Computers Decipher Burnt Scroll Found In Ancient Holy Ark (nationalgeographic.com) 235
bsharma writes: Scientists have formally announced their reconstruction of the Ein Gedi Scroll, the most ancient Hebrew scroll since the Dead Sea Scrolls. This was done by CAT scanning the burnt scrolls and virtually reconstructing the layers of scrolls with ink blobs on them. National Geographic reports: "For decades, the Israel Antiquities Authority guarded the document, known as the Ein Gedi Scroll, careful not to open it for fear that the brittle text would shatter to pieces. But last year, scientists announced that they had scanned, virtually unrolled, and translated the scroll's hidden verses -- a feat now formally described in the scientific literature. Based on preliminary scans, [Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky, who specialized in digitally reconstructing damaged texts,] and his colleagues announced in 2015 that the Ein Gedi Scroll was a biblical text from the sixth century A.D. containing a column of text from the book of Leviticus. But the full CT scan results, published on Wednesday in Science Advances, tell a deeper story. Further analysis revealed an extra column of text, ultimately fleshing out the first two chapters of Leviticus -- ironically, a book that begins with God's instructions for burnt offerings. What's more, radiocarbon dating of the scroll suggests that it may be between 1,700 and 1,800 years old, at least 200 years older than previously thought. In fact, the scroll's distinctive handwriting hearkens back to the first or second century A.D., some five centuries earlier than the date ascribed to the scroll last year." University of Cambridge lecturer James Aitken told Smithsonian's Devin Powell in 2015: "There's little of surprise in finding a Leviticus scroll. We probably have many more copies of it than any other book, as its Hebrew style is so simple and repetitive that it was used for children's writing exercises."
Obligatory.. (Score:5, Funny)
"Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."
Re: Obligatory.. (Score:5, Funny)
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As if todays church leaders would give a damn about what is written in the bible...
In one of his letters, Paul explicitly warns the congregation in one city against the teachings of "people who forbid to marry" and linkens this to demon-inspired utterings.
Did not stop the church to forbid its priests to marry until this day, all for the sake of money (well inheritance really).
And lets not forget Jesus saying, on the night of hist arrest, "Those who take up the sword will die by the sword". Now preventing th
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Right footed vicars have been allowed to marry since Elizabethan times. And I don't mean Frau Battenburg Von Schleswig-Holsten Pilsner.
Re: Obligatory.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to be pedantic, just precise, the wording of the passage you mention about "taking up the sword" refers specifically to criminality and not to war.
Fun facts (Score:2, Interesting)
1) There are two words for Hell in the greek language (Hades, Tartarus). Jesus never once said either one of them. He sometimes used the valley of Gehenna (which was right on the edge of the city of Jerusalem, and used as the city dump) in his metaphors, but the translators decided to change that to "hell." This isn't a translation..."Gehenna" does not and never did mean "hell" in any language. This is a changing of what he said, which has become codified as the standard in nearly all English translatio
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For clarity;
At least in my church our pastors preach FROM THE BIBLE. They give more than a damn about what is written in the Bible.
My church, and indeed virtually all of Protestant/Reformed Christianity does not forbid pastors, priests, whatever you call them to marry. The Catholic Church still does. Calling the Catholic Church "the church" is imprecise, lazy, or deliberately misleading. Or you don't really care, which is unfortunate.
Jesus did indeed correct Peter when He was arrested. There may be righte
Re: Obligatory.. (Score:2)
"At least in my church our pastors preach FROM THE BIBLE. They give more than a damn about what is written in the Bible"
I don't know how to say this as nicely as possible, but..
are we sure we are talking about the same book? I would be surprised if your pastors advocate the stoning of undisciplined pupils.
Re: Obligatory.. (Score:3)
More clarity :
As you should know, the Mosaic covenant is superceded, overridden, by the new covenant in Christ. Those who continue to obey the Law at bound by it, but those who believe in Christ not only need not, but are given a new covenant, fulfilled in Him.
This is a central point of Christianity, one you cannot be ignorant of. Unless you've done no study, in which case I encourage your attention. There is much literature, many essays, much discussion, going back to Christ Himself.
Your complaint is note
Re: Obligatory.. (Score:2)
thanks for your answer, I mean it!
one thing I don't understand is the following - maybe you can help (no irony)
the new testament is not getting into details on topics that many Christians seem to care about. topics like human sexuality, origins of the cosmos, laws of nature, and more.
when many Christians are looking for answers on such topics, they tend to refer to the old testament. however, when such answers appear unpalatable in the old testament (see e. g. stoning), they use the argument that the new te
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I am a Christian, and have attended (and continue to) churches that preach from the Bible, and endeavor to study it and to rightly interpret it.
Also, just in case you aren't familiar with the abbreviations, OT = Old Testament and NT = New Testament :)
Referring to out-of-context passages in the Old Testament (e.g., Leviticus for things about homosexuality) seems pretty common... unfortunately. It is not treated very well, and, as you have noted, pretty much just cherry-picked to "prove" one's point. It's o
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Chuck Missler is simply one of the best teachers of the Bible I've come across in 35+ years of faith in Jesus. He comes from an extensive technical background, focused on information technologies. I highly recommend anyone with honest questions to look into his work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] https://www.khouse.org/ [khouse.org] http://www.youtube.com/user/ko... [youtube.com]
Above all else, read for yourself. It takes a decent overall perspective to make sense of much of the specifics, but it's really not
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https://www.bible.com/bible/1/... [bible.com]
35Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,
36Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Note that this general theme concerni
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God is quite an elusive idea - but I do like very much the idea of loving your neighbor!
But if really boils down to that, why carrying forward all the baggage that can be summarized in that one wise and precious sentence?
Why loading yourself with the need to explain away everything else, when you could just choose any modern philosopher (say, Peter Singer) that says essentially the same thing, but without the references to goats, stoning and the like? It appears on the face of it an enormous effort and rath
Re: Obligatory.. (Score:2)
Excellent comments all, thank you.
In the NT, Hebrews 13 is an excellent passage, not only because it was written to Jewish converts, but because it is a brief, limited, but clear recommendation of how to live the Christian life.
The Letter of Paul to the Romans is, to me, the best handbook of the Gospel, living a Christian life, and how to evangelize in the NT. Our church just finished a 2+ year study of it, punctuated with other bits and such. A total of 60+ messages in all. We took months to go throu
Re: Obligatory.. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, he was suggesting exactly the opposite: that any sort of tolerance (let alone support) for war is anti-Christian, so priests etc. should be condemning armies instead of blessing them.
The body of Christ (Score:2)
America has a nuclear attack submarine named the USS Corpus Christi, which means "body of Christ". What would Jesus think about that?
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He may think that it's named after Corpus Christi, Texas. [google.com]
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I was explaining what the grandparent poster said because the parent poster misunderstood.
Also, for Christians (as opposed to Jews or Muslims), stuff Jesus said should be considered to supersede stuff Moses said.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrgLj9lOwk [youtube.com]
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Older = Better (Score:2)
Re:Older = Better (Score:5, Funny)
Well, the closer it is to the original. You know the old joke where the curator of the monastery came up from the vault with the original texts and cried "Dammit, in the original it read 'celebRate'!"
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How much do they vary? (Score:5, Informative)
You make an assertion that there are "dramatic" changes in the text, but is that true?
Here is an example [ancient-hebrew.org] of analysis of the Great Isaiah Scroll from the Dead Sea scroll find. It dates to 200 B.C., only 500 years after Isaiah wrote the original and over one thousand years older than the previously used manuscript (used in the King James Version of the Bible).
Is that a "dramatic" change the closer you get?
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If you want dramatic change, you have to translate it to a different language.
The joke is that the Old Testament we have today is probably closer to the original text than the New one.
Re:How much do they vary? (Score:5, Interesting)
You make an assertion that there are "dramatic" changes in the text, but is that true?
This is a good point. The Hebrew text of the Bible is remarkably stable in copies dating back almost 2000 years. Anyone who has spent time tracing families of manuscript sources in, for example, medieval Europe will realize how unstable many sources are compared to the Hebrew text. Copyists in most medieval treatises frequently made errors or omissions or even inserted their own variations, corrections, or commentary.
That said, rabbis are pretty aware of the variations in ancient sources --- perhaps most notably, the differences between the Masoretic text (the standard Hebrew edition dating to medieval times) and the Septuagint (an ancient translation of the Hebrew text into Greek), as well as the Samaritan Pentateuch (a rendering in the Samaritan alphabet of the first books of the Bible, which has lots of mostly minor variants). These variants are important to rabbinical commentary and exegesis.
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One of the reasons the Hebrew text was stable was because they used checksums when copying. Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet is also used as a number. That made it easy to calculate checksums for each line of text.
Re:How much do they vary? (Score:5, Informative)
One of the reasons the Hebrew text was stable was because they used checksums when copying. Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet is also used as a number. That made it easy to calculate checksums for each line of text.
Actually, there were a number of reasons for the stability. The "checksums," as you put it, were more associated with medieval Kabbalistic practices that date from probably more than a millennium after the "stable" version had basically been established. (And I'm not sure any scribes actually did this sort of "checksumming" in this way on any scale; only the "Bible code" wackos today seem to think so.)
Instead, you had a confluence of a number of factors:
(1) A tremendous set of ritualistic requirements for copying came about at a very early stage, which made copying the Torah distinct from any other scribal task. Scribes were required to take extra care with everything from ink quality to page layout. And they were to make verbal checks when copying every word, as well as other various checks (but mostly involved counting words and letters, not "summing" them).
(2) A rabbinical tradition was already in place nearly 2000 years ago which created a giant commentary on top of the actual text. Rabbis emphasized that even a single error in a single letter could create problems in accurate commentary, and the commentary itself often depended on tiny details of wording. (Remember all those stories of Jesus where he criticizes the "elders" and such for paying too much attention to details of the text so they forgot the broader meaning... that's what he was talking about. It was a new fad at that time, which caught on.) Hence, even if an error in copying occurred in the text, you could spot it by the fact that it disagreed with the commentaries by learned rabbis. (It's sort of like if you had documentation for code that explained every single operation in detail. Even if the original code became corrupted, you could reconstruct it from the documentation.)
(3) Finally, you had the fact that a lot of Jews were slaughtered by the Romans and other folks in the early centuries of the first millennium, around the time many of these exacting traditions had developed. Thus, any competing editions/variants were likely to be lost (burned down with synagogues, etc.), with only a few official copies preserved. Those few copies -- whatever their source -- then became the dominant text once the others had been lost.
So yeah, scribes could check the text in many ways, but there were various events and ideologies that helped that process along.
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You realize that your just kinda... making that up, right?
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If you had bothered to read the rest of that statement right here in the summary on slashdot, you'd realize that the "second column of text" is the second chapter. This isn't a case of adding/removing/doctoring text, it is a case of initially they had a single column (chapter) of text visible and through more work managed to reveal the second column (chapter) of text.
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Or they didn't happen to find this specific manuscript, relying on several others that were available.
In other words, they used what they actually had.
Seriously, this is not that hard.
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Re:Older = Better (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, the closer it is to the original
Actually, something left out of the summary is the textual significance of this find. Some of the researchers involved have noted that this is the earliest text found so far that is identical to the Masoretic text [wikipedia.org], a medieval version which is the standard Hebrew edition often used today (not only in the original but as the basis of many modern translations, etc.).
Previous finds have shown that a set of "proto-Masoretic" variants begins to emerge as a standard around 2000 years ago (before that, there were wider textual variants). But previous fragments actually identical to the Masoretic were only known to date to centuries after this one. Depending on whose dating you believe, this scroll places the origin of this standard text version perhaps back to 1700-2000 years ago.
It's also significant because it's a biblical fragment recovered from an ark in a synagogue, where it may have actually been used, as opposed to the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were preserved in desert caves and might represent a less 'standard" source tradition.
Again, a lot of this is speculative, but in this case the find is actually significant in pushing back the date when a "standard" Hebrew text may have begun to emerge.
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I think the whole point of the bible was summed up nicely in the Battlestar Galactica remake: "All of this has happened before, and shall happen again."
The older the text is, the more it drives that point home.
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You know the old joke where the curator of the monastery came up from the vault with the original texts and cried "Dammit, in the original it read 'celebRate'!"
Or the first line of the Bible, saying "The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred."
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History tends to be distorted over the generations. Where each historian will add their own personal spin on their interpretation. Where some people become savage villains while others become glorious generals. Where they both did what they did with the good and bad.
The older documents are not necessarily more accurate. But offers perspective with less layers of interpretation. Also offer insight of the culture of the time of the writing.
Now I disagree with the notion that the ancients were somehow closer
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But the more about the ancients we discover, the less primitive the people seem
The older I get, the more I learn about the other people sharing this planet and those that preceded us, the more I believe that we are all the same, for the most part. We all have the same basic wants and needs, the same basic drives. What separates me from a Roman living under Augustus or an Egyptian living in the time of Ramses is more a matter of the trappings of technology than the core of our beings.
As a kid I was always struck by this quote from Khan in the Star trek episode Space Seed
Nothing ever changes, except man. Your technical accomplishments? Improve a mechanical device and you may double productivity, but improve man and you gain a thousandfold. I am such a man.
There's no
Re: Older = Better (Score:2)
if you tried living in a cave, fighting bears with bare hands, surviving the decimation of your tribe by a neighbor tribe, to then die at age 25 of a small infection, all the while believing that the god of blood and thunder rules the forest, and moves the sun, his slave and concubine through the sky... ... you would have a different opinion.
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Here's an interesting read on the "accuracy" of the Bible...
http://www.icr.org/article/pre... [icr.org]
"it was used for children's writing exercises" (Score:2, Insightful)
Which frankly is all the faction and outright fairy tales in all religious tomes are really any use for.
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Tell that to all the Star Wars misfits around here. Grown men still obsessed with a plaything of their youth.
And how is that any more weird than grown people believing they must modify their behaviour according to the whims of some guy who's set himself up as a priest/prophet/grand-poobah and who says that if they don't obey his imaginary friend (whom only he can see and hear) will destroy them in a rain of fire and brimstone and then send them to spend eternity in an inferno for whose existence there isn't a shred of proof? Say what you will about Lucas hounds, making Jediism the fourth largest 'religion' in the
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A lot of religious people focus on the joy and love rather than the fear. Religion can be very good for your emotional health and ability to cope. I often think wistfully that it would be very nice to have a church with a theology I could actually believe in. However, I am the person that a possibly existing God hypothetically made, and I'm not going to find such a church.
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In a thousand years we will be still serving God, and you will be at the bottom of the lake of fire. This is of course of your own choosing. There's still hope for you, you just have to repent.
Why would an omnipotent being need somebody to "serve" him or "glorify" him? Can't he serve himself?
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It is no accident that the alleged god takes on attributes of megalomaniac warlord/monarch.
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In a thousand years we will be still serving God, and you will be at the bottom of the lake of fire. This is of course of your own choosing. There's still hope for you, you just have to repent.
By repent here you really mean take on the meme-complex...
Don't you see you have fallen for the equivalent of a chain letter? Same exact outline:
Promise rich rewards for spreading the meme-complex.
Threaten dire consequences for ignoring.
It is obvious if you spend a moment in honest self-reflection
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Which god are you referring to? If its our holy lord [F]lying [S]paghetti [M]onster, god bless you! Otherwise I have to remind that you will be at the bottom of boiling cauldron. Even then there's still hope for you. You just have to hug FSM.
Let us all say a prayer that we shall all be touched by his noodley appendage!
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So what are females of your religion good for? Isn't keeping them out of the priesthood at least a little cruel?
Give them a place to be ... (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ... and they'll just fill the space. That's life for ya.
Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises" (Score:5, Insightful)
More generally, "name calling" should be the expected behavior when asking almost any complex question to any large group of persons.
However, in that specific case, Richard Dawkins has the expected default position of any atheist (including me): The existence of an invisible unproven magic being cannot be the answer to any complex phenomena observed in the real world (in that case, that would be the origin of life). That position implies that there are things that we cannot explain with our current understanding of nature (you know, that thing called science).
Improving science by looking for more clues in the real world is the right way to handle those mysteries. Claiming "Magic", "God", "Taboo" or "Holy Book" is not.
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https://www.quantamagazine.org... [quantamagazine.org]
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Improving science by looking for more clues in the real world is the right way to handle those mysteries. Claiming "Magic", "God", "Taboo" or "Holy Book" is not.
Which ties into the "God of the gaps" argument, which over time, has been used to explain everything we do not know. Once upon a time, psychosis, birth defects, seemingly spontaneous biogenisis, the entire external universe and so much else were attributed to divinity because we just didn't know.
Then over time more and more was learned that fit the once mysterious things into the natural world, and the God of the gaps became popular.
Now the God of the Gaps has become quite small indeed. People who wou
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What we've really found is that we need to reject the God of the Gaps to make progress in science and engineering. If we call something a miracle, we can't learn anything about the world from it, since a miracle by definition is an exception to the laws of the Universe. If we reject the idea of a miracle and try to figure out what physically happened to create that effect, we might learn something. Over time, those "might learn something"s add up, while the "cant learn anything"s keep summing to zero.
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Google "God of the gaps" (Score:2)
Says it all really.
Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises" (Score:4, Insightful)
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For all you or I know, God did do it. It won't stop us from assuming it was a perfectly natural phenomenon and trying to figure what it was.
Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises" (Score:4, Insightful)
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How did the first self-replicating molecule originate? Know one knows, but "I don't know" is a lot better answer than "God did it".
Unfortunately many induhviduals have an almost pathological aversion to the words "I don't know". "God did it" is a nice comfortable catch-all to explain away the unknown, because the unknown is frightening to them.
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A lot of people also seem to reject the idea that the Universe is basically more complicated than they can imagine (typically without trying to understand it), and God is a nice convenient three-letter placeholder to prevent the necessity of trying to learn something or appreciate the wonder of the Universe.
Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises" (Score:5, Informative)
Atheism is a religion for most who 'believe' in it.
Every Sunday, atheists gather in their athiest churches (tax exempt by the way) and pray to (no one) to show theiir lack of faith in no one.
Then at night, before they go to bed, they pray to (no one) to keep themselves and their family safe and healthy.
Likewise, in times of stress, they also pray to (no one) petitioning (no one) for an outcome they desire.
Then after a hopefully long life lived according to their belief in (no one), when they shift this mortal coil, the eternal soul that they don't have will forever be in teh presence of (no one)
I think you are mistaking the fact that atheists, like all humans, can be assholes, just like the people of faith in a deity can be assholes at time.
Finally, the faithful tend to think about their particular deity all the time. I know I only think about a deity when we have these discussions and people try to tell me I have a religion. As a recovering Catholic, I know the difference well. But otherwise nope, sorry, no religion here.
To put it another way... (Score:5, Funny)
... Atheism is a religion in the same way that NOT playing football is a sport.
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... Atheism is a religion in the same way that NOT playing football is a sport.
Yes, yes, but we're pretty much just as sick of people telling how superior they are by not liking football as we are as by the people who constantly rant how they love football. Same goes for not stamp collecting and other hobbies.
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... Atheism is a religion in the same way that NOT playing football is a sport.
Yes, yes, but we're pretty much just as sick of people telling how superior they are by not liking football as we are as by the people who constantly rant how they love football. Same goes for not stamp collecting and other hobbies.
I grew up in a town where religion had a stranglhold on us. No Sunday stores open, No legally required sex education, Anything that showed the earth might be older than 6000 years removed form the curriculum, priests who liked to fuck little boys, And even without getting sexually abused, daily reminders of how you were going to hell if you didn't toe the line, I'd like to apologize for your inconvenience of people who are sick and tired of your shit.
The religious can dish it out, but they cannot take i
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The quantity of self-described religious adherents who don't go to church, don't pray, and don't think much about the afterlife (until the due date visibly approaches) is frankly quite large. Belief != fervor. And, proportionally, there's quite a few places [google.com] dedicated to bringing atheists together and promulgating their beliefs (tax exempt by the way).
As humans, we seek explanations, stake our identity in our beliefs, and pursue fellowship with those who share them. I know of at least one secular group in m
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The quantity of self-described religious adherents who don't go to church, don't pray, and don't think much about the afterlife (until the due date visibly approaches) is frankly quite large. Belief != fervor. And, proportionally, there's quite a few places [google.com] dedicated to bringing atheists together and promulgating their beliefs (tax exempt by the way).
Fascinatinating. Given that you mention Tax exempt status, it has become most clear that you define a 501(c) 3 coprporation as a religion. Allow me to show this from the first group, and th emajor group that comes up when I clicky clicky on the google search link you thoughtfully provided.
The American Atheists
This organization, which you declare as a religion, has this organizational note:
American Atheists, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. As such, all donations and gifts to American Athe
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Finally, the faithful tend to think about their particular deity all the time.
In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, "There is no God."
Yeay verily, who among us has not had the good fortune of being born in the place chosen by god to expound the one true belief?
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Cut it any way you want it but atheism is just as much a BELIEF as theism is.
Nope - you are just not capable of seeing it any other way.
People who have a belief in say, the exact word of god as given to man in the form of the King James Bible cannot have any other belief.
On th eother hand, I have confidence in matters. That means that if I say, have confidence that we cannot harness zero point energy, I'm pretty darn sure that we can't.
But if someone comes along, and proves that we can, I'll abandon my confidence that we cannot in the face of evidence.
That is something th
Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises" (Score:4, Insightful)
Atheism is no more a religion than an empty glass contains a kind of beer.
I tend to leave religious people strictly alone, so long as they aren't harming or advocating harming anyone else. I think the notion of believing in a religion, and especially an afterlife, would be very comforting. Certainly, a lot of my extended family find it so. Really, the only time I ever want to argue against religion is when people use it as a weapon against others.
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According to all religions, almost all religious texts are fairy tales. What's your problem?
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Some will have a problem. It's all other religious texts that are fairy tales. The religious texts for the religion that their parents indoctrinated them into are most definitely not fairy tales. To them anyway. And they can get quite irate over the suggestion that all religious texts are just the same.
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That's basically the joke. Atheism is just rejecting one more holy story as a fairy tale than every believer does.
Re: "it was used for children's writing exercises" (Score:2)
atheism does not require believing anything of the sort. why you say that?
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The problem is the old lame argument of trying to prove your point by changing the wording to a negative context.
Calling a Religion a FairyTale implies it is a set of overly simplistic stories meant for children.
While most religious text are a combination of written history philosophy of the time, mixed with rules for often a nomadic society to function in a world which is often against them.
The 10 commandments (where they are more than 10, and different religions count them differently and group them in di
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When I take a look down the average fairy tale, from Grimm's tales to Andersen, they are not that much different from many parables and allegories in the Bible. In many of either you find a good and a bad person, the good one facing hardship, overcoming it (in the fairy tale usually by his own feats, in the Bible it's usually divine intervention that helps him) and in the end being the winner because he was the (morally) superior being.
The difference isn't that big, you know...
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"Except that many of the "winners" in the Bible are not the superior being"
"It was God's providence, rather than anything good about Jacob, that made him the "winner"."
So helped by fictious superior being who came along just in time instead. Yes, big difference.
You should read Beowolf sometime.
Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises" (Score:5, Insightful)
The Bible has many WTF moments when you read it, but for some reason back then it must've seemed ok to the people back then. I mean, if god supports Jacob's trick and doesn't punish him for being an asshole and swindling his brother out of his firstborn rights, does god condone such behaviour?
Then again, when you look at Job, God can be quite the asshole himself.
Re:"it was used for children's writing exercises" (Score:4, Insightful)
"And He who made kittens put snakes in the grass"
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"And He who made kittens put snakes in the grass"
Something had to eat all those kittens, or we'd be overrun.
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Also, Leviticus is not just Hebrew law, its Christian law too. Jesus said so many times himself. Unless, of course, you don't take everything Jesus said seriously.
[Citation needed]
Seriously, though... this is a very, very simplistic interpretation of what Jesus "said." For example, what exactly did Jesus mean when He said that He didn't "come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it." And, of course, if you take the NT to also be accurate, then you have to deal with all of Paul's writings on the law, which are ... voluminous. And enlightening, as Paul often wrote to non-Jews, whereas Jesus was talking to Jews. Rightly interpreting what Jesus said, and why, requires
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These religions also tend to pick up temporary or local beliefs and practices and fossilize them in made-up dogma. I know a Muslim who says he didn't realize what Islam was until he came to the US and found it without all the tribal superstitions.
A shopping list (Score:2)
Pound pastrami
can kraut
six bagels - brig home for Emma
Who's reviewing the scrolls? (Score:5, Funny)
Who's reviewing the scrolls? Top men ...
The Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20 (Score:5, Funny)
Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it."
And they discovered that Slashdot has gone to Hell (Score:5, Insightful)
This thread is a perfect example of what's becoming of Slashdot. Instead of comments and insights on the awesome science and tech it took to read an up-to-now unreadable ancient document, almost every comment here is a comment about whether religion is fact or fiction and is *completely* off topic. The science behind this is pretty amazing, and could lead to being able to read other ancient burned documents like those found at Herculaneum from the time of its destruction by Vesuvius. But you people are apparently more interested in bashing religion than celebrating actual science and technical advances.
Re:And they discovered that Slashdot has gone to H (Score:4, Insightful)
The obvious conclusion is that we need to get rid of the reddit atheist kiddies who feel the need to shit up every decent discussion with their euphoric fedoras.
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TBH the media leads with this. When Mother Theresa was sainted recently, the lead NPR story mentioned it then a few sentences later launched into the "raging controversy going on in her town" over her, which consisted of an ancient bitchfest by Christopher Hitchens, and a guy who wrote a book six years ago.
You are all cogs instantiating the distribution of memeplexes.
Re:And they discovered that Slashdot has gone to H (Score:4, Informative)
The science behind this is pretty amazing, and could lead to being able to read other ancient burned documents like those found at Herculaneum from the time of its destruction by Vesuvius.
Just to note -- the computer techniques for reconstructing text from scrolls here were actually developed within a project for analyzing the scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. This biblical scroll application was just another use of this computer analysis technique, showing its power to deal with even very badly burned and less intact fragments.
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There was an article not too long ago about this technique.
In the Neal Stephenson book Reamde, they use a technique where a shredded sprays a book up into the air, where high speed cameras digitize each piece of confetti and then computers reassemble the pieces jigsaw-wise and OCR it.
This technique is even more advanced.
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This thread is a perfect example of what's becoming of Slashdot.
So, start a subthread on the technology. Seems like a way to get people talking about technology.
Slashdot has a seriously diverse readership. In any given topic, you'll get the usual suspects
The clueless noobs who are still learning.
The trolls
The "Get off my lawn" crowd, who probably are suffering from testosterone deprivation.
People who are actually interested.
Since this tech was introduced in reference to an ancient burnt Middle Eastern scroll, and it turned out to be Leviticus, of all things, it
I'd be far more interested in what comes next (Score:5, Interesting)
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They might discover lost Greek texts or other works of antiquity
Or much more interesting: Etruscan texts, of which there woefully few. The Estruscan language appears to be unrelated to any other known language, from the very few inscriptions we do have.
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They might discover lost Greek texts or other works of antiquity
Or much more interesting: Etruscan texts, of which there woefully few. The Estruscan language appears to be unrelated to any other known language, from the very few inscriptions we do have.
If only we could find Caludius' lost works of the Estruscan history and Dictionary.
Re:gerontophile (Score:2)
I can spell. I just can't type today.
Maybe ... (Score:2)
'Holy' arc? (Score:2)
There's no such thing in archeology or any other science.
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It's Leviticus, so it actually does contain paragraphs on giving burnt offerings to God.