Proving that something doesnt exist, is a whole lot harder than proving something does exist.

"Abscence of evidence is not evidence of absence"

argumentum ad ignorantiam

(Waiting for the deluge of hate-responses Amy's going to get from the theists.)

For the record, I believe in God, and yes, I consider my beliefs founded in common sense. Simply because there is no law of physics or any other science, that can account for sentience. Yes, things happen. In the hearts of stars, nuclear fusion takes place, turning elements into other elements.

But what law of physics can explain self-awareness? What atoms came together that gave some of these disparate elements a consciousness. I realize that the existence of God is not the only way that self-awareness can be explained. But it's as good a guess as any, especially since physics simply has no theory to account for this.

I pirated a car to work today, but I careened into a telephone pole trying to avoid a cow.

Sam Harris, on the Jews and Israel.

In The End of Faith, Harris is critical of the Jewish faith and its followers:
"The gravity of Jewish suffering over the ages, culminating in the Holocaust, makes it almost impossible to entertain any suggestion that Jews might have brought their troubles upon themselves. This is, however, in a rather narrow sense, the truth. [...] the ideology of Judaism remains a lightning rod for intolerance to this day. [...] Jews, insofar as they are religious, believe that they are bearers of a unique covenant with God. As a consequence, they have spent the last two thousand years collaborating with those who see them as different by seeing themselves as irretrievably so. Judaism is as intrinsically divisive, as ridiculous in its literalism, and as at odds with the civilizing insights of modernity as any other religion. Jewish settlers, by exercising their "freedom of belief" on contested land, are now one of the principal obstacles to peace in the Middle East."

By this, I guess he means, their refusal to either leave, convert to Islam, or die.

:shrug: we know very little about our own tiny little blue marble, much less the universe, so what can we prove? If you can mathematically prove 11 dimensions, but not physically, do they exist?
and do they care what we think?

We see a lot of pheonomena for which there is no proof, like dark energy, which is a desription of all the neergy that our models cannot account for.

Huh. You find an amount of energy [and mass for dark matter] that you can't account for, and you assign it a constant, so that the rest of the math works.

And this is NOT GOD, why? That sounds like the VERY definition of god.
All the things that can't be accounted for in our understanding of our surroundings.

The very human foibles that surround religion, are the same human foibles that surround science, or anything else. Remembering that eugenics seems like pretty sound science.

I have a sentimental belief in God, because I am sentimental about this existence. I think it beautiful, wonderful, and no accident... at least not as we understand it.

It is also entirely possible that we are 2D data scraped across the event horizon of a monster black hole. Gravity and time may both be the shadows of yet other forces that we cannot see, much less comprehend.

So? Is knowing that going to change the way you live your life?

The atheist need to prove things, is no different than the theist need to believe in things. They are both part of fundamental insecurity of a child in a dark room.

We are children, and we know nothing. So we figure out a story.

I don't require proof of either. I believe in God and I could care less if a dude name Elvis is working in Vegas.

or Reno or Carson City or Winnemucca.

What Patrick, SwissArmyD and causticf said.

I know Sam Harris is an incredibly smart guy. But he's got to get over it that so many smart people (including me) believe in God because we CHOOSE to, not because of the proof or lack thereof.

And as for the Elvis stuff, I used to frequent a blog written by a (now-deceased) author who used to counter anybody who questioned his atheism: "I believe in leprechauns, they're absolutely real," to ridicule his opponents. I finally once told him: whether it's leprechauns, Elvis or unicorns, I don't give a f*@# what you believe in as long as it gives your life comfort and meaning, and you aren't crazed about foisting it on other people.

I am not much of a believer, butI am also sick and tired of militant Atheists like Sam Harris, ascribing all the evil in the world to religion, and religious people.

Secular socialists and communists have done a lot more damage in pursuit of their utopia here on earth than religion ever dreamed of.

"Abscence(sic) of evidence is not evidence of absence"

There are three unsurmountable logical problems for the theist, here.

The first is that an absence is not the issue. Theists make the claim that a (male) intelligence cares, is in charge of what happens, and that the law of cause and effect can be altered by begging if it is done the right way.

The second occurs when some Bible™ story is related, such as The Ark. What is actually the case is that archaeologists not only find no evidence of the great Flood cited in that story, they find other ordinary processes occuring over any time period the theist cares to name which precludes the occurrence of a "flood".

The third occurs when physical laws are cited as preventing some fanciful story in the Bible™ from being literal. Drawing on the "flood" as an example again, there is no motive force for the movement of such waters. When the behavior of water and the energies are detailed, the theist often retreats into the "God™ can do anything" defense. It's become quite stylish to call a disciplined thinker a "uniformitarian", in order to try to demote actual reason to the status of another competing religion.

This doesn't do much for the faithful. Check the citation of Saint Augustine's here.

Radwaste. Your entire argument is a straw man. You are conflating a very specific concept of God practiced by evangelical Christians, as disproving any concept of God.

A person can have a belief in God or the possibility of God, and believe none of those things you list.

The fact that God, if he or she exists, may have no sex at all, as we understand it, or may not bother to intervene in the minutia of human affairs, may be evidence that God, if he exists, may not conform to the evangelical Christian concept of God, but it is not evidence against a supernatural force, that somehow may have created the laws of the universe that we live in. That is a very tough thing to disprove.

.

The fact that God, if he or she exists, may have no sex at all, as we understand it, or may not bother to intervene in the minutia of human affairs, may be evidence that God, if he exists, may not conform to the evangelical Christian concept of God, but it is not evidence against a supernatural force, that somehow may have created the laws of the universe that we live in. That is a very tough thing to disprove. -- Isab at June 21, 2013 6:39 PM

Fine, be a theist or deist if you like. Some supernatural being dropped its 3e-28 kg/m^3 marble 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago and then told it how to explode and then went away. It may have dropped another marble next to ours and told it to explode slightly differently.

The problem is that too many don't believe that being went away and just left us on our own.

So believing in God™ that is actively deciding who wins the football game on Sunday or saved the idiot who drove into the flood waters is common.

That becomes the issue for those of us who don't believe in it and is further aggravated by using that belief to craft laws that everyone has to live by.

That's irony, Isab - because you have assigned a value to my comments that is your own.

I describe three ways logical fallacies are used to support theism. You confused the concept with the application. This is actually independent of God™, which is actually the assumption here even though it is without merit to be so exclusive.

Now, I urge you to consider your popular notion, "supernatural force".

No such thing, not even by the twisted logic of Christian zealotry - because if God™ created everything, there is no "super-" part. It's mumbo-jumbo, like the word "miracle", which really means "I don't know how this happened."

It's a universal human tendency: the unknown is frightening, so, in order to not be paralyzed with fear, we make something up and get on with life.

The price of awareness is discontent.

Note: God™ has the ™ to designate the God™ of the Bible™, which has constraints that are frankly astonishing given the practices of its fans. Most argue the Bible™ - which is no more God™ than a book about the Mona Lisa is the actual painting.

Whether or not you believe in God, or any version of God, there is real power in faith. Real faith, which is knowing - not just believing - but knowing without proof. It is the only way to "access" the "God force", and it feels like Love. If you have proof, there is no faith and no way to "know God".

Religion is another matter. You don't need religion to know God, and having religion does not make one "Godly." I find religion to be a construct of man that does more harm then good.

Whether or not you believe in God, or any version of God, there is real power in faith. Real faith, which is knowing - not just believing - but knowing without proof. It is the only way to "access" the "God force", and it feels like Love. If you have proof, there is no faith and no way to "know God". -- Matt at June 22, 2013 7:18 AM

That's just certain parts of your brain activating. Check this out:

This work was followed by a study where scientists tried to stimulate the temporal lobes with a rotating magnetic field produced by a "God helmet". Michael Persinger, from Laurentian University in Ontario, found that he could artificially create the experience of religious feelings – the helmet's wearer reports being in the presence of a spirit or having a profound feeling of cosmic bliss.

Dr Persinger said that about eight in every 10 volunteers report quasi-religious feelings when wearing his helmet. However, when Professor Richard Dawkins, an evolutionist and renowned atheist, wore it during the making of a BBC documentary, he famously failed to find God, saying that the helmet only affected his breathing and his limbs.

As Sam Harris emphasized more than once in "The End of Faith," DOGMA is the real problem. E.g., Mao, Stalin, etc. There's no such thing as being "too rational."

Isab, do you understand the difference between deist, and theist?

"Secular socialists and communists have done a lot more damage in pursuit of their utopia here on earth than religion ever dreamed of."

Christians have done the most damage to Jews in pursuit of a monotheistic utopia. (Sounds ridiculous right?)

"I describe three ways logical fallacies are used to support theism"

No you didnt. You cited three examples where logical fallacies are used to support a particular religious tenant, all of them derived from fundamentalist Christian perspective.

All of these beliefs about God, can be totally wrong, and not prove the non existence of a supernatural origin of the Universe.

None of that is even relevant to a simple belief in a Devine creator or evidence against a god existing which does not conform to the Protestant Christian view of God.

And yes, Lujlp, I do understand the difference between a Diest, and a Theist, and a militant Atheist. Two of those believe in God, or a God, and the third has the hubris to think that he can prove a negative, which is that "any God" or supernatural force cannot, or does not exist.

We don't know where the universe came from. There are several interesting theories which show promise, but I doubt if we will find out in our lifetime.

We don't know enough about the physical laws that the universe operates under to even be able to draw a line at where the natural ends and the supernatural begins.

You know, when I read what passes for logic on this board, I understand why science is in such sad shape in this country. You have to know what "a proof" is to understand when you don't have one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence

Christians have done the most damage to Jews in pursuit of a monotheistic utopia. (Sounds ridiculous right?)
Posted by: Ppen at June 22, 2013 11:09 PM

The only theists I know of currently who are in pursuit of monotheistic utopia, is Islam, but other than that, it sounds about right.

Lets look at the two claims and see why they might be viewed differently.

first: "Elvis is working at a waffle house just outside of Reno"
Assumed Elvis means Elvis Presley - an ordinary human being not all that different from you or I. Since Elvis is an ordinary human he can only be in place at a time and has well defined lifetime (e.g. a birth and a death - no coming back to life years after death). It is widely believed Elvis has died. I have been to Reno and it seems like an ordinary city. the claim depends on Elvis being alive (either coming back to life or having faked his death) both of which seem extremely unlikely. Reno doesn't seem to change this (Vegas on other hand might ;-) ) and why would he happen to select Reno and why Waffle house? Thus from experience it seems extremely unlikely (though not impossible) that Elvis is working at a Waffle House in Reno.

Lets look at the other argument: There exists some super natural entity that some influence over the universe.
I have not (that I know of) participated in any other Universe so I cannot draw anything from there. So I cannot draw many conclusions at all. If I were to look at what can be observed, many events have (or at least appear to have) a cause by someone doing something. So thus other events which appear to have a plan behind them are also likely caused by some someone with a plan - even though I cannot exactly identify who that is.

I you want to be really silly consider the following:
Every Universe besides the one in question has had a supernatural being controlling it. (I true but meaningless statement since it is the empty set.) he universe in question is also a universe, thus likely has a supernatural being controlling it.

(yes, the reverse argument works equally as well).

the main point is for one I have a lot of independent information to use to make a judgement, in the other I do not.

@Isab - wow, did Sam Harris really write that disgusting crap about the Jews? My opinion of him wasn't all that high to begin with (due to holes in his philosophy) but it's just sunk much lower.

"Judaism is as intrinsically divisive, as ridiculous in its literalism, and as at odds with the civilizing insights of modernity as any other religion. Jewish settlers, by exercising their "freedom of belief" on contested land"

If apply his same reasoning to himself, didn't Sam's (Christian) ancestors also technically settle on, and 'exercise their "freedom of belief"' (square quotes) on 'contested land'?

Actually, it's even worse than that, as the Jews at least have some backing for their claim (i.e. actually having lived there in the past), while the European New World settlers basically just invaded, they never had a 'claim' to begin with.

"The only theists I know of currently who are in pursuit of monotheistic utopia, is Islam, but other than that, it sounds about right."

It all sounds ridiculous because it is not about the pursuit of a utopia but about our monkey brained, mob mentality, us vs them. It is human nature to kill the other guy and we will come up with any excuse to do it. If people believed in magical ponies that shit rainbows we'd say the other guy is preaching magical ponies shit diarrhea, it is sacrilege, let's kills them.

It does not matter if you are communist atheist or a Crusader Christian. That's why I hate the whole communist atheists have killed the most people argument.

"All of these beliefs about God, can be totally wrong, and not prove the non existence of a supernatural origin of the Universe."

I'm sorry I didn't write this so you wouldn't get it exactly backwards.

It isn't the non-existence of a deity that has to be proven - it's the existence of one. Especially when human characteristics are claimed for an entity credited with great powers.

Specific claims made by Christians are fallacious because of (see examples), and so their points are worthless other than as fantasy play, a major feature of most religions, to synthesize calm. Don't miss Saint Augustine's lament linked above.

My personal view of God is as both the Known Unknowns, and the Unknown Unknowns in our universe, and through humanities discoveries and the expansion of personal knowledge, an individual may seek to know all that is and can be, but will probably run out of time to know everything. Therefore, we must build upon our knowledge of the universe to provide the most complete picture of God. I know this is a very 16th century Monk view of things, but considering who pioneered the scientific method, I like that idea.

Harris' argument that a belief that Elvis is still alive despite a lack of evidence is reducible to belief in God works only if belief in God has no evidence. Fortunately for Harris, this particular theist (who strangely calls God "tangible" and doesn't just flat out reject Harris' question "'where' is God?") claims that there is no evidence, making Harris able to reduce the two beliefs, and *appear* to have destroyed the theist argument in general. Since Harris had a very weak opponent, he is free to make false claims, such as science can account for mathematics, and not be attacked when the fact that mathematics consists of necessary truths actually paves the way for belief in God.

Since Harris had a very weak opponent, he is free to make false claims, such as science can account for mathematics, and not be attacked when the fact that mathematics consists of necessary truths actually paves the way for belief in God. -- Russ at June 24, 2013 11:02 AM

So your argument that someg god© set up the mathematical facts and conditions that we are learning and understanding now some 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years later and then went away.

Or are you arguing God™ created the universe some 5-6000 years ago and fucked with the speed of light, the sedimentation record, continental drift, evolution records, etc. to make us think the earth is older?

You have a choice?

So if you think it is the 5-6K God™ can you produce evidence for the Tower of Babel? What about Moses? What about Noah?

The one I really want to know about is the koala bear. If Noah was right, then a pair of koala's strapped a few eucalyptus trees together, floated from Australia to the middle east, got on board the Ark, and then afterward floated back to Australia. Or could Noah's Ark do pickup and deliveries?

And if God™ is involved daily in our lives, then why hasn't anyone involved in the Boston Bombing regrown a limb. None of them are pious enough?

russ,
I am a big fan of your comments.

Jim P,

re god "went away"
Recall that god exists outside of time. Therefore, a billion years, here and there, makes no difference to god. Or, at least, he understands time, and its uses, in a more profound way.

Amy,

relevant to your blogpost, and related to my advice that you refrain from Hitchen your wagon to Christopher: a measured, scholarly takedown of many of the false and/or misguided claims of Christopher Hitchens: http://mimobile.byu.edu/?m=5&table=review&vol=21&num=2&id=773

related: an atheist at Salon writes article with this title: "Christopher Hitchens’ lies do atheism no favors"
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/23/christopher_hitchens_lies_do_atheism_no_favors/singleton/

excerpt:

But what I am most concerned with is not Hitchens’s sloppy or altogether missing knowledge of theology. What I want to describe is how irresponsible his thinking is within his own professed area of expertise, Western literature and philosophy. I have “four irreducible objections” (Hitchens’s phrase): he does not acknowledge, and may not recognize at all, his own brand of metaphysics and magical thinking; he does not admit to the destructiveness of this metaphysic; he ignores the spiritual and anti-rational contributions of 19th-and 20th-century literature and philosophy; and his own thinking is ultimately an expression of faith.

I’ll begin with Hitchens’s metaphysics. Of course, a large part of his book is devoted to denouncing the stupidity of religious metaphysics, especially the idea that God is an entity outside of the ordinary workings of nature. But Hitchens has his own metaphysical claims, claims for which he seems not to feel any need to create arguments. In opposition to religion he proposes Enlightenment reason. What is “reason” for Hitchens? Your guess is as good as mine. Is it the rules of logic? Is it the scientific method? Is it Thomas Paine’s common sense? Some combination of the above? Hitchens seems to feel that, of course, everyone already knows what reason is and there is no need to elaborate its function or its virtues. But this “of course” is the marker of ideology, and the ideologist resists examining his own assumptions because to do so would be to make vulnerable his claims to authority.

Amy,
you have this same problem, re your definition of "evidence". You have described science as "thinking that requires evidence before one believes". Fine. But, what is your definition of "evidence"? Your definition is likely a boutique definition which you yourself do not adhere to in any area other than the demands which you place upon belief in God.

For instance, consider that science relies on first assumptions which it cannot prove, as explicated by Russ:

The first principles that make science possible (the basic laws of logic, math, and reason itself) are impossible to prove demonstratively. We accept them as true neither by experience nor by reason. For example, that nature is uniform is nothing we could possibly learn from experience nor is it logically provable. It has to be accepted as a first principle.

We can probe a little further and ask what makes these first principles genuinely true. There has to be something that grounds these things as true, making them not just arbitrary rules that are relative to cultural and temporal attitudes, but principles that are necessarily and universally true. That grounding is God---not a man, a thing, or a point in space, but the possibility of there being anything at all.

I understand you might critique the argument and I really doubt you'll be persuaded by it (though, I don't think there's a legitimate objection to it), but to say it's as irrational as believing in flying cows is, well, irrational.

Amy,
the "tangles of words and perfumed bullshit" are the words of the Salon atheist, and of Russ, and of the professor at BYU. Where scholars have arisen to meet your various challenges (for instance, to slay Hitchens into a puddle of goo), you willfully ignore their work. Then you tra la tra la off into self congratulations about your own reasonability.

Second: again, the problem: what is your definition of evidence? We've no idea of the minimum standard of evidence which you would require in order for you to believe in God. You have created, for yourself, an illegitimate circumstance in which you can move the goal posts with every breath.

Jim P.,

You've given me a false dilemma. You've forced me to choose between a God that created all that exists and then bashfully hid in the corner and a God who created the world 5,000 years ago. I believe in a God who created the laws of nature, logic, and math, and all that exists however many years ago science tells us...and I believe God is personal (didn't "go away") and is capable of performing what we would call "miracles."

In the "Mumbo Jumbo" post, I argued against another false dilemma given by some modern Christians and Atheists that makes a Christian choose between a literal interpretation of the Bible and an allegorical one that reduces the Bible to nothing but poetry. Well, there's a third option, which is actually the traditional--not the modern--one.

I wrote, "Seeing Genesis as literary expression meant to convey something else that is true is an option. Genesis conveys the idea that God brought form to the void, law to nothingness with the line "Let there be light" and references to visibility as good and darkness as bad. That he is the author of all that exists is reinforced by descriptions of him creating animals, plants, the moon, the sun, man etc."

Given that I don't believe that you need to take a literal interpretation of the Bible (that is, use it in place of scientific textbooks), the answer would be "no" to your question about God deceiving us into thinking that the world is only 5,000 years old, and that makes all the follow-up questions irrelevant to me as well.

Thanks, gcotharn, I think you're right about Hitchens (and I'd add Harris, Dawkins, and Dennett to that pile). I think Hume and Russell are stronger defenders of atheism/agnosticism.

Russ,
in reading the Hamblin article, I noted his assertion that Genesis was a scientific breakthrough for its time, the Iron Age, insofar as Genesis rejected the near universal (and especially Roman) belief that planets and stars were themselves gods. Rather, Genesis makes planets and stars subject to natural law: an outlaw concept for the time. Hamblin characterizes Genesis as both scientific breakthrough and religious insight into "God's relationship to the created order and humankind."

Gcortharn,

That's exactly what I mean when I say that Genesis can both provide truth and be literary, not literal. The existence of God, the creator, can be true and the Roman religion false, but that the part about the creator is true doesn't mean God actually took a siesta on day 7. However, I would be hesitant to call Genesis, for that reason, scientific, because you're not dealing with anything empirical. The truths in Genesis are truths, but not "observable" truths, which are necessary for science.

Evidence = facts/experiance that can be duplicated by anyone following the same steps

example, water boils at 100C
evidence, boiling water when measured by thermometers reads @100C no matter who is holding the thermometer, or what kind of thermometer is used

The first principles that make science possible (the basic laws of logic, math, and reason itself) are impossible to prove demonstratively.

Define the 'first principles' of math, logic, and reason

Hi Luj. I appreciate the intellectual honesty of your grappling with the issue. You reason:
"Evidence = facts/experiance that can be duplicated by anyone following the same steps"

Your grappling provides an example of an assumption which is necessary for science.

To wit: Why should facts/experience be duplicatable? How do we know that water boiled at 100C in 1200AD? How do we know that water will boil at 100C tomorrow?

We put our hands into an experiment. We walk away, we have lunch, we return and put our hands back into the experiment, and we continue, and we assume that nothing about Earth's natural order has changed. How do we know that? Why do we believe it legitimate to assume that?

How does this relate to our discussion of a standard of "evidence" for God? As you long ago grasped, the point is that the demanded standard of evidence, for God, cannot be met in any other aspect of life, including aspects of life which atheists hold dear, such as science. The standard of "evidence" is unreasonable.

and so, Amy, according to your "make shit up" standard: you "make shit up" about science. The standard of evidence which you demand for God .. cannot be met by science.

Because if water didnt boil at 100C tomorrow, life would be in serious fucking trouble.

Beacuse if the laws of physics and math which have been unchanged scince the dawn of recorded history were subjet to change to rapidly without cause, then nothing we have built would ever work the way we designed them to, and there would be no point in leaving the cave, let alone turning around to look at the fire casting shadows on the wall

The fact that we are having this conversation electronically across thousands of miles on machines built of components manufactured from elements forged in the destruction of stars, drug from the bowels of the earth is far more proof of the efficacy of science than of your god

Define the first principles? Here are a few:

-LNC: It is impossible for two true statements to contradict each other.

-MT: If p is sufficient for q, then if q is false, p is false.

-Axioms of geometry

-Nature is uniform.

Neither Science, nor logical demonstration, nor raw observation can prove any of these. They're first principles.

To wit: Why should facts/experience be duplicatable? How do we know that water boiled at 100C in 1200AD? How do we know that water will boil at 100C tomorrow? -- gcotharn at June 25, 2013 8:51 AM

Actually you are right to question that How do we know that water will boil at 100C tomorrow?

The actual statement should be Water will boil at 100C at nominal sea level. Because it does change as noted here.

But considering that Anders Celsius started working on the scale somewhere around 1737, I doubt physics changed from 1200AD to now.

Why would a God™ from 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago change the physics in 1200AD?

In the "Mumbo Jumbo" post, I argued against another false dilemma given by some modern Christians and Atheists that makes a Christian choose between a literal interpretation of the Bible and an allegorical one that reduces the Bible to nothing but poetry. Well, there's a third option, which is actually the traditional--not the modern--one. -- Russ at June 24, 2013 10:28 PM

WHAT THE FUCK?

So what is traditional?

You mean that I have to take chunks of the Bible™ one way and other chunks another way?

Ok, lets deal with it that way. Let's talk Noah:

New International Version (NIV):

7 The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. 2 Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, 3 and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. 4 Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

5 And Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.

6 Noah was six hundred years old when the floodwaters came on the earth. 7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. 8 Pairs of clean and unclean animals, of birds and of all creatures that move along the ground, 9 male and female, came to Noah and entered the ark, as God had commanded Noah. 10 And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth.

11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. 12 And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights.

13 On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. 14 They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. 15 Pairs of all creatures that have the breath of life in them came to Noah and entered the ark. 16 The animals going in were male and female of every living thing, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.

17 For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. 18 The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. 19 They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. 20 The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.[a][b] 21 Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. 23 Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

24 The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days.

I still don't see an explanation for the Giant Panda (tied to bamboo) or the koala (tied to eucalyptus) whether you want to go literal, allegorical, or "traditional". Whatever the fuck "traditional" means.

Jim P.,

You can't say that it doesn't matter "whether you want to go literal, allegorical, or 'traditional'. Of course it matters. A literal interpretation will have a literal meaning and an allegorical one does not. If you keep reading my post, I state exactly what the traditional one is (also, by traditional I don't mean to describe the method of interpretation, but that the interpretation I go on to describe had been the customarily held one):

I wrote, "Seeing Genesis as literary expression meant to convey something else that is true is an option. Genesis conveys the idea that God brought form to the void, law to nothingness with the line "Let there be light" and references to visibility as good and darkness as bad. That he is the author of all that exists is reinforced by descriptions of him creating animals, plants, the moon, the sun, man etc."

You're right; this view chooses some chunks to be true and some to be allegory. Why is that wrong? Must we believe that a magical fairy turned a hunk of wood into a boy to believe that the moral behind Pinocchio--that lying is bad--is true? No. There is an objection I need to address: you might say, but we can simply use intuition to see that lying is wrong, so the truth of the myth of Pinocchio the wooden boy is irrelevant to the truth about lying, and therefore the analogy might seem to fall apart for Christianity.

But, as I argued before, the (and here it comes again) traditional philosophy of the Bible was not to use it as the ultimate source for belief in God. Instead, Christian philosophers thought that you could use reason to see if God exists, if morality exists, if the mind is distinct in some degree from the body, if we have free will, and the other significant questions that religion is centered on. Cue: Augustine, Dionysius, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Pascal, Leibniz. These guys thought that God's existence was clear, and could then turn to the Bible and see how "Let there be light" could be interpreted as God being the source of all that is possible, rather than seeing it as God moving his lips and waving his fingers and shooting lightning beams from a harp. And as I've said before, going to Noah's Ark to find a contradiction already has you skip over simpler ones found earlier in the beginning. There are problems in something that is outside time and space needing to take a nap or that the Earth could exist without form.

I wonder how many people have been killed for the heratical interpretations of Pinnochio

Also, according to "tradition" the story of genesis was related to Moses by god himself.

Riddle me this, why would an all powerful, all knowing god go out of his way to sow confusion when he knew his piss poor story telling would lead to so much confusion?

I would guess zero people have been killed for heretical interpretations of Pinocchio.

The literary devices (allegory) of the Bible make sense given the audience of the period. What exactly is the confusion? How we are supposed to interpret the Bible? Or atheism vs. theism? For both cases, using reason alongside the Bible had been the traditional method, and there really wasn't much confusion there.

As there is no confusion perhaps you can explain
1) where all the water disappeard to after the flood

2) How a neolithic culture which handnt even discovered bronze was able to built a trans dimentional tower than was higher than anything we are able to build today and also capable of reaching heaven as heaven obviously isnt strait up

"To wit: Why should facts/experience be duplicatable? How do we know that water boiled at 100C in 1200AD? How do we know that water will boil at 100C tomorrow?"

There's no "should". They are, and we do. Do you really think scientists just throw up their hands and say, "That's It! There's no more to see!"

No. That's what Bible™ thumpers do.

Short story: Observations of Supernova 1987A reveal that radioactive decay acted the same ("same" having a definition of "within the capacity of measurement to detect a difference") 160,000 years ago. This shows that no change in the strong nuclear force has occurred over the past 160,00 years - by direct observation.

Longer story:
Water acts the way it does because of the weak nuclear force and the action of the Van der Waals bond between water molecules. You DO know we have had the capability of seeing individual atoms in microscopes for about 20 years, right?
Singling out water to claim it changes properties, and then only in the weak nuclear force is an interesting tactic. I've seen it used by people eager to try claiming that science is just another religion, with nothing to show for its work - you just haven't used the word, "uniformitarian" for the people who think the laws of cause and effect have remained the same over the years.
Well, there is no reason to single out water. For centuries, investigators have known that counting on one method of measurement is a way to propagate and perpetuate error. That's why they don't count on the Bible to explain anything.

Many Christians have been led to distrust radiometric dating and are completely unaware of the great number of laboratory measurements that have shown these methods to be consistent. Many are also unaware that Bible-believing Christians are among those actively involved in radiometric dating. This paper describes in relatively simple terms how a number of the dating techniques work, how accurately the half-lives of the radioactive elements and the rock dates themselves are known, and how dates are checked with one another. In the process the paper refutes a number of misconceptions prevalent among Christians today.

Clearly, you don't know anything of the investigative methods used today. The passage by Saint Augustine linked above applies to you.