles seem to hint that the laws of physics are not fixed across all space, and could change depending on size and temperature. By better understanding how the laws of physics shifted as the universe cooled and expanded, this could begin to explain a number of questions about the nature of the universe that remain a mystery. ”
Wow. Look at that, an explanation of a physical phenomena that did not require mathematics. Amazing. And someone around here said it couldn’t be done. There’s another on wikipedia. MIT news, how of all things slide-ruley, even has an online article that accomplishes what you declared to be impossible:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/exp-quark-gluon-0609.html
“For a few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the universe consisted of a hot soup of elementary particles called quarks and gluons. A few microseconds later, those particles began cooling to form protons and neutrons, the building blocks of matter.
Over the past decade, physicists around the world have been trying to re-create that soup, known as quark-gluon plasma (QGP), by slamming together nuclei of atoms with enough energy to produce trillion-degree temperatures. ”
No mathematics, just words. Now imagine if the same concepts were explained only in images.
The problem here, really, is that you looking at this text as if the people who preserved it as oral history and later wrote it down, are intrinsically intellectually inferior to you. Disabuse yourself of that patently false notion.
B
In No 83, Cassandra goes on with, “And still, B, your accusation of hypocrisy is false, because I have not talked past you, posting about you rather than addressing you directly.”
Nonsense. Two of us were having what was basically a short literary discussion about what a myth in the Bible actually stated. Then you jumped in by ignoring the context and tried to hijack the discussion into some sort of theological argument that bores most of us to tears, which is for all intents and purposes talking past us.
Then, having made idiotic claims about what level of sophistication is actually needed to start understanding the processes that went just after our universe came into existence, Cassandra resorts to an infantile statement, “Hey, guess what, you are not the only person who reads PopSci,” when the link I provided, http://www.physics.umd.edu/courses/Phys741/xji/chapter2.pdf goes into some of the details (in what is really a simplified explanation, but that requires an understanding of physics and mathematics that is certainly beyond what I imagine Cassandra is capable of understanding.). This is not “popular science”.
And Cassandra even states, “MIT news, how of all things slide-ruley, even has an online article that accomplishes what you declared to be impossible…,” which ignores the fact that a press release is not an explanation of a complex phenomena, and that you’re not likely to find one slide-rule in use at M.I.T. these days (they went out when calculators and laptops became available).
I’ll refer her to what Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson) once said: “In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be.”
Tallskin
@B
you’re falling for her tricks
and
you’re wasting your time
One can tell from the manic energy involved in the quantity of her verbal runnyshit that she is seriously mentally deranged.
You’ll not get any sense out of her
B
No. 85 · Tallskin
I was simply watching her get herself into intellectual hot water. For instance, she cited an M.I.T. press release, but that press release contained the phrase, “A few microseconds later”. The mathematical sophistication of the “Israelites” around the time that Genesis was written was so limited that they could not express such a number in their language. http://www.skypoint.com/members/waltzmn/Mathematics.html has a description of ancient Hebrew arithmetic. They had symbols for 1 to 9, 10 to 90 in steps of 10, and 100 to 400 in steps of 100. To get larger numbers, they juxtaposed symbols. Fractions were problematic. To express a number like
1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
would require some combination of the symbols for 100 to 400 repeated as if they were baskets holding as many widgets as the symbol represents, Maybe Cassandra can write out this number for us using the ancient Hebrew representation. If she tries, it will take so long that we will never hear from her again.
Even funnier, even if Genesis was dictated by a deity, it would have to be told as a myth anyway – that’s all you can do when you can’t even use a quantity like “a few microseconds” that their language doesn’t handle.
Tallskin
@B – well just so long as you don’t get drawn in then! LOL
But I agree it’s always fun to watch potential roadkill voluntarily go sauntering into the middle of a busy road.
Splat!
Cassandra
B
I guess you haven’t taken the time to look up the word hypocrisy yet. It does not mean “doing something B dislikes”
I wrote: “And still, B, your accusation of hypocrisy is false, because I have not talked past you, posting about you rather than addressing you directly.”
And you repsonded: “Nonsense.”
I’m sorry that you consider the truth to be nonsense. This bears repeating:
Ah, here’s the problem, you didn’t understand the plain English phrase ‘talked past me’. I was referring to the way you suddenly switched from posting to me directly, to posting about me, i.e. “Cassandra, trying to bury the discussion”, addressing me in the third person, rather than directly.
So, no, B, I have not talked ‘past you’ at all, I have consistently directed my criticism of your posts to you in the first person.
“Two of us were having what was basically a short literary discussion about what a myth in the Bible actually stated. Then you jumped in by ignoring the context and tried to hijack the discussion into some sort of theological argument that bores most of us to tears, which is for all intents and purposes talking past us.”
That’s a nice fantasy, B. However, I did not ignore context or try to hijack anything. It is so kind of you to rely on false accusations and personal attack to cover up your many mistakes.
Joining a discussion, and taking it to a larger scope, as I did, is not talking past you. Posting about you, instead of directly to you, is talking past you, and that I have not done.
Your accusation of hypocrisy on my part, is simply a lie.
Ironically, you are doing it again – responding to my remarks by talking about me, rather than to me. I guess that is the reward one gets for taking you seriously and treating you with civility.
“Then, having made idiotic claims about what level of sophistication is actually needed to start understanding the processes that went just after our universe came into existence,”
That’s not an accurate account of my position, B. The issue initially was ‘explain’ but now you’ve changed it to ‘understand’. Why can’t you be honest about it?
Further, I demonstrated with three sources that mathematics are not necessary to fulfill your initial statement:
“You can’t explain concepts like quark-gluon plasmas that are important in understanding the behavior of the early universe (first 100 microseconds or so) to people who had trouble with simple arithmetic”
Now you are angry and resorting to insults because you made a mistake. It is possible to explain concepts like quark-gluon plasmas without using mathematics.
“Cassandra resorts to an infantile statement,”
Dismissing evidence against your false claim as “infantile” only means that you cannot refute the evidence in any honest way.
“but that requires an understanding of physics and mathematics that is certainly beyond what I imagine Cassandra is capable of understanding.).”
Given that you have failed, repeatedly, to accomplish two things: understand the simple theological argument I presented, and disprove anything I’ve written, it really isn’t wise for you to malign my intelligence, B. The comparison between won’t reflect well on you.
“This is not “popular science”.”
B, an article appeared online at PopSci.com that explained quark-gluon plasma in plain English. The concept you claimed could not be explained to people who do not have an advanced education in mathematics, was explained in words alone. It other words, B., the editors of a magazine about science decided that yes, the issue was popular science.
There is an ugly egotism that some minor academics display, where in they assume that only people with their degrees from minor junior colleges can understand concepts like quark-gluon plasmas. It is sad.
” which ignores the fact that a press release is not an explanation of a complex phenomena,”
A press release can be many things. In this case, it was a well-crafted explanation of quark-gluon plasmas, which the editors at the paper even titled: Explained: Quark gluon plasma.
Perhaps you feel that you are smarter than the folks at MIT News. Since it is a paper written for the students, faculty and alums of MIT, maybe, just maybe, you ought to reign in your ego a bit.
“and that you’re not likely to find one slide-rule in use at M.I.T. these days (they went out when calculators and laptops became available).”
Someone didn’t understand that ‘all things slide-ruley’ was a metaphor for the high degree of academic accomplish and precision, the focus on hard sciences and engineering, that MIT is known for.
Your reply reflects poorly on you, B.
“I was simply watching her get herself into intellectual hot water.”
So you enjoy fantasy. Again, B., do you really think that relying on insults is scientific, reasonable, effective communication, or anything other than a childish temper tantrum. With each insult, you demonstrate a lack of impulse control, and a lack of a substantive rebuttal.
“For instance, she cited an M.I.T. press release, but that press release contained the phrase, “A few microseconds later”. The mathematical sophistication of the “Israelites” around the time that Genesis was written was so limited that they could not express such a number in their language.”
Ah, but the number is not the concept, B. The concept ‘microsecond’ can be readily explained, sufficiently to understand quark-qluon plasmas, in words. Mathematics are not necessary.
The error in your thinking is one of degree of specificity. You assume, incorrectly, that everyone would require the same level of precision and specificity you would in order to understand that in the very first instances of time “the universe consisted of a hot soup of elementary particles called quarks and gluons.”
Note, the concept itself is not contingent on microseconds or nanoseconds or any other time scale.
“Even funnier, even if Genesis was dictated by a deity, it would have to be told as a myth anyway – that’s all you can do when you can’t even use a quantity like “a few microseconds” that their language doesn’t handle.”
You are be dishonest about the word myth again, as well as imposing your mental limits and requirements on others.
Whether Genesis is dictation, or revelation through vision, or any other way the Divine chose to impart the knowledge, the level of mathematical sophistication you demand is not required.
It is likely that the people you are trying to impress here recognized immediately that you changed the subject from “what the Bible says” to “the importance of higher mathematics” because you repeatedly were wrong about the Genesis text. Your diversion isn’t working.
That’s why you and tallskin are still relying on childish name-calling and insults.
Here’s the useful part for me. Both your responses, and tallskin’s, are primarily about exalting your own egos by tearing other people down. Per your posts, other people are intrinsically inferior to you.
Which is what prejudice is all about – declaring entire groups of people to be inferior. Tallskin declares that anyone who doesn’t share his obliviousness to the Divine (or dishonesty about the matter) is his inferior. Good for his ego that, but hardly realistic or rational. And you, B., assume that anyone who doesn’t share the interest in mathematics you apparently have, is also inferior to you. That’s good for your ego, but hardly realistic or rational.
There are undoubtedly many, many areas of human experience and knowledge that both of your are woefully uneducated about. Religion appears to be but one of them. What does that say about you?
Anyone reading along here will find areas of knowledge in which they have more expertise than either of you. Shall they now sneer at you?
B
In No. 88 · Cassandra is getting desperate, resorting to a string of silly statements, some tantamount to lying. For example, Cassandra claims, ‘I wrote: “And still, B, your accusation of hypocrisy is false, because I have not talked past you, posting about you rather than addressing you directly.” And you repsonded: “Nonsense.” I’m sorry that you consider the truth to be nonsense.’
Of course, the original response was, “Nonsense. Two of us were having what was basically a short literary discussion about what a myth in the Bible actually stated. Then you jumped in by ignoring the context and tried to hijack the discussion into some sort of theological argument that bores most of us to tears, which is for all intents and purposes talking past us.”
Then you whine about me pointing out your hypocrisy while completely ignoring the fact that you “talked past” me (as you put it) again by completely ignoring what I had actually said.
Then, in the middle of tons of pointless verbage, you say, “Ah, but the number is not the concept, B. The concept ‘microsecond’ can be readily explained, sufficiently to understand quark-qluon plasmas, in words.” … thus showing you don’t have a clue as to what you are talking about, since it doesn’t have anything specific to do with a quark-gluon plasma (one simply happened to exist a microsecond after the “Big Bang”).
Also, you can’t explain a microsecond without using mathematics that the ancient “Israelites” simply didn’t have – fractions were problematic for them. Since you are claiming otherwise, let’s see you come up with a definition of a microsecond that can be translated into ancient Hebrew without first teaching them what is now grade-school arithmetic, which they didn’t know. My bet is you’ll pass – the last thing religious types want is to test their ideas experimentally.
Cassandra goes on with things like, ‘”Cassandra resorts to an infantile statement,” Dismissing evidence against your false claim as “infantile” only means that you cannot refute the evidence in any honest way.’ But of course, the “infantile
statement” was not evidence in any sense: the infantile statement was “Hey, guess what, you are not the only person who reads PopSci,” and that was quoted. Cassandra was lying about “evidence” in a childish attempt to cover up her(his?) own behavior.
Then Cassandra said, ‘””This is not “popular science”.”B, an article appeared online at PopSci.com that explained quark-gluon plasma in plain English. … yet another dishonest statment from Cassandra since I had cited chapter from a physics text available on-line from the University of Maryland. Hint: the important details are not something you find in a dumped-down article for the general public.
Cassandra complains about any criticism of his/her behavior yet goes on to post a series of infantile personal statements and then whines when that behavior is pointed out!
B
Buried in No 88, Cassandra wrote, ‘It is likely that the people you are trying to impress here recognized immediately that you changed the subject from “what the Bible says” to “the importance of higher mathematics” because you repeatedly were wrong about the Genesis text. Your diversion isn’t working.’
What a liar! All (or nearly all) that I said about Genesis specifically is in No. 13: 1. A quote of a sentence from it, which was germane to what was in No. 8. where Danny assumed Adam and Eve would not have ever had children if they had not been kicked out of the “Garden of Eden” (according to the myth), and 2. a statement that the passage could (not must) be interpreted to mean that they were capable of having children, and 3. a statement that the account is indeed a myth (made so nobody would confuse me with some religious nut).
I then pointed out that the ancient “Israelites” did not have the mathematical and scientific backgrounds to understand anything other than a myth, using their their incredibly brain-dead notation for numbers as an example, not that the most advanced civilizations of the time were much better.
What Cassandra does not realize is that cosmology is not theology. The current models (variations of the Big Bang model such as inflation, etc.) allow one to make predictions regarding features in the microwave background (highly accurate measurements of which resulted in one Bay Area resident winning a Nobel prize), the ratio of the abundance of helium to hydrogen, etc., and the ones that don’t fit the data are rejected. The computations needed to make these predictions are quite complex. Some of the tests require some mathematical sophistication to even explain them in simplified terms. To test a theory against the microwave background data, you typically need to use some spacial Fourier transforms to even get started. Try running that one by the ancient Israelites.
It’s not easy to come up with models that fits the data, which is why there aren’t a million competing hypotheses.
Finally, let me suggest that Cassandra stick to theology and go to some other web site: people like Cassandra who are into theology never feel compelled to test their opinions by (gasp) doing an experiment.
Kev C
@Tallskin: Well, she and several other posters have raised some interesting points, esp. about Adam and Eve.
But frankly, the whole discussion of gender, gender roles, sexuality, or whatever arising in Genesis is written in a manner so coy and cryptic that the author probably didn’t want readers to know what he was talking about.
*mumble mumble*
What’s that, God? Eve likes snakes?
*mumble mumble*
Huh? Adam screwed himself?
Cassandra
B
How interesting.
“Cassandra is getting desperate, resorting to a string of silly statements, some tantamount to lying.”
Odd, it is your posts that seem desperate – dismissals, red herrings, diversionary tactics, name calling, and false accusations.
“For example, Cassandra claims, ‘I wrote: “And still, B, your accusation of hypocrisy is false, because I have not talked past you, posting about you rather than addressing you directly.” And you repsonded: “Nonsense.” I’m sorry that you consider the truth to be nonsense.’ ”
My statement is not a lie. I have not “talked past you”. Remember, B., I am the one who first used the phrase, I, and not you, determine what I was expressing when I used it. As I have repeatedly made clear, I was referring to the very thing you are doing here – talking about me in the third person, directing your comments to everyone else, instead of addressing them to me. That’s very rude. Does it come out of misogyny?
“Of course, the original response was, “Nonsense. Two of us were having what was basically a short literary discussion about what a myth in the Bible actually stated. Then you jumped in by ignoring the context and tried to hijack the discussion into some sort of theological argument that bores most of us to tears, which is for all intents and purposes talking past us.”
No, B. I’m truly sorry that you do not understand the concept involved here, and truly wish that you had not made disparaging remarks about my reading comprehension skills, since you have absolutely screwed this up.
When someone else contributes to an open conversation, B, and expands on a subject, that is not talking past you. If you somehow believe that you have some sort of monopoly on dialogue here, you don’t.
Your point is nonsensical – I addressed the relevant point to you, addressed you directly. If you don’t understand, admit it, but stop lying about it.
“Then you whine about me pointing out your hypocrisy”
Telling the truth is not whining, but, your continued obsession with this diversion is coming across rather whiny. You screwed up repeatedly regarding Genesis 3, B. Just admit it and move on. Being increasingly abusive toward will not undo your many mistakes.
Falsely accusing me of hypocrisy, simply because you don’t even understand what is meant by ‘talking past’ someone, simply reflects poorly on you.
“while completely ignoring the fact that you “talked past” me (as you put it) again by completely ignoring what I had actually said.”
B, I’m glad you recognize that I introduced the phrase ‘talked past’, because now you have no honest and decent choice but to accept the truth from the person who used the phrase: ‘talked past’ refers to the way you switched from talking to me, to talking about me. I have made that explicitly clear, B.
Your charge of hypocrisy is just noisy ad hominem.
“Then, in the middle of tons of pointless verbage, ”
In other words, more material that you cannot refute, and I suspect, cannot even follow.
“you say, “Ah, but the number is not the concept, B. The concept ‘microsecond’ can be readily explained, sufficiently to understand quark-qluon plasmas, in words.” … thus showing you don’t have a clue as to what you are talking about,”
Every derogatory dismissal you post, B, in place of a reasoned and civil argument, comes across as desperation and reeks of failure. And the truth is, the concept of ‘microsecond’ can indeed be explained quite easily – enough for the present purpose, without higher mathematics. You know, I am getting the distinct impression that you do not understand quark-gluon plasma’s, that you are not a familiar with higher mathematics as you present, and have been pulling a bluff the whole time.
See, B., first you argued that rabah means multiply, and that this somehow included the mathematical concept of zero, so Eve had to know that giving birth would hurt, etc. Now you insist that the ancient people’s who authored the Genesis account were too ignorant about mathematics to understand anything, and that the origin of the universe can only be explained with advanced mathematics (despite all of the evidence to the contrary). But your disparagement of the authors of Genesis as your intellectual inferiors in the realm of math, means that your claim:
“The phrase “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception” implies an initial non-zero “sorrow and conception” because zero multiplied by any finite number gives you zero.”
is refuted by your subsequent diversionary tactic. The word rabah cannot prove that Eve had some knowledge of some pain in childbirth even the authors were as mathematically incompetent as you need them to be to dismiss the whole text as myth.
And since your diversion regarding mathematics fails to prove that higher mathematics is necessary to communicate the process by which the universe came into being, you have effectively destroyed both your initial, erroneous assertion, as well as your diversion.
“Also, you can’t explain a microsecond without using mathematics that the ancient “Israelites” simply didn’t have”
Sure you can. Not to a scientific level of detail, but the phrase ‘an extremely brief period of time’ or ‘an instant’ will suffice for the purpose at hand – which is the Divine telling humans how the universe came to be. The ancient Israelites didn’t need the level of precision you are demanding, most people do not.
“Since you are claiming otherwise,”
But since I am not, why don’t you quit lying about my posts?
“My bet is you’ll pass – the last thing religious types want is to test their ideas experimentally.”
Your prejudice is exposed. All of this degradation and abuse from you, B., has been an expression of your overt prejudice and bias. Plus a little of the conceit of third-rate academics, I suspect.
The issue here is not whether the concepts can be expressed without mathematics – they certainly can. Some very well respected scientists have written excellent works explaining cutting edge physics, for lay people. The issue here is that you are demanding an unnecessary and unrealistic level of precision. You may demand that any explanation of the origin of the universe be expressed with precision of mathematics, but few other people do.
B, there are television shows that communicate the process of the origin of the universe, as current science understands it, using only images.
“Cassandra goes on with things like, ‘”Cassandra resorts to an infantile statement,” ”
Uh, B, that phrase in quotes is something you wrote. It is though, an example of you referring to me in the third person, rather than directly, which was rude. And it is an example of you, again, relying on an empty and derogatory dismissal.
Homophobes pull this stuff all the time do. Any point that they cannot refute, they simply dismiss, as you have done. It is clearly a symptom of prejudice.
“But of course, the “infantile statement” was not evidence in any sense:”
Sigh. Your use of insults is “something that makes plain or clear” that you could not, or chose not, to use logic, reason, data, or any other substantive argument. Are you truly unclear about what the word evidence means, or just being belligerent and dishonest in a desperate attempt to score points?
“the infantile statement was “Hey, guess what, you are not the only person who reads PopSci,” and that was quoted.”
Your characterization of that statement, which is not infantile by any means, is evidence that you could not refute my point with any rational, reasoned, data derived argument. All you could do was being insulting.
The question now is are you truly that confused about the texts that have been posted here, or are you simply being extraordinarily dishonest about them?
“Cassandra was lying about “evidence” in a childish attempt to cover up her(his?) own behavior.”
But since I did not lie, at all, your accusation comes across as very explicit projection.
“Then Cassandra said, ‘””This is not “popular science”.”B, an article appeared online at PopSci.com that explained quark-gluon plasma in plain English. … yet another dishonest statment from Cassandra”
No lie, no dishonesty. I provided a link to an article from PopSci.com that explained quark-gluon plasma in plain English. Here is the link again:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/rhic-collider-creates-72-trillion-degrees-fahrenheit-quark-gluon-plasma
The article I described exists, I have twice now presented a link to it, there is nothing dishonest in my statement you have quoted.
The dishonesty lies in your claims, B.
“since I had cited chapter from a physics text available on-line from the University of Maryland. Hint: the important details are not something you find in a dumped-down article for the general public.”
The details important to you, perhaps. But, B., the universe does not revolve around you, and not everyone or every purpose requires the level of detail you claim you require and understand. The level of detail you require is not necessary for the purpose at hand.
However, your remarks do verify the point I have long made here about prejudice – that it is about tearing down other people in order to exalt your own ego. In post after post here, B., perhaps even starting with your snarky remarks to Danny, your posts have all about feeding your ego – first as you make claims about the Genesis text that are not supported by the text itself, and then this sad diversion whereby anyone who doesn’t share your alleged background in math is inferior to you, through all of the insults and name calling and misogyny and condescension and self-congratulatory verbal masturbation.
“Cassandra complains about any criticism of his/her behavior”
Actually, I rebuke you for being verbally abusive. There is a difference.
“yet goes on to post a series of infantile personal statements and then whines when that behavior is pointed out!”
What fantasy world are you describing now?
B, you quoted me, “It is likely that the people you are trying to impress here recognized immediately that you changed the subject from “what the Bible says” to “the importance of higher mathematics” because you repeatedly were wrong about the Genesis text. Your diversion isn’t working.”
And then whined:
“What a liar!”
I posted no lie. Over the course of several posts, you have gone from trying to prove erroneous premises about the text of Genesis three, to a wild rant about mathematics.
“All (or nearly all) that I said about Genesis specifically is in No. 13: 1. A quote of a sentence from it, which was germane to what was in No. 8. where Danny assumed Adam and Eve would not have ever had children if they had not been kicked out of the “Garden of Eden” (according to the myth), and 2. a statement that the passage could (not must) be interpreted to mean that they were capable of having children, and 3. a statement that the account is indeed a myth (made so nobody would confuse me with some religious nut).”
Unfortunately, none of the above proves that I lied, or that anything you wrote in those aforementioned passages is accurate.
I guess we see in your posts, as we do in tallskin’s, the kind ethical lapses that come about when people have no spiritual foundation.
“I then pointed out that the ancient “Israelites” did not have the mathematical and scientific backgrounds to understand anything other than a myth, using their their incredibly brain-dead notation for numbers as an example, not that the most advanced civilizations of the time were much better.”
Not realizing, perhaps, that this killed your insistence that they understood that zero times any number is zero. Further, your conceit that ancient peoples are intrinsically inferior to your exalted self, really doesn’t help you here.
“What Cassandra does not realize is that cosmology is not theology.”
You know, B., homophobes constantly tell me what I know or do not know, and like you, they always get it wrong. Don’t you think it is just a little bit arrogant of you to define the breadth of knowledge for me?
I realize, you are being inflammatory and offensive in an attempt to get me to lose my temper, as you clearly lost yours days ago. But, B., your insults do not define my life any more than those hurled at me by homophobes. You are a bigot, so are they, and I don’t let bigots determine my self worth for me.
“The current models (variations of the Big Bang model such as inflation, etc.) allow one to make predictions regarding features in the microwave background (highly accurate measurements of which resulted in one Bay Area resident winning a Nobel prize), the ratio of the abundance of helium to hydrogen, etc., and the ones that don’t fit the data are rejected. The computations needed to make these predictions are quite complex. Some of the tests require some mathematical sophistication to even explain them in simplified terms. To test a theory against the microwave background data, you typically need to use some spacial Fourier transforms to even get started. Try running that one by the ancient Israelites.”
However, B., you are making the mistake that the Israelites required the same level of evidence, the same kind of evidence, that you, and real physicists, require. The mistake you are making is an ego-driven one – you are trying to define other people’s experiences by your own. If you need math to understand the universe, everyone else does.
But that is not true. As I pointed out, there are many, many examples of people explaining the origin of the universe without using higher mathematics. You rely on mathematics, though I doubt you understand it as well as you present, but other people accept other kinds of evidence, and grasp as much as they need to of these concepts from verbal or even visual depictions.
Which is why I said so many posts ago – you may need mathematics to explain the origin of the universe to people, and to understand it yourself (if you do), but God, as well as a great many people, including Stephen Hawkins, can explain the origin of the universe in other ways quite successfully.
“Finally, let me suggest that Cassandra stick to theology and go to some other web site: people like Cassandra who are into theology never feel compelled to test their opinions by (gasp) doing an experiment.”
When you have been wrong so consistently, B, and your insults and diversions and self-conflicting theories do not repair your ego, all that is left if for you to try to get me to leave.
Ultimately, that is the response of all bigots to opposition – chase off, remove or destroy those who rebuke their prejudice.
All in all, B, you’ve done as fine a job of providing a case study of atheism as prejudice, as tallskin does. It is kinda fun that what started out as an attempt, on my part, to share a successful argument about one prejudice, has become an object lesson in the prejudice of atheism.
The one thing about your advice – at least you recognize now that your grasp of Christian theology is far from sufficient.
Cassandra
Kev C
“But frankly, the whole discussion of gender, gender roles, sexuality, or whatever arising in Genesis is written in a manner so coy and cryptic that the author probably didn’t want readers to know what he was talking about.”
On and off, I’ve been developing a premise, a hypothesis, that one way, at least, that the Adam and Eve account can be meaningfully understood, is as a metaphor about surrendering to dualism – the idea of seeing the world as an either/or, black or white, good or evil, dynamic.
Understand that to people who take theology seriously, much of the Bible has layers within layers of meaning. So Genesis three can be an account of a vision in which a man and a woman appeared and did things, while having one or more hidden meanings.
My premise is still rough, but essentially, the idea is that before the fall, people were aware of the intrinsic interconnectedness, and did not see things as either good or evil, the way humans tend to now, but as is.
The tree “of the knowledge of good and evil” represents that way of looking at the world and everything in it as either good or evil, either superior or inferior, either dominant or submissive, etc – classifying everything in terms of polar opposites.
The serpent, I hypothesize, is a phallic symbol; Adam’s dick as Adam’s ego, as it still is for so many men today. Eve allows herself to be subjugated by Adam, to be treated as his inferior and servant, embracing the idea that men are superior/women are inferior, men are stronger/women are weaker, etc. She bites into the “knowledge” of sexism, the idea that she is Adam’s subordinate, and falls from grace. And keep in mind, Eve doubted God, she let her ego, her self-ness become first, if only for a moment. Of course, she cannot help but take Adam with her, validating his egotism made it concrete.
Part of the inspiration for my premise is an ancient Hebrew belief regarding Lilith – a woman made at the same time as Adam, as his equal, who insisted on being his equal, not his subordinate, and left him rather than submit to him. According to this story, Eve was then made.
So much of the dualism or polarity making we humans get into is about our ego’s. “Those people” are intrinsically inferior, we are intrinsically superior. This thing is intrinsically bad because we don’t like it, that thing is intrinsically good because we do. And so on.
Science is now showing us that the world is much more nuanced, the earthquakes we deem evil and bad, are an inevitable product of the same conditions that allow life to exist on this planet; plate tectonics are linked to having a molten, spinning iron core that produces an electromagnetic field that shields life from the worst of solar radiation. To have the shield, we get the earthquakes. To have the things we label good, the things we label bad also have to exist, because both arise from the same fundamental principles, and to alter those principles to prevent the “bad things” would also prevent the “good things”.
Judeo/Christian theology, at least, teaches that ego is the source of sin, Pride is called the first and worst sin, the precursor of all other sins. Ego becomes error, missing the mark, imperfection, sin, when we don’t love God first, and when we do not love everyone else as our equal.
If you look at people who see the world in strict black/white, good/evil way, they strongly tend to be the ones doing most of the deliberate harm to others, and the ones most caught up in exalting their own ego.
Once we embraced ego and dualism, we couldn’t escape applying it to each other and actually creating evil of our own will by stealing, lying, killing, etc.
Its rough yet, and sharing it will probably unleash more stuff from certain persons, but, some people may enjoy thinking about the Genesis text in this different way, and thinking about their own experiences of ego and connectedness, spirituality and empathy and peace, while exploring the idea I’ve just presented.
B
No. 92 · Cassandra is trying the “dazzle them with more and more bullshit” ploy – notice how Cassandra’s posts are growing on the average. Just counting the Cassandra’s replies to me, the number of lines, with all paragraphs merged and filled are 18, 49, 64, 166, 180, 113, 116, and 222 – with only two exceptions, the replies are getting longer and longer. No wonder Cassandra is trying “if you don’t reply it means you can’t” ploy since replying doing that would probably lead to exponential growth, turning Cassandra into a full time job.
The fact is that Cassandra lied about what I said regarding Genesis (nothing I said was wrong – I just quoted a sentence, mentioned one possible interpretation of that sentence, and added that the story is a myth. I presume Cassandra’s real
issue is with the term “myth”, even though it is obvious to
any sensible person.
Cassandra whines that I’m being “rude” while posting statements like “You rely on mathematics, though I doubt you understand it as well as you present,” and “You know, I am getting the distinct impression that you do not understand quark-gluon plasma’s, that you are not a familiar with higher mathematics as you present, and have been pulling a bluff the whole time,” and
“However, B., you are making the mistake that the Israelites required the same level of evidence, the same kind of evidence, that you, and real physicists, require.” Guess what I studied in graduate school! I am a real one.
Cassandra’s real issue is that she(?) cannot tolerate anyone not following her personal theology lock, stock and barrel. So, as I said, she should stick to religious web sites.
I’m ignoring the details of what Cassandra wrote for a simple reason – it is basically nonsense and too time consuming to deal with.
BTW, in a previous comment I didn’t proofread enough after a change in an example – for the microwave background, you really want to use things like spherical harmonics, giving you a multipole expansion. It’s for technical reasons too time consuming to go into.
Kev C
@Cassandra: The question is how much of the dualism was intended by the original authors and how much is due to modern interpretation such as the KJV. The hebrew word for Knowledge of Good and Evil can also be translated as the Knowledge of Everything. The hebrew text also indicates that Eve was merely a helpmate, with gender roles determined later. This is backed up by apocrapha such as jewish texts and alternate myth stories such as the Yazidi myth.
B
No. 95 · Kev C wrote, “The hebrew text also indicates that Eve was merely a helpmate, with gender roles determined later.” … except that, at the time, they thought a man just planted his “seed” in a woman, and that it grew into a baby that appeared at birth, so gender roles were more or less irrelevant as a woman was viewed as kind of a “helpmate” regardless. They had no notion of a woman providing an egg and its DNA.
Cassandra
B, B, B,
Are you ever going to stop murdering your own arguments?
“Cassandra is trying the “dazzle them with more and more bullshit” ploy – notice how Cassandra’s posts are growing on the average. Just counting the Cassandra’s replies to me, the number of lines, with all paragraphs merged and filled are 18, 49, 64, 166, 180, 113, 116, and 222 – with only two exceptions, the replies are getting longer and longer.”
So, now, a long and careful explanation is somehow invalid. Yet, B, previously you argued that your citation about quark-gluon plasma was preferable, and the ones I presented inferior, because mine were too short.
By the standard you just argued, your own citation, as the longest, is just a case of “dazzle them with more and more bullshit”.
And considering that your entire diversion about quark-gluons, the name-dropping, the citations to academia, have no bearing on the accuracy of your conclusions about the Genesis text, I think you are projecting your own foibles on me, yet again.
“No wonder Cassandra is trying “if you don’t reply it means you can’t” ploy since replying doing that would probably lead to exponential growth, turning Cassandra into a full time job.”
Any excuse to justify your wrong doing, eh B? Your derogatory theory falls on its face though. Clearly, my posts indicate that I am willing to make the effort necessary to respond to what you present. But you choose not make such an effort.
Who is lacking then? The one of us who makes a genuine and careful effort, investing care and time, or the one who dismisses everything with insults?
“The fact is that Cassandra lied about what I said regarding Genesis”
No, I have not. Repeatedly accusing me of lying, when I have not, makes you seem desperate.
“I presume Cassandra’s real issue is with the term “myth”, even though it is obvious to any sensible person.”
There is your conceit and prejudice at work again. Anyone who doesn’t see it your way, is not sensible or educated. But B., is it increasingly clear that you are not sensible when it comes to this issue, nor particularly educated about it either.
But that’s why you are being verbally abusive.
“Cassandra whines that I’m being “rude” ”
Such empathy, such respect for other human beings. How impertinent of me to expect you to be civil.
“while posting statements like “You rely on mathematics, though I doubt you understand it as well as you present,” and “You know, I am getting the distinct impression that you do not understand quark-gluon plasma’s, that you are not a familiar with higher mathematics as you present, and have been pulling a bluff the whole time,” ”
Do you recognize the difference between your outright assertions about me, framed as fact, vs. my opinions about you presented as opinion?
What is really obvious here, B., is that you feel entitled to verbally abuse other people if they dare correct your errors, dispute with you, or challenge you, expecting to never be criticized or challenged. Nice double standard there, B.
“However, B., you are making the mistake that the Israelites required the same level of evidence, the same kind of evidence, that you, and real physicists, require.” Guess what I studied in graduate school! I am a real one.”
So you say, but your posts do not support that notion. Your complaint, as usual, completely avoids the actual point – that you are projecting your standard of evidence on to other people, and that is not rational or reasonable. And frankly, it is reasonable to expect that someone with the high level of education necessary to make it to graduate school, would know better.
You can claim to be anything, B., but so far, your posts have come across more like a wanna be who knows he never will be. Face it, there is nothing you have presented so far regarding physics and mathematics, that anyone here couldn’t have found using google. The level of expertise you have actually presented, is completely within reach of anyone reading here who has access to the internet and a few minutes to invest reading relevant material. For the most part, you look like you are bluffing.
“Cassandra’s real issue is that she(?) cannot tolerate anyone not following her personal theology lock, stock and barrel. So, as I said, she should stick to religious web sites.”
So, another derogatory and degrading attack on my character, a lie frankly that is repudiating by my posts here. If I could not, did not tolerate disagreement, B., I wouldn’t be posting here, I stick to progressive GLBTQ websites. But I actually embrace disagreement, it challenges me to refine, research, improve my positions. I learn something from every discussion, correct mistakes, find stronger and clearer ways to express things, and develop responds to rebuttal.
Once again, B., you are projecting your own foibles onto me.
“I’m ignoring the details of what Cassandra wrote for a simple reason – it is basically nonsense and too time consuming to deal with.”
In other words, you cannot refute what I provided. Its ok. Make all the excuses you want. I’m sure you will go far in your alleged career dismissing challenges to your work as ‘basically nonsense’ and ‘too time consuming to deal with’. Yeah, that will get you tenure and the respect of your peers real quick.
“BTW, in a previous comment I didn’t proofread enough after a change in an example – for the microwave background, you really want to use things like spherical harmonics, giving you a multipole expansion. It’s for technical reasons too time consuming to go into.”
What was that you said earlier: “the “dazzle them with more and more bullshit” ploy” ?
Cassandra
Kev C
Some interesting ideas there. I hadn’t checked the Hebrew text to see what exact word or words were used to express ‘the tree of knowledge of good and evil’ – as I said, my idea is still rough and I only work on it now and then.
So I did, and the Hebrew uses three words yada towb ra’ for knowledge of good and evil. That doesn’t necessarily disprove the interpretation you offered, towb and ra’ together could be interpreted as everything, in fact there are expressions in English that work that way using ‘the good and the bad’ to mean everything.
What struck me as useful, and amusing, is the appearance of the word yada.
Yada is the word in the Sodom story that homophobes translate ‘have sex with’ to claim that the men of Sodom wanted to have sex with the angelic visitors. Of the 900+ times the word appears in the Bible, 99. something percent, yada is translated as some expression of knowledge or learn. Only a handful of times is yada uses as a euphemism for sexual knowledge, and in each case, the sex part is affirmed by subsequent comments that pregnancy did, or did not, occur.
But, homophobes insist ‘yada’ means ‘have sex’. So, playing in their context, it means that the tree of knowledge of good and evil, was really the tree of good and bad sex. Eve ate from the tree of good and bad sex with Adam, and immediately felt shame, they were kicked out of the garden.
Yeah, yada means knowledge, but when someone insists it means sex, then their understanding of the Genesis account is completely wrong. And if the Genesis account describes a tree of knowledge, then their interpretation of the Sodom story is wrong. They cannot have it both ways.
I would not minimalize Eve’s role of helper.
Homophobes assert that heterosexuality is God’s plan because it leads to reproduction. But Genesis two is clear, Eve’s role is defined as something other than baby-maker, there is no command to Adam and Eve to ‘go forth and multiply’ as occurs in Genesis 1, and the Bible doesn’t mention them having sex until after they have sinned.
When God realizes that Adam is lonely, God first offers to Adam all of the other animals. If God were thinking “Adam must reproduce” – why send lions and giraffes and zebras and guinea pigs? And as much as we treasure animal companions, for most of us, they are not the complete equivalent of a human helper, partner, mate. Sex is a component of the relationship God was providing Adam, but not the sole component, or even the most important component. It couldn’t have been the priority, since God offers animals to Adam first.
The useful thing is that while for a heterosexual man, the right woman can be his suitable helper, partner, companion, and vice versa, for a gay man, his suitable helper, partner, companion is the right man, and for a lesbian, her suitable helper, partner, companion, is the right woman. What is crucial is the larger role of helper.
B., intentionally or by accident, is affirming the homophobic tradition of insisting that the story of Adam and Eve establishes hetero sexism, the idea that heterosexuality is preferred, superior, etc. His notion in post 96 is an attempt to support the heterosexist notion that the ability to reproduce is what is primary in relationships. And he was making the same case in his posts to Danny and me.
Anyway, when one takes all of it together; Eve created as more than just a walking womb, sexual contact between Adam and Eve first mentioned after the fall, the curse on the fruit of heterosexual intercourse, there is a strong argument against the notion that God prefers heterosexuality and that the model of Adam and Eve somehow sets a standard for every other human couple.
At this point, if I were arguing with a homophobe about the whole thing, I’d point out that the most numerous life on earth doesn’t even have sex at all, that by mass as well, the most abundant life reproduces asexually – bacteria and other single-cell organisms. The dominant form of reproduction on earth, by number of species, number of individuals, and by sheer mass, is asexual. And other strategies are at least equal with heterosexuality – the majority of plants are essentially hermaphrodites, along with many mollusks, and we’re finding more and more species that are parthenogenic – females reproduce without genetic material from males. In other words, there is just too much diversity in sexualities and reproductive strategies to support the claim that heterosexuality alone is God’s plan.
I’m not familiar with the Yazidi myth – can you direct me to a good citation? I’d like to look into it, and if appropriate, add it to my resources for the next time someone defends anti-gay theology.
Kev C
It probably won’t help because the Yezidis worship a pentatant Lucifer/Satan demiurge, but it’s in their “Black Book”. Their claim is that they descended from Adam but not Eve, and thus, are not cursed by God. But other ancient variants of the story probably exist. Check Sacred-Texts . com
B
In No. 98, Cassandra lied by stating, “B., intentionally or by accident, is affirming the homophobic tradition of insisting that the story of Adam and Eve establishes hetero sexism, the idea that heterosexuality is preferred, superior, etc. His notion in post 96 is an attempt to support the heterosexist notion that the ability to reproduce is what is primary in relationships. And he was making the same case in his posts to Danny and me.”
In No 96 I merely stated an historical fact – the “Israelites” had a specific misconception about pregnancies – they didn’t know about eggs and just thought of a woman as being analogous to a field where you plant a seed to get a plant to grow.
In my reply to Danny in No 13, I merely quoted a sentence from Genesis, “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” and stated, “So, it could be interpreted to mean that having children was possible before they were booted out, but that as an added punishment, childbirth would henceforth be unpleasant.”
Cassandra’s claim that it is “heterosexist” to a say, “Eve might have been capable of getting pregnant before being kicked out of the Garden of Eden (according to the myth),” is one of the most idiotic things Cassandra has posted on this thread.
It is a simple biological fact – women typically are capable of getting pregnant at some point in their lives.
Cassandra
Ah,B., still trying the false accusation thing.
Sorry, but I did not lie when I said :
“B., intentionally or by accident, is affirming the homophobic tradition of insisting that the story of Adam and Eve establishes hetero sexism, the idea that heterosexuality is preferred, superior, etc. His notion in post 96 is an attempt to support the heterosexist notion that the ability to reproduce is what is primary in relationships. And he was making the same case in his posts to Danny and me.”
You are indeed affirming the homophobic tradition that Adam and Eve are a model for God-approved sexuality. Simply calling me a liar is not going to change that.
“I merely stated an historical fact”
It is the way you used your alleged fact that matter, B. Your protestations now suggest that your support of homophobic tradition is deliberate. After all, as someone who is overtly prejudiced against people of faith, or at least Christianity, you have a personal stake in perpetuating anti-gay theology so you can have something to vilify Christians about.
“I merely quoted”
No, you do not “merely” quote, B. You stated as fact a particular interpretation that is not supported by the text, but which conveniently, aligns with a core argument of homophobes.
“Cassandra’s claim that it is “heterosexist” to a say, “Eve might have been capable of getting pregnant before being kicked out of the Garden of Eden (according to the myth),” is one of the most idiotic things Cassandra has posted on this thread.”
Ironically, that is not a claim I made. What I actually said was: “the homophobic tradition of insisting that the story of Adam and Eve establishes hetero sexism, the idea that heterosexuality is preferred, superior, etc.”
I was quite explicit. I really cannot fathom how you could be so wrong about so straight forward a phrase, except that you are simply deliberately making false claims to be abusive.
“It is a simple biological fact – women typically are capable of getting pregnant at some point in their lives.”
Most are, but not all. Your new diversion does not change the fact that your premises presented in prior posts are not supported by the text. They are figments of your imagination, poor scholarship, and bias.
It is ironic that you, who have been so consistently dishonest, keep accusing me of lies. I suppose you think that will cause me to lose my temper – as false accusations, they cannot have any other realistic purpose, (except to reflect poorly on you, of course). But I don’t let homophobes make me angry, why should I let you cause me to stoop to the level of incivility and abuse you are already engaged in so consistently?
It is a shame that you choose to converse in such an ineffective and abusive fashion, rather than model the kind of education and sophistication that normally goes with the level of education you claim to have achieved. I do hope that you do not correspond with your alleged peers in a such a manner.
Cassandra
Kev C
Yeah, that might not be useful, but still sounds interesting. I’ll look into it some, soon.
B
In No. 101 · Cassandra lied some more by saying, “Ah,B., still trying the false accusation thing.” That’s what is called “projection” on Cassandra’s part. The fact that Cassandra is lying should be obvious given the lack of quotes of what I actually said (which contradict what she claimed I said).
For instance, Cassandra wrote, “You stated as fact a particular interpretation that is not supported by the text, but which conveniently, aligns with a core argument of homophobes,” which is simply a bald-faced lie since what I said about one sentence in the text was, “So, it could be interpreted to mean that having children was possible before they were booted out, but that as an added punishment, childbirth would henceforth be unpleasant.” Note the words “could” and “would”. It’s a use of the subjunctive mood and according to English grammar, it is not a statement of fact. Similarly, there is nothing “homophobic” in pointing out that a man and a woman might produce offspring.
Cassandra simply gets almost everything wrong, and then tries to cover up with tons of verbage. I’m not going to bother with the rest of Cassandra’s statmeents in No. 101 – those are as brain dead as the example I just gave and I have better things to do.
Cassandra
B.
Still being abusive and dishonest I see. Does that make you feel good about yourself?
Falsely accusing me of lying, particularly without a shred of evidence, is not going to make your many, many mistakes go away.
Your insistence on defining Eve’s role in Genesis based on her ability to reproduce, which is what you are doing, B., very much aligns with a core argument used by homophobes, including the Pope. Being insulting to me won’t change that.
And I am sorry that you apparently cannot follow the material I’ve presented, as you have repeatedly, and consistently, misunderstood and misrepresented my position on things that I presented in very clear, business level English. Maybe you shouldn’t have been so quick to insult my intelligence over and over again, all things considered.
Your little parsing game with ‘could and would’ doesn’t change anything, they just look like desperate excuse making, a case of grasping at semantic straws to fool people into thinking that you have not been arguing the same basic premise that the Pope proclaims.
If I got ‘everything wrong’ you wouldn’t have to rely on empty dismissals, B. Nor would you have to resort to distortions and false accusations. If my posts were “brain dead”, really, you’d be able to easily walk through them point by point and easily, and clearly, describe the error I made.
As I do with your posts.
But you don’t do that. Instead you rely on childish insults, the fallacy of ad hominem, instead. So, you are either convincing everyone that you are just lazy as all get out, or, that you cannot refute what I have presented.
The little games you play with Bill Purdue, B., don’t work on anyone else.
bishopdaveost
Im so tired of this silly confirmed Nazi talking, I hope the good RCCs escape his camp.
Bishop Dave
social.LCOCCI.org
B
In No. 105, Cassandra lied some more by saying, “Falsely accusing me of lying, particularly without a shred of evidence, is not going to make your many, many mistakes go away. Your insistence on defining Eve’s role in Genesis based on her ability to reproduce, which is what you are doing, B., very much aligns with a core argument used by homophobes, including the Pope. Being insulting to me won’t change that.”
The facts: in No 13, I commented on that the passage in the Genesis creation myth about increased pain during childbirth upon leaving the Garden of Eden by stating, “So, it could be interpreted to mean that having children was possible before they were booted out, but that as an added punishment, childbirth would henceforth be unpleasant.”
This is not “defining Eve’s role” in any way, shape, or form (the claim that it is is still another of Cassandra’s lies). For some reason, Cassandra, blinded by theological babbling, is refusing to admit to the obvious – men and women have children for a number of reasons, including an “accident” and wanting children because they like them (which is more or less the same reason a gay couple might want to adopt a child). In fact, it is so unremarkable for a couple to want to have children that, if our mythical Adam and Eve did not want kids, you’d sort of expect an explanation as to why, and there is no such statement anywhere in Genesis.