OH!

Rhythm... hmmm... what's that again?

you must be the only one

good luck... i'm kinda fast

Abra:

Once again, your post merely skirts the issue. Of course God was
specifically scattering them because it became clear that humanity had
reached a state in which goals (one that is specifically named is the
idea of building a tower to Heaven) required no character-building work
to be accomplished. Thus, the act of spreading was (as is clear from the
passage, without any unusual "divine" interpretation) undertaken for the
express purpose of making the world such that in order to accomplish
goals, differences had to be overcomed.

The passage does not say that God is worried that they will succeed in
building the tower (that's absurd). It says the he is worried that they
will be able to come together to work on the tower (or anything else
they conspire or imagine to work on) without have to ever overcome any
differences. That is what he is repsonding to. And it is very clear from
the passage that he is responding to that.

Secondly, if you actually think that biologists don't study the origin
of languages, then you are completely crazy and there is no point in
even trying to have a reasonable conversation with you. The origin,
development, and structure of languages is one of the most hotly debated
and widely researched topic within computational biology right now. If
you had read my last post, instead of skimming it, you would have seen
that the National Science Foundation, for example, is paying tons of
money right now for research projects on the emergent properties of
languages.

Just to name a few of the very prominent language and emergent behavior
scientists:
Noam Chomsky, Felipe Cucker, Maya Paczuski, and Laure Heïgeas.

It's ridiculous and completely unfounded to say that biologists do not
study language theory. I mean, that is absolutely absurd.

Further, you often say that I make absurd claims, but then you never try
to validate that with any argument of your own. You just write off my
statements as ridiculous, as if you need an excuse not to answer them. I
think it demonstrates that you are the one being dogmatic about your
particular set of beliefs.

Abra:

I just wanted to point out that in my first reply to your post, I
definitely did respond to Sorority's original post and offered an
interpretation of the philosophical value for God's decision regarding
the Tower of Babel.

People can't build a tower into space because it would be structurally
unstable and you can't breathe in space without breathing apparatuses.
Hence, it is ridiculous to claim that people might have built a tower to
outer space. The passage in Bible says nothing about whether they would
have succeeded in terms of building a tower to heaven. It merely says
that God saw that the world had reached a state in which people could
not build character that comes from working through differences, since
they essentially had none. Again, I'll just refer you to my previous
several posts (which you apparently ignored).

Also, I'm open to everyones interpretation. I have considered yours and
find it to be logically untenable, hence I don't accept it. I feel that
you are the one being closed minded... because when you post you admit
that you're not trying to change anyone's mind (not even your own). If
all you are doing is repeating mantra after mantra that you have come to
believe in over the years of your life, then you are the one who is not
open to change.

A simply great book that deals with some of this is called "The Problem
of Pain" by C.S. Lewis. It is a philosophical book that gives an
amazingly insightful answer to those people who think God's not real
because of the pain that exists.

But for a while it talks about why and how the belief in God ever got
started in the first place. Quite obviously, even primitive human beings
easily saw how painful the world is. Why do we tend to think that "back
then" they were somehow "sillier" or "dumber" and so to explain the
world, they made up grandiose tales about God and strange, weird myths?

To me, that is nonsensical. Just because they were primitive, does not
mean they were dumb or silly or irrational. In fact, I am quite sure
that they were very rational thinkers. Thus, why in the world did that
one single first human being who ever first came up with the concept of
God, why did he attribute goodness to God?

How could it possibly have developed that this painful, death-infested
world got to be attributed to a wise and loving God in the first place?
This leads to plenty of interesting debates, but for me it is quite
obvious that unless there actually was such a God, we would have never
been prompted to make him up. Unless God interfered with our existence,
we would have never dreamed up a good, or all-powerful force to be the
cause for the world around us.

I agree that after the large body of literature was built up, only then
could a small group act on it. But reading the Bible that sits on my
desk, I can clearly see that the themes in it are so interweaved that
they couldn't possibly have simply selected which themes to leave in and
which to leave out.

Additionally, we keep finding very old (3-4 thousand years) versions of
the documents and they turn out to barely be different from the version
on my desk (usually there are never more than a few verses difference...
which I consider to be totally OK given that the books are roughly 4000
years old).

One other thing though that I feel I should say is that the council of
Niceas DID NOT have a significant impact on theology at any point in
time. The events portrayed by Dan Brown relating to that council are
ridiculously (super ridiculously) blown out of proportion specifically
for the purposes of selling books).

The council of Nicea never voted on whether Christ was a deity or not.
There were 2 members (just 2 out of over 200) that wanted to, and as a
silly formality to appease those "crazy 2 members who just couldn't drop
the issue" they "voted" on it (but no one really took the vote
seriously... everyone there already believed that Christ was a deity,
except those 2 guys who kept arguing it). The result of the vote merely
said that they would keep on considering Christ a deity as they always
had been.

That is ALL that Nicea is known for, but Dan Brown does a nice job of
trying to make it look more controversial than it is.

Abra:

I said to stop ragging on the Bible because (emphasis on the because,
there) it has to be interpreted. I didn't say stop ragging on it if you
disagree with its message.

I am merely saying that if you criticize the Bible simply because it has
to be interpreted, then you would have to equally criticize every piece
of literature (i.e. it is not legitimate to criticize any piece of
writing merely because it has to be interpreted before it can be
useful).

If you feel that the message of the Bible is faulty, or unimportant, or
wrong, or evil, or whatever, that's fine. I even said in my post that I
respect those people who have beliefs that disagree with my own.
Apparently you failed to read that part of my post, and then you took
one sentence (the least meanignful sentence of my whole post) and you
quoted it out of context in order to try to make an argument against me.

That process sounds eerily familiar... it's the same thing that Dan
Brown does with his (preposterous) books about the authenticity of the
Bible. Apparently it is a common theme among people who disagree with
the Bible for reasons of authenticity. You pick some singular quote that
has no meaning without context, and then you forget to interpret it in
the context of surrounding language, and then you draw faulty
conclusions.

I do not advocate (and never have) that people should not criticize the
Bible. However, if your only basis for criticizing it lies in the fact
that in has to be interpreted, then your claims are invalid (because
your claims themselves have to be interpreted by your listeners).

Further, I believe (so please not that this is only my belief) that it's
simply too far-fetched to believe that relgious leaders with specific
agendas could possibly have been capable of organizing not only the
writing of the Bible, but then also the writing of the later books, and
the editing of all the books to make sure the amazingly deep
philosophical ideas were kept entirely consistent throughout the 4000+
years over which it was written. To me, that would require a miracle far
more stunning that walking on water or parting the Red Sea. It's
logically absurd to believe that this book is the organized work of a
small number of people. It is quite obviously the inspired work of a
single author. But that point can (and will have to be) argued somewhere
else, later.

And, to make another comment that is applicable to this post, evolution
actually can't account for the emergence of languages. I am actually
being paid to do research this summer by the National Science Foundation
in order to develop mathematical models of the emergence of human
languages because it is now the consensus opinion among modern
evolutionary biologists that modern, vowel-based, language structure did
not develop until fewer than 5-10 thousand years ago. This, I think,
gives some additional credibility to the story of the Tower of Babel.

And in case you're interested in the topic from a scientific point of
view, it is called emergent behavior. It's the same property that allows
fish to travel in schools, wolves ot hunt in packs, and groups of
lightning bugs to synchronize their lighting patterns.

Ten seconds of rational though will make it obvious that it would be
impossible for such behavior to have an origin, genetically. Take fish
schooling for example. In order for fish to know how to school, they
have to have that particular knowledge transcribed onto their genes.
Clearly then, no single isolated fish could ever have benefited if he
were the only fish to have known how to 'school'. Thus, in order for
natural selection to select genes with knowledge of schooling, a
multitude of fish would have had to have had it. But in order for a
multitude of fish to have the same mutation (i.e. the one giving them
the ability to school) natural selection would first have to choose some
single fish with that trait to survive... which leads to circular logic
and hence a contradiction.

This is just one example. No single fish could ever decide on his own to
be in a school. But if no single fish ever did that, then natural
selection can't ensure that schooling is a property of fish that gets
passed on. This is even admitted in college level evolutionary biology
book. It's one of the most difficult unsolved problems in biology.

Anyway, human language is the same. No single human could have been the
first one to start basing language on a system of vowels, because if the
others didn't adopt that language convention, then it could not properly
develop. Hence, you have to presuppose that a large group used the same
vowel system (and remember that in language theory 'vowel system' might
have a different meaning than you think. A vowel system could even
include the system of clicks and noises used by some primitive tribes in
Africa. It might seem primitive to you, but it's really amazingly
sophistocated. Just remember how the army used the Navajo language as a
code in world war 2).

So, please don't go assuming that science can somehow explain where
languages came from. It's one of the most difficult unsolved problems
facing biologists right now. The general idea is called emergent
behavior, and it presents the biggest challenge to evolution (in
addition to irreducible complexity).

Anyway, that's just a summary of why I feel that

1. claiming the Bible is wrong merely because it's interpreted is not
legitimate.

2. the Bible was not written by an organized, small group of people
based on personal agendas.

3. evolution cannot account for the emergence of vowel structure in
languages.

The passage you should read is Genesis 11:1-9. I suggest the translation
called 'The Message' but any translation is perfectly suitbale.

The Tower of Babel has nothing to do with punishment. God merely
observes that without political or larguage barriers, then barely any
tasks will be impossible for human kind to accomplish via working
together. Apparently, God did not want this to be the case, so he
miraculously arranged for men to be spread out to different countries
and speak different languages. Thus, the processes of working together,
overcoming differences, and working to get past language barriers
entered life.

I am a Christian, and I happen to believe that these events actually
happened. However, I see no problem in believing that this is merely a
story told to describe God's character.

In either case, a bit of God's character is revealed. He has a priority
to arrange the world such that we have difficulty in working together.
Hence, in order to work together, we have to learn to overcome
differences and be respectful: a perfectly legitimate lesson if you ask
me.

Now, obviously many of you don't believe this story, and I respect that.
But its purpose is only to explain where the idea of different languages
came from. God, upon seeing that humanity had only just reached a level
of cooperation that would have led to a civilization that was
dangerously homogeneous (uniform), decided to act so that humans could
grow in character by living in a world where tolerance, respect, and
cooperation were necessary.

That's my interpretation, and it makes perfect sense to me. Other
interpretations may make sense to you, and everyone should read the
passage for themselves and decide on which interpretation is best for
them.

In that sense, every piece of literature that has ever been written must
be interpreted. You could equally ask: "What's the point of the
constitution if the Supreme Court has to interpret it for us?" What is
the point of Feynman's Lectures on Physics if they have to be
interpreted? Everything, even science, has to be interpreted. And in
each case, you simply try to make an argument for why your
interpretation is correct. Or else, upon recognizing incorrect parts of
your own interpretation, you seek to find some interpretation that is
correct.

So please stop ragging on the Bible for needing to be interpreted. Every
piece of literature has to be interpreted.

A lobstermuffin or a muffinlobster?

that's something different, but not far off the topic...


Einstein used to start out some of his lectures by drawing a small
circle on the blackboard. He would say that the inside of the circle
represented what was known about the universe and the outside
represented what we didn't know. So the circumference of the circle
would be that mysterious border between what we know and don't know.
Einstein was always quick to point out that no matter how large the
circle grew, the circumference always gets bigger as well. So the more
knowledge we collect, the larger the border is between what we know and
what we don't know.

I have always found it inspiring. The most brilliant man who lived was
well aware of the limitations of empirical knowledge.

have you ever heard the story about "Einstein's Circle" that i am
referring to in the poem?

Truth Tellers!
or sellers of gimmicks?
Is science a Witness
or an enterprise?

We put on the costumes of knowledge and proof
We advertise Einstein’s Circle
as it continues to grow.

But so does what we don’t know

And while the Science of science is being refined
Everything we want to prove
Is just beyond our reach.


I hope it stays there.

AHHHHHHHH Which is better!?

How does one decide!!!???

you don't know what you're missing

kind of a soupy mix of spices, vegetables, and a ton of very well cooked
tofu. i added some rice

this stuff freakin' rocks

<------------------ see the picture?

That's me reaching for more hair to pull out.

when people use the term "coke" to refer to ever kind of pop (soda (but
really it's pop))

i supremely hate the word "breakfasted"... breakfast is a noun people,
not a d*mn verb!!!