Does the above Commandment explain why people dutifully gravitate to homeless puppies, adopt them, feed them and love them? Of course not, because there is no such commandment.
Nor are there any other abstract moral principles requiring us to love puppies. We love puppies because the urge to love small tame animals is deep in our bones. We love puppies because we are built to love (contrary to those who claim that life is fundamentally dog-eat-dog -- Consider also, that the “struggle for existence” is only a conceptual metaphor with limited application). Our human bodies are pre-rigged to take care of cute little mammals, especially when they appear to love us back. We would love puppies even if there were a commandment telling us to NOT love puppies.
In mathematics we know that no matter how perfectly you carry out the calculations, if your constants are wrong, your answer will be wrong. In science, the assumptions you make before beginning your experiment can affect the outcome of the experiment.
Keep that in mind as we go forward.
There has been some amazing scholarly work done with regard to the bible over the ages. And yet I feel that much of it rests upon several erroneous assumptions about the nature of God that don't hold up to common sense scrutiny.
Believers have told me that creation "bears witness of the creator". In other words, we can see the hand of God in nature. I agree! I think that the creative/destructive forces of the universe do reveal their nature through creation. With that in mind let's look to nature to see the nature of "god"!
God vs Satan
In the bible we are told that there is a cosmic battle going on between the forces of good and evil, i.e., God vs Satan. However, the separation of good and evil doesn't hold up in light of common sense observations of the universe. Bad and good are NEVER completely separate things. Nothing is ever all bad or all good.
Here is an example:
From Wiki: “The parasitoid wasp Glyptapanteles lays its eggs, about 80 at a time, in young geometrid caterpillars. The eggs hatch and the larvae feed on the caterpillar's body fluids. When they are fully developed, they eat through the caterpillar's skin, attach themselves to a nearby branch or leaf and wrap themselves up in a cocoon.”
For the wasp, this is good. For the caterpillar this is bad. Horrifically so.
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Sit back and enjoy Bart Ehrman's research regarding what we know about the origin of the Bible. Ehrman is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . I've previously posted about Ehrman's 2007 book, Misquoting Jesus.
Ehrman starts by telling the audience about a question that he asked his students recently: If the Bible is really the inerrant word of God, why aren't all believers actually reading it? Many of Ehrman's own students truly believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, but large numbers of them haven't yet read the entire Bible. Ehrman asks: "If God wrote a book, wouldn't you want to see what He said?"
Most of this lecture concerns the origin of the modern version of the Bible. Ehrman presents a fascinating history of a book based upon thousands of incomplete and conflicting earlier versions. These versions are riddled with mistakes. The oldest copy that we have of any book of the new testament is a tiny scrap from the Gospel by "John" called "P52). It is about the size of a credit card and it only contains a couple sentences. It is dated at "the first half of the second century" (minute 15 of the video). Our earliest surviving complete copy of the Gospel of "John" was created about the year 200 A.D.
Most of our manuscripts of the Bible are not anywhere near this old. Most of our manuscripts were created around the beginning of the third century (around the year 200). The earliest manuscripts of most of the books of the Bible date from the 7th or 8th century. By the time that a man named John Mill actually tracked the conflicts among the 100 manuscripts he reviewed (about 300 years ago), he noted about 30,000 differences. We now have about 7,000 manuscripts, and nobody has been able to add up all the differences among these copies (21:30). "There are more differences in our existing Greek manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament." So, then how can we really know what any of the writers really said? Ehrman characterizes this as "a problem." Most of these differences are "completely insignificant . . . mistakes."
I especially enjoyed Ehrman's description of one scribe's mistaken version of the alleged genealogy of Jesus all the way back to Adam and Eve (27:00). Many other more significant translation problems have been detected by modern scholars (32:00).
Unfortunately, this video has a glitch and it ended at the 34-minute mark. This is as far as I got tonight. I now see that there are other versions of Ehrman's lectures available in ten-minute chunks, starting here. I'm planning on viewing the remainder of Ehrman's lecture, and I'll report on it in the comments.
I would add a few questions to the one Ehrman asked at the top of his lecture: If the Bible really is the inspired word of God, why aren't more believers taking the time to understand the genesis of the Bible itself? Why aren't they more interested in learning about the things that Ehrman has researched throughout his career. Why don't they care more about the inaccuracies and contradictions? As Ehrman asked, don't you need to be confident that you know the accurate version of the Bible before telling others how "important" it is? I raise these questions because, in my experience of having discussed the Bible with hundreds of Christian believers, almost none of them know about these critically important issues raised by Ehrman, and it's a rare American Christian believer who exhibits any curiosity regarding these issues. How strange, unless, as Daniel Dennett suggested, that most believers believe in belief, rather than in the religious stories that they claim to be true.
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Why didn't I think of this? Someone has gone into the business of insuring that your pets will be cared for when the Rapture comes and your loving pets are left behind? One such company is here. For the small price of $110, a group of "dedicated animal lovers and atheists" will agree to care for your pet if you are taken to the heavens sometime within the next ten years. I assume you could renew the contract upon payment of more money if your pet is still alive and you have not been taken by Jesus. If you simply DIE, the contract does not apply. Apparently these animal lovers will only go so far. If you die, and your dog is left homeless, the dog is on its own.
I got into a stupid flame was the other day on Facebook with a friend (and her commenters)
She [A] posted the following to her wall:
If you think that putting up a mosque 600 ft. from ground zero and have
the opening of the mosque on the anniversary of 9/11/11, is immoral,
inhuman and a complete lack of respect for the memories of all that
perished on that day and their survivors & that politicians are
doing a grave injustice to the fallen heroes, their families and the
people of New York City, THEN PLEASE COPY AND PASTE THIS TO YOUR WALL
The first commenter followed with
[B] its digusting its even a thought in someones head.....
I saw this and saw yet another vile, right-wing sponsored attack on civil liberties. I am not religious, and abhor religion. I think it perpetuates an evil upon the world that does incalculable damage to current and future generations. However, I do support the rule of law, and the Cordoba House people have the right to build there.
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