• Welcome to League Of Reason Forums! Please read the rules before posting.
    If you are willing and able please consider making a donation to help with site overheads.
    Donations can be made via here

Crevo Query

arg-fallbackName="Sparhafoc"/>
Now I have been indoctrinated into believing that this verse is talking about now and these last days. Why? We legalized abortion just a few decades ago. We legalized gay marriage a few years ago (to name just a couple). Now we see how today to talk bad about gays is "evil" and to talk bad about aboron is "evil". My question is, are we indeed fulfilling this very thing? Calling evil good and good evil? Or am I mistaken about this verse and perhaps it's speaking of something totally different.

One might wonder who the 'we' is there?

The USA?

Part and parcel of the Protestant denominations of Christianity in the US is this kind of assumption of the nation being of special significance to God, that the US is some kind of unique fulfillment of righteous Christianity, and that consequently God's going to be either mad or happy based on what policies the US - you see this kind of nonsense every time a disaster hits with televangelists telling their flocks that the disaster is indication of God's displeasure with homosexuality or some other idiocy like that. Nothing in the Bible supports the idea of any American Exceptionalism, and America's capitalist policies, despite being popular with the same right wing Protestant Christians, seems entirely contrary to every relevant statement Jesus made.

Of course, the reality actually is that for the majority of human history, abortion wasn't criminal in the first place. This is also true of Christian countries. It's only relatively recently that it was criminalized. In the US, for example, up until 1900, abortion was widely practiced so long as it was 'prior to quickening'.

Finally, you should actually look into the times the Bible mentions homosexuality or abortion. Most Christians are simply unaware that the Bible has basically nothing to say on either. While there are events in the Bible which include homosexuality, generally it doesn't appear to be homosexuality the writers have a problem with, but rather other corresponding acts. On abortion, the Bible has absolutely nothing to say whatsoever. What this tells us is that all the Christians of the last century or whatever that claimed homosexuality and abortion should be illegal because of justifications deriving from their beliefs were either wrong or lying - in reality, they were pretending that their political and social preferences were divinely mandated but had bugger all scriptural support for those positions.

So your idea doesn't really hold up to any form of wider historical context.

Homosexuality never was 'evil'; it's a completely natural facet of the biological world found in thousands of animal species.

Abortion never was 'evil'; it's necessary for women to be able to control the frequency of their pregnancies, particularly so in a time prior to modern availability of contraceptives.

Saying bad things about homosexuals or parents who aborted isn't 'evil' - it's just small-minded, irrational, and arrogant.

Evil isn't a 'thing' that can be attained or not attained, it's a judgment call of society - a moral line the majority conceives of as being one step beyond what could be forgiven or understood.

Finally, you have to understand that every verse in the Bible which suggests some indication of the dire state of 'present times' has been appealed to in every age by Christian zealots. The plasticity of interpretation, in my opinion, strongly counts against the supposed divine source of the text.
 
arg-fallbackName="Steelers1981"/>
Thanks Aron Ra. I never realized the arrogance that we as a nation have become. We indeed always tend to believe that everything is about us or is referring to us. This answer makes a lot of since, so i appreciate that as now I can eliminate this fallacy from my interpretation. I don't have any questions, however I do have somewhat of a request. I have watched an untold number of your Youtube videos (which are all amazing). I don't know if you have already made a video (and i just haven't found it yet) of this or not, but I was wondering if you had a video where you start from the beginning (Genesis) and go through all the main stories of the bible in order and show us where the writers of the bible borrowed the story from. For example, you talk about the 6 creative days and god rested on the 7th day. This was copied from a previous religion in where 6 sets of gods created each day so that way the last set of gods could rest on the 7th day. The main reason for changing the thought of 'gods' to 'god' was because the Abrahamic religions were all going towards monothestic and getting away from polytheistic. I know you have some videos that you touch on specific areas about this very thing (i.e. exodus story copied from a Babylonian story). However, just wanted to know if you have a video (or possibly make a video) that goes from beginning to end describing where each story was copied from. (I.e. creative days, garden of Eden, flood, exodus, Jesus story and any other big story that may have been copied from previous religions). I just think it would be awesome to be able to take someones bible and show them how and when every single story was copied or influenced from previous beliefs.

If this is something you have already done, can you please send a link to that video. Thanks Aron Ra for all your hard work, you have made a huge difference in my understanding and freed me from the yoke of religion.

Josh
 
arg-fallbackName="Steelers1981"/>
Nice to meet you Gary. Sorry, I replied from his previous text, not sure why it went to you.
 
arg-fallbackName="Steelers1981"/>
Greetings,

The flood story is also from earlier cultures - you can find information about it in The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood.

Also, here's his talk on it:



Kindest regards,

James

Thank you for all your information. I'm currently working on a paper that shows how every story of the Bible was taken or influenced by previous religions (i.e. flood, red Sea crossing etc). However, Aron Ra mentioned an ancient text that talked about how 6 sets of God's created the first 6 days and the 6th set of God's made man so the 7th set of God's could rest.

Obviously this is what inspired the Jews to write the Genesis creation account. My question is who wrote that text about the 6 sets of God's creating each day so 7th set could rest?

I've looked all throughout Aron Ras videos and can't seem to refined it.

Thank you
 
arg-fallbackName="Deleted member 42253"/>
Another arrow for your quiver: We actually observed simple life around volcanic underwater vents, microbes thriving in one of the most acidic and toxic enviroment that exist on earth. Conditions at least similiar to what we imagine the early earth to have been like. I think Aron might have been referencing that, but lets spice it up with a couple of easy to digest sources:


Imho some of the most exiting news of recent history. Nevermind the most exiting news anyone into fossils can get .. 1.43 billion years old fossils of deep sea microbes:

 
arg-fallbackName="Steelers1981"/>
I recently received the following email:


While creationism contradicts all of science, and even contradicts itself, there are no contradictions in evolutionary theory whatsoever. I challenge you to produce one. You can't.


I’ll be happy to. I’m writing this reply from the passenger seat of my wife’s electric car as we return to Dallas from a weekend road trip to Phoenix Arizona, and I'm referencing Wikipedia from my phone, lacking a proper internet connection until we get to El Paso.


You’re right that they're not the right scientific terms, because you're conflating abiogenesis, geology and cosmology with evolution. Unless otherwise specified, when scientists speak of evolution, they’re only talking about a theory of biodiversity via population mechanics, summarily defined as “descent with inherent modification” or “changes in allele frequencies in reproductive populations over many generations”. Thus, evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life, the universe and everything. It is only talking about how already living organisms diversify into many different species. Since almost none of your questions to me have anything to do with evolution, we should talk about that after I’m done with these.


You’re not talking about evolution here, but abiogenesis, which is an entirely different collection of unrelated processes in different chemical environments.


First off, efficient simplicity could be an indicator of intelligent design, not the unnecessarily absurd complexity of biochemistry. That is indicative of a haphazard incidental configuration.

Second, it is said by biochemists that biochemists don’t say what you say they do. While it is true that a single cell cannot evolve, because evolution only applies to populations, rather than individuals, it is not true that we have to start with a complete cell. Instead, biochemists have always said that we have to start with constituent components. That’s what the Miller-Urey experiments were all about. Theirs and a number of other, similar experiments showed that water, ammonia, methane and hydrogen generate amino acids when heated and charged with electricity. The same thing happens when you change the mix to include Carbon-dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen-sulfide and sulfur-dioxide. Similarly, heating water to 70ºC in the presence of iron hydroxide (simulating geothermal vents in the anaerobic conditions of the prebiotic earth) also produced amino acids and alpha hydroxy acids in the lab. A separate study showed that redox and pH gradients drive amino acid synthesis in iron oxyhydroxide mineral systems. This is how we get from inorganic to organic chemistry.


Water protects against UV radiation much better than the relatively transparent ozone layer. Some stages of the abiogenesis sequence may have benefited from higher radiation. What we know of the early earth is that it was much warmer and more radioactive than it is today, a bubbling cauldron cooking complex chemicals.


On the contrary, alanine and valine, two of the proteinogenic amino acids thought to be among the most abundant on a prebiotic earth, can polymerize into peptides even in an aqueous environment. Further studies show it is remarkably easy for peptides to subsequently assemble into ordered protein-like, two-dimensional structures – amyloids – from basic building blocks. This discovery supports the researchers’ hypothesis that primal life could have evolved from amyloids such as these, and all of this, and every other stage of abiogenesis, happens in water.


There were two completely different and unrelated ideas that were both proposed as the “law of “biogenesis” by different scientists in the 19th century, one evolutionary, one not. Natural laws are determined by people. People can be wrong, and both of these laws turned out to be wrong. The one you’re talking about was proposed by Rudolf Virchow, who correctly noted that life comes from life and that cells come from cells. The word “only” was not included either time. Virchow also correctly noted that diseased cells come from diseased cells. Except that here he was forced to concede that there also had to be a first diseased cell that was originally a healthy cell that had somehow become diseased. This also logically implied that there had to be a first cell to qualify as living.

Now we know that the idea of a single first cell is too simplistic. We’re talking about vast collections of quasi-cells, many of which meet some but not all of the qualifications required to be considered alive. For example, studies show that peptides can spontaneously form self-replicating protein structures in the presence of carbonyl sulphide. They can also dry into polypeptides, because some of these chemicals become increasingly complex after repeated cycles of inundation, dehydration and irradiation. Then once the right phosphate is involved, they become ribonucleotides. If ribonucleotides come into contact with montmorillonite, they spontaneously produce strands of RNA. Activated RNA can not only replicate itself even without the usual enzyme, it also builds DNA. Biochemists also now know of a ribozyme that can use either left or right handed RNA templates to exclusively synthesize right-handed versions, solving the problem of homochirality. Then of course phospholipids automatically form a bilayered cell-wall upon contact with water, due to their combined polarity; allowing a haven for all these processes, with transport vesicles and other semi-permeable channels to keep fueling and exchanging the system. So if RNA and then DNA are contained within that incidental arrangement, then we have the basis of the first living cells.


This is the only question you’ve asked that had anything to do with evolution. Here is the textbook answer:

"Two processes are responsible for genetic variation, recombination and mutation. Mutation is the ultimate source of genetic change; new alleles arise in all organisms, some spontaneously, others as a result of exposure to mutagenic agents in the environment. These new alleles become the raw material for a second level of variation, effected by mutation."
Modern Genetic Analysis 1999
Griffiths AJF, Gelbart WM, Miller JH, et al.
5103QF5B6VL._SL350_.jpg



What you’re referring to here is a collection of different scientific theories, including big bang cosmology and accretion theory. Neither of which have anything to do with biology, to which evolution is confined. And both of these cosmic theories were proposed by scientists who had either rejected evolution or had never even heard of it.


We actually have observed that innumerable times with many different chemicals, both in space and here on earth.


You’re conflating unrelated theories again. The big bang concerns the inflation of the universe implied by cosmic red shift. However, what you’re talking about now is accretion theory, which deals with material in various states coming together due to gravitational attraction. This has nothing to do with the big bang. Understand that accretion theory isn’t just the commonly-observed condensation of gases into liquids and solids and their subsequent coalescence. It also continues with solids colliding into each other, which can tilt or otherwise significantly alter orbits and rotations, depending on which quadrant they hit; especially when we have rogue bodies coming in from other systems.


It isn’t odd at all that nothing ever matches anything in the Bible. I don’t know who is feeding you all this nonsense, but it seems that none of your information is correct. The first recorded observation of a supernova was in China 1,836 years ago. That star likely exploded 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, but its light didn’t get here until the year 185 on the Gregorian calendar. The earliest possible recorded supernova, known as HB9, could have been viewed by unknown Indian observers around 4500 years Before the Common calendar. There have been very few supernovae seen since then, except through telescopes, which can detect them even in other galaxies millions of light years away, which means they happened millions of years ago. Remember that the phrase "it is said" can refer to things that were said by idiots and liars. And if you got this from a creationist source, then the author is both.


No, it isn’t. It’s made almost entirely of metal, specifically iron and nickel.


Once again, evolution is a theory of biodiversity, not cosmology, nor geology, nor the origin of biochemistry. However, we also know that there was life on this planet as early as 3.8 billion years ago. So your numbers are still off. Your sources are misleading you.


What you’re citing now is actually the first creationist claim I ever refuted when I started doing this back around 1997. Though back then, I just copied it from the archive of creationist claims on Talk.Origins. You should check out their Index of Creationist Claims. Therein you'll see that the assertion was that these were supposed to be Polonium haloes, which only have a half-life of 138 days, and this was supposed to imply a recent magical creation. However, polonium haloes form from the alfa decay of radon, which is one of the decay products of uranium. Since radon is a gas, it can migrate through small cracks in the minerals. The fact that polonium haloes are only found associated with uranium, (the parent material for producing radon) supports this conclusion, as does the fact that such haloes are commonly found among cracks.


No, they wouldn’t; they couldn’t.


Again, your sources are misleading you. Comet Hyatuke has an orbital period of 70,000 years. Comet C/2006 P1 has an orbital period of 92,000 years, and Comet West has an orbital period of 250,000 years. So there was never any agreement that comets could only be 10,000 years old. Importantly though, the comets we have today haven't always been comets since the beginning of time. They only became comets relatively recently, as president Morgan Freeman explains at 1:41 of this clip from Deep Impact.



This is not circular reasoning because it isn't just a "belief" in the sense that your religious position is make-believe. The Oort cloud is a theoretical field of not-yet conglomerated material. In what sense did you imagine this to be circular reasoning? Especially considering that Oumuamua, which came through our system at 196,000 miles an hour four years ago was determined to be an interstellar object.


Where do you imagine circular reasoning here? Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune all have rings in various states of decay. And if one of their moons is destroyed, either by another moon or by an impacting asteroid, that would generate a new ring.


Yes, we absolutely would. Remember that it takes hundreds of millions of years for our galaxy to rotate just once. So even if galaxies were hundreds of billions of years old, we would still see them spiral into each other, just as this animation shows, with references to known galaxies in various states of collision over the last several billion years.



Again, while the English word "evolution" simply means any "change over time", the Theory of evolution only pertains to biodiversity via population genetics, which I'll be happy to prove to your satisfaction, once we're done with your questions.


Uniformitarianism means that we don't make the unwarranted assumption that the laws of physics had changed and were somehow different in the past. Instead we must consider that the laws of physics that apply now applied the same way in the past also. In which case, we know that certain sediments really do take hundreds of millions of years to accumulate to these levels, and we also see a WHOLE LOT of erosion, where you somehow thought we see none. Again, your sources are lying to you. As to your comment about soil between layers, if you deposited soil in the 1980s and continued to do so in the 1990s, would you expect to see any between those decades? If you shoveled all weekend, would you expect to find soil between the layers from Saturday and Sunday?


As with metallurgy, a gradual application of pressure can bend things slowly that would have broken if you tried to do it too fast.


Except that most of this was never "mud". So the only way this makes sense is under great pressure over a very long period of time.


No. Cracks usually only happen with relatively sudden tectonic movement, earthquakes.


Not if I applied a combination of heat and pressure continuously over many years.


Apart from igneous (volcanic) magma, when is rock ever soft and pliable?


Deep time is not an ideology. It is a verifiable fact that was confirmed by several Christian scientists citing several different means hundreds of years ago, even before we had several different methods of radiometric dating to confirm it all over again.


Again, if you look at the Index of Creationist Claims, you'll see that "Sudden deposition is not a problem for uniformitarian geology. Single floods can deposit sediments up to several feet thick. Furthermore, trees buried in such sediments do not die and decay immediately; the trunks can remain there for years or even decades." There is a more detailed explanation of Polystrate Tree Fossils, if you really care to understand this in more depth.


Once again, uniformitarianism is not a "belief". Secondly, no one assumes that underwater canyons would be formed by the same type of disparate erosion seen above sea level. Instead of reading creationist websites, which are always deliberately deceptive misinformation, you should look at secular science sources for the formation of underwater canyons. Even if you only went to Wikipedia, you would see that


Every question that comes from a creationist website is another error to be corrected, because they refuse to get anything right. So I suggest you only ask me what you yourself personally want to better understand.

Now, do you understand and accept everything I have explained to you so far?

If so, then if you're up to it, I could prove evolution even to your satisfaction. As a bonus, I will also prove that creationism depends ENTIRELY on frauds, falsehoods and fallacies with no truth in it. What do you say?


Aron Ra, this is Josh Melton. I had asked you quite a few questions in the past (and thank you so much for answering and all the help you have done for me which is beyond the scope of this email). However, I have one question that has been bothering me for quite sometime. Im sure you have heard of it and if one is a believer it is quite impressive. It has to do with the first 10 names of the genealogy from Adam to Noah (actually goes all the way to Jesus but that is quite a bit long). As im sure you are well aware of in ancient Hebrew times parents would name their children and the childs name always had a meaning. Actually the meaning of their name was more important then their actual name itself. For example, Moses means rescued. Peter means fragment of a rock. Each name had an important meaning to it. This prophecy (or so the believers claim) could not have been minupulated or written after the math. As we know, the book of Genesis was written around 500BCE. In other words some 500 years before the birth of the supposed Jesus. Before going to far, ill just give you in order what each name means and then read it all together.

Adam- Man
Seth- is appointed
Enosh- a mortal man of sorrow
Kenan- sorrow is born
Mahalalel- the glory of god
Jared- shall come down
Enoch- instructing that
Methuselah- his death shall bring
Lamech- those in despair
Noah- comfort and rest

Read in sequence it reads....

"Man is appointed a mortal man of sorrow, sorrow is born. The glory of god shall come down, instructing that his death shall bring those in despair, comfort and rest".

I have fought with this for quite some time and every possible explanation that i have has failed. Genesis was obviously written centuries before jesus. They couldnt have gone back and minnipulated the text somehow because we have the dead sea scrolls that date back to 200BCE. So it was obviously written this way long before Christ. Also, if you go on (from Luke chapter 3) this genealogy goes all the way to Jesus and continues to make a profound statement of a coming Christ and his death and resurrection.

If you have any explanation on how this is possible please let me know

Thank you so much for all that you do, i cant tell you enough how you have helped me overcome religious indoctrination.

Josh Melton
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
if one is a believer it is quite impressive.
I'm a believer and I don't think its so impressive. Either God exists or does not. I think He does.

If He does, then Him giving people names is not that all impressive considering He created us and the entire universe.

If He does not, then those 10 names are of no significance. It's just meaningless jumble put together in a sentence to describe an event that never happened nor ever could happen.

It would be interesting to get Aron's take on it though, I dont remember this being talked about much by atheists or by other christians, for that matter.
 
Last edited:
arg-fallbackName="Steelers1981"/>
I'm a believer and I don't think its so impressive. Either God exists or does not. I think He does.

If He does, then Him giving people names is not that all impressive considering He created us and the entire universe.

If He does not, then those 10 names are of no significance. It's just meaningless jumble put together in a sentence to describe an event that never happened nor ever could happen.

It would be interesting to get Aron's take on it though, I dont remember this being talked about much by atheists or by other christians, for that matter.
Same here, wish Aron would respond to this. It's definitely different then most prophecies, I got no explanation because it isn't "mumbo-jumbo" but instead, a direct story just by using the meanings of their names.
 
arg-fallbackName="*SD*"/>
Adam- Man
Seth- is appointed
Enosh- a mortal man of sorrow
Kenan- sorrow is born
Mahalalel- the glory of god
Jared- shall come down
Enoch- instructing that
Methuselah- his death shall bring
Lamech- those in despair
Noah- comfort and rest

Read in sequence it reads....

"Man is appointed a mortal man of sorrow, sorrow is born. The glory of god shall come down, instructing that his death shall bring those in despair, comfort and rest".

In the meantime...

Assuming the above is accurate and correct, and I have zero clue whether it is or not, but in the interests of charitability I'll assume it is... so what? The sentence doesn't even make any sense to me as a non-believer. I have to deliberately slather it in a theistic worldview to pull anything from it. And even then all I really get is some sort of poetry perhaps. To me as an atheist this is just a big nothing burger. No offence intended.
 
arg-fallbackName="ldmitruk"/>
In the meantime...

Assuming the above is accurate and correct, and I have zero clue whether it is or not, but in the interests of charitability I'll assume it is... so what? The sentence doesn't even make any sense to me as a non-believer. I have to deliberately slather it in a theistic worldview to pull anything from it. And even then all I really get is some sort of poetry perhaps. To me as an atheist this is just a big nothing burger. No offence intended.
It seems similar to the bible code nonsense. Not to mention those names can have multiple meanings, for example Jared also means descent, Kenan: to take possession, Enoch: dedicated, and so on. A person could come up with some good Mad Libs using various name meaning sites on the net.
 
Back
Top